a new new take on healthcare debate

[danielost]

i would like everyone to take the oppisite position on what they normally do in the healthcare debate.

so if you for it on here your against it. if your against it on here your for it.

and yes this is a normal debate tactic. even if i never took debate i know that much about it.

this should be fun and good. and please no personal attacks. that isn't a normal debate tactic.

health care is good for the country because everyone will be the same and have the same basic health care and the rich will pay for it.

[The Silver Thong]

Obama sucks, healthcare is crap, screw the people who can't afford it, I can't stand paying for other peoples health, you have to wait 40 years in Canada to get a broken finger fixed, goverment can't do crap right ummm I no theres more but thats a start LOL

[+Sherapy]

I am happy with my health care and have no need of a public option, but as a citizen I can see that so many don't have it and deserve it and we need some sort of UHC system in place... .. so I am for doing my part....

From the lips of a dear Mormon friend of mine last night when I asked her , her thoughts on universal health care....

[Guardsman Bass]

I've wheeled out Bizarro-Guardsman Bass once before, on the issue of Israel and Palestine, but there's no reason why he can't be wheeled out again. So, without further ado,

On Health Care

We are rapidly approaching the 60th anniversary of Harry Truman's first call for health care reform. Yet in that time, the major arguments have not changed: is health care a right, a privilege, a duty, or what? While this may seem callous, I would argue that it is, ultimately, not an obligation of the state to ensure that individuals are guaranteed health care coverage and access.

The foundation of American law, rights, and responsibilities is fundamentally negative in nature. Our property rights are not promoted - they are defended against others who might intrude upon them. Our military does not exist, contrary to some claims, to promote american welfare abroad - it is to deter potential enemy invasions and attacks. The police do not exist to promote the welfare of the individual - they exist to deter assaults upon the individual by others. Fundamentally, the key of these core responsibilities - and the core of states for all of history - is protection, not "provision". Even certain degrees of food assistance, while they seem to be "provision", are actually "prevention", because human beings require a certain amount of calories to survive, which is unavoidable regardless of their actions.

Health care as a "right" not only violates the standard of "protection", it illustrates the problem with a "right" that involves "provision". There is no real limit to it - is the state required to provide all emergency care? Preventive care? Pain relief? "Comfort relief"? This is an impossible burden upon any people and government, and one which violates the historical role of states. It is utterly unrealistic, and just as dangerously, casts doubt upon the concept of "rights".

While I do not dispute the importance in dealing with health care issues - although I fundamentally think the problem is cost rather than access - they are not a role for the state. To pretend it is such is to violate long-standing American and even world views on the role of the state in American welfare.

Edited October 21, 2009 by Guardsman Bass

[Guardsman Bass]

What the hell - I feel like another one:

Advocates for universal health care - a lie in of itself, since what they are usually arguing for is universal health care coverage, which is not at all the same thing - tend to argue that other successful systems, such as the Canadian, French, and German systems, can simply be transplanted on to American soil like so much potted plants. But governmental systems are not buildings, with a physical framework that could be re-assembled on any convenient piece of land. They are highly dependent on underlying cultural assumptions and beliefs within the people who make up these institutions, and UHC activists tend to ignore this important point in their arguments.

Take the Canadian system, for example. It relies on a governmental base that would not be unfamiliar to Americans, in that it is actually the provinces that administer the system. The federal government offers funding in exchange for compliance with federal rules of health care - much in the same way that Medicaid operates in the US. As in the US, Canadian provinces could theoretically reject the funding and reject UHC. It appears to be an eminently possible alternative to the American system.

Or is it? There is much more than meets the eye, as can be seen in one particular facet of the system - the ban on duplicate private insurance coverage for services covered by the governmental plans. This was put in place to prevent "queuing" by wealth, and to give the rich a stake in keeping the system at top notch. It plays a fundamental role in ensuring that the system segregates on the basis of perceived "need" rather than "income", and is also the source of the system's waiting lines.

It is also completely impossible in the United States. Why? Because Canada, at its root, has some different cultural bedrock. As would be expected from its longer duration under the British empire, it shares that mother country's greater tendency towards collectivism, shown in higher unionization rates and programs such as above. In contrast, America is much more individualistic, reflecting our ideals of market success, and our longer independence from the British Empire. What would be possible in Canada would be impossible in the US, and because of that, the Canadian system would be fundamentally impossible - it would rapidly degenerate into a combination of waiting lines for the poor and top treatment for the rich, the problems the UHC reformers despise and want to eliminate in the first place.

If a solution to the health care problem is to emerge, it must come wholly from American roots, reflecting our greater tendencies towards individual freedom, faith in the free market, and opposition to both extensive government and "patronage" government (namely government that distributes assistance). To do otherwise is to build a house upon the sand.

[+Sherapy]

What the hell - I feel like another one:

GB I think he needs to go back in the basement..tee hee..

[danielost]

remember please debate from the pov of the other side.

[preacherman76]

Trying...............mmmm........sorry I just cant.