Got Socialism?!!
- Thread starter signalmankenneth
- Start date
apple0154
MEOW
Which reminds me of this.
Joe republican.
Joe gets up at 6 a.m. and fills his coffeepot with water to prepare his morning coffee. The water is clean and good because some tree-hugging liberal fought for minimum water-quality standards. With his first swallow of water, he takes his daily medication. His medications are safe to take because some stupid commie liberal fought to ensure their safety and that they work as advertised.
All but $10 of his medications are paid for by his employer's medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance - now Joe gets it too.
He prepares his morning breakfast, bacon and eggs. Joe's bacon is safe to eat because some girly-man liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry.
In the morning shower, Joe reaches for his shampoo. His bottle is properly labeled with each ingredient and its amount in the total contents because some crybaby liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting on his body and how much it contained.
Joe dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air he breathes is clean because some environmentalist wacko liberal fought for the laws to stop industries from polluting our air.
He walks on the government-provided sidewalk to subway station for his government-subsidized ride to work. It saves him considerable money in parking and transportation fees because some fancy-pants liberal fought for affordable public transportation, which gives everyone the opportunity to be a contributor.
Joe begins his work day. He has a good job with excellent pay, medical benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because some lazy liberal union members fought and died for these working standards. Joe's employer pays these standards because Joe's employer doesn't want his employees to call the union.
If Joe is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed, he'll get a worker compensation or unemployment check because some stupid liberal didn't think he should lose his home because of his temporary misfortune.
It is noontime and Joe needs to make a bank deposit so he can pay some bills. Joe's deposit is federally insured by the FSLIC because some godless liberal wanted to protect Joe's money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the Great Depression.
Joe has to pay his Fannie Mae-underwritten mortgage and his below-market federal student loan because some elitist liberal decided that Joe and the government would be better off if he was educated and earned more money over his lifetime. Joe also forgets that his in addition to his federally subsidized student loans, he attended a state funded university.
Joe is home from work. He plans to visit his father this evening at his farm home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive. His car is among the safest in the world because some America-hating liberal fought for car safety standards to go along with the tax-payer funded roads.
He arrives at his boyhood home. His was the third generation to live in the house financed by Farmers' Home Administration because bankers didn't want to make rural loans.
The house didn't have electricity until some big-government liberal stuck his nose where it didn't belong and demanded rural electrification.
He is happy to see his father, who is now retired. His father lives on Social Security and a union pension because some wine-drinking, cheese-eating liberal made sure he could take care of himself so Joe wouldn't have to.
Joe gets back in his car for the ride home, and turns on a radio talk show. The radio host keeps saying that liberals are bad and conservatives are good. He doesn't mention that the beloved Republicans have fought against every protection and benefit Joe enjoys throughout his day. Joe agrees: "We don't need those big-government liberals ruining our lives! After all, I'm a self-made man who believes everyone should take care of themselves, just like I have."
Rationalist
Hail Voltaire
This is a tired, worn out argument. Government providing services that are inefficient or cumbersome for the private sector to provide does not equate to socialism. The private sector does a fine job of delivering health services when the government stays out of the way.
Dixie - In Memoriam
New member
Apple must be getting some kind of major kickback or benefit from a government-run health care system.... that's all I can figure. He's been relentlessly pounded for month after month on this, all of his arguments shot down, all of his claims refuted, all the flaws pointed out... and he still yammers on, as if we are still having a debate over this.
Just as Obamacare was passed into law, Obamacare will be repealed, if not completely struck down by the SCOTUS. There is no more debate... the issue is settled, one way or the other, we will NOT have Obamacare. It has been rejected by the people, as it should have been to start with, and Apple can flail away with his incoherent nonsense all he likes.
Just as Obamacare was passed into law, Obamacare will be repealed, if not completely struck down by the SCOTUS. There is no more debate... the issue is settled, one way or the other, we will NOT have Obamacare. It has been rejected by the people, as it should have been to start with, and Apple can flail away with his incoherent nonsense all he likes.
