But clearly not the rights of people who work for less than a living wage, which is actual wage slavery.
Also doctors in countries with socialized health care are still paid pretty well. Please do your research instead of regurgitating bad Ben Shapiro talking points.
Slavery? Nobody is forcing them at gunpoint or by whip crack.
Socialized healthcare workers can be paid like goddamn popstars, it doesn't mean Jack shit if Uncle Sam owns the entire industry and it's workers, too.
Do you know anything about the Federal Government? Everything they touch turns to bureaucratic Hell, just to get "Good enough for government work".
FYI, that's by design. The feds aren't supposed to have anywhere near that kind of control.
"Pffft come on nobody is forcing poor people to be slaves at gunpoint"
"SOCIALIZED HEALTHCARE WILL LITERALLY MAKE DOCTORS INTO SLAVES!!!"
Gee, at least have a bit of consistency.
I've been entirely consistent.
Poor people are not legally enslaved in my country.
Forcing medical professionals to serve the state is slavery.
When somebody else, or even an entity, controls your labor, time, and/or life, with no contract, recourse, or option to practice separate from the person/entity/state, you are a slave.
@famousone You realize that literally no one is suggesting medical professionals be enslaved. What is wanted is free universal healthcare paid for by taxes. There would be no reason to force doctors to work, they would still be paid. They would still be allowed to quit their jobs--with the same expectation of notice we have now.
Do you believe teachers are slaves? Or police force? What about military personnel?
Also, most people want universal healthcare to come in the form of government insurance--which would not cause the hospitals or their staff to change ownership. They would only belong to the government as much as they currently belong to their insurance companies.
Everything the feds touch turns to bureaucratic Hell. Being paid doesn't mean you aren't a slave, and no unwilling person should be subject to any lifestyle approaching that of a soldier. The military is not fun, fair, or democratic. The only reason it isn't straight up fascist is because it's voluntary. Nevermind the scrutiny and neutering that us, teachers and law enforcement have suffered due to government overreach.
Here's the gist, the government would be taking over the entire industry they pay for. They would arbitrarily decide how much a medical professional deserves to be paid, what operations can be conducted on what person, doctors would have no discretion, bureaucrats deciding whether a person really needs to be seen, forced to operate on a shoestring budget only to be regularly shut down or defunded.
Government work is shit, it is decided by committee rather than merit, it is a race to the bottom to see who can do the least at the highest cost to others and the budget.
Yeah, maybe. But caplist driven work isn't any better. It's still decided by committees/boards and the number one motive is always profit. The only reason they take things like the well being of doctors and patients into account is because lawsuits are expensive.
Doctors lifestyle are hell now. They have a very high suicide rate because dealing with paperwork and health insurance is exhausting and the stress involved with being responsible for the lifes of others is hard on a person. Especially the kind of person who cares about other peoples wellbeing enough to turn it into a career.
And again--being a doctor IS voluntary. You know what isn't voluntary though? The draft. We haven't used it in a while due to plentiful volunteers, but young men are still required to sign up for it and it could theoretically still be used if needed.
Hospitals may be run by committee, but doctors influence and authority still. They can negotiate pay, hours, and resources, or simply fuck off someplace better if the hospital doesn't flex. The paperwork is nowhere near the worst a doctor or nurse deals with, but government overreach has sure as fuck made things so much worse. Obamacare's new administrative standards alone are over a thousand pages, millions of dollars of change and work, all the create a standardized system that inferior to everything the medical facilities already had. And they couldn't do a damn thing to negotiate or fine tune anything. Doctor's lives suck because every day they live is a terrible day for their clients. It is mentally and spiritually exhausting, exponentially more so when you can't help them. There is no feeling more hopeless for medical professionals, than when we realize that we cannot help.
Being a doctor now is voluntary, but under government control you serve at the will and convenience of the state. No negotiations, no influence to change anything for the better, entirely restricted to books and procedures approved by people who don't know the first thing about patient care or medicine, for a fixed payscale that always places seniority over actual merit, who can and will be called in at any hour, whether you were fired, retired, or quit to do something else.
@pripyatplatypus I can't tell if you're serious or not
I really hope you're not
Either way, I would recommend reading the Gulag Archipelago
As in, please read it
"And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation...."
One of my favorite passages.
Terrifyingly true
The crux of Solzhenitsyn's point is that the moral failure of the individual leads to mass murder and hell
It cannot be any other way
Evil succeeds when good men do nothing.
All that need happen for 49 of 100 to suffer, is for 51 to permit it.
