Labor Unions

[oldhardhead]

Originally Posted by Arius

Sorry OHH...the typo can be confusing for some.

I was joshing ya.

Until the stimulus bill passed, there was no "effectiveness panel." Decisions were up to doctors and patients.

There is no such thing as free healthcare. It's just about who I decide to pay. If the government can successfully and expensively provide for my security...it can provide for my healthcare coverage as well.

Obama and Pelosi are promising free healthcare. If they have their way, you will have no choice regarding "who to pay."

The government is not legally allowed to "provide your healthcare," it's not in the constitution. It can muck with national defense.

A government that is good at providing national security is not necessarily good at providing individual healthcare for 300 million people.

Second, doctors and patients haven't made those decisions on their own since 1972 when HMOs were created.

Of course they have. HMOs influence the decisions because of their financial affect. If you are "in network," go for it! The insurer will pay! And Obama wonders why premiums go up?

Thank Ted Kennedy, who told us that HMOs would solve everything.

This was a very clear joint venture of Republicans and Democrats working together to socialize capitalism for the benefit of a very few under the auspice of helping the many.

You lost me. "Socialize capitalism?" You mean kill capitalism and replace it with socialism, don't you?

That hurts everyone except the few in power.

[Arius]

Originally Posted by oldhardhead

Obama and Pelosi are promising free healthcare. If they have their way, you will have no choice regarding "who to pay."

So? Bush promised security, Reagan promised that communism was evil, Clinton promised that blow jobs were not sex...they can promise whatever they like. You give them way too much power...a wise mind need not do that.

The government is not legally allowed to "provide your healthcare," it's not in the constitution. It can muck with national defense.

Wrong, it can provide for the general welfare...and health care can be deemed as much of the general welfare of this nation as roads and bridges (if not more so).

A government that is good at providing national security is not necessarily good at providing individual healthcare for 300 million people.

But it is not necessarily bad at it either. Remember, the government is not providing it...it's just paying for it.

Of course they have. HMOs influence the decisions because of their financial affect. If you are "in network," go for it! The insurer will pay! And Obama wonders why premiums go up?

Wrong...an insurer can now cancel your coverage without warning or cause. Get an expensive disease to cure...they can simply walk away leaving you to die, go bankrupt or live off of nonexistent charity.

Thank Ted Kennedy, who told us that HMOs would solve everything.

Of course I do, as well as the GOP who helped him write the bill.

ou lost me. "Socialize capitalism?" You mean kill capitalism and replace it with socialism, don't you?

Of course I do...but it's capitalists who are killing themselves. Greed and lust for power are killing capitalism...it can't help itself much like a over-eater who eats everything in sight and then starves to death.

That hurts everyone except the few in power.

Of course it does. So the "everyone" turn to the only organization that can protect them from capitalism when it goes awry: the government (hence the "promote the general welfare" requirement in our Constitution). The US government is nothing more than a union of citizenry that has been bastardized by capitalism and greed with that which is its opposite. Unfortunately, the opposite in our government has become no better then the bastards it is supposed to protect us from.

[oldhardhead]

Arius,

May I be so bold as to point out the error in your supposition:
QUOTE:

the constitution of the united states
preamble note

we the people of the united states, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this constitution for the united states of america.

It is the law.

[oldhardhead]

Is health care a right?

You say, "Williams, that would come very close to slavery if one person had the right to force someone to serve him without pay." You're right. Suppose instead of Harry being able to force a lab, doctor and pharmacy to provide services without pay, Congress uses its taxing power to take a couple of hundred dollars out of the paycheck of some American to give to Harry so that he could pay the lab, doctor and pharmacist. Would there be any difference in principle, namely forcibly using one person to serve the purposes of another?

No...

There would be one important strategic difference, that of concealment. Most Americans, I would hope, would be offended by the notion of directly and visibly forcing one person to serve the purposes of another. Congress' use of the tax system to invisibly accomplish the same end is more palatable to the average American.

But it's no different, is it?

[Arius]

Originally Posted by oldhardhead

Arius,

May I be so bold as to point out the error in your supposition:

It is the law.

Not sure which part of the supposition I have wrong here OHH. The phrase I have outlined is what the Feds use to do what they do.

[oldhardhead]

Since the federal government involves every American, they are supposed to be concerned with national things. National defense, national treaties, national currency, etc.

The Constitution is supposed to promote general welfare, Congress is not supposed to "redistribute the wealth." They are supposed to promote general welfare, not provide goods and services to special interest groups.

Grover Cleveland: First Inaugural Address. U.S. Inaugural Addresses. 1989

It is the duty of those serving the people in public place to closely limit public expenditures to the actual needs of the Government economically administered, because this bounds the right of the Government to exact tribute from the earnings of labor or the property of the citizen, and because public extravagance begets extravagance among the people. We should never be ashamed of the simplicity and prudential economies which are best suited to the operation of a republican form of government and most compatible with the mission of the American people. Those who are selected for a limited time to manage public affairs are still of the people, and may do much by their example to encourage, consistently with the dignity of their official functions, that plain way of life which among their fellow-citizens aids integrity and promotes thrift and prosperity.

.

[Arius]

Originally Posted by oldhardhead

Since the federal government involves every American, they are supposed to be concerned with national things. National defense, national treaties, national currency, etc.

The Constitution is supposed to promote general welfare, Congress is not supposed to "redistribute the wealth." They are supposed to promote general welfare, not provide goods and services to special interest groups.

Grover Cleveland: First Inaugural Address. U.S. Inaugural Addresses. 1989



.

If redistribution wealth and providing goods and services to special interest groups is promoting the general welfare, then yes, that is exactly what Congress is supposed to do. I didn't write the Constitution, I just find it odd that those who pretend to support it so vociferously have no real understanding of it's failure.

ALL federal and local government programs redistribute wealth to some extend OHH. Again, if this is NOT supposed to happen...then they ALL must end; not just the ones you don't like over the ones you favor.

As for your citing of Cleveland, it appears odd to me that:

1) You would cite a democrat even if he was a great president;
2) You would cite a President who actually started the federal regulation of commerce.
3) You would support Republican candidates who are nothing like the fiscally-restrained ideals you pretend to propose;
4) You would probably not vote for Cleveland today given his party affiliation. Of course, it is easy to say that Cleveland would probably have been neither GOP or Dem in his choice.

If Cleveland did two things right it was in not interfering in the depression of 1893 despite the riots and severe hardships (he believed it not Constitutional); the second being his support of the gold standard.