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Not everybody pays taxes. The people not paying taxes aren't paying for it.

You can go the paternalism route, which I wouldn't lose sleep over. But history has shown that it doesn't tend to turn out to be what it was said to be. Like Social Security.

Even with that route, you'd probably get some form of rationing.



True, but demand tends to be more flexible. Demand is a bad thing for the consumer when it spikes as well. Supply spikes are great for consumers.



A - Because private market prices aren't mandatory.
B - The (federal) government has virtually no competition. Which is part of the reason for federalism (state governments have to compete with eachother)
C - It's not going to end up being paid for by everyone.




Like I said, I wouldn't lose sleep over the paternalism route (where everybody pays in, everybody is guaranteed a minimum benefit, and the option to buy further benefit is present), but that's not where this his headed.

Even if it said it was, I'd still be highly skeptical it was the truth. Because Social Security was supposed to be essentially forced saving for retirement, where everybody was supposed to get a minimum benefit if they paid in.

PS. This shouldn't be a federal issue, regardless of if you're in favor of it or not.

Yeah, "free" healthcare seems to be doing none of the things that the critics here have said it does and/or will do in any of the countries where it's "free."

Your Pal,
Jubber

AKA "The Gun"
AKA "ROFeraL"

World Renowned Mexican Forklift Artiste

Partisan hardliners, you are the problem.

Partisanship breeds partisanship. grats on fucking/getting fucked by the same people you hate. You're helping to make more of them by being an excessive dickshit

Brawlsack

Taking an extended hiatus from gaming

What's the alternative? Let people die, to prove a point? What does that say about us as a society?

And even that's not even realistic. It won't play out that way because even the people not getting care won't stand for it. In reality, those people won't "die in a corner", they'll find their way into emergency rooms (at far greater public expense), or even worse, form a discontented and dangerous permanent underclass.



"Paternalism" didn't work in the world of Oliver Twist. Meanwhile, neither did lasseiz-faire across the Channel.



The free market is a form of rationing. Except in this case that doesn't apply because you're dealing with a product that's an elastic variable. More doctors can be trained, more facilities can be built. All of which costs money...which, upon being spent, immediately re-enters the economy through the spending of the workforce hired.

The only exception would be if we were at full employment.



We're talking about medical care, not Beanie Babies.



They absolutely are. What are you going to do, form your own cable/internet/phone/electric/water/air travel/car company? Do without any of those things? Again, ideology versus reality. Verizon and Comcast compete on paper but both still blow.



You're right, it doesn't. But it's accountable via the democratic system.



This is a neologism. Federalism means collaboration not competition. Competition between regions in a federal or imperial administrative structure is invariably and without exception bad and it brings empires down. There are many examples other than the Romans.



Isn't that true of the status quo?



This is another neologism. What you're describing isn't paternalism (a slightly more moderate form of totalitarianism or aristocracy). In any case, isn't that what the EU and Scandinavia and Japan use, isn't that the case there? What makes you so sure our system would evolve any worse if we dared engineer it along the same lines?



It still is. And retirement on Social Security is a pretty austere retirement.

The thing is though, the real winners from Social Security aren't the ones who get money from it, it's those who pay into it...and don't have to worry about things like food riots or (literal) class warfare or bandits or the other realities we would be dealing with if Social Security did not exist in its present form.

That's not to say it's the best solution to the basic problems of limited social mobility. Simply that those complaining they have to pay into it are far off the mark in their claims that they get absolutely nothing for their money.

Aestu of Bleeding Hollow...

Nihilism is a copout.

In that article it says 94% of the time that doesn't happen. Also, this specific thing has never been mentioned as a flaw to the proposed healthcare plan. Also, terminal illness, so I'm okay with this to an extent. Also, extreme examples actually hurt rather than help your argument.

My cousins in that same country absolutely LOVE having no worries about healthcare. All 30ish of them. Personally, I would benefit from NOT having this new healthcare overhaul, but my fellow citizen would not. If you think health insurance companies and the politicians that back them are in it for the citizens, you're mad.

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Elaborating on federalism:

Our federal system came into being back in 1776 when it was necessary to "unite or die" against the British. The British Empire was strong because it was united. It organized and distributed resources from far-flung territories and united them towards a common end. The whole was greater than the sum of its parts.

