Health Insurance QuestionFollow

Was your point that shitty parents produce shitty kids, excepting the occassional good kid on accident?

Because that doesn't actually support the opposite.

You're trying to hard to find some way to argue with me, but I know you're not that dense. Catwho's post said parents are to blame. My point was simple and clearly stated. Parents aren't always "to blame" (or "to credit") for how their children act or turn out.

And Samira, obviously, I was being somewhat facetious in my post. My second point is that the blame game is stupid.

Edited, Jun 30th 2009 1:16pm by Ahkuraj

Now that I can agree with.

And yet relevant in a discussion of why kids fail in public schools more than they tend to do in private schools. There are factors, and two huge factors are called Mom and Dad.

Yes, the kids need to take some responsibility; but it would take a mother lovin' saint to take responsibility for his future at the age of nine if he hasn't already been brought up to think that way.

The numbers seem to indicate that parental involvement makes the difference in the vast majority of kids from poor neighborhoods who succeed. We can deduce that lack of parental involvement is a factor in the failure of the vast majority of kids from poor neighborhoods who do not succeed.

Jophed,



And the problem with govn healthcare is you have lousy patients who refuse to follow the most sensible advice and still insist on having the govn pay for their care. I'm sorry if you're a fat as* you know that's not healhty. You also know that eating vegetables and exercising will remedy the situation.

Tulip,



This is exclusive to people who don't take care of themselves and expect the govn to.

That's okay. They're currently running up large emergency room bills and raising health care costs anyway.

What Joph said.

It's really funny because insurance is essentially the same idea as getting the government to run something, only they're going to charge you more as they want to make money.

You don't think the entitlement system and the mentality it fosters might have something to do with this?

Well apparently you've read all the story books. Do they tell you what happens to a society in the absence of government oversight?

It's called Somalia.

Really? You don't think that a system which rewards people for irresponsibility might possibly be related in some way to a rise in bad parenting? Social programs which encourage single women to raise children supported by government assistance rather than with the aid of the father don't contribute to this at all?

I see a pretty direct relation. While I'm sure the "correlation isn't causation" crowd will jump up and down about this, does anyone actually think that the rise of children born to single mothers from 3% in the 50s to 40% today isn't a significant factor to children not being encouraged at home?

Sorry. I'm going to need more than a "no" in response to this one...



To be honest, I don't recall what you posted about MPI. If you refresh my memory, I'll take a swing at it.

As to the Canadian health care system, I'm sure it appears great to those who are already inside it. Long waits for tests seems "normal" for them, I suppose. And hey! They don't have to pay for it, right? Such "free" systems always appeal to the young, who don't yet realize how much better their lives will be in the long run without them. And unfortunately, as a result of working within such a system, they often never realize the potential they might otherwise have reached, so they don't know what they missed.



The dynamics of the "red/green game" aspect of politics ensures that this will not happen in the long run. It's just a matter of how long it takes to run it's course and everyone just votes red.



Sure. So do dictatorships. But we tend to dislike them, not because they have the potential for great good, but because more often they result in great harm. The power you have to give the state to enable it to do those good things also enables it to do "bad things". Eventually, those things will follow. Again. It's just a matter of time. The US system of government was set up specifically with the understanding that power corrupts, so we should make sure our government has as little of it to wield over it's own citizens as possible, and what power it does have is checked to the greatest degree possible. The entire things is about limiting what the government can do. The need for that has not changed. The tactics of those trying to reverse it has though. Instead of arguing for the strength and greatness of the state (classical fascism/imperialism), they argue for the great things the state could do for the people if they just let it.




No. They don't do it deliberately at all. That's what you're not getting. Each operator will think he's doing the right thing at every step of the way. It's not that someone sets out to reduce the quality and quantity of the resource in question (health care in this case). It's more that there is no vested interest in increasing those things over time. The politician who does finds himself loosing the next election on the issue, to be replaced by someone who's running on a platform about how much people don't have rather than what they have. That politician will avoid the health care issue, but point out other things which are lacking (cause the first guy focused on health care, right?). He'll win because it's easier to win by appealing to what people don't have than to what they do.

Hardship sells in the public arena. You can point to your accomplishments all you want, but the guy pointing to what you don't have (yet) will win. Just look at this last Presidential election. Obama basically ran on a "Look at all the things wrong with America" platform. And won. Not because things were significantly "worse" than they'd ever been before, and not because he could show that he had better solutions to these things either. He won because by making a big deal about the things we lack, he appealed to the public more than someone pointing to the things we have. It's just easier to win elections running on what's bad than running about what's good.


The effect isn't deliberate. It happens all by itself. My point is that we have to be vigilant to *not* follow this path. Because in politics, it's just too easy to do. It's why earmarks have gotten out of control. Each politician running on what he's doing for his constituents. It's about convincing the voters of a problem, and then giving them the sense that you can solve the problem. And it's much much easier to win elections doing this than having real debates about proper energy policy, foreign policy, health care policy, or economic policy. Just get the people rilled up and let them assume that because you're the one talking about all the bad things, while your opponent is trying to downplay them, that you must be the better candidate.



It's how our founding fathers thought of government. It's why they built in such an elaborate system of checks and balances. It's why they chose a Republican rather than a direct Democracy as the form of government. They knew that at least with a representative system, the representatives *could* make good choices. It's the best of a bad set of choices. That's it.


So no. I don't think government does much of anything "well" or "properly". That's why the government should be limited to doing only those things it absolutely must do to ensure that there is sufficient order and stability within society for the rest of us to live our lives. That's it. We make our society. Not the government. It provides the military to protect our borders, laws for us to live by, police to enforce those laws, and otherwise should leave us the heck alone.