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?

[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.

[TheSpacePope]

To put a finer point on it, why is it that the government has to provide these health services? The current medical system would work fine with subsidies paid based on the number of patients that you free-rided based on their lack on insurance. Also, Pos, I completely agree that the mandatory car insurance thing is silly. I myself have had to pay a 200 dollar fine, and then go get car insurance, which in my book, is a double tax on my insurance. (still have not gotten a proper payout from any insurance co_)

I'd like the size of the government to decrease, so setting up departments of this and that to handle these new responsibilities is a very bad Idea in my book.

[Arlia Janet]

"The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy."

The mandatory car insurance laws have absolutely no teeth it seems. I've also seen claims of racial/socioeconomic profiling when insurance checks are actually set up. So it's not exactly painless to enforce. The local paper here reported that 4 out of 10 drivers are uninsured (and 1 of 10 are unlicensed). That's why I have to get insurance against uninsured drivers.

Not making a comment one way or another yet, just stating a few observations.

[POS Industries]

But see, the departments are already there, but in broken up, costly, overbloated bureaucratic forms. Essentially its the same money we're paying into the system, except that it just goes directly to paying for everyone's medical costs instead of paying a huge amount of people to decide what and what does not qualify for what coverage for whom. It's simply making it one large effective service provided by the government with the tax dollars we pay into it.

And, frankly, the government doesn't have to provide the services, but with a nation as large and rich as we have, it doesn't make sense that there are millions of people that can't have a basic human right like being able to be treated for their illnesses. Going to the doctor shouldn't be a privilege.

[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.

[Fifthfiend]

Originally Posted by POS Industries

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



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.

Okay yeah I guess we are pretty much agreed. I guess I saw you saying about the government not having the "right" to do it and took that as more significant to your point than it was, cause I do disagree about saying they shouldn't ever be allowed to do that. But I do agree that in pretty much every instance of actual practice I can think of, it works very little to anyone's benefit, except for the small handful of people that own whatever business the government is directing people to give their money.

In general, it seems to be the case that when you try and mix private companies into government mandates, you tend to end up with the worst of both; cause you pretty much end up subverting all the mechanisms meant to keep either one honest (the government can't be held accountable by way of voting or anything because any problems can be put at the feet of the private companies who actually run the program, and the companies are insulated from market forces by the government's requirement that people give them money).

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.

Compared to what countries with national health care spend, I think the addup for government health programs is actually significantly more per-capita.

And that's not even counting in the cost of, you know, all those private health insurance agencies.

[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.