landsnark1: Father_Jack: PurplePimpSaber: Nate Silver rips the IBD poll apart. (new window)

awesome. thanks for this.

also, everyone should take a look at this:



its those little tiny pink circles that everyone's peeing over. These little circles represent the changes. How exactly does this turn us into socialized medicine omg oh noes teh libruls?!?

we're talking about a change for a fraction of the population.

Because 90% of that 122,000,000 balloon is going to flock to the subsidized pink bubble when their employers drop their plans.

Citation: my father-in-law pays $600-800/mo/employee. $150 per under the subsidized plan. That's how this becomes socialized medicine

None of the plans I've read about will allow this. They all say essentially that if you have access to an employer sponsored plan, you don't qualify for the subsidized plan.

Rising Ape: geniusiknowit: If Company B were the only company around and had no desire to employ me, I'd have the option of employing myself or going elsewhere. Even if I were unable to do either of those, what obligation does the company have to hire anyone at all? What if they decided to close up shop? In none of the scenarios is anyone being coerced.

OK, now you're getting silly. What right does the company have to *exist*?

The company exists because of the right of people to voluntarily cooperate. The company doesn't have a right to exist. The people have a right to form a company.


Rising Ape: What right does it have to employ people on whatever terms it likes?

It has none. If someone doesn't like the terms of employment, they have no obligation to work there. A person's employment at a company is a voluntary agreement between employer and employee. Both must agree to the terms of employment.

Rising Ape: And if you really think "work for me for a pittance or starve" isn't coercion by any sane definition then I cannot understand your way of thinking at all. It's just a variant of "give me money or I'll shoot you", but slightly less direct.

What right do you have to enslave the employer and force him to employ you?

None.

But there's something missing from your scenario.
Why is this person starving? Drought killed their livestock? Blight killed their crops? They got lost wandering across the tundra? They spent all their money on hookers and booze? If I were starving and someone comes along and offers to pay me a pittance for performing some shiatty chore, I'd jump up and say, "Thank you! Thank you for giving me the opportunity to not starve to death!" Unless the employer is the one who killed my livestock and crops, and dropped me off in the middle of the tundra, he owes me nothing, and has no moral obligation to offer me a damn thing.

Rising Ape: Call me odd, but I think that society should be organized for the benefit of its citizens as a whole, not the benefit of a handful of powerful, unaccountable entities.

What makes you think you know what's best for the whole of society? What makes you think you could even figure out what is best for the whole of society? What makes you so sure that anything is good for society as a whole? And when you mean, "as a whole" do you mean for every single citizen, or is permissible to throw a certain percentage under the wheels? Whatever your answers, as long as there is government, there will always be the "powerful, unaccountable entities," to claim to detest.


Rising Ape: And if that means stopping a private corporation from doing whatever it damn well pleases, then so much the better.

Corporations can't do whatever they damn well please. They have to provide what their customers want, or they will go out of business.

Rising Ape: Nobody should default to being able to have power over others, and the situations where they do from necessity should be carefully regulated.

This sentence contradicts itself.

Rising Ape: If you want to be truly free from your oddly-defined idea of coercion, then let's take it all the way. No publicly funded police protection.

There's nothing "oddly-defined" about it. Ask anybody what coercion is. Check the dictionary.

And please! Take it all away!
Take away the police. They don't protect me. Hell, even the Supreme Court has ruled that police have no legal obligation to protect anyone. Anyone who locks the doors to their house before they go to bed is at least remotely aware of the fact that the police will not protect them.

Rising Ape: Of course, without that then the rich and powerful won't have the power of the state to force others to recognise their wealth and power. Let's see how that works out for them.

Now you're starting to make sense.

this is an absolute crock of shiat. are they publishing the source and methods of the survey, cuz I'm sure it'll be massively manufactured.

/physician
//couldn't quit medicine if I wanted for at least another 15 years
///too much debt!

lockers: geniusiknowit: Except the FDA failed to do even that, didn't they? People still got poisoned peanut butter. Some of the poisoned peanut product ended up in meals that FEMA was handing out to people. The CEO of that company was appointed by the Secretary of Agriculture to serve on the USDA's Peanut Standards Board, and was serving when the outbreak hit.

Ahhh. The great Reagan lie. After 30 years of eviscerating the control of government bureaucrats you still want me to believe that it isn't private industry that is the problem?

You forgot (or neglected) to quote what I said after that:

geniusiknowit: Weeks before the outbreak, the FDA knew about a salmonella-tainted shipment of peanut product from that company (it had gone to Canada, was being returned, and FDA it denied reentry because it was so polluted), and failed to take action against the company.

\Reagan was a hypocrite, and I have no respect for him

lockers: I do not think having the masses worked on by rural refuges getting paid slave wages to cut them up in ways designed by learned engineers as a possible solution to our health care costs.

