President Obama Weighs His Economic Legacy - By ANDREW ROSS SORKIN

[APG12]

Pre-ACA, the government was also spending $0.50 of every dollar in health care. I'm not sure what you'd expect to happen to the price of health care. We see the same thing with the exploding cost of education. If the government spent $0.50 of every dollar spent on hammers, I think we can guess what would happen to the price of hammers. I assume we'd also see calls for the government to nationalize the hammer industry because the 'free market' in hammers just isn't working for Americans.

 

LOL, look at American healthcare costs compared to countries with single payer systems--America has the same outcomes but is way more expensive.  On the other hand, I can see your point....  Why bother examining evidence if it doesn't support your ideology?

 

::)

 

I don't know if gov't health care spending was 50% of total but it would have been quite high because you have Medicare, Medicaid, and VA. And older people and military people tend to get sick. But if you've done a bit of research you would have discovered that Medicare costs while more expensive than other single payer systems (such as Canada) are way lower then private healthcare. Also cost increases for Medicare were very close to cost increases in Canada. The giant expansion in overall costs was mainly driven by the private side.

 

I haven't verified that but I still don't see the relevance of where the price increases are coming from. If the government introduces a bunch of customers into a market and under pays for them, freedom takes the blame because the private side is forced to pick up the cost? The market was utterly distorted by government spending. Price goes down and quality goes up in industries that the government stays out of, yet the opposite occurs in industries the government subsidizes. When the government starts introducing tons of demand to a market, as it is in education, it makes sense that the rise in prices is untenable over the long term and requires either more government intervention to control prices or a reversal of the policy. That doesn't contradict anything I said, contrary to Richard's claims. We saw the same phenomenon when the government started to make an active effort to increase the home ownership rate. Home prices inflated.

 

On the economic side I didn't say that the current situation in the US is a paradise. Not by a long shot. But the US made a lot of right moves to fix it's economy, more than many other counties. And it has managed to do that despite huge obstruction from the legislative bodies. While the situation now is still not great, in my opinion the current state is pretty close to the top of the range of possible outcomes looking forward from some years back.

 

About the less than $400 available I don't really see your point. As I've said, it's not an ideal situation. But what is your suggestion? That instead of Obama people should go (have gone) with a Republican party who's chomping at the bit to cut the safety net? Yea, that would really help those people that have less than $400 to deal with an emergency!

 

Did you read the article? The author himself is middle to upper middle class and one of the people who doesn't have $400. It's entirely his fault. Reduce your standard of living slightly and save something. Don't empty your 401k for your daughter's wedding. People came (and many still come) to this country with nothing yet build lives for themselves. Certainly there can be reasons for an individual to not have savings that are out of their control, but when the proportion of people with no savings reaches 1/2 the population, the people themselves are to blame. And why would you choose to not buy the latest cell phone and save instead when the government will pay for your education, your medical care, will buy you food, will give you housing, and will provide for your retirement? Over half of babies in the US receive welfare assistance from the WIC. We are the richest country in the history of mankind. Is life really one big hospital?

 

LOL, look at American healthcare costs compared to countries with single payer systems--America has the same outcomes but is way more expensive.  On the other hand, I can see your point....  Why bother examining evidence if it doesn't support your ideology?

I don't mean to be a pest Richard cause I know your heart is in the right place. But small correction. America is more expensive but the outcomes are not the same.

 

Last time (in 2000) the WHO ranked the worldwide healthcare systems the US came in at 15th in terms of outcomes and 1st in cost earning a global rank of 37. There have been many other studies of healthcare systems since then. The US routinely comes in at the bottom of the developed countries based on outcomes despite being by far the most expensive system.

