I INVEST in my health. Yes there is a chance I could go through my roughly 80 years of life and never use the healthcare I paid for, but that is ok. Maybe Jim won’t be as lucky as me and will get sick. There you go jim, have some healthcare on all the rest of us.

Perhaps it is because I have always lived in this culture with this type of healthcare but I don’t see how that security is a bad thing. I don’t understand how you could not want that security for yourself.

http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/leveling-the-slippery-slope/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheIncidentalEconomist+%28The+Incidental+Economist+%28Posts%29%29

Now, is this a “proper” governmental role? I think it may fall under the “general welfare” in the Preamble, or at least that’s the philosophical reasoning for such requirements. Doesn’t mean I agree with the health insurance requirements (is anyone going to arrest the homeless if they can’t provide proof of insurance?), but “proper” or not, there’s precedence.

@Doc
Hahahahahahahahaahaaa!

I’ve said this before: as an American I am not thrilled with the government telling me what I have to do or not do, but there are times when the greater good must be considered… and considered very carefully. Slippery slopes are treacherous.

Quite. I’m on the side of this couple, though not for the asinine reason that they gave. If they don’t want to buy insurance, that’s their concern. Since when is it the proper role of government to tell people what they should by?

Thanks much.

Of course, this means I can use a word processor and make comments as long and convoluted as MTU.

Cheers

How do you people get the formatting (ie. indented paragraphs, bold, italics, etc.) into your comments?

Use HTML tags. The format is simple “<”, tag, , “>”, text you want to edit, “<”, /tag, , “>”
Example: type < i > italic < /i > and the result should look like this: italic. Other tags are: b ,/b for bold, u, /u for underline , and blockquote, /blockquote for

quotes

.
Here’s a primer: HTML for the Conceptually Challenged

How do you people get the formatting (ie. indented paragraphs, bold, italics, etc.) into your comments?

Using a word processor to cut and past doesn’t work and editing while in moderating mode is a big boo boo (as I found out above with @29 and @30.

Thanks

……………………………………………………………..

@46 OtherRob

Thanks.

Yeah, after I made the comment I realized it was pretty dumb (see my @30 for my resulting self flagellation.

I tried to delete the damn thing but I couldn’t and, in the end, I just said to heck with it (see my comments just above this.)

Cheers

and,

“And the lament, “because democrats did not have the guts or the unity to push through universal health care” leaves out a crucial difference between the system you’re describing and the American attempt: ours has criminal penalties for trying to go elsewhere for treatment than the Government-approved service.”
………………………………………………………………………………….

I think you’re splitting hairs, and a little paranoid to boot.

If you want absolute control, then no, the Canadian Universal Health care system is not going to give you that – nor should it.
However, the supplementary, for profit system that exists along side the universal system might give you that, for a fee. Regardless, if you’ve got the money, you are free to travel anywhere in the world to purchase whatever medical service you want, and then come home and have the universal system clean up the resulting mess and perhaps save your life, for taxes paid and nothing more.

In the end, I don’t want the sky. I just want quality health care in a reasonable time with my dignity intact (and that’s where a feeling of control come in). If I feel that I’m in control, then I’m in control — anything else doesn’t matter.

………………………………………………………………………………………

As for the second part of your comment … like I said, rather than finishing the process and ramming through a system that works, they’ve left you with a clusterf@#$! .

cheers

Sorry I didn’t respond to this sooner, but, well, life and all that…

Well, maybe because the slippery slope is (generally) speculative – an endless stream of possible outcomes. However, if you can demonstrate a real link between the action and its consequence, then the argument is not fallacious

I agree that a lot of people will use ridiculous “slippery slope” arguments to oppose something — coming up with the worst, most absurd possible outcome. But I don’t believe that a slippery slope argument is inherently flawed or that calling someone’s objections “a slippery slope argument” invalidates their concerns. Which is what Gus Snarp seemed to be doing.

I believe it is perfectly valid to be concern about the eventual outcomes of any action and that they are valid avenues for discussion.

If you don’t have a car, you don’t buy insurance.

Phil, do you pay insurance on the motorcycle you don’t have?

The difference here is that you can’t buy a motorcycle by chance. You can, however, get sick by chance. You can’t accidentally drive a motorbike; you can ‘accidentally’ get cancer.

I think people would trust vaccines a lot better if the FDA would square up with the problems in the food industry and quit nitpicking with companies that advertise the nutritional benefits of their products. The food we eat today is higher-output, lower quality stuff than people ate decades ago. It’s more inflammatory; how about some standards for processing soy? I know the population is growing, what are you gonna do? Tell the public how it is. It’s got to be MSG for breakfast, lunch and dinner? That I don’t understand. I could show you how I react to the stuff any day of the week. Rickets symptoms. They shouldn’t be allowed to hide it.

Can’t add the public water to the fishtank, or fish go belly up. Good ol’ flouride, strengthens your teeth. Flushing the toilet with it, washing the clothes, the car, the dishes — but it’s got to be in ALL the water so hopefully your kids will swallow some and have stronger teeth. Wait a minute… why don’t we just drip flouride drops in their glass of water and save the friggin fish? C’mon, environmentalists! [crickets chirping]

What do they want, people to just have a little more trust? I wonder what they could do different? Hmm…

No. Not when you don’t pay. You’re mistaking a current level of availability and congruence with your wishes for “control”. You shouldn’t do that.

And the lament, “because democrats did not have the guts or the unity to push through universal health care” leaves out a crucial difference between the system you’re describing and the American attempt: ours has criminal penalties for trying to go elsewhere for treatment than the Government-approved service.

