Not for nothing, does Megan McArdle deserve the title, “Dumbest Blogger Ever”.
Ezra Klein does a great job destroying a post by both her and her husband. The subject-health care reform and the lies that are consistently told about it.
A (formerly) Far East located web site devoted to The Resistance, discussion of all things political, travel, women, golf, women,adventure, and did I mention women?
you guys are a total joke.
oooooooohhh look, by extending the government to pay for your health care and taking on several hundred billion of additional debt we’re going to save YOU money! People are waking up to that crapshot.
You clearly did not read the article-nor have you read any of the other commentaries that correctly point out that the “expanding government” idea is false and based on a lot of lies to get to that conclusion.
But that is the whole conservative idea nowadays-since their arguments don’t hold up to scrutiny, just distort the words of your opponent. This decency and fairness gets turned into “socialism” and the rest of the douche-bagger nonsenese.
well, you never did get around to explaining how me, that is to say ME, paying the health care premiums for 50 million uninsured was going to SAVE ME money did you? did you?
Skippy,
I’ve followed your blog for quite a while. You present thoughtful, interesting counterpoint to what I read and believe to be true. Your blog has often made me do research, question my assumptions, and at least understand that guys very similar to me might reach very different conclusions based on the same entering arguments. I have to tell you though, here is one where you jump the shark, and hard. We will expand the pool of folks who use a service (medical care) while not expanding the available supply (providers) and that will drive the price down. Wake up! That’s not how it works. (and yes I read the link. Lots of semantic arguments that did nothing to touch the substance of the issue.)
You recently mentioned trying to help CDR Salamander when you thought he was going off the rails blogging for Breitbart. I don’t have the history with you that you have with him– but respectfully, as a fellow Naval Officer and aviator, step back from the ledge, go back to fundamentals in economics, and THINK about what you’re saying. It just ain’t possible. The majority of Americans don’t support the health reform bill because it is Bad, capital B Bad.
You say conservatism left you, not the other way around. OK, here’s an invitation to come back. You don’t have to like Palin or O’Donell; please, just use your common sense to see that the road you are heading down and want the U.S. to go down ends badly, has always ended badly for others, and isn’t the road that a Patriot such as you and I would want our country to head down.
V/R
Sluf
Kevin,
The problem is-the conservative movement-such as it is does not offer any useful alternatives when it comes to health care. None-they prefer to see insurance companies have the “right” to screw over people in the name of increasing profits. That’s not something I accept any longer.
Furthermore, I am not so sure that your two basic premises here are correct. 1) The American people don’t understand health care reform and the Obama adminstration has done a very poor job of explaining it. 2) The idea that it has always ended badly for others is simply not true and does not hold up under scrutiny. Switzerland, Singapore, Japan, France and a about five others I can think of have universal health care and it works out just fine. When I was in Australia three years ago I had to see a doctor for a medical problem. It cost me very little and the care I got was superb.
This is issue is too important to dismiss under the guise of “its not American”. There are things we can learn from others and there are things they can learn from us. That’s a better worldview than the one of American exceptionalism-a view that was never correct to begin with.
Kevin,
Me and my big sister(8) used to accompany my grandfather on his country rounds back when my dad was in Vietnam and we were in Carlisle. We would climb in the back seat of the doctor’s car alongside his big black bag and drive hither and thither in the country around Carlisle and wait in the car while he delivered babies and did other things. Sometimes payment would be made in the form of a live chicken that we got to put into the trunk, take it home and put it in the chicken coop down by great granddad’s shed. An amazing place stuffed with books from the turn of the century.
Skippy is wrong about every single thing. except the sex bit. People don’t have a right to live forever or die trying AT MY EXPENSE. They get what they get and nobody is going to force DOCTORS to practice at a loss and NOBODY can afford to pay for the kind of healthcare that a zillionaire gets on my nickle and yours. Sarah Palin’s mention of the Death Panels was right on the money.
No one is asking Doctors to practice at a loss-they are asking for the fees to be in line with the services provided, and by mandating insurance they are increasing the risk pool in an effort to hold cost down.
There is a word for your final statement-selfish.
Which, in turn, punctures the most persistent myth of all: that America has “the finest health care” in the world. We don’t. In terms of results, almost all advanced countries have better national health statistics than the United States does. In terms of finance, we force 700,000 Americans into bankruptcy each year because of medical bills. In France, the number of medical bankruptcies is zero. Britain: zero. Japan: zero. Germany: zero.
Given our remarkable medical assets — the best-educated doctors and nurses, the most advanced hospitals, world-class research — the United States could be, and should be, the best in the world. To get there, though, we have to be willing to learn some lessons about health-care administration from the other industrialized democracies.
That’s why you have to shut up and color-anything else is morally indefensible. Health care is a right-I believe that and I will go on believing it.