 

Have you looked at the WHO rankings and the methodology? The PDF is 215 pages, and I admit I did not read it cover to cover, but take a look at it. The first hint that something funny is going on is the fact that Cuba is two below the United States at #39. The American health care system is more than 15X closer to Cuban health care than to the number one system? Cuba, a couple years prior to the date of this study, experienced shortages of basic medicine like aspirin, let alone less common drugs. You had to buy medicine on the black market. There were "many hospitals where there was often no running water, the toilets did not flush, and the risk of infections - by the hospital's own admission - was extremely high." I have personally heard reports in more recent years of soap shortages.

 

This alone indicates to me that the report's conclusions can be tossed in the trash, but I decided to look at the methodology a little closer because I find the utter corruption of these things fascinating. 25% of the ranking is determined by life expectancy in each country. This would be a great number if we were trying to rank the health of each country's population- not the health care system. It makes no adjustment for the choices people make. If America and France have the exact same health care system but Americans choose to eat fast food every day and the French eat a healthy balanced diet, then the American health care system is regarded as inferior. Given what we know about lifestyle differences it is ridiculous to not adjust for them. 25% of the ranking is determined by fairness of financial contribution, "fairness" meaning "that the risks each household faces due to the costs of the health system are distributed according to ability to pay rather than to the risk of illness." In essence, from each according to their ability. Another 25% of the ranking is determined by "fair" distribution of life expectancy, fairness in distribution of health itself defined as: "the smallest feasible differences among individuals and groups". In order to achieve equal health, health care must be distributed to the neediest first. In essence, to each according to their need. Half of the ranking is determined by how communistic the system is. The more communistic the better. Leaving aside the immorality of what's being touted as fairness, you have to recognize the circularity of an argument that says we should socialize our health care system because it's low in a ranking of how socialist it is. It appears that only 25% of the ranking weight is actually a measure of the quality of health care- and half of that 25% is suspect, but I didn't bother digging into it because it's not worth the time.

 

All of that gets you to our rank at 15, which is utterly meaningless. Adjusting that for what we spend gets us to rank 37. I didn't bother investigating the source of the adjustment because to paraphrase Bruce Greenwald, bad information plus good information = bad information. There's also the issue of all of the other countries using technology our inflated costs paid to develop.

 

Probably what's most important to note about all of this is the real difference- the philosophical difference- in what is regarded as fair, just, and moral. Richard can say he's non-ideological, but there's no such thing unless you're a robot. There are only those who identify what they believe and those that don't. The WHO apparently regards it as fair to penalize people who take care of their own lives because they took care of their own lives, while simultaneously rewarding those who acted irresponsibly because they acted irresponsibly. That's not merely a different code of justice than I hold but the exact inversion of it. It's popular to think communism is good in theory but bad in practice. It's actually evil in theory and a disaster in practice. People shouldn't be regarded as sacrificial animals, which is what socialized medicine does. It tells you that your values don't matter. You want to start a business with that money? You want to buy your kid a birthday present? You want to save it for retirement? You want to buy a wedding ring and get married? Sorry, your values just aren't of primary importance. Your life doesn't belong to you.

[ERICOPOLY]

The current system is just retarded -- I had an MRI on my elbow and I get all this junk mail from the insurance company about explanation of benefits, and explaining what they pay and what I have to pay.  I have conversations with a doctor about which surgeon my insurance may or may not cover, etc... etc...

 

Regardless of politics, who likes dealing with all this crap?  Don't you want to enjoy life instead of living this way?  It's a fucking nightmare of bullshit paperwork.

[RichardGibbons]

I haven't verified that but I still don't see the relevance of where the price increases are coming from. If the government introduces a bunch of customers into a market and under pays for them, freedom takes the blame because the private side is forced to pick up the cost? The market was utterly distorted by government spending. Price goes down and quality goes up in industries that the government stays out of, yet the opposite occurs in industries the government subsidizes. When the government starts introducing tons of demand to a market, as it is in education, it makes sense that the rise in prices is untenable over the long term and requires either more government intervention to control prices or a reversal of the policy. That doesn't contradict anything I said, contrary to Richard's claims. We saw the same phenomenon when the government started to make an active effort to increase the home ownership rate. Home prices inflated.

