| badgenome said: You certainly have a natural right not to be thrown into an arcane system that you don't understand, to answer for charges that you don't understand, while being forced to make incriminating statements against yourself, to face cruel and unusual punishment as a result, and in the event that you are found innocent, to be tried repeatedly for the same charge until you are finally found guilty. Building legal representation for defendants into the system when the state hauls you into its court and attempts to throw you in a cage isn't even in the same universe as telling everyone they are entitled to avail themselves of other people's skills, equipment, drugs, and so on free of charge. All it takes is a quick Google of "insert western nation here" and "health care costs" to see that it's a huge problem everywhere. America's system is more screwed up than most, not because of private insurance alone as you suggest, but because of the entire third party payer system. Medicare and Medicaid are a massive part of that. And thanks to Obamacare, the private insurance market has just been turned into a fucked up form of for-profit welfare, so shit is going to get worse before it gets better. The fact that Democrats want European style health care without including European style tort reform because they are so beholden to trial lawyers doesn't help. You do realize that most other nations have populations and economies comparable to our individual states, don't you? Saying that a tiny, ethnically homogeneous country like Norway can swing a massive nanny state at the national level, so America with its 310 million wildly diverse citizens should, too, is bordering on the imbecilic. And downsizing a bloated, wasteful government is not at all like chopping off a healthy limb to lose weight, it's like losing weight because you need to lose weight. Your comparison is so absurd, I had to read it twice to make sure you actually said something that ludicrous. |
Saying that you have a "natural right" to not be thrown into an arcane system just doesn't make sense. By your logic, you should have a right not to be put into any sort of system at all. The right to representation is a right that was introduced as a protection. It's easy to invent "natural rights" for any actual right... but the problem is, each time you do it, you end up also introducing other rights that weren't meant to be there.
I do agree that a major problem with the American health system is that it's not single-payer in any sense. And "European style health care"? No, how about Canadian? Australian? Neither country is "european", and both have far better outcomes, universal coverage, and lower costs. Australia's system is probably the better fit for America, having a private health insurance industry as an option on top of the basic public coverage. And you keep saying "western nation", but I'm not convinced that you're actually looking at it fairly. Have you even looked at Australia? Yes, our health care costs are increasing... but it's a proportional increase. And a lot of other "western nations" aren't having any more of a problem than Australia. I'll tell you what - have a read of this:
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/healthreport/health-care-costs-in-australia/3629464 (the "transcript")
"Our total health expenditure has increased as a proportion of GDP over a number of years. It was 7.9% about a decade ago and it's now 9.4% of GDP in 2009/10 but that's what we're also seeing in most other oeCD countries and in fact as the standard of living increases what you expect to see is that more of that is spent on health. And we're also starting to see the impact of the ageing population."
So basically, Australia's increasing total health care costs aren't particularly due to rising prices or things like that, but due to Australians paying more in order to sustain a higher standard of living, plus the aging population requiring more health care (whereas before, they were just dying). And the implication is that it's true elsewhere, too.
And I'm sorry, but the statistical difference between 5 million and 300 million is miniscule, it makes little difference to the overall behaviour. And I really don't see what ethnicity has to do with the ability for people to get along... unless you're claiming that America is inherently racist. Also, Norway has a significant immigrant population, with the current count working out to over 13% of the population. Also worth noting is that I'm not saying that Norway has it perfect, or that America should imitate Norway in everything... but perhaps America could get off its damn high horse for a few seconds, and look at where other countries are outperforming them? You know, try to improve your country by taking the best and most effective policies from other countries?
And no, the "small government" argument is akin to chopping off limbs. Government doesn't need to be smaller, it needs to be more efficient - it needs to cut away excess fat, through sensible policies. Let me put it this way - the Libertarian attitude would be "government needs to get out of healthcare". That would be cutting off a limb. On the other hand, "government needs to clean up its handling of health care" would involve cutting away the fat, leaving the healthy stuff behind.
Let me try another analogy on you. Trying to make government smaller is treating the symptom, rather than the cause. Government is bloated because of problems within government. Making government smaller doesn't fix those problems, it just puts more strain on the budget, which only serves to make it even more of a problem. On the other hand, if you fix the cause, the actual problems within government, then government will get smaller on its own, and what's left will be a much healthier government.
And that's where the analogy with obesity comes back in. If you get on the scales, and see that you're far overweight, you see the symptom that you're too heavy. A healthy response is to identify why you're so fat, and address those problems. An unhealthy response is to identify quick ways to remove weight (like cutting off a limb) - not only will it not address the problems, but it will actually make it even harder to address them.
But hey, why bother putting forward an argument, when you can just resort to ad hominem? Why explain your reasoning, when you can call the other person's argument "imbecilic" and leave it at that?
