Socialized Medicine

We can't afford it.  Some people like Michael Moore say that we should just divert funding for the war toward Socialized Medicine, but the fact of the matter is is that we can't afford the war either.  We are already borrowing money to finance a lot of the dumb programs already in place.  Government spending is out of control, and we need to exercise budget restraint now, not consider new areas to increase spending.

>>40
"A fallacy is a component of an argument that is demonstrably flawed in its logic or form, thus rendering the argument invalid in whole."

"An ad hominem argument, also known as argumentum ad hominem (Latin: "argument to the person", "argument against the man") consists of replying to an argument or factual claim by attacking or appealing to the person making the argument or claim, rather than by addressing the substance of the argument or producing evidence against the claim.  It is most commonly deply by retards."

sorry dude... PWND

GTFO nigger

>>42
I am a good deal smarter than you

GTFO nigger

>>44
sniveling coward.. the whole world's already on fire and you just think the smoke is pretty.  american's final century is upon you and you're too blind to see it.  repeat yourself all you like, good practice for when you're hiding under your bed...  the future belongs to us

GTFO nigger

If you're really going to bitch and piss and moan about you're right to smoke then you deserve to be unhealthy.

Seriously, it's fucking childish to say that your right to do unhealthy things is more important than establishing a culture that values life and living it well.

>>47
Dude... people have a right to health and unhealth alike

>>48
but that right exist if it (collectively) impacts the rest of the nation?

>>49
yeah, you're right... probably should be some way of place the burden on the individual for the choices that they're making while still not taking away their universal public health care...  hey wait, how about a kingsize 25 pack of good smokes costing $10 in Canada?  I hear in Virginia, it's like.... $2.50.

Besides, what're you going to do, make smoking illegal?  People already get reserve smokes from the native reservations for $10 a carton, you'd just drive it underground, make criminals rich, and lose tax money while still paying for the health costs.

We don't have to FORCE people to stop smoking.  We a culture that values its health so that the fewest number of people possible want to smoke/be fat/etc.
Yes it's idealistic, but it's the only way we'll ever have a health care system that isn't constantly burdened with preventable illnesses.

>>51
>>we NEED a culture....

>>51
so...  what is it you're suggesting, exactly? 

>>51
yeah well, get to work on that... I don't think that universal health care coverage should be kept from people because of an "unhealthy culture".  Unhealthy people have a right to medical care as much as healthy people do... would be rather silly otherwise.  Would shoo away a person from a public hospital because she had skin cancer from not using the right sunblock and sun bathing too much?  Oh, you wouldn't?  Then how is this line of thought relevant to whether or not socialized health care is good or not?

>>39
If it's bleeding to death, it's been injured. So there really is a way out! Let me just slip into the blood stream...

>>37
This ain't rhetoric 101.

But I have a grand idea. Let's not just throw out our grand ideas about socialism/capitalism/socio-capitalism/socio-communism/ad absurdum. Why not go out and do some research, look shit up in reliable sources of information (not teh internets)(unless it's from a respectable souce)(which means you can't reference Congress.) and figure out how much socialized medicine would cost in America. And then figure which part of the budget is going to get slashed. God forbid we lose the Department of Education. Or worse, how much the taxes will be to pay for it.

Now with that information, figure out how horrendous or wonderful it will be. I don't want your opinions.

If I wanted child-like rants and tantrums, I'd go to myspace.

>>55
yeah, because the food in your stomach escapes when you loose a leg.

No, this isn't LOGIC 101, it's GTFO nigger-town, and how I react to that is up to me.

Don't assume that just because you don't know what you're talking about, neither does anyone else.  All I've never known is socialized medicine, same thing with everyone in my family and all my friends.  I don't see the grand theory in me saying "it works fine and I'm glad I'll never have to mortgage my house if I get cancer".

If you don't want child-like rants and tantrums, avoid people in general.

>>56
Note the "slip into the bloodstream part." And if that don't work, I'll still get shat out.

Logic 101 or rhetoric 101? GTFO? lolz.

I think you have trouble reading, or perhaps I find the worst possible ways to express and idea. I wasn't coming down on one side of the argument or the other. Quite to the contrary.

What I am trying to do is get people to realize that even if they state something in all caps, it doesn't make it true. Let me give you an example, just so we're clear: you like buttsex with livestock. Now is that a true statement? Probably not. But if I really believe it is...and I believe very hard...nope, still not true. Clear?

