Stop expecting others to take care of you.

[Hiddenrun]

Are you naive, stupid, or just being obtuse?

I'm sorry you lack the ability to read your insurance contract, but claiming that your insurance company somehow can arbitrarily violate that contract without penalty suggests to me that you don't actually understand the subject you are discussing.

Naive, then.

Show me a single instance where an insurance company violated the insurance contract, and could not be taken to task for it.

No, the naivety is all yours. You do not understand the terms of the contract, and you make assumptions about what is covered and under what circumstances. Or you fail to divulge material information, or in other ways yourself violate the contract.

So many people whine about insurance companies when they themselves are at fault for not understanding the system, their rights and their responsibilities under the contract.

[Kryozerkia]

I apologise if my assumption is incorrect, and you are not in fact from the US at all. However:

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

(emphasis mine)


Somehow, I feel like your constitution covers it.

It sounds like the constitution favours the government having a form of socialised medicine and other assistance programmes to aid the people when they need it most. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link.

[Non Aligned States]

Sure is. In fact, that's ALL I want. To succeed of fail BY MY OWN MERIT. To rise to the level of my ability and stick there. That is what America is about. Let a man's friends help him when he is down- the government has no business mandating charity.

So... no law enforcement either?

[Trippoli]

Are you naive, stupid, or just being obtuse?

I'm sorry you lack the ability to read your insurance contract, but claiming that your insurance company somehow can arbitrarily violate that contract without penalty suggests to me that you don't actually understand the subject you are discussing.

Naive, then.

Show me a single instance where an insurance company violated the insurance contract, and could not be taken to task for it.

No, the naivety is all yours. You do not understand the terms of the contract, and you make assumptions about what is covered and under what circumstances. Or you fail to divulge material information, or in other ways yourself violate the contract.

So many people whine about insurance companies when they themselves are at fault for not understanding the system, their rights and their responsibilities under the contract.

Oh, for fuck sakes, they come to your house to inspect every inch of your yard and so on, trying there best to get out of the fucking thing so they don't have to pay for it.

(this is about car insurance by the way, tree fell on car.)

[Poliwanacraca]

So Hiddenrun, this is your America?

Everyone is on their own, walking the same path to success, you see someone nearby collapse, dying. What do you do? Sounds like you walk on by, and you do.

As you march on, more and more people drop like flies. Until finally, YOU drop. You cry for helps and everybody ignores you, just walks on by. Because your "too Fat, or lazy, or stupid." Is that what YOU want?

Don't be silly! Hiddenrun is completely safe, because the only way not to have lots of money to take care of all your needs is to be stupid and lazy! Insurance companies never EVER refuse to cover certain treatments, jobs never EVER fire you for reasons that weren't completely your own fault, and you totally only get cancer if you deserve it! Also, the world is full of dancing unicorns who poop rainbows! Yay!

[Virtud Tierra]

Are you naive, stupid, or just being obtuse?

I'm sorry you lack the ability to read your insurance contract, but claiming that your insurance company somehow can arbitrarily violate that contract without penalty suggests to me that you don't actually understand the subject you are discussing.

Naive, then.

Show me a single instance where an insurance company violated the insurance contract, and could not be taken to task for it.

No, the naivety is all yours. You do not understand the terms of the contract, and you make assumptions about what is covered and under what circumstances. Or you fail to divulge material information, or in other ways yourself violate the contract.

So many people whine about insurance companies when they themselves are at fault for not understanding the system, their rights and their responsibilities under the contract.

You gotta be kidding me.

Have you ever filed a claim with an insurance company?

[Treznor]

Sure is. In fact, that's ALL I want. To succeed of fail BY MY OWN MERIT. To rise to the level of my ability and stick there. That is what America is about. Let a man's friends help him when he is down- the government has no business mandating charity.

So... no law enforcement either?

No roads, no police, no fire departments, no disaster management, etc. There's nothing mandating any of these in our nation's highest laws, even though having the government take charge of our infrastructure and support services has freed businesses to work on production and distribution and enriched the lives of citizens who otherwise wouldn't be profitable enough to benefit from the support of private industry.

If we had stuck to strict Libertarian ideals from the beginning, we'd still be limited to local roads and wood-burning ovens in rural areas. Forget crossing the continent in a day or two on national roads.

Oh yeah, safety precautions in food, clothing and housing? Forget that, too.

[Free Soviets]

prove to me that one should not have access to things they can't afford, because i don't believe you.

The alternative is called "theft". You can acquire "stuff" through theft. But the rules of civil society demand that such acquisition be resisted.

false dilemma. clearly there are other options - they exist right now.

