Incidentally for anyone who's interested, you can save a page to your hard drive, edit the source, remove the .post_vote {display: none;} from the CSS, view the page from your hard drive, and give it a yea or nay if you'd like. :)
SilkWizard wrote:
The fact that you need health care doesn't entitle you to it. You're either some kind of moron or a heartless, selfish freak who is the very definition of 'immoral'. Maybe a combination of the two. | |
Devourer Of Souls wrote:
You're either some kind of moron or a heartless, selfish freak who is the very definition of 'immoral'. Maybe a combination of the two. It's called being an intellectual. | |
Everyone loves to throw Canada out there as reasoning to why socialized health care is flawed. Way to be spoon fed corporate crap. In 2000 Canada was rated 30th in the world for health care, the US was 37th (WHO rankings). Canada's health care sure isn't great, but the countries at the top of those lists? Yea... Those poor doctors over in France, Italy, etc. Only making six figures and can only budget one or two $90 thousand sports cars a year. Man.. Are they suffering...
The US sick care system is a complete and utter joke. You tell some of the stories of things that go on here to doctors in other countries they'll look at you like you have 4 eyes because the crap that goes on here is so unbelievable. Cut off two fingers with a table saw? Any country with sensible health care: "We'll get someone down here right away and have them put back on, with a little luck you'll have full functionality back in the future!" US Sick care: "It'll be $12,000 for the little finger, $27,000 for the ring finger... Oh you don't have insurance, we'll have to transport you to another hospital and can't help you here... Something for the pain..? The Ibuprofen we'll give you will be $45 per pill [That you can get 100 pills of for about $3 just about anywhere] you sure about that? Oh you'll pass, that's good because we forgot to mention the $600 handling fee because a nurse would have to get the pill for you, so its best you didn't take it..." The numbers may vary a bit, and the second half of that is a little exaggerated, but its a perfect example of what goes on in the US. If you haven't seen it, watch Michael Moore's Sicko with a grain of salt. The other health care systems are sugarcoated quite a bit, but the fact is that despite the sugarcoating those other health care systems are just plain better than what we have in the US. | |
Toadfish wrote:
it is not necessary to question morality -- it is just something we accept Thank you for taking the time to give a thoughtful reply. This, however, is the root of the problem. If you don't have a definition for morality, then morality could be anything. Someone could tell you that people who don't go to church every week are immoral. Another person could claim that stealing and murder are perfectly moral. Without a clearly defined objective set of ethics, you can't even begin to talk about the concept of human rights; much less the pros and cons of government intervention in health care. You can't build an argument without a foundation. Devourer Of Souls wrote: You're either some kind of moron or a heartless, selfish freak who is the very definition of 'immoral'. Maybe a combination of the two. Selfish, yes. Heartless, no. I am glad that we live in a country where your sister was able to get immediate treatment. I'm also happy that we are a nation of laws that holds people to the contracts they make... thus protecting the doctors whom you refuse to pay. Who's the heartless one? Xioden wrote: Any country with sensible health care: "We'll get someone down here right away and have them put back on, with a little luck you'll have full functionality back in the future!" That's a nice fantasy. Coincidentally, this entire editorial describes how that is completely impractical. Stupot wrote: Is the new plan "more socialist" than what is currently out there, most definitely. But it's a far stretch to say that arguments against pure socialized medicine squarely applies. How do they not apply? If we can demonstrate that socialized medicine is bad, then why would any amount of it be good? In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. | |
SilkWizard wrote:
Another person could claim that stealing and murder are perfectly moral. You're right. Whoever wrote that article is doing just that. | |
Devourer Of Souls wrote:
You're right. Whoever wrote that article is doing just that. That's the last "freebie" you get without posting quotes from the article and describing why you have come to that conclusion. | |
SilkWizard wrote:
How do they not apply? If we can demonstrate that socialized medicine is bad, then why would any amount of it be good? You are assuming that the entire notion of socialized medicine is poison. I purport that the only poisonous portion of socialized medicine is that people do not receive acceptable levels of healthcare. If the hybrid plan accounts for that, and people do receive acceptable levels of healthcare, then no, arguments against socialized medicine do not come into play. And, fyi, my definition of immoral means that the immoral party has violated someone else's right. I do not think that the government playing a role in healthcare either protects people's rights, nor does it violate people's rights. It is simply a matter of whether it is a better system for the American people. I'm sure the natural rebuttal to that is that the wealthiest 1% of Americans are going to pay unfair shares... That opens up an entirely different debate though, involving the percentage of profits the wealthiest gain from government provided services vs the percentage of profits other income brackets gain. If I recall correctly, that debate has already taken place. | |
Stupot wrote:
You are assuming that the entire notion of socialized medicine is poison. That's what I've been saying. I simply paused for a moment to answer your question about why attacking "pure" socialized health care was relevant to the discussion. Careful, we could go in circles :) Stupot wrote: And, fyi, my definition of immoral means that the immoral party has violated someone else's right. Do you believe in property rights and a person's right to the fruits of their own labor? If so, you've got a bit of a contradiction on your hands. Socialized medicine seizes the property of individuals in order to distribute it to others. It also artificially controls the prices that doctors can charge for their services as well as who they can do business with. | |
SilkWizard wrote:
Xioden wrote: And yet theres plenty of countries that have been doing just that for decades. Oh, I guess I'm supposed to feel sorry for those doctors in countries like France and Italy who are all making as much as a burger flipper at McDonalds... Oh, Wait, they're still making damn good 6 figure salaries. They've certainly become slaves! Crap like that article is just corporate bullshit to try and convince people that socialized health care doesn't work so that the Sick care industry in the united states can go right on raping the wallets of people who legitimately need help. And anyone who sincerely believes its government intervention driving up health care, it's not. It's company after company charging more and more because sick and dying people will pay, because well they're sick and dying. Hell, even deciding NOT to pay for medical care doesn't help you, You forgo medical care and die you leave your family with the expensive as hell cost of taking care of things once you're gone. But please, Doctors being made into slaves my ass. The health care industry in this country is in the money business, where the health care industry in other countries (You know, those 30 odd countries whose health care is better than ours) is in the business of treating sick people. You think its some nice little fantasy? Well pull your head out of the collective asses of everyone (Insurance companies, Pharmaceutical Companies, etc.) trying to convince people of the exact thing you're believing. Socialized medicine also does not seize the property of others as you put it. Doctors who are suddenly not getting an overly inflated 7 figure income are free to go find somewhere else to work. Most Doctors in the nations with the best health care in the world make just around 6 figures. That is more than enough with which to make a very comfortable living. Those pharmaceutical companies having to charge 1000%+ markups on prescription drugs to recoup research costs? That research is being funded already and suddenly like the rest of the world people can afford the drugs they need to stay alive. In our "Modern" society it's frankly disgusting that things that could make life for millions of people better and save millions of lives are thrown out the window because a bunch of big businesses want more money. | |
With "free" healthcare, more people will have access to medicine and treatment. They will be more healthy and will not require as much medicine or treatment as they were when they were sick.
