Virginia Gun Owners Forum - VGOF

Senator Webb (D-VA) voted NAY to repealing Obamacare. Let's end his career.

Senator Warner (D-VA) did not cast a vote.

Senate Democrats held together to beat back Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-KY) attempt to repeal the health care overhaul law, Roll Call reports.

However, the party-line 47 to 51 vote made good on McConnell's vow to force a vote on the measure.

The Hill: "Republicans have vowed to carry the fight forward, saying they will seek to de-fund the law as it is implemented. The GOP also has promised Wednesday's repeal vote will not be the last in this Congress."

51-47

Read more: http://nation.foxnews.com/obamacare-rep ... z1CrbC9ZJd

Actually not altogether a bad thing. This is something the republicans can foot stomp during the 2012 election when 23 democrat senators go on the ballot.

I was wondering who the one Not Voting was, Ol Warner the "Centrist " in his words.. let's remove him to when his election comes around. He votes the party line 100% and that ain't good!,,,

I just sent the following note to Senator Webb, and ask that some of you do the same (in your own words!). You can do so here: http://www.webb.senate.gov/contact.cfm

Senator,

I am extremely disheartened by your "NAY" vote to the repeal of the healthcare law. You have heard from "The People", and you have to know that the "Obamacare" law is one of the most unliked pieces of legislation that has ever been passed. I had hoped that you would vote "For the People" instead of falling in line behind the ideals of the Democratic party.

You will not be receiving my vote this year, no matter who runs against you. I'll write myself in as a candidate before I vote for you after your total disregard for the will of the people.

It's unfortunate that your career has to end this way, but you chose it, and God willing, The People will choose based on your voting record in November.

Respectfully submitted,
Rick S.

I know this is a very touchy subject and this won't be the popular thought on the board. Hell I may find myself locked out!! My postings may be ignored forever. But I hope that won't be the case. I hope my ideas, while not agreed with can at least be respected. After all in America we don't have to agree on EVERYTHING RIGHT? But as a former service member that served more than 8 yrs overseas alone. I've seen many, many other countries and nations that just don't have this problem. Healthcare comes at birth. While its not a life long freebie. Those with means pay their own way. Those who cannot get assistance. They are not forced to visit the ER for basics. Nor are they forced to sit for hours at the ONE facility the government supports. They have options.

While I'm not sure what the answer is. I'm not suggesting that forcing everyone to purchase healthcare is the answer either. But, I'd hope some would agree. SOMETHING different has to be done. To think if you or a loved one lost their job today. They could go broke if they had a serious accident after "COBRA" ran out (If they could even afford COBRA) just makes no sense. Think about it......many people pay and pay and pay for insurance. Many never use it. Then in an instant, at a low point an accident happens "the day after" job lose or missed payment. Then what? It just seems like a shity situation to me.

Just my two cents

@ChicagoGuy

Good debate on this forum is the norm and we welcome it so don't be afraid to voice your opinion.

I hear what you are saying, but really are you willing to let them Force something on you like this? You know that only the ones that can pay like you and I will be supporting all the Freeloaders that think that healthcare is a Right not a Privilege. (Hey what is different then now? Oh I now we are mandated to under this law to pay for the Freeloaders)

I think that that the way Healthcare is now needs to changed, and the good Lord knows there are some serious flaws in the system. The way Congress and the Senate pushed this legislation through was not in the best interest of the Country, and they just slapped things together behind closed doors and said “We have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it”. The process in which this Bill became Law stinks to high heaven. If you have to resort to that type of tactics then something is dreadfully wrong with it. This law should have been something that could have stood on it's own as a bill without all the bribes and kickbacks. Good suggestions were ignored and Bad ones placed in the bill. The Unions are now looking at it and find that they can't afford what they so strongly supported and are asking for a waiver. The problem I have is the FACT that the cronies in D.C. that are supposed to be representing all of us are trying to Force us to Purchase with our hard earned money insurance whether we want it or not is the problem.

The bad part about repealing this law is losing the only part of this bill that I was glad to see which was the pre-existing conditions clause. If nothing else survives I truly hope that these pre-existing conditions clause makes it through even if they have to make it a separate ruling.

I too am a Veteran “Retired Air Force” and I have served 17 of my 21 years in overseas assignments and have a European wife. My wife can tell you the horror stories of the European "Free" Health system with tales from her mothers encounters as well as hers. If you like waiting for a year or so to be scheduled for a Hip Replacement or any other kind surgery then this is the health care model for you.

Taggure wrote: You know that only the ones that can pay like you and I will be supporting all the Freeloaders that think that healthcare is a Right not a Privilege. (Hey what is different then now? Oh I now we are mandated to under this law to pay for the Freeloaders)

But under the current system we do that now in the form of higher premiums (and taxes to support Medicare and Medicaid) due to what we in the biz call "uncompensated care"....you know, people not paying their bills?

