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You cherry picked that one, I guess answering the real questions was too much to ask
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I didn't cherry-pick. If you had actually read the statement you were responding to, I had already parsed the difference. You then took one side of my parcing and applied it to the whole, I was attempting to correct your misreading.
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Because it gives people no incentive to take care of themselves,
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News flash for ya...people aren't taking care of themselves NOW. You really think if care were free (or at least purchased in bulk) we'd just become more self-destructive out of rote? Come on.
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it also gives incentive to not take care of yourself. Pretty bad idea when you recognize how many lazy Americans would be happy to lay around and have the taxpayer foot the bill.
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A majority of americans would BE the taxpayers footing the bill. You really think that the only thing that keeps people working at all is our current healthcare system? You're probably also one of these people who believes having covered bus shelters encourages homelessness.
"Oh, I can quite my job and live out in the cold, but I get to sleep on a bench and be covered? Well sign me the fuck up!"
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Because they are not Americans. There is lots of things that go on elsewhere that are not feasible here.
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It's beginning to sound to me like you have no problem with the system at all... you have a problem with the people IN the system. If that's true, then why does it matter what we do? We're all apparently doomed by virtue of our nationality anyway.
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I'm not saying that. I just think your underestimating the # of Americans who would take advantage of a system like that.
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You see? Now you're basically saying socialized medicine works, but that Americans are too lazy or dumb to take advantage of it.
I'm gonna put a stop to this lazy thing right now... Americans may have many problems, but laziness is not one of them. We have the longest work-week, the shortest vacation times, and the least amount of slack of any industrialized nation on earth. Our productivity as a people is the highest. The protestant work ethic which allows us to overfocus on production and not enough on basic needs like healthcare is the very thing which works in our favor when we actually roll up our sleeves and go to work on something new.
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Nobody asked me why they were selfish bastards.
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Okay, fair enough, I just meant that it was an insufficient explenation without adding that part of it.
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I just stated the fact because it is relevant. But truthfully they are selfish because thats what the government presses upon them. The entire system is based on greed and greed is what you get.
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So let me get this striaght, LESS government support in the form of healthcare is a way the government is pressing down on them MORE?
I'm not gonna fight the greedy thing, hell, I even agree on some level, but if we're greedy we should want cheaper medicine, instead we fight to defend the more expensive, clunky system we have now.
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Yeah if you think you can use the government at all, your wrong.
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Silly. The thing that people forget is that when government IS doing its job, its often invisible. You only hear about the bad stuff and the waste. And even if that weren't true, its foolish to think that government is some immutable evil. Obviously our government and other governments have changed through out all of history. The only system that manking has tried and universally abbandoned is a system with no government at all.
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They can, BTW the laws of supply and demand apply to much more than health care. In such a huge equation health care doesn't even matter
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Supply and demand isn't that huge or that complicated. If people want X then the value of X goes up. If the value of X is in a great enough supply however, then the value of X goes down preportionately. People's needs for goods and services are linked to the availability of those needs or services.
Yes, it can work on a huge scale of intricate links (i.e. the price of corn going up twice as much as the price of lettuce because it is both affected by both the price of the gas to transport it, and the increased demand for it due to its use in ethanol)
but it also works on a smaller more easilly percieved scale too (McDonalds hamburers are plentiful and in low demand, therefore their price remains low)
When I say that the laws of supply and demand don't apply to health care, I'm not saying they care isn't weighted by the same concerns as everything else, I'm just saying that those rules do NOT result in the best care for the largest number of people.
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It doesn't, like I said you can't base a supply and demand system on an isolated, far from normal case.
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Then I've won this argument. If you agree that the system does not result in the best care, then how can you defend that system?