Re: Another one o' them smoking ban threads....
 

i love it when people who don't follow the research go on a tear about what the world is willing/not willing to admit about pot.

cannabinoid are huge in medical research right now specifically because of their potential medical benefits. however, the mere fact that it's a plant that makes you feel good doesn't automatically make it good for your health. nor does it mean there's a grand worldwide conspiracy trying to cover up the good stuff you enjoy so much.

the fact is, smoking pot does put you at an increased risk of lung and oral cancers than non-smokers, although the research is still incomplete. it's not a grand conspiracy. you can argue whether it's less damaging than tobacco but that's like arguing whether it's worse to crash in a car or crash in a truck. you're still better off not crashing. long-term high exposure has also been shown to shrink the hippocampus and amygdala.

it's about risk assessment. there are risks associated with pot. enough to make you turn it down? doesn't sound like it, and that's totally your choice. but don't do this namby pamby "it's a plant that's good for you" crap just because it's an activity you enjoy.

i'd like to point out something here. i personally don't think the risks are worth it. smoking anything, in my opinion, is a fairly stupid thing to do to the one and only body you get in this life. i've watched someone die of lung cancer and it's one of the most horrifying things to see. it's not worth it for any reason.

but the difference between you and i, my friend, is that my vision of universal healthcare will treat you and try to save your life if you develop health complications as a result of stupidly treating your body like a disposable diaper. you, on the other hand, would deny me the same respect if our situations were reversed.

Re: Another one o' them smoking ban threads....
 

I am totally fine with the research, because I do believe their are side effects. I do not like it, however, when people try to spin my eating a pot brownie once a week is gonna lead to me developing lung cancer because people are not very intelligent and cannot separate correlation from causation with respect to the drug. If there were no cannibinoids in pot, you'd get lung cancer from smoking the leaf. If there is no leaf around the cannibinoids, you're not gonna get lung cancer from consuming the cannibinoids. That is all I'm saying...

you are a little too quick on the offencive. I am not some pseudo-science pothead with a G.E.D. and a bag of pot...

Re: Another one o' them smoking ban threads....
 

But ya can get cancer is what we're saying. Not only people who abuse dangerous vices get cancer.

Re: Another one o' them smoking ban threads....
 

Yes, this is true. I am well aware. (not being mean or sarcastic)

Before I post my little thing...

Do we all agree that Universal Health Care in the United States is a system in which the Federal government creates a bureau that uses taxpayer money to put money in the pockets of hospital employees and staff which in return for the unconditional health care of all who step foot into the hospital, regardless of their health context or taxpayer status? If coverage is not desired by an individual, is it possible for this individual to opt out of paying the tax that sponsors this universal health care bureau? Is health coverage absolute, or is cost split between private HMO and federal government? Give the context for split coverage, if so.

If this definition is in-line with all of yours', there are a few problems I have with Universal Health Care.

First and foremost, I do not believe that health care is a fundamental human right. I understand that health care is an important part of being alive, and that life is a fundamental human right. While these views seem somewhat contradictory, putting health care in line with other crucial-for-life resources such as food, water, and shelter reveals that health care does not warrant a federal government bureau to ensure its availability to all humans; plenty of Americans go to bed malnourished and unsheltered each night. Perhaps the desire for universal health care stems from citizens who live decently well aside from health care, because health care is an unreasonably priced commodity that is necessary for life, or maybe these citizens who campaign for universal health care don't empathize enough with the fact that a lot of people go to bed on the side of the road each night and consequently have not thought about creating government agencies to end the practice that does not immediately affect them in addition to overpriced health care. I do agree that health care is very unreasonably priced...

Combating the overpriced nature of health care using government money, as opposed to an individual combining the over-time and upon-treatment bills, does not actually lower prices but merely means everyone's pockets get fucked over a little bit instead of the ill minority citizens getting impaled with bills and the totally healthy being totally unaffected. Sure, HMO's have salaries to pay for their employees and they are the obvious middle man in health care. A federal bureau to collect taxes and redistribute the funds to hospitals also has employees to pay, as well (to my understanding, a lot of the money collected by the IRS is used to fund IRS operations). As to which one is more efficient, HMO or Government, I am not sure. If cost is the issue, perhaps a better way to reduce the cost of medical coverage is to limit frivolous law-suits against doctors and increase the efficiency of a currently existing government agency: the FDA.