To compensate for this, hospitals have to jack up their charges on everyone else, which in turn means insurers(be it third party or in the long run Medicare) pay more, which means we pay more.

I too am a Veteran “Retired Air Force” and I have served 17 of my 21 years in overseas assignments and have a European wife. My wife can tell you the horror stories of the European "Free" Health system with tales from her mothers encounters as well as hers. If you like waiting for a year or so to be scheduled for a Hip Replacement or any other kind surgery then this is the health care model for you.

if I had a choice between waiting a year or going bankrupt, I'd rather wait the year.

@Chicagoguy - indeed, all opinions are welcomed so dont be bashful...I think the feds forcing us to buy anything is unconstitutional and outrageous. They skipped alot of things that IMO would go along way in fixing our health care system. One big thing they missed big time was lowering costs for us consumers. It is simply not addressed anywhere. And, they beat up the health insurance industry without any reason. Check out health insurers from a financial perspective...they have one of the lowest profit margins (~3%) compared to other industries like banks (around 10%) that were all bailed out...

Health insurance is expensive simply because health care is expensive. Health care is expensive for several reasons -- none of which were even remotely mentioned by the democrats...to wit...

- Cost of malpractice insurance -- extremely expensive and can cost between 25 and 50% of a doctors earnings....so, I've heard
- Cost of medical education...can you say exorbitant
- Cost of fancy medical equipment...

When congress addresses these 3 issues then maybe we the people can engage in some meaningful conversation on the subject...

By the way, welcome and please do jump right in...

Kreutz wrote:

Taggure wrote: You know that only the ones that can pay like you and I will be supporting all the Freeloaders that think that healthcare is a Right not a Privilege. (Hey what is different then now? Oh I now we are mandated to under this law to pay for the Freeloaders)

But under the current system we do that now in the form of higher premiums (and taxes to support Medicare and Medicaid) due to what we in the biz call "uncompensated care"....you know, people not paying their bills?

To compensate for this, hospitals have to jack up their charges on everyone else, which in turn means insurers(be it third party or in the long run Medicare) pay more, which means we pay more.

Wasn't it Congress who made it mandatory? Yup, they have caused one huge mess here. Now they must treat people who they know won't pay and more importantly, don't really need ER services. It was a rare things for someone who actually needed real ER services to be turned down before the law was changed. Now, people go there expecting not to pay and for things which they should be seeing a normal doctor for.

Kreutz wrote:

I too am a Veteran “Retired Air Force” and I have served 17 of my 21 years in overseas assignments and have a European wife. My wife can tell you the horror stories of the European "Free" Health system with tales from her mothers encounters as well as hers. If you like waiting for a year or so to be scheduled for a Hip Replacement or any other kind surgery then this is the health care model for you.

if I had a choice between waiting a year or going bankrupt, I'd rather wait the year.

Two can play that game. If I had the choice between being dead because I had to wait a year and being bankrupt, I'd rather be bankrupt.

zephyp wrote:Cost of malpractice insurance -- extremely expensive and can cost between 25 and 50% of a doctors earnings....so, I've heard

This is a huge problem! While our courts have failed us, it really is indicative of a larger change in attitudes about risk. American's use to accept a certain amount of risk so they could have freedom. Now, we want to feel free, but have no risk. We can not be a free people and have everyone else carry our risk. This is exactly what the debate over health care is about, do we retain the right to our bodies or do we "minimize" risk by becoming health care slaves? The irony of it all is that the government option doesn't really reduce the risk at all, it simply masks the risk which is always there.

zephyp wrote:Cost of medical education...can you say exorbitant

Another major issue but it applies to all higher education. This is just like the housing bubble. The government decided to make student loans cheap and easy which has allowed the educators to drive up the cost and not care. Tyranny of good intentions and all.

zephyp wrote:Cost of fancy medical equipment...

There isn't much you can do here, but there is some. The cost of some of these machines is astronomical because of all the testing they must go through before being approved for human use. You should see the number of EEs going into biomed and making big bucks designing failsafe after failsafe so these machines can't ever harm anyone. That level of design and qualification takes a lot of resources. I'm not saying that is bad, but perhaps offering more choices would be better...kind of like how we have a spread of quality in most markets (guns, cars, housing, etc.) E.g. car A is $2k cheaper, but only carries 3 stars while car B has 5, but also gets 4MPG less. The regulations on medical devices drive the costs way up.

Also, there is a question of availability. The use of the machine would be far less if we kept it running 24/7/365, but we don't. Lots of expansive machines sit idle in the US because was want over-provisioning to handle peak demand and reduce scheduling conflicts. If we were willing to wait several weeks for our turn in line before a test it could reduce the apparent cost of the machines. This is just like high-end manufacturing, if you aren't running the machine all of the time you can't afford it.

