65 thoughts on “When You Make Government Responsible For Your Health”

  1. Appalled maybe, but I don’t think they’d be surprised at all. Ben Franklin could see it coming 200 years in advance.

      1. Obamacare does require pretty much the Non-Elderly and Non-Poor to get health insurance
        from a company that must provide certain key treatments and spend 85% of premiums on health care.

    2. So…

      I should be able to set aside $500,000 in assets and self-insure? Right? That should be permissible if “All it does is require that you take responsibility for your health care“.

      But, naturally it doesn’t allow true self-insurance.

      1. The numbers is closer to 3-5 million and it’s probably unwise to let people put their homes
        or a large chunk of their IRA into it. No put geting treatment and then ending up homeless or broke

        1. “… it’s probably unwise to let people…”

          Who is this entity “letting people” do things?

          I thought we were supposed to have a country founded on individual freedom, not a monarch or equivalent letting me do things out of its benevolence.

          1. I’m perfectly willing to let people like you opt out of the system, you just
            need a special chest tattoo, somewhere over the heart and a microchip that
            indicates “Not available for public insurance, perform no services without
            cash payment, Do Not Rescuscitate without payment”

            You want out, that’s cool. Just be willing to pay the price.

    3. Look at who’s lying. The title of the article is “Doctors, not Obamacare, will ask you about your sex life”. I don’t think there’s anyone so far gone that they think they’ll be interrogated by a bit of legislation about their sex life. And near the end, we have this little gem:

      But, hey, if you don’t do those things as a doctor, you won’t be “penalized”. You won’t get paid for them, and your patients might suffer, but no Obamacare thugs will come to get you.

      So doctors don’t get paid, if they don’t ask the right questions – mandated by Obamacare, of course. And it’s followed by:

      Moreover, there’s nothing in the law that mandates that the answers to your questions be sent anywhere or to the government. They’re part of your medical record, as they always have been, and they’re protected by the same laws that have always protected your data.

      The same government which is allegedly honoring these laws has been spying wholesale on communications throughout the world. It is a foolish delusion.

      1. Al – if the Republican party had actually proposed and voted for posting a bond, then we might have that option. But since they engaged in total obstruction, we didn’t get it. (BTW, half-a-mill can go really fast if you’re paying list price for cancer treatment.)

        Karl Hallowell – Somehow I doubt the NSA is interested in the results of your last checkup.

        1. The Republican Party is not pushing a government answer, and believes the government answer to be outside the bounds of the Constitution. What other response are you expecting if one party believes the government has no authority to provide a fix in the way the Democrats want?

          Whether the NSA is interested or not is irrelevant. The point is, the government is listening, or at least trying to listen, so it is not confidential at the pain of getting a warrant for individualized suspicion.

          1. Funny, I think in 2008, we had something called an Election, and
            a bunch of people called Democrats won, and one of the things they
            wanted to do was fix healthcare.

            They did.

            They were acting in the stated goals of the majority of the people.

            Now, if you got a problem with that, get out and vote.

            In 2012, we had another election. Um,,,

            Your guys lost.

        2. Except every single aspect of this is problematic.

          Every one of the ‘thing mandated’ to be insured means they’re also prohibiting insurance without that one item.

          With auto insurance, you can say “Hey, I don’t want glass coverage, make my premium cheaper.” That is: You can self-insure on glass coverage. Lots cheaper than self-insuring everything, and you’re able to save up a little to see if you can self-insure something else.

          A second aspect is that doctors, clinics, and hospitals have different prices if you private pay. (Like my personal $350 XRay, rebilled to insurance at $115, and final “total paid, you owe nothing” $13.50)

          If you use the $13 price, self-insurance isn’t difficult. At the $350 price, you’re not going to manage until you’re able to own your own hospital.

          If you’d actually read any of the proposals, you’d see “catastrophic health insurance” and other -pieces- of exactly this self-insurance approach.

          But, the D’s like serfs. So those were all blocked, naturally.

          1. Insurance companies stopped selling Catastrophic health insurance plans
            years ago. You can’t get them.

            I know, I tried. Nothing, zip. I tried in 4 states.

            it’s a loser of a product. Lots of top end risk, and cheap shit customers.

            It’s not the “Glass Insurance” that makes the product expensive, it’s cancer
            treatment.

        3. Karl Hallowell – Somehow I doubt the NSA is interested in the results of your last checkup.

          My records? Perhaps you’re right. But the medical records of hundreds of million or perhaps billions of people?

        4. This is a very late reply. I’ll just point out this story for posterity.

          The Drug Enforcement Administration thinks people have “no constitutionally protected privacy interest” in their confidential prescription records, according to a brief filed last month in federal court. That disconcerting statement comes in response to an ACLU lawsuit challenging the DEA’s practice of obtaining private medical information without a warrant. The ACLU has just filed its response brief, explaining to the court why the DEA’s position is both startling and wrong.

