The big lie: That Conservatives just want people to die

The way you win in November against Democrats, is to point out their hypocrisy. And to point it out, again, and again. The last Republican victory came with Karl Rove's "swiftboat" attacks(Only "swiftboat" in the sense that they were actually right.) The Democrats cried out that this was unfair that we were pointing out their hypocritical, often dishonest record(and nothing's more dishonest than their claims that they're a working class party, but that's another debunking.).

Obama called for a "new politics"(IE: A passive-aggressive stance, where Democrats could continue to attack Republicans, but Republicans shouldn't fight back.) I think anyone would call for one side to be defenseless, but the Republicans actually allowed themselves to be defenseless! And that has left us in the modern day. Where Republicans struggle to advocate for conservative principles, while allowing the Democrats to attack at will.

I think the 2012 defeat has shown quite clearly that our participation in a so-called "new politics" has not been, and is not reciprocated. And as such, it's time that at least in the form of a debate it's time we go back to the old ways: To Karl Rove swiftboating. That's what I will do today. Starting with defending the Conservative approach to Health Care.

The claim, is that we just want "people to die"(even as Democrats continue to hold onto the belief that the UHC 'lowered costs'. So it's not like there wasn't health care before UHC.). No, we find health insurance companies existed, created plans and sold those plans. Even if they were plans that YOU didn't like.

The ACA is nothing more than a restructuring of how insurance companies do business, rather than the creation of a magical "gift" called health care.
So, already just with this fact it can be clearly debunked that conservatives want "people to die", and it's not as though they are arguing for "preferred treatment of the 1%".

No, I've made mention numerous times why I believed the ACA was terrible: A government monopoly via the sanctioned "choices", dubiously and hilariously called a market but any entrepreneurs here(Merwen and Junkieturtle) can also attest that this is a monopoly. The only difference is that companies did not merge with each other, but inside the "government-ran" market.

A monopoly and the sense of a monopoly is to restrict buying choices. Hell, your very choice is already restricted with the individual mandate. That's the second problem. The ability to decide NOT to buy something(IE: Not to join a market) is the greatest power a consumer has, the greatest power to tell a chain, or a company that their product is simply not wanted on the open market, and that changes must be made for greater sales.

Typically in fact, CEO's rely on dissatisfaction to improve on their products. But because the individual mandate takes away this choice, companies lose all incentive to improve on their product. Presuming there's a limit to the number of health insurance companies that will enter a market, that means competition is thinned out even more.

There are of course, many more problems that exist with the ACA. Not limited to, but including:

-The hours law, which had to be the STUPIDEST thing ever written into the ACA. After the Democrats complained that big corporations rigged the game and didn't want to ensure people, they gave corporations a cop-out to cut hours and save money. The Democrats sole excuse then was "Hey, now you can choose to work part time".

Just like the principle of the ACA, there was never a time when you COULDN'T choose to work part time. It's just now you're FORCED to work part-time since if they're cutting the hours back, they most certainly aren't hiring full-time workers. It will now be a "privilege" to work full time. Thank you, Democrats.

-Supply and Demand.

Rather than lowering costs.(Without the subsidies, many who got the plans probably wouldn't be able to afford them) The fundamental function of the ACA is going to increase costs, because the demand will be higher(Well, uh duh.) And Health care is inelastic. Only so much blood to donate, only so many organs to go around and the already prohibitive costs means that to make health care more efficient, you need to scale it down anyway.

On the flipside since the demand cannot be met, supply will also dwindle. Until the increased number of insured(and those using it) will deplete health resources. In many ways, the technicalities that keep some individuals from using the Plan is keeping it more viable. But just because some of the flaws are keeping it alive and kicking, doesn't mean we should replace Crap Plan.

No, Crap Plan has to be replaced. And the GOP has done an absolutely miserable job to date on arguing precisely why it should be replaced.

Excellent article to describe the realities of health care

It's not that Conservatives are against universal health care, it's WHAT kind of health care is feasible. And the Insurance Mandate simply wasn't and isn't viable. Consumers don't have that money to spend, not all companies can entirely cover their employees and the medical faculties simply do NOT have that sheer amount of medical produce year after year.

What conservatives advocate for(and I know what I've advocated for is a TWO-TIER SYSTEM). **Huffs and puffs**. We don't want people dying in the streets. We just don't want excessive costs burdening the individual taxpayer. I believe that Singapore has it right. There should be a private component, we should work to segregate the market place and thus make costs a lot lower.

Tomfitz argued to me that Family Health Plans cost less than single plans. Family Health Plans cost less for insurance companies, because they can cover more people under the same rate. But that's only assuming health costs are lateral. Inevitably, as the cost for Group A increases, the Plan itself will change and inevitably become more expensive.

