Kamala Marx
- Thread starter snarlcakes
- Start date
Re EMTALA, I thought that was Obama's best argument for his desire to change the system: that path is way too expensive. We need to get people into preventative care, to save on overall health costs.
Re Singapore, I'm always sceptical of comparing the US to smaller nations like that with different demographics. Too many variables that we don't even know about. Not sure how it would help the larger number of unemployed here. But I agree with the notion that we need to get consumer buying decisions into the healthcare market, I'm just not sure how to do it.
I said it all. Who likes it adds nothing to or changes nothing about what I said.
You wouldn’t understand it if you read it. A TTT would need to tell you what they think it meant which likely would be wrong as usual.
The thing that Dems do best, by far, is chant. On everything else they're pretty worthless.
Approaching healthcare (among other issues) state-by-state would help in this regard. I do get your point, and it's a valid one. But, then, it's kind of hard to compare the US to most any other nation in a demographic sense.
The underlying concepts and principles are ultimately what matters most. The form they take matters, too. But, IMO, there’s no form that can make up for faulty guiding principles in public policy.
And I think failures in public policy almost always trace their way back to defective principles than they do the forms and manners in which they were implemented.
For example, if you begin with the principle that access to healthcare goods and services is a basic human right, whatever policy framework you design to facilitate that principle, it will ultimately fail.
And that’s because it’s literally impossible for a necessarily scarce resource such as healthcare goods/services to be allocated in such a way that genuinely makes it a right….as much as we might want that to be the case.
Can you better explain your last paragraph. As it stands I think healthcare is viewed or treated as a right and a commodity today.
Well, first, a right and a commodity are two very different things. Oil and beef are commodities. But I doubt any serious person would ever suggest they were something anybody had a right to.
That said, many people do view healthcare goods/services as something people have a right to -- or, at least, as something that people should have a right to. And they usually pair this with what they claim as the lone alternative: a privilege. In other words, if you don't think people have a right to healthcare goods and services, then you must believe that healthcare is a privilege....you heartless, greedy pig.
As clever as that framing is, it's a load of shit. The truth is that healthcare is neither a right nor a privilege -- just as beef is neither a right nor a privilege. It's just a scarce resource that everybody wants/needs at various times and other people labor to supply efficiently to that level of demand at a profit in order to earn a living.
"But, wait, most countries in the world have some form of universal healthcare....wherein people do, in fact, have a right to the goods and services they may need."
Really? Well, if that were the case, then there would be no such thing as a denial of claims in these countries. After all, we Americans all understand that we have the right to free exercise of religion and we instinctively understand that doesn't just mean on Sunday. There is no limit to the right to exercise religion...
Because religion is not a scarce resource, with alternative uses, and for which there is indeterminate demand.
In other words, however much or little you choose to utilize your right to exercise religion zero bearing on how much I can utilize mine. And that holds true no matter how many people are or aren't exercising that right. But the same doesn't hold true for housing, food, energy, clothing....and, yes, healthcare.
When those who view healthcare as a right encounter this, they'll often respond by saying people do have a right to healthcare goods/services, but merely that it's not unlimited. But doing that requires them to lose the language. That's a simple semantic sleight of hand that actually reflects a radical change in meaning.
Because any such thing is not actually a right. It's now become something to which we have some measure of entitlement -- subject to whatever limitations somebody else dictates and controls. Slaveowners invariably fed their slaves -- but don't ever confuse that with slaves having had a right to food.
Over the past 60 years, we've endeavored to realize healthcare as a right at least for those over the retirement age -- and understandably so. But Medicare wouldn't actually clear that bar even if its finances were the picture of financial efficiency and fidelity. Even with all its limitations, nobody can take a sober look at its finances and tell me that we've actually succeeded in birthing the proverbial unicorn.
There are multiple republicans who don’t like Trump for almost 8 billion in debt while talking about the “greatest economy ever”, some of us read the pilot testimony from Maxwell trial stating under oath Trump was “frequent flyer on Lolita Express” and Trump seems to mainly gravitate to non democratic autocrats. I’ll write in Mickey Mouse and vote for true elephant down ballot. Never Trump here
They are two different things but I think captured in the current system. I think Obamacare reflects the notion that healthcare is a commodity. It’s its own marketplace controlling supply and demand and prices etc. services are being commoditized as well with competition to traditional healthcare providers.
