Mandated healthcare.

[frazzledgear]

MANDATED HEALTHCARE.

What is mind boggling is why would anyone with a body have to be forced to buy healthcare coverage? Unless they are “freeloaders” who want someone else to pay for their medical care if they get sick or have and accident. I am forced to even if I don’t want to by having to pay higher hospital bills and higher healthcare premiums because hospital who have to treat freeloaders will recoup their losses by charging my healthcare insurance more and I will have to pay more for my premiums. For my own protection humans with bodies should be forced to buy their own healthcare coverage.

Another thing that is mind boggling is why do people who don’t need healthcare don’t wants other to have healthcare? Like they eat three meals a day but don’t want other to eat three meals a day unless they eat in their restaurants.

Government has numerous mandated laws that we have to follow or buy and if we don’t we pay a fine or go to jail. Government mandates that if you drive a car, you must pass a driver’s test and buy a driver’s license if you don’t you can be fined. Is you own a car and want to drive in you are mandated to buy a smog certificate, buy a registration and buy auto insurance. And in some states you are mandated to buy uninsured motorist insurance to cover your car if a driver hits your car and does not have auto insurance. Government can mandate you to buy auto insurance for your car but cannot mandate you buy healthcare for you? If this is unconstitutional they the constitution needs to be amended. ASAP. It can be done because it has been done 28 times. Constitution is not written in blood.

I don’t want to pay for others auto accidents but if I am forced to buy insured motorist auto insurance that is what I am mandated to do. To protect me. If my car is hit by an uninsured motorist my auto premiums goes up.

I don’t want to pay for free loaders medical care if they get sick or have an accident and don’t have healthcare and that is what I am mandated to do.

Obamacare will drive up healthcare? Healthcare cost will to up anyway if everyone does not have healthcare.

You don’t mind if an uninsured person gets sick or have an accident and use your medical insurance and you pay the cost of his medical care? And you are mandated to do it if you want to keep your healthcare coverage.

If someone does not have a burial plan who pays for their burials?

I want every driver to have auto insurance coverage and every body to have healthcare coverage because it protect me and cost me less.


Mass has mandate healthcare and is subsidized by the federal goverenment.

I don't even know where to start with your idiocies here. I want to get the auto insurance comparison out of the way right off the bat. I only have to buy auto insurance if I want to drive. I do NOT have to buy it to be a citizen. Obama's mandate would make it a REQUIREMENT of CITIZENSHIP. In other words, my birth in this country would no longer be sufficient to make me a citizen of this country, I would be required to buy health insurance. Driving is a state granted privilege which means the state can require I meet certain requirements before I am granted that PRIVILEGE. Literally tens of thousands of people choose to stop driving a car every year and immediately stop buying auto insurance when they do. But my citizenship is NOT a privilege but my RIGHT. And it is my right by the sheer fact I was born here and NOTHING ELSE. No President and NO Congress has the power to pervert my RIGHT by insisting that as part of my citizenship I must buy health insurance every single month FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE! Exactly where is that Executive and Congressional power? What is it you NUTJOBS just can't comprehend about our system and even after seeing other nations now dealing with the impending collapse of their own over-burdened ones still DEMAND we go down that same stupid path ourselves anyway? You do NOT get to change the rules for everyone else just because you are ARROGANT enough to think its a good idea -and just want to ram it down our throats against our will come hell or high water. You do understand our elected officials are only allowed to govern WITH OUR CONSENT? If they ram unwanted laws down our throats instead because enough of them are arrogant too and insist they know what is best for all of us whether we want it or not --they are no longer governing with our consent are they?

Any clue what kind of system that becomes? Look under "T" for TYRANNY. Not exactly a something the founders valued or believed in either. Which is why they didn't create one in the first place. The Constitution is not a list of suggestions, but the contract between our government and WE THE PEOPLE. And a critical part of that contract is that government doesn't get to change the rules just because some ruling elite thinks they know better than anyone else and believe they have a RIGHT to impose it on us all against our will. This isn't the Soviet Union honey.

But let's start with the fact a lot of people object to the idea of government being the middle man in their health care. Whoever you put as your middle man gets to call the shots. You don't like the way your insurance is calling the shots, you are free to look for a better deal. When government becomes the only middle man, you are screwed if you don't like their shots. Just ask people in the UK how they are liking it now when people with CURABLE illnesses, people who would be cured of that disease if just given the treatment -are denied treatment anyway on the grounds treating that person just isn't cost effective. You really want government putting a price on the value of YOUR life -and forcing YOU to accept that? I have a problem with that.

