Comments on: thoughts on socialized medicine

By: Mark

Mark — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 20:22:24 +0000

Ah yes, George Gilder, Time Magazine’s “Male Chauvinist Pig of the Year”, 1978, who claims that information theory disproves evolution. Have you purchased your tinfoil hat from him yet?

By: One Pediatrician’s Perspective on Universal Healthcare | The League of Ordinary Gentlemen

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 13:27:07 +0000

[...] share E.D.’s skepticism about the private insurance industry, and wanted to chime in a few thoughts from a provider’s [...]

By: richard

richard — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 01:37:30 +0000

“Sure, if we choose not to fund them…..” how do you fund a ponzi scheme?

By: Jaybird

Jaybird — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 21:10:34 +0000

I’m sure I would prefer different things if I were a different person.

I know for a fact that my preferences at age 21 were *COMPLETELY* different than they are 15 years later… and I know that 15 years from now, I will likely have new and different preferences.

Hell, I will probably have different preferences tomorrow.

This is why I find “preferences” to be far, far different from “Rights”.

By: Creon Critic

Creon Critic — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 21:05:45 +0000

I’d prefer to live in a city where the chicks are as hot as in Las Vegas, the jobs are as stable as on K Street, the food is as good as NYC, the rent is as cheap as Duluth, and the weed is as plentiful as Vancouver.

Ah but would you say that is you were a gay, itinerant, non-foodie, with lots of money, and against smoking pot? Reflective equilibrium clears stuff like this up every time.

By: Jaybird

Jaybird — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 20:39:51 +0000

Ah, the social contract.

I do not mind the idea of a social contract (I *LOVE* contracts!). I just wish I had more say in what it said and on the terms under which it changed. It also would have been nice to have been asked to sign.

When it comes to paying for police officers to help when I get hit by a car (or when you do), of *COURSE* I don’t mind that particularly. (Is it a violation of rights? I don’t mind the idea of public servants whose job it is to keep the peace… in theory. I’m not too crazy about those who shoot puppies during drug raids on the wrong house.)

But we aren’t talking about accident services, are we?

We’re talking about whether we ought to modify the social contract so that it will henceforth include Socialized Medicine… up to and including my responsibility for your replacement (body part) after a lifetime of your (bad habit)… and, more to the point, discussing “well, we pay when you get hit by a car… now we’re just haggling over whether we pay when I need (replacement body part)!”

(And when I say “I don’t think that we should change our social contract”, I can usually expect to be told a variant of “love it or leave it”.)

By: EngineerScotty

EngineerScotty — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 20:16:39 +0000

That gets to the underlying theory, I suppose, of natural rights vs social contract–if you assert that rights arise from nature and are (or should be) inviolate–and that this doesn’t depend on any sort of cultural context, it wouldn’t matter where you live. Further, if you believe, as I kinda suspect, that being taxed for the benefit of someone else (or having a product you manufacture price-controlled, etc) is a violation of your rights, but being excluded from lifesaving medical care (based on an inability to pay for it) is not; then I suspect that you would not like South Africa in this case.
Of course, many of us disagree with you on either a) the existence of natural rights, or b) what they ought to be. I, for one, find your position–at least at the extreme–obnoxious. Where to draw the line is a difficult question, of course, but let me ask you this. Were you to get hit by a car, paramedics will come to your aid. The fire department and police, in most jurisdictions, will not charge you for this service; depending on where in the US you are, you may or may not have to pay for an ambulance ride. Your tax dollars, of course, pay for the police and paramedics.
Are your rights infringed by this arrangement? If so, what other arrangement would you propose?

By: Jaybird

Jaybird — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 19:14:28 +0000

“I notice you deftly avoided saying which society you’d prefer to live in.”

For the life of me, I don’t see how my personal preferences relate to any discussion of rights.

By: E.D. Kain

E.D. Kain — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 16:58:53 +0000

Sure, if we choose not to fund them, or refuse to means-test.

By: Jaybird

Jaybird — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 16:57:55 +0000

From my vantage point, social security and medicare seem to be things that will result in collapse at some point.

The safety net is making things *LESS* sturdy.

From my vantage point.