The “right” to healthcare does not require....

[QGator2414]

Originally Posted by tegator80

One step further, we did this because we have/had a sense of responsibility and to give back to the community. Now it is at the end of a gun. Try to get an emotionally attached doctor/medical professional when they are being forced by law. Those who are good will either work underground for real payers (read rich) or leave the profession altogether. What will be left over are the financially stuck or the mediocre/poor professionals who can't be hired to do anything else.

In other words, look to the public education system in the liberal big cities as a model for the future healthcare in the US.

"Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country"

JFK

[orangeblueorangeblue]

Originally Posted by gator10010

You can avoid paying sales tax without going to jail.

You can avoid paying income tax without going to jail.

[MichiGator2002]

Originally Posted by wgbgator

You can legally avoid paying income tax by choosing to have little to no taxable income too.

Which, comically, has ever been the point people make, that we tax so many things to discourage them, such as cigarettes, but with income we are meant to believe that higher rates at higher income don't have any effect at all on people's interest in earning more, in doing the work.

[orangeblueorangeblue]

Sin tax -> avoidance tax

Other taxes -> usage tax

It's pretty simple.

[MichiGator2002]

Originally Posted by orangeblueorangeblue

Sin tax -> avoidance tax

Other taxes -> usage tax

It's pretty simple.

I hope that dadaism was not meant for me. Taxes either affect behavior or they don't.

[orangeblueorangeblue]

Originally Posted by MichiGator2002

I hope that dadaism was not meant for me. Taxes either affect behavior or they don't.

That's a rather superficial viewpoint.

Would a .00003% tax affect behavior? Do transparent taxes affect behavior? Generally not. This isn't a binary equation.

[orangeblueorangeblue]

But more importantly, I was drawing the distinction between the intentions of each. One is a blanket payment for services rendered, the other exists solely to discourage.

[Matthanuf06]

Originally Posted by orangeblueorangeblue

But more importantly, I was drawing the distinction between the intentions of each. One is a blanket payment for services rendered, the other exists solely to discourage.

Intentions have no impact on its elasticity of demand.

[egator1245]

Originally Posted by wgbgator

You can legally avoid paying income tax by choosing to have little to no taxable income too.

And then have the government support you which also means someone else must pay more income tax. Are you really that selfish?

[Row6]

"In 1986, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act known as EMTALA (Section 1867 (a) of the Social Security Act) and sometimes referred to as the "Patient Anti-Dumping Act" was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Reagan. The purpose of the Act was to ensure that acutely ill patients who are uninsured or underinsured receive appropriate emergency care and to prevent hospitals from refusing to treat certain populations of patients who present to the emergency department. Although EMTALA was passed to protect those who lack financial resources or medical insurance, it applies to all seeking care from a hospital's emergency department in all states and territories of the United States. However, not all hospitals have obligations under EMTALA. Only hospitals that accept federal funds from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS), a branch of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), are subject to civil liability under the Act. The CMS and the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) enforce EMTALA. The OIG can fine Hospitals $50,000 per violation ($25,000 for hospitals with less than 100 beds) and possibly terminate their Medicare provider agreement. Individual physicians also may receive a fine up to $50,000 and be excluded from future Medicare funding."

http://www.ascensionhealth.org/index...146&Itemid=172

[wgbgator]

Originally Posted by egator1245

And then have the government support you which also means someone else must pay more income tax. Are you really that selfish?

I don't know, was Mitt Romney that selfish? He hasnt been paying income tax lately.Or people who worked all their lives and have retired and thus have no income? Are they selfish too?

[busigator96]

We have no rights....only privileges.

[orangeblueorangeblue]

Originally Posted by Matthanuf06

Intentions have no impact on its elasticity of demand.

Nor did I say they did.

Scope, however, does.

[DaveFla]

Originally Posted by ATLitigator

so if the american people democratically decided that they had right to rob and rape every person making over a million dollars...then for all intents and purposes it is a right? .... yeah sounds pretty dumb when I say it too...

BOOM!

[austingtr]

Originally Posted by mocgator

. As an aside, the angriest patients I’ve ever encountered were the Medicare patients I subsequently treated with no charge whatsoever. My providing charitable care elicited patient rage like none I’ve encountered since. ( again...Entitlement ALWAYS breed contempt for those that provide the entitlement)

This sounds illogical but is so true. This has been our experience as well. If you want to stop a patient from calling you at all hours with all sorts of irrational and very intrusive requests, send their unpaid bills to a collection agency. Hubby started doing this a while ago, and it has saved him a lot of grief. He is the kind of doc who gives many of his sickest patients his cell phone, and never stops answering work calls, even on vacation- to my endless irritation this week is an example. He doesn't collect chit, because those people never pay, but at least they go away to someone else.

He has stopped doing some procedures because the pay is just absurd, for the responsibility and trouble you have to go through. I simply stopped working. The hoops that our licensing agencies expect us to go through to simply renew is stunning. They keep cutting pay, yet they add more responsibilities, paperwork, studies, and CME's. Little projects we are now forced to do take HOURS, and HOURS to complete. Most docs simply have their nurses or research assistants do them. It is a complete joke. All this is causing is more anger, and less desire to do the right thing. I shudder when I imagine the kind of medical care I will get, from the kind of people who will put up with this.

Reminds me of Atlas Shrugged:

Let them discover, in their operating rooms and hospital wards, that it is not safe to place their lives in the hands of a man whose life they have throttled. It is not safe, if he is the sort of a man who resents it – and still less safe, if he is the sort who doesn’t.

[MichiGator2002]

Originally Posted by orangeblueorangeblue

That's a rather superficial viewpoint.

Would a .00003% tax affect behavior? Do transparent taxes affect behavior? Generally not. This isn't a binary equation.

Of course they do. Duh. Whey tax that figures into price and cost at really any point of commerce influences the party on which it is assessed.

EMTALA is a popular, if totally specious, argument vis a vis the existence of, let alone the government as administrator of, a positive (i.e. fictional) right to healthcare. First, since EMTALA in no way by operation of law relieves the patient from the legal or moral duty to pay for the service they recieve, it really doesn't function as enacting a "right" to treatment. It prohibited providers from confirming the ability to pay up front. Second, it requires only that providers stabilize patients. This isn't the forerunner of well-care compelled as a function of a putative "right" patients have to get uncompensated treatment.

[orangeblueorangeblue]

They *could* but they don't, necessarily. That's the point. Not all taxes affect behavior, and the type of tax dictates that far less than the scope of the tax.

[mocgator]

Originally Posted by orangeblueorangeblue

I'm not convinced moc understands how health insurance works.

I'm only a C Level exec of a healthcare company... Who has read all 2400 pages... I must not know what I'm talking about.
So when I stop taking Medicaid patients next year you still won't believe it?

[mocgator]

Originally Posted by wgbgator

If people democratically decide its a "right," then for all intents and purposes it is. The Constitution isnt a charter that denys rights people retain democratically for themselves.

Could not be more completely and profoundly wrong on every level. What a strange world you live in. Rights are given to all of us by God. Government cannot give rights ... Only take them away. A right is an inherent thing. Life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. God grants these. Not some stinking politician.... Or mindless looter who wants a free cell phone.

[orangeblueorangeblue]

Originally Posted by mocgator

I'm only a C Level exec of a healthcare company... Who has read all 2400 pages... I must not know what I'm talking about.
So when I stop taking Medicaid patients next year you still won't believe it?

Based on this thread, though ... still not convinced.