The people enthusiastically yelling that yes, mr-hypothetical-coma-victim should just die.

I think you are indeed missing the point of 'society'.

hey its news now!

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/audience-tea-party-debate-c heers-leaving-uninsured-die-163216817.html

The point of society isn't simply to shore up economic disparities for everyone considered, for that to be even remotely feasible there would have to be committee determining who could breed and when based on how many people the budget could take care of.

Slippery slope.

I don't know, why is it always poor people who assume money grows on trees and the mean nasty rich people are just hiding it from everyone else?

A society that is no longer held accountable for their actions is one that will cease to produce reasonably thinking people.

On rewatching, it does seem like the "yeah!" is cheering the idea of letting the guy die. I was happy to give the audience members the benefit of the doubt in that they may have just been cheering Ron Paul in a Jerry Springer like environment...

But Ron himself seems to answer (from what I see in this clip) "No" they should not let him die [I'm going to infer 'necessarily']. End of life, comas etc. all terrible terrible stuff to deal with...but the human labor involved in care is expensive, hard to see how we can leave that capacity uncapped.

If there is reason to believe that the person can recover, I doubt anyone would suggest that they would rather let the person die than let them recover and pay the (obscene) cost for the treatment.

It's not just poor people assuming the nasty rich people are hiding all the money. They are literally holding the majority of the wealth of this country. The wealth disparity is the largest it's ever been in this country and is one of the largest in the world. It is also the single biggest driver of our current recession due to lack of demand (people having and spending money).

That's not to say that we have infinite resources that would enable us to give everyone the ability to have top notch health care and wait out every coma indefinitely. But it does mean that we have enough resources to give all of our citizens some modicum of preventative health care at the expense of a few giant mansions, yachts and pointless space tourism trips into low earth orbit.

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/04reic h-graphic-popup.jpg

You're right Burnov, money doesn't grow on trees. It grows on the exploitation of poor people.

Oh fuck off Burnov.

Such an erudite response, I expected as much, fuck off yourself think about what I said instead of behaving like a reactionary tit.

@fattaty, I agree that there that denying regular people a bare minimum in terms of care, especially in terms of emergency care is not unreasonable.

You're correct in that the money could be found for basic services, especially if your country would stop conducting such idiotic wars.

However, as far as planning to further levy taxes against the wealthy, I sincerely doubt it will work.

They'll simply leave the country if they find it to be too personally inequitable.

I hate to say it, but you guys are in a real state right now and I don't think it will be so easy to recover from.

This is a problem that goes back much further than the last decade and perhaps it is nearly too far gone without causing a major upheaval in american society to change it.

-is- unreasonable rather.

Bah, in addition to removing the initial part of a sentence I didn't completely remove your link fattaty does not seem to work.

Either way, I'm less convinced of the idea that the wealthy in your country are hoarding some treasure trove of wealth as I am convinced that some of the more profitable american based companies are increasingly outsourcing work and reinvesting perpetually less and less money into its own host economy.

In that sense it is a very real problem, however at this point threatening these companies and wealthy families will simply expedite their leaving the country.

These are the seeds sown by globalism.

You talk about the global elites as if they're greek gods who need constant appeasing despite their unreasonable nature or they'll shoot lightning down our ass-cracks.

All we need to do to keep them from outsourcing the jobs is to actually punish them for doing it, while rewarding them for hiring within the country. The rich CAN be potty trained if it's within their financial interests. Major businesses would never jump ship and do all their business from Indonesia if it involved burning lucrative trade bridges with America.

Burnov, both corporations and banks are "hoarding" large amounts of money.

Banks are borrowing treasuries because interest rates are down. Right now, just owning American dollars is a better investment than lending. There's fluidity in currency reserves. There is not fluidity in commodities, stocks (less so than money) and investment. From last I checked, banks are sitting on 1.6 trillion dollars in treasuries, the result of the QE the Fed pumped into the economy over the past few years at near-zero interest. The reason why there hasn't been any inflation is because banks are not lending (I'm a partner in a small business, I know this).

Large corporations, in the meantime, are also "hoarding" money, to the tune of 0B dollars. A lot of the money that was lent to them in the first round of stimulus is, in fact, just sitting in their bank accounts collecting dust and interest, paying increased dividends to draw in more capital (http://seekingalpha.com/article/293332-12-dow-stocks-with-consist ent-and-growing-dividends) and seizing assets that are crippled and vulnerable. None of these things create jobs.

This has nothing to do with healthcare, I know. Talking about when to pull the plug on terminally ill or comatose people is a valid concern, but it tends to distract from the much more serious issue of lowering insurance costs across the board for all people.

burnov is literally a golem made out of garbage animated by magical farts, and while that does sound impressive, a golem made of rotten meat, used condoms and those plastic rings that hold soda cans together is not a thing who should be regarded for any social/economic commentary.

baleen,
Someone that posts a seekingalpha link to back up macro economic assertions should consider a more critical perspective.

Not one of the companies on the list in the link were recipients of TARP money or any other stimulus I know of. Not one.

How in the world do you go about justifying your statement:

"A lot of the money that was lent to them in the first round of stimulus is, in fact, just sitting in their bank accounts collecting dust and interest, paying increased dividends to draw in more capital [link]"

Your post still wouldn't make much sense, even if the link you provided actually had any evidence.

gmol, to be fair you're criticism is about the structure of baleen's argument and not the actual claims he makes. Yes, what you say is a reason to be skeptical with what Baleen is claiming, but not a refutation of his claims.

