BF2S Forums U.S. health care reform

Uzique wrote:

Cybargs wrote:

even if you socialized the costs its still going to be relatively the same as buying insurance.

it's the principle, not the cost-to-the-individual. ordinarily they're negligible in both cases.

why is it that time after time you play up to this neo-con american capitalist ideology? you do it as a polemic habit in every thread. it's hilarious to see this aspirational asian kid try to posture with the attitudes of american big business (that wall street protest stuff was plain corny of you)

Again, showing your ignorance. Neo-cons favor state-run healthcare.

Jay wrote:

Uzique wrote:

Cybargs wrote:

even if you socialized the costs its still going to be relatively the same as buying insurance.

it's the principle, not the cost-to-the-individual. ordinarily they're negligible in both cases.

why is it that time after time you play up to this neo-con american capitalist ideology? you do it as a polemic habit in every thread. it's hilarious to see this aspirational asian kid try to posture with the attitudes of american big business (that wall street protest stuff was plain corny of you)

Again, showing your ignorance. Neo-cons favor state-run healthcare.

Wasn't it Nixon who started Medicare and Medicaid while Bush expanded those programs

medicare and medicaid aren't the same thing though as UNIVERSAL health-care in the european style. they're different programs with different aims (and different political ends). of the sort of universal healthcare that we're talking about (e.g. the european system):

Q: Would you be open to the ideal of a national health care plan?

BUSH: I’m absolutely opposed to a national health care plan. I don’t want the federal government making decisions for consumers or for providers. I remember what the administration tried to do in 1993. They tried to have a national health care plan, and fortunately it failed. I trust people; I don’t trust the federal government. I don’t want the federal government making decisions on behalf of everybody.
Source: St. Louis debate Oct 17, 2000

Uzique wrote:

medicare and medicaid aren't the same thing though as UNIVERSAL health-care in the european style. they're different programs with different aims (and different political ends). of the sort of universal healthcare that we're talking about (e.g. the european system):

Q: Would you be open to the ideal of a national health care plan?

BUSH: I’m absolutely opposed to a national health care plan. I don’t want the federal government making decisions for consumers or for providers. I remember what the administration tried to do in 1993. They tried to have a national health care plan, and fortunately it failed. I trust people; I don’t trust the federal government. I don’t want the federal government making decisions on behalf of everybody.
Source: St. Louis debate Oct 17, 2000

Umm, of course he said that in a national debate. If he'd said otherwise he would've lost the nomination.


Politicians never lie

Uzique wrote:

the use of the business nomenclature - "consumer" and "provider" - in discussion of healthcare is what makes the rest of the world nauseous, fyi.

Get over it. Like I said to teds last night, I don't see any real distinction between a farmer and a doctor. Yes, it is on an abstract level, but at the heart they perform tasks necessary to support and sustain human life. Why people get their panties in a twist when a doctor makes a profit is beyond me. Maybe it's some good old fashioned class envy. Doctors are rich, farmers are poor. Nationalize the doctor.

Jay wrote:

Uzique wrote:

the use of the business nomenclature - "consumer" and "provider" - in discussion of healthcare is what makes the rest of the world nauseous, fyi.

Get over it. Like I said to teds last night, I don't see any real distinction between a farmer and a doctor. Yes, it is on an abstract level, but at the heart they perform tasks necessary to support and sustain human life. Why people get their panties in a twist when a doctor makes a profit is beyond me. Maybe it's some good old fashioned class envy. Doctors are rich, farmers are poor. Nationalize the doctor.

you're completely wrong. a farmer's life task on an "abstract level" is supply & demand, not a service. farmers provide the most basic form of supply to the most basic form of demand: food. they're not 'giving a service' at all. the medical profession on an abstract level has a huge tradition of humanism and focus on just that: providing good health. it has nothing to do with business or concepts pertaining to economics/market logic (i.e. supply and demand). the medical profession originated as a school (note: the historical-sociological definition of 'schools' is of a cabal not interested in selling their services but merely advertising on their own strengths, prima facie). you're trying to be grand and talk about "abstract forms" but you're just completely wrong.

and doctors in the UK and in most other socialized systems are still undeniably upper class. in the most aristocratic way possible. nobody has a problem with that. the only person on this forum with "class envy", or a chip on his shoulder about class relations, as demonstated time and time again in just about every topic of discussion... is you. all of your ideologies and attitudes float around a nexus of class anxieties and envies.

i think you need to disentangle your thoughts about the medical profession and the market in terms of 'good' and 'service'. seems to me you're interchangeably using use-value and exchange-value and it's confusing as hell and muddles your argument. ditto with the analogy with farming and agriculture: i can't even begin to understand what you're really getting at, and what your real point is re: market medicine when you conflate so many terms.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exchange_value

Uzique wrote:

i think you need to disentangle your thoughts about the medical profession and the market in terms of 'good' and 'service'. seems to me you're interchangeably using use-value and exchange-value and it's confusing as hell and muddles your argument. ditto with the analogy with farming and agriculture: i can't even begin to understand what you're really getting at, and what your real point is re: market medicine when you conflate so many terms.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exchange_value

Ok, I'll start from scratch.

