View Full Version : Sanders and Cruz Debate Health Care
IMPress Polly
02-08-2017, 06:40 AM
Bernie Sanders and Ted Cruz debated health care policy last night on CNN. I thought it was pretty interesting debate (although I trust you can gather which side of the argument I'm on)! In case you missed it, I'll share it below. Note that he debate itself begins 7 and a half minutes into the video, so I recommend just skipping ahead to the 7:30 mark.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ugBYg1zbuY
NapRover
02-08-2017, 07:04 AM
Both had good points, I kept hearing sanders gripe about rich people though. As if everything a rich person has is immorally taken away from a poor person. That's why he belongs in a straight jacket.
Subdermal
02-08-2017, 07:15 AM
Both had good points, I kept hearing sanders gripe about rich people though. As if everything a rich person has is immorally taken away from a poor person. That's why he belongs in a straight jacket.
What are some good points you heard from Sanders?
How can something be a considered a 'Right' if something has to be provided by others to you to attain it?
NapRover
02-08-2017, 07:29 AM
What are some good points you heard from Sanders?
How can something be a considered a 'Right' if something has to be provided by others to you to attain it?
There's a fine line between healthcare being a right, and the richest country in the world's responsibility to care for the sick and disabled. I agree with him that pre-existing conditions should not disqualify one from care. I just experienced having to change my plan and my doctor. I join the "that's BS" crowd. My cousin was looking at ankle replacement--until he found out that it will cost $46k and his insurance covers 80% of it and he doesn't have the other $9.2k to cover it. You can get a nice wheelchair for less than that. Costs are way out of whack.
DGUtley
02-08-2017, 07:34 AM
I did not click your link to play the video but I watched a little bit of the debate and taped the rest. I will watch the rest of it tonight. One of the points that struck me was when a woman that owns a salon told Mr. Sanders that she could not afford to provide healthcare insurance for her employees and he looked right at her and basically said "tough".
BOOM: Watch Ted Cruz Shut Down Bernie Sanders.....
We all know that Sen. Ted Cruz owned Deadspin a few days ago. On Tuesday evening, he also owned Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT).
The two had a debate on CNN regarding the future of Obamacare. At one point, Cruz flipped the script entirely and said that he agreed with Sanders on one issue: the government is really corrupt. While he and Sanders both agree on this, Cruz thinks that it's a clear sign that D.C. shouldn't be given any more power--unlike what Sanders thinks.
Senator Ted Cruz
✔ @SenTedCruz I agree w @BernieSanders (https://twitter.com/BernieSanders), DC is corrupt! But if the problem is that govt is corrupt, why on Earth would you want more power in Washington?
9:38 PM - 7 Feb 2017 (https://twitter.com/SenTedCruz/status/829172579877474308)
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/christinerousselle/2017/02/08/boom-watch-ted-cruz-shut-down-bernie-sanders-n2282970
Cruz nailed the Sandman with that one. Good Times. http://www.debatepolitics.com/images/smilies/New_Smilies/2dance.gif
DGUtley
02-08-2017, 07:39 AM
There's a fine line between healthcare being a right, and the richest country in the world's responsibility to care for the sick and disabled. I agree with him that pre-existing conditions should not disqualify one from care. I just experienced having to change my plan and my doctor. I join the "that's BS" crowd. My cousin was looking at ankle replacement--until he found out that it will cost $46k and his insurance covers 80% of it and he doesn't have the other $9.2k to cover it. You can get a nice wheelchair for less than that. Costs are way out of whack.
The pre-existing condition exclusion is a fundamental underwriting principle. Everybody can understand and agree with the concept that you shouldn't be able to buy insurance for your car after you have already crashed it or to insure your house for a fire after it has already burned down. Those two examples are not considered discrimination but everybody jumps up-and-down screaming calling the principal discrimination as it applies to health insurance. It is harsh and a solution needs to be found. We have people buying insurance when they find out they're sick and then dropping it after the treatment. Regardless of whether it's the taxpayers or a private insurance company that foot that bill, how is that rational or fair?
FindersKeepers
02-08-2017, 07:49 AM
I did not click your link to play the video but I watched a little bit of the debate and taped the rest. I will watch the rest of it tonight. One of the points that struck me was when a woman that owns a salon told Mr. Sanders that she could not afford to provide healthcare insurance for her employees and he looked right at her and basically said "tough".
That's one of the basic faults, if not the biggest fault, of Sander's position. He think employers are responsible for providing healthcare insurance. He has no ability to comprehend how very small business struggle. It's inconceivable to him.
