I guess Michael doesn’t know that Connecticut doesn’t have any method to recall its senators.

Man, he’s still pounding that “Flint” button at every opportunity, isn’t he? Christ.

And therein lies the problem of Twitter--no megaphone application…

Oh Jiminy Christmas, Michael Moore went to Japan to render judgment on Akihabara.

I guess it’s true… some fat, white Americans just can’t keep themselves from going to other countries and trying to tell them what’s what.

I wonder if he is going to call for a boycott of Howard Dean as well? I hope that Mikey gets mistaken as a giant tuna by landlocked Japanese fishermen.

Michael Moore Moore is so deluded he thinks that people will actually respond to his ridiculous “call to action”.

Could you imagine someone saying, “No, sorry, we can’t have it in Hartford. Michael Moore called for a boycott.”

Reminds me of those “Gas-Outs” that used to clog my email inbox. “Hey, everybody! If we don’t buy gas for one day, those evil oil companies will be brought to their knees and will be forced to do our collective bidding!”

Go Get em, Mikey! I’m sure the voters of Connecticut are trembling at the mere thought of your unholy wrath.

Michael seems to suffer from severe delusions of grandeur...he consistently overestimates his own clout and influence.  Anybody remember the “Slacker” tour he did---the one where the big slogan was “sleep till noon, drink beer, vote for Kerry?” That was supposed to sweep Kerry into the White House in a landslide...all it did was provide Mikey with materials for two eminently-forgettable “documentaries.”

I’m sure that Connecticut is just trembling in its boots at the thought of Darth Michael’s wrath, and frantically trying to find a way to propitiate his almighty power.  NOT!

My name is Kevin.  First, before anything else I want you to know I consider you my brother and a patriot no matter what our idealogical differences may be. I truly wish you and your family nothing but the best and pray your wife is getting well.

As you can probably tell by the name, I am a fan of Michael Moore’s work, but it also doesn’t make me blind to his weaknesses, and I am sorry to hear you have received so much hate mail in light of the movie. I guess some people state their differences as plainly as “fuck you” and some leverage their fame to fuck another person over. And you are right about the anonymous part.

Even though I’m a bleeding-heart, “Socialist,” commie with a hard-on for spending money on a universal health system rather than a war, believe it or not I am a Christian who takes the Lord at his word when he says not to tell others about our good deeds or they all are in vain.

But I also think if you give me five minutes and a little information I could paint anyone as a hypocrite, because… well… we’ve all been hypocrites at some point in our lives. I know I have and I have also been the person pointing out the splinter in my brother’s eye while I had a 2x4 shoved into my eye hole.

Mainly, I wanted to introduce myself and let you know that I look at all sides of an issue (I own Fahrenheit 911 and Fahrenhype 911.) You hit the nail on the head when you said to question everything.

Having said that, as a former journalist caught up in the recession that crushed the newspaper industry, I’ve done years of research and I keep coming to the inescapable fact that good health is a basic human right guaranteed to all Americans within the words “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

I look forward to having you to read and help keep me looking at the other side of the fence while exchanging some lively yet respectful debate.

No doubt Moore’s films have an agenda and that makes them a film-version of a newspaper editorial at best within the world of journalism. But I admire him for using his talent for what he believes will help people just as I admire you for having the courage to stand fast in the face of hate mail and ignorance dashed at you unfairly from a point of celebrity.

So here’s to good debate, the very thing the founding fathers had in mind when they formed our government.

Which part of “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” makes health care a right?

Is it “Life”? We have the right to live without having the government going around killing us. But that isn’t the same thing as being entitled to having our lives extended or improved because of the services of another person. That would infringe on the second basic right outlined in The Declaration of Independence.

If everyone is guaranteed the services of a doctor, that service must be compelled in one of two ways. Either the doctor is directly compelled to provide services, or he is paid with money taken by force from the people. Either way, Liberty is infringed. Directly compelling someone to provide services without remuneration is called “slavery.” Taking money from someone by force is called “robbery”. Both infringe upon personal liberty.

If one needs to have the services of a doctor in order to pursue happiness, then you have to find doctors who pursue happiness by providing medical care for free. Some doctors like to play golf, which is an expensive game, and they need to charge people money in order to afford the green fees necessary for them to pursue happiness out on the links. You would also have to find drug manufacturers who pursue happiness by giving away lifesaving drugs because it makes them feel all fuzzy inside. You would also have to find medical equipment manufacturers for whom designing and building lifesaving medical devices is a labor of pure love. And then you’d have to find shipping companies who deliver other people’s goods because it’s cracking good adventure.

When you start guaranteeing one person the right to the goods or services of another, liberty suffers.

Go back and look at the Bill of Rights:

You have the right to speak freely. No one is compelled to listen. You have the right to worship whatever God your little heart fancies. You have the right to carry a weapon. You have the right to cover your own butt in court. You have the right to a speedy trial, to not have soldiers living in your house, The right to be tried only once for a crime, and so on. The bill of rights says if you leave other people alone, we’ll leave you alone, and we can all go out and pursue happiness in our own way.

You’re not entitled to health care, education, a job, a house, a car, a dinner, or a cup of coffee.

As a former photo editor for a medium sized daily, it wasn’t the recession that killed the newspaper biz.  It was the newspapers and the internet that did in the print media. It was mostly the digital age.  Have cellphone will take pictures and download them to the internet.

As a native of Michigan, I’ve posted many times on moore’s hypocrisy, especially when it comes to him using his talents to help others.  He claims to be from the mostly black and poor Flint, yet he moved to the mostly white and wealthy tourist town of Traverse City.  Instead of holding his self-professed highly successful film festival in Flint, Saginaw, Benton Harbor or Muskegon Heights, he continues to use his festival to funnel money into T.C.  I’ve done documentary work in the four towns that I mentioned and they can use the money a lot more than T.C. can.

Yet moore continues to snub his nose at the predominantly black, brown and poor towns I listed above and gets no rebuke from his fans.  That’s all I have to say about hypocrisy.

GuyFawkes:

Thank you for your gracious introduction. I assume from your words that you are addressing this majority of this comment to my husband, JimK. Just so you know, we have many authors here at MooreWatch and Jim was not the author of this piece - MikeS was. I point this out only to help you in your navigation around this site and to make sure that you are directing your comments to the correct people. I hope this helps. :)

Thank you for your inquiry about my health. As it happens I am doing quite well and I appreciate your kind words. The Sicko incident couldn’t have come at a worse time for me - that mountain of extra stress did me no favors - but I am proud to say that today I’m doing very well. I also appreciate your even-handed analysis of the situation - it isn’t often we get Moore fans willing to see things as evenly as you seem to.

Welcome, enjoy your time here and give me a holler if there is anything you need. Have a happy holiday season. :)

Which part of “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” makes health care a right?

Is it “Life”? We have the right to live without having the government going around killing us. But that isn’t the same thing as being entitled to having our lives extended or improved because of the services of another person. That would infringe on the second basic right outlined in The Declaration of Independence.

Look one of these parents who had a child denied the luxury of an “extension” of life and say that.

http://horror.kaiserpapers.org/children.html#Tiffany_Smith_

I mean where are your priorities when you value a doctor’s right to earn enough money for a round of golf and a third or fourth car over a child born into poverty’s right to life?

