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Spacemanvic wrote:

Your biblical ignorance is laughable. Giving should be a voluntary act, not a dictated one. You shouldnt be dragged into giving. And yes, it IS theft when those taxes are used for anything but roads, bridges, firemen, cops or caring for the poor. Most turnpike tolls etc start out this way, then wind up funding junkets. Look it up.

"Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's."
Matthew 22:15-22
"Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God."
Romans 13:5-7:
"Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also because of conscience. This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God's servants, who give their full time to governing. Give everyone what you owe him: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor."


This is the word of the Lord.

Spacemanvic wrote:
I give at church, I give to charities. I make the decision who gets what and how much of it. As for murder, I feel funding abortion is murder, so is it moral to force someone to pay into something that to them is immoral?

Of course the fact of the matter is the bill specifically excludes that very funding.

PS the most debauched American Politician would blush in shame in the Roman courts of the day.

Spacemanvic wrote:
And yes, it IS theft when those taxes are used for anything but roads, bridges, firemen, cops or caring for the poor.

What about the military, the elderly, diplomatic activity, intelligence services, or regulatory agencies?

Anyway, no, it isn't. Taxation is not theft under the auspices of a legitimate state, ever. Taxes do not become tacit to theft simply because you feel they are too high, or because they fund programs which you do not support.

You're equivocating in order to score cheap rhetorical points. Its lazy.

Spacemanvic wrote:Ive been in the workforce since I was 17, got insurance via work when I was 19, paid my way through 7 years of college, and am now a husband and father of 6. Ive never had the need to be coddled by anyone, much less the government. Ive had to move 3 times to go where the work was and have had insurance each time through 5 jobs. If your employer is giving you less hours, go somewhere else.

The system works well for me therefore the system works and you are to blame for any problems you have. Awesome reasoning, dude.

Spacemanvic wrote:As per http://www.american.com/archive/2008/march-april-magazine-contents/a-nation-of-givers
"No developed country approaches American giving. For example, in 1995 (the most recent year for which data are available), Americans gave, per capita, three and a half times as much to causes and charities as the French, seven times as much as the Germans, and 14 times as much as the Italians. Similarly, in 1998, Americans were 15 percent more likely to volunteer their time than the Dutch, 21 percent more likely than the Swiss, and 32 percent more likely than the Germans. These differences are not attributable to demographic characteristics such as education, income, age, sex, or marital status. On the contrary, if we look at two people who are identical in all these ways except that one is European and the other American, the probability is still far lower that the European will volunteer than the American."

And yet, despite the amount of US charity, their Gini index is among the worst in the developed world. If you don’t know, the Gini index is an economic measure of income distribution, the US’ low score demonstrates that despite the great wealth in the country the poor have very little, and a lot less than in other developed countries.

There are fundamental limitations to charity.

Spacemanvic wrote: As it is, most charities, minus government intervention can and do great good. Government is too cumbersome, too corrupt to actually fulfill its stated intent. One need only look at how the US government has been dealing with the Native American nation to see just how inefficient and corrupt government assistance can be.

At the micro-level for specific projects charity can outperform government by a long way. But charity by its nature will be smaller scale, and largely incapable of sustained, long term reform of a problem. Charity will also be erratic, dependant on charismatic leaders able to gain public interest. Most importantly, charity dependant on fundraising over volunterring will be highly inefficient, as much as 30 or 40% of revenue is spent fundraising – a tremendously large overhead.

Just as there are limits to government and to the private sector, there are limits to charity.

The Green Git wrote:The hypocrisy is here all right, but it's now where you think. Did you know Conservatives give 30% more to charities than liberal households?
http://richiericher.wordpress.com/2008/02/01/arthur-brooks-who-really-cares-the-surprising-truth-about-compassionate-conservatism/

You should try looking at the underlying numbers instead of reading third tier op ed pieces. The key determinant in charitable giving is religious faith – which makes a lot of sense when you think about it. Because the religious tend to be conservative in the US more often than liberal, a straight up comparison of conservative/liberal shows a greater amount of charitable giving among conservatives. However, if you actually divide out religion from political identification you get a really fascinating set of results. Then you find that non-religious conservatives are the least charitable, while religious liberals are the most generous. Political identification is nowhere near the factor that religion is, but the result is contrary to the one you’ve claimed.

