As long as someone is alive, there is money to be made from them in taxes, or whatever. I suppose the government, health care and insurance industry want the smokers to stop, but I am pretty sure the smokers end up paying more for coverage anyway. I figure it's no different than paying higher car insurance rates because of the uninsured and drunk drivers.
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Does it make sense to provide health insurance to smokers and drug users?
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Hey, hey! That kind of literature will cause unrest among the masses...
Might I also recommend at the risk of being rounded up by the secret police Murray Rothbard and Ludwig Von Mises. All you'll ever need to know about liberty, democracy, the state and economics lies within those two authors' easy-to-read works.
As a side note I hope everyone who's posted in this thread (all intelligent posts, might I add) steps out of the box a bit to see that this topic, along with others like it, is like analyzing the moves in a pro-wrestling match.
The game is rigged. The table is tilted. We're only ever given the choice between pre-selected options and if you don't choose it's chosen for us and that is no choice at all.
We find ourselves in a hole and are given the choice between a rope and a ladder. And as we argue about which one is the better option no one ever stops to ask how we got in the hole in the first place.
It's a very slow, gradual process to create these holes. One never realizes they're sinking. Slow enough that each generation believes that "this is the way it's always been." Eventually, everyone around prior to the changes dies, unable to attest to the failures of the changes or simply forgets how things used to be.
Health care is a commodity. It's a good and a service. No one has a right to anyone else's goods or services for free. That's either slavery, if no one pays, or theft if someone else's money is used to pay.
I find it quite interesting that people seem to believe that health care is something that's so important that we must make sure that no person goes without it but I can think of at least one thing that is more important than health care: food. Surely food is more important than health care. I have not needed health care for years but I have to eat every day or I will die.
So why is it that if one claims that because something is so important the govt must step in and manage its production and distribution they do not suggest doing the same for something ostensibly much more important, like food?
Surely, using that logic, food is far too important to be left to the free market. What guarantee do any of us have that the supermarkets will be stocked? That the food producers and supermarkets won't collude, cartelize, create a monopoly where we are forced to pay every last hard-earned cent for just enough food to live? That there will be a supermarket near anyone? That the food will taste good and be safe?
You'd hear those familiar arguments from the socialists that those barbaric capitalist pigs don't even guarantee food for their people! They are at the mercy of rich and greedy robber baron food producers who control the food supply and can exploit the people any time they want to pad their already fat wallets!
Except you don't hear those arguments because all those people quickly starve to death when the govt nationalizes food production. And the supermarkets here always seem to be full...
Secretly, everyone knows that food actually is something so important the govt can't be let anywhere near it's production and distribution because anything and everything govts have ever managed becomes a disaster. But it's like they keep going back to an abusive spouse not wanting to admit something is seriously wrong, thinking "this time, it will work--I know he loves me."
Govt has never been a good solution but always comes packaged as such at just the right time. Funny how that works.
It use to be the masses, now it's the few.
And it is most likely why an internet shut off button has been added to the nuke button control panel. The internet is VERY powerful and if used properly things would have to change.
BTW, what you wrote is all true. We are headed to the edge of a cliff at 200mph and no one can stop it.
Remember there is one word you can not use here, give.
That line cuts either way. Much of the status quo favors those who already have wealth.
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I'd argue the exact opposite.
All day.
For the third time in this thread....God help us.
You saw where I said it cuts both ways, yes?
Do I really need to cite examples of where the status quo favors the wealthy?
You would have to point to near-present issues, not ones from 100 or 300 or 500 years ago. "Wealth" is all relative these days. Even the poorest people can generally get a roof over their head and food in their stomach (free), thanks to welfare programs. There are very few truly "poor" people these days.
However, there are plenty of people that work that make less (or have less) than those that don't work at all. I remember when I first started working out of college, if I made $3K less, I could have had my wife and daughter on free health insurance through the government. Tempting, considering the cost of insurance. My tax burden would have been lower, I would've had miniscule copays (if any), and I wouldn't have been limited on my coverage for them.
So yes, I'd like to see your cited examples of the status quo favoring the wealthy (and not the "unwealthy"). I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you but I am curious as to what your argument will be.
Recall that I had responded to "The game is rigged. The table is tilted. We're only ever given the choice between pre-selected options and if you don't choose it's chosen for us and that is no choice at all."So yes, I'd like to see your cited examples of the status quo favoring the wealthy (and not the "unwealthy"). I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you but I am curious as to what your argument will be.
Politics in the USA is very much that kind of rigged game. The pre-selected options (the tweedledum and tweedledee parties) are both beholden to those who bankroll their campaigns.
You asked for a current-day example. Consider the stupendous amount of public money handed to the finance sector in the recent crisis, a process notable for (among other things) how opaque it was and how little oversight it had. Do you think it would have happened the way it did if the finance industry wasn't a huge contributor (to both parties)?
