It admittedly gets murkier when the consequence of not getting treatment is death or long-term disability. Is “Give me $1 million or I will let you die” any better than “Give me $1 million or I will kill you”? I’m not sure. All I know for certain is that I would never want to tell someone either.

In an ideal capitalist system (admittedly such a thing is as unrealistic as any other “ideal” system :)), the incentives would work in favor of good, cheap healthcare rather than exploitation. People will ideally choose the providers that offer the best value for the money. The reward for exploiting your customers is ideally that you no longer have any customers, as they have flocked to someone else providing a better value. If existing providers are all offering high prices, there is ideally a huge incentive to enter the market as a supplier, offer lower prices, and take all of the customers.

As you point out in the original article, this works well for a lot of things but isn’t working out very well for healthcare in the US. A hybrid system that provides basic care on the taxpayer’s dime, but still allows people to opt in to better care may well be the best practical compromise between the two ideals of capitalism and socialism.

At any rate, thanks for giving me something worthwhile to think about while I’m at work. :) It’s always a pleasure to read other people’s perspectives and try to formulate my own into actual English sentences.

http://americanclarity.com/2009/05/30/spirituality-vs-religion/

Personally, I think it’s nice of you to not want to offend your brothers and sisters, but ultimately there is sin, Christ had to die for it, and although we’re no longer going to hell because of his sacrifice, becoming a Christian should imply that He’s molding us to His character, in both His moral nature and in His self-sacrifice.

His word should be the moral law. Without it, we cannot confess our sins to Him and become more like Him as required in 1 John.

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20John%201:5-10;&version=31;

Furthermore, in Matthew 5, Christ taught is that those who teach others to disobey His law will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. Notice the “in the kingdom of heaven” part. That includes those who are not going to hell. I don’t know what you mean when you say “controversial practices,” but I wouldn’t be too condoning there. Sin leads us to grieve the Spirit, and when we’re not under control of the Spirit, we’re under the control of our flesh.

So while we shouldn’t shake our fingers out of condemnation, we should do it out of a desire of restoration. Doing anything less would be an act void of real love.

Dmoney:
Is coercion any better if it comes in the form of red ink? The problem being here, is that for a Capitalized system the incentives are setup to foster exploitation rather than to reward good care. Socialized health care is far from perfect for sure and I would love to see a healthy hybrid of the two working in the US. Most of the best healthcare systems in the world are a mix of public and private. Australia, New Zealand, Norway, and Sweden are all this way. They have private clinics that take anyone who has private insurance, as well as public hospitals that will take both public and private insurance. Its sad that this myth of these two systems being mutually exclusive is so prevalent here.

Jeremy:
You’re right, it would reduce costs somewhat, but it wouldn’t be a huge change. Tort fees and malpractice settlements only account for 0.46% of total health care spending in the US. Source

Thanks for the Comments guys, its always good to have feedback!

But aside from the fact that corporations have the capability to raise prices (which when done reasonably makes sense), what kind of impact do you think frivolous lawsuits have on prices for medical services? Do you think that caps should be placed on lawsuits, as well as a “loser pays” system for lawyer’s fees?

After all, before we became an incredibly litigious society, a man could pay for his family’s medical bills without breaking the bank. These lawsuits cost doctors big.

At least with a capitalist system I get to choose how much I think healthcare is worth. There are many areas I would rather invest my resources in than trying in vain to keep myself alive forever, and if we as a culture didn’t put such a ridiculous emphasis on life-at-any-cost, the market wouldn’t charge us so much for it. :)

I see what you are saying. As with any thing else, without love, it’s of questionable value. I like your observation about the role of authenticity as a point of accountability in community.

Thanks for the input!

The entire point of being authentic with people is that I get the added leverage of friends saying “You told me last week that you were trying to drink less, but now you’re saying how drunk you were on Monday night. What’s up with that?” And ideally I’m providing a similar level of accountability for them. It’s 100% about community and having calibration points for my behavior outside of myself. Within that context, authenticity is a great thing.