Government is supposed to treat all citizens on the same basis -regardless of race, religion, gender -and age. But once they are in charge of health care, they MUST discriminate against some citizens -and will. I do not want a government that will discriminate against me. PERIOD. And the fact there are people like you who would have no objection to it changes nothing.

You also seem to think that if someone refuses to buy health insurance they intend to be "freeloaders". Several things you should know -the reason the left and Obama want to force people to buy health insurance is because it will mean forcing YOUNG HEALTHY PEOPLE to buy it -people who are the least likely to use the system at all. THESE are the people for the most part who don't buy health insurance -single, childless and HEALTHY young adults -and THESE are the people Obama wants to force to buy it anyway even though they don't USE IT. THIS is the very group that is also LEAST likely to use the health care system. So they aren't "freeloaders" at all. They are NON-USERS of the system as well as non-payers into the system -and Obama wants to FORCE them to buy it anyway. But for the VAST majority of young, healthy people with no family obligations yet going without health insurance is actually an economically SOUND DECISION. It is incredibly expensive but for young, healthy people it is a MASSIVE chunk of their paycheck going for NOTHING AT ALL. The mandate to force people to buy health insurance is to FORCE the very people who need it the least to buy it anyway because they would be footing the bill for those who do need it. It can't work without stiffing young, healthy people with the bill.

On top of which everyone has the absolute right to refuse to let ANY middle man get in between them and their doctor or have any say in their health care whatsoever -and pay for their own bills directly. If someone chooses to pay their own way because they do not want some third party dictating their health care - then they aren't "freeloaders" honey. But Obama's bill made no exception for that option but as Americans, we all have the total right to PAY OUR OWN WAY IN LIFE if we choose.

Apparently you don't realize this but health insurance companies do not exist to pay your medical bills. They exist to MAKE MONEY OFF YOU. And they are VERY successful at doing that. They do it by having you give them even MORE money than you would have paid for your medical care if you had just paid for it directly. They simply keep the difference. And if they don't end up with enough money for themselves after they have paid your bills -they will just jack up your rates the next year to make sure you do give them lots more money than you would have been willing to pay directly out of pocket for your health care. That's what insurance companies do. Only a TINY minority in this country actually pay less for their health care by having insurance than they would have paid if they paid it directly.

Insurance companies first got into the health business by offering coverage against catastrophic illness -the kind of unexpected medical problems that could bankrupt someone with a very specific list of what kind of medical problems were covered. It was so successful -because most people never have a catastrophic illness but ended up paying for one anyway - they branched out into covering routine care. And as soon as they did -health care costs started rising and never looked back. Insurance companies have simply inserted themselves into YOUR health care in order to divert even MORE money to them than you would have voluntarily chosen to pay for your health care if you paid it directly -making it all cost far more. So in reality you end up paying FAR more for your health care than if you had just paid for it directly. In fact studies show that over your life time buying health insurance will guarantee you will end up paying more than 8 times as much as you would have VOLUNTARILY been willing to pay for it directly out of your own pocket. In other words insurance companies got you to pay a hell of a lot more for your health care than you would have chosen to do if you just paid for that service yourself like you do for every other service you use. This does NOT change by turning government into an insurance company and in fact it gets even worse -because government introduces a level of hardened waste and fraud that doesn't exist in the private sector, making it even MORE costly to you. ALL middle men you let between you and your doctor will take a BIG cut for themselves, making it cost you far more than it would have if you had just paid for it yourself in the first place!

But the real kicker is that by paying health insurance companies even more than you would have paid if you just paid for it directly -THEY get to call the shots in your health care. Not YOU. It means you get to pay a HELL of a lot more but have LESS say in your own care. There is NO price worth that to me -but you go ahead and sell yours off if you want but have no right to demand I do so as well just because YOU place so little value on it. YOUR poor value judgment cannot be used to demand I change MINE!

And throwing in the burial plan thing -are you for real? Most people do NOT have burial plans in case you really didn't know that. And their funerals are simply paid for by their estate which is typically MANY times larger than the cost of a funeral. This is how it works in the REAL WORLD where people actually pay their OWN way in life instead of believing if they buy some plan or insurance they have somehow "saved" something and shifted the burden to someone else. In reality you just made the cost of it even MORE expensive for yourself! Or insurance companies wouldn't be able to stay in business, would they? Do you possess any common sense or did you leave it back in 4th grade?

Clearly you have NO idea how difficult it is to change the Constitution. NOT going to happen and it sure as hell will never happen for something like THIS just because we have raised a pack of morons who think the proper role of government is to be their parental replacement and take care of them. Its YOUR job to take care of you -not government's. So go buy your own fucking health insurance if you think you can't live without it. Next time you whine about how expensive it is -just remember you are the one who decided you wanted to pay 8 times more for your health care over your lifetime than if you had just paid for itself in the first place. But you have no right to demand I pay that much for MINE!