No, if they didn't contribute the fed would have knocked them out and then built a new system which did contribute. Instead of giving the money to the bank they should have given it to individual debt holder that would pay down debt and the banks would have ended up with the money anyways and the middle class would have been happy too.
Lets agree that wall street stole money.... this one time payment they received. It's a small amount compared to the money stolen by those collecting public assistance year after year.
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And lets not forget the billions upon billions that these "greedy" companies pay in taxes every year. Not to mention the income taxes their employees pay.
The motor which runs the world is being persecuted.
I should start a scared straight program for liberals. They can come stay with me for a week. At the end of the week they will either want to jump off a bridge or stop all PA.
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Make sure you house the scared straight visitors in the guest house....otherwise they may decide that everyone deserves to live at your standard....and then start passing appropriate legislation.
Make sure you house the scared straight visitors in the guest house....otherwise they may decide that everyone deserves to live at your standard....and then start passing appropriate legislation.
They aren't going to stay and get breakfast in bed. They will work my schedule and put in the hours per day I do.:smile:
As if it weren't an instance of the way things often work.
Prescription drugs in the USA cost more, often much more, than what the same companies sell the same drugs for in other countries. The pharmacy in my town cannot import prescription drugs and sell them here; he would be shut down. It is roughly like a liquor store being forced to buy from mafia-owned distributors. You know the punch line to this sad joke: the pharmaceutical industry is a huge contributor to both parties.
well the pill may cost you 10 bucks each but that is because it cost 9 other people nothing.
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And God forbid a company make profit. I mean...that IS what business is for, isn't it? To make profit?
I mean, how dare those greedy bastards pay themselves salaries and feed their families.
What a lot of people seem to forget, is...that without financial reward, there is no incentive to think, to improvise, to innovate, or yes...even to work.
You think the scientists that invented viagra were suffering from ED?
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+1 AND the profit and overhead.
Please do not lump me in with those who think businesses shouldn't make a profit.
I am not against commerce; I am against unfair practices, which exist in a wide variety of shapes and forms.
I am not against commerce; I am against unfair practices, which exist in a wide variety of shapes and forms.
Should it not be:
"Does it make sense to provide health insurance to smokers, drug users and too fast-car owners"!?
I live in Sweden and we are NOT a socialist country, as the americans tend to think - we are as americanized country as we ever can be - what ever you do we do "better".... or "worse", only some years later!!
Our system is widely admired by many countries but it comes with some bad sides too as your system does.
Looking on your system from abroad, having our, I'd choose our!
-AND, we ARE discussing to force people stop smoking before they get an operation they need if the smoking will make the halthcare harder (excuse my bad english-hope you understand what I mean)!
Perhaps we could find something in the middle of these two systems??
"Does it make sense to provide health insurance to smokers, drug users and too fast-car owners"!?
I live in Sweden and we are NOT a socialist country, as the americans tend to think - we are as americanized country as we ever can be - what ever you do we do "better".... or "worse", only some years later!!
Our system is widely admired by many countries but it comes with some bad sides too as your system does.
Looking on your system from abroad, having our, I'd choose our!
-AND, we ARE discussing to force people stop smoking before they get an operation they need if the smoking will make the halthcare harder (excuse my bad english-hope you understand what I mean)!
Perhaps we could find something in the middle of these two systems??
I would only argue that if we didn't give health care to smokers, we shouldn't give it to fat people either.
Being fat and smoking are equally deadly, and I would assume, equally expensive for health insurance.
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THAT is in interesting question. I straight up asked my doctor, which is worse smoking or being fat. She wouldn't answer me. I am going to say being fat is worse. I have met old smokers, never met an old fat person.
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Get your script from the Doc, and order the generic version online. You want companies to charge lower prices? Reduce demand. Vote with your dollar. Be an informed consumer, not a lemming.
Oh, and you know why your pharmacy can't import drugs? Cause of the government.
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great idea. i'd be interested in learning which specific online pharmacy you buy your life-saving prescriptions from.
Adam Smith's invisible hand works except when it doesn't. Those who think it works great all the time have blind faith in an ideology.
By the way, I have bought drugs online from developing countries.
Every so often, the topic of inequity in international prescription pricing comes up in Washington, politicians say it sucks and they'll look into it, and... nothing happens. The government keeps things as they are because they don't want to bite the hand that feeds them. I thought that was obvious.Oh, and you know why your pharmacy can't import drugs? Cause of the government.
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See also the efforts of the US government to limit the availability of generics worldwide:
That's the ruled-by-politicians-bankrolled-by-drug-industry-contributions USA, in case that has to be spelled out.
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