Should socialized health care deny/delay treatment to smokers and the obese?

[Thanda]

How do you figure they don't want it?

They're sabotaging it.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

If you really don't understand that principle then unfortunately I must question your intelligence. Suppose I am an investor. Who do you suppose I will likely give my money to? Some who is sitting on their backs side with a good idea? Or someone with a good idea who has already drawn up a business plan, made efforts to start the business and is now looking for extra cash to expand his business to new markets?[

The answer is obviously the latter. Hence, as an investor, I am likely to help those who are helping themselves. For just because someone is helping themselves it does not mean they will be able to achieve their goals all on their own. And that is where God comes in. Those who desire eternal life, and who work to improve themselves and who seek to turn away from evil, those are they who God helps. Those are they who God saves.

So God is deficient, and the thing he needs to correct his deficiency is as many human works as possible? This is the implication of what you're saying... and it doesn't mesh with the beliefs of any Christian denomination that I'm familiar with.

Your analogy of business utterly fails, of course. We don't help other people out of concern for our own ROI.

 

[Thanda]

So God is deficient, and the thing he needs to correct his deficiency is as many human works as possible? This is the implication of what you're saying... and it doesn't mesh with the beliefs of any Christian denomination that I'm familiar with.

Your analogy of business utterly fails, of course. We don't help other people out of concern for our own ROI.

Where do you get the idea that God is deficient. Instead, God is just. He will not give eternal life to anyone who doesn't want it. And those who want it will do everything they can to try to obtain it.

Your analogy of business utterly fails, of course. We don't help other people out of concern for our own ROI.

It does not. If you want to tell me that someone who helps someone else does so with no thought of what they might gain (such as happiness) then you are trying to say that people who help others are irrational.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Where do you get the idea that God is deficient. Instead, God is just. He will not give eternal life to anyone who doesn't want it. And those who want it will do everything they can to try to obtain it.

When an investor invests in a company in the way you describe, it's with the hope of receiving something in return that he doesn't have already (i.e. more money). The analogy assumes that the investor is lacking whatever proceeds he hopes to get from the investment.

Look - it's your analogy; its implications are your problem. If it doesn't work, you're free to abandon it and make your argument some other way.

It does not. If you want to tell me that someone who helps someone else does so with no thought of what they might gain (such as happiness) then you are trying to say that people who help others are irrational.

Not irrational; their values just extend to things beyond themselves.

But you're still talking about God being motivated by desire and gain, which implies that God lacks something he wants or needs (since it implies that whatever he would gain, he doesn't have it already).

 

[jonathan180iq]

Augustus is right. Up until quite recently in Scotland cigarette packets were advertised freely and in full view behind the tills at a lot of shops and you could smoke just about anywhere you wanted. It's only in the last few years that smoking in public buildings has been banned and shops have been made to cover up their cigarette displays. I don't know what it's like elsewhere. It's not right for a society to give its citizens such easy access to such a harmful vice, to then punish them for using it by denying them healthcare access. That doesn't make sense.

Do you ever think about how insane it is that we once gave something so undeniably unhealthy such a prominent place in our daily lives?
Reimagine those displays as something else. Something horrible, like huffing gas. Think about what it took for smoking to become such an overwhelming part of our social lives.
It's everything wrong with capitalism, embodied in a slick ad campaign.

We have a multi-million dollar Coca Cola museum here. It's filled with lots of pompous exhibits, animatronics, celebrities, very crisp presentations, song, dance, the whole nine yards... And it's all for a goddam soda... It just blows my mind.

 

[jonathan180iq]

Where do you get the idea that God is deficient. Instead, God is just. He will not give eternal life to anyone who doesn't want it. And those who want it will do everything they can to try to obtain it.

Like a drug dealer?

 

[Thanda]

When an investor invests in a company in the way you describe, it's with the hope of receiving something in return that he doesn't have already (i.e. more money). The analogy assumes that the investor is lacking whatever proceeds he hopes to get from the investment.

