My Fellow Conservatives
Aug. 19th, 2009 04:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sevendeadlyfunSTOP. No, really. Stop. Stop 'shopping photos, stop obsessing over Mrs. O's legs, arms, and adorable children, stop telling outright (and ludicrous) lies about important issues, stop bringing guns to town hall meetings. Oh, and stop paying for Astroturf protesters. If we can't get real people genuinely concerned then we're either doing it wrong or we are just plain wrong. In either case, STOP.
Point of fact, medical care is rationed. It's rationed in the United States, it's rationed in Britain (I love the NHS too, Brits. Put away your tweets! I just love it for your country and not mine), it's rationed everywhere. Everything is rationed. It's a basic principle of economics. There is a limited supply and an unlimited demand. Ergo, we institute rationing devices. If we're slightly deranged, the rationing device is brute force. Might makes right and thus, might gets to have all the potato chips to himself. In America, our rationing device is money. If you have enough money, you can have more of our limited healthcare resources than someone with little or no money.
So that whole OMG RATIONED CARE thing? Nonsense. Care already is rationed. At this point, a public plan simply changes the rationing device. Now, is it conceivable that by changing to a public plan, your healthcare choices will be limited by what the public plan will pay for versus what your doctor may recommend? Sure. But it's the same way now. Insurance companies deny claims regularly. People pay out of pocket for drugs their doctor has prescribed that aren't in their plan's formulary. Rationing OMG.
But if the issue isn't rationing, what is it? Rising taxes? Well, maybe. President Obama has said that no one making under $250, 000 will experience a tax hike. But even though I think he's a man of his word (he's so far kept his promise not to decimate the tax exemptions for private health benefits), I think he'll end up between a political defeat and a CBO report, with nowhere else to turn but tax hikes.
Let's face it: public programs cost money. Britain's National Insurance contribution rate is roughtly 11% of a worker's income. Americans already pay roughly 6% tax rate for Social Security and Medicare, both of which provide health care services similar (BUT NOT THE SAME, BRITS. PLEASE, DON'T PELT ME WITH ROLLS ON WHICH YOU HAVE INSCRIBED YOUR LOVE FOR THE NHS IN HAIKU) to the ones the NHS provides.
All right, so care won't be rationed any more than it already is and we already pay through the wazoo for services most of us don't currently use but hope to use in the future. What about [death panels/abortion/sex changes/other issue on which i have strong feelings but which you, Seven, personally refuse to get worked up about]?
What about them? Either we're talking end of life counseling, which mostly involves your doctor listening to you and helping you decide your wishes on things like pain relief and palliative care (fluids, invasive procedures, &tc...) or we're talking denial of care based on likelihood of survival. In the first instance, you should want those things to happen. You should want to (if you're able) to let everyone know, loudly and with much cane whacking, how you're going go out. And in the second, we already do that. Doctors make decisions every day about when to discontinue treatment based on likelihood of survival. It's called triage. Limited resources, remember? If the patient is beyond saving, the doctor lets the family know it's time to say good-bye.
NO ONE IS GOING TO SHOW UP AT YOUR HOUSE AND SHOOT YOU. If you are perfectly healthy, no one will be bothered by you no matter how old you are. Except perhaps your children and they've been bothered by you year before you got old and crotchety.
As for abortion, it's a legal medical procedure. You don't have to like it, but you probably already subsidize it. Most private insurance plans cover abortion in at least some scenarios. Same goes for sex changes. And honestly, someone else's medical care is really none of your business. It amazes me that so many conservatives are all "harumph derpy doo medical care is private and the government should stay out". That sentiment actually goes both ways, folks. Medical care is private and you should stay out.
Since medical care is already rationed, we already pay far too high a tax bill to cover services most of us don't use but would like to at some point, and many of the so-called objectionable subsidies are already unobjectionably subsidized, what's the problem? Where's the beef?
Mostly, it's pandering. Now I'm sure that by now, you probably think I'm for a public plan. After all, I'm putting up a great defense of it. But, I'm not actually for a public plan. The ones on offer cost far too much and do far too little. Instead of saving money, they seem to require a whole new public emesis basin to catch all the money they're vomiting up.
What I'm after is a real debate. I'm tired of so-called conservatives standing up in front of cameras and doing their best Monty Python parody of a debate. Yes, Brits, that is unfair. If John Cleese were in charge, the bloviating would be funny rather than disturbing.
I think a lot of the ideas put forth by the Dems are wasteful. I think they're aimed at a fantastical notion of parity in American society that doesn't exist, and in free market society, can't exist. I think that by putting forth such spectacularly worthless plans and such wimpy ways to pay for them, Speaker Pelosi and her party are attempting a wholesale cultural change via legislation and I think it's failing.
And you know what? I think if the Republicans win, it won't be because we put forth smarter, better plans or even because we shot down the terrible idea and ideals propping up the Democrats' plans. Any victory drawn from these tactics is Pyrrhic, at best because we'll still have a huge deficit, healthcare spending will still be spiraling out of control, and people will still be in need of ways to access affordable medical treatment.