The result is a powerful argument for the importance of religion in mobilising people to give, as a political point scoring exercise the argument is very weak.

By the way, I take it you’ve decided to just ignore my earlier point about income and earning? If so, that’s a pretty crappy effort.

efarrer wrote:

Spacemanvic wrote:

Your biblical ignorance is laughable. Giving should be a voluntary act, not a dictated one. You shouldnt be dragged into giving. And yes, it IS theft when those taxes are used for anything but roads, bridges, firemen, cops or caring for the poor. Most turnpike tolls etc start out this way, then wind up funding junkets. Look it up.

"Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's."
Matthew 22:15-22
"Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God."
Romans 13:5-7:
"Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also because of conscience. This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God's servants, who give their full time to governing. Give everyone what you owe him: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor."


This is the word of the Lord.

Thank you, efarrer. Nice to see some sources cited in this discussion.
I'm tempted to leave this one to sebster, since I tend to agree with him and he does a good job of making his points, but I do feel strongly about having nationalized (aka socialized) healthcare. And education. But that's another debate.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

People claiming that it doesn't work should look at Scandinavia. Since I don't want to generalize, I'll go with Sweden (my favorite of the 3 I've been to). It seems like using Denmark would be cheating, since those damn socialists have (according to a University of Chicago worldwide study) the happiest country on earth (not just cause they invented Legos either)

Shall we look at life expectancy? Sweden leads the U.S. 80.9 to 78.2 [Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy ]
What about infant mortality? Sweden leads the U.S. 3.2 to 6.3 [Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_infant_mortality_rate ]
"Aha!" you say, "these Swedes must be paying dearly for this coverage!" Nope. Significantly less per capita than the United States. And they seem to be getting more for each dollar than we are.

"Ok, but that money must be funding that arch-fiend, ABORTION."
Take a look at this:

It looks like developed countries with socialized healthcare (Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Canada, England) have... LOWER abortion rates than the United States? This is easily explained. As I learned first hand from Swedes, free healthcare and paid maternity leaves tend to make people more likely to have children, because they know they can support their children.
All of this from the least religious country in the world. (85% atheist, agnostic, etc.)

Edited to fix links

Mad Rabbit wrote:It looks like developed countries with socialized healthcare (Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Canada, England) have... LOWER abortion rates than the United States? This is easily explained. As I learned first hand from Swedes, free healthcare and paid maternity leaves tend to make people more likely to have children, because they know they can support their children.
All of this from the least religious country in the world. (85% atheist, agnostic, etc.)

The lack of religion plays a really big part, as less overtly religious countries tend to have more comprehensive sex education, and often subsidise or provide contraceptives for free. The end result is that ironically the less religious countries tend to have less abortion.

How many people here that are lauding this national health care are all for compulsery military service?
A lot of the countries if not all that do national health care have compulsery military service.
Since we don't have it in place yet, I know that all of you people that are for hand outs will be queing up at the recruiting offices to do your civic responsibility.

Relapse wrote:How many people here that are lauding this national health care are all for compulsery military service?
A lot of the countries if not all that do national health care have compulsery military service.
Since we don't have it in place yet, I know that all of you people that are for hand outs will be queing up at the recruiting offices to do your civic responsibility.

That really couldn't be much less relevant to this.
Am I against letting sick people die, even if it costs me money? Yes.
Am I also against shooting people because their leaders disagree with mine? Yes.

In addition, since I posted sources for all of my claims above, please post some for yours.

