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The morality of health care

The morality of health care

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Originally posted by whodey
So if you were a Mexican, for example, and you needed health care that you could not obtain in Mexico, what would you do?
Well, I am an American in need of healthcare which I cannot obtain in the US since being half blind in one eye is not considered "necessary" surgery. The problem can be corrected but I lack the $3000 for the surgery. I bankrupted and used all my credit having the other eye done. Hopefully I will eventually raise the money but until then I am without remedy.

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Originally posted by caissad4
Well, I am an American in need of healthcare which I cannot obtain in the US since being half blind in one eye is not considered "necessary" surgery. The problem can be corrected but I lack the $3000 for the surgery. I bankrupted and used all my credit having the other eye done. Hopefully I will eventually raise the money but until then I am without remedy.
Have you applied for Medicaid? If you're bankrupt, you should be eligible.

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Originally posted by caissad4
Are you saying that this goes on in countries like Switzerland, Germany, Britain, Japan, Taiwan or any of the other countries where national healthcare is provided ???
It would be better if people would base their opinions in this matter on facts not kneejerk reactions and scare tactics.
No, I'm saying that this is the inevitable outcome of forcing people to perform certain duties. It's not knee jerk, it is stating a simple fact.

Apply this regulation to any business and see what happens. Suppose you could take your car to the panel shop with a certain 'injury' and the panel guy could not turn down the work? Even if you had not a hope of paying.

People like to attack the US health system on the basis it is freemarket, my point is - that it is nowhere near free market. They like to point at it and say the free market system is broken, but it's actually the regulation that has broken it in the first place, their solution is always the same - more regulation, like trying to repair the machine by throwing another spanner into the gear box.

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"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed - and hence clamorous to be led to safety - by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."
-H.L. Mencken

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Originally posted by sh76
Have you applied for Medicaid? If you're bankrupt, you should be eligible.
I have not filed bankruptcy and have no dependent children. I am not eligible. My condition is not considered a disability.

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Originally posted by Wajoma
No, I'm saying that this is the inevitable outcome of forcing people to perform certain duties. It's not knee jerk, it is stating a simple fact.

Apply this regulation to any business and see what happens. Suppose you could take your car to the panel shop with a certain 'injury' and the panel guy could not turn down the work? Even if you had not a hope o ...[text shortened]... egulation, like trying to repair the machine by throwing another spanner into the gear box.
But didn't the lack of regulation cause the current economic crisis here in the US ?? Here in the US only care defined as "emergency" cannot be turned away. Perhaps in your country doctors are "forced" to treat any and all patients but not here in the US. You are the first, the very first, person I have heard say that the US health system is attacked as "freemarket". The problem is the tens of millions who are uninsured and the 20,000 to 30,000 Americans who lose everything due to major illness. The philosophy of "deregulating everything" is rather shortsighted at least here in the US. There is 125 years of history here to show who actually benefits from deregulating and who loses.

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Originally posted by caissad4
But didn't the lack of regulation cause the current economic crisis here in the US ?? Here in the US only care defined as "emergency" cannot be turned away. Perhaps in your country doctors are "forced" to treat any and all patients but not here in the US. You are the first, the very first, person I have heard say that the US health system is attacked as "fr ...[text shortened]... 25 years of history here to show who actually benefits from deregulating and who loses.
No, the lack of regulation did not cause the current economic crisis.

It did if you're a guvamint bureaurat trying to expand your realm of control.

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Originally posted by whodey
The other night in Obama's speech about health care, he said that his NHC plan was the "right" thing to do and the "moral" thing to do. However, is it politically correct to say such things? After all, this is coming the same party that has bashed conservatives for trying to legislate morality in terms of issues surrounding abortion etc? Have both parties ...[text shortened]... to lie about such things in order to simply get a plan passed that he deems as "good"?
The Conservative and Constitutionalist would do well to go back to basics. Where in the Constitution is the authority for the government to distribute health care, and to decide who pays for it and who gets it.

Anyone who naively cites the "general welfare clause" should see what James Madison said about that.

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Originally posted by caissad4
I have not filed bankruptcy and have no dependent children. I am not eligible. My condition is not considered a disability.
You don't need to have dependents or be bankrupt to be eligible. You might want to contact your local Department of Social Services and ask them if there's any assistance with healthcare program you might be eligible for.