 

[Dragon]

I think we have to challenge the (mostly unchallenged) assumption that government is the best way to express our sense of responsibility to our community. Some are even convinced it's the only way - that the values of brotherhood and looking out for your countrymen would simply vanish if not encoded into law. You're suggesting here that if the government doesn't dictate it, no one will help sick people without insurance, that hospitals would demand cash payment in advance, and that they'd watch people die who couldn't pay.

Hi, dblack -- nice to see you again.

Here's the thing. The values of brotherhood and looking out for your neighbor are as strong as they ever were, but as always they apply only to people you regard as your brothers/sisters or your neighbors. Your countrymen? Maybe, once in a while, if they suffer some dire and highly visible problem that brings them to your immediate attention and forces itself through your us-them barrier, like a natural disaster, or even a distant famine among people who aren't in any way your countrymen. But normally, on an everyday basis, people take care of their own (if they can) and don't bother with anyone else.

This is really why government, even the aspects of it that libertarians like yourself believe in, is an invention of civilization. As long as our distant ancestors were living in small bands and everyone knew one another, formal government wasn't needed. People helped each other out. If you had a dispute, you resolved it, fought a duel, or took it to the Old Wise People to sort out. If someone was a complete recidivist unmitigated asshole, everyone got together and booted him out of the community.

But civilization is almost by definition a society of strangers, who do not instinctively regard one another as their brothers or their neighbors (even when they are in fact neighbors). And so, when our ancestors settled down in cities, they also created formal government and law.

Now, in the early days of civilization, law mostly applied in the cities themselves. People living out in the country could pretty much live without law. They protected their own farms, hopefully didn't come to the notice of rapacious nobles, and the only rules and regulations they lived under were their own except when they took their produce to town to market. But as civilization has become more and more urban, it has also become more and more under the rule of law. By the same token, in the distant but more recent past, when most people in this country lived in rural areas, people taking care of their own through a combination of family assistance and private charity worked for the most part, but even then we had aid to the poor as a government responsibility, only in those days it was all state and local government. Federal involvement didn't come in until the Great Depression when state and local resources were exhausted.

On top of this, we also have acquired more public services (mostly aimed towards the middle class rather than the destitute) as we have become wealthier and could afford more. That's because in the eyes of most people, government services aren't a necessary evil but a positive good; if we're going to have them, taxes are a necessary evil, and so we tend to have them only to the extent that our incomes are high enough the taxes to pay for them don't hurt too bad. So in 1900 when we were a lot poorer, we had no emergency management on a federal level and a hurricane in Galveston killed thousands of people; now, we feel that the public service of disaster management capable of saving lives is a luxury we can afford. One reason we're experiencing such a budget bite right now is that for the past thirty years more and more of the nation's wealth has flowed to fewer and fewer people and they have enough clout and enough greed to avoid being taxed themselves to pay for services that mostly benefit others not rich enough to pay for them. But that's off-topic.

A final reason for public health care involves the increasing cost of health-care itself, only part of which comes from mismanagement and greed. The other part comes from the simple fact that medicine is able to do a heck of a lot more today than it could in the past.

For all these reasons, your final statement is untrue:

We can and should help people in need. But we don't need to evoke the coercive power of the state to accomplish that.

Unfortunately, as long as we remain a society of strangers, yes, we do.

 

[Polk]

Realistically, how do you address the issue? I doubt "let critically ill people die on the steps of the ER" is going to be a popular rallying cry.

I think we have to challenge the (mostly unchallenged) assumption that government is the best way to express our sense of responsibility to our community. Some are even convinced it's the only way - that the values of brotherhood and looking out for your countrymen would simply vanish if not encoded into law. You're suggesting here that if the government doesn't dictate it, no one will help sick people without insurance, that hospitals would demand cash payment in advance, and that they'd watch people die who couldn't pay.

I assume that what a lot of people balk at is the idea that relying on charity, or the patience and good will of those who provide health care services, isn't a guarantee - and it's not. There is the chance that someone who throws caution to the wind will end up in a difficult spot. But it's that very disincentive that needs to be preserved. When we throw out all the natural incentives for responsible behavior, behavior follows suite. And then we try to patch it up, with bogus regulatory 'incentives' that generally fail to do the trick, and simply expand government power and scope in the process.

We can and should help people in need. But we don't need to evoke the coercive power of the state to accomplish that.

