rj:
To William Keller:
You said it perfectly about giving up our freedoms. Government healthcare for a country of our size would destroy our healthcare system.
No it wouldn’t because country after country with tens or hundreds of millions of citizens can hack it. Saying we are “too big” for “dang gummint” to do anything infers that we cannot have other well-functioning parts of government doing things like build and maintain an interstate highway system, have a military….
Cara – my insurance paid the bill except for the 20 dollar copay. The hospital was equipped to do the paparwork, just as the UK hospital filled out papers for their system. There is always paperwork.
Hooray for traditional US medical care.
Hooray if you have an employer that foots it (government workers have the best care outside doctors and CEOs – with prisoners, illegals, and indigents getting lesser but still free Totalcare).
For the 1/7th of the population now trending to 1/5th whose employers refuse healthcare bennies, and for the private coverage people banned from deducting what wealthy Owners get to deduct…no Hoorays.
Just more and more Americans hearing at work that big cutbacks must happen “in order to compete better with China”, entry level deliberately hired as “temp” to avoid dental and med coverage…or self-employed seeing healthcare reaching 610 for one person or 1100 a month for a family with no dental and no deductability unless they are “business owners with 15 or more employees”.
No hoorays for that. Nor is health insurance an ideological litmus test of a “Real Republican”.
Though “real republican” prisoners, illegals, and welfare recipients – as well as the wealthiest who get it all deductable and gratis do like “our best in the world, deal”.
Because of waste, duplication, and an army of lawyers, insurers, and excessive “doctor-medical professional entrepreneur compensation” – we have a 50% higher per capita cost of healthcare than Germany, with a lower life expectancy.
We are also the only advanced nation with the phenomena of widespread medical bankruptcies. One million filed a year. Many through no fault or poor health –
Like my aunt, who was hit by an Israeli in Florida on a tourist visa, suffered spinal damage, and lost her brokerage account, her job …and came close to having all her other savings taken by bill collectors from the “best in the world!!!” medical caregivers – before we could get her out of state and the Loi-Yahs erect safety devices. Collectors, we discovered, that included relatives of the Israeli that broadsided her while talking on his cell phone….
Republicans have long been on both sides of this and it would be as stupid a “litmus test” for them as a “no niggers or hispanics allowed” rule of party membership to now say they are against the universal health care leaders like Nixon, Romney, Taft, Schultz said we must strive for to appease the hardline “Freedom!!” ideologues.
Nixon was the 1st to propose it. He lost a brother to TB because his family could not afford care. He said we cannot protect America with a military and yet remain comfortable that over 10,000 Americans die each year because they have no health coverage and either expire untreated or die from a condition allowed to advance past the point of being able to save them.
Now we are up to 18,000 Americans dying from lack of health insurance each year and a million medically driven bankruptcies. In the last 10 years, we have maintained that the loss of 3,000 people over that time to Terrahist Evildoers is unacceptable, yet we accept 160,000 to 180,000 Americans dying from lack of access to health coverage. Something that France or Canada or Japan would never do – and which disgusts similarly advanced nations about America.
When we were spending 100 billion a year plus, rebuilding Iraq, after security and electricity, the 3rd highest priority they put on our spending was rebuilding the medical infrastructure and getting a universal health care system as good as the Israelis or Saudis have.
