socialism

[lizii]

I don't know where I should post my thoughts about socialism. Moderators, please feel free to move it.

My concern is about American health care. I feel you could have much better health coverage than you do. For instance:

You share the costs of police forces, fire, mail, internet, schools, shops, etc., by sharing costs together. You are doing that every day, you just don't call it socialism. Yet you don't understand you are using socialism yourselves.

Get over it! Forget your fears about socialism and kick the insurance companies away as far as health care is concerned...actually they are socialists too. Socialism means "living in communities...interdependent, cooperative, agreement for social benefits...state assistance for those lacking adequate money or welfare...I'm cherrypicking here from The pocket edition Oxford Dictionary [1982].

What's scary about that?

[Alan]

What an interesting question!

I guess to answer it, we'd have to define socialism. We're all social people, a family unit engages in socialism on a micro level and many of us join groups or make associations with others which are again socialist in nature. Other than not being able to choose which family you're born into, these are voluntary interactions and as such, reflect our free will and choice.

The trouble with governmental socialism is the lack of free will and choice. The United States was founded on the notion that individuals are free to choose for themselves and that government was their servant rather than their master. Of course, we've made concessions along the way in our attempts to do good to our fellow man, but with each concession we've morphed a little more into the type of of top down governmental structure that we rebelled against at our founding.

Many people believe that further concessions along those lines are not in our best long-term interests and that the long term moral hazard dwarfs our short term benefit.

[herbgeek]

For me the difference is between voluntary and compulsory. I love to pool with other shoppers to share costs on things /I/ want. I don't want someone demanding MY money to lower someone else's cost for something I have no interest in.

Here in Massachusetts, we have the "model" that Obamacare was loosely based on. My costs have /skyrocketed/ since mandatory insurance was instituted because I am forced to buy more and more coverage for things I don't want or need in order to subsidize other people. I cannot just buy catastrophic coverage and have a high deductible that I pay out of pocket for. I have to buy a set plan that I have no say over, no choice.

One example: I exercise every day even though I don't really enjoy it, eat well, manage my stress and the like in order to not need health care. I do not take any prescription medicines, yet prescription plans were added as a mandatory requirement that I have to pay for. There are no incentives for healthy living in our medical plans (I do it anyways for other reasons).

[bae]

I do not believe it is generally moral to initiate force against another.

So I'm just fine with voluntary associations and actions for mutual benefit engaged in by freely consenting parties in good faith. I'm not-so-fine with the killing fields.

[iris lily]

...
You share the costs of police forces, fire, mail, internet, schools, shops, etc., by sharing costs together. You are doing that every day, you just don't call it socialism. Yet you don't understand you are using socialism yourselves.

I assure you that I am well aware that there are many socialistic institutions in our country. I'm tied in more closely than you might think! And --get this--I know that I would be satisfied with the health care provided to Canadians! How about that!

But in this country, where everything must be big and The Best and everyone MUST be equal, your health system wouldn't work here. People here are not contect with "pretty good", everything must be The Best and Congress will always respond to victim groups who lobby for their particualr group or disease to be uber funded. Even and especially Compassionate Conservatives who have no balls will vote "ay" toward any re-up of spending to support whatever health need is trotted out in front of them.

To me the bottom line is this: in our country that is already spending way more than its annual income, we cannot add more expenditure. Scary? That's the word--I personally am wired to hate and fear debt. My own household is run to avoid debt. My stomach turns when I think about debt. I want my country run the same way.

[ApatheticNoMore]

This should be in public policy. Granted every conversation there degenerates into I don't know what (including name calling, insult throwing and) but ....

Costs for healthcare have been SOARING everywhere in the last 10 years, so I don't know how much worse MA is than places where they have no such plans (of course you don't notice so much if you are under an employer provided plan but yea healthcare costs are soaring).

Whether you favor redistribution depends on how just you think the current distribution is. However just it may or may not have been before when I will concede the market was at least semi-free, I think it just got a whole lot unjuster given the wholesale bailout of everything (which in fact was MASSIVE redistribution but will never be recognized as such!). Both the boom and the bust and the bailouts fundamentally realigned wealth.