If everyone is guaranteed the services of a doctor, that service must be compelled in one of two ways. Either the doctor is directly compelled to provide services, or he is paid with money taken by force from the people. Either way, Liberty is infringed. Directly compelling someone to provide services without remuneration is called “slavery.” Taking money from someone by force is called “robbery”. Both infringe upon personal liberty.

Who has ever suggested we should enslave doctor’s to acquire free health care? For time’s sake can we keep this in the realm of the realistic and out of science fiction?

Who is being robbed or enslaved in the U.K. or France?

Again, is the slave the doctor in Britian who’s capped at a half-million dollar home or is it the once middle class U.S. family on the HMO that won’t cover their child’s cancer treatment so they work three jobs to finance Dr. Golf’s BMW?
I would gladly have my taxes doubled to save those lives.

Not saying this is you, but it’s funny how angry people get over MLB players not accepting a salary cap because they play a game. I realize a doctor’s job is much more important but at what point does it dawn on us that a salary cap for doctors by way of universal health care is also much more important because it prevents unnecessary deaths?

If one needs to have the services of a doctor in order to pursue happiness, then you have to find doctors who pursue happiness by providing medical care for free. Some doctors like to play golf, which is an expensive game, and they need to charge people money in order to afford the green fees necessary for them to pursue happiness out on the links. You would also have to find drug manufacturers who pursue happiness by giving away lifesaving drugs because it makes them feel all fuzzy inside. You would also have to find medical equipment manufacturers for whom designing and building lifesaving medical devices is a labor of pure love. And then you’d have to find shipping companies who deliver other people’s goods because it’s cracking good adventure.

No, you have to find doctor’s and pharmicutical companies who pursue happiness by providing their product at a fairprice.

When you start guaranteeing one person the right to the goods or services of another, liberty suffers.

O.K. fair enough. So the choice is between infringing on the doctor and CEO’s right to make unlimited money or a child’s right to live?

Go back and look at the Bill of Rights:

Gladly, I keep a pocket version of the Constitution onme at alltimes. (I’m currently wracking up more debt via law school.)

You have the right to speak freely. No one is compelled to listen.

No you don’t. Read the Patriot Act.

You have the right to worship whatever God your little heart fancies.

Sir, until you have cut my chest open and seen the sizeof said muscle for yourself, consider me HIGHLY offended at your wreckless speculation as to my cardiac prowess, and I fart in your general direction. O.K. not really, but I thought it’d be fun to cut the tension.

You have the right to carry a weapon.

Close, it says we have the right to bear arms. We can argue over what we knowthe founders meant, which is obviously that we have the right to tear the arms off of a bear and keep them as souveneirs.

But seriously, because I know times were different, the the founders didn’t envision each household to have a nuke, but until it is ammended to be current you have the right to furry polar bear arms, an atomic bomb or a nine mm. Enjoy!

You have the right to cover your own butt in court.

...or an attorney.

You have the right to a speedy trial, to not have soldiers living in your house, The right to be tried only once for a crime, and so on.

O.J. trial? Michael Jackson? Prosoners at Guantanamo?

Read the patriot act about soldiers.

It says we have the right to impartial juries which I guess is true considering the founders didn’t consider blacks to be people, and thereforenot created equal.

The bill of rights says if you leave other people alone, we’ll leave you alone, and we can all go out and pursue happiness in our own way.
You’re not entitled to health care, education, a job, a house, a car, a dinner, or a cup of coffee.

And just as it never mentions the cup of coffee or the car, it doesn’t say anything about leaving each other alone.

It does however give us the right to life which is infringed upon when any person is denied care which directly leads to their death because of their financial situation. Not without due process of law.

Hey it really has been fun and Ilove debating intelligent people so Ithink I’m going to enjoy it here.

Right now, I must take my leave to see if Wal-Mart carries bear arms, or razors so I canhave bare arms, nukes and free attorneys.

Everyone please have a wonderful Christmas Eve Eve today!

As a former photo editor for a medium sized daily, it wasn’t the recession that killed the newspaper biz.  It was the newspapers and the internet that did in the print media. It was mostly the digital age.  Have cellphone will take pictures and download them to the internet.

As a native of Michigan, I’ve posted many times on moore’s hypocrisy, especially when it comes to him using his talents to help others.  He claims to be from the mostly black and poor Flint, yet he moved to the mostly white and wealthy tourist town of Traverse City.  Instead of holding his self-professed highly successful film festival in Flint, Saginaw, Benton Harbor or Muskegon Heights, he continues to use his festival to funnel money into T.C.  I’ve done documentary work in the four towns that I mentioned and they can use the money a lot more than T.C. can.

Yet moore continues to snub his nose at the predominantly black, brown and poor towns I listed above and gets no rebuke from his fans.  That’s all I have to say about hypocrisy.

Yep, can’t argue with that. What I meant to say was that in my personal scenario it was the recession that broke the proverbial camel’s back.

I think that is interesting what you say about Moore’s attitude to minorities in personal life vs. his movies and I will definitely have to look at that for myself. If he’s willingto throw a back-handed $12,000 at the very people he claims to protect in order toget the more ignorant of his following to send hate mail and death threats to aperfectly lovely family exercising free speech then I wouldn’tbe surprised to find that it was true.

But I think it countrerproductive to spend too much time on people’s hypocracy and off of the issues at hand.

Michael Moore, like the rest of us, like many minority success stories who leave the “bad neighborhoods” behind like George and Weasy are far from perfect.

While I certainly don’t agree with everything anyone does I do gravitate towards those with common goals, and that’s what I care about, what results a person is seeking.

I hope you are making your way well despite the digital age. It’s been a tough go here but things are looking up for sure.

GuyFawkes:

As a matter of netiquette, when you are responding to multiple parts of one person’s comment could you please contain all your counters to a single response whenever possible? Throwing up multiple comments in response to one person just floods the zone and we frown on that here. In the future if you could consolidate your replies I would greatly appreciate it.

Thank you in advance. :)

Michael Moore, like the rest of us, like many minority success stories who leave the “bad neighborhoods” behind like George and Weasy are far from perfect.

While I certainly don’t agree with everything anyone does I do gravitate towards those with common goals, and that’s what I care about, what results a person is seeking.

I hope you are making your way well despite the digital age. It’s been a tough go here but things are looking up for sure.

1)Moore isn’t a minority.  He’s a white male who grew up in an upper middle class household in the suburbs.  He’s as foreign to Flint as is the Queen of England.

2) The ends justify the means.  Yes, we’ve heard it here before by Moore’s fans.  Many of us don’t get it, but for some reason you folk tend to believe it and subsequently excuse Moore for the stupid and inconsistent things he says and does, i.e. manipulate and rewrite history to support his thesis’.

3) I’m long out of the newspaper biz.  I saw the bitter end when the digital age became popular.  Ironically, I think that the only papers that have a shot at surviving (unless democrats somehow decide to run/subsidize the MEdia)are the small town dailies and weeklies.  Small town America can’t get their local news on television or the internet.

Your “child has right to live” argument is based primarily on emotion. It’s sad when a child dies. Sometimes kids die despite the best care. Sometimes kids get hit by cars or washed away in floods. Your argument is that because a child is alive, he is inherently entitled to someone else’s goods and services. I disagree. I think the people in England and France are being robbed. They might be ok with it, they might not. That’s their business.

If every person is entitled to the services of a doctor, and there aren’t enough doctors to provide these services to all the people who are entitled to them because they are currently respirating, then someone has to choose which person is more entitled than the others.

