It's not about giving food and healthcare to everyone who might need it, but rather about everyone who cannot afford it. That's charity yes, and charity works best institutionalized.

It seems to me the main problem in the USA is that too many people are trying to screw over other people. Dog eat dog. Especially USA insurance companies seem unreliable. That's actually one more reason to hand the healthcare to the government or charities.

As for people gaming the system, it's necessary to do some elementary checks, but some abuses are unavoidable if you don't want to risk excluding people who actually need welfare. When it comes to abusing the system, hose welfare checks are nothing compared to the millions of bail outs and kickback that the wealthy and powerful get. Just look at the banking bailout.

The most poignant commentary I read here so far was that as technology advances, unemployment will become the norm, not the exception. Once robots and androids are able to do all the manual labor, there will be nothing to do for the majority of people. Not everyone can be a scientist, a sports man, an artist, engineer, designer or a computer programmer. The unemployed masses will demand that the wealth generated by the machines will be distributed to them. The wealthy will oppose this for a time but in the end (and hopefully without too much bloodshed) the masses will get what they want.

And that may mean indeed that we will have a world where most people just consume and lay about. The ambitious minority will be those who join in the the aforementioned professions. But isn't that the goal of technological progress? To make all manual labor unneeded, and usher in a golden age where people do not have to work for a living anymore?

It's called healthy competition, unless harm is involved. No, not "economic harm" caused by working harder and causing the lazy person to get laid off or fired.

Where did you get the idea that goverment or charities are reliable? Check your assumptions.

True dat, but no excuse.

The Jetsons anticipated this and promised us 4 hour workweeks ("Pushing all these buttons is killing me!") but it appears that isn't working out quite as anticipated. OTOH, lots of jobs are held down on the hours to avoid overtime and "full time benefits" that the government is supposedly enforcing by fiat.

Somehow the idea has arisen that people working "for the good of all, out of their heart" will motivate people better than self-serving greed. It might work for a month or three. Naturally the greed must be channeled by tort and anti-monopoly laws, but that's the only thing that works in the long run.

I've done that myself, yet here I am now. Not quite the same thing for a healthy person to pick themselves back up as it is for a sick person. And I know you don't believe in mental illness but I'm really quite sick.

Ah, this thread gave me a little lightbulb. It's really hard to describe my mental state, I've never been able to do so. But I thought of something close. If you've ever had a concussion - that's similar to how I feel almost all the time.

EDIT: Now I wonder if it's not more the concussions that are at play here - but there are other things too, like hallucinations/voices/paranoia that aren't things you'd get just from a concussion. Don't mean to steal the thread, I'm just excited I now have a way to describe it. The doctors always played down the role of the concussions though.

Time doesn't always tell. Not even close. You're thinking of confirmation bias. Possibilities that did not happen are mostly unknown. One way to judge what will happen with a given law is to see other countries have done and how their laws affected them. Generally, the rest of the industrialized nations haven't reverted to ruin.

There isn't anyone who thinks "free health care" means it grows on trees, so it's foolish quest to argue against that straw puppet. Lets see what health care has actually cost the United States.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/danmunro/2012/12/30/2012-the-year-in-healthcare-charts/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/26/charts-health-care-costs-americans_n_2957266.html

This is less of a red v. blue case than one of optimizing an inefficient system. I agree, though, that time will tell if Obamacare is any more efficient. It's an awfully piecemeal patchwork due to having to please our current healthcare corporations paying their way into law.

Well sure they want to "get off welfare", everybody looks down on them. But as far as putting some effort into it, well that's asking too much. Kind of like when a religious person says "I'll pray for you", I'm thinking "So you'll help me as much as possible as long as it doesn't involve effort?".

The thing with free health care is, you will appreciate it when you need it.

I have had many procedures in my life, mainly related to riding a motorcycle, and motocross (broken ribs, legs, hernia, etc) and everything was free.

I pay taxes? Yes, I do, about 21%, I think is less that what USA charges their citizens from what I read on wikipedia article about USA taxes.

I pay them glad, because when I need health, Im sure Im getting it, even if it is a expensive procedure. Even a foreign can get it, and no hospital can refuse. This guy in the photo should have purchased a ticket here, he would have got his problem solved only for the price of the ticket.

And Im not angry about the taxes, because I know they will help me eventually, and help others; is a cooperative mind, in USA seems to imperate "me over the others" mind, you dont rejoice if you get health care, you rejoice when the other does not get health care.

I have read too that many people in USA join the army to get health care, a good salary and education. That is B.S; a extortion, you join a army to go and die in a foreign land just to get what should be yours just by paying your taxes. How many are still in the jungle of Vietnam, their bodies never to be recovered? Joining the army to defend your country in your own soil is a thing, to go to a foreign land as a mercenary, well, lower than a mercenary since you dont get rich, just get what should be yours, is a fools errand. While you die in the sand/jungle/tundra, the politics cant count the money they are making with your blood.

That is pure and savage capitalism, comrade.

BTW, we have free education too, including college, from where many nobel prizes were educated.

Am I the only one who read Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut? People don't want jobs because they can make money. They want jobs to feel needed. If you talk to someone who delivers newspapers every day and someone who does nothing all day, you will see a strong difference. The "paper boy" may be pissed off because he's not making enough money or he has a menial job, but he will be animated.

Am I the only allegro user who feels it's a jolly good job we all live far apart and don't know exactly where we all live ?

Why do I get this ?

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IDK ? What does that mean ?

I earn more than many people, and many people earn more than me. So we all pay different amounts of tax, yet regardless of status we all get the same 'free' healthcare. If I had no job and no money I'd still get free healthcare and further assistance to lead a fairly normal life. When I did get a job I'd have a better quality of life and pay taxes to help everyone continue to get free healthcare.

I see this as a better model than one where people become ill and die simply because they couldn't afford to get a life-saving operation.

Comparing free food to free healthcare is just a ridiculous and simplistic comparison, a bit like saying more guns create safer environments (sorry, couldn't resist bringing guns into the argument as we haven't argued about them yet