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Should We Allow The Uninsured To Die?

Pinkie

Pinkie

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Do you agree with Ron Paul's POV, that the uninsured should be denied life-saving medical care?
 
Pinkie said:
Do you agree with Ron Paul's POV, that the uninsured should be denied life-saving medical care?
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I don't see anything here that says he wants to deny health care to the uninsured.

From his book:
In the days before Medicare and Medicaid, the poor and elderly were admitted to hospitals at the same rate they are now, and received good care. Before those programs came into existence, every physician understood that he or she had a responsibility towards the less fortunate and free medical care was the norm. Hardly anyone is aware of this today, since it doesn’t fit into the typical, by the script story of government rescuing us from a predatory private sector.
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As for last night, his exact words were:

Ron Paul: That's what freedom is all about: taking your own risks. This whole idea that you need a single payer to take care of everybody....
Blitzer: So are you saying society should let him die?
Ron Paul: No. I practiced medicine, uh....before we had Medicaid. In the early 1960s when I got out of medical school. I practiced at Santa Rosa Hospital in San Antonio and churches took care of them. We never turned anybody away from the hospitals. And we've given up on this whole concept of...that we might take care of ourselves or assume responsibility for ourselves...our neighbors, our communities, our churches would do it. This whole idea...that's the reason the cost is so high. The cost is so high because we dump it on the government, it becomes a beaurocracy, it becomes special interests, it cow-tows to the insurance companies and the drug companies. Then on top of that you have the inflation. The inflation devalues the dollar. We have lack of competition. There's no competition in medicine. Everybody is protected by licensing. We should actually legalize alternative healthcare; allow people to practice what they want.
 
Funny how all this would be solved if we just adopted the obvious solution: universal healthcare.
 
Ron Paul is living in a fantasy world. When people don't have health insurance and cannot afford their health treatment, they either get lucky and have someone else help them out or they die. Thousands of Americans die each year because they can't afford healthcare. This study found that uninsured Americans are 1.8 times as likely to die as insured ones:

http://www.pnhp.org/excessdeaths/health-insurance-and-mortality-in-US-adults.pdf
 
Paschendale said:
Funny how all this would be solved if we just adopted the obvious solution: universal healthcare.
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The government can't even run a licensing program efficiently. I do not want them controlling healthcare.
 
Voltaire X said:
Ron Paul is living in a fantasy world. When people don't have health insurance and cannot afford their health treatment, they either get lucky and have someone else help them out or they die. Thousands of Americans die each year because they can't afford healthcare. This study found that uninsured Americans are 1.8 times as likely to die as insured ones:

http://www.pnhp.org/excessdeaths/health-insurance-and-mortality-in-US-adults.pdf
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The question asked last night wasn't about people who can't afford insurance, but people who choose not to have insurance. He also addressed the issue of the cost of medical treatment, which is the biggest inhibiting factor to access for people who cannot afford insurance.

Did that study look into the lifestyle differences of insured v. uninsured? Or did it just do a surface examination with no other evidentiary findings?
 
tessaesque said:
The government can't even run a licensing program efficiently. I do not want them controlling healthcare.
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No one else could do it. Even if private corporations had any interest in helping those who can't make them rich, they don't have the massive amount of infrastructure to make it happen. But seriously, if you want government to be more effective at running the programs it takes on, stop handcuffing it. Get the private interests away from government. Get out the lobby money, get out the corporate campaign donations. Those massive 2000 page bills will shrink pretty quickly if they only need to tackle one issue. And then stop funneling money into the upper classes, where it does no one any good. Government is ineffective because we make it that way. Give it the means to accomplish the tasks we set it to, and it will be able to do them.

But it already does most things better than the private sector.
 
Paschendale said:
No one else could do it. Even if private corporations had any interest in helping those who can't make them rich, they don't have the massive amount of infrastructure to make it happen. But seriously, if you want government to be more effective at running the programs it takes on, stop handcuffing it. Get the private interests away from government. Get out the lobby money, get out the corporate campaign donations. Those massive 2000 page bills will shrink pretty quickly if they only need to tackle one issue. And then stop funneling money into the upper classes, where it does no one any good. Government is ineffective because we make it that way. Give it the means to accomplish the tasks we set it to, and it will be able to do them.

