I was going write about the parts to disagree with, but please just reread the first to 'graphs. Thankee.

Okay, also the fourth.

"But we also need to recognize that we're getting a crazy-bad deal by spending so much on health care and leaving so many people out."

This is my key to show you something: if you make a bad assumption, or lead with a lie, your argument must fall apart - unless you're talking to someone who doesn't know anything about health care except that Grandma is gonna die "because of those damned Republicans".

You are not excluded from health care in the USA just because you do not have insurance.

Yes, you must buy your way into any plan, scheme or treatment program in some way. Medical work is NOT FREE.

The solution is NOT to enable you to walk up to any clinic on a whim and demand service. That's exactly what is bogging down ERs here and there, and that is not going to change by having taxpayers pay for such visits.

Oh, yeah. Here's my link!

I want more than I am willing to pay for, just like every other human on this planet.

10 years ago I had an illness that left me paralyzed for a week in the ICU, and without good coverage would most likely have been detected very late and in the ER and would either have killed me, or left me paralyzed for 2 years. Total cost of coverage for that one was about $50,000 but I was able to go back to work in two weeks. (Joseph Heller had the same disease, it took him two years to get through it.)

Last year a congenital heart defect (that is, I was born with it, and it wasn't from smoking or eating too much) cost $250,000 to fix and took me out of work for about six weeks.

Again, with no coverage it would have been discovered almost certainly too late, or the fix would have required my undergoing additional operations every 10 years or so.

Today, I cannot describe my fear at losing my job and being unable to obtain insurance either for myself or my children.

I hold multiple degrees including ones in science, engineering, and business, but there is no way I can take the risk and start a small company or work for a small startup.

I have to work for companies that can offer good insurance. And I suspect that I'd better not tell anyone during an interview of my medical history. I am basically a wage slave at doing a job that I don't think utilizes my skills to the best of anyone's ability. But the insurance in awesome and unobtainable for me elsewhere.

Radwaste, Crid, you can either make it easy for me to get my own insurance, or you can pay my medical costs, and those of my kids yourselves as we obtain our health care from the ER.

I'd love a system that gave a tax credit and allowed me to purchase insurance on my own. After-tax dollars instead of pre-tax dollars. What could be better?

I meant pre-tax instead of after-tax!

That's not true, Amy. Most insurance will pick you up no questions asked if you were insured in the previous six months. And many states have guaranteed-issue policies available.

They cost more, but they exist.

Once more, presumptuous moral condescension. I don't have a social conscience because I disagree with the writer? I don't think so.

--
phunctor

Radwaste, Crid, you can either make it easy for me to get my own insurance, or you can pay my medical costs, and those of my kids yourselves as we obtain our health care from the ER.

Another option: don't force ERs to treat everyone.

Sorry, anon, but people with significant medical problems are screwed under every system. The government certainly doesn't want to pay for your expensive procedures; they're all about cutting costs.

Mr. Weisberg is correct that "The current system of American health care is at odds with America's character in three fundamental respects: moral, economic, and sociological," but not in the ways that he describes.

The current system is at odds with America's moral character in that the actions of the government restrict choices and provide perverse incentives. Those are bad enough, but that they distort prices offends America's economic character, which is based on capitalism and market competition. (Forms, paperwork and bureaucracy are un-american.) Sociologically, America roots for the underdog and idealizes the person who succeeds through hard work, not the person who lives off government handouts.

> Radwaste, Crid, you can either

I really, really don't care for your tone.

I'm suddenly alerted by an anonymous party that I have a profound individual responsibility to ameliorate the ravages of bad fortune. But not just 'luck': Apparently "genetic" is a password by which my wallet cracks open. Further, this alert is delivered with the warning that my options for response have been severely focused. And I'm on the hook not only for other people's reproductive choices, but for career fulfillment as well. I'm expected to take a personal interest in this person's normal human fears about death, suffering and poverty, and will be spinning with them on the roulette wheel long since they've put their chips down, and well after rien ne va plus.

