Why people are afraid of universal health care

[Henry-Finland]

Steve_Bank wrote:
If public libraries had never existed, and someone proposed creating today one for the public good, more than half of the politicians would shout: "Communism! This is the path to a totalitarian state! Think of the poor authors! And the tax burden for the people!"

Fortunately, Benjamin Franklin founded the first public library in 1731.

Sorry, this was meant to be like this The sentence of Steve_Bank was lost:

Steve_Bank wrote:
"Conservatives would say socialized medicine would lead to the end of free market economics and personal freedom of choice."

If public libraries had never existed, and someone proposed creating today one for the public good, more than half of the politicians would shout: "Communism! This is the path to a totalitarian state! Think of the poor authors! And the tax burden for the people!"
Fortunately, Benjamin Franklin founded the first public library in 1731.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Under UHC, no provider is out of plan, because there's only one plan, and everyone's in it.

I must be missing the boat somehow. I chose my particular advantage plan because it lets me go virtually anywhere. Sure there are costs and copays but access is certainly not a problem. I'm even covered out of country as should be. Yes, I'm healthy with no family histories of chronic diseases - knock on wood - but I don't get what the complaints are about advantage plans. Maybe the shit will eventually hit the fan but with millions of people using these things they seem to be working. Would I like to see UHC so that all the phony bullshit is gone? Yes. But that's not ever going to happen in the U.S.

 

[Henry-Finland]

Why are people poor?

Think outside the house where the famous box is.

 

[Elixir]

The problem comes from the stuff you can't assess as well--access to providers and the like.

Zackly.
The challenge of bringing together the best hardware and software, with the best medical specialists in an array of fields, and delivering it all to people including those in rural areas … I dunno. Quite daunting. Air medical transport is a thriving institution around here, despite the fact that the local hospital is geared up real good. .

Under UHC, no provider is out of plan, because there's only one plan, and everyone's in it.

That’s not a problem. Nobody around here is “out of plan”. It’s just that there’s nobody around here.

 

[Toni]

FFS: Mead was describing how societies begin: by caring for those who cannot care for themselves. Someone survived a broken femur, life treating injury today, without proper care. An individual who broke a femur could not have burned, fished or gathered for themselves for weeks. They would have died of thirst and starvation without help. Someone survived, ergo, they were helped by another human(oid).

But go ahead and be as pissy as you’d like. Feeding the hungry who cannot feed themselves is something a civilized society does. No one deserves to be beaten.

 

[aupmanyav]

List Of Government Health Schemes In India | An Overview

This article breaks down India's key government health schemes, including what each one offers and who is eligible for them. Learn more about how to take advantage of these programs.

www.eka.care

19 Types Of Government Health Insurance Schemes In India

What is a Government Health Insurance Scheme? A government health insurance scheme is simply a medical policy curated by the Government of India that insures you or your family from bearing the heavy cost of healthcare. However, many people in India are not even aware that they have multiple opti

www.forbes.com

Indians do not have to worry about insurance. People over 60 are treated free. Others have govt. subsidy to the extent of USD 6,000 (enough for most cases). Medicines are provided free, tests are done free. But there is one problem, numbers -1,455 million. There is a huge rush in the hospitals and the wait in India's heat is exasperating.

 

[Bomb#20]

I was hungry this morning. The cost of providing me breakfast should have been shared by the community.

If you lack the means of feeding yourself, it should be.

But I do not lack the means of feeding myself. Do you have any other grounds to think the cost of providing me breakfast should have been shared by the community?
... this is not a debate about whether the cost of providing health care to poor people who can't afford it should be shared by the community. It's a debate about whether the cost of providing health care to people who can afford it should also be shared by the community anyway even though we're perfectly capable of paying the doctor or a private cost-pooler ourselves. It's a debate about the U.S. model vs. the British model. The U.S. has long socialized the cost of care for the impoverished; it's called "Medicaid". ...

No, I think people should provide for necessities for themselves if they can.

Bingo. That's a perfectly reasonable position to take, and since bilby's meme implies it's wrong on purely metaphysical grounds, bilby's meme is perfectly unreasonable.

I hate to break it to you but unless you are extremely wealthy, if you have a very serious health condition and require expensive treatment, you are not rich enough to afford it on your own. ... I never looked at the statements at for his more recent, unrelated surgeries but they certainly must have been $500K in total. ...

Unless you are extremely wealthy, you are not rich enough to buy a new house if your current house burns down. This is not generally regarded as a good reason to require housing to be supplied to middle-income people at the expense of society as a whole. Instead, such people provide that necessity for themselves, because they can, by renting or by taking out mortgages. And since they are not rich enough to buy a new house if their current house burns down, they provide for themselves by making a deal with someone richer, who will promise to buy them a new house if theirs burns down, in exchange for a payment large enough to make the gamble an actuarially sound business decision for him. Unpredictable high cost low probability scenarios are not an obstacle to people providing necessities for themselves without forcing the cost onto society as a whole, if they can.

 

[gmbteach]

Needing to eat is neither an indulgence nor an offence, but a misfortune. So if the above quote attributed* to Bevan were valid reasoning then it would imply agriculture should be socialized food should be provided to hungry people

FTFY.

I was hungry this morning. The cost of providing me breakfast should have been shared by the community.

If you lack the means of feeding yourself, it should be.

But I do not lack the means of feeding myself. Do you have any other grounds to think the cost of providing me breakfast should have been shared by the community?

I was hungry this morning. The cost of providing me breakfast should have been shared by the community.

ummm... soup kitchen? Food banks? DUH!

Soup kitchens and food banks have better uses for their limited resources than providing breakfast to a rich guy like me. DUH!

What appears to have escaped you two, though probably not bilby, is that this is not a debate about whether the cost of providing health care to poor people who can't afford it should be shared by the community. It's a debate about whether the cost of providing health care to people who can afford it should also be shared by the community anyway even though we're perfectly capable of paying the doctor or a private cost-pooler ourselves. It's a debate about the U.S. model vs. the British model. The U.S. has long socialized the cost of care for the impoverished; it's called "Medicaid". (The U.S. even abolished private medical insurance, back in 2010 -- although what we have instead is still labeled "insurance", it stopped being the real thing when the ACA outlawed exclusion of preexisting conditions.)

The point of Marshall's philosophical claim Bilby quoted upthread (and of similar claims Bevan actually made*) was never that poor people should get their care paid for by the rest of us, but rather that "no element of commercialism should enter between doctor and patient".

My point is that that's an idiotic way to decide public policy. Whether socialized care of the poor and/or socialized feeding of the poor is better done by socializing the whole system from top to bottom, or instead by providing subsidies and directed attention to the poor while leaving those capable of fending for ourselves to do so, is a complicated technical question with costs and benefits in both directions to be traded off. Any intelligent attempt to answer it for health care needs to focus on the problems specific to health care, not on philosophical nonsense that doesn't know the difference between a medical clinic and a kitchen.

(* For instance, "The essence of a satisfactory health service is that the rich and the poor are treated alike, that poverty is not a disability, and wealth is not advantaged.")

So why shouldn’t the wealthy assist those less fortunate?

Bilby and I are ion a reasonable income, but we still help those less fortunate than us - particularly in my job as a teacher. I buy fruit for brain break, and so many pencils ... just so my kids can learn.

Only arrogant selfish people think that the poor shouldn’t receive assistance.

Hey, if I can afford to go to a better dr for surgery through private health insurance, sure.. my arugument is that that same surgeon should, and mostly would, offer their services to someone not insured. The only difference, IMO, is the use of private to ‘jump the queue’ for non essential life saving surgery.

Case in point, a lady at school and I are the same age. We both have horrible knees….. she waited a year for a knee replacement because she went public. It was deemed category three with means get to it within a year. I needed knee surgery and it was was done within a few weeks. I still didn’t pay much (as per above), which is how insurance is supposed to work.