Make that decision for yourself, and let others decide it for themselves.

NuttierThanEver: If you think your average family Doctor makes "lots" of money you'd be wrong, most make a comfortable living. Your average family Doctor makes about $120k-$140k a year (not to mention having med school loans to pay off of about $100,000 on average. Considering the grades needed to get into med school these folks could be making a shiat load more if they went to work on Wall Street.

LOL, my loans are 200,000 dollars. and I'm lucky not to have any undergraduate debt. For some of my classmates, that a good 50-100K more, and for those who attended my school from out of state, their debt is more like 250-300K.

I have one friend who will graduate with 400K in debt. That's almost half a million, and she's matched into a family medicine residency.

For myself, 200K in debt. Add to that the 8 years of school and training when I could have made actual money (probably an average of 60-70K per year considering the starting salary in engineering and what my friends are making at this stage in life), and you're talking a loss of 700K dollars or so.

So yeah, 120K dollars per year doesn't sound like a lot to me either.

Edsel: AuntofDogface: My ob/gyn doc is all for health care reform AND the public option. he takes it up the ass BIG TIME in malpractice premiums. My GP is in favor of it, as well.

The JAMA poll shows that a pretty substantial majority of docs are for the public option - I believe somewhere around 73%.

For the most part, those opposed to it are in procedure-based specialties like orthopedic surgery, where they stand to take a financial beating if the current reimbursement system changes.

boo-hoo, their financial beating is that they'll be making 350K per year instead of half a million.

Did a rotation with a hand surgeon who was easily pulling down half a million a year and still biatching about money. Hey farker, even after taxes you're probably keeping 300K per year, and all you do is carpal tunnel releases! Go biatch to a pediatrician or family medicine doc that reads much more literature than you do, handles more patients per day, gets less thanks for doing so, and is, on top of it, paid a pittance and treated disrespectfully by assholes like you.

/can't stand many orthopods
//met a couple of nice ones, that's about it.

This is EXACTLY what we need to cure the recession: More government spending.

You can't tax your way out of a recession.

geniusiknowit: You forgot (or neglected) to quote what I said after that:

geniusiknowit: Weeks before the outbreak, the FDA knew about a salmonella-tainted shipment of peanut product from that company (it had gone to Canada, was being returned, and FDA it denied reentry because it was so polluted), and failed to take action against the company.

Yes, The FDA is hobbled by corporate interests. Are you saying it is a problem of regulation or regulators?

lockers: geniusiknowit: You forgot (or neglected) to quote what I said after that:

geniusiknowit: Weeks before the outbreak, the FDA knew about a salmonella-tainted shipment of peanut product from that company (it had gone to Canada, was being returned, and FDA it denied reentry because it was so polluted), and failed to take action against the company.

Yes, The FDA is hobbled by corporate interests.

Do you honestly think the two could ever be disentangled?

lockers: Are you saying it is a problem of regulation or regulators?

Both.

Regulators will be corrupted to selectively enforce the regulation, in order to give some companies a competitive advantage over others.

The regulation, when enforced, interferes with the demands of consumers in the market.

geniusiknowit: Rising Ape: What right does it have to employ people on whatever terms it likes?

It has none. If someone doesn't like the terms of employment, they have no obligation to work there. A person's employment at a company is a voluntary agreement between employer and employee. Both must agree to the terms of employment.

But they may have no realistic alternative, say if the choice is "work here or starve". Unless by the same argument you think that the victim of an armed robbery has the choice to refuse. Well, it is a choice, technically.

Rising Ape: Call me odd, but I think that society should be organized for the benefit of its citizens as a whole, not the benefit of a handful of powerful, unaccountable entities.

What makes you think you know what's best for the whole of society?

I never claimed that I did, by myself. That's why we have an democratically elected government in which I have a vote, along with everyone else. That way everyone has a say, rather than just the wealthy or powerful. Not an ideal system, but the best we've come up with.

And when you mean, "as a whole" do you mean for every single citizen, or is permissible to throw a certain percentage under the wheels?

I mean for every citizen, as far as it's practical. Clearly it's not practical to provide infinite medical care for everyone, but that doesn't mean that "nothing" is a good alternative. It's also undesirable to have the government control everything, leaving nothing to private decisions. Determining the best way to organise and regulate society is only something that the population as a whole can do.

You're the one who appears to find it acceptable to throw people under the wheels, for example if they're too poor to buy medical treatment. I'd prefer to restrict the power of those at the top rather than at the bottom. Your philosophy appears to make no efforts whatsoever to protect the weak from the powerful.

Whatever your answers, as long as there is government, there will always be the "powerful, unaccountable entities," to claim to detest.

Take out the "as long as there is government" and you'd be correct. The government is more accountable than most large organisations in that it can be voted out. Obviously I'm only talking about democracies here. There are many scenarios in which there is no practical way to limit the power of a corporation without regulation.

