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Republican? Just scream and lie.

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  • If we were in pre-The Jungle America I might be a little more squicked out about meat processing.
    Luckily, we set up government regulations to prevent that sort of thing.
    Also, don't you know that Jack isn't against regulations he likes? He's only against regulations he doesn't like. Ones that don't have to do with safety, like being forced to buy healthcare.
  • Yeah, it's not like the vast majority of regulations were set up only to screw with people's abilities to make an honest living -- it's because too many people in the past tried to make a dishonest living that we needed to establish them to begin with. Granted, I do think various regulations need to be reviewed periodically to make sure that they are still valid and necessary, but it's madness to scrap all regulation.
  • Yeah, it's not like the vast majority of regulations were set up only to screw with people's abilities to make an honest living -- it's because too many people in the past tried to make a dishonest living that we needed to establish them to begin with. Granted, I do think various regulations need to be reviewed periodically to make sure that they are still valid and necessary, but it's madness to scrap all regulation.
    Not all. 50%.

  • I saw hat burn coming soon as I posted that. I'm okay with those regulations.
  • edited October 2012
    I think there is some merit to Jack's point of view. One should default to opposition of any new rule that restricts one's behavior. If someone cant give you a damn good reason for a rule then you probably shouldn't have one.

    The problem is that some people never make it past that to the step where you accept some rules as being necessary.
    Post edited by Drunken Butler on
  • I saw hat burn coming soon as I posted that. I'm okay with those regulations.
    Public health care has a huge effect on society. Are regulations requiring immunizations OK? What about for people who can't afford them or health care for them?

  • I think there is some merit to Jack's point of view. One should default to opposition of any new rule that restricts one's behavior. If someone cant give you a damn good reason for a rule then you probably shouldn't have one.

    The problem is that some people never make it past that to the step where you accept some rules as being necessary.
    Exactly. Hence why I said regulations should be periodically reviewed to make sure they are still valid and necessary. Although you're stating here that their necessity should be evaluated before they are even implemented, which I had taken as a given (and perhaps erroneously so).

    I hate to bring up my football analogy yet again, but once again it seems to apply here. In a football game, you have rules (analogous to government regulations) and officials (analogous to the government itself and its enforcement agencies) whose purpose is to make sure the competition (analogous to a properly functioning capitalist economy) is fair and doesn't result in needless injury to the participants (analogous to the people). Periodically, representatives of the participants (in football, this would be team owners, the players' union, the referee's union, etc.) meet to review the existing rules, repeal useless ones, and implement new ones as necessary (analogous to elected officials meeting). This sort of system is necessary to keep any sort of competition fair and safe, whether it's a sporting competition or an economic one.
  • I saw hat burn coming soon as I posted that. I'm okay with those regulations.
    Public health care has a huge effect on society. Are regulations requiring immunizations OK? What about for people who can't afford them or health care for them?

    Let me get one thing straight. You could walk into any medical facility in the country right now, and get treated. You will get healthcare. Most places will also work out a method to cover the costs if you don't have insurance, which is the issue. The government has said that you HAVE to have insurance now, or you will pay a fee under the taxing authority. And that's what rubs me the wrong way, irrespective of whether or not I myself have health insurance or not.
  • I think there is some merit to Jack's point of view. One should default to opposition of any new rule that restricts one's behavior. If someone cant give you a damn good reason for a rule then you probably shouldn't have one.

    The problem is that some people never make it past that to the step where you accept some rules as being necessary.
    Exactly. Hence why I said regulations should be periodically reviewed to make sure they are still valid and necessary. Although you're stating here that their necessity should be evaluated before they are even implemented, which I had taken as a given (and perhaps erroneously so).

