Tuesday, March 27, 2012

In regard to health care, is personal freedom without at least a quotient of personal responsibility a virtue...or a fetish? And what price should be calculated for society at large? Michael Tomasky of the "Daily Beast" ponders these questions in regard to conservative attacks on the Affordable Care Act. He draws on a key theme of J.S. Mill classic work, "On Liberty". ************************ Tomasky: "The classic definition of freedom, or liberty, is still John Stuart Mill’s. His sentence that goes, 'Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign,' can be quoted out of context to imply that a person shouldn’t have to buy health insurance. But context shows that a few sentences earlier, Mill discussed the harm principle. A person can act with complete freedom so long as his actions don’t harm others. Well, pal, if you’re healthy and 35 and you don’t buy insurance and you get hit by a bus and you need $10,000 in medical care and you can’t and don’t pay for it, that harms me, because I’m an insured taxpayer and I’m helping to pick up your tab." Read more: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/03/27/behind-court-challenge-to-health-care-lies-the-right-s-freedom-fetish.html

12 comments:

  1. Then the fair thing would be socialized medicine (truly affordable and available medicine for all) not compulsory purchase of something because others do.

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  2. Well Mr Insured Tax Payer, lets hope you don't get in the way of any murderous feeling buses. Lets hope nothing happens in your life which would cause you to lose your expensive health insurance even. Like sickness. Nothing makes an American (oh so sorry, I mean global, don't I) Insurance Company cancel insurance faster than actually having to pay out on a claim.

    I really hate this me, me, me attitude quite frankly. Paying taxes is the price for living in a civilised country. Paying taxes is for the Greater Good of the society in which one lives. Having a free and universal health system (and education system etc) benefits everyone. Anything less is about selfishness and greed and is pathological.

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  3. I suppose if it's true that the world is all about you as a "taxpayer" and to Hell with everybody else, this could have merit. But if other people besides you matter, this sounds like a shockingly self-absorbed and flawed diatribe. But then maybe nobody else matters but you, and then it's all good.

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  4. Perhaps I'm reading the replies incorrectly, but I suspect people read your intentions incorrectly, Doug.

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  5. That would be the best-case scenario, I agree, Slough

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  6. That's one of the big problems---the medical insurance companies are bigger than the people (and even those in a government trying to do the right thing) can handle.

    As for what I highlighted above, I couldn't have expressed my feelings on this better, Iri Ani. Thanks.

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  7. Although it's old-fashioned to say, with freedom comes responsibility. People from other eras in America have had to give a lot more than most Americans have had for that freedom.

    We are the only developed nation that let's working and younger people hang on the hope that they won't get coverage if they are sick.

    One political party wants to rectify that; one political party wants to pretend it's all about curbing "liberty".

    Thanks for your comments.

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  8. That is the trouble in so many areas these days Doug. The global corporates (whom we don't elect) have taken over running our lives from the governments (which we do elect).

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  9. Why more people can't see what you describe, Iri Ani--including friends and acquaintances I consider more than halfways intelligent in other areas of expertise--continues to amaze me, and not in a good way.

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  10. I have been listening to what the Supreme Court has been commenting....and it looks to me like the whole thing will be shot down. I hope if it does, and more democrats come into office in this next election....it will go to a single payer system like other countries have.

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  11. That may be the safe bet at this point, Marty, that it will be shot down and the new Congress will try again. Maybe something better will come out of that; I hope so.

    The Supremes would be wise to rule the Act Constiutional; at some more and more of the public apparently finds medical insurance harder to bear. Some of them just might even vote!

    The next Congress may not have quite as many tea party radicals as this crowd.

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  12. I'd say that scenario is 95% impossible.

    As an over-dramatized & gruesome example: Insurance won't pay for preexisting conditions. Out go the disabled, the terminally ill. How 'bout elderly? No point in caring for them, they've nothing to contribute~~they're just dying, right?

    Upside. Unemployment rate goes down. Somebody has to shovel their dead bodies off the street, aye? Do some math.What do the taxpayers pay the ghouls? Psst less than minimum wage? Wow I just hit pay dirt. Hire Mexicans. They'll do it for some beans and a tortilla.

    Problem solved.

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