I live in northern Maine, and we have very, very few doctors. Let’s say there are twenty kids, equally sick, and only one doctor to care for them. The doctor only has the time and resources to care for ten. Which ten should the doctor pick? Should he hold a lottery? Should he pick the kids with poor parents and let the rich ones die? Should he pick the white kids? Which child is more entitled to life? Or since they are all equally entitled, should he do nothing and let them all die equally?

Relying on emotion doesn’t address the realities of the situation. The reality is that there are not enough primary care doctors to care for all the sick people. The reality is that people don’t like working for free. I don’t blame the doctors for wanting to get paid; if I went to school for 10 years and racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, I’d want to get paid too. If you offer good incentives to do something, lots of people will want to do it. Better pay leads to more doctors, more doctors leads to more quality care.

I’d like to address the counterexamples you provided for the rights guaranteed in the first ten amendments to the Constitution. The existence of the Patriot Act does not negate the existence of the First Amendment. It’s true that the Patriot Act ignores the First Amendment, and the Fourth Amendment, which speaks more about bad legislation than anything else. If I follow your logic correctly, you are saying that because the Patriot Act infringes on the Constitution, then it’s all right if we do other unconstitutional things as long is it extends the life of children.

The Constitution does have something to say about leaving people alone. It’s in the Fourth Amendment:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

This means that if you leave other people alone, the government will leave you alone. It’s possible to hold up a plethora of counterexamples to show that the government isn’t following its own rules. But the point is that the RULES are good, and we’d all be better off it the government followed them.

I agree that the right to coffee and jobs does not appear in the Constitution. That’s because the rights listed in the Constitution are there to specifically limit the power of government over the lives of its citizens. The Constitution isn’t a list of all the free stuff you’re entitled to. Getting stuff is the responsibility of the individual.

Merry Christmas all. Sorry about the fragmented replies. I had one big reply planned but hit the wrong key and lost it all. I’m guessing the best thing to do is edit comment as I go along. :p

Your “child has right to live” argument is based primarily on emotion. It’s sad when a child dies. Sometimes kids die despite the best care. Sometimes kids get hit by cars or washed away in floods. Your argument is that because a child is alive, he is inherently entitled to someone else’s goods and services. I disagree. I think the people in England and France are being robbed. They might be ok with it, they might not. That’s their business.

True, sometimes people die despite our best efforts but that child has a fundamental right to our best efforts.

I use children in my example forsseing the inevitable, adults are responsible for their own etc. etc. But if that is the case then someone is failing these children. I really don’t care who it is, it just needs to be stopped. Personally I think it’s my fault and your fault.

As far as the Fourth ammendment and leaving people alone, again we nullified that document when we saton our hands and gave up that right to the “Patriot” Act without so much as a wimper.

If every person is entitled to the services of a doctor, and there aren’t enough doctors to provide these services to all the people who are entitled to them because they are currently respirating, then someone has to choose which person is more entitled than the others.

What reason have you ever been given to think there won’t be enough doctors? Oh you mean the current system isn’t providing you enough doctors and again failing you? Sorry folks but this private system is a failure and until someone comes up with a better plan that comes with a better incentive then we’ve lost our right to the supposed “freedom” that lets people die because ofthe amount of money they have acquired.

It is an emotional thing I’m sorry to say. Look into a mirror and say “I would rather have children die than give extra money in taxes to the government.” See how cruel it sounds? It’s not because Michael Moore or I say it sounds cruel, it’s because it sounds cruel.

I live in northern Maine, and we have very, very few doctors. Let’s say there are twenty kids, equally sick, and only one doctor to care for them. The doctor only has the time and resources to care for ten. Which ten should the doctor pick? Should he hold a lottery? Should he pick the kids with poor parents and let the rich ones die? Should he pick the white kids? Which child is more entitled to life? Or since they are all equally entitled, should he do nothing and let them all die equally?

When I see examples of that happening under “socialized” medicine I’ll be happy to respond. Right now it sounds like the current system has causedthis issue soI think it rather awaste of breathe to carry it to the next. I imagine the current system would go by the amount of money each had.

Relying on emotion doesn’t address the realities of the situation. The reality is that there are not enough primary care doctors to care for all the sick people. The reality is that people don’t like working for free. I don’t blame the doctors for wanting to get paid; if I went to school for 10 years and racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, I’d want to get paid too. If you offer good incentives to do something, lots of people will want to do it. Better pay leads to more doctors, more doctors leads to more quality care.

I do. It’scalled greed and it’s killing people. Doctors don’t get paid here by the amount of people they help get well. They are paidby how many get sick and bonus if they stay sick. Now I’m not accusing any doctor ofhaving kept someone sickbut as the current system stands thats where the incentives lie.

I’d like to address the counterexamples you provided for the rights

guaranteed in the first ten amendments to the Constitution. The existence of the Patriot Act does not negate the existence of the First Amendment. It’s true that the Patriot Act ignores the First Amendment, and the Fourth Amendment, which speaks more about bad legislation than anything else. If I follow your logic correctly, you are saying that because the Patriot Act infringes on the Constitution, then it’s all right if we do other unconstitutional things as long is it extends the life of children.

No that was not my train of thought. The Patriot Act and our right to life are two separate issues.

The Constitution does have something to say about leaving people alone. It’s in the Fourth Amendment:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

This means that if you leave other people alone, the government will leave you alone. It’s possible to hold up a plethora of counterexamples to show that the government isn’t following its own rules. But the point is that the RULES are good, and we’d all be better off it the government followed them.

I agree that the right to coffee and jobs does not appear in the Constitution. That’s because the rights listed in the Constitution are there to specifically limit the power of government over the lives of its citizens. The Constitution isn’t a list of all the free stuff you’re entitled to. Getting stuff is the responsibility of the individual.

And again we are back to getting stuff i.e. healthcare is up to the individual? The two-year old? If not the two-year-oldthen do we suppose the parents shouldpractice medicine? Again regardless of who it is someone is failing.

Now I can do a hatchet job on anyone you put before me, be it Michael Moore, the Pope, Obama, Mother Theresa etc. I can point out where all of them has been a hypocriteat some point but where is the productivity in that? No matter what you say the people at the forefront of this issue aren’t changing regardless of howmuch we don’t like the way they operate. It’s ends justify the means for EVERY person.

Guy, I won’t get into the “dying child” scenario much because, frankly, it’s a no-win situation for all involved.

You wear your heart on your sleeve and believe it’s the govt.’s responsibility to care for every sick child.

We agree it’s a noble thought, but one with so many inherent complications as to make it all but impossible. This site has numerous references to indicate other countries’ socialized medicine doesn’t work and is breaking or has broken on various levels. I urge you to seek them out to get that intellectual balance you say you enjoy.

But my main problem with your tone (and I don’t say this with hostility) is something a previous poster touched upon. The “ends justify the means” is bogus. I don’t care if you are for socialized medicine. I disagree, of course, but I can respect where you’re coming from.

But I cannot respect giving Moore a free pass on his methodology because you agree with his end result. It is perfectly fine to agree with his beliefs, but to find a better suited champion of them.

I disagree with abortion. But the man who goes to a clinic and shoots the place up is wrong. There are other ways.

