GOP Health Care Filibuster DefeatedFollow

On top of this, people who want their sniffles checked out do it now anyway... they just go to the emergency room where they have to be seen and then skip out on the bill (whether intentionally or due to mounding debt). My wife works for a hospital and reports that these sorts of cases make up a not insignificant portion of the ER population.

Why do you insist on speculation? There are actual countries with largely socialized medicine, and many of them are providing better care and at far less cost than our private system.

Why does the U.S. spend the most per capita and greatest percentage of GDP on their health care, managing to have the least government assistance, yet still have one of the highest infant mortality rates and one of the lowest life expectancies of many first and second world nations?

Why do some individuals try to pretend that socialized medicine would be a catastrophe in the U.S. when pretty much every real world application points to the contrary?

Edited, Dec 27th 2009 12:37am by Allegory

The fact that we have a diminishing resource of primary care physicians right now, today, isn't due to any future change. It's due to the change that has already happened: the frustration of having to justify every test on the one hand and the fear of not doing the test due to some phobic nightmare of liability on the other.

I know a lot of doctors. Yes, the money is nice; but most of them are motivated by a combination of altruism and ego, frankly. Set them up in a practice, tell them they are as gods and saviors, and take away the worst of the paperwork and you'll have more doctors.

One of them will probably menstruate on me during surgery.

Then boy are they in the wrong industry. For people competent enough to complete medical school in the U.S. there are a lot more profitable opportunities available to them.

You're a sick ******* if this is the way you actually think about human lives.

I agree with everything said in the first paragraph, but I think you have the wrong ultimate goal in mind. Society is not trying to maximize liberty, but trying to maximize utility (or happiness if you prefer that framing). Liberty is a large part of obtaining utility, but not an ends in itself.

Or, if you prefer, I could frame it as liberty being the ultimate goal, with the understanding that health is a significant part of liberty. A paraplegic has fewer freedoms than a normal individual. Even a common cold limits what activities an individual can participate in for the day and so limits freedom.

Either of these situations is valid for what follows.

It depends on the trade off. In the specific case of socialized medicine I believe the freedoms gained outweigh the freedoms given up (using the second of the two frames explained earlier).

The vast majority of people either need or want health care of some sort. I've been to the doctor in the past, and I know I will go again in the future. Since I know that I will be paying the costs at some future point it doesn't matter to me whether I am given the option or forced to pay, as both choices are identical to me. All I care about is paying the least possible for the most possible. Since being forced to pay costs less than being given a freedom I would never exercise, I would choose to be taxed.

There is no reason for research to decline nor any indication it would. Who is suggesting we socialize research programs? This argument is largely about insurance. If health insurance was entirely government funded, they would still be paying for drugs from private companies.

This is fundamentally flawed thinking. All that matters is that there is the greatest benefit for the greatest number of people. Method is irrelevant. By specifying a method "when each individual is able to improve his own life as a result of his own actions." you have imposed an additional constraint that can result in less than the real maximum.

Winning at a sport isn't composed of scoring the most points and fair play; it's composed of only scoring the most points. If you can foul 3 times before receiving any sort of penalty then you should always be willing to foul at least three times. Teams that decide fair play is part of their method of winning have given themselves an additional constraint that reduces the capacity of their play.

Victory, maximization, optimization, or any synonymous term is all that matters. If we can increase total utility through socialism, then we should socialize. If we can increase total utility through capitalism, then we should capitalize. If we can increase total utility by raping and pillaging all day long, then we should rape and pillage all day long.

Heh. That's cute and all but you're already nothing more than a number to your insurance company. You're completely meaningless except as an amount of money coming in per month versus the amount you'll statistically cost them per month. If they can save more over time by booting your ***, they'll happily do so to raise their bottom line and leave you out in the cold. You have absolutely zero value to them as a "person", only as a number.

Now doesn't that just give you the warm fuzzies?

So a cold cannot reduce your liberty but a law can?

Uh...

Nice job of infringing upon our liberty by imposing rules, sport.

You don't seem to understand that is exactly the same as giving someone liberty. Whether you set the base as zero freedom and count up or set it at full freedom and count down doesn't matter. The difference in liberty matters.

Whether you consider emancipated slaves to have more freedom given to them or to have less freedom taken away from them doesn't matter. There has been a positive change in their freedom.

