Democrats & Liberals Archives

Stephen

We need lots of reform. ObamaCare is a move in the wrong direction. We need to lower costs and increase flexibility. ObamaCare raises costs and makes it harder to have choices about our own doctor or health plans.

In the usual liberal way, you have properly diagnosed the problem and then prescribed the wrong solutions.

I assume you want more ObamaCare and not something smarter. If I am wrong, please explain.

Of course the system is broken.

The root cause is simple: too much greed and selfishess.

The manifestations of so much selfishness are:

• Government meddling is a major cause (especially by a severely bloated, wasteful, corrupt, and bankrupt government of nightmare proportions).
  
• Too many voters with a sense of entitlement is a major cause.
  
• Too much abuse and fraud ($70 Billion per year in Medicare Fraud) is a major cause. $70 Billion per year in Medicare fraud is HUGE ($1.4 Billion per state per year, and growing)!!!
  
• Too many voters believe they can ride in the wagon, while fewer and fewer people are pushing the wagon.
  
• Government meddling, condoned by the majority of voters, have what they deserve (especially with 90% re-election rates for Congress).
  
• Healthcare is not only increasingly unaffordable, but dangerous too! HealthGrades.com reported (27-July-2004) that “An average of 195,000 people in the U.S. died due to potentially preventable, in-hospital medical errors in each of the years 2000, 2001 and 2002, according to a new study of 37 million patient records”.

The system is broken (as are many systems in the U.S.).

All of these systems growing more dysfunctional and bankrupt has been in progress for decades. The majority of voters have chosen to get their education the hard and painful way, as the U.S. goes bankrupt by trying to borrow and print new money to afford all the things they believe they are entitled to.

The U.S. has 4% of the world population but the most debt of any nation in the world (and more than many nations combined). Yet, cuts in spending of about 2.5% due to the sequester is almost portrayed as an apocolypse?

At any rate, the majority of voters have the government that they elect, and re-elect, … , and re-elect, at least, possibly, until repeatedly rewarding failure and FOR-SALE, incompetent, arrogant, and corrupt incumbent politicians with perpetual re-election finally becomes too painful.

The result of so much greed and government corruption is more of this.

If the federal government really wanted to help, it could have set up a functioning non-profit healthcare insurance system and non-profit hospitals.

Yet, the Obama admininstration gave $340 Million to one of his friends (Sara Horowitz, also a Soros collaborator, and ObamaCare beneficiary), and the company is rated as one of the worst companies in the industry.

That is a perfect example of what you get when you expect any severely bloated, corrupt, and bankrupt government to do just about anything.

At any rate, the majority of voters have the government that they elect, and re-elect, … , and re-elect, at least, possibly, until repeatedly rewarding failure and FOR-SALE, incompetent, arrogant, and corrupt incumbent politicians with perpetual re-election finally becomes too painful.

If the man had been a homeless derelict, an illegal Mexican, or a black person on welfare and food stamps; they would never have had an problem getting the help they needed. But since they were working and especially entrepreneurs with some insurance, then they would never be allowed to be treated.

Stephen, this one was not hard…

Daniel Podolsky, Texas Southwestern Medical Center’s $1,244,000-a-year president, nor any other executive would be available to discuss billing practices. “The law does not allow us to talk about how we bill,” he explained.

Do we need more government?

The pharmaceutical industry’s common explanation for the price difference is that U.S. profits subsidize the research and development of trailblazing drugs that are developed in the U.S. and then marketed around the world.

In this circumstance, yes! Government could be the sole owner of research and development by paying for it and then putting the findings into the public domain for the industry to produce at the cost and profit the market would pay.

Tort Reform.

HR 3076 is specifically designed to address the medical malpractice crisis that threatens to drive thousands of American doctors — especially obstetricians — out of business. The bill provides a dollar-for-dollar tax credit that permits consumers to purchase “negative outcomes” insurance prior to undergoing surgery or other serious medical treatments. Negative outcomes insurance is a novel approach that guarantees those harmed receive fair compensation, while reducing the burden of costly malpractice litigation on the health care system. Patients receive this insurance payout without having to endure lengthy lawsuits, and without having to give away a large portion of their award to a trial lawyer. This also drastically reduces the costs imposed on physicians and hospitals by malpractice litigation. Under HR 3076, individuals can purchase negative outcomes insurance at essentially no cost.

You don’t have Ron Paul in congress to kick around any longer, but he knew a thing or two about what could be done to curb costs. Now that he’s gone you don’t have to give him the credit for making some common sense changes like HR 3076.

Stephen Daugherty, the article you linked to was absolutely scary. The lack of education concerning the costs incurred and the complexities of insurance policies that could leave a wealthy person in debt is mortifying. I could find myself without anything left and in debt for the rest of my life after an illness or even an injury. There is no choice made. Shit happens. Some of the solutions on page 11 should be taken into consideration.

