2) Insurance companies deny people treatment all the time, we have our own american
Version of death panels already.

3) Socialized coverage works in other countries, Canada is a poor example, check out the Swiss or the Japanese! Plus, we already pay for the unisured, when someone ends up in the emergency room and can’t pay their bills. That’s over 40 million people who are uninsured!

4) Our current health care system lags behind other developed nations at something like
22nd? Don’t believe me? Look it up!

You’ve rendered your own commentary irrelevant, Zippy.

Your commentary is irrelevant.

You can make that claim on your own blog, and you can refuse to post my comments there because you can’t handle criticism.

Here on PJM, your opinion is just not that important. You can keep on claiming that I lied – but the truth is I just keep on pointing out the shortcomings in your argument, and you keep pretending you have an answer. This will probably go on for some time.

Peace.

DS

Your commentary is irrelevant.

Well I’m beginning to feel like people who aren’t willing to carry their end of the log and contribute income tax to PAY for the enormous piles of social benefits we already have should not have access to public services or any OTHER benefit provided by the federal government. We clear?

You are spouting nonsense. Poor folks are not big tax dodgers. We all are subject to the same tax code, and we each have one vote in electing representatives to decide how it gets written. Unless you are simply advocating denial of services for tax dodgers (which already exists), you’ve gone overboard.

Clearly you haven’t a clue what it means to carry individual responsibility for your own needs and those you choose to bring into this world.

Clearly you haven’t a clue what it means to carry individual responsibility for your citizenship in a Republic.

Peace.

DS

Well I’m beginning to feel like people who aren’t willing to carry their end of the log and contribute income tax to PAY for the enormous piles of social benefits we already have should not have access to public services or any OTHER benefit provided by the federal government. We clear?

- Perspective is the key to life. Get some please.
Best take your own advice. Clearly you haven’t a clue what it means to carry individual responsibility for your own needs and those you choose to bring into this world.

Wrong again and / or lying again. You pick.

There’s no such thing as a “perfect” free market. And arguing based on a premise of unreal perfection is just a dodge – another hallmark of the socialist left.

The health care market and health care insurance market prior to the government’s socialist policies were functional, free markets. The key factor being that prices were set by agreement between provider and consumer – not by some monopolistic or quasi-monopolistic broker, or (as with Medicare) by the government.

Right now, there is nothing even close to a free market in health care. All prices are set by a collection of insurance companies, or by the government’s Medicare reimbursement schedule.

There are plenty of markets for other routine costs of living and commodities that keep goods and services for water, food, clothes, cars, gas, consumer electronics, appliances, personal hygiene items, housing, sporting goods, guns, books, ammunition, chiropractic services, magazines, newspapers, window treatments, carpeting, internet access, hairdressing services, auto maintenance, shoe repair, telephone, house painting, take-out pizza, etc., all relatively affordable. Claim free markets don’t work all you like – these markets prove otherwise. NONE of the these commodity markets are experiencing the out-of-control price increases seen in health care, because health care is the ONLY routine cost of living we pay for with other peoples’ money, using a completely bogus medium of exchange: group insurance.

- Most of us buy our water from a public source, guaranteed to meet mandated standards.
Nice fantasy.

Around here we pay a separate, non-tax “fee” for water and sewer use. That’s over and above property taxes. That publicly supplied water is virtually undrinkable. It turns the faucets green, the toilets, tubs and showers brown and it isn’t fit for a pet. It’s not “guaranteed” to be anything, contrary to what you may have fantasized in your naive and gullible little dreamland.

Hereabouts you either need a carbon-activated, whole-house water filter, in which case you incur installation and monthly filter replacement costs (all purchased at affordable market rates) OR you purchase bottled water from a local distributor for a going rate that is determined by mutual, market agreement between consumers and providers. The fee demanded by the city, on the other hand, is non-negotiable. You pay it or they turn off your water. You complain that the water quality is crap, they ignore you.

- Most of us buy a house that has been inspected …
You don’t buy the house from the inspector, Zippy. Try to stay focused.

- Food stamps are not “free market”, …
No. They’re welfare. Funded by the taxpayer. Food stamps are a way of making people dependent on the State. They are an artificial increase in income that results in a corresponding artificial increase in the price of food. Once again, federal social engineering corrupts the natural function of the market.

- That’s funny. Last time I went to the ER, I had to fill out insurance paperwork first .
You’re whining about paperwork when the topic is access to health care. You and everyone else in this country has access to health care. Just as you have access to food, clothes, water, shelter, transportation and all the other routine necessities of life. The only stipulation is that YOU have to PAY for that service. No one is required to give it to you free. And no one is required to pay for it on your behalf. Again, I know that you brainwashed socialist trolls have a hard time with this concept, but you really should try.

