Stop expecting others to take care of you.

[KiloMikeAlpha]

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.

I'm on yourside Hidden, in this arguement. However, insurance companies are huge. They are indeed postured to deny every claim the first time and make you justify it. *I* cannot fight it because I lack the resources to battle a large insurance company. I cannot change because the policy is chosen by my company. I could change my company, but the other insurance carriers are the same.

EDIT: Also insurance companies are in the business to make money and to make money, they must do what they can to not pay out claims.

[Hamilay]

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.

Can you show that people are able and willing to give as much in charity as is provided by government welfare programs?

If you can't, it seems to me that this line of reasoning is not really relevant, as the logical conclusion of your policies is less helping of others regardless of whether you think charity is nice or not.

[SD_Film Artists]

It seems like there's a lack of understanding here that it's an 'emergancy service' and 'helping the country' thing rather than a 'have sympathy on the poor' thing.

Precisely.

This little rant:

Personally, I fail to see why we should worry about the opinions of self-centered little shits who think it's a horrible offense for the government to spend tax money on saving people's lives. If you drive on roads built with public funds, use products developed through publicly funded research, call the publicly funded police if someone breaks into your house, use running water connected to sewer systems built with public funds - if, in short, you do not live in a cave cut off from all society - you have ALREADY accepted the premise that the government should use tax money to improve people's lives. You don't like it? Go live in that cave and shit in a bucket. No one will miss you.

Demonstrates the point quite well.

We build up our infrastructure as a nation through public funds. Arguably, more of that could be done through private funds, but let's just stick with where we're at.

This does not translate into helping paraplegic mentally deficient people so they can continue to do absolutely nothing to improve our overall standard of living.

Personal standards of living should be personal. If you want more than the bare basics, once again, GET OFF YOUR ASS AND WORK FOR IT.

If you don't, I for one won't miss you.

So you're arguing in favour of an NHS now. Unless of course, human life isn't considered to be "the bare basics". Getting a boob job and other petty desires that only a doctor can give are more than the bare basics (in more ways than one ), and for that reason they are NOT paid for by the NHS. But treating a broken leg or something worse is on the NHS. Just as the police will help you at any time but that doesn't mean that they're your private army.

At least in Britian and other NHS-like countries, health is one of the 3 Emergency Services which you gain the services of simply by being a citizen; and for that reason it's not just the poor working class who support it. Indeed, you'll be hard-pressed to find any part of the British political system that wants to completely get rid of the NHS. That's not to say that hospitals won't exist if they were all privatized US style, but the point is that they're a right of being a citizen, not just some commercial product.

[Hiddenrun]

I just want to pause to note the hilarity of this line of argument. Apparently, we are to judge people's worth to society by how much they contribute to "our overall standard of living." So what does that make the worth of someone who wants to hoard money for himself rather than contributing to others' well-being?

A paraplegic, mentally deficient person cannot serve me a burger, dig me a ditch, or connect my call to a help center in India. All that person can do is drain public funds if there are not private means available.

If you cannot contribute, you should not be entitled to anything.

Once again, I contribute to the well-being of people I choose to contribute to. If you are offended that you are not on that list, perhaps you should make yourself useful to me in some manner.

[Poliwanacraca]

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.

I really love some of the hilarious assumptions you people make.

I had a 4.3something GPA in high school. I went to a college consistently rated as one of the top 20 or so in the entire world. I also got laid off from my job last year, because the company I worked for was going out of business, since the economic downturn meant we simply weren't getting enough new clients to stay afloat. I've applied for several hundred jobs since then. I haven't been hired for any of them, largely because I'm overeducated for most of them.

But sure, keep telling yourself that everyone who's unemployed is just stupid and lazy. Keep pretending it could never happen to you. If you think it hard enough, maybe you can magically make it true.

[Virtud Tierra]

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.

Well, we'd see how your tune would change if your planning fails you and if you are brought to economic ruin from circumstances outside of your control.

Its not to say people are not in control of their lives or finances or ultimate destiny, but insurance companies and planning can only give you so much stability in life. Not everyone has wealthy parents or large savings to fall back on. Some people get hit with a hurricane or wild fire or drought and loose everything. "Its your fault for being a farmer in a place where it doesn't always rain" and "Its your fault for living in a house that an earthquake demolished."

"Its your fault for having a sick child. If your genetics were not so weak you'd never have to deal with these problems"

Anyways it seems to me that some of these arguments come from people that have never faced hardship and have never had disaster strike. Born with a silver spoon in their mouth so to speak and live in such an isolated manner that they don't understand that people outside of their sheltered status could possibly need legitimate help.

[Czardas]

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.

Again, society has determined that your taxes can be used to help other people with your consent. You can withdraw your consent, by moving to another society that doesn't have that requirement.