    I hate to bring up my football analogy yet again, but once again it seems to apply here. In a football game, you have rules (analogous to government regulations) and officials (analogous to the government itself and its enforcement agencies) whose purpose is to make sure the competition (analogous to a properly functioning capitalist economy) is fair and doesn't result in needless injury to the participants (analogous to the people). Periodically, representatives of the participants (in football, this would be team owners, the players' union, the referee's union, etc.) meet to review the existing rules, repeal useless ones, and implement new ones as necessary (analogous to elected officials meeting). This sort of system is necessary to keep any sort of competition fair and safe, whether it's a sporting competition or an economic one.
    That's a beautiful analogy, much better than how I'd have phrased it. It makes me wish that more people paid as much attention to politics as they do to football.

  • I think there is some merit to Jack's point of view. One should default to opposition of any new rule that restricts one's behavior. If someone cant give you a damn good reason for a rule then you probably shouldn't have one.

    The problem is that some people never make it past that to the step where you accept some rules as being necessary.
    Exactly. Hence why I said regulations should be periodically reviewed to make sure they are still valid and necessary. Although you're stating here that their necessity should be evaluated before they are even implemented, which I had taken as a given (and perhaps erroneously so).

    I hate to bring up my football analogy yet again, but once again it seems to apply here. In a football game, you have rules (analogous to government regulations) and officials (analogous to the government itself and its enforcement agencies) whose purpose is to make sure the competition (analogous to a properly functioning capitalist economy) is fair and doesn't result in needless injury to the participants (analogous to the people). Periodically, representatives of the participants (in football, this would be team owners, the players' union, the referee's union, etc.) meet to review the existing rules, repeal useless ones, and implement new ones as necessary (analogous to elected officials meeting). This sort of system is necessary to keep any sort of competition fair and safe, whether it's a sporting competition or an economic one.
    Put that way, I can actually get behind that. My problem is when one particularly good player emerges, and suddenly his team is wiping the floor with other teams, staying within the rules of the game, and the officials make new rules to unfairly constrain the good teams out of a misguided sense of "fairness" to the teams who aren't as good.
  • I saw hat burn coming soon as I posted that. I'm okay with those regulations.
    Public health care has a huge effect on society. Are regulations requiring immunizations OK? What about for people who can't afford them or health care for them?

    Let me get one thing straight. You could walk into any medical facility in the country right now, and get treated. You will get healthcare. Most places will also work out a method to cover the costs if you don't have insurance, which is the issue. The government has said that you HAVE to have insurance now, or you will pay a fee under the taxing authority. And that's what rubs me the wrong way, irrespective of whether or not I myself have health insurance or not.
    Why don't you then just pay a little extra in tax and have something like the NHS?
  • Let me get one thing straight. You could walk into any medical facility in the country right now, and get treated. You will get healthcare. Most places will also work out a method to cover the costs if you don't have insurance, which is the issue. The government has said that you HAVE to have insurance now, or you will pay a fee under the taxing authority. And that's what rubs me the wrong way, irrespective of whether or not I myself have health insurance or not.
    Let's see you try to walk into a health care facility and get 12 months of chemotherapy for free. Or perhaps hip replacement surgery after you get hit by a drunk driver and have your hip smashed beyond your body'd natural ability to repair itself. It's not gonna happen. The fact is, with the exception of immediate, stabilizing health care, if you either lack insurance or aren't somehow crazy rich, you're not going to get necessary health care and you're going to die (or at the very least be crippled for life) if you're unlucky enough to suffer from a severe illness or injury.

    Football analogy...
    That's a beautiful analogy, much better than how I'd have phrased it. It makes me wish that more people paid as much attention to politics as they do to football.
    Thanks!
  • I saw hat burn coming soon as I posted that. I'm okay with those regulations.
    Public health care has a huge effect on society. Are regulations requiring immunizations OK? What about for people who can't afford them or health care for them?

    Let me get one thing straight. You could walk into any medical facility in the country right now, and get treated. You will get healthcare. Most places will also work out a method to cover the costs if you don't have insurance, which is the issue. The government has said that you HAVE to have insurance now, or you will pay a fee under the taxing authority. And that's what rubs me the wrong way, irrespective of whether or not I myself have health insurance or not.
    You know that fee just gives that individual government insurance, right? It's not some penalty for not having insurance, it's the US government saying, "We got you covered."

