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The case the opposition to Health Care Reform is presenting is built on a STRAW MAN!

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posted on Jul, 14 2009 @ 02:56 PM
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Three times today alone, I have seen this ad:



Well Folks, what we have here is a textbook, classic case of a

STRAW MAN!

What is the difference between some government bureaucrat and some insurance company administrator? Well, there is a difference.

The government bureaucrat would be making decisions to make sure the system doesn't go broke. The corporate lackey, on the other hand is making decisions to ensure the Corporation makes a profit! The more profit the better! So who do you really want making the decision of whether you can have an MRI or not? I'm going for the guy who isn't going to get a bonus at the end of the year. BILLIONS of $$$$ paid into the health insurance industry are paid out to administrators and executives! Billions of $$$$ paid into the health insurance industry are paid out to stockholders of these Corporations!

Unless you're wealthy and don't need the insurance, you already have someone between you and your Doctor, but that person does not have your health in mind, just $$$$!

I'm sorry, but Capitalism + Healthcare = Nothing Good!



posted on Jul, 14 2009 @ 03:06 PM
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reply to post by JaxonRoberts
 


Government run health care,well there would be no way for there to be any problems there. The government has always been super efficent at everything they have ever done. They would squeeze out the value of every dime spent wouldn't they? There would never be any lobbiests trying to force policy changes to their benifit,the government would never allow that,would they?

I believe we should all lay down and just take what the government doles out to us. Never question the integrity of the government!!!

Sarcasm off.



posted on Jul, 14 2009 @ 03:13 PM
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reply to post by daddyroo45
 


Oh, and insurance companies soooooooo have your best interests in mind! You are certainly more than a number and a payroll deduction to THEM! They sooooooooo want you to get better, no matter what the cost!!! [/sarcasm] Nice try, Don Quixote, but the windmill moved!



posted on Jul, 14 2009 @ 03:14 PM
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reply to post by JaxonRoberts
 


ummm if you belive in goverment run health care take a look at the other social plans the goverment is running like oh lets say Social Security and Medicare which are not just broke but flat out on life support.

And to really see the effect of a goverment run health care system head down to the VA hospitals where it takes atleast a month to go seen for combat releated injuries not to mention the 8 hour er waiting room, or evening the vists for non related injuries that can take up to 6 months.... No thank you, I belive your theory is built on a strawman. I go to my doctor a day after I make a phone call, If I need an MRI I waited 2 weeks not 4 months like I did at the VA.


Whos idea is Straw?



posted on Jul, 14 2009 @ 03:19 PM
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I don't see the strawman in this ad. Call me blind or whatever, but this is the way every other universal health care system is run, and also if I'm not mistaken there is language in the stimulus package that was passed earlier this year that started a discovery process to set up a board of bureaucrats that will over see the medical care in a universal system.

Second, the health insurance may not approve of a surgery or a certain type of drug, but you can still get it if you want too. With the government system you won't have a choice the government will decide whether you get the treatment or not and if they say no, then you will be sunk, and then too get the treatment considering they don't outlaw private practice it will be 3 times as much.

There are many many thing they can do to reduce health care costs, but that works against special interest and that is unacceptable in the eyes of the corporate shills we call politicians and corporations.



posted on Jul, 14 2009 @ 03:28 PM
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Private insurance is far better than government run.

Reasons -

The Insurance company needs to keep customers, so they need to focus on service. If they don't pay - or cause problems, this kind of negative advertising will kill them quickly. Also - private insurers need to be as efficient as possible, because they have competition - so they need to make products people want, and price them effectively to get customers.

The problems come when regulations interfere with this process - and the government forces you to chose an insurer from a list or something like that. If some insurance corporations get government favours - don't expect a good system.



posted on Jul, 14 2009 @ 04:30 PM
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Originally posted by JaxonRoberts
reply to post by daddyroo45
 


Oh, and insurance companies soooooooo have your best interests in mind! You are certainly more than a number and a payroll deduction to THEM! They sooooooooo want you to get better, no matter what the cost!!! [/sarcasm] Nice try, Don Quixote, but the windmill moved!

