P
- Status
P
Prodigal_Son1
Guest
Do you view taxes, even those to help the less fortunate or needy for any reason, as ‘taken away’?I love how liberals refer to taxes as “sharing.”
You’re hilarious.
R
rlg94086
Guest
Of course. Taxes aren’t charity. They are a bill you have to pay.
R
rlg94086
Guest
Republicans prefer to give of their own funds…you know, charity. Democrats prefer to use other people’s money.
realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/03/conservatives_more_liberal_giv.html
Meanwhile, despite your hollow words calling for pro-life Democrats to fight, you help elect the politicians who continue the progress of the culture of death.
P
Prodigal_Son1
Guest
Do you oppose taxes, even for the good of the sick or under privileged?
R
rlg94086
Guest
This is tiresome…
I’ve explained my views of government, taxes, safety nets, etc. with you. I’m not going to repeat myself.
B
bbarrick8383
Guest
I oppose federal taxes being used for anything other than what our federal government was intended to do in the first place.
R
rlg94086
Guest
P
Prodigal_Son1
Guest
I wish you would explain, as merely stating you oppose taxes, even for the sick or poverty stricken, appears to be for ‘selfish’, or ‘greedy’, reasons.
R
rlg94086
Guest
Who is this directed towards? Who has “merely stated” they oppose taxes? Certainly, I nor bbarrick8383 have done so.
B
bbarrick8383
Guest
Nope. Not at all. If I was selfish and greedy I wouldn’t donate to charity would I? Even though I can not afford much I do what I can.
I oppose taxes that go to the federal government that are supposed to be used for the sick or poverty stricken for several reasons.
- States are being unfairly taxed as it is. Federal government tends to take more from some states and then turn around and give more to others than they paid in. This includes my own state which receives more than what it puts in and we don’t need it. States like NJ that are having to cut their school funding because of their budget problems pay more to the feds than they get back. Considerably more.
- Think about how we are currently taxed. From local taxes, county taxes, state taxes, federal taxes. Now think about what get’s taxed. Personal property, food, gasoline…can you think of anything that does not get taxed? Now look at how those entities waste that money. You could cloth, feed and house the poor with the money that is wasted by the government.
- How much money do you waste? If your taxes were kept to a bare minimum, would your bank account be depleted with no idea of where your money went? Would you let items that you worked hard for disappear left and right with no accountability or explanation?
- Think about the history of the country over the last 100 years. We had poor before then did we not? Then we implemented poverty programs to help the poor. Has it improved? There were sections of cities full of small business’s owned and operated by minorities in the 60’s that were flourishing with customers and are now “ghetto’s” full of drugs and violence.
The ideological reasons are numerous, but without even going into those all you have to do is look at what’s going on in government right now. Trillions of dollars in debt, borrowing and printing left and right. We’ve voted people in who have squandered that money away and they are all to blame not just one party.
J
JimG
Guest
Exactly–many of them are thinking that they are in the wrong profession, because it’s not the same profession they started out in.
They dreamed of building a practice, helping patients, doing their best medically for patients. Now increasingly they are finding that even before treating patients, they must complete forms, patients must complete forms, insurance companies must be contacted. They find, increasingly, that even in private practice, they are not independent agents but employees being directed and paid by someone else, insurance companies and government. It’s not what they signed up for.
Increasingly we will find that our (remaining) docs will be more like bureaucrats than physicians.
That’s why there is a growing trend among physicians in larger cities to get out of insurance entirely, to forgo all insurance, accepting none, and contract with patients directly. For a stated monthly fee, they will handle all routine care for a patient. (And the monthly fee is probably less than the patient was paying for insurance.)
J
JimG
Guest
Here’s a physician blog that I just stumbled upon. This doc is at last throwing in the towel, selling off his solo practice to a large medical group affiliated with a hospital. The things he mentioned that have been getting him down will, I am sure, only be exacerbated when government takes over health care.
docisinblog.com/
docisinblog.com/
C
Carlan
Guest
I beg your pardon, Let’s not get ugly.
No one sits in the voting booth with me, you do not know for whom i cast my vote!