Since you are a Democrat and page 11 specifically mentioned Democrat’s involvement in the tort reform aspect, What is your take on tort reform and HR3076 in particular? Please don’t kill the messenger, Ron Paul, and please, try to be brief.

Bummer! Paragraph 3 should be a quote from the article.

C&J-
Brill only prescribes tort reform for a specific set of problems. (Overuse of diagnostic tools like CT scans where they’re not needed). The rest is a nightmarish collage of hideous overcharges. What gets me is that folks who love to talk about five hundred dollar hammers being a bad thing stare costs like these in the face and still tell me we don’t need the reforms to make such practices illegal.

D.a.n.-
You didn’t happen to notice all those parts where Medicare turned out to be so much more efficient and reasonable in terms of how it compensated the hospital, compared to their chargemaster-based bills, did you? Nope.

If we ignore better results for the sake of politics, then that’s where we get our pain and suffering. By the way, all the waste you describe could be paid for, if you actually read the article, by simply allowing Medicare to bargain on drug prices.

george-
First, I think it’s kind of tasteless to suggest that we shouldn’t treat human beings because of their inability to pay. To say the least. If a person can’t pay, but does need the care, we ought to take the hit. It’s not as if people will arrange to get sick less if we don’t treat them.

The business folks and others do get treated, by the way, but both their insurance and they have to pay exorbinate bills that are just plain criminal in their mark-ups. If medical care was priced more according to its costs than according to what allows them to build huge, empty hospitals and pay their administrators hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars, they might get more and better care.

Weary Willie-
I find it interesting that the paragraph concerning tort reform draws your attention. Or that the law doesn’t allow discussion of billing (I believe that’s HIPAA, medical privacy) As for what you discuss with patents, I want you to stop for a moment and consider something.

Patents are part of the Constitution, and medicines are clearly inventions that can be novel and dealt with in terms of prior art. There wouldn’t be much of a profit motive to actually develop drugs if you couldn’t profit by it. We could discuss limiting markups, though.

Second, concerning tort reform, I would say it needs to be done carefully, so we’re not excluding cases of real malpractice. Doctors need to be held accountable.

As for the rest? We pay a lot to get very little. We pay more than other countries do for single payer or regulated insurance systems. I can’t find the redeeming feature in the bills I see in this article, which I hope folks had the good taste to actually thoroughly read.

These hospitals aren’t overcharging people because government is forcing them to. I’d point out that in many places in the article, Medicare actually gets more sensible bills out of these people. But everybody else? They’re paying ridiculous charges because they have the kind of service nobody can avoid forever. The fact that people are mortal allows them to overcharge habitually, to build in prices nobody should feel are reasonable.

Which is why I didn’t do too much comment myself. Though the article does criticize certain aspects of healthcare reform, I felt that the obvious takeaway, the indisputeable takeaway is that the private healthcare system is abusing the desperate, distracted, and non-professional nature of their patients, and that the market, rather than discouraging this, is making it worse.

I think that’s the case for reform, right there: the market is proving incapable of helping people get reasonable prices.

It’s not as if people will arrange to get sick less if we don’t treat them.

The last time I checked, the dead don’t get sick. I actually have a lot more respect for someone who is consistent in his or her beliefs. I would be perfectly fine if we as a society chose not to treat those who cannot afford it. My problem is when we try to have our cake and eat it too with laws such as EMTALA, which are likely the impetus for the outrageous prices paid by the rest of us. Hypocrisy in this form is intolerable for me.

When people expect somebody else to pay, they have no reason to prepare.
Hospitals cannot turn away an emergency, so everything is now an emergency. Headache, cold, sniffles, sprain etc…

You want to lower prices bigtime? Take away the “free” care and force people to pass on the new CD, BluRay etc… and purchase insurance. Hell, at least make them accountable and pay for the tab they ring up.

In a free society, emotion should never determine the “need” for legislation.

If We the People paid for the research and development done by the industry then We the People would own the patent. Putting the patent into the public domain would allow the industry to make a profit, albeit small, off of the manufacture and supply of the product. The cost to the industry would be equivalent to any other start-up/production costs for any other industry. There would be no reason to inflate the price to recoup the cost of R&D and, in the current scenario, to limit markup would also limit R&D.

The article points out the fact that administrators quote the law in order to avoid talking about any billing or the price structure in general. Administrators are hiding behind the law to avoid explaining their outrageous charges, not a specific patient’s charges. I find it odd, to say the least, that hospitals can charge for items twice and three times in their chargemaster bills and get away with it when a third party payer is not involved.

Neither Medicare nor any large insurance company would pay a hospital separately for those straps or the surgeon’s gown; that’s all supposed to come with the facility fee paid to the hospital, which in this case was $6,289.

