At 07:00 PM Sunday 9/6/2009, Bruce Bostwick wrote:
On Sep 6, 2009, at 5:47 PM, Ronn! Blankenship wrote:
At 05:12 PM Sunday 9/6/2009, John Williams wrote:
On Sun, Sep 6, 2009 at 2:50 PM, David Hobby<[email protected]>
wrote:
> This is why I've quit talking with you about
> health insurance. When pressed, your bottom
> line seems to be "taxation equals theft".
What I have written is that taxation (taking someone's money)
limits a
person's freedom. That is obviously true. However, I have never
written that I think there should be no taxes. In fact, I think that
there are indeed some cases where the ends justify the means --
that I
condone taking away individual freedoms for the greater good. But I
think these cases are far fewer than others seem to think.
> Yes, I AM prepared to make you pay your share
> to keep people from dying
Really? Would you literally come to my house with a gun and force me
to give you money, telling me that you know better who it should be
spent on than I do?
I know a lot more deserving people to give my money to than wealthy
elderly Americans who did not want to save up for their own health
care.
How about the people who are working but can't afford to take
themselves or their kids to a doctor when they get the sniffles or a
sore throat or an ear infection unless they have some sort of
insurance that will pay most of the cost of the office visit and
any prescriptions?
. . . ronn! :)
Or, for an even darker scenario, how about the people who can't quit
or, God forbid, be fired from their job because if they do they'll
lose the only insurance that will cover them -- because any other
insurance will refuse to accept them because the condition the
existing plan is paying for would be a "pre-existing" condition? Or
how about the people who *are* fired from their job because the
treatment they need will trigger a million-dollar-plus deductible that
their employer doesn't want to pay, and then have to find somewhere
else to work that has a health plan willing to consider accepting
them? And remember, for people who work full time for a living,
keeping a job when a critical care situation comes up can be extremely
difficult, because employers tend to take a dim view of their
employees taking weeks or months off to be treated or recover in the
hospital.
And while you are out of work, you put things off and run up bills
that must be paid off the next time you get some work, which of
course takes care of any idea of saving up for the next period of
unemployment which may come at any time without warning as you get
sicker and sicker again and the whole and partial day absences add up . . .
And not all health plans include long-term disability --
good luck with that Social Security disability application.
It took over two years the first time, and frequently I remarked
only-partially-jokingly that the amount of paperwork they sent you to
"fill out completely, and return within ten days" and other
requirements like visiting various SSA offices and doctors and
whatever seemed designed to prove you were able to work a regular job
if you were able to meet such requirements, and took nearly two years
to get the checks started up again after a problem occurred. Both
times I would have starved and had utilities shut off without the
direct charity of family, friends, and the Church.
And I feel very lucky, and, yes, even blessed to have done as well as
I have . . .
(And FWIW Medicare does almost nothing for me except take about $100
out of every month's check. In particular it does not pay a thing
for the medicine I take to attempt to alleviate some of the symptoms
in order to function somewhat, which is another $100 or now closer to
$150 a month as the stores keep taking advantage of every excuse to
jack up the prices, esp. the obviously-ineffective laws imposed in
recent years by the Feds and made even more restrictive by some
states for the stated purpose of preventing people from getting the
ingredients to make meth . . . )
And John .. "wealthy elderly Americans who did not want to save up for
their own health care"? Really? Wouldn't "wealthy" indicate some
ability to pay for critical care treatment, or at the very least, one
of those gold-plated full-indemnity plans where treatments aren't
denied by an actuarial accountant hundreds of miles away with no
medical training just because the doctor wasn't playing the game the
way they liked? Or has the definition of "wealthy" changed
substantially the last time I checked?
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. . . ronn! :)
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