It’d be easier to accept the libertarian paradise if it wasn’t for the stupid clothes.
Scott highlights the sort of way your brain fries and you quit thinking in Earth logic once you commit yourself to the libertarian ideology. Jane Galt shows why anti-health care folks are just going to lose the argument over time, because they have no real points. How can you, when you’re arguing that it’s better to be sick than well?
As a class, the old and sick are already luckier than the young and healthy. Again, for individuals within that class–those with desperate congenital conditions, for example–this is not the case. But I’m not sure it’s terribly compelling to argue that we should massively disadvantage a large group of people in order to massively advantage another, equally large group of people, all to help out the few who are needy, or deserving, or unlucky.
Of course, she does try to modify her point, but it’s out there that she honestly thinks people are getting away with something by aging or getting sick. As Scott points out, though, the real fault in her argument is that it sort of presupposes there’s a way to escape age or sickness. But Jane appears to think there is.
Moreover, as a class, the old and sick have some culpability in their ill health. They didn’t eat right or excercise; they smoked; they didn’t go to the doctor as often as they ought; they drank to much, or took drugs, or sped, or engaged in dangerous sports. Again, in individual cases this will not be true; but as a class, the old and sick bear some of the responsibility for their own ill health, while younger, healthier people have almost no causal role in the ill-health of others.
She casually leaves off what the old did to cause their own problems: They refused to commit suicide at the age of 40. I mean, the option is there, they don’t take it, and there you go. I suppose we can get Megan to sign onto a Logan’s Run-style plan of a shot to the head for everyone whose body has aged past a point of optimal performance.
I have to say, the desperation of opponents to universal health care is heart-warming. Of course, that’s no excuse to slack on the demands—just because our side has clearly won the argument doesn’t mean we’ve won the battle. (Look at abortion rights, for example.) But once you’ve hit the Logan’s Run argument, you’ve basically conceded all chance of being right.
By the way, dudes of the internet: If you mock them for their arguments instead of their clothes or their sex lives, you avoid giving them reasons to act all victimized.
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I guess we’re to assume that McArdle drinks nothing but grain alcohol and rainwater to preserve the purity of her precious bodily fluids. That fluoridation is scary stuff.
If you mock them for their arguments instead of their clothes or their sex lives, you avoid giving them reasons to act all victimized.
Or: you run a slightly smaller risk of having them reply by acting all victimized. For where would libertarianism be without the “I hate this whole nanny-state culture of victimology” followed by the “why is everyone being so mean to me” two-step?
Assuming I avoid any nasty accidents, I will probably live to at least 100 years old. Not because of my fabulous clean living, but because I chose my ancestors wisely.
Paternal grandmother: 98
Maternal grandmother: 94 (though with Alzheimer’s)
Paternal great-aunt: 100
My poor brother is screwed, though — the Y chromosome in our line isn’t nearly as hardy as the XX, not to mention that he’s still suffering the aftereffects of a car accident he had in high school.
But, hey, if he didn’t want to be a partial paraplegic, he shouldn’t have obeyed that green light and gotten himself broadsided by the woman who was running the red light from the opposite direction. If only he’d ignored the proper traffic signals the way that brave libertarian woman did when she thought, “I don’t need the government to tell me when to stop at an intersection,” then he’d be fine today.
By the way, dudes of the internet: If you mock them for their arguments instead of their clothes or their sex lives, you avoid giving them reasons to act all victimized.
Word. Plus to many women you seem more like allies and less like sexist assholes.
Thanks - I really needed the laugh.
This is not that different from the “Why should I pay for some other kid’s education” argument. I know a number of pretty hardcore libertarians, and it has always struck me that they want the benefits of civilization without any of the costs or fuss. It’s a pretty juvenile philosophy.
Someone preserve this just in case this woman is still writing in 10 or 20 or 30 years. It’s the middle-age healthcare version of “girls have all the power because my perky breasts trick the boys into buying me things.”
But, hey, if he didn’t want to be a partial paraplegic, he shouldn’t have obeyed that green light and gotten himself broadsided by the woman who was running the red light from the opposite direction. If only he’d ignored the proper traffic signals the way that brave libertarian woman did when she thought, “I don’t need the government to tell me when to stop at an intersection,” then he’d be fine today.
Funny how internet libertarians never seem to have bad shit happen to them or their families. No one ever gets crippled in a car accident, no one ever has a debilitating illness at an early age, nothing like that. Incredible. They’re the luckiest fuckers on the planet.
Oh for bumper stickers that said: “If you’re a libertarian that can read this, GET OFF THE FUCKING ROAD.”
Ellie–It’s a good thing that’s not an actual bumper sticker. I started laughing so hard that, had I been behind the wheel, I might have had an accident.
steve:
The way I think of it is that “libertarians don’t believe humans are social animals.”From TFL:
The young as a group don’t have any fucking money. What is there to tax?A few months ago I started having a vibration in my leg, which then led to something like my nerves (at least the pain receptors) going off, making any little pain massive. The neurologist can’t figure out what it is, thinks it isn’t life threatening, so she ups my meds 3x. Now I have to take an anti-seizure medication that makes me tired, dizzy, and have double vision sometimes. But, that’s my fault? In the class I’m going to be teaching, I have an epileptic kid. He is on his meds, but he can still have seizures - but that is his fault?
The more I see about Libertarians, the more convinced I am that they are basically selfish adolescents. Un-fricken-believable (although it really is all too believable)
What really amazes me is I know this guy who is “Libertarian”, who has been on unemployment, disability and job-retraining (more than once), has a wife who works for the state(and currently is the sole money-earner), and he bitches because the community colleges have been cutting back on the classes he wants to take.
There’s a COMPLETE disconnect on his part between taxes and government programs.
Wasn’t Logan’s Run age 30?
What are you still doing here, Berube? What am _I_ doing here? What was Peter Ustinov doing in that movie?
(Actually, I think when it comes to Logan’s Run, what was anyone doing in that movie? Urk.)
“…they didn’t go to the doctor as often as they ought…”
Uh. Maybe — and it’s just a thought — maybe they didn’t go to the doctor as often as they ought because they couldn’t afford it.
I mean, I’m sure that there are some people who believe doctors are bad. And I’m sure that there are some people who just get so busy with life that they don’t take the right time to deal with this stuff.
But it seems to me that *most* people would probably like going to the doctor every once in a while, instead of waiting until a limb is falling off or they’re puking up blood just to finally be lucky enough to get the ER to take them it.
What was Peter Ustinov doing in that movie?
Collecting a paycheck?
Though I should say, we watched it on cable once and it was more entertaining than I expected. Cheesy, but amusing. And it was science fiction with actual science fiction ideas in it, not just cool spaceships that blow up really cool.
Again, as I pointed out in another thread, it is easy to justify universal health care on libertarian grounds. The most famous 20th century libertarian, Friedrich Hayek, argued that the government had an obligation to provide social insurance to people. This is from page 133 of his book, “The Road To Serfdom”:
“but as a class”
What a poisonous little expression.
“Funny how internet libertarians never seem to have bad shit happen to them or their families. No one ever gets crippled in a car accident, no one ever has a debilitating illness at an early age, nothing like that. Incredible. They’re the luckiest fuckers on the planet.”
