Right Wing Health Care Nonsense

As a libertarian opposed to government-controlled health care for reasons relating to the virtues of small government, I am completely fed up with the far right (and Palin in particular) and their lies about the Obama health care plan. The recent lie from the far right is that the Obama plan will somehow enforce euthanasia on some citizens: see Palin's comments here and the truth here.

Peace,
Daniel

As we saw in the townhall case, where it was exposed in many cases as simple corporate fraud, the truth is as always highly subjective. Left and right are meaningless, there is only a free-for all on public opinion, with a faction of politicians aiming at fomenting anger to gather support.

I'm quite sick of seeing this as a liberal-conservative issue, because it plainly isn't.

Originally posted by Oscitate
As we saw in the townhall case, where it was exposed in many cases as simple corporate fraud, the truth is as always highly subjective. Left and right are meaningless, there is only a free-for all on public opinion, with a faction of politicians aiming at fomenting anger to gather support.

I'm quite sick of seeing this as a liberal-conservative issue, because it plainly isn't.

In this case, I completely disagree with you. It is obvious that nearly all those opposing the Obama health care plan are either right wing conservative or right wing libertarians. This is a left/right divide.

Peace,
Daniel

reply to post by pdpayne0418


Thanks for the reply Daniel.

I suppose we can agree to disagree. Perhaps I'm loathe to categorize political thought, because it's always an approximation. Nobody is born with a set of values that adheres completely to one faction or the other.

In my case: I have my issues with a government run health-case system. In principle, I'm not fond of paying taxes, and therefore expect few services. I'm sure I'd be categorized as a fiscal conservative -- economically. However, healthcare is a service I'm willing to be taxed for (one of the very few). In short, I'm in the gray area. Along with what I believe to be the vast majority of people. Nobody can be summarized politically by a manifesto.

We just have our opinions. I believe people within the same political spectrum will disagree from time to time.

reply to post by pdpayne0418


I dont buy it that your a libertarian........because I am as well, and its very very clear to me that the issues going on with the healthcare plan proposed by Obama , has definate undertones of the exact thing you say isnt true.

Its my opinion that you are either attempting to discredit the worries and concerns of people who have actually gone through this bill, and are connecting dots, or you yourself are buying in to the spin the liberal media is pumping out an amazing rate.

All one has to do is some research into this bill, look at the belief system of the czars hes put in place........and ask yourself some simple economic questions as far as what would "happen" should we have this healthcare plan.....

This isnt a left right issue, the only thing left and right about is that the left in DC is spreading a bunch of b.s. about the people concerned about what is within this bill, and trying to discredit them.....

Other then that, both left and right that have come together in these town hall meetings to discuss this are pretty much on the same page.......

Dont drink the Kool- aid , and dont buy into the hype.......

Like i said, if you ARE a libertarian and not someone else out there to throw a kink into the movement that is happening, then i suggest you read further into this bill and pay attention and connect the dots.

Originally posted by ManBehindTheMask
reply to post by pdpayne0418

 

I dont buy it that your a libertarian........because I am as well, and its very very clear to me that the issues going on with the healthcare plan proposed by Obama , has definate undertones of the exact thing you say isnt true.

Its my opinion that you are either attempting to discredit the worries and concerns of people who have actually gone through this bill, and are connecting dots, or you yourself are buying in to the spin the liberal media is pumping out an amazing rate.

All one has to do is some research into this bill, look at the belief system of the czars hes put in place........and ask yourself some simple economic questions as far as what would "happen" should we have this healthcare plan.....

This isnt a left right issue, the only thing left and right about is that the left in DC is spreading a bunch of b.s. about the people concerned about what is within this bill, and trying to discredit them.....

Other then that, both left and right that have come together in these town hall meetings to discuss this are pretty much on the same page.......

Dont drink the Kool- aid , and dont buy into the hype.......

Like i said, if you ARE a libertarian and not someone else out there to throw a kink into the movement that is happening, then i suggest you read further into this bill and pay attention and connect the dots.

I am a libertarian, and as I said before, I am not in favor of the health care plan for other reasons. But I will not "drink the Kool-Aid" being offered by the far right. As much as some want to believe so, there's simply not a demon behind every bush.

I maintain it is basically a left/right issue. Most in favor of the plan are on the left. Most opposed are on the right. This is just fact.

Why must I be "throwing a kink into the movement" just because I disagree with you?

