In reference to "So, all I'll say is that it is strange that you seem to feel so passionately about a policy that is purely fictional."
I refer you to this week's Parade Magazine article Is It Your Job To Stay Healthy?
So it's not "purely fictional" so much as it is "being done already by a government in the United States.
And a final comment on the trend itself:
He's wrong-headed because every person everywhere impinges on all the other people in society and cause them some expense, if you choose to try to monetize that impingement.
He's insane because he thinks he knows exactly how much a choice to sit and watch TV is costing *him*. Because he thinks that you can take a trend across a population and make individual's pay on that basis. Because he doesn't see the inherent complexity in an argument that doesn't (and can't) account for fat people dying before they get chronic geriatric conditions.
I wouldn't support your slightly-hysterical labeling of it as "fascist dictatorship"
Again, please go look up what fascism is. It's not hysterical and that's part of what I'm trying to start here... a conversation based on a real understanding and acknowledgment of the facts. It is fascism to have government/corporate hybrids deciding on people's rights with regard to how to live their lives and it is a dictatorship to have Barack Obama mandate that each person has to get health insurance. I'm not unwilling to have a substantive discussion about the merits of the plan, but I am frustrated that we're pretending that it isn't what it is.
And using public money to stop big corporations from failing, and a government executive telling them what products they can make and how much they can pay employees is socialism.
I refer you to this week's Parade Magazine article Is It Your Job To Stay Healthy?
Alabama state employees have until Nov. 30 to get screened for chronic illnesses such as diabetes and hypertension if they want to keep their free health insurance.
So it's not "purely fictional" so much as it is "being done already by a government in the United States.
Some companies are going a step further, penalizing unhealthy employees by deducting more from their paychecks to cover insurance or offering less-generous coverage.And would it not be perverse to hold to the opinion that our government, when it runs a health insurance company, would do less?
And a final comment on the trend itself:
Dr. Darwin Deen of Montefiore Medical Center in New York disagrees. “Right now,” he says, “ healthy people subsidize care for everyone else. Some people are asking: If you choose to sit and watch TV while I am out exercising, should I still be expected to pay for part of your health-care costs?”Dr. Deen is both wrong-headed and insane.
He's wrong-headed because every person everywhere impinges on all the other people in society and cause them some expense, if you choose to try to monetize that impingement.
He's insane because he thinks he knows exactly how much a choice to sit and watch TV is costing *him*. Because he thinks that you can take a trend across a population and make individual's pay on that basis. Because he doesn't see the inherent complexity in an argument that doesn't (and can't) account for fat people dying before they get chronic geriatric conditions.
I wouldn't support your slightly-hysterical labeling of it as "fascist dictatorship"
Again, please go look up what fascism is. It's not hysterical and that's part of what I'm trying to start here... a conversation based on a real understanding and acknowledgment of the facts. It is fascism to have government/corporate hybrids deciding on people's rights with regard to how to live their lives and it is a dictatorship to have Barack Obama mandate that each person has to get health insurance. I'm not unwilling to have a substantive discussion about the merits of the plan, but I am frustrated that we're pretending that it isn't what it is.
And using public money to stop big corporations from failing, and a government executive telling them what products they can make and how much they can pay employees is socialism.
3 comments:
The "fiction" in your proposition was "single payer," not the behavior of private insurers. And even though this is a state employee fund, I'm 100% sure (well, 99%) that it's privately administered insurance and no different from the way that Boeing's insurance program works (and the ways Boeing tries to promote healthy behavior).
By the way, this sort of thing is a great argument for de-linking insurance and employment. Make people pay their insurance so they see the cost of medical care, which is otherwise invisible. There's no such thing as "free" insurance. If everybody is in a private (regulated) insurance market, then nobody gets forced to do anything -- you pick the plan you like. Plans with a lot of mandatory screening and stuff will probably be cheaper, but other plans will undoubtably be available.
Having said that, I'm still a fan of community rating, which runs counter to the notion of underwriting people based on pre-existing conditions or lifestyle choices.
From Wikipedia's first paragraph on Fascism: Fascists believe that nations and/or races are in perpetual conflict whereby only the strong can survive by being healthy, vital, and by asserting themselves in conflict against the weak. Fascists advocate the creation of a single-party state. Fascist governments forbid and suppress criticism and opposition to the government and the fascist movement. Fascism opposes class conflict, blames capitalist liberal democracies for its creation and communists for exploiting the concept. [...] No common and concise definition exists for fascism and historians and political scientists disagree on what should be in any concise definition.
This is what I mean - Fascism is way too broad and nebulous a term to be useful in this discussion. (I would also argue that it's too loaded a term, but I'll leave that for now.) If you have settled on a definition in your own mind on what fascism means, it's pretty certain that your understanding of the term does not correlate to mine, and yours is no more definitive.
Coming to the issue of rights, I don't think it's at all correct that anybody's rights are being violated. You don't want to get checked for diabetes? Then fine, decline your employers' health plan and go buy one on the market. Or you can refuse to "live healthy" and forego the discounts offered for healthy behavior. I agree that it's bad policy, but it's not coercive and your rights are inviolate.
With the mandate to purchase insurance, it's only a dictatorship if you are a hard-core libertarian who thinks that it's dictatorship that you have to buy auto insurance or get a permit to install a water heater. The government compels a lot of stuff -- I have to pay for a war I didn't agree with, I had to register for selective service, we have to pay into Medicare and Social Security, you have to leave your gun at home when you go to a tavern, you have to wear seat belts, etc. It's not a dictatorship. If you don't like it, run for city council and repeal the water heater permit law. Or get a thousand signatures and put it on a referendum. And if you lose, just because you disagree with the decision of the majority or the decision of your elected officials, that disagreement does not equate to living under a dictatorship. You had a voice, and your position was not accepted by your fellow citizens.
Words mean things, and you are trying to impose a very unconventional meaning on these concepts. Dictatorship is "autocratic rule unconstrained by law," not "government making me do something I don't like."
I'm willing to go with your use of Fascist, but dictatorship? seem to remember this election. And there is this thing that can happen called impeachment.
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