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Monopolies can only exist with government connivance and assistance. In free markets, competitors can always undercut a monopoly that is beginning to abuse its position by raising prices etc.
Location: Democratic Peoples Republic of Redneckistan
11,078 posts, read 15,074,986 times
Reputation: 3937
Quote:
Originally Posted by mossomo
Conservative Logic: traditional American values of limited government, lower taxes, personal responsibility, a strong national defense, the sanctity of life, family values, and the capitalist system.
Moss...that would be awesome if that party still existed,but sadly there is NO party representing those views any longer.Reagan started demolishing it and baby Bush took the last bolt out of it when he left office.All they did was pay lip service to the family values and spent like a bunch of drunk construction workers.
If you are NOT partisan,I'd suggest you at least check this bunch out and see not only what they SAY,but how they VOTE too.
Blue Dog Coalition (http://www.house.gov/melancon/BlueDogs/ - broken link)
Can someone please tell me what Medicaid is if not for people without health insurance? I am serious I have no idea why we can't just fix that program instead of creating an entire new one.
Medicaid is only for the very low income people, e.g. people on welfare and those barely above the poverty level. If you make too much money, you do not qualify, yet you may not get employer-provided insurance, either, putting you between a rock and a hard place.
Or, alternatively, you could stop citing them and laughing at them while they weren't here to hear you do it.
That would take some integrity.
You're showing no sign of either one.
Perhaps the conservatives could also quit relating stories from others that cannot be verified. Some people seem to have no end of "friends" who are committing all sorts of welfare, food stamp and other fraud, for example.
I believe the guy, and I don't think he was making fun of these co-workers as much as giving some examples of their thinking.
Medicaid is only for the very low income people, e.g. people on welfare and those barely above the poverty level. If you make too much money, you do not qualify, yet you may not get employer-provided insurance, either, putting you between a rock and a hard place.
this is not really accurate. as long as you dont have a chunk of money, the people who qualify for some form of medicaid is higher than what this leads you to believe. also, the income requirements go up depending on the children people have.
As a liberal, I love talking politics, even with conservatives. In any debate, it's always important to try to understand the other person's view, even if you don't agree with it. But it's hard to debate with someone when both sides can't even agree on the facts.
I was having a discussion with some coworkers about health care reform. They're all conservatives who are strongly opposed to any type of public option. But what's interesting is how many of them don't even see the need for any reform. First, they all dispute the number of uninsured Americans. They contend that it's temporary and that most of the uninsured are either illegal aliens, people on welfare, or people too lazy to find a job. In other words, they've bought into the stereotypes. Second, they maintain that rising health care costs aren't hurting employers and that employers shouldn't be forced to provide health care coverage. They claim that it's cheaper for the individual to buy private insurance on their own. What's funny is all of them are getting insurance through their employer. Third, they think that government provided insurance will drive private insurance companies out of business. To me, that's a laughable claim. After all, the U.S. postal service hasn't exactly driven FedEx and UPS out of business.
Anyways, it's really hard to get into a debate with folks like this because I feel like I want to pull my hair out sometimes. I had one coworker claim that gay marriage was a more important issue than the war in Iraq. I had another say he's in support of torture and that anything less would be treating suspects like royalty. To me, these views just don't make any sense to me. How do some people prioritize gay marriage over a war? How does people not have a problem with torture?
Maybe they are correct, and you are wrong? Maybe they watch ABC news, and heard it from people George Will, who went unchallenged, as he made the same exact claims your cited, in red:
Quote:
"You talk about the 46, 47 million uninsured. Fourteen million of them are already eligible for other government programs and haven’t signed up. Ten million are in households with household incomes of $75,000 a year and could afford it if they wanted to. Furthermore, an enormous number in that 47 million are not American citizens. Sixty percent of the uninsured in San Francisco are not citizens."
This 47 million uninsured number that the left and the media is always throwing around is disingenuous. They portray this number of 47 million to scare us into accepting 0bama health care, and this number is just as inaccurate as their homeless numbers were under Reagan. So of the 47 million, they try to paint this picture that the health care system is so unfair, and so mean, that it's leaving 47 million Americans out in the cold, and it is just not so.
On a further note, even the AMA says that 0bama's health care plan will kill competition, reduce patient choices and increase costs.