Cathy Seipp only recently died of lung cancer. As she liked to point out, she never smoked, and so she had no risk factors for lung cancer. She left behind a 16 year old daughter.
Seipp remained a devout libertarian to the bitter end.
““but as a class”
What a poisonous little expression. ”
Well said. For hard-core right-wingers like Jane Galt , the only kind of class warfare that exists is when the unfortunate ask for help from the fortunate. She has, in the past, defended the idea of the government bailing out corporations from the pension mess that many corporations have gotten themselves into, by under-funding their pension obligations. When large corporations need money from the government, that is okay with Jane Galt. But when ordinary citizens turn to the government for some protection from life’s unpredictable tragedies, that is class warfare.
“What really amazes me is I know this guy who is “Libertarian”, who has been on unemployment, disability and job-retraining (more than once), has a wife who works for the state(and currently is the sole money-earner), and he bitches because the community colleges have been cutting back on the classes he wants to take.
There’s a COMPLETE disconnect on his part between taxes and government programs. ”
He could simply feel that he has to deal with the system as it is, but that in the utopia of tomorrow there will be no government and he will be free to reach his full potential.
I drive a car everywhere because the government doesn’t provide mass transit in my area of Virginia. But I oppose the government’s transportation plan, which I think is hopelessly slanted towards cars. I feel I have to use my car, till such a future utopia arrives as will enable me to get where I want to go using mass transit. Nevertheless, in the current moment, I can imagine that someone who hates mass transit might call me a hypocrite, in the same way you are suggesting tha t this fellow is a hypocrite for living one way but thinking another.
What are you still doing here, Berube? What am _I_ doing here? What was Peter Ustinov doing in that movie?
I know! I know! You and I were waiting around all these years to see The Island.
Maybe Megan saw a late-night rerun of “Mr. Show” and thought it was a documentary?
What was Peter Ustinov doing in that movie?
He was the Old Man who dwelt on The Surface (which had been shown to be an uninhabitable wasteland in the establishing shot at the beginning–but hey, who needs continuity?)
He could simply feel that he has to deal with the system as it is, but that in the utopia of tomorrow there will be no government and he will be free to reach his full potential.
Nah, that is just hypocrisy, which I have no issue with, per se. We are all hypocrites in one way or another, as your example points out.
My problem is with people who make no effort to acknowledge their own hypocrisy or have integrity enough to do the work required on themselves, so that their lives and thinking achieve some sort of internal consistency, to the degree that is possible.
I’m struck by the observation that many of these grasping elderly have gotten old “in high style.”
In high style.
Are we meant to envy and hate these elderly, who have clearly gotten away with something?
. . .
I don’t think we should be concerned with the old and sick who get there in “high style.”
I think there’s a far bigger danger in universal health care; which is to say, those who become old and sick through *fraud*.
You heard me.
People who are old and sick . . .
illegitimately.
These . . . these “pseudo-elders,” we should call them.
These . . . pseudo-elders, their lungs blackened not by honest viruses but by virus pills—
Probably the really tasty and expensive ones, too—
These pseudo-elders, their lungs blackened not by honest viruses but by virus pills, their hearts tremblingly clogged with artificial fat, will acquire their liver spots and wobbling gait not honestly but through guzzling the pureed livers of those taxpayers foolish enough to support their meteoric ascent through the age brackets to stand at last, “senior of seniors,” atop the great mountain-pile of the old, laughing and creaking, their early bird dinners made of the meat of what once was good and true American justice, their watered-down drink the transubstantiated wine of capitalism; and they will laugh and laugh and shake their bone-claw hands and they shall demand discounts of us, of we who are still young, and in our gerontocratic dhimmitude, our geronimmitude if you will, we shall have no choice but to obey; to obey, to weep, to whimper, and to crawl, wishing only that we had listened to those lone neglected voices in the wilderness wailing that a liberal President would take—at good long last—our rights.
Hey, the elderly had every right to discover the secret to eternal youth when they were younger. If we help them now, it just rewards their failure to do so.
Seriously, this may be one of the worst arguments against universal health care I’ve ever heard
“Stupid clothes”?? I think they’re quite fetching.
Wasn’t Logan’s Run age 30?
Actually, norbizness, in Nolan’s novel, the cutoff age was 21. (Now, don’t you feel old?), and Ustinov’s part was supposed to be played by a 42 year old man. When the movie came along, the age limit was raised to 30, and Ustinov’s character became a 60 year old man (and senile to boot.)
And The island was a high end budget remake of The Clonus Horror, if you want to watch the MST3K spoof on that sometime.
Yeah, I’m a scifi nerd. Sue me.
54? Pot roast? The oldies are not goodies!
False teeth speak false words, Bob!
Testicular electrocutions for EVERYONE!
“RENEW! RENEW! RENEW!”
Ya know, I always thought Ron Paul sounded a little like Box:
“Fish! Plankton! Protein of the sea!”
Doctor Science:
I prefer to say that libertarians use capitalism as an excuse not to give a fuck about anyone but themselves.
And Peter Ustinov absolutely made Logan’s Run for me. I thought it was boring and kinda dumb up until he came on screen. Then it was funny as hell.
What was Peter Ustinov doing in that movie?
What was Farrah Fawcett doing in that movie?
Uh. Maybe — and it’s just a thought — maybe they didn’t go to the doctor as often as they ought because they couldn’t afford it.
or they DID go to the doctor as often as they’re supposed to, and that’s how they found the polyp that took years and years of painful, exhausting therapy to treat, instead of ignoring doctor visits until it metastitized and they’d die in a month.
Why not just have Communism and we can all live in perfect equality - like termites.
Seriously, government run medicine will be like the Post Office. It will be adequate at delivering basic services, and that’s it. Need a hip replacement? Cataract surgery? A CAT Scan (or, God Forbid, an MRI?) Too bad, just get in line. There’ll be a few millions ahead of you (Kennedy kids, Paris Hilton clones). Just don’t complain, and accept your lot in life as a Prole. After all, the government and the politicians who run it know what’s best for us, right ….. ???
It’s like she doesn’t understand that the young and healthy become the old and sick. What is she, two?
Well, I know what parts of her were doing in that movie…
Again, in individual cases this will not be true; but as a class, the old and sick bear some of the responsibility for their own ill health, while younger, healthier people have almost no causal role in the ill-health of others.
Ha! Sounds like somebody never raised kids. Kids will make you sick as a dog!
Does she think the “younger, healthier people” sprang fully formed from the forehead of Zeus, or what? Somebody became older and sicker, in the act of raising them. Duh!
Not only are the libertarians annoying, they don’t seem to understand that basic “circle of life” stuff, which is simple enough even for Disney.
That graphic shows a bit more girl skin than the movie did, IIRC. Eh.
I rationalize my refusal to buy health insurance (expensive for a guy in his fifties) with my history of robust health and my habits of smoking and drinking, which ought to guarantee a late but quick death. I might be wrong, and wind up dying slowly of prostate cancer instead, and it would still be my fault. I could probably afford that too.
Is there any argument so nutty that libertarians won’t espouse it? Any affront to common sense they can’t swallow, and claim they like the taste? (Mmm, nutty!)
Their only issue is outrage that they might have to help out someone else: “Why should my money go for their problem?”
