Where in the Constitution is There a Guarantee for Health Care?

Consider the state of medicine in the late 1700s. The Founding Fathers may have been smart guys, but why would they have anything meaningful to say about health care? It had only been 25 years since barbers were legitimately doing amputations. Physicians still balanced humors. Medical licensing did not happen until 25 to 50 years later. The Constitution is a living document because they KNEW it wasn't perfect.

Fair and Balanced?

Wonder if they would cover a Democrat holding up nominations because they wanted pork for their home state?

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/05/white-house-blasts-shelby-hold-on-nominees/

Stories on Shelby's move are conspicuously absent on Fox's site:

http://www.foxnews.com/search-results/search?q=shelby

Really?

A lot of conservative economists seem to think that the unemployment rate is stubbornly high because of uncertainty created from the cap and trade and healthcare bills being debated in congress. So as I drive from strip mall to strip mall in my hometown, noticing there are at least 2, sometimes more, businesses shuttered I have to marvel at how disconnected from reality they are.

We are in the midst of a debt crisis - is it so unbelievable that over-leveraging of commercial businesses is still responsible for continued unemployment? No, it's not because of "uncertainty" created by government. It's because there's no dang customers! Businesses were so leveraged, based on everyone thinking housing prices would keep going up, that they were running razor thin profit margins in the best of times. Take away 20% of those customers in a matter of months and they cannot pay off their loans anymore. That, combined with banks now unwilling to refinance these businesses means none can keep their doors open, much less worry about hiring because of the uncertainty created by congressional bills.

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Update:
The real problem?
no customers.

national debt ceiling

Republicans are up in arms about the Democrats wish to attach a debt ceiling increase to a defense funding bill. For your reference, here are the times Republicans have increased the debt ceiling:

March 29, 1996
110 Stat. 875 Increased the debt limit to 5,500.0
August 5, 1997
111 Stat. 648 Increased the debt limit to 5,950.0
June 28, 2002
116 Stat. 734 Increased the debt limit to 6,400.0
May 27, 2003
117 Stat. 710 Increased the debt limit to 7,384.0
November 19, 2004
118 Stat. 2337 Increased the debt limit to 8,184.0
March 20, 2006
120 Stat. 289 Increased the debt limit to 8,965.0

It is interesting, however, that the Republicans DID have standalone votes on increasing the debt ceiling vs. attaching it to somewhat unrelated bills. While that as commendable, it hardly qualifies Republicans as fiscally responsible. Thus I will continue to be sick to my stomach whenever a member of either party ends a sentence with "our children and grandchildren" in reference to the debt.

Dr (In)Sanity's “logical progression” to Death Panels.

Deborah Gyapong: Slippery slope or logical progression?

First of all, Dr Insanity does not reference a bill, or the statement in the House bill that relates to “end of life counseling”. Instead, he BEGINS his logical progression by presenting that government will have to reign in costs by rationing. So, in his first step in proving that death panels is not a slippery slope argument, he uses the final result of a slippery slope argument. Here is the progression of that slippery slope argument for the uninitiated –

1. government does public option.

2. everyone flocks to public option because it will run a deficit and be cheaper

3. all insurance companies will die off, being unable to compete.

4. Now we have what liberals really want, defacto single payer.

5. Single payer will run out of money like all government programs do, and now we have rationing. This is step 1 in Dr. Sanity's argument.

So let's poke some holes in this first. 1. We don't even have a 100% chance of getting public option in this bill. For number 2,. In all of the bills that have a chance of passing, employers with more than 50 employees must keep their private insurance. Single payer is not just unlikely in this bill, it is illegal. Number 3: Non partisan projections put the number that will forgo private insurance for public option at between 10 to 30 million. This will hurt insurance companies, so it is no wonder they produce commercials against public option. Will it kill them? No. 4: Obama has said he has favored single payer, if he were starting from scratch. He's not starting from scratch, he's also not all that involved in writing this bill except for some lofty ideals that are unlikely to reduce costs. 5. is not the inevitable result, and in fact all non partisan analyses of this bill project increasing health care costs, far from reigning them in.

So Dr. Sanity's first step in making a logical progression argument is itself a fallacy. I could stop here, but let's examine some of his other points anyway.

“So, what criteria for rationing health care (particularly at the end of life) is likely to be used? “

If presenting a logical argument, what follows in the series of events MUST occur, or if saying a high probability exists, that probability must be scientifically presented. They can't be “likely”, or your progression includes an “appeal to probability” and is thus downgraded to a slippery slope fallacy.

It is TRUE that Ezekiel Emanuel presents arguments in a theoretical paper to ethically determine who should get care, in the UNDESIRABLE event that rationing becomes necessary AND a panel must be formed to decide in what order care should be received. This is far from a blueprint on how to suck money from a health system so you can put your dastardly death panel in place.

Is it likely that his ethical approach would be used should the unlikely string of events ever happen? Who knows. Is it even likely, if single payer were inevitable, that it would progress so fast to it that we would see it during Obama's presidency, much less see it run out of money during that time? That would kind of make what Obama and Emanuel want irrelevant, wouldn't it?

And to Deborah Gyapong who loves to end her posts with "Chilling." I say "Chill."