Never said it was. Infact, I said it wasn't, and considering the US government is the single biggest spender in healthcare... what does that tell you? That the federal government is NOT efficient at healthcare.
I would argue that this means that a private health care sytem is inherently inefficient, as evidenced by the much lower costs in all other countries using public health care systems.
I'd also argue that health care in the US is far poorer on a population level. See: infant mortality rate, for example.
So again, I ask, why would we want to give them MORE money to waste on inefficiency?
I guess my counterpoint would be, why defend the status quo, and continue a system that's wasteful, inefficient and performs poorly, if you're concerned about fiscal responsibility?
Restricted? No, not at all. But I WOULD argue that, the US being the 3rd most populous country in the world, that individual rights and choices and the fighting for them, ARE more bound in to our history and ingrained in our individual persona than any other country.
Your argument is "The US is populous, therefore individualism and fighting for personal liberty is more engrained in the popular culture than in other less populous countries?".
Are you suggesting that countries with a larger population are ultimately more individualistic? Because China would seem to be a glaring exception to that idea. Why would you think that population size and tendency towards invidualism would be linked?
Never said you weren't allowed, but you yourself admitted your knowledge on the typical American mindset is lacking.
Sure. But my point, I guess, is that I don't think I need to have lived in the US, to have an opinion about the relative merits of public versus private healthcare, any more than you have to have lived in a country with a public system to have a valid opinion about the same question.
I would suggest that both our arguments should stand or fall on the basis of the logic and reasoning they contain, rather than where the two of us happen to have lived.
If your point is that, through living in the states, you feel you have a better idea on what the average American believes, I'll happily concede that point. I don't think I was ever arguing it.
If you have some insights into why people don't want a cheaper public delivery system similar to that of virtually any other industrial nation, I'd love to hear it. But I can't buy simplistic jingoistic explanations like "American's love freedom more than anywhere else in the world", because I don't believe that's true.
You're arguing something totally different from I. You're arguing the abolishment of private healthcare for a public healthcare.
I would suggest that this is the superior model, based on how it performs in other countries.
I'm arguing against a federally run and funded healthcare that is unconstitutional. Unlike the typical European and their founding documents, the Constitution IS one of our biggest focal points in the US.
My understanding, simplistic though it may be, is that the constitution is a living, breathing document, that is ammended and reinterpreted and changes over time with society. There were times when segregation was considered acceptable, or the denial of universal suffrage.
It seems like whether proposed changes are constitutional is being hotly debated in the supreme court right now. I'm not sure that I understand enough about constitutional law or the US constitution in particular to make an intelligent argument about whether or not the proposed legislation is constitutional.
I'm not, at my deepest point, against publicly provided healthcare. I AM against the federal government doing it.
Would you be happier if each individual state provided a universal system? Just wondering.
Nope, not at all. Overtaxed because programs we don't want funded are being funded, funded inefficiently, and as such, more taxes are taken to fund the unwanted programs. Perpetual cycle.
But you understand that the rate of taxation in the US is very low in comparison to other countries, right? I'm not making that up, there's a factual basis to it.
If your argument is "Sure, but that's irrelevant, what's important is that we don't want to pay the level of taxation we currently do", then I can't argue against that.
Which programs do you feel are being funded inefficiently and why?
The reason why they aren't being funded properly is too many hands in the pot. Too many programs begging for money.
But to continue the pot analogy, if you used a bigger pot, do you think that more of these programs would be working functionally?
It's just something I've noticed, that living in some places with higher tax rates, people are more satisfied with the programs offered, and they seem to work better. If you starve a program of funding, it gets to a point where it can't fulfill its role any more. Have you considered that this might be happening here?
Isn't there a particular problem when you take a function that's normally federally run, and "outsource" it to a large mass of private companies? If you compare the cost expenditure in the US and elsewhere, it seems that you're able to provide good care for the very wealthy, but not for a lot of people with lower incomes. You also have a problem where people with previous medical problems either pay very high rates, or can't receive insurance if there's a lapse in their coverage.
These problems don't exist in a public system. In a public system, if you're sick, you get treatment allocated. No one would say, "Well, sorry, you're a minimum wage worker, and you haven't paid into a corporate insurance scheme, we're going to have to bankrupt you to do this surgery". This seems like a much more efficient use of resources --- instead of focusing on a wealthy elite, and very providing a second tier of care for people with middle incomes, and no care for lower income folks, it just gets spread around evenly.
Greece ring a bell? Yeah, they're handling finances so well, and as such, have dragged the rest of Europe with them dangerously close to another meltdown, which in turn will bring down the rest of the world.
I'm not going to argue that the Greeks aren't in a lot of trouble. They are. They've had a lot of corruption, they're overleveraged, and their economy has tanked. And now the rest of the EU is forcing them into much-needed austerity measures to try and preserve the Euro. And these are further crushing any hope of economic recovery. Obviously there's a lot of concern about whether other countries are going to end up needing economic support, because while the Eurozone can bail out Greece, it's not going to be able to provide the same support to a large country like Italy.
But that's not an issue that's caused by health spending, or the prevalence of public health systems in Europe. That's what happens when you have a common currency, and individual member states can't deflate a regional currency to make their exports more competitive, and allow them to better manage their debts. It's also a problem that stems from a comparatively weak and risky country like Greece receiving a near-endless supply of money at lower interest rates because the risk of it's default was judged (incorrectly) as minimal for a long period of time based on the strength of the other Eurozone member states's economies.
A collapse of the Eurozone would be a disaster, but just because the Greek economy has imploded, I don't think it should be assumed that other Eurozone member states such as France or Germany are particularly weak.
I'm against people in poverty having a sport scar then begging for food stamps and government assistance. That needs to be fixed.
While a Eurozone collapse would be catastropic for everyone, the healthcare costs in Europe are much lower than in the US. That's not the specific problem here. Not to mention there's other European states that aren't part of the Eurozone, e.g. Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, that are doing very well.
I think you can also look at the strength of the Canadian economy right now. There's another country, very similar to the US, with universal health care that seems to be surviving the current crises very well.
However, myself, being a person who pays more than my fair share of taxes, having no debt, saving money, paying my expenses on my own, working and contributing to society... I and only I get to choose where the rest of my money goes. No one is subsidizing my life. Same cannot be said for many.
Yes, I am sure. Because you don't live in the US to partake in such debates. The bank bailout debate was not only a daily occurrence back 4 years ago, but still happens to this day. Guess what? I refuse to bank with any company that took part in the bailout.
I respect your consistency.
This is going off on a complete tangent, but as someone who's fairly socialist, and obviously comes from a different philosophy than you, I'm still really concerned about that. I have some good friends in the UK, and I've watched their government pay out huge amounts of corporate welfare, and then turn around, institute massive tuition hikes, cut all sorts of social programs, restructure the healthcare system again, devalue the crap out of their currency, and even consider privatising the road system to pay for it. It seems like many on the right aren't as angry when common resources are directed towards finance or military projects. The average person there has got a lot poorer, has to deal with rising costs, and is receiving a lot less social services, and yet the banking industry seems to be turning a healthy profit again.
