Now that I'm not on my phone, maybe I can respond more efficiently.
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I am arguing that the effectiveness of a healthcare system can only be legitimately evaluated when one considers both.
Agreed.
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You are taking a more subjective stance than anyone, because you are making unsupported claims of high 'quality'
Unsupported? Like the ranking of hospitals that BTK posted? Or the absolute fact that the US is and has been by far the health care market leader world wide? Or the fact the very long list of innovations that came from American health care? By far more modern innovations than any other country.
Here's a list of the top 10 innovations in health care:
MRI/CT
ACE inhibitors
Balloon angiography
Statins
Mammography
CABG surgery
H2-receptor antagonists
SSRIs
Cataract extraction and lens implants
Hip and knee replacements
You can thank the US for all of those.
I think that's enough information to negate any accusation of "unsupported cliams."
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and using them to dismiss the importance of very real evidence of inadequacies with regard to 'quantity' (as in your claim that quality is primary, quantity secondary, despite making no effort to accurately determine the state of either).
This is completely false. My stance is that continued innovation is more important than supplying free health care to every citizen. The majority of people who aren't covered are illegals and the unemployed. That's where the bloated 45 million uncovered comes from. We have nearly 30 million people unemployed alone. There are 11 million illegal immigrants. Therefore there are about 5 million taxpayers that are not covered. That's less than 2% of the population. I don't see the need to risk destroying a world market to assist less than 2% of the population. We JUST did this to the real estate market. It only took 10 years of opening up one regulation to let lower income families buy homes. You're talking about changing an entire system and hoping that it still survives inside an economy that exists in a completely different system with completely different principles. Again... my stance is that this is too much of a risk in order to assist a relatively small amount of people. This government is supposed to be for the greater good of the majority, not the minority.
Now the majority CAN benefit from fixing the various regulations and deregulations that has put the health care industry in the state that it's in today. These problems didn't happen as a result of a free market system. They happened do to our businesses being allowed to bribe politicians to pass selfish legislation. So why not fix the problem at the source instead of wiping out the whole system??
If you still don't believe that a socialized system isn't a huge risk in the US then you should look at ANY social service in the US. ANY. Take your pick. NONE of them work anywhere near as well as their private counterparts. I don't care what you look at. We don't havee a single social service that operates the way it's supposed to in this country. Not a single fucking one.
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We are all aware that the 'quality' of US healthcare is currently good, but that its 'quantity' (coverage) is bad. The purpose of my argument is to ascertain how good the 'quality' of US healthcare is, because we already have factual evidence of how poor it is with regard to 'quantity'/coverage.
I don't know what more info you want to see. You want statistics and numbers. We're talking about QUALITY. Obviously we have statistics explaining QUANTITY. You're thinking like a robot or a computer. You can't just compute quality. You need to define quality into quantitative values and measure those quantities and it will always be subjective because you have to assign subjective levels of importance to each category. You're asking for arguments that just can't be made. It's all opinion. And my opinion is if I had to choose between having the quality of care that we have or having free health care for everyone... I'd choose quality over quantity. You can't even pretend that your argument isn't the opposite of that. You're pushing your system which values quantity over quality. You cannot deny this. Don't act like I'm making up arguments. We're not talking about extremes here. Obviously there needs to be a balance between quantity ad quality. That's another "duuuuuuuuuuuuh" statement. But I'm arguing that protecting quality is more important than increasing our CURRENT quantity (not having all quality but NO ONE can afford it. That's fuckin dumb). You're arguing against me therefore you're obviously arguing the fuckin opposite which is worrying more about quantity than protecting OUR CURRENT quality. If you're not arguing this then stop fuckin disagreeing with me for no reason. wtf.
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Ultra simplified:
Great quality, low coverage: BAD
Great coverage, low quality: BAD
An appropriate balance: GOOD
No shit lmao
We're disagreeing on what the balance should be. And it's a subjective fucking opinion lmao. Jesus fucking christ lol
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This is UNDISPUTABLE, and OBVIOUS. A healthcare system that gives the world's most incredible care to only the top 10% of the nation and leaves the rest uncovered and insecure is clearly an awful system, even if the quality of the care is incredible.
That's not the state of our current system. If that's what you think then you're WAY off.
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The quality of the system as a whole depends on both factors. If the 'quality' of the care is only slightly better than that of a universal system, then perhaps it is worth witnessing a minor decline in this quality in exchange for a significant boost in quantity/coverage. If what would be lost is greater than what would be gained, then the change is clearly not worthwhile. I want to find out how best to achieve a worthwhile change. To me, that seems the only rational way to approach this debate. I'm not even arguing for universal care, i'm arguing for whatever is genuinely best. If the major problems of the private system can be soothed or solved without making a move to universal care, then perhaps that is the best way forward. I simply want to try to get a better understanding of what is genuinely best, with ideologies shoved aside.
I've made my argument supporting regulation over socialism. I can't argue it any further into the ground. I was under the impression that you've been defending socialized care all this time since you've been countering anything I or BTK says with propaganda in support of socialized care. The bulk of your arguments have been you hanging on to 2 skewed statistics. One is a ranking that takes quantitative statistics to come to qualitative conclusions. The other is a statistic skewed by including the unemployed and illegal immigrants to bloat the numbers in order to make the problem appear much bigger than it is.