Rising Ape: And if that means stopping a private corporation from doing whatever it damn well pleases, then so much the better.

Corporations can't do whatever they damn well please. They have to provide what their customers want, or they will go out of business.

And what about what everyone else wants? There are plenty of examples from history of corporations polluting, mistreating workers (including child workers), carelessly causing horrific workplace injuries etc. until regulation stopped it. They remained in business because their customers weren't affected (see also: externality).

Rising Ape: Nobody should default to being able to have power over others, and the situations where they do from necessity should be carefully regulated.

This sentence contradicts itself.

No it doesn't, any more than using force to stop someone from murdering someone else does. You don't have the right to harm others, and will be prevented from doing so as far as that's possible.

There's nothing "oddly-defined" about it. Ask anybody what coercion is. Check the dictionary.

Your definition only makes sense if you put property rights above *everything* else - including the right to life, free speech, free movement... only that way could you define as letting people die from easily treated illnesses as being just and coercion-free. I do not, and that's my biggest beef with libertarianism and similar philosophies - they're really about property, not freedom, so the "libert-" part of the name is inappropriate.

And please! Take it all away!
Take away the police. They don't protect me. Hell, even the Supreme Court has ruled that police have no legal obligation to protect anyone. Anyone who locks the doors to their house before they go to bed is at least remotely aware of the fact that the police will not protect them.

So you'd have no objection to there being no legal penalty for armed gangs killing you and taking everything you have? OK, your philosophy may be nuts but at least it's consistent - the strongest rule. Do you really think that would would be coercion free in *any* sense, yours or mine?

45% of doctors would consider quitting if Congress passes health care overhaul. Now that's some change we can believe in

Oh, boo-farking-hoo...all the doctors in Saskatchewan made the same threats before they became the first province in the country to get, horrors, socialized medicine. If they stayed and kept working in Saskatchewan, where are american doctors going to go, exactly, and what are they going to do to pay off their student loans, giant mortgage(s), car loans, etc.

Let's face it: it sucks to be a doctor pretty much anywhere and I'm sure 45% would like to quit for other reasons too. I sure as hell wouldn't want a job where I couldn't have the occasional off day.

People really want government-run doctors?

Since when can the U.S. government do anything outside of the military right? Last time I checked, the U.S. government can't even balance its own budget.

And most teenagers I know can balance their budget.

Also, any time any government promises you "free stuff", it's time to check your guns.

geniusiknowit: Do you honestly think the two could ever be disentangled?

Yes, I believe the two can be disentangled. I am not a nihilist.

bmihura: People really want government-run doctors?

nobody is talking about government run doctors. You are an idiot.

But when a poll includes the question "are you considering early retirement because of X," half of doctors say yeah. Medicine is one of those professions where practitioners can often earn enough or have long term retirement benefits to allow considering early retirement. Same with police officers and fire fighters.

http://www.okphysiciansalliance.org/survey.htm (US)
http://jpubhealth.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/23/4/323(UK)
http://ftp.resource.org/gpo.gov/papers/2004/2004_vol1_135.pdf (US)

Kome: ...and doing what, instead? Flip burgers? Wait tables? Aside from practice medicine, what are they qualified to do that there are openings for?

Butchers. They could all become butchers.

I love how all of your healthcare debate boils down to where the money is coming from/going. How about having universal healthcare because its good of society as a whole, and go and find some other industry to milk dry. No one ever died from lack of obscene profit, but people do die from lack of healthcare. Im even willing to be that with the stress removed from worrying about health insurance etc, people would become much happier, healthier and productive, and generate more wealth than reform spent.

Or if your really serious about unbridled profit opportunities, you should just dissolve govt entirely and go somalia-style, where one person/warlord could theoretically amass enough wealth power and influence to dominate the entire country. I know you americans like your enterprising ways but where do u draw the line.

So which is it to be?

rga184: this is an absolute crock of shiat. are they publishing the source and methods of the survey, cuz I'm sure it'll be massively manufactured.

/physician
//couldn't quit medicine if I wanted for at least another 15 years
///too much debt!

sad because it's true.

i've gotten veiled comments from some doctors this year about health care reform, and the only negative opinion i've heard is that it won't change the system ENOUGH.

i've also personally witnessed the spending of about $1.6m (and counting) of health insurance dollars. even with good insurance, it's been about $20-30k out of pocket to me over the years.

most of the waste in the system that i've observed is sloppy record keeping and paperwork. for instance, medical billing doesn't use proper unique identifiers for patients and transactions, which can waste a thousand dollars of employee time to straighten out an apparent triple charge that the insurance company rejects - despite being the same procedure for each of three triplets, and costing $45 for each. medical billing in the US is actually farking primitive, and it is wasteful.

the other big part of waste i've seen is money-making procedures that don't do shiat. like getting an MRI for headaches that are obvious stress-caused, unless of course over-medication is the problem. insurance companies don't resist this and don't have much need to, and we all pay for it. the bottom line is you need some standardization of care. bean counters and doctors conspiring to fark you while maintaining low exposure to liability at each of dozens of different insurance companies - not efficient, not good for medical care, not good for anybody except doctors ordering needless tests. wasteful. yes i farking will ration your MRI if you just have a headache.

oddly, study after study that i've seen seems to confirm that the above two areas are the main source of waste in our system.