 

I'm trying to understand the way you're resolving your cognitive dissonance.  Are you basically saying:

1. Requiring healthcare for people increases demand.

2. Increased demand increases prices.

3. Therefore you need more government intervention to keep prices low (or a reversal of the policy)

4. Therefore you should ignore the evidence that most developed countries with a single payer system have better healthcare outcomes with much lower costs. My logic says such a thing cannot exist.

 

Or are you just saying, "I don't give a damn about the costs of the system, or how well it works, and about people who die through no fault of their own, because my freedom to do whatever the heck I want is more important than anything. I don't care who gets screwed in the process because if they were screwed it was probably their fault anyway."

 

To me, this second argument makes sense.  It's perfectly rational and consistent to say nobody else matters. (That said, I'd much prefer to live in a society where people don't believe this. I think kindness generally makes for happier people, and I think there's value in minimizing the variance arising from the genetic lottery.)

 

To add something actually interesting to this discussion, I suspect that the explanation for why single payer system is better for healthcare (and not, say, food), is because consumers cannot reasonably evaluate quality in the healthcare system (and, in emergency situations, often would never have the opportunity.) Plus they don't have the expertise or motivation (if the HMO is picking up the tab) to evaluate price. Since effective markets rely on the price discovery and feedback on quality by consumers, it means that the market is broken, and the government actually does a better job.  (I guess another key factor is that USA is litigious, which I imagine boosts costs dramatically.)

 

The interesting thing is that I imagine if there were a way to better communicate pricing and quality information to consumers, it might be possible to create a private market that is vastly superior to a single payer system. It just doesn't exist now.

 

[rb]

This is as a reply to Apg12. I'm not going to quote the whole rant because it'll clog up the board.

 

But WOW! Just wow! I don't even know where to start.

 

I guess I'll star with the non health-care stuff. Yes I've read the whole article. I've also read the title which refers to half of the US population. This is a majour problem in your country. As a great patriot do you think of any solutions for that problem or do you just go like "oh fuck 1/2 of the US"? Do you actually think that 1/2 of the people in the US got there by buying iphones and paying for weddings? Or maybe is there a bigger more systemic problem? Did you stop yourself to thing about that? Or did you just go... well they bought iphones that's where all their income went. And what's your solution to that problem? Let's take away the safety net? Sure let's take 1/2 of the US population that are at risk of poverty and push them into poverty that'll solve the problems with your solve the problems with the American society. That'll make America great again. 50% poverty rate.

 

And even for the person in the article. As you said he's one of the people of the middle to upper middle class. He's paid taxes, why shouldn't he be entitled to the programs he's paid into? That's what the safety net is. A wide insurance policy. If you paid your premiums for car insurance and you get into an accident you're not gonna claim it cause you can pay for it yourself? I don't think so. So why should he forgo government assistance for which he paid even though he made some mistakes? Or is it just the "job creators" that should receive government assistance even though they didn't really pay so much for it?

 

Anyway, let's move on... I love how people like you who have no idea what communism is make all these grand statements about communism. A tell tale sign is the use of the word "communistic". The is no such thing as more or less communistic. Communism is an absolute thing. But I'm sure you know better.

 

I also see that you have a big problem with Cuba. Cuba couldn't be close to the US. When the whole world knows that Cuba is better at health care than they are at cigars. I'm sorry, but Cuba for all its faults is very good at health care and at producing good doctors. It's not my fault.

 

Also the fact that you would propose the French as a model of a balanced diet society is laughable. They are super carnivores, devour carbs, love their cheese, and everything gets fries in either butter or duck lard. There's your picture of health.

 

Your assertion that it doesn't matter where the cost increases are coming from is non-sensical. So you have two systems in your country. Medicare and the private system. Medicare run by the government costs less and it's cost rate of growth is lower. The private system is more expensive and it's cost rate of growth is higher. But that doesn't matter. The private system is better!.... Because why? It's not "communistic"?

