by prophecor 401 Replies latest members politics
At will = work hard, we'll see you tomorrow. Or, do the bare minimum. Here's your pink slip.
This is overly simplified but you get the point.
Also I do understand that under a socialized system, there aren't 'claims' per se, that the end user has to be worried about.
But unless you're a capitated provider who is paid a set amount, some.....
on phone. gotta run I'll be back.
Chill, Eyebrow. She means me
Just trying to defend all those that didn't happen to agree with you...I wasn't implying you were talking directly to me FlyingHigh..but to those that didn't agree with you as a group. So that is why I replied. Giving myself too much credit? I think I already mentioned on the thread here I didn't bother starting a new topic when talking about a shift of private healthcare workers to the public sector was because, no my topics are not read that much. I don't really live and die on what is posted here, so whatever (I am sure you don't either).
Anyhoo...and I did mean have a good day and happy tomorrow. So please do. All of you, even all of the bitter capitalists.
Legally, at will employment mean the employee has the right to leave, and is not bound (absent contract to the contrary), and the employer has the right to 'leave' the employment agreement (absent an employment agreement). In Texas and 32 other states, that's the law, with degrees of variation for certain circumstances.
The term stems from the practice (originally British, at least in America) of endenturing workers, such that they had no right to leave, and could be flogged/imprisoned if they left before term of employ was completed, regardless of conditions or personal circumstances.
American codification of 'at will employment' is largely responsive to this practice.
Just trying to defend all those that didn't happen to agree with you...
Why? Believe me, they are too busy looking out for themselves and making some very disparaging remarks about the uninsured in America to notice. Poor things, they need for you to feel sorry for them and to defend them. Cry a river while you're at it. After some of the remarks I've read regarding uninsured, especially the working poor, I can't believe anyone would think those you're speaking of need defending. I don't care if people disagree with my views. What I do care about is the biggety, bragging, cavalier, haughty, insolent & presumptuous remarks made about those who find themselves uninsured. I hope you understand that it's the insluting way the uninsured are spoken of that I find troublesome.
One thing to keep in mind: we don't care if affordable healthcare, for every US citizen, is government run or if the government simply ensures a universal, affordable program is brought to fruition. It's ridiculous for anyone commenting here to think we want them personally to pay for all of it. Everyone who is able to work should pay for it.
We have no problem with helping to pay for such a program.
If we get some kind of universal healthcare program, should some inurance company employees lose their jobs, they'll find out how it is for hundreds and thousands who lose their jobs every week when their jobs are shipped to China, India, Mexico and third world countries. I don't wish them ill. They'll just be in the same boat as many of us: under employed and uninsured. Every US citizen is in danger of finding themselves among the under or uninsured. When that happens, they might be grateful for a program that ensures affordable healthcare is available to every citizen, including them.
Ross
The question would have to be: is the level of government inefficiency greater than the cut that shareholders will take from privatised profits. If it is not, then the Public (socialised) system is actually more cost effective.
Nice formulation; also add in if private health companies can compete and provide per-operation/patient costs lower than public sector, they can win business within a public health system.
Eyebrow2
So does this mean a company should hire anyone that wants a job, whether they are deserving (as in qualified) or not?
No, but it means after a certain period of time in which a worker has proved their worth, they qualify for employment protection. If the company wishes to stop employing them for financial reasons, then a fair settlement to the person being discharged should be part of the financial consideration the company has to make when deciding whether retaining or discharging staff is the best option. Without this financial responsibility. the companies decisions end up costing the public purse, effectively subsidising a private company with public money.
Terry
This whole notion of SOCIETY is so wonky!
Let us remove the phoney trappings of what SOCIETY is.
SOCIETY is people living together.
You can learn a great deal about society by studying man; but, you cannot learn anything about man by studying society.
What utter rubbish. So, American society does not inform one in any way about American people? Chinese society teaches us nothing about Chinese people? Two simple examples show your statement to be without foundation and unreasoned.
Standing back and looking at a GROUP makes all the members of the group look EQUAL. This is a false view. An individual person runs their own life. A GROUP is run by LEADERS. Groups have leaders. What is irrational in the leader becomes transferred to the group. Like illness it is contagious. It is the individual who always suffers.
The granulairity of a grouping does not stop the grouping having emergent charcteristics not predictable by its constituent members. Disagree if you like, I've enough evidence in evolutionary biology alone to make disagrement seem unthinking and ill informed.
Many societies have come and gone and left their imprint on history for us to study. But, it was the human being as an individual who gained or lost thereby.
Do we remember Greece as having conquered the world? No. Alexander the Great was an individual.
Was the genius of the Roman Empire the social art of its citizens or was it the Caesar, the man-god who was the engine of its might?
Even the contagion of vast religious movements is always the work of a man: Abraham, Jesus, Paul, Constantine, Luther, etc.)
None of this means the grouping these people were part of had no purpose.
We teach our children to recite mindless words like "alliegance" and attach their devotion to a piece of fabric said to represent the entire Nation in which they live. When they grow older that piece of fabric beckons them to serve it and they die on foreign soil. It is sacrifice of self. Now their "self" has value to the Nation! Had they refuse they would not be selfless; they would be selfish and called "cowards". There is no pledge for the individual to himself alone; it isn't tolerated.
Oh for god's sake, we're talking about healthcare. Do try to keep up.
Everywhere we find that the GROUP does our thinking and its demands are endless.
No we don't, Everywhere we find individuals who don't want to be 'part' of a larger grouping when it 'costs' them something, but will take every advantage of that larger grouping if it is to their benefit. Parasites - poor, ill-educated ones from bad backgrounds, and rich, well-educated ones from good backgrounds - parasites all.
