Good heavens, one day it’s 43 million, then it’s 56 million, now you say it’s 25 million. Will you liberals please make up your minds?

I’m just trying to tease out where the line is on ‘liberty’ as is used to frequently in these discussions. Much like a similar about ‘equality’ on another post here, where the definition used by multiple people was most definitely not the same. I hold no claim to a precise definition to these terms, and I suspect neither do many other people. As a result there seems to be to much talking past each other.

Yes, sorry. I wondered about that at one point later on, but was too tired to confirm it.

Previously in Florida, you had no choice. The law was that you had to wear a helmet. Now, you have a choice. BUT, you have to own responsibility with your choice. It may not be total freedom, as you’re trying to point out, but you do have a choice now with a caveat that you won’t be a burden to other Floridians for that choice.

Looks like the cash-for-clunkers program may be near an end. I don’t qualify; I made the mistake of buying a fuel-efficient car in 2000.

I’m trying to think if there’s some area of life where I can be stupid and irresponsible now, so I can get paid by Obama in the future. Because so far I’ve really screwed myself by doing things right.

And my favorite comment from that thread:

Why work for a living when you can vote for one instead?

All of liberalism is perverse incentives. The whole idea of the welfare state is to insulate people from the consequences of bad choices; and they do so by excessively taxing those who make good choices. The Obamacrat Health Plan is no different.

You know what burns my ass too, you know if the House had passed the bill exactly as it was presented and the Senate to follow Barry Soltero (sp) aka Barack Hussein Obama WOULD HAVE SIGNED IT AS IS. HOW REVOLTING!

“Yeah. I figured personal responsibility would be lost on you.” Really now? It’s not lost on me AT ALL.

But look back at your explanation of the Florida law from your comment. It was not at all clear. It is still not. The option there is either wear the helmet or pay – I don’t see how that is an argument for liberty. Actually, it would seem to back up Countervails point. FL is forcing riders to take responsibility in one way or another. Helmet or insurance.

And then this: “Further, I find your insistence that insurance companies are in business to kill their customers despicable.” I insisted no such thing!! Are you mixing up your commenters?

Personally, I do not like all this nonsense about the government getting so involved in health insurance. But on the other side, I do find the incentives in the present system to be perverse, and in need of some cleanup.

i.e. Tardo prefers the feudalist system. That explains everything.

Yeah. I figured personal responsibility would be lost on you. Essentially what the state of Florida is saying is that you’re free to choose whether or not you can ride with or without a helmet, but if something happens to you, you’re going to pay for it. It’s YOUR responsibility, not the rest of Florida. I can get a dictionary definition, if you’d like.

Further, I find your insistence that insurance companies are in business to kill their customers despicable.

We’re already paying the cost of not helping out those who are unable to afford health care.

Au contraire. We’re already paying the costs OF HELPING out those who are unable to afford health care. One of the reasons why health care is so high is because we ARE paying for those who don’t have it for one reason or another.

But I don’t want any more of my money being spent to line the pockets of investors and CEOs of big business

So don’t. For now, anyway, you have the right not to have insurance. You don’t have to pay for it. Or, if you’druther, you have the freedom to select a non-profit like BC/BS. You’re an adult, I assume, so you can make that decision and you don’t need the government to make that decision for you.

If it takes a public option to truly regulate insurance, I’m all for it.

And government regulation is a major reason why health care and insurance is so high. Talk about folks wanting the status quo. You’re one of them.

Then reach into your own pocket instead of demanding that everyone else pay for it.

But if you did that, you would have to spend your own money, and that’s not the point of liberalism. You don’t want to pay, so you try to use the law to force others to pay for you. It’s selfish, irresponsible, and childish, but that is what liberalism is. Selfish little boys like yourself don’t want to pay for their own health care or be responsible; instead, you pitch tantrums and scream how awful it is and how hateful anyone who thinks you should pay your own way are.

If you don’t care that you’re paying the highest amount of money for a mediocre level of care

Mediocre, indeed. I don’t see Americans fleeing across the border to Canada or Mexico to the socialized paradises there, but we sure as heck see people fleeing from everywhere else to places like the Mayo Clinic here.

We have the best, most technologically-advanced, and most available medical care in the world — mainly because we pay for it. The ludicrousness of anti-business leftists like yourself who think we will improve care by getting rid of hospitals, getting rid of technology, requiring people to wait absurdly long times, and forcing doctors and health care providers to work for less under a crushing government regimen can only be laughed at heartily.