Michael Moore is a liar and a fraud. The jury is still out whether or not HE is aware of that, but it doesn’t matter. You complain about greed, and yet Moore shows himself to be just as bad. He takes, uses and pads his own status and pocket book, then discards those who got it for him.

My point is simple - you’re trying to defend two completely separate arguments.  Michael Moore’s worth is not related to your beliefs about social health care, or any other liberal ideas. 

Travel any road you want, Guy, but for Pete’s sake, find a new driver.

After an exhaustive (by “exhaustive” I mean I typed “Shortage of primary care doctors” in Google and waited 1.35563 seconds) I have discovered a few articles that support my argument that there aren’t enough doctors.

From the Washington Post:

“As the debate on overhauling the nation’s health-care system exploded into partisan squabbling this week, virtually everyone still agreed on one point: There are not enough primary-care doctors to meet current needs, and providing health insurance to 46 million more people would threaten to overwhelm the system.”

From USA Today:

“Longer days, lower pay, less prestige and more administrative headaches have turned doctors away in droves from family medicine, presumed to be the frontline for wellness and preventive-care programs that can help reduce health care costs.

The number of U.S. medical school students going into primary care has dropped 51.8% since 1997, according to the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP).

Considering it takes 10 to 11 years to educate a doctor, the drying up of the pipeline is a big concern to health-care experts. The AAFP is predicting a shortage of 40,000 family physicians in 2020, when the demand is expected to spike. The U.S. health care system has about 100,000 family physicians and will need 139,531 in 10 years. The current environment is attracting only half the number needed to meet the demand.”

There are a lot more articles about this, but I don’t need a weatherman to tell me it’s raining. I mentioned that in northern Maine we don’t have enough doctors. Well the reason I mentioned that is because in northern Maine we don’t have enough doctors. You placed the blame for this on the current system. That’s fine, you can blame anyone you want, but you can’t simply ignore the fact that there aren’t enough doctors and call for everyone to receive services for free. Who is going to provide these services? Regardless of who is making the payments, there aren’t enough doctors to see everyone.

The current system pays primary care doctors less than dishwasher repairmen. This is in large part because of Medicare/Medicaid, and because of massive insurance malpractice bills. Both of these issues could be addressed by the government, but they are more interested in redistributing wealth than they are in improving access to medical care.

I don’t think that greed is killing people. I think cancer, diabetes, influenza, meningitis, heart diesase, blunt force trauma, and a host of other diseases and injuries are doing the actual killing. These diseases and injuries are going to keep on killing people too, because the human body isn’t immortal. No medical care can do more than extend human life for a period of time.

I can understand the visceral yearning for longer life. Everyone wants to live a long time and experience all manner of interesting things. Some do, some don’t. Call it God, Fate, Chance, whatever, we all have an expiration date. Doctors can push that date backward sometimes. It’s a valuable service.

Look at the situation from an economic perspective. Economics is based on incentives. If you provide a good incentive to do something, people will be more likely to do that thing. There doesn’t seem to be a terrible shortage of attourneys, because attourneys make good money for the most part. There is no shortage of football players, baseball players, basketball players, actors, writers, singers, stand-up comedians, auto mechanics, video-game programmers, real-estate agents, chefs, bartenders, fashion models, or administrative assistants. The incentives for doing these things are attractive enough to keep people doing them.

There are shortages in doctors, social workers, public school teachers, and Catholic Priests. The incentives to do these things aren’t attractive enough to get people to keep doing them, so you’re left with a few very idealistic folks who are willing to accept these incentives.

If you want better medical care, make the incentives for primary care doctors more attractive. Then you’ll have more people who want to become doctors, and with more doctors, more quality care.

Then the children will be saved.

Just a minor point here: Guy, you continually refer to the right to life in the Constitution, whereas I believe you’re referring to the Declaration of Independence.  The word “life” isn’t even mentioned in the Constitution until you get to the Amendments, and even then it says that The State cannot infringe upon life, liberty or property. Obamacare, by merely existing, betrays that very credo.

The amount of hyperbole around this issue has become staggering!

IMHO my overall thought is this:

Who is being robbed or enslaved in the U.K. or France?

I (in the UK) am being robbed by the Government through taxes to pay for the health of people I don’t even know.

Heres the kicker: I don’t mind.

Now I don’t think healthcare is a right, or that the Government has a ‘responsibility’ to care for the sick. i don’t even thing that each citizen is compelled to care for avery toddler with whooping cough. however, it is my opinion that the society I live in is improved when healthcare is accessible to all, and am happy to pay into the communal pot to live in such a society.

this does not make me morally superior, and it isn’t a question of rights or even of fairness. It’s simply what I beleive makes the UK society as a whole better.

I think universal healthcare would probably make US society better. but here is kicker number two: I don’t think that any of the proposed ways of making it a reality will work.

And here’s where I think Moore is actually damaging to the debate. By appealing to the emotional side, and blithely stating over and over again that by having ‘universal healthcare’ (whatever that actually means) will save all the sick babies is simply false. Babies will always die. There will always be people who can’t get treated, and there will always be people who can’t get advanced treatment becasue of cost. Pretending that Universal healthcare is some sort of magic bullet that will save the lives of American babies is a losing argument.

After reading all the back-n-forth, here, it seems to me that most of Guy’s arguments rely on a single, glaring misinterpretation of the words of our founding fathers. (Whether conveniently intentional or not.)
But he seems a decent fellow, so I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and simply point out the mistake.

Guy… when discussing the right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”, you seem to be laboring under the false assumption that the “right” to “life” translates into a call for intervention on the part of the government to provide this for you, as a citizen.

...it does not.

What it does call for is directly the opposite, in fact. It is a guarantee that the government does not deny these things from you, as other governments have, through their intervention.
In other words, it is not the obligation of the government to provide you these things. It is it’s obligation only to not actively deny them.

It is the purpose of these founding documents to reign in the power of government, not to delineate expandable powers.
They are a treatise on non-interference by governing bodies.

Once you understand this, you’ll see how it is not, by any measure, the government’s place to
provide healthcare, or in any other way guarantee an extension of one’s life, any more than it is it’s place to extend your pursuit of happiness by giving you a Corvette in which to do it, faster.

Personally I would hate to live in the U.S with its Nazi like views and agenda toward its healthcare and citizens. Its pretty clear to me that U.S folk have over many years been brain washed by their goverments and leaders to just accept what they are told.
Heres a simple scenario:
I live in the U.K.  I can go out on my bike this afternoon, fall off and break my leg. I will be cared for at no expense from the time of the accident untill im put back together 100% or close too.

I live in the U.S.  I can go out on my bike this afternoon, fall off and break my leg. If im insured theres a very good chance I will have to fight tooth and nail for the care I have been paying handsomely for...if im not insured I will be extorted or treated like a Darkage peasant!!

According to The Henry J Kaiser Family Foundation ‘In 2007, U.S. health care spending was about $7,421 per resident and accounted for 16.2% of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP); this is among the highest of all industrialized countries’.
Im a U.K resident and therefore an NHS user.. AKA… a Communist to simple thinking Bill beaten folk. I earn £25000 per annum about $40400 give or take. I pay a national insurance fee of £32.59 or $52.70 per month. So thats my health insurance right there. Dont have to fill forms out, dont have to declare my life story, dont even have to ask for help if i need medical attention. You see the doctors here treat people because they simply need treatment. For God Sake thats a doctors job and duty.