But it already does most things better than the private sector.
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Nice rant. Completely unrelated to my analogy, though.

How long to do wait at the DPS? After filling out a form the size of a postcard and gathering your birth certificate and SS card, how long are you made to wait until you get your license? How about the tax office? The DMV? Ever had to deal with the Fish and Wildlife department? What about the IRS? These are all programs and departments devised entirely by the government to regulate and control actions legislated by the government. And they're all bound up in red tape, lines, waiting lists, untrained, unprofessional, incapable staff, and tons upon tons of misinformation.

So you can blame everybody but the government for government inefficiency....but it's just more party-line nonsense designed to villify the people you like the least. Even if you consider the parties you mentioned above...guess what? The government decided whether or not those parties had any influence. So they're still the ones with their pants down here.

We can't even bid on a government job without jumping through a ridiculous number of hoops, and all we do is clean carpets. So I'm sorry if I don't fall into lock-step with the "government is our savior" bullhockey spewed as a justification for handing them the reigns and ability to train, regulate, monitor, and select the guy who measures out my anesthesia before surgery.
 
Pinkie said:
Do you agree with Ron Paul's POV, that the uninsured should be denied life-saving medical care?
Click to expand...
I agree with tessaesque, Ron Paul did not say this, I believe that if your going to start a debate, start it with a true question like....
Do you agree with the audience of the debate, on whether we should deny life-saving medical care to the uninsured?
 
tessaesque said:
Nice rant. Completely unrelated to my analogy, though.

How long to do wait at the DPS? After filling out a form the size of a postcard and gathering your birth certificate and SS card, how long are you made to wait until you get your license? How about the tax office? The DMV? Ever had to deal with the Fish and Wildlife department? What about the IRS? These are all programs and departments devised entirely by the government to regulate and control actions legislated by the government. And they're all bound up in red tape, lines, waiting lists, untrained, unprofessional, incapable staff, and tons upon tons of misinformation.

So you can blame everybody but the government for government inefficiency....but it's just more party-line nonsense designed to villify the people you like the least. Even if you consider the parties you mentioned above...guess what? The government decided whether or not those parties had any influence. So they're still the ones with their pants down here.

We can't even bid on a government job without jumping through a ridiculous number of hoops, and all we do is clean carpets. So I'm sorry if I don't fall into lock-step with the "government is our savior" bullhockey spewed as a justification for handing them the reigns and ability to train, regulate, monitor, and select the guy who measures out my anesthesia before surgery.
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i don't know, my dmv allows you to make appointments online, and you just breeze through. piece of cake. i also had to go through a number of "to dos" to get my masters captain's license, and while they were numerous, they were accomplished smoothly, including the homeland security required twic. i also got my fishing licesne on-line, again, piece of cake.
 
Pinkie said:
Do you agree with Ron Paul's POV, that the uninsured should be denied life-saving medical care?
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it's called natural selection
 
It isn't the governments place to step in for either the inactions or the bad choices people make. It is a question for society to answer.
 
tessaesque said:
The government can't even run a licensing program efficiently. I do not want them controlling healthcare.
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But the government does control some healthcare already. Medicare. All the retirees in my family have few if any complaints. They get the services they need with nary a mention to me, including new hips, in and out of town emergent care, back surgery and follow up care. Medicare also has the benefit of running on 3% overhead costs.
 
Gina said:
But the government does control some healthcare already. Medicare. All the retirees in my family have few if any complaints. They get the services they need with nary a mention to me, including new hips, in and out of town emergent care, back surgery and follow up care. Medicare also has the benefit of running on 3% overhead costs.
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I was on Medicaid for years and would fight tooth and nail to avoid ever being on it again. I'm glad you have people who are happy with their government health care. I wasn't. And I don't trust it. And I will fight to avoid it ever being mandated upon the entire population of this country. I got better care when I didn't have insurance at all (and I paid my bills) than I ever did when I was on the government dole. Can't even tell you how many times I was denied a medical test or procedure because some government-assembled group of "professionals" decided that particular test or procedure wasn't "necesssary" on the basis of some arbitrary qualification system.