How long do you think the British Empire could have lasted if its rulers said, "Hey, let's allow the provinces to compete amongst themselves. Let's let Indian workers compete on equal terms with British workers and expect our own people to accept a third-world standard of living as such."

Viable nations never work that way. Ever. While in the best of possible worlds, a federal organization is more fair and equitable than the British Empire was, there remains the constant that regulation, common cause and centralized authority serve to uphold the common good and move the nation forward. And sure enough even in the British Empire, for all its injustices and failings, India did make dramatic progress.

Feudalism and serfdom were the terrible political institutions that gave the Dark Ages its moniker. Feudalism and serfdom arose precisely because individual regions of the Roman Empire had to take care of themselves and compete on an unregulated playing field against other regions. Without the security, authority and accountability provided by the federal structure, people gave up their rights and freedoms to local authorities in return for protection - this was how serfdom came about. And it ended only after a thousand years with the re-establishment of federal, national authority.

Again, today, how stable or prosperous do you think France would be if individual provinces had to compete against their peers on equal terms? France is an old country, America is not. France has a good quality of life and abundant natural resources precisely because the authorities in Paris ensure that local communities do not have to endanger their people or squander their resources to keep up with the province over the next hill. And however much we may all hate the French for all sorts of reasons, this is the very reason that to call something French is to praise it: because of those traditions and quality of living that is protected by those long-sighted policies.

If America continues as it is going, with local governments willing to sacrifice the welfare of their people and the natural wealth of their environments in a short-sighted game, what sort of legacy, human or natural, will we leave for future generations? How will they compete against wiser, more far-sighted people?

It's not hypothetical at all. The French had the Germans under their thumb for over a millenia for this very reason: the French were united and strong, the Germans had a weak confederation with members endlessly competing against each other.

This dynamic didn't just apply to matters of war. The Germans never established great industries or infrastructure or roads or academies because they squandered their resources in petty economic competition with the guy over the hill. Germany's best and brightest left all that behind to go write books in Poland or sell their expertise to Turks and Scythians, and later British and Americans. All that changed when Germany finally united and became an object of dread - and finally, today, has attained the status of first amongst equals (har har) in the EU.

Back here in the US, the here and now, our freedoms, our rights, the standard of living we take for granted, is ultimately upheld by the superiority of the federal government. As Americans say, "You can't fight City Hall". And, usually, you don't need to - the Feds do it for you. They do it for you even when they don't, by virtue of the "maximum outcome" they represent.

If states truly competed, as you describe, and a citizen was the victim of an injustice perpetrated by way of greed or simple desire to dominate, he would have two choices:

1. Complain to the governor
2. Pack up and go next door, to the "competing" state

Now, the governor, or the mayor, or whomever, is naturally going to be looking out for number one. So if you are weak and the abuser is strong, he will prefer to side with the abuser, as they are more important to his own power.

So, competition. That is what is supposed to remedy this situation. The problem is, "competition" is driven entirely by self-interest. If you are a carpetbagger, you probably won't have much to offer, and in all likelihood won't even be welcome in the next state. It is, after all, only because of federal authority that citizens of states enjoy legal rights (including the right to drive) in neighboring states. This is one of the central themes of California's state book, The Grapes of Wrath - the hostility of local authorities to people from other states looking for a fair shake. Or Rambo: First Blood, if you prefer.

But with federal power, if the Keystone Kops mistreat you, you can complain to your senator, to the FBI. They aren't accountable to state governments and have no stake in the situation. Their prestige, their authority, is upheld by their relevance, and their mandate comes from the federal elections that all Americans take part in. And behind that is the whole balance of powers and such.

Past legal remedy, it is federal regulation that makes it possible, for example, to have a workforce that lives in Alaska or Florida making things like oil rigs and space shuttles. If this were not so, the entire central US would be instantly depopulated, or suffer double-digit sales taxes. Now you might say, "The market will fix it". Well, in theory. In practice? Hardly. Why? Because the whole "forty acres and a mule" bit works on a blank slate, or in the Iron Age; not so much when you have to bring your crops to the same market as established agribusiness who can produce much more efficiently than any one farmer. This was true in the days of the Roman latifunda, too.

