Why America Hates Universal Health Care: The Real Reason
[I originally published this essay in December of last year, before I started blogging for PJM. I was planning to write a new last-minute plea for sanity as we approach the zero hour for the health care vote in Congress -- but I inevitably ended up just re-phrasing the ideas contained in my original essay. So rather than repeat myself, I present below a reprise of what many have said is the one and only essay you'll ever need to read about universal health care.]
I watch the debate over health care with amazement. A million words are spoken on the topic with every passing minute, and as far as I can tell no one has ever addressed the real issue that’s upsetting everyone.
So, rather than wait in vain for someone else to finally speak the honest truth about the single-payer system, I’ll just have to do it myself.
• Let’s Get Blunt
America should listen to Dr. Earl Sunderhaus. ASAP. Because he holds the key to the health-care debate.
Who? you might ask. Never heard of him.
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| Dr. Earl Sunderhaus |
I hadn’t heard of him either until I saw a brief article last month in the Raleigh News & Observer with the unsubtle headline “Blunt doctor gets in trouble.”
The article detailed the travails of an elderly North Carolina eye doctor named Earl Sunderhaus who opened a 21st-century Pandora’s Box when he poked a patient in the thigh and informed her that she was too fat. Insulted, the patient complained to the state medical board, and now the doctor might lose his license.
But Sunderhaus was not about to back down:
Sunderhaus notified The News & Observer that he was about to be “screwed” by the medical board. He admitted he told the patient that thick eyeglasses would not cause her to go blind “but her thick thighs and diabetes would.”
“I poked her thigh to emphasize that diabetes is the leading cause of blindness,” he said Thursday. “People have got to accept criticism without getting their bowels in an uproar.”
He then upped the ante by threatening to counter-sue the medical board.
A follow-up article in the Asheville Citizen-Times gave more details about the eccentric doctor, who has notions that range from the kooky (disband the DEA, compulsory vasectomies) to the enlightened. Turns out Dr. Sunderhaus wasn’t merely poking this one patient in particular, but rather poking an entire nation of patients just like her:
“They are chastising me for telling her she should lose some weight because it is raising the cost of health care and it is also bad for her children and she is going to end up with diabetes,” Sunderhaus said. “I had to take three days out of my practice and go down to Raleigh, losing income, just because somebody didn’t like that I told her that she was fat.”
The patient complained that Sunderhaus poked her thigh and told her she was fat, and scolded her as irresponsible for being unemployed and relying on taxpayers to pay for another pregnancy.
“I told her the thick glasses were not going to blind her, she would go blind because of her thick thighs because diabetes is the No. 1 cause of blindness in this country,” Sunderhaus said.
…
Sunderhaus said he feels it is his responsibility as a physician to tell his patients to live healthier lives and that obesity and diabetes are costing the country millions of dollars.
…
“Telling this lady that she is fat is the truth, and it’s for her own good health,” Sunderhaus said. “She should be taking better care of herself, and it will be cheaper for us as a society.”
And to drive home his point, he poked the North Carolina Medical Board too,
“I’m the type of guy who can tell them to stick it up their butt because I am 77 years old, and if they don’t let me practice, I’ll just quit.”
Eccentricities aside, Dr. Sunderhaus has spoken the unspeakable, and by so doing has changed the frame of the health-care debate.
Because millions of Americans are secretly thinking the exact same thing as Dr. Sunderhaus and I: Why should we be forced to pay for the costs of other people’s irresponsibility?
Proponents of the single-payer national health plan can’t understand why anyone would want to oppose the faultless idea of universal health care. It’s completely egalitarian, it’s altruistic, and it’s free, they say. What’s not to like?
• “Free” is an illusion — but that’s not the point
Well, opponents of universal health care have focused on one particular objection to the idea, conclusively demonstrating that it’s not free at all. It’s “free” only in that the government inserts itself as a middleman into the payment system, so that you pay for your health care indirectly in the form of higher taxes to the government which then turns around and gives the money to doctors and hospitals — rather than individuals paying the doctors and hospitals directly. It just looks “free” on the surface. But someone has to pay for the medical care, and under the single-payer concept, that someone is Uncle Sam. But since Uncle Sam gets all his money from American taxpayers … you end up footing the bill anyway, and also footing the bill of a vast new government bureaucracy.
The argument then devolves into the minutiae of which system is more efficient and cost-effective: The current cumbersome HMO system, which still feels overpriced despite the theory that “market dynamics” should keep costs reasonable; or a new system dependent on government red tape, which long experience suggests will be even more cumbersome, less efficient, and ultimately more expensive overall than the flawed free-market system.
And that’s pretty much where the discussion over health care has stalled: If we have to have a middleman unnecessarily taking a cut of our doctor payments, should that middleman be a private company like an HMO — or should it be the government?
To my mind, that question is actually irrelevant. Because there’s a much deeper philosophical objection to “socialized medicine” that is so un-PC that it is rarely if ever voiced in public. And for that reason, the opponents of socialized medicine never even mention the real flaw in the concept that nags the unconscious of most Americans:
Not all ailments are equal.
• Blame: the final taboo
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A built-in false assumption with the health-care debate is that sickness is always no-fault sickness. It’s never socially acceptable to assign blame for people’s medical problems — especially blame on the patient.
But I’m not afraid to confess that I’m a judgmental person. And I’m pretty confident that most Americans who oppose socialized medicine share this same judgment: that some people are partly or entirely to blame for their unwellness.
I’m perfectly willing to provide subsidized health care to people who are suffering due to no fault of their own. But in those cases — which, unfortunately, constitute perhaps a majority of all cases — where the unwellness is a consequence of the patient’s own misdeeds, bad habits, or stupid choices, I feel a deep-seated resentment that the rest of us should pick up the tab to fix medical problems that never should have happened in the first place.
I’m speaking specifically of medical problems caused by:
• Obesity
• Cigarette smoking
• Alcohol abuse
• Reckless behavior
• Criminal activity
• Unprotected promiscuous sex
• Use of illicit drugs
• Cultural traditions
• Bad diets
Now, I really don’t care if you overeat, smoke like a chimney, hump like a bunny or forget to lock the safety mechanism on your pistol as you jam it in your waistband. Fine by me. And as a laissez-faire social-libertarian live-and-let-live kind of person, I would never under normal circumstances condemn anyone for any of the behaviors listed above. That is: Until the bill for your stupidity shows up in my mailbox. Then suddenly, I’m forced to care about what you do, because I’m being forced to pay for the consequences.
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• Reluctant busybodies
What I don’t like about the very concept of universal health care is that it compels me to become my brother’s keeper and insert myself into the moral decisions of his life. I’d rather grant each person maximum freedom. I’d prefer to let people make whatever choices they want, however stupid or dangerous I may deem those choices to be. Just so long as you take responsibility for your actions, and you reap the consequences and pay for them yourself — hey, be as foolish or hedonistic or selfish or thoughtless as you like. Not my business.
BINGO, BRAVO and HOME RUN, Zombie!
On a different article here on PJM I mentioned the woman {Donna Simpson] trying to reach her goal weight of a thousand pounds: http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2010/03/old_bridge_woman_who_wants_to.html
Donna can barely be on her feet and does her grocery shopping seated in a mobility scooter for the handicapped:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1257850/Super-sized-mother-determined-worlds-fattest-woman-years.html
One can easily imagine the enormous medical expenses that will rack up for this woman when her organs start failing.
————-
P.S. Is that Anderson ‘teabagger’ Cooper in the hardhat NSFW “Unprotected promiscuous sex photo?” LMAO
eww
Definitely NSFW. lol
Oh. You removed the photo already. Probably a good idea.
Nevermind. It’s still there on the ‘next’ page. I’m trying to keep from falling out of my chair. ROTFL
Don’t worry, Zombie. You and I will both be there to tell the idiots who want their “free” healthcare what for.
None of these are the reasons the White Middle/Working class despises Health Care Reform aka ObamaCare.
They hate it because it takes money and health care away from them to give to illegal aliens and welfare recipients, most of the latter the Black underclass. At a time of deep recession, no end in sight, and with the cost a job killer.
They don’t want to give up their slice of the pie, as Michelle Obama said, so others can have more.
White guilt is at an end. Moreover, Whites at 66% of the population, down from 80% in 1960, are not willing to pay for what promises to be the majority. White working/middle class people see themselves as the permanent, discriminated against piggy bank. The people who go last in line so the “correct” ethnicities and races: Black, and Hispanic, go first.
Indeed ObamaCare, putting who gets what health care, at how much, means that Whites are at huge risk of permanently being cut out of health care allocation as soon as the nation flips to majority non-White. Obama’s promised to legalize 20 million illegal aliens, and provide the same to millions more, as his next battle, so that’s a real danger.
Also, the health care bill has in it the federal takeover of student loans. With race being the real, deciding factor of who gets to college (Blacks and Hispanics) and who does not (Whites).
America as a multi-racial society cannot afford government picking winners and losers by race in health and education. Which is exactly what this bill entails.
So either the whole thing is thrown out, or get ready for “White Socialism.” Predicated on the idea that the White middle and working class majority can vote itself more goodies by excluding others or putting them to the back of the line, and summary deportation of anyone who just might be illegal, on the theory that the White population has to maintain demographic dominance to maintain access to health care and education for their kids.
Because there is not enough money for there not to be losers. Someone will be the loser.
If I am not mistaken, this travesty of a bill that SHOULD BE REPEALED also contains union pension payoffs.
A person who lives in Ontario Canada told me why he refuses to let the province underwrite the costs of raising his Downs Syndrome son: because if he pays, then he gets to make the decisions regarding that boy; if the state pays, then he is only one of 3 million people making decisions about his son, and that could very well include his son’s life or death.
The unhealthy, chaotic, undisciplined, uninsured people will be there no matter how many government programs are created to save them.
Let’s break it down tribally:
Imagine a tribe of people are who are ‘successful’ and have learned to hunt, gather, build and ‘better’ their lives via their successful techniques and hard work.
We will call these people ‘Tribe A’
Now, imagine a tribe of people who are habitually slovenly, lazy, sex-obsessed to the point of raping other tribal members, peyote tokers, poor hunters and gatherers and popping out babies they don’t want to work to feed.
We will call these people ‘Tribe B’
So, Tribe ‘B’ starts to go hungry but they don’t want to work at improving their skills as hunter/gatherers so they decide to tell ‘Tribe A’ that they should ‘help’ them in their hour of need. So, ‘Tribe A’ helps but ‘Tribe B’ still refuses to learn the hard work required to be as successful as ‘Tribe A’ and keeps expecting ‘Tribe A’ to sustain ‘Tribe B’ into perpetuity.
No, Sir. I don’t like it.
I like your theory, just add that group A was initially invaded by group B, kept as slaves for 400 years and would get killed for just trying to learn to read a book or write a paper. Then add the intrinsic evil of forcing believe in an unknown diety that only lets members of a particular group (which no one in group A could ever belong due to Genetics). Then add the anger from group B when they are told, they no longer can sit on their lazy asses and force others to do their labor for free and they would have to learn to respect all members of group A as if they were group B. Then yeah, that kinda explains it all IMO. LAzy bastards who no longer have free labor complaining about the members of a group they refuresed to let grow to mature thought processes and now they want to complain when the chickens come to roost. Yep, That about explains it all to me.
Ohhh, you were trying to make a funny and claim tribe A as the white people??? LOL, funny!
BINGO! Socialism– what Americans hate about universal health care: mandatorily spreading their wealth around to pay for other people’s irresponsible behavior.
I don’t know about everyone else, but my chief reason for opposing government controlled health care is because the “liberal” Democrats have already taken control of people’s health care, and then murdered people in cold blood by denying them access to medicine…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_syphilis_experiment
If you trust ANY government with this kind of power, you’re a damned fool, if you trust the FDR’s or the Barry Obama’s of the world with this kind of power…you’re stone cold insane.
That fat chick is the best birth control ad ever devised!
One of the more “plain, vanilla” elements to Obamacare is the concept of a government-run database of health care records. This, of course, means that your private discussions with your personal physician about lifestyle choices can be accessed across the country by any participating doctor. So much for patient-doctor confidentiality….you may want to request that your physician purge his records now.
And, of course, the “Joe the Plumber” episode amply illustrates how private and well-secured government databases are.
I’mma be lookin’ in your cart
I’mma be watchin’ your heart
I’mma be keepin’ a chart
I’mma bring spyin’ to an art.
I’mma your neighbor
I’mma friend
Until the govva’mnt
Gimma me dividends
Welcome to the end
I’mma pretend
I’mma not the reason
America ends.
Excellent, honest, article. Thanks for telling the truth that so many want to hide or ignore.
Regards
In fairness, I think those drunks are Russians. And I think they already have socialized healthcare. I also could have lived my whole life without seeing the unattractive middle-aged homosexual party.
As an outsider looking in from overseas this debate seems to prove that America is not a society but just a collection of competing individuals.
There are some things that are worth taking a ‘society wide’ approach to and healthcare is one of them.
Poor health outcomes don’t just affect the individual they can impact everyone. Let’s take the example of TB. A disease linked directly to poor living conditions and inability to access healthcare. It was all but eradicated in the mid 20th century but is now making a comeback in the USA in virulent forms. Such diseases have the ability to become drug resistant if allowed to fester and can then go on to infect society at large regardless of whether the individual has health coverage or not. The inability of society to take a collective view to the health outcomes of all of it’s population can and will hurt everyone in the long run. Some things can’t be tackled without taking a group approach, which is the point Obama has been trying to make.
But enough of the anecdotal evidence, lets have a look at the facts and compare the USA to every other OECD nation. You’re the only nation in the group without universal healthcare – USA has the lowest life expectancy, the highest rate of heart disease, highest rate of infectious disease transmission, highest rate of of obesity… the list is long and depressing. Yet the USA also has the most expensive healthcare system of all OECD countries. So you all pay more as individuals than any person in other western countries for worse health outcomes overall, a very inefficient system.
The rest of the western world looks on in disbelief and laughs at the ignorance displayed in the health debate in America.
Health isn’t all about cost, there is also opportunity cost to consider. There is value in the health of society as a whole which can’t necessarily be measured purely by accountants and consultants.
America is unfortunately the butt of jokes told around the world.
But that’s OK, you don’t really care…. just as long as you’re OK individually.
Good luck. We think you’re going to need it.
Coulda done without the graphic male on male,as it almost caused me to lose my breakfast, but the rest is spot on.
Hands up every PJM reader who uses Medicare.
Thought so.
Dumb, mean and utterly hypocritical. Quite a demographic you’re cultivating here.
I think Americans hate it because it may further bankrupt America.
a most excellent essay
thanks
Zombie, you’re the one who doesn’t get it.
The reason that I hate universal health care is because I don’t want and WILL NOT so help me God be relegated into a communist style system where I’m at the mercy of government employees for health care.
I will not be treated by some affirmative action doctor or be surrounded by affirmative action nurses or have affirmative action lab techs etc. while having an overcrowded hospital room with filthy sheets and wreaking of stench because of incompetent government workers that can’t be fired.
I refuse to be treated like a serf in a system that forces me to wait forever in some stinking clinic run by the government while scum like the arugula eating Obama’s still get private health care treatment.
I refuse to have some government overlord deciding whether to give me health care or not because I like to drink Coca Cola or I don’t fit their demographic. Too bad, its none of their business what I eat or drink or what demographic category that I fall into – maybe I’m too white and too middle class.
So Zombie, I have to conclude by saying that your essay is far from being the only essay that I’ll ever have to read abut universal health care.
But you think disbanding the DEA is “kooky”…? I wonder how you feel about disbanding BATF, or the IRS?
Well, no matter how much you hate it, America and patriotic Americans are going to take a major step today to help all Americans.
I liked the comment about shrinking white Americans (I am a white American). Read other day-81% of voters 65 and older were white in 2010 election. In 2020 election only 59% of voters first eligible to vote will be white. The Republican party’s short term strategy works to some extent to get elected. Long term, they are crapping in their own mess kits. The anti minority thinking of many Conservatives (who, by and large lie about it publicly, but admit it privately) will eventually doom their ideas.
In the meantime, enjoy Sunday. We continue to move the nation forward.
Delia: tribe A helps tribe B become like tribe A so now tribe A won’t recognize that tribe A has gotten larger. meanwhile tribe B continues to need help, BTW there will always be a tribe B. tribe A the white version is a dwindling demographic due to the tribe A baby boom getting to be AARP tigers. tribe A now has its ranks filled by tribe B look a likes. “i don’t like it” but that’s the way it is. what did the tribal elders say when they went back to Washington and saw the amount of whites? i think they thought, oh we are screwed because we can’t win a war of attrition. better go to plan B. this universal health care is not good for any one, not tribe A or tribe B. tribe A carries the load and tribe B is trapped being the load.
I couldn’t finish reading this article after seeing an obscured picture of a man sucking another man off. Sorry.
AMEN, Zombie.
Whiskey #6, I nominate you as The Loser.
@ 18. Onlooker in disbelief:
You are quite right, I don’t care what the rest of the world thinks. If America is, as you say, the laughing stock of the rest of the world why then is the preferred immigration flow still north and west?
One way to set our economy to rights would be for a lump sum re-payment from Europe and Asia for all the blood and treasure lost by Americans during the 20th Century due to all the bad political decisions made in Europe and Japan. To say nothing of the costs borne by American to rebuild Europe and Japan after the dust finally settled. Laugh at us all you want, but we are still the best opportunity for success on the planet today.
Zombie;
The main reason I oppose UHC is that I don’t want ACORN and SEIU making ANY sort of decision about my life. Both entities are already rife with corruption and you just know who Obama will put in charge of HC when he continues to redistribute our hard earned wealth.
North? Because even though America is bad, Mexico is worse.
West? It isn’t, and the few that are coming are coming here, making their money, and then leaving.
I live in America but not in in the USA, I’m canadian and I think it’s a shame to live in a world of such individualism. I have to accept to live in that kind of world but I don’t have to like it. My beliefs are that we should care for each other and if my neighbour can’t afford treatment for an illness that seriously impairs or threatens his/her life, I think it’s more appropriate and a lot kinder, even more “human” for the society to accept to help him/her. But, too often, if not always, money prevail over love and humanism … that makes me kind of sad and sorry – Only my humble opinion but that’s how I’ve been raised and I’m very proud of it
I love MY whiskey and I love YOU Whiskey (#6). You nailed it! We are soooooo screwed!
Zombie, as always, great piece.
There’s an even more elemental and rarely-spoke truth underlying the rush to universal health care. Sooner or later everyone is going to die. There aren’t very many people in a hurry to get there. As a matter of fact, denial is pretty much the order of the day. Part of that denial has to do with postponing the inevitable. That’s the card that not just the Democrats but almost everybody is holding out.
I’ve read Kurzweil and I really do want to believe that medical science will make it possible for me to extend my lifespan indefinitely. On the other hand, I don’t want to be a burden on my children. If I am in a declining spiral due to Alzheimer’s, put me out on the ice. My chart should always read “Do Not Resuscitate.”
I realize that this is heresy on a site run by a Zombie. Burn me.
Bring out your dead!
It’s all to do with whom you consider to be the deserving or undeserving poor or sick isn’t it. These people exist and what do you do with them? Leave them to fester and send the dead cart round from time to time? And who pays for that and for digging the death pit? – Your taxes just the same.
All you do is moan about the stupidity of humanity. You suggest no solution.
I was in Southern California a few months ago. Riding along the beach one could see all the surfers riding their boards, waiting for “the big one” to come along. I stopped for lunch and a few of those bronzed beauties were sitting next to me. Most were in their late 20′s, one looked to be in his mid-40′s.
As we talked, I learned every one of them worked minimal jobs…so they could surf most days. They had no ambition beyond the next wave. Perfectly happy to dwell in little California tacos with likewise-directionless buddies.
I thought about them yesterday. I’ll now be paying for their “free” health care. Knarly, dudes!
Onlooker in disbelief (18)
You’re hilarious. If in the name of religion someone were outlawing coffee, chocolate, homosexual sex, adultery, driving automobiles, sky diving, opening your retail store on Sunday, or any other list of behaviors because they felt that God didn’t approve of them, you’d either call them Muslim and ignore them or rush into the streets to demand that the separation of Church and State be respected. But when democrats propose the same sort of list in order to save us from our own ignorance and even top off their list with the dirt worshipper’s favorite, child sacrifices to Mother Earth, we’re supposed to “wise up”. Are you pretending that since the democrat elite doesn’t admit their God is involved in their decisions it has a different effect on us or are you simply admitting that you think collectivist government IS God? If neither, then you’re saying that you don’t think the Constitution is worth the paper it’s written on because it limits government and does so because it recognizes our rights are inalienable and to forever remain beyond the reach government.
If you’re concerned about other countries laughing at us, you really, really, don’t understand freedom or America which is all about freedom. Sixty years of democrats bastardizing schools into little propaganda factories may have hidden that little tidbit from you, but it’s a fact (you know, those things that are true for everyone, everywhere, at all times) whether you know it or not. Creeping feudalism and socialism at the hands of democrats who worship power over others is no different than the religious enslavement of women in Islam or the democrat enslavement of black folks in southern states prior to the Civil War. If you want to enslave yourself, put yourself on the auction block and sell yourself to the best line of chit (it looks like you’ve already done exactly that). If you think it’s reasonable for the government to enslave everyone, gradually or outright, then say so instead of arguing that “everyone else is doing it” then tell us why you think you’ll be among the slave owners rather than the slaves.
Have a day
Having lived with national health care all my life I have to say that your article is unduly optimistic. You have quoted various activities that you say increase the cost of health care to the individual- some of them I agree with you on, some I don’t. But you won’t be making the decisions. If some bureaucrat decide that your one beer a day is way too much- then you get stuck for that. Likewise if it is decided that professional sportsmen are overweight, verging on obese (if you believe the BMI calculation they actually are- because they tend to be tall and have a lot of muscle) then all but the stick insects get stuck for that. If you are prepared to accept seven years less health care and seven years less pension in return for the pleasure of smoking- well don’t expect all that tax you paid on the tobacco to be taken into account, you’ll get hounded. On all these things the facts are by no means as clear cut as the experts would have us believe, and opinions differ- but Authorities have to be Authoritative- so they don’t admit to uncertainty.
Anyone who wants to help the poor simply gives them money. Sure some will waste it, but mostly they know their own lives better than anyone else. All schemes involving vouchers, stamps, whatever are in reality intended to control the poor not help them- and they always end up controlling the not so poor as well. Not to mention that the mechanism of control absorbs a lot of wealth that could have been more usefully employed elsewhere.
Assuming the worst case scenario (the bill passes), shouldn’t we be focusing on a strategy and action plan to unwind it?
