Governments tellin' you to do stuff

[Fifthfiend]

I wanted to respond to POS in the guns thread but he was right that the thing I was responding to was pretty well away from the original topic so I said okay, I'll make another topic.

Originally Posted by POS

Which, as much of a tangent as this is, I feel is a criminal misuse of legislation as well. The government has no right to force you to pay a private company for a service that you may very possibly never need. I feel the same way about this "let's just make it a law that everyone has to have health insurance" idea a lot of the current presidential candidates are trying to push. If the problem is that people don't have the money to afford a service, why is making them obligated by law to pay for it a solution?

I guess I don't really have an issue on principle with car insurance / health insurance / mandated gun ownership because I'm pretty much okay with the government saying from time to time people are required to do stuff for the sake of the public good. On some level it just goes to the ability of the government to, well, govern, cause if they can't tell people to do stuff then they really aren't going to be doing a whole lot of effective governing.

I mean none of the above are really any different from, say, taxation; the government could always just up your taxes by whatever's the cost of a basic gun and then mail you a gun with a note saying "Okay citizen, here's your gun."

As far as stuff you'll never need, I don't really have too hard of a problem with that just because a lot of stuff government does isn't stuff I'll necessarily ever need. Again, they already require me to give them tax money to spend on highways I won't necessarily drive on or student loans for people other than me or to pay for an army that might never actually be needed to defend me from foreign invaders and lots of other things.

It's just that if I ever do need any of that stuff it's there, and even if I personally don't use it, I still indirectly benefit from all of that stuff being available to other people who do need it. Same as how I generally benifit from living in a world where people can cross streets with some assurance that if someone hits them with a car, then that person will be held accountable for their medical bills and things.

I do have a lot of problems with how these things are done in practice. Among other things health insurance mandates still leave our health in the hands of health insurance companies, which have proven themselves to be extremely disinterested in providing any particular person paying them money with any kind of actual medical coverage. And it continually upsets me that there isn't a law requiring car insurance companies to refund, say, 80% of whatever money they're paid that isn't paid out to people in actual claims. But I have a lot of particular disagreements with where people are spending my tax money too.

[Demetrius]

I'm having trouble getting this thought to fully form due to lack of sleep, so please forgive the oddness of it all.

What do you think would happen with government run health insurance? If you had to sue them (which sometimes you do need to do to get benefits) would you then be suing the government and starting off screwed?

The idea of even bigger government, with a greater control into my life worries me a great deal. The prospect of yet another layer of bureaucracy between my money and where it ends up just isn't right.

How much of the taxes we pay now go into systems that are outdated and could be merged with other offices to cut down on redundancies?

In the end, I think that before any system is implemented, we need to cut the fat and redundancies out that are not just costing money and clogging things up. I know budgets do this every year, but how much money goes into the maintenance of things we just don't need and could do better without?

[Xaeta]

Originally Posted by Demetrius

What do you think would happen with government run health insurance?
...
How much of the taxes we pay now go into systems that are outdated and could be merged with other offices to cut down on redundancies?
...
I know budgets do this every year, but how much money goes into the maintenance of things we just don't need and could do better without?

Well...if the government run health insurance, the government would be in slightly more debt because of how much medical care it would be paying for for everybody. Essentially, everyone would be insured, everyone would be covered, and if anything went wrong, don't worry, it's all good. The government would just be paying a lot of bills that it shouldn't - that is mostly why insurance is left to individual private corporations so that it's taken off the governments hand. Which doesn't help when "good medical directors" are the ones who turn down X more patients than the next doctor to save the company money. Taxes would be slightly increased to bring in the common allowance for medical care - depending on the quality. Budgeting in the United States would be redirected from technological research and military development to medical care and citizen welfare.

Then again, having universal government-issued healthcare is "the first step to socialism" as Ronal Reagan had put it. So is that happening - NO.

[POS Industries]

Originally Posted by Xaeta

Well...if the government run health insurance, the government would be in slightly more debt because of how much medical care it would be paying for for everybody. Essentially, everyone would be insured, everyone would be covered, and if anything went wrong, don't worry, it's all good. The government would just be paying a lot of bills that it shouldn't - that is mostly why insurance is left to individual private corporations so that it's taken off the governments hand. Which doesn't help when "good medical directors" are the ones who turn down X more patients than the next doctor to save the company money. Taxes would be slightly increased to bring in the common allowance for medical care - depending on the quality. Budgeting in the United States would be redirected from technological research and military development to medical care and citizen welfare.

Then again, having universal government-issued healthcare is "the first step to socialism" as Ronal Reagan had put it. So is that happening - NO.

Well, as was already stated, by canceling all the government health care programs already in effect in the United States and redirecting the funds toward a less bloated, streamlined universal health care system, there would likely be little to no impact on the rest of the national budget.

Also, I don't really agree with the slippery slope idea that your Reagan quote suggests. There's the obvious point that we don't have to keep taking more steps toward socialism afterward, but really we'd hardly be taking the first step at all. We already have numerous publicly-funded service programs, from schools to police to road work and on and on.