Relapse wrote:How many people here that are lauding this national health care are all for compulsery military service?
A lot of the countries if not all that do national health care have compulsery military service.
Since we don't have it in place yet, I know that all of you people that are for hand outs will be queing up at the recruiting offices to do your civic responsibility.

I am, not that it HAS ANYTHING TO DO WITH THE DISCUSSION. Try harder.

I'm against both, but yeah, I'm not really seeing the connection either.

I'd really hope he'd try smarter, not harder, but it seems pretty forlorn at this point.

Regardless of my several disagreements with this bill, I fully support, and am even happy with, several of its new provisions. As far as how it affects my benefits at work....I have no idea as of yet. I just started a new job, and haven't gotten used to the idea of a steady paycheck and benefits....

Relapse wrote:How many people here that are lauding this national health care are all for compulsery military service?
A lot of the countries if not all that do national health care have compulsery military service.
Since we don't have it in place yet, I know that all of you people that are for hand outs will be queing up at the recruiting offices to do your civic responsibility.

Umm, ‘a lot of the countries if not all…’? Seriously? Are you actually saying that you think it might be possible that all countries with national healthcare have compulsory military service?

Let’s just check that. UK – national healthcare and no draft. So, umm, there goes the ‘if not all’. Oh well, let’s keep going, see if we can drum up support for ‘most’. How about Australia? No… damn. New Zealand? Uh uh. Japan? Certainly not. Spain? Bugger. Germany? Yes. Yes! YES! Haha, one in five! That’s totally evidence!

Seriously dude, your idea seems to consist of saying ‘if you support one kind of government program you must support this other randomly chosen government program’ and you’ve taken that idea so happily that you just assumed that countries with healthcare plans must be more likely to have the draft. There’s nothing connecting the two ideas.

Relapse wrote:How many people here that are lauding this national health care are all for compulsery military service?
A lot of the countries if not all that do national health care have compulsery military service.
Since we don't have it in place yet, I know that all of you people that are for hand outs will be queing up at the recruiting offices to do your civic responsibility.

As others have pointed out, there is no necessary connection between national healthcare and mandatory service. Additionally, conscription in the Nordic countries (I assume those are nations you're referencing) has very little in common with either US military service, or even something like Israeli conscription. Men in places like Sweden do not owe (so far as I understand it) the state a discreet period of service. Instead, they put their name into a draft lottery and fulfill their chosen service when called.

efarrer wrote:

Spacemanvic wrote:

Your biblical ignorance is laughable. Giving should be a voluntary act, not a dictated one. You shouldnt be dragged into giving. And yes, it IS theft when those taxes are used for anything but roads, bridges, firemen, cops or caring for the poor. Most turnpike tolls etc start out this way, then wind up funding junkets. Look it up.

"Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's."
Matthew 22:15-22
"Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God."
Romans 13:5-7:
"Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also because of conscience. This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God's servants, who give their full time to governing. Give everyone what you owe him: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor."


This is the word of the Lord.

Spacemanvic wrote:
I give at church, I give to charities. I make the decision who gets what and how much of it. As for murder, I feel funding abortion is murder, so is it moral to force someone to pay into something that to them is immoral?

Of course the fact of the matter is the bill specifically excludes that very funding.

PS the most debauched American Politician would blush in shame in the Roman courts of the day.

Wow, you've proven that A: You have access to scripture and B: You can quote out of context. Bravo!

Modquisition on.
Cease desist the discussions of Christianity in relation to the Healthcare Bill and charity. It is not appropriate. If you want to discuss the merits and philosphy of charity do it in another thread. That is all.

You will not regret public healthcare. Wait until you have it, then you will want to keep it.

Big medicine will do anything to keep you from realising this.

DO you have the same physician every time Orly?

I do yea. Unless I request otherwise.

Cool.

Oh and in case of an emergency offcourse. But yea, if it's just appointments and such I always get the same guy.

Whats your MRI timeline? Aka if the doc wants an MRI because your shoulder is bugging you whats the timeline to getting an MRI?

