Why The Outrage About the iPhone/Healthcare Comments?

Vaccinations? Also, 2 months of training? Don't be a dolt just to be contrary.

Not that hard to give a shot brah. Probably takes a couple of minutes to get it. Bagging someone in respiratory arrest is harder than sticking them with a subcutaneous needle.
 
Not that hard to give a shot brah. Probably takes a couple of minutes to get it. Bagging someone in respiratory arrest is harder than sticking them with a subcutaneous needle.
You have to run blood first and make sure the infant is good to go. Not to mention being born in the first place. Shit ass christ man.
 
You have to run blood first and make sure the infant is good to go. Not to mention being born in the first place. Shit ass christ man.

You got me. You'll need a lab tech too. Point conceded.
 
You seem to be using an extremely narrow definition of "needs", in which only things required to prevent imminent death qualify. So by your definition clothing and shelter would only be needs for people in cold climates. I don't share such a narrow definition.


I consider treatment of medical conditions that chronically diminish people's quality of life, while not posing a threat of imminent death, as being needs.

Oh, “you consider” these things to be needs, eh? How big of you to decide that for millions of people who absolutely do not consider them to be needs! I wonder how many things I can paint as “needs” and then demand you pay for, if I choose to adopt your type of “my opinion of a need represents a need.” It is a simple fact that millions of people do not consider it a need and, go figure, those people’s lives go on without healthcare in many, many cases. That pretty much makes any notion of “need” you’re running on a sadly weak one, and I have to ask – is a “need” which many people, as a matter of fact, do not need, a need at all?

I can understand that there is a lot of wiggle room here. At the point where there are literally millions of people who do not even want what you’re saying they “need” you’ve gone past the point of wiggle room to trying to commandeer a strong term to make your weaker case look stronger.



Nonsense. The people with expensive healthcare needs can't just opt out of a property rights system that tells them to compete with the healthy majority for goods and services. You advocate forcing them to pay for and comply with a system of obligations and rights that compounds their disadvantage in attaining a good quality of life.


Whether or not everyone ends up taking advantage of healthcare services in a UHC society is irrelevant; I haven't argued for UHC on the basis that 'everyone benefits'.

Since the whole issue I’m tackling with the paragraph you’re answering is one of “stealing choice,” you do realize that you just declaring something irrelevant doesn’t make it so, right? And in all honesty, I’m not even understanding what you’re getting at with the first paragraph there. If you want me to deal with this point, restate it and I will.


No. The same healthcare goods may be available, but getting them without facing economic compulsion cannot be done in a non-UHC society (except for the rich of course).


But here’s the catch – if “economic compulsion” is something we’re trying to avoid, then what you’re simply ignoring is that universal healthcare simply has economic compulsion pre-built into the system at large. You were compelled by the state to buy a product you don’t necessarily want. So, please, do NOT try and present “economic compulsion” as something unique to the non universal healthcare society. What’s ironic about your position is that in the non universal healthcare society which has insurance available there is no economic compulsion – one chooses to buy the product, or gamble that they will never need it with the knowledge that extreme financial hardship may result if they don’t buy the product. You seem to be confusing “choice with dire consequences” with “economically compelled” when, in fact, it’s the lack of compulsion in the non universal healthcare society that potentially leads to the tremendous financial risk as.

This is a case where I think too much freedom can be a bad thing, so you take the ability to make bad choices away from people by compelling them to pay for healthcare – which is what universal healthcare does by compelling people to buy it. Your presentation of the non universal healthcare society as being the one that compels people is a fallacy.

The American system is flawed insofar as not everyone can get healthcare if they need it, even if it is available for them to buy, because they can’t afford it. At least, to the best of my knowledge – I didn’t care about this stuff as much when I lived there last, and now I’m in Canada. I think this is something that should be rectified. At the very least, if we don’t adopt a true universal healthcare system, I think healthcare should be made available to even the very poor.


"Very significant"? Prior to Obamacare, which penalizes people for not having insurance, what were most Americans spending per year on healthcare? And how does that compare with UHC countries?

Keep in mind, in one of my earlier posts I was *very* clear that I was talking about “Not Trump style universal health care, but Canada style.” I’m not talking about some half-assed American “universal” healthcare that is a step on the road to actual universal healthcare. I’ve said, many times, that the ACA is a step in the right direction but it’s a half baked plan as is.

And here, you’re mincing words. You say “what were MOST Americans spending per year on healthcare?” – but in all of your talk about compulsion, you seem to ignore that some Americans were willingly not paying for healthcare. As in, they were not paying because they were not compelled to pay. Contrast this to Canada – closer to the system I would like – and here is the reality:

In 2016, total health expenditure in Canada is expected to reach $228 billion, or $6,299 per person. It is anticipated that, overall, health spending will represent 11% of Canada’s gross domestic product (GDP).
https://www.cihi.ca/en/health-spending

11% of Canada’s GDP? An average of $6299 per person? Sounds “significant” to me. And just to be clear, those Canadians – this Canadian resident – has no choice, and is compelled to pay that money.