Moreover, as a class, the old and sick have some culpability in their ill health.
Of course, there’s always a way to blame the sick person. Got heart disease, lung cancer, COPD, or osteoporosis? Shouldn’t have been smoking. Got Crohn’s disease or Parkinson’s? It’s your own fault for NOT smoking. Got diabetes, heart disease (again), or hypertension? Should have been exercising more, ya lazy pig. Got osteoarthritis, stress injuries, or broken bones? Should have known better than to go jogging, now shouldn’t you? And so on. Liver failure? Too much drinking. Cardiovascular disease? Not enough drinking. High cholesterol? Take a statin. Rhabdomyelitis? You should have known better than to take that statin drug. There’s always a way to blame the victim and all preventative medicine is an exercise in probability and relative risk reduction. Nothing is absolutely safe and there is no way to do everything “right” so as to guarantee good health.
The most famous 20th century libertarian, Friedrich Hayek, argued that the government had an obligation to provide social insurance to people….
And to think Jonah Goldberg could have gone with the title:
Liberal Fascism: from Hegel to Hayek
(Actually I believe the term “socialized medicine” was invented by the West Coast branch of the Teamsters as part of their successful effort to stymie Truman’s universal health plan. Seems the Teamsters didn’t want to give up their insurance racket.)
Rebecca, I just became an even bigger fan of yours.
This weekend I saw a video (featuring Marcy Wheeler) of a local Michigan talk show where the Republican pundits screeched about “state funded abortions.” I think this is going to be one of their new talking points about universal health care.
As a class, the old and sick are already luckier than the young and healthy.
Word game?
* As a class, people with no teeth already eat more hard candy than people with a full set.
* As a class, people in a two year dry spell are already happier than those who are getting great sex every day.
* As a class, people whose homes have been washed away in a flood are better housed than those living in $5m penthouses in Manhattan.
Nah, too easy.
Couple of thoughts on this:
1. You guys, particularly Amanda, are positively obsessed with libertarians. I have a few thoughts on why. Do you?
2. To see you (here, and Amanda specifically) complaining that someone else sees themself as a victim is pretty funny (as in ironic). I don’t (see myself as a victim). I’ve been pretty lucky. Found a job I like, married a wonderful woman, have great kids, no serious illness or injury yet. That’s one reason I spend so much time doing charity work; I feel lucky. Of course. to some extent, you make your luck; and I’ve done that too.
3. I don’t look forward to the day the gov’t supplies my health care. I’ve seen their work.
Well, then again, in the novel there really was a Sanctuary, so it was a little more important to have the “old guy” not be so old. And the 21 limit had to be raised because the actors would have looked too old otherwise (This was before 21 Jump Street and the rash of thirty-year-old high school students on television).
Though I did wonder how all the mythology about Ballard revolved around the fact that he was 42, given that he’d presumably continue to have birthdays.
Anyway! As Professor Bérubé noted, addressing Ms. McArdle’s “arguments” would be met with similar dismissal. Indeed, various of the sites she links to have a long history of substantively eviscerating her fatuous writings. In fact, what’s got much of the crowd at Real Libertarian Jim Henley’s place worked up is her vacuous, unoriginal assertion that sure, she was wrong about the Iraq War, but the anti-war people were somehow just as wrong. That, and her “reluctant” embrace of the fictional ticking time bomb justification for torture. Obviously, she’s stampeded to refute them with something other than a dismissive handwave. (In these difficult economic times (purely my fault), I have to hoard my sarcasm tags.)
Oh, I don’t know: I kind of liked the way Jenny Agutter drerssed.
My microbio prof used to call kids “filthy little buggers.”
Come to think of it, it’s the young people’s fault that the elderly get sick, passing along infectious diseases that the elderly’s immune systems can’t handle. How do we start assigning responsibility for transmitting influenza?
Have you been paying attention to how health care’s been handled by private insurers? I’m convinced there’s no way the government could possibly give health care to fewer people for more money than they do already.
[/troll food]
Libertarian:
Well, at least you’re not trying to make yet another thread All. About. You.
As if.
As someone who has dealt with the Japanese health system, the U.K. health system, and the U.S. health system, I am NOT enamoured of the latter.
I’d willingly spend more time in line, have a little more nagging done, and go to grey-painted clinics in exchange for the MUCH lower cost AND the fact that I WILL receieve treatment.
(Try getting health insurance in the US when you’ve just moved back from abroad. Forget about it. Feh.)
Mr Wheatstraw wrote:
Most employer-provided programs have specific rates for individual and family coverage, and those rates are the same for everyone who participates in the plans, irrespective of how much they earn. If a man works a lot of overtime, and makes $5,000 more a year than his co-worker who sticks with 40 hour weeks, it doesn’t matter: both still pay the same amount for their health insurance.
If we go to a single-payer plan, health “insurance” will no longer be that way; it’ll be just like our other taxes, with the amount people pay based upon their income. Thus, the man who works a lot of overtime and earns $5,000 more than his co-worker will pay more for the same health care coverage.
Mr Wheatstraw got it right, of course: the people who will pay for a single-payer plan will be the middle class and the wealthy, the people who pay all of the taxes now. Some of us don’t think that’s right.
[She casually leaves off what the old did to cause their own problems: They refused to commit suicide at the age of 40. I mean, the option is there, they don’t take it, and there you go.]
My sister did- she set fire to her locked-up home and died in the basement 6 weeks’ before her 40th birthday and a week before Christmas. What a “hero”; the only burden she left was to her older sister, parents, and lots of lawyers settling out her messy estate. But if we had all offed ourselves before 40, we would have been spared this pain, so I guess we deserve it, huh?
You guys, particularly Amanda, are positively obsessed with libertarians. I have a few thoughts on why. Do you?
Because your particular brand of stupidity never stops being funny. It’s like fart jokes, but more bloggable.
Liberterians-
In the time I’ve been reading this blog, which is a couple of years, I’ve seen a handful of posts on libertarianism. If you check the archives, there have been a total of THREE posts on libertarians in the last month. Oh yes, pandagon is sure obsessed with liberterians /snark.
Truly, yours is a stunning logic.
As a person who works closely with the healthcare industry, I’ll give a hearty “hear, hear!” to stogoe: government-run healthcare could not possibly approach the tied-in-knots upgefuckedness of the current healthcare system. Hey Libertarian! You think having health insurance makes you safe? Think again, slick. Unless you’re a closet millionaire, are like every other non-millionaire in this country who has health insurance: one catastrophic illness away from financial ruin.
And hoo boy, aren’t those insurance companies eager to help you out if you suddenly stop being able to pay the premiums!
The problem is, these anti-healthcare reform people can’t imagine this kind of thing happening to them, no way, no sirree-bob, that kind of thing could NEVER happen to them, because they’re doing everything “right!”
Well, it can happen. It does happen, every day. And it can happen to YOU. If you’re not scared by that thought, you’re either not paying attention or are just plain dumb.
Damn, my comment got stuck in the mod queue. Sigh.
Er, you mean as opposed to the stunning success of the US private health care ‘market’, where the US has some of the lowest life expectancies in the western world, the highest disease rates, and the highest infant mortality rates.