Thanks to that nonsense I went through 8 years of daily pain because of gallstones the size of ping pong balls. Because some quantitative/qualitative measure devised by compiling data instead of talking to patients and doctors decided that a sonogram would cost more than any possible benefit of performing the procedure.
 
tessaesque said:
I was on Medicaid for years and would fight tooth and nail to avoid ever being on it again. I'm glad you have people who are happy with their government health care. I wasn't. And I don't trust it. And I will fight to avoid it ever being mandated upon the entire population of this country. I got better care when I didn't have insurance at all (and I paid my bills) than I ever did when I was on the government dole. Can't even tell you how many times I was denied a medical test or procedure because some government-assembled group of "professionals" decided that particular test or procedure wasn't "necesssary" on the basis of some arbitrary qualification system.

Thanks to that nonsense I went through 8 years of daily pain because of gallstones the size of ping pong balls. Because some quantitative/qualitative measure devised by compiling data instead of talking to patients and doctors decided that a sonogram would cost more than any possible benefit of performing the procedure.
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well, did you live in texas? i hear medicaid funds there are horribly misspent. ;-)

aside from that, do you have a problem with mandating insurance?
 
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We have the highest cost of care and the most bloated medical system in the western world. Clearly what we have is not working efficiently or providing quality care.

People object to universal health care for philosophical reasons. It could have the potential to actually save us money.

But ultimately I must agree with some opponents who say that we can't afford it right now. Our economy is too fragile to implement such a huge system, and the health care bill we currently have is a complete piece of corporate crap.
 
liblady said:
well, did you live in texas? i hear medicaid funds there are horribly misspent. ;-)

aside from that, do you have a problem with mandating insurance?
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I have a problem with the federal government mandating the purchase of a product. I feel that the power for that type of legislation, if belonging to anybody, would be with the states.
 
tessaesque said:
I was on Medicaid for years and would fight tooth and nail to avoid ever being on it again. I'm glad you have people who are happy with their government health care. I wasn't. And I don't trust it. And I will fight to avoid it ever being mandated upon the entire population of this country. I got better care when I didn't have insurance at all (and I paid my bills) than I ever did when I was on the government dole. Can't even tell you how many times I was denied a medical test or procedure because some government-assembled group of "professionals" decided that particular test or procedure wasn't "necesssary" on the basis of some arbitrary qualification system.

Thanks to that nonsense I went through 8 years of daily pain because of gallstones the size of ping pong balls. Because some quantitative/qualitative measure devised by compiling data instead of talking to patients and doctors decided that a sonogram would cost more than any possible benefit of performing the procedure.
Click to expand...

I don't want to be argumentative Tessa and I'm very sorry your experience has been so terrible, but Medicaid is administered through each state, yes? I know they must conform to federal guide lines, but maybe that is the difference in how benefits and care are approved and administered?

Again, I'm sorry and I don't blame you in the least for your opinion of government healthcare.
 
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Temporal said:
We have the highest cost of care and the most bloated medical system in the western world. Clearly what we have is not working efficiently or providing quality care.

People object to universal health care for philosophical reasons. It could have the potential to actually save us money.

But ultimately I must agree with some opponents who say that we can't afford it right now. Our economy is too fragile to implement such a huge system, and the health care bill we currently have is a complete piece of corporate crap.
Click to expand...

How does universal healthcare solve the problem of medical care being expensive? Just because the government says, "We think an MRI scan should cost $50" doesn't mean that an MRI scan will magically be feasible at $50.
 
Gina said:
I don't want to be argumentative Tessa and I'm very sorry your experience has been so terrible, but Medicaid is administered through each state, yes? I know they must conform to federal guide lines, but maybe that is the difference in how benefits and care are approved and administered?
Click to expand...