Education is a very important and overlooked factor in these billing charges. If patients were knowledgeable in the charges made and could recognize when they were being double and triple billed for an item, or when a gauze pad is inflated to hundreds of percent it’s cost, they could put pressure on the hospitals by not paying for them. Billing advocates should be available in every hospital and their expertise should carry great weight in a court of law. If people were allowed to dispute these charges with success the abuse would stop in short order.

We have to ask ourselves, “Why are we paying more than other countries for the same product, from the same manufacturer? Are we that gullible? Why does Medicare get the price breaks and others get gouged? Again, education is a major factor in this delema.

Doctors do need to be held accountable. Dr. Paul’s approach would accomodate the patient without the need for lawyers and time/money consuming litigation. Holding the doctor accountable should be done the same way the vandal/robber/murderer should be held accountable. If a doctor has an accident the insurance covers it. If the doctor is incompetent the criminal court should cover it. Time in jail is good motivation to do things right.

The market is capable of solving these problems if there is an educated consumer controlling the purse strings. Third party payers takes away the motivation to educate one’s self. No one would tolerate being charged three times for an am/fm radio in their new automobile! No one would tolerate paying separate charges for the box, and another charge for the wrapper, and then another charge for the crackers they buy at the supermarket. Why on earth do we allow it to happen in a hospital? I blame it on an ignorant and gullible consumer.

Stephen …. $70 billion of Medicare fraud per year is more efficient? Nonsense! Itis obsene!

kctim-
Funny, I would have never pegged you as a supporter of the insurance mandate.

As for the role of emotion? Without emotion, nothing in this world has salience for us. Nothing matters. That includes human life. Now, that might be convenient if you’re trying to be ruthlessly efficient, but when you are the cut cost, you might wish somebody was more “sentimental” about you.

One thing I would point out, though: you look at these bills, and the hospitals are charging tens, even hundreds of thousands of dollars for even just brief hospital visits. When the average person makes less than these bill every year, they really can’t cut enough in the real world to pay such bills.

And really, should every other business suffer for that fact, in exorbinate healthcare costs, or the lost demand for other products that comes from people not spending their money on other things?

d.a.n.-
It might help if you actually read what I said. I said that all the inefficiency you cite could be made up for if we allowed for bargaining. Additionally, you did not read all the parts about how little overhead they operate with, compared to private insurers, or the part where their accounting helps them avoid many of the costs that render healthcare for most private citizens much more expensive.

Weary Willie-
You also did not read the article close enough, as I recall there being a bit there about how the R&D costs nowhere near constitute enough of a bite into the profits to justify the mark-up.

On the point of the patent, I think they would have to demonstrate enough of their drug was due to their own R&D in order to patent it. But what if you do deny them the patent? Then why innovate? All the other drugmakers will be able to enter the same market, at the same time, with the same product.

Another Point: This argument always gets made, that people should educate themselves to avoid being taken advantage of by the newly freed up free-market enterprises. To a certain extent this is true.

But there’s a problem, and it boils down to one word: time. As in, we don’t have enough time to learn everything, especially not if we want to do our own jobs well. This is the reason for division of labor: it’s more efficient to divide up the jobs, often enough, into more specialized parts that can be optimized.

Medicine is fairly specialized, and requires a great deal of education to understand in depth. So it’s not enough to simply inform people. I mean, do people really have the time to learn everything they need to know to avoid being a victim?

Also, even if they do overcharge, what’s to stop them? As the article says, healthcare is the ultimate seller’s market. If you’re going to a doctor or the hospital, you need that help. You don’t necessarily have the option to go somewhere else, especially if the overcharging is a market norm, which it is, by the way.

Medicare gets the discount it does because there are laws that bind and constrain what they have to pay, and a bureaucracy devoted to essentially paring everything down to just paying a decent market rate for the work, the materials, and the equipment involved. The weakest places, like durable medical goods and the drug benefit, are that way because the law requires medicare to be that way.

So the question is, why not legislate protections against overcharging?

As for Ron Paul’s idea?

That seems to push things in the opposite direction from the tort reform the author suggests. You’d get people basically overtreating every patient in a desperate effort to avoid jail time. Accountability is one thing. This seems like even more heavy-handed an extension of the government’s power than the alternative. Obamacare instead takes the notion of paying for results more than admissions. If you only get paid for getting it right, you’ll do your best to avoid mistakes.

Stephen Daugherty said:

“george-
First, I think it’s kind of tasteless to suggest that we shouldn’t treat human beings because of their inability to pay. To say the least. If a person can’t pay, but does need the care, we ought to take the hit. It’s not as if people will arrange to get sick less if we don’t treat them.”

Tell me stupid, did I say we shouldn’t treat them??? No, I said they could get all the free care they wanted, and on the tax payer dollar. Stephen, you and your liberal friends made the argument FOR Obamacare, saying we needed NHC in order to cover the “kazillions” who have no HC. Now, all of a sudden, it turns out they were being treated all along.

