We are subsidizing health care for illegal immigrants.
Parkland Hospital lets undocumented women with no health insurance give birth at their hospital and because they cannot pay for it ($6000), turns out I have to. I am not sure if I should be paying that bill. Or better yet when my girlfriend gets pregnant I want the government to pay for that too - even though I can afford it. That seems fair.
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This odd cause you are in favor of subsidizing the college education of illegal immigrants.
Like I said, I am not exactly sure where I am on this issue. If all hospitals say they will not take undocumented women who cannot afford it then where do these women give birth?
Of course they can give birth at home, but for the sake of the child there might be complications and a hospital could be needed.
Also, I do not think it would discourage women from getting pregnant.
So I guess I am leaning towards it being OK. Leaning I say - LEANING
So are you leaning towards subsidizing non-citizens but telling actual citizens to figure out for themselves. Now thats just strange.
Besides i cant understand why you are sympathtetic towards those that need assitance giving birth. Its not like its a true unexpected occurence. They've known this was going to happen for quite some time now.
I can see how one might be inclined to help subsidize an illegal immigrant with a sudden unexpected medical emergency but a woman going into labor is not unexpected. One would think you would take up the position that they should take some personal responsiblity and have already made plans to deal with the actual delivery of the baby.
What kind of plans can you make for this baby that will help you afford the $6000 bill?
Rob a liqour store? Sell Drugs?
Oh I know get a job that has health insurance - but then have to leave a few months later becuase you want to stay with the baby.
You should rename your blog to Personal Responsibility - when it's easy.
I know this goes against a lot of what I say - and I am still not sure if this is what I believe.
But what is the realistic alternative?
I suspect the best way to get around this problem and stay consistent with your views is to aruge that we should free up restrictions on who is allowed to deliver a baby. In other words, create a new classification, perhpas calling it a midwife, that has to spend two years in a specialty school learning how deliver babies. Then create laws that will allow these professional to open up shop that specializes in just delivering babies. They already do this for the reverse with abortion clinics.
That way by opening up the feild you open up competitve markets to baby delivering which should bring down the price. That way the state no longer would have to subsidize those without health care becasue have a baby delivered would now cost with in their means.
unfortunately, the baby, as far as I am informed, does not have a free-market choice in whose belly it is maturing.... That sucks, or?? Have you guys, sorry to use those buzz-words again, ever heard of HUMANITY?????
I personally strongly refuse to connect the birth of a child with the term "subsidize" - the birth of a child is, ever again, an miracolous act that does not underly the processes of economy, and should not be assessed in words of "value of a birth", neither should it be of interest which nationality the mother is, nor whether she can pay for the delivery or not.
Sorry, again, for using the following blunt example, but, who the heck was subsidizing St. Mary's delivery back in good old times? Oh my god - which taxpayers paid for that??? She sure did not have the economic means to pay for it herself...
As long as your country can afford drive-through-nativity-scenes (the very first I saw in Millard , and this was very puzzling - never saw one before), you surely can afford to support babies to be born.
Side note - solidarity is another word. I also encourage that - along with, as mentioned before: HUMANITY. And, again, the child is the weakest element in here - and needs to be protected and ensured a healthy start-up into life.
so, a little bit less polemic and more serious than the last entry:
I would suggest fund-raising or the collection of donations: This would ensure that all babies get delivered, and would take the burden away from the taxpayers. At least some of the burden. It will seem more fair to those who otherwise feel treated unfairly, when the money comes from people who give voluntarily. There are indeed some who would contribute to birth-clinics for non-American mothers. At least, I hope so...
Bettina seems to be suggesting the solution to the problems is private donations. One that I most emphaticaly agree with. The problem is that the governemnt has taxed away most of the disposable income that I would likely give away. Further complicating this, is the use of my tax money for social good, eliminating my guilt for not contributing any of my own money to social needs. If we were to cut social progams and give back the money to the payer im sure donations for paying for the poors deliviers would be almost entirely covered by private donations.
So if the government hadn't taxed away your money so it could spend it on social good, you would have donated money to help these people; but since the government HAS taxed away your money that you would have used to help these people, you're outraged if they then spend that money to help those people?
Wow, it's almost as if you have an irrational hatred of government action even when you favor the things it's actually doing.
The outrage is more likely centered around inefficient use of money.
So you're ok with the government subsidizing this as long as they do so as efficiently as charities would? Or alternately, you have no problem with this type of government program, only wiht the fact that they're do it inneficiently?
Inefficient in the sense that guaranteed subsidization allows people to rely on it instead of seeking otherwise to get around the problem.
Presumably charties would have built in methods to make sure people are not gaming them. In the event that they are i get the ulitmate say in whether my money is spend in that way. Thus im outraged at how teh system strips me of my ability to make sure money is being spent efficiently.