Peace,
Daniel

I think it is high past time for Healt Care reform. My brother-in law is a pediatrician, my system has her masters in nursing & my wife has many health problems. My health insurance is very good.
What I have a problem with is the health care industry.
There are many good cancer fighter/cures out there but we Have to use chemotherapy.
They are just now talking about pre & pro biotics when their good work has been known for years.
Better and less expensive medications are out there that are so much better then those approved by the FDA. Please don't get me going on the FDA.
Doctors are being taught to treat the symptome and not fix the basic problem. My wife has Celiac (1 out of 160 people have it and don't know it) and was misdiagnosed for 20 years. We had changed plans and her doctor had worked at Johns Hopkins. He looked through her folder of her research & said I think you have Celiac.
Women are are on the fore front of researching their own medical problems because Doctors won't listen. Their pain & problems are all in their heads & have they seen a psychiatrist.
I'm all for fixing the health care system. This bill (and yes I've only made it through only 550 pages) does nothing of the kind. Stay on the subject of Reform. As President, I could cover all the uninsureds for a year under my current insurance plan out of 4 months of the pork barrell projects for the year.
Talk to me about charging the last 25 heads of the FDA with murder, manslaughter, conspiracy to ...
Tell me how this bill will reform the health care system. Don't talk to me about left & right or libertarian. Reform, reform, reform - that is the subject.

Sorry about getting angry. Don't get me mad.
Ignorance is bliss. I used to be blissfull oh so many years ago.

reply to post by pdpayne0418


Funny thing, this. As a Libertarian, you are more angry at those on the right fibbing about this bill than you are about those fibbing in support of it?

I don't think you fully understand what a libertarian is.

You should be outraged that this bill even exists as a possibilty in this republic, not angry at those who are trying to defeat it.

I don't support the lies, however I do understand them. These people are fighting a losing battle against the theft of thier money and liberty! They will do what they feel neccesary to keep the wolves at bay.

I think you should find a new catch phrase for yourself.

Originally posted by cavscout
reply to post by pdpayne0418

 

Funny thing, this. As a Libertarian, you are more angry at those on the right fibbing about this bill than you are about those fibbing in support of it?

I don't think you fully understand what a libertarian is.

You should be outraged that this bill even exists as a possibilty in this republic, not angry at those who are trying to defeat it.

I don't support the lies, however I do understand them. These people are fighting a losing battle against the theft of thier money and liberty! They will do what they feel neccesary to keep the wolves at bay.

I think you should find a new catch phrase for yourself.

Funny thing, this: some people of any political persuasion are more comfortable with lies than truth. I am outraged by untruth in defense of any proposition. I have no catchphrase for myself, nor do I wish to allow you to define libertarianism for me.

Peace,
Daniel

reply to post by Doctor G


Reform is not the topic of my OP - the lies about the plan coming from the Right is my point.

Peace,
Daniel

That is the whole point. Lies, lies & lies.
How can you tell if a politician is lying. His lips are moving.
Do you have politicians telling you about the bill? There. your question is answered by both sides.
If either of you were Libertarians you would both know the answer to this question.
Politicians, lawyers and sharks were all put in the same tank of water. Who were the survivors at the end?

reply to post by Doctor G


Not necessarily. Sweeping generalizations are part of the problem.

Peace,
Daniel

Here is some truths for you from a Conservative libertarian, I will tell you exactly why I don't like this bill and why.... no spin, no bull#, this is how I perceive it and believe many others perceive it.

Many of us "Working Middle Class Americans" have and pay for good healthcare insurance... Many of us have pretty damned good plans, I can get an MRI or Catscan approved in minutes if needed (and I have). I can get specialist consultations within days (hours if an emergency). I can go to any "urgent care" business and take care of any "non lethal" injury or illness immediatly.

We tend to like this "on demand / instant" healthcare. I sure as hell do anyway.

I cannot go to the emergency room and be seen in a timely manner... 4 to 6 hour wait, tried that recently and after waiting 2 hours we went to the Urgent Care and were in in 5 minutes, they still charged me $80 for "signing in" & sitting in the waiting room. So I go another 2 blocks to a private "urgent care" clinic that is attached to the diagnostic imaging center (one stop shop) and I am in in 5 minutes.

Here is the psych of much of the resistance to this current healthcare plan in a nutshell:

OK, Let's be truthful, we work, we have always worked, we pay for the privileges of outstanding healthcare. America "Does" have the best healthcare in the world if you are insured well.

So, why should we (those who work, retired, or on current good medical plans) lower our standard of living, lifesaving diagnostics, instant treatment so we can join that 4-6 hour line and wait months for tests, treatment, seeing specialist ect. (Real or Perceived I don't want to even argue that, When powerful people exempt themselves from the plan they are trying to force on everyone else then not many are going to trust it and many will perceive the worst.)

Really, I am open to a "universal basic medical" plan for EVERYONE. But Let's do it right! Tort reform, Pharma price negotiations, sane costs controls, etc.

Once you start seeing ANY EXEMPTIONS for specific elite or favored groups you know that that a plan is BS. Point blank, if were going to have a "universal care" then it damn well better be "universal" because trying to ram a crap plan down the throats of the middle class while EXEMPTING yourselves is crap. Let's all bear the burden together if were going to do it at all! Anything less is another screwing to the middle class and we all know it.