- Medicare is an improvement because it eliminates the problem of uninsured or uninsurable persons, …
Again, this silly statement demonstrates that you have obviously NEVER had any direct experience with Medicare. It does no such thing.

Medicare has a limited reimbursement schedule just like any other plan. The difference is that Medicare’s reimbursement rates are much lower than private plans’, which means that the quality of care suffers or is not available at all because doctors don’t want the hassle. Supplemental plans – which are quite expensive – are required to fully insure an individual who’s forced into Medicare slavery by the State. Those plans are NOT part of Medicare, and must be paid for separately.

- The government has the power to tax.
Right. And irrelevant. What the government does NOT have the power to do is to take away an entitlement you’ve paid for for fifty years simply because you don’t want to use their sh!tty Medicare plan. That’s extortion, and the DHHS is being called on it:
 

As the policy now stands, if you want to pay for your own health care rather than let taxpayers finance it through Medicare, government will not let you receive the Social Security benefits for which you have spent a lifetime paying taxes.

Note that nobody is trying to avoid contributing to Medicare. The plaintiffs merely want to decline the tax-funded benefits for which they already have paid. None of them want the bureaucracy, the governmental intrusions into their privacy, and the rationing of care they believe Medicare entails – so they volunteer to let taxpayers off the hook by providing their own health care coverage.

But DHHS won’t let them. Or at least not if they want to receive Social Security benefits. Forfeit Medicare, says DHHS, and you must also forfeit Social Security even if you’ve paid for it for half a century.

This is nuts. Utterly nonsensical.

- That’s right – public services intended to provide for the general welfare – just like health care.
No. Health care is not a “public” service, it’s an individual service. You’ve provided nothing that equates health care with public services. We already have public health departments and they already do what government has the mandate to do – which does NOT include providing individual, routine health care services for everyone at taxpayers’ expense.

- Why? Why should it not be a universal service provided for by a single-payer health care system…
The question is moot. The fact is that the government doesn’t have the authority to implement this. Get an amendment passed and we’ll talk. If you’re so cocksure this is the “right” thing to do, and that it’s obvious that it’s the best “solution” to a crisis no one was worried about until the feds threatened to seize control of the health care system, then you should have no problem whatsoever getting that amendment passed. Right? So do it. Or stop whining about it.

The fact is you CAN’T get such an amendment passed, and you know it. That’s because Medicare has already proved that a government-run system is not a feasible solution, because the only way Medicare stays operational is through criminal extortion and theft. A so-called “universal” system will just be more of the same, only several orders of magnitude worse. And that doesn’t even begin to address all the liberties at risk of being legislated once the government can claim they adversely affect the cost of health care. You’re a naive fool if you don’t recognize this.

- I’ve linked to the statistics before, …
If you’re going to make an idiotic assertion, back it up yourself. Don’t expect others to do it for you.

- Medicare is not single payer.
Clearly you don’t even understand the meaning of the term. SINGLE. PAYER. As in: all claims for medical services are paid through a single government program – in this case, Medicare.

The blindingly obvious flaw in your position here is that, with Medicare, other supplemental plans are required to maintain truly comprehensive coverage equivalent to a private plan. Those supplemental plans must be purchased from private insurers and they kick in to cover the sizable portion of many services that Medicare doesn’t. Don’t try to kid me on this, Zippy. I’ve dealt with this issue directly for three different elderly individuals over the course of 30 years in the aggregate. The notion that anyone would choose Medicare if they had an option is patently absurd. The fact is: they don’t have a choice. See above.

- Health care, like fire and police, should not be funded at the point of service.
That’s your idiotic, unsupportable opinion, driven by your mindless devotion to socialist dogma. Before government screwed up the health care market, this model worked just fine – just as it does for all other routine goods and services. And again – the fire department does not put out fires “for free”. Try to get that through your thick skull and past your obtuse aversion to reality.

- It would be like a police officer asking for payment prior to investigating a theft.
They ARE paid prior to investigating thefts, Zippy!! They get paid weekly, bi-weekly or monthly – whether they investigate any thefts or not! That’s the difference between municipal services provided for the general welfare and privately contracted services provided for the individual. Geez, are you THAT completely ignorant of what’s going on around you?

- You are now complaining because you have not had the pleasure of a serious crime or fire on your property? This is like complaining about not getting sick enough to use your catastrophic health insurance.
Clearly, your tuition was a complete waste of money, Zippy.

Look – if I decide to purchase catastrophic health insurance, I do so of my own free will. It’s MY CHOICE, and it’s MY DECISION to manage my own financial risk in that way. Taxes, on the other hand, are universally collected at the point of a gun or by threat of imprisonment, or both. There is no choice involved. The fact that you don’t see this, let alone understand it, demonstrates why your position on all this is so delusional. Likely you’ve never paid property tax on anything in your life, so you really have no experience with how this works. You’re relying solely on the socialist indoctrination you underwent in college to come up with solutions you don’t understand for problems you don’t comprehend.