But we’ve also built in rights. Pre-existing can’t be denied. And more fundamental rights such as Medicaid down to zero cost. Emergency treatment as a right etc. you can’t be denied at the door if you present with a bullet hole.
I’m tired and hungover today and feel like I’m maybe missing your point or thrust. I don’t see how it’s scarce and if we collectively deem it a right how we can’t guarantee same. Are you saying that if a right, demand would potentially overwhelm supply and that’s why it’s scarce or could become scarce? That declaring it a right or implementing it as a right is practically untenable
I think I’m catching on in re-reading your post
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This is the idea you need to focus on.
I assure you: healthcare goods and services are scarce. If they weren't, then none of this would matter to any of us. We'd all have all the access to whatever healthcare goods and services we needed, wanted, or even might come to want...without any limits, delays, considerations, sacrifices, etc. It wouldn't be a political issue in the least. How often do we have political fights over things we know exist in virtually infinite supply....like, sunlight? Air?
We don't. There's no need to. We take for granted that we'll get all the sunlight we might ever want or need (subject to natural limitations, of course)...pretty much irrespective of, say, how many solar panels our next-door neighbor constructs.
I obliquely referred to Lionel Robbins' famous definition of economics, based on the idea of scarcity, above. But here it is, in Robbins' own words:
"Economics is the science which studies human behavior as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses."
Or, for a more contemporary, humorous, and appropriately cynical take on this same idea, Thomas Sowell had this to say about it:"The first lesson of economics is scarcity: there is never enough of anything to fully satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics."
If you don't believe healthcare goods and services are scarce, you would be well-served to reexamine the issue with the understanding that they most certainly are. And understand that I'm not using the term "scarce" here to stand in for rare. I mean that they are finite -- that there is not, and will never be, enough of them to fully satisfy all those who want or need them.Okay I see. I don’t know that that is true. Interesting. I’m going to give it thought
Well, I wouldn't really characterize this as my opinion -- unless you think that, say, any and every woman in the world who wanted a breast augmentation could get one in the very near future without any kind of consideration for cost, geography, surgeon and surgical staff availability, implant availability, OR availability, etc.
Because that's what the world would look like if that particular healthcare good/service existed in abundance rather than scarcity.
But that's absurd, right? Of course these limitations exist. And that is what scarcity means.
As you do, keep in mind that recognizing the confinements this understanding implies does not mean that you must now subscribe to the belief that healthcare is something that is, or should be, accessible only to people with significant amounts of money. That is often cast as the other alternative. And that is simply a lie -- designed to appeal to people's sense of humanity.
I don't think so.
Recognizing a right to a level of healthcare need not imply a right to any and all healthcare.
Just as a society could recognize a right to not starve, so a level of food security. In a nation with access to a bountiful food supply--like the United States--this isn't a problem, even if food is, technically, a finite resource. That doesn't mean you have to recognize an individual right for every person to eat anything they want at any time.
Another counter-example: we created a right to a lawyer and a legal defense in all criminal cases. Lawyers and their time are both scarce and finite resources. But it works. It's a level of legal representation, and it doesn't mean you have a right to the best lawyer representing you on each crime.
More abstractly, rights are things created by legal systems and actualized by the actions of the sovereign/state. They don't exist outside those systems. So a system can create any right it wants. It's true you might have a right in name only, that cannot be actualized because your legal system created one that was not practical/couldn't be satisfied by the state.
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And, with that sentence, you just knocked down every single brick you had laid in the ones prior. To your credit, you knocked it down yourself...rather than waiting for me to do it. And I have to imagine you suspected that I would had you not.
Such a thing as you're describing is very much a "right in name only". It can be actualized only to the degree which somebody else decides you can. And, of course, that also suggests a right to change it, reduce it, deny it as that party sees fit. Anybody who thinks they have a right to their promised Social Security benefits, for instance, is likely in for a rude awakening. As it stands, the funds available are only sufficient to cover about 3/4ths of that. What the powers that be who control this "right" will do about that is anybody's guess. But one would have to be a fool to still consider those benefits a right.
It's more appropriate to think of them as an entitlement -- because that comes bundled ready with the implication that it's subject to modification, delay, etc.
And I simply don't think it's a good idea to confuse anything like that with those things we do properly recognize as rights.
I disagree. It's not impossible to provide a level of healthcare to every citizen. Other countries do it.And, with that sentence, you just knocked down every single brick you had laid in the ones prior. To your credit, you knocked it down yourself...rather than waiting for me to do it. And I have to imagine you suspected that I would had you not.