Being first always costs a bundle. R&D, prototypes, testing, etc., etc. To some extent first world countries will have to live with that cost in order to have the highest standard of living. Unless we want to stop progress, there isn't much we can do about that at all. Specifically as the specialized tools are needed by fewer and fewer people. I.e. we treat most common things fairly well, but still have a long way to go on specialized treatment.

ChicagoGuy wrote:But as a former service member that served more than 8 yrs overseas alone. I've seen many, many other countries and nations that just don't have this problem.

Yes, they can afford to do it better than we can because we pay for their defense. Most of those countries are free loading off of our military so they can divert the money towards other "free" services. It only is a marginally sustainable system because they aren't paying for other services, which means to say their system collapses as soon as we quit funding it.

It is a simple calculation. As long as there is liberty there will be stratification. Simply put, liberty allows people to devote resources how they desire and the freedom to make good and bad choices. I devote a lot money towards guns, other people think that is stupid or crazy. However, they drive a Lexus and I drive a Honda. To each his own. As long as there is liberty to make our own choices there will be stratification of resources based on our decisions (i.e. how much money you have). Even then, as long as there is freedom, people will optimize their resources to acquire the most "happiness." I like guns, they may like shoes. This would be true even if we had the exact same amount of resources (money). Some people will choose to put their resources towards better health care, some towards a wardrobe, some towards a car, etc., etc.

Even in "flat" societies like communism, socialism, etc. there still is stratification...it just isn't many shades of gray, you either are special or you aren't. The great myth here is that we can have everything we want in health care. Simply put, there are some treatments which are too expensive to justify their use on me. I do without them or I must give something else up, just like I must do when deciding to buy a new gun. Every penny I spend on the new gun is a penny I can't spend elsewhere. This is exactly why the mandatory ER law is so bad. It allows people to allocate all of their health care resources towards Xbox, HD TVs, cars, housing, eating out, etc. and then get free health care when they need it. Many things in the ER don't actually need ER services.

ChicagoGuy wrote:While I'm not sure what the answer is. I'm not suggesting that forcing everyone to purchase healthcare is the answer either.

What other choices do you have? The problems we face today are mostly a result of wanting our cake and eating it too. We can either have the liberty to make our own choices and live with them (good or bad) or we can have the government take our resources by force and they also get to make the decisions. You can't have it both ways. Go read up on all of the previous health care reforms and you will see one common theme, the government has caused the issues we have today by trying a part liberty, part tyranny solutions. Every time the government attempts to regulate behavior where there is no ethical transgression we get unintended consequences.

ChicagoGuy wrote:But, I'd hope some would agree. SOMETHING different has to be done. To think if you or a loved one lost their job today. They could go broke if they had a serious accident after "COBRA" ran out (If they could even afford COBRA) just makes no sense. Think about it......many people pay and pay and pay for insurance. Many never use it. Then in an instant, at a low point an accident happens "the day after" job lose or missed payment. Then what? It just seems like a shity situation to me.

No, that is the whole concept of insurance. If they charged you almost as much or more than what the actual medical costs were (they have overhead) why would you ever buy insurance? Hmm, I can pay $2k a month for insurance or I can just suck it up and pay $8k a year in actual medical bills. They need people on the rolls who are not using "their fair share" in order to cover those who are using more. The idea is that while you likely will pay more in for the insurance option, you have the safety net if something really bad happens.

One of the problems with insurance is that people expect it to pay for "maintenance." Imagine how expensive your car insurance would be if they also had to cover oil changes, broken parts, etc. Insurance is a poor system to cover regular maintenance of a car or a human. It is really designed for those events which are a few sigmas outside the norm. You pay for it so if you have an accident you are covered, health insurance needs to return to being the same. However, the whole reason we expect it to cover everything goes way back to the Great Depression. The government, in their infinite wisdom, decided to put wage caps in place. Employers needed a way to compensate those employees who use to make wages over the cap or near to it. They accomplished this with benefits, particularly health care. Eventually the government decided again in their infinite wisdom to make those benefits tax beneficial to the employer so that more employers, besides those who had highly compensated employees, would offer some health care. Of course dumping all those people into employer run plans means that most people were unhappy with their insurer. I.e. what you want and what I want are two different things, but we both get the same insurance through our employer. That of course led the government to step in again and regulate the insurers to the nth degree. Remember, what your insurer did/does was because the government said they must. HMOs, PPO, etc. are their doing. Of course more government regulations also means that there more people working at insurance companies dealing with them and thus more overhead.


If you want to fix things this is what must be done. Liberty must be restored at all levels of health care. If you don't like that option than ultimately you will be left with a series of disappointments until you have no health care freedom.

Dear Lord please dont ever let Garrett become a doctor...I'm afraid he would never get around to helping a patient cause he'd be too busy researching, analyzing, cogitating, pontificating, and articulating...

zephyp wrote:Dear Lord please dont ever let Garrett become a doctor...I'm afraid he would never get around to helping a patient cause he'd be too busy researching, analyzing, cogitating, pontificating, and articulating...

