The Glade 4.0

What?

If rights are fluid, there is nothing immoral about changing those rights.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

They are now!!

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

Not for soceity, no. It's immoral for government to do it against the will of society. It's also immoral for society to do it in such a way that only part of society gets a say in it; that's granting priveleges, not rights.

The starting assumption here is that everyone in society who is a competant adult (i.e. not a sociopath, or mentally incompetant or retarded) should have a say (no, that doesn't necessarily mean a full vote in every election or referendum; I'm not trying to get into specific systems or issues here) because all are created equal.

If what you're saying is that it isn't inherently or automatically immoral to change them, then you're correct.

If you're saying it cannot be immoral regardless of the circumstances, then no. This is an entirely different way of thinking about them. The point of this sort of thinking is that society can set itself up how it wants, as long as it doesn't antagonize other societies or its own members to the point that they replace it. Government still can't just make whatever rules it wants to, but society is not bound by "inherent rights" that need to be respected no matter what for no reason other consistency for its own sake.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Why is that a starting assumption? That assumption is based on certain other, more fundamental assumptions, and I would say has not been universally agreed upon in this conversation.



"Them" being what? Rights? Whether it is immoral or not to change them is dependent upon whether you believe in inherent rights or not. That, in turn, is based on individual belief.



This statement is solely a matter of belief, and is the crux of the discussion at hand. It is not self-evident, which has been one of my points througout.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

What constitutes "society"?Why? What's the moral benchmark here? What's the moral compass that somehow presupposes segregation or stratification as immoral?You're encumbering DFK!'s question with an assumption pertinent to one system and one system only: the United States. DFK!'s question is far broader than your position. More to the point, starting with the assumption that "all are created equal" has its own problems and reflects a particular phenomenological waypoint. What is all? How do you define equality? What is the marker for sameness?Logically speaking, you're starting from a different assumption than DFK!. You are, in point of fact, creating a rather elaborate straw-man argument shielded by red herrings because you don't want to consider the ruthless reality of his argument: Might makes Rights. The Lockeian dilemma isn't the confrontation between the elite and the state; it is the frustrating reality that people are neither equal in terms of skill nor their ability to use force on other human beings. The assumption that all people are equal must, of necessity, presuppose both a moral reality and a transcendental reality not created/modified/stewarded by human beings. Consequently, if rights are indeed fluid, given legitimacy and power by a construct created by human beings, then rights are nothing more than a mechanistic exertion of force on other human beings.Why can't society make its members want to replace it? What a priori moral impetus exists to forbid or even prevent such a reality from occurring? The Constitution? The Magna Carta? What is the source of these arbitrary, undefined, and non-material limitations on society and collective power?Except, you're carrying the assumption that society and government are bound by these things through your argument: whatever absolute morality it is you think exists to limit government and society. In the real word, that limiter is force.

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DS, given that the average doctor has deferred making any money for at least eight years, and spent a boat load to get the training during that time, absolutely a doctor should be able to make more than minimum wage.

::rant on::

First I will start with the stated 'right' to have medical care. I will note that this 'right' was stated initially without the limitation of emergency care only.

As initially stated a right to medical care indicates that doctors lose their right to work when and where and with whom they wish. That is slavery.

You say that no one would want their doctor enslaved. Unfortunately, in my personal experience that is not true. I have had people (family of an inpatient rehabilitation patient) who have told me that I must come in on Sunday morning to meet with them, because no other time was convenient for them. This is after I worked 14 hour days the other six days of the week, called the family repeatedly and offered times to meet and I was I church with my three year old son. Per this family, I was wrong and they filed a complaint with the hospital and with the state of Texas. At the meeting with the hospital administrator, these people screamed, cursed me and demanded that I be removed from the staff of the hospital. The administrator said he felt I made all the accommodations necessary, and the family's response was that I should never have gotten married, nor had a child because I should be “at the hospital at all times”.

So, there are people who do not respect other people or boundaries. There are people who feel they are entitled to what they want, when they want it. And if they can have what they want without cost or repercussions that is what they do every time.