Gosh darnit you make a good point. Those insurance companies!!! just don't give you the service you'd expect. Maybe you could excersise your consumer rights by changing insurance companies. Companies usually bend to market demand. With the government run insurance....let's see... I guess you wouldn't be able to change insurances...with a thousand dollar fine if you don't accept their coverage. I guess Change = no choices



posted on Jul, 14 2009 @ 04:30 PM
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reply to post by Amagnon
 


Yeah, the only problem with private run health care (and trust me, I am no fan of publicly funded health care the way it is being devised either) is that the insurance companies are price fixing between themselves and big pharma. They do it under the guise of lobbies, pacs, and industry groups, but it all ends up the same.

Honestly, the best solution is *probably* something around the lines of:

1) a publicly funded medical crisis insurance that covers heart attacks, etc.
2) a private industry initiative for providing proactive preventative care and activities, such as incentives for excercising, etc. (The Associates in Dallas used to do this years ago... paycheck bonuses for meeting excercise quotas)
3) a reworking of the way pharmaceuticals are handled. No idea what a solution would be for that.

All this would be a hard thing to work out, though. You have to give the system some time to buffer the shock of being off insurance and adjust office fees downwards, etc. Not sure what the implementation details would be there. Still a lot of holes in this idea of mine, but I haven't spent a lot of time pondering it as yet.



posted on Jul, 14 2009 @ 04:37 PM
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Originally posted by JaxonRoberts
I'm sorry, but Capitalism + Healthcare = Nothing Good!


That's funny. Canada's government run healthcare has used the United State's capitalist healthcare for years when their system couldn't handle the amount of patients in their system, with great success. Looks like both the U.S. and Canada are going pay dearly once ObamaCare goes into effect. At least the mortuaries and cemetaries will be seeing a heyday from this.



posted on Jul, 14 2009 @ 04:38 PM
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reply to post by daddyroo45
 


Well, I don't know about your employer, but mine only offers one choice, and it's the one that benefits them, costs them the least. And private insurance is waaaaay out of my price range! So much for choice! And if we can get into the same racket that congress gives itself:




posted on Jul, 14 2009 @ 04:45 PM
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reply to post by JaxonRoberts
 


Welcome to government run Health Care, where you get the same crappy coverage for that private insurance cost you can't afford now, while the politicians still get their private taxpayer paid super health care.

How about this, how about we come to an agreement. Let's get rid of every single politician that is currently in office, and the same with the president admin. Basically, get rid of the current corrupt bunch of crooks and lets get some new people in there and then we can talk about government health care or government insurance.

Honestly anybody wanting the current batch of crooks running our government making policy that covers 1/5 of our economy is not thinking clearly.



posted on Jul, 14 2009 @ 04:48 PM
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You bring up some good points, Jaxon. I would like to see health care run like a business in the sense that it needs to make good decisions to be self-sustaining.

Agree about the insurance companies, for the most part. If a person or family can afford top-of-the-line insurance, then they can hope for decent health care....... UNTIL they really need it for a big-dollar illness or injury.

Where I live now, in the Caribbean, our primary health care is government. There are also private practitioners, and insurance has core providers in both arenas. I don't think it produces excellence in health care, however it does seem to serve the population as a whole. I think we find it difficult to attract health care practitioners, and my take on the whole experience is that it is medication/pharm oriented.

Most government workers don't have the option of going to private practitioners unless, of course, it is paid for themselves.

I think this is akin to the vision of the current U.S. administration's .... to insure that every citizen and legal residents have SOMEthing. I don't know how well it would work if we weren't such a dinky country (40,000 pop. total).

Like others here on your thread, I am dubious of the U.S. government's ability to foster and implement a health care plan that is run as an efficient business. It will have to be funded by the taxpayer. However, I'm sure don't mind hoping that this administration can pull it together, make it work. Systems in place now don't seem to work for everyone, or at least that's my view from outside.



posted on Jul, 14 2009 @ 04:55 PM
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reply to post by Hastobemoretolife
 


I don't think the proposed or upcoming health care system of the U.S. will work unless all government employees, politicians, etc. have the identical care that is being proposed for the populace. Of course, anyone would still have the option of purchasing better health care if they had the duckets.

