And cell phones, computers, ad finitum?
Link: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/kamala-harris-vows-to-eliminate-private-health-care-plans-lets-eliminate-all-of-that-lets-move-on
I have a feeling this discussion is going to quickly devolve into libertarian "non-aggression principle," fairy tale land discussion of "natural rights," so let's just deal with that right away. We create rights and we take rights away. Many used to believe there was a "natural right" to own other human beings. Did you know that no holy book with which I'm familiar, including the Bible, mentions the word "rights" at any point? Did you know that the Constitution makes clear in its 9th Amendment that the people may declare new rights and protect those rights in the future?
If you believe we should be protecting human life, it entails more than having a police force and an army and anti-abortion laws. Clearly, life is also protected by the treatment of sickness and disease. The position of a minority is, "Tough luck. You should've thought of that before you were born to derelict parents and with below-average intelligence." Or, "You should've thought of that before you made those poor choices. You deserve to die, short of private charity helping you out." I would submit that a culture cloaked in Judeo-Christian values isn't likely to go down the social Darwinist, John Galt-Mad Max World, everyone-for-themselves route anytime soon.
If you believe private charities and churches adequately provided for the needs of the underclass prior to welfare programs, you're historically-misinformed. It was especially harsh on children (and the aged). Those institutions would be even less-equipped today to take on such a gargantuan task. We have a growing underclass where more-and-more of them have no place in our economy. Many are just above being mildly retarded in an economy where an increasing number of low-paying jobs require more and more reasoning ability. Add to that an immigration system that lets in millions of similarly low-skilled workers and you have a recipe for disaster. So what are you going to do for them? They're on their own? How about their kids? Are they on their own, too? Private charities and churches cannot provide healthcare to all/most of them. They should've thought of that before they ended up in this situation? They'll continue to end up at ERs. Then we all pay for it by delivering their healthcare to them in the most inefficient way possible. We end up paying their healthcare bills one way or the other. Which way would you prefer?
We don't have to go to the argument of natural rights. I know that's too foreign, too strange and too deep to many Americans who have been brainwashed by the progressive ideology. That's fine. let's just follow your "new rights" discourse in order to allow discussion to continue.
For every your "new right ", it’s easy to forget that there’s another side to the equation: personal responsibility. How easy? I don't see one word of "personal responsibility" in your post about health care. You also ignored important word "fundamental" from curly. Did you ever ask yourself: Is your newly created right really fundamental or just extensive? We conservatives believe that health care, fundamentally, is personal responsibility. You are the first agent who is responsible for your health which includes what you eat/drink, your exercise and your life style. If you want to trade pleasure of drinking alcohol with 10 years short of your life, that's fine with conservative. That's your choice to pay the price of 10 years of your life for pleasure of drinking alcohol, others won't pay it for you. You don't want 1 hour exercise daily to improve your health, you want working 1 hour more to make more money. That's also fine too with conservative. That's also your choice, your responsibility.
You, and the left in general, are obsessed with creating new rights, at same time, have no concept of man as a personally responsible agent. The end result, we have culture of entitlement with a generation of self-centered Americans.
Tell someone who is envious of others that you will make things more even at the expense of the others and they will vote you into power.
I thought I was pessimistic.
Why have you dodged every question I asked of you? Back to the drawing board for you.
You haven't the foggiest what the term even means. Conservatives speak of obligations. They value order and tradition. They would not, for instance, sacrifice those things for your Holy Free Market false idol. What are your obligations to society? A conservative recognizes with each right is an obligation.
At this point, if you have any sense at all, you're probably recognizing that foisting your imagined caricature on me was a poor choice. I lament the reduction of our political scene into lefties and righties crying out about "rights." Everytime some simpleton thinks he can apply caricatures to me, by the end, he has a buzzcut and he doesn't have a backside left. Maybe you'll be the first one to escape this turn of events. I doubt it, though.
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Unlike a child, I recognize that others do make legitimate claims upon me. Many of which I don't get to choose. The position that people should not receive the medical treatment they need due to not having enough money in their bank accounts is a monstrous idea. It's anti-life, it's anti-human. It's worse than arguing that they should not receive police protection because they lack enough money in their bank accounts. An obligation I have as a person who chooses to live in civilized society is that I at least partially subsidize them. I therefore reject the fantasy that I am some sort of island in society and that the only claims I may have made of me are "voluntary." I reject the fantasy of "positive rights" and "negative rights." Each and every one of those rights carries with it some obligation of someone else to provide something for me. Even those mystical "natural" rights you imagine. Did you ever think about that before in your brain? Go ahead. Give me one and I'll explain the obligation of someone else to help provide it to you.
