Impeding changes to our Health Care system

[jinx]

Right, services are received as part of compensation for service - nothing to do with what you said.

On the one hand, the government can't run anything, but on the other hand, government run healthcare is so good that only veterans deserve it.

[Happy Monkey]

So the VA is a booby prize?

[jinx]

It is what it is... you're bringing words like "so good" and "deserve" into to it to try to bolster your argument that the goverment will do a good job.

Personally, yeah, I wish buster was getting better care, but that's just one person and I don't have any first hand experience with it.

[Happy Monkey]

"Deserve" is another way to say "earned". You deserve something if you've earned it. And TheMercenary said "Yea, but everyone of those people earned it and made sacrifices to get it." as a retort to "Funny you would feel that way, after working in a government-run agency for so long, and receiving government-run health care.".

[classicman]

Tangent/misdirection

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by Happy Monkey

I see words that indicate that the VA is a reward for people who earned it by making sacrifices.

No, actually that is defined as a "benefit". Along with a number of other things when you sign your contract of service.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by Happy Monkey

"Deserve" is another way to say "earned". You deserve something if you've earned it. And TheMercenary said "Yea, but everyone of those people earned it and made sacrifices to get it." as a retort to "Funny you would feel that way, after working in a government-run agency for so long, and receiving government-run health care.".

It is how I feel about it.

[Clodfobble]

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

No, actually that is defined as a "benefit". Along with a number of other things when you sign your contract of service.

What if I wanted to sign a contract of payment for that benefit, instead of a contract of service? And what if the government was okay with this arrangement too? Are you cool with that?

[jinx]

Originally Posted by Happy Monkey

"Deserve" is another way to say "earned". You deserve something if you've earned it. And TheMercenary said "Yea, but everyone of those people earned it and made sacrifices to get it." as a retort to "Funny you would feel that way, after working in a government-run agency for so long, and receiving government-run health care.".

They've also earned their paychecks, so they deserve them. Notice I haven't said anything about the actual quality of their wages.

Mercenary earned his government-run health care thru service - good or bad, he deserves to receive it. I don't see anything funny, or complicated, about it...

[Happy Monkey]

Read the sequence of posts. IF The Mercenary wasn't saying that VA was good, then his post was a complete non sequitur.

a) Government can't do anything right
b) Mentions VA
a) Yeah, but people who get VA earned it

It wouldn't be the first time TheMercenary responded with a non sequitur, but I like to start out assuming that responses are actually responding to the post they quote.

[Radar]

Originally Posted by jinx

It is what it is... you're bringing words like "so good" and "deserve" into to it to try to bolster your argument that the goverment will do a good job.

Personally, yeah, I wish buster was getting better care, but that's just one person and I don't have any first hand experience with it.

I don't need to use words like "so good" and "deserve". I just use the indisputable facts. The government run health care in France, the UK, Canada, Germany, etc. are better from an objective standpoint than health care in America, PERIOD.

By better I mean...

1) Everyone can get medical care regardless of their creed, color, or circumstance or which procedure they need.

2) Lower infant-mortality rate

3) Longer lifespans

4) A fraction of the cost per person than what it costs in America while still paying doctors and nurses very well. For instance in the UK, they spent 1/3 of what Americans pay and they cover everyone while we leave 50-60 million people without any kind of coverage and even those that do have coverage find it gets dropped when they need it most. Less administration costs, less unnecessary procedures, large-scale negotiation for drugs, equipment, and other supplies, and a significantly reduced number of lawsuits and therefore the need to pay for malpractice insurance would reduce the costs enough that the government could easily pay for the program without raising taxes a single penny. This is especially true if we get the U.S. military out of areas it doesn't belong like Germany, Japan, Italy, Turkey, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. America spends a far higher percentage of GDP on health care than any other country but has worse ratings on such criteria as quality of care, efficiency of care, access to care, safe care, equity, and waiting times

5) No family or business goes bankrupt from hospital bills and people aren't forced to make tough decisions between allowing their family member to die, or giving up their house or business.

6) Their government system focuses on preventative care, which means less emergency care and overall healthier people.

7) They actually get something useful from their government when our money is pissed away on things we don't need and which don't help Americans like wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

8) By removing the profit motive for health care, those involved in health care actually care about helping people rather than making money. Our system rewards hospitals and doctors for keeping you sick. There is no money in the cure; only in the treatment. In any system that reimburses physicians on a fee-for-service basis, you will find abuses and doctors doing too many procedures. In one without a profit motive, they will only do what is needed and costs will be greatly reduced. By adopting a single-payer system, we'd no longer have a health care system that avoids helping truly sick people.

9) Neither the government, nor insurance companies would be involved in the decision as to which procedures we would or wouldn't have. That decision would be only for the doctor and patient to make and all options would be on the table; not just the ones the insurance company wants to pay for.

10) A national health care system like that in the UK would actually reduce the burden on businesses to provide health care plans to find and keep good employees. Even if the government didn't close our unnecessary military bases and didn't cut other programs, taxes would increase a fraction of what it costs employers to have health plans for their employees. Businesses would have higher profits (except for health insurance companies)

[Radar]

Originally Posted by Happy Monkey

Read the sequence of posts. IF The Mercenary wasn't saying that VA was good, then his post was a complete non sequitur.

a) Government can't do anything right
b) Mentions VA
a) Yeah, but people who get VA earned it

It wouldn't be the first time TheMercenary responded with a non sequitur, but I like to start out assuming that responses are actually responding to the post they quote.

I have a lot of friends who use the VA system and they are very happy with it. My uncle John is 82, goes there all the time. He went to the VA a couple of weeks ago with pneumonia and they fixed him right up without much of a wait, and gave him meds. He's pretty happy with it.

Although if he had money and he were paying for health insurance and he actually got sick with something serious, they'd probably drop him. They might not let him buy insurance to begin with at his age, or at least not at a rate he could afford.

[Undertoad]

Turns out it's just one of those things that's counter-intuitive: Spending more on health care increases the infant mortality rate

According to a 2002 analysis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at least a third of all infant mortality in the United States arises from complications of prematurity; other studies assert the figure is closer to half. Thus—at the risk of oversimplifying—infant mortality in the United States principally is a problem of premature birth, which today complicates just over one in 10 pregnancies.

To reduce infant mortality, then, we need to prevent premature births, and if that fails, improve care of premature babies once born. (Prematurity is also linked to other problems; for example, it's the leading cause of mental retardation and cerebral palsy in children.) But modern medicine isn't good at preventing prematurity—just the opposite. Better and more affordable medical care actually has worsened the rate of prematurity, and likely the rate of infant mortality, by making fertility treatment widespread.

[Undertoad]

And actually, maybe lifespan is also one of those counter-intuitive things:

One big reason our life expectancy lags is that Americans have an unusual tendency to perish in homicides or accidents. We are 12 times more likely than the Japanese to be murdered and nearly twice as likely to be killed in auto wrecks.

In their 2006 book, "The Business of Health," economists Robert L. Ohsfeldt and John E. Schneider set out to determine where the U.S. would rank in life span among developed nations if homicides and accidents are factored out. Their answer? First place.

[Radar]

It's a waste of time to talk about "what if" in a book by some partisan hack. It's better to take a look at reality. The reality is murders and accidents won't go away and millions of Americans don't have health care.

With a single-payer system, we'd have less deaths that we could actually prevent without raising taxes much or at all.