Terminate with extreme prejudice.
Posted on 08/12/2004 12:05:29 AM PDT by Lepidopteran
I am a swing voter, neither Republican nor Democrat. I supported President Bush in his response to September 11 and I supported the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. But I like John Kerry's message about the need to do something about the people in this country who have no health insurance. It's a hard choice.
A great many of the uninsured that the RATS are harping about are younger workers who have CHOSEN not to pay for health insurance. Now they are against CHOICE!!
Cool, that'd be worth seeing.
Laz called it!
The reason people dont have health insurance is because of people like John Edwards who sue the hell out of doctors.
Using your illustration of the 5 families, let us say that the valley in which the families live is facing attack from some outside band of marauder's. Let us have the 4 families who say, "We must band together." and the 5th family that says, "No, we'll do our protection on our own."
Is there anything different about defense that makes it unique in this discussion? I would argue that there is. Defense involves the families' immediate life and freedom whereas education does not immediately touch on one's ability to stay alive, and only distantly touches on one's ability to remain free.
That gets us to the 2nd consideration, that of "the superiority of combined action versus individual action." I doubt anyone would deny that 5 warriors have more firepower than one warrior -- assuming similarly armed warriors. Since the law of massed lethality has been recognized by authors on war from Sun Tzu to Tommie Franks, a law tested again and again, then it is safe to simply state for our purposes here that war is GENERALLY best and most successfully conducted when there is combined action versus individual action. (Specifically the issue is "mass" focused at a decisive point....if I can focus my 20,000 man division's combat lethality, and my fire-support from air and artillery, against your strategic weaknesses and you cannot muster the forces to repel them AT THAT DECISIVE FOCAL POINT, then I will defeat you even though your army might total many thousands more than my 20,000 man division; e.g., the recent Iraq military defeated by about 4 divisions of troops.)
In other words, I'm suggesting that combined, coerced action is "understandable" when there are issues "immediately" touching on one's life and freedom, AND there is studied and honest reason to indicate that combined action will have a MOMENTOUSLY greater return than will individual action.
That is why health care is an issue about which "compassionate conservatives" must think. Access to health care does "immediately" touch on the issue of life, because too often health care involves sicknesses and injuries that are immediately life-threatening.
The puzzling question with health care has to do with the value of combined versus individual action. There is good reason to believe from looking at nations that have gone the route of coerced, combined effort to provide health care that the resulting care is LESS EFFECTIVE than when health care is privately managed.
Simply ask any rich person in any country that practices socialized health care if they'd rather be worked on by an American surgeon in an American medical center or if they prefer their care be provided via the Canadian socialized system. The rich from around the world vote in favor of their care being via the American system. Fascinating.
I think it is the same dynamic as made the old Soviet food industry such a disaster. The government, in its wisdom, would sit down and try to decide how many acres of corn and potatoes needed to be planted for the needs of the Soviet population and the price to charge for the same. They probably did the math about the number of families, the number of potatoes and corn consumed in one meal, multiplied by a year, subtracted by deaths, etc., etc.
I'm sure they were great, mathematically supportable models they came up with....but they never worked because of the fickleness of markets, buying decisions, tastes, weather, costs of fertilizer, oil, etc.
In short, they discovered that keeping production decision centralized was counterproductive rather than advantageous. Not only did it not provide a MOMENTOUSLY greater return, it did not provide AS GOOD A RETURN as did private agricultural production.
Socialized medicine not only does not provide a MOMENTOUSLY greater return, but it also does not provide AS GOOD A RETURN as did private agricultural production.
Therefore, socialized medicine does not meet both tests, but only one of them. It does touch on an immediate life issue, but it does not provide a better medical care, and in fact, provides a worse medical care.
However, there should be compassionate conservative consideration of the fact that it does meet one of the tests. The fact that medical care touches on issues immediately touching on one's ability to remain ALIVE says that conservatives shouldn't gloss over this issue, but should consider it COMPASSIONATELY. They should not go the route of socialized medicine, which produces counterproductive results, but they should consider some intervention that enables citizens some comforting assurance that their very LIVES will be seriously regarded.
Assistance with costs is a goodhearted, well-intentioned effort to recognize the LIFE issue that is at stake. I believe it will fail, however, because it is an amount of money designed to accommodate a specific percentage of prescription cost. Since those drug costs are in a free market, and must remain free for success to continue in drug research, those costs will fluctuate UPWARD in price. To maintain the same percentage in the drug program will inevitably lead to greater and greater outlays in costs until one is forced to lower the percentage or to attempt to control prices....the latter would be a tragic result. (Witness the doctors getting out of medicine because their prices are controlled by insurance companies and government programs like Medicare/aid, AND their costs for malpractice insurance keep rising thanks rapacious jury-theft awards to the John Edwards of the world.)