As for not being able to afford more deficit spending, in most cases it is true. However I think we're screwed on healthcare one way or other anyway. So we already have socialism for old people in medicine as is, it is called medicare. And this is going bankrupt without a doubt. I think social security could be saved (remove income caps on SS taxes etc.), but medicare on the other hand, my gosh, given the current system it is a disaster! And it's possible socialized medicine is the only thing that could save it, as it would bring the lower cost people (younger people) into the income pool. So I think it may be an attempt to save medicare. Of course we didn't get socialized medicine, we got some horribly complex plan that very few understand, most of which hasn't taken effect yet, and that is unlikely to control costs. The only people I think it benefits are those with preexisting conditions.

[herbgeek]

With soaring prices in general, one is free to not purchase the item at all or find lower cost alternatives. With MA health care, I get neither option. I must purchase insurance, and I must purchase all the options the government has deemed that I "need". There is nothing I can do to reduce my cost. That's what is frustrating. I have many more options on my car insurance!

I have been unemployed for 2+ years, although my husband had intermittently found work- the mandatory insurance is our single largest expense and at times quite the hardship. We briefly slipped below the eligibility line for subsidized care for a while- our premium then was about 15% of our usual premium. That's one huge level of subsidization. There is no gradual increase in premium, you pay one low rate under the limit (x), and this very high rate (6.5x) once you make one dollar more.

[loosechickens]

It doesn't make sense, Lizii, which is why no other civilized, Western democracy has such a mess of a system, where we pay twice or more what any other of those countries pay for health care, get far less for our dollars, leave perhaps fifty million or more of our citizens without access, and fall further and further behind, while continuing to enrich our health "care" industry with fat profits.

The thing is, the people in this country who DO have good access to health insurance, either through an employer, or their own wealth and ability to pay the bills, don't worry about it, and often are determined not to have to contribute to access for any others.

Costs are spiraling out of control, which will continue until we manage to get some kind of system together to deal with it. I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for that to happen.

As you can see from some of the above comments.....this thinking is what is preventing the U.S. from having anything like what Canada has, or any of the European nations, some of which have single payer government health care and some that have hybrid systems, or systems based on the private sector, regulated. And none of which have citizens left without care at all, let alone fifty million people, and 3/4 of a million families going bankrupt from medical bills EVERY year.

But.....Alan didn't have to struggle along with a hearth condition and hear that his case wasn't life threatening enough to qualify for emergency care, or have bouts of heart failure, organ damage and other complications because he didn't have money to see a doctor or to pay for an operation. Bae could probably buy the whole hospital himself.......heck, I have Medicare and an excellent supplemental policy....I'm home free, too. (LOVE that socialized Medicare, I do). Although even that isn't "free", as I pay about $100 for the basic Medicare, per month, and $227 for my supplemental policy. At least I'm covered, and well.

It really comes down to whether people have an attitude of "I've got mine, and I'm not going to carry anybody else", or "I've got mine, but I care about whether others have theirs, too", and in the meantime, our costs go up, our health level as a country goes down, many millions have no access, but we have been "saved" from socialism. Don't even LOOK for it to make sense, because it doesn't. JMHO

[bae]

It really comes down to whether people have an attitude of "I've got mine, and I'm not going to carry anybody else", or "I've got mine, but I care about whether others have theirs, too",...

People can reasonably object to how a health care system is proposed to be implemented without being in the "I've got mine" camp. Casting the question as either-A-or-B is sloppy thinking at best.

I for instance think we have an affirmative moral duty to render aid to others, and act so in my daily life. I do not however believe I should be *forced* by someone else to take action. No matter how progressive their thinking is.

[Alan]

....It really comes down to whether people have an attitude of "I've got mine, and I'm not going to carry anybody else", or "I've got mine, but I care about whether others have theirs, too", and in the meantime, our costs go up, our health level as a country goes down, many millions have no access, but we have been "saved" from socialism. Don't even LOOK for it to make sense, because it doesn't. JMHO

Sorry loosechickens, it's much more complicated than that and I think other concerns were laid out pretty well throughout this thread. Perhaps you should re-read?