I think you meant "false dichotomy". No dilemma was presented. The "it's happening right now" argument doesn't work. We all tolerate a certain level of criminal activity (even on behalf of the government). Most of the time we just dismiss it as price of doing business of living. But it's important to recognize which activity is criminal (eg, theft) so that it's clear that steps will be taken to stop it.

false dilemma and false dichotomy are basically different names for the same thing. both work in this context.

but in any case, there are at least three ways one can acquire x. use wealth in your possession for it, get it via some other legitimate process of distribution - either public or private - which doesn't require the use of wealth in your possession, or take it without going through some legitimate process. what needs to be argued for is that there is no legitimate public process of distribution for x; or that there shouldn't be. this has yet to be done, as far as i've seen. certainly not in response to my posts.

[Melkor Unchained]

I seriously don't understand why humans ought not to help other humans out. This whole "dependency" thing is not the case for the vast majority...

I think this is where the two sides (right vs left) begin to talk past each other. I can't speak for everyone else (and I only consider myself a member of the 'right' in the economic sense) but I don't think the complaint is so much that people shouldn't "help other humans out," I think it has more to do with the fact that we're often forced to do so. Charity and compassion are fine; coming around to my house and saying "Hey these guys are in trouble and oh by the way help them out or I'll throw you in a f'ing cage" is moral cannibalism.

Hiddenrun, don't bother arguing with Free Soviets; it's pretty much pointless. He's a "Prove it" broken-record who insists on things he himself generally fails to provide; the fact that objects must be worked for and goals attained by labor everywhere else in nature means nothing to him. The (economic) left wants to have it both ways: humans are both "enlightened" beings above the brutish requirements of nature, and "animals" who cannot be expected to be responsible with their own money/resources. He doesn't believe that people shouldn't have things they "can't afford," because, I suspect, he either doesn't believe in money or because he thinks human beings are entitled to certain resources on no greater virtue than their existence.

[Farnhamia]

I apologise if my assumption is incorrect, and you are not in fact from the US at all. However:

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

(emphasis mine)


Somehow, I feel like your constitution covers it.

Oh, no, not the General Welfare clause of the Preamble! Silly foreigner, that means nothing, it's just some fancy language put up there to ease into the main task of the Constitution, which is safeguarding property. Why, even James Madison, who likely wrote those words, said in later years that they were used to cover too much. Of course, he could just have been in the same mood Gene Kelly was in his later years when people would ask him to do "Singing In The Rain" for the three millionth time.

Hiddenrun doesn't care about anyone except himself and the people he has specifically chosen to care about. This has been made clear not only here but in other threads. He's not worth the keystrokes used to attempt to argue with him. He's not here to learn, he already knows. He's just here to poke the liberals here with the sharp stick of his enlightenment and watch them jump.

[Vichy-Corsica]

Finally, someone who has at least half a brain on NS. I agree with everything Hidderun says. These jobless whiners, whinge about how they are desperate for money. Normal people learn how to plan. Let these idiots who never listened in school, and then couldnt be bothered to get a job stew in their own mess.

[Duetopia]

I apologise if my assumption is incorrect, and you are not in fact from the US at all. However:

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

(emphasis mine)


Somehow, I feel like your constitution covers it.

general Welfare is not the same as individual welfare. It's not even close to welfare state. The modern reinterpretation of the word is done simply to create confusion as to its original meaning. No one argues that taxes should not be used to promote justice. "Social justice" has nothing to do with justice -- just another attempt to reinterpret the word. Justice (as symbolized by a blind lady with a scale) is about ensuring that everyone gets a measure equal to what they give (so the scales are equal). This refers both to living up to contractual promises and to doling out punishment for crimes. Securing the blessings of liberty refers to providing of security. All the modern meanings of these phrases only mean what people are claiming them to mean because words' meanings are taken from their contexts and interpreted much broader sense then the meanings attached to them at the time of the writing of the document called the US Constitution.

[Barringtonia]

Show me a single instance where an insurance company violated the insurance contract, and could not be taken to task for it.

No, the naivety is all yours. You do not understand the terms of the contract, and you make assumptions about what is covered and under what circumstances. Or you fail to divulge material information, or in other ways yourself violate the contract.

So many people whine about insurance companies when they themselves are at fault for not understanding the system, their rights and their responsibilities under the contract.

Sure, I ticked 'safe' on my private insurance funds, instead they took that money and invested it in extremely dodgy, based on thin air, investments,

Can I sue them?

No I can't, the value of my investments may go up and down despite the fact that I ticked safe and they just manipulated what 'safe' meant.

[Hiddenrun]

Speaking of crocks of shit.

When people need help, they need help. Not "I'm sorry, that would cut into my profits too much." That's cold comfort when the fruits of a lifetime of struggle go up in smoke, or down the drain due to unexpected unemployment or illness. A lot of things that can't be predicted can be go wrong, and shrugging it off as "that's life" betrays a very callous outlook. We built a civilization on cooperation and compassion, not greed and selfishness.