That's definitely a fair criticism, although my response is that this is a democrac, and you should be voting for representatives favoring a system which has exactly that type of accountability built into it. You can definitely argue that that type of oversight is alot easier to achieve when you donate your money directly to a charity rather than when you have to vote for representatives to enact legislation you agree with, but I'm not entirely convincerd this is true. After all, when I donate money to UNICEF or Greenpeace, I really don't have much of a say into how that money is spent- the organizations are large and don't need to cater to my demands in order to get my meager donations. Possibly smaller local charities could be more responsive to those demands, but then I would question whether small local charities can reliably adress ubiquitous national problems (and whether you have to pick up a bible to get treatment, whether there's more corruption when an organization is too small to merit independant investigators watching it's every move, etc.).
An interesting point is that in the charity system, UNICEF may well change it's policies if Bill Gates offers them $200,000,000 if they do things his way with EVBERYONE'S donations, whereas in government (theoretically, though not in reality as it currently stands) I have as much say in who is elected as Bill Gates does, making the distribution of funds much more democratic. Of course this may actually be a drawback to your way of thinking, given your feelings that rich people are inherently better arbiters of how money is used (I agree they're probably more efficient, but not neccessarily 'better'). Personally, though, I favor the democratic system, though I definitely acknowledge it's shortcomings.
1.) If UNICEF and Greenpeace use money in way you don’t agree with guess what you are going to do? If the government spends money, because of the majority, in ways you don’t agree with what are you going to do?
2.) Charities were managing these problems before the 1930 and I so see no reason why they would fail now. However, I would be willing to bring in some central planning if we discover that charities don’t pick up the slack when we remove most all of the social safety network.
3.) First, the relative proportion of your donation to Gates sorta suggests he should have more say. Regardless of that, is the fact that charities that fail to act in good faith will see there purses shrink as donors stop giving. This will cause them to change ways or become eliminated. It’s called the invisible hand. Does that mean your donation in the mean time will be squandered on Gate’s pet project? Yes. But how does the government system avoid squandering millions when a set of experts makes a unintentional, but grievous error about how a program should operate?
4.) I have never said that riche are ‘better’ but only that they are more efficient. Or if I have said they are better I only meant in the context that they are more efficient.
5.) Its unclear why you favor what you term the ‘democratic system’ when the more heavily capitalistic position I argue for offers provides the individual with even great pluralistic control then a democratic system.
1) If UNICEF and Greenpeace spend money in ways I don't like, either I just won't donate money to those types of causes because those two giant groups are the most visible and make it harder to find smaller groups adressing the same causes, or I'll spend the additional time and effort to find a smaller local group, which will probably be innefficient or naive (otherwise they'd be a larger group by now).
If the government does something with my money that I don't like, a pull the lever that is next to their opponent's name next election.
2) What do you mean charities were 'handling' these issues before the 1930s? Before the 1930s, no one ever starved, or died of a treatable disease, or received a sub-par education based on their economic background, or was discriminated against, or all of the thousand other things that charities are set up to adress? Obviously they did, as they do now; for your statement to be at all relevant, you need to make the very strong claim that charities before the 1930s handled it BETTER than the government does now, and I'm pretty sure you havn't done the phenomenal amount of research neccessary to support such a strong and nebulous claim.
3) To start with, this type of moral relativism - where the person with the most money 'should' get to decide what social welfare progrmas our society pursues- make me really uncomfortable, which is one of the reasons I disagree with your model. I agree that some money will get squandered by the government, but
a. Experts are less likely to squander money in their field of expertise than rich people with little or no knowledge of the areas they are giving their moeny to.
b. If the government screws up big time, an investigation will be launched, the results made public, and measures can be put into place to stop that particular type of screwup from happening again. Also the voters can choose not to elect leaders who seem likely to make those same types of mmistakes again. But if Bill Gates makes a huge blunder and blows a giant wad of cash which could have cured a deadly disease had he spent it right, htere absolutely nothing to stop the next billionaire ten years from now from making the exact same mistake.
4) I agree the rich are more efficient, not better. I'm interested in spending this moey in the best way possible, not the most efficient way possible. Putting the business people in charge of fundraising would be great, since they're very talented at generating wealth- and in point of fact, that's exactly what we're doing under my system, since the rich people stimulate the economy which the government then taxes for charitable programs.
5)In what sense does your system offer more control? I agree that the individual can change his 'vote' (ie, where his money is going) much more quickly since he doesn't have to wait for anelection cycle (though voters do have a number of measures they cna take to influence government between election years if they are serious about it). On the other hand, Bill Gates has several tens of billions more 'votes' than I do under your system, which is one more reason I favor the 'democratic' system.
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