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As you should know nothing is free. For-profits have a role and it should not be the sole deliverer of care. 50 state single payer, medicare, medicaid, Indian health, all in one. Our current taxes will pay for it with additional revenue needed perhaps, but it will be a true tax, not some pie in the sky monthly premium money transfer to the wealthy investors calling it a tax. For-profits will have a role as supplemental coverage that is regulated. Pharmaceuticals will be negotiated. Specialty and clinics should be looked at closely to replace large hospitals.
This is an interesting proposition. Kind of a middle-of-the-road approach. I wonder if it could work.
I know our prior healthcare system was NOT working for far too many people, and something needed to be done.
Obamacare, ACA...still untried. A rocky rollout that has since gotten rather smoothed out, and only time will tell if this works. I suspect that, as with most laws, the implementation will not quite match the intentions, and it will have to be tweaked...but only time is going to tell.
Not at all. Never said it should. However, in a basic way, medicine is essentially anti-Darwinism. (this is coming from a family where virtually every one in it does medical research, and relies on it for their livelihood, so I don't say it lightly). If you find some medicine which allows someone with a hereditary disease to survive long enough to pro-create, or have a vice or vices to allow continuing a self-destructive lifestyle with potentially controllable (to a degree) consequences, then it can said that the ultimate evolution of man stops. Sounds cruel, but is accurate. If you choose to play Russian roulette, and you 'lose', do you expect society to take the bullet out of your head to keep you alive? (an extreme, but to make a point). If you drive 100mph and crash into a bridge abutment... well....
To be fair, we have lost some of greatest minds and people to diseases/illnesses that can be 'cured' today, but look at the number of people who die due to smoking, poor diets, alcoholism, drug use, etc.... dwarfs the former, and is often self-induced.
So to answer your question, we should have a medical system that is primarily targeted at those without self-induced illnesses. (sometimes much harder to diagnosis as such) JMHO.
And who decides what is "self-induced?"
Let's just suppose...I smoked cigarettes for five years. I later quit, and have been quit for twenty years.
I now come down with a smoking-related illness...maybe because I am around other people who smoke and am getting secondhand smoke. Now...is the proximate cause of my disease the secondhand smoke....or the five years in which I smoked?
If you want to deny healthcare to smoking-related things, then you also need to make cigarettes illegal. They are, currently a legal product, and to deny someone care because they used a legal product...simply does not make sense.
Alcohol harms far more people than cigarettes. How about the guy who gets cirrhosis of the liver? Should he be allowed to suffer and die? The drunk who smashes into another car...should his broken, bleeding body be left on the side of the road with no care, just because he made a foolish choice?
Or here's another ambiguous situation for you...
I happen to have a condition known as Vitiligo. This is an autoimmune disorder in which the immune system attacks healthy melanin-producing cells. This results in large spots of skin that will not tan, on the hands, legs, chest and face most common. This condition is also often known as the Michael Jackson Disease...because this is exactly what was happening to Michael...hence his getting bleached.
Now, because I have unsightly spots on my face this affects my ability to get a job. Nobody will hire me because they are freaked out by my appearance. Now...should the health care system pay for some sort of plastic surgery to help me...and help me become a productive member of society?
If so...then how about the person who is just plain ugly? Should they, too, have plastic surgery paid for?
You see the problems you can run into when you start making value judgements about who "deserves" care and who doesn't?
The above scenarios, by the way, are all hypothetical. In real life, I DO have Vitiligo, however, it is really only my hands that are affected. This COULD be a handicap in many areas, people would be freaked to shake hands with me, thinking it is contagious...which it isn't. However, since in my professional life I deal mainly with doctors who recognize it when they see it, it does not handicap me.
For one thing, the article you linked is hardly a prime example of your argument. Secondly this argument arose because you chose to nit pick the choice of the word compromise vs consensus. A consensus is often reached through compromise.We're arguing semantics. You don't have to look any further than the Constitutional Convention. I'll link to a simple article rather than an legal review.
Seriously...is it in the US Constitution or in that of any individual states?
I argue that within some limits that it ought to be a right. It isn't in the Constitution. However, there is nothing that keeps a majority of people in this country from saying something "ought to be a right" and passing laws, like the EMTALA and ACA, in furtherance of that right.
My position is that I don't really believe in natural law. I believe that the only rights that exist are those that we create for ourselves.
I argue that within some limits that it ought to be a right. It isn't in the Constitution. However, there is nothing that keeps a majority of people in this country from saying something "ought to be a right" and passing laws, like the EMTALA and ACA, in furtherance of that right.
My position is that I don't really believe in natural law. I believe that the only rights that exist are those that we create for ourselves.
There are many things that our government does that are unconsitutional. you might as well not have it.
I am for individual rights.
I fail to see how one can have healthcare as a right and not violate individual rights.
Exactly. You want healthcare, get a job which pays for it, or pay for it out of your own pocket. It isn't my responsibility or societies responsibility to pay your way through life.
And no, I don't expect, nor do I want you to pay one cent in tax to give me healthcare or anything else for that matter.
I pay for my own and don't really feel I should have to foot the bill for others. Get a job! I had to. Why are others so much better that they get free healthcare? Who decided they were entitled and why? GET A JOB! Work at 6 McDonald's if you have to. I don't care. I'm so sick of the laziness and entitlements!
I pay for my own and don't really feel I should have to foot the bill for others. Get a job! I had to. Why are others so much better that they get free healthcare? Who decided they were entitled and why? GET A JOB! Work at 6 McDonald's if you have to. I don't care. I'm so sick of the laziness and entitlements!
You are entitled to an opinion about whether others should have to pay for the health care or not.
What you aren't entitled to do is overrule decisions made by a majority of Congressmen over time. By passing the ACA, EMTALA, Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIPS, Congress has essentially said that within some limits there is a right medical care.
If you don't like the way things are than work to elect Congressmen who will support the repeal of these laws and a President who will sign such bills into law.
Until you accomplish these goals, what you "want" is pretty unimportant. Your real problem is that these things have been voted on for decades and your side has come up consistently on the the losing end. We do things like this through majority rule in this country. I suspect it will change about the time you can convince a majority of the country to take your point of view. I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for that to happen.
BTW, someone could work full time at McDonald's and they still wouldn't have health insurance because its not offered there.
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