Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

tomscott.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 440 posts

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#301

Post by bombolo »

thegrimmest wrote: post #281
linuxdude314 wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No reasonable person thinks this. If you truly believe this, your perspective have been warped by the culture you are immersed in. It sounds like you don’t find value in living in a society. Try living in a different culture than USA for 6 months to a year and I suspect your eyes will be opened.

I'm not so sure - entire revolutions have been had about this, and extensive documents written, for centuries[1]. Not everyone is a negative utilitarian. I value living a society where cooperation is (maximally) voluntary . Involuntary cooperation is indistinguishable from a degree of slavery. 1. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/rightsof.asp

Declaration of human rights was about the right to have your house burn down? You always learn some new made up crazy thing on the internet!

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#302

Post by saiya-jin »

rayiner wrote: post #163
that_guy_iain wrote: post #143

Even with this information included. I think the moral of the story is America has some very serious third-world problems. The reason things like this go on in America and not in any other developed country is that Americans just accept it. "They didn't pay, so they die." Here is how much they accept it, firefighters literally stood and watched a building burn down instead of playing with their toys. Not only that, t…

> I think the moral of the story is America has some very serious third-world problems. The reason things like this go on in America and not in any other developed country is that Americans just accept it. "They didn't pay, so they die." Here is how much they accept it, firefighters literally stood and watched a building burn down instead of playing with their toys. Not only that, the fire department refused to accep…

No post body was provided.

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#303

Post by EvanAnderson »

yamtaddle wrote: post #297
EvanAnderson wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fully admit to being hyperbolic. Where I live, in a rural area of a red state with a lot of wealth disparity, giving free medical care to anybody absolutely is seen as "socialized medicine". (Of course, there'll be a healthy dose of divisive racial and class politics mixed in to the argument, too.) The reasons behind that opinion are absolutely motivated by lack of understanding, but there are strong political beli…

> Where I live, in a rural area of a red state with a lot of wealth disparity, giving free medical care to anybody absolutely is seen as "socialized medicine". (Of course, there'll be a healthy dose of divisive racial and class politics mixed in to the argument, too.) The reasons behind that opinion are absolutely motivated by lack of understanding, but there are strong political beliefs there as well. Suburb in a re…

> Sorry if I pounced on you there, BTW. I could have been less confrontational with that previous post.

It's good. The nerd pedant in me can't let a mention of EMTALA go by without hammering on it. It's a bit of cognitive dissonance to inflict on the "free healthcare market"-types who have moral qualms about letting people die but aren't about to give an inch on "socialism".

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#304

Post by jandrewrogers »

that_guy_iain wrote: post #272
Aunche wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "They didn't pay, so they die". The problem with these emotionally charged characterizations is that they can be used against you. Conservatives will use the rationing caused by large cancer backlog in the UK as evidence for "death panels."

The funny thing is they're using the UK which is literally going nuts over the state of the NHS. The UK is extremely unhappy with the backlogs. And almost certainly they'll be getting reduced once a new goverment is voted in during the next general election. The really funny part, I bet a lower percentage of the captia die from cancer in the UK than the US. Because they can get some sort of treatment. And of course a…

> The really funny part, I bet a lower percentage of the captia die from cancer in the UK than the US.

The US, quite famously, generally has the highest cancer survival rates in the world. The standard bearers for cancer survival rates in Europe have traditionally been Switzerland and France, which are close to the same level as the US. A decade ago in the UK there was a public outcry when studies showed it had one of the poorest cancer survival rates in the developed world; in the well-known Lancet study, survival rates in the US were 50% higher than the UK.

The UK has improved their cancer survival rates significantly over the last decade in response to those studies but it isn't near the top tier.

In the US, everyone gets essentially the same cancer treatments, even if they are poor. The economic stratification occurs around enrollment in experimental cancer treatments, by virtue of needing to be located where experimental therapies are being tested. Experimental therapies are a big deal in the US because most state-of-the-art treatments are developed and tested there before being widely available. If you want to enroll in experimental cancer treatments outside of where they are being tested, you need to have the economic means to travel there. I personally know people on welfare in the US who survived Stage 4 cancer because they happened to live where highly effective experimental cancer therapies were being tested, making it readily available to them.

The US lives a little bit in the future for state-of-the-art cancer treatments. I know several people that survived cancer in the US thanks to experimental therapies that are now standard therapies. It usually takes a while for these to propagate to other parts of the world.