You also have no idea what "ad hominem" means. It's not an ad hominem if someone calls you a name. It is n ad hominem if someone calls you a name and then argues that because of this, your ideas are invalid. It is ironic that you would attempt to claim an ad hominem after yourself attaching me to your caricature of what you assume me to be and then argue that my position is invalid.
that makes America as a nation morally. We demand our citizens to uphold standards of personal responsibility. The left attack us as being cruel. If your whole philosophy is based on personal responsibilities, at least you shouldn't argue health care issue from "fundamental right' angle. You can still support healthcare for all from other perspectives. This is just strange to say healthcare is fundamental right if your whole philosophy is built on personal responsibilities.
take responsibility for any problem in society. Not once. Will you break the streak?
It's easy to demand that others be more responsible. It's much more difficult and uncomfortable to take account for what you have done wrong. Personally.
As I already explained, I don't buy your delineation of rights into different types.
That is totalitarian communism.
Is single-payer "communism?" Explain how.
If someone wants to sell you an insurance policy or if a doctor wants to provide you with treatment and you want to buy the policy or pay the doctor, the federal government should have no right to prohibit either. It harms no one. Totalitarian communism posits all "rights" in the State... not the individual.
defense interferes with my unfettered right to contract with whomever I wish to provide defense for me.
By the way, notice how you avoid my pertinent questions? Speaks volumes.
Who will decide what doctors we can see and what treatments we can get? And what happens to the business entities that now employ doctors and operate hospitals? How will they be compensated for the government shutting them down?
Apparently not. It would eliminate private health insurance. It would not create government hospitals and clinics at which doctors would work.
Right now. the vast majority of our providers are private individuals and business entities. We can pay them cash or use our private insurance, which we pay for individually. In the case of the latter, we usually have several options to fit our particular individual needs. The rates for services are negotiated for us by our carriers, and these vary tremendously depending on the service and the area of the country. It has taken decades to negotiate these deals, market by market by market. One size does not fit all. It's like a car or a house or a meal... everyone has different needs and tastes. By contrast, if the government is the sole provider, the options will be severely limited and will apply the same to everyone in every region of the country. Oh! And the government will be deciding what treatments can and cannot be provided. The individual shall have no say in this decision.
This is one of the reasons Medicare has been such a success and is extremely popular.
You prefer to have your care rationed by private bureaucrats. Public sector bureaucrats have very little incentive to deny me or my family coverage. In contrast, private health insurance bureaucrats have strong incentives to deny needed or desired care. We've just experienced this with our son.
And perhaps the GOVERNMENT would decide that someone over 70 simply does not need cataract surgery or a knee replacement or expensive cancer treatments.
Link: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/10/why-i-hope-to-die-at-75/379329/
Explain.
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The only private health insurers who do that are in Galt's Gulch and their premiums put new meaning to the term, "exorbitant."
I'm happy... and I don't want it taken away from me.
Your previous assertion "lacked candor" and you know it.
And, again, you're emblematic of the problem I noted to Eli: you speak of all the things you want. The things to which you believe you're entitled. You speak not a word about what you...you... are obliged to do for others in a civilized society. That's telling.
"Me, me, me, me, me, me, me."
"You can't tell me what to do!"
Sounds like the sorts of things children repeat incessantly.
Of course modern governments have, to one degree or another, decided they can take by force money from people who have it and give it to people who want it.
Now, the government can even take money from people who have not even been born yet (borrow and run up debt) and force them to pay for what politicians borrow.
Gradually, charity and individual consensual self sacrifice for the benefit of those less fortunate is being replaced by total government control of our lives. Who knows where that will end.
As far as health care, in my opinion I am already paying for quasi- universal health care through government enabled insurance cartels and government/medical profession limitations on the number of physicians available. Maybe some kind of “single payer” system will come eventually but Medicare for All is not a good answer.
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Are those fundamental rights?
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If you don't, you are doing it right.
If we choose to provide free health care that's also ok... but it has never been a fundamental right.
Where in the constitution is it written Americans get good road service....?
If citizens of any state decide through the ballot box to accept a tax to provide the heath and welfare of their citizens, it is their right. But DC should not tell any state what services it should provide to it's citizens.
is your gov't isn't providing smooth road surfaces there by causing harm to your precious vehicle - Communities across the nation make this complaint a priority yet when better HC is demanded, you righty's go off the wall yelling it's free shit for other people - or "where's a cop when you need one" - It's not, it would be in your taxes too and it would be paid for. As for a fundamental right - Why isn't good health a fundamental right? Bad health seems to be, just ask the boxed food industry, it's their right to produce and promote crap to you and your kids and you think that's just fine.
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to the states how tax revenue was instituted and how it was spent. There is no Federal right to tell states how they should spend their revenue. But with a Federal Income Tax, it pushed it's way into Education, Healthcare, personal rights, etc, which was clearly not the intention of the Founding Fathers.
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However, most taxes prior to the Civil War and even after where imposed by local municipalities and states to provide infrastructure and services to it's citizens. Actually in two instances, the Civil War and World Wars where the reasons behind Federal taxes to fund the military, in the Constitution. How we got from there to $4 trillion dollar annual budget and the role of the Federal government over states is the issue, especially for Libertarians.
