While some conservatives claim that Obama wants to kill your granny I hesitate to accept that as Obamas sole reason for pushing the health care reform.
From the private insurers point of view it makes perfect sense to oppose the reform ... if they didn't, they'd face an immense decline in profits if either the government option provides better care or if regulations bar insurers from avoiding costs by their current methods.
But it's a bit too simplicistic to merely claim that one party acts out of altruism (or a loathing of old ladies) and the other out of greed.
So, what do you think are the driving motives in this dispute ?
(Note that I don't ask you what you think is the better solution.)
Pro (Motives of the health care reform advocates):
Con (Motives of the health care reform opponents):
Two key issues that make the health care reform necessary in the eyes of the proponents are quailty and cost.
Quality has been discussed to death and information (and misinformation) is freely available.
Cost is harder to estimate - one simply can't understand what estimated costs of trillions of dollars over decades means for your paycheck. So I started a different thread where I want to compare the personal average cost of health care in different countries.
For example: German average gross income is about €2,500. After deductions (including health insurance) a single person without kids gets to keep about €1,500.
And what can germans do with that money in germany? Why, buy beer, of course. €1,500 get you 1,200 litre of high quality Pilsener beer - twice as much if you don't care about quality and go for the cheap labels.
Health care costs: €185 per month (currently $264)
Cheers!
Like many have said before on this thread, unless you are familiar with Medicare, or have relied on Medicare payments to run your business or make due for your family, you will not understand just how terribly the government fails at healthcare.
Medicare's broke & going broker. Medicaid's broke & going broker. The VA's broke & going broker. There's 3 reasons.
And I won't sell my health and well-being for false security. This is the nubbin of the current healthcare debate. It really does come down to self-determination and free will vs. the false security of the nanny-state. Once it is completely in charge of healthcare, there will be no recourse, the decisions of the state (the de facto 'death panel') will be final. They have no intention, of course, of 'pulling the plug' on you - they just intend to put an 'expert panel' protected lock on all the outlets.
You mean like 'patriot,' 'freedom,' and 'free markets' are swear words to the left?
Aroddo, avoid correcting someones english unless you're actually right. Or perhaps that would be left in your warped reality?
A misanthrope is someone that hates or distrusts people, rather simple. By attributing a class or spectrum to which someone belongs, you alter the meaning to be everyone not in the group, in the case of a diametric political system, the other side. I would be a conservative misanthrope, but I don't believe the conservative politicians are actually conservatives in the first place, so I obviously don't trust them either. His post is quite obvious, right wingers are just a bunch of rich people screwing others out of their money.
Fascism. Compliments of Webster: a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition.
You wish to force people into a nationalized health care system run by a central government enforcing rigid price controlling regulations on private industry. Hitler was elected, so don't bother pointing out a lack of complete uniformity with the definition. The current administration would have been the poster child for national socialism fifty years ago, for that matter so was the last for that final year. Today we pretend they're free market capitalists.
You didn't really need your mom to explain that, did you?
Probably. Explains why it's so hard to debate honestly when half the words are ideologically charged.
This is one of the most misinformed, naive statements I have read in this thread. Do you have any idea why drug costs are so high in the US? Do you have any insight whatsoever into the pharmaceutical industry? Do you honestly believe that the industry would still be able to invest billions each year into R&D if new-to-market drugs were available for pennies-a-dose?
Also, healthcare in Cuba is terrible. If you trust sources like Michael Moore, well, you might think otherwise, but he's hardly an impartial videographer. I invite you to go to Cuba to get surgery for pancreatic cancer. Sure, their state-trained "medics" may have less training than nurses in the US, but they should at least be able to find your pancreas after cutting you open, right?
How would the United States be able to afford public health care? We're already hundreds of billions of dollars in dept, and of course raising taxes on the rich probably won't be enough. Also considering our enormous obesity rate, I'm just not sure if public health care would be sustainable at the moment.