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#305

Post by lmm »

that_guy_iain wrote: post #204
pdonis wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are egregiously misinformed about the US.

How so? Do they have a public healthcare system? Nope. What sort of society doesn't look after it's own? Do they have police who have a duty to save you? Nope. That alone is just an absolute shit show. What sort of country says the police have no obligation to protect you? Only to show up and solve the crime once it's happened? What sort of society doesn't look after it's own? I could carry on but it's a bit pointles…

> Do they have police who have a duty to save you? Nope. That alone is just an absolute shit show. What sort of country says the police have no obligation to protect you? Only to show up and solve the crime once it's happened? What sort of society doesn't look after it's own?

What country puts that kind of positive obligation on the police? I'm not aware of any that do.

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#306

Post by JetAlone »

rqtwteye wrote: post #232
pdonis wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you have this backwards. Acting like a grownup means taking responsibility for your own actions and not expecting the government, or any institution, to magically make sure nothing bad ever happens to you. Paying for services like firefighting is fine; but being forced to pay for things because some government bureaucrat decrees it is not. And acting like a grownup also means letting people take the consequences…

Acting like a grownup means that you realize that not all things that happen to people are their own fault and that you yourself can’t totally avoid bad things no matter how careful you are. It also means to understand that some things can be handled much better by a shared effort instead of everybody on their own. That’s why we have police, firefighters and the military.

No post body was provided.

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#307

Post by Aunche »

WarChortle wrote: post #233
Aunche wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The US has the highest preventable death rate in the developed world. They also have by far the highest obesity rate in the developed world. > Have diabetes and no insurance? That's pretty much a death sentence and they'll watch you die. Need surgery? No insurance? No surgery and death because of complications caused by the lack of surgery. I'm supportive of universal healthcare, but this is a huge exaggeration. If…

> The US has the highest preventable death rate in the developed world. >> They also have by far the highest obesity rate in the developed world. So... I am sure that is one reason of the highest preventable death rate. doesn't invalidate GP point. > I'm supportive of universal healthcare, but this is a huge exaggeration. Sadly in a way its not an exaggeration at all, will doctors and nurses literally watch you die o…

> The UK has its issue, but from what I can see its because they are purposely starving it of money so they can ultimately privatize it.

This isn't true. Healthcare spending has grown every year and has never significantly fallen relative to GDP. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan...

> America's health care is fucking garbage.

I agree, but it's not for a lack of spending. The US government actually spends more per capita on healthcare than the UK in total. I'm not opposed to universal healthcare. I'm opposed to politicians throwing money at a problem to buy votes, but that is the only thing that can result from a universal policy that results from healthcare at all costs rhetoric.

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#308

Post by lmm »

bloppe wrote: post #246
that_guy_iain wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

The US operates on a fundamentally different scale from most other countries. It's so big and diverse (in terms of both people and biomes) that the only effective way to organize is heavily federated. Fire laws in California are very different from in Tennessee. There are a few ways to accurately paint Americans in broad strokes, but not many. I'd encourage you to travel around America a bit. Foreigners are often sho…

America has the largest amount of recorded donations to their rather stretched legal definition of a "charity". This says a lot more about the American tax code than it does about American generosity. I'd encourage you to travel around the world a bit.

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#309

Post by grecy »

Am4TIfIsER0ppos wrote: post #133
leetrout wrote: post #6

And here we are in modern times where we do, indeed, let buildings burn. > No pay, no spray: Firefighters let home burn > Firefighters in rural Tennessee let a home burn to the ground because the homeowner hadn't paid a $75 fee. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/wbna39516346

Money can be exchanged for goods and services. If you want your house extinguished then pay for it.

In developed countries that’s where our tax dollars go.

Re: Did insurance fire brigades let uninsured buildings burn?

#310

Post by chung8123 »

that_guy_iain wrote: post #143

Even with this information included. I think the moral of the story is America has some very serious third-world problems. The reason things like this go on in America and not in any other developed country is that Americans just accept it. "They didn't pay, so they die." Here is how much they accept it, firefighters literally stood and watched a building burn down instead of playing with their toys. Not only that, t…

The alternative is they wouldn't be allowed to live there. America allows people to get into situations that may result in harm to them if they are not careful. We do the same thing with healthcare and our nutrition. We still allow tons of processed and sugary food even though we know it will result in slamming our healthcare system but hopefully you have insurance.
Post reply on HN