Peace, Carlan
C
CMatt25
Guest
Carlan, I’m just sitting here reading thru the last several posts on this thread. And I’m just thinking how we don’t always agree on everything. But you never get ugly. And I just wanted to say before I go on with my Sunday, God bless you. :console:
Peace, Matt
C
Carlan
Guest
Thank you Matt,:curtsey: and Peace, to you, Carlan
R
Ridgerunner
Guest
With all due respect, I do not see where the Pope is throwing subsidiarity under the bus. One might, for example, look at the situation in France. It’s about 2/3 public and 1/3 private. The central government’s part is pretty spartan. Among other things, you pay up front at the point of service and receive reimbursement from the government (partial-usually about 80%) There are also local governmental authorities which provide for those situations where people can’t, by reason of poverty, do that. So, “universal” health coverage, even “governmental” coverage does not necessarily violate the principal of subsidiarity. Depends on what one means by “governmental”. Presumably, the more local authorities have better knowledge of local conditions and the locals themselves than does the central government.
In France, the private system is essentially unregulated. People have insurance as they choose or pay because they have the money themselves.
But if we’re trying to reach 'universal access", there are a lot more things that could be done besides federalizing the entire thing. In France, the government pays for medical education and malpractice insurance, so doctors do not have to charge twice what it takes, or more, to actually deliver the service. Nor do they have to pay clerical help and programs to be able to bill the government the way our governmental systems require. That particular part is delegated to the individuals themselves.
Medical schools are expanded to meet population needs. Our physician numbers are totally controlled by the universities, which have major disincentives to produce more doctors, and never do produce enough. How many of us know young people who would have made fine doctors, but end up going into some parallel related field because they can’t get into medical school even with excellent grades and test scores? Just about everybody knows such people, I imagine. I certainly have, and do.
Our universities also control the production of NPs. Those programs do not graduate nearly enough NPs, and have some strange requirements (like thesis writing) that have no relationship with providing quality medicine whatever, and which physicians themselves are not required to do.
Craziness abounds. It’s not all about creating some gray socialist system. We ought to be able to do better than that if even the French have.
P
Prodigal_Son1
Guest
:clapping:
1
1holycatholic
Guest
The pope isn’t throwing subsidiarity under the bus. If he was advocating federal government involvement in healthcare then he would be contradicting Church doctrine.
France has runaway healthcare costs. French physicians typically earn less than American physicians pay in malpractice insurance. And the French national government pays for (contrary to the principle of subsidiarity) the medical education of physicians. The French national government also subsidizes the taxes paid by French physicians - another violation of the principle of subsidiarity.
So you’ve offered a system with runaway costs, crushingly low wages for physicians, and national government involvement in healthcare contrary to Church teaching on subsidiarity. That’s not a just proposition.
Federalizing the entire thing is off the table since it would be an explicit rejection of the Catholic social doctrine on subsidiarity.
The French system is nationalized, and they aren’t doing well.
France Fights Universal Care’s High Cost
R
Ridgerunner
Guest
I don’t believe I specifically endorsed the French system. But I do think some aspects of it are worthy of consideration, perhaps emulation.
However it might be remedied, i have long thought (and I’m not alone at all in thinking it) that oligopoly control of the output of physicians by universities has adverse consequences to the society and to the profession. Many physicians would agree with that. It isn’t a matter of “free market” action either, since medical schools are heavily subsidized both by government and by other portions of the university. As enormous as medical tuition is, it doesn’t begin to cover the cost, so it’s subsidized by the “chalkboard and professor only” segments like the law and graduate schools. Consequently, universities “oversell” the profitable segments with the result that fewer than half of the law graduates, for example, ever enter into the practice of law. But overproduction of lawyers just goes on and on, because it’s profitable.
I can’t prove this, but the overselectivity of medical schools has had the strange effect of producing physicians who perhaps lack intuitive sense. Strange to tell, mathematical ability is highly prized in selection (in effect) notwithstanding that physicians rarely use it. Fully one-third of physicians in the U.S. have some signs of Asperger’s, which should be no great surprise, given the way they are selected. We ought to be concerned about the oncoming dominance of “evidence-based medicine” since it rewards a mechanistic approach and discourages exercise of the “art” of medicine. This country needs more physicians, but nobody has any good answer for that.
Making most patients pay “up front” for care, to be reimbursed by the government or insurer is, to me, a good idea since it discourages overutilization, one of the worst aspects of our present system…even the private insurance sector.
Relegation of “true” charity cases to local units (and perhaps charitable organizations) is consistent with subsidiarity (also consistent with the Ryan Plan in a general way).
And say what one wants, leaving about 1/3 of the total system entirely to the free market is superior to where we’re headed with “single payer”. We’re closing in on a 2/3 governmental control even without Obamacare.
French physicians make much less than do American physicians. But then, so do French citizens generally, and the ratio is about the same. So the income of French physicians does not tell us a whole lot.
- Status