    Come on. This really isn't difficult.
  • I saw hat burn coming soon as I posted that. I'm okay with those regulations.
    Public health care has a huge effect on society. Are regulations requiring immunizations OK? What about for people who can't afford them or health care for them?

    Let me get one thing straight. You could walk into any medical facility in the country right now, and get treated. You will get healthcare. Most places will also work out a method to cover the costs if you don't have insurance, which is the issue. The government has said that you HAVE to have insurance now, or you will pay a fee under the taxing authority. And that's what rubs me the wrong way, irrespective of whether or not I myself have health insurance or not.
    Why don't you then just pay a little extra in tax and have something like the NHS?
    I'd be okay with that. We have something like the NHS already. It's called Medicaid.
  • edited October 2012
    Put that way, I can actually get behind that. My problem is when one particularly good player emerges, and suddenly his team is wiping the floor with other teams, staying within the rules of the game, and the officials make new rules to unfairly constrain the good teams out of a misguided sense of "fairness" to the teams who aren't as good.
    True, however, what if that particularly good player is gaining his success within the rules but somehow causing damage to the participants. For example, let's assume that helmet-to-helmet hits were still legal in the NFL. So you have one player who's crazy good at making tackles, causing fumbles, and so on via legal helmet-to-helmet hits. However, the people he's tackling are getting severely injured as a result of his hits -- some of them to the point where they may no longer be able to play football ever again. It is then valid to ban helmet-to-helmet hits for the safety of the players, even at the expense of this good player's performance and even at the expense of making the previously worse teams/players who did not employ this tactic better.
    I'd be okay with that. We have something like the NHS already. It's called Medicaid.
    Only it's not available to everyone. Also, the reason why we didn't have something like the NHS or universal Medicaid was because the GOP was dead set against it. The individual mandate was originally a Republican idea, which they immediately disowned once the Democrats considered it an acceptable compromise.
    Post edited by Dragonmaster Lou on
  • Let me get one thing straight. You could walk into any medical facility in the country right now, and get treated. You will get healthcare.
    You do know that this is true only because a law was put into place to prevent hospitals from turning people that couldn't pay away? Because once upon a time hospitals could, would, and did turn away people who were unable to pay only to have them die soon afterwards?

    If you didn't have this rule that you can just wander into any hospital and get care regardless of your ability to pay then health costs would be pretty reasonable today. If you give it even a few moments thought you will realize that even if a tiny minority of people who abuse such a system, where the hospital has to serve you regardless, that the costs will be pushed onto everyone else who can. Which means higher costs for everyone, which in turn is too high for a slightly higher minority of people.

    Let such a system go too long and then you have a place where health costs are spiraling out of control.

    This isn't the only, or main reason, why we're in this pickle now but your glib thoughts on "oh just wander into a hospital and they'll take care of you!" is filled with such ignorance that I can't just sit here and watch it be.

    Your heath care affects _everyone_ around you.
  • edited October 2012

    Let me get one thing straight. You could walk into any medical facility in the country right now, and get treated. You will get healthcare. Most places will also work out a method to cover the costs if you don't have insurance, which is the issue. The government has said that you HAVE to have insurance now, or you will pay a fee under the taxing authority. And that's what rubs me the wrong way, irrespective of whether or not I myself have health insurance or not.
    So do you believe that those who choose not to purchase health insurance should be denied care? I ask this because you cant ask the medical establishment to foot the cost of care for everybody who doesn't have coverage. You have three choices
    A: You mandate that they provide their own heath insurance and penalize those who don't to cover the expenses of the uninsured.
    B: No one has health insurance and the government covers it all
    C: You mandate nothing and allow health care providers to refuse care to those who cant pay, this will effectively kill the poor and unlucky.

    Pick one.