JB’s response to Onlooker is right on. Let’s cancel the defense of Europe and see how much money is left for their healthcare and the pensions that seem to start at age 50. Think zero population growth is a problem now, wait another 20+ yrs when the Muslim population hits 25%-30% of Europe and they have to rely on the ‘unassimilated’ to pay their fair share. Good luck with that.
“Why America Hates Universal Health Care: The Real Reason”
Those who hate it are incapable of understanding what the reality is behind the coming health care plan. Have they listened to the CBO? They don’t even know what that is. Being ignorant is a tragedy and a source of unhappiness.
And those legislators voting against it will be condemned by History as stubborn negative politicians who don’t give a damn about people’s welfare. Voters take notice.
31. rashputin:
“Onlooker in disbelief (18)
If you’re concerned about other countries laughing at us, you really, really, don’t understand freedom or America which is all about freedom.”
‘O-in-d’ Has it right. The richest nation in the world has no decent health care. And it’s not about ‘freedom’. You are just using tired old slogans. We should be a society. Only 10% of this country can afford many things. The rest need cooperation and pooled resources. Are you against public transportation? Do you drink potable water or dug your own well? Do you hate the Internet because it’s a socialist tool? And on and on and on.
Only your brain is individual.
We hate universal health care simply because everything the government touches, regulates, manages turns to s@@t. The government has not solved a single social or economic problem in its history. We did get an army of bureaucrats whose sole purpose in life is to ensure ‘fairness’ and to mete out punishment for not toeing the line or rewards for being voluble in support of our new masters. If the Unions, federal workforce, the politicians, the state and local workforces were all included in the bill with no recourse to private insurance, i could support this. It has no restrictions on tort lawsuits so i can only assume that the bill will further subsidize the lawyer lobby. As it stands now, it’s just another tax on the middle class to provide for those in society who either will not or cannot pay their way.
I’ve seen plenty of those other countries, and lived in some. They’ve nothing to laugh about.
I’ll have my say this November, and in 2012.
Please see the following article for how this is already playing out in other countries:
“Universal Healthcare and the Waistline Police”
Christian Science Monitor, 1/9/2009
http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2009/0107/p09s01-coop.html
If/when ObamaCare passes, we will create a “nanny state” on steroids.
Onlooker: Thanks for your tiresome talking-points analysis. We’ve been listening to sanctimonious preening from outsiders since the 18th century.
Any idea why TB rates are on the rise here? Of course you don’t. It’s imported. The same government you want us to look to for health care has no control over our southern border. Similarly, our life expectancy rates are within a year or two of other OECD countries DESPITE things like taking in millions of the world’s poorest people and counting low survival rate preemies as live births.
Expensive? So what. Americans spend more on just about everything – houses, cars, power boats, high school sports. You’d think for what we spend on education we’d have better students. But the same people moaning about high health care costs are mum about government’s malign influence in our schools.
Look, I’ve got half a mouth full of cosmetic dental implants and my wife sports a magnificent pair of larger breasts. Hands of God, that surgeon had, every time I look at her . . . oh yes, where was I?
I run my own business, generating jobs and wealth. I do my own carpentry and electrical, fix my own cars, contribute generously to charity, participate in my community. I don’t need parents or incompetent bureaucrats telling me what to do, and I know when it’s time to help those who need it and deserve it. Americans are generous without being told to be.
You’re another clueless observer who will never understand why Americans prefer self-reliance and initiative to subsidizing feebleness and being turned slowly into slaves and wards of the state. I want you, your entitlement culture and the kleptocrat political class you support to get your hands out of my pockets.
Now run along, now. Nanny’s looking for you.
The bottom line is that our bodies are the only thing we truly own and have control of. Fat people should be free to be fat, risk takers should be eliminated by natural selection, and smokers should get their cigarettes. Just don’t ROB ME to pay for them. Heart disease, cancer, idiocy, and liberalism are all just bad luck. If your coin in life comes up tails, too bad. Who lives forever anyway? Maybe I, through my charity, will give you some money. If Uncle Sam compels me to give you money at the end of an IRS gun, it is thievery.
What Hellth Care does, is enslave our children (even further than they are now under Social[ism] Security). They’re the ones who we are committing to pay for this unconstitutional garbage. Considering the Democratic Party is the source of this evil, no one should be surprised given their past performance during the “late unpleasantness” (aka the War Between the States). They were the slave owners then and want a reprise now.
It’s called “Evolution in action”. It’s why some think bicycle helmets are a mistake.
Onlooker in disbelief, quite frankly…..we really don’t care what the rest of the world thinks. I know that is hard to believe, but since most of us are descended from people who couldn’t get out of your country (and others like it) fast enough, pardon us for not thinking that you and your society is something that we would want to emulate. Some of us still remember the stories that our grandparents told about the “civilized” behavior they endured back there (or in your former colonies as members of the indigenous peoples subjected to the whims of their “enlightened” rulers) before they got on the boat/plane/whatever to the USA.
What other things should we copy from the Old Country besides nationalized healthcare, anyway? The desecrations of Jewish and US military cemeteries, the “car-b-ques” in the banlieues surrounding Paris, the current rioting in Athens now that the poor little Greeks might have to work for a bit before retiring in their 50′s, or the rising rape rates “enjoyed” by Swedish females in Malmo?
We’ve already got the double digit unemployment rates. That’s enough “copying” as far as I’m concerned, but maybe you can make some other suggestions as to how we can stop being such uncouth barbarians?
Nice essay, Zombie.
There is a further argument to be made against socialized medicine, and indeed the entire structure of the modern-day welfare state; they are all bankrupt. And purposefully creating or continuing a bankrupt system is immoral. It is theft, and it’s every bit as much a crime as grabbing your gun and robbing a bank, or starting a Ponzi scheme and defrauding the pigeons.
Again: They are all bankrupt.
I look around the world, and everywhere I see debt, default, and denial. The stunted among us, those permanent adolescents who believe in the new, man-made “positive rights”, lie, cheat, and steal in defense of their failed belief system. The plain, simple truth is this: Every comprehensive welfare state is deeply in debt; all of them are run by thieves stealing from the future, whether through deficit spending or job crushing (and therefore future crushing) tax rates. They are run by amoral children, who value their wants and wishes far above reality or rationality.
And did I mention they are all bankrupt?
The story of the past 60 years should be called “Failure to Launch”. The changes in our societies have led to the takeover by the man-child, and sadly, those truncated fools think themselves evolution’s prize. We are stopping individual human development in a semi-larval stage.
When a child is born, he is naught but a demanding ball of entitlement, and justifiably so. He cannot meet his needs, he can only demand, and demand again. As a child grows, he gradually sheds the neediness, gradually loses entitlement as his abilities improve and his skills expand. That child enters adulthood only when the last of those entitlements is gone. That’s the choice; entitlement or adulthood. One or the other.
That is the story of the world today. Mewling man-children, demanding endless benefits from a bankrupt state, all the while ruling from their highchairs as only a child could — cruel, vindictive, arbitrary, petty tyrants. Modern-day Sun Kings, dazzled by their own imaginary brightness.
Hands up every PJM reader who uses Medicare.
Thought so.
Dumb, mean and utterly hypocritical. Quite a demographic you’re cultivating here.
How is it hypocritical to demand that you get back something you’ve been FORCED to pay for your entire working life.
Now, if your question had been “How many PJM readers wouldn’t OPT OUT of Medicare if given the chance?” and no one raised their hands, that would be hypocritical.
I love you drive-by commenters who think your comments are so razor-sharp that they shred the entire point of the article in question when, in reality, they’re sub-moronic. But, feel free to keep considering yourself at the top of the intellectual heap, just like that fat woman who probably considered herself “in good shape”. Your intellectual delusions are less obvious, but no less delusional.
Zombie didn’t mentio phase two. That’s when the government starts making bad life cloices illegal to save mony. That way you don’t have to pay for the obecity epidemic. After years of higher taxes and resentment as mentioned in the article it will be easier to ban fatty foods, cigarettes and other problem things. Then the elites won’t be embarassed by fat Walmart shopping stereotypes of Americans when they visit Europe.
There are so many loopholes and ways to get out of paying a fair share that it looks like the intent is to ensure that at least 51% of voters WILL be getting free health care. It will be up to the dwindling number of taxpayers to work harder to pay for it. After all, what are we for anyway?
Pick any five Americans who aren’t wearing their butts for helmets and we’ll come up with more effective ways to reduce the cost of health care than turning it over to politicians, the antithesis of efficiency. Oh, they say all the right words but look what they’ve done with Medicare, social security, and the VA. Suddenly it will be different? One reason your health insurance is so expensive is that these jackasses decided the easiest way to get cost savings in Medicare was to declare that they’ll only pay 85% of retail and doctors, you’ll take it and like it. Like any business, customers who can pay foot the bill for those who won’t so insurance companies pass those charges on to their customers. Then the politicians blame the market for reacting to the pressure.
There’s been so much 3-card Monte played with this issue that no one is really sure what this bill means anymore but isn’t kind of strange that they’ve at least proposed to respond to excessive insurance costs by taxing what they deem to be ‘Cadillac’ health plans, thus making them even more expensive? That they further pressure the insurance companies by forcing them to cover pre-existing conditions and thereby raise rates further? That we would be paying more taxes to the government now to fund health insurance that we cannot draw on until 2018? That these politicians think it’s COMPETITIVE to pass laws forcing private insurance companies and their clients to cut the government in on their transactions?
The health care program for the masses is just something politicians will twist to their own personal benefit. For us costs will increase, quality will decrease, and delays in treatment will be the norm. So it costs a lot – what are you worth?
Zombie,
This is a terrific essay, but could you please create a G-rated version? I’ve got a family-oriented blog and would like to link to this, but definitely cannot in it’s present form.
rashputin (31) @Onlooker in disbelief (18)
Rashputin, your reply to Onlooker did not seem to be based on anything they said in their comment. I think you might want to read it again because you may have replied to the wrong comment.
On another note since you don’t want any government controlled social services anymore, I think it’s time to disband our police force as we know it. I will be able to sleep better knowing freeloading, lazy folks will have to pay for their security instead of the rest of us. It’s just not right.
Adina Kutnicki said “Coulda done without the graphic male on male,as it almost caused me to lose my breakfast, but the rest is spot on.”
Sorry Adina, but that photo is from the Folsom Street Fair in San Francisco. A regular public event you can go to and see this right out in the open with the police just keeping order. This photo is one of the least objectionable taken at that fair. I think that it is in Nancy Pelosi’s district. This is what she is talking about when she says freedom. Get used to it, it is the future the Dems envision.
Shef, Medicare is an INSURANCE program, operating within the current private-sector market. If it falls short, there are alternatives and work-arounds to it, utilizing your own resources, charitable resources, or state/local resources.
What is being voted on at first is an expansion of that … but is going to be used as a stepping-stone in an attempt to replace the current system with a single-payer system where there will be no recourse for you when it fails to meet your needs outside of the glacial political process, for the Feds will control not just funding, but CARE ITSELF. They will be the keepers of every gate.
You are trying to equate apples and oranges … there is NO hypocrisy here.
And Onlooker in Disbelief … never forget that the reason that others, particularly in Western Europe, have been able to dabble in “soft” socialism is because copious amounts of American treasure, made available by the very rugged individualism you sneer at (not to mention a little American blood) prevented the imposition of the industrial-strength Soviet variant, at little cost to you.
We go down your road, there may not be much of a door left to keep the wolves out of your house, too.
I work 10 to 12 hour days, M-F. I work EVERY Saturday (at least 4 hours). My wife and I work hard, so that we can afford Blue Cross Insurance preminums at $1,000 monthly. We save so that we can send or babies to private school. My neighbor and his wife are meth heads. They do not work. They sit around their house everyday. At 6:00 pm every evening, like clock work, the “ice cream” truck shows up in front of their house. That’s when they stumble out to buy their $4.00 ice cream bars. This article hits it on the head…..Obama has made me come to understand that I HATE my fat, drug riddled, multiple gay-lover loving, depressed, Jerry Springer watching fellow Americans. America needs to fail.
Excellent points, zombie.
Perhaps we could have dispelled at least SOME of the confusion over what people don’t like about this scam by consistently calling it what it is, as you’ve done here. It’s not “universal health care”. It’s not “health care reform”. It’s not “ObamaCare” or even “HillaryCare”.
It’s SOCIALIZED MEDICINE.
Had we insisted on calling this turkey by its real name from the day the Democrats turned it into a “crisis”, the matter would have been dropped six months ago. Rather than allowing our professional lying classes to continually misrepresent it, public discourse would have centered around whether it IS or IS NOT socialized medicine. Since it is, of course, that makes it a non-starter by definition.
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@20. Shef Rogers: – Hands up every PJM reader who uses Medicare.
You meant to write “Hands up every PJM reader who IS BEING FORCED THROUGH FEDERAL EXTORTION TO PAY INTO Medicare.” Happy to fix that for you.
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@18. Onlooker in disbelief: – There are some things that are worth taking a ’society wide’ approach to and healthcare is one of them.
That’s your decidedly uninformed opinion – one not supported by the limited authority granted to government by our Constitution. Government has already far overstepped its bounds by destroying the free market in health care and driving health care costs to skyrocket for decades. Roll all that back and we can push health care costs back into equilibrium with OTHER commodities – commodities which all mysterious remain relatively affordable because we don’t abuse insurance to pay for them. At that point, there’s no reason people can’t take responsibility for their own health care JUST AS THEY DO WITH EVERY OTHER NECESSITY OF LIFE.
To #18 Onlooker in disbelief:
Those numbers Europeans like to quote reflect one thing, and it’s not that we have worse healthcare. It’s that in America we believe EVERY LIFE COUNTS. In the US if a baby is born crazy premature, we try to save them… if this tiny baby’s life is lost, we count is as a life lost. In Europe they don’t even try half the time, and if they do fail, they don’t count the loss (last time I checked they only counted infant deaths if the baby was full term.) The simple fact that Europe doesn’t count infant deaths into their mortality rate dramatically skews those numbers.
If you want to look at real numbers, check out the survival rates for Cancer in the US vs EU. For Diabetes. For any other major illness/disease. You tell me, if you get some rare type of cancer tomorrow, where do you want to be? In the US, where you can CHOOSE to travel to any Dr or hospital in the country for care, and you will not be refused, but you may have to declare bankruptcy, or in Europe where you don’t even have the option. You get to undergo their one official treatment, and if it doesn’t work, oh well for you.
Sorry, Dr. S. was fulla “stuff” when he said what he said, and so were you the first time around. No reason to re-publish it.
Americans hate ObamaCare because they want the Gov’t to butt out, because they fear DMV-level health care service, and because they fear DoD-level costs.
Lots of people feel better about themselves by looking down on someone else. And all the fat-hate, redneck-hate, smoker-hate, etc. is just that, and nothing more.
Fat smokers cost us all money? Really? Where are the unbiased studies that look at TOTAL lifetime healthcare costs that show that? Since fat smokers, we are constantly told, die much sooner they incur costs for fewer years. And, since they tend to die suddenly instead of withering away over years and years, their old age healthcare costs are much lower or nonexistent. And old age healthcare costs are where the vast majority of healthcare dollars are spent.
How dare I smoke? How dare you live so long!?! At least most smokers and fat people are in their working years, and hence contributing to society. What good are the old? By what right do they continue to milk dollars out of us?
And you horseback riders! And mountain bikers! How dare you engage in such a dangerous activity, thereby costing us all money with your foolishness?
The preceding 2 paragraphs are tongue-in-cheek but I think precisely on point. Dr. S. can’t show that the net costs of the people he likes to look down on are higher. He just likes to sneer at them.
Dr. S., and this author, are simply selfish moralistic busybodies who think they have both the right and duty to tell others how to live their lives. They just use the flimsy pretext of cost as their fig leaf. God protect us from such people.
Zombie – I think you’re great. This article is very rational. That, however, is the problem – this article totally misses the point. No rational person actually believes Obamacare will be fair, cost effective, efficient, and budget neutral. The point of Obamacare is control.
For how long now have the “leaders” of the Democratic party reached down to people in need only to end up keeping them down for the long term? Keep in mind one can reach down only if they feel that they are one up. The act of reaching down sadly only keeps people down.
In our courts we have an oath that compels a witness to “…tell the WHOLE truth…”. With respect to Obamacare, the whole truth is that Obama has little interest in the advancement of humankind. He is not interested in other people. He is not a beacon of compassion. He and his ilk are only interested in expanding their power to control the people that were raised right, employed discipline, valued education, applied themselves and worked diligently towards reaching their fullest potential. Obama and his compatriots seem to be envious of those who have attained advanced levels of accomplishment because he and his political allies haven’t managed to accomplish much of anything. If anyone can list one significant Obama accomplishment, please do so. Now they want to take down the pillars of our advanced society by hampering those with vision. They want to re-distribute the wealth earned by people who made good decisions their entire lives. These people who have gained access to the money club want to keep everyone else out while they feather their own nests. That’s why they want to build up the government – they are the elite members of the ruling class no socialist wants to acknowledge in their naive naïve view of socialism.
Isn’t it glaringly obvious that any rational approach to solving the problem of healthcare reform would have been the result of a detailed and open process that any business on the planet would undertake. First, there would have been a clear definition of the problem. Second, various parties would analyze the issues and develop solutions to each component of the problem. Third, the solutions would be discussed, analyzed and modified by the specific parties responsible for each area of concern Forth, there would have been a first draft of a solution presented to the Board (The People in this case) and then, fifth, there would be a period of evaluation. Sixth, would be revisions based upon input from all parties including the public and seventh, a final bill would be drafted and voted on.
This would have been the approach if anyone was rational and their goal was to actually reform our healthcare system. Am I the only one that notices the total absence of any type of professional problem solving process being employed by any of these people?
Its no wonder our country is on the verge of bankruptcy. If any business on the planet went about solving their problems like this, they too would go bankrupt. It is so clear that on top of SS, Medicare, Medicaid, Fanny Mac, Freddie Mae, the Post Office, and other failed efforts of the government to undertake any endeavor, any rational person can see that Obamacare is nothing more than a power grab designed to grow the government over which they preside – to the detriment of the People to whom they reach down to “help”.
This is The Real Reason behind the deception which has been presented to us.
@#9 Delia: There should come a time when Tribe A (the productive class) simply tells Tribe B (the parasite class) to go get bent; enough is enough. May that time come soon.
Zombie: Great essay, and you’re spot on. (But like others, I could’ve done without that one picture. On a Sunday morning where I have to miss church because of inclement weather, that wasn’t exactly the most uplifting image one could see…)
Shef:
Payment into Medicare is compulsory and the system will be broke even before Social Security is. How much better would people like me be off if I paid all that Medicare money (both employee and employer portion) into an HSA type account when I first entered the work force full-time around 19 years of age? I put as much as I could into my IRA (and later 401k plans) and at 40, already have a nice nest egg setup (even after the market crash).
I would have had far more saved if I wasn’t forced to pay into a losing system or if I was allowed to buy insurance individually (here in NJ, individual insurance plans for the young and healthy are basically banned). Instead I was forced into the employer risk pool. My last job, I paid into a plan $550 per month, that I almost never used. My entire medical expenses would have topped out around $2,000 for the full 5 years I worked there (mostly allergy and travel medications) if I paid 100% out of pocket. Why wouldn’t my employer offer an HSA? Because we had a large percentage of employees who were obese, smoked, or had other lifestyle choices that made them medically expensive. My company basically paid compensation in the form of medical benefits (its tax advantageous to do so). I basically transferred a big chunk of my salary to others in the company.
Now Obama is going to do this on a national scale.
I was puzzling over a report tacked up in our faculty lounge the other day. It rated New Mexico an “A” for school accountability, but a “D” minus for student achievement. The results are easily explained by the top-heavy, state-wide, school bureaucracy that spends buckets of money on itself while neglecting anything that might address genuine student achievement. The primary purpose of any bureaucracy is to feather its own nest, results be damned.
The U.S. health care system is already overburdened by government regulation. Add another layer and the entire system will come to a screeching halt. That’s pretty much the sum of it. But when did big government types ever care about results? You might remember that the former Soviet Union claimed 100% employment. Yup. Everyone worked for the government. And we saw how well that one worked out.
JB; amen! We are the scrappy ones who left thereby reducing EU’s gene pool to produce nothing but adult children.
The reason we are against universal health care is because it won’t work. Doctor’s will resign. Smart kids will not go into the profession, and why should they? The quality will then decline along with innovation. The GP’s will get sick of endless lines of whiners and just give antibiotics so they will go away. If socialized anything had ever worked anywhere EVER we would all be for it.
One way or another we pay for the irresponsible among us. Some drunk is gonna kill you or some of your family on the road. Even without single payer health care you are gonna pay when you have to go in hospital. Been that way for years. etc etc etc
Why is our society like this?
There weren’t a lot of fat people trundling around the plains and the mountains a hundred years ago amongst our progenitors. Oh there were some in the cities. But even they were the object of derision and were shamed.
So what is the difference between now and then? It is that we have become a nation of pussies. Period.
So sit down and shut up. Lay down and drown amongst the morbidly obese, the perverted, the bastards as well as an ever increasing percentage of psychopaths.
Oh, you’re right, all right, about the invidious psychology. But you left one dangerous and irresponsible act out of your tut-tut list: interfering in the lives of others. It will kill you deader than smoking, drinking, obesity and most illicit drugs put together — and it hurts, too, like a pitchfork in the guts or being riddled with bullets whilst hanging upside down from a lamppost. A firing squad or suicide is the best you can hope for.
There’s no percentage in totalitarianism. I mean, God forbid, just look at Europe, the laughingstock of the world. They’ve wiped themselves out playing this game. Don’t be like them.
Bravo #32. You are absolutely right. It is a moral problem and can be simplified even further. Simply put, for every action there is a reaction in kind. That means for every good, moral action you get a good, moral reaction (result) and for every bad, immoral action you get a bad, immoral result which is why socialism can never work. Socialism is based on a bad, immoral action in that it is based on theft – forcibly taking from one person to give to another. When a systems every action starts with a bad, immoral action then it is doomed to only return bad, immoral results. It doesn’t matter how good the intention was, the result is always a bad, immoral one. This is why all the welfare schemes, etc. that sound so good always fail and cause harm. An understanding by the people of this simple moral truth would stop socialism in its tracks.
There is yet another major subsidy in the wings. I call it Feel Good Mental Health.
Granted, there are those who suffer from real mental problems, no question. But if one of the ends of universal health care is to provide for mental as well as physical health (or both), the costs will skyrocket as psychological or psychiatric assistance is opened up to, say, self-esteem issues or mild depression or not feeling sexual attraction to one’s spouse or partner. The cure for “sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me” will not be to live with it, but to see a counselor.
As with much of universal health care, the elements that one could do without will become further entitlements and thrown into the sure-to-be rationing mix.
