US Healthcare reform

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Ruveyn, I think you are completely underestimating the power of private entities. You are assuming that doing business in the private sector is always a matter of consumer choice. It is not. Many are rejected from private insurance and many who are insured through their employers do not have a choice of with whom they do business. My husband's employer chose United Healthcare and we are not happy with their service at all, but we have no other choice. We can't take our business elsewhere (pre-existing conditions and premiums that would be at least double of what we pay now), we cannot go without care, and we cannot grow a doctor in the yard. They may not have guns, but insurance companies have easily been able to enforce their will on us for long enough.

It looks to me like they intended our government to do a lot more than you want it to do, ruveyn.

I just heard Sen. Orrin Hatch's Republican response for this week, on the topic of health care reform. It was very reasoned, and presented in a very calm manner. It called on citizens to argue the bill rationally, instead of trying to suppress discussion. It presented the conservative view very clearly, without any of the silliness that we've been hearing from most of them.

I hope his speech will help cool the rhetoric.

You can find his address (and the President's) here http://www.wbz.com/ under "Today's Top Audio."

Caveat Emptor. Let the buyer beware. This has been the rule of the Market Place since God invented dirt.

If you don't like Micro$oft then buy Linux or some other operating system.


ruveyn

I guess that means you don't think Bernie Madoff should have been prosecuted?

The Law part of the U.S. Constitution starts with Art. I. The Preamble is a motherhood statement and has no power or status of law.

Also the phrase "General Welfare" had a different meaning in 1787 then it does now.

ruveyn

He committed fraud and he should have been and was prosecuted to the extent of the law. Fraud is Out. Murder is Out. Theft is Out. Extortion is Out.

In addition to cheating his clients who trusted their fortunes to him, he cheated widows and orphans. He is a very bad man.

There is a distinction between wronging someone and not helping someone. We have no positive duty to help anyone, but we do have negative constraints on wronging other parties.

Your problem is that you don't distinguish between Something and Nothing. If I let someone die and do not act to save him, I have done Nothing. If I commit theft or bloodshed upon another party, I have done Something.

ruveyn

The Preamble is a statement of the writers' intentions in creating the document. It is so important that schoolchildren used to have to memorize it.

I bet "promote the general Welfare" didn't mean letting the poor die if they couldn't afford medical care.

Under Caveat Emptor the government has no place in the marketplace. It's not their job to regulate it. The people who bought into Madoff's scheme didn't check him out thoroughly enough, so it's their own fault they lost their money. Too bad. Be more careful next time.

Not true. Governments have dealt with frauds, torts and felonies ever since when. Roman Law dealt very harshly with false weights and measures.

Governments have adjudicated torts and breeches of contract for a long time.

Caveat Emptor means the primary responsibility of get value in the purchase of goods and services rests with the buyer. Some responsibility rests with the vendor. Warrants of merchantisability have been in place in this country for well over a century.

In any case the greater burden rests with the buyer.

ruveyn

Um. Please don't debate what you do not know.

I graduated from law school where Constitutional Law is a mandatory part of your first year studies.

IF the Founding Fathers envisioned national access to health care as something the federal government should be into, it would have been enumerated in the Constitution itself. More so, when they crafted the 10th Amendment, they were equally clear that whatever was not EXPRESSLY enumerated to the federal government was RESERVED to the states and/or the people. The federal government has no power that was not expressly granted in the Constitution.

"Promote the general welfare" is a very broad concept. If you have to compromise a man's freedom to guarantee him access to something that's good for him, one would debate you are doing the opposite by doing so. The Founding Fathers committed treason to give the American people the freedom to direct their own lives free of government control and abuse. To them, the government dictating and being the sole provider of health care would likely be seen as a great evil, not a public good.

This is the problem with looking at history with modern eyes; when that document was written, what little "healthcare" that existed was mostly folk medicine or outright quackery. You presume that these gentlemen would know the future of medicine? The Constitution was not designed to be the inflexible cutting board that it has become in the past century, in my opinion... a healthy government develops with its' citizenry; those which become rigid eventually fracture and collapse under their own weight.

If you do nothing, you've committed negligence - that is something. We disagree fundamentally here - we do have a positive duty towards others, otherwise we aren't worth a damn as a species.


M.

Positive duties arise from contracts and undertakings. They do not exist as default duties to strangers. We owe our children care, because we brought them into the world. We are bound to honor contracts into which we entered freely and through which we have received value. If we have undertaken to help someone and created a dependence, then we are bound to follow through (that is an undertaking). We owe nothing to strangers other than not to harm their lives or property through malice or negligence. That is not a positive duty, that is a constraint. What are we to strangers? What are they to us?

You are under no obligation whatsoever to feed the hungry, cloth the naked, heal the sick or house the homeless if you did not cause their difficulty in the first place. On the other hand no one can rightly prevent you from helping the troubled with your own resources. If you must be generous, then be generous. With your money, not mine.

There are no duties to help strangers found in Common Law.

ruveyn

Oh, bollocks - I'm not talking about codified rules of law, I am speaking of general responsibility towards others. Your concern is with self-wealth over human life? If you choose to revere greed over generosity, then that is your choice - but you have also earned their enmity. You live in the world you create - I am thankful that I do not share yours.


M.

My concern is to live my life as I see fit to live it, not according to requirements formulated by others. My life is mine. My body is mine. My time is mine. It is not the property of the State, of Society or of God.

I swear by my life and my love of it, that I will not live for the sake of another, nor will I ask another to live for my sake.;

ruveyn

That is your choice, and your right. I respect that; I still find it a selfish philosophy. I don't live -for- others, but I do not find pleasure in the suffering of others, or find it acceptable to ignore their needs, either.


M.