Look - it's your analogy; its implications are your problem. If it doesn't work, you're free to abandon it and make your argument some other way.

Ah I see. Well I think deficient is poor choice of word. Warren Buffet still invests in businesses to make more money even though he is not lacking in money - he just wants more of a good thing (assume for a moment that money is a good thing).

Nowhere in any part of the Bible does it state that God has everything he wants. In fact,God's whole relation with Man as recorded in the Bible leads one to believe that man's salvation is something God desires and which he currently does not have. In connection with this note how Christ always speaks about glorifying the Father and giving God the glory (see also John 17). Clearly God desires more glory. God is a rational being and he has his motivations for why he cares about man. In John 3:16 Jesus tells that God saves us because he loves us. Now what happens to someone when something good happens to someone they love? Do they not receive happiness? Of course they do, and that is why people do good for those they love - so objects of their love may have success which will intern fill the doer of the good deeds with happiness.

Not irrational; their values just extend to things beyond themselves.

But you're still talking about God being motivated by desire and gain, which implies that God lacks something he wants or needs (since it implies that whatever he would gain, he doesn't have it already

I have basically answered this in the paragraphs above. Suffice it to say that any rational being who has nothing to gain from doing a specific action will not do that action.

 

[Thanda]

Like a drug dealer?

I don't get you?

 

[jonathan180iq]

I don't get you?

He will not give eternal life to anyone who doesn't want it. And those who want it will do everything they can to try to obtain it.

...Just like a drug dealer.

Replace the variable of "eternal life" with a drug of your choice and your sentence will still work. Thus, God is a drug dealer.

More directly, there's something to be said for the idea that people are addicted to the product that churches sell. The high of the conversion moment is a thing that most addicts will spend their whole lives trying to recapture. There was certainly a lot of effort put into selling the product initially, right? Lots of pomp and circumstance? Lots of mood altering music and impassioned speeches? Converts are always searching for that dream of contentment and peace that is always just one more "hit" away. One more good deed, or one more deep sermon is all it will take...When the weak stuff doesn't work, at least there's the promise that a bigger and better drug will be coming at the end. A drug that will make all the previous experiences seem like child's play. All you have to do is die before you can have it.

 

[Lyndon]

Thanda's portrayal of God's motivations is indefensible IMHO but so is calling God a drug dealer, give me a break!!

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Thanda's portrayal of God's motivations is indefensible IMHO but so is calling God a drug dealer, give me a break!!

I agree. "Drug dealer" is an analogy I usually reserve for clergy and proselytizers, not gods.

 

[YmirGF]

I agree. "Drug dealer" is an analogy I usually reserve for clergy and proselytizers, not gods.

Agreed. In the analogy, god(s) would be the intoxicant itself, not the middle-man.

 

[Parchment]

I always have to chuckle to myself when people talk about free health care because someone is paying for it through taxes, the money just doesn't fall out of the sky as the Greeks found out just a few years ago and tried to re-sue Germany for WWII reparations since they squandered the rest in a welfare nation. Once you hand over the the money and power of choice to a bureaucracy then you are subject to the whims and limitations of whoever is running the show at that specific time period. As far as the OP goes I'd say the word "elective" is key and yes I believe that if one hands over that power to someone else then they have the right to prioritize, like it or not they did it to themselves.

 

[Perditus]

I always have to chuckle to myself when people talk about free health care because someone is paying for it through taxes, the money just doesn't fall out of the sky as the Greeks found out just a few years ago and tried to re-sue Germany for WWII reparations since they squandered the rest in a welfare nation. Once you hand over the the money and power of choice to a bureaucracy then you are subject to the whims and limitations of whoever is running the show at that specific time period. As far as the OP goes I'd say the word "elective" is key and yes I believe that if one hands over that power to someone else then they have the right to prioritize, like it or not they did it to themselves.

The United States is a wealthy nation. We should, at the very least, enjoy national health care. That is not something that should be subject to Capitalist bulls**t.