Before we can come up with a decent health plan, we need to realize that people (not their employers) are responsible for their own healthcare (not health insurance, which drags another industry into the fray).
In a true free market society, a patient and his doctor should be able to negotiate payment. If a patient had no money, the doctor should be able to work out a deal whereby the patient babysat the doctor's kids, or painted the doctor's house, or provided the doctor with eggs for a couple of years. Anything they want to negotiate should be on the table. But no -- we allow insurers to set prices for healthcare services, and, of course, they take on their own big profit, and suddenly, healthcare is priced out of the marketplace.
It's ridiculous.
Sanders is ridiculous.
Subdermal
02-08-2017, 07:53 AM
There's a fine line between healthcare being a right, and the richest country in the world's responsibility to care for the sick and disabled.
In our world before this massive ACA failure, do you think there were more people dying in this country due to lack of care...or fewer?
There is no fine line whatsoever. I asked a very specific question: how can something be called a Right when someone else is forced to provide something?
You didn't answer that question.
I agree with him that pre-existing conditions should not disqualify one from care.
That's nice, except that's not accurate, and - hence - you need to answer my first question to you in this post.
Sanders isn't simply proposing that people with pre-existing conditions cannot be refused care. He's proposing that people with pre-existing conditions cannot be refused insurance.
You think that's a subtle distinction?
Ok. I propose that a car insurance company cannot refuse to cover me if I get into an accident and then apply for insurance.
I just experienced having to change my plan and my doctor. I join the "that's BS" crowd. My cousin was looking at ankle replacement--until he found out that it will cost $46k and his insurance covers 80% of it and he doesn't have the other $9.2k to cover it. You can get a nice wheelchair for less than that. Costs are way out of whack.
And what do you propose? I've heard nothing about your suggested solution.
Subdermal
02-08-2017, 08:02 AM
The pre-existing condition exclusion is a fundamental underwriting principle. Everybody can understand and agree with the concept that you shouldn't be able to buy insurance for your car after you have already crashed it or to insure your house for a fire after it has already burned down. Those two examples are not considered discrimination but everybody jumps up-and-down screaming calling the principal discrimination as it applies to health insurance. It is harsh and a solution needs to be found. We have people buying insurance when they find out they're sick and then dropping it after the treatment. Regardless of whether it's the taxpayers or a private insurance company that foot that bill, how is that rational or fair?
You've got it, and it's exactly why I'm being extremely pointed with NapRover, who is granting that sort of insipid money grab some purchase.
The answer to this question requires an acceptance of reality. There are going to be tragedies no matter what path is chosen. Those in favor of promoting yet another massive Government program to address it will doubtless suppress stories of such tragedy under their path, and highlight such tragedies should the opposing (my) path be taken.
The answer is: free market healthcare with competition for services and products, a cap on liability for use of products and services; elimination of 3rd party coverage which loses controls on prices (ie: hospital bills Medicare/insurance for $20 aspirin, and patient doesn't care because patient doesn't see or pay bill).
Along with that, the other answer is charity as administered by private groups, and charity provided - as it has always been, and in spades, by the medial community itself, via its execution of the Hippocratic Oath.
That is a little covered story, for the reason of the agenda I illustrated at the outset. Much of my family are medical professionals. The amount of time and care - and medications - that they provide; that their hospitals that they head provide - is staggering. They are the answer - as they have been - to the hang-wringing so many leftists dedicated to pushing single payer boondoggles have been engaging in.
People die. They'll die no matter which way we pursue health care. It is far better to allow the free market to react to needs, and provide products and services at 1:1 negotiated rates in a climate of competition for those clients than to allow Government - which has ruined virtually everything it has touched, and exploded costs on society - to take it over.
Subdermal
02-08-2017, 08:06 AM
BOOM: Watch Ted Cruz Shut Down Bernie Sanders.....
We all know that Sen. Ted Cruz owned Deadspin a few days ago. On Tuesday evening, he also owned Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT).
The two had a debate on CNN regarding the future of Obamacare. At one point, Cruz flipped the script entirely and said that he agreed with Sanders on one issue: the government is really corrupt. While he and Sanders both agree on this, Cruz thinks that it's a clear sign that D.C. shouldn't be given any more power--unlike what Sanders thinks.
Senator Ted Cruz
✔ @SenTedCruz I agree w @BernieSanders (https://twitter.com/BernieSanders), DC is corrupt! But if the problem is that govt is corrupt, why on Earth would you want more power in Washington?
