3 ms·

If you are lucky to be rich, nothing is stopping you getting better health care and trying to add 1 or 2 years of life at extraordinary cost. It just won't be

by lubos 14y ago

If you are lucky to be rich, nothing is stopping you getting better health care and trying to add 1 or 2 years of life at extraordinary cost. It just won't be covered by your insurance. To me, universal healthcare is a tradeoff. Everybody will get at least some care and nobody will go bankrupt because of medical bills. Rich people will be still able to get whatever care money can buy. I don't understand how this is a question of freedom. Nobody is giving up freedom.

crusso 14y ago
> If you are lucky to be rich What if you work hard to be rich, and then you choose to use your money to pay for expensive treatments for you or your children? What if spending a bunch more money buys you a great deal more than a couple of years? What if the discoveries made at your great expense helps others who aren't so rich? > Nobody is giving up freedom. That's the justification of every little bit of thrown-away freedom we've made over the last hundred years in America. Ah, the smell of boiling frogs! By being forced to put taxes into a least-common denominator system out of your control, you can't help but to give up freedom.
- jtheory 14y ago
  > then you choose to use your money to pay for expensive treatments for you or your children? That's fine in any country with universal healthcare. > What if spending a bunch more money buys you a great deal more than a couple of years? It's possible, of course, but generally you'll have the best health outcomes with decent (cheap!) preventative health measures. The current insurance-based care system in the US doesn't gain anything from preventative care. Universal healthcare systems have a strong incentive to take this cheap route to a healthy population, fortunately. > What if the discoveries made at your great expense helps others who aren't so rich? Um; you can be proud of that, then? Of course, you can be a rich person who pays for treatments to be developed which you can then deny to poor people; that's called "the pharma industry". > Ah, the smell of boiling frogs! That's a myth; look it up. The frogs jump out when it gets uncomfortable. The same thing applies to most slippery slope arguments -- you have to prove each step would force the next. Most systems actually have forces pushing as well in the opposite direction. Personally, I see how getting reasonable universal healthcare working in the US will be a difficult course, but I'm also convinced we have to fight our way through the problems (mainly: the corporations currently earning enormous profits from the current system...) and get it working. I grew up in the US, sometimes without medical insurance; I've also spent much of my life with a sometimes-expensive "preexisting condition". Obviously, it's not "fair" if I'm bankrupted simply because I had the bad luck to have this condition -- hey, not everything in life is fair -- but I'm pretty sure that on balance, I'd be a more profitable economic unit/taxpayer to the US if I simply didn't have to worry about that. How many people don't launch startups because they can't risk it?
  - crusso 14y ago
    >> Ah, the smell of boiling frogs! >That's a myth; look it up. Uh, yeah, I know that it's not biologically true. It's a metaphor. It doesn't matter that it's not biologically true just like it wouldn't matter if I used the allegory of the Frog and the Scorpion or the Ant and the Grasshopper. > How many people don't launch startups because they can't risk it? How many people don't launch startups because they don't have the disposable income needed to take risks? You could compare US startup rates per capita with other countries featuring Universal Healthcare systems. Wanna guess what that graph would look like?
    - jtheory 14y ago
      > Uh, yeah, I know that it's not biologically true. You're skipping over my actual point; "slippery slope" is a logical fallacy by itself. >How many people don't launch startups because they don't have the disposable income needed to take risks? That's my point. You need to have much more disposable income if you're going to pay for medical insurance while you're hacking away in a garage. If you're keen on cutting down your life expenses, you can get then down really very low, even for a family... but expensive medical insurance doesn't play along. > Wanna guess what that graph would look like? Hard to say -- how would you make it apples to apples? Obviously "has universal healthcare" isn't the most significant variable in a straight comparison.
      - crusso 14y ago
        > "slippery slope" is a logical fallacy by itself. Not necessarily. I wasn't making a fallacious slippery slope argument of the form A leads to B leads to C : B, therefore C. I was simply pointing out that we are CURRENTLY in a state of greatly reduced Liberty and we got here slowly, step by step. I wasn't positing an inevitable terminal stage which would indicate a slippery slope argument. The stage we're in regarding Liberty sucks plenty enough as it is. > Hard to say -- how would you make it apples to apples? Obviously "has universal healthcare" isn't the most significant variable in a straight comparison. Right you are. Since I'm not looking for a PhD in the area, I'll go with my impression that the US has a great deal more entrepreneurial opportunities than any other country on earth, especially when you put it against reasonably comparable countries with universal healthcare. Add to that impression my experience in starting up companies here in the US (in the Bay Area) where I had plenty of disposable income because I wasn't paying high taxes to go to large socialist programs for healthcare, housing, food, etc.