    If you stand behind C I can support that, but don't act like A & B are not acceptable without acknowledging those left in the cold.
    Post edited by Drunken Butler on
  • Put that way, I can actually get behind that. My problem is when one particularly good player emerges, and suddenly his team is wiping the floor with other teams, staying within the rules of the game, and the officials make new rules to unfairly constrain the good teams out of a misguided sense of "fairness" to the teams who aren't as good.
    True, however, what if that particularly good player is gaining his success within the rules but somehow causing damage to the participants. For example, let's assume that helmet-to-helmet hits were still legal in the NFL. So you have one player who's crazy good at making tackles, causing fumbles, and so on via legal helmet-to-helmet hits. However, the people he's tackling are getting severely injured as a result of his hits -- some of them to the point where they may no longer be able to play football ever again. It is then valid to ban helmet-to-helmet hits for the safety of the players, even at the expense of this good player's performance and even at the expense of making the previously worse teams/players who did not employ this tactic better.
    Okay that's reasonable enough.
  • I saw hat burn coming soon as I posted that. I'm okay with those regulations.
    Public health care has a huge effect on society. Are regulations requiring immunizations OK? What about for people who can't afford them or health care for them?

    Let me get one thing straight. You could walk into any medical facility in the country right now, and get treated. You will get healthcare. Most places will also work out a method to cover the costs if you don't have insurance, which is the issue. The government has said that you HAVE to have insurance now, or you will pay a fee under the taxing authority. And that's what rubs me the wrong way, irrespective of whether or not I myself have health insurance or not.
    Why don't you then just pay a little extra in tax and have something like the NHS?
    I'd be okay with that. We have something like the NHS already. It's called Medicaid.
    Yeah, and you have to be at 133% of the Federal poverty level for that to kick in. $14,856 a year. Or, $7.14/hour. That's $.11 an hour less than Federal minimum wage.

    So... not really a good solution or any sort of universal healthcare. Also I think you misunderstand the NHS. The NHS is universal healthcare. You pay taxes, you can walk into any NHS hospital or doctor's office in England and get taken care of. That includes things like chemotherapy or a hip replacement. It also includes dental work, eye care and any sort of hospital visits you need.

  • AmpAmp
    edited October 2012
    Put that way, I can actually get behind that. My problem is when one particularly good player emerges, and suddenly his team is wiping the floor with other teams, staying within the rules of the game, and the officials make new rules to unfairly constrain the good teams out of a misguided sense of "fairness" to the teams who aren't as good.
    True, however, what if that particularly good player is gaining his success within the rules but somehow causing damage to the participants. For example, let's assume that helmet-to-helmet hits were still legal in the NFL. So you have one player who's crazy good at making tackles, causing fumbles, and so on via legal helmet-to-helmet hits. However, the people he's tackling are getting severely injured as a result of his hits -- some of them to the point where they may no longer be able to play football ever again. It is then valid to ban helmet-to-helmet hits for the safety of the players, even at the expense of this good player's performance and even at the expense of making the previously worse teams/players who did not employ this tactic better.
    I'd be okay with that. We have something like the NHS already. It's called Medicaid.
    Only it's not available to everyone. Also, the reason why we didn't have something like the NHS or universal Medicaid was because the GOP was dead set against it. The individual mandate was originally a Republican idea, which they immediately disowned once the Democrats considered it an acceptable compromise.
    So why then are people against it? The poor people can get health care and the rich can go private if they want to be special. The tax wouldn't be that high I'd imagen.
    Post edited by Amp on
  • I saw hat burn coming soon as I posted that. I'm okay with those regulations.
    Public health care has a huge effect on society. Are regulations requiring immunizations OK? What about for people who can't afford them or health care for them?

    Let me get one thing straight. You could walk into any medical facility in the country right now, and get treated. You will get healthcare. Most places will also work out a method to cover the costs if you don't have insurance, which is the issue. The government has said that you HAVE to have insurance now, or you will pay a fee under the taxing authority. And that's what rubs me the wrong way, irrespective of whether or not I myself have health insurance or not.
    My fiancee has an unpaid medical bill. $600 for routine bloodwork. A standard blood test. With insurance, that would have cost me $20.

