The health chapter glibly implies that most health problems are of people’s own making—they eat too much, don’t exercise, and skip preventive tests. He cites the case of Safeway, whose CEO, Stephen Burd, testified before Congress saying that the company’s Healthy Measures program, which monitors such things as cholesterol and blood pressure for employees, resulted in its health care costs remaining flat while those of other companies increased by 40 percent. If the nation had adopted Safeway’s approach in 2005, the nation’s health care bill would have been $550 billion less. “That’s a heck of better record than anything Congress has passed or even proposed!” Huckabee writes. “Why didn’t they listen to Burd?” Perhaps they didn’t listen because experts who know something about the subject challenged Burd’s claim—which Campaign Desk reported.
The health gospel according to Mike sounds sooooo reasonable, and it comes across that way on the stump. The problem is there’s a back story to just about everything he says.
Ms. Lieberman wrote : "The state does not sell insurance, but it does operate the Connector, where people shop for coverage..."
padikiller scoffs: The Nazis didn't actually kill Jews, but they did operate the gas chambers where Jews were killed...
This kind of Orwellian nonsense can't be real...
Are we on Candid Camera?
#1 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Mon 28 Feb 2011 at 08:39 PM
"Massachusetts health reform is hardly what I would call socialized medicine. It is classic free enterprise. In fact, the state’s law pushed the country further away from national health insurance with its key ingredients—universal coverage, low administrative expenses, and limits on what medical providers can charge. ... The state ... does operate the Connector, where people shop for coverage. And like the federal law, there is the mandate that everyone carry insurance."
Mandates+Price Controls+Rationing+Universal Coverage = Free Market
as
Taxation = Charity
thus
War = Peace
#2 Posted by Dan A., CJR on Tue 1 Mar 2011 at 12:27 AM
Maybe calling ti free enterprise is too much (though health care in a free enterprise system has endemic pathologies which no sane person would want, so Massachusetts is as free a health care market as humanly possible)
but it is not socialized. The government runs the marketplace, not the stores.
And, as far as Huckabee's health and diet monitoring goes, I support aspects of that. The problem is that lower income families do not have a selection of healthy foods to consume; only cheap, corn saturated, subsidized, processed food is cheap enough to feed the whole family. The other problem is that yes, having health care that's proactive and monitors citizen health in order to prevent future costs is noble, but it's not conservative.
But hey, neither is regulating people's reproductive rights or sexual choices so I suppose no one will question Huckabee's nanny tendencies.
Are people's private dietary choices private or not?
#3 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Tue 1 Mar 2011 at 12:53 AM
Lieberman's bar for what constitutes 'socialized' medicine is ingenuously high. Some of the vocabulary is archaic on the part of both Lieberman and Huckabee - writers these days seem to make no distinction between 'socialism' imagined by Karl Marx, and a 'dirigiste' state as run by, let us say, King Louis XIV.
I'd like to point out to my old friend Thimbles that liberals support peoples' reproductive rights all the time - if they are male. Invasive paternity tests can be enforced by the state. If you are female, you cannot legally be forced against your will to become a mother. But if you are male, you can legally be forced to become a father. I've always wondered what pro-choice women say to their sons vs. their daughers about the consequences of being sexually active - and why so many men favor reproductive rights for women, but not for themselves. Is this another of the reasons for the common stereotype of 'liberal' equating loosely to 'wimpy'?
#4 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Tue 1 Mar 2011 at 12:40 PM
Thimbles, sorry, the sense of the second paragraph is supposed to be that liberals only support the reproductive rights of women, and opposed them for men, in the main, so the notion that only Republicans want to regulate the consequences of what goes on in bedrooms is nonsense.
#5 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Tue 1 Mar 2011 at 01:05 PM
"Reproductive rights." Haha. I absolutely LOVE this term.
See, everyone should have and does have the right to reproduce as they see fit. The problem, however, is that once the process of reproduction has begun, the abrupt termination of that process ends in the death of a separate living human being. And therein lies the rub: If such a termination of life's process were to be forced upon any human being outside the womb, it would be called murder and those responsible for it would be held accountable in a court of law. Why? Because it is a violation of that other human being's rights to decide if she gets to live or not. And the law would NOT take into account if that other human being's existence proved to be a burden or inconvenience on the perpetrators.
#6 Posted by JB, CJR on Tue 1 Mar 2011 at 05:04 PM
Guys, the topic is on Huckabee and his "playing to the base" on socialized health care. And, if you want, we can throw in his latest PTTB birther comments:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2011/03/huckabee-asserts-hes-not-a-bir.html
But, if you really really want, we can get into it. Reproductive rights is more than just abortion. It's access to birth control, morning after pills, condoms, basic information, etc... all the tools you need to engage in healthy, safe sexual encounters.
And social conservatives hate these things because they read "safe" and they see "consequence free", and so they focus on
ignoranceabstinence based programs and fight to limit women's access to reproductive options.And then there's the late term abortion people who have no sympathy for the mother's life and decisions when the mother decides, late in the pregnancy, for medical reasons, to terminate.
You might be able to sell me on casual abortion limitations, you might be able to sell me on late term abortion limitations due to "mother's remorse", but you cannot sell me on bans of procedures when there is a solid medical basis to abort based on the child's or mother's physical health. People don't go that late into pregnancy with the intent to abort at 8 months. The reason for the procedure that late in the stage is usually medical AND between a patient and her doctor.
Furthermore, if we are to respect the sanctity of a child's life pre-birth, we should also accept the sanctity of that life post-birth. Human babies require complete care as they are completely dependent on caregivers for at least the first year of life. If mothers are incapable of providing that care and society forces them to have a child in spite of that, then the responsibility for the sanctity of that child falls on the society. Are conservatives willing to assume the costs of children gestating within inadequate mothers? If not, then you do not really care about the sanctity of the child. You care about sex sans consequences.
Which brings me to Mark's point. If society took on inadequate mothers children's costs, who would care about the father? But, since society does not assume that responsibility, who does? Should the government mandate abortion for incapable women?
The liberal position when it comes to abortion is that the government should not dictate what a woman does to her body and the developing being within her. The conservative position when it comes to inadequate mothers who choose to have children is that the government should not dictate what a woman does to her body and the developing being within her. When society refuses the duty, and when people limit reproductive choices, is it not conservative to seek out the responsible party and compel him to pay? Sex with consequences, you should love that... unless you believe sex should only have consequences for women.
#7 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Tue 1 Mar 2011 at 07:28 PM
We have a tendency in America to argue for or against a concept based on our own personal philosophy or view of the world, what advances our personal interests, or the interests of our party, family, organization, or region. Perhaps viewing the issue from a management or systemic perspective might result in innovative approaches to the issue. The American national mindset, citizen philosophy, lack of citizen motivation to be proactively healthy, and governance model make the socialization of health care in America very problematic, particularly at this point in time. A country needs to know its limitations.
#8 Posted by Reggie Greene / The Logistician, CJR on Sat 5 Mar 2011 at 09:35 AM