Sick? The clerk is not sick. Fill out this form.

To some people “the greater good” is a phrase used to justify way too much, but it also is part of the Preamble to the Constitution.

<nit>
Well, the actual phrase is:

provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare

</nit>

Government must stay out of our lives as much as possible. Hawai’i is the direction the “universal healthcare” folks want us to go…. no choices, no personal control of your healthcare, poor quality of care…. We’re already living it and it’s a bloody disaster.

………………………………………………………………………………

Chris, I’am an truly sorry that you’ve had the experience you’ve had.

However, you are certainly not living universal health care and therefore you are wrong to call it a bloody disaster.

What you are living is a clusterf@#$! that exists because democrats did not have the guts or the unity to push through universal health care. I know the difference because I’ve lived with universal health care (Canada) all my life (52 years) as have my family members and friends and I am generally very happy with it.

On the other hand, family members in the US (US Citizens in Maine, California and Louisiana) are generally not so happy with their health care system and those who are bitch about the high cost. Regardless, they all wish they had my system.

As for your other points, I have almost total control over my health care. I choose my doctor via appointment or I can go to a clinic and take whomever it get (or I can request a doctor and wait).

The doctor doesn’t just tell me what to do, I work with him or her to meets my needs. Of course, if I need a specialist, then my doctor will arrange for that and, because I usually don’t know the specialist, that’s fine with me. If however, I prefer a specialist, then my doctor will arrange that specialist, if the specialist is taking new patients. I am in control.

As for quality of care, it’s been generally excellent. Where it hasn’t, I’ve worked with the doctor to address the issue and it gets worked out. If it isn’t worked out, then I am free to see another doctor, and there is no charge. As well, be careful about arguments about the exception (ie. those rare times when the system screwed a patient over. While rare, they have happened and they fly to the top of the media heap and become the example of universal health care in general – they’re not, the system works well.

As well, where services are not provided by universal health care (ie. dental care or breast implants for Halloween), I am free to purchase these services — and they are probably covered by my supplementary health care plan provided by my employer. If you’ve got the money, you are free to purchase whatever you want, but you might have to travel outside the country if you don’t want to line up for high demand services (which go to those in greatest need, first).

So, if you’re not happy with your system, don’t blame it on universal health care. I live it, and it’s great.

Cheers

But, rather than whine, I have suggested a solution.

If you don’t like this one, well, beat it!

We allow the government this degree of control over ourselves because it’s in our common self interest. For an example of what a country without this would look like, libertarians are invited to take a vacation in Somalia.

Um… maybe you were thinking anarchists? You know, those who don’t want government. Not to be conflated with libertarians, who want a government focused on liberties.

They look the same, but Anarchists believe that bad faith actors won’t take advantage of the system or that it’ll serve the victims right for being somewhere they could get killed without a gun handy. Oh, and meanwhile, they believe that property is a myth.

Libertarians believe the purpose of government is to protect life, liberty, and property, as all true liberals should, and that governments are the number one thief of all three worldwide so they must be constantly kept in check. And they believe that property is sacrosanct, but that intellectual property is a myth. You can’t hold onto an idea, it’s impossible once it is out, it multiplies. Which is why Coca Cola and KFC don’t rely on patents to protect their secret recipes.

fair point.. correlation != causation and all that.

Though as far as the figures for Japanese Americans go, they are mostly the descendants of relatively recent voluntary migration, the majority being since 1965, and so would usually tend to be richer than the average of both the society that they are in and the society they or their ancestors originated from.

Er… agree with the first part, but the reasons for the second part are myriad.

Modern society is irreducibly complex (although *without* an intelligent design), folks, and needs to be treated as such if you ever hope to progress anywhere.

Japan has had public healthcare since the late 1920s.

Life expectancy of the average US male: 74 years
Life expectancy of males in Japan: 78 years

Ah ha! Right?

Life expectancy of Japanese American males in the US: 80 years

Oops.

It’s not a simple thing. I’ve seen some studies that indicate universal health care access and life expectancy are not very well correlated at all, and that other factors are much stronger indicators. These factors can be things like diet (a huge one), gang warfare and even traffic death rates.

Mm, big words such as “we”. I’m assuming neither Miko nor Phil were part of the original group of signers of the constitution.

No, that is the way the people with their paws in the honeypot want you to go.. unfortunately your government is so myopic that it can’t see any way of providing public services without putting the interests of lobbyists first.

Many other countries manage to get free healthcare and paid maternity leave from the state without having to give most of the money involved to financial services companies.

Your missing the point… because they couldn’t pass government healthcare (and pay for your insurance via taxes … which all the things you cited are paid via….) The government is actually requiring that you pay for something regardless of your income potential or capability. Sure they’ll “give” insurance to those who can’t afford it but for everyone else….. look at Hawai’i…. they “required” all employers provide health insurance long ago…..

What happened…. Hawai’i went from 8 insurance carriers to only two (one of which is an HMO…sucks) and the premiums are more than double what healthcare costs on the mainland are. For employers, the cost is 40% more (I checked) than it is for a private individual….. and guess what…. maternity coverage is not available for individual plans at any price (can’t happen.) When government tries to help….. they end up screwing it all up.

So when my wife got pregnant last year…. I had to actually “start a business” for her as the only employee just to have her pregnancy covered (as a business plan.) Government must stay out of our lives as much as possible. Hawai’i is the direction the “universal healthcare” folks want us to go…. no choices, no personal control of your healthcare, poor quality of care…. We’re already living it and it’s a bloody disaster.