SOMEONE'S gonna need health care

[Eidolon Faer]

Honestly?

The pregnant women are the big cost issue, as well as being the choice on moral grounds. Drug addicts, over the course of their lives (unless they catch AIDS) probably aren't any more expensive than anyone else regarding Health Care costs overall.

[Fallakin Kuvari]

They're still a drain on society as a whole. I'm not looking at them as costing more on medical coverage because I'm sure there are others out there that cost more.

[Harlowe]

Addiction is a tricky thing, one rehab visit seldom ever works and honestly they are most likely going to self-destruct before they end up burdening the system with health care costs.

[Fallakin Kuvari]

That seems true.

I guess ideologically I'd just like to see more people cleaned up than just allowing them to continue to be addicted to drugs.

[Harlowe]

Some parts from a recent article by Bill Maher I thought was amusing and apropos..

And before I go about demonstrating how, sadly, easy it is to prove the dumbness dragging down our country, let me just say that ignorance has life and death consequences. On the eve of the Iraq War, 69% of Americans thought Saddam Hussein was personally involved in 9/11. Four years later, 34% still did. Or take the health care debate we're presently having: members of Congress have recessed now so they can go home and "listen to their constituents." An urge they should resist because their constituents don't know anything. At a recent town-hall meeting in South Carolina, a man stood up and told his Congressman to "keep your government hands off my Medicare," which is kind of like driving cross country to protest highways.

I'm the bad guy for saying it's a stupid country, yet polls show that a majority of Americans cannot name a single branch of government, or explain what the Bill of Rights is. 24% could not name the country America fought in the Revolutionary War. More than two-thirds of Americans don't know what's in Roe v. Wade. Two-thirds don't know what the Food and Drug Administration does. Some of this stuff you should be able to pick up simply by being alive.

We should forget town halls, and replace them with study halls. There's a lot of populist anger directed towards Washington, but you know who concerned citizens should be most angry at? Their fellow citizens. "Inside the beltway" thinking may be wrong, but at least it's thinking, which is more than you can say for what's going on outside the beltway.

And if you want to call me an elitist for this, I say thank you. Yes, I want decisions made by an elite group of people who know what they're talking about. That means Obama budget director Peter Orszag, not Sarah Palin.

Which is the way our founding fathers wanted it. James Madison wrote that "pure democracy" doesn't work because "there is nothing to check... an obnoxious individual." Then, in the margins, he doodled a picture of Joe the Plumber.

Until we admit there are things we don't know, we can't even start asking the questions to find out. Until we admit that America can make a mistake, we can't stop the next one. A smart guy named Chesterton once said: "My country, right or wrong is a thing no patriot would ever think of saying... It is like saying 'My mother, drunk or sober.'" To which most Americans would respond: "Are you calling my mother a drunk?"

[Select]

Harlowe, where's the article at? I liked what I read.

[Lurker]

New Rule: Smart President ≠ Smart Country

[Fallakin Kuvari]

Seems like a common sense headline.

[Embar Angylwrath]

And THIS is something that needs to be in the bill if it's going to work, but it's going to be a hard sell to liberals on idealogical grounds. The new insurance system needs to have a way to address this from a behavior-of-patients standpoint.

I can get behind a penalty to encourage better use of health care from a patient standpoint, but I don't think it should be removal from the system. Steadily increasing fines maybe. Unless we're going to turn the uninsured away from the ER, removing people from the system for bad behavior would only compound the problem.

I don't recall that being your stance for obese people, which as a group account for a very large percentage of healthcare costs.

[Harlowe]

We have a 20-30% obesity rate in the US, you have to have a better option than not insuring them or just financially punishing them. I totally agree there are only so many lengths we can go to help people help themselves, but a cavalier attitude about it isn't going to fix. It's a huge issue that has to be addressed from many angles.

I like how some insurance companies along with employers try to be part of the solution. My community center membership is reimbursed almost completely by my healthcare plan if I go there 3 times a week. Our workplace allows it's employees to take 1 1/2 hour lunches if you come in 30 min's early (or leave 30 min's later) to work out, so they can do it over their lunch break. I think at least half our company takes advantage of this and they honestly are working out. I see them running or biking around the lake when I am, I see many of them in the same club over lunch (especially in the Winter).

I like win-win solutions like this. No one is losing anything, other than their fat asses. =)

[Lurker]

I don't recall that being your stance for obese people, which as a group account for a very large percentage of healthcare costs.

It was exactly my stance. I said I wasn't opposed to using tax policy to encourage desireable behavior.

I was not in favor of using it as a funding source for health reform. I was also opposed your idea of charging obese people higher insurance premiums if their lifestyle was the cause; an idea that was completely unworkable since most people get their insurance through their employer or through the Government. We don't want to give employers a disincentive to hiring someone because of their weight, and we don't want the Government tracking lifestyles so they can adjust Medicare deductions.