How’s that HMO based system working out for you then? I mean, wow, all those other western nations that all have public health care must be really be envious.
/snark.
Look, “the government” in a fucking democracy IS YOU. When something is wrong, it’s not “the government” that is wrong, IT’S YOU that is wrong. That’s the whole fucking point of a democracy.
“From everyone according to their means, to everyone according to their needs”
You libertarians make me sick … good thing I have health insurance, eh?
Um, how is that different from what we have now? The rich can afford to pay and go first. The rest of us are pretty damn used to waiting, even for basic services.
It always amazes me that people try to frighten us about single-payer health care by describing the situation that already exists here.
And then they claim that the high cost of healthcare is all due to the exorbitant amounts of money from malpractise suits.
Yeah, it’s got nothing at all to do with for-profit agencies injecting themselves into the middle of the transaction. And those for-profit agencies would never try to increase their profits by doing everything in their power to avoid paying for healthcare, right?
It’s the greatest scam ever!
Amanda
Wrong answer. You know the right one, but don’t want to say it out loud.
Dan
I didn’t make this about L’s, Amanda did.
Sarah
I’m not sorry I make you sick. It’s surely less of an imposition than you ALWAYS having your hand on my wallet.
I drive a car everywhere because the government doesn’t provide mass transit in my area of Virginia. But I oppose the government’s transportation plan, which I think is hopelessly slanted towards cars. I feel I have to use my car, till such a future utopia arrives as will enable me to get where I want to go using mass transit. Nevertheless, in the current moment, I can imagine that someone who hates mass transit might call me a hypocrite,
See, I don’t think this is hypocritical at all. You support mass transit. You oppose programs that slat towards cars. You only drive a car because there is no mass transit in your area.
I also don’t think there’s anything wrong with working for mass transit even if you know you personally wouldn’t benefit from it: you can recognize that it’s best for the community as a whole even if you don’t use it.
You could only be called a hypocrite, I think, if mass transit were available in your area and you still used your car because…um…buses are icky or something. Or if you went around saying “cars are evil and no one should use them”, but you continued to use a car when you had another option.
Now, if the libertarian guy who complains that the community college doesn’t have enough programs for him also complains that his taxes shouldn’t go toward community colleges, then I’d call him a hypocrite. In this case, he is using the very programs he claims he does not support and he wishes it were expanded just for him. He wants to deny other people the use of the same programs he takes advantage of: that’s the classic “good for me, not for thee” hypocrite.
ARRgh! Troll-feeding distracted me from commenting on the actual post and this classic line:
Because, of course, why would anybody ever want to help out the few who are needy or deserving or unlucky?
I bet she calls herself a Christian, too.
Moreover, as a class, the old and sick have some culpability in their ill health.
This is one of those dipshits who mistakes luck for virtue. I see it all the time. I’d dearly love to know how my younger brother was culpable for a brain tumor that nearly killed him at age 13. But somehow, according to this gal, he both had it coming *and* was lucky to get sick.
But I guess he was really lucky to get brain cancer. I mean, having a ten-inch scar up the back of your head, a year of radioactive vomit, morphine-induced hallucinations, stunted growth, nerve damage, permanent hair loss, kidney damage, and possible sterility rock.
Actually, in this country I get less from the government than you do, because I’m a foreigner … isn’t that wonderful.
Oh, and way to address to the matter at hand: fall into meaningless historical cliches wrapped up in an insult! I am surely feeling highly challenged here, I have to say.
Rebecca Borgstrom, that was brilliant.
And the current American system isn’t like this?
Yesterday, my boss asked me when I would be available in September to head out to LA. I responded: not September 24th, because I have a medical appointment I’ve been waiting 4 months for. That’s been my experience with CATs and MRIs–if it’s not a stat appointment (you know, I didn’t fall over, hit my head and develop a concussion), available appointments tend to be 3-4 months out. Same with my GP, same with the specialists I’ve had to see.
My father waited over six months from the day he scheduled to the day he received his hip replacement. His too was non-emergency–he hadn’t broken it. A birth defect that remained undiscovered until his 40s (a malformation of the ball) had completely destroyed the joint instead. The last couple of months, he had to use a walker on occasion due to the pain.
Libertarian:
“all about you” != “all about libertarians”
But thanks for demonstrating (again) that you have the reading comprehension skills of a prairie vole.
Jesus. It’s like you really, actually think that you and you alone are personally funding the entire fucking government. I can’t even imagine what it’s like to be that monumentally self-aggrandizing.
And you know, if you have any kind of insurance at all, then I already have my “hand” in your “wallet.” Because that’s how the insurance industry works.
“Amanda
Wrong answer. You know the right one, but don’t want to say it out loud.”
All right, so she deeply admires your Mighty Codpiece of Economic Justice. She was trying to keep Punkass Marc happy by not saying that in public. He has feelings too you know…
Are you happy now, goddammit?…
Libertarian, Dana, and Eric, just pray to whatever gods you acknowledge that you don’t get really sick. Because those gods won’t help you if you do. And your overpriced health insurance policy–which the insurance companies would *love* to retroactively cancel if they can get away with it–won’t help you much either.
“I’d dearly love to know how my younger brother was culpable for a brain tumor that nearly killed him at age 13.”
[snark]Well, he was 13. Hardly innocent…[/snark]
I was almost 40 when I was diagnosed with cancer, so I REALLY had it coming. And not only was I lucky enough to get sick once, it came back again 3-years later so I got to be lucky again. But I probably deserved the (reward/punishment) for being (good/bad).
It’s tha shiznit…
“Libertarian, Dana, and Eric, just pray to whatever gods you acknowledge that you don’t get really sick.”
Not only is living a (good/moral) (conservative/libertarian) life its own reward, you also never get sick, and if you do actually die before the 2nd Coming (maybe you were hit by an illegal immigrant evading the police or something), you are magically transported directly to your mansion in Heaven, where adult beverages and virgins are waiting for you…
So the government can’t be wrong, eh? Most people didn’t vote for this current crop of idiots we have in office, and are not willing to take responsibility for mistakes we begged this government not to make.
hp wrote:
Well, I’ve never had a hip replacement, but I have had cataract surgery, which was scheduled within about a week — when the opthalmologist was doing his surgeries. I’ve had a CT scan and a lower GI, both done the same day they were ordered by the physician, in a two-day hospital stay.
At least for me, no, the current American system isn’t like that.
Grilltacular wrote:
Ahhh, but most people did vote for the government in place — at least, the majority of people who chose to vote. If someone is too lazy to vote, as far as I am concerned, he has consented to the choices taken by other people.
Wrong answer. You know the right one, but don’t want to say it out loud.
Yes, I’m wildly in love with libertarians and want to have sex with all of them. The double dose of dumb and anti-social makes me cream my panties.
Dana, go read exactly what Blue Cross Blue Shield was doing in California and then come back and try to tell us that a socialized health system is automatically worse.
I just had to pay over $80 for a standard. Fucking. Tooth. Cleaning. Without X-rays. And that’s with the discount I get from Illinois BCBS–otherwise it would have been over $100. This is a price that has supposedly been decided upon by this wonderful Free Market. Thanks a lot, guys. Thanks a lot.
