[Sixstrings]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Plantagenet', 'I')f you hate Obama, that is your business----but please speak for yourself and don't ascribe your wacky views to me.

I think Obama is a great man and a historic figure....I just don't think the vast majority of his policies have worked out very well---and the Obamacare disaster is another example of Obama's policy failures.

[SeaGypsy]

I am seeing Fish and Plant here as open republicans honestly looking at the issue. This is what's important. Healthcare reform should be a clearly bipartisan issue, with universal and balanced care the obvious objective.
No system is perfect, but it would be hard to imagine one worse for a society as a whole than the one the US has got. The fact that the current republican leadership is hell bent on killing off universal health care shows who they are really working for. What the hell that has to do with 'Government for the people', by the people' beats the hell out of me; just as the blindness of the folks in the lower 90% of the US likely to vote for these thugs.

[Beery1]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Sixstrings', 'D')o people who don't have insurance deserve medical care?

[SeaGypsy]

6's point on economic individual freedom is a biggie which gets almost no attention in the MSM or elsewhere. I first paid into medicare in Australia when I was a 12 year old picking pumpkins on the weekends to pay for my surfboards, rollerskates, motorbikes. I haven't a clue what I have put into the system and don't really care. It's a very small tax over a lifetime. Now in my mid forties I have never had anyone ask for help to pay for medications or hospitalization, in my family or friends or work colleagues. I have never seen an untreated medical beggar in the street.

I have never heard of anyone being bankrupted through a medical problem. I have never felt or seen anyone trapped in a job or on welfare because of such. These are major rewards in a society with a universal system all Americans should be keenly aware of and lobbying for.

From what I can see, Obamacare is a silly compromise with the big insurers and should never have been put forward as is. Screw the bastards. Scrap the whole system. Use the Australian system as a blueprint and go from there.

This dumb allergy to anything with the word 'Tax' attached is beyond ridiculous. All the 'scum' need to do is scream/ "It's a new tax and even bigger government" and the republican bones start rattling.
What is 1.5% compared to hundreds of dollars a month in insurance?

[The Practician]

I haven't filed a tax return or paid my MSP in like a decade. (read: never) I got a collection agency calling me 20 times a day trying to tell me I owe $4500 dollars in back payments for my MSP. They don't like it when I tell them I don't owe them sh*t because I have never made enough money to actually HAVE to pay for it, have never collected E.I., and have never collected a tax return.

The nice thing about Canada though: I show up at the hospital and I get the care, no matter how "irresponsible" (poor and disinterested) I am about my health insurance premiums.

[Plantagenet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('SeaGypsy', '
')From what I can see, Obamacare is a silly compromise with the big insurers and should never have been put forward as is. Screw the bastards. Scrap the whole system. Use the Australian system as a blueprint and go from there.

[Satori]

the reality of healthcare in America
if your poor that is
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2012/03/d ... ution.html

and on a personal note
I was at the Urgent Care last week
I overheard a conversation
between the staff and an elderly woman
in short
if she didnt pay her back bill
she could no longer be seen

[SeaGypsy]

Over down under, she would have had a financial counselor work out with her and her family if she needed residential care. If she had no money, the kids could be millionaires but that would be irrelevant. If she owned a place worth well over a quarter mil, they may have pushed her to mortgage it against an 80% refundable (post mortum) rest home unit. If she had nada, a deal would be done where most of her aged pension would go to a nursing home to assist paying for her unit. That is usually unit, not bed. Her families assets don't even come into it. One way or another she would be looked after. The way it should be. Not thrown on the scrap heap.

[rangerone314]

What's the libertarian position for dealing someone who is sick and dying because they couldn't get medical care earlier deciding they have nothing to lose and going on a murderous rampage killing a few rich doctors and patients, before killing him/herself?

Just saying... because you know, sooner or later its going to happen.

(Oh, and the above scenario would include people who had health insurance and real conditions but were turned down by insurance companies counting on their dying before a lawsuit can go to court.)

[SeaGypsy]

A point goes to socialism.

[Cog]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('rangerone314', 'W')hat's the libertarian position for dealing someone who is sick and dying because they couldn't get medical care earlier deciding they have nothing to lose and going on a murderous rampage killing a few rich doctors and patients, before killing him/herself?
quote]

[rangerone314]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Cog', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('rangerone314', 'W')hat's the libertarian position for dealing someone who is sick and dying because they couldn't get medical care earlier deciding they have nothing to lose and going on a murderous rampage killing a few rich doctors and patients, before killing him/herself?
quote]

[Cog]

Self defense is not murder. You should really study more.

As far as the rest of your rant, save it for the libtards that frequent this board. I've heard all the justifications to last me a lifetime on confiscating my wealth to give to the mooch class.

[rangerone314]

I don't want to pay into "Social Security" because I'm not going to get anything back.

I tire of the hypocrisy of conartists and libtards and moneytarians. Big Business is as bad as Big Government.

Where is all the conservative outrage at BP and oil companies when an oil spill endangers small businessmen, or do small businessmen like shrimp fisherman not count? Maybe you consider shrimp fishermen or small scale farmers to be "libtards"?

Another classic, Michigan DNR being pushed by the big pig industry to go after small pig farmers.

Maybe the American people just need to refuse to consent to be governed anymore by Big Government and Big Business.

