Time for European style socialized medine

[Puddleglum]

Yup

UK has The Royal Navy, The Royal Marines, The Royal Airforce, Royal Artillery, Royal tank regiment etc Everyone else has their name in them

The US marine corps, the Royal Australian Air force etc.

Just one word: Luftwaffe.

And there's others: List of militaries by country.

If you make a claim such as "everyone else", you really should check first.

No, you are right. I stand corrected. I would have given you kudos as well if you hadn't added the patronizing comment afterwards.

[Tiberius]

You're absolutely right. How could I possibly claim that there are people who don't realise that they pay tax and that some of that tax goes to the NHS. That would be an incredible claim to make.

Way to miss my point...again! The people who I'm talking about do not pay tax. They are all earning less than the minimum taxable amount (so the unemployed, students, poor, etc.). For them, the NHS is completely free. They rarely stop to think about the effect it has on everyone else.

How come only one of us is allowed to argue by anecdote?

I gave you evidence in the form of the students who protested against education fee rises. A large percentage of them held signs from the socialist workers party, which demanded free education. Stands to reason they also think that the NHS should be free.

Great. OK. What if everyone decided to do the same thing? No NHS ambulances, no NHS, as nobody is paying for it from their tax. Or is this the whole, "I'm alright jack" argument, because I'd hoped that that had mostly died with Thatcherism.

There would be NHS ambulances, since they are still getting paid by the people who use them. I said before that all charges relating to your healthcare are simply sent to the insurance company, rather than to the government. So, if nobody pays for the NHS through tax, the NHS would run off the money it gets from private insurers.

A social healthcare system only works if it is social. I'm sure that you believe that your health is more important than everyone else's... but guess what? They think the same about their health. The deciding factor in triage shouldn't be wealthy-first, then the poor. Because, then we really would all be fucked.

I'm starting to think you really aren't reading my posts. I told you...twice...what happens to the poor in my scenario. They are either supported by the government (as they currently are), or by charity, or both.

Ok, I could see that happening, but it would also have to include strong anti-trust laws to prevent one company from buying out all the rest or to prevent all the companies from joining together to fuck everyone over.

The point of a free market is that if this happens, anyone can set up a competing company to challenge the might of the larger one. A free-market is entirely consumer driven, so as long as you have people such as yourself who don't like large corporations trying to gain a monopoly, you will have other companies form who will refuse to merge with those larger companies.

I can see the benefit of anti-trust laws when it comes to a finite resource, but healthcare insurance is not a finite resource, since all the services are abstract. You pay money for the insurance, which isn't a physical thing, and then when you need to use it, your insurance company pays for your hospital bills.

I don't agree with that. If my neighbor's house is on fire, I don't care whether he's insured or not; I want the fire department to put it out before it threatens my house.

This is how it works:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39516346/ns/...home-burn/

"Firefighters did eventually show up, but only to fight the fire on the neighboring property, whose owner had paid the fee."

Like I said before, it's all about the risk you run. That's the point of a risk...it can go one way or the other. Sometimes a person who doesn't buy fire insurance will never have an incident. Other times, their house will catch fire 3 times in one year. I'll mention at this point that I don't agree with the fire insurance setup in the article I quoted. I think that if you don't pay the yearly fee, and your house catches on fire, you should simply be slapped with a very large bill for the service, at least large enough to convince (the majority) people that the $75 a year is worth it.

That's not true. National Insurance is just another tax. It just goes straight into the treasury and has nothing to do with the NHS. I spent 15 years working in the UK,half of that as an employer so I know all about NI thanks

Clearly you don't.

National Insurance contributions are paid into the various classes of National Insurance after deduction of monies specifically allocated to the National Health Service (NHS).

Bolding mine.

[Red Celt]

Way to miss my point...again! The people who I'm talking about do not pay tax. They are all earning less than the minimum taxable amount (so the unemployed, students, poor, etc.). For them, the NHS is completely free. They rarely stop to think about the effect it has on everyone else.

<sigh>

Now go back to post #9 and read what you actually wrote, then recognise what I was replying to... and not what you just added, as a means of protecting your ego.

You claimed that people think of the NHS as free. There was no mention of the people who didn't pay NI. You were talking about people who seemed oblivious to the fact that the NHS isn't free. I corrected you, by adding that "free" is just a contraction of "free at the point of delivery" and nothing else... ever since which, you've been spiralling away... ducking and diving, rather than admitting the you were wrong in the first place.

So be it. If your ego is more important than the truth... you win.

Ultimately, I will never find agreement with libertarians. I'm at the opposite end of the spectrum. I'd happily pay far more taxes, if the end result was a better society.

[Darth]

Ultimately, I will never find agreement with libertarians. I'm at the opposite end of the spectrum. I'd happily pay far more taxes, if the end result was a better society.

