Printable View
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ziggy Stardust
You should know me well enough by now to know that I have no problem at all condeming my own actions. I was a dumbass for smoking, drinking heavily, overeating, Hell, even dating a stripper could be conisdered stupid.
From a business standpoint the pool should be comprised of people who pay and don't file claims. That maximizes profit without incurring risk. From an insurance standpoint the pool should include everybody because that minimizes the risk. Insurance as a business is a game that can't be won, AIG.Quote:
Originally Posted by agamemnus
What part of I don’t want to pay for other people’s life style choices doesn’t make sense to you? Are you that obtuse? You want me to pay for people to have surgery, because they eat way too much?Quote:
Originally Posted by Aimless
I was just at Quiznos, got me a Turkey Sandwich. The lady beside me, who easily weighed twice my weight, orders a large Steak and Cheese, with everything.
I’m so glad that in your little utopia you want me to pay for to have surgery because the uber fattening sandwich she had was tasty. Not only would she have spent less, but it would have been more healthy for her to eat a turkey sandwich.
I should have gotten a picture, she could have been one of Baxter’s babes.
I’m where I’m at now because of choice I make, to this very day!!!Quote:
he is also silly for forgetting that obesity is frequently established in childhood or youth. finally he may be having a bad day because he 1. forgot to point out that he, unlike very many other fat people, is fairly well-off financially and in terms of job-security, and doesn't have kids etc and 2. forgot that just because something is free doesn't mean it's good. didn't we recently read about an unusually successful desmoking intervention relying on cash incentives???
We’ve had this conversation before, and I guess I can’t condemn you for not remembering everything about me, but I’m where I’m at because of choices I made as adult. I was homeless, living out of my car. This wasn’t that long ago (shortly before I got to the company where I now work) I righted my own life. Others can easily do the same.
If you want to smoke, fine by me, just don’t expect me to pay for it. If you can’t afford to smoke, don’t. If you can’t afford to eat healthy, at least exercise…. And as far as your really dumb idea that some people aren’t well off financially, they can go walking to exercise for free.
These same people who aren’t in dire straits financially would rather spend money on cigarettes, then spending on it their kids??? WTF!!! And not only do you want to support them, you want to spend MY money doing it by increasing my taxes.
God love ya Minxie poo, but there is no way in hell I can support that crap.
Pretty much. As has been pointed out many times on these forums, I’m not that smart, I’m not that educated, yet I’m able to use what few skills I have to get where I am at.Quote:
how he can be so hard on others when he himself was at least 50 lbs overfat baffles me. no, wait, it doesn't... it's the whole self-made man nonsense in another form isn't it :o
What’s wrong with a little self motivation. If you reward poor behavior it leads to more poor behavior.
I want smokers to pay more. You obviously don't see my point. Don't reward bad behavior.Quote:
Originally Posted by GGT
I'll be happy to give you advice for free on your 401k. In the financial community, when people ask you how is your portfolio doing, they mean in comparison to the S&P500. So, why do you try to 'guess' what is doing well, when you can just simply pick a fund that mimics the S&P500. Typically, these funds are the lowest cost both intial cost, and cost to keep the fund running.Quote:
Originally Posted by EyeKhan
Anything else is a gamble (even the S&P is a gamble, just not as big a gamble).
<Smokers already pay more. In sin taxes, insurance premiums, and oh yeah, earlier deaths.>
Ogre, how far would you have gotten to that Quizno's without public roads? Did you also bemoan the SUV drivers or gas guzzlers along the way, or our oil crazed society? How would you have learned about your lifestyle choices being "bad" without the internet and electricity? How well could you have diagnosed your medical problems without your big employer (that flies people all over the globe) and your employer subsidized health care insurance helping to pay for your physician?
edit for the "and another thing!" comment. How far do you think you'd be without our US gov't having "subsidized" the airline industry....or our Treasury or Fed Res manipulating our dollar...or others having discretionary income to spend on flying around the world for vacations?
Some people just don't get revenue shift. It's about money.