“The business folks and others do get treated, by the way, but both their insurance and they have to pay exorbinate bills that are just plain criminal in their mark-ups. If medical care was priced more according to its costs than according to what allows them to build huge, empty hospitals and pay their administrators hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars, they might get more and better care.”

Stephen, you stupid SOB; the “business folks and others” with insurance are paying outrageous costs in order to pay for the medical procedures given FREE to the down trodden. As usual Stephen, liberals love free stuff, as long as someone else is paying for it.

Stephen, you and your liberal friends are uncontrollably ignorant. This country is collapsing in debt. You will never enjoy the life I have; you will never see one dime of SS, and you will stand in lines (like they do in Canada) in order to see a doctor or have an operation. And when your little world comes collapsing down, you can say, “I’M A LIBERAL, AND I TAKE FULL RESPONSIBILITY FOR OUR DEMISE”.

George, you need to read the rules of participation. I would have no problem reporting you to the editor for your name calling. That is totally uncalled for.

George,

I don’t understand your rant against Stephen. On the one hand, you are outraged that those with insurance and the taxpayer are subsidizing ER care for the uninsured. On the other hand, you are outraged at Obamacare and Romneycare as unnecessary since the uninsured are already receiving medical care through ERs. Huh!

Rich, I think it would be best if we don’t pop George’s little bubble of cognitive dissonance.

Stephen

“Funny, I would have never pegged you as a supporter of the insurance mandate.”

Sure came out that way didn’t it, lol.
I should have phrased it this way: Take away the “free” care and that would force people to pass on the new CD, BluRay etc… and purchase insurance or live with their decision not to have it.

As far as ruling by emotion, it doesn’t work in a society based on the rights of the individual. Emotion does nothing but “justify” treating people differently, which always leads to resentment and division.
For every person you desire to help, another must be punished.

2011 was not a good year for me, I am all too familiar with how and what hospitals charge.
Forcing hospitals to give free service for some means they will charge more for those who pay. Combine this with the fact that government money always raises costs and you get crazy fees.

“When the average person makes less than these bill every year, they really can’t cut enough in the real world to pay such bills.”

Yes they can. It may take years but almost everybody can pay on their bills. The problem is that they are not expected to so they spend their money on cell phones, cable, eating out etc…

As far as the couple in your link, satisfactory health care coverage is their responsibility and it should be part of any business plan.

George-
Let’s start from your hysterically overwrought conclusion and work backwards.

First, people already stand in lines, already end up waiting in emergency rooms and everything. The system is tremendously inefficient, in no small part because people can’t really boycott it entirely.

As for debt?

If we want less debt, The recovery of the economy is key. We need more economic activity, to provide greater revenues, to reduce social safety net expenditures, and dilute the value of the debt in a bigger economy. By recovering sooner, rather than later, we reduce the multiplication of additional years worth of economic stagnation, which is a big part of the deficit.

We also make it easier to reduce spending, or at least spending growth, and absorb higher taxes more easily, in a more stable economy.

The main difference between the deficit as it was under Bush and the Deficit as it was under Obama is the financial crisis. If we try the loanshark approach, the “**** you, pay me” approach to reducing our debt, you will find the economic effects will take back any progress in reducing debt, And the real long term problem, which is higher unemployment and the low revenues and growth that attend it, will remain.

As for this?

Stephen, you stupid SOB; the “business folks and others” with insurance are paying outrageous costs in order to pay for the medical procedures given FREE to the down trodden. As usual Stephen, liberals love free stuff, as long as someone else is paying for it.

They’re paying a lot of that cost because of the unconscionable mark-up, not the charity care. If you read the article, instead of your thesaurus looking for demeaning insults to throw at me, you might have picked up on that.

As for emergency room care?

Let me ask a pretty blunt question here: are you for socialism or are you not?

Because your idea of regularizing emergency care as your solution is exactly what Republicans were calling socialist when they first talked about it. People getting something for free, on the government dime, or on the business’s dime because it’s required?

I mean, if you find that objectionable, why not support a mandate. If you don’t find it objectionable, why don’t we ditch the whole emergency care aspect, and go instead for a Medicare-by-premium or Public option idea instead?

Again, folks on the right seem to change what they want, depending on what the Democrats are supporting. If Democrats are for it, no matter the principle or facts at heart, they must be against it.

kctim-
Let’s start at the fact that Hospitals are badly overcharging those who are on insurance, much less the ones who don’t have it. That should prompt an emotion. Anger, because people in life and death situations, or who have simple injuries or illnesses are being taken advantage of, pushed into incredible levels of debt nobody can sanely think is reasonable.