Though I'd argue that failing to make a stand when you're able, makes you less than a good person. Not necessarily bad, simply not good either.
I feel Solzhenitsyn might concur
Trust me, I've read a lot of history on the Soviet Union and the communist movements. I'm being mostly facetious about this, but it's impossible not to look at our current system and wonder if there is a better way to do all this. I'm not advocating for Soviet style communism in the least though. That shit don't work.
Collectivism, totalitarianism, theocracy. Any system that devalues individual liberty or is dedicated to do what's best for everyone, whether everyone likes it or not, can go bad.
The American system is the worst in the world, except for the others.
Individual liberty is a core aspect of any successful governmental system, but so is taking care of the most vulnerable and creating a baseline of services available to all.
National security.
Interstate and international relations.
Equality before the law.
Inalienable rights, never to be infringed upon.
That about covers it.
A better idea is to just get rid of interest rates on things such as student loans and medical bills. That way people still have to pay it, but will actually be able to pay it off without interest accumulating faster then the payments.
Banks only offer student loans because it profits the banks. Removing student loan interest means that banks will not offer student loans because they won't profit.
Yes--but the real problem isn't that debts accumulate interest faster than you can pay it off forcing you to make constant payments without seeing any benefit. Not that that isn't a problem, but it's really more of a symptom.
The real problem is that healthcare and college are so expensive, that a typical middle class person cannot need very much of either and expect to be able to pay for it themselves.
Health insurance will pay for healthcare--and you can't afford to be unwell without health insurance (typically). Therefore, you have to buy health insurance. If you can't afford health insurance--or your insurance won't cover what you need--you end up with debt.
And it's not "I want this now and I am willing to pay interest to have it now instead of later" debt. Its "I need this--I will agree to whatever terms because without this, I won't be able to return to work and I will end up on the street" debt. The difference being in the first case, people won't (usually) agree to super high interest rates. People have the ability to act as responsible consumers. But when you need something, all bets are off. Even when the price is more than you can afford. Even when you know it.
And that means doctors can charge basically any amount of money--and people will agree to pay it--for services people need.
This does not always mean people will pay it. And health insurance companies tend to have agreements with hospitals and clinics that they will pay X amount per X service. Which then tends to be what everyone is charged. Which of course means health insurance companies benefit from keeping those prices just barely out of affordable range....
... because who would pay for health insurance if going to the doctor was affordable. Some people would, sure, but I'm certain plenty of young Americans would be like "eh, it's a bill I don't have to pay really. I'll just keep enough money in savings to go to the doctor if I need to. And then they wouldn't and they would go ask their parents for a loan when they got sick just like people do for car problems now. Because you will be able to pay for this, on payday. But everyone agrees you need insurance because "what if something where to happen" seems like a rational arguement when you literally can't afford for something bad to happen without insurance.
Student loan debt is a little different--but it's the same sort of problem. Teenagers are told "you have to go to college or you will never be successful". Which is a lie by the way. As long as you graduate high school or get a GED, youbcan be successful with the right work ethic and personality. But its the myth we are told.
And it seems believable. College leads to success is a good sounding lie. And many jobs do actually require some college. But many don't. And a majority of people don't find a job in their major anyway. My immediate boss has a culinary arts degree. She makes less than local WalMart employees. Meanwhile my roommate has only her GED, and makes a salary that brings home about double what I bring home. A college degree may help you do what you want to do--but unless you are certain in what you it's a bad investment.
But at 18 not only is it easy to believe you need college. It's also easy to go to college. People are offering you loans left and right, and your parents will let you live with them so long as you are in school. Plus you will be such a disappointment if you don't go to college.
So you go to college--for an exorbitant amount of money--long before you really understand how much money you will really have to spend by the time you have to start paying it back.
Not primarily, no. The costs are definitely worse for government intervention, but ultimately capitalism will drive prices to unsustainable levels only to crash back down. That's the problem with capital. Investors demand constant growth. That's not an option realistically, you can always make profit with a good business, but you can't always make more profit that last quarter. At some point you've actually successfully maximized profits. But that's not enough. You have to find ways to make more profit or your business will lose shareholders--which will kill your business. That's why inflation is so much of a problem. If we don't start taking more steps to transition away from capitalism, we will face a total economic collapse in the future. Providing we don't make the planet uninhabitable before then.
Education and healthcare are in the places they are because some genius came up with the idea to squeeze as much money out of them as possible. We are so used to being fleeced that we all just kind of collectively shrug our shoulder and say "what else are we gonna do."
