Indefensible.

Really, then why are the costs of health care and medicine far less expensive in every country that has a national health care system?

 

I made it through four and a half pages and skipped the rest. So I don't know if this was pointed out since then, but this bill is a reauthorization. To say that the government suddenly doesn't care about children's health care is short-sighted; the money has been there. It's just now the Democrats want to infuse it with more cash, and that's where the disagreements begin.

I brought up this thread at dinner tonight with my wife and another couple; both of them are also conservative with experience as Hill staffers, one currently. I asked them how they would defend it, so here's what they told me: (please note that this is NOT my own opinion, I'm simply re-telling what they had to say)

(adapted from a PM)

-- They believe the current coverage to be adequate. The reauthorization ups the price tag significantly; they believed the range to be between $70,000 and $83,000 - as in couples making less than that would be eligible for government health care.

They saw problems with that down the road as well. If the government provides children's health care for a couple making, say, $20,000 a year, HMO's and other third-party providers won't bother to cover them. They wove that into a less-competitive health-care market where HMO's, etc. keep pushing prices higher just because they can. (I apologize I can't recall how they got exactly from A to B on that.)

-- They stood by W's point that it pushes toward a socialistic system. I asked them why that was such a bad thing, or was it just strictly an unbridgeable ideologic gap. They said government-run health care lags in innovation, not excels, and there were no systems out there that had proven otherwise.

They again mentioned the free-market theory, saying competition among companies would bring about better advances than anything the gov't could do. Moreover, they said it's not like the best and the brightest will jump at a government job that pays significantly less, given how long it currently takes a person to pay off med school. Now imagine doing that on a government salary.

The richest folks still would get the best health care, because they'd be able to afford it. The rest of us would be left with a worse-off health care system.

----

For what it's worth.

 

And why is the care so bad that the people from those countries who can afford it come here for their care?

Do you really think it's worth the extra years of very expensive schooling and all the student loans that put you in the hole for years to be paid like a fireman? In your ideal country there won't be many doctors at all. And anyone that would still become one would be so stupid that they certainly wouldn't be a good one.

 

Do you really think doctors in Canada and Western Europe are "paid like fireman" struggling to make ends meet and put food on the table. Perhaps JR or another canuck could help us out here, but I'd bet the farm that's not the case. They might not be making quite as much as docs here but I'm sure they're very well-paid nonetheless. I've heard no stories of starving doctors in Europe and Canada.

 

Now I'm going to try to be patient here, but I'm now beginning to understand that IU90 means you were born in Indiana University Hospital in 1990. I originally thought it meant you graduated from there in 1990.

So it's understandable that at 17 years old you think you're making a great point by noting those services are provided "by someone else." That doesn't in any way, shape or form make them rights. Do you have a right to police and fire protection? Of course not. But we do deem them valuable and we agree to pay taxes to have them provided.

Now you can argue that wrecking the health care system (which is what universal health care would do) is also in that category. But it is not a right.

 

And yet you have to know that that's the way things would eventually go for us. One of my good friends is a doctor and the way things have changed over the last 15 years, he wishes he was a fireman.

 

Which countries?

 

See, I think wrecking our current health care system would be a fabulous start. It's a system under which only the wealthy have access to the best care.

Have you lived without health insurance recently, OT? Because I have, and it's not fun. But I did it because the plan I was offered was completely not affordable. And not because I have a plasma TV or eat lobster all the time either, asshole, so don't even think about trying that line on me. At the time, I had a 10-year-old TV I got from my parents and I didn't have cable and I worked two jobs. I still don't have cable, by the way. Was it nerve-wracking to be without insurance, knowing that if I slipped off a curb and broke my ankle, it would financially ruin me? Yeah, it was. But to keep a roof over my head, it was something I had to do. It was a choice I had to make, a choice I think no one should ever have to make, for themselves, and certainly not for their children (for whom, I might add, they are legally required to provide some sort of medical care).

Now I'm fortunate to be working for a company that provides a pretty decent health care package at very little cost to me. But guess what? That's not an option that's available to everyone. And if I had to buy insurance on the open market, I wouldn't be able to, because I have a pre-existing condition. Insurance companies exist to make profits, not to open the vast fields of health care to everyone under the sun.

I'm happy that you live an existence that allows you access to medical care. Really, I am. I don't begrudge you that in the slightest. What I wonder is why you would begrudge others that access, particularly children.

 

Very well put, Deskslave.

 

"We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, and to promote the general welfare. do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

 

Well, Ragu, one of the things they can do is disenthrall themselves from the insurance companies, to whom the profession sold its soul 50 years ago. Their interests are in no way mutual.