Though of course, this is from someone not entirely educated on the subject... >__<
I'll go with the latter, based on recent reports from the UK & Canada.
hm, can someone actually explain just why medicaid and medicare is so broke? I'd suspect it has something to do with them only treating rather sick and poor, thus expensive ppl. in that case, no wonder it is costly and running a deficit. if it is just badly run, then I see part of the problem: no one wants power to a system that has proven its inefficiency. but then ... would you not want to work on that? would you not demand from the government to make it more efficient. then, maybe, more people would be ready to accept government control.
also, I saw the list at the post is constantly updated: on the pro side you can write 'private companies are not only inefficient with their funds, but also greedy'. for the funds they consume, I don't thing services are as comprehensive as elsewhere. I'd bet there are some treatments, necessary ones that fall under the expensive category, that are not covered much, if at all and that is less performance for more cost, thus lower efficiency.
I can actually offer a theory how private insurers could make our german health care system go broke. I'm not familiar with the funding of the half a dozen US government run health care services so maybe this can't be applied 1:1 to them.
I assume that medicare & co run on a budget granted by the fed. The budget is based on the projected number of "customers" and the per-capita costs of the years before.
Normally this would even out: You get 9 customers requiring no or very minor care for every 1 customer requiring intensive care.
Now here come the private insurers who try to drop a customer as soon as he becomes costly and even prevent potentially expensive customers from getting insurance due to pre-existing conditions. They literally cherry-pick the healthiest people as their customers.
So, in the end private insurers aim for getting 10 out of 10 customers requireing no or minor care while the government run services get 10 out of 10 customers requiring intensive care, increasing the needed budget tenfold!
Laws in european countries bar companies from denying coverage. Private insurers still try to cherrypick customers in increase profits, but they can't simply get rip of their costly patients.
By the way, this led to insurance companies actively promoting healthy life styles so their precious customers don't get sick or something.
And why don't you believe anyone who actually lives with public health care?
You know, that's why I asked the question about motives...
Behind the opponents of health care are undeniably strong fincancial motives. And where money is involved, Faux News is ever present.Behind the advocates of public health care are what motives? Taxes and control? Or really altruism?
Public health works ... and even private health care will work if you put some regulations in and prevent amoral business practices by law.
But you are being told that any reform will make it worse with all their fear-mongering causing you to not even listen to arguments. You react out of instinct, not reason. And that's neither democratic nor christian.
@ aroddo: hm, yes, that was about what I expected. the private insurers to pick only those that have few conditions and thus cost little whereas the public ones get a disproportionate amount of costlier people. which would not be that bad if those costs were distributed over a wider basis or could be compensated by more 'cost-effective' customers. actually, there is a phenomenon like that in economics literature: adverse selection. you can look it up if you want, quite interesting stuff. can even outright destroy a market altogether.
All too true!
The liberal's lament: If we only had more of other people's money and more rules and regulations, we could fix these problems.
Simply look at history - there's never been enough OPM and never been enough rules.
There is a reason the US is different from eurocentric socialist countries - we have different values and beliefs. I don't consider the 'charge' that the US spends the most per capita on healthcare an insult or a defect. There is no such thing as a 'right' amount of GDP which should be 'consumed' by healthcare, as if it is money we simply pour down some rathole, never to be seen again. Our economy is not a zero sum game - every segment of it is an economic engine in its own right, including healthcare. I reject the premise that we have a 'crisis' altogether - there are strange incentives and unfunded mandates that have crept in over the past 50 years that have driven the costs up, not due to greed, but due to the relentless infiltration of government into the healthcare industry. We are where we are today because of our government and that government now wants carte blanche to 'solve' the mess it created with more of the same and essentially kill the economic engine of one sixth of our economy.
When you have no argument, bash 'Faux News.'
Soon as David Axelrod's kid does all that work for free, soon as Michael Moore gives away all his money to homeless people on Sunset Boulevard, I'll buy the altruism argument. You're a fool if you think the advocates of healthcare reform are altruists. It's nothing more than the greed and financial motives that the left railed about when GWB was in the White House, now just all dressed up in feel-good rhetoric and lining different people's pockets.