I’m sorry, I can’t hear y’all over the sound of my Canadian healthcare.
Up here, I don’t really give a hoot about the irresponsible people you describe, but for every fat lady going blind there’s a regular person going bankrupt and having their lives ruined because they cannot afford their hospital bills, because of some uncontrollable condition they have. Or they can’t even buy insurance because they have a pre-existing condition. We make a decision that we will overlook the irresponsible people because it’s worth it to have the rest covered. It’s not communism, it’s called giving two shits about your fellow man.
My question is, what is the practical Republican alternative, and can the Republicans actually be expected to go through with it when they (eventually) return to power? I know you’d all love your perfect free-market solutions like Ivan would like his perfect socialist harmony back, but realistically?
Just wait until the states (35, at current count) start suing Obamacare under the Tenth Amendment.
And individuals and physicians start suing Obamacare under the Ninth Amendments… Or even the other ones under the Bill of Rights.
It’s going to be the Perfect Storm.
We The People have a very simple message to Obama and the Democrats. We’ll see you in court.
You really have to ask yourselves why any European,or anyone not an American citizen, would invest themselves in US healthcare reform or if they just wanted to avail themselves of an opportunity to insult some Americans.
IOW, their opinions are less than useless .
You can believe that society has a responsibility as a society to attempt to save people from the consequences of their own foolish, erroneous or shortsighted decisions — either because you believe spiritually that we *are* all our brethren’s keepers, or practically because you recognize that no individual is an island and simply allowing “bad apples” to destroy themselves inevitably drags down and harms the good apples around them — without thinking that a particular proposed method of doing so will be a sufficiently effective solution.
As an example, part of why Canada’s socialized health care has worked reasonably well for a long time is because it was instituted province by province, with individual flexibility in place, for a series of provincial populations none of whom was much over 10 million at the time back in 1961 and which has only undergone significant demographic change in three major cities (Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver) at best since then. Yet it never occurs to any supporter of the current bill that the objection “I like universal health care in theory, just not *this* model of it because a top-down bill trying to normalize and anticipate every regulatable situation for three hundred million people of an incredible demographic and geographic variety while simultaneously taking command of a medical industry far more complex, advanced and expensive than has ever been anywhere in the world simply *cannot* work” is either meaningful or valid.
I myself believe we have a flat responsibility to look after others regardless of their own bad choices; because it’s impossible to tell the deserving from the undeserving, basic humanitarianism calls for erring on the side of mercy and charity — this is where I disagree with Zombie. But I remain unconvinced that the law of Caesar is the proper tool for enforcing the obligations of Christ, and I retain the right to vociferously object to any *particular* law on the grounds of whether or not it will actually *work.*
The guy from Europe thinks that their social mores are the future. In just a few years, in all but Switzerland, he’ll be under sharia as a dhimmi. From what I’ve seen of the current middle-age Euros, they’d be perfectly happy to bow down to their muslim overlords just as long as the muslims don’t interfere with the welfare state bennies, including “free” healthcare. It would be a match made in heaven…lazy welfare dependents willing to be controlled in every aspect of their lives as long as they get to suck on the goverment teat, with the government run by islamists who want to control every aspect of a person’s life through sharia.
I can’t see what could go wrong there.
And good luck to ya.
It’s Universal Death Care.
The intention is to manage Death Care for everyone who is too costly for medical need.
Stop calling it Universal Health Care since this legislation is designed to kill all human beings who are unwanted, elderly or sick.
The only reason we have a “lower life expectancy” is because we include still births and infants that die quickly in our figures. Other nations do not. Hence, we appear to have worse health care.
We do not. Stick that in your euro-trash pipe and smoke it, weenie.
Our health care is second to none in technology. Cost? Yes, pricey. It would be allot cheaper if the government stayed out of it, and we all payed for it like car insurance. Then you might see some fatties taking responsibility.
In the end, this is all about controlling society. The issue of ‘white-guilt’ is a straw dog that is designed to make some feel guilty or responsible for the circumstances of others.
First, blacks are disproportionately affected by the unemployment situation right now. That could be eased by sending illegal aliens, of any color, home. There are 8 million (at least) illegal aliens out there working. And, they do do jobs Americans would do. That dog don’t hunt.
Creation of a new bloated federal bureaucracy, establishing even more power within the IRS, and yes, enabling the “quality assurance panel” to establish treatment parameters for illnesses, is one frightening thought. Lets face it, they will be enabled to determine the who, what, where, when, why & how of treatment. Do any of us really think that regulatory body (or should I say busy-body) will not soon enough also get to the point of deciding “IF” one gets delivery of health care. I can hear it now… you smoked for twenty years. You may have quit, but all of the damage was done so now you cannot have any of the heart treatments or procedures. We’ll give you some pain pills… enough to last anyway!
The US Postal Service, AMTRAK, Medicare, Medicaid, are but a few of the programs imposed on us that are on their way to financial insolvency. The only “bailout” to save them will be draconian taxes. The average American will see taxes in the 80% to 90% range within 20 years if those programs are to be saved, plus there will be serious reductions in benefits anyway.
For most, this article is correct. People simply do not want the government in the Doctors office with them when decisions are made, or examinations for that matter. The “I know what’s best for you crowd” seem to think it is they & only they who know best how to run…. the world! Its called, oppression & slavery.
No thanks!
I don’t know what is worse about universal health care — the fact that we shall be subsidizing this behavior, or that all the stupid people who do drugs, have unprotected sex, engage in dangerous criminal behavior, or get monstrously fat will get *PREFERENCE* over normal, law-abiding, otherwise healthy people. Think about it — the left will whine about inequities (race, gender, class, etc) in government run health care that should be rectified by affirmative action.
Sorry George, the 35 year old computer programmer with 2 young daughters, a wife, and a mortgage — we can’t help you with your lymphoma until we treat DeShawn’s gunshot wound, Big Betty Sue’s cola-induced diabetes, and Esmeralda the prostitute’s end-stage AIDS infection. Anarcho-tyranny strikes again! (look it up)
Re: 18. Onlooker in disbelief:,
Yes, let’s look at the facts.
The medical consensus regarding TB’s resurgence in virulence is that it is due to the over-prescription of antibiotics.
The USA has the lowest life expectancy, the highest rate of heart disease, highest rate of infectious disease transmission, and the highest rate of obesity because our multi-racial, multi-cultural, highest rate-of-immigration in the world society… enjoys the greatest level of freedom in the world, which respects individual’s right to make decisions, bad decisions, as well as good ones.
We think freedom is necessary and, so do you when we have to come over there and save your ungrateful, metro-sexual asses.
The USA has the most expensive healthcare system of all OECD countries because we are paying for the medical research costs and subsidizing your systems parasitic dependence.
So you all pay more as individuals than any person in other western countries for worse health outcomes overall, a very inefficient system.
How ‘inefficient’ is going broke? Which you are doing. Look at Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy.
Your.social.welfare.state.is.going.bankrupt.
It’s doing that despite our subsidizing the cost of military defense for you, providing superpower deterrence which has protected and coddled your infantile, ungrateful, inferiority complex-driven societies.
Europe is going bankrupt because you have a rising tide of ‘moochers’ and a declining rate of producers.
Over time, socialism can have no other outcome.
Your grandchildren will suffer and your post-modernistic, self-obsessed societies don’t care and, thus shall suffer the fate of all such societies.
Extinction.
@14 cthulhu is absolutely correct here. As in IT person in the medical records field you would be SHOCKED to know how many people have access to your medical records. You’d probably take on a second identity just to get some privacy. With a government run nationwide database don’t even bother running for office or asking the president a hard question if you’ve ever had an STD, been prescribed any psychiatric drugs, or have trouble in the sack.
Now as a fat man I totally 101% agree that you good people shouldn’t be paying for my bad habits. And to the other fat people out there here’s a secret, eat 3 healthy meals and 2 to 3 healthy snacks a day and bam, you’re losing weight. That’s 6 times you get to eat, SIX! You’ll also need to go for a walk or two. This works. Or you could take up smoking (see Cigarette Smoking) but Zombie might knock the cig out of your mouth with a canoe paddle (see Reckless Behavior).
I don’t give a crap if an illness is fault or no-fault! In a JUST SOCIETY, ONE MAN CANNOT LEGITIMATELY HAVE WEALTH FORCIBLY TAKEN FROM HIM TO GIVE TO ANOTHER!!! That’s why it’s wealth redistribution. That’s why it’s socialism. That’s why it has no place in America, nor in any FREE country. This is not the PURPOSE of Government.
It has NOTHING whatsoever to do with whether or not illnesses are caused by irresponsible behavior, or by a lightning strike on a cloudless day.
Perhaps if you KNEW what the PURPOSE of Government is, you’d know this; and then you wouldn’t write such an asinine article.
Creeping feudalism and socialism at the hands of democrats who worship power over others is no different than the religious enslavement of women in Islam or the democrat enslavement of black folks in southern states prior to the Civil War.
That’s really all that’s going on here. If you happened to watch Barack’s last push speech yesterday, it would be clear that “the win” and “the power” are his motivations and that he is sincerely disconnected from the endless sob stories he tells, many of them specious and/or outright lies as to the true course of individual medical events in the stories he tells.
I noted the picture (how could I not) on page 2 of this essay of the guys getting blow jobs in the streets. This actually happened in broad daylight in a (formerly) great American city, San Francisco.
Why don’t we add in illegal immigration? Think of the millions – or perhaps billions – we pay out for emergency room care for those in the country illegally. Har de har.
Zombie, this is a really excellent essay. It little matters that there are even MORE reasons to detest socialized medicine.
@purkrame: Yeah, you go on “moving the country forward” regardless of the will of the people. Spoken like a true totalitarian.
Why America Hates Universal Health Care: The Real Reason
Wishing Other Americans were like you will not make it so.
Our Founding Forefathers had it right: Men must be ruled;
The questions which divide us are how, when, and by whom.
The answers they gave in the Constitution are still correct:
When the federal govt. fails, power devolves to the states,
and to the people thereof, who will be watching their local
governments _quite_ closely, as they attempt to weather the
coming storm, and rebuild afterward.
Winner’s Hint: The Public School system in New Orleans
improved noticeably after Hurricane Katrina blew all the
bureaucrats away, and replaced them with Charter Schools.
Diggs, some folks enjoy living on their knees and I’m convinced man is largely a feudal creature. Look at the way so many defer automatically to celebrities and royalty. Doesn’t even take the physical intimidation of warlords, gangsters or party bosses in police states for people to fall into pecking orders.
This place wasn’t built by our growing dependency classes. Many who came here returned to the safety of the old country. Freedom, frontiers and futures are hard work.
Moderator: My comment at #32 still says comment awaiting moderation.
#36
I was going to make a nasty comment about our hands-across-the-sea visitor, Onlooker (who I expect is really one of the local Obama Troll “Corpse” soldiers), Diggsie, but you said it all. Lots of other good anti-bloated government comments as well. Two of our government trio arms are the turgid presidency and convoluted congress. I’m placing a lot of hope that the courts and November elections will turn some of the tide in favor of the recognition of Constitutional limits.
Pictures look like a tea party protest.
Tell a lie long enough, cherry pick the data, make dubious comparisons, and it becomes fact I guess is your creed? As someone in the medical field, I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that America’s medical system, with all of its built-in litigious flaws and cost overruns, is still the best in the world. Doubt me, see where people come for treatment where money is no concern.
Life expectancy is a skewed statistic to use for measuring the quality of health care. You let me use your homogeneous classification of demographic that most other western nations experience (say white and female), and life expectancy in the U.S. rivals any nation no matter how obese.
The fact that we have freedoms in choice you don’t, that our country provides hope that your own can not, including taking on the oppressed, the poor, and the sick, recognizing freedom comes with a risk, is a price most Americans are willing to pay to experience the liberties we do. If a nanny state is required to live three more years, I’ll take the shorter life and enjoy my stay.
Smart people recognize the flaws that you can not afford your pipe dream of some leftist utopia. You would to if you had any sense, helping to explain why no country on earth rivals America’s greatness – not even close. And even in long life if you’re lucky, where you live is still second fiddle and always will be no matter how you spin the facts.
You are absolutely right that we are talking around the main issue with government healthcare.
I quit practicing adult medicine years ago because it was almost all time and money spent trying to minimize the damage done by chronic bad behaviors and old age. This is what we expect from health care. This is why it is so expensive. There is little savings to be had from making medicine a nonprofit process.
In the end, the only way to bring costs down is for someone to say, “That bit of medical care is too expensive for what you get. Don’t buy it.” The decison will be made by the guy paying for the care. That is either me with my own dollars, my employer through the insurance company he hires to define benefits, or the government. I trust myself a lot more than the other two. As a plus, when I make good decisions about my health, the savings come to me personally. And a second plus, I don’t have to be forced to care for morons (many, many, many of those around) – I will be happy to help care for those that suffer catastrophies through no fault of their own (few of those around).
I agree entirely with everything you said, but actually see your article as reluctant support for the cleaning up of society. The main theme to this entire article in a nutshell is, “If I’m paying, I’m going to pass judgement on those I’m paying for.” And I agree. People respond very well to external forces because we’re no longer raised with self-confidence, self-motivation, or self-control. These are all things that people must learn on their own and we were lucky enough to understand the consequences before it was too late. Human beings will naturally try to fit into society, whether they like it or not; everyone yearns to be part of the big picture. The fact that we’ll be paying for others’ mistakes means that maybe us Americans won’t have to be so tight-lipped and understanding of peoples’ own stupid problems. Whether you’re paying for it or not, obesity is making YOUR healthcare/insurance more expensive. Whether you’re paying for it or not, smoking is making YOUR healthcare/insurance more expensive. The problem is, you say “live and let live” and turn a blind eye to all the things that the world is laughing at us for because, contrary to Comatus, everyone outside of the US is either laughing at us, angry at us, or using us through our logic-blinding pride. Maybe if people like you were to start focusing some of your socially “edgy” (“”s because everyone secretly agrees, but doesn’t have the marbles to say it) opinions towards the people they’re directed towards on a regular basis rather than at liberals, these people would feel more inclined to be healthier. Maybe if we were to stop tobacco companies from giving our government millions of dollars every month we could actually stop people from smoking. MAYBE IF FAT PEOPLE HEARD EVERYONE CALL THEM FAT THEY WOULD FEEL COMPELLED TO BE HEALTHIER. Stop censoring people for saying things like that and we might have less problems. I believe that spreading the responsibility to other people will lead to those people not being as tolerant of things like obesity. Maybe if people realized that their personal decisions directly effected their social position whether we’ve got UHC or not, they’d be more inclined to avoid casting themselves to the outskirts of social acceptance.
All I’m trying to say is that our country goes to such great lengths to avoid offending people for their personal downfalls that we’ve made those downfalls appear to be acceptable. Maybe if the rest of us realized that our blind eyes were contributing and stopped being tolerant of things that are crippling our society, we could not only make America happy, prosperous and respected, but we could lower the ever-surmounting debt. This isn’t a cry for Obamacare, socialism, or even social justice. This is a cry for the one thing this country actually needs and that’s social responsibility. Whether you like it or not, we are all, in part, responsible for each other. Our actions AS A GROUP define the country that we live in. When you travel out of the country, everyone sees you as the fat, stupid, lazy, wasteful, intolerant American, not as one of the few exceptions to that stereotype. The only way that I can see us making America great again is to reshape the image that we’ve created for ourselves. In doing this, we’ll be able to begin to reduce costs in not only healthcare, but the penal system, and emergency services in general. With all that extra money (plus the money not being spent bombing everything in site) we can invest a heaping sum of money into the education of the future generations because they will be the ones taking care of us when we’re older.
this was a very well-written article and I really wish more people from both sides of the fence could realize, whether for or against healthcare, we agree that our country as the same basic flaws. Whether you want a more aggressive approach to the problem or a more passive, we all want the same end-result, but that will never happen if we continue to let single issues divide us.
19. Adina Kutnicki, Israel: “Coulda done without the graphic male on male,as it almost caused me to lose my breakfast, but the rest is spot on.”
Says our friend from Israel, who lives – and no doubt suffers – under a system of universal health care.
Agree with Zombie on all points. And I have a new definition of “gore”: watching gays suck each other off. OMG I need a new pair of eyes. And a wiped memory while I’m at it.
I’d share this on FB but my 700+ friends would never forgive me.
Onlooker
Do you know why many Americans hate Universal health care, I’ll give you a hint, it has nothing to do with fairness. It all about staying in power. You see true Universal health care usually meant that everybody with no exceptions get to be in line with the hoi polloi in being seen by doctors and nurses or admitted to the hospital. But the reverse is true in all cases, politicians, bureaucrats, the connected and their families get a different kind of health care than the rest of the population. They have level A quality of care while the rest get the wait for the appointment or the I’m sorry, but we can’t help you treatment.
Universal Health care reduces the common people regardless of wealth and politics into numbers with the bureaucrats making the decision on who is to have this care or not or to be blunt, to live or die.
I am a nurse, Onlooker with disbelief, a floor nurse, a unit nurse or whatever you call them in your country. We take care of everybody, we admit patients who are self pay or in other words with no insurance or who are rich enough who can pay their hospital and medical bills, those with private insurance , those with Medicare and Medicaid, illegals and the occasional foreigner who comes into our way. They get the same damn care, the same tests, the same doctors and everything else. If they cannot pay their bills, hell , that’s easy too. patient’s can ask their alderman for help, various charities or have the hospital help them paying by installments. From my experience, Outcomes are just that, a useless number bandied around by experts and people like you who never work in a floor of an American hospital.
purkrame:
Another idiotic talking point. The health care system in America is in trouble because the Government decided years ago to get involved in health care. Do you know how much they pay a hospital for a Medicaid patient regardless of the length of stay and costs, 55 dollars. How much do Medicare pay for a coronary Angiogram, last I heard it was 250 dollars. How much a private insurance company pay for an angiogram,about half of 12000 dollars, more or less, depending on the insurance. In regards to medicines , Medicare and Medicaid reject more drugs than private insurance, same with procedures.
So tell me, purkrame, guess who will be getting the short end of the stick when ObamaCare becomes law, it will be the poor especially the minorities who will get hard hit. Health care is not cheap and when the government bureaucrats realized that taxes cannot reduce the cost, they will find ways to reduce it with your life. Nothing personal, you see. In case you try to use the racism card, I’m Filipino and I have seen racists in every color working as a nurse.
Tsk, tsk
too/to in 40
As hellaciously destructive as the costs will be, they’re not the root problem. As far as love, peace, brotherhood happiness and harmony are concerned, a transaction between a sucker and a grifter can easily work out fine for both. The problem comes when the transaction requires one or the the other side to compel the other.
No matter what new strings of words one side of the transaction comes up with to make the transaction seem right, as long as the other side is not free to say “no thanks”, then it’s not really a transaction –its an attack.
Just a few hours away from formally declaring this “The New Communist Socialist Democratic Republic of the Americas and the World.”
Yes, this area (no longer a Nation) is a point of attraction of immigrants, from the rest of the Third World. They are attracted to the Third World guy who’s running it and his free money from the Obama sky for all.
Workers, atheists and muslims of the World unite; you have nothing to lose but your lousy brains.
I haven’t figured it out yet, but I’m sure this is somehow wayyyycist.
#39
Man, try a little harder next time. Sounds like you aren’t even trying any more.
as for OP: ZOMBIE FOR PREZ
Wrong: The reason I and many others are against universal health care (and the present HCR bill) is that it is plainly unconstitutional.
Re-read Ninth and Tenth Amendments. Power not expressly given to the Fed does not belong to the Fed, but to States and individuals.
And, yes, the picture was distasteful. If I want porn, I’ll go find it, rather than have it shoved in my face.
.
.
“What I don’t like about the very concept of universal health care is that it compels me to become my brother’s keeper….”
And if the Judeo-Christian tradition had taught us anything, it’s that we are NOT our brother’s keeper.
Democrat smear machine in full force!
This is all over the internet and in local newspapers all over the country!
http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en&source=hp&btnG=Google+Search#hl=en&source=hp&q=Charles+Babington+and+Christine+Simmons&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=&fp=1dc62da33e2ff469
Yes, we all should be more responsible, but that is the cost of freedom. The slackers, etc do cost everyone more, but to solve that I can well imagine our government, under a form of national healthcare system, doing to lower costs exactly what will be done if you don’t take their insurance program, fines and/or jail for “bad” behavior. Smoking, transfats and salt prohibitions are just the beginning.
Where is the civil disobedience in NY over the city’s food and smoking rulings or against ObamaCare. None that I see and unless it is a mass action as with MLK, nothing will happen. Neither congress nor government in general fear us. What I have done has been mostly ignored for 30 weeks except for my Standing at 1st and Capital in DC on Dec 1, 2009 where the people ignored me but the Capitol Police didn’t; but our betters could not ignore hundreds of thousands, or the 1.5 million I calculated were present in DC last year. So we write and show signs of anger as government moves in the direction of taking power from the people and we DO NOTHING to strike fear in them; we dishonor the millions who died or were diasabled for life to defend our Constitution in our over 200 years as a nation.
I am ashamed of my fellow Americans.
…it’s an attack, which could be justified –think quarantine disease, draft soldiers to resist attack, taxation itself –by only by emergency.
The reason the alternative proposals in this case are so deeply hidden under a media blackout is that by their very sensible sobriety and intuitive workability they utterly belie this entire revved-up fake “emergency”.
The ‘tell’ is, if the alternative proposals were actually dumb or unworkable, there’d be no reason for the blackout. On the contrary, they’d be daily, hourly, held up for above-the-fold ridicule.
Onlooker,
Your “civilization” is crumbling. Your car is on fire and you don’t have any kids to take care of you when you get old. Check back in in twenty years if your overlords allow it.
“Joseph:
“What I don’t like about the very concept of universal health care is that it compels me to become my brother’s keeper….”
And if the Judeo-Christian tradition had taught us anything, it’s that we are NOT our brother’s keeper.”
Ah yes… state compelled religious behavior. The hallmark of enlightened societies.
Physicians agree with every word Dr. Sunderhaus is saying, but of course (being younger and still needing to make a living) they can’t say so publicly. BRAVO Dr. Sunderhaus, you kick “them” all in the butt!
For those of us who don’t DO all those dangerous and slovenly things that damage our health we think we should pay less.
Now we’ll all pay more!
I DON’T THINK SO.
Some of us are considering NOT PAYING TAXES this year. That’s right. IF WE ALL JUST DON’T PAY TAXES, ALL OF US, they cannot put us all in jail. They don’t HAVE enough jail cells. THINK ABOUT IT. You want to squander MY hard-earned money? Raise MY taxes again?
NO. I quit.
Think about it. It’s time to just say NO.
