Tea Party Questions

I don't have a problem with "personal responsibility" determining how successful you are. I think it's appropriate that one's choices in life should provide the opportunity to improve one's lifestyle.That said...let's be really honest here: "personal responsibility" mostly refers to "how good you had it growing up." Many of the major influences over your life are determined before you're even old enough to make your own decisions at all, let alone be responsible for yourself.And most importantly, I don't think the ability to play on the trapeze means you have to do so without a net. I don't think there is any choice or set of choices a person can make that would make me feel appropriate just letting them die, homeless and starving. I don't think there's any choice a person can make that would make me feel right about withholding life-saving treatment for a disease like cancer just because that person can't afford it.I think personal responsibility is all well and good, but collectively we have a greater responsibility to human life and each other in general. I don't think a person should ever for any reason be made to choose between lifesaving medicine and bankruptcy. I don't think a person should ever for any reason need to choose between feeding themselves or their children. Or a house and food. Or food and transportation to work.I don't mind paying taxes. I mind when I feel like my tax dollars are being spent to kill people in foreign nations instead of being used to guarantee universal, single-payer healthcare for every American, just like what they have in Canada. I mind when my tax dollars are spent on tax breaks for the rich who don;t need them, instead of being used to provide shelter for the homeless. I mind when my tax dollars are spent to bail out the banking system who caused the so-called "Great Recession," but not to put those responsible in prison. I mind when my tax dollars are spent to put a pot smoker in jail, instead of taxing his pot.But I suppose I'm an idealist, or something. Fuck the Teabaggers, and fuck Wall Street.

You forgot "amoral" and "stupid." The rich don't hold the world on their backs - they few stand on the shoulders of the many who are poor and do the actual work.

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If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich. - John F. Kennedy, 1961 Inaugural Address

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Funny how caring so much about life also carries absolutely no weight as to the absolute minimum quality of that life. Abortion is bad, but once that unwanted baby comes out, it can starve, get beaten, lack medical care, and generally live miserably until it dies.They won't admit to that, of course - but they never want to put their (tax) money where their mouth is. They'll say they care...but at the end of the day, words do very little. Donations are fickle and undependable. Tax dollars can and do feed the hungry and give medicine to the sick. Funny how they talk the talk, but kick and scream when you try to fund a program for the poor.

I don't have a problem with people making a profit. I do have a problem with a business model that directly correlates greater profit to refusing treatment.Somehow Canada and the rest of the First World manage to be profitable markets for the pharmaceutical industry while simultaneously guaranteeing coverage, usually single-payer, to every citizen. If I lived a little farther north, past an arbitrary line, I wouldn't even need to pay a copay for a doctor's appointment or prescription medication...and yet the Canadian market is still profitable enough that pharmaceutical companies still sell them drugs.Funny how it all works so differently when you cross that arbitrary border, isn't it?

You may note that the very next sentence detailed that I do have a problem with business models that equate profit with denying coverage.The companies that supply the police and fire departments and the publishers that fill our libraries with books do work for-profit, and things seem to work perfectly well.The problem is when the service provider itself is providing coverage as insurance - premiums are paid whether services are rendered or not, and so inevitably it is more profitable to deny services while continuing to accept premium payments. This is true of healthcare, and has historically been true when services like fire protection have been privatized.Please try to read full paragraphs rather than attempting to quote-mine. I'm an absolute supporter of a single-payer, 100% tax-funded healthcare system like in Canada. Representing me as pro-private-healthcare would be factually incorrect.

It was either a quote-mine, or an example of incapacity for reading comprehension. I've seen your ability to comprehend what you read, ergo I can only conclude the remaining option.The logical conclusion of:

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I do have a problem with a business model that directly correlates greater profit to refusing treatment.

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is that I would similarly have a problem with any other business model in which denying services, particularly socially necessary services like healthcare, police, and fire protection, would be directly correlated to profit.Since you apparently need it spelled out directly: YES, I would have a problem with for-profit fire, police, education, and other socially necessary services in which a for-profit business model would result in denial of insured services carrying larger profits. It is, because it's blatantly obvious as a question one would only ask to a person who expressed support for a for-profit healthcare model. It's a question I've asked others many times for exactly the same reason. The logical conclusion of for-profit fire, police, and education, dronester, is (get this):A business model in which denial of socially necessary services directly correlates to higher profit. Denying coverage for cancer treatment while soaking up premiums = higher profit. Denying police protection while soaking up tax/private payment/whatever = higher profit. Denying a fire truck for an emergency fire call while taking revenue from "fire insurance" = higher profit. Fewer books at a library while accepting payment = higher profit.Are you following me here, dronester?This means that, again, we have two choices:1) you read one sentence of my post and reacted without reading the rest, in effect quote-mining, or
2) you read the entire post, but didn't actually think for even a fraction of a second about what you were reading, because a grade-school child could easily establish that the very next sentence after your quote was an indictment against any for-profit social service, like fire, police, healthcare, or education. No, it doesn't, not if you actually read my words. I was specifically pointing out the fact that mysteriously Big Pharma still seems to find selling medication to Canada and other single-payer nations to be a profitable exercise (else they simply wouldn't do it) while still guaranteeing no-cost-at-point-of-service medical coverage for all citizens based on need rather than income; and that therefore it's curious that we see so much vehement resistance to such programs here in the States. Agreed completely.