Single Plans are much more viable for individuals, and I think that Single Plans can be funded as a family plan under certain guidelines. Or the costs have to be fixed to a single number(or percentage.) Otherwise, the varying variables means that a single plan is much more affordable.

Especially as I personally called for more insurance companies, and the division of consumers along the demographics of age. This will lead to more pools being created, which will also act as a cost reducer. Overall, the conservative approach to health care is vastly more cheaper than the one-size fits all, failed project that Liberals want us to keep to, supposedly because we want those "others" to die in the streets.

Except we don't. We just want our self-determination to return to us. If we want "crappy plans", we reserve our right to "crappy plans" thank you

 

Is the post so powerful that our Liberal friends want to avoid it? What's wrong. I thought we wanted people to die on the streets. Should be easy to debunk me and show me that we have no apathy for the poor.

 

I would guess most people do not want to read a very long post.

 

"The ACA is nothing more than a restructuring of how insurance companies do business, rather than the creation of a magical "gift" called health care.
So, already just with this fact it can be clearly debunked that conservatives want "people to die", and it's not as though they are arguing for "preferred treatment of the 1%"."

remember Arizona, republican death panels did cause people to die

"Two Dead Since Arizona Medicaid Program Slashed Transplant Coverage"

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/News/arizona-transplant-deaths/story?id=12559369

.

 

Attention spans aren't what they used to be....Unless the subject matter involves sex or violence and if both than wowee......

 

I read it because I respect the poster but I have found that OP's of two paragraphs are about the right length then you can follow up with further arguments.

 

I have seen multiple people on here saying that healthcare isn't a right (which honestly, it's not but we need healthcare for everyone) and that if someone can't afford it that's their own fault. I know lots of people who are sick and can't work because they got really sick by not being able to afford healthcare. Not only that, but illness doesn't wait until a person is financially ready to pay for the massive costs associated with it, it just strikes. In many cases, private health insurance costs more than a monthly car payment, and that doesn't even begin to cover the costs of treatment until a deductible is met. If someone is making $1600 a month and health insurance costs $400, rent costs $700, food costs $300, utilities run $300 etc. etc. and a doctor visit costs upwards of $70-$150 dollars, where will they fit in that cost? Even regular middle class people end up going bankrupt, in fact 64% of bankruptcies involve healthcare bills. The cost is too damn high, and all republicans propose is the free market, which we had before obamacare and it wasn't working.

Don't get me wrong, obamacare isn't a good solution either, we need a universal plan that ensures nobody goes without treatment regardless of income or ability to afford it. It's a life and death matter, after all. Indigent patients already cost the system exhorbitant amounts of money by doing things like going to the ER for a common cold. Over 50% of hospital bills go unpaid. America cannot afford to do nothing.

Simply saying America cannot afford universal healthcare is dishonest too. Nearly every developed country has it, but for some reason, America, the richest country on earth can't do it. I call bull(*)(*)(*)(*).

Republicans keep just proposing "free market" as a solution, which as anybody with a brain can tell, is not a real solution, it's the problem.

As for a shortage of healthcare, government intervention to train more doctors via reduced or free college tuition would definitely help that out. I'm smart enough to be a med student but am not going for it because there is no way I could afford to, I have a feeling there are a lot more like myself out there. It'd cost me over $400,000

 

I don't think it is true that conservatives want people to die for lack of health care, at least not most of them. However, they generally don't want to pay for someone else's health care.

Neither is it true that all liberals love the ACA, many of them just saw that there was a need for something to be done, because it was intolerable for the richest country of the world to have 10s of million uninsured, just one medical emergency away from bankruptcy.

Of course, most conservatives didn't acknowledge that they were already paying for someone else's health care before the ACA, because the sick still had to be treated, covered by insurance or not. That's why providers overcharged those with insurance, so they could cover for treating those without. In a way, the ACA gets around this problems, preventing people freeloading by saving the money for insurance, and then receiving treatment anyway.

 

And when my deductible triples and becomes almost unaffordable to pay for someone who has wasted their life you somehow think that is fair?

 

I don't think Republicans want people to die. I also don't think the ACA is wonderful, but the status quo was unsustainable. I don't even think most people want health insurance. What they want is health care and when an accident or serious illness comes along, not to go bankrupt because of it. It is hard to look at the rest of the world, see other countries providing health care for their people, and the strongest and richest country in the world squabble politically and not do the same. Can we provide health care for all our citizens? Sure we can. It's simply a matter of priorities, and those with the power to do so have it as a low priority or this problem would have been fixed years ago. Instead, it is used as political leverage to criticize the opposing side. It sure would be nice for those elected to actually put the American people as a priority instead of playing political games, but I won't hold my breath that will happen in my lifetime.