There are still some chances that the democrats will succeed in ramming this bill through Congress and if they succeed they will have the chance to change the whole structure of American economy: this is the point of the fake “reform” and true revolution.
I frankly do not understand why the pundits do not discuss the true points that are at stake with this administration policies.
We discuss vague “ethical” matters, while the subversives change the economic structure of the country and make the America we knew DISAPPEAR.
The cost of this “reform” will make the deficit skyrocket, which will make the dollar weaker while at the same time the price to build an independent enterprise will become nearly impossible to pay: these two facts will feed each other (through a decrease in the taxable income) and the general result will be a very low economic growth, for decades.
This will change America.
Of all the pundits that use miles of ink to discuss the “reform”, not one has said the truth about Europe: the truth about Europe is that 75-80 per cent of Europeans are POOR, barely survive, live in very small apartments, are allowed very little power consumption, have very little cars, live a life that OUR American poor will consider unacceptable.
That is where this “reform” wants to lead us.
Do people know that the cost of gas in Europe is about 7 dollars a gallon ?
Do people know that a European home cannot have more than 3 (THREE) KWh installed ?
Do people know that most European countries do not have Armed Forces enough to defend themselves ?
Do you know that the price of a three rooms apartment in any European city equals the cost of a single family home with a large yard in America ?
Do you know why ? Taxes, taxes, taxes AND ALL money goes in the (otherwise miserable) national health care systems.
Let’s mention motorcycles.
A very high risk activity, with lots of expensive accidents. A big bunch of those expenses get taken care of via our taxes. Hard to imagine a guy or girl with facial road rash getting turned away at an emergency room.
Some states respond by requiring riders to wear helmets. Statistically, that helps with fatalities and expenses.
The smarter course is by Florida. If you want a license to drive a motorcycle on the public roads, you have to have personal accident insurance to cover your own medical expenses.
Ideally, no helmet laws and no freebie medical care. But that’s not a compromise either side will make.
Here is one reason ObamaCare should pass, as it seems likely to do regardless of what we want. The basic thesis is that if it passes, the Democrats will own it and conservatives will be able to use it effectively as a major issue in the congressional elections this year; Speaker Pelosi is probably correct in claiming that we will know what it is when it passes. I think she errs in concluding that we will like it. If conservative “obstructionism” prevents passage, the argument — “Now you can see how bad it really is” — will be at weakened to “We had enough clout to defeat this, but we need more.” If the thesis is correct, and enough leftist incumbents find themselves unemployed come January of 2011, it may be worth it.
Although I agree with comments appended to Mr. Parks’ article to the effect that something evil should not be permitted in order to promote something good, I wonder how much harm ObamaCare can actually cause between now and appropriations time in 2011. Most of the wild spending will not come into being for several years.
I don’t expect there to be a veto proof conservative super-majority in either house in 2011. Although I expect conservative majorities then, that won’t be enough to permit repeal of ObamaCare anytime soon.
However, all appropriations bills must originate in the House, and a bare majority there can block some or all ObamaCare funding and maybe pull off other “mischief” as well — refusal to approve yet another increase in the debt limit, perhaps. With a conservative majority that can happen, even if it requires funding bills which effectively write around ObamaCare.
Perhaps this is all “whistling past the graveyard,” but since it looks as though we are probably going there in any event, a bit of whistling and getting seriously to work on this November’s elections can’t hurt.
Libs want to take care of all of these peps who indulge in risky behaviour because they see them as helpless instead of the fools that they are and don’t distiguish really between what is avoidable and what is not. Wouldn’t be PC now would it? The rest of us see it as the next step in upping the nanny state. After universal healthcare come the bills to ban sugar, salt, transfats. What will be next? Mandatory excercise regimens for everyone, a weekly national weigh in? Peps want to include incentives for peps to do things that improve their health or avoid illness but how long before that turns into get healthy OR ELSE. They put costly programs in place based on the myth of global warming. What costly health myths will they start believing in?
I don’t always take care of my health as maybe I should but I am not overweight and am in pretty good health BUT I do have health insurance (and disability coverage) so if I get sick I wont be costing anyone but myself anything. Doesn’t mean I indulge in risky behavior just because the financial consequences will be paid for. Yes, we are against universal health because we don’t want to pay for other peep’s risky behavior, but under universal health care we get a system that tells those of us who generally take good care of ourselves that we aren’t doing enough or not doing it the right way. And we will still be paying for other peeps health care whether they are risk takers or not.
39. skeeziks:
Actually that picture looks like your messiah working for his slumlord boss… hmm what was his name?
Of course we already pay for medical care for drunken burger smoker. If he is insured we do it through our own insurance premiums, if not we do it through inflated costs such as $40 tylenol at the hospital.
All the people in those pictures are getting medical care. It is all paid for somehow.
There are lots of good reasons to oppose obamacare, I do, but this is not one of them. It is a good reason to get all sanctimonious about how well one takes care not to indulge in various sinful and unhealthy pleasures, a topic which few people in real life ever want to listen to but that is what blogs are for, right?
Spindok
#18
You Euro peon type socialists deserve what’s coming to you. This time we won’t be there to help. We can’t were broke and getting more so by the moment.
We will deal with your evil philososphy though. The commie generation that is power now is about to go by the wayside forever.
We will teach truth and justice, personnal responsibility, freedom and use you as an example of the mistakes never to be made again.
Zombie: Nice work, keep it up.
48. Sherab Zangpo:
“Do people know that most European countries do not have Armed Forces enough to defend themselves ?”
Who needs ‘em. Uncle Sam has been a permanent presence since the ’40s.
“Do you know that the price of a three rooms apartment in any European city equals the cost of a single family home with a large yard in America ?”
Imagine that! A Paris apartment costs more than a large house in the suburbs. Btw, check out condo costs in NY, San Franciso – or any other city where people want to live.
“Do you know why ? Taxes, taxes, taxes AND ALL money goes in the (otherwise miserable) national health care systems.”
And yet in none of these places – England, France, Canada, Israel, etc. – is there a movement of any size to get rid of these systems.
The blindness of those who attack “lifestyle” diseases amazes and dismays me, as does the lack of compassion.
Tell the Pima Indians of Arizona about diabetes and obesity. Their genetics are adapted to a very low calorie diet (perhaps due to a famine in their past). Now, in modern society, 50% of the adults have diabetes.
But hey, it’s all their fault, right?
I’m no fan of Obamacare, but the growing desire to demean and deny care to those who have a bad lifestyle is disgusting. It fails to distinguish a choice of sloth from other reasons for the disorders – from psychological disease to bad genetics.
It also ignores the fact that everyone dies, and the healthiest may be more likely to die of cancer, which costs a huge amount to treat.
So grow a bit of wisdom and stop the simplistic bigotry.
Question, because I really don’t know: is there a way to PREVENT the dems from ‘Cleaning up’ this bill before or after our first Socialist President signs it into law?
I’d love for every single scummy deal to stay in there until november.
I want the dems to own every single piece of this stinking pile of manure in november.
But I have no faith in the republicans doing anything right. In fact, it wouldnt surprise me if, by November, the republicans have shot themselves in the foot and handed pelosi the congress again.
People, we need a purge of the RNC. We are not being represented.
#18 Onlooker in disbelief, or onlooker in disproof?
Just takes one fact to disprove a lie, though you were full of those pesky lies.
Canada spends 33% of their GNP on health care. We, the US, spend half as much. Canadians may not realize it, but they pay more, and get less. And that’s what you want us to agree to do?
“Yet the USA also has the most expensive healthcare system of all OECD countries. So you all pay more as individuals than any person in other western countries for worse health outcomes overall, a very inefficient system.”
Not so; see above.
“The rest of the western world looks on in disbelief and laughs at the ignorance displayed in the health debate in America.”
You don’t know the real reason their laughter is so nervous. They are convulsing, wondering where they will go for medical care if the light of America dims, knowing lights of hope all over the world will dim as well, and more. Wise up, Mr. Knowitall.
Daniel Hannan (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Hannan ), British MEP, has been all over the Fox Network saying to America about nationalized health care; “Don’t so what we have done, for God sake, don’t do it.” Daniel is a clear-headed rational person that, if the UK is lucky, may become their PM.
“Health isn’t all about cost, there is also opportunity cost to consider. There is value in the health of society as a whole which can’t necessarily be measured purely by accountants and consultants.”
Opportunity costs – to do what? The US is the most productive, most affluent, and has the most access to the pleasures of life of any country on this particular planet. What you would accomplish with the diminution of those others must really be a prize that YOU covet. Not us.
“America is unfortunately the butt of jokes told around the world.”
Many jokes are told out of envy, and ridicule can be a form of praise and affection. That about covers it. All else, including those two, are your problems. You have us confused with someone that thinks what someone else thinks about us is important. (Unfortunately, too many do care.)
Who will answer that 3:00 AM call, when you call us to save your sorry butts once again? You had better hope it isn’t Obama, or your ass is grass: Go back to smokin’ it. Maybe Russia, or the Haiti military, will bail you out. Oh wait, Cuba has socialized health care – they will be able to save your country, won’t they? Oh, can you wait another fifty years while they save their own country? Well, then there is Venezuela,…you see where you guys are going?
stevieray (32)
Excellent point about the babies in charge and stealing from future generations. This mob of thieves and their hired thugs have built their rationalizations for their crimes into an entire theology they insist proves their right to be in power and to always remain in power. Barry appointed dozens of little tin gods to avoid soiling his own hands with the work of an office he feels is beneath him. Is it any wonder he seems like the perfect leader and all around great guy to those who lay claim to the wealth and efforts of others in order to avoid soiling their hands with the consequences of their own actions?
Scott (34)
”It is that we have become a nation of pussies. Period.”
You are correct, but did you know it’s due to so many people having become infected with Chronic Rationally Anal-expulsive Brain Syndrome (CRABS)? Those infected gasify and pass as flatulence all rational thoughts. While non-professionals frequently misdiagnose the symptoms as stupidity, CRABS is actually an infectious disease the effect of which is to subvert the native mental abilities and cause a trance like delusional state accompanied by fantasies of superior intellect. Almost exclusively spread by academic intercourse, the rate of infection is so closely related to the duration of academic exposure that only an estimated three percent of those who practice the frequent intercourse required to join the Piled Higher and Deeper Priesthood remain uninfected.
Since first discovering this horrible disease in 1975, my research has led me to conclude that those participating in academic intercourse must constantly have themselves evaluated by others known to be disease free. Proper regular evaluations and, when necessary, the administration of antibullotics, have successfully halted the progress of and eliminated the effects of, the disease even in instances of repeated infections. Those who avoid others with the above described symptoms, who are regularly evaluated appropriately, and who take the entire prescribed course of antibullotics at the first signs of infection, have managed to endure years of exposure and remain disease free.
Regards
Well, no matter how much you hate it, America and patriotic Americans are going to take a major step today to help all Americans.
No, you’re mistaken. Democrats are going to take this step. Or at least try to.
Most people seem to confuse “health insurance” with “health care.” Everyone except the Canadians that is; recently a published text showed that there were more MRI machines in Philadelphia, a geographically-small town of 1M people than there are in all of Canada, a land mass larger than the USA with a population of 33M. This shows the dramatic gap between the needs shown in the free market vs. the expected needs in a controlled market. The lead time to get an MRI in Canada has gone north of 2 years. Additionally the Canadian government, who still bans private health insurance, ie American, in 6 out of the 10 provinces, has now formalized relationships with several American hospitals in our northern states to accept Canadian patients on a regular basis.
Their “health insurance” is to send them out of the country away from friends and family and everything familiar to get health care from the privatized system to the south.
With that in mind, where will Americans go?
52. Joseph:
48. Sherab Zangpo:
And yet in none of these places – England, France, Canada, Israel, etc. – is there a movement of any size to get rid of these systems.
Joe you are no plumber.
that is why the dems want to push this through ..they and the stupid sh!t who is your president don’t care what the f@#$k is in the bill because once it is done it cannot be undone …as you say the people just don’t form movement to get rid of these messes.
if the government can do it then the private sector allowed supply and demand capitalism (not the phone sh!t you presently call capitalism) CAN DO IT BETTER AND CHEAPER.
not one of those socialist countries would be where they are without the innovation and free market of the USA.
this bill with effectively kill that and you will have the pleasure of government mandated choice of take it or leave it ….there will be no option number 3. there will be no option of second opinion. Your bright world will become the gray associated with the old USSR. didn’t see movements there either did you. f in moron
51. Which is why we must force them to pay for their own care. Why do we let people steal health care services?
Right on. We are being asked to subsidize other peoples stupidity. I don’t mind supporting widows and orphans. But I really object to people who do foolish things and then expect me to bail them out. I used to own and operate a sailboat, and never carried a radio. I expected that if I ran into problems, I would solve my own problems and not ask others to risk life and limb to save me from my stupidity. The term is “moral hazard”. Forget the postal system, which works, if not well. Instead look at schools: our schools have been a mess for years (since well before “A Nation at Risk, in the ’80s.), and only continue to deteriorate. Imagine a health care system that works that well, with people who have slight regard for their own well being. No thank you.
the something(s) that is(are) wrong with our healthcare system have not been articulated. we are fostering legislation without fully understanding what is the benefit of this. the poor already are treated medically. what is it exactly we are benefiting from?
a single payer system is okay with me. that is not what this is. nor is it universal health care. we are mandated to use insurance companies, noted bloodsuckers and leeches who don’t care if we die, and hope we do to save them money.
plus, i don’t know what affordable is to each and every one of us, but i can assure you it is different from one to the other.
and, the loathsome obama directing this does not give me much cause to hope for a good result.
Well, good luck and Godspee, zombie, but I can tell you why you’re going to lose this one, unfortunately.
Last night I read a letter planted in the San Diego Uptown News by an alleged female PhD, complaining bitterly because she is 53, in relatively good health with a few regular prescriptions about $35/month, a doctor’s visit a month, and she found a private insurance plan from Aetna with a $3,000 deductible and 7,500 per year premium. She thinks that 1) her health insurance should cost LESS THAN these expenses, and she thinks that the bill in Congress is designed to DECREASE HER HEALTH INSURANCE PREMIUMS. Sorry for shouting. It’s just that the letter is so damn incredible coming from somebody who ought to be able to recognize the parameters of a word problem. This is an alleged female with a doctorate who has no idea what insurance is, or how it functions.
If you want to see it, here it is “American people” looking for insurance they can afford, not $10,000 annual fees, by “Carole Duebbert, Ph.D.”
http://content.yudu.com/A1n70u/Uptown31910/resources/index.htm?referrerUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fsduptownnews.com%2F%3Fs%3Dinsurance
There are better solutions to the problem of large numbers of healthy people who opt out of insurance, and then wind up in need of medical care. Those solutions are not embodied in the present legislation. But this alleged woman is never going to be capable of evaluating any part of the debate.
“Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.”
Do you know? I have never met anyone who cares twopence what health care system you Americans have. We have lots of opinions about what health care system we should have – but care sweet FA about yours!
#52 Joseph
BINGO !
If you had read my post #47 and thought about it, you would have understood that “your” final statement is EXACTLY what I was pointing at:
as #55 has already said,
the point is exactly that by making everybody POOR, the nomenklatura of the socialist regime CHAINS everybody:
if you live in a miserable condition where you have very little and THE STATE is the master, directly or indirectly, of all the very little that you have, you can no longer live like a CITIZEN, you live and think like a slave.
And that’s what the radicals of this administration want to reach: depress the economy in America forever, destroy the same idea of an EMPOWERED citizenry.
The rest of the socialist revolution NEEDS this starting point.
You are right, the Europeans do not fight back any longer, the socialists won.
And now that the socialists import in Europe MILLIONS of muslims and change Europe into a muslim land, the Europeans stay silent.
Check mate in favor of the subversives.
And the key is making everybody poor, and dependent from the government.
PS And if you like Europe so much, please do move there, I know at least six Americans that did it and came back in six months (after ten years of planning) when they hit their head in WHAT THE PUNDITS DON’T TELL YOU.
57. Valerie:
that letter writer probably got her PhD at the same school as the moron occupying the white house.
The US has a big problem with illegal immigration.
Many countries with socialized medical systems (including Mexico) do not allow immigration of any but the healthy (or rich).
Think about that – we don’t have the political will to do so.
45. Joseph:
“What I don’t like about the very concept of universal health care is that it compels me to become my brother’s keeper….”
And if the Judeo-Christian tradition had taught us anything, it’s that we are NOT our brother’s keeper.
The irony of Christianity is that we are all responsible for our own salvation, but if our behavior causes others to stray then we are responsible. That being said, people who make bad choices have to suffer the consequences. Now making “good” choices won’t prevent people from having bad things happen, but those happen without being invited. It’s one thing to be hit by a drunk driver; it’s another to drive while drunk.
“18. Onlooker in disbelief” The United States Army and Navy could defeat the Nazis, and put up a wall to stop the Red Army, but we can’t protect you from all of the Muslim immigrants who have moved into Europe because your people don’t believe in the future enough to have children. Your socialized medicine isn’t going to be worth much when you lose the rest of your freedoms. Taxes in France are such that entrepreneurs are hesitant to start businesses or to hire more help. The tax burden of this bill is too much.
Gee, I hope America is not surprised that the national Government and State Government will be establishing “Rules for Living” We can be sure Governments of the past, had such rules.
And there will be means established for enforcing these rules.
As we lose our Freedoms, surprise, they are replaced by “RULES FOR LIVING” AND, YOU WILL FOLLOW THESE RULES.
Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia had Rules, Remember.
58. Sherab Zangpo: #52 Joseph “You are right, the Europeans do not fight back any longer, the socialists won.”
Yep, the Europeans are a broken people, as are the Canadians. And the Israelis don’t have an ounce of fight left in them — all because of their socialized medicine.
“And now that the socialists import in Europe MILLIONS of muslims and change Europe into a muslim land, the Europeans stay silent.”
Just as in the US, millions of Mexicans and other Latinos were imported as cheap labor by socialist farmers and agri-business execs.
@ Onlooker
There is no such entity as “society,” and as such, “society” has no rights whatsoever.
A society is merely a collection of individuals, and individuals have rights and responsibilities for their own decisions and actions.
Period.
In no way could it be possible for “the good of society” to be at odds with “the good of the individual,” nor does any alleged “right” of “society” trump real individual rights and liberties.
America has its problems, look at the figures you’ve cited. I’ll take the first one, life expectancy, as it was one of the bogus figures that played so heavily into the US being rated “37th” by the WHO ten years ago.
First, we have a much higher incidence of violent crime and gang violence than the countries to which we were compared. When 16 year olds are killing each other by the thousands in LA and Detroit, that throws off life expectancy without being a reflection on the quality of, or access to, health care. Truly, in the US, not only is there a plethora of free clinics, but no hospital ER can refuse life saving (or prenatal or post natal, if memory serves me correctly) care, regardless of ability to pay, so the idea that people are dying by the scores due to lack of health care access is a bold-faced lie.
In addition, the other number that played into our ranking of 37th (not mentioned by you) was infant mortality. But our higher number in that area is due to US hospitals considering all borderline births – even those certain to end in death ten minutes later – as “live births” and *try* to save them, where all those precious single-payer-rationed-care monstrosities like the UK count those same births as “stillborn” and make no attempt to save the child’s life. The result? Our infant mortality figure (“deaths per 1000 live births”) is thus much higher precisely BECAUSE we render better care…all those deaths at “0 years of age” also tend to drag down life expectancy averages when they are routinely omitted from European figures.
I’ve deal with all the skewed numbers hogwash some time back on my own blog, with links to the studies that found that the US system is actually providing much better care in most, if not all, major areas than anything Europe has to offer. Feel free to follow the link by my name and check them out for yourself.
The specific link is here:
http://themadpiper.wordpress.com/2009/09/15/healthcare-myths-and-misleading-factoids-from-the-left/
but I encourage you to read all the entries…
As usual, impossible to make the agitprops of the subversives reason.
Enjoy the regime.
And don’t fly to Europe in twenty years from now, they will behead you as an infidel.
Skeeziks- I didn’t know you worked in construction!!
The article is pretty much spot on, and I would love to spread the link around, but some of those pictures (one in particular, you know which) are out of bounds. It’s disgusting and unnecessary, and I wish you’d remove them.
The “Doc” is O.K. with me – except for the “poke” – and all you be-clowned commentators should give it a rest; this incident has nothing to do with the current medicare / health insurance industry bailout plans being foisted upon an uncomprehending but greedy electorate by our sinecure seeking political class.
He should have apologized to the patient for the “poke”.
Does he think that patients permit him a license to touch them for his own purposes – even up to and including a common “battery”.
Frankly, even if he doesn’t apologize, his license should not be pulled. He will likely need a source of income to pay the jury award.
IMHO
I have failed to understand why this healthcare plan is not rationally discussed before trying to pass into law.
I do not understand why there is a bunch of crap in the bill that does NOT pertain to health care.
If the left refuses to discuss and be rational, then we need to vote them out in ’10.
People like Ferraro, Pelosi, Reid, Obama need to live with the bills that they want to have pass on Americans.
If this bill was so good, and the people knew the voters back home really wanted this, they would not need to be bribed.
..
2012 cannot come soon enough!!! So, we hvae to settle for 2010 and vote the trash out of office and hope we can fix the mess they have made so far and plan to do today!!!
Thanks for the visuals..I think….
Onlooker in disbelief:
Who is it exactly wishing us luck? Do you speak for the victims of the earthquakes in Haiti and Chile? Maybe you’re standing amongst the legion massed at our southern border trying to get in to the country with the worst mortality rate in the civilized world. Oh, wait, maybe you’re talking about Premier Danny Williams of Newfoundland who travelled to Miami for heart surgery. No, that can’t be it. Could it be that you represent the millions worldwide who depend on U.S. generosity and dollars to cure every crisis from natural disaster to man-made destruction? From my perspective you had better wish this nation luck because once we start this gravy train inside our borders there will be a little less generosity and even fewer dollars to export to the enlightened nations of the world who just can’t make it without a little fiduciary injection from the bad ol’ U.S.A.
At least you tried, Sherab –but you’re right –’reason’ is not in the playbook. Only ‘presence’ is.
The forces against health care for Americans have spent billions stopping health care and health care reform because they have earned billions from America not having it. The time has now come for them to lose one….just this once… and for Americans to win one. The banks always win, insurance companies always win and oil companies always win…what about us? What about America? Just for once, why cant America win?
Support health care for America and Reform for big insurance.
You will not regret it….
America doesn’t hate universal health care. Curb your ego. You are not America.
