Question for conservatives,is the fire department socialist?They fight fires for everyone,pay or not,socialism

Question

There is no policy field where a citizen's well-being is so directly involved. In a recent article on health care published in USA Today, my attention was attracted to the following comment I cite: "One of the basic questions about health care is an old one. Should health care be a right for everyone regardless of income, preexisting illness, or bad genes? Or should it be a privilege obtained by hard work or bestowed by good birth? We would never agree that police and fire protection should be distributed on income, so why should health care?"

Answer 1

dear friend; the Europe and the US have different political background. in the US, there was not "labor" movement that the US became "capitalist state" since "civil war". so, your comparative is meaningless.
you are right. everybody must have health care. but, the US is different than Europe. I just pointed out historical fact. in Turkey, we have no capitalist and socialist movement because of the Ottoman Empire. but, we have social security, health care...but, again the US'historical background is based on "capitalism" "lassies-faire" "night-watchman"

Answer 2

Okay. I've been following your question for some time. I've read the interesting bio on your profile page. You are not a socialist, but I think there is a great deal of confusing in the discussions you bring as to what socialism actually is.
Social programs aimed at relieving the pressures on poverty is not socialism. Socialism is an economic model. caring for those in need is charity. There is no conflict in America about supporting the needy with tax revenue.
No one in America suffers from lack of healthcare. Everyone who needs life threatening medical attention gets it. Those who cannot pay are supported by the state. Teaching hospitals, who get state and federal grants, are required by law to provide medical care to the indigent free of charge. Other hospitals can bill state and federal agencies for medical bills for those people who have no means to pay.
A national healthcare system already exist in this country. The problem that we now have is the high cost of insurance being faced by the middle-class, not the care for the poor. The cost of insurance has skyrocketed, and many middle-class families no longer can afford the cost of this insurance.
This has led to a situation where the family home and other assets are in jeopardy when medical cost arise. Since these people have assets, they don't qualify for state assistance. A major medical problem can and does put many of these people into poverty.
So, the issue you are arguing, healthcare for the poor, is not the problem we have in America, and your solutions do not address the real problem. There are other ways, other than a national medical system, to bring insurance cost down to a managable level for middle-class wage earners.

Answer 3

Australia has public health care. It works well and means that people aren't dying of curable diseases in the street. Our country is also doing better than yours' economically with a higher growth rate and not being saddled with trillions of dollars of foreign debt. So how does that work then?

Ultimately health care, like policing or a fire department are things that should be made to cover every person within the society because otherwise the hidden costs are greater. If people are left to fend for themselves when sick then diseases can easily spread unchecked throughout the poorer population and then acheive resistance to anti-biotics before infecting everyone else.

Interesting choice about the fire department comparison though because the first fire departments WERE privately owned and only put out fires at places who were paying for them... the reason for a public fire department is because fires spread beyond the scope of just one building and many people, paying or not, can suffer damage from the effects of just letting someones house burn down because they can't afford to pay for it to be put out. The situation is the same with healthcare.

Answer 4

Ask the Democrat Congress's who in 1973, 1978 and 1994 refused to allow national health care legislation out of Committee to be voted on ?

National health care will happen.

But it's gonna require alot of changes.

It will Require a huge part of the Federal Budget.

And a dramatic change in the present Tax System.

National health Care would cost between one trillion and 1.5 trillion dollars per year in the United States.

That's basing it on what other nations now spend per citizen , per year on national health systems and what the US now spends on Medicare.

Since the US had non SS tax revenue of 1.5 trillion dollars in 2006.

You can see that the US would have to generate an additional 836 billion per year in tax revenue to fund a national health care system if they kept current funding levels for other services.

The US currently spends 633 billion a year on medicare, medicaid and veteran health care.

That's why the number was 836 billion, instead of 1.5 trillion.

To generate 836 billion in new tax revenue. it would require a 59% increase in Individual and Corporate tax revenue.

This is not including the start up cost.

In the United States there are about 5,500 private for profit hospitals, and ten's of thousands of privately owned medicial clinics and labs.

The Federal Government would have to either buy or lease all of those facilities.


=====================================================

Of course, shouldn't the government be responsible for affordable housing first ?

What about affordable transportation ?

Ive never understood how anyone can think its ok for someone to have to pay $1,400 a month for a 500 sq feet apartment, but then think it's not ok for them to have to pay $300 a month for health care coverage.

Answer 5

I would agree with Aslan's statement.
I would like to add, however, that one of the reasons health insurance in the USA is so expensive is because everyone doesn't buy it. Only people who expect to have medical cost buy health insurance. Young healthy people see medical insurance as a waste of money. If all people were required to have medical insurance, it would bring the overall cost down.
Let me give you an example.
Back in the 1960s when I first started driving a car, it wasn't required to have auto insurance. It was optional. So, as a result most people didn't buy it.
For those people who did purchase auto insurance, there was an added expense in the policy to cover damages and medical cost you incurred in an accident where the cause was an unisured motorist. The fact was, if you bought insurance, you also had to pay for those people who didn't.
When states started to require all motorist to have auto insurance, this extra charge disappeared, and the cost of the policies came down.
The same would happen with health insurance. If insurance companies were able to sell policies to the millions of people who don't get medical expenses, they could spread their profit base across a broader populace.
I see no point in creating a federal department that would cost billions to administer when the same result could be achieved by just requiring people to purchase insurance on their own.
President Bush, who I don't care for btw, gave an interesting proposal in his last state of the union address. He proposed a tax deduction of $15,000 for all Americans for healthcare insurance and much needed tort reform. I think if he hadn't proved to be such a warmonger, this proposal would have gained momentum, but it did not.

Answer 6

Healthcare is available to everyone. When someone shows up to a hospital they are given treatment whether they have insurance or not. Nearly every hospital in the nation also has programs for those who can not afford to pay their bills. I'd compare the hospital to the fire department.

People without insurance and who are low income may not be able to go to the doctor's office because they don't have insurance (if they don't qualify for Medicaid for whatever reason) but they can go to the hospital for emergencies.

People who are lower income may not be able to afford sprinkler systems and fire extinguishers but when there's an emergency they go to the fire department for help.

Answer 7

The last thing the politicians want is to examine why they not only allowed this to happen, but engineered it by not enforcing the laws on the books in the 1986 amnesty . Maybe we need to asked the likes of those such as Ted Kennedy why he and others should not be held personally responsible for the mayhem and cost to the American people for his and others failures.

Answer 8

No. Fire departments protect the community as a whole. Govt health care would serve individuals. Big difference.

Answer 9

If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Do you know what kind of taxes those countries that have your beloved government funded health care pay? Astronomical! And do you know what kind of health care they get? Minimal! Seems like a fair trade to me doesn't it? If it does, then feel free to move to Canada.

State sponsored health care has many more drawbacks than it does upside. If we abandon free enterprise and capitalism now on this issue what's next?

Answer 10

Nice point. If we all have the right to protection by the fire department, surely we should all have the right to health care coverage.