Why all these new guns laws and no economy cares? (Republic: college, taxation)

[Flyover_Country]

Originally Posted by Versatile

I thought you vetted your sources better than that. You made a mistake admit it.

You are intentionally ignoring the fact that socialized medicine in the U.S. would be significantly more expensive than the current system and willfully continue to avoid any discussion on that topic. You are wrong, admit it.

[STLviaMSP]

socialized medicine in the U.S. would be significantly more expensive than the current system

Riiiiiiiight. Because the rest of the west, which essentially has socialized medicine, spends so much more than we do per capita.

Okay, I'm done laughing at you.

Hey bonehead, we spend almost twice as much per capita as the rest of the civilized world. Deal with it.

[northbound74]

Originally Posted by STLviaMSP

Riiiiiiiight. Because the rest of the west, which essentially has socialized medicine, spends so much more than we do per capita.

Okay, I'm done laughing at you.

Hey bonehead, we spend almost twice as much per capita as the rest of the civilized world. Deal with it.

Again, small, mostly homogeneous nations can get by with all sorts of things we NEVER will be able to. Liberals fret over diversity then have their hissy fits when people don't agree with them on everything.

Again, we are a nation addicted to junk food and laziness (most likely more than those other western nations liberals idolize), and then wonder why health care is so expensive.
It's the same with electric rates and gas prices. Our homes are filled with ever-increasing amounts of gadgets, and our personal speed-limits are set to 5-10 above what's posted... not to mention our obsession with living as far away as possible from work... and we then wonder why those prices are so high. I cringe at the thought of electric cars. Drastically higher electric prices, not to mention what ecological disaster are we willing to put up with for the sake of reduced "global warming"? Maybe the Amish got it right.

Collectivism is a powerful thing, often a good thing... when it's the end result of individuals making similar decisions, NOT when it's forced on the front end onto such a free-thinking, diverse group like what we have here in the U.S.

Charity and concern for fellow man is a wonderful trait, cheerfully coming from the heart and not forced. Not forced, and not filtered through a greedy, incompetent, untrained-in-the-field middle-man before pennies on the dollar make it to the needy recipient.

Obamacare is not charity, it is like having a drafty window and gutting your house out and doing a complete remodel because of the one problem. Like a car with worn brake pads, but replacing the tires instead. It's just a very ridiculous and wrong-headed solution to the problem that ails our unhealthy nation.
Back to collectivism, if enough of us got our act together with our own personal health, you'd see rates go down. Supply and demand and all that. Less need for doctors and medicine. Sure, there will always be disease and injury, but those would be reduced dramatically if we stayed away from fast food and the like.

Then should government force us to eat our fruits and veggies? I'm sure that would work out about as well as Obamacare. No, in this country we as individual people have the power. Much more power than we think or want to admit for some reason.
So go ahead, debate the pie charts and figures all you want. The root problem with healthcare and most anything else really, lies within us as individuals.
We need to act on our own as individuals, because no government mandate will ever truly fix anything.

Talking about time-wasting, if we spent as much time educating and encouraging each other take better care of ourselves as we do debating how to fix the end-result of bad decisions, we might truly get somewhere with those high healthcare costs... and gun violence.

just keepin' thread on track. Sort of.

[marigolds6]

Originally Posted by Flyover_Country

The issue is currently that another company from another state can't come in and offer policies. Also, the FTC should have jurisdiction as a multi-state association of statewide insurers such as the BCBS Association certainly IS interstate commerce and thus the FTC can have jurisdiction. Shoot, a farmer growing about $800 in today's dollars worth of wheat for his personal use and had that declared "interstate commerce" in Wickard v. Filburn. Multibillion-dollar insurance company trusts should certainly fall under that jurisdiction if half a combine load of wheat that never left a farm did.



You forget that there happened to be a ~20% population growth rate in Texas during that time period. The aggregate amount spent on premiums being the same post-tort-reform but with 20% more people is a big deal as each person in the state has 20% less in malpractice insurance premiums passed onto them. You are trying to make it sound like this was a failure but it is not. Again, do the math.



Disability claims nationwide have jumped precipitously in the past five years nationwide. It's not just a Texas thing. The main reasons cited by CNN of all places are that people are mainly using it as a form of welfare due to the poor economy and actual welfare being harder to get onto than it was before the 1990s. It has nothing to do with subsidizing insurance companies.

Source: Disability claims skyrocket: Here's why - Apr. 11, 2013

Also, of course you won't see a decrease in total medical costs in a state when you have a 20% population growth! You have 20% more people to take care of. Again, do the math.

As noted in the article, the study adjusted for changes in population, and for the nationwide increases in disability.

