Seniors hate government health insurance

11 Responses to Seniors hate government health insurance

1. Art says:

   August 27, 2009 at 9:30 am

   The data is actually revealing in another way. Since socialized health care represents a transfer of wealth from the young to the old, you would expect to see younger people more resistant to government involvement. Of course, years of marxist indoctrination in public schools and universities has convinced younger people that the government is a font of compassion and efficiency, and that socialized health care will be “free”.

   All of us are forced into participating in Medicare. The resources that seniors may have used to provide for their own private health care in old age are confiscated through the payroll tax during their working lives and used to perpetuate what is essentially a Ponzi scheme. Many seniors see this system for what it is and do not want to see it enlarged at the expense of a private system that is self-sustaining and provides life saving innovations in treatment. Others, having been robbed and herded onto the government system, feel dependent and vulnerable and rightfully worry about the continued viability of Medicare. Both are perfectly rational positions to hold.

   Asking whether someone favors “the government” spending more on health insurance implies that the burden of financing will fall onto a third party. Why not ask people whether they favor increased taxes on themselves so that the government can provide one-size-fits-all health insurance rather than allowing people to choose from a myriad of private sector options?
2. Derek Scruggs says:

   August 27, 2009 at 6:26 pm

   Hey Art, why did young people allow Medicare in the first place? Indocrtination? What about the election of Roosevelt? Were all those voters indoctrinated?

   Or maybe it’s because they think old people shold get decent medical care even if they can’t get insurance?

   Not saying I’m a huge fan of Medicare or Social Security, but attributing its support to “marxist indoctrination” makes the rest of your argument suspect.
3. Art says:

   August 28, 2009 at 11:55 am

   Not saying I’m a huge fan of Medicare or Social Security, but attributing its support to “marxist indoctrination” makes the rest of your argument suspect.

   What I said was that younger people have been indoctrinated to believe that the motives of statist politicians are pure and altruistic, and that the government acts out of compassion rather than corrupt self-interest. This indoctrination leads to statements like:

   … maybe it’s because they think old people should get decent medical care even if they can’t get insurance?

   You have to be pretty far gone to believe that the only way that older people can access decent medical care is through the beneficence of a coercive state authority. What’s next, collectivizing private farms and negating private property rights to ensure that we all get “decent food and shelter”?

   If you actually studied the outcomes related to socialized medicine in other countries, you would know that providing decent medical care to seniors is not the priority. The priority is establishing dependent political constituencies. It’s power seeking, pure and simple.

   The U.S. already has large, efficient, non-profit providers of health insurance. A large percentage of our hospitals are run by charities on a non-profit basis. What exactly is a government option supposed to add to that?

   Notice that the same leftists who work themselves into a lather about the importance of a government option to provide “competition” in health insurance do everything in their power to eliminate private competition in primary education. Why?

   As for Roosevelt, you are about to live through the unwinding of the unsustainable Ponzi schemes he and Lyndon Johnson sold to Americans as “security” in their old age.

   Socialism is a lie. It will always be a lie.
4. Randall Parker says:

   August 29, 2009 at 6:34 pm

   Seniors oppose medical spending programs that will compete with Medicare for money.
5. anonyme says:

   August 30, 2009 at 12:03 pm

   I realize that there are far more of them here than of us (by a multiple of a hundred or so), but being as all of the worthy AUTHORS of this blog are not fanatical closed-minded Randian automatons with nightmarish shrieks howling through their skulls can’t we just ban them? Those guys have more “secular right” blogs than you can throw all of the internets’ pipes at, they’re dominant on every single right-wing blog that isn’t based on Christ. We have one tiny blog, why the hell won’t they just leave us alone?

   To be clear (and I know this is already obvious to everyone who isn’t a card-carrying self-identifying “Libertarian”, but we happen to be in the minority at the present) it isn’t opposition to government-run health-care that makes Art’s comments so annoying, it’s the fact that he isn’t an individual thinker and considerer but rather a parrot of tired dogma. Those guys have dozens of blogs of their own on which to outdo each other in paranoid rants against “marxist conspiracies”, let them leave us alone to discuss things as free individuals do, rather than as mantra-mutterers in an echo chamber.
6. Art says:

   September 1, 2009 at 8:11 am

   It isn’t the opposotion to different points of view that makes anonyme’s comments so annoying, it’s the fact that he is not a thinker at all. He immediately jumps to censor those whose comments he disagrees with and then waxes on about others “marxist conspiracies”.

   You have not just “ony tiny blog”, but one tiny mind as well.
7. Chris says:

   September 1, 2009 at 1:55 pm

   Hey Art, your use of Ad hominem attacks, slippery slope logical fallacies and marxist conspiracies wouldn’t impress a middle school debate team. Please try to explain why it is a good thing that the U.S. spends twice as much on health care (per capita and GDP) while ranking last (or almost last) in EVERY survey or ranking compared with the rest of the developed world.
8. Art says:

   September 2, 2009 at 11:27 am

   … the U.S. spends twice as much on health care (per capita and GDP) while ranking last (or almost last) in EVERY survey or ranking compared with the rest of the developed world.

   EVERY survey? To paraphrase Reagan, it’s not that you’re ignorant, it’s just that you know so much that isn’t so. Let’s take infant mortality, IBD sets the record straight:

   Official World Health Organization statistics show the U.S. lagging behind France in infant mortality rates — 6.7 per 1,000 live births vs. 3.8 for France….in the U.S., any infant born that shows any sign of life for any length of time is considered a live birth. In France — in fact, in most of the European Union — any baby born before 26 weeks’ gestation is not considered alive and therefore doesn’t “count” in reported infant mortality rates.