As the lovely IL Rep. Schakowsky said - "This is not a principled argument."
What's wrong with rules requiring (private) insurers to pay for treatments, like agreed?
They are selling a product and they are oblieged to guarantee the product's quality. They do not deliver on their promise because they don't have to. Because nothing forces them to. No rules.
Society needs rules and freedoms. Otherwise it's just anarchy and the rule of the strong.
The per capita values indicate effectiveness, though. And by all accounts the US health care system is ineffective and inhumane.
And "the government" that got you into this mess is not the same government that has to drag you out of it. It's the same as saying that the economic crisis is Obama's fault because it happened during his presidency.
But you are right, you have different values and beliefs. And compassion, humanism and justice are apparently not among them.
i daresay the NHS works just fine thankyouvermuch.
being a 'dirty immigrant' to UK myself, I have on numerous occasions used the services of NHS with satisfactory results (both emergencies and preventative care), while having worked and paid taxes in UK for less than half a year.
I do acknowledge the inherent inefficiencies of a large bureaucracy, but i consider it the lesser evil when compared to the aforementioned 'cherry picker' insurance companies.
As for the OPs question i think money is a very likely motive for those opposing reforms.
For pro reformists motives... i am probably blinded by the common-senseness of having public healthcare that i dont really see a need for another motivator here.
No they don't. They don't tell half the story. But believe what you will.
What garbage. Amen, indeed. Respect for human dignity and self-determination does not require a massive forced transfer of wealth from taxpayers and lowest-common-denominator healthcare.
What I said. You have different values and beliefs than I do. And compassion, humanism and justice are apparently not among yours. Yours are apparently dignity, self-determination and wealth.
There is nothing compassionate about supporting taking other people's money to give to other people.
Compassion would be YOU giving your own money to someone else voluntarily.
Aroddo -
Your avatar is spookily appropriate. Slight modification here & there, BO could use it.
On the site, it had familiar names suck as Ann Coulter, Dick Morris, and Bill O'Reilly. Seems like it's pretty much a Jewish GOP supporting site. Wikipedia agrees with me.
Let's look at some quotes:
"The current "health care" bill threatens to take life-and-death decisions out of the hands of individuals and their doctors, transferring those decisions to Washington bureaucrats." -- multiple democrats have continuously reiterated that the purpose of the current bill is to provide a public option. So, the competition will lower the cost of health care and improve the quality, thus giving those who are constrained by money choices. Explain to me how more choice takes life and death decisions away from us.
"if you preferred to have a nice hospital room with "amenities" rather than being in an unsanitary ward with inadequate nursing care, as under the National Health Service in Britain" -- As smart as this guy may be, he really can't say that without providing some sort of source. He's not a doctor, he's an economist and social commentator, so he can't use himself as a source
"it is as predictable as the sunrise that medical care for the elderly will be cut back under a government-controlled medical system." -- you mean if such a system focused on preventive care, which includes promoting a healthy lifestyle, they government wouldn't need to spend as much money on heart surgeries? okay, I buy that.
"It is part of a whole mindset of many on the left who have never reconciled themselves to an economic system in which how much people can withdraw from the resources of the nation depends on how much they have contributed to those resources." -- That's probably because that's not what the current economic system is. I don't pay fire insurance so that the trucks will come to my house, I pay taxes to contribute to the fire department, which services everyone, even those who would be unable to pay for fire insurance.
On a side note, I know at least one reasons why medicare is costing so much:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicare_Prescription_Drug,_Improvement,_and_Modernization_Act
quick quote from that:
"it prohibits the Federal government from negotiating discounts with drug companies;" -- so if I were the CEO of a perscription drug company, I'd want to charge Medicare a lot more for the same quality drugs so I have bigger profits and then the shareholders like me more?
That sounds like the people who voted that legislation in (repubicans in '03) were trying to make Medicare bankrupt.
Don't pretend that Wikipedia is a reliable source for controversial issues, such as politics.
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