Smoking a Cigarette
- Thread starter Orleander
- Start date
on purpose.
No I think you are missing the point my old chum - or at least you are missing MY point and merely focusing on your own (perhaps my own fault as I have strayed slightly off topic by pointing out the delicious irony of the situation)
I don't disagree with the fact that there is little difference between directly charging smokers more on a health ins premium and taxing cigarettes directly.
I am pointing out that this represents a form of coercion or an attempt to exert an influence on somebody's choice.
I am pointing out that one major criticism of free universal healthcare is that it limits choice - but I have demonstrated very clearly that in reality both systems do that to the same extent, and in more or less the same way.
The difference between the two systems though (which I haven't mentioned in previous posts but I will now because this is the clincher), is that one of them doesn't employ people who's job it is to justify - and who's 5 and 6 figure bonuses rely upon - the denial of treatment to sick patients.
First of all, I do not support urine tests that monitor what you do off the job. What you do on your own time should be your own business.
But, Americans are not slaves. You don't like Walmart's policy on drug testing? Work somewhere else! You don't want to work for anyone, start your own business.
Meanwhile, in a nation with a national healthcare system, the state has every justification to limit what you do at all times to hold down healthcare costs. Remember 1984? Why do you think everyone was forced to get up in the morning and exercise in 1984? To keep down healthcare costs, no doubt.
If you drive a fast car, do you expect to pay more for car insurance?
How is asking someone to pay more if they smoke limiting their choice? $40 a month is limiting?
madanthonywayne can i just point out that although we DO have universal health care, we have LESS laws restricting indervidual behavor than the US. Most of our laws tend to be about WHERE you can do things not IF you can do things. For instance your cant smoke in an enclosed space where people work for THERE health, however you can smoke. Australia has never had prohabition to my knowlage either.
So although you keep CLAIMING that universal health care will mean high tax and low freedom the facts dont bare that out. Look at france where smoking bans have only JUST passed and they soak up wine like the world is about to end. They have the BEST health care system in the world paid for from tax and yet they have less impingement on freedom than the US does
So although you keep CLAIMING that universal health care will mean high tax and low freedom the facts dont bare that out. Look at france where smoking bans have only JUST passed and they soak up wine like the world is about to end. They have the BEST health care system in the world paid for from tax and yet they have less impingement on freedom than the US does
There's no such thing as a free lunch. Handing over the responsibility for healthcare to the government means you give something up. I hear stories of long waits for surgery, rationing of care, etc in countries with nationalized healthcare. And, whether it's happened yet or not, if the government is paying for your healthcare, it would have every right to control your behavior to protect its investment.
do you honestly belive that?
yes there are waiting lists for SOME surgury but that would be the case even if we had the same number of doctors with a private system.
as to the goverment controling us, we control the goverment, those sort of changes would have to be legislative and would have to be aproved at BOTH the state AND federal level which means it has to go through 4 houses of parliment to pass in ONE state. This is a pritty good garentiee that it WONT happen especially when parlimentry terms for one or the other would be about 1 1/2 years away. People dont take kindly to being told what to do.
The problem with the US is that her people fear the goverment rather than the other way around
yes there are waiting lists for SOME surgury but that would be the case even if we had the same number of doctors with a private system.
as to the goverment controling us, we control the goverment, those sort of changes would have to be legislative and would have to be aproved at BOTH the state AND federal level which means it has to go through 4 houses of parliment to pass in ONE state. This is a pritty good garentiee that it WONT happen especially when parlimentry terms for one or the other would be about 1 1/2 years away. People dont take kindly to being told what to do.
The problem with the US is that her people fear the goverment rather than the other way around
Because that they did lie about their well being could also mean they could have lied about other things and still could be lying to the business owners now about their work or their contacts.
You can level exactly the same argument at private healthcare - to protect profits, health insurance companies use financial dis-incentives to influence behaviour - the difference is that it is in the interests of a health insurance company to deny as much treatment as possible - and indeed they employ doctors who's job it is specifically to look for ways to do this.