One of the illusions that is being created in this thread is that without universal health care many people in emergency situations will die. The federal government already requires anyone who enters a hospital under emergency circumstances will receive coverage. If federal paperwork is added pre-treatment as it is in certain countries, hospital wait-times may be longer than they are today. Of course there are circumstances that a few hours will not make or break, such as cancer, but the inconvenience may still exist if universal health care is not put into effect while taking this concern into account.

While universal health care does provide coverage for those who genuinely cannot afford health care under their own abilities, universal health care also removes some cause-effect accountability in the individual. When the group (Nation) is footing the bill, it is not impossible to conceive of a citizen who does not take monetary costs associated with unhealthy lifestyle choices as seriously as he would if he were solely responsible for coverage through HMO monthly bills and upon-treatment bills. Another potential problem associated with universal health care could occur when coverage is given to individuals who do not pay taxes; if the group pool of money is to avoid any one member of the group being severely affected by bills, what is the point of covering those who have not committed to the group?

Some still prefer the group pool of money, even if some individuals are not using the money in accordance with common sense (ie alcoholics getting liver transplants and hitting the bottle afterword). Even if you do not believe in "common sense"...at a certain point, with certain conditions and certain specific ways to contract those conditions, there are direct causations between deliberate human activity and the presence of a disease. As a registered voter, I choose to vote against this communal-money-pool school of thought because I do not want others to be held accountable for my actions and choices and I do not want to be held accountable for the actions and choices of others (when choices lead to illness), even if it means higher prices for me as an individual down the line. Obviously this accountability argument does not apply to pathogens, unpreventable diseases, unforeseeable/unpreventable/uncushionable illnesses or states of being sick. My intro into this thread had to deal with this issue of accountability; because certain people do not want to pay for lifestyles they have smugly deemed unacceptable, they will pressure for laws to limit your freedom of lifestyle or deny you health care coverage under the universal health care system.

I personally believe limiting the individuals freedom of lifestyle by propping up smoking bans in private places or denying smokers health coverage because I do not deem their health choices acceptable violates multiple amendments to the Constitution. Be careful to not confuse my beliefs; if there is universal health care, everyone should get coverage or else the institution is illegally discriminatory. If there is not universal health care present, I will keep voting against it because it would create the (unnecessary) dilemma of paying for the (un)health(y) choices of others or illegally denying them coverage.

If citizens really feared smoking as much as the government would want you to believe, free market solutions tell me bars that ban smoking on principle, by choice, should be more popular than they are ;)

Aside from all of these potential issues, health care is not outlined as a government responsibility in the Constitution and is therefore illegal at the federal level. If no faith can be put in the free market solutions by dirty readers, I believe government regulation on HMO business practices and ethics is the most reasonable solution in place of free market ones. The only free market solution, in practically any debate, is the success of companies that do what people want the companies to do for them. If I'm going to be an ideologue... While health care is an essential part of health, health care is still treatment. Perhaps prevention, in the form of education about diet, exercise, and public sanitation could at least limit some of the strain on tomorrow's hospitals.

I understand criticisms that I simply debated against universal health care instead of supporting the free market, but I'm not sure I care at this point. I don't have a thorough solution that I can outline for you, I just believe universal health care is not it. Free market is pretty self-explanatory, though, and simplicity may be an asset. If you want to learn more, or learn anything, read a book about it.

For the record, my insult toward Sarcasmo was about him being so God damned unnecessarily angry and hostile, but not angry and hostile about one particular decision in his life. I do not take the insult back, but I will say that I respect the man's right to think individually and express himself accordingly.

Re: Another one o' them smoking ban threads....
 