No. We do not need to transition from capitalism because capitalism doesn't exist. It is simply what naturally happens when people not bound by kings want to do business with one another. It is not going to inevitably collapse because investors are people and people are not simple machines. They will have multiple investments, several streams of income, and simply shift over to the next growing industry when one peaks while other enterprising individuals step in to take their place, only to eventually cycle back around. Investors are not gods, the most they can do is withdraw pending funds. The problems start when the feds subsidize failures or micromanage any practice or industry. That only creates artificial barriers to entry, chokes out smaller practices, and steals the liberty and autonomy of every little person in the way. Centralized and planned economies don't work, have never worked without being subsidized by either blood or the money and protection of the US.
Also doctors in countries with socialized health care are still paid pretty well. Please do your research instead of regurgitating bad Ben Shapiro talking points.
Socialized healthcare workers can be paid like goddamn popstars, it doesn't mean Jack shit if Uncle Sam owns the entire industry and it's workers, too.
Do you know anything about the Federal Government? Everything they touch turns to bureaucratic Hell, just to get "Good enough for government work".
FYI, that's by design. The feds aren't supposed to have anywhere near that kind of control.
"SOCIALIZED HEALTHCARE WILL LITERALLY MAKE DOCTORS INTO SLAVES!!!"
Gee, at least have a bit of consistency.
Poor people are not legally enslaved in my country.
Forcing medical professionals to serve the state is slavery.
When somebody else, or even an entity, controls your labor, time, and/or life, with no contract, recourse, or option to practice separate from the person/entity/state, you are a slave.
But I do have a question for @ewqua
Where do doctors' wages come from?
Do you believe teachers are slaves? Or police force? What about military personnel?
Also, most people want universal healthcare to come in the form of government insurance--which would not cause the hospitals or their staff to change ownership. They would only belong to the government as much as they currently belong to their insurance companies.
Here's the gist, the government would be taking over the entire industry they pay for. They would arbitrarily decide how much a medical professional deserves to be paid, what operations can be conducted on what person, doctors would have no discretion, bureaucrats deciding whether a person really needs to be seen, forced to operate on a shoestring budget only to be regularly shut down or defunded.
Government work is shit, it is decided by committee rather than merit, it is a race to the bottom to see who can do the least at the highest cost to others and the budget.
Doctors lifestyle are hell now. They have a very high suicide rate because dealing with paperwork and health insurance is exhausting and the stress involved with being responsible for the lifes of others is hard on a person. Especially the kind of person who cares about other peoples wellbeing enough to turn it into a career.
And again--being a doctor IS voluntary. You know what isn't voluntary though? The draft. We haven't used it in a while due to plentiful volunteers, but young men are still required to sign up for it and it could theoretically still be used if needed.
I really hope you're not
Either way, I would recommend reading the Gulag Archipelago
As in, please read it
One of my favorite passages.
The crux of Solzhenitsyn's point is that the moral failure of the individual leads to mass murder and hell
It cannot be any other way
All that need happen for 49 of 100 to suffer, is for 51 to permit it.
Though I'd argue that failing to make a stand when you're able, makes you less than a good person. Not necessarily bad, simply not good either.
I feel Solzhenitsyn might concur
The American system is the worst in the world, except for the others.
Interstate and international relations.
Equality before the law.
Inalienable rights, never to be infringed upon.
That about covers it.
The logic is something like this: making people pay their debts = acting like human life has no value
The real problem is that healthcare and college are so expensive, that a typical middle class person cannot need very much of either and expect to be able to pay for it themselves.
Health insurance will pay for healthcare--and you can't afford to be unwell without health insurance (typically). Therefore, you have to buy health insurance. If you can't afford health insurance--or your insurance won't cover what you need--you end up with debt.
And that means doctors can charge basically any amount of money--and people will agree to pay it--for services people need.
This does not always mean people will pay it. And health insurance companies tend to have agreements with hospitals and clinics that they will pay X amount per X service. Which then tends to be what everyone is charged. Which of course means health insurance companies benefit from keeping those prices just barely out of affordable range....
Student loan debt is a little different--but it's the same sort of problem. Teenagers are told "you have to go to college or you will never be successful". Which is a lie by the way. As long as you graduate high school or get a GED, youbcan be successful with the right work ethic and personality. But its the myth we are told.
But at 18 not only is it easy to believe you need college. It's also easy to go to college. People are offering you loans left and right, and your parents will let you live with them so long as you are in school. Plus you will be such a disappointment if you don't go to college.
So you go to college--for an exorbitant amount of money--long before you really understand how much money you will really have to spend by the time you have to start paying it back.