It doesn't, rather obviously, from my post that baleen might consider providing his readers with a list of companies that are "hoarding" cash to support his claim, instead of a list that doesn't do that?

I can't parse baleen's rambling complaints into anything meaningful, there wasn't much of a point in addressing the remainder.

Since when did banks "borrow" treasuries? They buy them from the Fed. And no, they don't buy them because interest rates are "down", they are buying them for many reasons including increased risk aversion (form which many things follow) and achieving profit objectives (on the credit spread). You might think profit objectives are selfish, but keep in mind that BAC's solvency has been openly questioned in the financial press recently (that, and they are laying off 30k).

What the hell is "fluidity"? I presume baleen is referring to liquidity, and I still have no idea what he is trying to say.

Then these evil corporations that are hoarding money that was lent to them from a stimulus package, and paying increased dividends...to attract more capital (how DARE they!). Yet baleen can't cite one, and points to a useless pop financial stock pick article to justify his claims (and none of those companies was the direct recipient of any sort of stimulus money!).

I am not trying to refute baleen's claims, I can't really find any in his post that present a modicum of financial literacy.

Burnov has an awful lot of opinions and ideas regarding a country he doesn't live in.

Fascism came wrapped in a Flag and a Bible. And now they apparently think the Bible is all about torture and executions...

Oh wait.

Greed and selfishness became virtues. Ignorance became a point of pride rather than something to overcome.

We elected a black guy.

And Jesus said, "Blessed are the rich, and the Devil take the hindmost."

For cheese.

It's okay that this I get hard from the thought of people dying miserable preventable deaths because they brought it on themselves with a single unwise decision.

Mmmmmmm.

Yeah, that's right. Take that responsibility, bitch.

Almost there. Almost there. Ung.

I recently heard on the radio someone describe Ron Paul as a bowl of delicious vanilla ice cream with a spoonful of dog shit thrown on top.

That is pretty much the best analogy that has ever been made about him.

I guess there's no point in getting health insurance. I'll get the health care I need anyways because liberals made it so nobody has to be responsible.

i started typing a reply about how reagan expanded the federal government and about how supporting supply side economics while not being a billionaire makes you a jackass but then i remembered whom i was addressing.

thanks for protecting us from elephant seals, man, those things are fucking weird looking.

We outta make service members (even those that pretend to be in the Navy) to pay for their own health insurance.

i mean, it would seem reasonable that we all, as members of a interdependent society, would be expected to take care of each other in even the tiniest way (i.e. getting taxed a little more i guess) since the more people are healthy and able to support themselves the better off our society is.

but no, cena, you don't have to worry about the health insurance racket getting any poorer. that's not going to happen in the america you built. a lot of people are going to be forced into life-destroying debt or facing the complications of not being treated for things they should be seeing a doctor for, and i guess that's good for society???

I'm not saying we let people die, but we need a system that encourages more personal responsibility.
scrotum, that's a terrible idea, but I assure you when I was a civilian I was paying for health insurance.

so you don't think they should die, you just think they should be locked in an inescapable prison of debt. because "personal responsibility" is more important than social mobility for the underclasses.

Damn liberals making it so kids with diabetes don't have to pay more for insurance. When will they ever learn.

As a conservative christian, I like fucking my sister and being in the Coast Guard.

Remember that this is put on by the Teabaggers where the loudest is the one that's rightest.

Def GOP Jam

I'd like to remind everyone that even though this debate is being broadcast on...Fox...(ugh), that there be no obnoxious hooting and hollering.

Answer the question Claire!

But he answered "No" to the question that asked if they should let hypothetical man die!

Folks here ain't willing to give the man a fair shake. Ron Paul wants more responsibility but he wouldn't let people die. He was a doctor.

You use words like "responsibility" because you're not honest enough to use the words "greed" and "selfishness".

Gmol: He said YES. He said risk is part of American life, like taking the risk of not having insurance and having the hospital put you into the street for the church to pick up, if there is one.

No he didn't, he said "No".

Wolf: "Congressman, are you saying that society should just let him die?"

Ron: "No..." [goes on to talk about how he is a physician, probably suggesting that the answer in this case is (obviously) complicated]

How could you say he said 'yes', in all caps at that? Ron's answer directly contradicts the suggestive title of this video.

Ron Paul is the most sane person up there, which is really terrifying if you think about it

The video cuts off right before Ron Paul explains that when he was a doctor before medicaid, the hospital never turned anyone away, on account of the church.

personal responsibility = letting the super-wealthy take an increasingly large share (despite slowing economic growth), because stupid people understand racial stereotypes more readily than large numbers or facts

An empire in its death throes will eventually turn on its own.

Stars. Take them.

Think about the rest of us? Think about themselves! Even having insurance isn't a guarantee that you won't end up in the hospital, lying in a coma without any coverage.

I am that theoretical person, as far as my family is concerned. Not the coma part, the being insurance-less and dealing with serious illness for the past few years.
Speaking frankly: it teaches them jack shit. They are a bunch of motherfucking boomers. The very bad kind.

Speaking from personal experience, there is no hope for these people. They aren't tying women to railroad tracks and cackling and twirling their waxed mustaches, but they aren't ever going to come to their senses either. As depressing as it is, the only realistic option is to try and minimize the damage they do, and wait them out until they come down with full-blown dementia and die.

It's pretty clear tht political debates have become a new form of monster truck shows.

To be fair, Wolf never specified that it was a white guy.