I’m surprised that the health insurance companies haven’t gotten together and really squeezed for cheap check-ups. Oh, I guess I’m working on the assumption that they actually want to catch things early on–my bad. No, they don’t care if you can’t afford monitoring or check-ups and wait until something gets really bad, because at that point they’ll just sweetly refuse to have treatments anyway and sucks boo to you.
I’ve had pretty good luck with my healthcare coverage so far — they do get me in for my appointments quickly. When my doctor referred me for a CAT scan to make sure that my migraines are just migraines and not something more serious, that department called me within a week and got me an appointment by the end of that week.
Notice that I say “department.” That’s because I have Kaiser Permanente (in Southern California, thank god), which means that when they refer you, they refer you internally. There’s no checking on coverage, because it’s a Kaiser department — you’re covered. Because they’ve removed an entire level of bureaucracy, I get care a lot faster.
Hmmm, maybe there’s a lesson here …. naah, I’m sure that the current way of having to get a referral from your physician to another specialist who your insurance company has to approve before you can even make the appointment, and then approve the treatment, and then let you make the appointment to get the treatment, is much more efficient than having it all be one system where you can get treated right away.
At least for me, no, the current American system isn’t like that.
Aye, there’s the rub. Because for a whole lot of Americans, the current system is like that, through no fault of their own. If they even have access to health care at all.
I recently had surgery to remove a tumor. Because I work on a university campus, I have pretty good access to primary care. I was referred to a specialist (an otolaryngologist), but there were no openings until two months later. Longer than I would have liked, but I could live with it since the mysterious lump just below and behind my earlobe didn’t seem to be causing any problems.
So two months later, I go to the otolaryngologist, and I get a fine needle aspiration and a CT scan that same day. The results come back a week later, and my surgery gets schedule for month later.
All in all, a pretty decent experience. Here’s the deal: had this occurred, say, ten years earlier, I would have been in much more difficult straits. I didn’t have health insurance then, even though I was working an honest, 40-hr./wk job. Because I was classified as “temporary”, I was not eligible for health care benefits, and my wages weren’t enough to purchase my own. The surgery’s full cost was several thousand dollars; there is simply no way I could have afforded it (even with my decent coverage now, it’s expensive, but not catastrophic by any means).
This particular tumor (a pleomorphic adenoma on my parotid gland) is only treated by surgery. The only alternative would have been to do nothing, thereby risking that it would have turned malignant (an admittedly small chance), or simply allowing it to grow larger and larger (which adenomas generally do if untreated).
Had this particular tumor been malignant, I really would have been in major trouble, as malignant salivary gland tumors tend to be aggressive and therefore quite deadly.
On top of that, there is nothing I could have done to prevent this tumor. The cause of salivary gland tumors - at least the one I had - is unknown. I could have done every healthy thing possible and still have this tumor.
That’s a stat situation. You were in the hospital, you get priority over all those who are not.
I have Canadian friends, and the Canadian system is the same: stat situations are generally handled immediately. Regular priority situations wait until the next available non-emergency appointment, which is generally several months out. And, at least in the past few years, my experience with non-emergency care has become exactly the same as theirs.
My CAT was to check out my lower GI due to chronic constipation, my MRI to check my thyroid and neck due to ongoing stiffness and pain. Since both were already “chronic” the scans were not considered to be priority, so I got in line at the radiology lab my insurance (Humana) covers. The available appointments were 3.5 months out.
About 6 months after that, when I was having problems breathing (but my blood oxygen was still at appropriate levels) my lung scan was declared stat and was done in 48 hours.
When I needed to go to an endocrinologist (see MRI and thyroid above), I called about 8 in my area who were covered by my insurance. Average wait time for an non-emergency appointment (I was having problems and was symptomatic but probably not endangering my long-term health) was 4 months. The highly recced one was 6 months.
When I called around for an OB/GYN for prenatal (my former OB/GYN had retired and I’d been getting my paps from my GP in the meantime) average wait time when I didn’t clearly say “I’m pregnant and need an appointment” was 4 months. When I realized that I had to say “I’m pregnant and am looking for prenatal care” that dropped to 2 months before my first appointment. And then, the OB/GYN griped at me because I hadn’t had any care during my first trimester.
During the pregnancy, the “common” things like the 20w u/s needed to be scheduled 4 weeks in advance, until I developed GD and then the following u/s only needed to be scheduled 1 week in advance.
I’m in a major suburban area in the midwest, btw. I have a PPO, not an HMO. I could go outside my PPO for care but these wait times seem fairly consistent across the medical industry in my area.
Wouldn’t Logan’s Run have qualified as a government-run single payer system?
To all the libertarians out there: When you’re in a hole, stop digging!
While the comments on Megan’s clothing or choice of sexual partners were moronic, she sure went to a lot of trouble to hunt them down.
Ah, yes. Recent experiences:
My Sept 24 appointment is an annual, and I’m well aware now that I need to schedule it 4-5 months in advance. The problem is, I can’t MISS or reschedule it (my comment to my boss) because it’ll be another 4-5 months and I need my yearly meds refilled.
I had been scheduling my son’s well baby appointments at his previous appointments. But at his 6m appointment, the office was rather disorganized (we had an 8.30am appt and finally saw the ped at 10.30am). So, I forgot. About two weeks later I called to schedule his 9m appt and got myself chewed out because well baby and well child appointments should be scheduled 3 months in advance and I was looking for one in 2.5 months. Lesson for the future, I guess.
Okay, let’s talk about the part of the current system we haven’t heard much about. Changing jobs. Usually when you change jobs, your new health insurance doesn’t kick in for 3 months. You now have a choice, go uncovered for 3 months and hope nothing comes up (unless you have a “pre-existing condition” in which case this isn’t much of an option) or choose COBRA.
I chose COBRA. Cost? $838 per month. Okay fine. So, the first month I do COBRA (June), I send in my check on May 18th. Come June 15 and I go to pick up the incredibly expensive prescription. Guess what? I’m not covered. I look and see that the check was cashed on 6/3 so I call to see what the deal is. For some reason, they didn’t enroll me in COBRA. They fix that.
Mid-July and it’s time to pick up the incredibly expensive prescription. No problems. Excellent.
Now it’s August 18th and time to pick up the incredibly expensive Rx, once again. I go in and… Guess what? I’m not eligible. The 18th is a Saturday so I must wait until Monday to call in. I do so.
“Did you send in your payment?”
“Yes, and you cashed it on the 4th.”
“Hmmm. That was the payment for July.”
“It most certainly was not!”
So, I get that straightened out and get the Rx.
What would have happened if I’d been run over by a truck on the 12th of August? I’d have been considered uninsured. How would I have known to check beforehand? You pays yer money and you gets yer services, no? No.
Under a single payer plan this sort of problem goes away. How much of a savings is that?
“Scott highlights the sort of way your brain fries and you quit thinking in Earth logic once you commit yourself to the libertarian ideology. Jane Galt shows why anti-health care folks are just going to lose the argument over time, because they have no real points. ”
If Jane Galt is going to be accepted as some kind of libertarian, as a opposed to some kind of right-winger, then what is the correct terms for those who support the progressive tradition of the Enlightenment? The label used to be “liberal”, but the liberal tradition was focused on restraints on government power, a tradition that evolved after 1932, and then people began using labels like “civil libertarian” when they meant to refer to someone who was good on civil rights. In Britain they simply used the word “libertarian”, though in America “libertarian” briefly referred to those who still had serious concerns about devolution of power, decentralization, and spontaneous, socially useful actvity arising from exchange. Nowadays people who are pro-torture and pro-war call themselves “libertarian”, so the label isn’t as useful as it once was.