Which is all this thread has amounted to. Anon says "Socialized medicine won't work because it is teh suxorz." To which Anon says, "Big corporations are buttsexing you, cause socialized medicine does work." And then Anon relates anecdotal proof, which is just as quickly rebutted by Anon with his own, roxorz anecdotal proof. See?

I'm not expecting to see meaningful, productive intercourse ("hehe lolz") but informed banter would be nice. What would be really awesome and would fill my heart with rainbows and puppy dogs and koala bears is people saying, "it won't work because, according to these data, expenditure would exceed revenue," to which Anon replies "With socialized medicine, there's no need for the medicare program and a host of other redundant systems..."

Now come here and give me a hug!

>>54
Firstly I didn't say anything about denying health care to anyone.  I was saying that our society will be much better off if people treasure their well being and make an effort to keep themselves healthy (by eating right, exercising, being informed, etc.).

Next, you're not looking at the long-term picture.  What good is a universal health care system if half our population is overweight and suffering from diabetes and other weight related conditions.  Sure their symptoms can be treated, but in the long run people won't be any happier.  Taxes will be higher because unnecessary illnesses (read: preventable) will have be treated.  And outside of the health care system people are going to be less productive for society.

So, tell me, is there a single reason why we as a society shouldn't strive to be healthy; to prevent illness before it happens?  Is there something wrong with educating people so maybe they don't catch and spread STDs?  Do you find something inherently bad about teaching people proper eating habits?

If our society doesn't make an effort to improve its condition it'll literally be crushed under its own weight.  Some quick fix like socialized medicine isn't going to make everything all right.  If large numbers of people continue with unhealthy lifestyles the system will eventually fail because there will be too many people to care for.  people who potentially didn't have to become ill.

The drugs in the states are just too farking expensive. Medicine in Thailand is only a fraction of the US price.
What's the excuse for that?

All manufacturers must print SMOKING IS BAD FOR YOUR HEALTH on each package.
OH MY GOD, IT'S THE END OF THE FUCKING WORLD! QUICK, CALL AYN RAND!!1!!1!1!!

As I said, slippery-slope arguments are for morons.

>>58
might I remind you that this is the "socialized medicine" threat and not the "prancing about being gay" thread

>>58
the funny thing about a lack of socialized medicine is that a lot of people who miss out aren't necessarily unhealthy, they're just poor.  It doesn't seem to matter that places like Canada and the UK, which also have fat people and smokers, manage to figure it out...  ooooh, but you can't afford it?  a week's worth of fighting in iraq money would do it, and you seem to pretend you can afford that...  except instead of flushing the money down the desert, you're recharging your labour force to be able to get back to wort.

No one has yet been able to counter the profits = losses phenomena

I did watch Mr Moores film and as a Brit i found it quite shocking. I knew americans don't have national health care but i assumed if they couldn't pay the government puts up the cash. Also i knew how good cuba was for healthcare too but moore didn't mention cubas difficulty of importing medication due to the american embargo.

Im glad to live in a country with socialized medical care, education to University level, social services, housing and so forth. Americans seem to think these things are a drain on a country, slow progress and make people poorer. It is quite the opposite, they are jewels we have worked hard for and allow us to do great things.

Any child in this or many other European nations who wants to say be an architect, is guaranteed to have everything provided for them to achieve that, food, shelter, care and education. If they get sick everything possible in modern medicine will be done to ensure their recovery and one day they will be another working adult as a part of that society. When they retire, the society they have helped prosper will ensure their needs are met. Thats what socialism is gentlemen, thats what Europe is all about basically, just trying to find a better way for people to live, be happy and avoid the death and destruction of the past.

everyone who wants to provide health care for everyone should first become doctors and actually provide health care before they "armchair politic" for socialized medicine.

>>64
anyone who wants to complain about socialized health care should invade all the countries that already have it and take it away from them, before they "armchair politic" for people to stop talking about a good idea that works in every other developed country.

#62 makes a good point.  I happen to have ego enough to expand upon it in my own way.  Insurance-dominated healthcare in America really didn't happen until the labor shortages around WWII.  Employer-covered healthcare was one of the benefits which companies added since they were largely not allowed to offer larger wages or salaries due to government price controls.  Hence, what was America really like before that?  A living hell?  Certainly not.  America wasn't a living hell before air conditioning and weekly trash pickups, either, yet yuppie fucks somehow think that it was.

As the presence of Hypercapitalist insurance companies continue to distort healthcare in America beyond all recognition, perhaps it's time to stop subscribing to the idea that healthcare is a necessary item for a large percentage of the population.  That same percentage could help that along by eating right and actually exercising for once ... what with individual responsibility being so allegedly important in America and all.

