Thread: Are We Incrementally Losing Our Freedom?

But in order to start to "fix" the system, we have to first stop breaking it.

Interesting thing about cap and trade... Prior to it becoming a big left vs. right type of deal many economists looked at it as one of the best market based solutions for controlling pollution. Cap and trade is still better than all out government regulation. It still allows the market to work.

I don't believe in global warming, I'm a hardcore market capitalist, extremely to the right regarding fiscal and monetary issues, and I support cap and trade.

All cap and trade does is provides financial incentive to reduce pollution. That is one thing that the market will not do on it's own.
That said, the amount the government charges for overuse or purchase of additional credits is the variable part. Where I would have a problem with this is if the caps are such that business can't operate effectively, and the cost to purchase additional credits is beyond what business can afford as part of it's operating expense.

Originally Posted by HNSB

Interesting thing about cap and trade... Prior to it becoming a big left vs. right type of deal most economists looked at it as one of the best market based solutions for controlling pollution. Cap and trade is still better than all out government regulation. It still allows the market to work.

I don't believe in global warming, I'm a hardcore market capitalist, extremely to the right regarding fiscal and monetary issues, and I support cap and trade.

This is good, and hits on the reason I started the thread..."prior to becoming a big left vs. right type of deal"...

HNSB posted on another thread about polls and how they're conducted, which, I responded too as well...The point being that when whoever, (politicans...media...etc.), label something as left/right/liberal/conservative/radical...they are doing so to incite/blind you...steer you in a direction. In the case of the mainstream media...thats the whole gig or if they don't want to actually label it...they get a piece of a certain individual, be it Franks, Pelosi, Bush, Limbaugh...commenting on it/brackett it to create the impression or label it...people form the opinion before they have all the facts...like cap and trade...kind of keeping you busy so you can't get involved...we want you for it///we want you against it...but...we don't necessarily want you to understand it as you might form your own opinion.

=MistressNomad;567243]Depends on what about Cap and Trade you're talking about, specifically. I think the concept is sound. Not all of the implementation is.

The only concept I have seen being bantered about will do nothing but drive prices up. It does not limit amounts, it just makes people pay for higher amounts. The people who pay are the energy consumers, not the energy producers.

But just as we ban smoking indoors because of the potential health risk it possess to unconsenting parties, we have to take measures to keep industry from completely wrecking the planet.

Are people getting shoved into these buildings? Unconsenting? So the non-smoker has the right to go any where they choose without discretion? Special rights?

No matter what you think of global warming, it's undeniable that in the past (and still today, but to a lesser degree) unchecked industry has rendered entire bodies of water basically poisonous, and destroyed untold acres of previously fertile land.

And industry has put clean water where there was none, has turned millions of acres of infertile land, fertile. Has used those acres to feed millions of city dwellers that have no other means of substinance, making "civilized life" possible. Has built pipelines and canals, built railroads,tractor trailers, and airplanes bringing products from the far reaches of the earth to your neighborhood store. Has provided employment for millions of people, allowing them to work for income, to provide for responsibilities and purchase their wants. Has taken the standard of living from a one room house, to where the poor need to decide between which tv to watch. Which has basically given us a world in which we have the spare time to sit around and invent problems.

Like I've said, I actually don't think this health care bill is the answer. In the short term, it may help stop people from pre-existing conditions from simply dying off in the heat of the depression, and *maybe* it will help restore some order to our ER's (but that could kinda go either way), but really, I don't have any long-term hope for it.

Thats reassuring that we are going to be paying trillions of future tax dollars for the wrong answer to a problem that may or may not exist.

I see it as hopefully being a spring-board into something more sustainable. The fact is that now we've done it, which means we've overcome all the inertia that was holding up health care reform in the first place. So from here out, it should be easier to make further reforms as we inevitably find things about this bill that don't work.

It will definitely be a spring board, but not to what you are dreaming of, imo. The thing we would do well to remember is that we live in a precedental system. So if something has been done before it can be done again, and it doesnt even have to be the same thing or the same situation. It comes back to what thebigspendur was getting at earlier(if i understood his intent, if not sorry tbs), everyone that allows a right to be taken in this circumstance, will complain when a right is taken in that circumstance, even though it was the right they agreed with losing, that led to the one they are complaining about losing. So at some point, which I wish would of happened long ago, people will quit allowing usurptations of rights period, even when they agree that the ends justify the means, the ends need to justify themselves.

In order to *truly* reform health care, we also have to reform everything from the court system to social security. The system is broken all the way down to the bottom floor. And that's going to take time to fix.

A statement I can get fully behind, lets all gather in the lobby and start over. The US constitution as written, not as it has been perverted.

I'm not hoping for a quick fix, and this bill certainly confirmed that I shouldn't. Baby steps.