The people that hate universal health care are white Republicans that can’t stand that women, minorities, and gays will not get the same excellent health care that white people get and (the horror!) white people might have to see blacks in the same waiting room as them. And, when you factor in Obama, people can’t stand that a black man acts like he is President even though he actually is the President. If Obama were white, the healthcare bill would pass easily. But the racist Republicans keep reminding people that Obama is black instead of arguing on the merits of the bill.
well its over……Stupac caved!!
The USA is now heading towards its death thrues…
It’s time to REMOVE the Socialists, Progressives, Marxists and Communists from the DemocRAT Congress and White House. 2010 and 2012 should do the job.
We have to return to self-responsibility and our Constitution. Let’s end this Big Government Madness and return to the States all those things that are not explicitly given to the Federal Government in the Constitution.
Trollvi vo (41)
The richest nation in the world has no decent health care. And it’s not about ‘freedom’. You are just using tired old slogans
It’s no ‘tired old slogan’ that every penny I borrow from my children and grandchildren reduces what they’ll have, what they’ll be free to do, and what will remain of their freedom after they’re saddled with a huge tax burden and decades of new regulations. Indentured servitude is the main result of socialist health plans the world over and the fact they you think selling future generations into such servitude is perfectly acceptable speaks volumes more about you and your sundry sorry pseudonyms than the rote and scripted floundering fantasy falsehoods you post.
“The people that hate universal health care” are the ones who are going to be taxed to pay others. Pay your own way. When you run out of money don’t expect others to do for you. It’s immoral to vote money out of others wallets to pay for your debts.
Wrong, Poor Citizen, billions of dollars were or are being lost because the government decided to the lead in Health care. How about this , Poor Citzen, that you, me and everyone else take charge and responsibility of their own health care instead of the government. I have seen government health care first hand and I will not be an unwilling party to any of it.
@151 (Vinnie something):
U R still using vaseline in the wrong place.
149. You are not America. You are the enemy.
123. genotype,
Genetic and ethnicity factors (and a genetic predisposition for certain diseases) can be taken into account for how much ‘treatment’ the government will ‘allot’ you when the time comes. No worries (well, unless you have one of those nagging predispositions or find out that you do once you’ve had your DNA analyzed by the ‘health-allotment’ IRS agents and czars).
151.,
I see plenty of minorities (more than whites actually) in the waiting room.
I’m from Australia where we have universal health care. I’ve heard President Obama say that the health care bill will provide the same care that senators and congressmen get now for ALL Americans. But that’s not how it ends up working in a state controlled system.
In reality, universal health care means a public system for the working folks that is underfunded, run by a postal service-like bureaucracy, chronically short on nurses, doctors and equipment, while a elite hospital system for those who can pay for private health care evolves. What we have in Australia is a separate and unequal system. Our politicians and rich enjoy world class health care, while the public hospitals are dirty, crowded and people can wait for years for so-called elective surgeries, such as hip replacements or by-pass surgeries.
Welcome to the world of socialized medicine. You will simply have to work that much harder to pay for both your own private health care insurance and the onerous taxes to fund a public system as well.
But the worst part is that now that taxation pays for health care, the government will have a rational reason to invade everyone’s privacy with new laws that restrict what citizens can and cannot do in order to contain health care costs. For instance, why not outlaw TV commercials for fast food businesses? Everyone knows obesity is a problem, big government can lend a helpful hand. Next, outlaw handguns. You see where this is going.
Ultimately, socialized medicine is a necessary step to an oligarchy. Believe me, Obama’s children will never see the inside of a “public hospital.”
SCARY……
Is this REALLY our AMERICA??????
Know the TRUTH about the Government Health Care Bill H.R.3200 – Key Points
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcBaSP31Be8
The highly destructive Cap and Trade. An inferior health care plan that no one wants and CANNOT afford to pay. The threat to jail and/or fine those who don’t purchase the government enforced plan. Massive spending as if there is no tomorrow. Massive borrowing. The Massive giving away of Billions of dollars every year to other countries, including the oil-wealthy Middle East. Greatly increased taxation. Massive debt. The massive printing of paper money. There is no question that the total DESTRUCTION of America’s economy is planned. The results will be horrifying. In the once wealthy and great nation of America, millions of Americans will become destitute, hungry and homeless with no money or resources to help them.
OBAMA: DEBT UNSUSTAINABLE
Obama Says U.S. Long-Term Debt Load ‘Unsustainable’
By Roger Runningen and Hans Nichols
May 14 (Bloomberg) — President Barack Obama, calling current deficit spending “unsustainable,” warned of skyrocketing interest rates for consumers if the U.S. continues to finance government by borrowing from other countries.
“We can’t keep on just borrowing from China,” Obama said at a town-hall meeting in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, outside Albuquerque. “We have to pay interest on that debt, and that means we are mortgaging our children’s future with more and more debt.”
Holders of U.S. debt will eventually “get tired” of buying it, causing interest rates on everything from auto loans to home mortgages to increase, Obama said. “It will have a dampening effect on our economy.”…
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aJsSb4qtILhg&refer=worldwide
Obama admits the terrible financial destruction wrought against Americans. WHY then DOES OBAMA NOT IMMEDIATELY REVERSE THIS TRAGEDY?
A major investor states America is going to reach Zimbabwe hyperinflation.
http://economyincrisis.org/articles/show/2942
Yes, everyone always goes running up to Canada for the latest cutting edge miracle life saving procedure. Even poor Natasha Richardson died up there when she fell on the ski slope. Eat your veggies everyone, Obama and Co. are turning back the clock.
Re: 149 & 151 -You really shouldn’t skip the meds! For all the sane responders, aren’t you glad tat you went ahead and armed up? I am! See you in the trenches.
Vinnie, this type of “healthcare” was proposed by Bill Clinton, and opposed vociferously. Mr. Clinton is white.
Great article, you’ve said out loud what many of us have thought for such a long time.
It’s too bad the politicians are unwilling to listen to such wisdom, and don’t seem to care
that we have to pay for the stupidity of others.
There is also this reason
A doctor’s perpective of Obamacare – Healthcare delivery bankruptcy
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2475223/posts?page=1
Vinnie
Let me ask you a question? Are you a floor nurse, a medical resident or a doctor working in an American hospital ?? You see, I am a nurse working in Chicago and guess what, in any given day, we will admit patients in our unit who are black, white, yellow, brown, mulatto and every color in the rainbow and they will have the same amount of medical and nursing care regardless of their income, color, creed and insurance or lack of it. Oh btw, in our unit, the vast majority of nurses are Asian in which I am one. The Unit manager is Asian, the Case manager is Asian and the Social Worker is Hispanic. So stop the racism charge, it’s gets to be boring. Why is it that people who never worked in the health care trenches tends to think they know it all. Heck, if you want real reforms, Vinnie, talk to the floor nurses and ER nurses, Residents and Attendings. We don’t BS around unlike the so called experts .
As a British subject I can only wish this article be published in our press. It says what a large number of productive people throughout the world believe but probably rarely express for fear of offence. Think about your car insurance. Imagine if all risk was bundled up and everyone paid the same premium regardless of age,vehicle and personal history! That’s basically what happens in the NHS. No doubt it was an improvement for some in the 1940s but it just isn’t good value now. Saying this is unacceptable to people who work in the NHS who have “the truth” if you know what I mean.
Will, Vinnie was talking about himself –he thinks by putting his thinking in another’s mind he cleans himself up a liitle bit. He doesn’t realize all this of course. Or maybe he does.
151
If Obama were white, the healthcare bill would pass easily.
Yes, just like when that white President, Bill Clinton, got his health care plan to pass!
Man, you people are delusional.
160 wesgeorge -What’s the phrase you guys use -too right?
While the bleeding hearts accuse us of not being compassionate enough to want to help our fellow human beings (which couldn’t be further from the truth) they don’t realize that those who need the help the most are not going to get it (for the reasons you describe) under universal health care.
Even Obama has admitted that the olegarchy will be the ones to get the healthcare they want. In a speech he suggested that if you’re old and need a hip replacement then maybe it would be better to just give you a pain pill but in the same breath he let slip that if it was his own mother he would pay for it himself. So compassionate of him to condemn the non-privileged elderly in their remaining years to a life of pain, pills (which often don’t help much and lead to addiction), a wheelchair and loss of independance. O really showed his true elitist colors with that one.
And it’s not about ‘freedom’. You are just using tired old slogans
Anyone who thinks “freedom” is a tired old slogan is a pathetic piece of human vermin.
164. venividivici:
Not only are the moonbats delusional but hypocritical and in one moment cry racism but will turn a blind eye to the REAL racism buried in this HUGE bill that amounts to government takeover of our lives while calling people against this socialist decline ‘racists’.
20. Shef Rogers:
Hands up every PJM reader who uses Medicare.
——————————————–
How about, hands up every PJM reader who knows Medicare/Medicaid/VA health system are sumpholes of misspent money. (Unless you’re a bureaucrat in those systems.)
Hands up every PJM reader who knows that so-called “universal” health care around the world relies on, as 160. wesgeorge pointed out, private insurance for REAL health care.
“The rest of the western world looks on in disbelief and laughs at the ignorance displayed in the health debate in America.”
Yeah, I’m sure Euros are laughing their asses off from Guernica to Auschwitz, to the Katyn Forest all the way to Babi Yar. Probably yucking it up in Srebrenica even.
See, there’s a bit of a problem with the kind of totalitarian governments the rest of the western world favors (the kind that provides government controlled healthcare)….when they’re not busy telling you what doctor you can go to, they have a tendency to get together every few years and slaughter millions of people…which kinda screws up your quality of life stats a tad.
The decline of our country into socialism has been eeking in through the years and now that the Leftists have power they are ramming in the rest, the people be damned even while many countries that have implemented socialism are failing.
Pathetic.
I thank God I am healthy and require little yet in the way of health care. Now that this Obamacare mess has passed, socialized medicine is on its way.
Socialized medicine in the USA will be just like socialized medicine everywhere else in the world; Long wait times to get substandard care.
I HOPE all your liberals enjoy the CHANGE that is coming.
I have been a doctor for 19 years. 4 years in the Army and 15 years in private practice. I belong to a doctor owned group of approx 350 doctors in a multi-specialty practice. We employ 4000 people. In addition to being touted as one of the very best clinics in the nation (Acclaim Award winners) we have donated over a million dollars to the local city in grants, scholarships and charity. Regularly voted as top places to work by our employees. US healthcare at its very best. I am very proud of what we do and we provide tremendous care and value to our patients.
We seek to maintain a 3-5% profit margin annually. We operate in the very precarious business model of enormous volume, low margin. As any business owner knows, this is high-risk-low-margin of error model. Consequently any small changes to cash flow vectors, mandates widespread internal policy and practice corrections. Tiny changes = massive consequences.
As many people may know, Medicare and Medicaid, the current government paid ‘insurer’ – pays approximately 70% of the cost of care. ie its more expensive for doctors to care for these patients than we get reimbursed for. Say you are a contractor. Imagine the government mandating a significant number of your jobs whereby your out of pocket costs are ~ 30% + greater than your income. That is Medicare and Medicaid. In perspective, our group alone, year 2008 lost ~$12 million caring for our government patients. This is despite taking over 1 1/2 years to help move our fee-for-service traditional Medicare patients over to Medicare Advantage plans, which are privatized versions of Medicare that reimburse better…still not covering costs…but lessen our losses significantly.
Many people ask, why do private health insurance premiums continue to escalate? The liberals want you to believe its a combination of profiteering and waste. When in fact its due mainly to two other processes. The first is obvious: every year it costs more to care for patients and premiums are trying to keep up with this rising cost. But secondly, and less often discussed, is that every year private delivery systems lose more and more money caring for our government patients. Someone has to make up for these losses in order for your hospitals, clinics, nursing homes, pharmacies, group practices to remain solvent and profitable. Every year these delivery systems open their books to the private healthcare insurers – and the insurers must – they must in order for the entire system at large to stay functional, increase the amount they pay out to cover these losses. If they dont, both the delivery systems and the insurers die. So to keep the boat afloat, the payouts by private insurers MUST increase to subsidize the ever increasing losses doctors incur by taking care of our government patients. So, in a way, you could say that your increasing premiums are a tax that you are paying to cover the losses that are Medicare and Medicaid. It’s a clear and inarguable private subsidation of government cost. Enough said on that.
So to really feel the consequence and full impact of Obamacare, one must simply see the economic dominos. Most people can see how this bill will rapidly reduce private insurance plans and rapidly expand government plan patients. And take whatever number that is being reported, and multiply that by 3. That has been the experience in both Mass and Hawaii. Both government plans were overwhelmed with the enrollees as they significantly underestimated the government migration.
Ok, so now- how can anyone not see the obvious outcome? Government patients = significant loss of profitability. Initally the private insurers will do their best to continue to subsidize this loss, and there will be a huge escalation of premiums. But within a few months this will be unsustainable. Its a cycle that cannot be stopped. Higher premiums = higher recidivism to governmnet plans = higher premiums etc. Within months, every single hospital, every single doctor office, clinic, nursing home, pharmacy – every delivery system reliant on private insurers will no longer be profitable. ie they will go bankrupt. These will most certainly be the headlines to come: Hospital XYZ shockingly announces bankruptcy; Hospitals can no longer remain open; Clinics across the country file for bankruptcy; Loss of Pharmacy access shocks the Nation; Doctors going bankrupt en masse creating healthcare delivery and access to care crises; Where can you go to get care?; Loss of access reported Nationwide
Yes a crises. A crises of access due to widespread business failure. You will not be able to get care for as long as it takes for the government to devise their emergency bailout package and as long as it takes for those insufficient dollars to try and get those doors back open again. But it will be too late, and it will be too expensive. There is absolutely no way that our government can capitalize our entire healthcare system. Try as they might, only a percentage of what we have now will ultimately survive. And those that do survive will be a shell of what they once were. The conditions will be frightening, and the consequnces will be dire. The degree of disarray will be unimaginable and the underlap in access to care will be gaping.
I will not expand this discussion to predict what this means to our economy at large because I am not an economist. But anyone can be close to predicting what I am suggesting. Factors such as loss of work hours due to illnesses not treated, pressure on all the other private business models; let alone the out and out loss of enourmous capital via the bankruptcy of this entire healthcare industry can clearly be the death nail to our country and imo is a clear and present threat to our very sovereignty. This can make the housing collapse look like a speed bump. This will be massive and rapid and lethal and complete.
I am not certain why this very obvious outcome has not been openly discussed momre often – ie the rapid and massive bankruptcy of all of your health care providers and their delivery systems. But this is the inevitable outcome should this bill ever become law and inplemented.
Thanks for reading. Please ping, copy and email your friends and try and get this word out. I know it’s a very late hour – but I do think the implementation is not an inevitability as multiple lawsuits may keep it on hold for a while – so public opinion will still be vital for many more months to come.
Unbelievable times. Please do your part and email and make the phone calls. This plea comes an honest and heartfelt love of our country and its citizens, and an honest and heartfelt love of my profession, avocation and the welfare of my patients.
176. Dave Surls:
“The rest of the western world looks on in disbelief and laughs at the ignorance displayed in the health debate in America.”
Yeah, I’m sure Euros are laughing their asses off from Guernica to Auschwitz, to the Katyn Forest all the way to Babi Yar. Probably yucking it up in Srebrenica even.
—————————————–
The Euros are laughing their @$$e$ off because we’ve footed the bill — and given lots of lives — in their defense for the last 60-plus years. They’re safe to laugh.
“The rest of the western [sic] world” obviously confuses us with someone who gives a cr@p about their opinions. (Like our “president.”)
“The Euros are laughing their @$$e$ off because we’ve footed the bill — and given lots of lives — in their defense for the last 60-plus years.”
In that case, the joke really is on us, and I don’t blame them for laughing.
That’s what we deserve for electing dirtbags like FDR & co.
Dave Surls, great letter but please don’t do a NYT Puliter-winning Walter Duranty and forget the socially-engineered Ukrainian Holomodor wherein 10 or 20 million farmers who “only cared about themselves” paid for the lapse via watching the slow murder of their families by government starvation.
Delia, no need to cross our borders to find the leftist signature on human catastrophe –just look at the cities across the arc of our own deep-blue states. I do not understand how a single left-winger has the gall to open his mouth as long as empty wrecks comprise up to one full third (Detroit) of the buildings and God only knows what percentage of the poor wretches trapped –by the Party of Compassion –inside.
25. purkrame:
“I liked the comment about shrinking white Americans (I am a white American). Read other day-81% of voters 65 and older were white in 2010 election. In 2020 election only 59% of voters first eligible to vote will be white. The Republican party’s short term strategy works to some extent to get elected. Long term, they are crapping in their own mess kits. The anti minority thinking of many Conservatives (who, by and large lie about it publicly, but admit it privately) will eventually doom their ideas.
“In the meantime, enjoy Sunday. We continue to move the nation forward.”
_____
I’ve never heard such racist claptrap in my life as in the last few years, particularly in the last year.
And mostly from white people! Against themselves. Wishing and hoping for the destruction of other white people.
I always fought racism on the basis that all races should be equally accepted. This new version, however, just turns hate on its ear and decides that white people are bad and need punishing.
I can almost understand it on the part of a different race (though that’s inexcusable also). But to hear all these white people decrying other white people simply for being white, and looking forward to their decline, if not disappearance – it blows my mind.
White people don’t become more “cool” by hating themselves.
Disgusting.
Take a deep breath…and say hahahahahahahaha….
http://www.imao.us/index.php/2010/03/imao-reader-theater-nancy-gets-shrugged/
Wah, wah, wah — what a bunch of clueless crybabies. *All* Obama is trying to do is head off a currently relentlessly growing problem before it becomes a full blown crisis (although it is already starting to cause problems in surprising places.) Misrepresent things all you want, knock the Cheerios to the floor, spit out the Gerbers, whatever — if the dumbass Republicans (yes, I know that is a redundant phrase) had gone along with Bill Clinton’s original plan, we’d likely have a far less problematic health care system at the least. Bush was a destructive waste of 8 years and the Republicans in Congress seem to think they can cobble together a plan made from talking points taken off the Internet. Things just got worse and worse, and there is absolutely no reason to think that if a Republican had been elected President, things would be allowed to deteriorate even further.
If Obama gets this bill passed, that *will* be a seriously good thing, whether you’re too politically polarized, confused, plain stupid, or whatever to recognize it as such.
Well, maybe the bright spot in all of this is that it looks like the the house dems voting on the senate bill may NOT be able to fix it ex post facto…. I hope that is actually the case and hope the republicans fight any and all attempts to clean this turd up. I want it as stinky as possible come november. And I want it splattered all over the messiahs face!
Stupak is as Stupak does.
But hey, more job openings at the IRS (stimulus!), according to Mr. Steyn:
“Longer wait times, fewer doctors, more bureaucracy, massive IRS expansion, explosive debt, the end of the Pax Americana, and global Armageddon. Must try to look on the bright side…”
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NWI3MGNjMjVlMmJmYjEwNzdlYTYzZWYwNDlmNWIxNzg=
181. Dave Surls, totally agreed.
Whether this incredible piece of insanity is passed, or not, the current crop of legislators needs to put a great big X on its November calendars.
” We continue to move the nation forward” …because the abyss is just ahead.
185. BC:
Apart from your pathetic homoerotic fixation on your messiah, you do make some good points. The republicans are incompetent and have been complicit in the expansion of the state. It’s because of their incompetency that we have our first Socialist President…but that’s no reason for you to be such a groveling sycophantic worm, seriously… have some self respect.
BC says, ‘..a plan made from talking points taken off the Internet’. FYI: That’s all YOU do! You have NO rational decisions, analysis of your own. You copy n paste the mundane. Wow..
BC, do yourself a favor and read up on Massachusetts floundering universal health program. 4 years into its inception and 1/2 their budget is health. Of those uninsured prior to 2006, 2/3′s of that same population is either partial pay/ no pay and the taxpayer’s foot the bill. Massachusetts has the highest premiums in the country, increasing 26-41% more quickly than other states. Massachusetts had the most insured people than any state in the Union prior to 2006, this and many more dire consequences are the result.
It’s disturbing you and your ilk cant see the forest for the trees. BTW, notice I didn’t blanket you as ‘you liberals or ‘you Democrats’ etc,. For that’s ignorant. Though you excel in ignorance.
As for the individual who’d commented of ridding our country of the Police Department, why not? Having a CCW and raised how to use a firearm properly, no problem. Besides, when seconds count, the Police are minutes away.
On a side note, during this recession, our local Police and Fire Departments are adamant in receiving a pay raise. Raises.. now?! Ahh, Government employees with Union backers..
I detect some concern among some of you esteemed readers; you seem somewhat fearful of us joining the ranks of the Third World, under our beloved Third World Leader’s orders and his Mussolini chin-up (way up) look.
I would urge all of you to look at the upside of this, otherwise somewhat unfortunate, turn of events for our great Republic: the quality of our soccer game is bound to improve significantly.
Just take a look at the location (I think still) called “Great Britain” (or even more broadly, what is currently referred to as the “European Union” – obviously a misnomer, nomenclature soon to be corrected, by acquiring a proper name like the “EurAsioAfrican Union”). At both of those aforementioned locales, soccer is tops as is the popularity of the name “Ayisha.” The later requires some knowledge of the koran, to fully appreciate it.
Bananas anyone?
@185. BC: – If Obama gets this bill passed, that *will* be a seriously good thing…
So… in your eyes, destroying what’s left of the economy through radically increased taxation, increasing unemployment through added burdens on business, giving an unaccountable government carte blanche to legislate ANYTHING that they claim increases the cost of health care, increasing the cost of insurance like we’ve seen with CommieCare in MA, destroying insurers’ ability to evaluate risk, circumventing both the letter and the spirit of the Constitution by “passing” Amendment-scale changes through cowardly, procedural gimmickry… all for legislation that the majority has consistently rejected… in your eyes that’s “a seriously good thing”??
BC – from me to you – you are one really seriously twisted and completely effed-up individual.
179. Ralph,
(((((((((((((THANK YOU!!!!!!))))))))))
People need to take the blinders off and see this for what it really is (unsustainable and will destroy our advanced medical care and physicians).
This won’t be an UPGRADE for ANYONE. It will be a DOWNGRADE for EVERYONE.
I have a solution for keeping insurance companies from going broke- package deals. Buy your health, life, homeowners and auto insurance from the same company and get a deal for the bulk set. That way, the insurance company may be willing to take a loss on one product to keep a good customer around to buy the other products, the way supermarkets use milk as a loss leader.
The executive order is worse than the Slaughter rule! Why not let the President issue an executive order for universal health care and bypass the whole Congress-Senate thing. This is an extremely dangerous precedent! Please contact your representatives and tell them this is the worst yet.
** GUFFAW **
I’m actually pumped for the “war” that’s a brewing. A little chaos might be a good thing.