I don’t think that greed is killing people. I think cancer, diabetes, influenza, meningitis, heart diesase, blunt force trauma, and a host of other diseases and injuries are doing the actual killing. These diseases and injuries are going to keep on killing people too, because the human body isn’t immortal. No medical care can do more than extend human life for a period of time.

Well we might as well just beat babys to death with a stick as there born with that sort of attitude!!! After all if they grow up and fall fait to one of the above problems medical care can only extend life for a period of time. What a barrel of crap!! Thats a Hitler like statement if ever I heard one. Medicine also cures illness!!

For me it really beggers belief how an intelligent nation can totally disregard 15% of its population, ITS OWN PEOPLE.
Theres no excuse athough it wouldnt suprise me if it was a law.

Regards
Dean (Conservative)

So there are immortal people in the UK, and this immortality is due to the unparalleled brilliance of the National Health Service? Are there similar immortal populations in France and Canada? How about Sweden?

I don’t suppose that the J. Henry Kaiser Foundation report mentioned that a sizeable portion of health spending in the U.S. is done by the government through the Medicare/Medicaid program. Since we in the United States just “accept what we are told,” why are the majority of Americans opposed to government takeover of health care, when it’s the government telling us that we need it?

The Hitler reference was especially classy. You should be proud.

Hey xdeanox, I can help embellish your hypothetical stories:

I live in the U.S.  I can go out on my bike this afternoon and start having heart palpitations.  I go to the emergency room, and they take me in immediately, without even asking for insurance information.

True story. 

Question: was it Hitler-like for them to not even ask for my insurance information?  Wouldn’t it have been more Nazi-like for them to put me on some waiting list?

xdeanox,

Take a look at cancer survival rates in the U.S. compared to Canada, Britain, France, etc.  We spend more because we get treatment to cure the disease, not just manage the effects of it.

Guy, I won’t get into the “dying child” scenario much because, frankly, it’s a no-win situation for all involved.

True and I do understand that. But my point is, is it a no-win situation because I’m using ethos or is it no-win because we are all agreed that it needs to stop? I don’t want to win. I just want to help some people and hopefully getting my J.D. from Ole’ Miss will put me in position to provide legal needs to abused children. I’m not at all saying you guys want to kill children so please don’t think that.

You wear your heart on your sleeve and believe it’s the govt.’s responsibility to care for every sick child.

We agree it’s a noble thought, but one with so many inherent complications as to make it all but impossible. This site has numerous references to indicate other countries’ socialized medicine doesn’t work and is breaking or has broken on various levels. I urge you to seek them out to get that intellectual balance you say you enjoy.

For:

http://www.politicsdaily.com/2009/07/14/ten-things-you-might-not-know-about-socialized-medicine/

Balanced:

http://www.moorewatch.com/index.php/weblog/comments/boycott_the_voters/

Links to For and Against:

http://jmchar.people.wm.edu/Kin493/socmed.html

I was just doing that and thought you might enjoy some of these that give you easy access to thoughts on both sides.

I consider myself balanced in the sense that I research both sides to come to a conclusion. Once that conclusion was reached my stance is pro-universal healthcare thereby making me not balanced.

But my main problem with your tone (and I don’t say this with hostility) is something a previous poster touched upon. The “ends justify the means” is bogus. I don’t care if you are for socialized medicine. I disagree, of course, but I can respect where you’re coming from.

I wish it wasn’t the case but remember back in high school when we wrote persuasive papers? You chose a side and of course you were not going to use statistics against your stance. It seems to me and please do correct me if I’m wrong that you feel Moore has some kind of duty to equally bash his own point of view in his persuasive films and I don’t agree.

Name a person that you think is a good champ for your cause and I think I could illustrate better. My point is that everyone uses the figures that best support their own point and Moore is no different.

But I cannot respect giving Moore a free pass on his methodology because you agree with his end result. It is perfectly fine to agree with his beliefs, but to find a better suited champion of them.

Name a person that you think is a good champ for your cause and I think I could illustrate better. My point is that everyone uses the figures that best support their own point and Moore is no different. If this were the case then I’d have a serious beef with Fox News not presenting my side of the issue.

I disagree with abortion. But the man who goes to a clinic and shoots the place up is wrong. There are other ways.

That is an extreme example and obviously taking human life does not justify the means. I’m talking about his tendency to use the facts that support his issue the best. When Moore starts murdering people in the name of healthcare then no, thwe ends don’t justify the means.

Michael Moore is a liar and a fraud. The jury is still out whether or not HE is aware of that, but it doesn’t matter. You complain about greed, and yet Moore shows himself to be just as bad. He takes, uses and pads his own status and pocket book, then discards those who got it for him.

Moore does plenty for charity. I wish there could be a moratorium on the fat thing because it’s just sour grapes and it hurts your own arguement to take the third grade argument by calling him fatty.

Moore isn’t fighting for healthcare to benefit himself. He can afford it. Anyone who has as large a podium as he does can afford it. People who can’t afford healthcare who want to make a movie about it can’t afford to make movies.

My point is simple - you’re trying to defend two completely separate arguments.  Michael Moore’s worth is not related to your beliefs about social health care, or any other liberal ideas.

Moore’s worth? Not sure where you are going there.
So what if they are not related. Am I not allowed to cover two separate points?

Travel any road you want, Guy, but for Pete’s sake, find a new driver.

Also understand that Moore isn’t the main guy I’m behind in regards to health care reform, but I figured you all would appreciate me not deviate from the site’s subject which is all about Michael Moore.

Posted by bismarck on 12/26/2009 at 10:11 PM (Link to this comment | )
Just a minor point here: Guy, you continually refer to the right to life in the Constitution, whereas I believe you’re referring to the Declaration of Independence.  The word “life” isn’t even mentioned in the Constitution until you get to the Amendments, and even then it says that The State cannot infringe upon life, liberty or property. Obamacare, by merely existing, betrays that very credo.

So when do we stop infringing upon people’s right to live who have no access to healthcare?

Now I don’t think healthcare is a right, or that the Government has a ‘responsibility’ to care for the sick. i don’t even thing that each citizen is compelled to care for avery toddler with whooping cough. however, it is my opinion that the society I live in is improved when healthcare is accessible to all, and am happy to pay into the communal pot to live in such a society.

Bingo, great way of looking at it which brings me back to greed.

Well we might as well just beat babys to death with a stick as there born with that sort of attitude!!! After all if they grow up and fall fait to one of the above problems medical care can only extend life for a period of time. What a barrel of crap!! Thats a Hitler like statement if ever I heard one. Medicine also cures illness!!

For me it really beggers belief how an intelligent nation can totally disregard 15% of its population, ITS OWN PEOPLE.
Theres no excuse athough it wouldnt suprise me if it was a law.

Can I crash with you until I get citizenship?

The Hitler reference was especially classy. You should be proud.

Yes because fat jokes are such high society.

Hey xdeanox, I can help embellish your hypothetical stories:

I live in the U.S.  I can go out on my bike this afternoon and start having heart palpitations.  I go to the emergency room, and they take me in immediately, without even asking for insurance information.

True story. 

Question: was it Hitler-like for them to not even ask for my insurance information?  Wouldn’t it have been more Nazi-like for them to put me on some waiting list?

Could you make the arguement make sense by applying it to a young girl who is rushed to a closeby hospital and denied treatment because it isn’t Kaiser?

