jeffd
1921
It’s not arrogance that causes people to dismiss you Andy. It’s weariness. You’re bringing up arguments that were knocked down months ago, if not years ago.
You have presented not one single new bit of insight or analysis to this thread. Not one. Maybe it’s not fair to you that we’re tired of debunking the same nonsense arguments that conservatives have been bringing up for over a year now - but, well, that’s just life.
And this is a case where statistics can be misleading, as I previously mentioned. In Canada (which has a lower infant mortality rate that the U.S.) for example, babies weighing less than a pound are not considered live births. In Hong Kong and Japan, an infant death is not counted if it occurs in the first 24 hours, while nearly half of infant deaths in the U.S. happen within the first day. Furthermore, because of the quality of the U.S. healthcare system, attempts are made to save infants at a much earlier point in the gestation process, but since the life expectancy decreases dramatically for early deliveries, that skews U.S. statistics downward. That’s why it is misleading to say that the U.S. ranks towards the bottom of the list of developed nations, and why it is relevant to note that a Canadian official will come to the U.S. to have surgery.
But politicians usually make at least an attempt to read them. With the 1600-page healthcare reform bill, they seem to have given up even the pretense of reading it. Plus, with the barrage of special exceptions and exemptions in the bill, you can see how people would be wary of it.
Seriously, why don’t Republicans and Democrats come together to introduce focused, specific bills to deal with individual problems in the healthcare system? It seems like working together would be more effective.
Best explained by comparing the number of preterm births in the United States to that in other developed nations.
I’ve given up on trusting comparative numbers in this exercise. The number of differences between nations, standard medical practices, and all other manner of crap means that virtually anything you find will have to deal with a dozen or more confounding factors before you can draw any conclusion. It’s also worth noting that the difference between the United States and the highest ranked nation on each of those lists is really not that significant. 40 spots of improvement on the list only corresponds to a 0.3% total mortality difference.
Trying to compare numbers like this is a losing game. Anybody can find any evidence that will say what they want it to and anybody else can cite all of the complicating factors that could potentially explain the observed difference as the result of things that no proposed plan could possibly affect. Numbers, in this case, are far too malleable and don’t serve to set any kind of achievable goals.
Emphatically wrong. Aristocracy is defined first and foremost by hereditary inheritance of privileges, regardless of inherent worth of that person. It is precisely what you are describing here:
I am saying that some people are born with privileges that others don’t have, which means by definition that they have greater access to those privileges. I did not say or imply that that makes them intrinsically “better” than anyone else.
I can’t imagine the sort of cognitive dissonance you require to be able to say something like this with a straight face. Your insistence that you don’t think this makes someone “better” is just a smokescreen for the fact that you think it is perfectly acceptable that the level of privilege someone can enjoy in our society is defined by their birth. I find this baseline view of social justice to be absolutely abhorrent and un-American, but it explains so much about your politics.
If you say that all people should have equal access to benefits, then you are saying that A and B should start their lives with the same amount of money, which is just not realistic.
This requires the assumption that money is the primary determinant of access to (health) benefits. It is actually possible to decouple the two.
Seriously, why don’t Republicans and Democrats come together to introduce focused, specific bills to deal with individual problems in the healthcare system? It seems like working together would be more effective.
Have you been living under a fucking rock? The Republicans have made it quite clear that they have absolutely no interest in participating in a bipartisan solution. The Democrats gave them many, many chances to be involved. They stonewalled through the entire process.
And yet that is actually exactly what would help solve a lot of America’s problems. I believe that children should start life with the same or as close to as possible levels of opportunity as one another. That means that wealth inequality should be massively reduced or at the very least the essential things that wealth could buy as advantages should be provided to the best possible standard by the state to all their citizens. These things crucially include health care and education.
Providing these two is the bare minimum standard that a decent society should hold itself to. Otherwise you are effectively abandoning people from birth through no fault of their own. It is a sin of ommision, ommitting to provide a fair chance for someone to succeed in society as it exists. If you don’t grant at least that much then you have no right to complain about things like crime or poor people not having jobs.
If you are interested in how higher levels of income and wealth inequality correlates with poor outcomes for all societies then you can read The Spirit Level, have a look at this brief videothat sumarises it with puppets, or check out the website for the Equality Trust:
And yet you still say things like, “The U.S. lags most other developed countries in infant mortality,”*right after I cited the statistics about how infant mortality rates are recorded differently in other countries. I don’t think ignoring arguments counts as “debunking”*them.
An inability to understand this perspective will prevent you from ever actually understanding what any conservative actually believes. There are two ways to interpret the notion of equality - equality of ends or equality of treatment. Liberalism tends to endorse equality of ends as the proper understanding of equality. Conservatives endorse the notion that so long as the law pays no regard to the qualitative status of the person that confronts it, that equality of treatment has been achieved. These two attitudes are not compatible - in order to ensure equality of product, the government MUST treat those who have less differently from those who have more.
Neither of these attitudes is written on stone by the hands of your divine maker. Both perspectives are reasonable and both have their place. If you really cannot grasp one side of the discussion, my best advice to you would be to eschew politics altogether.