With less sick people using up all the medication and man hours, there wont be as much scarcity and costs will go down. "Free" healthcare will save everyone a lot of money. People are happier when they're healthy. The world will be a happier place to live. | |
Being someone dealing with some pretty nasty medical issues I still agree that 'universal' healthcare is never going to be an ideal solution, it simply forces too much change into a long-standing system.
Sure, it would be nice if I could see a doctor without having my credit completely ruined, but I'm content just not seeing a doctor. If I could work I'd do that, but my condition prevents that and the disability laws in this country are a joke. Someone who drinks themselves disabled has no trouble getting benefits, but someone with an actual condition out of their control can't. I didn't even want money benefits, I just needed basic insurance to fix me up, then I'd be able to work again. | |
Hi Silk,
I should apologise for being unclear earlier. Allow me to rephrase what I said: it is unnecessary to define objective morality, because should we define objective morality we won't have a part in it. That is, if say, we had a book that defines exactly what the moral action is in a given situation, all we'd have to do to make decisions is, open that book, go to chapter 8.3 and do what it says. I do not believe that purely objective morality can ever be 'moral' -- that is, without the human emotions or mind, you can never make decisions as 'moral' as they could've been with these things. Because humanity is in the centre of morality, humanity is also a central component of it, and so 'objective morality' - a set of rules and logic that defines exactly what is moral and what isn't - however logically correct it may be, won't really be 'moral', ever. It would be as if we let objective systems and logic take over our 'right' to determine what exactly is right, or moral, ourselves, by detaching ourselves from our own morality. A society in which 'moral' decision making is robotic and needs no human intervention, is not really moral, in my eyes. However I should add, that I also see where you're coming from. The polar opposite to an objective system of ethics is a subjective one, and that system is just as bad. Without some code of ethics we would never be able to make good moral decisions - everyone would have their own conception of what is good and what is wrong, and there won't be such a thing as 'justice'. I think the best solution is neither here nor there, but a combination of both. A system that is in part objective but also in part subjective (which is very much what we have today, but what we have today fails for different reasons), seems like the ideal solution to me. | |
SilkWizard wrote:
Do you believe in property rights and a person's right to the fruits of their own labor? If so, you've got a bit of a contradiction on your hands. Socialized medicine seizes the property of individuals in order to distribute it to others. It also artificially controls the prices that doctors can charge for their services as well as who they can do business with. The entire notion of taxes or any government provided service could be viewed as redistributing wealth. However, you are going to have a hard time convincing anybody that government providing roads, a legal system, etc (not a right) is a bad thing. Roads, a legal system, and healthcare are all necessities in the world we live in today. People who are sick can't work. People who are losing their house because they can't pay their medical bills typically can't work (whether it's from depression, moving or something else). Healthcare can save not only money for the individual person, but it also benefits the company they work for. Businesses can't profit off of employees if they aren't working. Not to mention if more people are working, more money is being distributed, more taxes get collected...it's a big pile of win. I would be willing to bet that if the road construction industry was privatized right now, we would be in the same situation with roads. Roads benefit everybody, and they benefit businesses (and those that make the most money from those businesses), much more than they help the bottom rung workers. I believe that everybody having healthcare falls under the same category. If we can come up with a viable solution where the most amount of people have healthcare insurance, (this is where we fundamentally disagree), then it would benefit everybody. Government provided roads does not follow the Objectivism model. But you will be hard pressed to find many people that will support the notion that all roads should be privatized. Careful, we could go in circles :) That's what I've been saying! :P I do always enjoy/hate our debates. | |
Is the new plan "more socialist" than what is currently out there, most definitely. But it's a far stretch to say that arguments against pure socialized medicine squarely applies.
And I wasn't saying that hard facts in any debate are not relevant. Rather I was saying that we would not necessarily agree on what is a "hard fact" and what isn't. Furthermore, even if we did agree on what is true or not, it doesn't mean we would agree on how important each fact is. For instance, we could easily banter back and forth about whether the new plan is socialist or not. We could both support our sides with facts and statistics. It even seems as though we might agree that it is more socialist than what is before it. But what percentage is it socialist? And how close to socialism does it need to be before arguments against pure social apply? There are no straight forward answers to those questions and no amount of hard facts will change that. We will continue to disagree.