All/most entitlements are managed and processed at a state level, but they're still federally legislated, mandated, and created programs. The SS checks I used to cash for recipients were signed by the state comptroller of Texas. The guideline which essentially rationed my care came from the federal level, devised by a group of federally-selected "professionals" and submitted to the federal legislature for inclusion in a federally mandated and funded program.
 
I think if any health care project should exist from the government then it should only entitle children and soldiers. Health care is a socialist program that gets people to conform to the subsidy and learn how to live off it. There is no mechanism in these programs to efficiently get people back to "societal normalcy", this means getting a job, paying your own bills with your own money. A lot of people that get on these programs, like health care from the state, or Welfare, unemployment benefits, subsidized housing, these people learn how to get every drop. They sometimes have no choice, they're are trapped because it's set up to be a switch, you either have it or you don't. So to get off subsidies becomes damn near impossible.
I have personally received just about all of these subsidies and worked my 'tukas' off to be independent. 13 years later and I'm back on subsidies, but only 1. I won't accept state health benefits. It seems ...like I'm cheating or doing something wrong. And I would oppose a socialized program that would mandate me to have health care, unless this program was a stepped system that allows people to get off the subsidy and onto their own healthcare.
But the fact remains that we need to know about everything else, and talk about everything else that coincides with this subject like welfare and other things of that nature.
We literally can not debate about the use of one socialized system that is part of a larger system. If we can't see the big picture there is no point to debating health care, and how or why or if it should happen. Period.
 
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I think the more pressing question is about allowing old people to die. 40% of medicare dollars go to the last month of the patients life. We spend huge amounts of money on incredibly expensive treatments with a minimal chance of success that would only buy a few more months of life in the best case scenario. If you are going to start sacrificing people for healthcare dollars, you should start with biggest expenses that bring in the least benefit.

Frankly, I would be downright ashamed to enact such draconian measure at the moment. The only reason every American doesn't have healthcare is because our current system is the most wasteful and inefficient system in the world. We spend more 142% more money than anyone else per capita, and yet can't cover 16% of our population. There is no shortage of healthcare dollars, only people willing to avoid pissing said money away.
 
Pinkie said:
Do you agree with Ron Paul's POV, that the uninsured should be denied life-saving medical care?[/QUOT

Ive always said Paul is nuts and the more he talks the more nuts I believe he is
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tessaesque said:
I don't see anything here that says he wants to deny health care to the uninsured.

From his book:


As for last night, his exact words were:

Ron Paul: That's what freedom is all about: taking your own risks. This whole idea that you need a single payer to take care of everybody....
Blitzer: So are you saying society should let him die?
Ron Paul: No. I practiced medicine, uh....before we had Medicaid. In the early 1960s when I got out of medical school. I practiced at Santa Rosa Hospital in San Antonio and churches took care of them. We never turned anybody away from the hospitals. And we've given up on this whole concept of...that we might take care of ourselves or assume responsibility for ourselves...our neighbors, our communities, our churches would do it. This whole idea...that's the reason the cost is so high. The cost is so high because we dump it on the government, it becomes a beaurocracy, it becomes special interests, it cow-tows to the insurance companies and the drug companies. Then on top of that you have the inflation. The inflation devalues the dollar. We have lack of competition. There's no competition in medicine. Everybody is protected by licensing. We should actually legalize alternative healthcare; allow people to practice what they want.
Click to expand...


I watched the debate and he couldnt answer the question...and didnt....the question was if a 30 yr old who had a good job didnt have health insurance because he didnt want to pay for it...and he went into a coma who pays for that....and paul did not answer that question directly.

Hes living in a world 40 yrs ago...where there wasnt that many americans and there wasnt gadzillions of illegal immigrants running over the border to give us the privledge of paying for their child births to the tune of 400,000 a year....and most hospitals are for PROFIT and they get subsidies From guess who GOVT for indigent care....my county in fla we pay 25.00 a yr property tax for the indigent care our local hospital does...so Paul is living in lalaland..
Theres millions more uninsured now...and anyone that thinks doctors are going to spend most of their time working for free...your living in the same lallaland and Paul is......personal responsibility...blahblahblah...sounds cool...make everyone do it...including the millions of illegals here..
 
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