Moore didn’t even pay for healthcare for a large number of people who worked on his last movie.  He’s a hypocrite.  In fact, in a film dedicated to union labor, he didn’t even use all union labor:

An internal AFT memo, obtained by ABCNews.com, added that the non-union workers hired for the film did not receive health insurance.

Hypocrite...

So when do we stop infringing upon people’s right to live who have no access to healthcare?

Perhaps you missed the part where I pointed out that the Constitution doesn’t even mention a right to life?  More importantly, since when does life = healthcare?  (Corollary: How is it that humans have existed for 100,000, most of that without access to what we would remotely call healthcare?)

Could you make the arguement make sense by applying it to a young girl who is rushed to a closeby hospital and denied treatment because it isn’t Kaiser?

No.

You’re contending that we suffer from an epidemic of people being turned away.  That is clearly not the case.

Also, you do realize that more people are denied by Medicare than by Kaiser, do you not?

Mr. Fawkes...I didn’t think you would be back. But since you are, allow me to retort.

The reason some people don’t have access to health care is because there aren’t enough doctors. Having health insurance is completely meaningless if there isn’t a doctor around.

Let’s say I have good dental insurance, but I have to drive five hours one way to see a dentist who takes the insurance. There simply aren’t enough dentists up here for everyone to have access, so local dentists aren’t taking any new patients. This isn’t a hypothetical situation. This happened to my wife. It wasn’t greed that got her turned away. The demand is such that dentists can’t see everyone, because there simply isn’t enough time.

Again, I reiterate: Access to insurance doesn’t equal access to care.

So maybe you could elborate on how evil, greedy private insurance companies are creating a hostile environment for primary care doctors. You should mention in your rebuttal how well Medicare/Medicaid functions in comparison. Since your argument is that the Government has an obligation to provide these kinds of services, perhaps you could enlighten us in regard to the government’s current effectiveness in this arena.

As far as the Hitler-Reference comment, you said earlier that the ends justifies the means. If our end is to discredit Michael Moore, should you criticize our means in doing so? If you think that it’s wrong to use Michael’s weight against him, then perhaps you aren’t completely in favor of “any means necessary” when trying to accomplish a goal.

So which is it?

The Medicare denial rate found in the study was, on a weighted average basis, roughly 1.7 times that of all of the private carriers combined (99,025 divided by 2,447,216 is 4.05%; 6.85% divided by 4.05% =1.69).

Check the graph.

I think that Guy has a misunderstanding of health care in America. It is illegal to refuse emergency treatment to ANYONE in need in the US regardless of citizenship, legal status, or ability to pay. There are no provisions for reimbursement in the law.

He also talks about greed. One thing I never understood from most liberals was that they liked to paint the insurance companies as evil, greedy monsters who will take all of your premiums but deny your claims and leave you to die when you are sick. Then they espouse liberal talking points while promoting this bill that will REQUIRE EVERYONE IN THE US TO BUY INSURANCE FROM THEM!!!!!!

is it a no-win situation because I’m using ethos or is it no-win because we are all agreed that it needs to stop? I don’t want to win. I just want to help some people and hopefully getting my J.D. from Ole’ Miss will put me in position to provide legal needs to abused children. I’m not at all saying you guys want to kill children so please don’t think that.

It’s no-win because it’s irrelevant.  Obviously no one is for children dying.  And obviously children will die with or without health care.  We agree we don’t want children to die; we disagree on the best overall method to get there.

I research both sides to come to a conclusion. Once that conclusion was reached my stance is pro-universal healthcare thereby making me not balanced.

It’s late, but I will examine some of the links you posted.  I’m still urging you to do the same on this website, however.

I wish it wasn’t the case but remember back in high school when we wrote persuasive papers? You chose a side and of course you were not going to use statistics against your stance. It seems to me and please do correct me if I’m wrong that you feel Moore has some kind of duty to equally bash his own point of view in his persuasive films and I don’t agree.

Actually, I was always taught to present a counter-argument first, then use your backup to logically shoot it down, or explain why your way is better.  But I digress.

More to the point, let me correct you because you’re wrong.  I don’t believe Moore has a duty to bash his point of view.  I do believe he has a duty to be truthful.

Again, let me ask you to explore this site (and others if you’d like that debunk the man).  His “facts” are purposeful distortions of the truth at best, and in-your-face lies at worst.  That is the very crux of this site’s existence, and the part you’re either ignoring or oblivious of. 

I don’t think anyone in this site will argue it’s pretty darn easy to make a two hour movie critical of George W Bush using honest, legitimate information.  No need to take out of context, no need to compare apples and oranges and no need to flat out deceive.

And yet MM made a film one critic notated “59 deceits” in.  It’s not that we think his conclusions are wrong (though most of us do), it’s that we know his very facts - the foundation of his arguments - are wrong. 

Moore is dishonest.  He’s not using only the statistics that support his argument; he’s just making the damn statistics up as he goes.

PS Why are you bringing up comments about Moore’s weight in my posts as a weak argument?  I don’t recall saying a thing about his weight.

Alright, first hello. First time poster on -these- forums. Now, I am neither a fan nor anti-fan of Mister Moore. I think he has done a lot of good things and has said somethings that are honestly stupid. ““People of Connecticut: What have u done 2 this country? We hold u responsible. Start recall of Lieberman 2day or we’ll boycott your state.” comes to mind…

However, I have to agree that Greed is bad. Noone wants a doctor to not get paid. Ok yes, -some- do but most people who support social medical care do -not- want doctors to do it for free. We DO understand that yes, our taxes will go up. What most of us are saying, however, is that if we are all paying for it, then a doctor should be given a fair wage. That does NOT mean 3 cars, a 2 million dollar house, and 3 days of golf. If you want to be a plastic surgeon who makes that much, fine. Dont make plastic surgery an option with the ‘social health care’.

Yes, no system is perfect. And I think that is what ALL Moore lovers and Moore haters need to understand. There will ALWAYS be problems with a system. However, if social health care will increase the quality of life for people, then isn’t that something we should all be on board for? Yes, it means putting our natural instinct for greed and “i have more then you” aside

Also to the comment: If you offer good incentives to do something, lots of people will want to do it. Better pay leads to more doctors, more doctors leads to more quality care.

This is, sadly, not true. All it means is more students who slide by on a C average getting to make more money. Look at pharmacy. I lived in texas as a phrm tech at pharmacy with only three letters, i wont say which. Do you know who did 90% of the work? The pharmacy tech. They do the dr calls for refills, they count the drugs, they type up the information, they take care of returns. While pharmacist SOMETIMES had to handle a question from a customer, for the majority of the time they where in the back. They looked at the tablets in the bottle, checked a computer screen, signed it, and sent it on its way. And yet they made two to four times as much as the ones doing the majority of the work. And I met a lot of ‘odd’ pharmacists in the past. (One who in the middle of the day would go around the pharmacy ‘flying like an airplane’. No lie. One who told a PT to take Tylenol when they complained of gas...) They made just as much money as good pharmacists. So no, more money does NOT equal “more quality care”.

On a side note: As someone who has newly found this website (And yes, it was because it was mentioned on Sicko) I found myself at times having to take a step back. Not because of the issues but because of the overused term “moore-on”. I found myself more and more on the side of those called that because the posters who used the term came off as “childish”. Don’t clap at that Moore Lovers.. cause I have seen you do just as bad on the Moore website. My point being that we need to learn to leave those types of words behind, as all they do is sway us to the other guy’s point of view.

