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No_hite_pls
Joined: 05 Mar 2007
Location: Don't hate me because I'm right
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 Posted: Sat Oct 17, 2009 5:09 am Post subject: Another fat lazy American wanting specail treatment |
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I am sick of fat lazy Americans wanting health insurance. They need to start going to the gym and working out, maybe they could get a personal trainer but I for one don't want my tax dollars going to these fat lazy people.
Go to gym people!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wM8kDZd4Q-c |
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chris_J2
Joined: 17 Apr 2006
Location: From Brisbane, Au.
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| Posted: Sat Oct 17, 2009 5:24 am Post subject: Health care |
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Most of your tax dollars are in fact, going to health insurance companies, & drug companies, in collusion, who continue to raise prices & gouge the consumer. Maybe the legal system in the US needs an overhaul too? There are several other threads that have discussed Obama's proposed healthcare changes, in a rational, non accusatory manner.
You might want to correct the typo, too (special). |
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ontheway
Joined: 24 Aug 2005
Location: Somewhere under the rainbow...
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| Posted: Sat Oct 17, 2009 6:23 am Post subject: |
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On the video above you can see a stupid man boasting of his complete ignorance, making an ass of himself, and not having the wit to realize that he is a fool.
Just what is insurance? God almighty. Will someone please take a class in something before making videos about nonsense? Socialists have made themselves stupid intentionally!
Insurance.
Insurance is a pool made of individuals who share common characteristics and measurable risks that have a small chance of occurance and a predictable pattern of incidence, so as to allow the computation of actuarily determined future costs that allow the members of the pool the opportunity to "insure" against the major financial loss that may befall those who suffer the statistically unlikely misfortune of the actual occurance, by contributing small amounts to a pool by a large number of individuals that allows payment to those few who suffer a covered loss.
The likelyhood of the event must be small.
The members of the pool must be nearly the same.
The risk must be understood and predictable.
Events outside those covered, and individuals who are not homogeneous to the pool, must be excluded.
So, if a fat baby does not match the characteristics of the insured pool of individuals, he or she must be excluded. This is a good thing. If the government would just get out of the way, some other people could make an insurance pool for the obese, and the fat baby could be covered, at the appropriate cost.
In a free market, insurance could be offered by private, profit making enterprises, charitable organizations, neighborhood associations, mutual assurance societies, cooperatives and any other voluntary group. The fascist-socialist government of the US has all but precluded the opportunity to create alternative, competitive insurance institutions. Socialism has failed again. |
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chris_J2
Joined: 17 Apr 2006
Location: From Brisbane, Au.
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jaykimf
Joined: 24 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Sat Oct 17, 2009 7:26 am Post subject: |
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| ontheway wrote: |
On the video above you can see a stupid man boasting of his complete ignorance, making an ass of himself, and not having the wit to realize that he is a fool.
Just what is insurance? God almighty. Will someone please take a class in something before making videos about nonsense? Socialists have made themselves stupid intentionally!
Insurance.
Insurance is a pool made of individuals who share common characteristics and measurable risks that have a small chance of occurance and a predictable pattern of incidence, so as to allow the computation of actuarily determined future costs that allow the members of the pool the opportunity to "insure" against the major financial loss that may befall those who suffer the statistically unlikely misfortune of the actual occurance, by contributing small amounts to a pool by a large number of individuals that allows payment to those few who suffer a covered loss.
The likelyhood of the event must be small.
The members of the pool must be nearly the same.
The risk must be understood and predictable.
Events outside those covered, and individuals who are not homogeneous to the pool, must be excluded.
So, if a fat baby does not match the characteristics of the insured pool of individuals, he or she must be excluded. This is a good thing. If the government would just get out of the way, some other people could make an insurance pool for the obese, and the fat baby could be covered, at the appropriate cost.
In a free market, insurance could be offered by private, profit making enterprises, charitable organizations, neighborhood associations, mutual assurance societies, cooperatives and any other voluntary group. The fascist-socialist government of the US has all but precluded the opportunity to create alternative, competitive insurance institutions. Socialism has failed again. |
you can see a stupid man boasting of his complete ignorance, making an ass of himself, and not having the wit to realize that he is a fool. |
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RufusW
Joined: 14 Jun 2008
Location: Busan
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| Posted: Sat Oct 17, 2009 8:26 am Post subject: |
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| ontheway wrote: |
| ...the fat baby could be covered, at the appropriate cost. |
You fail to understand why socialized medicine exists - to cover those who can't afford it. You may think they shouldn't get it if they're poor - if you do you're heartless. |
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visitorq
Joined: 11 Jan 2008
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| Posted: Sat Oct 17, 2009 11:34 am Post subject: |
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| RufusW wrote: |
| ontheway wrote: |
| ...the fat baby could be covered, at the appropriate cost. |
You fail to understand why socialized medicine exists - to cover those who can't afford it. You may think they shouldn't get it if they're poor - if you do you're heartless. |
You're missing the point. Which is that socialism impoverishes people, makes them dependent on the state, and then you feel lucky to take what you can get. |
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Street Magic
Joined: 23 Sep 2009
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| Posted: Sat Oct 17, 2009 12:54 pm Post subject: |
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| ontheway wrote: |
Just what is insurance? God almighty. Will someone please take a class in something before making videos about nonsense? Socialists have made themselves stupid intentionally!
