Originally posted by: BoberFett
Craig is, once again, confused on so many levels.
Irony of the month award. And it's only the 6th.
Read my post again. I never said anything about government being wrong all the time.
You set up a false dilemma - some call that a 'logical fallacy'. Of course you edit out the history but here's your original comment:
If you truly believe that those in government are smarter and know more than we do, then you should be 100% behind the Iraq war. Obviously as president, Bush knows more than you do.
On the other hand if you are against Iraq, then you must admit that government is fallible and not necessarily able to make the best decisions, thereby negating your assertion that they'll make the right decision regarding health care.
So what you say here is that either government is right all the time, or you should not rely on it to do anything right, i.e., an error in the Iraq war means UHC is a bad idea.
If only medicine could cure such horrible logic.
You then go on to get confused more:
Only that it has the potential to be wrong. In fact, it has the exact same potential to be wrong as the free market. The only difference is in scope. When a private enterprise is wrong it only affects those that voluntarily chose to associate with it. When government is wrong, everybody gets shafted. In the free market, if I see a company that looks shady I can avoid them. When government is shady it's forcibly imposed on you whether you want it or not. That's why I support minimal government. It's all about freedom of association.
So, all programs are well suited to the private sector of competing businesses better than government doing them.
President Kennedy shouldn't have concentrated $50 billion (adjusted) dollars to put a man on the moon, he should have had a lot of companies each try, wasting far more money in total and not getting there because they can't spend the $50 on that, really. There shouldn't be an FBI; when a crime happens, crime victims should pick which private FBI to call. There shouldn't be one police force in a city, people should pick which one to call. The city shouldn't supply clean drinking water; it should be for-profit, priced by the market.
I'm all in favor of preserving the private, competing system in healthcare - to the extent it provides better, affordable, healthcare to people. If all that's needed is to fill some gaps for the uninsured - fine. I'm more concerned that everyone get healthcare than with how it's done. But if the private system can't deliver it nearly as well, then I'll look at the government doing more.
In addition, he laughably says that on one hand we need to get the money out of politics. Then he goes right into how we need to give the government more money so they can manage health care. So he wants to take money out of politics but put it into government? I've got new for you, simpleton.
I'll just have to include that in the already awarded irony award. Simpleton, you laughably confuse the money in *political campaigns* with the money spent on public services.
Talk about confused.
Government is politics. The only way to get money out of politics is to take it away from government. People who are honest have better things to do with their lives than work in government. They have families to raise and jobs to do. The power of government lures those who seek to abuse the power, whether they're Democrat or Republican. It's a rare person who gets elected and maintains any sort of principle. When it happens it's wonderful, but don't expect it to stay that way. Soon enough someone will replace them who will take the power given happily to the former benevolent politician and twist it for their own purposes. It never fails.
What never fails is that some people have paranoia leading them to false assumptions leading them to bad policy.
It's not that you're entirely wrong, its that you fail to offer anything constructive or to recognize that you're throwing the baby out with the bathwater, that any system without our democratic political system, i.e., power transferred from the 'government' (i.e. the public's elected government) to the private sector (the new robber barons who will increase) will be worse, and we need to fix the democracy, not get rid of it.
Finally, he says we have to monitor government. How exactly does he plan on doiong that when he wants to keep increasing the size of government? We can't even keep it under control right now, if health care should come under it's purview will it somehow become easier to manage? The larger the bureaucracy the easier it is to hide corruption. Again, history shows us everything we need to know about this.
For all the paranois about the corruption of a large government program, social security, Medicare, the VA, are huge programs any objective source I see says are very efficient, much moreso than private counterparts. The one exception there is the republican-created social security trust fund abused by politicians beginning iwth Reagan, which only Al Gore so far promised to stop abusing. But that's not a problem with how SS is run, just with how the politicians grab the money.
It's sad really, because I would support some sort of government sponsored health care. I'm not heartless. I'd love to see something like a government sponsored non-profit health insurance provider that still charges it's members for their insurance, but it doesn't turn away anybody based on health conditions. If the UHC supporters are correct and the only thing causing skyrocketing health care costs is capitalist greed, then surely a non-profit could provide cheap health care. Take away the greed and price should plummet, right? Then I could at least choose whether I wanted to pay one of those greedy private companies or take part in the non-profit plan. But Democrats don't want choice involved, they want a free ride for their voting base. They want to take my money and give it to other people in order to buy their votes, and it's despicable.
Finally, some constructive suggestion - maybe a good one, maybe not. I don't say no to it until it's looked at.
Enough with the rhetorical nonsense about 'buying votes' by simply having good government. 'Oh there goes that political whore Jefferson again, freedom of religion now added to freedom of speech - what's he going to give the people next to buy their votes? How corrupt he is'.
The funny thing is, many view our founding as exactly that - a small group tired of England taking too much a share of their economic activity, and to get the public to support war against England, giving them a bigger share of power than almost any society in history - making a unique circumstance for power to finally not be so locked up with an oligarchy. And what was wrong with how that worked out?
A program that serves society well is not 'corruption'. A program that feeds the poor because society wants to feed the poor is not 'corruption'. A program that gives affordable drugs to elders because society wants to is not corruption, unless passed by the corrupt current administration who adds language jacking up the drug prices to add hundreds of billions in profits for their largest *campaign donors*.
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