Subsequent to my comments, another correspondent left this in the Star-Ledger Reader Forum. This discussion was the subject of my post of 8/4/09.
HSR0601 wrote, in part:
"U.S. health care consumers are usually one step removed from the cost because they are covered by employer-provided insurance, which might operate as a formula for a slow pace of transfer, along with the code of mandate.
"All free states as a nation / one body, and a fundamental human right, cover all their people. The debate about a human right, or public policy
in America is puzzling them now."
My commentary:
Posted by Zemack on 08/08/09 at 7:23PM
The fundamental conflict of the health care debate comes down to the age-old battle of collectivism vs. individualism. HSR0601 argues for the collectivist side:
"All free states as a nation / one body, and a fundamental human right, cover all their people."
"Slavery", in other words, "is freedom". The idea that there is a "fundamental human right" to any man-made product such as healthcare depends on the view of human beings as interchangeable cells in some super-organism, or ants in a hill colony, or "a nation / one body". The collectivist notion of "one body" is a floating abstraction with no basis in reality. Any group such as a nation, or society, or the public consists of independent, autonomous, individual human beings...each with his own stomach, heart, goals, values, character, and mind.
Collectivism serves a sinister purpose, though. Consider what the alleged "right" to health care actually means in practice.
If someone requires medical care, then the doctors, nurses, pharmaceutical and device makers, etc., must be legally obligated (i.e., compelled) to provide their services to that person. Likewise, that person's neighbor, or the guy 3000 miles away, must be legally obligated to pay for his treatment. In other words, the providers whose skills make medical care possible, as well as those whose taxes pay for it, are serfs. There is no other way. That is why the alleged "right" to health care requires a government takeover of the medical field...to give the state the power to loot and enslave the people. We would all become both slaves and moochers.
HSR0601s "a nation / one body" argument is a cover to justify...on the altruist grounds that "we are our brothers', and our sisters', keepers", as the president likes to say...the grab for unearned goods and control over other people's lives. Collectivism is the doctrine by, for, and of the parasites and the power-lusters. It's incredible that, after Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany, Red China, and all of the lesser variants of collectivism, this idea can still be taken seriously.
We don't need the third-party-payer system, which empowers insurers; or the mandates and interstate trade barriers, which cripple the insurance industry; or Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP, EMTALA, etc, which empower government bureaucrats and enslave all to all. We need to abolish the current semi-socialized, semi-fascist, government regulated system, in favor of the only moral alternative - freedom (the real kind), individual rights, a rights-protecting government, and free markets in medicine.
Showing posts with label Collectivism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Collectivism. Show all posts
Saturday, August 8, 2009
Saturday, May 16, 2009
"National Healthcare"--Star-Ledger Reader's Forum
National health insurance
I have been reading about the various approaches being looked at in Congress to address the creation of a national health insurance plan that would assure coverage to all Americans. I endorse and support that effort.
The federal government already has contracts with almost all of the insurance companies in the United States and the premiums for federal employees are lower than most companies are charged, and definitely lower than what individuals can get.
Why not simply open the federal plan to all businesses and individuals in the country? That would create a rate-base of 300 million and that rate-base would drive down costs.
The federal government can also open up existing federal programs like Medicare to all citizens as a backstop and a way of insuring that private companies do not take unfair advantage of consumers. We will also have to make provision for the indigents, because having people who are not insured is more expensive than covering them.
We can even have graduated levels of assistance for the working poor.
I want to see the current federal insurance system opened to all Americans using an actuarial rate base of all the people in the nation. This will keep the private companies alive as well as assure medical insurance and the health care for everyone.
This can be a win-win.
George N. Wells, Dover
My Commentary:
Posted by Zemack on 05/16/09 at 2:42PM
The basic premise underlying the idea of "universal health care" is the un-American idea that the individual has no rights and is to be subordinated to the group, as represented by the state. It is the deadly ideology of collectivism. I submit into evidence the letter by George N. Wells.
He declares that Congress should set up "a national health insurance plan that would assure coverage to all Americans."
The means by which human needs (and desires) are to be met do not just occur free in nature. They must be created by productive people. There are basically only two ways to acquire the product of another man's labor--by voluntary means such as trade or private charity, or seize it by force. The first is the civilized method; the second is the criminal method. Therefor, the only way that government can guarantee any man-made product such as healthcare is to declare that the people's earnings and the productive labor of the providers belong to "society", and then exercise the totalitarian powers to loot and enslave. There is no other way. When government pays, government sets the terms...on who the money comes from, on who will get what treatment when, prices and salaries, medical technology and innovation, etc.
Mr. Wells declares that "we" should provide for "the indigents" and "the working poor". This is a tacit admission that Mr. Wells believes that the earnings and wealth of others is his to dispose of...the disposition to be carried out by the majority mob's political surrogates. The fact that universal health schemes may be administered by quasi-private companies controlled by the government is nothing more than socialism through the fascist back door.