The US system sucks! Plain and simple. Health care should be for everyone. Simple.

Holy mother of god! Where the bejesus do you imagine you saw me say the wealthy shouldn't assist those less fortunate? Where the bejesus do you imagine you saw me say the poor shouldn’t receive assistance? Where the bejesus do you imagine you saw me say the US system doesn't suck? Where the bejesus do you imagine you saw me say health care shouldn't be for everyone? It's like you didn't even bother to read my post before you hit "Reply" and quoted it back to me and then appended a "reply" that had jack squat to do with anything you'd quoted.

Some time between when I was a kid and now, a lot of U.S. schools gave up phonics and switched to a newly fashionable theory called "whole language", wherein they tried to teach kids to read by telling them to just guess words they didn't recognize straight off and carry on reading, instead of sounding them out and then looking them up or asking the teacher if they still didn't know the word. This practice has the entirely predictable result that the kids don't learn new words by reading them and so never acquire reading vocabularies any larger than their oral vocabularies. One of my nieces was taught this way; listening to her try to read aloud was painful. That's a metaphor for your post -- it reads like you didn't already recognize the line of argument you were seeing, and rather than follow the words and try to understand, or ask me to explain further, you just guessed which argument it was from among those you were already familiar with, and replied to what you imagined I meant instead of replying to what you saw me say. Please do not impute views to me that I haven't expressed.

Teacher here, so let’s a leave the teaching reference alone.

I found it a bit shocking that a teacher would display such poor reading comprehension.

Your quote:
I was hungry this morning. The cost of providing me breakfast should have been shared by the community.

I think you picked up on the sarcasm, but just in case, I was pointing out to bilby that my hunger is a stupid reason to think society should pay for my breakfast.

My response was about soup kitchens - aka the community providing food for less fortunate.

That was your first error -- soup kitchens were not on point. You appear to have seen me indicate that I don't think society should buy me breakfast and illogically jumped to the conclusion that I don't think society should buy anyone breakfast. That's the Hasty Generalization Fallacy. Why did you do that?

Your quote (Bilby’s editing included because you are getting me at the end of a very hard very long week so I am leaving it there - and yes I get the irony of the fact that me typing the explanation is propbsblyblonger than editing the quote but hey.. Sue me)
Needing to eat is neither an indulgence nor an offence, but a misfortune. So if the above quote attributed* to Bevan were valid reasoning then it would imply agriculture should be socialize
So I refer to the soup kitchen again. Why shouldn’t those less fortunate be assisted by those than can?

Good grief! Why shouldn't your wife not be beaten?!? Your question assumes facts not in evidence!

I pointed out your mistake. You doubled down on it. So I pointed it out again. And here you are, tripling down on it. Stop asking "Why shouldn’t those less fortunate be assisted by those than can?" until you find somebody who implies those less fortunate shouldn't be assisted by those that can! This is not rocket science.

Do you seriously believe socializing agriculture is the only way a society can have soup kitchens? No? Then how the bejesus do you convince yourself my opposition to socializing agriculture is a good reason for you to conclude I'm against soup kitchens? What the hell? The Soviets socialized agriculture and caused a famine. The PRC socialized agriculture and caused a famine. North Korea socialized agriculture and caused a famine. The Khmer Rouge socialized agriculture and caused a famine. The US did not socialize agriculture, did not cause a famine, and set up soup kitchens!.

You APPEAR (don’t really want to be sued) to not care that there are those less fortunate than you who need food and medical assistance….

Show your goddamn work! No, I bloody well do not APPEAR to not care that there are those less fortunate than you who need food and medical assistance. That is a whole-cloth figment of your imagination. I did not give any such appearance out; your opinion is something your brain did to itself.

The quote in the meme bilby posted expressed the sentiment that something being neither an indulgence nor an offence, but a misfortune, was a good reason for society to pay for filling everyone's need of that thing, not just a good reason for society to pay for filling poor people's need of that thing. So I offered myself as a counterexample, a person whom there is no good reason for society to subsidize, because I'm not poor.

Would you walk past a nun having a heart attack?

Stop making groundless insinuations.

IMO medical assistance is akin to food and shelter - necessities of life.

I like this quote,, and I think it sums up why UHC is needed….

Mead said that the first sign of civilization in an ancient culture was a femur (thighbone) that had been broken and then healed. Mead explained that in the animal kingdom, if you break your leg, you die. You cannot run from danger, get to the river for a drink or hunt for food.

Well, in the first place, Mead was evidently not an evolutionary biologist. The ability of bones to heal themselves from breaks is not something that animals spent five hundred million years evolving without consequently surviving, just in order to preadapt their human descendants for the day when we'd invent civilization and finally get some payoff from all their investment.

Second, and more to the point, why the bejesus would you assume UHC being needed is a good reason to think somebody's argument for the NHS must have been valid? It's perfectly possible to make health care universal with a mixed public/private system. Here you are, over and over, seeing me point out that a pro-NHS argument is illogical, and apparently fervently believing you saw me denounce Medicaid.

Every time you lecture me about helping the poor, you are falsely and groundlessly insinuating that I need a lecture on helping the poor. Every time you do that I will have good reason to lecture you about improving your reading comprehension.

You made remarks that in the context of what I was reading sounded the way I interpreted them. I understand that you don’t need assistance, and so don’t want it. Fair enough. You don’t need to take it. But would you be willing to contribute to a system where everyone has access to the assistance they need? That’s what we do here in Australia. Those that need it can access it, and those than can pay, don’t access it. Does that make sense?

 

[gmbteach]

I was hungry this morning. The cost of providing me breakfast should have been shared by the community.

If you lack the means of feeding yourself, it should be.

But I do not lack the means of feeding myself. Do you have any other grounds to think the cost of providing me breakfast should have been shared by the community?
... this is not a debate about whether the cost of providing health care to poor people who can't afford it should be shared by the community. It's a debate about whether the cost of providing health care to people who can afford it should also be shared by the community anyway even though we're perfectly capable of paying the doctor or a private cost-pooler ourselves. It's a debate about the U.S. model vs. the British model. The U.S. has long socialized the cost of care for the impoverished; it's called "Medicaid". ...

No, I think people should provide for necessities for themselves if they can.

Bingo. That's a perfectly reasonable position to take, and since bilby's meme implies it's wrong on purely metaphysical grounds, bilby's meme is perfectly unreasonable.

I hate to break it to you but unless you are extremely wealthy, if you have a very serious health condition and require expensive treatment, you are not rich enough to afford it on your own. ... I never looked at the statements at for his more recent, unrelated surgeries but they certainly must have been $500K in total. ...

Unless you are extremely wealthy, you are not rich enough to buy a new house if your current house burns down. This is not generally regarded as a good reason to require housing to be supplied to middle-income people at the expense of society as a whole. Instead, such people provide that necessity for themselves, because they can, by renting or by taking out mortgages. And since they are not rich enough to buy a new house if their current house burns down, they provide for themselves by making a deal with someone richer, who will promise to buy them a new house if theirs burns down, in exchange for a payment large enough to make the gamble an actuarially sound business decision for him. Unpredictable high cost low probability scenarios are not an obstacle to people providing necessities for themselves without forcing the cost onto society as a whole, if they can.

Hang about. I want to make sure I have comprehended this remark properly by asking a couple of questions.

Is there social housing in the US that people can access to help them get off the street? If so, who pays for it to be built?

We have a massive homeless issue here that our state government is throwing money at to try and fix. They have bought snd refurbished abandoned unit blocks, hotels etc and converted them. They have also built apartment buildings… all to provide reasonably priced accommodation for those that need it.

Fuck! I grew up in one such house. My parents didn’t have anywhere to take us, so the government helped. When my parents could afford it, they bought said house and are there still.

In your opinion, is the government/society providing housing that taxpayers have paid to be built wrong?

 

[Elixir]

is the government/society providing housing that taxpayers have paid to be built wrong (?)

