http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/01/18/berkeley-pay-sex-change-operations/
One could go on and on about how wrong this idea is-not on moral grounds-but on why the tax-payers should be funding this procedure. I don't much care if people want to change themselves into a man, a woman or a anteater. That's their business. However, it is not our duty to pay for it. That's my argument, pure and simple.
But how can one argue against Beserkley?
23 comments:
Berekley can't afford new roads, trash removal, keeping libraries and parks open, but they can afford this?
A prime example of the Moonbat form of government.
I think that you are both very cold hearted about this issue, obviously you know nothing about it and think that people just frivolously change their gender because they have nothing better to do.
Ingrid,
Au contraire. I am not cold hearted at all. I plainly stated that I don't care if people want to change their gender. I just don't want to pay for it through my taxes. Let them pay for it themselves. That's cold-hearted?
Ingrid true transgendered individuals are very rare. They are the people with the genitals of one or both but the genes of one distinct sex. They have my sympathy.
What the majority of those who call themselves transgendered are men and women who wish to be a different sex than what their genes are. They need a psychologist not an operation.
Berkeley cannot provide necessary service such as road repair, police, fire and rescue. The money isn't there. Giving a mentally ill asshole a sex change operation paid for by the city they can afford.
It is not cold-hearted, it is being practical.
If someone needs a new heart or liver, should he pay for it himself too? I still say you don't understand what is involved in gender reassinment. It's not what people want, it's what they need.
This is another example of the consequences of government run healthcare. There is a good 50 or 100 years of unnecessary bitter debate over what should or should not be paid for out of taxpayer money. How. about breast reduction or augmentation? Why not penile implants then. There is a long Wish List which expands exponentially when the government pays. Now this is sorted out in the marketplace between patients, doctors, and carriers and we don't have public arguments about entitlements.
While this is not a complete list by any means, what about increased utilization of "free" healthcare? There is the complication from over 100 new departments and agencies with God knows how many government employees writing tens of thousands of regulations each with it's own waivers, exceptions, and loopholes. Think of the bonanza of litigation, ballot initiatives, and referendums.
Is there any doubt there will be more fraud, and abuse with government employees watching this instead of insurance carriers that lose this money. You can't quantify the cost of government employees without the incentives that private sector employees have.
This is a great example of Left Wing "Stage One Thinking."
How. about breast reduction or augmentation? Why not penile implants then.
Comparing these things to gender reassignment surgery shows that you don't understand the issue in the first place. But hey, that's par for the course with you, Miggie.
My Mom (Ingrid) knows what she's talking about with this, as she has some personal experience. (No, she didn't have the surgery, but somebody close to her did. There was a time when she probably thought very closely to you guys about this issue, but it's amazing what a little first-hand experience can do.)
I think Gary is closer to right about this. We could go back to a totally free market approach to medical care: you get what you have the money to pay for, and if you don't have the money, you can die. If we have some kind of communal fund to make sure everyone is covered, we have to be honest about how we are going to pay for it. Money doesn't grow on trees. I'm all for taxing income over $1 million at 50%, and over $10 million at 90%, but still, there is only so much money, and we have to draw a line somewhere.
There may be occasions when someone really needs the gender-change surgery. But it would take some very tight regulation to limit it to those occasions. My priorities would be:
1) Any treatment which would save a life,
1a) minus major surgery which would only prolong life by six to eighteen months at a cost of several hundred thousand dollars.
2) Any and all preventive care which will reduce the incidence of life-threatening illness,
3) cosmetic surgery to compensate for major congenital flaws or accidents, but excluding optional,
4) apply the criteria of (3) to gender change surgery.
At every step everyone should pay something, and the more optional the treatment, the more the individual should pay.
There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.
Ingrid heart or liver transplants saves lives. But even then insurance companies and the government only pay for 1 liver transplant attempt. For if the first doesn't work, then subsequent attempts will fail.
What Berkeley is doing is not life saving, but a cosmetic procedure. It would be like the government paying for plastic surgery for every person in the US because they don't feel good about themselves.
Thanks Lance. Findalis, again you have no clue what this is about. A hermaphrodite is one thing and totally different than what you coldly call a "mentally ill asshole".
Why would someone go through the physical pain involved in gender reassignment, the hassle from the outside world, the pain it causes the family? Again, this is not something some one chooses lightly, because it starts in the brain, and we don't know why. Many transgender commit suicide. Instead of compassion you show contempt.
Exactly. While I don't necessarily disagree with Gary's notion that taxpayer money should go to these types of surgeries, it's the callousness of Gary's post (the laughing chimp) and to an even worse extent, the responses of Miggie and Findalis, that I find objectionable.
As my mom stated, these are people who need compassion and sympathy. It's not like getting a breast augmentation. It's a major life decision that people don't make lightly. Maybe instead of judging them, you should take the time to understand them.