There are certain life necessities that we can all agree upon.

1) We all need food.
2) We all need water.
3) We all need shelter.
4) We all need warmth provided by clothing or fire.

Added to this, as we live in developed nations and expect more out of life:

5) We all want health care.

I classify health care as a want because its function is to extend life, not provide it. You can't get by without the first four for more than a few days without dying. You can get by without seeing a doctor your entire life. But, for the sake of argument, let's classify it as a need.

In order to check the first box, food, we do have options (this argument assumes that we are not farmers). We can grow our own food, if inefficiently, or we can pay someone else to do the task. They throw some seed in a field, do a rain dance, and magically we have bread on our table. As I said, we could grow it ourselves, but we'd probably fail at it and starve. Instead, the farmer performs a service for us, one we've listed as a necessity for survival. Without the farmer, we starve.

Much the same thing happens when we visit a doctor. We do have the ability to diagnose and treat ourselves, we have myriad websites and over-the-counter drugs dedicated to nothing but self-diagnosis and treatment, but we're not very good at it. We'd rather pay a professional for his or her time and knowledge. Without the doctor, we can not extend our lifespan to the extent we wish.

So why is it that no one ever calls for the nationalization of farms? Why are doctors somehow more coveted? We spend far more on food over the course of our lifetimes than we do on health care, but I don't hear anyone begrudging the farmer his profits. Health care isn't even a necessity for life, it's a luxury.

i stopped reading when you said "without the farmer, we starve". how do you think human civilization coped before mass agriculture and wal-mart? the farmer provides supply for a mass-market demand for a commodity: food. it is not vital. didn't you say yourself you want to get a cabin 'upstate' somewhere and live on the land? i guess you're expecting to starve.

also hardly anyone begrudges the farmer his profits because in the western world the farmer hardly makes any profits, because the market (i.e. the supermarkets) installs intermediaries.

Last edited by Uzique (2011-12-20 10:17:28)

Uzique wrote:

i stopped reading when you said "without the farmer, we starve". how do you think human civilization coped before mass agriculture and wal-mart? the farmer provides supply for a mass-market demand for a commodity: food. it is not vital. didn't you say yourself you want to get a cabin 'upstate' somewhere and live on the land? i guess you're expecting to starve.

also hardly anyone begrudges the farmer his profits because in the western world the farmer hardly makes any profits, because the market (i.e. the supermarkets) installs intermediaries.

So you think with 6 billion+ people on this planet that we all go back to a hunter/gatherer lifestyle? We're completely dependent on farmers.

Uzique wrote:

our current lifestyle, of course, completely unsustainable (it's unsustainable now even with mass agriculture). but would we starve? i don't think so. it would require a complete overhauling of the world system (namely the global commodity market) but we wouldn't simply starve without the farmer. anyway i think the whole analogy to the medical profession is torturous. you're trying to apply economic-market concepts to the medical profession. the medical profession is primarily a matter of ethics, not a market ideology.

Whatever helps you sleep at night uzique.

Uzique wrote:

Jay wrote:

Uzique wrote:

a doctor doesn't enter the profession because he speculates that there are a lot of ill people, or that a lot more people will be getting ill, thus it will be a lucrative choice. a doctor doesn't alter his hourly rates or his fees according to the demand on his 'service'. a doctor's service is not elastic (even calling it inelastic seems unwieldy and nonsensical).

Yes they do.

Yes they do.

Yes it is.

Doctors are just as affected by supply and demand as anyone else. Even if they are government employees, they still face it to a certain extent. If there was an overabundance of doctors compared to the population, would you expect them to make the same pay that they do now?

doctors do none of those things in the UK. but then again our medical schools aren't giant businesses like they are in the US (like your law schools and business schools). our medical profession doesn't tend to accept a massive over-abundance of new talent for training in order to make money. from tuition fees. nobody here opts to become a doctor because of supply:demand curves.

You don't have specialists and sub-specialists in the UK?

Jay wrote:

Uzique wrote:

our current lifestyle, of course, completely unsustainable (it's unsustainable now even with mass agriculture). but would we starve? i don't think so. it would require a complete overhauling of the world system (namely the global commodity market) but we wouldn't simply starve without the farmer. anyway i think the whole analogy to the medical profession is torturous. you're trying to apply economic-market concepts to the medical profession. the medical profession is primarily a matter of ethics, not a market ideology.

Whatever helps you sleep at night uzique.

that's seriously all you've got to say? 2 pages of trying to compare a doctor in the medical profession to a farmer in some sort of use-value supply-and-demand analogy that MAKES NO SENSE and all you've got to say is "whatever helps you sleep at night?". the reason this discussion is so confounded is because you are forming analogies that wouldn't even make sense to an autistic root vegetable.