On 10/12/2013 8:11 PM, Shay wrote:
> On 10/12/2013 11:14 AM, Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> On 10/11/2013 11:26 PM, Shay wrote:
>
> Yes, the world is full of stupidity, and, yes, maybe YOU could improve
> some of it if you had infinite, incorruptible power at your disposal.
> But this is a fantasy, and no amount of problem-pointing-out makes it
> any less of a fantasy.
>
>   -Shay
>
And, your solution is to "not" help people that need it, because, well, 
that would "force" doctors to do something they wouldn't otherwise.

There are reason emergency rooms "must", under the law, be forced to 
provide care to anyone that comes in, and why its that way in every 
single damn civilized country. See... somewhere along the line a few 
realizations happened:

1. Its possible to not have ID, or insurance on you.

2. Its possible to be, while in the prior state, not coherent, 
conscious, or with someone who can pay.

3. Without ID, and more specifically a proven way to pay, its not 
possible to **know** if the person is recently homeless, just had a 
brush with death do to accident, but middle class, or filthy rich. Now.. 
You could always solve that one by loading everyone's picture and 
biometrics in some huge ass database, so we could identify them that 
way... Only-- that would be $%$@$#^ authoritarian and easily corrupted.

4. They might not be even local, or from the same country, and.. somehow 
people get really pissy when you treat their family, or citizens, like 
shit, just because they got injured on "your" soil, instead of their 
own. In fact, I am sure its probably even illegal to let them die, under 
international laws, without at least attempting to treat them.

5. Most people actually give a fuck about other people's lives.

Hence, it is illegal for hospitals to turn away patients who need 
critical care.

Unfortunately, it is still legal to take a mother with medical problems, 
which can kill her, as well as her child, and force her to ride in an 
ambulance, or other transportation, to some place hundreds of miles 
away, for ***immediate*** treatment, which the hospital won't give, 
because they are religious, and therefor don't have to do it, as long as 
the mother is still breathing when loading into transport, to ship her 
someplace else, where she has to **hope** some new asshole hasn't bought 
the place up, and instituted the same, "Kill the mother, even if it 
won't save the child, because otherwise Jesus might cry!", policies. 
And, that is just the most sick and evil of the things they can get by 
with choosing to ***not do*** because they have some exemption, or 
loophole, that lets them fob the job off on someone else.

So, at least your principle that they shouldn't be "forced" to do things 
counts, for some shit that ends up killing people (and hell yes, it does 
kill people).

Decades of what amounted to charnel houses and "special wards", for 
people sent/allowed to die, instead of receiving proper care, and, of 
course, is almost always the case, a lot of big name people, or their 
family members dying do to this crap, led to them passing a law that 
said, "You can't deny people help! - except in the cases listed in sub 
paragraph 14, section 5, where all the damn loopholes to the rule hide."

I have heard the same asinine argument made, over and over again, by 
"libertarians" arguing that laws prohibiting businesses from telling 
people with the wrong color skin, or political affiliation, or what ever 
other BS they use, should be a allowed, and most of them, while 
completely fucking racist, sexist, or just plain hateful of some 
category of people, never the less DO NOT RISE to being as outright 
evil, and sick, as suggesting that mandatory care, for someone entering 
an emergency room, is "wrong", because it might "force" them someone to 
provide help they wanted to deny someone.

All of which, again, misses the point, entirely, that its only a damn 
problem if half of all healthcare in a country, like the US, ends up in 
the emergency room, because half of the people in the country have no, 
or substandard, insurance, there are no where near enough free clinics 
to help, and nearly all of their funding comes from "charities", who 
just can't provide enough to even keep them open, never mind staffed, 
and with up to date equipment, and finally, a huge chunk of those people 
never set foot in a doctors office, since possible in their entire 
lives, until they got sick, and where forced to go to one (and then, not 
knowing the options, or even perhaps that they had any, they went to the 
worst place they could, for non-critical treatment).

The courts presume that its better to let one guilty person go free, 
than an innocent person to languish in jail. As faulty, and sometimes 
corrupt, as it is, it works (though, far far better in many other 
countries).

If not for the lies of people that have, even before social security 
existed, have been fighting to kill government services, the rule would 
be, "It is better that one person cheat the system, than that someone 
else die of starvation." Corrupt or not, hundreds of thousands of people 
would be dead without it.

