The KGB Oracle Forums General Public Discussion (SPECIAL ACCESS) KGB Political Debate Central This is the country I want

Interesting you call *me a partisan ideologue...

And unlike you, I actually understand multiple and opposing viewpoints whereas your worldview seems to be entirely two dimensional. Understanding a concept, or an asserted application of a concept is not the same as agreeing with it or agreeing with the application, which is something you seem to have troubles with.

After all.. your response to "health care is not a natural right" is....... "Somalia". Think about that for a second. Seriously.

As far as capability for understanding..... I have had to correct you or explain just about every topic or concept we have discussed. Someone who has proven themselves so utterly incapable of actually applying words or concepts correctly, should refrain from insulting those who actually have to tutor them on almost every topic.

Now as for correcting your latest broadside - I shall begin:

1) You claim healthcare is a basic need. You claim this basic need is required to be met to participate in democratic process. However, the way you state this falsely implies that an all-encompassing FedGov healthcare plan needs to be in place to properly provide this level of health provision.

You provide no evidence of fact or logic to identify what level of health is required to participate or what level of care is required to meet that metric... and boy, you have to be pretty ill to not be able to show up to townhalls or vote. Countless people with various serious illnesses are on record as having been politicians... let alone participating in civic life. Also, even if we accept your misuse of hierarchy of needs for the sake of this discussion - my stance is that reforming govt *out of the healthcare business to a large degree would enable cheaper and more widely available care. After all, things that govt heavily subsidizes have been empirically shown to become dramatically more expensive. Govt simply introduces market distortions, but until you realize that - you cannot even begin to start thinking up ways to help ensure a level of services without introducing or managing market distortions of price and availability. Thus, economic efficiency will fall leading those like yourselves to inevitably call for more govt control... which further separates provision of services from rational and objective valuation mechanisms (free market) leading to further inefficiency and eventual breakdown.

2. Your second point is a simple false assertion. You will likely try to justify it with an observation that preventative medicine is cheaper than emergency room care after a would-be minor problem has become a major one. This in of itself is true, and proves that the current status quo is inefficient. What it does not prove however, is that your model of universal care is any better - because systems need to be evaluated independently and in the entirety of their effects, so until you can accurately model a universal system wholly - you cannot make an assumption that such a system would actually address this or any other issue sufficiently.

3. Well, in a free market the providers of services have financial incentive to not price people out of a system. Also, I have always left open possibility of some level of public service - however the logical way to address this issue is at a more local level, since the economic realities of supply and demand of various types of services can vary widely by location. Even the Social-corporatist states like Sweden that have socialistic systems that dont malfunction as badly as other examples of central health planning (though they do have serious issues as I have demonstrated here previously) do almost all of their actual health planning and allocation on a very local level. Which is the complete opposite of anything proposed by you or the general "left" in this country where the focus is on Federal level planning and allocation.