American Health Care Reform

[GuyInTaiwan]

Craig: There are three options:

1. The government steals from some people and gives others a free pass.
2. The government pretends everyone is paying their way, but really steals more from some people and gives others more of a free pass.
3. The government doesn't steal from anyone or give anyone a free pass because the government minds its own bloody business.

Where do you stand? Freedom or theft?

See what I did there in defining the terms so I look "good" and you look "evil"? Isn't this game called "Snap"?

[CraigTPE]

Craig: There are three options:

1. The government steals from some people and gives others a free pass.
2. The government pretends everyone is paying their way, but really steals more from some people and gives others more of a free pass.
3. The government doesn't steal from anyone or give anyone a free pass because the government minds its own bloody business.

Where do you stand? Freedom or theft?

See what I did there in defining the terms so I look "good" and you look "evil"? Isn't this game called "Snap"?

How do you figure requiring people to buy insurance to be stealing by the government? How is the government stealing when a private hospital's emergency room is providing free service.

I don't know what game you're playing. Seems kind of silly.

[GuyInTaiwan]

Because you know perfectly well that not everyone will end up paying the same amount. What happens if people can't afford health insurance, or doesn't pay the same amount as someone earning more? If anyone is subsidising anyone else, then there's a form of theft going on. I'm not talking about private hospitals providing free services. You know that I'm not. So again, which side are you on, the side that favours freedom or theft?

I'm playing exactly the same kind of game you're playing: defining the terms to favour my side and demonise the other. I'm glad you admit it's a silly game. Please stop doing it.

[Gao Bohan]

So it's death panels here we come.

I made several points in my previous response to you and you haven't addressed a single one. It's apparent from your phraseology and demeanor that you have no interest in a serious conversation and are just here to stir the pot. Have fun playing in your sandbox.

[Mucha Man]

... So again, which side are you on, the side that favours freedom ir theft?

Personally I side with theft. I've seen freedom: it looks like Somalia. I've seen theft as you put it. It looks like Norway.

[Gao Bohan]

Guy,

CraigTPE's point is that there is a fundamental problem in the American health care system with only a limited number of solutions. The problem is that some 50 million Americans do not have health insurance, and yet will almost inevitably end up at a hospital at some point in their life. The law requires hospitals to screen and stabilize all patients with emergency conditions, and yet without insurance most patients cannot afford the treatment they receive. Health care is a service in very high demand, meaning that the majority of the costs will be passed on to other consumers. Meanwhile, the uninsured patients go bankrupt, and are worse off than if they had been able to get their conditions treated earlier on. Nobody really "wins".

The reality is that "letting them die in the streets" isn't an option even if the law requiring hospitals to treat emergency condition patients were repealed. Hospitals were treating emergency patients before the law passed in 1986. The effects of that law are unclear. The real choices aren't let them die in the streets or mandate the purchase of health insurance. The choices are to ignore the problem or come up with a solution. At least the Democrats took action, rather than sit around navel-gazing and making vague promises about an even cloudier theoretical solution.

[Chris]

Taxation is not theft.

[Petrichor]

Guy,

CraigTPE's point is that there is a fundamental problem in the American health care system with only a limited number of solutions. The problem is that some 50 million Americans do not have health insurance, and yet will almost inevitably end up at a hospital at some point in their life. The law requires hospitals to screen and stabilize all patients with emergency conditions, and yet without insurance most patients cannot afford the treatment they receive. Health care is a service in very high demand, meaning that the majority of the costs will be passed on to other consumers. Meanwhile, the uninsured patients go bankrupt, and are worse off than if they had been able to get their conditions treated earlier on. Nobody really "wins".

The reality is that "letting them die in the streets" isn't an option even if the law requiring hospitals to treat emergency condition patients were repealed. Hospitals were treating emergency patients before the law passed in 1986. The effects of that law are unclear. The real choices aren't let them die in the streets or mandate the purchase of health insurance. The choices are to ignore the problem or come up with a solution. At least the Democrats took action, rather than sit around navel-gazing and making vague promises about an even cloudier theoretical solution.

A lot of insured patients go bankrupt too:

Medical problems caused 62% of all personal bankruptcies filed in the U.S. in 2007, according to a study by Harvard researchers. And in a finding that surprised even the researchers, 78% of those filers had medical insurance at the start of their illness, including 60.3% who had private coverage, not Medicare or Medicaid.

Medically related bankruptcies have been rising steadily for decades. In 1981, only 8% of families filing for bankruptcy cited a serious medical problem as the reason, while a 2001 study of bankruptcies in five states by the same researchers found that illness or medical bills contributed to 50% of all filings. This newest, nationwide study, conducted before the start of the current recession by Drs. David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler of Harvard Medical School, Elizabeth Warren of Harvard Law School, and Deborah Thorne, a sociology professor at Ohio University, found that the filers were for the most part solidly middle class before medical disaster hit. Two-thirds owned their home and three-fifths had gone to college.

But medically bankrupt families with private insurance reported average out-of pocket medical bills of $17,749, while the uninsured's bills averaged $26,971. Of the families who started out with insurance but lost it during the course of their illness, medical bills averaged $22,658. "For middle-class Americans, health insurance offers little protection. Most of us have policies with so many loopholes, co-payments, and deductibles that illness can put you in the poorhouse," said lead author Himmelstein. "Unless you're Warren Buffett, your family is just one serious illness away from bankruptcy."

http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnf ... 666715.htm

I should think the study's results are skewed by the fact that if you're poor you're unlikely to be properly treated for a serious illness until it becomes life-threatening and you don't have time to accrue large debts before you die.

[GuyInTaiwan]

... So again, which side are you on, the side that favours freedom ir theft?

Personally I side with theft. I've seen freedom: it looks like Somalia. I've seen theft as you put it. It looks like Norway.

How convenient that you left out Greece or Nicaragua, as examples of theft.

[GuyInTaiwan]

Taxation is not theft.

If I take something that does not belong to me, it's considered theft. If a big organisation does it, we call it a different name. It's a bit like that old line that if one hundred people believe something crazy, it's called a cult. If one hundred million people believe something crazy, it's called a world religion.