By extension - "Better to have to treat 5 patients with minor issues, 
than have to autopsy those same 5 people, a month later, when the 
problem became life threatening." And, again, corrupt or not, hundreds 
of thousands of people would be dead, if not for that rule. Its likely 
that tens of thousands are dead anyway, but not **because of** the rule, 
but because they couldn't be treated "locally", because the hospital 
didn't want to waste money of the proper equipment, or they where women, 
with serious, at that moment not life threatening, but lethal, by the 
time they nearly bled to death being transported to some other place, 
because the hospital "doesn't offer those services", or dozens of other 
reasons that stem not from them being "forced" to treat patients, but 
due to corporate greed, combined with being **allowed** to choose not to 
help them.

And, I challenge you to show one single, tiny, scrap of evidence that, 
any time this happens, **ever** its was because it would have cost 
someone less their life, instead, or because the personnel where "tied 
up" with lesser problems, or any other reason other than prejudice, 
dogma, or greed (in the latter case because they don't get refunded 
insane, unreasonable, heavily padded, amounts of money, for doing their 
jobs, where.. someone walking in with an insurance card, will have their 
wallet surgically removed, in many of these supposedly upstanding 
hospitals, along with shrapnel, bone splinters, or what ever else might 
be otherwise threatening their lives).

All one has to do is read the real stories of the real people, who work 
in these places, to know that the law isn't the problem, its the damn 
stock holders, the church that may now own the place, the bosses insane 
ideas about "saving money", or one of a long list of other stupid shit 
that goes on, all of which is on **your side** and saying, "We shouldn't 
have to do this, instead of robbing someone healthier, and with money, 
blind instead." None of them, not one of them, blame it on "being forced 
to treat someone". This isn't a damn restaurant, where the server can 
decide, and avoid being fired, that they don't want to bring someone 
their sandwich. No one dies of the waiter decides they don't like the 
fraking customer. People do, if they misinterpret the supposedly "minor" 
problem, and it turns out to be something lethal, or contagious, or you 
otherwise refuse to treat them, and thus, actually determine if the 
bloody nose, or the sprained ankle, or what ever they came in with, is 
**actually** even the most pressing problem they suffer from.

And, again - the only solution is to get people out of the damned 
emergency room, and into regular clinics, and doctors offices, all of 
whom ***can*** refused to see patients, if they don't have insurance, or 
other means to pay (or, due to recent bullshit laws, even if you can 
pay, but still don't have insurance).

And, that has got to be the most fucked up thing of all. You could walk 
in with a suit case full of hundred dollar bills, in need of nothing 
more than a cast for a sprained ankle, and some of that "corruption" you 
are so worried about, makes it illegal, in some cases/states, to treat 
them ***at all***, without also producing an insurance card. Why? 
Because it cuts out the profits of the insurance companies, and worse, 
anyone with that kind of money must be, by definition, able to afford 
it, or, possibly a drug dealer, criminal, terrorist, or some other 
"unwanted" that doesn't, by the logic of some of the idiots out there 
(and, often the same ones apposed to universal health care, and other 
social programs), not **deserving** of help.

There is the "corruption" you need to be worrying about, not the 
mythical "freeloader" that might be using your dime to get a damn 
bandaid. Funny thing, really, in one of those super "socialist" 
countries that everyone is worried we will turn into, they have very 
good track of who freeloads. And, supposedly, there is literally **one** 
of them, in the entire country who has refused all jobs, training, or 
anything else, and is just living off the government dime. Most people 
**want** to do something, and only refuse to do so when they can't make 
enough fucking money doing it that they can live off it. Odd how, in the 
US, where like half the country is making close to $8 less than the 
estimated cost of living, per hour, and the social services have been 
intentionally handicapped and disabled, to the point where you can't get 
training, or real help to find a job, or even get the federal government 
to get off its ass and stop trying to push through pet projects, or 
legislation about aborting, to fix infrastructure (along with the jobs 
it would create), that some people actually find that sitting on their 
ass is "more profitable", than being paid to work, and.. just how many 
of them do work, on the side, anyway, because they would be bored off 
their asses, doing nothing.

Its almost as though, if we really helped people, instead of shitting 
all over them, while giving them free money, they might become 
productive citizens... Nah...

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