Thats good because quick fixes dont exist, its either fixed right or its still broken. Baby steps can still get you to hell, or out, which direction is up to us, but its not the way we are heading and have been heading for some time, imo.

Again, what aspect of Cap and Trade are we talking about? It's been around for years, and includes many different pieces of legislation. Many of which have been very successful and not harmed the market at all.

When a person choses to do an activity which may have health consequences, they do not have the right to force it on others. This is why smokers do, and should, smoke where non-smokers have the option of not going, or in open air where the dilution of the smoke is sufficient to negate health risks.

A lot of the progress you mention has been made by Cap and Trade. And if industry continued the way it was going, it was likely going to pollute its own resources to such a degree that it could no longer use them. Most of this legislation benefits everyone - including industry, by giving them better materials to work with.

You think people dying due to lack of health care and the fact that America has the lowest life expectancy in the developed world is a problem that "may or may not exist?" This legislation may not be a perfect solution, but it takes a definitive step towards trying to end those problems which DO exist.

What rights are you complaining about losing? Most countries with public health care continue to have a private system. A private system, may I add, that is drastically cheaper than the private system we have, even when you include taxes spent on public health care. Because the reason your insurance is so expensive, keep in mind, is because we're all paying for uninsured medical care already. You're already paying for it. That's why your premiums are so high.

So, what I'm proposing is that you pay less for it, and if you don't like the public plan, you can get a private plan for less money. What are you complaining about?

I am a Canadian and couldn't imagine not having healthcare so I am unsure what the fuss is all about, I can go to any hospital/clinic I want for anything, even the sniffles, and get examined free of any fee whatsoever, when my child was born i wasn't put through any financial hardship, nor was I concerned about how I would pay when I broke a bone. The American Constitution outline life as an unalianable right for all not just those that can pay, I would hate to have to worry that if my child or parents became ill, would I be able to pay or would i have to say "walk it off your not that sick" If one of my family members (God forbid) ever had a horrific illness/accident I could spend my energies on thier recovery, not on worring about my ability to pay, or worrying if thier healthcare provider would cut them off. If I felt that coveage was not adaquite I can allways get additional private coverage, as I need to do when travelling to the US, because heaven forbid I injure myself while abroad. Just an opinion from an uninformed Canadian.

To answer the OP's question. YES.

One of the posts above gave me an idea, and maybe someone here knows the answer -

If having a "free" health care system means that anyone, at anytime, can go to a clinic, "even for the sniffles," for "free", what is the rate of wasted resources (time, money, drugs, etc)? Assuming this is true. I am basing this on what I read in another posting.

For instance, a big issue in medicine is the over utilization of antibiotic drugs. Someone goes to the doctor for a viral infection and the doc prescribes antibiotics, probably not for the virus, as any doctor knows that antibiotics have no effect on a virus - viruses are not living organisms. The antibiotic is more often prescribed due to the possibility of a secondary bacterial infection. And some docs know that sending a patient away with nothing is bad for their business. Either way, the drug is utilized which somewhere down the line costs something to someone.
Now imagine ER's and clinics packed with people with the sniffles due to rhino virus, or stress headaches. They all go because it is "free", they are under no immediate obligation so why not?
If nothing else it requires time and money just to process each patient for what often turns out to be a self-limiting condition that in reality requires no medical treatment. Quite often the treatment is palliative and could have been resolved at home with OTC meds. But then, with a "free" system, why would anyone stay home with a headache when it is so much easier to go have it looked at by a doctor.

In other words (apologies if it's long winded), it sounds to me that such a system could be more prone to abuse than a system where each person has a vested responsibility (financial?) in the process.

Any thoughts?

PS - Sorry that this may be way off topic, but it is directly related to a prior posting in this thread.

I realize that the query tried to step outside left-right, but given the nature of our system, that is all but impossible.

The essential problems from which the disagreements over healthcare, and any other thing the current majority wishes to do, ostensibly have to do with the right-wing notion that the majority are somehow operating outside the boundaries of the constitutional framework. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The problem is not only legal, but philosophical and attitudinal, as well. The right-wing is by far the more authoritarian of the two sides, and has an almost religious fervor about the origins of the United States. To an authoritarian, the Framers were just short of demi-gods and the Constution is a thing forever set in stone.

Yet, the fact is, the Framers, based upon actual available history, would never have elevated themselves to the esteem the right-wing affords them. They recognized their own human frailties (most of them drank in excess of a gallon of wine a day) and failings (many of them held slaves and hadn't a CLUE how to deal with that pernicious nightmare) and offered up a framing document that admitted of its own failings. How?