Talking to my Emergency Room colleagues, most of what they do is not emergency medicine anymore. They tell me they are trapped between EMTALA and the Press-Ganey score. The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) is a U.S. Act of Congress passed in 1986 as part of the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA). It requires hospitals and ambulance services to provide care to anyone needing emergency healthcare treatment regardless of citizenship, legal status or ability to pay. But who defines an emergency? Basically this means that anyone who comes to an emergency room must be seen by a physician. So, if a physician sees a patient and determines there is no medical emergency, the patient can be discharged without treatment? Yes it does, but that rarely happens, for two major reasons. First, there is another federal rule that requires hospitals to monitor patient satisfaction/quality of care, and for some reason most of them use Press-Ganey. Press-Ganey surveys patients discharged directly home from the emergency room as to the quality of their care. So, the people with the true emergencies, like heart attacks, strokes, and severe trauma are never asked. Only the people who where well enough to go straight home. And people use this to threaten doctors in the ER to give them narcotics, repeat normal imaging studies, or do a routine workup so they can avoid a delay getting insurance approval or taking time off during the day. Press-Ganey scores are used to discipline and fire doctors every day. Hospital Administrators tell doctors to ‘make people happy’ and ‘improve the score’, not practice good medicine. The second reason is medical liability. If anything is missed the doctor is responsible. Even if nothing is missed at the time, and something happens later, the doctor is blamed. And you wonder why it takes ‘forever’ to be seen. It is no longer an emergency room; it is a clinic.

There was also the statement that I chose to be a doctor. Well yes, I did. And like the vast majority of doctors, I did this because I enjoy caring for people and figuring out what is wrong with them. From there the statement was, that if I chose, I could stop being a doctor. This is not exactly true. Because I am a doctor I can never be trained for and take a ‘lower’ position, such as a nurse, or therapist. I will always be held to the liability level of a physician. The only way to escape is to leave medicine entirely.

Let me turn now to the ‘greedy doctor’ hypothesis. I.E. This country would not be in this trouble if doctors did not charge so much. I will give you one word, Overhead. This is the cost to have the office open. In this country, the future physician must pay for their education. In 2009 the average educational debt of physicians was $156,456. That is like a mortgage, except you usually have to pay it back faster and at a higher interest rate. Then there are the other costs. Medical liability insurance costs in 2003 for emergency room physicians was $53,000 per year, and it increase 50% from 2002. The same year obstetricians costs were listed at $200,000 to $300,000. Then there is cost to rent an office, hire staff, bill for services, maintain medical records, telephones, pagers, cell phones, and the thousand other costs to running any business. And doctors do not get paid until all those bills have been paid. Cut overhead you say. Well doctors have done that. Why do you think you get an answering machine first? And when a doctor bills for a service, it is not paid for by the person consuming that service, but by a third party, whose responsibility is first to their shareholders. So there usually is a person in every office whose job it is to fight to get paid, and when they do it is far less than was billed. What other business bills to be paid after the fact and is happy when they get 40% of the original charge?

TL:DR No one can have a viable business if they pay $1 for a hot dog and can sell it for 50 cents.

So you take a person who deferred making money for at least eight years, spent the cost of a house to get an education and now you want them to maybe earn what high school teacher does? (That is the “professional wage” that the CMS is aiming for with physicians.) Or actually force the doctor to pay money to care for you?

I and most physicians went into medicine because we love caring for people. The last ten years of abuse have left us completely disillusioned and angry. You want a right to medical care? Well YOU can damn well provide it.

::rant off::

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Memento Vivere

I have local knowledge.
That sandbar was not there yesterday!

Müs! Scalpel, STAT! I have to go in....

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In time, this too shall pass.

Wait, the scalpel's the pointy one right? Ooh, these are like pliers, but go the other way... this is neat.

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Holy shitsnacks!

To be fair , SG, nobody in this thread has suggested working unpaid, on demand, other than folks trying to stir up a strawman.

