DescentBB

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Hee hee, good one Foil.

Well, the efficiency of any system, public or private, depends on those who run it and what they want out of said system or what they want said system to do for it's recipients. Both systems can be victims of waste, neglect, inflexibility and fraud. Those who hate the government have a point that a large, impersonal bureaucracy can be rife with fraud, waste and be inflexible to change, all of which are true. Private enterprise can also be wrought with those same problems as well. Neither system is perfect.

I guess what I object to with private enterprise in health care is that inconvenient profit motive that's always layered on top of all those other problems I pointed out above. It's always couched as "freedom of choice" when in reality, it's not. I just don't think profit motive goes good in any situation that's composed of inelastic demand in any marketplace. Such situations usually lean towards monopolistic behavior, greed and abuse. It only cares if it makes money, and lots of it, not whether the customer gets better, or lives. The way our system is set up now, there is no incentive to cut costs to the customer either, because the customer will always want to pay whatever it takes to live. The customer is his or hers own worst enemy.

Even worse, consumers can't even find out the costs beforehand if they wanted to make an informed buying choice. When you have that situation, how does the free market compensate fairly for all so that some don't fall through the cracks? If a system requires all customers to pay into that system to ensure a large enough pool to make it viable, why should 30% of what people are required pay into that system go into the pockets of a few companies and CEO's as overhead for essentially little service in return? That's what Obama's private insurance mandate does for us. I could buy a whole lot of health care with just the premiums I'm paying right now.

I'm somewhat liberal and I'm fine with paying into a common pool. But I want MOST of what I'm paying to at least go towards helping those consumers in that pool, including me. That's usually what a government-run program is there for, fairness for all, not just some CEO who's skimming 30% off the top and not doing anything beneficial health care wise. The tea partiers and conservatives want to get rid of Medicare altogether. I say fix it so everyone benefits, not just the wealthy.

I guess that I'm of the position that health care is one of those inalienable rights that's part of the life, liberty and freedom part of our country. The government should be there to ensure that. If the government is broken, fix it first, don't give it over lock, stock and barrel to private enterprise as a knee-jerk reactionary response from a corporate-sponsored astroturf political party. Private enterprise is not a fix-all for every problem out there. Sometimes the system that we have just needs a really good tune-up, and the motivation to do it, to work properly.

As Jon Stewart said: Not everyone defines freedom as the ability to not pay taxes. We wish government was better, not gone.

Thorne, wouldn't changing the playing field necessitate a massive government intervention anyways? It saddens me that because of some blind hatred of everything government on your side, nothing gets done. Civilization crumbles while you guys sit and moan about people that can afford it paying an extra 3%.

What if the govt cut the corporate tax rate but mandated that all those savings MUST be applied to new hiring and expansion? What would you guys think of that? And I mean goddamn mandated!!

Seriously damn is filtered? What is this a kids' forum?

Feel free to turn off your filter.

Zuruck wrote:Seriously damn is filtered? What is this a kids' forum?

No but apparently you just needed one of the big kids to tell you it's ok to take the training wheels off your bike....now don't crash on your first ride, ok?

Kewl..lolz!!!!1

I think it would have been more fun if Foil HADN'T told him about that switch.

I guess I assumed that since we are all mildly obese, middle-aged men we wouldn't need a filter.

Zuruck wrote:I guess I assumed that since we are all mildly obese, middle-aged men we wouldn't need a filter.

who are you calling MILDLY obese?

My penis is mildly obese Hey he said kids forum

Hey, I'm only a slightly-overweight twenty-something. Don't lump me in with the rest of you.

define middle-aged

Zuruck wrote:I guess I assumed that since we are all mildly obese, middle-aged men we wouldn't need a filter.

no, we just assumed you'd look around at the new features of the board, seeing as there was an upgrade done.

but I guess we assumed wrong.

Zuruck wrote:Thorne, wouldn't changing the playing field necessitate a massive government intervention anyways? It saddens me that because of some blind hatred of everything government on your side, nothing gets done. Civilization crumbles while you guys sit and moan about people that can afford it paying an extra 3%.

I think your representation of the situation is convenient and unfair. Let me start out by saying that I'm not the one that hit civilization with the 15lb mallet. Maybe I should stop moaning and hope that the same school of though that led us into this mess will walk us right back out. So get off of my back, politically. You want to take pot shots, you take them at the fuckers pushing us toward the cliff, not the ones focusing more on stopping the forward movement than plotting a new course, as you portray it. Hell, take them at the ones telling us that if we don't surge forward as fast as humanly possible we won't have enough speed to run on air Wile E. Coyote-style.

I still haven''t made up my mind when it comes to the equity of someone blaming another person for not wanting to do anything when they're doing everything terribly ★■◆●ing wrong. Something just doesn't sit right with me about that.

Anywho... in answer to your first question--would it require a lot of government intervention. The answer, I believe is that it would require a great deal of the government intervening in its own affairs--how it regulates and looks at business. I haven't thought it out totally.

Zuruck wrote:What if the govt cut the corporate tax rate but mandated that all those savings MUST be applied to new hiring and expansion? What would you guys think of that? And I mean ******* mandated!!

This would be done in the form of a tax incentive, most probably. I don't think I would have a problem with it, other than that I don't trust anyone to implement it cleanly and reliably.