@32. Andrew Ian Dodge: - Dirigo, Maine’s socialized insurance program, is on life support.
And Massachusetts’ law that transformed health insurance from an employee benefit to a statutory entitlement led to a system which, last time I checked, ended up costing its taxpayers almost twice as much as the voters were told it would. Of course, as with everything else involving our corrupt federal government, we can magnify similar problems at the federal level by at least an order of magnitude.
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@36. mags: - Maybe you should reflect on problems in your own country before judging us.
Maybe you should grow a brain, purchase a clue and practice a little of your “multiculturalism”, “tolerance” and “diversity” before coming in here and judging Americans with a statement as patently clueless and brainless as “You must all hate eachother“.
- Would it be ’shit happens’ if a house burnt down killing everyone because they didn’t have insurance?
This ‘shit’ happens all the time. Insurance does not prevent it. Oftentimes firefighters can’t either – and it has nothing to do with insurance. Geez!! This is a perfect example of how the morally adolescent left can’t think critically or rationally about anything. Your thought process is totally governed by emotion and guilt, not reason, and it leaves you vulnerable to idiotic, false analogies like this one.
- It’s your attitude that confuses the world. The U.S is happy to spend their money on war,so you can be ’safe’ but can’t help your own.
Oh do give this “the world” crap a frakking rest, okay? We’re really, really tired of hearing clueless useful idiots reciting the media’s mantra about our image. When you people learn to think for yourselves instead of regurgitating the BBC’s, Reuters’ and APs’ latest propaganda, you get an opinion. Until then, kindly keep your parroting to yourself. If the US only cared about Americans being safe, we would withdraw all troops to within our borders, put a fence around the country, finish the missile shield and watch the rest of you eat each other alive. Obviously, that’s not what’s happened though.
Check our federal and State budgets, sweetie. And check the billion$ collected by American charities – good luck even counting the charities themselves, let alone the amount of money they collect to help others. When you can even comprehend the amounts of money the U.S. sends to the poor and to other countries – both officially and UN-officially, from individuals and via charitable NGOs – get back to us with a post. Until then, kindly mind your own damn business. Europe has been depending on the U.S. to protect it from the USSR, and now Russia, since WWII. Any idea how much that has cost? THAT is the money we should be passing out in the streets to Americans, not the funds that have been spent to oust tyrants like Saddam and to squash professional homicidal maniacs like al Qaeda and the Taliban. You are in very, very serious need of a reality check.
- We believe that people have a fundamental right for life.
Wrong. You believe that someone else should guarantee your quality of life. It’s the entitlement mindset you acquired as an adolescent and/or at university. Growing out of that mindset requires a moral maturity that you don’t exhibit, based on your posts. It is not someone else’s responsibility to provide for you – for ANY of your needs. It is yours.
- Your lack of humanity towards even your vulnerable is sad.
Really? Any idea how many hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars are spent on taking care of the “vulnerable” in the U.S.? Any idea how much of that is wasted or stolen due to corruption, ineptitude, bureaucratic inefficiency and leftist policies based on emotion, not reason?
Here’s just one tiny, depressing ‘for instance’… American taxpayers provide 100% support, through SSDI, for people who are “too depressed to work”, people who are “too obese to work”, people who are “disabled due to past drug abuse”, people who are labeled “suicidal” by a broken social services system and not allowed to work, even if they want to – that’s to say nothing of the people who are genuinely infirm, disabled, unemployed or uneducated – even when they insist on popping out another kid every 10 months. I have had direct experience with idiocy like this and had to leave the system because the insanity was just so overwhelming and depressing. One small example: former drug abusers were provided with travel vouchers – $75 per trip, two trips per visit – so they could visit our clinic for group therapy (also paid for by the taxpayer). Therapists in that same clinic – some disabled and unable to drive – had to find their own transportation. The State AND the clinic refused to help them because they were gainfully employed. So you tell me what’s “fair” about that. You can go peddle your “humanity” to someone who will pay YOUR bills for you.
- … i know what i’m talking out.
That’s got to be the most comically ironic thing I’ve read today. But then the day is only half over.
Here’s the bottom line, ‘mags’. The cost of purchasing basic, primary health care goods and services should not be so high that it presents a financial risk. In fact, most of these costs do NOT present such a risk. But people the world over – especially here in America – have been brainwashed into thinking, for some inexplicable reason, that they can’t possibly afford health care without insurance. This is where the problem lies: peope have been duped into worrying about the cost of insurance instead of screaming bloody murder about the outrageous cost of health care, which has skyrocketed at rates multiple times that of inflation for decades – apparently, everywhere. The ONLY entities that have benefited from this have been the companies selling comprehensive health insurance – they have, in effect, created the problem.
Insurance is a tool for managing risk. That is its only purpose. A proper reduction in the cost of quotidian health care – to bring it BACK in line with all the other commodities that require no ‘insurance’ – will eliminate the need for ‘comprehensive’ health insurance entirely. Health care issues that involve significant expense – expenses every family should be planning for, like having to buy a new car, move to a new residence, buy a new home, pay for a wedding, etc. – can be covered with ‘catastrophic’ policies. These were the ones we had when I was a kid – when no one went broke paying for health care out-of-pocket – and which are still available today.
The left needs to pull its collective head out of its butt and start seriously thinking about why some people can’t get good health care. The reason is the cost, not the lack of insurance. Bring the cost back down, through free market economics, and the rest of these problems go away – especially the one we’re now facing, which is how deep into our personal lives and liberties the professional political class of ticks will burrow, using a guarantee of our health as an excuse.