Universal healthcare does not mean unbounded unrecompensed healthcare. No country in western europe that I am aware of forces doctors to work, or fails to pay them.

In the UK there is a perfectly prosperous private medical sector running alongside the state one too.

I understand your experiences suggest there are extremes that fit the strawman; but I dont think even Monte is suggesting that a right to healthcare involves an unbounded right to medical practitioners time, unrecompensed.

Suineko:

That's exactly what a right to healthcare would entail. Those of us arguing against the use of that particular term, that particular assumption, are using right in the manner which the U.S. ascribes it meaning.

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We're not talking about universal healthcare, Sui. We're talking about a system that can satisfy the *right* to healthcare.

Universal healthcare attempts to not make slaves out of its doctors and nurses by imposing quotas, reducing acceptable standards, and denying procedures to limit that right however much it needs to in order for the supply to be able to fill the demand created by the bounds of the "right."

In other words, under universal healthcare, you still don't have a right to care. You have a right to as much care as the system is able to provide, and God help you if that's not enough.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Really? How are we stirring a strawman?

My questions regarded someone feeling the right to coerce another for their time because they feel they have a right to it, based on their view of what they are entitled to. The second is based on lower compensation than a person should receive for their level of skills and eduication.

This is because Monte straight out said he felt that the doctors should be state employees. And in the state of California (as discussed in another thread) state employees were dropped to minimum wage because the state is experiencing a negative cashflow scenario.

I could care less how healthcare works in other countries. If it works, happy day for those it works for. America is not going to do it the rigth way. Our government has already proven they are too **** stupid to do anythign right other than conserve their own power and **** the people right in the mouth.

And as far as being uncompensated.... Medicare and Medicaid are essentially already the equivalent to being uncompensated. And it has been explained repeatedly how hard it is to get compensated by these entities. Yet some people on this board are **** stupid enough to think that is how our country should have all care performed.

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

It's not based on other more fundamental assumptions any more than inherent rights are, nor does anyone else need to agree to it for me to explain how it works.



You're not paying attention. I'm explaining how there can be a system where rights are not inherent, but it is also immoral for the government to change them. You don't need inherent rights for



Obviously. Did you miss where I made the very same point?

You keep trying to assert that if rights are not inherent, then it is not immoral for the government to change those rights. That does not follow. It is perfectly consistent to have a moral system in which rights are not inherent, but the authority to change them is reserved to society as a whole rather than being given to the government.

For example, in our system, the states can decide to eliminate the First Ammendment by repealing it, following proper proposal of the ammendment. From the moral standpoint I'm explaining, that's society changing rights rather than the government. It's not a perfect example because the state governments actually vote on it for the state, but since the society in the example would be the national one, and the government the national government, it illustrates the point.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Additionally, people don't need Emergency Education. A school is not required to take more students than they plan for.

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The Dude abides.

That's insane.

Slavery is forced, uncompensated labor for which you have no choice. For example, if someone has kidnapped you and forced you into prostitution, you are actually a really real slave. If you get captured, stuck on a boat, brought to the new world and then are forced to work for a master, and you are not paid, you are a slave.

If you are a doctor, you could certainly choose where you worked. And like any other employee, you may or may not have a choice as to *when* you work (i.e., what shift). As for with whom - I do not think it's slavery for doctors to have to treat anyone who comes across their doorstep so long as that doctor is employed and getting paid.

Using the word Slavery to describe your fear is honestly insulting to the history of *actual* slavery in the world. You would not be a slave in a nationalized system. Not even close. Call me when they put an actual chain around your neck, physically split up your family, when you count as only 3/5 a person in terms of the census, when you cannot vote, and when you are literally property. Until then, stow the slavery bullshit. It's demeaning for someone of your intellect.

Just because Ayn Rand or some other idiot conservative philosopher extends the definition of Slavery to describe any situation in which your total freedom is limited doesn't mean you are actually enslaved. Seriously. Get over yourself. Anyone who thinks that taxes are slavery - you're nuts. Plain and simple. If you think that someone working in a public system that considers something like education to be a right is a slave, you are nuts as well. Go have a sit down and nice long moment of deep introspection.