 

I'm not gonna go point by point for the rest of your post cause frankly is like a bowl of spaghetti. I'll try to paraphrase instead. You argue that life expectancy should have no bearing on the effectiveness of a healthcare system. On the US healthcare system in particular because over there u redistribute healthcare from people with less money to people with more money. If you were to extrapolate that is akin to saying that the healthcare in an oppressive African country is great because even those those people who are dirt poor die early the dictator who can pay lots of money to the doctor gets to live to a ripe old age.

 

Your argument also reads as well the other developed countries systems delivers care to everyone equally no matter of their social status (yuck!) fixes everyone, makes people healthy and they live longer than us but we all have to wait in the same line (double yuck!!) and costs less. Our system delivers care to less people, we live less longer, and costs a hell of a lot more but by god it's awesome because it's less "communistic" because it doesn't deliver care to those people! yippee ki yay!!! USA!!! USA!!!

 

Great! I thought you guy were the Christian country, Guys like you always go about that, it seems like help thy neighbour got replacet by fuck thy neighbour. And when he's down fuck him agian!

[rb]

The current system is just retarded -- I had an MRI on my elbow and I get all this junk mail from the insurance company about explanation of benefits, and explaining what they pay and what I have to pay.  I have conversations with a doctor about which surgeon my insurance may or may not cover, etc... etc...

 

Regardless of politics, who likes dealing with all this crap?  Don't you want to enjoy life instead of living this way?  It's a fucking nightmare of bullshit paperwork.

Hey Eric, I know we've sparred about this sort of stuff in the past. And I'm sorry that you've had to go though the stuff that required an MRI.

 

Here's how my experience in Canada went with a health issue with my sister a while back:

 

She plays soccer pretty hard one day. Comes home in pain. A couple of hours in her knee is pretty swollen. I take her to a walk in clinic close to my house. I swipe my government issued health card. I see a doctor. He says it looks pretty bad and i should take her to a hospital. I go there, I swipe my the card, talk to a nurse, 20 minutes we're in to see a doctor. He gives her a bunch of pain killers to make her comfortable and sends her to get x-rays. We come back he looks at the x-rays, says it doesn't look good. Schedules her for an MRI 3 days later and an appointment with a surgeon a week later. A week later we meet with the surgeon he walks us through the MRI and shows how her ACL is ripped and schedules a surgery 6 weeks later.

 

My sister goes through the 3 hour surgery, turns out that the guy is also a plastic surgeon and does the thing without leaving any scars (which is nice since my sister was 17 at the time). No paperwork, no hassle. Really, the hardest part of the whole thing was when she was high on oxys after the surgery and was hearing things that weren't there.

 

Then at the end of the year we've paid our taxes. And really our taxes aren't much higher than yours. Yet millions of people yell at the top of their lungs that your system (which you call retarded) is better and resist even thinking about change.

[rb]

Or are you just saying, "I don't give a damn about the costs of the system, or how well it works, and about people who die through no fault of their own, because my freedom to do whatever the heck I want is more important than anything. I don't care who gets screwed in the process because if they were screwed it was probably their fault anyway."

 

I think the quoted part pretty much summaries his argument. From experience I don't know if there's much point in arguing. I spent an hour (I won't ever get back) drafting a reply to him because I have this romantic notion that there's still humanity and goodwill in the world and if you make good arguments you'll be able to swing people into doing the right thing and make our society a better place.

 

What it appears to me as an outsider is that the value of an American life is determined by how it's lost not by how it's lived.

 

3 Americans loose their lives abroad then navy fleets need to converge, the air force needs to be deployed, countries need to be punished, potential trillions need to be spent, no problem. 16 Americans die in a  mass shooting on American soil... well second amendment what you gonna do? 1/2 of American population is in danger of poverty? Well fuck'em they bought iphones. Millions in danger of dieing because of poorly designed health care system... well let them die, they don't have enough money to pay what it takes, freedom, no communistic system, USA! I guess that's what American exceptionalism is.