Many circuit laws were worked out before the discovery of the electron. At that time they were using the basis of positive charge flowing in a particular direction. However, when it was later discovered that it was actually the negatively charged electrons that flowed through a conductor, none of the laws needed to be changed. Because it doesn't matter whether you consider the system to have positive charged flowing in one direction or negative charge flowing in the opposite, current still moves in the same direction.

I understand what you are thinking. You are thinking of financial assets (such as savings) as being continuously depleted, and so in order to sustain them you need a constant source of replenishment. $100 dollars and nothing more for the rest of your life won't get you very far, but $100 every week will. And so your attention and sense of importance is directed towards income generation.

This line of thinking is wrong.

First of all, earning it does not matter. A $100 dollar bill affords me the freedom to buy apples or other goods. (Or if you prefer, reduces the taking away of my freedom to buy apples, because they're exactly the same). Even if I never see any more cash in my life again, I still have an increase in freedom because of that $100 bill compared to not having it. Obviously if I had a job and constantly gained $100 every week then I would have even more liberty, but that doesn't negate that $100 alone does give me some increase in liberty.

Second of all, cash alone is not simply stuff. It is liberty. There is no such thing as "stuff." Everything you have gives you liberty. If I have $5 I have the liberty to buy any item or group of items up to $100 in value. I have the liberty to buy. When I purchase a bag of apples for $5 I have exchanged one freedom for another. I have given up the freedom to buy various items--an opportunity cost--and gained the freedom to eat. The $5 dollars did not directly grant me the liberty to nourish myself.

Third,earning doesn't necessarily matter, it just usually matters. This is a very important distinction, because one significant flaw you are making is taking a situation that is usually true and interpreting it as necessarily true. However, if I were to trip over a trillion dollar bill tomorrow I would have more liberty than you will likely ever have. It does not matter that I did not earn it. It does not matter that I do not have a constant income stream (lets assume I never invest it or earn any interest). That single trillion dollars will vastly outweigh the sum of all all you future cash flows and present assets. I would have more money to spend than you will ever make, without having earned it, without having a constant stream of income, I will have more liberty than you. This is not a very likely situation. Lottery winning comes close and is a practical demonstration of the concept.

All that matters is that you have liberty. Your limited scope of observing how people usually obtain liberty has mislead you into thinking about how they must obtain liberty. There is no must. There is no necessarily. What happens to work, works. It doesn't matter why. It doesn't matter how. All that matters is it works. "Why" and "how" only matter in that they often help achieve "works," but they are innately meaningless. People used fire long before they understood the least of what was occurring.


And that is all wrong. Once again you are taking situations that are usually true and deriving from that necessarily true situation.

Only the result matters.

Method happens to usually matter transitively because it allows for duplication or sustainability. Being punctual doesn't innately matter, it only happens to matter because if I'm not punctual I would usually lose my job. My job does not matter innately, it only matters because it is usually the way people gain cash. Cash does not matter, it only matter because it is usually the way people gain some liberties. None of the methods matter in themselves, they only matter because they happen to work toward my goal. If at any point in time they happened to not work toward my goal, they would cease to matter, as they have no innate value. If my boss didn't care when I showed up to work, then punctuality doesn't gain me any extra liberty. If I won the lottery and the only places that would hire pay next to nothing, then work wouldn't matter, because it doesn't gain me any extra liberty. If society collapsed and paper money was worthless, then cash wouldn't matter, because it does gain me any extra liberty.



In games weird methods of winning sometimes pop up. In FFXI you are supposed to have a standard party with a tank, healer, support, and dps. However, some people discovered that you could very effectively level up with 5 mages (dps) and a bard (support). It didn't matter that this went against developer intention. It didn't matter that this was a incredibly strange party setup. All that mattered was that these groups could gain exp very quickly. In Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 there is a very effective setup involving using the knife and riot shield. This is an FPS game, where you are supposed to hide and shoot your enemies, but there are players who effectively kill medieval style with sword and board. It doesn't matter that this wasn't intended. It doesn't matter that this seems very strange. All that matters is that it works.

What happens to work, works. Pretending that that a particular method should be important or is the right way to do things is silly.

Edited, Dec 30th 2009 2:27pm by Allegory