[STLviaMSP]

Collectivism is a powerful thing, often a good thing... when it's the end result of individuals making similar decisions, NOT when it's forced on the front end onto such a free-thinking, diverse group like what we have here in the U.S.

Sounds like that old states' rights nonsense rearing up its head. No one has the right to keep us in the (mostly inferior) past. We live in the twenty first century. So deal.

[northbound74]

Originally Posted by STLviaMSP

Sounds like that old states' rights nonsense rearing up its head. No one has the right to keep us in the (mostly inferior) past. We live in the twenty first century. So deal.

Some things in the past were better. What's with the obsession of constant change solely for the sake of change and nothing else?
On the other hand, why on earth drag us back to the tried-and-failed socialist ideals of the 20th century? We do live in the 21st, so catch up.

We are not the single-minded, robotic, homogeneous nation that liberals so badly want us to be. They scream diversity, but in reality loathe diversity. They're downright hostile to it.
The liberal knee-jerk to state's rights is slavery. I mean, seriously? So who's really stuck in the past?
Ever been anywhere outside of St. Louis or Minneapolis? There can be vast differences in culture from one state to another. In the liberal mind, we are to respect and never interfere with foreign cultures, but different cultures here in the U.S.? Oh my, they must be set straight to mirror whatever the liberals want.

I would never in a million years live in California. I think the place is downright backwards. But hey, it's their culture, and if I practice what I preach, I'll leave them to their own devices. If it works for them, fine. I choose not to live in a place like that. And since this is a vast, diverse, free, welcoming country, I'll stay in my corner with my low taxes, low regulations, minimal services, and be as happy as a clam. What's so horrible about that?
I see it as our country's only way of survival: to truly and honestly respect that we have many cultures living among us, and leave each other's politics to themselves in their respective states. The federal/state model we have is quite brilliant because of that. Let's not throw it out the window due to our personal power trips.
That's where the problem with Obamacare, gun control, and economic issues lie. We will never agree on any of those things. So let the states decide for themselves, and respect that some might not agree with you.

[Flyover_Country]

Originally Posted by STLviaMSP

Riiiiiiiight. Because the rest of the west, which essentially has socialized medicine, spends so much more than we do per capita.

Okay, I'm done laughing at you.

Hey bonehead, we spend almost twice as much per capita as the rest of the civilized world. Deal with it.

I gave a detailed analysis of the issue of cost of socialized medicine and have already explained why other countries with socialized medicine have lower costs per capita (a significant amount of rationing.) You launch an ad hominem attack and sidestep any discussion of the actual facts of the matter.

I think any junior high student in a debate club can tell what's going on here. You have no argument to come back with my points and have resorted to an ad hominem attack and a bandwagon appeal. You clearly lost the debate. But this thread is a very good example of what's going on in national politics as well. The statists don't have a real logical reply to conservative criticism of socialized medicine and thus resort to personal attacks and "throw granny off a cliff" reductio ab absurdum fallacies.

[cyrano]

Originally Posted by Flyover_Country

I had read that tidbit in a recent article, which then stated that the rule is now that people over 90 are not to be admitted to the ICU.

I can't find my original link but the BBC (not Fox, which I know you'd ignore just because of where it came from) has some pretty similar stories of significant rationing of care based on age:

BBC NEWS | Health | NHS Ageism: Case studies

BBC NEWS | Health | NHS age discrimination 'common'



However, you are very conveniently missing everything else that is being discussed, namely that having some socialized healthcare system is going to cost the nation a whole lot more than what we currently have. Are you actually going to respond to that or are you just going to try to point out more insignificant details while continuing to completely ignore the main points being raised?

No, I'm just going to discount your arguments because they're not based on facts.

[STLviaMSP]

Northbound, it's interesting how you profess to speak for what Liberals do and do not believe.

[Flyover_Country]

Originally Posted by cyrano

No, I'm just going to discount your arguments because they're not based on facts.

Actually, you're going to ignore them because they don't fit with your ideology and you can't put together a reasonable argument that does any more than call a few insignificant details into question. You make no response to the major points because you know that you can't do so and not have the main points of your argument completely torn apart.

You're in good company though. The statists in Washington regularly do that with a wide range of issues, ranging from economics to gun control. If it doesn't seem to work now and it didn't work in the past, they just need to double down on the government involvement and regulation and then it will work this time, because they're so much smarter than people were in the past! I think the reason the current crop of statists thinks they can get away with it is because they have control of a powerful propaganda machine to push their ideas. However even that seems to be getting away from them now. Obama's approval numbers clearly reflect the fact today.