Sounds more like valuing personal anecdotal experience more than impersonal and unfamiliar general statistics. Everyone ends up doing that to some degree.Quote:
Originally Posted by Aimless
He's doing both. He pulled himself up by his own bootstraps dontchaknow. Why can't everyone else do that, without taking money from his pocket?Quote:
Originally Posted by LittleFuzzy
you know, if you pay for her surgery chances are she won't be ABLE to eat any more über-fattening sandwiches! it's awesome!
i bet you caught some lucky breaks man
if you didn't then you're an exceptional case and well done on your self-improvement but don't be so stupid as to assume that, just because you managed, everyone else can as well.
i mentioned kids because it's not easy losing any significant amount of weight all on your own with no guidance and no support when you're working your ass off, have to drive everywhere, and have kids to worry about as well.
man it doesn't require immersion in impersonal and general statistics, it just requires awareness of a simple principle: just because something is true for me (to the best of my knowledge) doesn't mean it has to be true for you.Quote:
Originally Posted by LittleFuzzy
Libertarianism is supposed to be about honoring the individual, and recognizing the myriad that exists in its diversity.Quote:
Originally Posted by Aimless
Some people are just narcissists who want to call everything individualism. Maybe that's the definition of shallow greed?
Corporacracy is individualism to the extreme.Quote:
Originally Posted by GGT
Public roads increase the infrastructure. I’m not an anarchist, I’m for limited government. As far as your electricity comment, and your internet comment, while everyeone already has access to the internet for free (via the public library), I’m actually a supporter of making broadband a utility…..Quote:
Originally Posted by GGT
How’s that for throwing you a loop.
As far as taxpayers subsidizing airlines, I’m 100% against it. But you did. So thank you for letting your tax dollars pay for my salary. I think it’s time to go burn some more money in the fireplace.
I’ve been an analysis for long enough to know that numbers can tell be massaged to tell any story, and they can even be made up as well. But what I do know to be true is what I see with my own eyes.Quote:
Originally Posted by LittleFuzzy
Nice Sara Palin comment there. While I wouldn’t throw her out of bed, I don’t follow her ideology either.Quote:
Originally Posted by GGT
Thanks for the laugh. As the majority of Americans are overweight, that means I’ll be taxes with approximately ½ the cost of their surgery. Again, nice of you to be generous with my money.Quote:
Originally Posted by Aimless
Lucky breaks? Got a job. Worked my ass off. Why do you find it so hard to think that if someone works hard, they can make something of themselves? It’s the American Dream. No, I’m not filthy rich, but I make a damn good living, doing a job I like, because I worked my ass off.
Just because you may have been born with a silver spoon, doesn’t mean everyone born without one can’t work there way to the top.
As far as your kids comments go, I can’t think of anything to respond but bullshit. There are plenty of single moms out there I would consider a MILF. Hell, I’m dating one. ( I can show you the pics again!!! She’s a hottie)
I am greedy. Greed is a powerful force. If it drives someone to excel, then more power to them.Quote:
Originally Posted by GGT
and there are plenty of single moms who are overweight so what's your point?
ps. i'm not saying that you didn't work your ass off, i'm saying that working your ass off doesn't guarantee success. eg. all the non-MILF unsuccessful single moms
Froot Loops.Quote:
Originally Posted by ImAnOgre
My public library won't let me conduct personal business on-line, like banking or buying plane tickets. But nice try.
I did what? I said your airline employer should reconsider subsidizing your perks and health benefits package, so I could pay less as a consumer to fly, and you came back with "you don't have to fly".Quote:
As far as taxpayers subsidizing airlines, I’m 100% against it. But you did. So thank you for letting your tax dollars pay for my salary. I think it’s time to go burn some more money in the fireplace.
Must be some awesome boots you've got there, cowboy.Quote:
.....
Lucky breaks? Got a job. Worked my ass off. Why do you find it so hard to think that if someone works hard, they can make something of themselves? It’s the American Dream. No, I’m not filthy rich, but I make a damn good living, doing a job I like, because I worked my ass off.
Who the hell are you talking to there?Quote:
Just because you may have been born with a silver spoon, doesn’t mean everyone born without one can’t work there way to the top.
As far as your kids comments go, I can’t think of anything to respond but bullshit. There are plenty of single moms out there I would consider a MILF. Hell, I’m dating one. ( I can show you the pics again!!! She’s a hottie)
I see. Greed is Good, says Gecko. Greed is really the ONLY motivator in life, and that means keeping a limited pie to yourself, instead of making more pies or bigger pies for others? Dogs eat dogs in the concrete jungle, power to the fittest, crumbs to everyone else.Quote:
I am greedy. Greed is a powerful force. If it drives someone to excel, then more power to them.
Should Humans eat Humans on their way to the top, just like wolves?
I'm going to bet, and this could just be me, but working your ass off probably has something to do with where you are at in society.Quote:
Originally Posted by Aimless
Perhaps I'm wrong, but I'm going to guess you've spent quite a lot of time both working and studying. How long did you work in a hospital again?