It isn't SOCIETY that needs healthcare.
It isn't SOCIETY that pays the costs.
Yes it is, as the absense of public healthcare leads to social inequality and a society performing below its optimal level; it IS society that pays the price.
The payment of healthcare costs comes not through voluntary thought or a spirit of comraderie and giving; it comes from an edict and the force of compulsory legislation from leadership at the hands of ideologues driven by group-think.
No, it comes from enlightened self-interest. Maybe you stop analysing the potential beenfits to you too early in the process flow? If I pay for a public heathcare scheme through tax I will always have healthcare, no matter what. I will live in a society where there are not massive differentiations of outcome in illness depending on income, which means society will be less strained, more inclusive, and healthier.
Just as supporting liberalisation of drug control benefits me by making it less likely a junkie will steal from me to finance drug taking, so too supporting public healthcare maeans I will live in a healthier society. That's a net benefit to me even if I never fall ill.
The INDIVIDUAL is a rarity in a SOCIETY. It is the odd man out. An individual makes his own decisions and is called a cynic and a square peg. Yet, this much maligned and abused individual is the genius who has made all the great discoveries and boons that others have benefited from. No committee ever invented a lightbulb or wrote an opera or cured polio. It was not Rodin's "duty" to society to create THE THINKER. It wasn't Van Gogh's humanitarian impulses that created Starry Night. It was the spark of genius that only an individual has and no society can glom off.
And all this is bluster with nothing to do with whether public heathcare is functionally fairer and more effective.
All are canards of the weak to bring down the engines of genius to their own level as slaves. It is working!
Terry, your argument is quite absurd. Lightbulbs, Operas, cures for disease, works of art - all are possible in a system with public healthcare!!!!
Lisa / KD:
Thanks for that. Please excuse my ignorance. So basically "at-will" is casual labour, wherein you get no benefits or job security, yes?
Gyles:
if private health companies can compete and provide per-operation/patient costs lower than public sector, they can win business within a public health system.
True true. That's what happens with all the independant contractors like therapists and even the non-NHS dentists, etc.
LITTLETOE WROTE:
Terry:
Have you ever worked in Healthcare?
Believe me, it's vocational, and the majority of folks don't go into it for the money (even though consultants can make shedloads!).
The incentive, and major part of the psychological employment contract, is the ability to help people, not remuneration. This is where pure capitalism falls down, on this score. Some people do have an altruistic streak.
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There is a psychology to people who work "not for remuneration" but to help others. Just as there is a psychology to people called "enablers" who prop up
alcoholics and drug addicts and abusive husbands.
Somewhere between these two psychologies you have a neurosis bell curve.
Taking care of your SELF is sanity. The less you do so in favor of taking care of non-self others the more neurotic you become no matter how lovely it appears to those who embrace altruism as an absolute good.
The ability to help people by volunteer work is one thing. The ability to help people by spending other people's money is another....and so on.
People do things for a lot of reasons and not all of those reasons are as they appear.
The TV evangelists who have their photo taken next to a wide-eyed African child with flies on their face to raise money from their TV audience may actually have OTHER ideas in mind for the spending of those funds. Their particular psychology is interesting too.
I don't judge people over this---I just observe it isn't quite as obvious as it looks.
Terry
Abaddon says:
If I pay for a public heathcare scheme through tax I will always have healthcare, no matter what. I will live in a society where there are not massive differentiations of outcome in illness depending on income, which means society will be less strained, more inclusive, and healthier.
I reply:
You are trusting the people who take your money to handle it properly, invest it and have it ready when you need it. In America this has become more and more
a Ponzi Scheme than a trust issue. The political body is composed of persons who are not trustworthy except in their speeches and promises.
I find your protests naive in the extreme. Also, all your animadversions demonstrate the weakness of your foundational belief system. You actually trust groups more than individuals? I'm breathless.
Terry
What an interesting universe you live in.
Homo Sapien Sapien is a gregarious beast and underlying all his actions will be the dichotomy between self-preservation and common-good. You appear to applaud the one and despise the other. What a crippled outlook...
You highlight one of the main issues with working on a salary, that being that you can't just clock out if there's work to be done
This is so very true. The image that is offered up far too often of salaried/govt paid workers is that they do little or nothing to earn a dollar, they are higher paid than the public sector and they can't be fired or laid off. WRONG. For example - we had cutbacks during one really bad year and the government ordered our budget slashed - rather than try and find the money in the services that we provided to those in our care, a decision was made - take a pay cut voluntarily or they would start laying off from the bottom up. We collectively took the pay cut so that we lost no members of the team. We immediately had a months wages taken from our paychecks and this meant having no income for 4 weeks before Christmas. Salarys were frozen and we had a hiring freeze so that while our care numbers increased we could not afford the help we needed to do the work with this growth. It makes me shake my head in wonder that people colour the world in such contrasting shades of black and white. The people who work on the front lines change diapers, feeding tubes, deal with sexual, mental and physical issues and are in my opinion, underpaid. I am aware of where people would be without access to and paid health care and that includes all of those who earn only enough to live on. The link between mental/emotional/physical health has been proven time and again. I've heard the comments about the guy in the bar having a drink and some chips with mates on a Friday night - what a wastrel he is when he can barely afford his rent - he should be socking that money away...and I guess I recognize that people are social creatures and in order to balance one's life there has to be interaction. I don't see this as a waste. Abuse is of course a different beast altogether. sw.
