here's an idea, let's withdraw our troops and military bases from the 150+ countries around the world and maybe we can use some of that money to treat people...!

yeah

del

Not to mention the people who are provided company cars that they like and want to keep using. What happens to them when their employer takes the car away to cut costs in a down economy using the rationale of "Hey, you can take the bus now!"

most people seem to overestimate the quality of their own private insurance and underestimate the quality of the public options

what happens to them now? why would that change? Its in their best interest to offer the car, to hire the best people, right? So if in a down economy it gets taken away, they'd be covered by the bus they help pay for, when the economy rebounds, the company would offer benefits again, right? Wouldn't having that option actually be beneficial to companies struggling in a down economy?

It might be beneficial to companies, sure, but it obliterates Obama's oft-repeated mantra that everyone who likes their coverage will get to keep it. Maybe shifting the burden of health care costs from employers to the government might be good for businesses...but how does that help people who want (or already have) good health care?

And where is the motivation for companies to pick up the bill on insurance again once the economy rebounds? Right now, the choice is either you pay for your health care, or your employer does. That makes employer-based health care a big perk, one that makes a job with that employer that much more attractive, and thus worth the expense to the employer. But when the choice changes to either your employer pays, or the government does, suddenly it becomes much less of a perk. Why would the employer go to the kind of expense necessary to provide its employees mere expanded coverage if there's a government safety net in place?

Im not really talking about this proposed plan, I was just asking about a hybrid system where basic shitty coverage exists for those that would have none, and those with the means get whatever they want. Your example of a company struggling with such a system in place, would benefit from having the option to temporarily shift that burden, wouldnt it? This is far from a strong point of mine, I'm not so much stating something as I am asking a question.


The same motivation they have now for offering something to begin with. Recruiting the best. I doubt they take on the expense out of the kindness of their heart. If they could they wouldnt, but the market dictates they offer it, doesnt it? Especially if you believe government care will be mediocre. I just dont see, if the market dictates this behavior, how adding a safety net for those with nothing now, impacts it. Its a perk now, it will be a perk then.

But this is just hypothetical, what will be passed wont be anything like this anyway. So basically,

How about we don't buy bus tickets for felons? Because Obama's plan offers free health coverage for 12,000,000 illegal aliens.

I would love to see the state military abolished. I advocate this all the time.

most countries that have free health care make no distinction based on someone's status in the territory. suggesting that seems inhuman but sadly not surprising.

Absolutely completely entirely absurd, shortsighted, and proven to be foolish since Spinoza.

This would turn the incentive of an army from peace to war, thus negating entirely the purpose of having a military. A citizen army forces a nation to make decisions based on the knowledge that they are sending their own people into harm's way, and thus their military votes and so do family/friends. A private army would never seek to end conflict, for if they did then they would destroy their business.

WOW I can't believe ANYBODY supports the idea of a privatized army. Seriously hundreds and hundreds of years ago people realized this is just a completely horrible idea, and have since proven it wrong with very simple words. Please, I beg you, don't even entertain this possibility anymore. It's plainly and obviously not optimal to privatize a state military.

I'd rather maintain an empire and pay the costs of it than be some other country's bitch.

Please jczeroman return to this thread in the future and try to argue your point that you "advocate ... all the time." It's honestly the political equivalent of somebody arguing about the principles of alchemy in the face of chemistry.

at least he's philosophically consistant

post your source for this. which wingnut site is it? newsmax? or newsbusters?

i've read in many places that illegal immigrants will not be covered.
Obama: No Health Care For Illegal Immigrants - Political Hotsheet - CBS News

I don't know what to say anymore. But I am not american.

Even tho I pay for private health care (my own choice) just so I can choose which doctors and hospitals to go once in a while I find myself having to resort to public health care because they are more modern and they don't deny any sort of treatment or test based on the fact they "don't consider it necessary".

Of course in general you wouldn't be there in your own beautiful room watching 72 channels on cable, but we take pride on the fact nobody has to die or lose their homes or savings because of illness.

we consider that to be a fundamental service - like education or the police.

If anything, we want to know that out taxes are going to health care, and that we wouldn't refuse anyone treatment - illegal or not.

but I guess it's a fundamental difference in ideals.

I'm happy to spend my money on private health care so I won't have to wait a month to get an appointment with a doctor, and I'm also happy to know that my tax money will guarantee that no one, no one will be refused treatment or medication.

For whatever it's worth, the number of uninsured people that keeps getting tossed around as being the indicator that reform is needed has always included illegals in it. It seems odd that they would include them only to beef up the numbers and make them scarier.

I get really disturbed when people refer to other people as "illegal"

I don't know, I associate that word with acts not people

true, but not odd, it's politics.

That's total spin - look at the facts.

The Democrats voted down the Heller Amendment which would have specifically disallowed illegals to participate in the health care plans.

All that will be required to get coverage is a driver's license.