Bullshiat.

Rising Ape: But they may have no realistic alternative, say if the choice is "work here or starve". Unless by the same argument you think that the victim of an armed robbery has the choice to refuse. Well, it is a choice, technically.

The two are not the same. In one case, someone is threatening to initiate violence against another person. In the other, someone is refusing to transact someone else. You still haven't explained how someone with a company has any obligation to employ any particular person, let alone employ them at what you consider a fair wage. And I'm not sure you understand what violence and intimidation are.

Rising Ape: I never claimed that I did, by myself. That's why we have an democratically elected government in which I have a vote, along with everyone else. That way everyone has a say, rather than just the wealthy or powerful. Not an ideal system, but the best we've come up with.

What makes you think that everybody together can figure out what's best for society as a whole? Fifty-one percent of the population makes up the rules for the other 49%. That 49% had their say, but it didn't do them a damn bit of good, did it? And ask yourself this, if you hadn't voted for whomever you voted, would it have changed the outcome of the election? If the answer is no, then your vote didn't matter.

Rising Ape: I mean for every citizen, as far as it's practical. Clearly it's not practical to provide infinite medical care for everyone, but that doesn't mean that "nothing" is a good alternative. It's also undesirable to have the government control everything, leaving nothing to private decisions. Determining the best way to organise and regulate society is only something that the population as a whole can do.

I didn't say "nothing" was the alternative. I said the alternative is to get the government out of the way so people can figure out what works best for them.

The population as a whole decides nothing. Under the current system, majority factions decide everything.

Rising Ape: The government is more accountable than most large organisations in that it can be voted out. Obviously I'm only talking about democracies here. There are many scenarios in which there is no practical way to limit the power of a corporation without regulation.

Women and small children are being killed by American bombs in Afghanistan. Who's accountable for that? The government is giving handouts to ultrawealthy bankers by robbing everyone else of their savings. Who is accountable for that?

When has anything ever been improved by voting for someone else?
Don't you pay attention? Whenever the government screws something up, it blames someone else (usually the previous administration) and then demands more money to do the job "right."

A corporation is accountable to its customers. The moment it quits giving them what they want is the moment it starts losing money.

Rising Ape: And what about what everyone else wants? There are plenty of examples from history of corporations polluting, mistreating workers (including child workers), carelessly causing horrific workplace injuries etc. until regulation stopped it. They remained in business because their customers weren't affected (see also: externality).

Corporations can get away with pollution because they bribe the govt regulators, and because government interferes with proper recognition of property rights.

Child labor? The alternative for those children was to starve to death. Child labor was on its way out well before govt did anything about it, for two reasons. First is that the financial situations of the families of those children improved, eliminating the need for them to employ their children. And second, children suck as laborers. Regulation also didn't do anything for workplace safety that wasn't already being implemented by people in the market. Employers know it's costly to train new workers, it's costly to have to stop work because of an accident, that accidents affect the morale of the other workers, that workers expect to be compensated extra for extra risky jobs, and that unsafe working conditions can garner negative publicity leading to a loss in sales. It's another instance of regulators claiming credit for something that was already being done.


Rising Ape: No it doesn't, any more than using force to stop someone from murdering someone else does. You don't have the right to harm others, and will be prevented from doing so as far as that's possible.

That's not what you were saying. What you were essentially saying was, "someone should be in charge to make sure that no one is in charge.'

But now that you've recognized the right to not be harmed.... how can you collect taxes, or force people to buy health insurance, without threatening them with harm?

Rising Ape: Your definition only makes sense if you put property rights above *everything* else - including the right to life, free speech, free movement... only that way could you define as letting people die from easily treated illnesses as being just and coercion-free. I do not, and that's my biggest beef with libertarianism and similar philosophies - they're really about property, not freedom, so the "libert-" part of the name is inappropriate.

You misunderstand libertarianism and property rights.

Who owns you?

You do, right? Of course you do. If someone else owned you, you'd be a slave.

You own you. That is self-ownership. Your body is your property. This is the ultimate property right from which all other property rights are derived.

