Church groups take collections for sick and needy church members all the time.
Church groups take collections for sick and needy church members all the time.
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"This will be a fight against overwhelming odds from which survival cannot be expected. We will do what damage we can."
-- Capt. Copeland
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Then you have been misinformed. The conservative braintrust today is having a hard time connecting the dots how a healthy populace with access to healthcare is a beneficial thing for EVERYONE, including, yes you and your family. It's a national security issue, and it would help GDP growth immensely.
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Shhhhhh, don't say that, they might have to start thinking in 21st century concepts and terms.
The private insurance path is not ideal at all. There might be solutions to the problems you raised but they are out of scope for this conversation. I am not arguing for it. I am just pointing out the fact that saying "without state healthcare everybody would become bankrupt" is not a good argument at all. Especially when you consider the conservative world view on the subject. You are not going to convince them with this argument when they value private insurance and self responsibility a lot. According to their world view, if you do not buy yourself insurance and do not have a close knit community it is your own fault and they are not completely stupid for saying that.
In the same vein, socialized medecine is not all that its cracked up to be. As a personal anectode, I have seen with my own eyes my aunt die of a cancer that might have been cured using some new technique that had a huge success rate for that specific cancer. Our state agency that approves of what treatments to use did not approve of it yet and so she died without having the possibility to try. Of course, it might have not changed the outcome but we will never know. That treatment was actually approved a couple of years later.
If only there was some sort of correlation between medical bills and personal bankruptcies that caused President Obama to create and pass the Affordable Care Act. Oh medical bills are the number one cause of personal bankruptcies. There were 1000's of people each year that couldn't afford their medical bills. Begging for handouts and charity obviously wasn't working.
If this guy believed what he spewed wouldn't he have taken personal responsibility and made sure he had good medical insurance before getting into a serious motorcycle accident? I mean free markets and all, since he obviously has free choice to seek medical treatment for his serious injuries the doctors will be competing for his business LOLOL.
As far as medical treatment not being a right, why can't it become one? Why can't the wealthiest nation on Earth not guarantee it's citizens medical care? Maybe there needs to be a constitutional amendment. We could replace the 2nd amendment for an amendment that guarantees the right to medical care.
Where in America are women killing babies?!? I'm sure if they killed a baby they'd be in jail.
Finally speaking of conservatives "donating to charity". How come so many of these charities turn out to be a scam? How come $5 million dollars was raised for veterans and still hasn't gone to veterans? I guess Trump is waiting until after he is elected to donate that money or what's left after he spends what he needs.
No.
Socialized medicine is about the government taking care of its people. Crowdfunding lets people pick and choose whose health care they wish to pay for. You can be specific and judgemental, or you can blanket donate to everyone.
It is, however, fiscally questionable. Bulk rates/single payer situations will, by almost all successful systems, reduce costs. Paying for individual people at higher rates has the trade-off of allowing you to pick and choose, but you're paying more to do so than if you paid for everyone.
If you oppose socialized medicine, but are quick to ask strangers to help keep your friends alive, you should probably learn to enjoy watching your friends die.
Asking for it is different than demanding it.
Plus the poor do get it for free, this idiot had enough money and didn't buy insurance.
I would be very interested to know if the fiscal side of it is that questionable. I understand the one payer, bulk thing but doesn't that open the way for services to just cost much more since the one payer is forced to pay it ? Could prices not be lower if actual competition was involved ? I would be very interested in knowing how much higher the prices would be for a country that does not do any socialized medecine at all. I suspect that the prices of the services would be as high and in the end would cost everybody more money but I would love to know for sure.
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Yes and yes.
You do know that the vast majority of donations by conservatives is to their church, which does jack shit for the community most of the time. Donating to a church is more selfish than not donating at all. The motivation behind it is generally, "oh if I donate to the church, my soul won't burn in hell", and then that money doesn't actually help anybody.
That is the literal definition of modern greed. If you don't force someone to pay, they will only care about those close to them. Honestly, having a nose stuffed square into a rich persons rectum because their daddy's daddy was super successful at abusing child labor in the offchance that I might break my toe sounds infinitely more disgusting than doing the same thing to the government.
There are no worse scum in this world than fascists, rebels and political hypocrites.
Donald Trump is only like Hitler because of the fact he's losing this war on all fronts.
Apparently condemning a fascist ideology is the same as being fascist. And who the fuck are you to say I can't be fascist against fascist ideologies?
If merit was the only dividing factor in the human race, then everyone on Earth would be pretty damn equal.
I'll break it down for you as simple as I can:
Charity = giving willingly to a cause that you find worthy and that you want to support with your money. If you don't spend charitably, you may go to Hell (if there is one) or at least be deemed a jerk.
Taxes = money taken forcibly by the government and spent however the government wants to spend it. If you don't pay your taxes, you are fined or get thrown in prison or killed (depending on what country we are talking).
Taxes =/= Charity.
The government's job is not supposed to be to choose what charities we MUST spend our money on.
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Hmmm. This is just the Catholic Church and is just an estimate ... but it would refute your claim pretty easily.
"The Economist estimates that annual spending by the church and entities owned by the church was around $170 billion in 2010 (the church does not release such figures). We think 57% of this goes on health-care networks, followed by 28% on colleges, with parish and diocesan day-to-day operations accounting for just 6% and national charitable activities just 2.7% (see chart). In total, Catholic institutions employ over 1m people, reckons Fred Gluck, a former McKinsey managing partner and co-founder of the National Leadership Roundtable on Church Management, a lay organisation seeking to improve the way the church is run. For purposes of secular comparison, in 2010 General Electric’s revenue was $150 billion and Walmart employed roughly 2m people."
And this is a biased article trying to make the Cahtolic Church look bad, but if you break down their chart of estimates:
4.7 billion donated to various charities
48.8 billion used as on colleges/universities (also, would be considered charitable donation on an individual's taxes)
98.6 billion used as health services (also, would be considered charitable donation on an individual's taxes)
So that is 152.1 BILLION dollars that are spent for charity -- i.e. improving healthcare, supporting education, and supporting actual charities.
Yes it is that questionable. If you look at the cost per head for providing healthcare in the USA vs UK/France/Germany/etc that have some form of socialized system, the costs are 1.5x to 2.5x greater for the US. Now if the healthcare outcomes were that much better you could say the extra costs are justified but they are not. The overall healthcare outcomes are roughly the same in northern european nations vs the US.
The fact of the matter is that due to the nature of healthcare (you will pay whatever it takes to fix x,y,z), the economic power lies with the providers of it and not the consumers, meaning that the providers will therefore take you for every last cent they can. Other countries have realized is this and use the power of gov to force down costs and regulate out this economic rent extraction (as much as they can). Hence they get equal healthcare at far less cost. But given that so many idiots believe government is the problem (rather than the possible solution) they won't let it act to do what is needed.
Of course a truly free market would be better if such a free market were possible in healthcare, as say it is in cars, or clothes. But it isn't and won't ever be.
this argument shouldn't even exist. dozens of other countries have better outcomes than the USA while spending less.
it's over. conservatives are wrong. it's proven.