Health care law ruled constitutional

[Hyve]

Because it defies economic principles.

When you guarantee a service no matter the cost, the price will keep rising. If money is no object, the producers will keep raising prices. If you interfere in the process of price discovery, you create shortages.

Let's take for example Nixon and gas prices. Gas prices were rising fast under Nixon. He implemented price controls as a counter. He prevented gas companies from raising prices. Problem solved right? Wrong. By capping the price of gas, it became unprofitable to sell gas. So gas stations stopped selling. The result was massive shortages. Gas lines. Nixon was then forced to remove price controls, and that cause the price of gas to skyrocket even faster than before, as the cap had artificially boosted demand.

Socialism claims government can provide free services to all. That is an economic impossibility. Its an attractive PROMISE. People who are uneducated about economics can fall prey to its seductive call. But it doesn't work.

When you guarantee health care, you either must be prepared to go bankrupt providing care to all, or create shortages / long waiting lists to hold costs down. Those lines by definition must keep getting longer as well to keep costs down, as money is still no object no matter how long the lines get.

This is why you have places with entrenched socialism like North Korea, where social services are primitive. The services are "free" but barely exist. Its the only way to keep costs down under socialism.

---------- Post added 2011-11-08 at 12:59 PM ----------

If you look at Europe and socialized medicine, you are seeing the typical destruction it causes. Some countries are going bankrupt trying to guarantee social services. Other have long lines to get your free service. Its failing. In the end, the EU will go bankrupt. Its a dystopia.

You my good man, need to be given a medal for your this fantastic post.

Everything within it is perfectly right. Socialism doesn't work. I'd be interested if anyone can show me a nation or civilisation where socialism has worked. It hasn't and nor will it ever, purely for the reasons detailed in this mans thread.

I salute you, sensible person!

[xile]

A little off topic but i have a question about your (US) healthcare system as current. Say someone needs life saving surgery and they don't have this stupidly expensive health insurance and can't afford the operation, is there some help out there or are you left to die due to being poor?

As i understand it depends on several factors, sometimes there will be times where a hospital will do something charitable or work with people to see what they can do, but as i understand the norm is that if you can't pay you don't get the surgery unless you fall under a certain demographic for income and other things to which i believe there are some programs that help them, but they aren't that well known especially among the lower income brackets and leave alot of people to fall through the cracks because of how they are set up.

[Wells]

A little off topic but i have a question about your (US) healthcare system as current. Say someone needs life saving surgery and they don't have this stupidly expensive health insurance and can't afford the operation, is there some help out there or are you left to die due to being poor?

We give emergency care. So they would forgo the surgery and then once it becomes immediately life threatening they could go to an ER. By then they're probably going to die.

[xile]

You my good man, need to be given a medal for your this fantastic post.

Everything within it is perfectly right. Socialism doesn't work. I'd be interested if anyone can show me a nation or civilisation where socialism has worked. It hasn't and nor will it ever, purely for the reasons detailed in this mans thread.

I salute you, sensible person!

Socalism doesn't work, socialist policies combined with a market system are however pretty good. There's nothing that says you can't have a market system and have universal healthcare on the other end, many countries do it. Heck even in america we have a socialistic system for education that's coupled with a capitalistic system in private schools. Despite what people say our education isn't that bad, and it only is because of the fact that we have such a wide inequality gap where inner city kids with little to no social or community support drag alot of the schools and systems down.

---------- Post added 2011-11-17 at 09:31 PM ----------

We give emergency care. So they would forgo the surgery and then once it becomes immediately life threatening they could go to an ER. By then they're probably going to die.

^^ That pretty much, hospitals are required to take people if it's an emergency.

[Deleted]

Please. You and your 9mm are going to prevent a dictator from coming to power? Even you and all the other pro-gun people out there couldn't stop that. This isn't the 18th or even 19th century.

Ever heard of guerilla warfare? Ever heard of people deserting the army? Ever heard of third world nations armed with poor equipment fighting back superpowers with the most modern equipment? Vietnam? Afganistan (vs soviet & usa)? Cechenya in Russia? the list goes on.

[xile]

This conversation's been had before, in this thread, I think. No country on earth has ever used socialism in its true sense. Even in "socialist" Europe, they are driven by a capitalist economy.

And when you eventually understand that socialism =/= free shit, you'll understand that it has a place in society. In fact, it's being used in this United States of America right now. Ask your grandparents on Medicare, or your friends/family that are veterans. Socialism and capitalism can and do work together nicely. It's when you get too heavy on one side when problems occur. Still, it's not free, unless we make the assumption that taxes aren't free.

