2012-07-25, 10:06 AM
Eos Wrote:What about single parents on minimum wage with multiple children who get sick?1) their own fault for keeping the babies or having them in the first place. If you aren't willing or able to support a child/children, you shouldn't have them; that's not our responsibility to subsidize.
What about a single man working who gets a non debilitating injury, or one that wouldn't be debilitating with the proper care, but can't afford to have the required surgery on what they make? What about the college kid on a scholarship who just got hit by a drunk driver and has no income and now requires extensive physical therapy and operations just to resume normal life? There are hundreds if not thousands of easily named scenarios.
Your "physically unable" criteria is more black and white than just giving everyone equal benefits and protections.
This "It's my money everyone else can fend for themselves" mentality is plain ignorance and fear of losing something without tangible reward, especially when coupled with blame. People don't choose to need medical attention. They get sick. They get hurt. Things happen beyond your control. Ensuring everyone is equally covered and that the cost of it is spread evenly benefits everyone except people so damn wealthy they can afford their own hospitals and never need to worry about the cost of anything, and even they could benefit from savings if our medical system wasn't designed to be a financial suck-hole that no one will address.
Everyone "deserves" to be healthy.
2)If he's working, he should already have health care; if he works at a very low end job and doesn't, he would fall under the "physically disabled" category in the latter example, and in the former he would not. Not really much more to it than that...while this sort of system would encourage people to get hurt worse if they get hurt at all, it would still dissuade the weak-hearted from trying to take advantage of the system, and let's be honest here, that will be the majority in any situation, not just in this.
3)Why wouldn't he fall under that as well? If he's disabled without the therapy, it's the same as saying "he's disabled", since that's exactly what he will be if no help is given.
As to your last point...I will agree to disagree, we have fundamentally different opinions on this subject. I feel that not only is that not the case, but that most people DON'T deserve to be healthy. If you aren't putting something back into the market, you are worthless to society; me saying the disabled deserve healthcare is me meeting you halfway, because honestly, the best system nature has to offer is survival of those who survive (survival of the fittest isn't really a good way to say it, since that does not factor in luck, which is a major variable in all aspects of life whether we want it to be or not). If I were crippled in some way an hour from now I would still say this, but then, I've never been one to care for my own wellbeing, anyway. Call me suicidal by negligence, if you wish. People, creatures, living organisms...none of these groups are equal, within themselves or with the other groups alike.
Stereo Wrote:Rich people depend far more on the existence of poor people than poor people do on rich people, in the same way that top of the food chain predators need large numbers of prey.
What does that have to do with anything...? If you are going to go that route, there will NEVER, EVER be a shortage of expendable bodies. Even if ten people took all of the world's wealth and somehow took the concept of trade/barter, everyone would still not die. Hundreds of thousands of people would still be drifting the planet aimlessly a decade later. If each of those 10 people had 5 capable slaves, they would still easily be able to live a life of luxury for the remainder of their lives. Trying to "topple the pyramid by removing the bottom" will not work when they own the entire pyramid, all of the people that made it, all of the resources used in the process of making said pyramid, and all of the land that the pyramids are located on.
Quote:Further, I'm still appalled that your default assumption is that they didn't try. It's exactly like a lottery winner telling everyone else they should have bought more tickets, and they could be winners too. It just plain ignores reality.This world is full to the brim of people that never tried. Many of them I can observe in my own family. For some, the second they realize they don't need to work in order to survive, they stop trying and put double the effort into making themselves fit into the subset for free pomegranate, sometimes even going so far as to disable THEMSELVES just to get said free pomegranate. Now, that's not common, and they will usually just try to fake it as best they can, but there have been cases of that kind of thing occurring. Honestly, if someone is willing to cripple themselves to get a free ride, kudos to them, they deserve it, in a messed up sort of way. There are some genuinely handicapped people as well, and they deserve our help, too. But a perfectly capable person wanting handouts because "they can't get a job"? Hell no. There is no such thing as can't get a job in this country; in other countries, it really can be impossible to get a job. But we are not a third world country, last I checked. What we have here is "not willing to take that job", which is an entirely different situation. Worst case scenario, something that absolutely everyone has that is worth at least something is their own body.
None of this is really the issue at hand though; all of these things and more could be done by a good system of privatized healthcare. What we currently have is a system based on crony capitalism, not the free market; if the government wants to do something useful, reform the way they deal with the current system of privatized healthcare.
But again, that would be like shooting themselves in the foot; they profit off of crony capitalism entirely too much to ever try to abolish any aspect of it. The only thing that they would make MORE off of is forced government healthcare. So, by continually trying to force it through, they are continually showing how greedy they really are.
"For the greater good" is usually the last thing said by any given person or group before they descend into the depths of madness. The cliche' line that absolute power corrupts absolutely fits perfectly, for this.