I work in a country where there are more then a few lazy people. Hell, I worked with a ton of lazy individuals when I first started at my current employer. Most of them are still where they were to begin with; At an entry level position.
The beauty of this country is, if you don't like your current lifestyle, you can make it better. You can rely on you alone to do so.
You know I would never knock your intelligence, or your book smarts Minxie... but there's also a lot that can be gained by streetsmarts too.
I've always wondered, if we cut off welfare, how many people would get a job..... necessity if the mother of invention... I'm betting the necessity to eat is the father of getting your ass off the couch and getting a job.
Yeah let's try that real life experiment, cut off welfare. Where's the line you draw? Is corporate welfare in there too, or just any safety nets you deem mooching lazy ass choice?Quote:
Originally Posted by ImAnOgre
You do realize that in the US there are around 6 people vying for every open job position, and there are about 15 million people unemployed (even more are underemployed) but they're not necessarily sitting on their fat asses on the couch and eating KFC.
You are wrong on both counts.Quote:
Originally Posted by Being
"From a business standpoint the pool should be comprised of people who pay and don't file claims. That maximizes profit without incurring risk."
That's like saying that "from a business standpoint, Microsoft should be charging $10000 per computer." That's simply not what happens in a free market.
"From an insurance standpoint the pool should include everybody because that minimizes the risk."
That's again wrong, in three respects.
First, a insurance company's payout variability will disappear after several thousand customers.
Second, as I said before, insurance companies will charge a customer for his average cost plus a fee in a free market. Forcing an enormous pool of people with random health needs places a burden on healthier customers (whether they choose to be healthy or not), and gives an incentive for customers to NOT be healthy (since they are automatically in the same pool by definition).
Third, I don't think Democrats are even suggesting to force insurance companies to pool everyone into the same mess.
Microsoft doesn't sell computers. :bulb:
If insurance isn't a business then there would be no insurance companies. :bulb::bulb:
I'm talking about their software charge for computers that other companies sell.Quote:
Originally Posted by Being
Er.... which is why the health care bill is bad. :bulb:Quote:
If insurance isn't a business then there would be no insurance companies. :bulb::bulb:
Spit it out then aggie. Can you really put peoples' health (and lives) in the same category as any other commodity, and treat it like other profit-driven businesses, or is it something different?Quote:
Originally Posted by agamemnus
I'm gonna pull a Republican move in the middle of the discussion and say, "Let's start over".....
Who wants healthcare Reform, and who wants Insurance reform?
Right :bulb: It's as bad an idea as having everyone pay for national defense, police, fire fighters, and such. There is strength in numbers. The larger the pool, the lower the risk.Quote:
Originally Posted by agamemnus
This is where you go wrong.Quote:
Originally Posted by ImAnOgre
Actually you are wrong on all counts; if there is no regulation of cherry-picking and lemon-dropping then the government might just as well not bother at all with healthcare reform.Quote:
Originally Posted by agamemnus
In which case the costs for all who can't afford will be a burden on the tax-payers, or as IAO seems to want, on nobody at all, which roughly is the case in the average third world country, where 'society' also doesn't mean anything to anybody with some money. People die in the streets in those places, very often of diseases for which there are cures.
A real free health market that some people in this thread seem to deem feasable, is a health market that is unsustainable. Because let there be no doubt about that; the bulk of the money isn't in those perky little policies that private insurers offer but in the money that gets sloshed into medicare and medicaid.
Perky Policies. :)
Costs to society by doing nothing are huge, like you said about third world countries Hazir--all we have to do is go next door to Mexico where barefoot kids sell Chiclets in front of luxury hotels, to see how we don't want to become.