I don’t see how you justify “rich people get health insurance, poor people don’t” as “equality of treatment.”
Tankero
1930
They both get charged the same.
No the system is, Health Insurance costs X dollars for EVERYONE (unless you’re sick, but forget that for now). See, equality of treatment. Too bad you don’t have all those dollars.
I don’t think equality has any useful meaning left if you accept Brian’s conservative definition as ‘covering all the bases’. If you can say to someone being born with controllably unequal opportunities that they have equality then you and I have a fundamentally different understanding of the english language.
jeffd
1933
Here is UNICEF’s calculation of infant mortality, which attempts to adjust for the factors you mention.
For the record, here are the numbers (deaths in the first year of life per thousand births):
United States: 7
Canada: 5
Japan: 3
France: 4
Germany: 4
United Kingdom: 5
Israel: 4
But politicians usually make at least an attempt to read them. With the 1600-page healthcare reform bill, they seem to have given up even the pretense of reading it. Plus, with the barrage of special exceptions and exemptions in the bill, you can see how people would be wary of it.
No, they don’t make an effort to read them. They have staff do that. Bills are written in legalese, which is incomprehensible to the layperson. Reading a bill will do nothing but confuse you.
I can’t stand the Senate Finance Committee, but it has one tradition that’s fantastic: All bills are written and presented in plain English, and then translated into legalese. The rest of the Senate works in the opposite fashion.
Seriously, why don’t Republicans and Democrats come together to introduce focused, specific bills to deal with individual problems in the healthcare system? It seems like working together would be more effective.
Umm, because Republicans are not interested in allowing Democrats to pass anything through the Senate? Your question presumes that Republicans in the Senate are making a good-faith effort to legislate as the minority, but all evidence indicates the contrary.
jeffd
1934
Translation: I reject any attempt to compare the US healthcare system to dirty foreigners. RAH RAH RAH USYAY!
And incidentally, I didn’t say that I didn’t understand it. I said that I found it abhorrent. This is even before we discuss the immense oversimplification of political philosophy you just attempted.
What I find “perfectly acceptable”*has nothing to do with it; it is simply a fact that different people are born in different situations. “Privilege”*implies something that is specifically granted or given, not just the facts of birth. “Aristocracy”*means something totally different than “being born in a better neighborhood or to a richer family.”
I was talking about benefits in general, not specifically health benefits.
What major changes have the Democrats made to the healthcare bill to appease the Republicans? They have made it quite clear that “elections have consequences” and that they were not going to make any changes to appeal the more conservative elements in Congress.
Health care, as it stands now, isn’t a government service. Whether either individual receives care is a function of a bunch of crap over which the government presently only has tertiary influence. Health care isn’t a function of the law. Not yet, anyway.
From a social standpoint, both individuals are still playing by the same rules. You have a problem with money being used as a metric to judge how much access you have to the health care system. That’s a legitimate position to take. I assume that you do not, however, oppose using money as the metric governing access to, say, bowling alleys or arcade cabinets, so it’s clear that you’re drawing some distinctions that you should clarify. For what it’s worth, if you think we can completely remove money as a standard governing access to health care, you’re entirely and completely wrong. Nothing is free, and some health care is more expensive than other health care. The goal that you should set is that everybody has access to the same minimum standard of health care at the same price. That’s actually true in every part of the United States that I’m familiar with right now - if you require critical care, there is a hospital somewhere around you that is required to treat you without worrying about whether you can give them money or not. It turns out that only providing critical care in this way does not do a particularly good job of controlling costs down and does not yield very good outcomes when compared to more expansive provision of care.
Or, let’s approach it from a different direction - there is no such thing as a human being that is intrinsically rich or poor. Tomorrow, a team of unethical IT professionals could assault Bill Gates and probably put him, if not in the gutter, at least send him back into the workforce. He could lose all of his money. Similarly, in that same period any random individual below the poverty line could win the lottery and suddenly become very, very wealthy. Conservatives prefer not to associate WEALTH directly with PERSONHOOD or any derivative quality thereof. I’m not going to sit here and tell you that it’s the only way to look at things, but it is certainly A way to look at things, and it’s not invalid on its face.
If you completely ignore the varying standards that other countries use, then I can see how you would misinterpret his statement like this.
jeffd
1939
I prefer to attempt to adjust for them, rather than to use them as a justification for avoiding any kind of comparison at all.
Are you footnoting or something? What’s with the asterisks?
I was talking about benefits in general, not specifically health benefits.
This thread is about health benefits. Maybe you should try to keep up?
What major changes have the Democrats made to the healthcare bill to appease the Republicans?
What changes have the Republicans requested? They haven’t involved themselves AT ALL other than to say “we don’t like it.” Regardless, the Democrats have made EXTENSIVE cuts and changes to their original plans in order to appease conservatives. Most notably, the public option. The plan that finally got passed in the Senate was WAY more conservative than some of the options on the table. Again I ask if you have been hiding under a rock while this has been going on.