    And she was insured at the time. They don't cover "preventative" care, apparently.

    The issue has always been with access to AFFORDABLE health care.

    You don't make enough money to have income tax withdrawn. A single overnight stay in a hospital immediately generates 10's of thousands of dollars in medical bills. If you don't have insurance, you get the bill. Can't pay? Welcome to collections and ruined credit. All because of bullshit that is literally beyond your control.

    And if you just don't pay, the hospital raises everyone else's costs to cover the loss.

    That's why we need universal health care. Medical care is ludicrously expensive, and we are in a financial situation that makes it increasingly difficult for people to pay for medical care, making things harder to afford for others..

    Do you get why this is a problem? That's why you have to have health insurance. That's why everyone does.

    I mean, Medicaire for everyone would be a better solution - but the party you want to represent you has shot that down, along with every attempt that even comes close. They're the reason that the thing we've implemented has come out the way it has.

    Seriously. Have you not thought about this? Do you not understand how expensive medical care is here?




  • True, however, what if that particularly good player is gaining his success within the rules but somehow causing damage to the participants. For example, let's assume that helmet-to-helmet hits were still legal in the NFL. So you have one player who's crazy good at making tackles, causing fumbles, and so on via legal helmet-to-helmet hits. However, the people he's tackling are getting severely injured as a result of his hits -- some of them to the point where they may no longer be able to play football ever again. It is then valid to ban helmet-to-helmet hits for the safety of the players, even at the expense of this good player's performance and even at the expense of making the previously worse teams/players who did not employ this tactic better.
    Okay that's reasonable enough.
    Okay, now let's look at it from an economic standpoint. You have a company that's very successful at making sprockets. Let's call it Spacely's Sprockets for the sake of the argument. Meanwhile, another company, Cogswell's Cogs, makes a competing product, cogs. Spacely's Sprockets realizes the competitive threat posed by Cogswell's Cogs, so it takes advantage of its current larger market share to do various ethically questionable, but still legal (at least in this fictional scenario as I don't know what is and isn't currently legal when it comes to anti-trust law) actions such as dumping sprockets onto the market below cost, signing exclusive contracts with Cogswell's Cogs' suppliers to deny them the materials they need to make cogs, forcing their customers to sign contracts banning them from purchasing cogs in lieu of sprockets, and so on. The end result of this behavior is that Spacely's Sprockets becomes the only company in its market and has set up enough economic barriers to entry that no other companies can enter and compete. This results in injury to not only Cogswell's Cogs and its employees by forcing them out of business, but also to the consumers on the general market as Spacely's Sprockets now can charge through the roof for their products since they have no competition to keep their prices low. Hence, the need to craft regulations to prevent Spacely's Sprockets from engaging in these behaviors to make sure that the playing field is fair for the competition and consumers.
  • Equating the NHS to Medicaid because they both are publicly-funded healthcare sources is like saying a Ferrari Enzo is like a rusted-out Model A because they're both cars.
  • Well my idea was to expand Medicaid to include every US citizen, but it was a basic level of care. Then you could buy an a la carte policy to cover stuff like surgeries and whatnot.

    Of course the idea of making Medicaid just straight up our NHS system isn't bad either.
  • I saw hat burn coming soon as I posted that. I'm okay with those regulations.
    Public health care has a huge effect on society. Are regulations requiring immunizations OK? What about for people who can't afford them or health care for them?

    Let me get one thing straight. You could walk into any medical facility in the country right now, and get treated. You will get healthcare. Most places will also work out a method to cover the costs if you don't have insurance, which is the issue. The government has said that you HAVE to have insurance now, or you will pay a fee under the taxing authority. And that's what rubs me the wrong way, irrespective of whether or not I myself have health insurance or not.
    My fiancee has an unpaid medical bill. $600 for routine bloodwork. A standard blood test. With insurance, that would have cost me $20.