No IMO.
For as long as I can remember, anti-socialist types have looked myopically at the fiscal equation of housing the homeless at public expense, which is overtly unfair, and used it to argue against helping the hapless or the helpless.
In fact with help, some fraction of those individuals will become better (more productive/less dangerous/less likely to be found on your marble doorstep passed out drunk in a pool of vomit) citizens than they would have become without help. The value of such secondary and tertiary effects is impossible to quantify meaningfully, so it is safely ignored by objectivist types. But I believe it exists and is significant.

 

[Toni]

I was hungry this morning. The cost of providing me breakfast should have been shared by the community.

If you lack the means of feeding yourself, it should be.

But I do not lack the means of feeding myself. Do you have any other grounds to think the cost of providing me breakfast should have been shared by the community?
... this is not a debate about whether the cost of providing health care to poor people who can't afford it should be shared by the community. It's a debate about whether the cost of providing health care to people who can afford it should also be shared by the community anyway even though we're perfectly capable of paying the doctor or a private cost-pooler ourselves. It's a debate about the U.S. model vs. the British model. The U.S. has long socialized the cost of care for the impoverished; it's called "Medicaid". ...

No, I think people should provide for necessities for themselves if they can.

Bingo. That's a perfectly reasonable position to take, and since bilby's meme implies it's wrong on purely metaphysical grounds, bilby's meme is perfectly unreasonable.

I hate to break it to you but unless you are extremely wealthy, if you have a very serious health condition and require expensive treatment, you are not rich enough to afford it on your own. ... I never looked at the statements at for his more recent, unrelated surgeries but they certainly must have been $500K in total. ...

Unless you are extremely wealthy, you are not rich enough to buy a new house if your current house burns down. This is not generally regarded as a good reason to require housing to be supplied to middle-income people at the expense of society as a whole. Instead, such people provide that necessity for themselves, because they can, by renting or by taking out mortgages. And since they are not rich enough to buy a new house if their current house burns down, they provide for themselves by making a deal with someone richer, who will promise to buy them a new house if theirs burns down, in exchange for a payment large enough to make the gamble an actuarially sound business decision for him. Unpredictable high cost low probability scenarios are not an obstacle to people providing necessities for themselves without forcing the cost onto society as a whole, if they can.

We have home owner’s insurance for the full replacement value of our home plus contents. We are not extremely wealthy. We are US middle class, for our state, verging on the low end of upper middle class but not quite there. By world standards, we’re pretty wealthy. By NYC or LA or Chicago or San Francisco standards, we’re…. Middle class, probably re ting and hoping our rent doesn’t go up.

In fact, we might sell our current home in the next few years. Any other home we purchase would almost certainly be smaller and less updated and cost hundreds of thousands more than our current updated home. Old Victorians in our area are relatively cheap, compared with anything built in the last 50-60 years. So we’d either use savings or get another mortgage, depending.

I realize you think that means depending on someone richer ( insurance company) who is not a person but a business that we pay annual premiums to, just as we do for our vehicles. But your choice of words is disingenuous. I do not know why you are in such a pissy frame of mind but I see no reason to continue to engage with someone who seems to prefer games rather than have honest discourse.

 

[Toni]

Needing to eat is neither an indulgence nor an offence, but a misfortune. So if the above quote attributed* to Bevan were valid reasoning then it would imply agriculture should be socialized food should be provided to hungry people

FTFY.

I was hungry this morning. The cost of providing me breakfast should have been shared by the community.

If you lack the means of feeding yourself, it should be.

But I do not lack the means of feeding myself. Do you have any other grounds to think the cost of providing me breakfast should have been shared by the community?

I was hungry this morning. The cost of providing me breakfast should have been shared by the community.

ummm... soup kitchen? Food banks? DUH!

Soup kitchens and food banks have better uses for their limited resources than providing breakfast to a rich guy like me. DUH!

What appears to have escaped you two, though probably not bilby, is that this is not a debate about whether the cost of providing health care to poor people who can't afford it should be shared by the community. It's a debate about whether the cost of providing health care to people who can afford it should also be shared by the community anyway even though we're perfectly capable of paying the doctor or a private cost-pooler ourselves. It's a debate about the U.S. model vs. the British model. The U.S. has long socialized the cost of care for the impoverished; it's called "Medicaid". (The U.S. even abolished private medical insurance, back in 2010 -- although what we have instead is still labeled "insurance", it stopped being the real thing when the ACA outlawed exclusion of preexisting conditions.)

The point of Marshall's philosophical claim Bilby quoted upthread (and of similar claims Bevan actually made*) was never that poor people should get their care paid for by the rest of us, but rather that "no element of commercialism should enter between doctor and patient".

My point is that that's an idiotic way to decide public policy. Whether socialized care of the poor and/or socialized feeding of the poor is better done by socializing the whole system from top to bottom, or instead by providing subsidies and directed attention to the poor while leaving those capable of fending for ourselves to do so, is a complicated technical question with costs and benefits in both directions to be traded off. Any intelligent attempt to answer it for health care needs to focus on the problems specific to health care, not on philosophical nonsense that doesn't know the difference between a medical clinic and a kitchen.

(* For instance, "The essence of a satisfactory health service is that the rich and the poor are treated alike, that poverty is not a disability, and wealth is not advantaged.")

So why shouldn’t the wealthy assist those less fortunate?

Bilby and I are ion a reasonable income, but we still help those less fortunate than us - particularly in my job as a teacher. I buy fruit for brain break, and so many pencils ... just so my kids can learn.

Only arrogant selfish people think that the poor shouldn’t receive assistance.

Hey, if I can afford to go to a better dr for surgery through private health insurance, sure.. my arugument is that that same surgeon should, and mostly would, offer their services to someone not insured. The only difference, IMO, is the use of private to ‘jump the queue’ for non essential life saving surgery.

Case in point, a lady at school and I are the same age. We both have horrible knees….. she waited a year for a knee replacement because she went public. It was deemed category three with means get to it within a year. I needed knee surgery and it was was done within a few weeks. I still didn’t pay much (as per above), which is how insurance is supposed to work.

The US system sucks! Plain and simple. Health care should be for everyone. Simple.

Holy mother of god! Where the bejesus do you imagine you saw me say the wealthy shouldn't assist those less fortunate? Where the bejesus do you imagine you saw me say the poor shouldn’t receive assistance? Where the bejesus do you imagine you saw me say the US system doesn't suck? Where the bejesus do you imagine you saw me say health care shouldn't be for everyone? It's like you didn't even bother to read my post before you hit "Reply" and quoted it back to me and then appended a "reply" that had jack squat to do with anything you'd quoted.

Some time between when I was a kid and now, a lot of U.S. schools gave up phonics and switched to a newly fashionable theory called "whole language", wherein they tried to teach kids to read by telling them to just guess words they didn't recognize straight off and carry on reading, instead of sounding them out and then looking them up or asking the teacher if they still didn't know the word. This practice has the entirely predictable result that the kids don't learn new words by reading them and so never acquire reading vocabularies any larger than their oral vocabularies. One of my nieces was taught this way; listening to her try to read aloud was painful. That's a metaphor for your post -- it reads like you didn't already recognize the line of argument you were seeing, and rather than follow the words and try to understand, or ask me to explain further, you just guessed which argument it was from among those you were already familiar with, and replied to what you imagined I meant instead of replying to what you saw me say. Please do not impute views to me that I haven't expressed.

Teacher here, so let’s a leave the teaching reference alone.

I found it a bit shocking that a teacher would display such poor reading comprehension.

Your quote:
I was hungry this morning. The cost of providing me breakfast should have been shared by the community.

I think you picked up on the sarcasm, but just in case, I was pointing out to bilby that my hunger is a stupid reason to think society should pay for my breakfast.

My response was about soup kitchens - aka the community providing food for less fortunate.