You want to win the idea wars? Come up with some ideas. Real ideas, smart ideas, for solving any or all of these problems. And do it without being dicks. Rough, I know, but do-able.
Thanks from:
a fellow conservative tired of having to preface political discussions with the phrase "not one of the crazies"
Point of fact, medical care is rationed. It's rationed in the United States, it's rationed in Britain (I love the NHS too, Brits. Put away your tweets! I just love it for your country and not mine), it's rationed everywhere. Everything is rationed. It's a basic principle of economics. There is a limited supply and an unlimited demand. Ergo, we institute rationing devices. If we're slightly deranged, the rationing device is brute force. Might makes right and thus, might gets to have all the potato chips to himself. In America, our rationing device is money. If you have enough money, you can have more of our limited healthcare resources than someone with little or no money.
So that whole OMG RATIONED CARE thing? Nonsense. Care already is rationed. At this point, a public plan simply changes the rationing device. Now, is it conceivable that by changing to a public plan, your healthcare choices will be limited by what the public plan will pay for versus what your doctor may recommend? Sure. But it's the same way now. Insurance companies deny claims regularly. People pay out of pocket for drugs their doctor has prescribed that aren't in their plan's formulary. Rationing OMG.
But if the issue isn't rationing, what is it? Rising taxes? Well, maybe. President Obama has said that no one making under $250, 000 will experience a tax hike. But even though I think he's a man of his word (he's so far kept his promise not to decimate the tax exemptions for private health benefits), I think he'll end up between a political defeat and a CBO report, with nowhere else to turn but tax hikes.
Let's face it: public programs cost money. Britain's National Insurance contribution rate is roughtly 11% of a worker's income. Americans already pay roughly 6% tax rate for Social Security and Medicare, both of which provide health care services similar (BUT NOT THE SAME, BRITS. PLEASE, DON'T PELT ME WITH ROLLS ON WHICH YOU HAVE INSCRIBED YOUR LOVE FOR THE NHS IN HAIKU) to the ones the NHS provides.
All right, so care won't be rationed any more than it already is and we already pay through the wazoo for services most of us don't currently use but hope to use in the future. What about [death panels/abortion/sex changes/other issue on which i have strong feelings but which you, Seven, personally refuse to get worked up about]?
What about them? Either we're talking end of life counseling, which mostly involves your doctor listening to you and helping you decide your wishes on things like pain relief and palliative care (fluids, invasive procedures, &tc...) or we're talking denial of care based on likelihood of survival. In the first instance, you should want those things to happen. You should want to (if you're able) to let everyone know, loudly and with much cane whacking, how you're going go out. And in the second, we already do that. Doctors make decisions every day about when to discontinue treatment based on likelihood of survival. It's called triage. Limited resources, remember? If the patient is beyond saving, the doctor lets the family know it's time to say good-bye.
NO ONE IS GOING TO SHOW UP AT YOUR HOUSE AND SHOOT YOU. If you are perfectly healthy, no one will be bothered by you no matter how old you are. Except perhaps your children and they've been bothered by you year before you got old and crotchety.
As for abortion, it's a legal medical procedure. You don't have to like it, but you probably already subsidize it. Most private insurance plans cover abortion in at least some scenarios. Same goes for sex changes. And honestly, someone else's medical care is really none of your business. It amazes me that so many conservatives are all "harumph derpy doo medical care is private and the government should stay out". That sentiment actually goes both ways, folks. Medical care is private and you should stay out.
Since medical care is already rationed, we already pay far too high a tax bill to cover services most of us don't use but would like to at some point, and many of the so-called objectionable subsidies are already unobjectionably subsidized, what's the problem? Where's the beef?
Mostly, it's pandering. Now I'm sure that by now, you probably think I'm for a public plan. After all, I'm putting up a great defense of it. But, I'm not actually for a public plan. The ones on offer cost far too much and do far too little. Instead of saving money, they seem to require a whole new public emesis basin to catch all the money they're vomiting up.
What I'm after is a real debate. I'm tired of so-called conservatives standing up in front of cameras and doing their best Monty Python parody of a debate. Yes, Brits, that is unfair. If John Cleese were in charge, the bloviating would be funny rather than disturbing.
I think a lot of the ideas put forth by the Dems are wasteful. I think they're aimed at a fantastical notion of parity in American society that doesn't exist, and in free market society, can't exist. I think that by putting forth such spectacularly worthless plans and such wimpy ways to pay for them, Speaker Pelosi and her party are attempting a wholesale cultural change via legislation and I think it's failing.
And you know what? I think if the Republicans win, it won't be because we put forth smarter, better plans or even because we shot down the terrible idea and ideals propping up the Democrats' plans. Any victory drawn from these tactics is Pyrrhic, at best because we'll still have a huge deficit, healthcare spending will still be spiraling out of control, and people will still be in need of ways to access affordable medical treatment.
You want to win the idea wars? Come up with some ideas. Real ideas, smart ideas, for solving any or all of these problems. And do it without being dicks. Rough, I know, but do-able.
Thanks from:
a fellow conservative tired of having to preface political discussions with the phrase "not one of the crazies"