[Jurgis]

Thanks rb and Richard.

[adesigar]

Or are you just saying, "I don't give a damn about the costs of the system, or how well it works, and about people who die through no fault of their own, because my freedom to do whatever the heck I want is more important than anything. I don't care who gets screwed in the process because if they were screwed it was probably their fault anyway."

 

That's the libertarian point of view on just about everything. They care about 3 people me, myself and I.

[TwoCitiesCapital]

Or are you just saying, "I don't give a damn about the costs of the system, or how well it works, and about people who die through no fault of their own, because my freedom to do whatever the heck I want is more important than anything. I don't care who gets screwed in the process because if they were screwed it was probably their fault anyway."

 

That's the libertarian point of view on just about everything. They care about 3 people me, myself and I.

 

::)

 

Republicans and Democrats must be so much more selfless in the ways that they spend astronomical sums of money belonging to future generations to fund whatever ideological bullshit they spewed to get elected...

[DeepSouth]

When you Canadians compare the US to other developed countries in regards to healthcare you are missing the most crucial element. The American government (federal and state) implicitly or even explicitly drafts effectively all healthcare legislature to raise the cost of healthcare. Banning Medicare negotiation of drug prices, banning Medicare from factoring costs into procedure evaluation, HMO regulation to increase their costs, cost for service model enforcement, banning re-importation of drugs, etc. Of course the out of control healthcare inflation spiral began coincident to the Great Society legislation. All this is done because American politicians care more about the healthcare industry than the taxpayer and the voter is too dumb to care about costs. I see no reason why single payer wouldn't just exacerbate this.

[rb]

When you Canadians compare the US to other developed countries in regards to healthcare you are missing the most crucial element. The American government (federal and state) implicitly or even explicitly drafts effectively all healthcare legislature to raise the cost of healthcare. Banning Medicare negotiation of drug prices, banning Medicare from factoring costs into procedure evaluation, HMO regulation to increase their costs, cost for service model enforcement, banning re-importation of drugs, etc. Of course the out of control healthcare inflation spiral began coincident to the Great Society legislation. All this is done because American politicians care more about the healthcare industry than the taxpayer and the voter is too dumb to care about costs. I see no reason why single payer wouldn't just exacerbate this.

I don't think that your leaders have a secret goal to increase health care costs. I think that's it's more of a byproduct of your toxic political process mixed with a good helping of lobbying. And don't get me wrong we don't have the perfect system here in Canada either. There's tons of inefficiency, waste, and abuse. Lobbyists are working big time here as well. We're always looking to make it better. But despite all its faults our single payer system delivers universal health care and clocks its costs at 10.4% of GDP vs the US at 17.1%.

 

I think your argument that you just can't do it is a cheap cop-out to not even try. So every other country in the world can do it, but for some reason the United States cannot.

 

You say that you see no reason why single payer wouldn't exacerbate cost increases. I guess it's because you haven't looked. Medicare which is effectively a single payer system and has cost increases for medicare have been lower than for private insurance. Users also seem to be very happy with the product and don't want to privatize Medicare.

 

Medicare is also much more efficient. I looked at 3 big insurance companies Aetna, Cigna, and Humana. Their average loss ratio (how much they've spen't on actual care as % of revenues) in 2015 was 73.7%. That means that 26.3% of premiums did not go to care. If we assume that's the ratio across the system and US care is 53% private. This adds to $434 billion. Medicare's admin ratio from what i remember is around 2%. So if you shifted to single payer with nothing else changing then you would save $401 billion. The real figure would be larger when you factor in that you would get better pricing from service providers and drug makers and so on. But even if the government does none of that you save $400 billion a year. That's 81% of the 2015 budget deficit.

[APG12]

I guess this is the nature of online discussion, but we should try to maintain civility here.