If you are talking about hermaphrodites, certainly, they need corrective surgery. I don't make light of that. That is a real medical issue that could be covered under health insurance. I still think that sex change surgery is something that tax payers should not be made to pay for. The fact that Berkeley is sticking that onto the tax-payers to pay for city worker gender change surgery, in my humble view, deserves the laughing chimp.
@ Ingrid
You didn't read what I wrote very well.
Ingrid true transgendered individuals are very rare. They are the people with the genitals of one or both but the genes of one distinct sex. They have my sympathy.
What the majority of those who call themselves transgendered are men and women who wish to be a different sex than what their genes are. They need a psychologist not an operation.
One with a true medical condition should not be turned away from help.
How many have the rare condition that traps them in a gender opposite that of their genetic makeup and how many are in need of psychiatric help and not surgery?
Nature does not create evolutionary errors too often. It would bring about the extinction of the species. That is why genetic diseases are rarer than people imagine.
I'm not talking about hermaphrodites. And again, I don't have an issue with you being against taxpayer money going to this type of surgery. I'm not sure that I would approve of that either. My point is that your attitude toward these people is callous. Heaven forbid that you should ever have a loved one who wanted this kind of procedure. It's this kind of insensitivity on the part of you, Miggie, and Findalis is why these people have such a high suicide rate.
What the majority of those who call themselves transgendered are men and women who wish to be a different sex than what their genes are. They need a psychologist not an operation.
Findalis, please provide proof for this assertion.
What is confusing this issue is that there are a fair number of people in America today with a sense of entitlement to whatever they want. They think that is the definition of "fundamental fairness." It isn't.
Thus, it is easy to make fun of some of the more outlandish (but very heartfelt) demands, and belatedly note that some people with very real problems have been swept into the trashcan also.
There is no good deed that some opportunist will not take advantage of. There is not rigorous exclusion that will not harm those who really need what they are denied.
Drawing a line in a modestly reasonable way and accepting the error rate we will inevitably still has is the best we can really hope for.
Findalis, I personally know only of one transgender, and she went through years of psychological evaluation before surgery to live like a man. I am not an expert but I feel bad for everyone involved.
We can argue about this forever, but I just wonder how many people the city of Berkeley has that need a sex change operation and want the city to pay for it. Are there really that many that it would be a hardship? Maybe they should round them all up and lock them away, so our society won't be bothered by having to live with them. It's the lack of compassion I am missing.
I received this email and thought it would fit right in with this thread.
=================
Let me get this straight . . . .
We're going to be "gifted" with a health care
plan we are forced to purchase and fined if we don't,
which purportedly covers at least ten million more people, without adding a single new doctor, but provides for 16,000 new IRS agents,
written by a committee whose chairman says he doesn't understand it,
passed by a Congress that didn't read it but
exempted themselves from it,
and signed by a President who smokes,
with funding administered by a treasury chief who
didn't pay his taxes,
for which we'll be taxed for four years before any
benefits take effect,
by a government which has already bankrupted Social Security and Medicare,
all to be overseen by a surgeon general
who is obese,
and financed by a country that's broke!!!!!
'What the hell could possibly go wrong?'
As usual, Miggie, what you posted doesn't have anything to do with the conversation at hand. Thanks for playing though, and we'll be sure to send you a copy of the Fousesquawk home game.
Ingrid
A city must look after the needs of all their citizens.
In this example the City of Berkeley is facing a deficit for the coming year. While providing said operation to the few dozen or so individuals is a nice idea, is it still nice if to pay for it you have to close a library or park or layoff a fireman or cop?
Berkeley cannot repair their infrastructure. Roads, sewers, and the like have to come first. The needs of the whole community is the priority.
The post was not on whether transgendered people should get help from the City of Berkeley, but whether Berkeley should pay for that help when it cannot afford basic services.
In that case unfortunately, the answer can only be no.
I'd say Findalis has this right, at least after honing her argument in the fierce heat of combat with Ingrid and Lance. She's got it down to the basic facts, shorn of attitude and sarcasm.
ANYTHING we expect our government, local, state or federal, to do, must be paid for, now or later, by someone. The government is not a profitable organization, so we have to all pay, in some form or fashion, for whatever it delivers.
Right now, paying for transgender surgery doesn't rank very high, relative to the sum of money available.
Miggie, incidentally, has mirrored an email that is mostly plain untruths. For example, the health care bill requires that all members of congress and their staffs participate in the same health coverage as everyone else. Lie about one item, I suspect you are lying about a good deal of the rest.
http://newledger.com/2010/03/exempted-from-obamacare-senior-staff-who-wrote-the-bill/
Sent from my iPhone
Miggie, either you are a gullible oaf, or, more likely, you mistake us all for a pack of fools. You have offered a link to an opinion site which avers that uncited language from a referenced page "appears" to exempt a small number of "senior staff" who "wrote the bill." There is no evidence there at all. Even if what is written is true, this mysterious "senior staff" would not amount to one twentieth of the congress and the senate. A legal construct to accomplish such a narrow purpose is extremely unlikely. In short, your link deserves one of Gary's modern art images of the rear end of a horse, or a bull backed up to a toilet.
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