If it’s just about asserting that we are the way we are and to hell with the consequences, then I agree with you that it’s worse than useless.

I firmly believe in the concept of evolution. (Which is very different from scientific arguments about exactly how it occurred.) But I’m still working on what implications that has for my Christian faith.

The biggest may be the brevity and apparent lack of concern with which you address the scale issue between abortion and war. While you say that 90,000 civilians have been confirmed killed in Iraq since 2003, the statistics show that 2005 was the lowest year for abortions since 1976, only 1.2 million were performed (all this during the reign of a republican lead white house). (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/16/AR2008011603624.html ) By pure utilitarian means (which are among the lowest methods of measuring ethics in existence, hence the ideals which we should be advocating must not just take into account utilitarian standards, but put them to shame…) such statistics should confound anyone who uses the “bombs vs babies” mindset that seems to be advocated here. We’re talking millions killed in our life time…

This is a very good point. I was struggling with this problem while writing it. The best answer I can give is that the issue of war may have a less direct bodycount but has bigger long-term implications. The war in Iraq is only one example that comes to mind and is representative of a much larger issue: our entire take on foreign policy. I find the Democratic take on foreign policy (from the issue of war to foreign aid to diplomacy) to be much more in line with promoting life around the world. With the longer-term implications this has for future wars (not only with the United States, but in or between other countries), immigration, poverty relief, etc., the utilitarian means may judge the situation differently.

Secondly, when you say that some reference to McCain is necessary for purposes of positioning, you were certainly right. I wish you would have positioned yourself a little bit more thoughtfully in regards to this issue. Because of McCain/Palin’s stance on torture AND abortion, you probably need to interact more with this fact: 2 of the areas you addressed are flagship goals of the Republican presidential ticket: to challenge abortion AND torture.

This is true, and I may try to address it more in the future. But it ignores the other issues of life (poverty, healthcare, capital punishment) that I believe the Democratic side gets correct. Perhaps my arguments were too much waited towards the issue of torture and not enough towards these other policies. While McCain may oppose both of these issues, I don’t feel that this necessarily outweights the other issues.

You have also come short of demonstrating how an Obama lead white house will effectually cause more respect for human rights in the wake of mis managed Iraq. As Obama continues to push his ideas for withdrawal further and further towards the horizon (let alone his original ideas of withdrawal starting next year), the idea that significant troop reductions will bring about more respect for human life in Iraq is TOTAL SPECULATION (let alone his bright idea to bomb Pakistan which actually caused riots in Pakistan in which people were injured in Spring 2007http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN0132206420070801), and leaders owe it to the people they represent, if not the rest of the world, to go by what they know, not by speculaiton.

If our conduct in war, capital punishment, abortion and torture are how we measure the protection and assertion of the ideals we hold so true, it seems that McCain could make more of an argument for these ideals than Obama, because not only does he oppose torture and (in a Republican mindset of course, yay surge!) advocate a militarily supported mindset of fighting to win which means using what we’ve learned from our mistakes to fight to stem conflict in Iraq (including ethnic conflict), he is also on a strongly pro-life presidential ticket…

I think this is the weakest counterargument. For one, I don’t believe I suggested that troop reductions would produce respect for human rights. The troop reductions themselves are part of a different conversation, one about Iraq. (And as far as Pakistan, I didn’t like Obama’s comments on that from the first. But seeing recent events, I’m not entirely sure it’s a purely Democratic problem.) Second, the disrespect for human rights, including torture, occured because of our actions in Iraq, completely seperate from withdrawing from it. Finally, leaders do act on what they know, but they also have to act on what they predict. No one, even the President, knows the future and we can’t expect them true. We can expect them to make the best decision, and while Obama may have opposed the surge, he also opposed the war in the first place. If there was no war, then the question of the surge would be a moot point.

Thanks for your thoughtful comments, I truly appreciate them. Hopefully I’ve done something to address the issues, though probably not as well as you had hoped.