Frazzled wrote:Whats your MRI timeline? Aka if the doc wants an MRI because your shoulder is bugging you whats the timeline to getting an MRI?

When I did my cruciate it was about a month before I was put on the MRI - the machine was free but that was how long the swelling took to go down enough for the MRI to produce usable results. I saw the specialist after a month, he noted the swelling had gone down enough and booked me in for an MRI that day. I got the scans back about three days later. That was all public care.

However, when the MRI confirmed the damage and that surgery was required, he said it'd be a two month wait before surgery, that's just how it was on public care. I pointed out I was privately insured, and he booked my surgery for the next Monday.

Which is the thing - you can have a public system that ensures a basic level of care for everyone and ensures no-one will lose their house because they got sick, and then people who want shorter queues and fancier rooms can pay that bit extra.

sebster wrote:

Frazzled wrote:Whats your MRI timeline? Aka if the doc wants an MRI because your shoulder is bugging you whats the timeline to getting an MRI?

When I did my cruciate it was about a month before I was put on the MRI - the machine was free but that was how long the swelling took to go down enough for the MRI to produce usable results. I saw the specialist after a month, he noted the swelling had gone down enough and booked me in for an MRI that day. I got the scans back about three days later. That was all public care.

However, when the MRI confirmed the damage and that surgery was required, he said it'd be a two month wait before surgery, that's just how it was on public care. I pointed out I was privately insured, and he booked my surgery for the next Monday.

Sorry not sure what a cruciate is but that doesn't sound too bad timewise.

Which is the thing - you can have a public system that ensures a basic level of care for everyone and ensures no-one will lose their house because they got sick, and then people who want shorter queues and fancier rooms can pay that bit extra.

Well two issues:
1. I don't go for the two tiered system. Equality for all helps insure a good system.
2. Which one costs less in absolute dollars-state run or private? Then you should build up from there.
See I'm not the hardliner you think I are.

Frazzled wrote:
Sorry not sure what a cruciate is but that doesn't sound too bad timewise.

There are several cruciate ligaments in the knee; including the ACL, MCL, PCL. The ACL is the most commonly injured. Interesting trivia: the word 'cruciate' is etymologically connected to the word 'excruciating', most like because it hurts like Satan when you tear one.

Frazzled wrote:
See I'm not the hardliner you think I are.

Not when you're calm anyway.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Frazzled wrote:
1. I don't go for the two tiered system. Equality for all helps insure a good system.

How would you ensure equality in a fully privatized system?

The connection I am making when I mention military sevice is the fact that people in this country seem happy to sponge off other people and the governent for their health care and other items, but balk when it comes to them doing anything meaningful when it comes to putting something back into the system.
People don't feel like serving a hitch in the military? Fine, but they should be willing to do a couple of years of some other kind of service to earn the benefits they want to leech out of everyone else.

You've made it perfectly clear that you have no intention of engaging in intelligent debate on this subject, but just for gaks and giggles, how does someone 'leech' from a system we're all paying into?

That's just the point. Not everyone is paying into it.

Relapse wrote:That's just the point. Not everyone is paying into it.

Well you go right ahead and send the mentally handicapped and children to war.

Frazzled wrote:Whats your MRI timeline? Aka if the doc wants an MRI because your shoulder is bugging you whats the timeline to getting an MRI?

When I had my TIA (about 2 years ago)... 3 days?

Haven't had any other scans or real big things happen at the hospital.. except for a weird thing on my left index finger.... like... the meat was growing outside the skin in a mushroomy shape, had to be removed.. and they bloody failed on the stitches, as a result the stitches were below the healed tissue and had to be pullet out... that hurt :(

Soladrin wrote:...except for a weird thing on my left index finger.... like... the meat was growing outside the skin in a mushroomy shape, had to be removed...

I am intrigued, mildly disgusted, and perplexed all at the same time... not exactly sure if I want to know more about all of that...

Appropriate reaction pic.