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Originally posted by Wajoma
No, I'm saying that this is the inevitable outcome of forcing people to perform certain duties. It's not knee jerk, it is stating a simple fact.

Apply this regulation to any business and see what happens. Suppose you could take your car to the panel shop with a certain 'injury' and the panel guy could not turn down the work? Even if you had not a hope o ...[text shortened]... egulation, like trying to repair the machine by throwing another spanner into the gear box.
You've got it nailed. May I point out that we used to force certain people to perform certain duties. Remember it was called slavery.

The heaviest users of the American health care system are those already in government run coverage, Medicare and Medicaid, and both systems are bankrupt.

Talk about stopping the Titanic to pick up passengers.

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Originally posted by normbenign
The Conservative and Constitutionalist would do well to go back to basics. Where in the Constitution is the authority for the government to distribute health care, and to decide who pays for it and who gets it.

Anyone who naively cites the "general welfare clause" should see what James Madison said about that.
It would be passed under the "taxing and spending for the general welfare" clause. It might also be passed under the Commerce clause. What James Madison had to say about the subject is irrelevant.

I wouldn't bet on a Constitutional challenge to the healthcare bill succeeding; and this is not a Court that overly friendly to federal power.

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Originally posted by caissad4
Well, I am an American in need of healthcare which I cannot obtain in the US since being half blind in one eye is not considered "necessary" surgery. The problem can be corrected but I lack the $3000 for the surgery. I bankrupted and used all my credit having the other eye done. Hopefully I will eventually raise the money but until then I am without remedy.
You should be on Soc. Sec. disability if you can't work. Have you tried this?

GRANNY.

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Originally posted by caissad4
Well, I am an American in need of healthcare which I cannot obtain in the US since being half blind in one eye is not considered "necessary" surgery. The problem can be corrected but I lack the $3000 for the surgery. I bankrupted and used all my credit having the other eye done. Hopefully I will eventually raise the money but until then I am without remedy.
I can't be certain but by the price and nature (one eye at a time) you sound as if you need a lensectomy (correction of cateracts).

The problem is that proponents of Nationalized health care attempt to make you think it will universally cover everything, and that's the biggest lie there is.

I live in Detroit on the Canadian border, and had my surgeries done in Canada, by the same surgeon who had done my lasik a few years earlier. I paid cash for all these surgeries, as all were considered optional, non life threatening.

Cateract surgery is covered by Medicare, and Ontario Care, however the wait is about three months under Medicare, and nine months under the Canadian system. With my cash, the doctor scheduled me the very next week.

I waited saving money for several years before having the second eye done, but "half blind in one eye" was hardly noticeable after the first eye was done.

Something to consider is that currently, your condition is probably not covered except by Medicare, and the likelihood is that under nationalized health care, it might not be covered for anyone especially the elderly.

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Originally posted by sh76
It would be passed under the "taxing and spending for the general welfare" clause. It might also be passed under the Commerce clause. What James Madison had to say about the subject is irrelevant.

I wouldn't bet on a Constitutional challenge to the healthcare bill succeeding; and this is not a Court that overly friendly to federal power.
To properly understand the "general welfare clause" who better than Madison. I understand that the modern big government liberals and the neo-cons find the Constitution "limiting", and inconvenient.

I say either we start living by it, or toss it out altogether, and use the Communist Manifesto or some other document rather than paying lip service and totally disrepecting the document that made our nation exceptional.

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Originally posted by normbenign
To properly understand the "general welfare clause" who better than Madison. I understand that the modern big government liberals and the neo-cons find the Constitution "limiting", and inconvenient.

I say either we start living by it, or toss it out altogether, and use the Communist Manifesto or some other document rather than paying lip service and totally disrepecting the document that made our nation exceptional.
What I meant by the Madison comment is that the calculus of federal power has changed so much since those days from the antitrust laws to the New Deal to the expansion of federal criminal law, etc., etc. Madison and Co. would never have dreamed of the breadth and scope of federal regulation that exists today.

For better or for worse (and obviously you believe for worse), the federal government has been allocated the power by the Supreme Court's interpretation of the Commerce and Taxing and Spending clauses that are well beyond the proposed healthcare bill.