[Mesden]

Originally Posted by POS Industries

Well, as was already stated, by canceling all the government health care programs already in effect in the United States and redirecting the funds toward a less bloated, streamlined universal health care system, there would likely be little to no impact on the rest of the national budget.

No, we would spend noticeably less money. We already spend stupidly high amounts of money on unneeded public healthcare (Expansions on Medicare part-d anyone?).

Also, I don't really agree with the slippery slope idea that your Reagan quote suggests. There's the obvious point that we don't have to keep taking more steps toward socialism afterward, but really we'd hardly be taking the first step at all. We already have numerous publicly-funded service programs, from schools to police to road work and on and on.

Just to emphasize this point, of social healthcare means we're socialists or going to become socialists really soon, then public schooling should've made us communists a long time ago.

[POS Industries]

Originally Posted by Mesden

No, we would spend noticeably less money. We already spend stupidly high amounts of money on unneeded public healthcare (Expansions on Medicare part-d anyone?).

Well, I was basically giving the most conservative estimate of the average taxpayer's potential savings but yeah, pretty much.

[Odjn]

I think we should have a government insurance policy that costs a certain amount. That way private companies would have to compete with that rather than work among themselves to determine pricing.

[Xaeta]

Originally Posted by POS Industries

...but really we'd hardly be taking the first step at all. We already have numerous publicly-funded service programs, from schools to police to road work and on and on.

True. But it's not that Americans would be taking the first step or not, it's the ideal that the first step is actually there - the threat of Comminsm/Socialsm is such a redundant fear passed down through the generations, to the point where merely speak of it in the wrong crowds will hardly end well.
But publicly-funded programs can only go so far and do so much because - as the name implies - it's publically funded. Road workers will only work as hard as you pay them, and police will work as hard as they're stressed. That's where private corporations take on the curve to stop the government from spending money and make money at the same time.
So essentially there's a big reliance on private corporations to save you because you're a member - NOT A SHAREHOLDER, a member....pffft, yea right.

[Xaeta]

Originally Posted by POS Industries

Also, I don't really agree with the slippery slope idea that your Reagan quote suggests. There's the obvious point that we don't have to keep taking more steps toward socialism afterward, but really we'd hardly be taking the first step at all. We already have numerous publicly-funded service programs, from schools to police to road work and on and on.

To tell you the truth I don't really like that quote either. I use it as a reference to why universal healthcare is a prominent problem in America and why it won't be done any time soon. I mean, privately owned health-insurance companies and many senators spent hundreds of millions of dollars to SILENCE Hilary Clinton and her plans of bettered (near universal) healthcare.
Not to sound Communist, but....is America SO capitalist that it will constantly allow private business to dictate if you can (RATE TO) see the doctor or not? I guess getting an extra $500,000 a year over the next man is rather tempting....

[POS Industries]

I totally agree with Fifth on this one, especially this part here:

Originally Posted by Fifthfiend

I do have a lot of problems with how these things are done in practice. Among other things health insurance mandates still leave our health in the hands of health insurance companies, which have proven themselves to be extremely disinterested in providing any particular person paying them money with any kind of actual medical coverage. And it continually upsets me that there isn't a law requiring car insurance companies to refund, say, 80% of whatever money they're paid that isn't paid out to people in actual claims. But I have a lot of particular disagreements with where people are spending my tax money too.

My issue with this new wave of "pay company X to provide service Y so you can potentially make sure horrible thing Z is paid for if it happens" plans that the government's going for lately is that there are ways that the tax dollars I already pay these people to deal with stuff goes to the actual stuff-dealing.

Car insurance is the major one here, as it's the biggest one currently in practice. The idea is that, if you get into a car accident and it's not your fault and the other person doesn't have insurance, than your damages may never be paid for. So the government decided to kill two birds with one stone and make it so that you are legally obligated to have car insurance if you plan to drive, thus theoretically solving the problem and putting more money into the pockets of the insurance companies that undoubtedly give them campaign donations.

And it's that second part that bothers me most. The only people that are most benefitting from this law are car insurance companies. A mandatory health insurance law will be no different, obviously. As to the car insurance, another way to go would simply to make the driver responsible for the accident legally obligated to pay the damages, and if they don't they are taken to court and fined for the damages, which are then paid by the court to the victim. Then, if the defendant doesn't have the money to pay the fines, the state will repossess your belongings and sell them at auction until the fines are paid off. Or they could also garner your wages as a less drastic measure. The end.

This way, you are encouraged to have car insurance because if you don't and you get in an accident that's your fault, you don't have to pay major consequences.

As for the health care thing, if they scrapped all the Federal and State health programs we already have running (Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP, special health coverage for federal and state employees and elected officials, etc) and then redirected the funding into a universal health system that automatically covers everyone immediately with no huge time-consuming and money-draining bureaucracy, it is very possible that it would work with either very little tax increase or even none whatsoever. Our country is large enough and rich enough to afford it.

I really don't have a problem with being taxed by the government for services they provide because the government isn't making a profit for providing those services, which means that the money I'm paying is substantially less than the money I would be paying a private corporation for the same service.