Additionally, the case can also be made that any cooperative/combined/shared funding plan for medical costs creates a huge pot of money, and that pot of money encourages prices to increase to the level where that money gets spent by some player (hospital, doctor, insurance company, etc. (Sorta like "junk accumulates to fill the available space." "Prices increase to consume the available money.")
Therefore, the best plan will end up being a plan that encourages private costs and private prices. The market will force those two to find a livable middle ground.
The best work of conservatives would be work designed to think-tank where that private cost/private price juncture is, what it would look like, and how to push the system in that direction.
My own opinion is that it will end up looking like private pay for basic medical care and shared pay insurance for catastrophic medical care.
It's a distortion of the system to expect a "plan" to pay when I break my wrist and need a cast, or to pay when I have a cold and need an antibiotic. It would be like expecting the homeowner's policy to pay when my drains get clogged and I have to call a plumber. Sure, pay when the house burns down or gets burglarized/vandalized, but why should they pay just because I need to replace a fixture and pipe?
Normal care versus catastrophic care would actually be a throwback to about the 1950's, 1960's wouldn't it....when the government was less involved and much of the medical care was private pay except for catastrophic insurance coverage?
It's an orgy-buffet! First come, first served!
LOL!
I don't think lepidopterian is up to it though.
You can bet it'll cover botox treatments. Too bad for most libs, it won't cover cerebral cortex upgrades.
What are you wearing?
;
Everything goes better with salt!
I thank you... and the poem was hilarious. I really think the reason both my parents kind of gave up, and slipped away at the separate ends of their lives was because of all that "stuff they couldn't do anymore." When my Mom was moved into advanced care, it was one of those G-D'ed smoke free units, and when they took her smokes away ( about the last thing she could still enjoy ) she just went to sleep- permanently.
It's not just for breakfast anymore.
What hard choice?
The health care argument is bogus... there is a difference between lack of health insurance (which one can buy if they choose to for as little as $50 to $75 a month for a young single person (which represent MOST of the uninsured) and not having access to health care!
Dems want you to not make a distinction in this, they want to create socialized health care that won't work... where you have to wait 13 weeks just to see your family doctor.. 65 weeks to have surgery, 17 weeks to get an MRI etc etc etc....
No one is without health care in this nation, anyone destitute or wealthy can get care.... Unpaid Health care bills do not negatively impact your ability to get a mortgage to own a home under FHA... hospitals will accept whatever payment plans a person makes... etc etc etc....
Bush has and is doing the right things for america... the Economy is better now than it was in 1996 when Clinton was running on the "AWESOME" economy... Unemployment now is 5.5% during Clintons Reelection it was 5.6%... The last 4 quarters have had more growth than anytime under Clinton.. and are some of the best in nearly 20 years.
We are at war so that america can have lives.. 87 Billion to rebuild a nation is a pittence compared to what 9/11 cost this nation fiscally... and it was the right decision! Health insurance doesn't do squat for you if you jump out of a 110 story building because some sick animals use plains as suicide missles.
Kerry offers nothing, no promise he has made during his 20 years in the Senate has he kept... other than voting down funding for the military and for intelligence... even in the wake of the first WTC bombing he voted to cut intelligence spending and questioned why we even needed it. Kerry and his ilk do not get it.. they think the War on terror is a law enforcement issue.. they don't take it seriously, they are the chamberlains in our time and Bubba had the same view.. which is why we had a 9/11 in the first place.. because he refused to go after the terrorists the way they need to be gone after... attack after attack, bolder and bolder and the appeasement its a law enforcement issue party did absolutely NOTHING.
If you wish to see America destroyed you vote for the Democrats... they and their ilk desire nothing more than to undermine this nation... There are a few noteworthy exceptions to this.. Joe Lieberman, Zell Miller etc... but this is the party of people who won't say the pledge of allegence... and they are supposed to be defending and protecting this nation from all threats foriegn and domestic? They are the domestic threat to this nations sovereignty....
We shouldn't act without the UN... Won't solute the flag... believe law should recognized Homosexual Marriage... Believe that you can raise up the wage earner by destrying the wage payer... etc etc etc...
Here is the simple truth... as stated by Abraham Lincoln:
"You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot help the wage-earner by pulling down the wage-payer. You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves."
The democrats do not believe any of that statement, vast majority anyway. If you don't either vote for Kerry, because he and his administration will do the exact oposite of the plane truth.. they will weaken the strong believing it will strengthen the weak.... they will pull down the wage-payer believing it will help the wage earner... adn tehy will destroy the rich believing it will help the poor and they will do permanently that men should do for themselves believing it will help them... of course it won't work... because it defies reality and never works.. but it won't stop them.
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