I wonder what John Adams and Thomas Jefferson would think of the current U.S. government, which is of, by, and for extralegal global corporations. I mean, the “health care reform” that Obama is saying “must happen this year” has, so far, been geared toward making sure the for-profit insurance companies are allowed to keep doing what they’ve been doing, which is make money off denying health care to those who’ve been paying for it all along just when they need it most. That’s change we can believe in?
watch it: the 7/4/09 weekly address from President Barack Obama
share and enjoy
if a state run free health care system is implemented to compete with private insurance companies and it’s efective then the companies will slowly start to go bankrup and disappear
if that’s indeed the plan then it’s really brilliant, because this way no one can complain, people will be given a choice and if it works then the outcome will be same than baning all the companies now but without all the mess that could cause
anyone who has problems with this because they think the system will be slow or burocratic or whatever will have a chance to see the two options side by side and they’ll see a natural movement of people from one option to another, and that way they can’t complain because poeple would’ve the final word
also this way guarantees that the system is efective, fast and responsive because if it isn’t people will stay with the private companies util it gets it together
it’s funny to see the republicans trying their old tired lines in speaking against this, those lines were efective before but now is painfully clear that they’re not saying that because they beleive it but rather because they’re are on the private HMO’s payroll
if people are stupid enough to swallow those lies then they deserve to be exploited by greedy health companies and denied services that they’re supposed to be paying for
it seems that’s not the case now, at least not anymore
Doa766, you wrote:
On that claim I must disagree. Nobody deserves to be exploited.
More to the point, nobody deserves to profit from exploiting others. Armed robbery is still a crime when the strong commit it against the weak. The weak do not deserve to be robbed merely because they are weak. For the same reason, fraud is still a crime, even when the cunning commit it against the trusting. People do not deserve to be exploited merely because they are too trusting.
Signing a contract should never be a way to make theft legal, just as it can never make chattel slavery legal.
VIctor Plenty:
most people will support the system until they realize that they’re being exploited, they won’t notice or care if others are exploited until it happens to them personally, and if that’s the only way to make them undertand then it MUST happen for the good of all
you can’t blame a dog for barking and you can’t blame a greedy company for trying to make money, it’s what they do, but you can blame all the people who swallowed the lies they were fed about the evils of a state run health
you can bitch and moan all you want about HMOs and politicians but they wouldn’t have done what they did without the people’s support and they had it, the ones who supported them are to blame
if all you’re life you supported the current system, and thus preventing change, you deserve to experience first hand the worst it has to offer
“too trusting” or stupid doesn’t make it right, they’re are responsable and if bad things need to happen for things to change, then it should happen to them
Doa766, you seem to be saying we should not be surprised when the fraudulent make victims out of the trusting. If you were to stop there, I might be able to agree with you.
It is when you go on to blame the victims for the crime that I must part company with you. Blaming the victim is always morally indefensible.
By your logic, if an adult attacks a small child, the child has a moral obligation to defeat and kill that adult attacker in self-defense. Any child who fails to do this deserves to be murdered. That’s the conclusion your line of reasoning demands.
But the line doesn’t stop there. According to your moral theory, any future crimes committed by that adult should also be blamed on the child. The psychopath can’t be blamed for doing what comes naturally, just like a barking dog. Those future victims could have been saved, and all their suffering could have been avoided, if that first child would have stepped up and stopped the criminal once and for all.
Of course, anybody can see this line of reasoning is preposterous. Yet your argument on health care is exactly parallel. You are placing the lion’s share of the blame on those who have the least power to change the present system. Calling them “stupid” will never justify your claim that they deserve to swindled and cheated.
Victor Plenty:
let me put it another way: about a year before he left office Bush vetoed a bill to provide with health care to millions of poor children
now right after the bill was approved by congress every congressman and senator, every journalist covering the story and any person well informed knew that Bush was going to veto that law, Bush wasn’t acting off-character, it wasn’t unlike him to do that, anyone who knew him or knew of him knew that he was going to do that
my point is that his not reponsable, he’s just another corrupt politician (and those are a dime a dozen) who’s harmless by himself, the people responsable are the ones who put him in a position to veto the law
so I’m saying that in a sense of poetic justice anything that might had happened to those millions of poor uninsured kids deserves to happen to the people who put Bush in office, they should suffer not the children
voting carries a responsability, people don’t like to be held responsable and they pass the blame by saying they were deceived, I’m saying they’re to blame and they are responsable and they deserve any hardships their vote might have cause them