I can't help but notice that communism and socialism keep being brought up like the traditional bogeymen. Really. It's been nearly 20 years since the Cold War ended.... and people still can't stop using 'Communism!' as a thought terminating cliche. It's outdated and foolish and smacks of the 1950's. It's also bloody annoying. Arguably, it's the screams of 'Communism!' that're leading to car-crashes such as the ACA and the like because people are afraid to actually grab the bull by the horns, despite wanting to reform the system properly.
A 'Federal Health Service' or the equivelant is not 'Communism' and neither would it be a command economy. It is the Goverment stepping in to correct what is clearly an ongoing market failure by taking control and establishing an alternative. An FHS will take some of the expensive people out of the insurance system, be able to fund research into drugs and treatments that're necessary but being ignored by the market (Like antibiotics and the like), and provide a backstop that'll keep people productive and healthy and participating in the economy.
This goes right back to how 'freedom' and 'liberty' are defined.
Would you like to live in a world where the police are privatised? And will only investigate crimes on behalf of the people who're able to afford to have them investigated? What sort of society would that be like? Especially when you consider just how expensive a rape, or murder investigation can be in time and effort. Think about it for a second and just let the nightmare settle in.... And yet there are some people out there who would call that a free country when the result would actually be a dystopian nightmare.
Ultimately a 'free' people requires some intervention from the government to maintain that 'freedom', for the benefit of all the people.
I would propose that in its current iteration, the healthcare industry in the States is acting in a way that acts as an attack on people's freedoms. It forces people into bankruptcy, or out of the working economy. Massive insurance premiums act as a further drag on the economy, even after people have paid their taxes - more of which goes towards medicare and medicaid by proportion than in any other country in the world. (Including Canada, the UK and France). And instead of acting as a way for employers to entice people to jump jobs, the company healthcare plan is now an extra piece of leverage to hold over worker's head. Or, depending on how you feel about the ACA, a reason the kick even more workers down to part-time work. Furthermore, it is one of the few industries where there is a commercial disincentive to provide the services the customer has already paid for - when a person finally needs their insurance, the company begins to lobby for loopholes or mistakes on its own part to let themselves out of the contract.
You can no more control getting ill or having an accident, than you can control a house-fire or becoming a victim of crime. You can take actions to minimise the risk, but that's about it.
This is a system that, far from supporting people and improving their chance to achieve a strong future or any modicum of personal security in the future is now actively working to suppress people and keep them from advancing and improving their lot in life. It is negatively impacting basic liberties and personal securities.
And right now, this is a point where the government should intervene and should take command. It needs a full reboot and a ground-up reconstruction. This is how most public health services were built in the aftermath of WWII, and this was also one area where the red parts of the map did rather better than the blue ones.
There are some things private enterprise is good at and others it isn't. One of the things it is clearly failing at is basic, living healthcare. And it is something would be almost trivial for a country as wealthy as the United States to provide for it's people - with a massive benefit to the people's overall economic and personal freedoms and potential. It could be done at less cost to the economy than the current system, with a much greater benefit.
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--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?
A 'Federal Health Service' or the equivelant is not 'Communism' and neither would it be a command economy. It is the Goverment stepping in to correct what is clearly an ongoing market failure by taking control and establishing an alternative. An FHS will take some of the expensive people out of the insurance system, be able to fund research into drugs and treatments that're necessary but being ignored by the market (Like antibiotics and the like), and provide a backstop that'll keep people productive and healthy and participating in the economy.
This goes right back to how 'freedom' and 'liberty' are defined.
Would you like to live in a world where the police are privatised? And will only investigate crimes on behalf of the people who're able to afford to have them investigated? What sort of society would that be like? Especially when you consider just how expensive a rape, or murder investigation can be in time and effort. Think about it for a second and just let the nightmare settle in.... And yet there are some people out there who would call that a free country when the result would actually be a dystopian nightmare.
Ultimately a 'free' people requires some intervention from the government to maintain that 'freedom', for the benefit of all the people.
I would propose that in its current iteration, the healthcare industry in the States is acting in a way that acts as an attack on people's freedoms. It forces people into bankruptcy, or out of the working economy. Massive insurance premiums act as a further drag on the economy, even after people have paid their taxes - more of which goes towards medicare and medicaid by proportion than in any other country in the world. (Including Canada, the UK and France). And instead of acting as a way for employers to entice people to jump jobs, the company healthcare plan is now an extra piece of leverage to hold over worker's head. Or, depending on how you feel about the ACA, a reason the kick even more workers down to part-time work. Furthermore, it is one of the few industries where there is a commercial disincentive to provide the services the customer has already paid for - when a person finally needs their insurance, the company begins to lobby for loopholes or mistakes on its own part to let themselves out of the contract.
You can no more control getting ill or having an accident, than you can control a house-fire or becoming a victim of crime. You can take actions to minimise the risk, but that's about it.
This is a system that, far from supporting people and improving their chance to achieve a strong future or any modicum of personal security in the future is now actively working to suppress people and keep them from advancing and improving their lot in life. It is negatively impacting basic liberties and personal securities.
And right now, this is a point where the government should intervene and should take command. It needs a full reboot and a ground-up reconstruction. This is how most public health services were built in the aftermath of WWII, and this was also one area where the red parts of the map did rather better than the blue ones.
There are some things private enterprise is good at and others it isn't. One of the things it is clearly failing at is basic, living healthcare. And it is something would be almost trivial for a country as wealthy as the United States to provide for it's people - with a massive benefit to the people's overall economic and personal freedoms and potential. It could be done at less cost to the economy than the current system, with a much greater benefit.
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?