31–39 of 39 posts
There is no such thing as a free lunch. Someone always has to pay, and socialized healthcare just means that your neighbor has to pay for your poor lifestyle decisions. Employer 'provided' healthcare is a voluntary, demand-driven benefit. To re-purpose an earlier comment - socialism "sounds like slavery".
Explaining away US healthcare as an artifact of WWII by claiming European countries turned to nation health schemes because of economic ruins ignores one very important counterpoint: Canadian healthcare. Canada had no wartime ruin, and indeed, excelled after the war by advances in industrialization from the demands of WWII-- much like the US. Actually, Canada got it's universal healthcare because of the efforts of To…
Honest question. Did Canada have the same situation with a mandated pay-raise freeze and the end-run around that by companies in the form of company provided, tax-free, health care benefits? It seems, according to the article, that this is the base situation that entrenched company paid health plans in the first place and prevented Truman from getting traction with a national health plan.
Before the war, many provinces had attempted to pass healthcare legislation but were halted by financial limitations or from opposition from doctors. Shortly after the war Saskatchewan managed to pass legislation to subsidize doctor visits by entrenching a common practice for communities to pool resources to attract doctors to service rural and remote parts of the province. Perhaps this is the distinction: local and provincial governments across the country were involved right from the beginning in providing healthcare. Canada's relatively homogenous citizenry may have also helped: most Anglophone Canadians saw themselves as a body of British subjects and this likely helped themselves band together to provide a common good.
I suspect that segregation in many places in the US acted to form healthcare in a less communal nature around private businesses where discrimination was easy to enforce.
There is no such thing as a free lunch. Someone always has to pay, and socialized healthcare just means that your neighbor has to pay for your poor lifestyle decisions. Employer 'provided' healthcare is a voluntary, demand-driven benefit. To re-purpose an earlier comment - socialism "sounds like slavery".
"your poor lifestyle decisions." Why frame the issue in this way, except to make yourself feel better about being complicit in denying your fellow citizens access to basic healthcare? The alternative explanation is that you genuinely believe all issues requiring healthcare are the result of "poor lifestyle decisions", which is plainly ludicrous. I think you should give some serious consideration as to why your brain…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"your poor lifestyle decisions." Why frame the issue in this way, except to make yourself feel better about being complicit in denying your fellow citizens access to basic healthcare? The alternative explanation is that you genuinely believe all issues requiring healthcare are the result of "poor lifestyle decisions", which is plainly ludicrous. I think you should give some serious consideration as to why your brain…
A huge fraction of health care expenses is due to lifestyle choices. Most diabetes (diet and obesity), most cancer (smoking), many knee/hip replacements (obesity), most hypertension (diet, obesity, sedentary lifestyle), not to mention alcoholism and drug addicition which at least starts with lifestyle choices.
Malcolm Gladwell recently had a podcast about how McDonalds ruined their French fries when they got bullied into changing their fryer oil from stable saturated fats to unstable polyunsaturated oil: http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/19-mcdonalds-broke-my...
I don't think The American Heart Association's propaganda campaign against stable cooking fats helps individuals make good choices for themselves.
Alcohol and drug addictions usually start with physical and/or mental anguish, not 'lifestyle choices'. I wrote about this recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15024780
I wish NYT does a piece on origins of minimum wage. Minimum wage was brought int to make sure black people dont find employment.
Explaining away US healthcare as an artifact of WWII by claiming European countries turned to nation health schemes because of economic ruins ignores one very important counterpoint: Canadian healthcare. Canada had no wartime ruin, and indeed, excelled after the war by advances in industrialization from the demands of WWII-- much like the US. Actually, Canada got it's universal healthcare because of the efforts of To…
This article describes how employer-sponsored healthcare started, but it avoids the reasons why it continued. And the reason Truman didn't get support for his universal healthcare plan was the "S" word: "socialism". From http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/november-19-1945-harry-t... (first link I found, it's documented numerous places): "Almost as soon as the reinvigorated bill was announced, the once-powerful Ameri…
To me it sounds like slavery. I mean, if you get old and/or sick you are stuck with your employer. How crazy is this?
> and the wage freezes and tax policy that emerged because of it. Unfortunately, what made sense then may not make as much right now. I wish NYT does a piece on origins of minimum wage. Minimum wage was brought int to make sure black people dont find employment.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This article describes how employer-sponsored healthcare started, but it avoids the reasons why it continued. And the reason Truman didn't get support for his universal healthcare plan was the "S" word: "socialism". From http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/november-19-1945-harry-t... (first link I found, it's documented numerous places): "Almost as soon as the reinvigorated bill was announced, the once-powerful Ameri…
Socialism brings ruin to whatever it touches. Canadian healthcare is not an exception but Venezuelan and Cuban healthcare are much better examples.