If, that's a mighty big 'if'.



You know you can donate to the IRS yeah?
Shockingly, few do.

[TaraJo]

The point of a free market is that if this happens, anyone can set up a competing company to challenge the might of the larger one. A free-market is entirely consumer driven, so as long as you have people such as yourself who don't like large corporations trying to gain a monopoly, you will have other companies form who will refuse to merge with those larger companies.

I can see the benefit of anti-trust laws when it comes to a finite resource, but healthcare insurance is not a finite resource, since all the services are abstract. You pay money for the insurance, which isn't a physical thing, and then when you need to use it, your insurance company pays for your hospital bills.

Free market is good. Heck, it's great, but the government still needs to protect that free market from corruption. What if one company gets really popular or buys out their competition or all the companies join together and they decide to offer a special payment plan to the hospital as long as that hospital doesn't accept any other insurance company. And then they go around and make that same deal with every hospital in the area? Sure, someone could go out and form a new health insurance company, but nobody is going to do any business with them if the hospitals won't/can't accept their insurance.

And that's just an example or potential for corruption that I thought of off the top of my head. I'm sure I could think of more if I had more time. I don't really think the corporations are malicious as much as I think there's a kind of corporate survival of the fittest at play and if the environment allows underhanded deals, the companies that survive are going to be the ones who use underhanded deals like that. My political philosophy says that the basic job of the government is to protect the people and in this case, part of that protection is to protect us from abuses from big corporations.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39516346/ns/...home-burn/

"Firefighters did eventually show up, but only to fight the fire on the neighboring property, whose owner had paid the fee."

Like I said before, it's all about the risk you run. That's the point of a risk...it can go one way or the other. Sometimes a person who doesn't buy fire insurance will never have an incident. Other times, their house will catch fire 3 times in one year. I'll mention at this point that I don't agree with the fire insurance setup in the article I quoted. I think that if you don't pay the yearly fee, and your house catches on fire, you should simply be slapped with a very large bill for the service, at least large enough to convince (the majority) people that the $75 a year is worth it.

I can agree with that last part more. I don't like the 'let their house burn' idea, simply because if my house is next door and I've paid my firefighter fee, my house is at risk if their house burns. The larger the fire gets over there, the harder it's going to be to prevent it from damaging my house. However, in said case, we also have to look at some of what's happening with health insurance companies. Pre existing conditions, conditions that aren't covered under certain policies, companies who change their mind about paying after the treatment has been done..... I worry about what kind of tricks could be pulled off if we needed fire insurance as well. Can you imagine a fire fighter coming to your house, but refusing to put out the fire because your car is on fire and the house is covered but not the car? Or if a tree outside catches fire, they don't mess with it because you only have the house itself covered, not the tree outside? Or changing their mind about coverage after the fire's been fought already?

[Polaris]

We need preventative treatment to be covered as well. I think we should have certain treatments (massages and chiropractors...only one massage covered a month) covered with a co-pay of 20 dollars like I do for a do doctor visit. Think of how much could be saved by taking care of our bodies before they wear out, but I don't think this would happen in America as the pharmaceutical lobbyists would fight this tooth and nail.

[TaraJo]

We need preventative treatment to be covered as well. I think we should have certain treatments (massages and chiropractors...only one massage covered a month) covered with a co-pay of 20 dollars like I do for a do doctor visit. Think of how much could be saved by taking care of our bodies before they wear out, but I don't think this would happen in America as the pharmaceutical lobbyists would fight this tooth and nail.

I agree completely and I think the insurance companies are idiots for fighting this one. There are concerns about health insurance companies covering birth control, right? Well, which do you think is going to cost the health insurance company more: to cover the woman's birth control pills or to cover 9 months of pregnancy with regular doctors office visits and several prenatal prescriptions followed by childbirth and the associated hospital stay?

[Darth]

Massage? Chiro? Awful lot of woo in chiropractic. Seriously?

If it really is in their best interests (and it might not be for 'Christian Morals Insurance Inc'* or 'No Thrills Catastrophic Insurance Only LLC') then they would either already be doing it, or wasting money. With all the coverage** that this issue has had recently, do you think that if they thought it would save them money, they wouldn't be handing everyone contraceptives when they signed up for one of their policies?

*act's of god not covered

**get it? Insurance, coverage? Ba dum chshhhh!

[Minimalist]

n an ideal world, the free market would handle this

But alas, the world is not ideal and the "free market" is an illusion that in reality is a corrupt system manipulated by a relative handful of rich bastards.

Which is why we have a system which continues to allow rich executives to suck billions out of our health care system while providing no value in return.

[Puddleglum]

Chiro is serious woo and defintely shouod not be covered by taxpayers nor homeopathy or any other such bunkum