I support the alternative, free market capitalism. This is the moral system based upon American principles...the principles of individual rights protected by a government limited to that purpose. Rights are guarantees to freedom of action, coupled with the sole obligation to respect the same rights of others...a respect distinctly missing from socialized medicine's proponents. Rights are not an automatic claim on the earnings, property, or wealth produced by others.
In a free market, all associations are voluntary. Consumers, providers, insurers, and patients are left free to contract voluntarily with each other to mutual advantage. Each individual is free to decide for himself when, whom, and in what capacity to help others...free from the predatory, phony do-gooders seeking to practice "charity" with other people's tax money.
Government interference is the source of the problems confronting American healthcare. America currently spends some $7500 per capita per year ($30,000 per family of four and rising) on healthcare. Almost that entire amount represents third parties spending other people's money. This is a fundamental part of the problem.
The only just and moral course to take on healthcare reform is to rid medicine of government interference. End all government insurance mandates, barriers to inter-state competition, and the third-party-payer system; phase out existing "public" plans like Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP, and let people take personal responsibility for their own healthcare, as is their unalienable right under American principles. Leave healthcare dollars in the hands of the people that earned it through some vehicle like HSAs, leave providers and insurers free to compete directly for those consumer dollars, and restrict the government to its proper role of protector of the individual rights of all (which includes anti-fraud laws and enforcement of contracts). The natural incentives inherent in a free market provide the proper, moral dynamics for affordable, widely available quality healthcare.
Mr. Wells endorses and supports tyranny, whether he chooses to acknowledge it or not. I support capitalism and individual rights.
I have been reading about the various approaches being looked at in Congress to address the creation of a national health insurance plan that would assure coverage to all Americans. I endorse and support that effort.
The federal government already has contracts with almost all of the insurance companies in the United States and the premiums for federal employees are lower than most companies are charged, and definitely lower than what individuals can get.
Why not simply open the federal plan to all businesses and individuals in the country? That would create a rate-base of 300 million and that rate-base would drive down costs.
The federal government can also open up existing federal programs like Medicare to all citizens as a backstop and a way of insuring that private companies do not take unfair advantage of consumers. We will also have to make provision for the indigents, because having people who are not insured is more expensive than covering them.
We can even have graduated levels of assistance for the working poor.
I want to see the current federal insurance system opened to all Americans using an actuarial rate base of all the people in the nation. This will keep the private companies alive as well as assure medical insurance and the health care for everyone.
This can be a win-win.
George N. Wells, Dover
My Commentary:
Posted by Zemack on 05/16/09 at 2:42PM
The basic premise underlying the idea of "universal health care" is the un-American idea that the individual has no rights and is to be subordinated to the group, as represented by the state. It is the deadly ideology of collectivism. I submit into evidence the letter by George N. Wells.
He declares that Congress should set up "a national health insurance plan that would assure coverage to all Americans."
The means by which human needs (and desires) are to be met do not just occur free in nature. They must be created by productive people. There are basically only two ways to acquire the product of another man's labor--by voluntary means such as trade or private charity, or seize it by force. The first is the civilized method; the second is the criminal method. Therefor, the only way that government can guarantee any man-made product such as healthcare is to declare that the people's earnings and the productive labor of the providers belong to "society", and then exercise the totalitarian powers to loot and enslave. There is no other way. When government pays, government sets the terms...on who the money comes from, on who will get what treatment when, prices and salaries, medical technology and innovation, etc.
Mr. Wells declares that "we" should provide for "the indigents" and "the working poor". This is a tacit admission that Mr. Wells believes that the earnings and wealth of others is his to dispose of...the disposition to be carried out by the majority mob's political surrogates. The fact that universal health schemes may be administered by quasi-private companies controlled by the government is nothing more than socialism through the fascist back door.
I support the alternative, free market capitalism. This is the moral system based upon American principles...the principles of individual rights protected by a government limited to that purpose. Rights are guarantees to freedom of action, coupled with the sole obligation to respect the same rights of others...a respect distinctly missing from socialized medicine's proponents. Rights are not an automatic claim on the earnings, property, or wealth produced by others.
In a free market, all associations are voluntary. Consumers, providers, insurers, and patients are left free to contract voluntarily with each other to mutual advantage. Each individual is free to decide for himself when, whom, and in what capacity to help others...free from the predatory, phony do-gooders seeking to practice "charity" with other people's tax money.
Government interference is the source of the problems confronting American healthcare. America currently spends some $7500 per capita per year ($30,000 per family of four and rising) on healthcare. Almost that entire amount represents third parties spending other people's money. This is a fundamental part of the problem.