It's a very interesting phenomenon that normal individuals so easily buy in to voting expressly against their own interests.I pay something like $700/month for just my share of my "employer-provided" healthcare for myself and my fiance (covered as a "domestic partner" until we get married), plus roughly an additional $150 in prescription medications, plus copays for doctor visits.I would be more than happy to pay the exact same amount to the federal government instead of insurance companies so that a nation-wide public healthcare provider could then better negotiate prices on medication and services at a group rate 300+ million subscribers strong, and guarantee coverage to everyone on the basis of need alone. I'm rather tired of the percentage of my insurance premium that goes to administrative overhead, deciding whether to approve or deny claims, rather than giving coverage to the people who are sick.

Many idiots would say "yes" to privatization of all, I'm sure.But the fact is that of necessity, any dollar allocated to profit is a dollar that would not be used to put out or prevent a fire; to prevent crime; to give lifesaving treatment to the sick or injured; to educate children.Private institutions simply aren't answerable to the public in the same way that government is. Government must represent all of us, regardless of income or race or gender or any other consideration. Private industry must represent only the profits of the shareholders.The profit motive is excellent at driving competition and creativity in the marketplace.It's not excellent at getting the job done regardless of whetehr you can make money doing it.What happens if you pay private fire departments based on the number of fires they put out? They now have an incentive to create an environment with more fires, not less. It's even an incentive to start fires, just so they can be paid when they put them out.What happens if your neighbor doesn't pay his fire department bill, and his house catches fire? Does the fire department then just let that house burn? Do they let anyone trapped inside die? What about the danger the burning house poses to your own home, even if you paid your bill?Clearly that doesn't work if your goal is protection of the public from fire. Which is why fire protection is paid publicly, not privately.I don't think we even need to mention the hazards of opening up the profit motive to private police. Justice for all...who can pay!Certain social services need to be provided at equal levels to the entire population, regardless of ability to pay, regardless of whether doing the job is profitable or not. The job needs to get done, period. Those services are not well served by privatization.Social Security isn;t particularly different. Privatization in that case typically means investing SS funds gathered from taxes into private sticks on the open market. In effect, this means taking money from every American citizen and just handing it directly to businesses, with no guarantee that the investment will be returned.If I told you that I was going to deduct money from your paycheck and just hand it to Goldman Sachs, to do with what they will, in the hope that you'll get to share in the profits, but with absolutely no guarantees or responsibility, what would you say?Obviously the extra money would be a massive boon for business. But what happens in an economic slump? Do retired people who have been guaranteed a certain amount of income for the rest of their lives suddenly get cut off because the stock market had a bad day? That rather seems to defeat the entire purpose of Social Security.Edited by Rahvin, : Clarification - calling Teabaggers idiots, not dronester.

Indeed - and this instance caused no small amount of outrage because of the risk to life and property, and because it's easy enough to just save the damned house and issue a judgement against the family to pay their bill plus penalty fees.

Maybe. I doubt it based on the track record of for-profit social services, but maybe.The problem is it would still of necessity be inferior to a not-for-profit option, because (again) every dollar of profit is a dollar not used for providing services. This means either greater expense for the public, lower services for the public, or both.

Other drains include:1) no collective price bargaining for medication. Since everyone gets their meds as individuals, you don't get group discount pricing. A government-run healthcare provider can actually negotiate prices and buy in bulk at a lower price than individuals.2) paperwork. Claims processing (and erroneous claim processing) costs billions.

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In fact, the AMA estimates that health insurer claims-processing errors are costing the healthcare industry an estimated $17 billion in unnecessary administrative costs per year.

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One health insurer (WellPoint Inc, formed from the merger of two companies that were once known as Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Indiana and Blue Cross of California)
spent 14.7% of its total revenue on marketing and administration, money that will never ever go toward offering medical care to anyone.A publicly run healthcare provider doesn't need to worry about billing and denied claims. The doctor approves treatment, and funds are paid out of the healthcare provider's budget, funded by taxes.

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The firm’s total marketing (selling) expenses for 2008 were $1,778.4 million. General administrative expenses were $7,242.1 million. The sum of these two items ... amounted to 14.7 percent of total revenue in 2008.

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In other words, medical claims billing and marketing cost 14.7% of revenue from the insurance company...and then, after that, the errors in the claims billing cost the actual doctors around $17 billion.That's an awful lot of money not being used for x-rays or MRIs or surgeries or medicine.A public provider doesn't need to advertise, or spend billions on approving and denying claims from individual doctors.3) profit.

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WellPoint’s net income (profits) after all expenses and the provision for income taxes in 2008 was 4.07 percent of total revenue.

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Their revenue total was $61,579.2 million, so their profit was $2.506 billion.That's another $2.506 billion dollars that doesn't buy medicine, or put a cast on a broken limb, or transplant a kidney.

I'm actually surprised to hear that, because it differs from what other Canadians have said to me, but perhaps I misunderstood.How much do you pay for medications without separate insurance? How much does insurance cost, and how much are copays?