Third Party & Independents: Archives

The real question is: How much higher would life expectancy be if 41 million Americans could afford health insurance and annual physical exams. There is a built in mechanism to prevent that life expectancy from rising any faster than it is, it is called poverty and low minimum wages and the Republicrat duopoly.

I started to reply last night. Changed my mind since I was going to turn this negative.

It seems to me ‘they’ use the fact that our healthcare is getting better to justify the rising costs.

I remember having to pay cash for an ultrsound 9 years ago. It was around $200. I asked why it cost so much?? Answer - because the equipment is expensive and has to be paid for. The equipment? The equipment was already about 5 years old. I imagine it had been paid for over and over. At $200 a pop - exactly how long does it take to pay for it? A week?
Next excuse - they have to buy new equipment and it is expensive - then they have to charge enormous fees for the new equip..
A minimum of $78 for a 10 minute yearly checkup?
I had to go to the walk-in clinic a few weeks ago. I received a bill for the doctor of $65 - the thing is I NEVER SAW THE DOCTOR ! A nurse practitioner took care of me and wrote the prescription. I found out a few days later, through the newspaper, that she(the doc)had retired a month before and was on a tour of Europe!
It’s a viscious cycle.
They charge what they want and we have to pay for it.

Dawn- I am surprized that you waiting this long to turn it negative- i expected 10 negative posts within a matter of hours.

“They charge what they want and we have to pay for it.”

Yes, and they have the right to charge what they want- it is their product! The real problem is that the ridiculous ammount of regulation in the industry makes barriers to entry so high as to reduce competition.

But the more emmidiate issue to my article is how we need to turn everything negative. Rather than being happy that our healthcare continues to improve, we always need to focus on the negative aspects. Thats fine and all, but looking at the world with dark-colored classes is just a big a vice as looking at it with rose-colored glasses.

Misha,

Don’t get me wrong - I am happy we have the best healthcare.
You are right about it being ‘their product’.

I guess because I am one who would rather make more money by selling more product than by overcharging just because I can …

David - good point.

There is a paradox here, indeed. Folks are living longer so that they’ll have more years to complain about how much healthcare is costing them!

Misha,
I’ve read that Progress Paradox book. I got it out of the Public Library because it sounded like an interesting subject - began reading it and then said to myself, ‘Oh, I see, this is a Libertarian book.’
First he talks about how much better everything is (for the rich and middle classes, anyway) then he segways into how some things are in fact really very bad, but that those things can only be fixed by individual kindness and generousity rather than to ever expect the government to lend a hand with any of our societies ills.
I was left with the impression that Easterbrook didn’t himself know what kind of book he wanted to write, a scientific study (btw, some of his statistics seemed extremely questionable) on happiness, or a lecture on personal morality. Then I discovered that what Easterbrook usually writes about is football - of all things.
I think he really should’ve stuck to that.

Misha

You won’t get any negativity out of me on this one. I read the book and his earlier book “A Moment on the Earth.” I also got an interesting book called “The Birth of Plenty.” We don’t appreciate how good we have it compared with almost any time and place in the history of humankind.

We have gotten so prosperous, that one of the biggest problems of the very poor is obesity. That people don’t find that ironic just shows how far we have come. I have given up believing that many people can be happy with what they have.

There was a Latin saying, “Many people have too much, but nobody has enough.” As a society that applies to us. There is a homeless bum I talk to on the way to my metro stop. I like him because he doesn’t pretend that he would work for food or is just down on his luck. I give him a few dollars and I am sure he goes and buys some cheap wine. Occasionally we talk about his life. It is not happy and he is not doing well – by modern U.S. standards. But even this guy gets more nutritious food than 95% of the people who ever lived on earth. His clothes are dirty and unkempt, but they are not rags. And he has achieved all this with absolutely nothing anyone could call work.

I know my anecdote will annoy some people and I expect the shower of sob stories about hard times. We have failed my friend in the sense that we have allowed his life to become too chaotic. Of course, he has failed us by not working steady and becoming a drunken “outdoorsman”. I don’t know what government sponsored social program could help him because he is clearly doing what he chooses, although not what he would prefer, to do.

Adrienne- i take it you did not read that book very carefully, as he is actually liberal (including recomending univesal healthcare and a 10 dollar minimum wage- things i assume you agree with, and I do not- and i know no libertarian that would agree with either of those two terrible proposals). As for your dig at him for writing about football- he was a writer about the environment and a noted columnist for the New Republic well before he wrote his football column. You really should know more about people, or at least read their books a little more carefully, before you try to tear them down.

Misha:
“i take it you did not read that book very carefully, as he is actually liberal”

Actually, I thought he was all over the board, sounding variously like a libertarian, a rightwinger, and only occasionally like a liberal. I was left with the impression that he was a very confused person.

“(including recomending univesal healthcare and a 10 dollar minimum wage- things i assume you agree with, and I do not- and i know no libertarian that would agree with either of those two terrible proposals)”

He talked about them in the strangest way though. I wasn’t left with the impression that he thought that we should demand those things from the government. He seemed to be saying that his own Christianity and morality made him believe that those things were needed, but he never spelled out how he felt we should arrive at getting them.

“a noted columnist for the New Republic”

Ah, well there you go. Only marginally left-leaning, The New Republic often champions things I don’t agree with.

“…..things can only be fixed by individual kindness and generousity rather than to ever expect the government to lend a hand with any of our societies ills.”

There ya go ….

Dawn:
“There ya go ….”

???

I agree that people should help people first and rely on the government as a last resort. If this were to happen we wouldn’t need many of the programs our tax dollars are supposed to be paying for.
It seems that everyone wants to run to the government. Ultimately giving more control of our every day lives to our ‘leaders’.
Money that is meant to go to help people is generally wasted or allocated elsewhere through the government.
Instead of government getting bigger, it should be made smaller and more manageable.
We have come to rely more on the government than each other. That can’t be all good.

When Democrats use the term ‘It takes a village.’, what does that mean exactly?

Sorry about that - only one word was supposed to be underlined.