Well played.

gunderwood wrote:

zephyp wrote:Dear Lord please dont ever let Garrett become a doctor...I'm afraid he would never get around to helping a patient cause he'd be too busy researching, analyzing, cogitating, pontificating, and articulating...

Well played.

That was one I just couldnt pass up...

gunderwood wrote:Wasn't it Congress who made it mandatory? Yup, they have caused one huge mess here. Now they must treat people who they know won't pay and more importantly, don't really need ER services. It was a rare things for someone who actually needed real ER services to be turned down before the law was changed. Now, people go there expecting not to pay and for things which they should be seeing a normal doctor for.

This has been the law since 1986 (signed into law by the Gipper no less).

Its called EMTALA(Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act) and basically says hospitals must treat emergencies regardless of ability to pay. This is how illegals get free treatment.

Yes, people abuse the ER. I actually owe my business' success to this fact. I see alot of people coming in for ear infections or runny noses. Same cash to me as a cardiac arrest, so I like it when this happens; much less information to read for a sprained ankle than a gunshot.

Two can play that game. If I had the choice between being dead because I had to wait a year and being bankrupt, I'd rather be bankrupt

I am genuinely unaware of a death occurring due to a delayed hip replacement. Usually you have to go through a few months of pointless "physical therapy" before an insurer will pay for the arthroplasty anyway; so theres still a delay here. Its just an insurance bureaucrat instead of a government one.

Fact is at least half of all bankruptcies here are due to medical care. My wife was in the hospital for a blood clot in her lung; three days stay totalled 26k. No surgeries either. Insurance left us owing 2k total. If we didnt have insurance, that one episode could have wiped us out if we were an average income family. I consider that unacceptable, and if I have to pay a few extra bucks in taxes to stop it, so be it.

There isn't much you can do here, but there is some. The cost of some of these machines is astronomical because of all the testing they must go through before being approved for human use. You should see the number of EEs going into biomed and making big bucks designing failsafe after failsafe so these machines can't ever harm anyone.

This is true, I knew medical equipment repair guys back in NY making 100k to start.

If we were willing to wait several weeks for our turn in line before a test it could reduce the apparent cost of the machines.

Wait, its OK for the free market to impose a waiting system, but not Ok for a government?

gunderwood wrote:

Kreutz wrote:

Taggure wrote: You know that only the ones that can pay like you and I will be supporting all the Freeloaders that think that healthcare is a Right not a Privilege. (Hey what is different then now? Oh I now we are mandated to under this law to pay for the Freeloaders)

But under the current system we do that now in the form of higher premiums (and taxes to support Medicare and Medicaid) due to what we in the biz call "uncompensated care"....you know, people not paying their bills?

To compensate for this, hospitals have to jack up their charges on everyone else, which in turn means insurers(be it third party or in the long run Medicare) pay more, which means we pay more.

Wasn't it Congress who made it mandatory? Yup, they have caused one huge mess here. Now they must treat people who they know won't pay and more importantly, don't really need ER services. It was a rare things for someone who actually needed real ER services to be turned down before the law was changed. Now, people go there expecting not to pay and for things which they should be seeing a normal doctor for.

Kreutz wrote:

I too am a Veteran “Retired Air Force” and I have served 17 of my 21 years in overseas assignments and have a European wife. My wife can tell you the horror stories of the European "Free" Health system with tales from her mothers encounters as well as hers. If you like waiting for a year or so to be scheduled for a Hip Replacement or any other kind surgery then this is the health care model for you.

if I had a choice between waiting a year or going bankrupt, I'd rather wait the year.

Two can play that game. If I had the choice between being dead because I had to wait a year and being bankrupt, I'd rather be bankrupt.

zephyp wrote:Cost of malpractice insurance -- extremely expensive and can cost between 25 and 50% of a doctors earnings....so, I've heard

This is a huge problem! While our courts have failed us, it really is indicative of a larger change in attitudes about risk. American's use to accept a certain amount of risk so they could have freedom. Now, we want to feel free, but have no risk. We can not be a free people and have everyone else carry our risk. This is exactly what the debate over health care is about, do we retain the right to our bodies or do we "minimize" risk by becoming health care slaves? The irony of it all is that the government option doesn't really reduce the risk at all, it simply masks the risk which is always there.

zephyp wrote:Cost of medical education...can you say exorbitant

Another major issue but it applies to all higher education. This is just like the housing bubble. The government decided to make student loans cheap and easy which has allowed the educators to drive up the cost and not care. Tyranny of good intentions and all.

zephyp wrote:Cost of fancy medical equipment...