Quote:
The introduction of a new public plan threatens to restrict patient choice by driving out private insurers, which currently provide coverage for nearly 70 percent of Americans. In an effort to keep public plan costs low, it is likely that a public plan would receive special advantages and government subsidies that would not be available to private insurers. Rather than stimulating competition among insurers and strengthening the health insurance market overall, the competitive advantage of a public plan would be so great that many private insurers would be pushed out of the market entirely. A crowd-out of private insurers and the corresponding surge in public plan participation would likely lead to an explosion of costs that would need to be absorbed by taxpayers.
Most conservatives know reform is needed in healthcare. It is just how we go about it.
Yes the reform needed is quite different from what is currently being passed off by liberals as 'reform'.
Imagine you are Ford Motor Company. You make a million cars a year. And you price them at $10,000 each.
The government comes to you and says "we are going to buy 500,000 of your cars each year. But we are only going to pay $8000 per car. And there is nothing you can do to stop us."
What would you do?
You would raise the price on the remaining 500,000 cars to $12,000 each to make up the shortfall and keep yourself in business.
This is what happens in health care.
The government buys the largest percentage of health care services in the nation and refuses to pay full price.
So the health care providers shift the cost to those who pay from their own pocket or via an insurance company.
The solution is getting government out of the health care purchasing business, not farther in it.
Government now wants to offer a government plan to 'those who can't afford private insurance' (i.e. it will be cheaper)
The claim is that this will have no effect on private insurors.
But anybody who understands basic economics knows what happens when a new competitor shows up who undercuts your price.
The intent of the new competitor is to drive you out of business, is it not?
Then when government attains a monopoly on health care, then what?
It will be just as efficient as the DMV and just as financially sound as Social Security (the Ponzi scheme that DIDN'T get shut down recently).
Last edited by I am Joe White; 07-16-2009 at 01:05 PM..
Reason: incorrect punctuation
By your location in the midwest I can deduce the so called conservatives you were talking to were most likely right wing neocon Christian Evangelicals. Is that an accurate assesment?
Most conservatives know reform is needed in healthcare. It is just how we go about it.
I agree with your last statement, we need to find ways to reduce costs before we spend $2 trillion on a bloated, cumbersome, inefficient government program, which will simply swallow of the current costs in health care.
Conservative Logic: traditional American values of limited government, lower taxes, personal responsibility, a strong national defense, the sanctity of life, family values, and the capitalist system.
I generally agree.Although things like "family values" is subjective.It is not the place or the "right" for conservatives to nanny people in their personal business in many regards whether it is consenting sex,gambling,marriage,substance useage and whatnot.It is none of your business what your neighbor does as long as they don't intrude on you.
The definition of protecting individual liberty is there to protect from "conservative" nannying as much as "progressive liberal" nannying.
Also a strong military does not equate to blindly following a president who takes us to war and staying silent against said war because it is the "patriotic thing to do".
Regarding capitalism,yes in generally works,competition that produces superior service or prices but it doesn't always work sometimes greed overtakes fair marketing qualities and ethics .Free markets don't help a person with health conditions that no company will insure.What about them?How about the 55 year old person who worked their whole life,paid off the house and in one shot because of a health crisis is in debt so much with no hope of ever paying it off,who then has credit destroyed and leins judged against them?
As a liberal, I love talking politics, even with conservatives. In any debate, it's always important to try to understand the other person's view, even if you don't agree with it. But it's hard to debate with someone when both sides can't even agree on the facts.
I was having a discussion with some coworkers about health care reform. They're all conservatives who are strongly opposed to any type of public option. But what's interesting is how many of them don't even see the need for any reform. First, they all dispute the number of uninsured Americans. They contend that it's temporary and that most of the uninsured are either illegal aliens, people on welfare, or people too lazy to find a job. In other words, they've bought into the stereotypes. Second, they maintain that rising health care costs aren't hurting employers and that employers shouldn't be forced to provide health care coverage. They claim that it's cheaper for the individual to buy private insurance on their own. What's funny is all of them are getting insurance through their employer. Third, they think that government provided insurance will drive private insurance companies out of business. To me, that's a laughable claim. After all, the U.S. postal service hasn't exactly driven FedEx and UPS out of business.
Anyways, it's really hard to get into a debate with folks like this because I feel like I want to pull my hair out sometimes. I had one coworker claim that gay marriage was a more important issue than the war in Iraq. I had another say he's in support of torture and that anything less would be treating suspects like royalty. To me, these views just don't make any sense to me. How do some people prioritize gay marriage over a war? How does people not have a problem with torture?
The first thing to understand is these are not conservatives, in the traditional American sense of the word, but authoritarians- fascists, who do not use either reason or facts.
See: John Dean " Conservatives Without Conscience".
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