Remember, the REAL heart to "pro choice" is at the time when legs are spread to receive some whigger's cock.  Similarly, the REAL heart to healthcare in America is keeping yourself fit for most of your life.  That might require less posting to 4chan, alas, but that's the price we all must pay.

perhaps it's time to stop subscribing to the idea that healthcare is a necessary item for a large percentage of the population.
How are you planning to halt infections, heredity, or accidents?

How were "infections, heredity, or accidents" halted in the past?  Answer:  They weren't.  How are they stopped today.  Answer:  The still aren't.  The infection thing is even more poignant, since on top of everything else, we're in a "calm before the storm" phase of healthcare where we're going to have a monstrous resistance-inspired plague run across America.  Today's arrangements aren't any better than before; we just have better PR.

I can only maintain that if we don't control the costs of for-profit healthcare, that we will be FORCED to make healthcare highly optional for Americans within 20 years.  It only behooves people to anticipate that and act accordingly and personally.

We can afford it if we stop being an interventionalist superpower.

Ding! Ding! Ding!  #69 wins the prize for having issued the CORRECT answer.  Actually, the answer card says:

"The USA would be able to afford to provide socialized medicine if it used the excess capital currently being wasted maintaining metastable supremacy over other nations."

The judges decided #69's answer is sufficient.

For his prize, #69 gets an all-expenses paid trip to beautiful Baghdad!  He'll also receive a complimentary vest of body armor!  He'll be able to bask in the warm Middle Eastern sun, while being served poisoned sodas by an Iraqi boy/insurgent.

>>69
We could afford it if the anti-american axis of evil stopped persecuting us and threatenning us with terrorism.*

fix'd

>>66
I'm very, VERY curious as to what part of my point you think you expanded upon...  I said that unhealthy, even WILLINGLY unhealthy, people exist in abundance in countries other than the United States, and those countries still provide free medical care to everyone who needs it.

You said that people used to get by without social medicare, and people are fat, so go fuck yourselves.

Tell me... before WWII, how much did kemo-therapy cost?  Or cancer medication?  Before WWII, was it possible to encure medical expenses upwards of the inflation adjusted $500,000 it can cost you today in america after a head injury?

I think if you walked into an american hospital before WWII with a severed finger in a coffee cup, no insurance or employee benefits, and no inflation adjusted $60,000 at your disposal, the doctor would still help you.

And if he didn't then, just because it was before WWII, doesn't make it right or wrong.  If, for whatever reason, there were people who didn't have access to medical care in america before WWII, for ANY reason, be it their financial circumstances or the condemnation of their choices concerning free time and fatty foods by the pussy skinheads that frequent 4chan from time to time, it would still be as much as a travesty then as it is now.

#71, there's no serious threat to the USA from terrorism.  If people had done their fucking jobs leading up to 911, it quite simply would not have happened.  The people learning to fly (but not land) planes would have been investigated.  Most likely, some would have been deported once their visas expired and they remained in the US.  Further, their buying up of tickets to de-populate the target planes would also have triggered an investigation.  Further, once the planes seriously departed their flight plans, interceptor jets would have scrambled in the regions they were over, and would have stopped them once it became obvious they were aimed at cities.

The 911 report was FULL of these examples if individual and institutional incompetence, but the American people and their leaders completely glossed over that fact and marched onward as if such weakness didn't need to be addressed.

(And you know what?  The chief barrier to another hijacking in the US is the PASSENGERS.  They've finally acted (as they should have done ALL ALONG, 911 and before) several times to stop threatening passengers.)

But what was the Chief Incompetent (i.e. GWB) doing in the months leading up to 911?  Yes, he was fucking around with making plans to INVADE IRAQ.  Once again, he demonstrated that playing a Fascist general was more the aim of a national leader than actually protecting American lives.

EVEN NOW, your beloved warhawks and chickenhawks refuse to secure the borders of the USA.  Like them, you're just busy selling the Imperial Model of the West to the subjects (NOT citizens) of the same area.  So, eat shit, fuckbrain!

#72, I'd be more than happy to 'splain.

Your subsequent examples are filled with financial fail.  Chemo?  No, you just died.  However, you died without invoking tens of thousands of dollars in average treatment costs.  Cancer survival rates are still terrible.  Obviously, a lot of people are spending a lot of money and just end up dead (or dead soon enough) anyway.  How exactly is THAT a better system of healthcare?