Harlowe highlights a much better solution if the goal is to help people lead healthier lives. That wasn't your goal, though. You wanted to set up an intrusive and complicated system of tracking and charging people based on lifestyle (odd for someone who doesn't even want his health records stored electronically) to fund reform just so you could avoid paying taxes you admit you aren't paying anyways.

[Harlowe]

If a person isn't really paying their fair share in taxes, it seems silly they should be bitching about how their non-existent tax dollars are being spent.

They are part of the problem actually.

[Select]

My concern with funding abortions for anything other than the mother's life at risk, would increase the abortion rate or some might get more cavalier about their birth control method and use abortion as their back up.

That's just parroting paranoia that the anti-choicers try to spread. Come on, Harlowe, you're more logical and intelligent than that.
That's not how it works, that wouldn't happen, and hasn't happened when clinics have been given more funding. When clinics get more funding, they tend to do more BC education in the local community which reduces the rate of pregnancy and abortion overall. If you paid for someone to go to a clinic and get an abortion, I can't see the results being much different than when clinics get more funding. The majority of people getting abortions have never been so irresponsible as to use it like you fear.

[Eidolon Faer]

I said this was going to be a sticky, complicated issue.

Frankly, whatever mechanisms we select for 'encouraging' certain behaviors in patients are either going to be so weak as to be pointless, or they're going to be a tool that every single-issue do-gooder nutbag is going to think is just the *perfect* thing to fix their own private Idaho.

First it's crack babies. Then obesity. Then smoking. Then drinking. Then non-monogamous sex, anal intercourse, circumcision, television, you name it. It becomes The Church Lady's wet dream and the libertarian's worst nightmare.

Isn't that special.

[Eidolon Faer]

And yes...the "I want an abortion, so all I gotta do is get high on crack the night before my prenatal exam and the Gub'ment pays all expenses" is definitely a way to game the system.

One that frankly appalls me, but I suppose no amount of crazy ought to shock me by now.

[Harlowe]

I do think that if something is easy to get, people will abuse it. Maybe subsidized, but man, I just don't want to see it become as easy to get as government cheese in the 90's.

[Fobbon Lazyfoot]

I've read most the thread, and tried to keep up on the news, but what keeps bothering me is this: why is it so difficult for us to go about solving the healthcare problem when we (America) are supposedly the only first world nation without nationalized, universal healthcare?

I'm not trying to make a point, I really just can't figure it out.

As far as the crack baby thing... I think having children should require an application and permit. Don't have a permit? Mandatory birth control. You have no business having children if you can't take care of them, and I think one could argue that a child's (unborn or born) right to proper parental care superceeds the reproductive rights of the individual parents. Would cut down the cost of things like social services and education as well, I'd imagine.

[Partha]

I've read most the thread, and tried to keep up on the news, but what keeps bothering me is this: why is it so difficult for us to go about solving the healthcare problem when we (America) are supposedly the only first world nation without nationalized, universal healthcare?

I'm not trying to make a point, I really just can't figure it out.

Two reasons. One is American exceptionalism. This has been promulgated so long in this country that it's become a basic tenet. You can find people who will justify ANY action taken by America, regardless of how poor the outcome. Hell, you'll even see it on this board from time to time. The fact that the rest of the world has wised up means less than nothing to them, and in fact increases the hostility to it.

The second is that government costs. I'm sure you've seen a ton of people (and on this board as well) who, when given a problem, will support virtually any solution that does not affect their perceived tax rate, regardless of outcome or the reality of their tax situation in regards to what's proposed. They'll also reject any solution that threatens that. Put those two together and you've got a plethora of stupid on the issue.

As far as the crack baby thing... I think having children should require an application and permit. Don't have a permit? Mandatory birth control. You have no business having children if you can't take care of them, and I think one could argue that a child's (unborn or born) right to proper parental care superceeds the reproductive rights of the individual parents. Would cut down the cost of things like social services and education as well, I'd imagine.

That's monstrous. You're equally right to claim that forced euthanasia a la Logan's Run will cut down on costs involving the elderly, too.

No, abortions should be a private matter handled by private insurance, since getting pregnant is an elective procedure. The only time it should be publicly funded is in cases where it would endanger the life of the mother, incest, and rape.

[Fallakin Kuvari]

And you could almost bet that rape claims would skyrocket, in that case... just another way to game the system.

[Fobbon Lazyfoot]

That's monstrous. You're equally right to claim that forced euthanasia a la Logan's Run will cut down on costs involving the elderly, too.

No, I'd be equally right to claim that having less babies would reduce the cost of the elderly, because theres less fucking people. I don't see where I was talking about killing babies. I also didn't get the Logan's Run reference. Although, now that you mention it, babies would make a rather delicious, nourishing soup - perhaps that's the solution?