 

I guess I'll star with the non health-care stuff. Yes I've read the whole article. I've also read the title which refers to half of the US population. This is a majour problem in your country. As a great patriot do you think of any solutions for that problem or do you just go like "oh fuck 1/2 of the US"? Do you actually think that 1/2 of the people in the US got there by buying iphones and paying for weddings? Or maybe is there a bigger more systemic problem? Did you stop yourself to thing about that? Or did you just go... well they bought iphones that's where all their income went. And what's your solution to that problem? Let's take away the safety net? Sure let's take 1/2 of the US population that are at risk of poverty and push them into poverty that'll solve the problems with your solve the problems with the American society. That'll make America great again. 50% poverty rate.

 

And even for the person in the article. As you said he's one of the people of the middle to upper middle class. He's paid taxes, why shouldn't he be entitled to the programs he's paid into? That's what the safety net is. A wide insurance policy. If you paid your premiums for car insurance and you get into an accident you're not gonna claim it cause you can pay for it yourself? I don't think so. So why should he forgo government assistance for which he paid even though he made some mistakes? Or is it just the "job creators" that should receive government assistance even though they didn't really pay so much for it?

 

Yes, I have thought about it. And as I said in the prior post, when 50% of the population of the richest country in human history does not have any savings, by and large, the individuals themselves are to blame. I'm just repeating myself. Consequently, the solution is for them to start taking ownership over their own lives. I don't know if it's because they spent it on iPhones, or if it's because they live in houses that are too expensive, or drive cars that are too nice, or attend colleges that are too expensive, or where precisely the money went. If someone lives beyond their means and pays the price, that is justice- getting what you deserve. My solution is to stop bailing out irresponsibility and institute a free society where actions have consequences. Not to further insulate the irresponsible from causality. I think it's wrong to refer to redistributive schemes as insurance. My social security tax is not going into an insurance fund, it's going straight into someone else's pocket. There is a problem now in that promises have been made to people, and I'm not sure what the most just way is to unwind an injustice, but I would start with allowing people to opt out.

 

Anyway, let's move on... I love how people like you who have no idea what communism is make all these grand statements about communism. A tell tale sign is the use of the word "communistic". The is no such thing as more or less communistic. Communism is an absolute thing. But I'm sure you know better.

 

I also see that you have a big problem with Cuba. Cuba couldn't be close to the US. When the whole world knows that Cuba is better at health care than they are at cigars. I'm sorry, but Cuba for all its faults is very good at health care and at producing good doctors. It's not my fault.

 

Also the fact that you would propose the French as a model of a balanced diet society is laughable. They are super carnivores, devour carbs, love their cheese, and everything gets fries in either butter or duck lard. There's your picture of health.

 

Your assertion that it doesn't matter where the cost increases are coming from is non-sensical. So you have two systems in your country. Medicare and the private system. Medicare run by the government costs less and it's cost rate of growth is lower. The private system is more expensive and it's cost rate of growth is higher. But that doesn't matter. The private system is better!.... Because why? It's not "communistic"?

 

There is such a thing as more or less consistency in the application of a principle, in this case the principles of communism. As far as the wonders of Cuban health care, my aunt is currently volunteering there and they have trouble acquiring soap. I have a hard time accepting that as a good system. My point with respect to the French diet is not that we should adopt it but that the life expectancy statistic makes no effort to adjust for ANY personal choices. That could be anything from diet to how much we drive. This is merely a statistical point- let's be honest and clear about what the statistic that we're using represents.

 

I'm not gonna go point by point for the rest of your post cause frankly is like a bowl of spaghetti. I'll try to paraphrase instead. You argue that life expectancy should have no bearing on the effectiveness of a healthcare system. On the US healthcare system in particular because over there u redistribute healthcare from people with less money to people with more money. If you were to extrapolate that is akin to saying that the healthcare in an oppressive African country is great because even those those people who are dirt poor die early the dictator who can pay lots of money to the doctor gets to live to a ripe old age.