If you are not toiling with an overseer who's got an actual whip in his hand, you are not a slave. If you are not forced to work for nothing, you are not a slave. If you have not been literally auctioned off, you are not a slave. What you are is someone who has made a serious rhetorical error, and you should be ashamed of yourself.

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It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

When you remove the ability of a person to decide who, when, and what they will work for; they are no longer free. When you remove freedom from a man, you make him subservient. When you make him subservient, you make him a slave.

It is you who do the rhetorical dance defending the despicable, and cheapen the fight of men who have suffered under the whip. It is you who cheapen the freedom of man, discarding it so easily in the name of treacherous ideology. To legitimize your absolute demand of service, you renounce the ability of others to choose, and instead become their keeper and master.

You have chosen for them. You will reap what you sow.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

That is EXACTLY what you are asking for.

END OF DISCUSSION.

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Memento Vivere

I have local knowledge.
That sandbar was not there yesterday!

Rynar, very well said. Thank you.

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Memento Vivere

I have local knowledge.
That sandbar was not there yesterday!

SG,

I must apologize. I was not trying to bait you here. But if someone has an opinion on how someone in a certain field should feel about an issue... I felt it best to ask someone in that field as opposed to making wide speculations.

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

DS,

I do not feel baited by you. Those where legitimate questions.

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Memento Vivere

I have local knowledge.
That sandbar was not there yesterday!

If we asked people what kind of world they could wake up in tomorrow, and they had to choose one, which do you think they would choose:

One without doctors, or one without fencing instructors?

There's your answer. Health care practitioners offer a service that is highly valued by society. That value is many times greater than the value to society that a fencing instructor offers. Health care practitioners are scarce because the required skill, work and time required to become one is immense. The same can be said for a fencing instructor. Let's, for argument's sake, say that becoming a fencing instructor is more difficult than become a quality health care practitioner.

Even were that the case, health care practitioners would still be paid more because the value they offer to society is disproportionately greater than that offered by a fencing instructor. It is also disproportionately greater than the value offered by a mechanical engineer but probably requires more time and effort thereby making practitioners of medicine more scare than mechanical engineers and more highly valued. I therefore concede that it makes sense mechanical engineers get paid less than doctors.

Therefore, Monte, you must make (quality) health care less valuable to society or make health care practitioners less scarce by somehow making the study of medicine easier to understand or altering the laws of physics. Likewise, you could make the standard by which health care practitioners become licensed to practice easier, less rigorous and/or cheaper to decrease their scarcity. If this happens, their services will be worth less and/or more readily available relative to other services and bringing their salaries in line with out types.

Your argument that quality health care is expensive and levying that discontent toward doctors is vastly misplaced. Quality health care is expensive simply by the very fact that it is highly valued by society and scarce to come by relative to other services.

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"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones

1. When you remove the ability of a person to decide...they are no longer free.
2. When you remove freedom from a man, you make him subservient.
3. When you make him subservient, you make him a slave.
4. A slave named Kunta Kinte was portrayed by LeVar Burton.
5. LeVar Burton was in Star Trek: First Contact with Alfre Woodward.
6. Alfre Woodward was in Beauty Shop with....Kevin Bacon!

Don't ever thank me for saying what every man should say. I've done nothing special, or deserving of thanks. I've simply spoken truth, and if speaking truth has become special, then that is not to the credit of those who speak it. People should not be praised for doing what is just. They should be shunned for doing or saying what is not. Doing anything else only encourages the poor notion that those who do what they should are the extraordinary, and those who don't hold a position that debatably holds merit. It cheapens us as a society, and weakens us as a people.

I hope you don't take offense at that, but it is a personal philosophy I hold near to my heart.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

RD wins the thread.

Thread. OVER.

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"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Yeah, actually, I'm totally comfortable with that.

++ RD

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Ezekiel 23:19-20