They give the excuse of indigent care, but the numbers don’t add up. And really, if folks are being forced to pay for these kinds of things over time, that’s still an opportunity cost for anything else in our economy.

Go back, read what kind of charges are being done there. Read about the double and triple charging, the outrageous, indefensible mark-ups. It sort of reminds me of this lyric in a song from a video game: “Aperture Science: We do what we must, because we can!”

They can cook up any number of excuses, but the numbers just don’t make it plausible.

You’re not paying for other people to get healthcare, you’re paying for the hospital Administrator’s Mercedes, and the new hospital wing at an institution already short on patients. The system is almost Soviet in its inefficiency.

Stephen writes; “If a person can’t pay, but does need the care, we ought to take the hit.”

That’s a very open-ended statement. If taxpayers are paying the bill should there not be limitations?

For example, is it reasonable to pay a million dollars on a patient who may only have his/her life extended a year or so. Could not that money be better spent treating 1,000 people at $1000 each?

When my wife was active as an educational diagnostician (special education) there were often special ed kids who, with the expenditure of many tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars, be only expected to one day be able to tie their own shoelaces. Is it reasonable to spend scarce resources on a few children instead of on many children?

“…and you will stand in lines (like they do in Canada.”

George,

Do you really think that Canada is some third world country? Their doctors and hospitals adhere to the same standards as US doctors and hospitals. Canadians are overwhelming in favor of their health care insurance arrangement. Sure, they have problems with the system. But, when compared to the US system, which they had until the mid 80s, they almost universally reject the US system.

“Canadians are overwhelming in favor of their health care insurance arrangement.”

Please provide your source for this statement.

you and your liberal friends are uncontrollably ignorant. This country is collapsing in debt.

George, George George, You open your mouth stupid comes out, just like the conservatives in Texas-
“Following projections by Health and Human Services that this will lead to 24,000 additional unplanned births in 2014-15 for women in poverty on Medicaid—at a $237 million cost to taxpayers—Republican lawmakers are backtracking on their stance and scrambling to restore funding to the important prevention services.”

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/03/05-4

Royal Flush-
If they don’t care for themselves, others will either have to forsake employment or hire other folks to care for them. Some claim to find savings in cutting people off of government help, but in a number of cases and situations, you’re just moving around the expense and the problem to somewhere else. If the kids have to take care of their parents, there’s a cost. If folks who are unemployed don’t have those benefits, they might turn to relatives, or worse, to crime, in order to make ends meet.

As for your question about the million dollar doctor’s bill?

Well, let’s start from the fact that under Obamacare, Medicare is by law supposed to keep track of those ineffective treatments and return data back as to whether they’re effective.

“Canadians are overwhelming in favor of their health care insurance arrangement.”

Royal, surveys of Canadians repeatedly find overwhelming support of their universally publicly funded system with upwards of 90% supporting the system. http://www.medicare.ca/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/nanos-poll.pdf

http://www.newswire.ca/en/story/884001/support-for-public-health-care-soars-94-of-canadians-including-conservatives-choose-public-over-for-profit-solutions

Stephen

To solve the problem, we have to look at why hospitals charge so much. No charge treatment, write-offs, government programs and the red tape that always comes with them, insurance in a sue happy society, on and on.
Government can’t pile on a ton of additional costs and expect the hospital to eat it.

A huge problem with all of that is that the “indigent” are not the only ones taxing and abusing the system. We now have millions of people choosing bling over responsibility added to the equation and such irresponsibility and abuse raises costs and only hurts care for the truly “indigent.”

We do pay for other people to get healthcare Stephen. We pay thousands for aspirin so that people don’t have to spend their own $4 for a bottle. But instead of fixing such abuse, you would rather worry about what a doctor is paid?

And sorry, but fretting over what other people are paid and wanting to control their pay, so that you can redistribute their wealth as you think it should be, sounds a lot more “Soviet” than a system that pays a person their market value.

kctim-
You blame government for the costs. Why not blame simple greed, combined with a business that’s literally necessary for people’s survival? Your default seems to be to portray business as the victim of government, but as the article demonstrates, there aren’t nearly enough free riders and costs associated with them to justify the huge mark-ups. Additionally, if you were to blame the lower costs that Medicare gets charged for that, he provides counterexamples of institutions where medicare reimbursement predominates, yet those organizations still make money.

kctim,

Did you actually read the linked article? Did you not see the absurd operating profit margins of those ostensibly “non-profit” hospitals? Did you not see the compensation levels of their executives? Are you so blind as to not recognize when you are getting ripped off?

Rich-
They see what they want to see. Logic is not what matters, unless it’s the crystalline, unsullied logic of their political dogmas, which need no check from reality. For them, government must be bad, must be at fault. Private concerns can’t be seen as able to abuse their power over others. They must be seen as the victims.