I, too, am in favor of balanced budgets and devolving most power to the states and local governments. Libertarian proposals to accomplish such things are juvenile, silly and will never happen.
But, it will probably never happen, because the Democrat elites fear losing power over places like Nebraska and Alabama. They want concentrated power in D.C. So, they just say repealing it is anti-Democratic. They are correct in part, and because civics is no longer taught, people think all increases in democracy are good, and all decreases bad, so it will never be done.
Libertarians are a veritable treasure trove of ideas that will never happen, ideas that ignore basic facts about human nature and psychology and basic sociological truths. Their conceptions of what society can and should be are not unlike what an imaginative 12 year-old dreams up on a boring Saturday afternoon.
For example, i think the Dems are working towards an unachievable utopian massive government (something a 12 year old would definitely dream up)...which they will not achieve because of human nature and sociological truths which prevent any such utopia from being realized. They will, in the end, succeed in building a despotic state which initially promises everything to everyone just like the Soviets did (the Soviets made healthcare and housing as itemized rights in their constitution...look how that worked out). Their effort to make every possible life need or desire a "right," coupled with their goal of making US citizenship a right of all 7 billion of Earth's inhabitants, can lead nowhere but the destruction of the Constitutional Republic in the long run. There is no other outcome...all in the pursuit of a 12 year old's utopian fantasy.
At least the Libertarian Party's approach to economics tries to leverage human nature, not suppress it.
You'll notice, though, a stark difference between the Dems/Repubs, versus all the others. The two major parties have to keep their policies and platforms mostly grounded in reality. They have to actually govern. It's easier when you know you will not have any responsibility in governing to advocate all sorts of implausible solutions to problems and radical changes.
Many years ago, I was at a Harry Brown campaign stop when he was running for president. Large enough to be a significant crowd...but barely small enough to have a Q&A session after his stump speech. The Q&A session was nonstop attacks on Brown...every compromise he made to offer something actually achievable was aggressively attacked (by his supporters) for violating official libertarian philosophy. I was dumbfounded. Brown was a 1000 times more eloquent and reasonable than Gary Johnson, and they were tearing him to shreds. Very frustrating.
I haven't been active in the LP for a long time.
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A childlike understanding of the world leads to these sorts of responses. Right, if we have single-payer, the state will be running my life. You folks are like the leftists in that you have no historical understanding whatsoever. As a result, you're oblivious to the fact that you live in more opulence and freedom in the sense that you mean than the world has ever seen, yet you convince yourselves that you have less of these freedoms and that the state is breathing down your throat and only getting closer. In fact, you and the leftists live in such opulence and, dare I say, "privilege," that you must imagine and contrive your oppression.
rising at double digits, inferior service, high deductibles, and we can't get into see a doctor. Who should I see about that? And single payer healthcare will cost an additional $4 trillion annually according to the CBO. Twice the annual budget currently. Will it improve service? Based on my personal experience, had government not tried to add 40 million uninsured onto it's citizens without calling it what it was a TAX is criminal. Just be honest. Why not say we should provide annual healthcare to everyone and those that pay taxes will see an increase. But instead we got, I can keep my insurance, doctor, premiums would go down, etc? Yeah right. That's why I don't want some DC hack interfering in my business or personal life.
I'm actually for getting rid of our ridiculous system of employers having to provide health insurance plans to employees. Did you never think this through or realize this before, the fact that single-payer relieves businesses, particularly small businesses, from this burden?
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which is irrefutable proof that it isn't.
Never mind Cole. He believes Russian interference in US elections is a fundamental right.
And who will be deciding what services can be provided and what cannot? A DC bureaucrat?
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responsibility is raising them to become responsible adults. This is what is missing so much today.
If the goal was to get the African-American community back on the government plantation, the liberal plans seem to be succeeding. Looks like a dip happened when Clinton started making "entitlement" recipients work, so credit where credit is due.
I mean, young children are even a greater inconvenience once they are air breathers.
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Usually when we want things from others, we ask for those things, and we explain why we want them. But, for rights, we don't have to explain anything.
We can say that all Americans should have certain benefits, and we can argue as strongly as possible that the government should provide those certain, very important benefits. But to say that those benefits are rights is sloppy and lazy and just plain incorrect...it is a way to avoid having to have a discussion about the cost vs. benefit of the issue. This concept that I can demand something from you as a right as long as I use the force of government to do it is a very new concept developed by the Left so as to avoid discussing the merits of their many proposals for government takeover of services traditionally provided in the private sector. Every time you do this, you dilute and diminish the concept of rights.
But, if we go by your definition of rights, then by your rules, I guess if gun ownership is a right, then the government should provide a gun to every adult.
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And is it like abortion... if you are on one side of the wall you have no rights but once you get over it you have all the rights.
It's as if they are Gruber, relying on stupid voters. You don't have to defend a right, because rights are inherently justified. We can discuss what duties we owe our fellow man, but our fellow man can exercise his rights without us doing anything.