 

I have no idea what you're saying here, and I tried to understand. I don't know of any regressive distribution system for health care here. I'm against redistribution at all.

 

I spent an hour (I won't ever get back) drafting a reply to him because I have this romantic notion that there's still humanity and goodwill in the world and if you make good arguments you'll be able to swing people into doing the right thing and make our society a better place.

 

Let's begin the trend of intellectual honesty with the acknowledgement that the WHO ranking you presented does not represent what you advertised it to represent. Let's acknowledge the statistical issues with life expectancy unadjusted for personal choices as a measure for a health care system. The great thing about being on the right side of the truth is that intellectual honesty works in your favor. With that in mind, let's look at how my position was represented:

 

Guys like you always go about that, it seems like help thy neighbour got replacet by fuck thy neighbour. And when he's down fuck him agian!

 

Or are you just saying, "I don't give a damn about the costs of the system, or how well it works, and about people who die through no fault of their own, because my freedom to do whatever the heck I want is more important than anything. I don't care who gets screwed in the process because if they were screwed it was probably their fault anyway."

 

I think the quoted part pretty much summaries his argument.

 

That's the libertarian point of view on just about everything. They care about 3 people me, myself and I.

 

These are caricatures of freedom and caricatures of what I said. I recognize that human beings are often incredibly valuable to one another. But not all relationships are good for the involved parties and that's why I believe that when a relationship isn't working out for an individual, they should be allowed to go their own way. That is, human interaction should be voluntary. Socialized medicine is not voluntary. If it's not the system you want, too bad. You pay up or you go to jail. In a free society, if someone asks me for help, I might help them and I might not. It depends on whether they deserve it and also their relative importance to me. If you lived outside of your means and now want my help, that's too bad. Or, if I have to save for retirement or pay for school etc, I might not give it to you. That isn't "screwing them over". I did nothing to create their situation. But for that person to believe that I owe them help, that they are entitled to my labor without pay, and that my life is theirs to dispose of, is completely wrong.

 

One side of this argument says that the political system should ignore your values and regard your life as property to be sacrificed or distributed. If you want to use your money for something besides welfare payments, what you want is not important. Your values are secondary to the needs of someone else. Your life doesn't belong to you, it belongs to the state, or your neighbor, or some other entity that isn't you. My side of the argument is that individuals do exist, they do have values that are important to them, and their lives do belong to them. Which side of this argument "cares about people?" Which side regards people as unique individuals and protects the sanctity of their lives in the fullest sense of the concept of life, and which side regards people as cogs in a collective machine to be sacrificed? In a very important sense, socialized medicine does not recognize the existence of people, only resources and burdens.

[doughishere]

I'm actually really sorry I started this thread.....can't we all just be friends?

[RichardGibbons]

Thanks APG.  I think I get where you're coming from, and your beliefs seem consistent.  Basically as I said--you got yours and screw everyone else, because they deserve what they get, good or bad. 

 

That baby growing up with an absent dad and a drug-addicted mother, who can't find work as an adult because nobody cared enough to buy her an education, deserves to die at 20 from a heroin overdose.  If that baby wanted to survive, she would have sold apples or herself in the streets when she was four to pay for healthy food and her own education.  Stupid, irresponsible baby.  Die, baby, die! Justice, yeah!

 

It's not how I'd want to live, but I understand the appeal. If you believe that in life, people mostly get what they deserve, then Libertarianism totally make sense. This might be the key difference between Libertarians and me, and I never realized it before. It's pretty interesting to me that possibly the only difference between your political beliefs and mine may be in our differing interpretations of the causes of variance in life. (Basically, I think life is more random than you do....  I'd guess something like 80% of major life outcomes are attributable to luck.)  So, thanks for that insight.

 

What's more, if you're serious that sort of unconstrained, me-first, tax-free lifestyle, you should totally check out Mogadishu. Though it might be slipping away a bit from your Libertarian  paradise, it may still be the closest thing we have right now.  Could be a nice place to raise a family....