Rich
Yes, I read the article before commenting on it.
I do not care about profit margins or compensation levels, I care about rights. A company should have the right to run as it wants and we should have the right to support that company or not.
If you guys worried about irresponsibility and abuse even half as much as you worry about other people, this wouldn’t be an issue.

Stephen
You are replacing reality with utopian fantasies and you claim that I am the one not using logic?
Tell me Stephen, what kind of logic says to ignore the problem in order to come up with a solution?
What kind of logic is it to worry about the abuse of power of “private concerns” but to ignore the abuse of power of government?

“They must be seen as the victims”

I want government to leave me alone and let me live my own life.
You think everybody (except government) is out to get you so you want government to mandate how others treat you. You think it’s unfair that some make more money so you want government to redistribute their money to you and your causes. You believe in legislating by emotion.
But I’m the one who wants to be seen as the victim? Give me a break.

kctim-
I consider government abuses and private sector abuses to be equally bad.

As for government? Well, you know what? I don’t really see a lot of government invading my life, and I wonder whether you would, either, if you weren’t bombarded by constant propaganda telling you what a victim of government you are. No, you don’t like taxes. Should I? A part of me want the money. Another part tells me that in the real world, you have to pay to get some of the things you want. I like having meet that won’t give me food poisoning, drugs that don’t have massive side effects, the crooks in prison, my nation’s enemies held at bay, etc.

So, I do cost/benefit analysis. You know, I have no problem cutting waste, duplication, fraud and other things like that. I don’t even have a problem tightening the belt when our economy recovers. But rather than find common ground with me, you and yours entertain these utopian notions that you can have this nation all to yourselves, and run over anybody who says any differently. That, to me, seems altogether less attractive of a prospect, so I’ll fight rather than agree with that.

Stephen,

Most of ‘what you want’ can (and should) be achieved without the aid of government.

You want meat that won’t give you food poisoning…go to a butcher you trust to handle the meat correctly and who buys from sanitary/safe ranches. If you start to doubt the quality of the meat, go to another butcher…

You want drugs without massive side effects…research what you are taking. Look for a doctor who keeps track of his patients results rather than prescribing whichever product has the highest kick back.

The only thing government is absolutely needed for is defense (which is pretty much what conservatives have said all along).

But the problem, in your eyes, is that you can’t take those responsibilities on. Or better yet, that maybe you could, but the rest of the country is somehow incapable of being responsible for their own decisions and need government to protect them. Which is actually ironic, becuase it is a liberal belief that conservative trust corporations and not people, whereas in fact it is you that doesn’t believe you fellow citizens are capable of making intelligent, educated decisions…

Kctim,

“A company should have the right to run as it wants and we should have the right to support that company or not.”

That might be great if there was truly freedom of competition between hospitals and providers. If you actually had a choice. However, that choice is limited. The number of hospitals, beds, MIR machines, services, etc. are tightly controlled by the Certificate of Need which must be obtained before construction, expansion, etc. is authorized. This is one of those issues that is under the radar in health care reform and should receive more attention.

Adam-
I consider myself a fairly smart man.

I do not consider myself competent to represent somebody as a lawyer.

I have above average knowledge of anatomy, thanks to the textbooks that my mom had around the house, and I have better than average understanding about pharmaceuticals and biological processes for the same reason. But I’m no expert. I would not trust me to be your doctor.

I have some mechanical skill and expertise, but I still would rather have professionals install things so there aren’t any big errors caused by my amateur status.

I know something about modern physics, but there’s probably a bunch I don’t know.

What I have a professional’s level of knowledge about is making movies. I could at least do a decent job of that.

We all spend time training, learning, gathering the information we need to do our jobs, and because of the complexity of the world as it is, it is practically impossible for the modern man to know “everything” that his society knows.

We live in one of the most complex, technologically advanced civilizations that has ever existed on the face of this planet. The philosophy you’re depending on is the philosophy of an agrarian society which really didn’t need much management. People knew what they needed to know to deal with what was possible to do at that point, and the rest was in God’s hands.

But things are different now. If the Framers were around at this point, they would be astounded at how crowded, urbanized, and absolutely huge their country has become. they would be amazed that our streets weren’t full of horse****, that the sewers weren’t simply channels in the middle of the street. They would be astounded at the wealth of even the poorest person, at AC and Central Heating, at Fossil Fuels, much less the incredible advances of photovoltaic cells.

Forget TV, Radio, and the Internet. Hell, the Typewriter would be an innovation to them!

As part of my job, I’ve learned to deal with any number of aspects of computer performance and mechanics. But would you want me to fix your car? No. I could learn that. I could learn any number of fields if I wanted to. And if heaven allows it, when I go up, I’d like to do all that stuff, learn all that stuff.

But you know what? Here on Earth, we don’t have the time to learn everything, to figure out everything. Not even the smartest among us can know all things. That’s why we create agencies in the Executive branch, because somebody in those places can be an expert, can know what they’re facing.