The only just and moral course to take on healthcare reform is to rid medicine of government interference. End all government insurance mandates, barriers to inter-state competition, and the third-party-payer system; phase out existing "public" plans like Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP, and let people take personal responsibility for their own healthcare, as is their unalienable right under American principles. Leave healthcare dollars in the hands of the people that earned it through some vehicle like HSAs, leave providers and insurers free to compete directly for those consumer dollars, and restrict the government to its proper role of protector of the individual rights of all (which includes anti-fraud laws and enforcement of contracts). The natural incentives inherent in a free market provide the proper, moral dynamics for affordable, widely available quality healthcare.
Mr. Wells endorses and supports tyranny, whether he chooses to acknowledge it or not. I support capitalism and individual rights.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Collectivism In Medicine
Health Care is Ailing, from the Star-Ledger Reader's Forum
Jason Fodeman rhetorically asks: "Is our health system really bad off?" in "Haste makes waste when fixing health care" (April 23). In a word, "yes."
According to a recent Commonwealth Fund Commission report, U.S. health care is the most expensive in the world, but does not meet critical benchmarks for quality, access, and other major performance measures. While America spends twice as much per capita on health care, it ranks lower than most other industrialized nations on numerous indicators of overall care; the U.S. score averaged 65 out of 100 over 37 categories, and fell to last for "preventing deaths through use of timely and effective medical care."
Can we afford covering the 47 million uninsured and the 50 million underinsured nationwide? Yes, we can. Currently, insurance companies have an overhead of approximately 30 percent, which is spent on marketing, administration, shareholders dividends and exorbitant CEO salaries. Medicare's overhead is approximately 3 percent. We could save about $350 billion annually, enough to cover the 47 million uninsured and the 50 million underinsured. Both the Congressional Budget Office and the General Accounting Office say the U.S. could insure everyone for the money we're paying now to insure seniors only.
-- Larry Siegel, Plainsboro
My Commentary:
Posted by Zemack on 04/30/09 at 7:39PM
Larry Siegal underscores the fundamental philosophical/moral conflict at the root of the healthcare debate...collectivism verses individualism. He asks:
Can we afford covering the 47 million uninsured and the 50 million underinsured nationwide?
Implicit in that question is the assumption that the wealth and earnings of a nation do not belong to those who produced it, but to the collective, as represented by the state. That primitive view holds that individual human beings have no value except as sacrificial fodder to the whims of the tribe. The representative of the tribe is whoever claims to speak for it, which in this case is the democratic majority as manifested in the government. Mr. Siegel simply assumes that "we" may dispose of the earnings and wealth (i.e., the lives) of whomever "we" please, for the unearned benefit of the "uninsured" or "underinsured" (whatever that means). This is the altruistic premise that individual self-sacrifice for the sake of others is the ideal, which is the moral root of all forms of tyranny, oppression, and predatory government.
America was founded upon the opposite premise...that every individual is a morally independent entity capable of charting the course of his own life by his own mind and effort, and in voluntary, uncoerced, rights-respecting association with others. This is the egoistic premise that each person is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of "humanitarians" wielding the legalized physical force of government, nor as a slave to the needs of other people. America's founding premises lead to a society based upon the inalienable rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness held equally, at all times, and protected by a government limited to that purpose.
Mr. Siegel's premise leads to socialized medicine. America's premise leads to a free market in healthcare.
Leaving aside the issue of statistics...which can be skewed any which way and which tell you nothing about the actual quality of American healthcare...and Medicare's alleged low administrative expenses...which is a myth ...I do sympathize with Mr. Siegel that our system has serious problems. Unfortunately, Mr. Siegel, like so many other advocates of medical tyranny, fails or refuses to consider how we got here. But cause and effect is where we must begin.
The fact is, the problems in American healthcare have grown in lock step with the growth of government intervention. The solution we are racing towards is to reward the culprit with full totalitarian control. The real solution is one that is not even being discussed in the political arena...a turn towards capitalism and free markets.
The only just and moral course to take on healthcare reform is to rid healthcare of government interference. America currently spends some $7500 per capita per year ($30,000 per family of four and rising) on healthcare. Almost that entire amount represents third parties spending other people's money. This is a fundamental part of the problem. That money comes from all of us in a myriad of ways, yet leaves us with little control over how it is spent. Leave that money in the hands of the people that earned it through some vehicle like HSAs, end government insurance mandates and the third-party-payer system, phase out existing "public" plans like Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP, and let people take personal responsibility for their own healthcare.
Advocates of socialized medicine (by whatever name you want to ascribe to it) like to take the moral high road, claiming compassionate concern for some downtrodden group. But they never see actual human beings, whom they are free to help through direct, voluntary charity. They give no consideration whatsoever to their fellow men as what they actually are...individual human beings with their own unique values and circumstances. Anyone who would trample the rights of others to act upon their own judgement with regard to their own healthcare deserves not a moral sanction but moral condemnation. Show me someone who would force others to pay for his "compassion" by depriving them of their earnings and their freedom, and I'll show you a phony.