    4. This is flat out wrong. If I have to do anything, like pay at gunpoint, then it is not making me take personal responsibility.

      Personal responsibility would be that I have insurance or the hospital can deny admittance if I can’t pay. But, there is no government fine a priori.

      Or, like Al mentioned, does Obamacare allow me to set aside enough of my personal assets to cover hospital costs, and otherwise do nothing?

      Otherwise, your meaning of “personal responsibility” is just a repackaged Marxism: I must sacrifice myself to the needs of the group/state. I must buy from the state’s approved list just for living, or else men with guns will show up at my house if I refuse.

      1. “someguy”, you lose on “style points.”

        To say “this is flat out wrong” is a wimpy Conservative way of saying, “Your point is arguable and reasonable people may disagree, but based on the evidence I have seen and based on my personal experiences, it is my sincere conviction that mine is the correct interpretation.”

        You need to take that brash, hair-on-the-chest, tell-Putin-where-to-put-it Liberal way of “drawing a red line” and say “you lie”, that is, emulate the post to which you are responding. The person you are disagreeing with is not only wrong, their wrong interpretation of an arguable matter is a willful and personal act of malice.

      2. This bears repeating, with emphasis:

        If I have to do anything, like pay at gunpoint, then it is not making me take personal responsibility.

        It amazes and depresses me how few people understand something so straightforward.

        1. It’s not taking personal responsibility to show up at the hospital ER, sick, dying and
          without insurance or millions in cash.

          2. EMTALA was passed in 1986 by Reagan and a Republican Senate.

            You have a problem with that, go kick over his headstone.

      3. Someguy – So the only reason you don’t rob banks is because the police will come for you at gunpoint?

        Arguing that everything government does is “at gunpoint” and therefore wrong is an attempt to argue from emotion, not reason.

        1. That is what government is at its essence, pointing guns at people, otherwise laws are just words on paper.

          Government is not “us” or “we ” are not the government. And government is not what “we” decide to do together. Government at best is what “we” decide to point guns at.

          I don’t rob banks because I believe in someone’s right to their earnings and it is not my right to take it just based on the fact that I exist, regardless of my life’s circumstances. However, others don’t believe in that, we call them bank robbers, and so cops need to point guns at those people and take them to jail or kill them if they resist.

          However, I must have missed the part where refraining from hurting someone through robbing them is the same as being made to actively purchase a product from a government-approved list just for existing.

          1. to quote the economists, it’s called an “Externality”.

            You don’t hurt anyone “with an outhouse in your back yard”,
            unless of course, everyone has an outhouse, or your outhouse is close to the river, or your worm laden, disease spewing kin are infected with dysentery.

            Then the city comes along and makes you get a deep sewer system or put in a septic field or move your outhouse. Now you can call that “Liberty”, but,
            see, most people call that civilization.

            So yes, the government can make you buy sewer service, and city water, and have electricity, and yes, they can condemn your house, if it’s lacking those.

            So the city is making you pay a hospital/health/medical tax.

    5. We need doctor/patient confidentiality. No one has any right or business with a person’s medical records other than their doctor and the patient. Obamacare is destroying the doctor patient relationship.

      People should be able to be honest with their doctors and not worry about some government stooge sitting over their shoulder.

      1. Exactly. Obamacare makes my doctor and my insurance company essentially agents of the government. And given what we’ve seen in the scope and consistency of The Obama Scandals, that amounts to making them agents of one political party.

    6. Anybody who objects to the state’s divine right to monitor your sex life and record your phone sex is antisocial. Therefore, that antisocial unperson will report to re-edumacation camp for double-plus goodness.

      1. I wonder when the Democrats are going to call for looking at the books people check out from the library and the burning of unapproved texts like the Constitution.

  3. It depends which Founders you are talking about.

    2/3rds of the founding fathers were slaveholders, so, they seemed to have funny concepts about who deserved essential liberty and of the 7 who weren’t
    Hamilton and Adams were big government federalists, quite happy to grow the federal government. In fact Adams signed a law mandating taxes to establish
    a national system of seamen’s hospitals.

    1. You do know that the 2/3 compromise was actually a bid to limit the power of the slaveholding states, right?

      Also, your example of seamen’s hospitals would fall under national defense, something that was explicitly put into the Constitution.

      The “limited government” perspective isn’t “size” per se, although it does correlate. So, when people argue, “but the military budget is big, so you don’t like limited government”, it misconstrues what is being argued. The argument is over what the Federal government is making laws about and creating enforcement agencies for, not necessarily how big each department is per se. As I stated, the military is one of the few things specifically mentioned as a Federal responsibility, along with treaties and such.