Of course we need the state to do it. How else do you think it will happen? Magic pixies? The entire reason governments stepped in to the space in the first place is the failure of private charities to provide.

 

[Greenbeard]

You also seem to think that if someone refuses to buy health insurance they intend to be "freeloaders". Several things you should know -the reason the left and Obama want to force people to buy health insurance is because it will mean forcing YOUNG HEALTHY PEOPLE to buy it -people who are the least likely to use the system at all. THESE are the people for the most part who don't buy health insurance -single, childless and HEALTHY young adults -and THESE are the people Obama wants to force to buy it anyway even though they don't USE IT. THIS is the very group that is also LEAST likely to use the health care system. So they aren't "freeloaders" at all. They are NON-USERS of the system as well as non-payers into the system -and Obama wants to FORCE them to buy it anyway. But for the VAST majority of young, healthy people with no family obligations yet going without health insurance is actually an economically SOUND DECISION. It is incredibly expensive but for young, healthy people it is a MASSIVE chunk of their paycheck going for NOTHING AT ALL. The mandate to force people to buy health insurance is to FORCE the very people who need it the least to buy it anyway because they would be footing the bill for those who do need it. It can't work without stiffing young, healthy people with the bill. [...]

Insurance companies first got into the health business by offering coverage against catastrophic illness -the kind of unexpected medical problems that could bankrupt someone with a very specific list of what kind of medical problems were covered.

Young people can buy catastrophic coverage if they wish.

 

[dblack]

Hi, dblack -- nice to see you again.

Likewise! How ya been?

Here's the thing.
...

...in the eyes of most people, government services aren't a necessary evil but a positive good

I think that gets to the core of it. I'm still hopeful that that can change; that people might come to see that voluntary cooperation is preferable to coercive government, and that the latter should be a tool of last resort. Perhaps it will become more evident when the state actually starts using the power we keep giving it.

 

[Listening]

Why not dump the freeloaders ?

Did you ever hear of Tenncare ?

Dump them...into Medicaid?

Quite the point! shuffling from one government program to another is neither "dumping" nor a best use of resources. National Healthcare, single payer, would be a boon for citizens, states and most businesses, the only people who would lose out are the few who are making obscene profits of the misery of others now.

Can you please supply the numbers you use to reach this conclusion.

How about a qualification of obscene profits ?

 

[Listening]

That's because in the eyes of most people, government services aren't a necessary evil but a positive good; if we're going to have them, taxes are a necessary evil, and so we tend to have them only to the extent that our incomes are high enough the taxes to pay for them don't hurt too bad.

I am not sure that statement is accurate.

Why did the people of the U.S. decide to give the house back to the GOP and significantly weaken Harry Ried in the senate ?

 

[RealChange]

This is a dream come true for the insurance companies. They managed to get the government to pass a law requiring all citizens to buy their product.

 

[Greenbeard]

Why not dump the freeloaders ?

Did you ever hear of Tenncare ?

Dump them...into Medicaid?

No, out of the system altogether.

Just asking.

Am I missing the connection to Tennessee's Medicaid program?

 

[Listening]

Am I missing the connection to Tennessee's Medicaid program?

I don't understand your question.

My apologies....sometimes simple things get past me.

 

[Listening]

This is a dream come true for the insurance companies. They managed to get the government to pass a law requiring all citizens to buy their product.

I agree.

What is worse is that it seems the government has been propping these guys up for years.

I can't agree with people who call it a market failure. There really has been no market for quite some time.

 

[C_Clayton_Jones]

Here's the thing. The values of brotherhood and looking out for your neighbor are as strong as they ever were, but as always they apply only to people you regard as your brothers/sisters or your neighbors. Your countrymen? Maybe, once in a while, if they suffer some dire and highly visible problem that brings them to your immediate attention and forces itself through your us-them barrier, like a natural disaster, or even a distant famine among people who aren't in any way your countrymen. But normally, on an everyday basis, people take care of their own (if they can) and don't bother with anyone else.

This is really why government, even the aspects of it that libertarians like yourself believe in, is an invention of civilization. As long as our distant ancestors were living in small bands and everyone knew one another, formal government wasn't needed. People helped each other out. If you had a dispute, you resolved it, fought a duel, or took it to the Old Wise People to sort out. If someone was a complete recidivist unmitigated asshole, everyone got together and booted him out of the community.

But civilization is almost by definition a society of strangers, who do not instinctively regard one another as their brothers or their neighbors (even when they are in fact neighbors). And so, when our ancestors settled down in cities, they also created formal government and law.