    And she was insured at the time. They don't cover "preventative" care, apparently.

    The issue has always been with access to AFFORDABLE health care.

    You don't make enough money to have income tax withdrawn. A single overnight stay in a hospital immediately generates 10's of thousands of dollars in medical bills. If you don't have insurance, you get the bill. Can't pay? Welcome to collections and ruined credit. All because of bullshit that is literally beyond your control.

    And if you just don't pay, the hospital raises everyone else's costs to cover the loss.

    That's why we need universal health care. Medical care is ludicrously expensive, and we are in a financial situation that makes it increasingly difficult for people to pay for medical care, making things harder to afford for others..

    Do you get why this is a problem? That's why you have to have health insurance. That's why everyone does.

    I mean, Medicaire for everyone would be a better solution - but the party you want to represent you has shot that down, along with every attempt that even comes close. They're the reason that the thing we've implemented has come out the way it has.

    Seriously. Have you not thought about this? Do you not understand how expensive medical care is here?



    I would imagen that many people who are against it have not been in such a situation or have been able to cover the costs and as such see no reason to change what doesn't effect them.
  • edited October 2012
    Not to mention hospitals go bankrupt/close down because they can't afford to cover absolutely everyone.
    Post edited by Schnevets on
  • It should also be noted that even people with insurance get slammed pretty hard. I have a good friend who simply had to get some medication adjusted. Unfortunately, this medication can be mood altering, so the doctor put her in the hospital for 2 days to keep her under observation to make sure that everything was alright. Completely reasonable.

    A couple weeks later, she received a bill for $15,000. Turns out her insurance doesn't cover that particular situation under some sort of loophole.

    Now she's gonna be making payments on that $15k for the next five years, at least.
  • edited October 2012
    I saw hat burn coming soon as I posted that. I'm okay with those regulations.
    Public health care has a huge effect on society. Are regulations requiring immunizations OK? What about for people who can't afford them or health care for them?

    Let me get one thing straight. You could walk into any medical facility in the country right now, and get treated. You will get healthcare. Most places will also work out a method to cover the costs if you don't have insurance, which is the issue. The government has said that you HAVE to have insurance now, or you will pay a fee under the taxing authority. And that's what rubs me the wrong way, irrespective of whether or not I myself have health insurance or not.
    Jack, I'd love to lecture you for about 4 hours on my 5 years' experience being uninsured in the United States with Crohn's Disease and just how understanding hospitals were when I had no insurance but was above the poverty line and didn't qualify for welfare. They were very helpful as their lawyers called me day and night and eventually took me to court for tens of thousands of dollars despite the fact that I was making weekly payments. By the way with insurance the bill would have been about 25% what it was. I didn't get to negotiate, because I didn't have insurance. It was particularly fun when they seized two of my bank accounts and I was unable to pay my rent.

    For now I'll just have to settle for "Fuck you, Jack. You have no fucking idea what the fuck you are talking about."

    And as others have said, good luck getting chemotherapy by showing up at an ER.
    Post edited by muppet on
  • edited October 2012
    Well my idea was to expand Medicaid to include every US citizen, but it was a basic level of care. Then you could buy an a la carte policy to cover stuff like surgeries and whatnot.

    Of course the idea of making Medicaid just straight up our NHS system isn't bad either.
    A small outpatient surgery, like a laparoscopic cholecystectomy, can cost $20k for an individual in good health with no complications. A single CT scan can cost $1000. The "basic care + a la carte" methodology of public healthcare is intrinsically flawed from a purely economic standpoint.

    Also, if you don't have insurance but you have a malignant cancer, you will die horribly, at home, with no palliative care or treatment. That's just the cold truth of US healthcare.
    Post edited by WindUpBird on
  • edited October 2012
    I would support an opt-out ammendment to Obamacare where you don't pay the penalty and hospitals get to tell you to pay first.

    That work for you Jack?
    Post edited by HMTKSteve on
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