Okay, I'll bite. It'll have to be a two-parter though... :D Sorry, but that made me giggle like a small child. Just wanted to establish my immaturity right off the bat. Now onto the grown-up talk....

It's not necessarily, but I think we can still discuss the philosophical merits of universal healthcare.

I believe the contradiction here outweighs the qualifiers you provide. First and foremost, yes it is a blatant contradiction in that preserving our basic human right to life requires that we are able to have regular physicals, and treatment for injuries and illnesses.

But secondly, the comparisons you give are actually incomparable to the subject at hand. While I agree that food, water and shelter are obvious necessities, and that we should be looking for solutions to these problems as well, I disagree that they are in any way appropriate to use as arguments against universal health care. So let's take them one at a time.

Food vs health care. You can get a meal that will fill you up for less than $5 virtually anywhere in the country. There is no medical procedure or exam that, uninsured, will be even remotely as affordable. Or to put it another way, a hungry person can get a meal by scrounging up change, begging, going to a soup kitchen, etc to end their hunger for the moment. Certainly not desirable, but definitely doable. Contrast that with an uninsured person who discovers, for example, that they need hernia surgery - this happened to me shortly after I left college and before I was qualified to join the union. With the help of a very kind employee at the doctor's office, I was able to haggle the price of the surgery/anesthesia/hospital costs down to $10,000. That pretty much wiped out everything I had managed to save up until that point in my life. Someone who wasn't fortunate enough to have $10,000 on hand could be facing choices such as enormous debt, or even death from an untreated hernia. And even though I had the money and paid it immediately, I still had to deal with a collection agency being sicked on me by the anesthesiologist because the surgeon hadn't forwarded his share of the payment on to him, and it took me months of stress to resolve. I would've preferred the challenge of finding a meal.

Water vs universal health care. I don't know about where you live, but I know of countless public places around L.A. where there are water fountains that anyone can use for free. Nothing comparable for medical treatments though.

Shelter vs health care. I'd basically say that the same argument applies here as with the food issue. And again, I'm not arguing that malnourishment and lack of shelter aren't problems. I'm only saying that they're problems which can be solved by an individual far more readily than an unchecked illness or injury. Which leads us to your next point...


Basically, you acknowledge the problem of the high cost of health care, but offer no realistic solution. I'm all for limiting frivolous lawsuits, believe me. But the high cost of health care is not simply, or even largely, due to lawsuits (sorry, but I think you need to use safari to open the link). It's due to a variety of primarily social and economic factors which, yes, should absolutely be reigned in. However, that still won't solve the problem. Most information you find on soaring health care costs talks about how they've really shot up since the year 2000, and the example I gave of my hernia surgery happened back in 1993, when treatment was far more "affordable". So even if we get costs down, they will still be out of reach for the vast majority of the uninsured.

What you're ignoring here is the difference in quality of health care between those who have good insurance, those who have the bare minimum, and those who are uninsured. Simply put, the treatments, techniques and equipment made available to you directly correlates with how good your coverage is, or how much you can afford to pay. So while you may get "treated" as a poor, uninsured person, you will likely get the bare minimum treatment, which very likely won't solve a serious illness as much as it will temporarily ease the problem. Ultimately, this can very well lead to death, or a life of pain and discomfort that could otherwise be eased or even eliminated.

I agree, but the problem is that this is already happening, and is already what's playing a huge part in driving costs of health care up. So again, I agree that it's a problem we need to solve, but it isn't an argument against universal health care in my opinion. It's simply a consideration that must be addressed in the implementation of a universal system.

Again, I'm not sure that just presenting challenges in making it feasible is reason enough to say it shouldn't happen. I agree that this example needs to be considered and dealt with, but I don't see why that means we shouldn't even try.

Re: Another one o' them smoking ban threads....
 

Part two...

And here we differ on the "common sense" issue. I disagree with the bulk of the examples you've given of people being "stupid", "retarded", or showing no "common sense". In your comments above, you illustrate your point by saying "alcoholics getting liver transplants and hitting the bottle afterword" aren't using "common sense". Alcoholism is a disease, and an extremely difficult one to fight. I simply don't see that as an issue of "common sense" as you do. And you've already refused to respond in any meaningful way to my challenges regarding what exercise-driven physical activities you believe should be classified as "stupid", so I'll just let my earlier replies stand as my response to this point.