I hear stories about the world being 7,000 years old? so what if you hear stories?
Would you care for a serving of truth with reality sauce?
I can't speak for other countries, but in the UK the government has little direct control over the healthcare system - it is managed by individual health authorities - in effect by the doctors and nurses themselves - in that way they meet the health needs of individual communities instead of providing a "one size fits all" health policy handed down from central government.
In terms of waiting lists - yes - we do have them, and there's a number of reasons for that - firstly its due to the fact that anyone who needs immediate treatment gets first priority and is treated immediately - anyone who needs treatment but can get by without it waits in line - or has the choice to go private. So its not a case of leaving people to die due to some kind of rigid rationing system - moreover its a system that treats people according to thier needs instead of according to their ability to pay.
Another cause of wating lists is due to availability of donors for transplant surgery - this is a problem for all healthcare systems - public and private.
The whole issue of free healthcare causing increased and intrusive government control is a myth my friend
In principle yes it is limiting - you're just haggling over the price.
Here's a few hypothetical examples for you to help you understand.
Would say the government slapping a $1000 sales tax on all firearms limit your choice and your right to bear arms?
The answer is of course yes
would a $10 tax do the same?
The answer is still yes
Like I said - you're just haggling over the price instead of looking at the issue.
I read recently that gun owners are something 18 times more likely to kill or injure themselves with their own gun than they are likely to ever have to use their gun to defend themselves - I don't honestly know if this is a fact, but lets assume that this is true for a moment - we are talking hypothetically after all
Would a health insurance company who took notice of these figures be limiting your freedoms and choices if they decided to increase premiums for gun owners?
Would a health insurance company who took notice of these figures be limiting your freedoms and choices if they decided to deny or withdraw health cover altogether for gun owners - just as they already do for people they deem too fat, too thin, or have other pre-existing medical conditions?
Do you see what I'm getting at? Profit is a much just as good a motivator when it comes to attempting to influence choices (if it wasn't we wouldn't have advertising) - so beleiving that UFHC limits choice in a way that is significantly different to a purely private system is a complete delusion.
In australia the money is paid by the federal goverment and spent by the states in the case of health care for acute hospitals and services. In the case of doctors, medicare pays them directly. I like having hospitals controled by state goverments or the federal goverment because it means that stategic planing can be done by the health department. For instance if there are two hospitals with in a 10 min drive in the country, it makes no sence for them both to have dialis facilities if they arnt being used to there full capacity. This sort of planning cant be done by the private sector OR by local hospital boards which is why the mersy take over sent a chill down my spine.
As synthesizer-patel said, when the aim is to make a profit the best way to do this is to cut costs. In the case of health care this means cutting treatment anyway they can. If this is the goverment doing this they lose office, in the case of private companies who stops them? Especially when they are coluding together like they do in the US. This is not a case of ripping off coustimers, it actually COSTS LIVES
synthesizer-patel your not quite right about rationing of services not costing lives. Under a general work load your right but triage for an MCI DOES let people die. It does this delibratly and clinically so that emotions arnt involved in who lives and who dies. On a country road in say a bus crashes and 30 people are injured or killed. There is only 2 abulances capable of responding with in an hour. There just isnt anyway to transpot all 30 cases to hospital imidatly so some people will be left to die
However this isnt general day to day practice
As synthesizer-patel said, when the aim is to make a profit the best way to do this is to cut costs. In the case of health care this means cutting treatment anyway they can. If this is the goverment doing this they lose office, in the case of private companies who stops them? Especially when they are coluding together like they do in the US. This is not a case of ripping off coustimers, it actually COSTS LIVES
synthesizer-patel your not quite right about rationing of services not costing lives. Under a general work load your right but triage for an MCI DOES let people die. It does this delibratly and clinically so that emotions arnt involved in who lives and who dies. On a country road in say a bus crashes and 30 people are injured or killed. There is only 2 abulances capable of responding with in an hour. There just isnt anyway to transpot all 30 cases to hospital imidatly so some people will be left to die
However this isnt general day to day practice
Perhaps - but I don't see that this is a function of public healthcare - in a private system a rural area is just as likely to have a low availability of resources like ambulances - supply and demand after all.