There isn't much you can do here, but there is some. The cost of some of these machines is astronomical because of all the testing they must go through before being approved for human use. You should see the number of EEs going into biomed and making big bucks designing failsafe after failsafe so these machines can't ever harm anyone. That level of design and qualification takes a lot of resources. I'm not saying that is bad, but perhaps offering more choices would be better...kind of like how we have a spread of quality in most markets (guns, cars, housing, etc.) E.g. car A is $2k cheaper, but only carries 3 stars while car B has 5, but also gets 4MPG less. The regulations on medical devices drive the costs way up.

Also, there is a question of availability. The use of the machine would be far less if we kept it running 24/7/365, but we don't. Lots of expansive machines sit idle in the US because was want over-provisioning to handle peak demand and reduce scheduling conflicts. If we were willing to wait several weeks for our turn in line before a test it could reduce the apparent cost of the machines. This is just like high-end manufacturing, if you aren't running the machine all of the time you can't afford it.

Being first always costs a bundle. R&D, prototypes, testing, etc., etc. To some extent first world countries will have to live with that cost in order to have the highest standard of living. Unless we want to stop progress, there isn't much we can do about that at all. Specifically as the specialized tools are needed by fewer and fewer people. I.e. we treat most common things fairly well, but still have a long way to go on specialized treatment.

ChicagoGuy wrote:But as a former service member that served more than 8 yrs overseas alone. I've seen many, many other countries and nations that just don't have this problem.

Yes, they can afford to do it better than we can because we pay for their defense. Most of those countries are free loading off of our military so they can divert the money towards other "free" services. It only is a marginally sustainable system because they aren't paying for other services, which means to say their system collapses as soon as we quit funding it.

It is a simple calculation. As long as there is liberty there will be stratification. Simply put, liberty allows people to devote resources how they desire and the freedom to make good and bad choices. I devote a lot money towards guns, other people think that is stupid or crazy. However, they drive a Lexus and I drive a Honda. To each his own. As long as there is liberty to make our own choices there will be stratification of resources based on our decisions (i.e. how much money you have). Even then, as long as there is freedom, people will optimize their resources to acquire the most "happiness." I like guns, they may like shoes. This would be true even if we had the exact same amount of resources (money). Some people will choose to put their resources towards better health care, some towards a wardrobe, some towards a car, etc., etc.

Even in "flat" societies like communism, socialism, etc. there still is stratification...it just isn't many shades of gray, you either are special or you aren't. The great myth here is that we can have everything we want in health care. Simply put, there are some treatments which are too expensive to justify their use on me. I do without them or I must give something else up, just like I must do when deciding to buy a new gun. Every penny I spend on the new gun is a penny I can't spend elsewhere. This is exactly why the mandatory ER law is so bad. It allows people to allocate all of their health care resources towards Xbox, HD TVs, cars, housing, eating out, etc. and then get free health care when they need it. Many things in the ER don't actually need ER services.

ChicagoGuy wrote:While I'm not sure what the answer is. I'm not suggesting that forcing everyone to purchase healthcare is the answer either.

What other choices do you have? The problems we face today are mostly a result of wanting our cake and eating it too. We can either have the liberty to make our own choices and live with them (good or bad) or we can have the government take our resources by force and they also get to make the decisions. You can't have it both ways. Go read up on all of the previous health care reforms and you will see one common theme, the government has caused the issues we have today by trying a part liberty, part tyranny solutions. Every time the government attempts to regulate behavior where there is no ethical transgression we get unintended consequences.

ChicagoGuy wrote:But, I'd hope some would agree. SOMETHING different has to be done. To think if you or a loved one lost their job today. They could go broke if they had a serious accident after "COBRA" ran out (If they could even afford COBRA) just makes no sense. Think about it......many people pay and pay and pay for insurance. Many never use it. Then in an instant, at a low point an accident happens "the day after" job lose or missed payment. Then what? It just seems like a shity situation to me.

No, that is the whole concept of insurance. If they charged you almost as much or more than what the actual medical costs were (they have overhead) why would you ever buy insurance? Hmm, I can pay $2k a month for insurance or I can just suck it up and pay $8k a year in actual medical bills. They need people on the rolls who are not using "their fair share" in order to cover those who are using more. The idea is that while you likely will pay more in for the insurance option, you have the safety net if something really bad happens.

One of the problems with insurance is that people expect it to pay for "maintenance." Imagine how expensive your car insurance would be if they also had to cover oil changes, broken parts, etc. Insurance is a poor system to cover regular maintenance of a car or a human. It is really designed for those events which are a few sigmas outside the norm. You pay for it so if you have an accident you are covered, health insurance needs to return to being the same. However, the whole reason we expect it to cover everything goes way back to the Great Depression. The government, in their infinite wisdom, decided to put wage caps in place. Employers needed a way to compensate those employees who use to make wages over the cap or near to it. They accomplished this with benefits, particularly health care. Eventually the government decided again in their infinite wisdom to make those benefits tax beneficial to the employer so that more employers, besides those who had highly compensated employees, would offer some health care. Of course dumping all those people into employer run plans means that most people were unhappy with their insurer. I.e. what you want and what I want are two different things, but we both get the same insurance through our employer. That of course led the government to step in again and regulate the insurers to the nth degree. Remember, what your insurer did/does was because the government said they must. HMOs, PPO, etc. are their doing. Of course more government regulations also means that there more people working at insurance companies dealing with them and thus more overhead.


