Results 21 to 29 of 29
|
-
- Join Date
- May 2008
- Location
- Southeast.
- Posts
- 7,082
-
-
04-11-2013, 12:21 PM
Why should "we" be covering any of this? Any woman, gay, straight, bi or Underground Panther, has a right to try to give birth, but that doesn't mean that somebody else has to pay for it. If their insurance company is willing to underwrite the treatments, and they are covered (in which case the premiums will reflect the cost of the coverage), then that's a private transaction between the company and the individuals, but it becomes a public issue when the government mandates coverage for individuals, at which point the insurers have to either raise their premiums to cover the actual costs of coverage, or they have to ration care. This is the result of socializing medicine. We not only have to pay for increased coverage, but we have to subsidize choices that we find disagreeable, immoral or otherwise idiotic. A straight couple that can't conceive is not my concern, unless they demand that I pay for their conception.
The problem with adoption is that the states have a vested interest in the status quo, as they get money for fostering kids, pay out a pittance and put all manner of obstacles in the was of parents who want to adopt. Talk to NJCardFan about the problems that he's gone through trying to adopt kids that he and his family have fostered.
Octomom was an outrage. She should have been kicked off of public assistance. If her treatments were paid for by the taxpayer, then the approving authority should have been fired.
The problem that you don't understand is that when the state becomes the arbiter of who gets what, allocation of resources becomes embroiled in legal equality, rather than supply and demand. In a private medical system, the state doesn't force insurers to cover gay couples that want to have children, and it doesn't ban them from doing so. The insurers determine the costs and the benefits, build the actuarial tables and charge premiums that will cover the potential costs. The sexual behavior of the insured doesn't matter, unless it increases the risks associated with coverage, in which case, the premiums rise. However, in a public system, where the state is the only authority, the determination of who gets coverage is based on political pressure, with the noisiest activists getting what they want, and those who aren't politically active or connected (i.e., people who are focused on businesses, families or anything that doesn't get put up to a vote) get shorted. Politics becomes pervasive, and so does the corruption that politics brings.--Odysseus
Sic Hacer Pace, Para Bellum.
Before you can do things for people, you must be the kind of man who can get things done. But to get things done, you must love the doing, not the people!
-
04-11-2013, 01:18 PM
The American Left: Where everything is politics and politics is everything.
-
- Join Date
- Apr 2005
- Location
- Bavaria
- Posts
- 9,156
-
- Join Date
- May 2008
- Location
- Southeast.
- Posts
- 7,082
04-15-2013, 01:25 AM
I would agree with that. I personally don't think we should cover fertility treatments for anybody. People are sick, and we need to put that first. I just object to these ideas that it should be covered for others, but not gays. If these treatments are going to be covered for some, then it should be covered for others. If it's going to be denied for some, then it should be denied for others. I would think the only people who should be denied coverage for fertility treatments (if we're going to have coverage) are people with a history of violence. Maybe also people who don't show financial stability. We shouldn't cover somebody who can't support their kids either. But blocking somebody because they're gay? No. Oh heck, gays have been getting this stuff covered. It's not like there's a check box at the fertility clinics for gay and straight.
But once again, let me state again that I really don't care to cover fertility treatments in general. I had a friend last year who went without his heart medication some after losing his job. He did have difficulty. His mother was sick for a long time (no insurance) until she finally ended up in the hospital and they signed her up for medicaid. I have another friend with MS and Diabetes who couldn't have her medicine for a long time and couldn't work either. Her doctor said he didn't know why she was still alive (a miracle). These are just people I know. We've got thousands of people in this country who are struggling to get their medication, who have a terminal illness and don't know how to get their surgery paid for. There are people who have dental pain, but no insurance or money to get it fixed.
But we're worried about fertility treatments? Really? Let's figure out how to help the people who are already here before making new people.
-
- Join Date
- Jun 2008
- Posts
- 21,274
04-22-2013, 04:13 PM
Precisely. That is what is so evil about Obamacare. As long as a private company is willing to insure anything, and as long as a customer of that company is willing to pay for such insurance, it's not ultimately our concern nor any cost to us. The only reason we are even having this discussion now is that Obamacare has taken over private health insurance and gets to dictate the terms. If the government wants more coverage--even if we fundamentally disagree with it, logically or morally--we still have to pay for it.
I don't want to pay for fertility treatments for gay men to get a surrogate or for a gay woman to be artificially inseminated. I don't want to pay for that cost for anyone outside of a heterosexual marriage. But my moral standards be damned--I still have to pay for it. For those of us who believe that contributing financially to sin makes us also culpable, it is a moral outrage to have to do so.
-
04-23-2013, 10:31 AM
Okay, you're getting closer, but you're still not quite getting it. We shouldn't cover anyone for anything. It's not my job (or yours) to pay for somebody else's healthcare. Healthcare isn't a right, it's a service, which is a commodity, and like any commodity, when you distort the market by screwing with the price, you get disconnects between the supply and the demand. We've been lowering the price for decades by making healthcare part of everyone's employment, with the consequence that the consumers of medical services don't pay for what they consume. The third parties who pay for healthcare, the government and insurance companies, cannot restrict the demand, and they cannot expand the supply, so they ration services, either by denying coverage or through restrictions on services. If you want to reduce the cost of medical care in the aggregate, eliminate the middlemen and have people pay for their own insurance.
Again, it's not simply the sexual morality of fertility treatments, it's the broader moral issue of people expecting someone to provide a service for free. Doctors, nurses and other medical practicioners are not slaves. They have a right to charge market prices for their services, and if the government has a problem with that, then it can propose a Constitutional amendment to give it control over the economic transactions that people engage in (the Interstate Commerce Clause was meant to give the federal government the authority to settle disputes between the states in their commerce, not to give the feds the power to control all transactions that cross state lines). The true evil of Obamacare isn't that it imposes immorality on some people, it's that it imposes tyranny on all people and shreds the Constitution in the process. It turns us from a free people who can make their own health care choices into a population of serfs, dependent upon the largess of our ruling class for our medical needs. That's the evil.--Odysseus
Sic Hacer Pace, Para Bellum.
Before you can do things for people, you must be the kind of man who can get things done. But to get things done, you must love the doing, not the people!
-
04-23-2013, 12:14 PM
I feel that once a black fella has referred to white foks as "honky paleface devil white-trash cracker redneck Caspers," he's abdicated the right to get upset about the "N" word. But that's just me. -- Jim Goad
« Previous Thread | Next Thread » |
Fun Earth Day plans anyone?
Today, 03:31 PM in The End of Teh World I tell ya!!