But what would be the right label for people who think there needs to be more checks and balances on all forms of government power, both civil rights protections and checks on the economic regulations? If the label “liberal” no longer works, and the label “libertarian” no longer works, then what would work?
Also, a majority of the hip replacements in this country are paid for by…..goverment run health care!!!!
And most hip replacements go through in a timely manner. Imagine that!!!
Wrong answer. You know the right one, but don’t want to say it out loud.
First rule of claiming you want other people’s hands out of your pocketbook is not pretending you have access to their thoughts. Libertarianism can ONLY work if you believe all human beings are rational, moral agents with their own clear, functioning thought processes. If “You know better than everyone else” than obviously your desire for libertarianism isn’t a genuine freedom for all individuals, but a lust for the ability to establish your own private little tyranny where you’ll be protected by the new set of laws and tax codes. You don’t want the freedom of a utopia. You want the freedom of a Duke of Saxony.
Anyone remember the Logan’s Run TV series?
IMDB does!
There’s a remake (currently listed as “shelved”) that would apparently restore the 21-year-old cutoff point.
I’m almost certain the RPG “Paranoia” was inspired by Logan’s Run.
Sadly, No’s takedowns of Megan McRandroid were pretty funny, I thought.
“If “You know better than everyone else” than obviously your desire for libertarianism isn’t a genuine freedom for all individuals, but a lust for the ability to establish your own private little tyranny where you’ll be protected by the new set of laws and tax codes. You don’t want the freedom of a utopia. You want the freedom of a Duke of Saxony.”
karpad nails it. Libertarian “thinking” is just another way to climb up or stay at the top of the social/economic hierarchy.
If the “libertarians” didn’t think they would get something out of it, they’d move on to some other bogus political theory.
A libertarian is just a Republican whose boat didn’t lift up when the tide rose…
I’d like re-phrase my last question. If being libertarian means you’re pro-war and pro-torture, then what is the right label for writers lke John Stuart Mill and Friedrich Hayek? Human rights were at the core of their philosophies. These men were once called “liberals”, then they were called “libertarians”. What should we call them now? If someone derives their political philosphy from Mill and Hayek, how should one label one’s political beliefs?
Sigh. Am I in moderation or did my comment vanish?
Short version: I have Kaiser Permanente in southern California (aka the good one) and I never have to wait for tests, because it’s a closed system and you’re referred between departments, not to a completely separate and independent medical office. It’s also a nonprofit, so they don’t have a financial incentive to deny me care the way that, say, Cigna or HealthNet do.
I’m libertarian and I’ve avoided the temptation to make snarky replies to some of the anti-libertarian cheapshots during the last few months. I don’t want to come across as a troll because I hate them as much as you do, including the libertarian ones.
So here is my sincere, non-trolly question to folks here–
Unlike what people say here, I am against the Iraq War and against torture. I hate the current health care system in the US. I worry about global warming and think there should be some kind of non-punitive economic system as a balance, perhaps even a carbon “tax” if that’s the only alternative. I think the US is fascist and/or in another Gilded Age, where corporations are in bed with politicians, and I believe that that is hardly libertarian. I believe if the US policy turned 100% libertarian overnight, we’d be fucked. I think Ayn Rand sucks.
I believe in all those things quite strongly. Plenty of other libertarians share these thoughts.
Would you call still me a libertarian?
If so, then please stop all the broad brushstrokes. I never call anyone left-of-center a “Stalin-humping pinko” for a good reason.
If not and you think people like me are really not libertarian, I’d like to know what you’d call us instead.
Mnem, I hate to tell you this, but Kaiser Permanente was one of the main healthcare systems being investigated in the big California retroactive coverage denials (or “rescissions”) brouhaha that recently happened. (Blue Cross/Blue Shield was the other one.) They were mostly doing it to individual policyholders, though, so if you have group coverage you should be way less likely to experience that particular type of crapweasling.
Well, hp, I had a dental appointment on Tuesday, August 14th, which I had scheduled just a week earlier. Turned out that the guy who was supposed to relieve me at work couldn’t, so I called Monday and cancelled. Turns out the dentist’s office is closed on Mondays, so I cancelled to an answering machine. I called on Tuesday to reschedule, was told it would be a whole week, but they’d fit me in earlier if they could; I wound up being seen on Thursday the 16th. And it’s not like I live in a big city with a million dentists; I live in a small town in the south end of the Poconos, and the dentist is within walking distance of my house.
I have no idea how your insurance works, but I have never had a problem in getting a reasonably prompt appointment for anything.
MRIs? Never had one, but when I was working in tyhe Philly area, there were so many MRIs around that there were private companies advertising for people to come in for a baseline MRI, just as a check-up; there were more MRI machines and technicians to operate them and radiologists to read the results than were really needed, and they were advertisling, trying to drum up business!
I’ve lived in Mt Sterling, Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky, Hampton, Virginia, the suburbs of Wilmington, Delaware and now Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, and I’ve never had any sort of major wait in scheduling a medical or dental appointment. Every time we moved, we had to find new doctors and dentists (my wife is diabetic, so it’s not like we can ignore stuff), and we never had a problem doing so. It’s difficult to imagine that I’m so special that I get preferential treatment.
TXS, when I walked out of the dentist’s office on Thursday, for a “a standard. Fucking. Tooth. Cleaning. With X-rays,” I had my checkbook on me, and had asked how much I owed.
Nothing. Not one cent. They’d bill my insurance.
How much do I pay for insurance? Nothing; my wife is a registered nurse, and health insurance for the whole family is free. The only drawback I’ve seen so far is that she has to get her prescriptions from the hospital pharmacy.
Dana, if you (for instance) had never gotten into a car crash, would you think that proves car crashes don’t exist, and seatbelt laws are therefore unnecessary?
Unlike what people say here, I am against the Iraq War and against torture. I hate the current health care system in the US. I worry about global warming and think there should be some kind of non-punitive economic system as a balance, perhaps even a carbon “tax” if that’s the only alternative. I think the US is fascist and/or in another Gilded Age, where corporations are in bed with politicians, and I believe that that is hardly libertarian. I believe if the US policy turned 100% libertarian overnight, we’d be fucked. I think Ayn Rand sucks.
Given all that, what causes you to identify as “libertarian?” Does your “health care sucks” mean you support government subsidized health care in the form of Single Payer or any other similar pattern currently existing in other countries? You like public education, college loans, that sort of thing? Do you think providing such essential services is more important that libertarian rhetoric about taxes being theft?
Is it just you want pot legalized, and think free speech is nifty? because liberals do that.
You’ve defined opinions you have contrary to libertarianism (or objectivism for the last one.) What makes you identify as libertarian? because no, if you have attributes contrary to libertarianism, and no attributes in favor of it, we would not call you a libertarian.
How much do I pay for insurance? Nothing; my wife is a registered nurse, and health insurance for the whole family is free. The only drawback I’ve seen so far is that she has to get her prescriptions from the hospital pharmacy.