I'll support libertarianism when people can buy a small plot of land and choose to completely opt out of society entirely. In fact, I would probably do that if I was able to. Grow my own food with no stupid primates telling me what to do, and let everyone else have their taxes, their wars and their dying in a hospital with tube down their throats.

I like what the Dalai Lama said:
The Dalai Lama, when asked what surprised him most about humanity, answered “Man. Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.”

I was stuck in traffic recently listening to some NCR program on the radio about some 3rd world kids living in filth and said "this can't be how human's were meant to live". Then I looked around at all the cars around me and said again "this can't be how human's were meant to live".

[SeaGypsy]

Cog, you and I have both worked out some remote places and without getting into sensitive unrelated issues, I can fully relate to being nauseated by the level of sloth and bludgeing as we call it here. I'm not sure if you are aware, but among other legal changes in Australia recent years, everyone under retirement age is obliged to at least be assessed for work capacity regularly. It's not great but it is getting better here, with more active encouragement, more carrot than stick.

Bottom line is although I hate my tax going to pay for some fat piglady to stuff her delinquent fatherless brats full of garbage whilst enriching the local mafia with any spare, I sooner shut up and pay than have her runt kids scrambling over my fence with knives in their teeth and no food in their belly for three days. You get me?

There has to be limits on spending, but we are evolving as a species and in our systems. We should be very aware not to throw out the baby, nor to overlook what can be done when people are much more involved in their own personal care; preferably with money not being in the front nor center of the picture when it comes to life or death situations.

Where the society is clearly stuffed socially is where it is not safe for a grown up to tell off a child in public. Very bad. A 61 tear old near my home was stabbed in the gut for intervening in a teen argument at a train station yesterday. There is a dire shortage of proper respect, for elders, for common and private property. There is a lack of community responsibility and membership. If the Governments are any good anywhere these are issues which are seriously looked at and progressed towards solutions for. Not necessarily left or right in our western systems as both are basically centrist and bank serving.

Getting an Australian style med system in the USA would be a massive step forwards for the country. Whichever party has the simple intelligence to admit this and sell it will own government for at least double term.

[Sixstrings]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('rangerone314', 'W')hat's the libertarian position for dealing someone who is sick and dying because they couldn't get medical care earlier deciding they have nothing to lose and going on a murderous rampage killing a few rich doctors and patients, before killing him/herself?

[SeaGypsy]

More polarization doesn't get the argument anywhere.
As far as I am concerned 'Libertarianism' is whatever I think it is, whatever anyone else thinks it is. You may think I am confused with Anarchy? Really putting capitals in front of ideologies which have not resulted in wars goes a bit beyond me.

How much more progress could the USA (let alone the rest of the world) have made had a few things been done differently? Why has the biggest, richest economy in the world got one of the worst social systems with many of the worst social statistics of developed countries?

The system clearly needs rebuilding. There needs to be more intervention by government where it is needed and a lot less where it is not. The sheer waste of many huge government programs, for really zero or less net gain, over stupid political out of date views, is plainly absurd. Get rid of the waste. Then 'Libertarians' might note complain so loudly about government.

[rangerone314]

I used to support the concept of libertarianism until I realized it was just a smokescreen used by elites to put blinders on people. (Run of the mill conservatism--or more accurately social conservatism--and liberalism are just divide and conquer strategies used by the elites)

I have yet to see libertarians acknowledge that the property rights of small landowners or small businessmen are as valid as the rights of a large landowner or large corporation.

Libertarianism is ultimately about providing protection for those exerting economic power; economic power ultimately translates in our society into political power. Its not about the little guy, whether or not the little guy is a drug-addicted leech on society living in a homeless shelter, or a small farmer who is working hard trying to raise crops.

I have yet to see their solution for market externalities, to see what the libertarian solution is for a factory pollution destroying a small farmer's crops. I also fail to see why advocating for the small farmer would be a "liberal" position given that the small farmer is working through his own sweat using his own land.

I also wonder how much of the cost of health care is due to pollution and the toxins in our bodies from products. Seems like another market externality.

Its why I'm trying to growing my own food, but I wonder what all I am forcibly exposed to against my will. Libertarians and Randists love to go off about their "non-aggression principle" but spewing toxins that make other people sick and making the other people choose between paying for their own healthcare and being sick seems pretty "aggressive" to me.

[Cog]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Sixstrings', '
')That's Libertarianism. The poor riot, you crack down with force. If it gets bad enough though you wind up with a revolution -- Cuba, France, the Russian Romanovs. And this is why the US is not Libertarian Some people think all these overpaid government workers and government contractors are just a drain on the taxpayers, with their self-perpetuating bureaucratic bloat and pay / bennies that can't be found in the private sector where people have to really compete.

A "free shit army" is in the eye of the beholder. What about the rich with the tax loopholes their lobbyists get them, their tax havens, government subsidies -- isn't that a "free shit army?

[rangerone314]

The smart money is on people who try now to grow their own food and live off the grid with solar power and are prepared to die of natural causes. I'd rather my money and the land and food resources I've built up be bequeathed to my children and grandchildren than pay for some doctor's Mercedes and new set of golf clubs.

I said it at the time to both my liberal wife and conservative parents that Obama care was ill-conceived (a single-payer system would be better) and ill-timed (should have been trying to encourage infrastructure during a recession instead of fiddling while Rome burns and worrying about healthcare).