Perhaps you could explain why the number of medical students going into family medicine has declined so rapidly, while those going into medical specialties has gone up. I don’t suppose the fact that specialists tend to earn more has anything to do with it.

Since you used the example of Pharmacists to illustrate why higher incentives do not bring more quality workers, all me to offer a counterexample: teachers.

Public school teachers get paid lousy wages. They work for a socialized system, one that everyone pays for even if they don’t have kids in the system. Somehow, five years of school for really bad wages doesn’t always attract the brightest of talent. To make things worse, once a bad teacher gets in, it’s practically impossible to fire them.
There’s a teacher where I work who taught a seventh grade social science class that the U.S. was still on the gold standard. I corrected her all the time when she gave the kids bad information. She would look over at me, the lowly ed tech, to verify if what she was telling the students was true. The school tried to fire her, but the union got involved, and she’s still there, teaching sixth grade. If she were a mechanic or a diswasher repair person, or a fast food worker, she would have been out the door.

You can’t just say “greed is bad, so we need to be fair.” Fairness is subjective, and therefore impossible to enforce. What you might think is a fair wage could be too low for someone who spent the last eight to ten years racking up colossal debt to pay for med school, and now has to try to scrape by, paying nurses, medical assistants, and ridiculously high malpractice insurance in addition to making enough to live on him or herself. Besides, how can you Constitutionally justify setting the wages of one profession, but not all of them? Shouldn’t a systems administrator get a “fair wage” too? What if that systems administrator works for a hospital? Is he then considered a health care worker and subject to the same wage controls as doctors? What about EMTs? Should we be setting their wages as well? They are health care workers, aren’t they?

I don’t believe that socialized medicine will result in a better quality of life for most people. I think the government is ill-equipped to handle anything more complex than delivering mail and fixing potholes. Medical care is not a right. It is a service that a private individual provides in exchange for money. Government has already proved its incompetence when it comes to paying for medical care. It’s high time we stopped rewarding incompetence. It’s the reason no one drives a Yugo, why no one drinks New Coke, and why it’s so difficult to start a restaurant. The market, like the wilderness, doesn’t abide incompetence. The only reason medical services are treated differently is because people have come up with the notion that they are somehow entitled to the services of a doctor. We aren’t, just like we can’t go into the auto mechanic’s garage and demand he fix the bad bearing in your trunk’s tires because we need to go to work the next day.

As far as “Moore-On” goes, Moore supporters bring it on themselves. Moore painted Charlton Heston as a racist. Heston marched with Martin Luther King! Moore went to Cuba to show a model for great health care. He painted Iraq as a peaceful, kite-flying paradise. People who look at his work and think it has some kind of social value have divested themselves of any sort of critical thinking, and deserve to be called morons.

First, I let me say I have never known -anyone- who goes into teaching to be there “for the money”. Ask any teacher and “money” is the last reason they joined that profession. Now yes, you have a teacher in your example that was bad at her job.. it does happen. But I promise you she wasn’t motivated by greed, because you have to be really stupid to go into a career that pays that little for nothing by the money. Unlike.. say.. doctors/pharmacists who CAN be motivated by nothing but money.

Second, I can say Greed is bad, because Greed helps noone. Yes, you can say “Greed is the american way” (And yes, I was told that once, word for word). But show me where our current system, which greed is a major factor in, has helped us one bit? If you as a doctor go out and buy a BWM, and do it by over charging your Pts, how does that help your PTs better? And how does it help people who can’t afford your services? Services they could afford if you could maybe drive.. a kia instead? Or if you could miss that extra day of golf…

Now, you said that you don’t believe that “socialized medicine will result in a better quality of life for most people.” Well… the current system is not resulting in a better quality of life for most people. Medical costs is one of the most widely complained about subjects. If the CURRENT system is not working, why not try something else even if it might not work?

That is kinda like saying “Well, this car can’t make it up this hill… so rather then buying a 4W-Drive, im going to keep trying with this car”. Its noble.. and I love the stubbornness behind it.. but it doesn’t make a lot of sense.

*Sigh* As far as the moore-on stuff.. seriously, the fact they don’t agree with you don’t make them a moron. People believe Bush was right to use terror tactics in Iraq and hell a lot of ppl thought it was ok during WW2 for us to treat people from Japan ALMOST the same way the Nazi’s treated the Jewish. (We didnt line em up to be marched to their deaths after all..close but not quite.) All it does is cause people who might otherwise listen to your point of view ignore it because of your actions. Calling names/flaming never PROVES anything beyond the fact that for a moment we lost the ability to talk like adults.

Actually, Face, I do know people who have gone into teaching for money.  Just because they’re not going to make doctor salaries doesn’t mean they consider teacher salaries a pittance. And let’s be perfectly honest - if you ask a lot of teachers why they went into that profession, they’ll tell you “Three reasons - June, July and August.” (And if money is so low of a factor, explain why teachers often want to be transferred to the higher paying districts which may not necessarily be the most affluent communities.)

But what you’re completely ignoring is the time, cost, pressure and difficulty it takes to be a doctor.  There is high reward, but high risk and high cost first.  Take away the high reward, and why would anyone want to go into it?  Those who really want to do good for other people (a career motivation for doctors you’re conveniently neglecting) may simply choose to be cops, teachers or nurses and not cough up the ungodly amounts of money it takes for medical school.  Those in it for the money only will go to law school.

With regards to greed, I would argue the people who invented cars, computers, etc. did so to make a buck.  Would you rather go without?  Sounds to me like it helped this planet immensely. 

I would also argue the current system actually does work fine for the majority of people, not the minority as you stated.  That said, a large enough percentage of the population is not well-enough served.  But if it’s the minority, does that mean we need to overhaul the entire system, or improve the current? 

Moore’s fans (like those over at Daily Kos) scream until they’re blue in the face folks like me are for status quo, don’t want change and are willing to screw the little guy.  Wrong.  We’re saying if status quo is Plan A, and universal is Plan B, we like Plan C - reform and revamp what we’ve got.

To tweak your analogy, the car won’t start so you argue we need to buy a new BMW.  We’re asking “Can’t we just buy a new battery?”

Finally, “Moore-ons” is an obvious pun on the name.  Let’s not blow this out of proportion.  Unless you really are that deeply offended by such juvenile “flaming” in which case I’m sure you always side with the conservatives on Daily Kos when they’re constantly referred to as Hitlers and rednecks.  I assume you’ve chastised that crowd, too, correct?

Why should only doctors have their wages dictated?

We’re talking about fairness here, right? So let’s make sure we’re fair to everyone. Doctors shouldn’t have BMWs and big houses and stuff, so neither should anyone else. Let’s look around the economic landscape and decide what a fair salary is for the following professions:

Garbage collector
Game designer
Actor, Film
Heating/Plumbing Specialist
Actor, Television
Advertising Executive
Engineer
Architect
Professional Basketball Player
Speech/Language Pathologist
Dental Hygienist
Auto Mechanic
Conservative Talk Radio Host

All of these people work in order to earn money. Let’s make sure they don’t make more than is “fair.” So Facepalm, tell us what a “fair” wage is for these professions.

Man, I tell ya.... go away for a few months and all heck breaks out here.  :)

On “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness...”

The assertion by GuyFawkes is that the above from the Declaration of Independence should now mean that health care is a basic human right.