Of course in a public healthcare system, the paramedics who do arrive on the scene are not going say "can all those people who either have health insurance or cash to pay for the treatment please raise your hands and/or bloody stumps please" in order to determine who lives and who dies.
I agree it has nothing to do with the system, actually a public system will be better at moving resorces to provide coverage than a group of private services all compeating with eachother. However in order to be fair (and so that argument wasnt thrown up latter) i thought i would bring up the laws of triage early. As part of my degree we have to learn how to triage pts and unfortuantly it does include letting some die where resorces are not avilable to deal with everyone and the pt is likly to die without LOTS of resorces (if they are possable to save at all) which are needed for other pts.
I dont know if you know adelaide at all but the disaster senario we trained on was a hypothetical earthquake which ran through adelaide oval when a big match is on, and runing up through flinders med center (one of the 2 main trauma centers, though there is a third specifically for peds). This would mean at least 100 THOUSAND dead, injured or trapped. NO service, no matter how well resorced could cope with that. This and pandemic flu are the two things that terrify me, make the day of the roses look like a fender bender
I dont know if you know adelaide at all but the disaster senario we trained on was a hypothetical earthquake which ran through adelaide oval when a big match is on, and runing up through flinders med center (one of the 2 main trauma centers, though there is a third specifically for peds). This would mean at least 100 THOUSAND dead, injured or trapped. NO service, no matter how well resorced could cope with that. This and pandemic flu are the two things that terrify me, make the day of the roses look like a fender bender
Aside from not answering my first question (it wasn't rhetorical), you seem to be confusing the issue. How is a government taxing firearms the same as a private company charging more for a riskier investment?
Does a government charging sales tax on Coke limit one's right to drink Coke?
The employees of this company don't HAVE to pay for the company insurance, I'm sure. In fact, they are perfectly free to find another insurer, if this company is at all like any company that I've ever heard of.
:bugeye: and you know that how?
Having worked for Whirlpool, and considering the St Joe plant is a unionized company, and considering the union approved the health care plan and its stipulations, I honestly think Whirlpool would have been more than happy if some went and got their own insurance. The employer helps pay for the insurance and it would be one less person they have to pay for.
You're speaking of HMO's. HMO's are set up so that the less the doctor sees the patient, the more money he makes. That's why HMO's have gone out of favor. They suck. Most private insurance is fee for service. Under this system, if anything, the doctor has an incentive to provide more treatment than is needed.
So your waiting lists only insure that those who need treatment most get the treatment? Then how do you explain this:
So your chances of dying of cancer are higher in the UK with your much praised healthcare system than in the rest of Europe and the US beats you all. But surely that's the only problem. Right?
So the government passes a regulation requiring that patients be seen within four hours and they respond by keeping them sitting in ambulances so the clock doesn't start! Meanwhile, people are waiting five hours for an ambulance to show up! Where I live, the response time is a few minutes with our evil private pay system. How many patients that could have been saved are dying due to ambulances being used as waiting rooms?
And this story is the worst of the bunch, you all keep claiming that the having the government pay for healthcare carries no risk of oppresion. Well, how about this:
So, if you hold the wrong political views, you don't get medical treatment. That's just fuckin' great. Of course, there's no risk in handing over your healthcare to the government. Literally giving the government the power to decide who lives and who dies is no problem. Just be sure not to execute any murderers. But if someone holds the wrong political views, fuck em.
actually from all of YOU. Besides the thread asking exactly that there is the atitude of fear that you all seem to show towards goverment run services. Now this maybe fear of incopatance but then if thats the case VOTE IN BETTER GOVERMENTS