There you have it, why I am against this particular plan as it stands today (house version of the bill)
waysandmeans.house.gov...
help.senate.gov...

So, I am a greedy rotten SOB because I do not want to Lose something that I have worked (and am currently working) for and because the Politicians, Govt Employees, and Unions EXEMPT themselves to keep what I got now! (So what does this make them? they are not greedy rotten SOB's???) Screw them!

All or nothing baby!!!

Don't try to make the rest of us "take one for the team" if your not willing to do it yourselves!

The same politicians who are pushing this on ME have VOTED OPENLY to EXEMPT THEMSELVES so... you know.... I think I will be against this one, start over and bring us a good healthcare bill this time!

Does this clear up any questions about why so many people are truly up in arms about this... it suddenly impacts them! Yes, they should have been up in arms about the Debt, Bailouts, etc, but finally it hits home. That is why they are getting off the couch and speaking up... sure there are some groups "fanning the flames" but there has to be a fire there to fan. If getting people out to these things was as simple as having a Republican Group telling them to show up it would have happened LONG LONG ago.

So in summary: Stop arguing about the pros or cons of a junk plan, who is organizing who and lying about what and agree we DESERVE A BETTER ONE!!!

We deserve a Healthcare plan or reform bill that is good enough to NOT require EXEMPTIONS for the same people pushing the bill on everyone....

Please... Tell me one good reason why (Current Pro-bill supporters) that there should be EXEMPTIONS for the "chosen". I really want to hear your justifictations for this.

[edit on 8-8-2009 by infolurker]

reply to post by infolurker


I appreciate all your reasons for not supporting the health plan, and appreciate that your reasons are not based on lies. Therefore, it really has nothing to do with my OP, and I do not necessarily disagree with you. The plan could be better for sure. I am no supporter of it. This has nothing to do, though, with my OP.

Peace,
Daniel

Galitin is having a good laugh at our system of gov't. Sweeping generalizations come into being through propagandal, truth or ignorance.
You started out talking about the lies. When you have to wade thru the lies and find out they just got deeper, that is a lot of lies.
Is the glass half full of lies or half empty.

Originally posted by pdpayne0418
As a libertarian opposed to government-controlled health care for reasons relating to the virtues of small government, I am completely fed up with the far right (and Palin in particular) and their lies about the Obama health care plan. The recent lie from the far right is that the Obama plan will somehow enforce euthanasia on some citizens: see Palin's comments here and the truth here.

Peace,
Daniel

I agree that it is a stretch to say this current plan Obama is pushing would enforce euthanasia. But, it does lay the groundwork and open the door to the possibility, which gives her opinion some validity.

Originally posted by mhc_70

Originally posted by pdpayne0418
As a libertarian opposed to government-controlled health care for reasons relating to the virtues of small government, I am completely fed up with the far right (and Palin in particular) and their lies about the Obama health care plan. The recent lie from the far right is that the Obama plan will somehow enforce euthanasia on some citizens: see Palin's comments here and the truth here.

Peace,
Daniel

I agree that it is a stretch to say this current plan Obama is pushing would enforce euthanasia. But, it does lay the groundwork and open the door to the possibility, which gives her opinion some validity.

Something can always lay the groundwork for something else. Palin is deceiving people by saying that Obama's plan will kill her down syndrome child. She's not only being willfully dishonest (quite a Christian, she), but she's playing the emotion card by using her son - something else despicable apart from her lies.

Peace,
Daniel

It will force euthanasia on the elderly.

When the government nationalizes a market and sets prices, the inevitable outcome is that demand will exceed supply.

When demand exceeds supply in a price controlled nationalized market, there is only one option left.

ration the care.



That means grandma and grandpa are first on the list to get the axe.

The government will keep its tax producing citizens healthy first before it gives service to those who have outlived their usefulness and no longer provide a source of tax revenue.



Now granted, the proposed bills don't directly nationalize healthcare. However they make such an outcome inevitable by killing the private insurance industry. Once private insurance is dead, expect nationalization to be top priority. Of course, there will be no opposition to it, since everyone will already be dependent upon government insurance.






[edit on 9-8-2009 by mnemeth1]

Originally posted by mnemeth1
It will force euthanasia on the elderly.

When the government nationalizes a market and sets prices, the inevitable outcome is that demand will exceed supply.

When demand exceeds supply in a price controlled nationalized market, there is only one option left.

ration the care.



That means grandma and grandpa are first on the list to get the axe.

The government will keep its tax producing citizens healthy first before it gives service to those who have outlived their usefulness and no longer provide a source of tax revenue.