That was your first error -- soup kitchens were not on point. You appear to have seen me indicate that I don't think society should buy me breakfast and illogically jumped to the conclusion that I don't think society should buy anyone breakfast. That's the Hasty Generalization Fallacy. Why did you do that?

Your quote (Bilby’s editing included because you are getting me at the end of a very hard very long week so I am leaving it there - and yes I get the irony of the fact that me typing the explanation is propbsblyblonger than editing the quote but hey.. Sue me)
Needing to eat is neither an indulgence nor an offence, but a misfortune. So if the above quote attributed* to Bevan were valid reasoning then it would imply agriculture should be socialize
So I refer to the soup kitchen again. Why shouldn’t those less fortunate be assisted by those than can?

Good grief! Why shouldn't your wife not be beaten?!? Your question assumes facts not in evidence!

I pointed out your mistake. You doubled down on it. So I pointed it out again. And here you are, tripling down on it. Stop asking "Why shouldn’t those less fortunate be assisted by those than can?" until you find somebody who implies those less fortunate shouldn't be assisted by those that can! This is not rocket science.

Do you seriously believe socializing agriculture is the only way a society can have soup kitchens? No? Then how the bejesus do you convince yourself my opposition to socializing agriculture is a good reason for you to conclude I'm against soup kitchens? What the hell? The Soviets socialized agriculture and caused a famine. The PRC socialized agriculture and caused a famine. North Korea socialized agriculture and caused a famine. The Khmer Rouge socialized agriculture and caused a famine. The US did not socialize agriculture, did not cause a famine, and set up soup kitchens!.

You APPEAR (don’t really want to be sued) to not care that there are those less fortunate than you who need food and medical assistance….

Show your goddamn work! No, I bloody well do not APPEAR to not care that there are those less fortunate than you who need food and medical assistance. That is a whole-cloth figment of your imagination. I did not give any such appearance out; your opinion is something your brain did to itself.

The quote in the meme bilby posted expressed the sentiment that something being neither an indulgence nor an offence, but a misfortune, was a good reason for society to pay for filling everyone's need of that thing, not just a good reason for society to pay for filling poor people's need of that thing. So I offered myself as a counterexample, a person whom there is no good reason for society to subsidize, because I'm not poor.

Would you walk past a nun having a heart attack?

Stop making groundless insinuations.

IMO medical assistance is akin to food and shelter - necessities of life.

I like this quote,, and I think it sums up why UHC is needed….

Mead said that the first sign of civilization in an ancient culture was a femur (thighbone) that had been broken and then healed. Mead explained that in the animal kingdom, if you break your leg, you die. You cannot run from danger, get to the river for a drink or hunt for food.

Well, in the first place, Mead was evidently not an evolutionary biologist. The ability of bones to heal themselves from breaks is not something that animals spent five hundred million years evolving without consequently surviving, just in order to preadapt their human descendants for the day when we'd invent civilization and finally get some payoff from all their investment.

Second, and more to the point, why the bejesus would you assume UHC being needed is a good reason to think somebody's argument for the NHS must have been valid? It's perfectly possible to make health care universal with a mixed public/private system. Here you are, over and over, seeing me point out that a pro-NHS argument is illogical, and apparently fervently believing you saw me denounce Medicaid.

Every time you lecture me about helping the poor, you are falsely and groundlessly insinuating that I need a lecture on helping the poor. Every time you do that I will have good reason to lecture you about improving your reading comprehension.

You made remarks that in the context of what I was reading sounded the way I interpreted them. I understand that you don’t need assistance, and so don’t want it. Fair enough. You don’t need to take it. But would you be willing to contribute to a system where everyone has access to the assistance they need? That’s what we do here in Australia. Those that need it can access it, and those than can pay, don’t access it. Does that make sense?

Yeah, that’s totally rational and here, we have similar social assistance but the amount and types available are determined by different criteria, depending on the state you reside in

In addition, we also have a variety of charity organizations that help those in need, as I’m certain you do.

 

[Toni]

I was hungry this morning. The cost of providing me breakfast should have been shared by the community.

If you lack the means of feeding yourself, it should be.

But I do not lack the means of feeding myself. Do you have any other grounds to think the cost of providing me breakfast should have been shared by the community?
... this is not a debate about whether the cost of providing health care to poor people who can't afford it should be shared by the community. It's a debate about whether the cost of providing health care to people who can afford it should also be shared by the community anyway even though we're perfectly capable of paying the doctor or a private cost-pooler ourselves. It's a debate about the U.S. model vs. the British model. The U.S. has long socialized the cost of care for the impoverished; it's called "Medicaid". ...

No, I think people should provide for necessities for themselves if they can.

Bingo. That's a perfectly reasonable position to take, and since bilby's meme implies it's wrong on purely metaphysical grounds, bilby's meme is perfectly unreasonable.

I hate to break it to you but unless you are extremely wealthy, if you have a very serious health condition and require expensive treatment, you are not rich enough to afford it on your own. ... I never looked at the statements at for his more recent, unrelated surgeries but they certainly must have been $500K in total. ...

Unless you are extremely wealthy, you are not rich enough to buy a new house if your current house burns down. This is not generally regarded as a good reason to require housing to be supplied to middle-income people at the expense of society as a whole. Instead, such people provide that necessity for themselves, because they can, by renting or by taking out mortgages. And since they are not rich enough to buy a new house if their current house burns down, they provide for themselves by making a deal with someone richer, who will promise to buy them a new house if theirs burns down, in exchange for a payment large enough to make the gamble an actuarially sound business decision for him. Unpredictable high cost low probability scenarios are not an obstacle to people providing necessities for themselves without forcing the cost onto society as a whole, if they can.

Hang about. I want to make sure I have comprehended this remark properly by asking a couple of questions.

Is there social housing in the US that people can access to help them get off the street? If so, who pays for it to be built?

We have a massive homeless issue here that our state government is throwing money at to try and fix. They have bought snd refurbished abandoned unit blocks, hotels etc and converted them. They have also built apartment buildings… all to provide reasonably priced accommodation for those that need it.

Fuck! I grew up in one such house. My parents didn’t have anywhere to take us, so the government helped. When my parents could afford it, they bought said house and are there still.

In your opinion, is the government/society providing housing that taxpayers have paid to be built wrong?

Yes, we have public low income housing, and rent subsidies. The availability of such and the income limits vary by state and sometimes by locality. It is vastly inadequate, depending on where you live. My state has harsh winters and so attracts fewer homeless people. We also have a semi-decent social safety net to help those in need, as well as some charitable assistance. It’s inadequate but not as inadequate as areas with more homeless.

 

[gmbteach]

Needing to eat is neither an indulgence nor an offence, but a misfortune. So if the above quote attributed* to Bevan were valid reasoning then it would imply agriculture should be socialized food should be provided to hungry people

FTFY.

I was hungry this morning. The cost of providing me breakfast should have been shared by the community.

If you lack the means of feeding yourself, it should be.

But I do not lack the means of feeding myself. Do you have any other grounds to think the cost of providing me breakfast should have been shared by the community?

I was hungry this morning. The cost of providing me breakfast should have been shared by the community.

ummm... soup kitchen? Food banks? DUH!

Soup kitchens and food banks have better uses for their limited resources than providing breakfast to a rich guy like me. DUH!

What appears to have escaped you two, though probably not bilby, is that this is not a debate about whether the cost of providing health care to poor people who can't afford it should be shared by the community. It's a debate about whether the cost of providing health care to people who can afford it should also be shared by the community anyway even though we're perfectly capable of paying the doctor or a private cost-pooler ourselves. It's a debate about the U.S. model vs. the British model. The U.S. has long socialized the cost of care for the impoverished; it's called "Medicaid". (The U.S. even abolished private medical insurance, back in 2010 -- although what we have instead is still labeled "insurance", it stopped being the real thing when the ACA outlawed exclusion of preexisting conditions.)