9:38 PM - 7 Feb 2017 (https://twitter.com/SenTedCruz/status/829172579877474308)
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/christinerousselle/2017/02/08/boom-watch-ted-cruz-shut-down-bernie-sanders-n2282970
Cruz nailed the Sandman with that one. Good Times. http://www.debatepolitics.com/images/smilies/New_Smilies/2dance.gif
It's a great point, and exactly why Sanders is a clueless duplicitous hypocrite. "Government is corrupt! We have to get the money out of politics! We also have to increase taxes to give Government more money to provide more services!"
:rolleyes:
But if Government is corrupt, clueless Bernie, how does giving Government more power make it less corrupt?
:thinking:
Leftists are loons.
midcan5
02-08-2017, 08:06 AM
The word 'rights' comes with too many hidden meanings. The use people attach to it shows quickly whether they have a heart, soul, compassion, a sense of reality, etc etc. Ask why someone with wealth has a right to the resources of the world and you hear some say they earned it. Personally I don't buy that argument for even a second. No time now but I'll share one person's view on concept. If you are really interested check out Parfit's 'On What Matters'. Beware a real challenge, you may lose your.....
"Core morality tells us that people have a right to what they earn by their own efforts freely exercised. It is this part of core morality that Ayn Rand objectivists, libertarians, and other right wingers tap into when they insist that taxation is slavery... The trouble with such arguments is that nothing is earned, nothing is deserved. Even if there really were moral rights to the fruit of our freely exercised abilities and talents, these talents and abilities are never freely acquired or exercised. Just as your innate and acquired intelligence and abilities are unearned, so also are your ambitions, along with the discipline, the willingness to train, and other traits that have to be combined with your talents and abilities to produce anything worthwhile at all.... We don't earn our inborn (excuse the expression "God given") talents and abilities. We had nothing to do with whether these traits were conferred on us or not. Similarly, we didn't earn the acquired character traits needed to convert these talents into achievements. They, too, were the result of deterministic processes (genetic and cultural) that were set in motion long before we were born. That is what excludes the possibility that we earned or deserve them. We were just lucky to have the combination of hardwired abilities and learned ambitions that resulted in the world beating a path to our door....No one ever earned or deserved the traits that resulted in the inequalities we enjoy - greater income and wealth, better health and longer life, admiration and social distinction, comfort, and leisure. Therefore, no one, including us, has a moral right to those inequalities. Core morality may permit unearned inequalities, but it is certainly not going to require them without some further moral reason to do so." Alex Rosenberg 'The Atheist's Guide to Reality'
Bernie Sanders and Ted Cruz debated health care policy last night on CNN. I thought it was pretty interesting debate (although I trust you can gather which side of the argument I'm on)! In case you missed it, I'll share it below. Note that he debate itself begins 7 and a half minutes into the video, so I recommend just skipping ahead to the 7:30 mark.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ugBYg1zbuY
The problem I have with both right and left debating healthcare, is the fact that both left and right have proven time and time again and again that when the federal government violates the Constitution and takes on authorities it doesn't have constitutionally, (see amendment 10), nothing good actually comes from it.
Both Cruz and Sandars only proved to me that they were both right about the other's healthcare position being a failure and they were both wrong about their own healthcare position being a road map to successful healthcare. Both systems have proven to be failures because both promote federal government meddling in healthcare where they don't constitutionally belong.
Subdermal
02-08-2017, 08:17 AM
The word 'rights' comes with too many hidden meanings. The use people attach to it shows quickly whether they have a heart, soul, compassion, a sense of reality, etc etc. Ask why someone with wealth has a right to the resources of the world and you hear some say they earned it. Personally I don't buy that argument for even a second. No time now but I'll share one person's view on concept. If you are really interested check out Parfit's 'On What Matters'. Beware a real challenge, you may lose your.....
