Boehner swells in House rank

The party line answer is "pay for it themselves", just don't ask them to acknowledge that this encourages a system of "haves" and "have nots".

The problem is that that mentality, by extension, goes all the way down. Roads? Pay for them yourselves. Police? Pay for them yourselves? Schools? Pay for them yourselves. Government services? At what point is a sufficient percent of the population in abject misery with no services of any sort before it justifies intervention?

Well, I'm all for socialized health care. My dad is currently in Hospice-something we definitely could not have afforded, but due to the existence of Medicaid, there are non-profit community hospices which have made his last days on earth something other than utterly horrible.

So if Boehner and cronies are anti-health care reform and want to repeal Obamacare, they can suck my-

^^I agree, which is why I favor cheaper, government provided health insurance. But I'll play devil's advocate for a moment here, and say that we should be careful not to give in to the temptation to ascribe to a slippery slope fallacy.

edited 6th Nov '10 5:32:35 PM by TheBadinator

I'm actually not - the Tea Party platform borrows heavily from extreme libertarianism which essentially wishes to strip all social services from the government.

In practice, most Tea Party voters would object to anyone touching their medicare or medicaid (despite not wanting government to spend any money on it...)

Yeah, I think the Tea Partiers and most Republicans are hypocrites. They constantly talk about cutting spending but they have no plans about what to cut except for "government waste" which presumably makes up the majority of the budget in tea party land.

Which is to say nothing of the fact that they parrot themselves as champions of individual rights and liberties but don't seem to have any interest in supporting the rights of immigrants, Muslims, homosexuals, recreational drug users, black citizens, or the poverty stricken. Any time a rights issue with a group that is not white and/or wealthy comes up, it's inherently the fault of the group in question that their living standard is not sufficient, or their treatment by the system unequal.

I'll put my Devil's Advocate hat back on for a moment and clarify that I'm not trying to say that libertarians/conservatives/republicans/tea partiers are necessarily in and of themselves prejudicial towards any or all of these groups, but simply that they espouse a political philosophy which is.

I see a lot of accusations leveled at Tom that he is straw man. He does have valid points and merely pointing a source that relates to our nations constitution does not make him straw man.

If you folks are going to continue level these accusations you need to start pointing exactly what makes him a straw man.

Medicaid exists only for the very poor, and like all programs for the poor, has been cut and cut again to the point of uselessness.

Medicare is better funded, given that it serves the middle class in addition to the poor, but prescription drugs are an issue. One that Medicare Part D (passed by Bush) did absolutely nothing to solve.

edited 6th Nov '10 7:57:37 PM by EnglishIvy

Medicare and medicaid are not concepts of "public" healthcare, they're just welfare programs for the poor or the old. A universal healthcare system would be substantially different and without the for-profit motivation of insurance companies it immediately eliminates all the "insurance denial" claims that have been occurring in the USA without any extra legislation or supervision. It's in the best interests of politicians to ensure that healthcare costs are low and services are high because everyone is basically like the teabaggers; they want all the current services from the government and pay zero tax and assume that somehow this would work.

I mean, even though medicaid and medicare are your closest things to "public" option, Americans should immediately see how well run they are and how much they lower costs for everyone involved. Why would Americans expect public healthcare to be any different?

The debate on the issue should be dead. Healthcare discussion should focus on cost reduction such as preventative medicine and proactive vs passive doctors. Why are we still stuck on the public option debate 40 years after it's been resolved?

Because it's so easy to demagogue people about creeping socialism and death panels and rationing? Because people want to be demagogued?

"The Federalist Papers provide ample evidence that was more their intention than pamper every citizen with a government handout from birth to death."

The "Pamper every citizen with a government handout from birth to death" is a strawman, or hyperbole-with Tom, it's kind of hard to tell sometimes.

There: specific instance pointed out-the same one quoted when Tom was called a strawman. Any objections?

edited 7th Nov '10 11:54:20 AM by TheyCallMeTomu

Not to mention that there's no particular reason to follow the wishes of some dead guys.

You may have noticed that we have political parties today. We have elections that the average person can vote in. Both of these are things that would have appalled the founding fathers.

Thanks Tomu.

I do what I can (which is increasingly limited these days).