The point of Marshall's philosophical claim Bilby quoted upthread (and of similar claims Bevan actually made*) was never that poor people should get their care paid for by the rest of us, but rather that "no element of commercialism should enter between doctor and patient".

My point is that that's an idiotic way to decide public policy. Whether socialized care of the poor and/or socialized feeding of the poor is better done by socializing the whole system from top to bottom, or instead by providing subsidies and directed attention to the poor while leaving those capable of fending for ourselves to do so, is a complicated technical question with costs and benefits in both directions to be traded off. Any intelligent attempt to answer it for health care needs to focus on the problems specific to health care, not on philosophical nonsense that doesn't know the difference between a medical clinic and a kitchen.

(* For instance, "The essence of a satisfactory health service is that the rich and the poor are treated alike, that poverty is not a disability, and wealth is not advantaged.")

So why shouldn’t the wealthy assist those less fortunate?

Bilby and I are ion a reasonable income, but we still help those less fortunate than us - particularly in my job as a teacher. I buy fruit for brain break, and so many pencils ... just so my kids can learn.

Only arrogant selfish people think that the poor shouldn’t receive assistance.

Hey, if I can afford to go to a better dr for surgery through private health insurance, sure.. my arugument is that that same surgeon should, and mostly would, offer their services to someone not insured. The only difference, IMO, is the use of private to ‘jump the queue’ for non essential life saving surgery.

Case in point, a lady at school and I are the same age. We both have horrible knees….. she waited a year for a knee replacement because she went public. It was deemed category three with means get to it within a year. I needed knee surgery and it was was done within a few weeks. I still didn’t pay much (as per above), which is how insurance is supposed to work.

The US system sucks! Plain and simple. Health care should be for everyone. Simple.

Holy mother of god! Where the bejesus do you imagine you saw me say the wealthy shouldn't assist those less fortunate? Where the bejesus do you imagine you saw me say the poor shouldn’t receive assistance? Where the bejesus do you imagine you saw me say the US system doesn't suck? Where the bejesus do you imagine you saw me say health care shouldn't be for everyone? It's like you didn't even bother to read my post before you hit "Reply" and quoted it back to me and then appended a "reply" that had jack squat to do with anything you'd quoted.

Some time between when I was a kid and now, a lot of U.S. schools gave up phonics and switched to a newly fashionable theory called "whole language", wherein they tried to teach kids to read by telling them to just guess words they didn't recognize straight off and carry on reading, instead of sounding them out and then looking them up or asking the teacher if they still didn't know the word. This practice has the entirely predictable result that the kids don't learn new words by reading them and so never acquire reading vocabularies any larger than their oral vocabularies. One of my nieces was taught this way; listening to her try to read aloud was painful. That's a metaphor for your post -- it reads like you didn't already recognize the line of argument you were seeing, and rather than follow the words and try to understand, or ask me to explain further, you just guessed which argument it was from among those you were already familiar with, and replied to what you imagined I meant instead of replying to what you saw me say. Please do not impute views to me that I haven't expressed.

Teacher here, so let’s a leave the teaching reference alone.

I found it a bit shocking that a teacher would display such poor reading comprehension.

Your quote:
I was hungry this morning. The cost of providing me breakfast should have been shared by the community.

I think you picked up on the sarcasm, but just in case, I was pointing out to bilby that my hunger is a stupid reason to think society should pay for my breakfast.

My response was about soup kitchens - aka the community providing food for less fortunate.

That was your first error -- soup kitchens were not on point. You appear to have seen me indicate that I don't think society should buy me breakfast and illogically jumped to the conclusion that I don't think society should buy anyone breakfast. That's the Hasty Generalization Fallacy. Why did you do that?

Your quote (Bilby’s editing included because you are getting me at the end of a very hard very long week so I am leaving it there - and yes I get the irony of the fact that me typing the explanation is propbsblyblonger than editing the quote but hey.. Sue me)
Needing to eat is neither an indulgence nor an offence, but a misfortune. So if the above quote attributed* to Bevan were valid reasoning then it would imply agriculture should be socialize
So I refer to the soup kitchen again. Why shouldn’t those less fortunate be assisted by those than can?

Good grief! Why shouldn't your wife not be beaten?!? Your question assumes facts not in evidence!

I pointed out your mistake. You doubled down on it. So I pointed it out again. And here you are, tripling down on it. Stop asking "Why shouldn’t those less fortunate be assisted by those than can?" until you find somebody who implies those less fortunate shouldn't be assisted by those that can! This is not rocket science.

Do you seriously believe socializing agriculture is the only way a society can have soup kitchens? No? Then how the bejesus do you convince yourself my opposition to socializing agriculture is a good reason for you to conclude I'm against soup kitchens? What the hell? The Soviets socialized agriculture and caused a famine. The PRC socialized agriculture and caused a famine. North Korea socialized agriculture and caused a famine. The Khmer Rouge socialized agriculture and caused a famine. The US did not socialize agriculture, did not cause a famine, and set up soup kitchens!.

You APPEAR (don’t really want to be sued) to not care that there are those less fortunate than you who need food and medical assistance….

Show your goddamn work! No, I bloody well do not APPEAR to not care that there are those less fortunate than you who need food and medical assistance. That is a whole-cloth figment of your imagination. I did not give any such appearance out; your opinion is something your brain did to itself.

The quote in the meme bilby posted expressed the sentiment that something being neither an indulgence nor an offence, but a misfortune, was a good reason for society to pay for filling everyone's need of that thing, not just a good reason for society to pay for filling poor people's need of that thing. So I offered myself as a counterexample, a person whom there is no good reason for society to subsidize, because I'm not poor.

Would you walk past a nun having a heart attack?

Stop making groundless insinuations.

IMO medical assistance is akin to food and shelter - necessities of life.

I like this quote,, and I think it sums up why UHC is needed….

Mead said that the first sign of civilization in an ancient culture was a femur (thighbone) that had been broken and then healed. Mead explained that in the animal kingdom, if you break your leg, you die. You cannot run from danger, get to the river for a drink or hunt for food.

Well, in the first place, Mead was evidently not an evolutionary biologist. The ability of bones to heal themselves from breaks is not something that animals spent five hundred million years evolving without consequently surviving, just in order to preadapt their human descendants for the day when we'd invent civilization and finally get some payoff from all their investment.

Second, and more to the point, why the bejesus would you assume UHC being needed is a good reason to think somebody's argument for the NHS must have been valid? It's perfectly possible to make health care universal with a mixed public/private system. Here you are, over and over, seeing me point out that a pro-NHS argument is illogical, and apparently fervently believing you saw me denounce Medicaid.

Every time you lecture me about helping the poor, you are falsely and groundlessly insinuating that I need a lecture on helping the poor. Every time you do that I will have good reason to lecture you about improving your reading comprehension.

You made remarks that in the context of what I was reading sounded the way I interpreted them. I understand that you don’t need assistance, and so don’t want it. Fair enough. You don’t need to take it. But would you be willing to contribute to a system where everyone has access to the assistance they need? That’s what we do here in Australia. Those that need it can access it, and those than can pay, don’t access it. Does that make sense?

Yeah, that’s totally rational and here, we have similar social assistance but the amount and types available are determined by different criteria, depending on the state you reside in

In addition, we also have a variety of charity organizations that help those in need, as I’m certain you do.

We do have charities... some secular I believe, though mostly religious ones... and they don't discriminate. We have the NDIS system as well, which allows disabled peoples (and believe me they have identified a broad range of disabilities) that provides social workers, home help, general assistance such as helping with taking people shopping etc. It is Government funded so tax payer funded. Noone quibbles about it, mainly because we all know someone who benefits from it. My SIL is a social worker and her son works with NDIS to provide support for a blind person. My SIL specialises in Hoarding - helping them clean things out and assistance and guidance with not getting any more. (It is how she got a couple of her kittens - rescuing them from a hoarder )

I think what Makes Australia Great (Again ) is our willingness to be a community, to be helpful. Yes we have homeless, but the community said do something - so it's doing something. When Covid hit, we agreed to lockdowns etc to keep the community safe - a couple of crackpots ruined it and didn't like it for their own selfish reasons - but again - community worked together.