To account for this, the study broke average Canadian families down into 10 income groups, concluding that Canada’s poorest families pay $477 a year for health care, while the wealthiest earners pay $59,666 a year.

http://www.ctvnews.ca/health/true-c...erage-family-is-11k-per-year-report-1.2525114

Again, the money mentioned here is money that people are compelled to pay, unlike in a non universal healthcare setting in which people have the choice to essentially gamble on their health.



Regardless, even if UHC does result in healthy people paying more (which is a reasonable expectation), the choice of allowing healthy people to have more money to choose between different luxury items, or the choice of allowing unhealthy people the same opportunity to spend on luxury items that healthy people have, seems clear to me.


You say things like "seems clear to me" and "I consider ____ to be a need" and whatnot, but it's pretty obvious that you're basically taking your personal position - your opinion - and treating it as fact in the face of millions of people who outright look at what you call a need and say "I don't need or want that." Now, I'm all for you holding your opinion. You trying to pass it off as something more is where your whole narrative starts to stink.

What’s more, you trying to paint the non universal healthcare society as the one that financially compels people is a slick bit of rhetoric because you present the results of one’s free and informed choice as leading to compulsion when, in reality, the “compulsion” in this scenario is the compulsion a willing gambler feels when she loses and the casino demands she pay up. The gambler makes a choice knowing the risks and when she loses she is “compelled” to pay up in accordance with the known consequences she willingly agreed to beforehand – so, in short, being held responsible for choices freely made and not compelled to do anything more than what she had already agreed to do. Universal healthcare compels you to pay into healthcare because one doesn’t have a choice – non-universal healthcare gives you the choice to gamble and risk significant financial consequence. You are essentially trying to paint the society that forces you to pay for a service you may not want as the less compulsive one, and the one that lets you gamble knowing the consequences of loss but then holding you accountable for your freely taken choice as the compulsive one, and that strand of arguing is all kinds of hinky.
 
On my phone so I'm not gonna write out a long multiquote reply now, but I'll address your verbose garbage when I get home.
 
On my phone so I'm not gonna write out a long multiquote reply now, but I'll address your verbose garbage when I get home.

After making me wade through your protracted "my opinion is fact!" trek through fantasy land paired with selective interpretation of terms to support your case, I hope it gives you a headache.
 
After making me wade through your protracted "my opinion is fact!" trek through fantasy land paired with selective interpretation of terms to support your case, I hope it gives you a headache.

More like flashbacks of having to proofread papers in high school.
 
I think a lot of the outrage comes from a lack of understanding of the issues by politicians who enjoy much more comprehensive and cheaper coverage than the average American does.
 
Because its a dumb premise.

How much healthcare does an Iphones value buy in a crony capitalist market? Almost none. Might as well tell the poor to stop buying peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and use that money to buy healthcare. It makes as much sense.
 
Because its a dumb premise.

How much healthcare does an Iphones value buy in a crony capitalist market? Almost none. Might as well tell the poor to stop buying peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and use that money to buy healthcare. It makes as much sense.

The really sad thing is that people like the guy who made the phone/healthcare statement believes a majority, if not all, poor people are sitting around driving nice cars, eating 3 meals a day, smoking, drinking every weekend, enjoying cable TV while they are on their expensive smartphone.
 
Because its a dumb premise.

How much healthcare does an Iphones value buy in a crony capitalist market? Almost none. Might as well tell the poor to stop buying peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and use that money to buy healthcare. It makes as much sense.

The really sad thing is that people like the guy who made the phone/healthcare statement believes a majority, if not all, poor people are sitting around driving nice cars, eating 3 meals a day, smoking, drinking every weekend, enjoying cable TV while they are on their expensive smartphone.

I think that, in principle, the concern is sound. If someone is blowing their money irresponsibly and can't afford healthcare in a non-universal healthcare system, *some* of the blame should fall on them. iPhones, specifically, aren't a horrible metaphor for economic habits at large because they're a premium brand with a premium price point which people seem to treat like it's an entry level item that everybody needs. I know people who are broke and complaining about money who eat steak several times a week and use a brand new iPhone while I eat lentils and use a $150 Windows phone on a budget provider because I've realized I really don't need more. In principle, some admonition of certain spending habits is reasonable - though, I think the solution to this is education on more appropriate spending habits rather than saying "too bad, you don't get the medicine you need!" as many Righties want to suggest.