...
In a free market, insurance could be offered by private, profit making enterprises, charitable organizations, neighborhood associations, mutual assurance societies, cooperatives and any other voluntary group. The fascist-socialist government of the US has all but precluded the opportunity to create alternative, competitive insurance institutions. Socialism has failed again. |
I'm no fan of that youtube series, but the guy didn't say anything inaccurate about insurance. Actuarial work is an art as much as it's a science. You don't just plug in all the statistics and get one magical answer to how everything should be run for maximum profits. Most would agree that the added risk of cost posed by extending coverage to otherwise healthy heavy babies is outweighed by the social benefits of doing so. I personally don't care about babies or really anyone other than myself, but I still acknowledge that other people are going to need access to certain services and that the upset majority will eventually force whomever they can to make that access available one way or another because of that need.
If we're talking about luxuries, then of course people should pay more for more expensive things. This is about a basic civilized need though and in the overwhelming majority of the cases relevant to this discussion, no one is actively choosing to consume anything. We don't have police insurance to cover different people in different homogeneous groups of estimated cost risk. We don't deny legal services to families of murder victims because the average person doesn't have a murdered family member and that puts them in a different statistical risk pool.
No group is going to form to fix this problem in a free market system. It's not as though government pressures are preventing insurance companies from creating high risk coverage for groups like fat babies and others with similar estimated costs, and even if we could do something to promote more private coverage for groups like that, they'd still be paying way more than everyone else. This is where the personal responsibility argument breaks down. A heavy baby's family did nothing to shoulder the burden of greatly increased health care coverage costs. There is no reason why this cost should fall on the family rather than be divided and imposed on every contributor to the system. Either way, there's an extra expected cost that needs to be covered and someone who has nothing to do with that expected cost is going to be paying for it. Might as well have that cost fall evenly to everyone in a way that's affordable for everyone rather than de facto deny care to those who can't afford it or outright deny care to those who can't find anyone willing to extend them coverage for any rate at all.
I personally have nothing to gain by promoting this point of view. I'm a young adult male American with a securely average height and weight, I have a job and insurance, I have no chronic illnesses, and every realistic outcome for this health care debate will mean equally little in terms of how much it affects my well being. I hold this view only because it makes sense to me and I'm open to any reasonable alternatives. The idea that "socialism causes all of our problems" however is one of the farthest views from reasonable I can think of. It's completely insane that you think any problem of a scope such as this one has is that simple.
A more reasonable variant of that argument might be that continuing to limit government interference will allow more people to receive quality health care so long as charity organizations can be promoted, supported, and otherwise encouraged without the force of legal mandate to cooperate with hospitals to more aggressively fill in the gaps, but it's ridiculous for you to call one of the most hands off private health care systems in the modern developed world an example of socialism failure. I could see where a libertarian health care model might actually do very well if insurance companies moved back to working more with individual plans rather than employer sponsored group plans in the US, but you really discredit a plausible notion by making these absurdly broad smears against all forms of government intervention, particularly when you're calling the US's (lack of) health care policy, well known as the poster child for privatized health insurance system failure, an example of socialism failure.
All that said, I'm probably going to abstain from responding to responses to my post here because I don't have the energy to involve myself in an ongoing forum debate. I hate people who say they're done discussing something because they know they're right, so yeah, I'm not doing that. I just want to cut myself off early on so I don't get sucked into a never ending version of an argument that's going on in a million other places right now. |
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zipper
Joined: 22 Jul 2009
Location: Ruben Carter was falsely accused
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| Posted: Sat Oct 17, 2009 6:00 pm Post subject: |
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| I think there has to be a population attitude change that being fat is unhealthy and unbecoming. Advertisers have been selling the idea that being thin is in, but the majority of US fat men and women don�t seem to get it or just don�t care about. It seems that a lot of apathetic fat Americans that don�t care about being fat might suffer from low self esteem, lack of dignity, ignorance and a host of other factors including, biological, social and economic status. |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Sat Oct 17, 2009 6:17 pm Post subject: |
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| zipper wrote: |
| I think there has to be a population attitude change that being fat is unhealthy and unbecoming. Advertisers have been selling the idea that being thin is in, but the majority of US fat men and women don�t seem to get it or just don�t care about. It seems that a lot of apathetic fat Americans that don�t care about being fat might suffer from low self esteem, lack of dignity, ignorance and a host of other factors including, biological, social and economic status. |
I have little respect for the obese. But it really isn't all their fault. What are they told about shedding the pounds? Avoid saturated fat. Eat grains etc. The food pyramid has 8-11 servings of carbs at the bottom. That is a recipe to get fat. A breakfast of Special K and toast is about as useful as drinking sugar water.