Mott the Hoople
Sweet Jane
Really? Then how comes our government has stayed out of the way and health care is costing us 18% of GDP which is twice as much as a percentage of GDP as all other wealthy industrialized nations while achieving third world level of health care outcomes. Would you care to explain that contradiction in your basic premise?
The problem with your premise is that there are some services for which the private sector is inadequate, wasteful or cannot provide the breadth of scope or order of magnitude of services required to meet the public needs. Infrastructure, National Defense, Public Utilities, Research and Development, Technology Transfer and Education are just a few examples in which the private sector fails to do just exactly that, provide the quality and scope of services needed by the public. This also happens to be the case with health care management in our nation. All the other modern wealthy industrialized nations on this planet have figured this out but us and we have been prevented from doing so because a small group with a financial vested interest in maintaining the status quo who use scare tactics and boogey men, like Dixie's "Socialist" to support a completely irrational system based on maximizing prophets for a small group of financial service companies by denying access to needed medical services to the masses.
There is nothing wrong and everything right, in a democracy, for the people to pool their resources and mandate government to provide solutions to these large scale problems that the market and private enterprise are either unable or incapable of providing. That's one of the roles government provides in a free society.
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Mott the Hoople
Sweet Jane
Hey Dixie, hadn't you better go run and look under your bed? A socialist may be hiding under it...or worse....1/3 of a socialist might be there! LOL LOL LOL
Cancel 2018. 3
<-- sched 2, MJ sched 1
i love it when libs cry that roads are socialism...its hilarious because its so wrong. i do appreciate though, that after all this time, libs finally admit the GM takeover was in fact socialism.
Dixie - In Memoriam
New member
Mott, you and I have had some wonderful conversations in the past. We seldom agree on anything political, but I have enjoyed going back and forth with you, when you are willing to argue your side and try to make a point. That said, this pattern of personally insulting me every post you make lately, is either going to have to stop, or I will have to put you on the Ignore List. Comprehend?
Dixie - In Memoriam
New member
First of all, the government hasn't "stayed out of the way" at all on health care, they've been meddling in health care for the past 70 years or so. One of the reasons health care costs are higher in America, is the number of regulations and mandates which must be adhered to, then there is the cost of litigation for malpractice suits, we've gone apeshit crazy with TORT, and then... there is the indigent care laws, on the books in every single state, requiring all hospitals to treat patients regardless of their ability to pay. All of these things have driven the cost higher, but the main #1 thing is, we have the most advanced technology and best doctors in the world... A Rolls Royce just costs MORE than a Chevrolet.
Rationalist
Hail Voltaire
There are several reasons we spend 18% of our GDP on health care. Some of that can be attributed to supply and demand. In the United States, people are free to decide how much they want to spend on health care, whereas people of other nations do not always have that luxury.
However, the rising cost of health care can be attributed for the most part to obscene regulation, frivolous/exorbitant malpractice lawsuits, and a disconnect between the value and cost of health care created by Medicare and Medicaid.
The problem with your premise is that it assumes we have free market health care, when in reality we do not.
Liberty
Libertarian Minded
apple0154
MEOW
Arguments shot down, all of his claims refuted, all the flaws pointed out?
Show me ONE country which implemented a government plan and then reverted to a "pay or suffer" system. Just ONE.
In every country with a government health care system the people insist the government maintain that system. Again, not ONE exception.
Please come back to reality, Dix.
apple0154
MEOW
"There is the indigent care laws, on the books in every single state, requiring all hospitals to treat patients regardless of their ability to pay."
That's the whole point. Treating people who are unable to pay and dozens of countries have been doing that for over 50 years and they are paying at least 1/3 less for medical care.
Come back to reality, Dix.
apple0154
MEOW
If that's the case wouldn't it be logical to implement a medical plan similar to one of the countries which currently have a plan? There are dozens of plans available for study all offering cost savings. Furthermore, the people in every country, without exception, insist on keeping their plan.
