I support Ron Paul's billFollow

Oh yeah, slaves totally love their lifestyle. How many slaves have you interviewed lately? This comparison is ridiculous.

Thats the bit that really irks gbaji. He thinks all the people who don't slave away 'working', should all die off. The sooner the better.

He wants everyone to be like him and spend every waking hour working their ***** off for the holy $, so they can spend it on stuff thats supplied by other people, some of whom live in big houses and drive nice cars, and others who work 80 hours a week from the age of 8 and live in shacks next to polluted rivers in asia. Its called capitalism, or some such. Apparently its the secret to global happinness...

Personnally, I'm not convinced.

For the record, the only person I see here talking about free healthcare is gbaji. No one expects it to be free. Just affordable.

Tulip,



You know this is the exact same arguement the liberals used that allowed freddie and fannie to loan all that money to people who couldn't "afford" to be homeowners. Do you really want to see a similar result with the US health industry? You think hearing about people losing their houses and being forclosed on is bad. Just wait until we start hearing about people dying because of denied care. The problem with putting healthcare under govn control is govn tends to f*ck things up worse than they would have been had they not done anything at all. Sometimes doing nothing is better than doing the wrong thing.

Tulip,

Not even close to the scale it's going to happen if left in control by the federal govn.

If you're comparing the two, you should be saying "Just like people who couldn't afford homes shouldn't have gotten homes via government intervention, people who can't afford health care shouldn't get health care via government intervention." At least that would be a straight comparison. You're all over the board here.

Yossarian,



So does the US; and we did so before obamacare.

Thank you for remedial cost averaging. Now let me give you a lesson in remedial argument as you clearly need it.

Your math goes wonky here. If health insurance premium cost increases continue on as they are expected to (yes, even after the panacea was rammed through...) that 3144 will be somewhere in the neighborhood of $7,000. You don't get to build an argument using today's cost vs. a fine 6 years out. It doesn't work. You're an idiot.

Apparently I'm not the one struggling here.


Largely because there's no contrivance between giving money to a private entity in return for a service vs. giving money to the government as a penalty for not giving it to the private entity. Most people understand the difference between the exchange of money for service and confiscatory fines imposed by government.

That is gbaji-esque in its retardation.

The idiocy is the level to which you people will go to slurp up whatever the president just shot all over your face.

I'll point out again that you are using a completely different definition of "free" than I am. To me, being able to choose whether to buy health care or not, what what amount and type of health care to buy is an indication of freedom/liberty in that regard. If I'm given one product, have no choice but to pay for that one product, and cannot choose not to buy that product, that's not freedom. That's the opposite of freedom.


If the government took money out of every citizens pockets each year to pay for free shoes for everyone, so that everyone got the same shoes regardless of how much they earned, we could legitimately say that this is a boon for those who could not otherwise afford to buy shoes. But no one in their right mind would call this an extension of freedom.


That's my issue with this. It's not about whether it's a good idea or not to provide services for people with government funding. It's the reality that for some reason most of those who advocate it think that this somehow makes them more "free", or increases their liberty, rights, etc. And that bothers me for a whole number of reasons, not the least of which is that once you can no longer accurately determine what things really represent an increase or decrease in liberty, then how can you know when something comes along to take what you have left? When liberty is defined in the context of how much the government gives you, you're really missing the point IMO.



It's not really about cost either though. That's another point you don't get. What is the price of freedom? What's happened is that you've been indoctrinated to the point where you don't even realize you're paying a price *and* not getting freedom. I'm willing to pay more to have free choices in my life. You are apparently willing to pay half as much, while having those freedoms taken away. I think I'm getting the better deal...

First off "health care" is not synonymous with "life". Health care absolutely is a product you can buy. People managed to have "life" long before health care systems appeared, much less government run ones. But even ignoring that, if this is so important, shouldn't it be more important that we get to make our own choices about it?

Here's why this is so funny to me:

If I were to propose that the government take $200 from you each month, and in return provide you with $200 of groceries, but that you'd have no choice about what you got to eat, you'd say that this was a violation of your rights. You had the freedom to choose what you ate before, and you don't now. Clearly, all that's happened is that your liberty has been diminished, right?

Yet, if I propose that the government take $2000 from you each year, and in return provide you with $2000 worth of health care, you'll insist that this provides you with liberty and freedom and equality and every other wonderful candy-filled thing you can think of. And if you wouldn't (I'm speaking of a broader "you" here), can we agree that most of those on this forum would? Why is that?


Why is one a reduction of freedom and the other an increase? Why is one condemned pretty universally, while the other one gets you condemned if you oppose it? Think about it. I don't oppose this because I want those who can't afford health care to suffer. That's not what this is about. It's about the freedom of those who *can* afford health care having their choices taken away from them. To me, the scales don't balance on that. And more importantly, if we do decide to pay for that benefit, we should do so honestly and not lie to ourselves that by doing this we're somehow increasing liberty. We're not.

Edited, Apr 21st 2010 5:29pm by gbaji