Now granted, the proposed bills don't directly nationalize healthcare. However they make such an outcome inevitable by killing the private insurance industry. Once private insurance is dead, expect nationalization to be top priority. Of course, there will be no opposition to it, since everyone will already be dependent upon government insurance.

Your post is spot on!!!

Heres an example...

online.wsj.com...

Take the United Kingdom, which is often praised for spending as little as half as much per capita on health care as the U.S. Credit for this cost containment goes in large part to the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, or NICE. Americans should understand how NICE works because under ObamaCare it will eventually be coming to a hospital near you.

The British officials who established NICE in the late 1990s pitched it as a body that would ensure that the government-run National Health System used "best practices" in medicine. As the Guardian reported in 1998: "Health ministers are setting up [NICE], designed to ensure that every treatment, operation, or medicine used is the proven best. It will root out under-performing doctors and useless treatments, spreading best practices everywhere."

What NICE has become in practice is a rationing board. As health costs have exploded in Britain as in most developed countries, NICE has become the heavy that reduces spending by limiting the treatments that 61 million citizens are allowed to receive through the NHS. For example:

In March, NICE ruled against the use of two drugs, Lapatinib and Sutent, that prolong the life of those with certain forms of breast and stomach cancer. This followed on a 2008 ruling against drugs -- including Sutent, which costs about $50,000 -- that would help terminally ill kidney-cancer patients. After last year's ruling, Peter Littlejohns, NICE's clinical and public health director, noted that "there is a limited pot of money," that the drugs were of "marginal benefit at quite often an extreme cost," and the money might be better spent elsewhere.

In 2007, the board restricted access to two drugs for macular degeneration, a cause of blindness. The drug Macugen was blocked outright. The other, Lucentis, was limited to a particular category of individuals with the disease, restricting it to about one in five sufferers. Even then, the drug was only approved for use in one eye, meaning those lucky enough to get it would still go blind in the other. As Andrew Dillon, the chief executive of NICE, explained at the time: "When treatments are very expensive, we have to use them where they give the most benefit to patients."

NICE has limited the use of Alzheimer's drugs, including Aricept, for patients in the early stages of the disease. Doctors in the U.K. argued vociferously that the most effective way to slow the progress of the disease is to give drugs at the first sign of dementia. NICE ruled the drugs were not "cost effective" in early stages.

Other NICE rulings include the rejection of Kineret, a drug for rheumatoid arthritis; Avonex, which reduces the relapse rate in patients with multiple sclerosis; and lenalidomide, which fights multiple myeloma. Private U.S. insurers often cover all, or at least portions, of the cost of many of these NICE-denied drugs.

NICE has also produced guidance that restrains certain surgical operations and treatments. NICE has restrictions on fertility treatments, as well as on procedures for back pain, including surgeries and steroid injections. The U.K. has recently been absorbed by the cases of several young women who developed cervical cancer after being denied pap smears by a related health authority, the Cervical Screening Programme, which in order to reduce government health-care spending has refused the screens to women under age 25.

We could go on. NICE is the target of frequent protests and lawsuits, and at times under political pressure has reversed or watered-down its rulings. But it has by now established the principle that the only way to control health-care costs is for this panel of medical high priests to dictate limits on certain kinds of care to certain classes of patients.

The NICE board even has a mathematical formula for doing so, based on a "quality adjusted life year." While the guidelines are complex, NICE currently holds that, except in unusual cases, Britain cannot afford to spend more than about $22,000 to extend a life by six months. Why $22,000? It seems to be arbitrary, calculated mainly based on how much the government wants to spend on health care. That figure has remained fairly constant since NICE was established and doesn't adjust for either overall or medical inflation.

[edit on 9-8-2009 by mhc_70]

Originally posted by pdpayne0418
As a libertarian opposed to government-controlled health care for reasons relating to the virtues of small government, I am completely fed up with the far right (and Palin in particular) and their lies about the Obama health care plan. The recent lie from the far right is that the Obama plan will somehow enforce euthanasia on some citizens: see Palin's comments here and the truth here.

Peace,
Daniel

I agree. It is a debate fallacy technique. They are leading people to say and repeat stupid things that can easily be knocked down. Debate the health reform on what it actually intends to do--that's enough. Why scare people with telling them it will kill children.

The supporters of the reform would do well to read the bill. This is not health
care like Canada or the UK has. This is our usual eff up version of how things should be done. This bill is to health care what the Patriot Act was to patriotism.

Supporters should ask themselves why they don't use the HMO plan and choose the PPO instead, then reread the bill, and understand that the government never gets it right the first, the second, or even the third time. This will cause a lot of problems because they are SPEEDING it through. With something this important one ought to take the time to do it right.

This sounds just like the Patriot Act and see what that did for us? Less freedom, more bulls***, and larger budgets.