And that's where the problem arises, what you and others are pointing at. You have some guy who has life by the ass in a cushy government position telling people who, in many cases, really just haven't had to the opportunity get into a better spot that they need to not buy this or that or the other thing. A lot of poor people have spending habits that are just fine and, even for those that don't, depriving them of healthcare is a pretty brutal punishment.

It's why I like universal healthcare. Even if some of the "bad" get covered, many of the good do too, and we don't have to listen to sanctimonious twats tell people what they can and can't buy. I do think that some sort of financial education is important though because, when the state is covering some of your biggest bills, the state should have *some* influence on how you spend your money, even if it falls well short of telling you what you can and can't do.
 
I don't get it. All I saw was the MSM and the left bashing him constantly. Saying he attacked the poor. What the hell...how? By giving them a dose or reality?

If you're poor, you can't afford to NOT make those tough financial decisions. He doesn't need to tell rich people to choose, because rich people can afford both. Poor people can't. They whine and whine about how they can't afford healthcare, but then they still have expensive cars and nice, new iPhones.

My best guess would just be that the left are being crybullies, and don't want the poor to be accountable for their own bad decisions.
Partisan politics. Everything is fair game to be used as a weapon. This is why the sane people don't side with either party.
 
Oh, “you consider” these things to be needs, eh? How big of you to decide that for millions of people who absolutely do not consider them to be needs! I wonder how many things I can paint as “needs” and then demand you pay for, if I choose to adopt your type of “my opinion of a need represents a need.” It is a simple fact that millions of people do not consider it a need and, go figure, those people’s lives go on without healthcare in many, many cases. That pretty much makes any notion of “need” you’re running on a sadly weak one, and I have to ask – is a “need” which many people, as a matter of fact, do not need, a need at all?

We (people) have an objective interest in our bodies not experiencing serious harm. When you ask someone what their interests are, no one says, "not getting headaches" or "being able to walk without a limp". That health is an interest for humans is a given.

What other things do you have in mind that have this universality and yet also extremely uneven attainment costs?

I can understand that there is a lot of wiggle room here. At the point where there are literally millions of people who do not even want what you’re saying they “need” you’ve gone past the point of wiggle room to trying to commandeer a strong term to make your weaker case look stronger.

Nonsense. Attaining better health comes at a cost. People may choose not to get treatment for either monetary reasons or because they fear treatment would make their health worse, but that doesn't mean if people were given the choice of having an ailment or not having it, with a guarantee of no negative side effects and all expenses (including time off from work) paid, they would choose to continue in their untreated misery.


Since the whole issue I’m tackling with the paragraph you’re answering is one of “stealing choice,” you do realize that you just declaring something irrelevant doesn’t make it so, right? And in all honesty, I’m not even understanding what you’re getting at with the first paragraph there. If you want me to deal with this point, restate it and I will.

I said it's irrelevant because you were arguing against something I didn't argue for. A strawman.

But here’s the catch – if “economic compulsion” is something we’re trying to avoid, then what you’re simply ignoring is that universal healthcare simply has economic compulsion pre-built into the system at large. You were compelled by the state to buy a product you don’t necessarily want. So, please, do NOT try and present “economic compulsion” as something unique to the non universal healthcare society.

Taxing people to pay for entitlement programs is coercion, not compulsion.

Compulsion is unique to the non-UHC society (on the issue of healthcare anyway, not necessarily other issues) because good health is a vital interest that can only be attained by some people in a non-UHC society by making large sacrifices in their level of material comfort. If there are two people who perform the same job for the same pay, but one has expensive health needs and the other does not, over the course of their careers the former will have spent tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars more than the other to reduce pain that the latter has been able to invest in his home, save for retirement, and spend on vacations. In a UHC society on the other hand, these two co-workers pay roughly the same for healthcare and are able to equally enjoy the fruit of their labor on life's comforts; the healthy person ends up paying more on healthcare than he would in a non-UHC society, but he still has a decent chance to have a good quality of life unlike his unhealthy coworker in a non-UHC society.

What’s ironic about your position is that in the non universal healthcare society which has insurance available there is no economic compulsion – one chooses to buy the product, or gamble that they will never need it with the knowledge that extreme financial hardship may result if they don’t buy the product. You seem to be confusing “choice with dire consequences” with “economically compelled” when, in fact, it’s the lack of compulsion in the non universal healthcare society that potentially leads to the tremendous financial risk as.

This is a case where I think too much freedom can be a bad thing, so you take the ability to make bad choices away from people by compelling them to pay for healthcare – which is what universal healthcare does by compelling people to buy it. Your presentation of the non universal healthcare society as being the one that compels people is a fallacy.