If you want to fix things this is what must be done. Liberty must be restored at all levels of health care. If you don't like that option than ultimately you will be left with a series of disappointments until you have no health care freedom.

........I heard all the reasons of why NOT to do. But what I didn't hear....was what TO DO????? Or was that the whole idea?

....Kreutz, you make a lot of very good points. I only wish I had said it!!!

When honest hard working people are going broke and STILL NOT getting the care they need AND DESERVE. While at the same time insurance companys and suppliers are posting record profits. There is something REALLY WRONG. Say what you will.....it is NOT the nature of the business. If someone charges $50 for a pill and someone else sells it for $10.......its CLEAR TO ME....SOMEONE is over charging me. HELLO, they do the same thing!!!!

Kreutz wrote:This has been the law since 1986 (signed into law by the Gipper no less).

No where did I blame Obama for it. I said government which is party neutral. Obama is just leading the latest misguided charge.

Kreutz wrote:I am genuinely unaware of a death occurring due to a delayed hip replacement. Usually you have to go through a few months of pointless "physical therapy" before an insurer will pay for the arthroplasty anyway; so theres still a delay here. Its just an insurance bureaucrat instead of a government one.

In any system there always is a rationing of resources, the question is how do we make that determination. In a free market solution, you get to decide. In a government solution you are at the mercy of a government board or regulation. If you do not meet the guidelines you will not recieve care...unless you fly to another country and pay for it like lots of Europeans do here.

Besides, who said anything about a hip replacement? In Europe people have died because the government board decided the cost of the treatment was too much for the expected gain. Again, there is no such thing as 100% care for anyone so someone must decide when that point is reached. It either is you or someone else.

In the end it was a silly statement which is why I responded to it in the way I did.

Kreutz wrote:Fact is at least half of all bankruptcies here are due to medical care. My wife was in the hospital for a blood clot in her lung; three days stay totalled 26k. No surgeries either. Insurance left us owing 2k total. If we didnt have insurance, that one episode could have wiped us out if we were an average income family. I consider that unacceptable, and if I have to pay a few extra bucks in taxes to stop it, so be it.

You've made that claim every time we have this debate, but you have never provide the source and I've asked multiple times. Again, you are setting up a false narrative. It is about control, not care. The government care is limited too, but you just don't have a say in it directly. Ultimately the care won't happen and can't exist unless someone pays for it. Doctor's won't get trained, medical machines won't get designed and built, R&D won't happen, etc. It all takes money. How exactly does giving government control of your choice reduce costs one penny? It hasn't yet and it never will because the basic logic is flawed.

Wait, its OK for the free market to impose a waiting system, but not Ok for a government?

The difference is liberty. I can choose to wait or I can choose not too. The fact of a wait or not a wait is irrelevant except when the pro-government takeover crowd is making false promises. They promise that it won't cost more and things will get much better. That is a false promise. Ultimately the government adds more overheard and must make cuts somewhere (if they can't hide the cost increase somehow like raiding other slush funds). Those cuts usually result in more waiting because they take some of the capacity offline.




The whole debate is about a fundamentally flawed understanding of praxeology, economics and government.

1. Praxeology is the study of human actions and the laws of social cooperation. Medical care can not and will not exist unless those who wish to provide it see some reward and return for doing so. I.e. Doctors must feed their families too. The cost of such care will be raised be many external and internal factors such as: standard of living of the country, quality of care, cost of training, cost of tools, regulation, risk, etc. The more quality and advancements you want the more it will cost. There is no way to get around the fact that the medical profession at all levels will not exist unless there is financial gain to be had for participating in it; this is no different than any other market. I.e. I don't work for free and neither do you, we all work to make gains so we can better fulfill our wants and needs...by doing so though we must, by the definition of being successful, do work which others value. In this way we are all doing things which "help" each other.

The logical flaw here is that we can keep high quality and pay these people less at the same time. If you want to attract more and better people than we have today so we can increase quality it will require paying them more, not less. The amount of money you are willing to pay is directly related to how good the talent you can attract.

2. Economics. The fact is we have limited resources and so does the government. No one can get away from the fact that we must make choices between things we want. E.g. Do I want to eat bread and water for a month so I can afford to buy the new <insert firearm here>? We all make these decisions every day and we each have different priorities. I could live in the country on a nice piece of property if I was willing to give up certain things I have now because the jobs pay less out there...I choose not too. I choose to drive a Honda when I could be driving a much nicer car, but I would rather spend my money on firearms or computers or whatever. Because we have limited resources we all make these decisions at the exclusion of others.