Why does this alert come anonymously? Two reasons come to mind. First, the author recognizes, in some quiet interior corner, that the patience of fellows is being indecently tested. Secondly, while the author is eager to project risks and debts into the lives of others, it will be easier to hoard blessings and success when passing among the fellows without recognition.

I'm pretty sure I know who the author is. We got no beef, OK? But don't kid a kidder.

One of the continuing themes I've seen in the bus-stop brawls here on Amy's blog over the last five years is the verge between public and private responsibility. Not just private responsibility, but intimate responsibility... People want government (i.e., neighbor taxpayers) to fulfill roles in their lives that can only be filled by a loving, motivated person who's completely immersed in their affairs.

You want government to do that? Not a problem! Government can do that. But I promise you're going to be disappointed when you consider all the other consequences.

I like liberty. I understand that you can lose on this planet, and lose big, and for no good reason, and it's nothing personal. A few of my losses came very early, and I've been making up ground since then.... But have conducted my affairs with the insight that answering one's own responsibilities is the best way to contain the nightmares.

It's just not the nature of distant human beings to take a personal interest in your affairs, no matter how unfortunate or impersonal the source of your distress. You can pretend that it is, but it isn't.

You may not like my tone, but unless you plan on not paying your taxes, what do I care?

I ain't prying the money out of your wallet, that's the army and police and lawyers doing that. My suggestion for you is for you to lobby for the most efficient deal for everyone that gives you the best return on your investment.

My suggestion is that if you are planning on living in this country as anything other than a tax cheat, that helping everyone get the medical care they need to help them be a productive member of society will be cheaper to your wallet than ignoring these people and having the government take the money to pay for their ER care.

My suggestion is that you be selfish, not merely ignorant.

You're selfish with your identity, and there's a very good reason for that.

>My suggestion for you is for you

So it's only a suggestion, not a demand? I'll give it some thought and get back to you.

> gives you the best return on
> your investment.

It's not an "investment" unless it's volitional. Other things are called "taxes".

I am anonymous as I don't think it's a good idea in an online forum to suggest I am not happy with my job.

No need to get back to me on this. Submit your thoughts on the back of your 1040 in April.

Fascism, they call that.

Yes, still pissed. The closed-mindedness of it, the settled nature of the wording, the fait accompli: You will be paying for my ass, no matter what... These things we discuss today are all just details.

Have you met Brian? He has a plan too: "They'll eventually get their money."

We hear the mills grinding in Washington, and you're done with bargaining... So no more tears, OK?

I think we both actually do agree on whether its good or bad that the government has the power of the gun to force open your wallet.

But I am saying "These things we discuss today are NOT just details" but the whole thing. Whether you pay or not has been decided. You can totally waste your money by paying for my care in an ER or you can vote to get a policy that returns people to productive members of society as efficiently as possible by voting for universally available individual insurance that is not tied to employers.

If you think the question is whether or not you have to pay for my care if I can't get insurance, you're just wrong. That boat sailed years ago.

> Whether you pay or not has
> been decided.

Truly? You think so?

No tears. No tears. Don't come cryin'.

Although in his haste to attack me, Crid neglects to mention that I find the answer of "You aren't critical, go to the fucking clinic" to be an appropriate response from the Emergency Room.

Anon, You'd do well to note that under a government controlled rationing system you'd likely be left to suffer and/or die. If you're too expensive relative to expected future tax receipts, well...

Pragmatism.

> neglects to mention that I
> find the answer of

Again, Brian, the rest of the world is just not that interested in your feelings... Especially when there are paying customers to deal with.

I keep asking people:

Q. Crisis here! How will we create the wealth necessary to pay for our taste for limitless good service, and for our capacity for limitless bad luck?

And people reply:

A. We'll take that value from other people!

And I say:

Q. No... I mean, what I'm asking is, how will you create the wealth for these needs?

And people say:

A. We'll take it from...

Q. Grrrrrrrrrrrr......

Well, that's what happens when you ask boomers questions about money. They figure there's a limitless supply of "daddy" money out there, it's just a matter of expropriating it.