The American system is flawed insofar as not everyone can get healthcare if they need it, even if it is available for them to buy, because they can’t afford it. At least, to the best of my knowledge – I didn’t care about this stuff as much when I lived there last, and now I’m in Canada. I think this is something that should be rectified. At the very least, if we don’t adopt a true universal healthcare system, I think healthcare should be made available to even the very poor.

Insurance isn't available for people who got illness at a time when they had to choose between health insurance and paying for rent, utilities, and their car. It's not like health insurance is $20 a month and leaves subscribers with no out of pocket expenses, something that could be paid for if people simply chose to forego a new Iphone or Netflix. Lets be real here.

The non-UHC society can take many forms, but if it has roughly an entitlement property rights system a la Nozick, then the only goods people get (legally anyway) are those they earned or were graciously given. The government taking money from my paycheck and taxing my property to protect your right to exclude me from an area of the earth called your property is coercion. The government protecting the stacks of cash under your mattress or at your bank that were produced through your labor (or the labor of someone you inherited from) and allowing you to spend them on whatever you wish, precludes me from spending them on my healthcare. That creates a situation where I have to choose between the fruit of my labor going towards my home, vacations, retirement, etc (the benefits of capitalism) and reducing my physical suffering. That is compulsion.

Keep in mind, in one of my earlier posts I was *very* clear that I was talking about “Not Trump style universal health care, but Canada style.” I’m not talking about some half-assed American “universal” healthcare that is a step on the road to actual universal healthcare. I’ve said, many times, that the ACA is a step in the right direction but it’s a half baked plan as is.

And here, you’re mincing words. You say “what were MOST Americans spending per year on healthcare?” – but in all of your talk about compulsion, you seem to ignore that some Americans were willingly not paying for healthcare. As in, they were not paying because they were not compelled to pay. Contrast this to Canada – closer to the system I would like – and here is the reality:

In 2016, total health expenditure in Canada is expected to reach $228 billion, or $6,299 per person. It is anticipated that, overall, health spending will represent 11% of Canada’s gross domestic product (GDP).
https://www.cihi.ca/en/health-spending

11% of Canada’s GDP? An average of $6299 per person? Sounds “significant” to me. And just to be clear, those Canadians – this Canadian resident – has no choice, and is compelled to pay that money.

To account for this, the study broke average Canadian families down into 10 income groups, concluding that Canada’s poorest families pay $477 a year for health care, while the wealthiest earners pay $59,666 a year.

http://www.ctvnews.ca/health/true-c...erage-family-is-11k-per-year-report-1.2525114

Again, the money mentioned here is money that people are compelled to pay, unlike in a non universal healthcare setting in which people have the choice to essentially gamble on their health.

That's less than the US. And Canada pays in a modestly progressive way. I'd like to see a US UHC system funded more progressively than Canada's. Having UHC itself does not entail any one particular method of funding. So you might think it's unfair to expect someone making $30,000 a year to have to spend $7,000 a year on healthcare. I agree. Fortunately governments aren't limited to the choices of "UHC by taxing members of the working class a quarter of their annual income" -or- "not having UHC".

You say things like "seems clear to me" and "I consider ____ to be a need" and whatnot, but it's pretty obvious that you're basically taking your personal position - your opinion - and treating it as fact in the face of millions of people who outright look at what you call a need and say "I don't need or want that." Now, I'm all for you holding your opinion. You trying to pass it off as something more is where your whole narrative starts to stink.

It's not like I'm using some esoteric conception of needs. As I said earlier in this post, the universal, objective desire to not experience serious physical suffering makes healthcare a need.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/need "b : a physiological or psychological requirement for the well-being of an organism health and education needs"

What’s more, you trying to paint the non universal healthcare society as the one that financially compels people is a slick bit of rhetoric because you present the results of one’s free and informed choice as leading to compulsion when, in reality, the “compulsion” in this scenario is the compulsion a willing gambler feels when she loses and the casino demands she pay up. The gambler makes a choice knowing the risks and when she loses she is “compelled” to pay up in accordance with the known consequences she willingly agreed to beforehand – so, in short, being held responsible for choices freely made and not compelled to do anything more than what she had already agreed to do. Universal healthcare compels you to pay into healthcare because one doesn’t have a choice – non-universal healthcare gives you the choice to gamble and risk significant financial consequence. You are essentially trying to paint the society that forces you to pay for a service you may not want as the less compulsive one, and the one that lets you gamble knowing the consequences of loss but then holding you accountable for your freely taken choice as the compulsive one, and that strand of arguing is all kinds of hinky.

I addressed everything you said here throughout the post, but I'll reiterate that good health insurance is not something that can be acquired by a little belt tightening. It's hundreds of dollars a month.
 
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