I think R&D has to be an important part of the plan, however that has problems of its own, being the classic junk-drawer for funds, if abused. Big pharma's gravy train needs to be shut down; It's obscene what meds, vaccines, etc. cost........ tied into R&D, sure, but seems like the focus is on hugely expensive treatments for the few, as opposed to developing new treatments.



posted on Jul, 14 2009 @ 05:04 PM
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reply to post by argentus
 


Exactly my point, the current crop of politicians are going to exclude themselves from what the "commoners" will have. What is inevitable though is that what they are writing now is designed to put private insurance out of business, it will take just long enough for people to forget that the problem was government created.

This is my proposal, before we go and changing all the health care system around and government run insurance or whatever, how about we change the IP laws and make it to where Big Pharma can't patent cancer drugs. The drugs are all experimental and not approved by the FDA as is. They are making hordes and hordes of money off of these "experimental" drugs.

Do you know how many cancer drugs have been approved by the FDA? Not very many, all of maybe 2 or 3.

Also tort reform, put a cap on how much somebody can sue a doctor for. In all honesty America's population is too big for any government run health care or insurance. We need health care reform, but I will be firmly against a government plan of any sorts until I get all sides of the argument. I feel that both sides are not telling us everything.

Also I don't trust the current crop of politicians to dictate who is going to be in control of my health and what not. Also I don't want the government telling me what I have to do in order to remain to get treated.



posted on Jul, 14 2009 @ 05:04 PM
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OK, here's my thing. The opposition seems to have no plan at all, in other words, "It ain't broke, don't fix it!". That is total BS! It is spiralling out of control! When I was a kid, you could get good health insurance and you could get it cheap. Now most plans suck, and they are far more expensive. So, it seems the choice now is do something or do nothing. Do nothing is just not an option. SOMETHING has to be done! So if you don't like the current plan, what's yours???



posted on Jul, 14 2009 @ 05:04 PM
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reply to post by JaxonRoberts
 

I don't get it? What does cost have to do with choice? It may well narrow your choices but it doesn't strip them from you. Let me ask you a question. If you are given one choice, is that really even a choice?



posted on Jul, 14 2009 @ 05:13 PM
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reply to post by daddyroo45
 


Well, you speak like we all have all these choices now, when in fact, most of us do not. Have a chunk taken out of our paycheck for a crappy, low cap sorry @ss excuse for a health plan and pray we don't get really sick or injured, or keep the money and pray we don't get really sick or injured. I'm all for something else, but no one has put something else on the table. I certainly won't be worse off than I am now!



posted on Jul, 14 2009 @ 05:13 PM
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Originally posted by JaxonRoberts
OK, here's my thing. The opposition seems to have no plan at all, in other words, "It ain't broke, don't fix it!". That is total BS! It is spiralling out of control! When I was a kid, you could get good health insurance and you could get it cheap. Now most plans suck, and they are far more expensive. So, it seems the choice now is do something or do nothing. Do nothing is just not an option. SOMETHING has to be done! So if you don't like the current plan, what's yours???

It is out of control. The Hospitals have cost overruns because of people that are uninsured or have no means by which to pay the bill. That cost gets passed on to everyone with coverage. The influx of illegal aliens into this country in the last twenty years has put a terrible strain on health care facilities. That is one reason for sky rocketing health care costs. The system need fixing no doubt. If they want to build a health care system designed for illegal aliens, that would treat them and then deport them.I would vote for that!! Take the strain off the system and cost would soon settle back down to a more normal system.



posted on Jul, 14 2009 @ 05:15 PM
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reply to post by JaxonRoberts
 


That is the problem. They do offer alternate choices, well I'm for alternate choice they are outlined above in one of the posts I made on this thread.

The problem is that none of the stuff that will work will ever get passed. You know it is always a possibility and they probably will, that they will screw things up worse than they already are.

We can't just do "something" just for the sake of doing "something". Especially when it comes to health care. I don't want another 1000 page monstrosity of a bill shoved down my throat without having time to read and understand it, especially when it comes to my life.



posted on Jul, 14 2009 @ 05:15 PM
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As a Canadian, I don't really understand why everyone is so against a national healthcare system. You seem to think that it is going to be your neighborhood DMV guy treating you. You would have the same doctor, he would just get paid by someone else. I really don't see the problem.




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