The logical flaw here is that by giving that power of choice to the government that somehow we will not be resource limited. The government loves to make promises it knows it can't keep just like SS. It never was a workable system, it always was flawed, but that doesn't matter because it worked long enough for those to implemented it to benefit from it. If you don't pay more and you add more government overhead care must go down. Socialized health care or what ever you want to call it only transfers power to the government, it does not address any of the underlying issues which are the reason health care is so expensive. Some of which are unavoidable as they are directly related to the quality of care we choose to have.

The second logical flaw here is that government has a better way to promote efficiency than the free market does. Please note that what we have today in health care is hardly a free market solution, it is a government one and has been so for generations. The free market alternative promotes choice and optimization. Good choices and optimizations make for better outcomes than bad choices. If I blow all of my money on a house and can't afford to put up blinds or change the oil in my car or buy food we generally agree that that is a bad choice. Health care is just like food, water, shelter, and everything else. We must make choices which provide for our needs and wants the best. For some people that means buying a high cost insurance plan that covers nearly everything. For others it means that they only buy a plan which covers rare events that could bankrupt them. For others it could mean none at all. This act of choosing promote optimization by making sure that only the insurance models people want can exist (employer health care distorts this, but government regulations always do). It also promotes optimization by making sure that people only take care when they deem it valuable. If I don't have to pay for something I'll take all I can get and so does everyone else. Only when I have to evaluate what it will cost me do I sometimes choose not to partake of everything.

The government model is far worse. It makes the choices for you and applies an "equal" standard. Everyone gets the same regardless if they want more or not. This promotes everyone wanting to get their "fair share" which always is the maximum of what the rules say they can take.

3. Government is the legalization of force, nothing else. Government does that which no person could do without being unethical. We instituted government to do by force those things which we deemed were necessary and "could not" do ourselves. Right, wrong or indifferent at its very core that is all it is. One thing no government can do is by fiat power change the very nature and rules of the universe. Government can not change the laws of economics anymore than they can change gravity; no law to the contrary will cause gravity to cease. Instead resources must be expanded in order to give the appearance that gravity has been revoked, but that by its very nature means that we must choose to expend resources revoking it rather than on something else.

The obviously logical flaw here is that somehow by giving government the power to control health care that they can change the fundamental laws which are making it expensive. By what force of action is the government going to accomplish that? Shall they make force people to be doctors or researchers or nurses and mandate that they only make $30k a year? Without forcing people into those professions, mandating $30k will only result in insufficient doctors, nothing else. Shall they decree that no treatment or medical machine shall cost more than $100k? Guess what, that only results in treatments and machines which cost more than that never coming into existence in the first place. Who would invest in a new treatment when they know they could never charge enough to make it profitable? (i.e. worth the resources and risk) The government can not change the very nature of why somethings are expensive because force can not accomplish that goal.

ChicagoGuy wrote:....Kreutz, you make a lot of very good points. I only wish I had said it!!!

When honest hard working people are going broke and STILL NOT getting the care they need AND DESERVE. While at the same time insurance companys and suppliers are posting record profits. There is something REALLY WRONG. Say what you will.....it is NOT the nature of the business. If someone charges $50 for a pill and someone else sells it for $10.......its CLEAR TO ME....SOMEONE is over charging me. HELLO, they do the same thing!!!!

Please tell me how much of someone else's labor you deserve? We only deserve that which we have worked for, nothing else. If you don't work for it, you don't deserve it...since we use money as an intermediary, if you don't pay for it you don't deserve it.

Furthermore, you can not properly evaluate what others need, nor can I. Only they can do that for themselves. That is exactly why they must make the decision, not the government as to what they want and need.

When you buy insurance you agree to a set of rules and those rules are built around them offering a service and taking on your risk. They don't know that they will make money, sometimes they do and sometimes they don't. If you only pay for an economy plan you can't complain that it doesn't provide coverage like a luxury plan.

What is always amusing that that people like you begrudge others making a profit, but make one themselves. I think you make an obscene profit and should work for free. How do you like that? I don't know who you work for or what you do, but I'm sure I'm paying way to much for the quality of work...clearly you are over charging me and I would like a refund.

ChicagoGuy wrote:........I heard all the reasons of why NOT to do. But what I didn't hear....was what TO DO????? Or was that the whole idea?

Just because I didn't expound more on a workable solution doesn't make a demonstrably flawed system a good idea. I.e. just because you do not know what to do, doesn't mean we should adopt something which can be shown is a unsustainable solution.


There are several things we must do.