[Barringtonia]

Once again, I contribute to the well-being of people I choose to contribute to. If you are offended that you are not on that list, perhaps you should make yourself useful to me in some manner.

Alas you don't, you pay taxes, your dream world is merely that,

[Duetopia]

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.

The 2nd of those ways is indistinguishable from the 1st if it's not something to which the person from whom the said property is taken has personally agreed (mind you that the US Constitution is considered to be a social contract and is thus a form of an agreement between all denizens of the land).

For example, winning a lottery is not theft because the issuer of the lottery agreed to pay the sum of money. Paying taxes in order to support activity you've agreed to support (via the agreement called Constitution) is not theft. Being forced to pay taxes to sponsor activities which you never agreed to sponsor (because they are not constitutional) is theft.

Since 2nd item on your list falls in either 1st or 3rd (depending on the situation), there is only 2 alternatives left. That is, in fact, a dichotomy. It's not a dilemma though. A dilemma would be a dichotomy in which a choice between the two alternatives would be difficult to make. When choosing between theft and honest behavior, the choice of a civil society is simple.

It kind of amazes me that people who demonize Rand are not even aware of some her simpler arguments. I mean, she had some kooky ideas, but even a broken clock is right twice a day and she got this perfectly right. The dichotomy is between volition and coercion. Volition need not be at the time of the event, of course. It can be an expressed will forged into a promise at an earlier time (which is what all contracts are).

[Hiddenrun]

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.)

Then I certainly hope you made a point of disclosing material information to your insurance company, since that is the only way they can accurately assess your level of risk. If you deliberately omitted details then you are in breach of the contract, and not entitled to any payments.

[Vilmaria]

If you are working class and you get an unexpected and costly illness, there is simply no way you are not going to be fianically ruined by it.

Say a guy and his wife with highschool eduation work 40 hours a week, make 800$ a week between the two of them, and their goddamn 4 year old has leukemia. The treatments run into the hundreds of thousands and the kid dies anyways.

Thats some serious hardship that they could never have predicted or have been prepared for. Their insurance companies refuse to pay for it and they spend the rest of their lives working off interest on their debt.

Seems like their could be a more elegant arrangement then that.

then you go to your neighbors you go to your church you organize a walk-a-thon if you have to. people will help you but the government should not.

[Barringtonia]

Volition need not be at the time of the event, of course. It can be an expressed will forged into a promise at an earlier time (which is what all contracts are).

Indeed, we should place all new-born babies on Ellis island until they can choose to enter society or not,

[Non Aligned States]

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.

Going into debt to get an education assumes that you can pay it off before the interest snowballs to impossible levels. If you break a leg, or come down with a debilitating disease, you're dead.

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.

Yes. You haven't planned for it. If you come down with leukemia, or some other fatal disease that your insurance company weasels out of, you're screwed. And while you could retain a lawyer on contingency, the insurance firm simply has to stall long enough, and they certainly can with their much greater access to legal resources, for you to drop dead after you've exhausted your resources to treat the disease. Or rather simpler, the insurance firm goes bust, having put significant investments in Fanny and Mae pre-economic crash.

You failed to plan for absolute worse case scenario. And so if it comes to pass, you deserve to die, just the way you advocated.

[Trippoli]

A paraplegic, mentally deficient person cannot serve me a burger, dig me a ditch, or connect my call to a help center in India. All that person can do is drain public funds if there are not private means available.

If you cannot contribute, you should not be entitled to anything.

Okay, so if you fuck up somehow in your early teens and no one is willing to hire you now, let me know so I can point and laugh. You kind of people constantly bitch about an America where everyone has the opportunity to succeed but when it comes to you, you just blow them off.

[Duetopia]

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.

HMO denying payment for service to a terminally ill cancer patient. Because HMOs are immune to law suits, once the patient dies, the insurance company is no longer liable for anything even if the patient was previously owed compensation for a treatment. That's a perfect example.

[SD_Film Artists]

And while we're on the subject of commerical health care: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWc3WY3fuZU

[Barringtonia]

All Hiddenrun is doing is selecting the points that allow him to reiterate the same point again and again, he's said nothing aside from, essentially 'I choose to do what I want',

It's easy to live in a fantasy world where you can pick and choose so,

[Czardas]

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.

I really love some of the hilarious assumptions you people make.

I had a 4.3something GPA in high school. I went to a college consistently rated as one of the top 20 or so in the entire world. I also got laid off from my job last year, because the company I worked for was going out of business, since the economic downturn meant we simply weren't getting enough new clients to stay afloat. I've applied for several hundred jobs since then. I haven't been hired for any of them, largely because I'm overeducated for most of them.

But sure, keep telling yourself that everyone who's unemployed is just stupid and lazy. Keep pretending it could never happen to you. If you think it hard enough, maybe you can magically make it true.