 

[gmbteach]

I was hungry this morning. The cost of providing me breakfast should have been shared by the community.

If you lack the means of feeding yourself, it should be.

But I do not lack the means of feeding myself. Do you have any other grounds to think the cost of providing me breakfast should have been shared by the community?
... this is not a debate about whether the cost of providing health care to poor people who can't afford it should be shared by the community. It's a debate about whether the cost of providing health care to people who can afford it should also be shared by the community anyway even though we're perfectly capable of paying the doctor or a private cost-pooler ourselves. It's a debate about the U.S. model vs. the British model. The U.S. has long socialized the cost of care for the impoverished; it's called "Medicaid". ...

No, I think people should provide for necessities for themselves if they can.

Bingo. That's a perfectly reasonable position to take, and since bilby's meme implies it's wrong on purely metaphysical grounds, bilby's meme is perfectly unreasonable.

I hate to break it to you but unless you are extremely wealthy, if you have a very serious health condition and require expensive treatment, you are not rich enough to afford it on your own. ... I never looked at the statements at for his more recent, unrelated surgeries but they certainly must have been $500K in total. ...

Unless you are extremely wealthy, you are not rich enough to buy a new house if your current house burns down. This is not generally regarded as a good reason to require housing to be supplied to middle-income people at the expense of society as a whole. Instead, such people provide that necessity for themselves, because they can, by renting or by taking out mortgages. And since they are not rich enough to buy a new house if their current house burns down, they provide for themselves by making a deal with someone richer, who will promise to buy them a new house if theirs burns down, in exchange for a payment large enough to make the gamble an actuarially sound business decision for him. Unpredictable high cost low probability scenarios are not an obstacle to people providing necessities for themselves without forcing the cost onto society as a whole, if they can.

Hang about. I want to make sure I have comprehended this remark properly by asking a couple of questions.

Is there social housing in the US that people can access to help them get off the street? If so, who pays for it to be built?

We have a massive homeless issue here that our state government is throwing money at to try and fix. They have bought snd refurbished abandoned unit blocks, hotels etc and converted them. They have also built apartment buildings… all to provide reasonably priced accommodation for those that need it.

Fuck! I grew up in one such house. My parents didn’t have anywhere to take us, so the government helped. When my parents could afford it, they bought said house and are there still.

In your opinion, is the government/society providing housing that taxpayers have paid to be built wrong?

Yes, we have public low income housing, and rent subsidies. The availability of such and the income limits vary by state and sometimes by locality. It is vastly inadequate, depending on where you live. My state has harsh winters and so attracts fewer homeless people. We also have a semi-decent social safety net to help those in need, as well as some charitable assistance. It’s inadequate but not as inadequate as areas with more homeless.

Our homeless situation, I think, has been driven by the floods of people moving from NSW and VIC where Covid was rampant, and that drove house prices up - which drove rents up on rental properties, and the COL has also risen, meaning you sometimes had to choose - rent or food. We had a few tent cities spring up, and that is when people noticed the problem. Rents are still stupid - a friend rents a 2 bedroom 'granny flat' like the one below for $400 a week... and that is reasonable. Next door rents their three bedroom place (equal to our upstairs only) for $700 a week - but it has a pool.


And these sorts of properties are popping up everywhere - that or townhouses. I think Logan City (Where we live) still has tight restrictions on how you can build on your property depending upon its size, but I also think they are looking at changing it. I laugh when I see 'large 500m block of land'... we have 725m and I would like a bit more. Ours is just too small to put a duplux on I think - but something like the plan above would be doable.

 

[Toni]

Needing to eat is neither an indulgence nor an offence, but a misfortune. So if the above quote attributed* to Bevan were valid reasoning then it would imply agriculture should be socialized food should be provided to hungry people

FTFY.

I was hungry this morning. The cost of providing me breakfast should have been shared by the community.

If you lack the means of feeding yourself, it should be.

But I do not lack the means of feeding myself. Do you have any other grounds to think the cost of providing me breakfast should have been shared by the community?

I was hungry this morning. The cost of providing me breakfast should have been shared by the community.

ummm... soup kitchen? Food banks? DUH!

Soup kitchens and food banks have better uses for their limited resources than providing breakfast to a rich guy like me. DUH!

What appears to have escaped you two, though probably not bilby, is that this is not a debate about whether the cost of providing health care to poor people who can't afford it should be shared by the community. It's a debate about whether the cost of providing health care to people who can afford it should also be shared by the community anyway even though we're perfectly capable of paying the doctor or a private cost-pooler ourselves. It's a debate about the U.S. model vs. the British model. The U.S. has long socialized the cost of care for the impoverished; it's called "Medicaid". (The U.S. even abolished private medical insurance, back in 2010 -- although what we have instead is still labeled "insurance", it stopped being the real thing when the ACA outlawed exclusion of preexisting conditions.)

The point of Marshall's philosophical claim Bilby quoted upthread (and of similar claims Bevan actually made*) was never that poor people should get their care paid for by the rest of us, but rather that "no element of commercialism should enter between doctor and patient".

My point is that that's an idiotic way to decide public policy. Whether socialized care of the poor and/or socialized feeding of the poor is better done by socializing the whole system from top to bottom, or instead by providing subsidies and directed attention to the poor while leaving those capable of fending for ourselves to do so, is a complicated technical question with costs and benefits in both directions to be traded off. Any intelligent attempt to answer it for health care needs to focus on the problems specific to health care, not on philosophical nonsense that doesn't know the difference between a medical clinic and a kitchen.

(* For instance, "The essence of a satisfactory health service is that the rich and the poor are treated alike, that poverty is not a disability, and wealth is not advantaged.")

So why shouldn’t the wealthy assist those less fortunate?

Bilby and I are ion a reasonable income, but we still help those less fortunate than us - particularly in my job as a teacher. I buy fruit for brain break, and so many pencils ... just so my kids can learn.

Only arrogant selfish people think that the poor shouldn’t receive assistance.

Hey, if I can afford to go to a better dr for surgery through private health insurance, sure.. my arugument is that that same surgeon should, and mostly would, offer their services to someone not insured. The only difference, IMO, is the use of private to ‘jump the queue’ for non essential life saving surgery.

Case in point, a lady at school and I are the same age. We both have horrible knees….. she waited a year for a knee replacement because she went public. It was deemed category three with means get to it within a year. I needed knee surgery and it was was done within a few weeks. I still didn’t pay much (as per above), which is how insurance is supposed to work.

The US system sucks! Plain and simple. Health care should be for everyone. Simple.

Holy mother of god! Where the bejesus do you imagine you saw me say the wealthy shouldn't assist those less fortunate? Where the bejesus do you imagine you saw me say the poor shouldn’t receive assistance? Where the bejesus do you imagine you saw me say the US system doesn't suck? Where the bejesus do you imagine you saw me say health care shouldn't be for everyone? It's like you didn't even bother to read my post before you hit "Reply" and quoted it back to me and then appended a "reply" that had jack squat to do with anything you'd quoted.

Some time between when I was a kid and now, a lot of U.S. schools gave up phonics and switched to a newly fashionable theory called "whole language", wherein they tried to teach kids to read by telling them to just guess words they didn't recognize straight off and carry on reading, instead of sounding them out and then looking them up or asking the teacher if they still didn't know the word. This practice has the entirely predictable result that the kids don't learn new words by reading them and so never acquire reading vocabularies any larger than their oral vocabularies. One of my nieces was taught this way; listening to her try to read aloud was painful. That's a metaphor for your post -- it reads like you didn't already recognize the line of argument you were seeing, and rather than follow the words and try to understand, or ask me to explain further, you just guessed which argument it was from among those you were already familiar with, and replied to what you imagined I meant instead of replying to what you saw me say. Please do not impute views to me that I haven't expressed.

