Here is my question for Ron Paul supporters.
Imagine that your mother got laid off her job and lost health insurance and needed emergency treatment. But imagine that your mother could not get insurance because of a preexisting condition. Would you let your mother die under these conditions? Would you support the Obama view that people with preexisting conditions should at least be covered?
I have tried to be fair to Ron Paul, but what he said in the Sept. 12 debate is scary. Of course it would be great if churches, and others, would care for these people, and in many cases they do. But on matters of life and death, this is a cop-out. What if they don't?
To Ron Paul supporters, if your mother faced any of the situations I described above, would you place your libertarian philosophy ahead of your mother's life and let her die because of it? Or do you believe, as I do, that the Obama plan is right about preexisting conditions, at least?
Please, no cop-outs. We all hope churches and others would take care of people, but they do not always do this. What if they don't? What comes first, your libertarian philosophy of responsibility, or your mother's life? And what about insurers who deny coverage to some people who want insurance? Should your mother die if she were one of those people who had no chance to be responsible because insurers wanted to make more money?
Americans can't handle the truth.
Remember those days? When you could just run wide open? The sky was the limit? Take your business as far as it could go?
Ron Paul would create explosive growth for small business, and slash the cost of government.
But that's just me. I sure you can dig up some more fear propaganda with another issue now.
Modern medicine is great for patching someone back together again after they get smashed up, great for sports and work injuries, accidents. Modern medicine is miraculous for anesthesia and life-saving procedures, repairs, burns, bones, etc. Let's appreciate that. It's high-tech and fabulous when it's required.
But modern med is a monster too, not suited to wellness, well-being, self care, health maintenance, and cost efficiency... The hubris of medical science is often humbled by alternative medicine from around the globe. Modern med fosters and feeds on an obese and sickly population of walking-wounded who cost medicare, for example, 50 grand a month for each dialysis patient (a fast growing procedures in U.S., btw).
In our huge health-care industry nation of people who've been seeing their doctors all their life, the most popular vehicle now is the sit-down car for elderly shoppers. Pathetic !
The real debate about runaway health care costs hasn't started yet... it's not about insurance it's about our food system.
You want Gov't to do something? How 'bout this.... If the tobacco industry was accountable then surely the fast food, processed foods and beverage industry should be paying too. There's no debate about the cause / effect of illness and obesity, schools have banned all sorts of things already. That much money alone would change this fear-mongering debate.
Doctors would charge me a lot less for visits if other consumers had to pay for their routine visits as I do. Why not end the wars, cut spending, and cut taxes, then watch routine healthcare costs drop like a rock as we use our tax savings to pay for our own routine healthcare costs. Insurance could cover the truly catastrophic costs, not the routine visits.
This is how the free market regulates itself. It is only through Government intervention that such an industry can survive and post record profits year after year while at the same time constantly losing it's customers who can no longer afford it.
If we were under a free market, I wouldn't have to worry about my mother not receiving care.
What Ron Paul said in the answer to that debate was not a theory, and it wasn't just an idea. It was based on FACT and history.
To be honest, I got quite enough fear based propaganda during the bush years, and it's the same kind of tactics I'm now seeing from democrats. Enough is enough already.
About the questions, the lapses in logic are so great, I don't know where to begin or if I could ever end. According to you, my only choice is to let my mother die or support the Obama plan. I think my mom would only want me to support that plan only over her dead body anyway . . . That was a joke, people!!!!
I guess, I think we have more choices than this. Just because I don't agree with the Obama plan, or even its premise, doesn't mean I'm for no change, or that I don't care about the issue or uninsured people. I could be uninsured tomorrow--EASILY. But my position wouldn't change. This is what constitutes an ideal. You seem to suggest that libertarian ideals are bad because they don't flake out when the going gets tough. I would argue, without such ideals, we're still a British colony.
Costs need to come down. If costs are so high average Americans can't afford insurance, can our debt-laden government? We are broke. The dollar is weak. The single biggest threat to our sovereignty and to our national security and to all of us individually is borrowing more money from China to fund ANYTHING. If we continue down that road, not having health insurance will be the least of our worries.
(sigh)... but alas, in a nation of prisoners who are not aware of what holds the stones together, what keeps the cells locked, the guns loaded and the guards paid... if they only wait for their next meal they will never be in a mood to escape.
I fully agree with those posters who decry the cost of medical care. There's a reason why, even in the stock market turn down, medical and pharmceutical companies were still getting good returns.