ECM found this video on Health Care BS.
The thing you need to understand about socialized medicine is this:
- If you don’t work then you don’t pay into the system
- If you do work then you do pay into the system
- If you are young and still voting, then you get treatment
- If you are old and not still voting, then you get no treatment
So basically, if you collect welfare for your whole life, and choose to sleep with strangers, and then get an STD, then the abortion is FREEEE!
But, if you are old but have worked all your life, and get need surgery for a brain tumor, through no fault of your own, then you get DEAAADDDD!
That’s socialized medicine in a nutshell. And NO, you cannot pay for any treatment over the counter – in a single payer system the GOVERNMENT decides whether you will be treated and when. You pay into the system your whole life based on your income level, and the government treats other people who make free choices to indulge in risky lifestyle decisions. When you finally retire and get sick due to no fault of your own, you can get in line behind the people who want sex changes and IVF. Everyone has an equal life outcome regardless of their willingness to work or make responsible decisions about what is moral/immoral and safe/unsafe.
And what are the incentives in a socialized medicine system? There is no incentive to work. But there is an incentive to be irresponsible and risky with your health. People who spend the day working instead of skiing will pay for people who break their legs skiing instead of working. That’s socialized medicine. That’s “equality”. There is no personal responsibility or accountability in a socialist system.
WINTERY KNIGHT 
This is a great FUD piece. I’ve never read any instance in any of the medical journals I receive on a monthly basis indicating somone will die from not getting a knee replacement surgery. Sure, your quality of life will go down greatly, but death?
Like it or not, STD’s pose a threat to public health. I know what you’re going to say and I agree – keep it in your pants and this isn’t a problem, but social issues are never that simple.
Now I’m agains socialized medicine, but arguments like yours ruin our position since opponents can point and say, “see, they’re just putting out obvious lies…”.
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I just used those treatments as examples. Do you want me to go back and put brain cancer?
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yes, I think it would be a much better argument and something that socialized medicine would be likely to ignore. Heck msnbc has a similar article, excerpt: “Arizona recently stopped paying for certain organ transplants for people in its Medicaid program” link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40514947/ns/us_news-the_new_york_times/
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OK I fixed it! It actually makes sense to do it your way.
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I just read that story on Secondhand Smoke:
http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/secondhandsmoke/2010/12/04/single-payer-actual-culprit-in-arizona-organ-transplant-rationing/
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Jerry: Good point re the knee replacement example. The brain tumour example is a stronger one as it really will kill you and WK used the term “dead”. That said, the vast majority of abortions are elective (i.e. babies are killed who pose no threat to the lives of their healthy mothers) and I’ve never heard of someone who needed to have a sex change to live. Knee replacement surgery actually repairs someone instead of killing or taking a perfectly adequate physique and changing it for reasons of whim.
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I didn’t think I said anything that would imply I think US tax dollars should support abortion or sex changes. I think both are elective and should be paid out of pocket. I think IVF should be paid out of pocket. I think baldness cures should be out of pocket. I think gastric bypass should be out of pocket.
I don’t think insurance, whether it be private or single payer (gov) should be forced to pay for it. I would prefer that private insurers stay away all that I mentioned (and probably some more) just because as they venture into those treatments, they have to raise rates for everyone to cover them for the few.
If you believe that STD = pregnancy as WK’s writing implied, then you need to pick up a book on the birds and the bees as we call it on this side of the ocean. while STD and pregnancy usually come from the same acts, neither is guaranteed.
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Jerry, I agree with you entirely. :)
I don’t think that WK was equating STDs with pregnancy, but rather listing them both as the typical outworkings of irresponsible sex. It is a little ambiguous. He should probably have made it clearer.
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You’re half right, Mary. WK wasn’t equating STDs with pregnancy, as much as he was equating poor women on welfare with sleeping around, getting STDS, getting pregnant by strangers and having abortions. Seriously, I think that’s a whole lot worse.