---------- Post added 2011-11-17 at 03:34 PM ----------



It's actually a law, signed by that evil socialist....Ronald Reagan.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergen...tive_Labor_Act

Socialism shouldn't be used in society, socialist policies should, i feel like there should be a distinction made. Socialism isn't nearly as good of an economic system in terms of production, or advancement really. Socialist policies are great sometimes, but capitalism is arguably the biggest reason that the U.S. is the economic power it is today despite how every one loves to act like the U.S. is falling apart.

[Daelak]

The question is, are we violent in nature, or violent because of guns? I lean to the former. It's why I hate guns and will never own one. But I will defend the 2nd amendment in terms of the right to bear arms to my dying day. Why? Because it means we'll never have a dictator in power. It's what separates us from many countries in the world. We have to take the good with the bad.

I'm not diminishing the impact of gun violence, though. It's definitely a problem, but I think we'd be better served finding the source of the problem rather than attacking the symptoms. Perhaps you're onto something with mental evaluations.

Well from what I have read about human nature (if you can call it that) is completely determined on our environment. So by saying that humans are innately violent, meaning that we have violent tendencies written into our genome, is not true. We now know that atleast 1-2% of the human population have sociopathic/psychopathic tendencies just due to the variance/imperfection in DNA and the amount of people (7 billion). But for the vast majority of people that are born, they are born with predispositions towards nurturing, caring, and socialization because these are the traits that helped us survive for millions of years. The violence aspect of our history comes from scarcity in our environment.

[xile]

Ever heard of guerilla warfare? Ever heard of people deserting the army? Ever heard of third world nations armed with poor equipment fighting back superpowers with the most modern equipment? Vietnam? Afganistan (vs soviet & usa)? Cechenya in Russia? the list goes on.

It's irrelevant, the argument itself is stupid because saying that we should have guns because if we don't we can't stop our government from becoming dictators or w.e. is silly. Our government really wouldn't for literally 9000 reasons, and the idea of the citizens of the U.S. being armed wouldn't even be close to the top. Society today is entirely different from what it was even 50 years ago. There's no point in arguing a pro gun standpoint based upon an issue that won't happen.

[Wells]

Why is a health care thread discussing war tactics?

[Traejun]

Ever heard of guerilla warfare? Ever heard of people deserting the army? Ever heard of third world nations armed with poor equipment fighting back superpowers with the most modern equipment? Vietnam? Afganistan (vs soviet & usa)? Cechenya in Russia? the list goes on.

Right, because living the mountains outside the San Fernando Valley is a win for me? Cool.

-Vietnam was armed by the Russians, with equipment capture from the French. They were a well armed, well organized military.
-Afghanistan did "beat" the Russians...but the U.S. hand-picked the leaders they wanted to have power there, I'd call that a win.
-Chechnya lost a lot of people during that war. They did beat the Russians back...but at what cost?

[Deleted]

Right, because living the mountains outside the San Fernando Valley is a win for me? Cool.

Come on. We're not talking about some teapartiers who want to impeach obama because they think he's a muslim brotherhood member from Kenya or any shit like that. We're talking about a situation where being in the mountains outside San Fernando Valley is better than the circumstances of the nation. We're talking about some remote possibility of total dictatorship, like what the British did to the US.

The fact that people are armed in the first place makes it alot less likely for anyone to even try that shit.

[skylla05]

In Canada, we have long waiting list for emergencies most likely caused by people who use the system for stupid things like a cold.

I've waited in a waiting room, in excruciating pain from a stuck kidney stone... because there was a 15-16 year old kid with a "tummy ache" and a guy that drank too much and "hurt his wrist" (I watched him walk out with an ice pack on it, no cast). And from what I gathered, the kid was just constipated (overheard the doctor)

If anyone has had a kidney stone, let alone one that is stuck in your urethra near your pelvis, you'd know how infuriating this is. There's a reason they rate "renal colic", the name they give this pain, up with 3rd degree burns and gunshots. It's one of the single most painful things a human being can experience... and I had to wait over crap like this. Not only is it beyond painful, it can cause infections quite quickly and even tear open your urethra.

While the Canadian system is better than USA, it's still pretty crappy because a lot of people abuse it simply due to the ease of accessibility. I also live in a rather small city compared to say, Calgary, so you see A LOT of this type of things in our hospital. It's hard to say if my case was just a matter of poor nurses/administration, or if this is how it generally works... but man I was pissed right off.

[xile]

Come on. We're not talking about some teapartiers who want to impeach obama because they think he's a muslim brotherhood member from Kenya or any shit like that. We're talking about a situation where being in the mountains outside San Fernando Valley is better than the circumstances of the nation. We're talking about some remote possibility of total dictatorship, like what the British did to the US.

The fact that people are armed in the first place makes it alot less likely for anyone to even try that shit.