Socialism works great until you run out of OPM.

We're out of OPM.

> Well, that's what happens when
> you ask boomers questions
> about money

Or questions about making them wait for it. After all, "they'll eventually get their money," right?

Please don't speak as if your judgment comes by removal from the process. Your presumption that distant others should make precious allowances in your case is precisely, precisely the problem. Again, you one of Obama's Loyal Cadets.

You just can't let it go, can you? I've cost other people precisely zero dollars. And for you to get all "Starship Troopers" and tell me that I oughtn't be making commentary is unacceptable.

For you to put my actions into a position of supporting Obama is insulting in the extreme. Go find a glove and slap yourself in the face with it.

Oh, and it looks like Obama might just fail on his attempted takeover of the medical industry. We may have dodged a bullet on that one. And he's never going to get a second chance. Lame duck in less than a year.

Maybe this country isn't as far gone as I thought.

"Radwaste, Crid, you can either make it easy for me to get my own insurance, or you can pay my medical costs, and those of my kids yourselves as we obtain our health care from the ER."

Obviously there is a learning disability here - and possibly a swollen entitlement gland. Did you follow my link?

"Insurance" is not a magic word that means you get better. It's not even a word you should rely on to designate the process of your getting medical care. It's just, I bet, the only word you know for getting other people to pay for your problems.

Since when are you entitled to that?

Go back and read the link. You walk into a clinic, or the ER, and hand them your card. You get billed. That part is mandatory in any system to protect it against frivolous charges. When the expense runs above your "limit", then the fund kicks in for reasonable and customary sums. This part would still be governed by an authority, paid by the interest on outstanding sums to administer that fund.

The benefit to the system is the relief it gets from legions of running noses going to clinics and ERs for free.

The benefit to you is that every day you go without a medical expense, you keep your money. There's no hundreds/month extracted from your wallet when you're in perfect health.

> You just can't let it go

I'm a context superfreak! Can't live without it!

> "Insurance" is not a magic word
> that means you get better.

Raddy's onto something. Insurance is a mundane but thoughtfully-composed list of arrangements by which a bunch of people share specific risks. To just say "Everybody needs insurance!" misses the point.

What I mean is, it's not sophistimicated... It's like a schoolgirl saying "I need a pony!" or "I need a pot of gold!"... Y'know, who doesn't?

Listen, if anyone out there is truly, truly unable to get insurance –and I just don't mean at a price you find unappealing, but that you are flatly unable to protect your family and your community– then of course people should feel bad for you.

But the whole world can't be clued into Anon's career development, or Brian's taste for video games as a metrics for a failed market. Again, if you think the rest of the world should care about your intimate problems, go ahead and force the issue and see what happens. Won't be pretty.

--

I try as hard as I can to dislike McCardle (for being tall and media-elite snooty), and can often build some momentum. And then she goes and ruins it with a chart like this.

A little off the subject of the comments but back onto the original blog post:

Before we go too far down this road, check out the listings under "45 million uninsured myth" (emphasis on the last word!).

Then estimate what we're trying to do to our health system for approx 4% of the population.

It might interest Crid to know that I don't have health insurance for my dog either. But about 6 years ago Crimson had surgery to remove an infected salivary gland. I paid the thousand or so dollars out of my pocket.

There goes your theory that I don't pay for health care.

I just spend more on it for the dog than I do myself.

Oh oh oh. Brian....

http://www.petinsurance.com/

I have one for my pooch. :)

Again, again, again.... There's no interest in your personal finances. There's no intimate fascination, not for me, and not for your creditors. We don't care about Amy's personal finances, either. And we don't have to! She's self-employed, but has insurance! So, like, whatever. We know it will be handled.

There's no intimate fascination, not for me, and not for your creditors.

That's a bigger lie than I believe you've ever told anyone else in your life.

If you weren't fascinated by it, you wouldn't beat it like a baby seal.