Your body is your property. It is your exclusive right to decide what you do with your body. You may do anything with it that does not infringe upon the property rights of others. If you find something in a state of nature... that is to say something that is unowned... you act upon it to make it yours. You mix it with your labor, and it becomes your property. You may then keep it, destroy it, abandon it, or voluntarily transfer it to someone else, who will then become the owner of it.

I own my body, my labor, and everything I produce with my labor, as long as my labor isn't infringing upon the property rights of someone else.

This is where your right to life, free speech, freedom of movement, etc come from. You have these rights because you are the owner of your body. Anyone who infringes upon these rights is infringing upon your self-ownership. Anyone who takes your rightfully acquired property is also infringing upon your right of self-ownership.

Rising Ape: So you'd have no objection to there being no legal penalty for armed gangs killing you and taking everything you have? OK, your philosophy may be nuts but at least it's consistent - the strongest rule. Do you really think that would would be coercion free in *any* sense, yours or mine?

There can be law without government. But that's beside the point.

There are consequences for actions.
If someone commits a violent act against another person... if he declines to recognize the rights of another person... he should have no reason to expect others to respect his rights. He could expect retaliation, or demands that restitution be made.

lockers: geniusiknowit: Do you honestly think the two could ever be disentangled?

Yes, I believe the two can be disentangled. I am not a nihilist.

Then you've got to be even more insane than people say I am.

:-)

I'm going to bed. Goodnight!

Master Chief: Or if your really serious about unbridled profit opportunities, you should just dissolve govt entirely and go somalia-style, where one person/warlord could theoretically amass enough wealth power and influence to dominate the entire country. I know you americans like your enterprising ways but where do u draw the line.

So which is it to be?

Which is why I asked, Does the conservative plan include dumping medicare and medicade? no?

kthxbye

sseye:

the other big part of waste i've seen is money-making procedures that don't do shiat. like getting an MRI for headaches that are obvious stress-caused, unless of course over-medication is the problem. insurance companies don't resist this and don't have much need to, and we all pay for it. the bottom line is you need some standardization of care. bean counters and doctors conspiring to fark you while maintaining low exposure to liability at each of dozens of different insurance companies - not efficient, not good for medical care, not good for anybody except doctors ordering needless tests. wasteful. yes i farking will ration your MRI if you just have a headache.

oddly, study after study that i've seen seems to confirm that the above two areas are the main source of waste in our system.

This "needless ordering of tests" is all a part of defensive medicine. Doctors must order that MRI for a headache because if they don't and that 0.5% chance of a brain tumor comes to fruition, they are going to get their asses sued by a paranoid patient saying "I told you so." This is also part of the reason why malpractice insurance is getting ridiculous and is even driving physicians in certain fields (such as OB-GYN) out of some areas of the US. It's not worth it to have to pay $300K in malpractice just to open your doors at the beginning of the year, because then you are going to have to crank out patients like crazy just to recover that cost and *gasp* make a living. It's also not fair to your patients, as you can get so concerned with getting in the requisite amount of patients each day that you completely lose an appreciation for the doctor-patient relationship.

geniusiknowit: I didn't say "nothing" was the alternative. I said the alternative is to get the government out of the way so people can figure out what works best for them.

And how will that happen, exactly? What magical mechanism will allow a penniless cancer suffer to get treatment? Unless dying is what you mean by working best.

The two are not the same. In one case, someone is threatening to initiate violence against another person.

Okay, so starving person steals something from Big All Powerful Company so he can eat and not die. Guards threaten starving person with violence, thus satisfying your "threatining to initiate violence", but on the other side. Since if I'm not mistaken you won't be siding with the starving man here, then initiating violence is not the big crime you claim.

But now that you've recognized the right to not be harmed.... how can you collect taxes, or force people to buy health insurance, without threatening them with harm?

How do you enforce any law, any contract, any property without threatening harm to anyone who might go against it? You can't. Potential force is inherent in *any* system, since people's wishes will sometimes by incompatible, meaning someone must give way.

The issue of tax is simple. Society as a whole simply doesn't recognise the taxable part of income as legitimate property, and as such should not be protected by the government.

This is where your right to life, free speech, freedom of movement, etc come from. You have these rights because you are the owner of your body. Anyone who infringes upon these rights is infringing upon your self-ownership.

This is typical libertarian dogma, and makes no sense at all. Yes, owning yourself seems reasonable, but that's where it ends. Your body is easily associated with you as a person, but the idea that this can work for property in general in any meaningful way is nonsense, because nothing else can be unambiguously defined as "mine". There's a clear and obvious distinction between my body and everything else. What right do I have to assume ownership of something that naturally has no owner, such as land? Nothing, unless I can convince everyone else that it makes sense to do so. The fact that I got there first and did something to it hardly justifies it. Since my ownership denies everyone else the use of that item, thus harming them in a small way, it's only just that I compensate them in some way that we can both recognise.