Self-sufficiency doesn't stack up well against the realities of an established nation. Self-sufficiency, at the individual or state level, is at odds with efficiency and long-term growth.

Aestu of Bleeding Hollow...

Nihilism is a copout.

I think that it's instructive that we can stop reading at the first sentence just because it's so incredibly in error. The Constitution wasn't adopted until 1787...over a decade after the founding of the nation. Before the Constitution was adopted, the country was organized under the Articles of Confederation. Under the Articles of Confederation, the states all maintained individual sovereignty and were only loosely grouped in cooperative efforts. Federalism, as adopted in the Constitution, created and defined the limits of a stronger central authority, and outlined how power would be shared between the central government and individual states.

Your Pal,
Jubber

AKA "The Gun"
AKA "ROFeraL"

World Renowned Mexican Forklift Artiste

Which proves my point.

Then there are those that think you can actually have rights without federal authority to back them up.

Aestu of Bleeding Hollow...

Nihilism is a copout.

I'm not arguing the federal state has no purpose, or that it is a bad thing.

I'm saying this ('obamacare') shouldn't be done by the federal government.

1. What exactly do you define as "Obamacare"?
2. Why not?



Federal judges say a lot of things. You can find a random quote from some federal judge in favor of almost any opinion no matter how outrageous or wrong. That one quote, dredged out of obscurity and grossly magnified by ideologues, is a long way from a cogent principle of government.

1932 was a long time ago and since then our political system has changed greatly and chickens have come home to roost. Amongst those "chickens" is the sprawling complexity and increasing irrelevance of the American political system.

We have a mess of state and local governments all going off and doing their own thing, rather than working together to plan for the long-term future. They build shopping malls and casinos for quick taxes and cut budgets because they need to "compete" with their neighbors rather than build expensive infrastructure at public expense.

Like a lot of ideological nonsense, the three-paragraph article (written in the here and now by someone who actually believes in this stuff), speaks in vague generalizations that betray willful ignorance. The article is devoid of specifics. What policies, where, when, have actually been developed in this way in the here and now? And why doesn't the article cite them?

The whole appeal of the article is to people who think all things are so simple that they can be explained in three paragraphs with no real-world specifics. That is proof it was written by partisans and not people who actually know what they are talking about.

It's also worth pointing out that the article you cited contains two hypocrises:
1. The concept of "laboratories of democracy" is predicated upon a proactive federal government that will be the ultimate application of the "laboratory findings".
2. The concept is described in defense of an anti-libertarian viewpoint: the judge is defending the right of the state to arbitrarily regulate a business that doesn't want to be regulated.

Also see: NIMBYism

What this whole debate boils down to is free speech vs free beer. Conflating the concept of political freedom with the belief that avoiding unpleasant responsibilities such as choosing priorities and making sacrifices will also magically allow 2+2=5 and let people reap all the material rewards of civilization without any of the responsibilities that have brought it about.

Aestu of Bleeding Hollow...

Nihilism is a copout.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patient_Protection_and_Affordable_Care_Act

The quotes are there because I don't particularly like the term 'obamacare', because I usually hear it in a pejorative context. Though, come to think of it, I don't know how the quotes would help in that regard in any way.

But saying the full name is too long, and would probably require some people to have to stop a moment and think about what it is that's being talked about.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution

Ok, what do you oppose about that law?

The government has the authority to regulate interstate commerce. Transnational corporations that manage healthcare are definitely interstate.

An ultraconservative view of the Tenth Amendement to literally mean the government can't do anything other than run a postal service and an army is totally unrealistic and would mean our country would revert to the level of functioning of a third-world country.

Let me ask you: what makes you think we'd do any better than any other country with such a marginal role for government? Are there any countries in the here and now who actually make that kind of a system work?

Aestu of Bleeding Hollow...

Nihilism is a copout.

Why do you think government could do it so much better? They can't even balance(or sometimes even write) the budget. It takes them forever to do anything. Do you want them in charge of individual life and death too?

I don't know if it would be better or worse because I'm the only one here who doesnt seem to have all the answers, but will it be SO MUCH BETTER that it will be worth all this trouble? I doubt it but that's mainly because I have always had a dim view of congress.