Teacher here, so let’s a leave the teaching reference alone.

I found it a bit shocking that a teacher would display such poor reading comprehension.

Your quote:
I was hungry this morning. The cost of providing me breakfast should have been shared by the community.

I think you picked up on the sarcasm, but just in case, I was pointing out to bilby that my hunger is a stupid reason to think society should pay for my breakfast.

My response was about soup kitchens - aka the community providing food for less fortunate.

That was your first error -- soup kitchens were not on point. You appear to have seen me indicate that I don't think society should buy me breakfast and illogically jumped to the conclusion that I don't think society should buy anyone breakfast. That's the Hasty Generalization Fallacy. Why did you do that?

Your quote (Bilby’s editing included because you are getting me at the end of a very hard very long week so I am leaving it there - and yes I get the irony of the fact that me typing the explanation is propbsblyblonger than editing the quote but hey.. Sue me)
Needing to eat is neither an indulgence nor an offence, but a misfortune. So if the above quote attributed* to Bevan were valid reasoning then it would imply agriculture should be socialize
So I refer to the soup kitchen again. Why shouldn’t those less fortunate be assisted by those than can?

Good grief! Why shouldn't your wife not be beaten?!? Your question assumes facts not in evidence!

I pointed out your mistake. You doubled down on it. So I pointed it out again. And here you are, tripling down on it. Stop asking "Why shouldn’t those less fortunate be assisted by those than can?" until you find somebody who implies those less fortunate shouldn't be assisted by those that can! This is not rocket science.

Do you seriously believe socializing agriculture is the only way a society can have soup kitchens? No? Then how the bejesus do you convince yourself my opposition to socializing agriculture is a good reason for you to conclude I'm against soup kitchens? What the hell? The Soviets socialized agriculture and caused a famine. The PRC socialized agriculture and caused a famine. North Korea socialized agriculture and caused a famine. The Khmer Rouge socialized agriculture and caused a famine. The US did not socialize agriculture, did not cause a famine, and set up soup kitchens!.

You APPEAR (don’t really want to be sued) to not care that there are those less fortunate than you who need food and medical assistance….

Show your goddamn work! No, I bloody well do not APPEAR to not care that there are those less fortunate than you who need food and medical assistance. That is a whole-cloth figment of your imagination. I did not give any such appearance out; your opinion is something your brain did to itself.

The quote in the meme bilby posted expressed the sentiment that something being neither an indulgence nor an offence, but a misfortune, was a good reason for society to pay for filling everyone's need of that thing, not just a good reason for society to pay for filling poor people's need of that thing. So I offered myself as a counterexample, a person whom there is no good reason for society to subsidize, because I'm not poor.

Would you walk past a nun having a heart attack?

Stop making groundless insinuations.

IMO medical assistance is akin to food and shelter - necessities of life.

I like this quote,, and I think it sums up why UHC is needed….

Mead said that the first sign of civilization in an ancient culture was a femur (thighbone) that had been broken and then healed. Mead explained that in the animal kingdom, if you break your leg, you die. You cannot run from danger, get to the river for a drink or hunt for food.

Well, in the first place, Mead was evidently not an evolutionary biologist. The ability of bones to heal themselves from breaks is not something that animals spent five hundred million years evolving without consequently surviving, just in order to preadapt their human descendants for the day when we'd invent civilization and finally get some payoff from all their investment.

Second, and more to the point, why the bejesus would you assume UHC being needed is a good reason to think somebody's argument for the NHS must have been valid? It's perfectly possible to make health care universal with a mixed public/private system. Here you are, over and over, seeing me point out that a pro-NHS argument is illogical, and apparently fervently believing you saw me denounce Medicaid.

Every time you lecture me about helping the poor, you are falsely and groundlessly insinuating that I need a lecture on helping the poor. Every time you do that I will have good reason to lecture you about improving your reading comprehension.

You made remarks that in the context of what I was reading sounded the way I interpreted them. I understand that you don’t need assistance, and so don’t want it. Fair enough. You don’t need to take it. But would you be willing to contribute to a system where everyone has access to the assistance they need? That’s what we do here in Australia. Those that need it can access it, and those than can pay, don’t access it. Does that make sense?

Yeah, that’s totally rational and here, we have similar social assistance but the amount and types available are determined by different criteria, depending on the state you reside in

In addition, we also have a variety of charity organizations that help those in need, as I’m certain you do.

We do have charities... some secular I believe, though mostly religious ones... and they don't discriminate. We have the NDIS system as well, which allows disabled peoples (and believe me they have identified a broad range of disabilities) that provides social workers, home help, general assistance such as helping with taking people shopping etc. It is Government funded so tax payer funded. Noone quibbles about it, mainly because we all know someone who benefits from it. My SIL is a social worker and her son works with NDIS to provide support for a blind person. My SIL specialises in Hoarding - helping them clean things out and assistance and guidance with not getting any more. (It is how she got a couple of her kittens - rescuing them from a hoarder )

I think what Makes Australia Great (Again ) is our willingness to be a community, to be helpful. Yes we have homeless, but the community said do something - so it's doing something. When Covid hit, we agreed to lockdowns etc to keep the community safe - a couple of crackpots ruined it and didn't like it for their own selfish reasons - but again - community worked together.

As little as it must appear to the greater world since Trump, the US tends to be generous and kind towards those in need. We have supplement tal Social Security for disabled people regardless of age. It’s not much . There is also subsidies fused housing and depending on where you live, a variety of support services. It is still an achingly lean way to live, especially because of the remaining Puritanical streak: you are only allowed to have a very small dollar amount in assets to qualify. That’s particularly cruel as it can really limit a persons ability to have easy transport if they don’t live in a large metropolitan area with lots of public transport.

When my kids were young, I volunteered extensively in the public schools where I learned that only a small portion of families who qualified for fee and reduced lunches actually completed the paperwork, declaring that they weren’t poor. Being the recipient of such benefits is a source of much shame to many people, especially the working poor. The pandemic did force employers to start to pay more reasonable wages but a lot of people still piece together a ‘living’ out of a series of part time jobs that don’t pay enough. Which in turn causes a great deal of stress which exacerbates any alcohol abuse issues which makes them seem ‘unreliable’ to the wealthy owners and execs who have vacation homes and ski vacations, etc. and $M bonuses.

I am fortunate to live in a state that does more for the poor and makes them now and scrape less than some states. Fortunately I do. Or need these services but I know people who do

 

[BH]

Needing to eat is neither an indulgence nor an offence, but a misfortune. So if the above quote attributed* to Bevan were valid reasoning then it would imply agriculture should be socialized food should be provided to hungry people

FTFY.

I was hungry this morning. The cost of providing me breakfast should have been shared by the community.

If you lack the means of feeding yourself, it should be.

But I do not lack the means of feeding myself. Do you have any other grounds to think the cost of providing me breakfast should have been shared by the community?

I was hungry this morning. The cost of providing me breakfast should have been shared by the community.

ummm... soup kitchen? Food banks? DUH!

Soup kitchens and food banks have better uses for their limited resources than providing breakfast to a rich guy like me. DUH!

What appears to have escaped you two, though probably not bilby, is that this is not a debate about whether the cost of providing health care to poor people who can't afford it should be shared by the community. It's a debate about whether the cost of providing health care to people who can afford it should also be shared by the community anyway even though we're perfectly capable of paying the doctor or a private cost-pooler ourselves. It's a debate about the U.S. model vs. the British model. The U.S. has long socialized the cost of care for the impoverished; it's called "Medicaid". (The U.S. even abolished private medical insurance, back in 2010 -- although what we have instead is still labeled "insurance", it stopped being the real thing when the ACA outlawed exclusion of preexisting conditions.)