Ultimately, that's what it boils down to - convincing society as a whole that I actually have a right to that property. And it's granted, subject to conditions, one of which is taxation.

EmmaLou:
Ooohhh, but doctors don't want to take advantage of programs that allow them to go to school for a reduced fee if they will work in rural or impoverished areas or any other program that will help them out.

Medicine is all about the ego and the money. If it was truly about helping people be more healthy, there wouldn't be severe doctor shortages in areas around the country.

Some people just aren't interested in family medicine, pediatrics, or OB-GYN. Some people have families and need to get a primary care position in a certain area, not where they are randomly selected to go by the NIH. Also, that loan repayment program only has a $60K lifetime maximum, with a yearly maximum of $10K, and many medical students graduate with $200K+ in student loans.

Yeah, for some doctors, it's about the ego and the money - these guys are in the minority, but it's this minority that the public sadly bases their opinions on. Plenty of doctors live modestly and donate their time to the community.

"HORSE HOCKEY!"

Thread is tl;dr, but the poll is a crock. Every other suggests that 60% + support a public option and roughly 10% of the rest support a full on single-payer system.

stryker4526: NuttierThanEver: SushiJoe: making lots of money is the right reason to become a doctor

If you think your average family Doctor makes "lots" of money you'd be wrong, most make a comfortable living. Your average family Doctor makes about $120k-$140k a year (not to mention having med school loans to pay off of about $100,000 on average. Considering the grades needed to get into med school these folks could be making a shiat load more if they went to work on Wall Street.

You don't think $120k-$140k is a lot of money?

...what the fark is wrong with you?


It really isn't when you need to sacrifice at least 12 years of your life just for school/residency, and especially when you are smart enough to be successful at anything you might want to do.

geniusiknowit: But nobody's need of medical care trumps my right to be free from coercion.


Being a life form on the planet earth trumps your right to be free from coercion.

"Under the proposed medical overhaul, an additional 47 million people would have to be cared for - an 18% increase in patient loads, without an equivalent increase in doctors."

47 million more people would have access to healthcare? Wow, that sounds terrible!

In Soviet Canada, healthcare fixes you!

There are even more dickheads on here than I thought. My sister's a doctor, and she thinks UHC would be great. She cares about her patients though.

Pr1nc3ss: There are even more dickheads on here than I thought. My sister's a doctor, and she thinks UHC would be great. She cares about her patients though.

I think it depends on the thread...

This was a doctor thread, so many are going to post. I certainly understand concerns regarding compensation with the huge time and monetary outlay they put forth. I don't understand the doctor hate. When one factors in opportunity cost and the pittance they are making through residency and fellowships, even a $200K salary isn't ridiculous. And then there are the people who don't understand the complexity of the human body and don't realize that the same symptoms may be associated with several different underlying conditions.

I think the best threads are the Canada or UK-baiting threads where there are a bunch of non-US citizens posting to set the Randians here straight regarding cost and quality of care. It really is hard to fathom that the US is so different from these other countries that better health care for 1/2 the government cost per capita (yes, that's just government--the insured here of course pay additional through private insurance!), that we couldn't make UHC work here. Surely the government is not the most efficient, but as a future physician, I'd rather deal with an incompetent and inefficient government than a corporation whose only interest is the denial of claims. And, darn, every corporation that now provides healthcare as a benefit would love to drop it. How can American companies compete when this is a huge drain on the bottom line?

Which brings me to my final point: the people I really don't understand are the Stossels whose major argument is that this is a moral issue over property and taxation. How someone can argue morality when they are basically arguing against healthcare coverage for all and do it all with a straight face is beyond me. And the argument that we should remove all regulations and the the poor can just get healthcare from some random dude on the street with a pair of nail scissors he bought at Walmart is beyond words. Heck, even the most free market capitalists understand we need some regulations to prevent fraud and harm. Geez.

Oh, yeah, and screw the AMA and AAMC. We need more medical schools and hospitals.

whistleridge: So what? "Consider quitting" != "Quitting", despite what TFA implies.

I would consider quitting my job too if I got a new boss, but I probably wouldn't.

This means nothing.

They will "consider" quitting for about .000000005674 seconds, before they realize:

1. They have a $1.6 million mortgage to pay off
2. They have a $600k boat payment
3. They have a $85k car
4. They have $100k in student loans outstanding
5. They have a God complex, and a job that allows them to indulge it
6. They are utterly unqualified to do anything else that pays even a fraction of what they make now

And then they won't quit. Simple as that.

they may... they may not... the problem is will the next generation of "smart kids" go to school to be doctors?

"Four of nine doctors, or 45%..."

(My emphasis)

They could have polled a grand total of 9 doctors and this would be a true statement. Despite the headline, nothing in the article actually says they ever asked more than 9 doctors that question.

notmtwain: If losing more than half of all doctors doesn't drive down costs, nothing will.