Lower cost and satisfied citizens. What more is there to consider?
apple0154
MEOW
Govt is the very reason healthcare ($) is screwed up.
Look at any country with full government medical. They all show savings and the citizens in every one of those countries insist on keeping their government plan.
The overwhelming evidence is private enterprise is the problem. It has no place in the medical care of citizens.
Mott the Hoople
Sweet Jane
Point well taken Dixie. I'll man up and apologize for the cheap shot.
Mott the Hoople
Sweet Jane
I'm sorry but you're just factually wrong. Only 6% of our national health care costs are due to government payments and administration. So your arguing from a false premise. Government is not a significant driver in increasing health care costs.
There are many factors that drive up the cost of health care in our nation but the big three, in order of impact, are;
Chronic Disease. It's estimated that chronic diseases caused by poor life style choices, such as, obesity, sedintary life style, smoking, alcohol and drug abuse, etc, account for 50% of our cost burden. Because our system is geared towards trauma therapy and not disease prevention large segments of the population do not recieve the public health education and preventative treatments and therapy that can systematically reduce the incidence of chronic disease and diagnose it in it's early and treatable stages rather then when it transitions from the chronice to the acute and much more expensive to treat stage of illness. It's also the primary factor in why the US has such low health care outcomes. This is just common sense folks and it seems to have gotten lost but Poor Richard was right, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
Unnecessary treatments. This has a number of drivers such as over utilization of new and expensive technology in order to pay for that technology, practicing defensive medicine, and lack of knowledge about what modalities work and which do not do to no organized systems of assessing and evaluating treatment and it's efficacty. All modern nations have national ware houses where data on patient treatment must be reported so that specific treatments can be evaluated to determine if they work and are affective or are not. The US is the only wealthy industrialized nation on the planet to lack such a national information warehouse. This is one of the more difficult problems to work with from the market stand point cause the market produces a vast array of treatments for health problems with out the market being able to provide a lot of evidence or feedback that demonstrates the affectiveness of those treatments with the end result that large numbers of Americans pay a lot of money for treatment methods for which it's not really known if they are affective or not and in many cases they probably are not affective.
Medical errors. The best way to reduce the practice of defensive medicion is not tort reform (though tort reform is certainly needed, it's just not a cure all) but reducing medical errors. Nearly 30% of all serious infectious diseases that occur in our nation occur when a patient visits a hospital or clinic for treatment. It also dove tails into unnecessary treatments as mistakes, complications, infections, etc are more likely to occur when modalities are applied when they aren't really necessary. Not only are national standards and practices required to improve the level of quality control in the health care industry but again we need a national standard for reporting data, investigating errors and implementing corrective actions to mitigate and prevent medical errors from occuring.
Now these are three of the largest factors of what drive health care costs and this is a large part of what reform needs to focus on.
So spare me the comments about government driving up the costs and socialist boogeymen. They aren't the problem.
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Topspin
Verified User
I find this fucking hillarious from the left.
1. We use more hc than poorer countries, shit England just got dentist. Just ask crocked tooth tom.
2. You think Europeans get as many elective surgeries as we do. Boob jobs, face lifts etc. If you do, here's a big Child please.
3. Our doctors make way more than there's do, the AMA is a cartel like Opec
Of course we spend more, WE GET MORE
1. We use more hc than poorer countries, shit England just got dentist. Just ask crocked tooth tom.
2. You think Europeans get as many elective surgeries as we do. Boob jobs, face lifts etc. If you do, here's a big Child please.
3. Our doctors make way more than there's do, the AMA is a cartel like Opec
Of course we spend more, WE GET MORE
Mott the Hoople
Sweet Jane
Child please. We spend twice as much per person! That's a lot of boob jobs homey and I don't know about you but I aint seeing that many nice sets of tits.
A little thin skinned, you are allowed name calling but, watch out Mott, don't make a joke or we will have to break up?
Your tough guy facade is cracked...