      What is being argued on “my side” in a short statement is that the Federal government should basically consist of the State Department and the War Department, and some Federal courts for federal cases, and pretty much nothing else.

      Which means yes, Medicare and Social Security would disappear, at least from the Federal government, as well as any federal involvement in education or civilian medicine, and about 90% of what has been built up over the last about 80 years or so.

      If you wanted Medicare and Social Security-type programs, the Tenth Amendment of course says it can fall to any state that wants to do so. Then the argument would fall to what the state’s specific Constitution allows for in that state.

      1. You do know that the 2/3 compromise was actually a bid to limit the power of the slaveholding states, right?

        I doubt he knows it. DC types typically have an inflated opinion of their own intelligence as a result of maleducation.

        1. I’m aware of that, it’s still important that the Founding fathers believed in slavery, supported slavery, made their fortunes on slavery and wrote it into the constitution.

          Jefferson, Washinton, Henry, Hancock, Madison may have talked about Liberty, but, didn’t really mean it.

      3. The 3/5 compromise was a bid to limit the power of slave states, and it was needed because the slaveholders wanted to count their slaves as whole persons for purpose of representation. They wanted control of the House based on slaves.

        Adams’ hospitals for seamen had nothing to do with national defense – they were for civilian mariners, not our then-tiny Navy.

      4. “Discussion of 3/5ths compromise”.

        You realize that was a direct constitutional imprimatur on the institution of slavery. So the founding fathers were 3/5’s in support of slavery.

        So what form of liberty, did Jefferson exactly believe in, in 1787?

        1. The colonies had just come out of a bloody war with Britain a few years earlier. As was shown about 80 years later, there was no way to get rid of slavery without another war. The founding generation wasn’t about to invade the South after having just fought Britain. The colonies were still vulnerable and needed to band together to be able to defend themselves from Britain. And in 1812 another war with Britain came. So, the only answer was political.

          Also, slavery was practiced by everybody at the time, including Britain. The general thought was that slavery would go away over time. Importation of slaves was banned in 1808. Unfortunately, it proved a more resilient activity than initially thought.

          Does it make it right? No. But, it is more complicated than just saying “the founding generation was 3/5 in support of slavery”.

        2. Also, note that the Founding Fathers didn’t like democracy (especially the concept of Universal Suffrage), they anticipated the danger of the low-information voter.

    2. Interesting, you think that because some of the Founding Fathers owned slaves that they would like Obamacare. What does that say about Obamacare, is it on par with slavery?

      1. Well, thinking about it, that would be a useful compromise. People who receive more from government monetarily than they put in, would only have 3/5th the vote of a free person.

        1. It’s nice, Karl, to see you relate a person who doesn’t receive monetary gains from the government as a free person. It’s a shame more people don’t think that way.

        2. On average, that would dramatically lower the political power of the Red states. The red states as a rule are net recipients of federal largesse.

          1. Because of military bases and such, not welfare.

            Still an interesting defense of Obamacare by equating it to slavery. It’s funny how post modern arguments rooted in deconstruction backfire like that. But you know you did it backwards right?

          3. I wouldn’t go so far as claiming that the only ways red states suckle at the Federal teat is due to military bases. One need only look as far as their local nightly newscasts spreading doom and gloom about 6 dollar-per-gallon milk to know that plenty of red state denizens receive federal money, too.

            Of course, 2/3 of the “Farm Bill” is allocated to Food Stamps, so it’s not like most of the Federal waste is being sent to farmers, but it’s also dangerous to claim that “flyover country” isn’t getting any money from the Feds, either…

  4. “When you make government responsible for your health . . . you give government control of your life.”
    –Rand Simberg

    “And I suppose you think that’s a bad thing.”
    –Admiral Gerrib

    1. “When you make government responsible for your health . . . you give government control of your life.”
      –Rand Simberg

      “And I suppose you think that’s a bad thing.”
      –Admiral Gerrib

      No, Rand’ premise is false. It is a lie. Obamacare does not make the government responsible for your health, my health or anybody’s health. It says that, since we as Americans are not going to let you die in the street, you need to obtain medical coverage so we’re not paying for your care. It says that if you truly can’t pay for your own health care, we’ll help, but you have to take responsibility.

      1. Who is this”we” you are referring to?

        This is your problem. You force your help on to me and then say I am not being personally responsible for myself if I don’t make the decisions you want. You are the one who made the choice to help or not. You have no right to demand anything from me if you decide to help me. That’s on you. You can choose at any time to not help if you think I am not being personally responsible to your standards.

    2. This personal responsibility is why a Republican governor (Mitt Romney) implemented it in Massachusetts. This personal responsibility is exactly what Newt Gingrich called for. This personal responsibility (in the form of a coverage mandate) was explicitly supported (before he turned against it) by Chuck Grassley of Iowa. This plan was designed by the Heritage Foundation.

