[Pharylon]

I don't think emotional arguments are a distraction, they're the whole point. This is a moral issue. Other countries manage to have universal healthcare and it doesn't break the bank. In fact, they spend less per person. The fiscal argument is the distraction.

[conanbatt]

> I don't think emotional arguments are a distraction, they're the whole point. This is a moral issue.

I find the moral argument to be disingenuous. It is immoral to make poor people pay a tax that cure the diseases of rich people.

"Nobody should go hungry, so everyone should be able to eat anywhere they want and not look at the tab".

[Pharylon]

Disingenuous? You think people arguing that it's immoral for someone to die because they were born poor are not actually sincere in their argument? Tell me, what is my evil ulterior motive? Do I actually just want to increase taxes for the hell of it?

[austincheney]

> You think people arguing that it's immoral for someone to die because they were born poor are not actually sincere in their argument?

That would depend upon the specifics of the argument at hand. I also don't think increased funding is a solution to the problem.

[conanbatt]

Of course its not a sincere argument: I believe that you can believe it, but its insincere at least to yourself to say that the reason healthcare should be universally provided through government is for the poor. If you cared for the poor the argument is to make food stamps for healthcare services, not universal. Universal is also for yourself. So yes, it is disingenuous to say that which is best for your is also best for the poor.

Reminds me to the typical argument that college should be free so poor people can go, but ultimately, middle class and up go. Healthcare is similar: the richer live longer, which means they live more of the most expensive healthcare years.

[mattmanser]

Your argument makes no sense.

It's like garbage collection, it's just something the government provides as a service to all citizens.

Whether it's regressive or progressive entirely depends on the tax used to pay for it. If everyone has to pay exactly the same, it's regressive, as poor people are impacted much more than rich people. If it's a proportion of income, it's progressive.

In the UK our national insurance, which pays for our universal healthcare, social welfare and pensions, is actually a regressive tax, it's 12% on the first £46k you earn, then 2% after that (something like your first £6k is actually tax free). I don't know why people don't make a bigger deal out of this given that the NHS is suffering at the moment.

[conanbatt]

> In the UK our national insurance, which pays for our universal healthcare, social welfare and pensions, is actually a regressive tax, it's 12% on the first £46k you earn, then 2% after that (something like your first £6k is actually tax free). I don't know why people don't make a bigger deal out of this given that the NHS is suffering at the moment.

Are you arguing that NHS is not a benefit to the poor? Because its a regressive tax? So eliminating NHS is actually in benefit of the poorer classes.

[mattmanser]

No, I replied and rapidly edited out a few words of my original reply to try and make it clearer, but seem to have done the opposite. The last sentence initially started with "Interestingly". My original meaning of the last paragraph was "here is an interesting, related, factoid. The UK happens to have a regressive tax to pay for the NHS".

My main point is that governments are free to provide the same service to rich and poor without that being regressive or disproportionately favouring the rich. For example, bin collection, policing, national defence, fire safety, etc.

A universal health service can simply be another collective service. If you want more because you're rich, in the UK we also have private healthcare services you can pay for, much like you can pay for a cleaner in addition to your bin collections or a body guard in addition to the police or national defence or pay to install fire suppression in addition to the national fire service.

What makes it regressive or not is how it is taxed for.

[mundo]

> "Nobody should go hungry, so everyone should be able to eat anywhere they want and not look at the tab".

This is a violation of the most oft-ignored HN guideline: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize."

What the moral argument side is saying is that it is immoral for a country this rich to not provide socialized healthcare up to a certain level. What level, specifically? I don't know. I'm guessing it would probably include a diabetic's insulin, and would not include a smoker's lung transplant. The point is, (according to the argument you're disagreeing with) there is a level and it should be higher than it is now.

What you did with your straw-man quote - "everyone should be able to eat anywhere they want and not look at the tab" is set the level at infinity, so that the argument is trivially wrong and easy to defeat. You've done the same elsewhere: "The logical consequence of this is that any cost must be paid" and "If its rationed then some people are going to be left out, and the moral argument crumbles, as people that need it don't get it." This doesn't get us anywhere.

Try, before responding to an argument, paraphrasing it such that the person who you're arguing with would agree. If you can't do that - if you can't restate their position in a way that they would say, "Yeah, that is indeed my position" - then you don't understand it well enough to argue against it.

[conanbatt]

Lets do that excercise "It is immoral for wealth to exist in a way that, properly distributed, would solve the fundamental necessities of people. Thus, wealth should be confiscated until this goal is achieved for morality"

And I answer "the very application of that goal will be immoral because it will take from all and give to all, and will do so unevenly on both ends while also destroy a part of everything levied."

[mundo]

> "It is immoral for wealth to exist in a way that, properly distributed, would solve the fundamental necessities of people. Thus, wealth should be confiscated until this goal is achieved for morality"

I don't believe anyone in this thread would say, "Yes, that is what I was arguing." I don't believe you do either. Stop trying to jujitsu random passersby in to discussing your preferred topic with you and the downvotes will abate.

[SilasX]

"It is morally wrong that someone can die from X because they're poor" is a fine point to make. There's nothing wrong with moralizing in that sense, IMHO.

The problem is when you add "And therefore the presence of profit making entities must be the cause". That inserts a moral argument as a substitute for identifying the core problem. I think that's the kind of error you're making here:

>Other countries manage to have universal healthcare and it doesn't break the bank. In fact, they spend less per person.

True, but there are differences other than the universal coverage. The same things that lead, in the US, to bureaucratic bloat and 700% markups on saline, may very well also torpedo those systems!

I think it's a reasonable point for the parent to criticize the kind of moralizing that doesn't attempt a legitimate root cause of why health care spending is so ineffective in the US.

[marnett]

You are correct. There are plenty of other factors that result in broken healthcare, broken prisons, broken public health, broken cities.

But what are they? What is the root cause resulting in the richest country in the world being so dysfunctional for so many of its own citizens?

[Shivetya]

However there is a trust issue here, how can Americans truly trust their government to implement it right when the same government cannot get the VA right and worse there seems to be active opposition within the VA and government to right it?

Throw in the BIS run systems which make the VA look good and its a very hard sale.

A lot of the cost of medical care is because there are too many limits on competition for both services and insurance. It certainly needs reform but to get the trust of the people it must prove it can run what it has