First, we must have an honest discussion about the realities of life. We can not have everything we want or need. No one gets that and health care is no different. The idea that everyone can have 100% of health care is a myth...or at least only works if you artificially limit and define what 100% means. There are and always will be some treatments which are just too expensive to offer to everyone who wants or needs it. We must either decide to let some have it and prevent others from obtaining it or we must not let anyone have it. Either way we must choose a way to make that decision (point three). Either the person who wants or needs the treatment can decide or someone else can decide for them. Generally, someone else making the decision doesn't work unless they have the power to back up the decision to limit care. As an American, I choose liberty and personal choice...after all that is what freedom is all about right?

Second, since we are choosing liberty and personal choice over someone else making the decision for us, we must remove all artificial roadblocks which stand in the way of making such a decision. That means getting rid of government regulations which prohibit the free exercise of liberty concerning health care and health contracts. If I want to treat my (hypothetical) cancer by standing on my head, I should be able too do so even though most "experts" would claim that my choice is not a wise one. If I want to prolong my life 6 months by using up $10M in health care, I should be able to do that as well. If I want to make a contract with a third party to take on a certain level of risk concerning my health care I should be able to negotiate whatever contract I and they can agree on. Only by reducing the overhead which the government currently imposes on health care can we reasonably expect lower costs while maintaining the level of care we have today. A flat cost and increasing overhead never lead to flat or increasing quality.

Third, we must have an agreed upon way of determining who shall get what level of care. What you want and what I want are two different things. I personally prefer not to spend my last days trying to extend my life a few weeks while my quality of life is poor. However, many people want and do just that. To each his own. Since we are Americans and believe in freedom and natural rights, we can not ethically compel anyone to provide us with services or goods. We must negotiate with them a price which we both agree to whether it is a new car, health care or employment. Only the two parties can determine what is fair. Furthermore, since money is just an intermediary transactional mechanism (roughly), if I want gold plated service I must pay for it. I can not expect world class heath care for third world prices.

Interestingly enough, my ability to pay for the services rendered is directly related to how well I have served others. If I have served them poorly they would be unwilling to continue paying me for the services rendered which means I likely won't be able to afford much of anything let alone world class health care. If I have served them well, I am likely to have been paid well for those services. We pay for things we deem worthy and our labor or goods which we offer to others are no different.

That is the fairest way to determine who gets what resources, health care or otherwise; how many people value their goods or services and by how much? The more other people value you the more they will be willing to pay you. However, that is only half of the equation. You must also make decisions which don't use up all of your "value" and allow for some of it to be used for health care. We all have to make choices, some of use do better than others, but each of us should have to live with the consequences of those choices. That was very American too. Even charity falls into this decision making framework as well. Charity simply means that someone values you more than they value whatever was given up. In a very real way, those who provide charity are receiving something in return just like any other transaction. The problem of course is that the value provided to the giver is hard to quantify and comprehend for third parties. Either way, third parties can never access the fairness of an exchange.


The solution was, is and always will be simple...liberty works. The only reason people want government involved is because they don't like how things turned out or they don't want to be responsible for how they do turn out. Either way they are not free. In every way liberty always is the most efficient and ethical way for humans to interact with each other. A government solution will always introduce more overhead than a liberty based solution which requires personal choices. Less efficiency always means you pay more for less, no way around it unless you are being unethical and using force to make others do things they willfully would not do otherwise.

gunderwood wrote:You've made that claim every time we have this debate, but you have never provide the source and I've asked multiple times.

Its gone up since I last checked; its 60% of all bankruptcies are due to medical debt now.

http://articles.cnn.com/2009-06-05/heal ... =PM:HEALTH

This year, an estimated 1.5 million Americans will declare bankruptcy. Many people may chalk up that misfortune to overspending or a lavish lifestyle, but a new study suggests that more than 60 percent of people who go bankrupt are actually capsized by medical bills.

Again, you are setting up a false narrative. It is about control, not care. The government care is limited too, but you just don't have a say in it directly. Ultimately the care won't happen and can't exist unless someone pays for it. Doctor's won't get trained, medical machines won't get designed and built, R&D won't happen, etc. It all takes money. How exactly does giving government control of your choice reduce costs one penny? It hasn't yet and it never will because the basic logic is flawed.

Economies of scale. The current system is fractured and disorganized, and in all honestly giving the governemtn control isn't much of a change. Not many people know this but insurers usually follow Medicare anyway.

Lets say Medicare starts paying for...I don't know, ductoscopies (a fiberoptic examination of the mammary ducts of the breast)....we know within a year Blue cross and aetna will be paying for it too.

They follow the governments lead anyway. They usually use only slightly different reimbursement formulas too...only the weight (what they use to calculate their payment for X service) is a secret...the rest is all based on CMS payment formulas.

In the end as someone involved in "the system" of healthcare I just don't see an end-user difference in a practical sense with this law.

It really doesn't change much except increasing access to healthcare, which is fine by me.

I can't respond to the rest as I'm supposed to be working and needed a supposedly quick diversion; too much to read lol.