"Core morality tells us that people have a right to what they earn by their own efforts freely exercised. It is this part of core morality that Ayn Rand objectivists, libertarians, and other right wingers tap into when they insist that taxation is slavery... The trouble with such arguments is that nothing is earned, nothing is deserved. Even if there really were moral rights to the fruit of our freely exercised abilities and talents, these talents and abilities are never freely acquired or exercised. Just as your innate and acquired intelligence and abilities are unearned, so also are your ambitions, along with the discipline, the willingness to train, and other traits that have to be combined with your talents and abilities to produce anything worthwhile at all.... We don't earn our inborn (excuse the expression "God given") talents and abilities. We had nothing to do with whether these traits were conferred on us or not. Similarly, we didn't earn the acquired character traits needed to convert these talents into achievements. They, too, were the result of deterministic processes (genetic and cultural) that were set in motion long before we were born. That is what excludes the possibility that we earned or deserve them. We were just lucky to have the combination of hardwired abilities and learned ambitions that resulted in the world beating a path to our door....No one ever earned or deserved the traits that resulted in the inequalities we enjoy - greater income and wealth, better health and longer life, admiration and social distinction, comfort, and leisure. Therefore, no one, including us, has a moral right to those inequalities. Core morality may permit unearned inequalities, but it is certainly not going to require them without some further moral reason to do so." Alex Rosenberg 'The Atheist's Guide to Reality'
Your screed should be renamed "The Atheist's Guide to a WhackaDoodle Fantasy Perception of Reality", as I do not believe - by his own metric - that he has earned the right to write it; have it read, or have others consider it.
Your post doesn't exist, and his stupid comments don't either. Because he said so.
It's a great point, and exactly why Sanders is a clueless duplicitous hypocrite. "Government is corrupt! We have to get the money out of politics! We also have to increase taxes to give Government more money to provide more services!"
:rolleyes:
But if Government is corrupt, clueless Bernie, how does giving Government more power make it less corrupt?
:thinking:
Leftists are loons.
That one line will cause the Sandman to avoid Cruz in the future. What was quite amusing was the Sandman thinking this was going to be a Weekend at Bernies.
Captain Obvious
02-08-2017, 09:03 AM
Healthcare is not a right.
Forcing the middle class to pay your tab is unethical.
Both Sanders and Cruz are frauds, neither know how to be honest.
Green Arrow
02-08-2017, 11:08 AM
That's one of the basic faults, if not the biggest fault, of Sander's position. He think employers are responsible for providing healthcare insurance. He has no ability to comprehend how very small business struggle. It's inconceivable to him.
Before we can come up with a decent health plan, we need to realize that people (not their employers) are responsible for their own healthcare (not health insurance, which drags another industry into the fray).
In a true free market society, a patient and his doctor should be able to negotiate payment. If a patient had no money, the doctor should be able to work out a deal whereby the patient babysat the doctor's kids, or painted the doctor's house, or provided the doctor with eggs for a couple of years. Anything they want to negotiate should be on the table. But no -- we allow insurers to set prices for healthcare services, and, of course, they take on their own big profit, and suddenly, healthcare is priced out of the marketplace.
It's ridiculous.
Sanders is ridiculous.
Maybe but at least he's trying to do what he thinks is right to solve the problem, instead of throwing up his hands and letting "the market" fix it...eventually.
MisterVeritis
02-08-2017, 11:11 AM
Maybe but at least he's trying to do what he thinks is right to solve the problem, instead of throwing up his hands and letting "the market" fix it...eventually.
Once there is a wall of separation between government and health care the market will fix the problem instantly. That is what markets do.
DGUtley
02-08-2017, 11:17 AM
Maybe but at least he's trying to do what he thinks is right to solve the problem, instead of throwing up his hands and letting "the market" fix it...eventually.
I'm no expert, not by a long shot, but remember when computers were $8000 and those big screen TV's were $16,000 -- I do. The market took care of those items by competition. We've never had that here for healthcare. I don't know whether it'd help or not but I'm curious. I've long wondered whether "Catastrophic Coverage" should be mandatory -- or maybe even government funded through taxes. In other words - the first 'x' would be on you or your private insurer, but after that 100K or something high the government coverage kicks in. I'd think that the cost of the day-to-day coverage would drop bigly.
Green Arrow
02-08-2017, 01:33 PM
I'm no expert, not by a long shot, but remember when computers were $8000 and those big screen TV's were $16,000 -- I do. The market took care of those items by competition. We've never had that here for healthcare. I don't know whether it'd help or not but I'm curious. I've long wondered whether "Catastrophic Coverage" should be mandatory -- or maybe even government funded through taxes. In other words - the first 'x' would be on you or your private insurer, but after that 100K or something high the government coverage kicks in. I'd think that the cost of the day-to-day coverage would drop bigly.
Why not just cut out the middle man and go to a single-payer system?
DGUtley
02-08-2017, 01:47 PM
Why not just cut out the middle man and go to a single-payer system?
1. Then Mordor controls it - what you get, what you don't get, what it costs, etc..
2. Imagine what that TV or Computer would cost if the Government was the one selling it.....
Subdermal
02-08-2017, 02:28 PM
Healthcare is not a right.
