Okay, this one is not a discussion of theology. It isn't even about something Christian. I am not offering answers. I'm completely at your mercy. I am trying to understand.
Apparently, according to all sorts of sources, in amongst the 1000-some-odd page healthcare reform bill is a clause that makes it illegal to not have health insurance. Now, according to the President and the Congress and all, there are some 45 million Americans without health insurance. The answer, at least in part, is to force them to get health insurance.
Now, someone help me, please. How is forcing health insurance on everyone the answer? How is it legal? How is it constitutional? How is it moral?
I'm not making an argument. I'm not making a point. I'm asking a question. Seriously, how does this make any sense at all?
12 comments:
Some of my honest thoughts on the matter. (hey, you changed your comment format, thanks)
1. Something I rarely here mentioned in this debate is the concept of responsibility as it pertains to the individual. If I don't ware a helmet on my motorcycle and crack my scull, I have just suffered the consequence of my decision. The government was not there to throw out pads for my head when I hit the dog that ran out in front of me; and nobody, as far as I know, is upset about that... yet. (who knows... these are indeed strange times) The helmet, just like seat belts and other safety equipment is a form of insurance. And as with insurance, the use of it after the fact does us no good.
But health insurance is different. What are we suppose to do when there are sick and dieing people lying outside the emergency room with life saving equipment a few mere feet away? Are we suppose to look at them and say sorry, you are now going to have to suffer the consequence of your decisions? The only difference between now and before is a matter of time. If it took a person two weeks to fall off their motorcycle we could be having the same debate over paying someone to go out and put pads out for the irresponsible among us.
Now this analogy is full of anomalies and is meant to address only one issue, responsibility.
More to come.
I understand the problem -- health care isn't what it should be. My question is how mandating it for people who currently can't afford it makes it ... affordable ... or even right.
(In California, motorcycle helmets are mandatory for the same reason.)
Those Homophones again. What a mind field for those week of mine.
Dan: "More to come."
I'm looking forward to it.
As an aside -- something I just thought about -- there is a large number of hospitals in the U.S. that were started by Christian organizations. They were started primarily to address the problem that Christians saw in the public health care system and they operated out of Christian charity to help people. That seems like a better "health care reform" than "force the people who can't afford health care to pay for it anyway so they will be covered."
Dan said: "What are we suppose to do when there are sick and dieing people lying outside the emergency room with life saving equipment a few mere feet away? Are we suppose to look at them and say sorry, you are now going to have to suffer the consequence of your decisions?"
This is a strawman if I ever saw one. There is no emergency room that can legally do that. No one is to be denied health care in an emergency room, even if they don't have insurance. That is a law in this country, and so few people seem to know that.
In light of this, I would love it if you would explain your analogy again as I'm not sure I followed what you were trying to say. I don't see how health insurance is any different.
To all -
What blows my mind is that the number of people without health care is an extremely misleading number. Of those without health care, a huge percentage of them can afford it, but choose not to have it (in a free country, should this not be an option?). Of the remaining people, a rather large number of them are very close to being able to afford health insurance, something that could be fixed by opening up competition across state lines, tort reform, and a myriad of other things. Of those left (now just a handful compared to what we started with), most of them could afford health insurance if they chose to go find a job. They just struggle to choose to work because they like the free time they're afforded to watch cable/satellite tv, play their xbox, and go get more booze, smokes, and other drugs. (I don't mean a career, I just mean fast food or what have you.) So many of those are just plain lazy, and expect to be handed their necessities because they spend what they do have on those things mentioned above, among other things. And the government enables them to be lazy and irresponsible by giving them handouts instead of teaching them responsibility. What we have left are actually very few people in this country that genuinely can't afford health insurance, and most of them can't work because of some form of disability. And that smaller number (of those in the last two groups I mentioned) can be handled by a compassionate church.
It is not the job of the government to care for the poor...that job was given to the church. On top of that, we were given instructions on how to care for them, and it wasn't necessarily giving them anything and everything they "needed." We make excuses when we pass off the job of taking care of others by throwing money at it (especially money we don't have), and by making other people take care of it. And the argument that the government in this country is the people so we're not actually passing the buck, is so full of holes, I can't believe anyone actually brings that up.
Thanks for asking the question. That's only one, however, of so many questions that could be asked of this monstrosity working its way through our government. Others would include:
Why is it that we see health insurance as a right, when it's never been seen that way before in the history of mankind?
Do we realize, too, that the question has jumped to having a right to health care as opposed to insurance? And does it not also make sense that if you believe one has a right to health care, that means that they have a right over another person's life (unless they can provide health care for themselves)?
Why are government officials who are creating this law not excited about having this government health insurance for themselves and excluding themselves from it, if it's so great?
Why would it not be implemented until 2013 if people "need" this now?
Ryan
re "This is a strawman if I ever saw one. There is no emergency room that can legally do that."
This was an attempt at a hypothetical analogy demonstrating a false dilemma, give me free health care or the moron dies. It would be a strawman if it were my defense for this boondoggle of a bill now hanging over the nation's head. There are other more civil options in such a case, like holding the person accountable for the bill. The only question is, does this nation have the will to enforce it. My guess is no, it does not.
Sorry that the analogy was not clear. There was a part two that would have cleared things up but in publishing it, it got accidentally erased. Note to self: always copy long comments before attempting to post!
Ryan
re I don't see how health insurance is any different. It is different in reference to my point only due to the time factor, hence: "The government was not there to throw out pads for my head when I hit the dog that ran out in front of me; and nobody, as far as I know, is upset about that... yet. (who knows... these are indeed strange times)"
Hope that clears things up a little.
Ryan
I asked similar questions on this post earlier.
Dan,
Your answer on that post was "It's not about compassion; it's about power." I guess that's a pretty good answer to my question, too, isn't it? It's not about fixing all those poor folk who don't have insurance. It's about power.
Yes Stan, there's no question that this debacle is a crisis created by those who now want to fix it for the purposes of using it for the gaining of more power. But my answer... or at least my attempted answer deals with the questions of How is forcing health insurance on everyone the answer? and How is it moral? I was trying to make the case that we seem to be faced with a false dilemma because there are people who, through no fault of their own, are faced with economic devastation, but not enough to warrant the complete destruction of the system as it now stands by removing incentives to practice and develop medicine. And as Ryan alluded, the problem presented is hugely inflated and takes into account many who could afford at least catastrophic coverage but choose to spend their money elsewise, in short, to act irresponsibly and immorally with the full knowledge that the "system" will take care of them.
With a government growing larger by the minute by making promises it can't keep of ensuring cradle to grave security to a people more than willing to trade their birthright for such vein hopes at their neighbor's expense, the questions of legality, constitutionality, and morality, in my opinion, become moot. These questions suggest a governing objective reality, a reality that we seem to now collectively reject. The only question that I can see remaining is, when will that reality catch up to us, or perhaps better put, when will we on our current coarse collide with it?
So ... is there any reason to think that the new system will benefit me or anyone of the apparently 340 million Americans who are currently insured?
I'm sorry...I just struggled to understand your post Dan. Somehow I got the idea you were supportive, though I was a little surprised by that. Nothing seemed to make sense! Sorry!
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