Fact is, we need more government because the alternative would be people not learning their jobs, and filling all their lives up with arbitrary training, just so they can, without ignorance, look over somebody else’s shoulder. Me, I think people, while they’d be smart to learn some things, shouldn’t have to practically become able to do somebody else’s job, to make sure somebody else does their job.

We should be able to get good pharmaceuticals without becoming Doctors. We should be able to hire a lawyer and not get screwed without becoming lawyers ourselves. We shouldn’t have to get a degree in biochemistry, or chemistry period to keep people from polluting our air, our land, and our water.

We need to admit, that as Adam Smith talked about, we live in a society where jobs have become increasingly specialized, where people get tons of training in order to be able to do their own jobs, and thus, if a society like ours is going to function, it needs a government that matches its sophistication.

Stephen

How can you say that you consider the abuses to be “equally bad” when you constantly promote the take over and control of one over the other?

Reality, not propaganda, is why I am aware and concerned about government intrusion into our lives. You see Stephen, we view our rights and freedoms in very different ways. You create rights based on your desires for material things and you use your emotions to justify punishing others in order to obtain those material things. You also fear other people having rights and freedoms you do not approve of and you are more than willing to pull on heart strings and dance on graves to scare up support to take away those rights and freedoms.
Because of this, you do not see, or even want to see, just how intrusive government has become in our personal lives.

“No, you don’t like taxes.”

Sigh, wrong as usual. It has been explained to you many many times by myself and others, that limited government does not mean no government at all. Your Happy Meals would still be safe if people were to have to purchase their own aspirin.

Liberal politics corrupt your “cost/benefit analysis” and that makes it a waste of time. It refuses to acknowledge waste that compromises a one sided sense of “fairness” or threatens it at the ballot box.

“But rather than find common ground with me, you and yours entertain these utopian notions that you can have this nation all to yourselves, and run over anybody who says any differently.”

I have asked before but I’ll give it another shot: How do I want this nation all to myself and how am I running over anybody, when all I want is the freedom to live my life as I see best?
How is my belief of responsibility rather than dependency, so evil?

You know Stephen, for someone who loves to spout nonsense about everybody who dares disagree with you being brainwashed by propaganda, you sure love to promote big government through standard talking points and fear.

Stephen,

Nice try in trying to alter what I prescribed, but you didn’t actually espouse becoming a physician, butcher, lawyer or anything else. I prescribed people using their own intellect in evaluating others.

You don’t have to be a doctor to look at evaluate a doctors performance. Anecdotal evidence, statistics, etc. offer all the information you need when deciding which physician treats you. Trying to pretend that I wanted you to learn as the complexities of modern medicine is just your attempt to excuse yourself from personal responsibility.

The same goes for lawyers, mechanics, chemists, etc. You don’t have to learn how they do their jobs to be able to evaluate them and their performance. If you have ever taken a car to a mechanic, you have already done this. The same goes for your personal physician. Maybe you asked friends and relatives for recommendations, maybe you looked at examples of their work, possibly even visited sites like Angie’s list, but in the end you make a decision and then live and learn from it (they either perform sufficiently, or the next time you go somewhere else). The more important the decision, the more time goes into evaluating the choice before you make the plunge. A good example was my wife’s decision to have cosmetic surgery. Do to the gravity of that decision, we spent six months evaluating different doctors in the area before we finally made a decision. Yet during all that time, I never learned how to perform the surgery….it wasn’t necessary. So please, quit trying to obscure what I originally suggested.

The second fault of your argument is the (inaccurate, false) belief that government and its entities are ran by experts. The EPA, DOE, etc. are not run by experts in their given field. They are run by bureaucrats. In fact, they report to the executive branch, which is a political office, not a scientific think tank. In my job as a regulatory engineer (with a BS in mechanical engineering) I spent 60% of my time answering to different representatives from DOE and EPA. In 4 years (at 60% of my time) do you know how many people with an engineering background I have had the privilege of talking to at these agencies? Zero. Now guess how many lawyers…hundreds. They dictate, prescribe, and regulate what my industry and company should do without the minimum amount of knowledge about how, why, or even if what they ask for is physically possible (they have on multiple occasions asked for the equivalent of perpetual motion machines)…

So, long story short. There is absolutely no reason why the American people can’t maintain their freedom, and with that their responsibility, to manage their own choices. Handing that responsibility over to government DOES decrease our freedom and self autonomy with the only benefit of allowing society to become lazier and hold less personal responsibility.

P.S. On a side note, this (along with many other conservative ideas ) might not be popular among the voting public (which has been one of your constant rants lately) but that does not make it wrong. I would rather be in the minority and correct, than incorrect but part of the majority. People are very often willing to give up their rights, little by little, for a shallow sense of security. But history has shown (over and over) that dire consequence of that mistake.