No. It doesn't. Like i've already said on the list of reasons as to why the government should not become a dictatorship that they have to go down before they take action, the fact that you have an armed country doesn't even break the top 10. The best part is that this situation in which our government would turn into a dictatorship wouldn't happen, period. This whole thing is like arguing that we shouldn't ban cocaine because maybe if aliens come in the next million years to america they may be deathly sick to it and then we could kill them with it. It's basing a point on a dam near improbable situation where even in that situation it's not even close to the biggest deterrent to the proposed idea.

[Daelak]

Socialism shouldn't be used in society, socialist policies should, i feel like there should be a distinction made. Socialism isn't nearly as good of an economic system in terms of production, or advancement really. Socialist policies are great sometimes, but capitalism is arguably the biggest reason that the U.S. is the economic power it is today despite how every one loves to act like the U.S. is falling apart.

This happens everytime when people defend "capitalism" over "socialism". I believe Joseph Stiglitz said it best when talking about what kind of economic system we have in the US: "corporate administered state capitalism". To me, this means that we have a large mixed economy where the government and corporations are the agents that utilize capital (public and private) for PRIVATE gain. Large private interests in the US use and mold the government to further interests, i.e. monopolization, tariffs/free trade agreements, and the like. In my opinion, we have never had a capitalist free market, it has just been portrayed that way.

[Pert]

No pert what cymraeg13 is saying is sarcasm to the previous post. anyone who believes superior weaponry= autovictory knows nothing about war or even how to wage one.

I'm well aware of the sarcasm. (Un?)fortunately the US is not Afghanistan.

[xile]

This happens everytime when people defend "capitalism" over "socialism". I believe Joseph Stiglitz said it best when talking about what kind of economic system we have in the US: "corporate administered state capitalism". To me, this means that we have a large mixed economy where the government and corporations are the agents that utilize capital (public and private) for PRIVATE gain. Large private interests in the US use and mold the government to further interests, i.e. monopolization, tariffs/free trade agreements, and the like. In my opinion, we have never had a capitalist free market, it has just been portrayed that way.

Alot of the things the government puts in place are good, like tariffs on goods. I would find it hard to believe that the U.S. could compete with the ridiculously low prices of most crops in india and china because of their incredibly low labor costs, i suppose it's possible, but all would happen if we didn't have some of those tariffs would be (assuming their goods are cheaper) that all that money would go straight out of America.

[Deleted]

No. It doesn't.

Well let's just say there are numerous examples in recent history where the people wish they had been armed.

Alot of the things the government puts in place are good, like tariffs on goods. I would find it hard to believe that the U.S. could compete with the ridiculously low prices of most crops in india and china because of their incredibly low labor costs, i suppose it's possible, but all would happen if we didn't have some of those tariffs would be (assuming their goods are cheaper) that all that money would go straight out of America.

Tariffs are not good. Tariffs serve special interests (the protected industry) at a cost to the rest of society in the form of higher prices through lower competition.

[xile]

Well let's just say there are numerous examples in recent history where the people wish they had been armed.

Tariffs are not good. Tariffs serve special interests (the protected industry) at a cost to the rest of society in the form of higher prices.

There are numerous examples, The U.S. and the world is absolutely nothing like those situations at all, Yes china fell to communism, they were also a horribly designed country, with no real checks and balances, there was no real global media, no internet for organization, there are literally hundreds of reasons why this would not happen in america.

Tariffs on goods coming in from other countries are. It raises the prices of incoming goods, so that people buy american goods instead of foreign goods, which may cheaper and probably are, but allocates money out of the U.S. and destroys jobs here which in turn hurts the country more. While you could argue that it hurts jobs on a global level that doesn't really matter when discussing single country economics.

[Pert]

Alot of the things the government puts in place are good, like tariffs on goods. I would find it hard to believe that the U.S. could compete with the ridiculously low prices of most crops in india and china because of their incredibly low labor costs, i suppose it's possible, but all would happen if we didn't have some of those tariffs would be (assuming their goods are cheaper) that all that money would go straight out of America.

I disagree. Protectionist policies like tariffs are not a good thing. They may prop up certain jobs within the US, but at the cost of other jobs. Additionally, the higher costs are passed down to consumers. In addition to directly harming, tariffs also help to promote a system of tit-for-tat "retaliatory" tariffs or other import restrictions between countries.

Tariffs are not good.

[Deleted]

Tariffs on goods coming in are. It raises the prices of incoming goods, so that people buy american goods instead of foreign goods, which may cheaper and probably are, but allocates money out of the U.S. and destroys jobs here which in turn hurts the country more.

That just doesn't make sense from an Economic perspective.

A live example: Hong Kong has no real natural resources, it has no trade barriers and yet it doesn't suffer from unemployment.