That assertion falls on several counts.  First, GuyFawkes must believe that “life” and “health care” were the intended meanings of the founding fathers.  As there was no formal “health care” system as GuyFawkes wants in that day, clearly the founding fathers were not saying that “life” and “health care” were one in the same.  Furthermore, GuyFawkes tries the slight of hand trick in equating “health” and “health care.” The two are not the same.  One relates to the state of wellness in a person, and the other relates to a system. 

It is important to note that Jefferson was relying on earlier writings of philosophers and the phrase “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness” was originally “life, liberty and the pursuit of property.” The founding fathers equating happiness with property defeats one of the very foundations that GuyFawkes and Facepalming put forth - the idea that working for money, a goal, or property is somehow a horrible idea.  Unless either of those fine posters are willing to say that they would go to work, do a job, and not get paid, their cries of “too much money” fall on deaf ears. 

But even deaf ears can still kick the snot out of an argument. 

One of the new regulations that is about to come down on Medicare payments is a reduction in payments for cardiologists who are called in to the hospital during their time off.  The new old rate was about $225 to come in, examine, review, etc.  The new rate is $127.  That is less than a plumber charges for an emergency call.  That means that the government now is telling you that a specialist with 8 years of training is worth less than a plumber. 

On “Well… the current system is not resulting in a better quality of life for most people.”
This is one assertion that always makes me chuckle.  If one looks at outcome based rankings, and quality of health care, the US leads or is in the top 3 of every category. 

Clearly those who assert such a thing have only bought into the headlines and not done any research into the reality of the situation at all. 

GuyFawkes and FacePalming are simply advancing the idea of class and economic warfare.  They believe that those who have worked hard, accrued money and property should now be forced at the point of a gun to give it up to someone else.  In the end, that is really what this is about.

Though it looks like our new friends are gone, an update for Guy if he wanders back into the waters - I did look through your links.

For the record, all but one of his “anti-Universal health care” links is dead.  The one that isn’t is a dated 1994 publication.

A few of the “pro-Universal health care” links are also dead, but most are active.  They use the same projected costs, projected savings and projected health care quality that are, at best, under debate from others.  They use the numbers, but offer nothing to prove their numbers are valid.

I won’t get into who is right or wrong.  I will just say it is without question there is a debate about which numbers out there are accurate.

They do have some numbers, such as the amount of money used in administration costs in our current system, which may be right.  Don’t know.  It assign $350 billion as that cost, and assumes those expenditures would simply disappear under a single-payer system run by the govt.  Thus the system would pay for itself!

Govt run systems will drastically REDUCE administrative and red-tape costs...now that’s a good one!

To Debug and Face…

Debug, I can actually speak for both the groups you are talking about. I’m a Medical student and my Wife is in fact a teacher. While I can assure you that neither of us went into these professions for the money I’m sure you will not believe me. But let me say this, if it was money I wanted I would have remained a Business finance major and would be working 1/2 the hours for 2x the money! But I have this underlying need to help others. And while the prospect of making about 140,000 (avg. doctors income) leaves me and my family comfortable at night, it really doesn’t say anything to the shear enjoyment I get from really helping people on a daily basis.

I know what you are thinking...And yes, my wife was a teacher before she married me and we both knew that she would barely make enough to cover her student loans. But here we are, trying to make a difference in the world anyway.

I have to side with Face on this one. I just wish I could have made it into the discussion a few days sooner.

But here is why I really commented on this post… I have issued a challenge and I hope both of you will participate. And I am copying and pasting here but I hope both of you will get the idea…

“In Fact. If some of you out there want to make it interesting!!! I’ll give $40 of my hard earned cash to the best idea… Just email [email protected] by feb/1/2010 and the best idea about helping your fellow US citizen gets 40 bucks (cash, no strings attached). Some thing that is a small contribution to a small community would be preferred. And I will also give $30 to the admin. of this site for helping promote this idea. There is just one catch, I will email everyone with the winning idea and everyone has to put there actions were there mouth is, I expect everyone to actually take part and preform the winning idea.

So there it is… If you are both so smart… it should be easy to win.

Lets be part of the solution, not the problem.
-George S

Here, I’ll put my idea right here on the page so that everyone can see it. Vote for people who promise to lower taxes and reduce the size of government. 

Reducing the size and authority of government would spur innovation, prevent corruption, enable the free exchange of ideas necessary for progress, and generally make the country a better place for everyone.

Here’s another idea, and you can have this one for free: Foster a culture of self-sufficiency by maintaining food and water storage, having an emergency pack ready, and avoiding unnecessary debt. Self-sufficient people are the backbone of any free society. The more self sufficient people we have, the stronger we are as a nation, regardless of how many guns are pointed at our enemies.

You can start fostering a culture of self-sufficiency by planting a backyard garden in the spring. Get your friends and neighbors to do the same. You don’t need much space, a 4’ x 4’ area will yield more than you might expect if you do it right.

Regardless of who wins your mighty bounty, I fully intend to take action on both of my ideas.

Posted by Rann Aridorn on 12/17/2009 at 10:59 AM (Link to this comment | )
Oh Jiminy Christmas, Michael Moore went to Japan to render judgment on Akihabara.

I guess it’s true… some fat, white Americans just can’t keep themselves from going to other countries and trying to tell them what’s what.

That’s right! A bunch of fat americans have been going to other countries for years and imposing their will! Afghanistan, Iraq, Cuba, Vietnam, Korea.... should i continue? I may just be that Moore has the interests of humanity at heart whilst the others have had the interests of big business and the industrial military complex to keep happy!

xoxo

The pleasant Skippy!

jaydenj, I just heard the bell ring.  It’s time for you to go back in from recess.

But here we are, trying to make a difference in the world anyway.

I have to side with Face on this one. I just wish I could have made it into the discussion a few days sooner.

Re-read the posts, George - Face was the one arguing doctors are only in it for the greed, not me.  My point was, and still is, doctors get high reward because of all that goes into being a doctor.  I won’t ask if you would do it for a specific salary because you’ll likely say yes, and we don’t know if you’re completely honest or not. 

Instead, let me ask this - how much is your student loan sum going to be by the time you actually graduate?  The follow-up question - how exactly would you be able to pay it off if you made $35,000 a year instead of $140,000?

You’ve already explained your wife can barely cover her own student loans.  So how would that work if she had to pay off yours?  Doctors deserve the money they get.  Also, I was the one who reminded Face a common motivation for doctors was actually the want to do good, not the other way around.

As far as the teaching profession, my mother not only taught high school throughout my life, but in a very difficult district (East St. Louis, IL).  Growing up, I was surrounded by teachers, adminitrators and counselors.  I stay in contact with a few of them even today. 

In addition, two of my best friends are currently teachers, one specializing in hard-of-hearing classrooms.  I have other (not as close) friends who teach as well.

Yes, they love teaching.  Yes, they want to do good.  But yes, they appreciate the competitive salary.  And yes, they love the fact they have the summer off (especially those with children - I was blessed to have mom around during days off from school).  And yes, they enjoy the benefits, days off during semesters, good retirement packages and set schedules.

You married a teacher and have (at most) a few years personal experience with the teaching profession.  Please don’t think I’m trying to trivialize or diminish that.

But I have four decades of personal experience with those in the teaching profession.  I feel very comfortable in my earlier statements, and I stand by them.