How to break healthcare

[preslove]

The republicans' plan is that if you are the working poor & get a treatable disease, you die.

It is so disgusting that Obama passed a right wing health care plan invented by the Heritage foundation and first implemented by Romney in MA, and then viciously attacked him over it.

Now, after the ACA has become integrated into the health care industry, they're going to throw it into chaos.

 

[Jhhnn]

Because luck is the only way you'd be able to achieve that?

Luck is always a factor. I'm lucky to have a good family, a decent intellect, all my limbs, & to be a white male in America. I could have been born deaf & blind to poor Bangla Deshis.

I count my blessings.

 

[theeedude]

This country has to learn a very important lesson that it should have learned after Bush, namely, that the Republican party belongs on the ash heap of history. Trump is the guy who will teach it very well.

 

[fskimospy]

Again, how is that figure defining a rich vs poor background? If rich means the top 5% or greater, then no I don't agree it matters more. There are always going to be people that win the lottery of birth.

It's actually low income vs. high income. Low income is less than 200% of the FPL while high income is at least 200% of the FPL. So no, nowhere close to the top 5%. Now are you appropriately shocked?

https://www.bostonfed.org/inequality2014/papers/reeves-sawhill.pdf

http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox...raduate_vs_high_school_graduate_salaries.html
http://www.forbes.com/sites/susanad...ghest-starting-salaries-in-2015/#5f50f72396a2

Social work majors are frequently in the bottom tier when it comes to income, and the difference between a sub-par college degree and a high school diploma is minor.

Fair enough!

If we accept:

1) Some workers have to fill bad jobs because automation doesn't allow for them to be replaced
2) Those workers will never have a chance to be economically self-sufficient, whether due to abusive upbringings, low IQs, etc
3) A conscious effort will be made to reduce the reproduction of undercapable citizens and increase the ability of the human race

Then I don't have an issue with public healthcare/welfare. The people that fall into all three of those categories have no choice in improving themselves, are still necessary for industry to move forward and make products, and only fail to be compensated because an excessively large labor pool kills their value.

We do not accept that we will attempt to reduce the reproduction of citizens we decide are 'undercapable'. The history of eugenics movements and their results should be all the evidence you need as to why that's a really, really bad idea.

I think it's debatable whether or not healthcare has much bearing on a person's ability to succeed though; most children are fairly healthy and able-bodied as long as they aren't obese. Free and improved public education, I'm all for that, but not many would argue otherwise.

Evidence suggests it does.

http://www.columbia.edu/~rr2165/pdfs/RebackCox_abstract.pdf

The addition of a health center while a student is in middle school substantially increases the chance that this student eventually graduates from high school with a Regent’s diploma rather than just a G.E.D. or local diploma.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

It's actually low income vs. high income. Low income is less than 200% of the FPL while high income is at least 200% of the FPL. So no, nowhere close to the top 5%. Now are you appropriately shocked?

https://www.bostonfed.org/inequality2014/papers/reeves-sawhill.pdf

So $60k~$70k/yr is now rich? All this is telling me now is that if you're at least middle class, you have a good chance of maintaining the standard of living that your parents gave you. I don't see that as a bad thing at all; worst case, I see a problem in some people growing up in poor environments so socially toxic that it hurts their chance of escape.

We do not accept that we will attempt to reduce the reproduction of citizens we decide are 'undercapable'. The history of eugenics movements and their results should be all the evidence you need as to why that's a really, really bad idea.

Nah. Hitler was a jealous failure that described the genius of many Ashkenazi philosophers, scientists, etc as "Jewish philosophy" or "Jewish physics" because he and his buddies were insecure about not being capable of understanding it, and it's a shame that the concept of eugenics had to be ruined by him. The Ashkenazis are actually a great example of the success of (albeit probably unconscious) eugenics; an insular culture that placed high value on literacy and filled niches in banking and elsewhere not permitted in the Christian/Muslim societies they lived with. The extent to which their success is genetic versus cultural is very debatable, but afaic, culture is the transmissible information that makes humans so unique over other animals. A white West Virginian and white Connecticuter could have similar genetic backgrounds, but if one grows up wanting to make coal miners and the other engineers and scientists, I know which one I want reproducing.

I'd argue that the underclasses being the first victims of war and starvation whenever shit hits the fan is better evidence in support of birth consciousness. Granted, technology has pretty much eliminated starvation except in areas with terrible government, but it's always better to have too few people than too many.

Evidence suggests it does.

http://www.columbia.edu/~rr2165/pdfs/RebackCox_abstract.pdf

Since that only contains the abstract, is the primary cause due to teenage pregnancy resulting in dropping out of school? I'm all for making birth control available, in case it's not obvious from the rest of my post. A few hundred bucks on contraceptives/sex ed to save tens/hundreds of thousands of dollars to society overall sounds like one of the best deals imaginable.

 

[fskimospy]

So $60k~$70k/yr is now rich? All this is telling me now is that if you're at least middle class, you have a good chance of maintaining the standard of living that your parents gave you. I don't see that as a bad thing at all; worst case, I see a problem in some people growing up in poor environments so socially toxic that it hurts their chance of escape.

So your first objection was that high income was too high to be relevant and now your argument is high income is too low to be relevant? That seems pretty absurd. I'm not sure why you're trying to hard to escape the pretty obvious conclusions of that paper, which is that simply working hard and doing the right thing is insufficient to escape low income for a good amount of people. Therefore, saying we should provide aid to poor people because it will just encourage them to be poor is wrong.

Nah. Hitler was a jealous failure that described the genius of many Ashkenazi philosophers, scientists, etc as "Jewish philosophy" or "Jewish physics" because he and his buddies were insecure about not being capable of understanding it, and it's a shame that the concept of eugenics had to be ruined by him. The Ashkenazis are actually a great example of the success of (albeit probably unconscious) eugenics; an insular culture that placed high value on literacy and filled niches in banking and elsewhere not permitted in the Christian/Muslim societies they lived with. The extent to which their success is genetic versus cultural is very debatable, but afaic, culture is the transmissible information that makes humans so unique over other animals. A white West Virginian and white Connecticuter could have similar genetic backgrounds, but if one grows up wanting to make coal miners and the other engineers and scientists, I know which one I want reproducing.

The eugenics movement is not unique to Hitler and it has had an ugly history everywhere it's been tried. Casually endorsing eugenics tells me that you either haven't done much research into what that would actually mean in practice or you are badly morally compromised. It's a disgusting thing to promote.

I'd argue that the underclasses being the first victims of war and starvation whenever shit hits the fan is better evidence in support of birth consciousness. Granted, technology has pretty much eliminated starvation except in areas with terrible government, but it's always better to have too few people than too many.

I think history pretty conclusively shows that it's not always better to have too few people than too many.

Since that only contains the abstract, is the primary cause due to teenage pregnancy resulting in dropping out of school? I'm all for making birth control available, in case it's not obvious from the rest of my post. A few hundred bucks on contraceptives/sex ed to save tens/hundreds of thousands of dollars to society overall sounds like one of the best deals imaginable.

No, and if you read it more closely you'll also see that primary health care is associated with improved student learning, etc.