I would submit that this is why the constitution was framed as a document that could, and should, be amended. As we progress as a society, new needs arise, new discoveries are made, and new debates present themselves. All of these have to be dealt with as they come to the forefront, which is where the healthcare issue is right now. It's not an illegal proposal - it's a new proposal. And if it was illegal, wouldn't it be safe to say that Republicans would have already seized upon that fact in their debate against Democrats on the subject? I'm no constitutional scholar, but then neither are you I suspect. So ultimately on this point, I'll defer to actual constitutional scholars, and I have never seen any of them argue the illegality of the concept of universal health care.

I agree with a free market philosophy when it comes to non-essential goods and services, but health care is a necessity for all people. The free market works on a fundamental principle of consumption, which is that people tend to look for the best deal they can (typically meaning the most affordable). When they find it, they go with it, thus rewarding companies who make an effort to keep their goods and services affordable, and of a certain quality. But as was mentioned in the first article I linked to in this reply:

"When was the last time you heard someone say something like this: 'You're having chest pains, Al? Sorry to hear that. You should see Dr. Smith. He's not as fancy as those cardiologists at the Cleveland Clinic, but you can't beat his prices! In fact, I think he's having a Presidents' Day special on angioplasty right now.' There's no medical equivalent of Wal-Mart. Everyone wants Neiman Marcus."

Given this fact, the free-market approach to health care suffers from a severe handicap, and cannot be relied upon to effectively change the current health care situation for the better.

"Exercise". Still waiting for a good reply to the points I previously raised on that one. Especially since I hate, hate, hate going to the gym, which means that I get the bulk of my exercise through playing sports as frequently as possible, especially beach volleyball.

Given that the free market strategy is fundamentally flawed as I mentioned above, it's probably good that you didn't spend more time advocating it. ;)

Overall though, it seems to me that your main argument against universal health care can be boiled down to something along the lines of "there are difficult issues to consider in drafting effective universal health care, so we shouldn't even try". I say tackle those issues head on and see what we can come up with. The free market just doesn't lend itself to realistic management of health care costs, and not making affordable health care available means a lot of unnecessary pain, suffering and death.

Also for the record, the offense I took to it was that nothing Sarcasmo said in the post in question had anything to do with any "bad decision" he had made in life. If you re-read his post, it was all about telling you that he thinks you're wrong, plain and simple. You then went ahead and apparently assumed that his frustration with your posts was rooted in some kind of self-loathing resulting from bad decisions he's made. I'll help out by quoting Sarcasmo's post in it's entirity here:

...and now your misrepresentation of what he said...

Nothing in your misrepresentation had anything to do with what Sarcasmo said....except that it actually did support his assertion that "your intellectual narcissism knows no bounds". Rather than acknowledge that you hadn't been presenting your stance effectively, you assumed his response was all about some kind of self-loathing and personal frustration over bad decisions he must have made in his life.

I have no problem with disagreements, debates and even blunt arguments, but all three can be had without that kind of very personal attack. In this case, Sarcasmo was blunt - you were flat out rude.

I don't want to just end my reply that way, so let me just say that it's obvious you spend a lot of time thinking about this stuff, and I'm all for maintaining open dialogue, so as far as I'm concerned, as long as the personal attacks don't enter into it, I enjoy the passion your posts have brought to the world forum.

Re: Another one o' them smoking ban threads....
 