Just an FYI:

EPA leadership:

Acting Administrator and Deputy Administrator - Bob Perciasepe—-Perciasepe holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Natural Resources from Cornell University and master’s degree in planning and public administration from the Maxwell School of Syracuse University.

Diane E. Thompson, Chief of Staff—-She holds a bachelor’s degree from Vassar College and a law degree from George Washington University National Law Center.

Arvin Ganesan, Associate Administrator for the Office of Congressional and Intergovernmental Relations—-Ganesan holds a B.A in Economics from the University of Massachusetts/ Amherst and a Master’s degree in Public Administration from the George Washington University.

James A. O’Hara, Associate Administrator for the Office of External Affairs and Environmental Education—-EPA site doesn’t list his education, only state he started his career as a journalist. (I personally don’t know anyone with a science degree that starts their career in journalism)

Michael L. Goo, Associate Administrator for the Office of Policy—-Michael graduated from Washington University School of Law in St. Louis and cum laude from Vassar College.

Associate Administrator for Homeland Security, Deborah Dietrich—-Ms. Dietrich has a Bachelor Degree from the University of Maryland in business and another from Salisbury University

So, that make one person in the entire leadership with any sort of scientific background. So much for Stephen’s assertion that “That’s why we create agencies in the Executive branch, because somebody in those places can be an expert, can know what they’re facing.” Looks more like we create the agencies so crony lawyers and aspiring politicians can dictate to those of us who do know what we are doing.

“You want meat that won’t give you food poisoning…go to a butcher you trust to handle the meat correctly and who buys from sanitary/safe ranches. If you start to doubt the quality of the meat, go to another butcher…”

Adam,

Do you actually know where most meat and poultry is processed? Hint. It isn’t at your local butcher shop. In fact, try to find one. If you can, find out where it obtains its meat and poultry. You may be surprised. It’s a totally absurd idea that the consumer could evaluate and monitor the safety of meat and poultry which may be raised, slaughtered and packaged thousands of miles from the consumer.

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kctim-
You seem to tell me an awful lot about what I believe, which puzzles me because I have firsthand knowledge of it.

Let’s say you have a ten year old boy or girl, a trusting child who looks up to adults, and believes them to be real wise and professional, etc. That child’s been taught to think of America as tolerant, free, a place where hard work gets good results, where being smart, being honest, and everything else is what gets you a better position in life. You are supposed to earn your better position in life, rather than having it be granted to you by accident of birth.

That is the mythology we sell to our children, so they’ll buy into it, and grow up to be good little citizens.

My sensibility is that the less you have to explain the discrepancies to those theoreticial children, the better.

Put simply, I believe in a sensible balance between freedom and the obligations of law, one that filters out irresponsible, dangerous, malicious, and otherwise merit-poor behavior. I think the market can help filter out some of that behavior, but the market itself is not inherently moral. It can reward the cheats as well as the truly virtuous, and in fact will sometimes reward the cheats to the exclusion of the good.

You’re just throwing stereotypes my way. You’re not astounding me with your insight, you’re bewildering me with your obtuseness.

Stephen Daugherty wrote: d.a.n.- It might help if you actually read what I said.

It does not matter how much bloat and waste there is, because some people like it that way … especially the ones who benefit from it.

Whatever efficiencies may exist in the severely unfunded Medicare system, they are totally obliterated by $70 Billion per year in Medicare fraud.

Now, if you can show efficiencies that exceed the $70 Billion in fraud (not to mention waste), then you might have a case. But $70 Billion is about 20% of total Medicare spending, and a much larger percentage of total Medicare tax revenues (since the vast majority of money for Medicare is borrowed; a part of the $1.2 Trillion borrowed every year for the past 4+ years).

Eventually, all this debt is going to have severe consequences. But then, with 90% re-election rates for Congress, the majority of voters have what they deserve. When the SHTF, the majority of voters will only have themselves to thank for it, because too many of the voters belong to these two extremes:

Extreme #1: One extreme wants regressive taxation, unfettered capitalism and freedom to explore and wallow in every manifestation of unchecked greed (which we have seen plenty of lately).

• Extreme #2: The other extreme wants a nanny-state with citizens increasingly dependent on the government; with massive cradle-to-grave government programs (which are usually severely mismanaged) that nurture a sense of entitlement and dependency on government; wants to grow government ever larger (despite the already current nightmare proportions); rewards failure and laziness; and perpetuates the myth that we can somehow all live at the expense of everyone else.

At any rate, the majority of voters have the government that they elect, and re-elect, … , and re-elect, at least, possibly, until repeatedly rewarding failure and FOR-SALE, incompetent, arrogant, and corrupt incumbent politicians with perpetual re-election finally becomes too painful.

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