If the Framers thought the Constitution perfect and immutable, they would have had no need to create Congress or provide a means by which the Constitution could be amended. Instead, they created a bicameral legislative body that was designed to expound and expand upon the framework set forth in the Constitution within its strictures. Recognizing that the Constitution, itself, was fallible (please recall that the Framers largely despised the notion of infallibilty, being as they were mostly deists and, at the least, protestants) and might require periodic amendation, they provided a far-from-impossible means of changing it, which the young republic began doing almost immediately (witness the change to the original structure of presidential/vice-presidential elections after the nastiness of the Jefferson election).

Nothing of the framing, establishment and adoption of the Constution admits of the authoritarian reverence the right-wing accords it, save for the fact that authoritarianism loathes challenges to the status quo.

As such, the fact that the right has persistently decried healthcare as being outside the bounds of the Constitution is simply silly. It was written in broad generalities such as "provide for the general welfare," that allowed future generations to define that for themselves. That "general welfare" includes healthcare if the Congress determines that it does. The Supreme Court has the right to pass upon the idea if a sufficient "case and controversy" is presented to it, but not otherwise and may act then only if it finds that Congress' actions, viewed in the light most favorable to the Congress, are clearly unconstitutional.

The Framers were aware, because they were learned, of what happens when good laws go bad. They had, for instance, England's "mortmain" law to reflect upon, which, upon hard lessons-learned, precluded a "dead hand" from continuing to control property ownership. The Constitution, in short, was not written in a vacuum. It was written within the Anglo-Saxon legal tradition that pre-supposed a growing, changing body of law made to deal with a growing, changing body of citizens.

The right's incessant cry that "at no other time in American History have citizens been mandated to purchase something at their own cost," (and variations on the theme) displays not a philosophy, but an ignorance. Only scant years after the ratification of the Constitution, the Congress enacted the Second Militia Act of 1792, which COMPELLED American citizens to purchase the following:

"a good musket or firelock, a sufficient bayonet and belt, two spare flints, and a knapsack, a pouch, with a box therein, to contain not less than twenty four cartridges, suited to the bore of his musket or firelock, each cartridge to contain a proper quantity of powder and ball; or with a good rifle, knapsack, shot-pouch, and powder-horn, twenty balls suited to the bore of his rifle, and a quarter of a pound of powder."

If purchasing healthcare coverage is a violation of personal liberty, then so, too, was the requirement passed by the Congress in 1792.

There really is NO impact upon "personal liberty" in the present healthcare legislation, unless one is willing to so far extend the boundaries of "personal freedom" as to include the "personal" right to impose a grim, grisly death upon 45,000 OTHER Americans every year and deny them access to the "general welfare" with which the Congress is charged oversight.

I would submit that such is a profound over-extension of any rational notion of "personal liberty."

Originally Posted by honedright

One of the posts above gave me an idea, and maybe someone here knows the answer -

If having a "free" health care system means that anyone, at anytime, can go to a clinic, "even for the sniffles," for "free", what is the rate of wasted resources (time, money, drugs, etc)?
For instance, a big issue in medicine is the over utilization of antibiotic drugs. Someone goes to the doctor for a viral infection and the doc prescribes antibiotics, probably not for the virus, as any doctor knows that antibiotics have no effect on a virus - viruses are not living organisms. The antibiotic is more often prescribed due to the possibility of a secondary bacterial infection. And some docs know that sending a patient away with nothing is bad for their business. Either way, the drug is utilized which somewhere down the line costs something to someone.
Now imagine ER's and clinics packed with people with the sniffles due to rhino virus, or stress headaches. They all go because it is "free", they are under no obligation so why not?
If nothing else it requires time and money just to process each patient for what often turns out to be a self limiting condition that in reality requires no medical treatment. Quite often the treatment is palliative and could have been resolved at home with OTC meds. But then, with a "free" system, why would anyone stay home with a headache when it is so much easier to go have it looked at by a doctor.

In other words, it sounds to me that such a system could be more prone to abuse than a system where each person has a vested responsibility (financial?) in the process.

Any thoughts?

PS - Sorry that this may be way off topic, but it is directly related to a prior posting in this thread.

Well, none of that happens in reality.

First of all, Canada spends less than half as much on health care as we do, and they live longer.
Costs of Health Care Administration: U.S. vs. Canada - General Medicine

Canada is #11, and America is #38... right below Cuba. Speaking of Cuba, did you know some Americans have started going to Cuba for cheaper and better health care?
List of countries by life expectancy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Second of all, just because they *could* go to the clinic for the sniffles doesn't mean they do. Why not? Because they know the doc can't do anything. When you feel crappy, and you know you'll just be told to drink fluids, why bother expending the effort? I currently have health coverage without having to worry what it'll cost me, and I'd never waste the time doing that. I'd rather sleep. You're bypassing basic logic, here...

Have you actually looked into the way universal health care functions in coutries which have had it for decades? If you had, you would find that your scenario doesn't match up with reality.