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What was it that one learned through a great books curriculum? Certainly not "conservatism" in any contemporary American sense of the term. We were not taught to become American patriots, or religious pietists, or to worship what Rudyard Kipling called "the Gods of the Market Place." We were not instructed in the evils of Marxism, or the glories of capitalism, or even the superiority of Western civilization.
As I think about it, I'm not sure we were taught anything at all. What we did was read books that raised serious questions about the human condition, and which invited us to attempt to ask serious questions of our own. Education, in this sense, wasn't a "teaching" with any fixed lesson. It was an exercise in interrogation.
To listen and understand; to question and disagree; to treat no proposition as sacred and no objection as impious; to be willing to entertain unpopular ideas and cultivate the habits of an open mind — this is what I was encouraged to do by my teachers at the University of Chicago.
It's what used to be called a liberal education.
The University of Chicago showed us something else: that every great idea is really just a spectacular disagreement with some other great idea.
Bret Stephens's speech warrants a full read. It makes valuable points that we all need to hear, even on SN.
(Score: 4, Disagree) by meustrus on Wednesday September 27 2017, @05:27PM (6 children)
The #1 problem with Medicaid is that poor people that don't qualify for it resent paying for poorer people to have better health care. Medicaid as health insurance is actually amazing because it covers everything immediately, no bureaucratic runaround required. No fighting with insurance co death panels to pay for covered services. The administrative overhead is minuscule compared to industry-standard overhead in the private sector.
So while people are generally unwilling to expand Medicaid, that's usually because to them Medicaid means insurance for other people on their dime. Medicare-for-all, meanwhile, enjoys the support of a large majority of voters despite being a technically worse system.
The real beginning of the end of private insurance is when people can buy into government-run health insurance. That's when people will have the chance to pay less for better service.
So no, doubling down on Medicaid is not trying harder to make a failing system work. It's scaling up a successful system.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday September 27 2017, @07:57PM (5 children)
Recall that Medicaid pays less for health care than anyone else does (even after the alleged overhead of administration expenses). That translates directly into poorer quality care, IMHO.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 27 2017, @10:03PM (1 child)
Paying less immediated means shoddy quality?
Or does it mean its actually better run and they have implemented well thought out cost control strategies.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday September 28 2017, @02:16AM
(Score: 3, Interesting) by meustrus on Wednesday September 27 2017, @10:56PM (2 children)
And yet they paid for my son to be flown by helicopter to a hospital 200 miles away, receive intensive care from the top specialists in the state, and remain under in-patient care for two weeks without a single contribution from my end.
Then I got a job that paid me too much to be eligible for Medicaid, and I had to pay $200/month on top of my premiums just to receive follow-up treatment. From two separate billing departments, months after the fact, and the treatment wasn't even "pre-existing" because we had continuous insurance coverage.
This is on top of the stellar maintenance care we received in the time prior to this hospital visit, where we were able to go to any doctor we wanted without asking the bureaucracy for permission, get whatever treatment the doctor wanted to give us without asking the bureaucracy for permission, and get whatever medications the doctor prescribed without asking the bureaucracy for permission.
Having been on both sides, I'm not bitter that my taxes go to support poor people having better medical coverage than I do now. But I am bitter that I'm not allowed to have that coverage anymore, no matter what I'm willing to pay in premiums.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday September 28 2017, @02:35AM (1 child)
I've noticed that there's this mysterious effect where people who benefit from a policy favor the policy and people who don't, don't. We also need to keep in mind that it's good politics to spare no expense for sick kids.
My experience with Medicaid was an old coworker who got sick with some sort of kidney or bladder infection and stayed for a few days in a hospital courtesy of Medicaid. They kicked him out while he still was wearing the catheter. I got to drive him home. So I'm not equally impressed with Medicaid though I grant the treatment he received may well have saved his life.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Monday October 02 2017, @05:15PM
That's not an experience limited to Medicaid patients. Many hospitals are famous, especially in LA, for dumping patients as soon as they can get away with it.
It's not a problem of who is paying for the medical care, but how the medical care is delivered and for how much money. We have an abundance of for-profit hospitals in the US, and they operate by delivering the most expensive care they expect to be paid for. They get in real close with the insurers to give them a good deal while ensuring that patients are never given the information to make an informed decision that keeps anybody's costs down. And if you aren't part of this system, they want you gone as soon as possible.
Unfortunately, nobody is talking about how to fix this part of the system. The closest we get is Medica(re|id)-for-all, which would reduce bureaucratic expenses and streamline billing while also consolidating bargaining authority in an organization more accountable to the people. But that's not why liberals want it, so the best we can hope for is that expenses just slowly go down over time on their own because things are more efficient.
What we need most of all is for so-called conservatives to get their heads out of their asses and join the rest of the developed world in accepting healthcare as a government responsibility. Only fiscal conservatives would even try to solve the real problems plaguing healthcare in the US. They just have to stop shouting "NOT IT" first.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?