 

I thought Oprah was the one wanting a particular race to die?

 

And there we have it folks, the REAL Republican "solution". Anybody who can't afford to pay for healthcare has "wasted their lives" (maybe by getting sick before they could afford to buy good insurance, or losing a job because they were sick, or having wasted all their money on raising their kids before they got old) and deserves to die in the street to save Spooks a few bucks.

They DO want all the sick to die, you, me, everybody who is not among God's 'favored'. Don't let them bull(*)(*)(*)(*) you and don't EVER vote them into ANY office where they might get control of you.

 

Middle class people wasted their life? Working class people wasted their life? Children wasted their life? If your deductible triples it won't be because of universal healthcare, but the free market, which has been a derailing train of ballooning costs for years.

 

"I don't even think most people want health insurance. What they want is health care". BINGO. Let's put it in economic context: I'm a relatively healthy 24 year old male. I might have to visit the hospital maybe 3 times a year(if that.) Most of the time, never at all. So while this young healthy male goes to work, pays his out-of-pocket expenses and FOR WHAT? With Car insurance, I get it. You need a legal license to drive, it's a privilege.

But there was never any logic in equating a walking, talking human being to a car. Other than the costs of the uninsured piling up at the hospitals. To which you rightly point out: We were already paying out of pocket for the uninsured anyway, prior to the ACA. But there are a couple of caveats. These hospitals, wanting to reduce costs basically used(for the most part) the most basic forms of care. And you weren't paying for other people's subsidies or for things on your own plan(and others plans) that you never wanted or needed.

So for the individual who was covered prior to the ACA, the whole thing is a hassle. For those who willfully choose to not engage in the market, but are now forced to it's doubly a hassle. The only ones who win are the ones who got the free ride to begin with. Making matters worse: The ACA did not have cost reduction measures, but rather you just shifted the burden of the uninsured to the Union collectively.

And why? Because it's your money, not mine muwahahaha. Liberals aren't necessarily for more "government", they're for government paid and brought for by your taxpayer dollars. Unfortunately, it means they can spend as much as they want, frivolously as they want with no accountability.

 

The post was a strawman, so why bother?
The real difference between cons and libs today:

Cons= You're on your own. (Don't ask us for help.)
Libs= We're in this together. (How can we help?)

 

There are two points on which I disagree, but otherwise I think we're in agreement on most things.

The first point is this one-

Those people do get health insurance free, but I wouldn't want to change places with them for all the tea in China. They only get free health care because they are living at the poverty line. Giving them health care is cost effective. If they can see a doctor when they are sick, they won't wait until the illness progresses to the point where they get much more expensive emergency room care, that would have also been paid for by insurance holders in falsified charges. I view welfare and other social spending in a similar way. Desperate people do desperate things. If we can eliminate or reduce some of that desperation, perhaps they won't come to my house to take the things I have in order to live and it will let my homeowner's insurance costs stay as low as possible. I do believe in helping the less fortunate, but it seems to me that there is also a pragmatic point in social spending that rarely gets addressed in forums such as this, especially by those that believe everyone can pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, even those without boots.

The second point is this one-

The way I see government is that it is there to provide structure and protection for the country. Business won't do some things because they aren't profitable. Businesses didn't build the interstate highway system, but they certainly profit from it. It took government. Similarly, Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy could only be handled by governmental agencies. Funding cuts to organizations that provide that kind of help really strained resources and lives were lost because of it. No one and no state can handle that kind of thing alone, and no one thinks its important until it happens to them. Being a large county of diverse needs means sometimes things you think are a waste save someone else's life, and things others may think is a waste will save yours. I'm reminded of those that didn't want to fund relief to Hurricane Katrina victims, until something similar happened to New Jersey. I see it happening now with a Utah senator holding up relief to Flint, Michigan, but he would be irate if the federal government denied his state help should something happen there. We are one big country and we should help each other. We do that through government.

Except for gerrymandered districts, there is accountability to every elected official on election day. I won't go on a rant about gerrymandering, but I do believe it significantly hinders accountability and should be abolished.

You're younger than my youngest child, but I read your posts as if you are a peer. I think you have lots of political savvy, but you are still developing your political ideals. I say that to say this… government isn't evil. It is the people acting collectively to help each other. Sometimes those elected are misguided, so it's important that we pay attention to what they actually say, vote, and hold them accountable. They only have the power we let them have. When we don't pay attention, that power can easily be corrupted. I'm glad there are young people like you that want to hold them accountable. I hope you grow to support the beneficial things that government does, as well as railing against the negative aspects.