Silly, you should have picked a job that you couldn't possibly get laid off from in any kind of financial crisis whatsoever. Don't you know how to predict the future?

[Hiddenrun]

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,

Again with the ridiculous plugs at insurance companies. Do you lot get together and plan this?

Know the details of your insurance. If your insurance does not cover everything you want it to cover, then either switch coverage, or obtain additional coverage. I live in an area that is prone to flooding, and yet most insurance companies locally absolutely refuse to sell flood insurance. I bought local insurance for everything else, and went further for a company that was willing to cover me for flood damage. Beats sitting around and moaning about how the insurance companies who specifically did not cover flood damage wouldn't pay for me to fix my basement last spring.

But don't let facts get in the way of your anti-insurance crying.

jobs never EVER fire you for reasons that weren't completely your own fault,

Haven't you ever heard the rule of thumb of ensuring you have at least three months of pay in the bank in case of job loss? If you've been ensuring that you remain abreast of professional developments, and put in the effort necessary to make a good name for yourself in your field, you should be able to find another position if your is cut. And if not, you can always take a job outside of your field to ensure you continue to feed your family while you seek better employment.

If you get sick, you should have medical coverage for that. If you have debts, you should have insurance that cover job loss (for fucks sakes people, even your credit cards offer insurance plans that PAY OFF YOUR BALANCE or freeze your interest if you lose your job).

I'm sorry so many of you seem incapable of planning ahead. I hope you start understanding how important it is to do so.

you totally only get cancer if you deserve it! Also, the world is full of dancing unicorns who poop rainbows! Yay!

I hope you enjoyed your pointless and error-filled rant.

[Ourobora]

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.

I suppose I see it more as contributing to something that one day I may need. If I don't, it's just like never having to make an insurance claim. Personally I'd make it mandatory because of exactly this - people believing they are sufficiently prepared when they may in fact not be.

[Duetopia]

Volition need not be at the time of the event, of course. It can be an expressed will forged into a promise at an earlier time (which is what all contracts are).

Indeed, we should place all new-born babies on Ellis island until they can choose to enter society or not,

No, because Constitution is an implied contract. This is why US used to have civics classes in schools: so that everyone would understand the contract under which they live. Not having those classes does, in fact, remove volition from consent. I would be all for making them required again (perhaps even making them a requirement for participation in any public-sponsored activity -- including driving).

[Kamsaki]

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

His point is that no insurance company will write a contract that fulfils an "adequate" level of protection, I think, primarily because it would be unprofitable of them to do so. It is not the fault of the individual that no insurance company exists that will provide the kind of coverage he is looking for.

The point about national insurance is that its contracts are not constructed in such a way that the possibility of financial loss of any given contract is minimised; they're constructed in such a way that the overall net result is roughly zero. Since you're only looking for the point at which on average individuals take out only as much as they put in, you can afford to be a bit more generous with the terms of the contract than you can if you're looking to generate revenue from it.

However, in thinking of it in this way, I can see that the private insurance approach may be the better one in the US. The idea that Americans would put as much into healthcare financing as they would take out is probably not reasonable, given certain aspects of your culture and lifestyle.

[Treznor]

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.

No, insurance companies are not charities. They're interested in one thing: profit. If they can deny coverage to someone who needs it, they'll do it, and they do. They do it so much there's growing support for getting rid of them. It's funny that people talking against socialized healthcare warn us that it'll mean rationing, because that's what's happening to us right now with private health care.

I don't give a shit if insurance companies make a profit or not. I'm concerned with people's health and lives. I'm sorry if that doesn't register as a point of concern for you.

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.

As I pointed out, not everybody has the presence of mind to make a good case, or the resources to challenge a multi-billion dollar company who can save money by dragging out a court case until the claimant has no options left. I understand insurance contracts perfectly well, after helping my parents fight their insurance company for lack of coverage for a disease that eventually killed my father. We were forced to settle for part of the costs after my father died because there wasn't the will or the money to keep going.

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.

Ah, I see. You're projecting your greed onto me. Sorry, I don't care about filling my pockets. I simply don't care enough about your greed to stop promoting public options that will help everybody, including you. You think everybody getting basic medical care won't help you? Remember that the next time you catch the flu from someone who couldn't afford to stay home from work.

[Hiddenrun]

You gotta be kidding me.

Have you ever filed a claim with an insurance company?

Multiple times.

I make a point of understanding my coverage.

[Farnhamia]

All Hiddenrun is doing is selecting the points that allow him to reiterate the same point again and again, he's said nothing aside from, essentially 'I choose to do what I want',

It's easy to live in a fantasy world where you can pick and choose so,

Exactly. This is the entirety of his argument: "Once again, I contribute to the well-being of people I choose to contribute to. If you are offended that you are not on that list, perhaps you should make yourself useful to me in some manner."