True about the Medicare/Medicaid. :(
The reason unregulated, for-profit health care markets can't work is because the way to make profit in this industry is to collect premiums and pay as little benefit as possible. That means people get left out or they get tricked with hidden provisions. Markets can do some wonderful things, but not everything.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hazir
Blah, blah, blah. Nowhere did I advocate zero regulation, and you are also forgetting that the industry is not a free market; it is limited by myriad state laws that prevent inter-state competition.Quote:
Originally Posted by EyeKhan
I already addressed this fallacy directly in a response to you. Some people just can't learn...Quote:
Originally Posted by Being
Ok. I'm up for trying a well regulated interstate market so long as A. costs get controlled in line with other modern industrial nations, one way or another, and B. everyone gets the coverage they need.Quote:
Originally Posted by agamemnus
A: The gap isn't as big as you might think. Sure, we pay incredibly more for prescription pills and medications (patent laws, formerly lax antitrust, no caps on prices for patent-protected products, etc.) and the inefficiency of lacking real competition among health insurers has hurt us a lot. BUT:Quote:
Originally Posted by EyeKhan
It's common knowledge that the United States has the best and most high-tech medicine in the world (surgery, various diagnostic procedures): that costs a lot of money, and people willingly pay for that via their employer's insurance. Also, the cost gap you often see in newspapers doesn't take into account the factor of extra taxes for health care which European countries impose. Because of Europe's subsidies and their accompanying restrictions, there just isn't enough profit in it for hospitals to actually buy very expensive machines or hire expensive surgeons. There's a reason all those Saudi Sheikhs come to the US for treatment: they can actually buy the treatment they want.
There is no logical reason to take one half-baked system (US) and replace it with another half-baked system (Europe's). The first things I mentioned in the first paragraph are the things Republicans would mostly support and the things that should happen to bring our health care cost down. What I mentioned in the second paragraph is something that we should NOT do.
B: "Need" is a very subjective term. I'd like my health care coverage to include a giant air filter around the house so that my neighbors don't pollute their clogged chimney's exhaust into my body. But that ain't gonna happen, jack...
it's because those saudi sheikhs are 1. idiots blinded by money and 2. they think they can (and should :D) buy everything. i understand not wanting to have to wait, of course
truth is that your healthcare system isn't seeing much benefit from all these super-fancy-high-tech gizmos you guys keep bringing up. if your costs are high due to fancy-pants diagnostics using expensive methods and expensive equipment then it's more often than not about defensive medicine in which doctors use unnecessarily expensive methods and equipment just to cover their asses.
but sure, hey, let's focus on the stuff that is relevant to like 0.0000001% of the population :D :D
ps. i saw a great deal on a gamma knife on e-bay the other day would you like to buy one?? :o :o
Good, then it should be an easy goal to achieve. :up:Quote:
Originally Posted by agamemnus
Except that by all metrics many European countries have much better, fully baked systems. (And no, I'm not going to post the common life expectancy, infant mortality, etc etc stats. We've all seen them. If you have truthful stats that somehow disprove the rankings that show the US way down the list in quality of health care system, please post.)Quote:
There is no logical reason to take one half-baked system (US) and replace it with another half-baked system (Europe's).
I think what people reasonably need won't be that difficult to figure out. Those superior European systems did it. Why can't we? :oQuote:
B: "Need" is a very subjective term. I'd like my health care coverage to include a giant air filter around the house so that my neighbors don't pollute their clogged chimney's exhaust into my body. But that ain't gonna happen, jack...
(The lack of faith so many conservatives have in their own country just boggles my mind.)
You couldn't even start to talk about a 'European' system as there is no such system. Every EU state has its own independent system and they all work in ways that have very little in common with eachother. But for one important element and that is the freedom of the consumer to choose. Even people who are locked in a state-run system in principle like the people in the UK in the end have the possibility to benefit from the superb French private healthcare if they put a little effort into it. It is not the interest of the NHS in Britain to see their clients cross the Channel, but the only way they can prevent it (and the costs that come with it) is by improving their own service.
What I see in Europe is a situation where not only health care providers (private and state) and health care insurers (private and state) but even the systems in which they operate (private or state) have to compete on a level playing field. We have little chances for complacency to claim that we're the best anywhere in Europe, we actually have to work to be the best, because otherwise the clients will drain out of our national systems.
What reason does Britain's NHS have for keeping people on its plan(s)?
If people go, for example to France, for treatment, the costs for this treatment will still have to come out of the NHS budget. Every procedure done in France means less money for the NHS back in the UK.Quote:
Originally Posted by agamemnus
There are some brakes on the possibilities to take your 'business' out of the NHS, but it can be done. The way things work in the UK, the state puts a budget for your healthcare in the hands of the NHS administrators. EU rules enables you to take that money from their hands and spend it somewhere else inside the EU.
....sounds a bit like what might happen with single payer and interstate competition....?
Actually sounds like how school vouchers are supposed to work. So it wont happen here.:pQuote:
Originally Posted by GGT
I can tell you t, he British government wasn't happy with it. But they can't cut the competition out just because the state delivers the service.Quote:
Originally Posted by Veldan Rath
Anyway, reconcilliation it is then? Anybody who cares to explain what it entails ?