Well, bully for you. I guess that means everyone has insurance and we don’t even need to discuss the problems with U.S. healthcare. Either that you’re a rather entitled a**hole who thinks that if they don’t have a problem then no one else does.
How much do I pay for insurance? Nothing; my wife is a registered nurse, and health insurance for the whole family is free.
That must be nice. When I worked at UCLA Medical Center, we had to pay for our insurance. In fact, every job I’ve worked, in and out of the medical field, we paid. My husband works for a home infusion company and has super-crappy insurance. Healthcare job != free healthcare.
Again, the fact that you personally have not had to deal with these issues doesn’t mean that they magically don’t exist for anyone else. And the fact that you haven’t dealt with them yet doesn’t mean that you’ll never have to.
Just b/c I don’t like the current system doesn’t mean I want socialized health insurance. I’d rather take the current system than single-payer but that’s a real crappy choice. Unfortunately in a liberal/conservative world, those are the only 2 options discussed.
I should add that the current system is hardly run by the free market. That’s another misconception I see. Our system is closer to Germany’s level of regulation than a free market.
I don’t care for “what would the world be like without public schools” debate. It’s philosophical and doesn’t reflect the current world that is accustomed to public school.
But what about things like more school choice and more localized school funding (i.e., less federal funding)? Those ideas may make you gag, but that’s what I believe. It makes me gag when I hear someone suggest that all libertarians would abolish all public schooling.
I’m all about a small(er) government. I just thought I’d lay out some of the beliefs that don’t jibe with many Pandagoners’ perceptions.
If in fact, you’re saying that shit we complain about is bad, but you are saying it needs to be MORE creepy freemarket exploitative than it is, yes, you’re a libertarian. and you still fit our stereotypes of you.
If you say you wouldn’t abolish public schools, just make them “more local” and effectively choke off any funding for them, then yes, you still fit our stereotypes.
collect your door prize, strawlibertarian. No one wants to hear you whining about “My libertarian political views are being reducto ad absurdam’d and spoken of with distain BAWWWWWWW.” Your political views are tested and wrong. Your aims abhorrent, and we have no particular duty to be civil about making sure you don’t look like a beast for wanting to make shit better for the rich with the blood of the poor.
Mr. Krubner, Mr. or Ms. Gee,
Libertarian ideas developed within a feminist context and perspective could probably be relabeled “libertarian feminism.”
Libertarian ideas developed from outside a feminist context . . .
I’d love it if decent, mature, sensible libertarians would succeed in reclaiming the label in the progressive blogosphere. I don’t know how to do it, and I don’t think that it’s going to happen on the feminist blogs first. There are two reasons I think this.
First, the contingent of so-called libertarians who do the term so much discredit are, like most trolls, at their loudest and most grating when speaking to women. It’s going to be harder to dispel the impression here.
Second, a skepticism of civil rights implementation and of government as collective action, when developed against a background of our general cultural context and then imported without *very* deep reflection into the feminist discussion—
a discussion, mind, on how best to help a population suffering the erosion of already nominal, substandard, and grudgingly-offered rights—
is going to receive less of a welcome than it would in the more general progressive discussion.
Personally, I’d suggest finding the isolated subweb of really cool libertarian debate that statistics tells me must be out there somewhere and raising its profile on more general progressive sites. But what do I know? I’m not a libertarian.
Right now, speaking as a random reader of Pandagon, I don’t *have* a good way to boil you down to a one-word political label that’s different from the one-word political label for the less enlightened libertarians. It’s kind of by chance that I know about the existence of reasoned and compassionate libertarianism at all.
Rebecca
Rumblelizard wrote:
Actually, I do think that seatbelt laws are an unjustifiable infringement of our rights. It may make sense to use seatbelts, but it isn’t the government’s business to require people to use them.
How are they unjustified, Dana? From a standpoint of guarding the wellbeing of its citizen, or the standpoint of saving money on emergency care?
And that’s the rub, eh, Dana?
You have free insurance, and it sounds like it’s good. I had that once. It was really cool; sorta like Star Trek–even having a baby would have been free in-network, and all my docs were in-network.
It was nifty till the next round of layoffs. Then we got to go for 2 years without insurance at all. B/c when you’re self-employed, insurance is prohibitively expensive and covers next to nothing. Plus doctors/hospitals charge a lot more b/c you can’t collectively bargain those prices down.
Thank goodness we live in Illinois and had access to AllKids. My children got their vaccinations gratis.
Dana, everyone should have what you have–free insurance and easy coverage. It is not the experience of the majority of people in this country. Even the Chicago Police Union can’t get their insurance premiums covered in their contracts anymore.
Just in this blog alone, you’ve had three people tell you that they have had lonf waits for non-emergency care or have foregone care b/c it was too expensive. You don’t get to just write that off as unreal b/c it doesn’t match your personal experience.
Google those intertubes…you’ll find out how uncommon your care level is except for the rich.
I was disgusted by the indifference in the article above, the casual disregard for the “needy, deserving or unlucky.” But you have to be that callous (or ignorant enough to believe your personal experience discredits reality) to praise the current US system for healthcare.
i live in illinois too, but i dont have any insurance because of a pre existing condition caused by a birth defect. currently im fucked if i need another surgery or anything like that, but i go to a county clinic for dental care and basic medical care. know what i paid as a co-pay when i had a teeth cleaning at the govt run clinic? 15 bucks.
there is a month or so wait at the clinic for non emergencies, but you can head in as a walk-in if you need to and theres a few hour wait to see someone. however, if you are really really sick, they bump you up to the front of the line, even as a walk-in, like the time i went in with bronchitis w/ an 103 degree fever and dizziness/fading in and out. they got me in immediately.
and the visit cost me 25 bucks.
anyone who bitches and moans about “socialized medicine” hasnt experienced govt healthcare, IMO. i actually prefer to go doctors and dentists at the clinic, they work there because they genuinely care about people, not to buy a new beemer. its nice to be treated like a person, not a paycheck.
Dana:
I’m sorry, Dana, but shouting “YOU ARE NOT THE BOSS OF ME” at the top of your lungs is not a valid political philosophy.
Grow up. You’re not in the second grade anymore.
“a discussion, mind, on how best to help a population suffering the erosion of already nominal, substandard, and grudgingly-offered rights—
is going to receive less of a welcome than it would in the more general progressive discussion.”
I appreciate your point that there may be better forums for me to raise the question. I won’t ask again here. I have already, in previous months, asked the question in more general progressive forums. It’s hard to find a good answer to the question. I think the point is too academic for many people to care. Then, too, I check myself and ask myself why I’m bothering to ask questions on weblogs. I do sometimes think that my time could be better spent elsewhere. I’m easily drawn in by conversations of a political nature, I find them fascinating, but, all the same, I should probably quit and devote my time to something else.
Dana, that right there pretty much knocks out any claim you have that your heath-insurance experience is representative of the majority of Americans.
I lived for 25 years in Canada, and worked for five years in a GP’s office. What people are describing here for wait-times (several months for non-stat diagnostic tests and surgeries, days or hours for hospital/emergency stuff) is about what we had. I don’t think we waited any longer.
