Whoa, I really don't even know where to start. But let's give this a go, taking this point by point, I think it's just about possible.
If you take out people already eligible for a "government" plan, illegal aliens- who Obama is promising won't be covered anyways, people who could afford insurance but choose to spend their money on iphones and cable TV, and people between jobs- who are only temporarily without coverage the number of people chronically uncovered shrinks considerably to a total of 4-10 million depending on the figures you use.
You're absolutely right that this figure probably represents an overestimate of the actual incidence of the uninsured that will be covered by this plan - the point however remains the same. Whether it's 15% or 5% (and that's a figure which is set to grow as health insurance costs continue to rise, unemployment rises and growth rates slow) I still consider that unacceptable. Especially so since that represents something I haven't even touched on yet - the people who are insured but are paying far over the odds for care which doesn't cover all the bases and still leaves them open for massive financial penalties on claims.
The point is that a public option covers that five percent with very little relative impact on everyone else. It's not like there are suddenly going to be massive waiting lines, huge drops in quality of service or anything else that you are claiming - in fact it is just plain disingenuous to claim so. Paying for a public option on health insurance is a funding-based thing which has very little to do with your actual healthcare provision. I'm not sure how to explain this any more clearly, but the bill presented to congress concerns funding, not provision.
The case is quite clear that a public option will reduce the financial burden on many, provide coverage for many who don't already have it, and potentially require insurance companies to be competitive given a new entrant into their oligopoly (increased competition in a market increasing efficiency). Simple economic theory tells us that this will be more effective in terms of welfare provision than the private sector alone, so what arguments are there actually against this in terms of its efficacy?
That's the point I made earlier. Cost is not the issue here in the US- we have the overall BEST care which naturally costs more. If Obama succeeds in his hostile takeover bid- then cost will become the dominant factor.
For the moment we'll ignore the Daily Mail repost (given that I already pointed out the source is dubious, it relates to provision rather than funding, and regardless of its veracity anecdotal evidence doesn't prove anything) and cut straight to this point.
The US only has the best care in the world if you can afford to pay for complete coverage at the best private hospitals - a situation which does not represent the majority of American citizens. The US's efficiency in terms of cost is massively lacking compared to most other industrialised countries; the US spends 15% of GDP on healthcare, far more than other countries, and doesn't experience a higher quality of life as we have already established. In terms of studies which directly target performance, the WHO ranks the US first in expenditure, but 37th in overall performance.
Furthermore, I don't think you have any evidence at all that the bill will reduce the effectiveness of US healthcare because of "cost becoming a factor". Of course, I'm not entirely sure exactly what point you are trying to make there, so it's possible you could be arguing for or against something else with that statement. If you could clarify that for me, that would be great.
That's the debate that has been raging in this country between liberals who want the "freedom" to change the constitution by changing the meanings of the words clearly to mean the opposite of the intention and conservatives who generally believe the constitution- as a set of principles- means what it says and what the authors intended which can be found by reading some of their other writings.
Personally I find characterising constitutional interpretation as divided on purely partisan lines a little inaccurate given the actions of past "conservative" administrations, but there you go. I think this is a discussion for another thread, however.
Actually you've got that backwards. That argument- "arguing that something is "unconstitutional" is short-circuiting any debate" is in itself just a method to short circuit the debate. Kind of like the "global warming" so-called debate. They proclaim without EVER debating it that "the science is in the debate is over" and just blow off the fact that most scientists and research disprooves it. (No please dont start global warming here I was simply citing the standard communist method)
As captain haddock points out, that is in fact not correct. You see, if the debate is about the effectiveness of public healthcare, talking about constitutionality in the context in which you brought it up is what is known as ignoratio elenchi (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignoratio_elenchi), or more colloquially a red herring. The constitutionality or otherwise of the public healthcare option actually has nothing to do with the effectiveness of public healthcare and making the case against public healthcare on the grounds of constitutionality is an attempt to preclude the debate on effectiveness.
We can pass without commenting on that last part, I think.
Problem is- None of what they are claiming in that list is "socialism" [...] I love how socialists love to claim every good or necessary thing is socialism.
It seems captain haddock has dealt with this one already. But to add to his points, I'm not sure (despite our earlier discussion about it) that you really understand what you are talking about when you casually sling the terms "socialist" and "communist" around. By your own definition, the creation of a public insurance system is socialist - however, if you define that expenditure of public funds as socialist you cannot ignore the other publicly funded institutions which are essential to a functioning modern society like the ones that captain haddock lists above.