BC, you remind me of the 97lbs. weakling on the playground with the big mouth who pushed being the class clown routine a little too far. The final result *will* be a seriously good thing, as we walk over your broken, feckless party.
What are you going to do sport if 50MM of us tell you and your ilk to kiss our ass? Maybe will “deem” our taxes already paid. Maybe we will “deem” laws don’t mean much anymore and we will do as we wish. You think you’ve got the power to enforce it?
Access, quality, cost, BC. Does your bill –besides costing the nation into oblivion, do anything to improve them?
Those ‘internet talking points’ –tort control (see Texas), leave as-is our global-best free-market quality, and control cost via reform of 3rd party payer –are the actual solutions. No wonder your party’s main talking point is to ridicule them as ‘talking points’.
Any actual humanitarian can easily see that if we could just pry out from under the political protection of your party a mere fraction of the $100-$150 billion per year of admitted Medicare fraud, the country could buy every uninsured poor American his or her own-property HSA, which would, by putting them on the road to property and giving them a stake in the American system, greatly elevate the future prospects of folks now facing, under your bill, not poverty alone but poverty and permanent slavery.
Jumpin Judas Priest !
Even so called conservatives in this panty waist country are libtards. I’ve watched this mess pile up around us for sixty years. I told everybody I knew or talked to on the internet not to vote for GWB during the 2000 primary. Little whimp couldn’t spell conservative.
Then they try and give us McQueeg. MY GAWD! And NOW … Sarah’s out there pimping the old fool. There’s no hope folks. Put in a garden. Learn to can. Get out of the city if you can. Stock up on rice and beans … and ammunition .
Pray that the Lord is Coming soon.
When all of those ‘life-saving’ techniques are priced out of existence and become virtually extinct (unless a new America arises out of the ashes some place), all of the cries for why this bill was put into existence to ‘help’ someone who couldn’t afford ‘health insurance’ or was screwed by their ‘health insurance’ will be one sad joke on America.
No John and Jane, you won’t be ‘saved’ by those life-saving doctors, we now have third world class doctors who couldn’t save you from a staph infection and certainly not treat you for cancer.
Viva ignorance!
Schizophrenia and Tobacco
So many people who praise the inherent “kindness” of universal healthcare seem to be ignoring a crucial detail of human nature: You can’t force someone to be kind.
You can’t force a person to love their fellow humans. You can’t force someone to think of humanity as some sort of giant family. You can’t force someone to care about another person. All of things thing must be achieved AS AN INDIVIDUAL.
If I give a homeless man a place to stay, help him look for work, and let him share my food voluntarily, that makes me a good person. If I do all that ONLY because I know I’ll go to jail otherwise, that just makes me pragmatic. The same basic principal applies to healthcare. I donate money to a hospital, I’m a decent person. I pay my taxes, I’m following a rule.
Furthermore, to all those who bemoan the supposed buffoonery of American individualism, I say that politics and culture do not necessarily overlap. Being forced to pay for others will not make us, as individualists, love them. Zombie has demonstrated at least one person who will, if anything, become a greater misanthrope for it. Passing laws will not make Americans more loving. That is a purely cultural issue, and there the government has no power. It is up to us, AS INDIVIDUALS, to teach Americans to care about each other. Teach, not order.
I treasure my free will. I sincerely hope that the people who don’t are happy on their Borg ship.
TT/194; make that 50MM+1
50MM+15 more
Rack ‘em up.
“I won’t have to work out how to put gas in my car, I won’t have work out how to pay my mortgage. If I help him, he’s gonna help me.” …and get her “free” healthcare, too.
turn on Fox –Boehner is on FIRE
201. buddy larsen,
THANK YOU, buddy!
He’s on FIYAH! WHOOP-WHOOP!
I know it’s not ‘lady-like’ but I just want to give Pukey Pelosi a swift kick in the caboose.
Pelosi do read her newspeak real good, don’t she. Yup, purty words.
Delia,
I was taught from the old school where dad told me to hold the door for the fairer sex and mom taught me real men didn’t need to manhandle women to be a man. My wife would burn the house down with me in it if I ever raised a hand to her or the daughters. I try to be a gentleman.
But contrary to all I know and all I was taught, if I ever get close enough to get the chance to wipe that arrogant smirk of Nancy Pelosi’s face, I’ll sucker punch that leather with everything I’ve got and worry about the consequences later.
–the opening night of “Up Yours!”, the hot new dark comedy new one act dark farce scripted by the N-famous hot do-O of Genovese & Gambino and starring Been Nelson & Bark Stupak, opened toNITE to repetered rawcuss audience applesause, in DC’s recently enervated Little House of Whorers!
I think I’ll make myself a bumper sticker that says “Honk if you’re paying the medical bills for my unhealthy lifestyle.”
Democrats suck.
well, Andy Stern’s 40% underfunded SEIU pension fund just got a taxpayer bailout. probably the entire reason for the whole god-forsaken farce
I like your Earl Sunderhaus example: Otherwise it’s a clean miss.
I’m 60, I have private insurance, and I smoke cigarettes and drink beer. So what?
You want I should eat tufu, go for daily walks, and hang around until I’m an 80 or 90 year old doddering idiot? For what? Most of the people I love are dead, and anyway it’s not in the genes, dude. MYOB!
You’re a California vegetarian hippie. Stay with what you know, and don’t go trying to figure out Middle America.
Charlie
210. Tex Taylor
????????
LMFAOOOOOOOOOOO
THAT WAS EFFING AWESOME!
bahahahahaha!
Swing! SWING, batta!
obama on tv just said “this vote answers the dreams of so many….”
yeh, i remember those dreams …i was about 16 or so, and dreaming “damn, if i could just find me a pot of gold, or a money tree, i wouldn’t EVAH have to take no shit from nobody….”
214. How do you figure? Kill all the old people so younger retirees can take their share of the pension?
Another vile yet overlooked aspect of this health care ‘reform’ is what it is actually doing to our medical professionals.
It is in essence drafting them into government service against their will, turning them into medical serfs practicing their profession by leave of their feudal master, the Federal Government.
The only difference between the military draft and the medical draft is that medical professionals can choose to simply quit, as the doctor in this story threatened to do.
This is “Atlas Shrugged” come true. A truly frightening scenario.
~ The Infidel Alliance
Finally, someone willing to tell the truth. Get off your fat rear and try walking around the block a few times instead of eating the whole cake. I say right on, Dr. Sunderhaus! I’m all for people eating whatever they want – in fact, I recommend AZ’s Heart Attack Grill & loading up on the juicy double, triple, quadruple burgers and flat-liner fries (cooked in 100% lard, btw) as much as you want – just don’t ask me to pay for your diabetes treatment & bypass operation.
#9 Delia: Spot on. Tribe A is doing zero good by helping Tribe B. What should happen is that Tribe A should help Tribe B ONE TIME, then if Tribe B doesn’t get its act together, then Tribe B dies out. Tribe A then lives on, passing its work ethic on to its young, whereupon they can then pass on their work ethic to their own young and so forth.
I’m willing to accept the fact that many have a period when they are down and out and need help – but help in perpetuity serves no one. There comes a point where one has to learn survival skills for him/herself.
#116 Whitehall makes a good point also. Some states not only do not require the insurance, but also don’t require helmets. Go figure – that puts a heavier burden on the rest of us who are responsible.
I just want to thank you for posting this. I’m a medical student and I agree with him privately, however for fear of repercussion could never publically state that. Why the hell should I be forced to “work for free” or pay for someone’s healthcare? Yes its great that I enjoy helping people and all but I would NEVER EVER do this for free or for 80k a year! Most of us graduate with medical school debt of over 150k and that doesn’t even include our undergraduate debt or our graduate school debt some might have. And to those people claiming that the government will help pay for school, yes this is like the option of the military paying for it, THEY ALWAYS SCREW YOU, everyone knows that!!!!
Mythbuster, naw, what i was thinking was somewhere betwenn some sort of emergency decree (AIG’s precedent has hardly been explored yet) and that the system will not take what’s coming from the colliding fiscal and economic fronts, and that a coming reset will cancel all system liabilities. The dollar, all property rights and all wealth, too, the ledger can’t be split in two, we’d have an oligarcy that would make feudalism look like Mao’s little red book.
anything and everything –except letting a protected pal bankrupt –is possible now. The left has managed to politicize everything. Clinton started it in earnest –with his escapes from his myriad scandals successful thru politicizing right and wrong and the rule of law and justice itself.
And now with this bill his heirs have managed to politicize raw stupidity (it’s ”good”) and with that, have finally politicized politicization itself (“drop dead, America”).
Marxism, religion of and parasite on the energy in words themselves, grown fat and heavy in the Age of Communication, continues to greedily engorge itself on the human future.
…to be a little more clear, mythbuster, without this bill, we were barely gonna make it anyway. Iffy even with sacrifice and work and trying to deserve some luck and good fortune. Our economic/foreign policy/financial –”political economy” –design margin was already drawn down to the dregs, pretty much used up, *before* this multi-trillion dollar incentive-smashing confidence-draining credit-money debt bill passed.
…but maybe a miracle will happen. Wouldn’t be the first time. Cultures in their glory days win many a contest by simply refusing to lose. The mechanics of it do look mighty tough tho. Especially if the America exec admin is not only not trying to win but is actively determined to lose.
Seeing into the future we ask ourselves how far down the rabbit hole must we go?
Whiskey,
We’re all African in mitochondrial origin. It’s just that some tribes were winners and some tribes were losers in the game of life, war, migration, sex, adaption and geography. Now that the winners have been ‘forced’ to pay for the ‘losers’ the losers have gotten the upper-hand so to speak.
Viva losers!
154. rashputin:
“The richest nation in the world has no decent health care. And it’s not about ‘freedom’. You are just using tired old slogans
It’s no ‘tired old slogan’ that every penny I borrow from my children and grandchildren reduces what they’ll have, what they’ll be free to do, and what will remain of their freedom after they’re saddled with a huge tax burden and decades of new regulations.”
Do you live in a deserted island or someone’s basement? The world is large enough and the population keeps growing. The obvious trend is to live as a community, everyone helping each other. That costs money, but the cheapest way to share is by taxing. Learn and live.
226.,
Yes, vivo, ‘it takes a village’ to live in a third world shit hole struggling in poverty ‘together’ in stinkin’ ‘unity’.
Thanks for clarifying the new banana republic on steroids.
President Camacho: “Sh*t. I know sh*t’s bad right now, with all that starving bullsh*t, and the dust storms, and we are running out of french fries and burrito coverings. But I got a solution……”
Health care reform perhaps??
IDIOCRACY ALERT!!!
?As the 21st century began, human evolution was at a turning point. Natural selection, the process by which the strongest, the smartest, the fastest, reproduced in greater numbers than the rest, a process which had once favored the noblest traits of man, now began to favor different traits.
Most science fiction of the day predicted a future that was more civilized and more intelligent. But as time went on, things seemed to be heading in the opposite direction. A dumbing down. How did this happen? Evolution does not necessarily reward intelligence.
With no natural predators to thin the herd, it began to simply reward those who reproduced the most, and left the intelligent to become an endangered species.”
IDIOCRACY ALERT!!!
Vivo, i order you to mow my yard every weekend. You have to obey, because we’re both in the US citizen community. Now DO it or i’ll throw your ass in prison.
I understand your concerns, however I am a big woman myself and let me tell you the health care system the way it is now does not pay when I go to the doctor because you got it I am fat. so right now every time I go to the doctor I pay out of pocket anyway.
Just an FYI for ya, not all “FAT” people are the same! some of us go to the gym every day, some of us eat healthy food. some of us are trying to correct the mistake we have made.some of us are very healthy, just big too so please do not stereo type “ALL” fat people.
In Dem land:
to covet your own belongings is greed
to covet another’s belongings is community
to covet your own liberty is extreme
to covet another’s is community.
To paul_unalaska: Maybe you should do a little reading instead of spouting out talking points. And a huge difference between the Massachusetts plan and a national one is that you have much greater resources on a national level to tackle the purposely deeply hidden infrastructural costs that are really at the heart of why health care cost increases have been so relentless regardless of economic conditions. Around my way, the local community hospitals have been struggling to stay alive, which begs the question: “Where the hell is all the money going then?”
To Tex Taylor: Ain’t you just one good ol’, poop kicking, guffawing boy — gawd…. Face it – the good guys won, the bad guys lost. If you’re upset, maybe you should check to see which group you’ve been tipping cows with.
@235. BC: – Maybe you should do a little reading instead of spouting out talking points.
Maybe you should do a little research before you blindly copypaste another bogus link because you’re utterly incapable of supporting your own arguments. MTF is not a credible source – a fact known here in New England for almost a decade. The realities of CommieCare are very different from what they claim.
CommieCare was supposed to cost taxpayers $725 million per year. By 2008 the cost had risen to $869 million representing a 20% increase over the projections. Private insurance premiums rose by 7.4% in 2007, 8-12% in 2008 and rose approximately 9% last year. By comparison, nationwide insurance costs rose by 6.1% in 2007, 4.7% in 2008 and were projected to increase 6.4% last year.
Get ready, because that’s only a little taste of the economy-destroying effect you’re going to see with National CommieCare.
You don’t exhibit the tiniest bit of understanding regarding what has driven skyrocketing health care costs. ALL of the data – some even cheerfully provided by YOU, if you recall – points to government meddling in the health care / insurance markets as the cause. Intellectually impotent, statist shills like you simply refuse to grasp reality. Happily, you’ll pay the piper for your stupidity along with everyone else.
BC.. BC. Again, a website for ‘YOUR’ talking point. Hey, it took you but 11 hours to respond, too. Your dial-up must have taken forever to find the right site, albeit in your psychosis, for this gem of a rebuttal. 11 hours.. I believe that’s your personal best..
Sure, the link you’d given points to all the ‘savings’ MA has made since 2006. Or at the very least ‘slowed’ the progression of costs. I beg to inquire, are you truly that obtuse? did you not read my post at all!?
I need only tackle your ‘health care cost increases have been so relentless regardless of economic conditions’ comment.
BC, don’t you think it’d be much easier to address your ‘health care cost increases’ if, I don’t know, if that person(s) had employment!
This administration pushed through mandated health insurance reform by any means necessary. Don’t you think it’d have been more conducive in relation to economic growth to tackle the unemployment projections FIRST, whereas the unfortunates can ATTEMPT to address their own health insurance costs?
I don’t know, maybe it’s silly but I always found it more ‘productive’ to possess a full-time job, or a job for that matter in this day and age to provide a myriad of services, including proper health.
Let me ask. These ‘community hospitals’ in your area, do a majority of these hospital’s patients involve unemployed or low-skilled work individuals? Unfortunately, most of those people are existing, so to speak. Now that Obama will provide them health insurance at your/ my expense, they’ll need something else. And something else. Ad infinitum.
This road were frighteningly, voluntarily aiming towards is ‘success’ rather than true reform?
As for your Community Hospital’s ‘struggling to stay alive’, have you made attempts to speak with, oh I don’t know, the Administration, the Board, shareholder’s, someone of the Hospital? No, you and the ‘news’ tell you it’s corporate greed.. go with the idiocy, pal.
The MA Taxpayer’s Foundation for validity? BC, sadly you are further proof of our public education system churning out another nincompoop (psst’ it’s spouting ‘off’. I hope I helped you for the future SAT/ACT English euphemisms portion question).
Lastly, I’d not poke Tex Taylor or Texas for that matter. Texas has less legal citizens on the welfare dole than tiny ‘ol Massachusetts. Not to mention Texas can secede from the Union when this country is hellbent on its furthering course to serfdom..
Id b karful wud I sayer Z is Steroid from the futr wks 4 gov
Reid Job 4 truf
Paul @ 237 is right.
Massachusetts and Texas could be seen as an American Revolution FILO system –Massachusetts ‘first in’ in April 1775 and Texas ‘last out’ as it fights to this day to hew to the founding documents that flowed out of Lexington and Concord.
As a direct result of this, yes, Texas has great growth and economic stats, with few third-worldish problems –this despite being actually in touch with the third world via 2000 miles of a 3000 mile national border.
Isn’t there a simple expression that explains it all? If you rob Peter to pay Paul,you’re going to get a lot of support from Paul.
He who steals a needle will steal an ox.
I have not read all the comments yet.
There seems to be a belief by posters here that the U.S higher infant mortality rate is because we (U.K) do not register all births.
I am a midwife in the U.K. All live births/stillbirths of any gestation are recorded and registered
The reason i know this is because i do it .
So posters need to find another excuse to explain this fact.
he who takes your property will take your life
Geez Oh vivo
Of course, all of us who watched how happy Barry got when he talked about his growing up in a chithole and the beauty of the Muslim call to prayer knew damn well he thought living like it was still the seventh century was the way to go. It’s nice to see that he’s convinced you of the same thing. Or, wait a minute, was it your Imman who convinced you?
244. mags,
Well, we have loads of abortions here!!!!!!!!! Obviously, a good portion of America doesn’t give a crap about ‘infant mortality’.
244. mags,
P.S. I gave birth with a midwife and she had ZERO mortalities!
So really, you resent the fact that if you are forced against your will to participate in society, that you may actually need to ask people to be responsible once in a while? I don’t quite understand your logic- why would you choose to live in a place where you’re surrounded by fat, unhealthy, stupid people, who are only going downhill from here? Will that make your property values go up? Use your energy to do some good in your community and reap the benefits.
141. Patrick Sarsfield:
‘But our higher number in that area is due to US hospitals considering all borderline births – even those certain to end in death ten minutes later – as “live births” and *try* to save them, where all those precious single-payer-rationed-care monstrosities like the UK count those same births as “stillborn” and make no attempt to save the child’s life.
Patrick i am a midwife working in N.H.S.
Every live birth whatever gestation is registered, it doesn’t mstter how long the baby might live for.
I know this because it is part of my job.
Still births are those babies who have already died in the womb,
or are born dead.
These births are also registered.
Any signs of life in a viable fetus is acted on.You can’t really try to save a baby that is alresdy dead.
So ,you are going to have to come up with other excuses to explain the U.S infant mortality rate
249. Gunz:
“So really, you resent the fact that if you are forced against your will to participate in society, that you may actually need to ask people to be responsible once in a while?”
Tell that to the SMOKER in the White House, doofus. You think he’s going to be held to the standards that the ‘dumbass masses’ are required to?
Nope. Just like his precious darlings won’t set foot in a nasty assed ‘public school’.
FRICKTARD
250. mags,
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/04/health/04infant.html
P.S. Suck ‘o’ balls, 0bot.
@249. mags: – … you are going to have to come up with other excuses to explain the U.S infant mortality rate
Sorry but, being a statistic and all, examining that rate very closely would be racist, given which demographic has the most premature babies, which is the prime contributor to the IMR in the USA. So we here in the politically correct US aren’t allowed to analyze it very thoroughly. Let’s just say the major contributors are maternal obesity, smoking, generally poor diet, rapid-fire births, maternal drug use, maternal alcoholism and all the other wonderful things that contribute to premature birth.
Premie births are also strongly correlated statistically with induced labor / C-sections before the 37th week (both on the rise as of last year) and fertility treatments. The former is a facet of defensive medicine that is pursued partly due to the “insurance will cover it” mindset and partly due to lack of adequate tort reform. The latter is a facet of “insurance will cover it” mentality. My State, for instance, mandates fertility treatment coverage, which means I have to pay extra on my insurance plan to finance treatments for others even though (a) the expense for such treatments is entirely elective, and not incurred due to some unavoidable risk factor (like having a car accident, and (b) I will never use it.
Goy,
You forgot STD’s which can effect the outcome of a birth which is raaaaaaaacist.
GoyDelia:
A long as you’re on a whine, how about spitting on a black Congressman and calling him a nigger – is that racist? I love the Tea Baggers. They always deliver.
255. skeeziks,
Skeezer, for anyone knows the few scum yelling/spitting (still no solid video proof of which there are plenty vids of said event) were plants from your own racist leftists.
You DO realize you have RACISTS in your OWN? RIGHT? Look to the POTUS for further inspection and then on downwards.
Scum always rises to the top though and that’s the problem with politics in general.
256. Delia:
Let’s see, they were leftist plants or it didn’t happen because it’s not on video. Face it, those frenzied idtiotrons whipped into a lather by scum like Beck and Limbaugh showed their true colors. You’d be better off focusing on their laudable approach to litter – the single most positive character attribute of the Tea Baggers. N one ever says there aren’t racists on the left. But no one is willing to admit there are racists in the Tea Bagger movement. I offer your own words as proof.
@254. Delia: – You forgot STD’s which can effect the outcome of a birth which is raaaaaaaacist.
Didn’t forget. Just thought that might be a bridge too far. The AIDS thing (et al.) is a multi-edged sword you know.
.
@255. skeeziks: – … how about spitting on a black Congressman and calling him a nigger [sic]…
Sorry, fake vet. You’ll have to look elsewhere for help in manifesting your tawdry, yet-to-be-substantiated fantasies. But stay off the phone because the PC Police have your IP address now, and will be calling to set YOU up for diversity and tolerance counseling.
Oh look – CNN is raaaaaaaaaaacisssssssst!!!!!
(not to mention a little slow on the uptake – BHO has in fact been underwater with likely voters since last October)
CNN IS RAAAAAAAAAAAAACIST!
RAAAAAAAAAAAAACIST
EVILLLLLLLLLLLL
THE PEOPLE HAVE SPOKENNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!
THE PEOPLE HAVE BEEN SILENNNNNNNNNNCED!
You really are ignorant.
http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2010/images/03/22/rel5a.pdf
21. (IF OPPOSE) Do you oppose that legislation because you think its approach toward health care is
too liberal, or because you think it is not liberal enough?
QUESTIONS 20 AND 21 COMBINED
Mar 19-21
2010
Favor (from Question 20) 39%
Oppose, too liberal 43%
Oppose, not liberal enough 13%
No opinion 5%
Simple math is not as easy as stalking high school students in your neighborhood, is it. Add the favor, with those who oppose it ONLY BECAUSE ITS NOT LIBERAL ENOUGH and you get 52% who favor universal health care. Do you get it?
Delia,
I am in the U.K not Sweden they can do whatever they want.
T am talking about our N.H.S. in the U.K.
I responded to Patrick comments, which are wrong.
He said
141. Patrick Sarsfield:
‘But our higher number in that area is due to US hospitals considering all borderline births – even those certain to end in death ten minutes later – as “live births” and *try* to save them, ‘
Every live birth is registered. here, whatever the gestation.
Last week i had a women sadly having a miscarriage.
She was 15 weeks pregnant the fetus had a heartbeat,so we had to register as live birth and then a death certificate even though 15 weeks is not compatable with life
‘Where all those precious single-payer-rationed-care monstrosities like the UK count those same births as “stillborn” and make no attempt to save the child’s life.’