I don't mind paying more taxes for this purpose.

 

[jonathan180iq]

The United States is a wealthy nation. We should, at the very least, enjoy national health care. That is not something that should be subject to Capitalist bulls**t.

I don't mind paying more taxes for this purpose.

Same with higher education.

 

[Perditus]

Same with higher education.

I'm not sure about that. Something would have to be done about the outrageous budget for higher education, as it would have to be for health care as well.

So, after writing this post, I agree with you after all.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

I'm not sure about that. Something would have to be done about the outrageous budget for higher education, as it would have to be for health care as well.

There wouldn't be as big of an incentive to increase the cost of higher education if it isn't for profit. We'd also have to do something about text book prices, because there is no justifying the outrageous prices on them. There are some other things that could be trimmed (and without touching those dreadful art, social sciences and humanities that conservatives gripe and complain about), and some things that could easily be made more efficient, so I really don't think higher education as impossible, but like so many other areas it has to be remodeled to serve a function and fundamentally exist to provide an education rather than fundamentally existing to pull in fundings, with a run-away train-model for prices fueling it.

 

[ADigitalArtist]

I always have to chuckle to myself when people talk about free health care because someone is paying for it through taxes, the money just doesn't fall out of the sky as the Greeks found out just a few years ago and tried to re-sue Germany for WWII reparations since they squandered the rest in a welfare nation. Once you hand over the the money and power of choice to a bureaucracy then you are subject to the whims and limitations of whoever is running the show at that specific time period. As far as the OP goes I'd say the word "elective" is key and yes I believe that if one hands over that power to someone else then they have the right to prioritize, like it or not they did it to themselves.

We in the United States have some of the lowest taxes in first world nations, I think we can handle it. Especially when people are paying far more than they would in taxes on the required insurance fees. Insurance fees which through sleazeball legal language and wiggle room propped up on for-profit medical may or may not get you coverage. Coverage that may or may not be in your best interest because the best funded and widest circulated treatments are what the pharmaceutical industry wants it to be for highest profit margin. Hey what do you know, our current money and power is handed over to an even less regulated, less transparent bureaucracy which we are subject to the whims and limitations of whoever is running the show.

As for 'elective,' this is a term looser than the bowels of Noro patients. A surgery could be considered elective based on entirely arbitrary criteria. When I was in highschool I had a breast reduction surgery, which was then considered medical because of the back pain it caused (they took off 5 lbs of unbalanced tissue after all, it also prevented the shoulder divits and compromised trapezius muscle my mom had because she waited to get the surgery as an adult) and because breast cancer runs in my family and I would never have been able to find a growth during self-exams until it was already too big to not already have likely metastasized. Today that sort of surgery is considered purely 'elective,' and not covered by the majority of health insurance.
Similarly, knee replacements. If this logic was consistent that 'do it to yourself' should be treated as second class priorities, then knee replacements for people who regularly preformed sports or outdoor activities shown to damage knees should also be part of that group (then good luck getting them to not lie about it). But because we have this weird hang-up about the obese (who could very-well have knee problems due to cartilage disease or be obese due to hormone disorder). Similarly for those who choose to work in a factory, sewage, mechanical shop or other compromised air quality environments and develop lung complications are given free pass over smokers. The fact is we don't do this **** because it's entirely unregulatable. And then just comes down to the biases that insurance claim adjuster or that doctor has. Rather than what's best for the patient and the health of the community.

 

[Perditus]

We'd also have to do something about text book prices, because there is no justifying the outrageous prices on them.

OMG, girl, did you ever nail that one.

I don't know how textbook printers sleep at night.

 

[Perditus]

Today that sort of surgery is considered purely 'elective,' and not covered by the majority of health insurance.

That is insane. I inherited my grandmother's boobs and wanted them off me when I was a teen. They were ungainly.

I didn't know about such surgery until I was well into adulthood and by then it was too late.

Insurance companies should never be allowed to make medical decisions. Our healthcare system is rotten to the core.