Now, in the early days of civilization, law mostly applied in the cities themselves. People living out in the country could pretty much live without law. They protected their own farms, hopefully didn't come to the notice of rapacious nobles, and the only rules and regulations they lived under were their own except when they took their produce to town to market. But as civilization has become more and more urban, it has also become more and more under the rule of law. By the same token, in the distant but more recent past, when most people in this country lived in rural areas, people taking care of their own through a combination of family assistance and private charity worked for the most part, but even then we had aid to the poor as a government responsibility, only in those days it was all state and local government. Federal involvement didn't come in until the Great Depression when state and local resources were exhausted.

On top of this, we also have acquired more public services (mostly aimed towards the middle class rather than the destitute) as we have become wealthier and could afford more. That's because in the eyes of most people, government services aren't a necessary evil but a positive good; if we're going to have them, taxes are a necessary evil, and so we tend to have them only to the extent that our incomes are high enough the taxes to pay for them don't hurt too bad. So in 1900 when we were a lot poorer, we had no emergency management on a federal level and a hurricane in Galveston killed thousands of people; now, we feel that the public service of disaster management capable of saving lives is a luxury we can afford. One reason we're experiencing such a budget bite right now is that for the past thirty years more and more of the nation's wealth has flowed to fewer and fewer people and they have enough clout and enough greed to avoid being taxed themselves to pay for services that mostly benefit others not rich enough to pay for them. But that's off-topic.

A final reason for public health care involves the increasing cost of health-care itself, only part of which comes from mismanagement and greed. The other part comes from the simple fact that medicine is able to do a heck of a lot more today than it could in the past.

For all these reasons, your final statement is untrue:

We can and should help people in need. But we don't need to evoke the coercive power of the state to accomplish that.

Unfortunately, as long as we remain a society of strangers, yes, we do.

Correct and well-said.

We must reject such wishful thinking and anachronistic dogma and embrace a pragmatic approach; doctors don’t get paid with baskets of eggs and fruit preserves anymore.

Of course we need the state to do it. How else do you think it will happen? Magic pixies? The entire reason governments stepped in to the space in the first place is the failure of private charities to provide.

Also correct.

There needs to be a way to ensure distribution of healthcare is consistent, particularly with regard to children, the elderly, and disabled.

 

[Greenbeard]

Am I missing the connection to Tennessee's Medicaid program?

I don't understand your question.

My apologies....sometimes simple things get past me.

I'm wondering why you brought up TennCare, Tennessee's Medicaid managed care program. It was in the context of "free loaders" and I don't know what point you were getting at.

 

[RealChange]

Government can mandate you to buy auto insurance for your car but cannot mandate you buy healthcare for you?

The difference is you are not forced to own and/or drive a car which means you are not forced to buy car insurance. With the health care mandate you are forced to buy health insurance just because you are alive. Big difference.

 

[RealChange]

One reason we're experiencing such a budget bite right now is that for the past thirty years more and more of the nation's wealth has flowed to fewer and fewer people and they have enough clout and enough greed to avoid being taxed themselves to pay for services that mostly benefit others not rich enough to pay for them.

With all due respect that's ridiculous. You're confusing people with corporations some of which have managed to pay very little tax but the people that work for the corporations do pay their "fair share" and that includes the rich. The top 5% of tax payers pay 54% of total income tax but earn 33% of total income. Is that not a fair share? A big problem in this country is over consumption. We need to tax consumption not production.

The reason for the "budget bite" is the fact that we no longer produce anything in this country. 85% of our economy is in the service sector and we have a massive trade deficit. We import more than twice what we export which means our dollars are constantly flowing outward along with our jobs. Essentially we export dollars and import goods. Without manufacturing in this country there will be a shortage of jobs which means a shortage of tax revenue. In the 60's the manufacturing sector made up more than 50% of GDP and in the 80's it was 40%. Now manufacturing makes up less than 9% of GDP.

 

[Moonglow]

there are many things made in the USA

 

[Unkotare]

[ we no longer produce anything in this country. .

The US is the world's largest manufacturer.

 

[RealChange]

The US is the world's largest manufacturer.

Actually China is world's largest with 19.8 percent of world manufacturing output(via IHS Global Insight March 2011).

 

[Unkotare]

The US is the world's largest manufacturer.

Actually China is world's largest with 19.8 percent of world manufacturing output(via IHS Global Insight March 2011).

Nope.


Shopfloor | A Manufacturing Blog Reporting on Manufacturing Policy and Politics

 

[editec]

I cannot see how the current proposal will NOT drive up the cost of medical care.

I see nothing in that bill that will do a damned thing to increase the supply of health care and plenty that is going to drive up the demand for it.