The definition of stillborn here in the U.K is baby born with no signs of life. We can’t really save stillborns because they are already dead!
Good ante-natal care is reducing incidents of stillborns.
P.S. Suck ‘o’ balls, 0bot.
Is it possible to debate issues with Americans without name calling and abuse.Very disappointed that you felt the need to make that comment
What I don’t like about the very concept of universal health care is that it compels me to become my brother’s keeper and insert myself into the moral decisions of his life.
This is hilarious. After you got into the business of schools where you have no children, to try to stop programs that aren’t tax payer funded, because you think there’s something immoral about teaching kids about gardening. Seriously, get a shrink.
Do you feel compelled “to become a meddlesome busybody” in the personal choices of the elderly, the poor, or government workers? You realize of course that we all pay for their medical insurance already, right?
I’m cellybraytin ya’ll!
Freebies for meeeeeee!
I’m gonna get drunk and get me a free liver!
WHOOOOO HOOOOOOOOOOO
*hic*
Oscar Le Douche, I don’t care how many Americans want this boondoggle or not. Somebody is payin’ for meeeeeeeeeeee. WHOOOOOOO HOOOOOOOOOO!
I’m ALIVE!
I’m ALIVEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
Praize Obama!
More crack babies will die.
YAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY
More black babies will die.
YAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY
WHOOOOOOO HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
More illegal immigrant babies will die
WHOOOOOOOO HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Yaknow why they run from MEXICO?
Because they are freakin’ MEXICO!
Oh, let’s turn AMERICA into MEXICO!
Brazilliant!
WHOOOOOOOO WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
IDIOCRACYYYYYYYYYYY
Press #555567655 for Englais
Boo yah!
Die crack babies, DIE!
@Shef Rogers
You seize my money at gunpoint, promising health care in return yet I am not entitled to claim the benefits that you promise if I want you to stop? When you stop seizing my money, only then will I stop availing myself of the benefits that you promise in return. I feel absolutely no shame in claiming the benefits of the compulsory contract that you insist at gunpoint that I abide by. None.
Stop mugging me. Then I will stop accepting your “generosity”
Hey skeeziks/moho – I KNEW I could depend on you to spread nonsensical derision. Good on ya! regarding an article that talks about the unconstitutional mandated health insurance strong-armed recently upon us.
Oh, you know. Your ‘unique’ endeavors to sway EVERY conversation into the mundane conclusion of ‘racism’.
As for the handful of morons at the Capitol Sunday, there’s always a bad egg or 2 in ANY gathering. Perhaps those individuals were tarred and feathered for their visceral. Whoa, wait. Am I a racist for using that analogy? Oh please respond, I wish to be a subservient PC misanthrope to ‘The Cause’.
Good luck on your life’s endeavor of ‘encouraging’ others to achieve success on their own volition. Good news, there’s less work to achieve just that nowadays, moho. Health insurance is yours for the stealing, err, for the ‘earning’..?
Be careful at the taxpayer trough, though. There’s other takers who want their ‘share’ as well..
Paul. I’ve been posting under this screen name for the past month or so, and don’t really come here that often. Glad to see your obsessive delusions persist, however.
Oscar, my comment as referenced in the first sentence was directed to skeeziks.
Though if you’re experiencing multiple screen name personality disorder, I can’t find a thing to cover that in the health insurance bill. Sorry, bub.
#255 “A long as you’re on a whine, how about spitting on a black Congressman and calling him a nigger – is that racist? I love the Tea Baggers. They always deliver.”
====
Did that really happen? If so, was it done by an infiltrator or a real Tea Party participant? Calling names is wrong and juvenile. However, the n-word properly refers to an attitude and not to a race.
Goy;
Premature births are strongly correlated to illegitimacy. The US has a lot of that, especially among certain minorities.
#73 another canadian — …but for every fat lady going blind there’s a regular person going bankrupt and having their lives ruined because they cannot afford their hospital bills, because of some uncontrollable condition they have. Or they can’t even buy insurance because they have a pre-existing condition.
This is true. Get cancer in the USA and you find out the hard way just how many things your insurance plan doesn’t or won’t cover. In our case Blue Cross refused to pay for radiation since the procedure* was relatively new, calling it “experimental.” We had a bill for $90k on top of the other $50k annual average (for many years.) Most families can’t possibly afford this. Probably 99 of 100 complainers on this forum couldn’t afford this. And thanks to “pre-existing condition” clauses etc the wife is uninsurable. And unlike some claims here it’s not like she made “lifestyle choices” to get cancer. Stuff happens.
The *usual* outcome of a cancer diagnosis under age 50 is financial ruin and/or the bonus of watching your loved one die. Usually both. And this is *with* insurance.
US health insurance is great for normal stuff like checkups or broken bones, but not that good for getting cancer or other nasty diagnoses. Some of what the Obamacare plan does is address this.
***
*the previous (older) radiation plan also nuked a lot of heart muscle which caused a large percentage of patients to have coronaries 5 years later. A way of beam modulation perfected about 7 years back allowed more precise targeting to avoid the heart. Blue Cross refused to pay for the beam modulation radiation not because it was exotic or iffy, but simply because they hadn’t gotten around to adding it yet. It takes *years* for them to do so, which supposedly saves money…
***
So how is it that US insurance companies get away with this? Simple. Most cancer happens around retirement age, which transfers the financial burden to medicare; e.g. most breast cancers are age 60+. Thus some of what the Obamacare plan does is address this as well.
GL Alston;
So how is it that US insurance companies get away with this?
Because they are businesses, not charities. And in that context, it is perfectly logical for a business to refuse a customer who won’t make money for them.
We need reform and a way to get people with expensive diseases treated without bankruptcy, but it is specious to blame a business for acting like a … well, a business.
@276. G.L. Alston: – Get cancer in the USA and you find out the hard way just how many things your insurance plan doesn’t or won’t cover.
Yes, that is “the hard way”.
Or… hmmm… one could just find out the easy way by reading one’s policy when it goes into effect. But then that tends to take the surprise out of the whole experience.
It also never hurts to, you know, actually check with the insurance company directly when a plan is activated. If personal health, lifestyle or family history warrants, get private high-deductible / low-premium backup coverage if you find areas in your employer-provided plan lacking. If you have a crappy plan you should have this anyway, e.g., this sort of thing is required if you’re being extorted by Medicare, which is not comprehensive either.
But of course most Americans have become so drugged – literally and figuratively – by ostensibly ‘free’ health care that they never bother to actually check to see what their plan does/doesn’t cover until a serious problem comes up. At that point it’s always the insurance company’s “fault” if something isn’t covered.
Stuff happens. It’s YOUR responsibility to manage the risk posed by that stuff. Not someone else’s.
- The *usual* outcome of a cancer diagnosis under age 50 is financial ruin and/or the bonus of watching your loved one die. Usually both. And this is *with* insurance.
This is complete horsesh!t. Many insurance plans cover the full gamut of cancer treatments up to lifetime maximums in the millions of dollars. I’ve had direct, personal experience with this on more than one occasion, as well as indirect experience through friends and co-workers. I’ve processed thousands of insurance claims for exactly this sort of treatment. The myth that your insurance policy evaporates as soon as you get seriously ill is just that – a leftist myth.
Cancer is awful enough all on its own. Lying about how insurance companies treat it, to push an Appeal to Emotion fallacy based on a tiny minority of all cases involving extenuating issues like new treatments, is an insult to people who have actually had to go through the experience.
- US health insurance is great for normal stuff like checkups or broken bones, …
Wrong. Insurance is being ABUSED when it’s used to pay for this sort of routine health care. Insurance is a tool for mitigating financial risk. There is no risk posed by an annual checkup, and because ‘stuff happens’ people should be putting money away for things like the inevitable broken bone or even extended illnesses. But of course in 21st century America, where people are pathologically dependent on someone else to take responsibility for their risk, that simply doesn’t happen.
- Some of what the Obamacare plan does is address this.
Not that there’s any evidence to support this. Right now the current plan is not much more than a statutory requirement to purchase insurance – whether or not you want it, need it or can afford it – and a bill of attainder that penalizes people who earn an income above the arbitrary level required to satisfy Mob Rule, shifting more of the tax burden onto those who already shoulder the vast majority of it.
- So how is it that US insurance companies get away with this?
Simple. They “get away with this” by providing you with a contract that describes what is and what is not covered up front. When you toss that contract in a drawer and don’t bother actually reading it until some catastrophic illness or injury occurs, then of course the insurance company is “getting away” with not covering something that was never contractually covered in the first place. It’s pretty straightforward.
- Thus some of what the Obamacare plan does is address this as well.
Again, there’s no evidence to support this. The current bill guts Medicare and confiscates income in order to inject 30 million new health care consumers into the market with the promise of Taxpayer-backed “affordable health care”. This is no different from the way millions of unqualified home buyers were injected into the housing market with the promise of Taxpayer-backed “affordable mortgages”. In the latter case, the result was a bubble that helped create the smoldering pile we presently refer to as our economy. The former will further exacerbate problems ALREADY created by over-consumption, defensive medicine, malpractice lawsuits and fraud, as 30 million consumers are unleashed on the health care market with a NO-LIMIT HEALTH CARE CREDIT CARD (aka “insurance card”), causing health care costs to skyrocket even faster than they already are. Meanwhile, it does nothing to address cancer in the elderly.
The problem with health care is the way we pay for it. And the way we pay for it is the result of 50 years of social engineering by leftists in government, starting with Medicare, continuing with HMOs and then with subsidized comprehensive plans.
Paul: I’m Moho, you illiterate idiot. I don’t know who Skeeziks is. I actually feel a little embarrassed that you’ve exalted me into some magical primordial being responsible for any post that wipes the floor with your a@@.
goy makes an interesting point: people should save money for foreseeable healthcare expenses and should put money aside for unforeseeable ones. The problem is that Americans don’t save any money as it is, and that many unforeseeable events are simply too costly. In every developed nation save the US the solution has been to force people to get insured, the same way that everyone who drives a car has to get insured (for exactly the same reasons). So actually universal healthcare insurance is the only realistic implementation of what you want, goy. It forces everyone to act a bit rational, putting aside money for healthcare, while not telling them what to do.
As an aside, it is almost impossible to know exactly what your contract covers, as it is not a standalone document (it references other documents, can be superseded by local law, …), and it changes continuously. While you may think everyone should relish the thought of matching wits with the army of lawyers that create and maintain those documents, I’m not so inclined. Why waste time on all this bureaucracy?
The artist formerly known as ‘moho’ -
Whoa whoa whoa. ‘Primordial’. If you are primordial, ‘the beginning’ so to speak you wouldn’t be changing your screen name when the going got tough.
I do offer my apologies to the other posters. I didn’t realize there was another individual believing the ‘I’m from the Government and I’m here to help’ moniker.
Paul. Unfortunately looking a word up on an internet dictionary doesn’t always give you a clue of how to use it. I’m happy to give you more attempts to demonstrate your ignorance. Try me. I’ll have you crying home to Goy in no time flat.
@whiskey in #6, said, “welfare recipients, most of the latter the Black underclass”
Mathematically incorrect.
Most welfare recipients are white.
WWWebb;
But black folks are getting welfare in numbers greater than their percentage in the population. Also, subsidized daycare, Aid To Women With Infants and Children(WIC), subsidized school lunches, etc …
@280. endorendil: – The problem is that Americans don’t save any money as it is, and that many unforeseeable events are simply too costly.
Yes, and water’s wet, the sky’s blue, etc.
So you think some Americans’ laziness is justification for extra-Constitutional legislation that forces ALL Americans to purchase something whether they want it, need it, can afford it, or not? Interesting. Just curious: why haven’t you moved to Venezuela, where the government is more in tune with your desire to be ruled?
There are very few unforeseeable medical events which pose a risk so large that it can’t be mitigated by the judicious application of a Health Savings Account and high-deductible / low-premium health care insurance. That’s what insurance is actually for – not to pay for every dollar of health care we consume. Meanwhile, it’s no one’s responsibility but YOURS to plan for “Shit Happens”.
- In every developed nation save the US the solution has been to force people to get insured, …
Which of those developed nations have governments defined by our Constitution? Wait – I know this one: I believe that number is Zero.
- … the same way that everyone who drives a car has to get insured (for exactly the same reasons).
This idiotic talking point has been thoroughly shredded. There is no moral, civic or economic correlation between mandated auto insurance and mandated comprehensive, group health care insurance. Both, in fact, require that government arrogate to itself the authority to dictate to me how to manage my own risk. The arguments for mandated auto insurance are, therefore, specious at best. The argument for mandated health care insurance, like its correlation with auto insurance, is nonexistent.
… universal healthcare insurance is the only realistic implementation of what you want …
There is no such thing as “universal” health care insurance.
- It forces everyone to act a bit rational, putting aside money for healthcare …
So, you admit that this legislation is just about controlling People, and really has nothing to do with actually improving health care or reducing its cost in any way. Thanks for the honesty.
- … , while not telling them what to do.
So you’re daft after all. That wasn’t exactly clear earlier. You can’t impose a mandate that tells someone what to do and then claim you’re NOT telling them what to do. Perhaps if you think about that for a moment, it may become apparent, but I’m guessing not.
- … it is almost impossible to know exactly what your contract covers, …
That is pathetic nonsense. Statements explaining what a policy covers are required by law to be issued to policyholders whenever they join the plan and/or whenever a change is made – whether it’s due to company policy or a change in the law. By accepting an insurance policy you are entering into a contract with the insurance company. Then again, it’s starting to sound like you’ll sign just about anything without really knowing what it says…
- Why waste time on all this bureaucracy?
Uhm… because you can be financial ruined if you don’t? Anyway, do you really think the Democrats’ socialized medicine plan won’t involve economy-crushing bureaucracy that will be ten times greater than any insurance company? Sorry, that level of credulous naivete just elevated you to the dubious status of troll/tool.
@284. WWWebb:- Mathematically incorrect. Most welfare recipients are white.
Geez, are there still people out there who are really this stupid? Most Americans are White, fool.
Want to play racialist mind games? Let’s try checking the US Census figures then, shall we (see pages 9 & 10 for helpful charts if your reading comprehension is on par with your math skillz – then go thank your local Teachers’ Union).
The likelihood of receiving means-tested assistance and the length of benefit receipt differed among racial groups. In 2003, 41.1 percent of Blacks, 18.5 percent of Asians or Pacific Islanders, and 13.0 percent of non-Hispanic Whites participated in a means-tested program for at least 1 month (Figure 9). In 2003, the average monthly participation rate for Blacks, 33.7 percent, was higher than that for non-Hispanic Whites, 9.7 percent. The average monthly participation rate for Asians or Pacific Islanders was 13.4 percent (Figure 10).
I guess ALL schools are just daycare centers now.
@Onlooker in disbelief – part of your argument is fallacious.
“You’re the only nation in the group without universal healthcare – USA has the lowest life expectancy, the highest rate of heart disease, highest rate of infectious disease transmission, highest rate of of obesity… the list is long and depressing.”
USA has the lowest life expectancy for the same reason many of us *don’t* want universal healthcare. “Tribe B” is the same group that’s at fault for your statistics about heart disease, obesity etc. An analogous example can support this (forgive the numbers, they’re not correct but the principle is just the same): blacks account for 13% of the total U.S. population but make up 50% of the inmates in our prisons. Similarly, “Tribe B”, according to the July 2009 Gallup poll, is about 16% of the U.S. population, yet they make up our “majority” of “sufferers” from, once again, your statistics.
… Forgot to finish my argument.
The point of my argument wasn’t to attack a singular part of yours, but rather to point out that ideas about the amount of people who “suffer” from these “diseases” (or rather, ways of life) are invalid to support the argument that we *should* have universal healthcare.
Mathematically incorrect. Most welfare recipients are white.
Geez, are there still people out there who are really this stupid? Most Americans are White, fool.
You seem to think that these two facts cancel each other out or something. If most welfare recipients are white, then most of the expenditure on welfare is for white people. It doesn’t really matter if most Americans are white as far as this point is concerned. I don’t know what kind of racial bs conversation you’re involved in, but even though I can’t see a reason why someone would bring up the fact that most welfare recipients are white, your point is even lamer.
@290. Principal Levine: – You seem to think that these two facts cancel each other …
You seem incapable of following basic logic.
No, they don’t “cancel each other out” at all. I’m curious – did you even bother to read #6?
Here, I’ll re-frame it so even you and your sock puppet can understand: noting that “most welfare recipients are white” is the same as saying “most liberals are white”. In absolute numbers, most Americans are White, so their proportionate representation in any group should be a majority. Duh.
So now try reading the Census figures again, then go back and read #6. The issue, as JB and The Spaghetti Monster have also noted, is one of proportional demographics. WWWeb quoted a banal and irrelevant statistic in an attempt to dispute whiskey’s point, which was all about proportional demographics, not absolute numbers.
Taxpayers are finally, at long last, beginning to realize that they’re working less and less to support themselves, their futures and their families, and more and more to support an entire welfare class of individuals who are congenitally and/or pathologically dependent on a socialist State.
This welfare class is already disproportionately represented by people who happen to be Black (see the Census figures, above). Yet, despite that fact, the government is now also applying racialist criteria to further discriminate by distributing health care in favor of that same demographic. With this, the first “post-racial” President has single-handedly turned health care itself into a race issue – his plan in this regard is nothing less than stealth reparations using institutionalized theft and redistribution of wealth. This is something BHO is on record as having argued for in the past, and now he has the chance to do it via health care.
The problem is this: BHO’s “reparations” game carries two socially suicidal consequences. First, it perpetuates pathological dependency, creating a permanent, growing Dependent Class comprised disproportionately of minorities who overwhelmingly support whatever political machine continues to feed them. Right now that machine is comprised of the socialist Democrat Party and their “compassionate conservative” (i.e., Socialist Lite®) RINO enablers. Second, and far more dangerous, is that it creates an institutionalized, race-based class hierarchy – one protected and the other exploited. Ponder American history for a moment and try to think back on the last time we had that kind of arrangement. Yeah, that one.
So recall the awakening Taxpayers up above. Those Taxpayers who happen to be White, non-Hispanic – especially the men – have lived with decades of institutionalized reverse discrimination, racial (and gender) quotas, politically correct (and feminist) hypocrisy, imposed white guilt and affirmative action – none of which has done anything to improve the lot of minorities in the aggregate (by design). They now see a President who has just added 30 million individuals to The Dependent Class, who has passed a law that discriminates in favor of The Dependent Class based on race (not theirs), and who promises to add another 20 million more Black and Hispanic illegal aliens to The Dependent Class just as soon as he can ram amnesty through Congress using the same unconstitutional procedure he used for socialized medicine.
whiskey’s point, well taken, is that these folks have simply had enough. You try backing them up against the wall by actively, recklessly destroying the economy, and taking away the means to support themselves and their families – the way this fascist government is presently doing – and you’re going to see some unprecedented reactions. One such unprecedented action will likely be the outright repeal of an entitlement program.
But the first reaction I want to see is when BHO parrots another of Bush’s policies – as he has with almost everything else – and claims that illegal aliens should be given amnesty because they take the jobs Americans don’t want. I’m stocking up on popcorn for that show.
I’m not a loud voice, but this article and the debates thereafter sicken me. Not that you would care about that–it’s my problem, right? The kind of “every man for himself” thinking perpetuate the problems with health care. Obviously, the old system isn’t working–millions of Americans are without health care. Your article states no ways for improvement and your supporters simply state how bad things are going to be. How about we tackle the issue of food in this country? Eliminating big corporations’ processed foods would be a start. Eating fresh, local food makes sense. Farming in a way that isn’t demanded by a corporations regulations would be a huge improvement on the quality of food. Our health comes down to our environment, emotional/psychological health and what we put into our bodies. I understand you can’t make people live healthy lives, but you can sure give them the options. Socialized healthcare is a necessary evil–a solution to the problem. Ignoring that there’s a problem is our biggest mistake.
@293. Sarah: – The kind of “every man for himself” thinking perpetuate the problems with health care.
Grow up. We already have one of the most massive welfare states on the planet. Medicare and Medicaid are bankrupting us. Social Security is insolvent. Entitlement programs are NOT in the federal government’s job description. You should try reading it – it’s that thing called the U.S. Constitution.
- Obviously, the old system isn’t working–millions of Americans are without health care.
Lie. Every person in this country has direct access to health care. All they need to do is take the personal responsibility to pay for it – just like they pay for food, water, utilities, rent/mortgage, income tax, property tax, a car (or two), auto insurance, auto registration, designer jeans, an iPod, a cell phone, cable TV, HBO, a Blockbusters card, Skechers, Nikes and all the other necessities of life.
- Your article states no ways for improvement and your supporters simply state how bad things are going to be.
Lie. Numerous alternatives to socialized medicine have been proposed. The socialist Democrats don’t want to hear them and The Left Wing Media is only interested in either ignoring, misrepresenting or actively demonizing those alternatives.
- How about we tackle the issue of food in this country?
Why, is that a crisis now too? Are you going to collectivize the purchase of food in the same way payment for health care has already been collectivized through government meddling? Or are you going to start dictating to people what they can and can’t eat, along with forcing them to purchase insurance whether they need it, want it, can afford it, or not?
- Socialized healthcare is a necessary evil–a solution to the problem.
It’s certainly evil, but it’s not a solution to anything. Just ask the Japanese. They use a system that is identical to the one this government is pushing for. It is failing under the weight of over-consumption (four times greater than in the U.S.), artificial price controls and a quickly aging population (yeah, like the Baby Boomer time bomb). Their system has helped jack their public Debt-to-GDP ratio up to almost 200% – second only to Zimbabwe. And they don’t have near the illegal alien problem we have here in the U.S.
- Ignoring that there’s a problem is our biggest mistake.
How about ignoring the ACTUAL problem, because that’s what you’re doing. The problem is not “lack of insurance”. Insurance is a tool for mitigating financial risk – INSURANCE IS NOT HEALTH CARE.
The problem you’re ignoring is skyrocketing health care costs, which have been systematically encouraged by decades of government meddling aimed at corruption of the free market in health care. Restore the free market and health care costs will move back into equilibrium with other commodities – all of which, mysteriously, remain relatively affordable because we don’t abuse insurance to pay for them by “spreading the costs around” (sound familiar?).
Thankfully, the government’s unconstitutional legislation is already bumping up against The Law Of Unintended Consequences.
Socialized ‘health-care’ slows health-care availability for everyone and even moreso for the poor. When you are on a wait-list for a regular doctor’s appointment for months (if one will accept ‘new’ patients) for symptoms that could end up being serious or preventable or ‘catchable’ will end up in the ‘emergency room’. Then, if the doctor decides you need an MRI, return to the back of the line again on the wait-list for that procedure! Not only will doctor availability shrink but emergency rooms and hospitals will be even MORE overburdened than they already are.