///but I don't know how they can afford to quit since I've been hearing about how they are all losing money now because of malpractice costs.

Actually it will drive up costs and increase waiting times, probably drive down quality of care too.

9 out of 10 doctors recommend Camel cigarettes.

Ah. the telepormpter-in-chief won't stop till there is a 60% reduction.

yehti7: Ah. the telepormpter-in-chief won't stop till there is a 60% reduction.

There's a video on youtube that needs your comments.

Rising Ape: And how will that happen, exactly? What magical mechanism will allow a penniless cancer suffer to get treatment? Unless dying is what you mean by working best.

Who knows if anyone will ever find a way to get treatment to penniless cancer sufferers? Countries with socialized health care haven't gotten it figured out either. Live in Canada and develop cancer? Hope it doesn't kill you before you turn comes up on the waiting list.

Private companies have found it profitable to give clothing to poor people (put advertisements on the clothes). Or to feed the homeless (pay them to hold advertisements). Private companies give products and services away for free all the time. Often it's done as part of research. Sometimes it's done for direct advertisement. Sometimes it's done to generate positive publicity. Sometimes it's simply done out of a sense of charity. Private companies find ways to do it and profit from it. Government can only do it by passing the loss onto everyone else.

Rising Ape: Okay, so starving person steals something from Big All Powerful Company so he can eat and not die. Guards threaten starving person with violence, thus satisfying your "threatining to initiate violence", but on the other side. Since if I'm not mistaken you won't be siding with the starving man here, then initiating violence is not the big crime you claim.

The Big All Powerful Company is made up of people, you know. People who need food, clothing, and shelter for themselves and their families. It does no good to have a company if you can't maintain control over your assets. (I'll reiterate this in response to one of your next statements.) If anyone can just come along and take what you've created, why bother creating it at all? And those guards? As you said, they're guards. They're paid to defend the property. That starving person would be violating the rights of the owners whatever he's stealing. Violence is justifiable for purposes of defense. Someone stealing from me directly and actively threatens my survival. Even if that person is stealing to survive, I have done nothing to cause their precarious situation, and so I should not be punished or made to suffer for it.

Rising Ape: How do you enforce any law, any contract, any property without threatening harm to anyone who might go against it? You can't. Potential force is inherent in *any* system, since people's wishes will sometimes by incompatible, meaning someone must give way.

Harm/force/violence is immoral when it's coercive... when it's non-defensive. I didn't think I'd need to keep saying that. Force is justifiable for defense of one's self and one's legitimately acquired property.

Rising Ape: The issue of tax is simple. Society as a whole simply doesn't recognise the taxable part of income as legitimate property, and as such should not be protected by the government.

Society as a whole doesn't do anything. Society cannot do anything. Society has no rights, no responsibilities, no powers, no privileges, no needs, and no desires. Society is not an entity. Society is the word for a collection of individuals with individual rights making individual choices.

Rising Ape: Your body is easily associated with you as a person, but the idea that this can work for property in general in any meaningful way is nonsense, because nothing else can be unambiguously defined as "mine". There's a clear and obvious distinction between my body and everything else. What right do I have to assume ownership of something that naturally has no owner, such as land? Nothing, unless I can convince everyone else that it makes sense to do so. The fact that I got there first and did something to it hardly justifies it.

This the only way that property has any meaning. And extending property rights to objects outside your body is the only way you can acquire the materials necessary to survive in a way that instantly determines who has the right to use those materials. Without the right to exclusive use of the materials I labor upon, self-ownership means nothing, for I will die of hunger/thirst/exposure. By what right may I put sustenance into my body if that sustenance belongs to everybody? By what right may I put air into my lungs if that volume of air belongs to everybody?

Rising Ape: Since my ownership denies everyone else the use of that item, thus harming them in a small way, it's only just that I compensate them in some way that we can both recognise.

How do I compensate 6 billion others for the air I breathe, or the water I drink? If I find a peach tree claimed by no one, and I pluck a peach from it and eat that peach, how do I compensate 6 billion others for my use of that peach? How do 6 billion people even come to a conclusion on what may be considered fair compensation? How do I get 6 billion people to agree on whether or not I can even consume that peach, regardless of compensation? How does one even stand or move upon the ground, without compensating or getting permission from 6 billion other people for use of that land?

The labor theory of property is the only way by which ownership of one's own body and action has meaning... and thus the only way in which one's life has any value.

If all resources belong to everyone, we would go extinct, being unable to come to a consensus about how any given unit of a resource may be used or compensated for.

Leaving that aside for a moment, if all property is owned by everyone, what motivation do I have to maintain or improve any particular resource? Why should I labor upon something if everyone else has an equal right to that resource?

Abox: Being a life form on the planet earth trumps your right to be free from coercion.