And last but certainly not least:

An industry that plays with the well-being of individuals, taking their hard-earned money when they’re well, and dropping them off the insurance rolls when they get sick, or refusing outright not to help those who can’t pay incredibly high premiums or those with pre-existing conditions doesn’t deserve any praise.

What about people like yourself who won’t reach into their pockets to pay those peoples’ bills? Why don’t you do it? Why won’t you take responsibility, liberal?

That’s right. You don’t want to help other people if it requires you to spend a dime. Instead you try to demonize and destroy private businesses so you don’t have to put your money where your pathetic blabbing mouth is.

And interestingly enough, trial lawyers spent $16.6 million dollars in 2008.

So put in perspective, you’re whining about the insurance industry spending $2.2 million over four years while completely ignoring trial and malpractice lawyers spending almost eight times that amount in one year.

If you’re concerned about influence-buying, you’re aiming at the wrong sources. But then again, you’re not concerned about influence-buying; you’re merely concerned with demonizing private businesses because that’s what leftists do.

In 2006, the insurance industry made $15 billion dollar profit representing a 1,084 percent increase in five years alone.

Citations please, leftist. You need to present actual evidence instead of repeating talking points.

You have a free market now.

No we do not. We have a business in which 50 different states impose 50 different sets of regulations and 50 different sets of idiotic mandates. Not a single one of the five sites that I oversee on a daily basis has the same insurance plan — because they are in five different states. This is not because the insurance companies want it that way; on the contrary, they would be overjoyed to spread the risk over the five sites instead of on an individual basis. It’s because of ludicrous state laws and stupid mandates that require me to offer coverage that not a single one of my employees uses, but for which I have to be charged.

That is not a free market. That is a stupidly-overregulated market that requires unnecessary administration and forces additional expense. But Barack Obama and his Obama Party don’t want to fix that problem; instead, they want to add expense.

Your assertion that we should support a “free market” comprised of companies reaping incredible profits and ginning the system through campaign contributions and lobbying to take advantage of average Americans disgusts me. An industry that plays with the well-being of individuals, taking their hard-earned money when they’re well, and dropping them off the insurance rolls when they get sick, or refusing outright not to help those who can’t pay incredibly high premiums or those with pre-existing conditions doesn’t deserve any praise. Insurance is an industry, a business, one that you would promote in some abstract sense of “liberty” over the well-being of fellow Americans.

I think you took my statement to mean that I don’t want to help the ill-fortuned from our country. Far from it. I’m mad as hell we’re institutionally being taken advantage of by the health care industry, the same one where making health care available to everyone is bad business. We’re already paying the cost of not helping out those who are unable to afford health care. But I don’t want any more of my money being spent to line the pockets of investors and CEOs of big business for a second-class solution for what has become a second-class of American citizens.

If it takes a public option to truly regulate insurance, I’m all for it. Big money in our capitalistic country will always speak louder than our concern for the unfortunate. Is that the definition of liberty? When health care concerns have the financial resources to throw $1 billion dollars worth of lobbying at congress every year, how in the world are regular people who just want to get along in their lives supposed to compete with that? When politicians who are supposed to be looking out for the well-being of their constituents receiving millions of dollars in campaign donations, how are people who can’t even pay for a doctor visit supposed to have a voice in the debate?

If you don’t care that you’re paying the highest amount of money for a mediocre level of care, that 25 million of your fellow Americans can’t even afford the basics of health care and want the insurance industry and the health care industry be able to have unregulated say over your health care choices in the name of liberty, I say continue to say no as loudly as you can. You will only reap what you sow.

Whatever the number people uninsured actually is, that’s not the same as saying that they don’t receive medical care.

The reason that companies spend money on lobbyists and influence is because the government has the power to make and break industries… if the government had less involvement then there’d be less money floating around. PhRMA isn’t offering to spend $150 million to advertise Obamacare for altruistic reasons… it’s to buy a seat at the table (look up “rent seeking”). Government involvement seems to cause more problems than it solves (think mortgage meltdown).