If you get cancer and it's late stage, just go home and die with dignity.  Don't run up (by then) a good $100K in bills just so you can have 2 years of terrible treatments just so you can linger for 2 more years and then die of the same causes anyway.

Look, what I'm saying is that we CAN and MUST get by without socialized medicine in the USA.

CAN = We used to keep ourselves healthy with eating right and exercising.  That's most of the healthcare battle, right there.  Past that point, you can buy "catastrophic health" insurance.

MUST = The Hypercapitalists are in solid control of the nation and there's going to be no sharing of that power with the general public without resolution by civil war.  Barring the war, it's not going to get better.  The prudent man would conclude that common healthcare is going to continue being priced out of his ability to pay.  The prudent man would then plan accordingly; that means paying a lot more attention to your personal, preventative actions.

>>74
faggot

What part of 300 million people do you idiots not understand.  Just because someoine is paying taxes does not mean they are not putting more than they are taking out.  Unlike many of those european countries, we have areas of permanent burdens known here as Ghettos.  You will see the money quickly drain when gangsters with no job keep getting shot and treated.  If your solution is to not treat them, then your statement that it helps everyone is false.

That's a fairly good point, #76, but if you're that cognizant of gangsters, then you must be fairly well informed of all the gangsters in the insurance, care and elder-housing industries who routinely rape Medicare with overcharges.  I guess my point is that "leeches" and "cost centers" upon the system will always be a problem, which auditing and control are always charged to stop.

>>76
when was the last time your ghettos spilled over with rage and tens of thousands of cars were set on fire?

When those riots were going on, I asked my Paris friend how she felt about the situation...  she told me this was just the first time the american news had picked up on it.  It happens ALL the time, not that big, but there's a sustained civil war going on in France between the police and those ghettos.  Over 2,400 police officers wounded every year.  Yet somehow, France still manages to provide excellent health care to everyone and be ranked #1 in health care in the whole of the world, with a higher productivity rating than the united states of fail.

>>74
CAN = do the same fucking thing that less prosperous nations do with their health care system, with burdens and drains and sorrows all their own.

MUST = overcome this bullshit cowboy pioneer mentality from days of settlers and gunfights.  No longer can all the societal ills of the day be smothered up from the promised riches of just pushing a little further West.  You're no longer a settler people, you're a settled people, and it's time to grow up, sit down, and try to figure out how to make this whole "nation" thing work.

Some would call that socialism.  I call it necessity.

#78, #76's point was a bit more hidden.  He just doesn't want to provide "free" healthcare for the niggers he so despises that just cramming their Black asses into ghettos is insufficient to what he really wants to do with them.  Since a lot of racism in America is dressed up in nicer phrasing, he couldn't actually say that, however.

I'm darned curious, however:  are the ghettos in France large users of healthcare?  You might be able to tell from hospitals.  With exceptions, hospitals in America tend to be much nicer for White and wealthy folk, and are either missing or shitty in the Black/poor areas.  Some overlap with urban areas masks this trend.  What real healthcare is provided in the French ghettos (which from the reports are filled with Algerians and Pakistanis and other North African and Middle Eastern second-class citizens)?

Furthermore, #78, I get the feeling that you just didn't HEAR ME.  Hypercapitalists are in firm control of the USA and there's no real way to dislodge their vicious hold upon the national mechanism without resorting to outright civil war.  Americans are far too complacent with (even accepting of) the Imperial Model to ever fight back, regardless of how armed they are.  There's still plenty of food, gasoline, electricity and entertainments of all kinds.  We have a good 50 years of distraction before enough millions of Americans finally wake up poor, half-dead or full-dead, before Americans finally snap and start the shooting in earnest.

Since the Jews and WASPs with all the money have nearly complete control of the nation, there's not going to be any of your CAN/MUST wishful-thinking bullshit.  What WILL happen is all of my CAN/MUST plans.  Your insurance company is not going to cover your pre-existing condition, guy.  Michael Moore can vomit up 1 "Sicko" movie each year and that's not going to change.

What MUST change is that you either change your lifestyle or you fucking die.  If you don't fucking learn, then your death will cause your brother to learn; if HE doesn't learn, then HIS death will be a lesson for somebody else.  We've about 300 million people in the USA ... we can lose a few tens of millions to an UNhealthcare industry without people causing any significant fuss.

There's no getting around it ... and there's no great Cultural Revolution waiting in the wings to make your fairy-tale wishes become reality.