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You have argued that the US is head and shoulders above other countries. This is something that could legitimately be supported by unbiased statistics, but you are yet to provide any. I want to see them. I want to know the extent of what would be lost in 'socialization', because I am already aware of the extent of what would be gained.
Again... what statistics do you think there are?? If you're not supporting one side or the other and just seeking knowledge then why aren't YOU looking for these statistics?? Why are you only digging up statistics supporting the side that you claim you're not supporting? I don't need statistics. I know how my country is run. I know that every service we socialize turns to shit. I deal with those social services everyday. There are no statistics to show me that everytime I use the US postal service my packages get fucked up or lost, but when I use UPS or FEDEX everything is A OK. There's no statistics to tell me that I didn't learn shit in public school and was passed from grade to grade without doing any work, but private school kicked my ass, kept me challenged, and made me more educated than the majority. There are no statistics for me to show you how bad these social services ARE, so how do you expect me to find statistics showing how bad this social service WOULD be? Come on man.
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capitalism pwns, therefore the US must be head and shoulders in front
Yea... THAT doesn't make sense, but reverse that and you have my stance that actually does make sense. The US is head and shoulders above the rest therefore capitalism is the best. You can look at capitalist and socialist countries that both fuck over their citizens just the same. But what you don't find is socialist countries that provide as much progress as capitalist countries.
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Mr Bighead Mcmassiveshoulders
LMFAO!!
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It seems you and BTK have assumed all I am doing is trying to push a universal reform. I have said repeatedly in other threads that I only support feasible, effective reform. That includes considering what will be lost, what will be gained, etc. Idealistically, I would support universal care every time, because I do believe that coverage is very important, but i would not support a universal system that offered inadequate care. I want to know the extent to which your system is currently great, so that it can be weighed up against the extent to which it currently sucks.
If you don't want people to think you're in support of something, then don't regurgitate propaganda supporting it lol. And Idealistically, I'd support privatization every time because I value my freedom.
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slightly worse life expectancies
That's due to lifestyle choices, not health care lol
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The thing about medical breakthroughs is more questionable, because sources indicate that the majority of the actual breakthroughs are the result of government funded academics working in government funded laboritories, and it is 'productivization' (apparently) which the industry is primarily responsible for.
I don't know what this has to do with anything. We have a capitalist government. Everything they do is to try to profit in some way. What makes you think that this funding would eve exist when we're already paying for 300 million people to have free healthcare? lol
Ya see, you don't need statistics to understand this debate. You need to learn economics. You don't know the theory behind what you're trying to come to conclusions about. You will never get it if you don't learn the basis of the arguments.
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How much will this be diminished under universal care?
This spending exists for one reason. Profit. The quest for profit. Take away the quest for profit and ask yourself why this money would still exist. This money comes from investors. Investors dump money into what is profitable. This is a simple concept. Kill the market... kill the funding. It doesn't get more simple than that.
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BTK simply thinks i'm simply a left-wing anti-US... know-nothing nutjob
BTK thinks that about everyone lol
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I'm seemingly the only person looking to actually learn more and compare these systems thoroughly; you and BTK already have your minds made up.
Because we live here lmao. We know how shitty your system plays out here. You're thinking theoretically, and we're thinking practically. You're assuming that the government will succeed, and we're assuming that the government will fail. In this case, you are being naive. Maybe your government doesn't fuck everything up that it touches, but ours does. Theoretically socialism is SWEET. The government does everything for society and everyone just goes about their merry life, everyone on the same level, no one without anything. The reality is that there's not a single socialist country that works like that. And there isn't a single socialized service in our country that works like that.
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(also - I googled that statistic, and it saw many reports claiming it is a myth. Apologies, I drew on something I had read a while back, and should have checked it. All stats are open to questioning, of course. Those debunking this myth offered their own stats, suggesting that the figure is between 100,000 and 200,000 medical bankrupcies a year. The original stat was mostly based on bankrupcies in which medical debt was simply a contributor, but not a primary cause. Very bad stats then, but still, the number of actual medical bankrupcies is also upsetting and avoidable, so the point is still there. Your mocking of that stat would be a bit more convincing if you actually posted some of your own, of course.)
This is my point. Yes, there is a problem. But liberals want to convince the American people that it's so bad that the only solution is for them to take control of everything. 1/8th of america suffering from no health care and 1 person going bankrupt every second sounds serious enough to wipe out our whole system. 2% of taxpayers without coverage and 100,000 bankruptcies a year sounds like a problem that needs to be reformed. And this problem can be traced back to specific "reforms" that were made and need to be overturned. This has only become a problem over the past 20 or so years. Everything was good before health care was deregulated to allow insufficient coverage. We need to go back and fix what we fucked up, not dump the whole thing. And beyond that, we need to move forward with these private co-op charities to help the select few that will still be suffering due to lack of resources. People that would be suffering anyway in any system because they need expensive long term treatment and they have no money... not to mention, treatment that they might very well need to be in the US to receive.
Anyway, I'm not making another one of these posts. I've told you everything that I find important. If you find info that contradicts the info I have, then please let me know, and I'll look into it and adjust my conclusions.