Walter Reed / Universal Health Care
desandrews
Posts: 143
I've always believed that the stated "liberal" goals are noble and worthy of striving towards but I completely disagree with the idea that the government must be the ones to enact laws, restrict liberty and forcefully transfer income to achieve those goals. One of the major reasons is because I believe humans will fuck just about anything up when they do not have the proper oversight, realize no costs associated with their efforts and suffer no consequences for their actions.
So, we're all outraged over the Walter Reed fiasco and the deplorable conditions that many of our nation's heros have been subject to, but let me ask you this, doesn't it basically remind you of the DMV or our public school system or anything else that the government has full control over? A complete fuck up...
Aren't you the least bit worried that if we enact "Universal Health Care" and turn everything over to the government that every hospital in America will eventually resemble Walter Reed? I know I am.
So, we're all outraged over the Walter Reed fiasco and the deplorable conditions that many of our nation's heros have been subject to, but let me ask you this, doesn't it basically remind you of the DMV or our public school system or anything else that the government has full control over? A complete fuck up...
Aren't you the least bit worried that if we enact "Universal Health Care" and turn everything over to the government that every hospital in America will eventually resemble Walter Reed? I know I am.
Post edited by Unknown User on
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As for walter reed that has more to do with the repubs always underfunding the veterans administration. Acts like that are usually made to keep people like you from complaining about how high their taxes are.
Well you seem pretty libertarian. Most libertarians/libertarian republicans hate paying taxes. How could you not hate paying taxes if everything that the government touches is a complete fuckup?
It has much more to do with mismanagement than underfunding.
You seem more interested in talking about me personally rather than the issues within my post, I'm flattered but not interested.
I'm sick of people maoaning about paying taxes. If you dont like paying taxes then move overseas to that nation where you dont have to pay taxes. Someone help me with the name of that country. Bye bye.
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Right. We should all stop complaining about things we don't like. No more anti-tax noise. No more anti-war noise. No more talk of this silly abuse of privacy and illegal wiretaps. No more talk of poor conditions at Walter Reed. If you don't like this stuff leave. Otherwise, do like Rushlimo and step in line.
Yeah, this would never happen under a democratic regime. Right. Keep drinking the kool-aid.
What does this even mean? I didn't say that every government program was totally devoid of waste I was just saying that making a blanket statement that every government program is fucked up isn't a great example of critical thinking. Neither is your post.
+1
You pay them every month and then they still want to bill the shit out you when you have to actually use it.
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
-Oscar Wilde
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You claimed the problem stemmed solely from republican underfunding. The response was "Yeah, this would never happen under a democratic regime. Right. Keep drinking the kool-aid." How does that not make sense?
I never claimed that every government program is fucked up, you went ahead and lept to that conclusion on your own. I merely tried to provide some context first, about my views in general and second by adding examples of areas where the government has taken over and botched things up. I then asked if anyone was concerned that this may happen under Universal Health Care. I then stated that I was concerned, but I thought from there we'd discuss points of view (see Hippiemom's post). Yet once again you finish your post criticizing an individual while failing to even discuss any of the issues within scope.
I think a lot of the problems with private health insurance is that the government is already too involved. Granted, you make valid points here, but the insurance companies are between a rock and a hard space by being forced to offer "wear and tear" policies rather than "catastrophic care" policies. When government's force companies to offer drug and alcohol rehabilitation coverage, contraceptive coverage etc. that increases the cost of the policy. Don't get me wrong, those things should be offered but it should not be mandatory. That way people can chose the coverages they need and forgo the coverages they don't need. This would create much more competition and much lower prices. Plus, there's no reason why it has to be offered through the employer. Why not make it more like automobile or homeowner's coverage? I don't see nearly as many problems in that industry. There's much less government regulation (although there is still a lot) and the choice and competition is much greater providing savings to the consumers.
Claims handling may be an issue with the private insurers causing too many problems by fighting you but you have to recognize the continuum. There's significant risk that under the gov't there would be little to no push back on issues like that. That would cause the prices to skyrocket even further. I'm not saying the current private scenario is ideal, I'm saying, I don't think the gov't ideal would be better, there would need to be a happy medium and that could be obtained without turning everything over to the feds.
Yeah.......can't imagine where I got that idea.......
Originally Posted by desandrews
I never claimed that every government program is fucked up
Quote:
Originally Posted by desandrews
doesn't it basically remind you of the DMV or our public school system or anything else that the government has full control over? A complete fuck up...
"every government program" encompasses many initiatives that the government does not have "full control over." Remember the things you mentioned in your first post like the Pell Grant initiative, that's a good partnership of using the gov'ts, I mean our money, through private institutions to provide a valuable service. See, there's a difference between the two.
The management of Walter Reed was privatized.
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2007/03/Weightmansubpoena/
Well, security, patient care and operations were "privatized" but it is still a Federal hospital filled with federal employees. It is a hybrid that obviously doesn't work. Privatization is like pregnancy. It either is or isn't. Walter Reed isn't.
A few quotes from the article:
..."the Defense Department “systemically” tried to replace federal workers at Walter Reed with private companies for facilities management, patient care and guard duty..."
"They also found that more than 300 federal employees providing facilities management services at Walter Reed had drooped to fewer than 60 by Feb. 3, 2007, the day before IAP took over facilities management. IAP replaced the remaining 60 employees with only 50 private workers."
So, aside from the fact that a federal employee is the same as a private employee (it's the management that's the problem - and at Walter Reed, it was private), what federal employees are you talking about? Janitors?
Good one. Who owns it?
I don't get the conservative vs liberal buck passing distinction. You've completely lost me there. As far as I can tell that is status quo for either party. I completly agree that the government fucked up. That is a given.
If you think it is just the janitors who are federal employees, ask yourself why the people at the top were sacked. They were federal employees. This is a federal facility, run by federal employees with services outsourced to the private sector. Some statist decides that if you outsource some functions you've suddently privatized the hospital. It hasn't been privatized. It is still a federal facility.
It's the work and how the place was being ran that caused the uproar. These jobs were privatized. You're avoiding this to try to save face for your privatization argument. Everything isn't all daisies and sunshine as soon as you privatize things like you would have us believe.
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
-Oscar Wilde
Basically, what I'm saying is this isn't evidence that universal health care would be a failure, as was implied by the opening post in this thread.
Totally fair point. And I'm only arguing that this pseudo/hybrid privatization of Walter Reed is not evidence that privatization doesn't work. There are enough examples of top notch private hospitals to demonstrate that.
The money for this care is going to come from the government either way - it has too, this is a war expense - so it goes without saying that the hospital cannot be completely private. Were the government more directly involved, i.e. were Walter Reed less privatized, Walter Reed would likely still be the model it once was. In many major ways, other hospitals are a completely different animal.
Oh yeah, and let's not even talk about hiking up the tax rate another 15 or 20% per year to pay for this shit. If that's the case, I'd have to GET, and get CURED OF, prostate cancer every frickin' year just to get my dollars worth.
Yeah, great idea. We're already raped at 30% of our gross income anyway...which is spent on a war that none of YOU want...but now you want us to give them ANOTHER 20% ON TOP OF THAT.
I'm sure they'll spend it wisely. :rolleyes:
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I don't think privatization magically makes anything great. I think choice and competition breed efficiency and forces individuals to do what's in the interest of the consumer because they have the power to take their business elsewhere.
I wonder how it was decided to "privatize" the facility. Was there any competition involved? If the administration makes the privatization a virtual monopoly it's not representative of anything you see in the free market today and is just some fucked up hybrid beast as was mentioned earlier.