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TheHeretic -> RE: Can it really be simple? (9/20/2009 1:40:52 PM)
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It looks like the answer is "no," Orion, but there is some drift into a channel of interest
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ORIGINAL: ThatDamnedPanda
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ORIGINAL: TheHeretic
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ORIGINAL: ThatDamnedPanda
See, that's the disconnect. The people who oppose universal health care on the grounds that the government is not competent enough to administrate it have to take the position that the American government is more incompetent and more corrupt than (for all practical purposes) every other government in the Western world, and in fact more than almost every other government in the world, period.
And they're the ones who call us cynics? They're the ones who say we don't believe in our country?
Do any of these people ever stop to consider the completely contradictory assumptions that underlie their worldview?
I don't see how you are getting there, Panda (and I consider myself something of an expert on wild leaps). For starters, I set the bar at reducing the quality from what hundreds of millions of Americans are currently happy with. What do you find contradictory in the notion that government is inherently inefficient?
I'm sorry, man; I don't mean to seem obtuse, but I don't think I quite got what you meant there. Maybe I'm tired or something, but I miss the point. It sounds like we're disagreeing, but I don't want to argue until I know exactly what the disagreement is.
Ok, Panda, let's have another crack at this, shall we?
We aren't talking about bringing some new thing into the world. We have a health care system in the United States, and a lot of things in it work damn well. The discussion is whether we should trust the government to take it over, either directly, or by controlling the purse. (The bit about opposing that somehow meaning I think our gov't is the most incompetent and corrupt on the planet just makes no sense to me at all. If you'd care to elaborate?)
Just as I won't participate in a conversation about the credibilty of various news organizations without thinking of Dan Rather, and the stain he left, anytime the subject turns to gov't control of health care, I'm thinking of the government employee mopping the floor around the woman who died in the ER waiting room of a government hospital in LA.
We have big problems in our health care system. Malpractice insurance costs have dramatically altered the nature of the small practice. Our emergency rooms are overwhelmed with cases that should have been treated in a clinic a lot earlier. We have a safety-net that will cover the medical costs of the most desperately poor, but it won't kick in for most people unless they can lose absolutely everything they have worked for in their lives, before they die. The situation of pre-existing conditions is extremely problematic. We have a lot of people working in the industry who probably shouldn't be, and I haven't heard of that being addressed in so much as a press release. Some of the issues are completely cultural, rendering the rest of the worlds experience mostly irrelevant.
Might a gov't program be the only way to address some of these? Sure. Maybe a couple of different programs, even. One wave of the Federal Magic Wand, and all our problems disappear? That the elephants in the room aren't there because President Obama says they aren't? You'd have better luck selling me Arizona oceanfront. I'll give you that much cynicism, because it seems to me the option is to be ridiculously gullible.
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