I also believe there are several drivers in the run-up in medical costs (about twice the rate of inflation since the late 60s). A few:

1. Medicare/Medicaid and the resulting cost-shifting.
2. Advances in care. Illnesses and injuries that were once death sentences (e.g. AIDS) are now treatable and many cancers can now be cured; once fatal traumas are now survivable. The first human-human heart transplant was in 1967; now they’re almost routine.
3. Social decay: treating crack babies and all the rest isn’t free
4. Malpractice awards. There are quacks and charlatans but Powerball-sized awards for bad outcomes (not due to negligence or incompetence) drives up costs (insurance and defensive medicine). John Edwards and his ilk didn’t get filthy rich from going after truly incompetent doctors – there just aren’t that many.
5. Illegal immigration. I feel bad for these people but if we’re to treat anyone who makes it over the border then there are about 6 billion potential patients in the waiting room.

In fact you things completely backwards. It was the proto-lefties of the Enlightenment, like Rousseau, with his “noble savage’ who thought that human nature was inherintly good. That is why that tradition developed a lot of utopic ideas – all that was necessary to achieve heaven on Earth was to return humans to their original purity. Its a philosophy that can lead to opposition to progress (leading us further away from the garden), or to a revolutionary upheaval against the estabished order which has taken us so far from the garden.

History has validated this belief time and time again.

Conservatives: Leave people to their own devices because they’re inherently good. Free markets and free people have as their nature to care for one another if left alone and allowed to.

Leftists: Make sure you control and dictate to people, becuase left to their own devices, they’ll take care of only themselves and throw the rest to the wolves.

Take ANY debate from Iraq to health care and you can boil it down to these two truths about the perspectives of the Right and Left in America today.

Now that’s interesting. Isn’t this exactly contrary to the fundamental conservative insight into human nature?

Now who’s in for the “blood money”? Your comment, frankly, disgusts me.

I will absolutely be the first to admit that in the name of liberty from time to time some people may fall through the cracks. I believe we, as a society, should do all we can (within the limits of INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY) to help those folks.

My argument is and has always been about liberty and has never been to take care of any individuals nor the society as a whole. I feel that humans, being born (CREATED!) as good souls will do all they can to help each other. As such, when left to their own human devices, LIBERTY allows citizens to help themselves and, therefore, others.

Your argument, writ large in that insidious comment of yours (#33) speaks volumes. Let those who may die die, let those whose liberty must be subjugated go without freedom. So long as “my bottom line” is not affected.

Disgusting. All I can say, really.

I take great offense that I’m somehow against business because in an industry like health care, the business of living and dying, I would like the insurance companies to put the care of the people they serve ahead of the profits they promise to their shareholders. During the Bush presidency we’ve seen unprecedented gains in profits to these sectors. In 2006, the insurance industry made $15 billion dollar profit representing a 1,084 percent increase in five years alone. In that same year, the pharmacy industry was the second most profitable industry in the United States with profits nearing 20%. Health care issues prey on our biggest fears and concerns and these industries, while providing valuable services, scare the bejeebus out of you to get top dollar for those services. That’s why compared to other industrialized nations we pay the most money for mediocre service.

The health care sector also spends millions of dollars to ensure that profit keeps getting larger. The insurance industry alone spent $2.2 million on congressional campaigns since 2005, mostly to Republican lawmakers and Democratic lawmakers in key positions regarding health insurance regulation. Just in the last six months they’ve spent $11 million in campaign contributions. Health care spends nearly $1 billion annually on lobbying efforts. Our lawmakers are not uninterested parties. How do you think your couple hundred bucks premium per month compares to that? And while you can’t call it a cabal per se, you have to have health insurance from somewhere or face dire consequences should you truly get sick. Calling the insurance industry “competitive” is a bit of a stretch. A public option would simply highlight that fact.

Now last time I checked, I didn’t see these industries going “hey, business is great so we could moderate more.” When’s the last time you saw a voluntary reduction in your premiums? Did you ever think of jumping ship from your company plan because the free market would surely be more competitive? You have a free market now. Is there any quantifiable information showing it’s actually competitive?

Roughly 25 million people in the country are uninsured. This is national crisis and if the insurance industry refuses to accept competition in the form of a public option, I think it’s only fair that they at least have to subsidize the cost of insuring the uninsured or underinsured.

Maybe that was the Obama plan all alone and you’re all getting duped. It’s not a great time to take on more debt for the country so let’s let the highly profitable health care industry underwrite it. It doesn’t matter to me one way or the other. I realize that I subsidize health care for these individuals already and would be happy to shift that burden over to the insurance industries if it’s guaranteed it won’t affect my bottom line.