   Link

   Norway boasts one of the lowest infant mortality rates in the world — until you factor in weight at birth, and then its rate is no better than in the U.S.

   In other countries babies that survive less than 24 hours are also excluded and are classified as “stillborn.” In the U.S. any infant that shows any sign of life for any length of time is considered a live birth.

   A child born in Hong Kong or Japan that lives less than a day is reported as a “miscarriage” and not counted. In Switzerland and other parts of Europe, a baby is not counted as a baby if it is less than 30 centimeters in length.

   Link

   The cost of health care in the U.S., compared to socialized systems, suffers from the same apples to oranges comparisons. Particularly, if one considers that what socialized systems offer is the promise of care and not actual care. Access to waiting lists and a limited number of approved medications, technologies, etc. is not access to care.

   How about cancer survival rates?:

   Is the U.S. system inferior to those in other developed countries based on life expectancy and cancer survival rates? Not according to economists Robert L. Ohsfeldt (Texas A&M) and John E. Schneider (University of Iowa), who argued in their 2006 book, The Business of Health: The Role of Competition, Markets and Regulation (AEI Press), that the U.S. system actually compares very favorably to the health-care systems of other nations.

   …for the adjusted standardized life expectancy the U.S. ranks #1.

   …the U.S. has the best record for five-year survival rates for six different cancers. In some cases the differences are huge: 81.2% in the U.S. for prostate cancer vs. 41% in Denmark and 47.4% in Italy; 61.7% in the U.S. for colon cancer vs. 39.2% in Denmark; 12% in the U.S. for lung cancer vs. 5.6% in Denmark.

   Carpe Diem

   Breast cancer mortality is 52 percent higher in Germany than in the United States and 88 percent higher in the United Kingdom. Prostate cancer mortality is 604 percent higher in the United Kingdom and 457 percent higher in Norway. The mortality rate for colorectal cancer among British men and women is about 40 percent higher.

   […]

   More than 70 percent of German, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand, and British adults say their health system needs either “fundamental change” or “complete rebuilding.”

   Hoover Digest

   Rankings offered by institutions like the WHO give countries points for having socialized systems, while ignoring the aggressive rationing of care under those systems.

   The U.S. has the finest health care in the world. Yes, targeted, market based reform is needed, but government control is not the answer.
9. gene berman says:

   September 6, 2009 at 6:23 am

   Art:

   I want to commend you for your excellent presentation and, as well, for your thoughtful and measured responses to the wild-eyed reformers–wouldn’t have had the patience for it , meself.

   Actually, though, I’d have been just a mite more forceful on a couple items or at least explained them more fully. There’s always the tendency to assume your opponents are “enemies,” when even the most vociferous are quite apt to be under the sway of arguments that can be dealt with on a reasonable basis. While it is true that many such are influenced by “Marxist” teachings, these are, on the whole, not specifically distinguishable from other doctrines originationg in envy: populism, etc.
   many millions, even a majority, perhaps, entertain such prepossessions–throughout the world–including very many without any specifically “Marxian” indoctrination, whether through education systems or otherwise (though I would agree fully that the system of public education has been under that general sway for the better part of at least a hundred years, often unknowingly by such “educators,” themselves.

   Nor would I put forward “non-profit” organizations engaged in the provision of medical or health-related services as exemplary of an alternate to provision by authority; in effect, their very status itself is a form of such intrusion into the market, their competitive position enhanced by the annointing process in more ways than mere exemption from taxes on profits (or any outfit could achieve such status simply by not making any profits; that they, with their advantages, have not succeeded in driving all the “for-profits” from the marketplace, hardly qualifies them as efficacious deliverers of the goods and services sought).

   The “socialist calculation” argument is as immutably and impregnably true today as when advanced nearly 80 years ago yet is almost as little-known (and less understood) today than then and the socialist mode of thinking and behaving, despite the collapse of the USSR (and the realignment of some previously Soviet-bloc countries) is as dominant as ever, if somewhat attenuated in practice.
10. gene berman says:

    September 6, 2009 at 6:54 am

    Derek:

    An acquaintance retired in 1980 after a working life nearly synchronous with SS. As an exercise. he’d laid out his (always max) contributions over 45 years, adjusting the “accumulation” to reflect interest rates effective at the times. His total, by his calculation of withdrawal at the rate in effect at his retirement (1979) would be exhausted in just a shade over 3 years. Through saving and prudent investing, he’d accumulated several millions; but he said that SS had outperformed every other investment. What else can anyone expect of a system subject to the political control (or at least major influence) of its recipients?

    You should also be aware that, at the time of its institution, the life expectancy of a black man was less than that of the minimum retirement age. So, at least part of the “success” of SS can be accounted for by the transfer, from black to white, of many millions upon millions paid in by the “equally treated” population of black wage-earners.

    The German system, installed by Bismark, lasted roughly 70 years before collapsing. Ours seems to be doing similarly, with a number of necessary fixes extending the ‘third rail.”
11. gene berman says:

    September 6, 2009 at 7:04 am

    Art:

    One more thing I should mention. It’s not really useful to speak of “indebting the future.” On one or another basis, the population of the future will differ from that of the (spending) present and will decide, at that time, whether or not to consider themselves indebted.
    All of the consumption must be of goods and services already extant when consumed, whether produced by the present or previous generations. If enough of present production and accumulated capital is consumed in the present, the production of the future will be diminished, perhaps to a point lower than that of which the present is capable. Should that happen, there will be no question of the repayment of debt except insofar as that may be accomplished by a currency inflated at substantially higher rates than prevalent in the past and at present. Just sayin’.

Comments are closed.