And as for whether the guy making more money would pay more for insurance than the guy making less, it actually goes like this (or did when I lived in British Columbia in the 1990s): there is a baseline insurance rate, which probably the guy making more money can afford (and maybe the guy working only 40 hours a week can, too*), and people who make less money and can’t afford the baseline rate are often subsidized directly by the government. My dad worked several jobs trying to make ends meet (I’m talking getting groceries left on our doorstep every couple of months by the church and going “oh, whew, maybe we can pay to get the car fixed this month”), and we were able to have all the benefits of being insured under the BC provincial healthcare plan. We didn’t choose to be poor, but we were graciously allowed to be healthy. I’d take that any day over what happened in Tennessee last year, where my dad was paying a third of his paycheck in insurance premiums–that only covered him, not my mom. The kids had to go on TennCare (local Medicare).
*The reason I say the guy working a few hours less a week might be able to afford healthcare under the universal healthcare system: I had medical insurance in the US for a few months last year, and sat down one day and did the math. The unsubsidized rate that I would pay in Canada was one quarter of what I was being charged here. Luckily, my employer paid half of the premiums–but I still had to pay $30 to see the doctor, which was money I really didn’t have. When I worked at a doctors’ office in BC, $30 for an office visit was what the uninsured patients paid.
Dana, that right there pretty much knocks out any claim you have that your heath-insurance experience is representative of the majority of Americans.
I lived for 25 years in Canada, and worked for five years in a GP’s office. What people are describing here for wait-times (several months for non-stat diagnostic tests and surgeries, days or hours for hospital/emergency stuff) is about what we had. I don’t think we waited any longer.
And as for whether the guy making more money would pay more for insurance than the guy making less, it actually goes like this (or did when I lived in British Columbia in the 1990s): there is a baseline insurance rate, which probably the guy making more money can afford (and maybe the guy working only 40 hours a week can, too*), and people who make less money and can’t afford the baseline rate are often subsidized directly by the government. My dad worked several jobs trying to make ends meet (I’m talking getting groceries left on our doorstep every couple of months by the church and going “oh, whew, maybe we can pay to get the car fixed this month”), and we were able to have all the benefits of being insured under the BC provincial healthcare plan. We didn’t choose to be poor, but we were graciously allowed to be healthy. I’d take that any day over what happened in Tennessee last year, where my dad was paying a third of his paycheck in insurance premiums–that only covered him, not my mom. The kids had to go on TennCare (local Medicare).
*The reason I say the guy working a few hours less a week might be able to afford healthcare under the universal healthcare system: I had medical insurance in the US for a few months last year, and sat down one day and did the math. The unsubsidized rate that I would pay in Canada was one quarter of what I was being charged here. Luckily, my employer paid half of the premiums–but I still had to pay $30 to see the doctor, which was money I really didn’t have. When I worked at a doctors’ office in BC, $30 for an office visit was what the uninsured patients paid.
Hmmm, his voice may be kind of weird, but that Michael York certainly was a looker in his time.
Ahem. As you were.
MRIs? Never had one, but when I was working in tyhe Philly area, there were so many MRIs around that there were private companies advertising for people to come in for a baseline MRI, just as a check-up; there were more MRI machines and technicians to operate them and radiologists to read the results than were really needed, and they were advertisling, trying to drum up business!
There’s a problem with these MRI exams: they’re useless. Or worse. I’ve dealt with MRIs from this sort of private clinic several times and they were without exception so poor quality that they could not be meaningfully read and had to be redone. And I don’t know where they find the “radiologists” who read them, but I somehow doubt that their qualifications are legit–their interpretations are almost always off, even given the poor quality of the exams themselves. In one particularly tragic case, the private clinic told a patient with liver cancer that his tumors were gone. They weren’t, of course, the MRI was just so badly done that they couldn’t be seen. But breaking the news that he was not cured, as he had believed, to him was not fun. So my advice on these types of MRI is to avoid them at all costs. They’re worse than useless. Go to Canada and wait for a high quality MRI. It might take a while, but at least the technicians running the machine and the radiologists reading the results will probably be competent.
And if there are no waiting times in the US and everyone can see a doctor when they need to why does this phenomenon exist?
Dana, you didn’t answer my question; you just changed the subject. I asked in a metaphorical way if you believed that your experience of never having problems with healthcare access means that nobody has problems with access to healthcare, thus making any kind of legislative remedy unnecessary. Because that sure is what it seems like you’re arguing. And if that is what you’re arguing, you’re fucking delusional.
I’m curious, would you say the same about anyone who supports a third party candidate?
The majority of people did NOT vote for Bush in 2000, including myself. Given the nature of Electoral voting and the importance of swing states, a voter’s power can be further diluted, and there are rational reasons to not vote.
This is not to say voting does not have power, just that it has limited liability, especially if you vote for “the other guy”, instead of the one who wins and comes into office to fuck everything up.
I just do not believe we are all little Eichmanns. Just the Republicans.
Also:
I’m a bit confused why it is assumed that Libertarians object to government run health care but accept private insurance. It seems to me to be a similar concept, except with government management the overhead goes from about 30% down to about 3%.
I think if we had parallel systems, the Government run system would be so superior that everyone else would migrate over after there fears that “it could never work here” are assuaged and they see the rest of us paying on average thousands of dollars less per year (based on comparisons to industrialized nations with socialized medicine).
Given those efficiency gains, you would imagine single-payer health care would be very appealing to even the most anti-government person. We accepted government run police and fire services, why not government run health care?
sorry, *their, not there
Wait, Dana, your healthcare coverage is not “free”. Really. The employer may be paying 100% of it for you, but family insurance is going to run $800-1000+ per month.
So your wife’s salary is being short-changed by $9600-12000 per year. Surely you would rather get the money and go get your own individual insurance policy or healthcare savings account (or go without for a year or so if you’re a healthy lot), if THE MAN would just let you.
Again, as the Chicago Police Union has learned, 100% covereage is becoming a thing of the past. At any time, your wife’s employer may decide that she needs to kick in 30% or 50% or 100% of the premium without a comiserate raise in salary. That’s gonna hurt.
Then you’ll start to understand where the majority of Americans are coming from. We pay more per capita for healthcare than anywhere in the western world (nearly double) and receive less care. Where does that money go? To the for-profit insurance agencies. It does nothing for the doctors or the patients.
“Actually, I do think that seatbelt laws are an unjustifiable infringement of our rights.”
@ Dana: Our rights to what? Be victims of physics? Think of seatbelts as something the government is asking you to do, not for yourself, but to protect your fellow citizens. Because the seatbelt doesn’t just keep you in the seat, it also keeps you *behind the wheel*, which gives you a better chance to avoid hurting *somebody else.* Somebody who maybe doesn’t have as sweet a deal as you on insurance, say.
@Helen: Amen on Michael York, and please pass the Richard Jordan.
@liberalrob: I do remember the Logan’s Run TV show! It starred Gregory Harrison (yum!), and Heather Menzies–who had played Louisa in the film “The Sound of Music,” and later married Robert Urich. (Spenser for Hire–also yum!)
Man, I know a lot of pointless crap, don’t I?
OT York looked his best in the Zeffirelli Rome and Juliet. Mercutio as a big cat.