Anyways, "low self esteem". Hey, isn't that new Spin Doctors track awesome? Just go ahead now.. |
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zipper
Joined: 22 Jul 2009
Location: Ruben Carter was falsely accused
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| Posted: Sat Oct 17, 2009 6:18 pm Post subject: |
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| Street Magic wrote: |
A more reasonable variant of that argument might be that continuing to limit government interference will allow more people to receive quality health care so long as charity organizations can be promoted, supported, and otherwise encouraged without the force of legal mandate to cooperate with hospitals to more aggressively fill in the gaps, but it's ridiculous for you to call one of the most hands off private health care systems in the modern developed world an example of socialism failure. I could see where a libertarian health care model might actually do very well if insurance companies moved back to working more with individual plans rather than employer sponsored group plans in the US, but you really discredit a plausible notion by making these absurdly broad smears against all forms of government intervention, particularly when you're calling the US's (lack of) health care policy, well known as the poster child for privatized health insurance system failure, an example of socialism failure.
All that said, I'm probably going to abstain from responding to responses to my post here because I don't have the energy to involve myself in an ongoing forum debate. I hate people who say they're done discussing something because they know they're right, so yeah, I'm not doing that. I just want to cut myself off early on so I don't get sucked into a never ending version of an argument that's going on in a million other places right now. |
I just wanted to note that you have made good points. I agree, how could one claim that socialism failed, when in fact the American private insurance system has failed? |
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djsmnc
Joined: 20 Jan 2003
Location: Dave's ESL Cafe
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| Posted: Sat Oct 17, 2009 7:34 pm Post subject: |
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| mises wrote: |
I have little respect for the obese. But it really isn't all their fault. What are they told about shedding the pounds? Avoid saturated fat. Eat grains etc. The food pyramid has 8-11 servings of carbs at the bottom. That is a recipe to get fat. A breakfast of Special K and toast is about as useful as drinking sugar water.
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Yeah, but if one is to ONLY eat Special K and toast for breakfast, a mid morning low serving snack of fruit or yogurt, a simple lunch, an afternoon snack, and a good dinner, it would all balance itself out.
However, it's more accurate to point out that the Special K and toast are often sides to a far more terrible dietary regimen.
I recall all the fatties at work making fun of me for eating "sticks, roots, and random nuts and grains" for breakfast, snack, and lunch and then being baffled at how I lost so much weight over the following 6 months. They would say "He eats all the pizza and such whenever someone orders it" without realizing the obvious fact that I ONLY ate it when one of us ordered it on a "special" day. Meanwhile they would be eating their daily Dunkin and McDonald's breakfasts purchased hastily on the way in every morning. Snacks out of the machine all day, macchiatos from Starbucks. I kept track of all of it just for my own personal record and inspiration.
I have very little sensitivity toward the issue. Some have said "Well, you lived in Korea, so you changed your diet/had healthier choices/etc" As long as some of my best friends back home have never left the country, eat sparingly, and have active personal outings every day that keep them in good shape, I just don't buy it.
A daily routine of sweets, chips, and soda while sitting and driving everywhere, while being sure to catch every sports game and sitcom do not a healthy lifestyle deserving of insurance make. |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Sat Oct 17, 2009 7:48 pm Post subject: |
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| djsmnc wrote: |
| mises wrote: |
I have little respect for the obese. But it really isn't all their fault. What are they told about shedding the pounds? Avoid saturated fat. Eat grains etc. The food pyramid has 8-11 servings of carbs at the bottom. That is a recipe to get fat. A breakfast of Special K and toast is about as useful as drinking sugar water.
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Yeah, but if one is to ONLY eat Special K and toast for breakfast, a mid morning low serving snack of fruit or yogurt, a simple lunch, an afternoon snack, and a good dinner, it would all balance itself out. |
For the overweight and obese it is probably best for them to just not eat carbs at all. If you're at a normal weight you can enjoy some bread. If you're not, best to completely avoid it (and other carbs). |
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stolenchild00
Joined: 25 Sep 2009
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Sun Oct 18, 2009 5:17 am Post subject: health care |
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Um, anyone who thinks that if people get sick, it's their own fault, is an idiot.
Seriously, some of us have lost relatives to serious diseases that just f---ing HAPPENED, the way diseases often do. It's as offensive as it is stupid.
If you want to talk about a better lifestyle for Americans, better preventative medicine, more education about health and nutrition, better access to and greater affordability for nutrious food -- these are all legitimate matters of public concern, the same way making sure that one's access to quality health care is a legitimate matter of public concern.
Cancer happens. So, apparently, does mental retardation. Too bad the government didn't regulate lead paint better, because people who inhale it as children obviously end up as Republican voters. |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Sun Oct 18, 2009 6:01 am Post subject: Re: health care |
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| stolenchild00 wrote: |
| Um, anyone who thinks that if people get sick, it's their own fault, is an idiot. |
Smokers? Drunks? Fatasses? Junkies? I could go on. |
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