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I generally support universal healthcare in America despite the massive downsides of having the government administer it. But I think the debate about values a

by mlthoughts2018 7y ago

I generally support universal healthcare in America despite the massive downsides of having the government administer it. But I think the debate about values and principles is way more complicated than you are acknowledging. A lot of it boils down to terminal subjective value systems. Do you value “freedom from” financial ruin more highly than “freedom to” spend your money however you see fit (e.g. low taxes)? There’s no easy high level argument for why someone should normatively prefer “freedom from” over “freedom to” ways of thinking. You won’t get anywhere just decrying the “freedom to” crowd and dismissing their sincerely held values and beliefs.

suby 7y ago
I dislike discussing this in terms of freedom, because I feel that it misses the severity of the situation. After all, how free one is when they're dead due to lack of healthcare? The CDC estimates that 45,000 Americans die each year due to lack of healthcare [0](from 2012). People are not going to the doctor when they have something treatable and preventable, because they're not covered. They'll go to the ER when whatever they have progresses far enough, and the associated monetary costs and risks to that persons life will be of course be higher because they let the problem persist. I also take issue with the idea that this would cost more than the current system does. We spend almost twice as much per capita than other industrialized nations with universal healthcare do.[1] There are cost savings involved when you get rid of the middlemen and redundancy that comes along with our current for profit system. The number I keep seeing in the media is that, for example, Sanders healthcare plan would cost 32 trillion dollars over a ten year period. Yet we're currently paying 34 trillion dollars.[2] [0]https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2009/09/new-study-finds-45000-deaths-annually-linked-to-lack-of-health-coverage/ https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2009/09/new-study-fin... [1]https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/03/13/the-real-reason-the-u-s-spends-twice-as-much-on-health-care-as-other-wealthy-countries/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/03/13/the-r... [2]https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/32-trillion-price-tag-sanders-medicare-program-koch/story?id=56938226 https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/32-trillion-price-tag-sander...
- mlthoughts2018 7y ago
  But nothing you say is connected to whether someone should value this higher than freedoms that would be reduced. You’re making tacit normative assumptions and then refusing to engage with people who sincerely know the same facts you know and don’t attach the same meaning to them.
  - suby 7y ago
    What? I'm not sure I understand what you're saying exactly, so please correct me if I'm making misinterpreting you here. There are going to be people who are worse off with universal health care due to higher taxes, there is no doubt about that. The question is how much worse off will they be versus how much benefit will the average person gain as a result? How many losers will we have and how many winners, and by how much will the losers be hurt / the winners gain? Like I've already mentioned, the costs that I've seen in the media are 32 trillion for universal healthcare, versus the 34 trillion we're paying now. So already the universal health care system is saving money and thus increasing "freedoms." There will of course be people who have a higher burden than they used to, though. The idea is that this burden would be put on the wealthiest among us, who have, by the way, seen their share of wealth grow over the past 30 years while the wealth of the bottom 90 percent has fallen. Today, the top 1 percent of households own more wealth than the bottom 90 percent combined.[0] Given such facts, I for one am comfortable with the idea that we sacrifice some of the "freedom" of these individuals in order to increase the "freedoms" of everyone else. By the way, even under such a tax system, the freest among us will still remain the most free. This is all ignoring the fact that the current status quo is needlessly killing tens of thousands of people per year, which you neglected to address in favor of talking about some abstract decrease in freedom for people due to a decrease in income for people who are already extremely well off / the most free. Am I massively misunderstanding you here? [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/12/06/the-richest-1-percent-now-owns-more-of-the-countrys-wealth-than-at-any-time-in-the-past-50-years/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/12/06/the-r...
    - mlthoughts2018 7y ago

suby 7y ago

I dislike discussing this in terms of freedom, because I feel that it misses the severity of the situation. After all, how free one is when they're dead due to lack of healthcare? The CDC estimates that 45,000 Americans die each year due to lack of healthcare [0](from 2012). People are not going to the doctor when they have something treatable and preventable, because they're not covered. They'll go to the ER when whatever they have progresses far enough, and the associated monetary costs and risks to that persons life will be of course be higher because they let the problem persist. I also take issue with the idea that this would cost more than the current system does. We spend almost twice as much per capita than other industrialized nations with universal healthcare do.[1] There are cost savings involved when you get rid of the middlemen and redundancy that comes along with our current for profit system. The number I keep seeing in the media is that, for example, Sanders healthcare plan would cost 32 trillion dollars over a ten year period. Yet we're currently paying 34 trillion dollars.[2] [0]https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2009/09/new-study-finds-45000-deaths-annually-linked-to-lack-of-health-coverage/ https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2009/09/new-study-fin... [1]https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/03/13/the-real-reason-the-u-s-spends-twice-as-much-on-health-care-as-other-wealthy-countries/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/03/13/the-r... [2]https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/32-trillion-price-tag-sanders-medicare-program-koch/story?id=56938226 https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/32-trillion-price-tag-sander...

mlthoughts2018 7y ago
But nothing you say is connected to whether someone should value this higher than freedoms that would be reduced. You’re making tacit normative assumptions and then refusing to engage with people who sincerely know the same facts you know and don’t attach the same meaning to them.
- suby 7y ago
  What? I'm not sure I understand what you're saying exactly, so please correct me if I'm making misinterpreting you here. There are going to be people who are worse off with universal health care due to higher taxes, there is no doubt about that. The question is how much worse off will they be versus how much benefit will the average person gain as a result? How many losers will we have and how many winners, and by how much will the losers be hurt / the winners gain? Like I've already mentioned, the costs that I've seen in the media are 32 trillion for universal healthcare, versus the 34 trillion we're paying now. So already the universal health care system is saving money and thus increasing "freedoms." There will of course be people who have a higher burden than they used to, though. The idea is that this burden would be put on the wealthiest among us, who have, by the way, seen their share of wealth grow over the past 30 years while the wealth of the bottom 90 percent has fallen. Today, the top 1 percent of households own more wealth than the bottom 90 percent combined.[0] Given such facts, I for one am comfortable with the idea that we sacrifice some of the "freedom" of these individuals in order to increase the "freedoms" of everyone else. By the way, even under such a tax system, the freest among us will still remain the most free. This is all ignoring the fact that the current status quo is needlessly killing tens of thousands of people per year, which you neglected to address in favor of talking about some abstract decrease in freedom for people due to a decrease in income for people who are already extremely well off / the most free. Am I massively misunderstanding you here? [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/12/06/the-richest-1-percent-now-owns-more-of-the-countrys-wealth-than-at-any-time-in-the-past-50-years/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/12/06/the-r...
  - mlthoughts2018 7y ago