The point of Marshall's philosophical claim Bilby quoted upthread (and of similar claims Bevan actually made*) was never that poor people should get their care paid for by the rest of us, but rather that "no element of commercialism should enter between doctor and patient".

My point is that that's an idiotic way to decide public policy. Whether socialized care of the poor and/or socialized feeding of the poor is better done by socializing the whole system from top to bottom, or instead by providing subsidies and directed attention to the poor while leaving those capable of fending for ourselves to do so, is a complicated technical question with costs and benefits in both directions to be traded off. Any intelligent attempt to answer it for health care needs to focus on the problems specific to health care, not on philosophical nonsense that doesn't know the difference between a medical clinic and a kitchen.

(* For instance, "The essence of a satisfactory health service is that the rich and the poor are treated alike, that poverty is not a disability, and wealth is not advantaged.")

So why shouldn’t the wealthy assist those less fortunate?

Bilby and I are ion a reasonable income, but we still help those less fortunate than us - particularly in my job as a teacher. I buy fruit for brain break, and so many pencils (fuck me can those kids eat them or what?), just so my kids can learn.

Only arrogant selfish people think that the poor shouldn’t receive assistance.

Hey, if I can afford to go to a better dr for surgery through private health insurance, sure.. my arugument is that that same surgeon should, and mostly would, offer their services to someone not insured. The only difference, IMO, is the use of private to ‘jump the queue’ for non essential life saving surgery.

Case in point, a lady at school and I are the same age. We both have horrible knees….. she waited a year for a knee replacement because she went public. It was deemed category three with means get to it within a year. I needed knee surgery and it was was done within a few weeks. I still didn’t pay much (as per above), which is how insurance is supposed to work.

The US system sucks! Plain and simple. Health care should be for everyone. Simple.

I make a good wage for a retail store manager in the area I live in. It's in the 40 to 50 grand range. When I get bonuses I buy a hundred or two hundred dollars worth of shoes or socks and give them away to poor people I know or to a preacher friend I can trust who will. My wage isn't anything to be ashamed of but it isn't anything to brag about. But if I can cheerfully part with a couple of hundred dollars every few months to do something that truly helps many people for a good while why would anyone making much more than me be affronted with the idea they ought to help others too.

I have read the more you make the more selfish and less concerned with morality you become. I have a cousin who is all but dissertation for a PHD in Psychology tell me what I read is true and is proven in test after test. If that's the case you need a social and economic seperation of powers .

 

[gmbteach]

Needing to eat is neither an indulgence nor an offence, but a misfortune. So if the above quote attributed* to Bevan were valid reasoning then it would imply agriculture should be socialized food should be provided to hungry people

FTFY.

I was hungry this morning. The cost of providing me breakfast should have been shared by the community.

If you lack the means of feeding yourself, it should be.

But I do not lack the means of feeding myself. Do you have any other grounds to think the cost of providing me breakfast should have been shared by the community?

I was hungry this morning. The cost of providing me breakfast should have been shared by the community.

ummm... soup kitchen? Food banks? DUH!

Soup kitchens and food banks have better uses for their limited resources than providing breakfast to a rich guy like me. DUH!

What appears to have escaped you two, though probably not bilby, is that this is not a debate about whether the cost of providing health care to poor people who can't afford it should be shared by the community. It's a debate about whether the cost of providing health care to people who can afford it should also be shared by the community anyway even though we're perfectly capable of paying the doctor or a private cost-pooler ourselves. It's a debate about the U.S. model vs. the British model. The U.S. has long socialized the cost of care for the impoverished; it's called "Medicaid". (The U.S. even abolished private medical insurance, back in 2010 -- although what we have instead is still labeled "insurance", it stopped being the real thing when the ACA outlawed exclusion of preexisting conditions.)

The point of Marshall's philosophical claim Bilby quoted upthread (and of similar claims Bevan actually made*) was never that poor people should get their care paid for by the rest of us, but rather that "no element of commercialism should enter between doctor and patient".

My point is that that's an idiotic way to decide public policy. Whether socialized care of the poor and/or socialized feeding of the poor is better done by socializing the whole system from top to bottom, or instead by providing subsidies and directed attention to the poor while leaving those capable of fending for ourselves to do so, is a complicated technical question with costs and benefits in both directions to be traded off. Any intelligent attempt to answer it for health care needs to focus on the problems specific to health care, not on philosophical nonsense that doesn't know the difference between a medical clinic and a kitchen.

(* For instance, "The essence of a satisfactory health service is that the rich and the poor are treated alike, that poverty is not a disability, and wealth is not advantaged.")

So why shouldn’t the wealthy assist those less fortunate?

Bilby and I are ion a reasonable income, but we still help those less fortunate than us - particularly in my job as a teacher. I buy fruit for brain break, and so many pencils (fuck me can those kids eat them or what?), just so my kids can learn.

Only arrogant selfish people think that the poor shouldn’t receive assistance.

Hey, if I can afford to go to a better dr for surgery through private health insurance, sure.. my arugument is that that same surgeon should, and mostly would, offer their services to someone not insured. The only difference, IMO, is the use of private to ‘jump the queue’ for non essential life saving surgery.

Case in point, a lady at school and I are the same age. We both have horrible knees….. she waited a year for a knee replacement because she went public. It was deemed category three with means get to it within a year. I needed knee surgery and it was was done within a few weeks. I still didn’t pay much (as per above), which is how insurance is supposed to work.

The US system sucks! Plain and simple. Health care should be for everyone. Simple.

I make a good wage for a retail store manager in the area I live in. It's in the 40 to 50 grand range. When I get bonuses I buy a hundred or two hundred dollars worth of shoes or socks and give them away to poor people I know or to a preacher friend I can trust who will. My wage isn't anything to be ashamed of but it isn't anything to brag about. But if I can cheerfully part with a couple of hundred dollars every few months to do something that truly helps many people for a good while why would anyone making much more than me be affronted with the idea they ought to help others too.

I have read the more you make the more selfish and less concerned with morality you become. I have a cousin who is all but dissertation for a PHD in Psychology tell me what I read is true and is proven in test after test. If that's the case you need a social and economic seperation of powers .

I could help more - but we are trying to pay off the mortgage so we can retire... should we have a massive windfall, I would like to move from here and convert this house into a refuge place for homeless people - particularly domestic violence victims. It is built in downstairs with a massive bedroom and small bathroom - which would be perfect for a 'manager' of sorts - and there are three bedrooms upstairs that can each hold a queen sized bed and a cupboard to two. A parent and a couple of kids could sleep in the one bed, which means potentially three families could escape their situation. We have a 6ft colourbond fence with security gates - and an electronic gate - so it's difficult to get in to. Perfect for such a thing. Until then.....

 

[BH]

Sometimes when you help in one way you help in others indirectly. One time a mom has problems with a tooth. But her needs needed shoes and clothes. I told the mom I'd buy her kids some shoes if she would use her dental insurance and fix the tooth. By buying the shoes she had enough for the copay to get her tooth fixed. I solved two problems. One directly--the kids needs, one indirectly--mom had money for the copay to get the tooth fixed. Little things can make big differences.

 

[gmbteach]

Sometimes when you help in one way you help in others indirectly. One time a mom has problems with a tooth. But her needs needed shoes and clothes. I told the mom I'd buy her kids some shoes if she would use her dental insurance and fix the tooth. By buying the shoes she had enough for the copay to get her tooth fixed. I solved two problems. One directly--the kids needs, one indirectly--mom had money for the copay to get the tooth fixed. Little things can make big differences.

I follow the same philosophy at school. If you take care of the little things, the big things take care of themselves. And by little, I mean a bag of apples or mandarins so kids have brain food to learn, buying cheap colouring pencils etc so that the kids have stuff to do their work. They know they are cared for…and so they behave.

There was an article, ad, meme, about the effect of spending $50 in a local small business as opposed to a large chain store. The $50 you spend the owner spends at the hairdresser, who spends it st the florist…and so on. $50 can go a long way when you think about it.