War on sickness
POSTED BY: SergeantX
UPDATED: Thursday, April 27, 2006 20:46
VIEWED: 5120
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What do you all think of the new law in Massachusetts requiring everyone to buy health insurance? Fines of up to a $1000 dollars will be levied against those who fail to play ball. The carrot is lower rates for the poor. I'd like to think this kind of idiocy wouldn't make it past the first court challenge, but history doesn't support such optimism. The model is expected to have a 'ripple effect' across the country. 
They pulled off the same crap with mandatory auto liability insurance. Damn, them insurance boys know how to lobby!
SergeantX
"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock
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Well let's see. Manidory auto insurance is so that if you know, you kill some folks there will be some money to compensate the family. Doesn't seem like a hardship to me.
Right now hospitals have to treat emergency cases. If the person receiving the care cant pay then you and I pick up that cost either in taxes or higher premiums. Since we don't want to let these people die isn't it better if at the very least they have some basic insurance so that you and I don't pick up the bill?
I figure if this doesnt appeal to your humanity then appealing to blind self interest should work.
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Taking away my right to decide how best to spend my money doesn't appeal to my self interest. Passing laws requiring me to do business with an industry I consider corrupt doesn't appeal to my self interest. Seeing countless millions of American voters duped by appealing to their infantile desire to be 'taken care of' is disgusting. Sheep lining up for the fleecing.
Unfortunately, this pattern is accelerating. Whenever some 'interest group' figures out a way they can use legislation to make themselves a boatload of cash, they sick their lobbyists on D.C. and we get stuck with the bill. Couldn't we wake up to this crap. At least a little?
SergeantX
"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock
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Quote:
Originally posted by SergeantX:
What do you all think of the new law in Massachusetts requiring everyone to buy health insurance?
I'm waiting for more details and to observe the pratical effect, but all in all, I think its a novel idea and a great new approach.
For the record, my only known liberal sentiment is health care. I oppose the liberal national health care idea, I also oppose the conservative 'lets take a couple ideas that address a couple narrow problems and call it a solution".
My leaning has always been universal access to affordable health insurance. I think it should not be mandatory. If an adult chooses to go without, then let them go without, but limit their access to free care and support, in other words make them live or die with the decision they've made. But the costs to those who choose MUST be affordable or its all for naught.
H
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Why not just have a public system then and be done with it.....
Or are the private insurers going to huke rates and make a killing here ?
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Common sense once again fails.
Health insurance companies admit that 25% of premiums goes to paperwork. Another (unaccounted) percentage goes to profit. And then there is the (unaccounted) cut for execs' inflated salaries and perks. What do you guess it adds up to? 50% of insurance premiums wasted?
No wonder government-provided universal health care costs so much less and does so much more.
Meanwhile, the NEJM published studies showing that just making standard health care available to everyone will save an order of magnitude more lives than all the whoppee-do high-tech medical advances and modern drugs combined.
People must really enjoy being r*ped by the system.
Nearly everything I know I learned by the grace of others.
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Quote:
Originally posted by GinoBiffaroni:
Why not just have a public system then and be done with it...
I'd honestly prefer it to the subterfuge going on in Massachusetts. Why are we letting an industry lobby to pass laws telling their customers they'll be punished if they don't buy their products??? That's just screwed up.
Socialized medicine would be just as evil and corrupt, but at least it would be out in the open. But tell me, are those are the only choices? - to be slaves to the insurance companies or slaves to government health bureaucrats? How about we just quit trying to tell each other what to do?
SergeantX
"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock
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Let's hear it for free market medicine.
Quoted from NEJM
August 25, 2005
Patents versus Patients? Antiretroviral Therapy in India
In December 2004, to comply with the requirement of the World Trade Organization that its member countries adhere to trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights, the president of India issued a patent-amendment ordinance requiring 20-year patents on all new medications. Objections were voiced around the world by advocacy groups for patients with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), who characterized the proposed law as pitting patents against patients.
Because only slight modifications in manufacturing could qualify a product for a new patent, Indian companies were able to offer HIV drugs at prices as low as 4 percent of those of brand-name drugs.
The new Indian patent legislation may well slow, if not threaten very substantially, the development of new products with these benefits.
Nearly everything I know I learned by the grace of others.
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SergeantX
"How about we just quit trying to tell each other what to do?"
I suggest this - up and up socialized medicine. A certain percentage of your tax will go for your cut of 'free' care. If you opt out, you don't get to enjoy the benefits. It's pay as you go for everything from the trivial to the financially devastating. And you don't get government aid like food stamps if medical costs make you poor.
Would that satisfy you?
Nearly everything I know I learned by the grace of others.
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Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
SergeantX
"How about we just quit trying to tell each other what to do?"
I suggest this - up and up socialized medicine. A certain percentage of your tax will go for your cut of 'free' care. If you opt out, you don't get to enjoy the benefits. It's pay as you go for everything from the trivial to the financially devastating. And you don't get government aid like food stamps if medical costs make you poor.
Would that satisfy you?
heh... optional taxes? Absolutely. I'm not sure how you're imagining a government making such an offer, but it sounds fair to me. Wouldn't that just be more or less like regular insurance though?
SergeantX
"Dream a little dream or you can live a little dream. I'd rather live it, cause dreamers always chase but never get it." Aesop Rock
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