Such a thing as you're describing is very much a "right in name only". It can be actualized only to the degree which somebody else decides you can. And, of course, that also suggests a right to change it, reduce it, deny it as that party sees fit. Anybody who thinks they have a right to their promised Social Security benefits, for instance, is likely in for a rude awakening. As it stands, the funds available are only sufficient to cover about 3/4ths of that. What the powers that be who control this "right" will do about that is anybody's guess. But one would have to be a fool to still consider those benefits a right.
It's more appropriate to think of them as an entitlement -- because that comes bundled ready with the implication that it's subject to modification, delay, etc.
And I simply don't think it's a good idea to confuse anything like that with those things we do properly recognize as rights.
Re it can be "actualized only to the degree which somebody else decides you can," ditto all constitutional rights.
I think the extreme example isn’t helpful. If you think of basic healthcare I’m not sure that we couldn’t do it and that that notion doesn’t obviate your position on scarcity. We come close to it now
Providing a level of healthcare to every citizen is not the description of a right.
And, no, that limitation does not apply to constitutional rights. There is no limit to how much we can exercise free speech -- even if there are limits what is and isn't protected speech. Apples/oranges.
You may spend the entirety of your life speaking -- out loud, saying things. You may be committed for this. However, what you have not done is limited my, or anybody else's, ability to exercise our rights to free speech. And that is because speech does not have any quantitative limits...whether imposed by government or otherwise.
It is not mathematically possible to implement a right to something for which there is more demand than there is supply. And utilizing semantics to try to create this doesn't clear the bar.
But recognizing scarcity in healthcare is no more "my position" than recognizing gravity would be.
This isn't a matter of opinion. You can apply any example you want to demonstrate that healthcare goods/services exist in scarcity.
Why do you suppose hospitals stopped offering elective services during Covid?
Come on, mcmurtry...you're smart enough to see this.
I think bc I view it as something we can control vs a true finite resource. Like bitcoin by way of goofy analogy. You can only mine so much. Healthcare can be incentivized, expanded etc if we deemed same impt enough. Bitcoin we can’t. Once it’s all mined that’s it.
I don't think your logic holds up.
We can guarantee a right to levels of service in almost any area. Most states (every?) have done so with education for over 100 years. Do you get a perfect education? No. Infinite time? No. Is the provision of education done with limited resources? Yep--time, money, physical space for schools, etc. Yet we do it.
We do the same for legal representation in criminal cases.
As for other constitutional rights, I think you need to think more broadly. The only way your right exists is because of govt officials who follow the constitution, because of lawyers (I know, you hate us, while we protect you) who will argue for you or sue the govt, and because of judges who will follow through and rule a certain way. It has nothing to do with speech not having quantitative limits (which it does--you are a finite being with finite time available to you to speak and can only speak at a certain rate).
The same goes for all your other rights--they exist to the extent these other people let them exist. (Re right to own a gun, it also relies on other people making guns). To paraphrase the worst rock band in history, choosing not to act is an action in and of itself. @hookyIU1990 Too many people, not just you, seem to ignore the importance of our rule-of-law culture and people who make it work. Don't think I'm right? Fly to Moscow and try the same thing and see what happens.
I do understand what he’s saying and think he’s right in theory. I just think the theoretical doesn’t really matterc
I think all he's saying is that we don't have enough of every type of healthcare to go around and that it is very expensive.
I think everyone already knows that.
You’re confusing finite/scarce with fixed and unexpandable.
I’m at a football stadium right now. There are only so many seats here. The seats are scarce. The stadium could easily be doubled in size. They would still be scarce. They could double it again. Still scarce.
As opposed to something which exists in abundance…in which there isn’t really a case where the demand for it could or would outstrip the supply. Again: think sunlight.
If the stadium fit 10,000, and you had 8,000 students, the school could make every student have a right to attend the game, correct? And the number of seats would still be finite, correct? Same goes with a lot of drugs in the US, amount of primary care time, etc. And if not, then we spend more money to build more seats (i.e. more docs, PAs, etc.).
If something is a right, does that mean I can force someone else to pay so that I get it ?
That is what’s implied when you declare something a right. If it’s a right, that means you can compel services from a medical professional. From then on, that professional is operating under a form of servitude.
You don’t think forcing people to work and taking the only thing that is truly scare life, their time, theoretically matters? Damn Murt, we got some work to do in Auburn.
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