Just to clarify on a few things I've said:
-"common sense" is not denying the alcoholic a liver transplant if the list has rolled around to his name (that is just mean) but rather denying him common funds to pay for the surgery. so...violating common sense with respect to the universal health care system is taking deliberate action to ensure or increase the chance of requiring medical care, at no real benefit to the man requiring the treatment, while someone else is paying the bill. its rude to expect the coverage (of bill), and it violates 'common sense' to pay for it. I understand that you have to drive to work, but you don't have to go over the speed limit etc...
-Exercise not as a law, but just to change our society a little bit so that moving around and taking care of yourself is more available in fun ways. more recess in school, more public parks, parents reminding their kids that real football is as fun as madden 08 etc
-free market is used in reference to HMOs, or the links between average people and the complex health care system. Its not about doctors competing against one another, ideally, but moreso people paying for coverage that suits their needs instead of assuming the way things are is the way they have to be. Money talks is pretty much the philosophy, I would like people to be more hands-on with their in a country that is based on capitalism
-There are disparities in every facet of life, including health care, based on your ability to pay. Guess what my proposed philosophy is to dampen these disparities
-I still stand by my point that health care is not a right
-There are community/charity hospitals and a government safetynet, so the analogy to water fountains does apply to health care, even if at a smaller scale. I'm not sure if anyone here wants to expands these programs, though
-90% of my concern about health care is not that we can or can not solve certain issues (others are innate), its just that lobbyists/bad politicians would not allow the universal health care bill to do what it should

Respond to my original post, but read these before doing so, please

Re: Another one o' them smoking ban threads....
 

Was this a reply to me? If so, it ignores all the substantive points I made. And labeling an alcoholic who requires medical treatment as "rude" is a bit off base, too. And you still haven't explained how the "stupidity" of playing "risky" sports can coexist with telling kids to go play football, etc. And I can't imagine you've had any firsthand experience with HMOs if you think that a free market approach with them will do the trick. Oh well. I gave you an honest shot. :rolleyes:

Re: Another one o' them smoking ban threads....
 

It's not a response to what YOU said, its just a clarification of what I said. Its not that he's rude to require medical care, its rude that he might want you and I to pay for it. Its not like I am offended by the existence of sick and special needs people... I like helping people, too.. :/ I did make a diction error and I paranthetically changed it.

I'll respond to everyone after everyone that wants to respond to me has done so. if its just you and I, then I'll respond in a few days. I didn't want to assume you were the only one speaking on behalf of universal health care :D

Re: Another one o' them smoking ban threads....
 

I think its right to ask health care supporters what the difference is between food/shelter and health care. All are essential to life. And yet food/shelter has never been strictly guaranteed by the constitution and therefore legally government sponsored, so why would health care be sponsored?

The problem with this thinking, as Sean pointed out, is varied....

1. not because its costly for the middle class and they only care about their own, its pricey for everyone. even people who can't eat. We would see the same push to regulate and centrally administer food if that became a problem for everyone underneath the richest 2%

2. We actually do guarantee essential resources through public water works, roads, red cross, national guard. Is not protection from danger, infrastructure and roads just as essential to life? And yet we see the government at play already in these areas. So we can think of health care as a bread line. Or we can see it as one's own personal katrina. So we have emergency services for natural disasters by city. My question is what is the difference between someone who lives in new orleans facing a cat 5 hurricane and someone diagnosed with acute adult onset leukemia, who never drank or smoked?

3. The constitution is a legal document. Not a bible of ethics. That means while it does not legally allow for progressive measures to defeat social ills, it does not strictly disallow the possibility. Which means strict constitutionalists risk seeming like the type to walk past a stabbing victim without calling 911 because he's/she's not legally bound to do so. What I'm saying is the human condition is not perfectly encapsulated in the Constitution and its folly to shoe horn our intellect into it.

4. Like it or not, government programs work to clean up the mess caused by markets that have become imbalanced. Its just a fact that Roosevelt's progressive policies of government subsidies and progressive programs defeated run away deflation and unemployment. We have similarly bleak circumstances in HMO based health care.

So while I agree with your essay philosophically, because like I said, I'm dealing with universal health care right now, and its a real problem up here in Canada. And I do have a lot of beliefs in the libertarian corner.

But opponents have got to do better than talk about the abstracts of freedom and the constitution and move forward to actually talk about a practical implementation of reform.

So I'm asking you, how do we reform the current situation, by actually covering people's health care without universal health care?