Insurance companies are not charities. If you want charity, find a charitable organization willing to help you out after you took risks and refused to mitigate them with private insurance. Find someone and tell them the story of how you opened a restaurant, failed to take out insurance, and then had the restaurant burn down. Ask them to give you money to cover your monumental failure to use any common sense whatsoever.

Hell, if you feel so much sympathy for that level of idiocy, by all means, start a charity that specifically targets such people.

Exactly. They're profit-based so it makes perfect sense for them to cut off assistance when people need it most. That's why we want to get rid of them.

Again, if you don't understand insurance contracts, that's your problem.

If your material circumstances change, you are under a contractual obligation to immediately inform the insurance company of this, so that your assessed level of risk can be changed if necessary. Failure to do so breaches the insurance contract, and you are no longer entitled to coverage. If you remain on the up and up with your insurance company, you should have no problems. And if there is a dispute between you and your insurance company, you can sue on the contract.

This idea that insurance companies just go around willy nilly unilaterally canceling contracts is false.

Fuck that. My mother doesn't have the ability to fix my problems, especially after paying for the cancer treatments my father suffered through without help from insurance. They saved up a lot of money for a rainy day and it still fell short when they needed it most, along with their private insurance company who was happy to take their money up to the point when they needed assistance. There's a reason why the most common cause of bankruptcy in the US is due to medical bills.

Not everyone is fortunate enough to be born into a rich family. The "rags to riches" fable is increasingly rare, not because people are lazy as you claim, but because the barriers to success are increasingly more difficult to overcome. People lose their jobs on a whim, get illnesses that cost too much to address and can't afford basic medical maintenance because it's more profitable to drive up the prices.

Fuck greed. If it comes down to a choice between healthy profit margins and healthy bodies, fuck the profit margins. Take away the profit motive from health care and any other "industry" based on human need. I don't give a shit if it means "stealing" from you in the form of taxes, because it'll benefit you anyway even if you aren't willing to believe it.

*yawn*

You just go on and tell yourself that taking my money to fill your pockets helps me out in the end.

But don't expect me to start believing it.

[Custodiscia]

It's not just the whining about needing socialized medicine, it's the entire sense of entitlement that people seem to have. It should be very simple. If you can't afford it, you shouldn't have it. Period. If someone wants to get it for you, great. I don't happen to care about you at all, and I resent greatly the belief that I should somehow pay for you to access anything you can't get on your own.

Where do you think this notion came from? This lack of self-sufficiency? Are children being too coddled by their parents? Is it wider social conditioning, top down? For those of you living on the public teat, what makes you think you should be doing so?

Just to clear this up, not going into to much argument, have you seen Sicko?

[United Technocrats]

It's not just the whining about needing socialized medicine, it's the entire sense of entitlement that people seem to have. It should be very simple. If you can't afford it, you shouldn't have it. Period. If someone wants to get it for you, great. I don't happen to care about you at all, and I resent greatly the belief that I should somehow pay for you to access anything you can't get on your own.

Exactly. And all those soldiers who lost their limbs and are thus unable to work once they return, should be immediately disposed of as trash.

[Barringtonia]

Insurance companies are not charities.

Haha, that's for sure,

[Hiddenrun]

Yes, because people who are going through a crisis are going to have all the resources and stability they need to sue multi-billion dollar corporates for breach of contract. That makes perfect sense.

If the claim is big enough, get a lawyer who works on contingency.

You pay lawyers for piece of mind, and for their expertise. If you don't wish to do that, by all means, try to tackle the issue yourself.

A better solution is to research the issue, choose a good company, and understand how your contract works.

If that sounds too much like hard work, then your refusal to engage in it tells me something about your overall work ethic.

[Hydesland]

It's also profit-based. They therefore have a vested interest in taking money from people, while giving back as little as possible. That's not help so much as exploitation. Got a little risk, because you had a traffic ticket or a previous illness? They won't cover you the way you're likely to need it.

Of course they will, the rate will just go higher to get that coverage. I know what hiddenrun is saying is bullshit, but that doesn't excuse bashing insurance companies for making sensible precautions like increasing the risk premium. The increases in risk premiums are to stop the companies from going broke, you only need a very small profit margin on the premiums in order for the company as a whole to make comfortable profits. Any unnecessary profit margin that does exist would be competed away from other companies anyway. Society is very dependent on these institutions (even governments to an extent), even if they wont inevitably cover everyone, it's obnoxious to call them exploitative evil profit obsessed corporations just yet.

[Czardas]

So Hiddenrun, this is your America?

Everyone is on their own, walking the same path to success, you see someone nearby collapse, dying. What do you do? Sounds like you walk on by, and you do.