Thanks, but I'm already familiar with egoism.

notmtwain: If losing more than half of all doctors doesn't drive down costs, nothing will.

///but I don't know how they can afford to quit since I've been hearing about how they are all losing money now because of malpractice costs.

Wow. Massive economics fail.

Link (new window)

yehti7: Ah. the telepormpter-in-chief won't stop till there is a 60% reduction.

Are you for real? That is to say, are you a complete and utter moron or are you just being obtuse? How many times do you need to have it pointed out to you that all presidents and presidential candidates have used a teleprompter since and including Reagan?

Why worry when we have a perfectly functioning alternative health care system in this country to take up the slack. Chinese herbalists, chiropractors, homeopaths, massage therapists, and witch doctors. Plenty for all our health needs! LOL

geniusiknowit: Who knows if anyone will ever find a way to get treatment to penniless cancer sufferers? Countries with socialized health care haven't gotten it figured out either. Live in Canada and develop cancer? Hope it doesn't kill you before you turn comes up on the waiting list.

An exaggerated myth, and the waiting list in your world for those without money would be infinite.

Private companies have found it profitable to give clothing to poor people (put advertisements on the clothes). Or to feed the homeless (pay them to hold advertisements). Private companies give products and services away for free all the time. Often it's done as part of research. Sometimes it's done for direct advertisement. Sometimes it's done to generate positive publicity. Sometimes it's simply done out of a sense of charity. Private companies find ways to do it and profit from it. Government can only do it by passing the loss onto everyone else.

I don't know what to say to this, since it so obviously flies in the face of historical fact. There are some things which aren't profitable for a private company to do. The fact that they may do so in 1% of the cases that need it doesn't change that. It's also the wrong way round to organize a society.

If anyone can just come along and take what you've created, why bother creating it at all?

Well quite, but that's an argument of practicality not of fundamental rights. It's *practical* to have a concept of property for that reason. But as our current society shows, taxation still leaves incentive to create, as can be seen by the fact that things get created.

That starving person would be violating the rights of the owners whatever he's stealing. Violence is justifiable for purposes of defense. Someone stealing from me directly and actively threatens my survival.

No they don't, unless they're stealing something you need to survive and that you couldn't get elsewhere. In my example, he wasn't, but the reverse was true. THe violence here is not for defence of life, and so isn't justified by any sane morality.

Even if that person is stealing to survive, I have done nothing to cause their precarious situation, and so I should not be punished or made to suffer for it.

Starving man may have done nothing to deserve it either. Apparently his starving to death is justifiable but a super-wealthy company losing something they won't even notice is an intolerable sacrifice? Property above reason, again.

Harm/force/violence is immoral when it's coercive... when it's non-defensive. I didn't think I'd need to keep saying that. Force is justifiable for defense of one's self and one's legitimately acquired property.

But what's coercive and non-defensive is dependent on your value system. For people who put life above property, someone using violence to stop a starving man from obtaining food would be coercive and non-defensive. Someone using force to stop people travelling over certain land is coercive. This is what I meant by your funny idea of coercion - if violence agrees with your philosophy it's just and right, if not it's coercion. Well everyone can say that, whatever they believe in, and mostly they don't believe in the libertarian definitions.

Society as a whole doesn't do anything. Society cannot do anything. Society has no rights, no responsibilities, no powers, no privileges, no needs, and no desires. Society is not an entity. Society is the word for a collection of individuals with individual rights making individual choices.

Surely you're intelligent enough to cope with abstractions. There's no such thing as wind, it's merely the drift motion of a large number of air molecules, but I think we can work with the concept.

This the only way that property has any meaning. And extending property rights to objects outside your body is the only way you can acquire the materials necessary to survive in a way that instantly determines who has the right to use those materials.

No it isn't, there are plenty of examples of people surviving without such a rigid idea of property. Almost all societies in fact.

Without the right to exclusive use of the materials I labor upon, self-ownership means nothing, for I will die of hdie of hunger/thirst/exposure. By what right may I put sustenance into my body if that sustenance belongs to everybody? By what right may I put air into my lungs if that volume of air belongs to everybody? ...

Well, for a start because you have a right to live, which is more important than anyone's property claim over the food and air.

This is another argument from practicality. The man who has nothing because everything is owned by someone else will die of hunger. Property doesn't help him there, it hinders him. Property is a useful concept in practice, but it certainly shouldn't be elevated above every other human right.

kronicfeld: The IBD/TIPP Poll was conducted by mail the past two weeks, with 1,376 practicing physicians chosen randomly throughout the country taking part. Responses are still coming in,

Ah, a self-selecting poll.

More than 800,000 doctors were practicing in 2006, the government says. Projecting the poll's finding onto that population, 360,000 doctors would consider quitting.

Yeah, they're all going to leave their 6-figure jobs and go bag groceries, I'm sure.

What?