You do not need to prove citizenship to get a driver's license.

Obama then essentially said that by the time the plan is active he'd like all of those people to be citizens, thus granting amnesty - that part is in your own article.

Spin however you like and pretend this is some right-wing agenda out to get your boy, or look at the facts. Choice is yours.

I don't know what I'm talking about really but I saw on TV a while ago that in a lot of states non-citizens wouldn't get driver licenses anymore.:erm:

It's just a mean spirited gesture and a (not so)subtle act of racism to deny services to undocumented aliens. There's no practical reasoning behind it other than that. It doesn't make sense to keep a significant portion of our population sick and uneducated. Personally I would prefer not to have crime/disease infested slums in America. Plus its more expensive in the long run if these people are denied preventative care and we end up footing the bill for more expensive treatments later on to more serious illnesses that they'll eventually use the ER for.

If you don't want undocumented immigrants to leech off the system, get government to provide better border enforcement. But don't try to enforce the borders through our health care system or law enforcement. Doctors and policemen are not our border patrol.

Ok so you guys have stated why universal health care will be so terrible, but you do realize there are flaws in our current system, right? You know about the 47 million people in this country who don't have health insurance (and if you want to subtract the 12 million illegal aliens, that's fine, but 35 million is still a tenth of our population). You should know that even if you have private health insurance you still have to deal with the bureaucracy of your insurance company. You still have to get pre-authorization. You still get denied coverage. Doctors fight with insurance companies all the time to get their patients approved for ESSENTIAL procedures. You still have restrictions on which doctors you can see, because not all insurance plans are accepted by all doctors (and why is that? well doctors don't accept certain plans because those companies have a piss poor reputation when it comes to paying for services in full and on time). You still have increasingly high costs for patients in the form of co-payments. If you have a $50 co-pay and you're on 7 medications (and believe me, most elderly people are), you're paying $350 a month out of pocket!
So the question for you guys now is how do you fix the current system?

Debaser said it very well several posts ago. People tend to overestimate their private health plan and underestimate the public health plans. I'll take it a step further and say that people who value their private health insurance so highly haven't been severely sick enough.

oh i agree with this

Yup.

Or get the government to tank the economy.

Mexican immigration to U.S. off 40 percent, study finds - CNN.com

Oh no!

You're not enforcing immigration, you're killing incentive. Your statement would be the same as saying "don't blame the employers who hire illegals, just enforce the borders."

Yes, the borders should be enforced, but that doesn't help that you have millions of people who have bankrupted California and are now working on the rest of the country already here.

Also can we please not play the race card? Illegals from any country, including Canada and Europe are included. There are a good number of illegals from eastern Europe who would be considered "white" you know.

This is for the benefit of others, since I've generally concluded that you are a complete moron when it comes to political philosophy.

This is not logical. Citizen armies in democratic societies are the most victimised, because just like other people' money, other people's lives (especially foreigners) can be voted away at apparently little to no cost. The army is now a public good, owned by no one, and the the natural human incentives of consumption, exploitation and monopoly occur. Citizens are drafted under the banner of nationalism and marched off to fight invaders under threat of everything from unpatriotic stigma to outright death for "treason." This also provides an incentive for perpetual war because the means of the state for obtaining goods, since it does not produce them or trade them voluntarily, is through the expropriation and exploitation of either its citizens (in a socialist state) or foreigners (in an imperialist or fascist state). The military is the branch of the state, and those elites which wield the power of the state (and these elites are inevitable even in completely collectivist states), to carry out exploitation. Thus the public military is an inevitable step towards perpetual war.

A private army is incentivised to minimise conflict because engaging in conflict destroys resources and capital (both "conquered" resources and capital of the army itself). Any private military that seeks perpetual conflict will quickly be out competed by wiser, more judicious and diplomatic military service providers. Moreover, militaries that do engage in conflict will need to abide by the ethics of those people who hire them and those who will potentially hire them if they expect to do business. This incentivises specificity in targets, minimisation of collateral damage and (preferably) an end to conflict before it beings. Moreover, private militaries can be held accountable because they would not work in collusion with the state monopoly on courts and justice (which, for the same reasons, should also be abolished).


Wars "hundreds of years ago" that were truly private killed tens, hundreds, perhaps thousands of people and were waged almost exclusively on soldiers and military infrastructure, contractually or voluntarily obligated to the war-wagers. As opposed to this, public wars of just the last decades have killed literally hundreds of millions of people, many of them non-combatants - while their governments all proclaimed they were doing so on the side of freedom, human rights and liberty. You really are deluded. The correlation between "democracy" and state monopoly on military and total war, death and perpetual exploitative war is unparalleled in human history.

haha what you sound like this guy



nimrod if you want people to stop playing the race card against stop saying racist comments as "jokes"

there's a reason people think you are a racist and it's sad how you try and pretend like you aren't.