As you march on, more and more people drop like flies. Until finally, YOU drop. You cry for helps and everybody ignores you, just walks on by. Because your "too Fat, or lazy, or stupid." Is that what YOU want?

Sure is. In fact, that's ALL I want. To succeed of fail BY MY OWN MERIT. To rise to the level of my ability and stick there. That is what America is about. Let a man's friends help him when he is down- the government has no business mandating charity.

Let's hypothesize a minarchy, where the government controls nothing but the courts system and the military -- and even that works side by side with private military contractors on important missions.

Now, let's say you're working a normal job in a big company, having amassed significant life savings in case of emergency. You get some potentially fatal disease, through no fault of your own. The minimum cost the hospitals will charge you exceeds the amount of life savings you've amassed, rendering you bankrupt, and because you're out of work for too long, you're fired from your company for not being valuable enough to it. You're now poor, unemployed, sick, and with every day you spend in hospital you amass greater debts that your children and their children will have to work long hours just to repay (with no profit to themselves). Did you fail on your own merits in that situation?

EDIT: I'm aware that I left insurance companies out of the picture here. Nonetheless, let's say the insurance company you've been paying for for years refuses to cover your healthcare costs once you get sick on some technicality in the contract. You can switch to another insurance company, but the premiums will bankrupt you just as well because your risk has skyrocketed now that you're in the hospital. You can sue your insurance company... with money you're spending on the hospital bills... while you're sick. Get the picture?

[Barringtonia]

Yes, because people who are going through a crisis are going to have all the resources and stability they need to sue multi-billion dollar corporates for breach of contract. That makes perfect sense.

If the claim is big enough, get a lawyer who works on contingency.

You pay lawyers for piece of mind, and for their expertise. If you don't wish to do that, by all means, try to tackle the issue yourself.

A better solution is to research the issue, choose a good company, and understand how your contract works.

If that sounds too much like hard work, then your refusal to engage in it tells me something about your overall work ethic.

Ah ha ha, how am I going to afford a lawyer equal to that of a multi-billion dollar insurance company,

Honestly,

My insurance funds are quite worthless despite my ticking 'safe' as an investment choice, as, I imagine, did most other people.

Whatever, let's redefine safe then, just repackage unsafe into Triple A rated 'safe',

Screw me, I'm just the little guy,

[Melkor Unchained]

Finally, someone who has at least half a brain on NS.

I'd be careful with statements like this, people might consider them trolling.

If that sounds too much like hard work, then your refusal to engage in it tells me something about your overall work ethic.

I'd be careful with these, too. Seems kinda bait-y to me. So far this thread has been doing alright, let's not ruin that.

[Post-Unity Terra]

Are you naive, stupid, or just being obtuse?

I'm sorry you lack the ability to read your insurance contract, but claiming that your insurance company somehow can arbitrarily violate that contract without penalty suggests to me that you don't actually understand the subject you are discussing.

Naive, then.

Show me a single instance where an insurance company violated the insurance contract, and could not be taken to task for it.

No, the naivety is all yours. You do not understand the terms of the contract, and you make assumptions about what is covered and under what circumstances. Or you fail to divulge material information, or in other ways yourself violate the contract.

So many people whine about insurance companies when they themselves are at fault for not understanding the system, their rights and their responsibilities under the contract.

Of course they have contracts they must abide by. But put it this way: who has more legal weight behind them, a multi-billion insurance company or Bob the taxi driver?

Perhaps in your paralell universe it's much harder for a large company to railroad people.

[Ourobora]

general Welfare is not the same as individual welfare. It's not even close to welfare state. The modern reinterpretation of the word is done simply to create confusion as to its original meaning.

I don't understand how general welfare could exclude the welfare of the individuals who make up that general. Unless this general is not referring to people at all?

[Hiddenrun]

Oh really? And where are these extra hours in the day going to come from? One 8 hour shift job that lets you earn subsistence wage doesn't mean you'll be better off if you work 16 hour days.

I said work harder. I should also have added, work smarter. If you need to go into debt to get an education in order to get a better paying job, then do it. WORK HARDER, get a better job, do what it takes to earn more if you have needs beyond the basics.

It's good to see that you're willing to be honest in describing yourself, being a poster child for lack of worst case planning, since you clearly have not planned for the worse to happen to you. Lose your job, your house and your finances, stuck with minimum wage jobs and cancer or other terminal disease which has a $200,000 bill monthly to treat. I imagine you've never planned for that.

I 'clearly have not planned'?

I own my house and my land outright. I have next to no debt. I do not live beyond my means. I have excellent health insurance, home insurance, automobile insurance, etc. I have money saved to educate my children, I have retirement savings, I have any number of resources to access if anything happens.

I have spent my life 'planning for it'. I expect you to do the same.