Forcing the middle class to pay your tab is unethical.
Both Sanders and Cruz are frauds, neither know how to be honest.
I'm not following on what Cruz has said that you believe is fraudulent.
Subdermal
02-08-2017, 02:29 PM
Why not just cut out the middle man and go to a single-payer system?
Doctor---->Government----->Patient
Which middleman are you thinking will be cut out in your plan again?
Subdermal
02-08-2017, 02:30 PM
Maybe but at least he's trying to do what he thinks is right to solve the problem, instead of throwing up his hands and letting "the market" fix it...eventually.
That's really poor logic, considering the track record of Government on just about anything.
Green Arrow
02-08-2017, 02:39 PM
1. Then Mordor controls it - what you get, what you don't get, what it costs, etc..
And that would be bad because...?
2. Imagine what that TV or Computer would cost if the Government was the one selling it.....
We're not talking about selling, here.
Green Arrow
02-08-2017, 02:40 PM
That's really poor logic, considering the track record of Government on just about anything.
What is poor logic is the myth that this is all a zero-sum game, that government is either all bad or all good. Government is just government. What is bad or good is what we do with it.
IMPress Polly
02-08-2017, 04:06 PM
I go further than Sanders does. I favor a fully nationalized system of health care, as in national insurance (this is essentially where Sanders' program ends), nationally-owned medical facilities, and the nationalization of drug companies. Countries that employ a fully nationalized health care system have lower health care costs than those that don't, simply put. It is clearly the most effective way of getting medical costs under control not only from the standpoint of the consumer (insurance becomes free and prescription drugs either free or near-free), but also in terms of administrative expenses (more efficient record-keeping, no profits or advertising costs to tack on, etc.). And there's furthermore no reason why such a system cannot be managed by the doctors, nurses, and other workers and professionals who do the toil in these fields rather than by executives and investors on Wall Street.
As to what does and doesn't work about the Affordable Care Act, the ACA can be essentially divided into two main parts: the Medicaid expansion and the insurance pools. The former works. The latter does not. While the ACA has successfully reduced the uninsured rate to the lowest in American history (no thanks to the many states that refuse to participate in the Medicaid expansion!), the fact that most of the people who enroll in the plans in the insurance pools require the expanded Medicaid coverage to afford their plans goes frankly to prove that the plans are not actually affordable, as the law's title suggests they should be. The system would work better if we just kept the individual mandate and the Medicaid expansion and scrapped the insurance pools, frankly! We would do better still though to just eliminate the health insurance industry because relying on the generosity of for-profit businesses to keep costs under control never works. It didn't work before the ACA and it doesn't work now.
Subdermal
02-08-2017, 11:56 PM
What is poor logic is the myth that this is all a zero-sum game, that government is either all bad or all good.
Who is arguing binary thinking here? Government is inefficient; wasteful and has an awful track record of success. In just about everything.
Government is just government. What is bad or good is what we do with it.
I don't even know what this means, and neither do you.
Green Arrow
02-09-2017, 12:01 AM
Who is arguing binary thinking here? Government is inefficient; wasteful and has an awful track record of success. In just about everything.
Well, you do, when you argue that government is 95-99% inefficient, wasteful, and bad at just about everything.
I don't even know what this means, and neither do you.
I do know what it means, actually. It's pretty clear.
Subdermal
02-09-2017, 08:28 AM
Well, you do, when you argue that government is 95-99% inefficient, wasteful, and bad at just about everything.
:biglaugh:
Binary. Allows for only two possibilities. You've just written a concession of my point. You have also failed to demonstrate how I'm wrong about it.
I do know what it means, actually. It's pretty clear.
And yet you refuse to explain it. Or expound in any way, really.
Green Arrow
02-09-2017, 10:48 AM
:biglaugh:
Binary. Allows for only two possibilities. You've just written a concession of my point. You have also failed to demonstrate how I'm wrong about it.
:rollseyes:
Call it whatever you want to, it's not a zero sum game as I said. You can't demonstrate that government is uniquely terrible at everything.
And yet you refuse to explain it. Or expound in any way, really.
Correct, because I think it's clear and self-explanatory and thus not in need of explanation. Government is a tool, not a sentient being, it's not inherently good or bad. All that is good or bad is how we use it.
Tahuyaman
02-09-2017, 10:55 AM
Too many people now believe it's government's job to provide people with more and more of our human needs.
What's ironic is that those are the same people who claim that they don't support big government and claim that they stand for more idividual freedom.
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