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Vickery: No, he didn’t equate them. The point about the welfare check was that even if someone is not contributing financially, they can reap a benefit for the result of irresponsible behaviour, while someone who is contributing financially can be denied healthcare for an ailment which did not result from irresponsible behaviour. Hardly what one can call fair.
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Listen, I like Wintery as much as anyone, Mary but seriously, that’s not what he said. And anyone who’s read his blog for the last six months would know that his sentiments toward women on welfare are not exactly of the “love thy neighbor as thyself” variety. But rather than argue, why not let him answer for himself? I mean, I like hearing your anaylses of what Wintery says, but it’s not quite the same as hearing it straight from the lobster’s mouth. Wintery, can you comment?
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What Mary said is what I meant to say. If I was unclear, then I apologize.
The point of socialized medicine is that you pay based on how much you produce, but you get service based on what the government offers in order to buy votes. I’m a high earner, I pay a lot in taxes. I haven’t been to the doctor for anything but check-ups in my entire life. Meanwhile, various groups are getting taxpayer funded sex changes and taxpayer funded IVF and taxpayer funded abortions. Is that fair? How do you think that makes me feel when I have to use my the leftovers of my earned income to marry and have children? Do you think that maybe I might have had plans to spend that money on my own family? Do you think that maybe that’s why I went to school for so long, and saved and saved – eating Ramen noodles and using cardboard box furniture?
If the state is providing free health care to illegal aliens at my expense, and writing checks to single mothers so they can raise babies without fathers, what am I to think about marrying and having children? What message is the state sending about who they want to have children? What is my incentive to work harder? Who are they to decide that someone else is more worthy of my money than my family?
Feminists can either have a husband or they can have the feeling of being morally superior by redistributing a potential husband’s money so that he turns into a non-husband. What is it going to be – feminists have to choose what they want.
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Vickery:
“And anyone who’s read his blog for the last six months would know that his sentiments toward women on welfare are not exactly of the “love thy neighbor as thyself” variety.”
Really? He doesn’t not pay taxes and expect others to pay for superfluous medical procedures resulting from irreponsible behaviour on his part. So, he does not require anything of others that he doesn’t live up to himself.
You’re turning this into a male/female issue and it’s not. In fact, in other blog posts he has lamented the fact that socialized healthcare is going towards paying for Viagra for prison inmates who don’t contribute to society, but take away from it? That would be MALE prison inmates – sexual offenders, no less. Do you think that’s fair that taxpayer money should go there? Or what about male “enhancement” surgery? Should taxpayer money pay for that?
See, this has nothing to do with the battle of the sexes and everything to do with the fact that responsible taxpayers shouldn’t be expected to pay for elective procedures for the irresponsible, especially for evil things like abortion. Abortion is a good example, because there’s not much that’s more evil than killing innocent, defenceless little children.
In my country, when abortion was legalized it was immediately taxpayer funded. It makes me livid that a portion of my taxes go to killing babies. It should make you livid too.
I like to respond to you, because I like to give a different female perspective on these things. Otherwise, when people read this blog, they see a woman on one side and a man on the other side of the argument, and it all becomes about “men vs women”, whereas it isn’t really to do with what sex one is and everything to do with one’s ideology.
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“various groups are getting taxpayer funded sex changes.”
Can you substantiate that?
“you get service based on what the government offers in order to buy votes”
Interesting analysis. Isn’t that what the Republicans are doing with their affiliation for tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans?
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IVF in Canada: (single payer)
https://winteryknight.wordpress.com/2009/08/20/ontario-human-rights-tribunal-says-that-in-vitro-fertilization-is-a-right/
Sex changes in Canada: (single payer)
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/may/08051608.html
Breast enlargements in the UK: (single payer hybrid)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-189310/Plastic-surgery-NHS.html
The reason why Republicans give tax hikes to the job creators and the highest producers is because… wait for it… allowing job creators to keep their own money creates JOBS. And that’s why Bush’s 2.2 trillion in tax cuts produced an unemployment rate of 4.5% despite a stock market crash in 2001 and TWO WARS. Never forget that those people earned that money. People who steal their neighbor’s money for health care that isn’t health care aren’t earning a thing.
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