      The real Orwellian doublethink is in getting Republicans to repudiate their own plan.

        1. Fine, Someguy. Get a tattoo that says you refuse medical help and I won’t require you to get health care. The problem is I’ve never seen anybody say “I’m sick but I can’t pay so don’t help me.”

          Romney ran for President on the Republican Party ticket. Gingrich was Speaker of the House in a Republican congress. How could I not assume that they spoke for the majority of members of the Republican Party?

          1. Why should I have to get a tattoo or do anything?

            If you want to help people so badly you and all of your friends can create as many charities as you want and give as much money as you want to help those who cannot pay for their own medical care.

          2. The Cathedral picks who gets to be the nominees of each party. What do you think the term “respectable candidate” means?

            It even gets to pick what kind of debates the candidates get to attend. It demands that “moderators” get involved and it picks who gets to be a moderator. It picks the questions that are asked.

      2. “This personal responsibility”

        It isn’t personal responsibility if it is forced on you and subsidized, for favorite classes, by the federal government.

        “Obamacare does not make the government responsible for your health, my health or anybody’s health.”

        Then why does Obama call healthcare a right that can only be realized by government action? Obama and the Democrats position is that government is responsible, otherwise we never would have had Obamacare.

      3. The Cathedral wanted to turn doctors into USG agents for obvious reasons. And so it tells the puppet elected legislatures -republican and democrat- to accept its premises (ex. “we need healthcare reform” “war on women”), thus forcing them to argue within those premises instead of arguing outside of them. Only a handful of elected politicians reject its premises outright (ex. Sen. Rand Paul).

  5. Oh I love the argument that, “this is the same plan the Republicans of past proposed”. Note that all the people that touted this plan never got elected/reelected after taking these positions. The base thought it stank then, didn’t vote to put them in because it defied the republican principles, and didn’t turn out to vote for the Romney because they didn’t even want to hold their nose and pull the lever anyways. This is why we call the Republicans the “Stupid Party”. They only came up with this mandate as an answer, that nobody asked for, to Hillarycare. Yet, the RNC somehow thinks they need to juxtapose to the Democrats initiatives when they should just stay true, break down the illogical inconsistencies, and pander to general common sense. It really just highlights a bipartisan problem. You ask a federal legislature that’s been in office for most their life, “do we need a federal program…..”, “Yes!”. Bureaucrats aren’t going to fix problems, they are only going to create conditions that insure job security; that’s what gov’t agents do.

  6. Fine, Someguy. Get a tattoo that says you refuse medical help and I won’t require you to get health care.

    Just because someguy doesn’t want to be forced by the federal government to buy insurance is not the same as refusal of medical care. Asking for and receiving health care is far different than paying insurance. Obamacare demands that people buy insurance. Personal responsibility would be purchasing insurance without a government demand.

    Further, it is possible and very easy to get health care on your own without insurance. In fact, I plan on paying, out of my own pocket, for a physical next week , because insurance will only cover a physical once a year, which in policy terms means >365 days since your last physical. I want one sooner. As insurance is inconvenient for me, I’m taking personal responsibility and paying for my own health care on my terms. The simple fact that I can do this disproves every argument Gerrib has tried to make in this thread.

    But then, Gerrib’s name on this blog is like a tattoo saying “I served in the military, and that’s about all I got for an argument.”

    1. “Further, it is possible and very easy to get health care on your own without insurance.”

      Funny, you go to Johns Hopkins hospital with cancer and they want 150K in cash down, and
      proof you are good for 300 K.

      It’s easy to get a physical or an office visit for cash, I do that all the time. What’s expensive is the Hospital.

      You want to make sure if you are hurt bad, the ER will patch you up, and you aren’t willing to pay for that charge.

      You really want to opt out? Start your own little Leland Insurance company.

  7. Funny, you go to Johns Hopkins hospital with cancer and they want 150K in cash down, and
    proof you are good for 300 K.

    I’m good for it. But greater than 50% of the population will never have cancer, and fewer will be treated for it or die from it. Yet 100% of the population is expected to purchase insurance for it?

    You really want to opt out? Start your own little Leland Insurance company.

    You continually come up with the dumbest arguments ever on this blog. How about if you want Health care, you actually get an education in medicine? That’s the basis of your style of argument and it is just dumb.

    How about I’m not required to do something that’s against my interest? That’s what freedom and personal choice is all about; and I first must have personal choice in order to have personal responsibility. To date, I’ve had that freedom and have taken personal responsiblity. With Obamacare, millions will never have to do what I have done and will become dependent on government for their lives.

    1. “With Obamacare, millions will never have to do what I have done and will become dependent on government for their lives.”…

      ” With Medicare, millions will never have to do what I have done and will become dependent on
      government for their lives.”…

      How’s that different?

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