The choice we face is not between a government-run healthcare dictatorship and the status quo. The choice we face is between being held hostage to government central planners, or liberating each of us...consumers, providers, patients, and insurers alike...to take control of our own healthcare in a truly free market.
Jason Fodeman rhetorically asks: "Is our health system really bad off?" in "Haste makes waste when fixing health care" (April 23). In a word, "yes."
According to a recent Commonwealth Fund Commission report, U.S. health care is the most expensive in the world, but does not meet critical benchmarks for quality, access, and other major performance measures. While America spends twice as much per capita on health care, it ranks lower than most other industrialized nations on numerous indicators of overall care; the U.S. score averaged 65 out of 100 over 37 categories, and fell to last for "preventing deaths through use of timely and effective medical care."
Can we afford covering the 47 million uninsured and the 50 million underinsured nationwide? Yes, we can. Currently, insurance companies have an overhead of approximately 30 percent, which is spent on marketing, administration, shareholders dividends and exorbitant CEO salaries. Medicare's overhead is approximately 3 percent. We could save about $350 billion annually, enough to cover the 47 million uninsured and the 50 million underinsured. Both the Congressional Budget Office and the General Accounting Office say the U.S. could insure everyone for the money we're paying now to insure seniors only.
-- Larry Siegel, Plainsboro
My Commentary:
Posted by Zemack on 04/30/09 at 7:39PM
Larry Siegal underscores the fundamental philosophical/moral conflict at the root of the healthcare debate...collectivism verses individualism. He asks:
Can we afford covering the 47 million uninsured and the 50 million underinsured nationwide?
Implicit in that question is the assumption that the wealth and earnings of a nation do not belong to those who produced it, but to the collective, as represented by the state. That primitive view holds that individual human beings have no value except as sacrificial fodder to the whims of the tribe. The representative of the tribe is whoever claims to speak for it, which in this case is the democratic majority as manifested in the government. Mr. Siegel simply assumes that "we" may dispose of the earnings and wealth (i.e., the lives) of whomever "we" please, for the unearned benefit of the "uninsured" or "underinsured" (whatever that means). This is the altruistic premise that individual self-sacrifice for the sake of others is the ideal, which is the moral root of all forms of tyranny, oppression, and predatory government.
America was founded upon the opposite premise...that every individual is a morally independent entity capable of charting the course of his own life by his own mind and effort, and in voluntary, uncoerced, rights-respecting association with others. This is the egoistic premise that each person is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of "humanitarians" wielding the legalized physical force of government, nor as a slave to the needs of other people. America's founding premises lead to a society based upon the inalienable rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness held equally, at all times, and protected by a government limited to that purpose.
Mr. Siegel's premise leads to socialized medicine. America's premise leads to a free market in healthcare.
Leaving aside the issue of statistics...which can be skewed any which way and which tell you nothing about the actual quality of American healthcare...and Medicare's alleged low administrative expenses...which is a myth ...I do sympathize with Mr. Siegel that our system has serious problems. Unfortunately, Mr. Siegel, like so many other advocates of medical tyranny, fails or refuses to consider how we got here. But cause and effect is where we must begin.
The fact is, the problems in American healthcare have grown in lock step with the growth of government intervention. The solution we are racing towards is to reward the culprit with full totalitarian control. The real solution is one that is not even being discussed in the political arena...a turn towards capitalism and free markets.
The only just and moral course to take on healthcare reform is to rid healthcare of government interference. America currently spends some $7500 per capita per year ($30,000 per family of four and rising) on healthcare. Almost that entire amount represents third parties spending other people's money. This is a fundamental part of the problem. That money comes from all of us in a myriad of ways, yet leaves us with little control over how it is spent. Leave that money in the hands of the people that earned it through some vehicle like HSAs, end government insurance mandates and the third-party-payer system, phase out existing "public" plans like Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP, and let people take personal responsibility for their own healthcare.
Advocates of socialized medicine (by whatever name you want to ascribe to it) like to take the moral high road, claiming compassionate concern for some downtrodden group. But they never see actual human beings, whom they are free to help through direct, voluntary charity. They give no consideration whatsoever to their fellow men as what they actually are...individual human beings with their own unique values and circumstances. Anyone who would trample the rights of others to act upon their own judgement with regard to their own healthcare deserves not a moral sanction but moral condemnation. Show me someone who would force others to pay for his "compassion" by depriving them of their earnings and their freedom, and I'll show you a phony.
The choice we face is not between a government-run healthcare dictatorship and the status quo. The choice we face is between being held hostage to government central planners, or liberating each of us...consumers, providers, patients, and insurers alike...to take control of our own healthcare in a truly free market.
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