- Single payer saves money, …
No, it doesn’t. And Medicare has already proved this. Other than that one system, there is no “single payer” system in America right now that can be used as a benchmark, so your claim that “single payer saves money” is completely bogus AND based on nothing. The very fact that you believe government is capable of “saving money” in any endeavor – compared to private enterprise – demonstrates once again how completely naive and ignorant you are about real life.

What I observe – based on the documented facts – is that we DO NOT HAVE a functional, free market for health care OR health care insurance right now.

Agreed. What you fail to observe is that a perfect free market is impossible, and a functional free market never has existed for health care or health insurance. It is a chimera. It is not a solution.

Functional markets keep all other routine, costs of living relatively affordable.

A functional market is not the same thing as a free market – they are mutually exclusive.

Most of us buy our water from a public source, guaranteed to meet mandated standards. Most of us buy a house that has been inspected and deemed safe by public authorities, and pay taxes thereon to provide public fire, police and other services. Food stamps are not “free market”, but they do function to keep food on the tables of people who would otherwise go hungry.

Public solutions make sense sometimes.

There isn’t a single person in this country who has “no access to health care”. Access to health care is available everywhere.

That’s funny. Last time I went to the ER, I had to fill out insurance paperwork first . No treatment for my broken teeth until the payment was assured. Access to health care means nothing if you have no money and no insurance. It is a lie.

Medicare is an improvement because it eliminates the problem of uninsured or uninsurable persons, and removes the economic hardship that would otherwise attend care for elders. Expanding the system to cover the less-expensive health care of younger citizens will help in the long run to make it a solvent system. That’s what this reform will ultimately accomplish. Medicare is an improvement according to those who receive care – they rate it higher than the customers of private insurance rate their care.

Ignore it or deconstruct it all you like, but extortion is extortion.

The government has the power to tax. You can call that extortion, but it is also perfectly legal. Deal with it.

- Ever wonder why police & fire protection are public?

No, I’ve never wondered at that at all, since the reason has always been crystal clear. Unlike you, I learned along time ago not to confuse fire and police departments with businesses. They’re public services, funded by my taxes and intended to provide for general law and order and limit extensive property damage in case of a fire inasmuch as is possible.

That’s right – public services intended to provide for the general welfare – just like health care.

Routine health care – especially that care provided to prevent serious health problems – is an individual service that must be provided by someone else for a fee.

Why? Why should it not be a universal service provided for by a single-payer health care system like all other civilized countries have? I don’t have a problem with your private fire protection contract, but I still think the public fire department is a superior solution. Just as I don’t mind if you want to buy private coverage, but I still think the public option is a superior solution.

…you’ve failed to show that “millions” can’t afford routine health care. The truth is that the entire nation has been trained to believe that it’s someone else’s responsibility to pay for it.

I’ve linked to the statistics before, and I know that you can operate a web browser. Millions can’t even afford to feed themselves – health care is a fantasy for the working poor in this country. Health care was inexpensive before the technological innovation of this century, and the massive efforts poured into extending life. It is still relatively inexpensive in all the countries that have universal systems. You are being willfully duplicitous to blame Medicare for the failures of the private insurance market in the USA to contain costs. The problem is profit.

- That’s why I support single payer, which is a proven solution.

Proven infeasible – by the insolvency of Medicare, and the fact that it is only sustained through criminal government actions amounting to outright extortion and theft.

Medicare is not single payer. Are you even reading what you write?

See, this is one of the inconvenient truths you socialist trolls keep ignoring: IT’S NOT FREE, D!PSH!T. It’s only “free” – to you – if you don’t pay anything in income tax or other taxes to support it. But it’s not “free” – someone has to pay for it.

Health care, like fire and police, should not be funded at the point of service. It would be like a police officer asking for payment prior to investigating a theft. Can you not see the corrupting influence of money in this scenario? There should be no cost to call on the services of firemen, police and paramedics.

I pay exorbitant property taxes and State income taxes so the city can maintain police, fire and public works departments. To date I have exactly NOTHING to show for the tens of thousands of dollars I’ve forked over.

You are now complaining because you have not had the pleasure of a serious crime or fire on your property? This is like complaining about not getting sick enough to use your catastrophic health insurance.

Your devotion to the imaginary “free market” aside, the best solution for health care remains a single payer system. Administrative expenses and profit are the source of immense waste in our current private system, which has proven to be no more effective than public systems elsewhere, while costing twice as much, and failing to cover millions of working and unemployed citizens.

Single payer saves money, saves lives, and will also save Medicare. That’s why health reform will pass.

Peace.

DS