by lubos 14y ago

crusso 14y ago

> If you are lucky to be rich What if you work hard to be rich, and then you choose to use your money to pay for expensive treatments for you or your children? What if spending a bunch more money buys you a great deal more than a couple of years? What if the discoveries made at your great expense helps others who aren't so rich? > Nobody is giving up freedom. That's the justification of every little bit of thrown-away freedom we've made over the last hundred years in America. Ah, the smell of boiling frogs! By being forced to put taxes into a least-common denominator system out of your control, you can't help but to give up freedom.

jtheory 14y ago
> then you choose to use your money to pay for expensive treatments for you or your children? That's fine in any country with universal healthcare. > What if spending a bunch more money buys you a great deal more than a couple of years? It's possible, of course, but generally you'll have the best health outcomes with decent (cheap!) preventative health measures. The current insurance-based care system in the US doesn't gain anything from preventative care. Universal healthcare systems have a strong incentive to take this cheap route to a healthy population, fortunately. > What if the discoveries made at your great expense helps others who aren't so rich? Um; you can be proud of that, then? Of course, you can be a rich person who pays for treatments to be developed which you can then deny to poor people; that's called "the pharma industry". > Ah, the smell of boiling frogs! That's a myth; look it up. The frogs jump out when it gets uncomfortable. The same thing applies to most slippery slope arguments -- you have to prove each step would force the next. Most systems actually have forces pushing as well in the opposite direction. Personally, I see how getting reasonable universal healthcare working in the US will be a difficult course, but I'm also convinced we have to fight our way through the problems (mainly: the corporations currently earning enormous profits from the current system...) and get it working. I grew up in the US, sometimes without medical insurance; I've also spent much of my life with a sometimes-expensive "preexisting condition". Obviously, it's not "fair" if I'm bankrupted simply because I had the bad luck to have this condition -- hey, not everything in life is fair -- but I'm pretty sure that on balance, I'd be a more profitable economic unit/taxpayer to the US if I simply didn't have to worry about that. How many people don't launch startups because they can't risk it?
- crusso 14y ago
  >> Ah, the smell of boiling frogs! >That's a myth; look it up. Uh, yeah, I know that it's not biologically true. It's a metaphor. It doesn't matter that it's not biologically true just like it wouldn't matter if I used the allegory of the Frog and the Scorpion or the Ant and the Grasshopper. > How many people don't launch startups because they can't risk it? How many people don't launch startups because they don't have the disposable income needed to take risks? You could compare US startup rates per capita with other countries featuring Universal Healthcare systems. Wanna guess what that graph would look like?
  - jtheory 14y ago
    > Uh, yeah, I know that it's not biologically true. You're skipping over my actual point; "slippery slope" is a logical fallacy by itself. >How many people don't launch startups because they don't have the disposable income needed to take risks? That's my point. You need to have much more disposable income if you're going to pay for medical insurance while you're hacking away in a garage. If you're keen on cutting down your life expenses, you can get then down really very low, even for a family... but expensive medical insurance doesn't play along. > Wanna guess what that graph would look like? Hard to say -- how would you make it apples to apples? Obviously "has universal healthcare" isn't the most significant variable in a straight comparison.
    - crusso 14y ago
      > "slippery slope" is a logical fallacy by itself. Not necessarily. I wasn't making a fallacious slippery slope argument of the form A leads to B leads to C : B, therefore C. I was simply pointing out that we are CURRENTLY in a state of greatly reduced Liberty and we got here slowly, step by step. I wasn't positing an inevitable terminal stage which would indicate a slippery slope argument. The stage we're in regarding Liberty sucks plenty enough as it is. > Hard to say -- how would you make it apples to apples? Obviously "has universal healthcare" isn't the most significant variable in a straight comparison. Right you are. Since I'm not looking for a PhD in the area, I'll go with my impression that the US has a great deal more entrepreneurial opportunities than any other country on earth, especially when you put it against reasonably comparable countries with universal healthcare. Add to that impression my experience in starting up companies here in the US (in the Bay Area) where I had plenty of disposable income because I wasn't paying high taxes to go to large socialist programs for healthcare, housing, food, etc.