Saving lives? I don’t sphinct so!
How in the hell is that a GOOD idea?
Writing from Australia:
I find this discussion quite unbelievable – clearly something quite sensible – universal health care – has been hijacked by emotion about being labelled “socialist” whatever that is.
If this is socialist and you don’t like it, why do you pay your government for a police force? Why do you “subsidize” high crime neighbourhoods. Why do you pay your government for roads. Why don’t you build your own? I get it that you don’t like government but if you expect your government to be useless, well, you get what you deserve.
The reason that your government maintains a police force is that in some circumstances, where everyone is affected by an issue, e.g crime it makes sense to work together. You can call this whatever you want but you already do this.
We all get sick eventually, some sicker than the rest. Sometimes its bad luck, sometimes it’s due to bad choices. It makes sense to consider whether, a basic level of health, is a collective responsibility. Your country is made up of your neighbours, your friends, old people, new people, your countrymen and women. How can you let so many of your own be uninsured? The arguments about freedom seem ridiculous, I bet only a very small percentage of the people who are uninsured are actaully wanting to be that way.
Australia is also full of immigrants and although there is resistance to increasing numbers too fast, once they are accepted in they are ours. And we look after them like one of our own.
Patrick i am a midwife working in N.H.S.
Every live birth whatever gestation is registered, it doesn’t mstter how long the baby might live for.
I know this because it is part of my job.
AK is right. Reading this is unbelievable.The U.S seems to despise eachother ,it’s not like that in other countries.
295. Delia:
By law in the NHS Constitution states You can choose which GP surgery you’d like to register with. That GP surgery must accept you unless there are good reasons for not doing so, for example, violence to staff.
Whatever the reason, the surgery must tell you why. If you can’t register with your preferred GP surgery, the NHS has to you find another one.
The waiting target to see your GP is 48hrs.If that is not possible we have access to GP-led health centres offering walk-in and bookable GP appointments seven days a week. You can use the service regardless of which local GP surgery you’re registered with.
This includes access to night time home visits.
We have other walk-in centres and Minor injuries units.
This is as well as A+E. This reduces the pressure on them.
There a waiting times of 18 weeks from GP to specialist to treatment including surgery. If we don’t reach that target we are fined.
The national average is eight weeks.Where i work it is four weeks.If the 18 week deadline is not met the patient has the right to go private and the N.H.S has to pay.
How many people do you know who needed a hip replacement, cataract, or coronary bypass surgeries were immediately hospitalized? When not a life-threatening situation, many Americans with excellent health insurance still wait weeks and sometimes months for surgery with no negative consequences.
I have just re-read this comment you made earlier.
‘P.S. I gave birth with a midwife and she had ZERO mortalities’
An extremely immature answer,showing a lack of insight to the role of midwife here .
However i am pleased that you used a midwife .Their skills have been undervalued in the U.S.
@296. AK: – …being labelled “socialist” whatever that is.
Hmmm… not clear on the concept of socialism? Then maybe you should look it up before pretending you’re smart enough to criticize.
- … why do you pay your government for a police force?
We don’t. We pay taxes locally for that. The only part the government plays in that process is through ‘pork’, where some of the money stolen by the feds is funneled back to the people it was stolen from in order to buy votes for Senators and Congresscritters. Some of that money goes to local police forces. They are not a federal function.
- Why do you “subsidize” high crime neighbourhoods.
Talk to the Democrats. That’s how they maintain political power – by subsidizing unemployment. Everything they do is just enough to keep minorities in a constant state of poverty. They promise every year to steal “rich” people’s money and give it to them. It never happens.
- Why do you pay your government for roads.
We don’t pay the government for roads. The government maintains the interstate. That’s part of its function. Unlike their basic necessities of life, individual people can NOT be individually financially responsible for the “piece” of the road they use. As for the rest, see above regarding “pork”. States are primarily responsible for road maintenance, not the feds.
– …if you expect your government to be useless, well, you get what you deserve.
Maybe you should have a look at the U.S. Constitution. That might explain a few things you seem to be clueless about. In particular, it lists the things the federal government is responsible for and has authority over. Health care is not one of those things. Neither is retirement for that matter. Check the Bill of Rights. No “right” to health care. No “right” to retirement. No “right” to be supported by other Taxpayers all your life.
- The reason that your government maintains a police force …
The U.S. government does not maintain a “police force”.
- We all get sick eventually, some sicker than the rest.
Yes. And we all need to eat. We all need water, heat and electricity. We all need clothes. We all need a place to live. And shoes. And an education. And transportation. And HDTVs. And cable. And an iPod. And a cell phone. And Internet. Health care is NO DIFFERENT from any of these other basic necessities. Like all these other necessities, everyone in the U.S. has direct, easy access to health care. All they need to do is take personal responsibility to pay for it – just as they seem to be able to do with all these other necessities.
- It makes sense to consider whether, a basic level of health, is a collective responsibility.
Okay – consider it “considered”: no, it’s not a collective responsibility. No moreso than any OTHER necessity. Get it yet? Probably not.
- How can you let so many of your own be uninsured?
Because INSURANCE is not HEALTH CARE. Insurance is a tool to mitigate financial risk. It should NOT be used to pay for every dollar of health care we consume. That’s what has caused the cost of health care to skyrocket in the first place. Try to overcome your brainwashing. The problem is not the so-called “uninsured”. The problem is the sky-high cost of health care. If we restore the free market in health care – which has been destroyed by government meddling – the cost of health care will move back into equilibrium with all other necessities of life. Somehow, all of those other commodities mysteriously remain relatively affordable. All except health care, which is the ONE and ONLY thing we are insane enough to pay for using an insurance policy.
- … once they are accepted in they are ours. And we look after them like one of our own.
Good for you. Send a boat. You can have ours. No one asked them to come here. No one offered to take care of them.
@298. mags: – AK is right.
No. AK is full of baloney. AK has no idea what s/he’s talking about. That should be clear.
Meanwhile, how awful or how great the NHS is, is of absolutely no concern to anyone in the U.S. We don’t have an NHS and the government – despite recent usurpations – doesn’t have the Constitutional authority to impose one. We don’t live under an idiotic government system where the Parliament can rewrite the Constitution whenever it feels like it. Our government may ACT like that’s what we have, but they’re going to pay a price for it. One way or another. The majority of Americans want this crap sandwich repealed.
Stay tuned.
Ditto on the midwife thing. We had one also. She was the only thing standing between us and an unnecessary induced labor / c-section (because the doctor was in a hurry to get home). That’s part of the problem here in the U.S.: the people who do all the actual work are poorly paid while health care practitioners (doctors, et al.) enjoy the exorbitant wages and the second-highest of all recent salary increases.
This idiocy is made possible by one thing: the insane way we pay for health care, using an insurance policy. That insanity allows prices and wages to increase constantly… yet people look around like cows at a passing train, wondering why the costs are so high.
300. goy,
LOVE midwives! I would have definitely had an unnecessary c-section if I hadn’t had a midwife delivery. My labor was almost 2 full days and no way a Hospital would have ‘waited’ that out.
I’m not too fond of the whole medical profession anyhow though and I don’t go for every little cough or throat tickle and I’m not big on getting a bunch of ‘tests’ for everything under the sun every year just because I’m female.
Many women in the USA are sick and tired of being treated like children by the medical profession. Someone here shared this link before about pap smears and it was a fascinating read (I go back and visit every once in a while to read new posts on the subject):
Unnecessary Pap Smears
The thing is, doctors aren’t ‘GOD’. They can perform procedures to save your life in an emergency, prescribe you medication or fix something that is broken but it’s still ultimately up to ME to take care of myself and be responsible for the outcome of my health. If I have signs of something serious I’ll go to the doc but preventative medicine starts and ends with my willingness to take care of myself.
To the ‘others’ here: 0bamacare might have been a ‘dandy’ idea once upon a time but as with all things that seem ‘dandy’ end up costing us way more than we [the productive shmucks] can pay for. Look at what is happening to Medicare and Social Security? Unsustainable and going in the red. 0bamacare will add insult to injury. So will amnesty and cap-n-trade and more taxes and prices going up and our dollar going down the crapper.
RE: Socialism…
American Public Voted for Socialism
230. buddy larsen:
“Vivo, i order you to mow my yard every weekend. You have to obey, because we’re both in the US citizen community. Now DO it or i’ll throw your ass in prison.”
You wish. It will take only one day. Mowing the lawn requires to remove the weeds. You obviously stand out as the tallest weed. First thing my machete will remove.
246. rashputin:
Your xithole doesn’t compare to the other billions of decent homes around the world. Ask your family. Rashputin? Give me a break.
@301. Delia: – Unnecessary Pap Smears
And mammograms…
…and don’t even get me started on the Gardasil and HPV scam…
…or the fact that there’s no medical relationship between cholesterol and heart disease, yet there IS a correlation between lowered cholesterol and aggressive behavior. IMHO that certainly says a lot about the state of things in our increasingly rage-filled world, where the medical and pharmaceutical community encourage consumers to spend billion$ each year artificially lowering their cholesterol using drugs.
300. goy:
‘Meanwhile, how awful or how great the NHS is, is of absolutely no
concern to anyone in the U.S.’
WHAT!
You have been calling it evil,saying we have death squads,enforced amnio’s and abortion, that we would of killed Sarah Palins son at birth.
The funniest was the claim that if Stephen Hawkings was born in the U.K we would of killed him at birth.
Nobody cares what health system you have in the U.S.
We object to being dragged in to it.
If you must then have the sense to get the details right.
Posters seem interested in the N.H.S when it is presented with negative information.
Goy and Delia,
I am truly delighted with your support of midwives.
@304. mags: – WHAT! You have been calling it evil,saying we have death squads,enforced amnio’s and abortion, that we would of killed Sarah Palins son at birth.
I have?
SRSLY????
Clearly you have me confused with someone who was responding to socialized medicine being rammed down their throats by socialists in the Democrat Party here in the U.S., and who was being browbeaten in that regard with stories about the NHS as evidence.
- Posters seem interested in the N.H.S when it is presented with negative information.
No, I think the interest drawn to the NHS is 100% the fault of those who have sought to use it as “evidence” in favor of pursuing similar policy here in the U.S., when it’s really irrelevant.
This is the basic fallacy in ALL of the arguments citing how other “civilized” countries are all goose-stepping down the socialized medicine path toward fiscal insolvency (like Japan). Other “civilized” countries don’t typically have a limited government based on a Constitution which expressly reserves issues like health care for resolution by the several States or, in this case, by the People, themselves.
zombie writes with zeal of things misunderstood…the nanny state mantra he peddles is rather cleverly dsguised by a series of nuanced trivialities he believes to be commendable insights…and principled dictums…in fact the article can best be described as inane.
As an outsider looking in on your debate from Australia, I’m somewhat bemused. We have a sort of hybrid public and private healthcare system here which has its faults, and potential for cost blowouts, but it basically works.
Your points about personal responsibility are quite valid, but the point of universal healthcare is to extend services to those unable to afford them. I can afford private health cover myself, but someone on half my wage would not be able to – why should they be any less deserving of medical services than me? I for one am happy to have a portion of my taxes allocated to helping those on lower incomes.
Turning to the matter of idiots who don’t know how to look after themselves: I would be interested to see figures on the proportion of medical procedures necessitated by such people. Measures to take into account repeated stupidity would be a good idea.
But @305. goy don’t make me laugh – our “socialised medicine” is not causing financial insolvency! Cost blowouts anticipated due to an ageing population are being planned for. If it turns out we need to further rein in costs, we will – one way or another – but I’m quite sure we won’t abandon the underlying principle of access to healthcare for everyone, regardless of income. No it is not a right (We in fact have no such thing as a bill of rights here!) but it is a privilege of living in a relatively prosperous nation.
All I’m saying is it *can* work and it *does* work here. Your government’s chosen implementation is a curious one… I hope it works!
vivo/302; i wasn’t really ordering you to mow my yard –i was pointing out that coercion creates reaction. For example, even clearly kiddingly aping a coercive demand can get one threatened with machete decapitation.
306. buddy larsen:
“i wasn’t really ordering you to mow my yard –i was pointing out that coercion creates reaction.”
Your virtual coercion created a virtual reaction.
After the health care plan was approved, there are only two acceptable reactions: follow the rules and improve the process. Do you feel that paying your income tax is a coercion? Most of us accept it because it allows you to receive many benefits (infrastructure, education, defense, etc.) with a minimal expense. Heath care can do that. Speculations at this point are useless. Monitoring the process can lead to improvements, even cancellations of unrealistic benefits, but we need to see it in action. All the whining is just political noise.
Some of you from other countries don’t quite understand that this HUGE bill is about controlling Americans above and beyond the call of ‘health-care’ and very little to do with the ‘health’ of anyone. There is so much crap jammed into that sucker it’s sickening and more and more comes to light every day like some creeping evil…
Or in the words of Nancy Pukey Pelosi, “[...]we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it[...]”
Personally, I don’t want yet another bureaucratic branch of government taking over a part of MY FREAKIN’ LIFE and in the most LITERAL SENSE OF THE FREAKIN’ WORD!
Instead of making EVERYONE pay for this sh*t sandwich, the people who want it should pay a minimum for cheap catastrophic insurance and the government can set-up its own insurance company for THOSE people. Health insurance shouldn’t be MANDATED. MY BODY. MY CHOICE. heh
303. goy,
Yep. The whole ‘cholesterol’ scam is another one for the books. There’s also this:
Good cholesterol vs. bad</a
Just like there are good fats vs. bad fats. Our brains need fat to function and all of those 'low-fat diets' ended up causing many people to become fatter, hypoglycemic and irritable. Of course, moderation in anything is always recommended since overeating any type of food on a regular basis can possibly sensitize you to it and eventually causing a food allergy. Food allergies…! NOT FUN.
The funny thing is, I'm a bit of a hypochondriac health-nut and I'd rather learn techniques and skills to doctor myself as the first line of defense before I have to expose my immune system to a walk-in clinic/doctor's waiting room full of other sick people.
I'm not afraid of the GOOD germs though.
Much.
Oops. I hyper-linked my paragraphs. Someone is sweepy!
Hmm. 2:45 am!
Sleep, another thing that is a great immune booster and I best get some zzzs!
@307. DM: – …it basically works.
Don’t kid yourself – so does the system in the U.S. Notably, it wasn’t a “crisis” until the Democrats decided to push for socialized medicine. Odd, that.
- Your points about personal responsibility are quite valid, but the point of universal healthcare is to extend services to those unable to afford them.
DM, did you catch the non sequitur in your own statement there? If the point of a thing is to focus on one specific social group, as you’ve just described, then it’s hardly “universal”, is it.
Either way, the only “universal” aspect of the law that was just rammed through here – against bipartisan opposition AND the majority will of the citizenry – is that it effectively imposes socialized medicine on everyone. It doesn’t ensure “universal access” to health care in any way (we already have that anyway – see above), but it does form the basis for nationalization of the entire multi-trillion-dollar health care insurance industry.
Worse yet, arguments for socialized medicine here in the U.S. invariably make one blind assumption, i.e., that there’s no way to control costs. The irony – because the same is true of much “medicine” – is that proponents of socialized medicine pursue Appeal to Emotion fallacies based on a symptom instead of targeting the actual cause of the disease. In the U.S., the main problem with health care is blatantly obvious: it’s the skyrocketing prices. During the time the rate of health care price increases have skyrocketed, the rate of the so-called “uninsured” has remained virtually flat.
The socialists in our government pursue the path they’re on not because it will solve health problems – it can’t. They pursue it because it increases their power and influence, and supports their collectivist agenda by placing more of the means of production under the State’s control. Call that marxism, fascism, communism or socialism – State control of the economy is the most significant facet of all of them. Control over access to health care is uniquely prized by the socialist in that it not only puts an enormous portion of the economy under State control, but it also provides the basis for any legislation the State wishes to pass – all they need to do is “argue” that it will reduce the cost of health care. And if the government can force you to purchase something whether you want it, need it, can afford it, or not, they can certainly the rationalize forcing you to take whatever medication they prescribe as long as they can argue that “it’s for the greater good”.
Not only is socialized medicine extra-Constitutional here in the U.S., but it will create a new entitlement for tens of millions of Americans, setting them up with a Taxpayer-funded, NO-LIMIT HEALTH CARE CREDIT CARD (aka “insurance card”). This will encourage additional over-consumption of health care, which is already a huge problem among those who maintain comprehensive coverage (as well as among their health care providers, via “defensive” medicine). Not only does that artificially (and dangerously) increase the overall cost (i.e., the overall volume of health care being consumed), but it effectively increases demand as well. Increased demand always results in increased price. Since the Democrats’ plan does absolutely nothing to restore the free market in health care, all they’re doing is encouraging AND SUBSIDIZING further skyrocketing health care costs.
- I can afford private health cover myself, but someone on half my wage would not be able to – why should they be any less deserving of medical services than me?
Again, you’re pursuing a non sequitur. INSURANCE is not HEALTH CARE. And socialized medicine doesn’t even guarantee ACCESS to health care if the government denies your claim, or you can’t afford the co-pays. And you are also proceeding from the false assumption that health care prices can’t be brought back into equilibrium with all OTHER commodity necessities, where prices remain relatively affordable for all (for some mysterious reason… like the fact that we don’t use insurance to pay for them).
- I for one am happy to have a portion of my taxes allocated to helping those on lower incomes.
That’s very altruistic of you. And it’s nice (for you) that you can afford to do so. But your altruism and relative wealth give you neither legal nor moral authority to force others to do the same.
Meanwhile, what you don’t seem to realize is that government effectively nullifies your altruism by taking away your choice to be altruistic. This is a point that leftists here in the U.S. simply can not comprehend – it’s outside of their adolescent moral framework.
- …our “socialised medicine” is not causing financial insolvency!
Again, that’s very nice for you, but that’s not the case here. Medicare alone is already insolvent here in the U.S. It’s part of what’s bankrupting our government. Expanding that program out over the entire population will lead to crushing federal debt, then hyperinflation, then complete economic collapse. We’re already much closer to that than most Americans realize. This is the direction the Japanese have taken and they are already quite far down that road, even with very stringent price controls.
I’m a Canadian who spends much time in the USA and appreciates our open and welcoming neighbor. I’ve also see a fair bit of both health care systems.
I’m not here to tell Americans what to do with their tax or health care dollars. None of my business.
But let me clear something up:
125. byrbry: – “Canada spends 33% of their GNP on health care.”
It’s about 10%.
81. AZ-Mike: – “Sorry George, the 35 year old computer programmer with 2 young daughters, a wife, and a mortgage — we can’t help you with your lymphoma until we treat DeShawn’s gunshot wound, Big Betty Sue’s cola-induced diabetes, and Esmeralda the prostitute’s end-stage AIDS infection.”
This is kind of true in Canada. If I join the Health Care line behind a pro with AIDS, she gets treated first even though I think I’m better than her. And, the lawyer behind me gets treated after me, even though he thinks he’s better than both me and the hooker.
The current “free market” American system demands profit. Therefore, the HMO has to find a way to deny health care wherever possible. How much of the American health care dollar is spent trying to deny health care?
When you get sick in Canada, you learn very quickly that ALL OF our health care dollars are spent trying to provide health care, though we don’t spend quite enough and it is not flawless. We do not reserve treatment for the affluent or for those who claim moral superiority. We do not start every case by asking, “Now, how can we deny treatment and make more money?”
See sick person. Diagnose. Treat.
@314. Grateful Canadian: – We do not reserve treatment for the affluent or for those who claim moral superiority.
You might want to consider re-reading #81 and thinking about it a bit more. You completely missed the point.
Socialized medicine forces Taxpayers to foot the bill for everyone’s health care costs, even if those costs are incurred because of health problems that result from an individual’s own poor choices (e.g., membership in a gang, consuming too much sugar, working as a hooker, etc.).
It’s not a question of the Taxpayer thinking s/he’s “superior” to anyone else, it’s a question of whether or not I should be forced to pay for someone else’s self-destructive behavior. All socialized medicine does in this regard is to subsidize a general lack of responsibility. That is, I’m being forced to assume others’ financial risk without being given any say in what risks they’re allowed to take.
Meanwhile, the health care insurer most guilty of denying care in the U.S. is… wait for it… the Medicare system. “Profit” is clearly not a factor.
Vivo, and other ‘pro’ Obamacare folks are arguing as if the difference between this bill and perhaps something that would approximate the Texas tort reform, and open insurance competition, and belay 100-150 billion dollars/yr in Medicare fraud, is the difference between a ford and a chevy.
But because of the perverse incentive structure and the nullifying of the innovative spark and merit based compensation structure, it is not at all in any ways a comme ci comme ca like the diff between a ford and a chevy.
Maybe if a Fairlane cost many times more than an Impala and ran only a fraction as well, then the differences would be lesser. If you soon couldn’t even procure an Impala, if the reason for that was that the Fairlane people preferred you be unable to procure an Impala, and Fairlane was not only the only car on the market but everybody had to buy one, even as (true to form, without market rigor) the Fairlane quality, production output, value, and end-user satisfaction kept falling as the price and operating costs kept rising, maybe then the debate would harmonize and the discordant insouciance of the pro-Obamacare advocates would at least begin to approach being proportional to the topic.
Goy,
You have had an Aussie,a Canadian and me again -a Brit trying to explain our different health system grouped together as ‘socialsed medicine.’
We have all said it is up to you what you do in the U.S.
The reason we are different is due to the underlying belief that health ,if we can ,should not be based on ability to pay.
The N.H.S was formed following ww2.Soldiers from all different backgrounds deserved respect when it came to life.
That was introduced across the country and improved infant mortality rates for the poor greatly.(hint when looking for why the U.S has high infant mortality rates i direct you in this direction).
Other countries are not as divided socially and politically,the hatred that you have for eachother is palpable and shocking.
You are all to close to see.There is nothing united about the
U.S.A .
That is why we look on bewildered,you have a civil war and it’s nasty.
We can see that,only in America can there be no right for life,but want to spend your money on being ‘safe’.
Yes the U.S is unique.
Yes our systems can be abused,many problems ,we argue about it daily,we are all shareholders.The tax payer runs the N.H.S and we don’t give that up easily.
Yes there is self responsibility, but it’s about our countries pyche and pride that we as a country believe even a drug ravaged hooker is worthly of our taxes because it’s who we are.
We don’t hate eachother.
Surely a strong message for our young.
Noble sentiments, mags. NIH has a pretty sorry reputation, tho, so could be the noble sentiments are subsiding too much noble sentiment. Good intentions can be as blue sky as the imagination can fly –but results not delivered are not results. Good results are science; good intentions are art. Maybe it’s cold science vs warm art, but the patient wants to get well.
@317. mags: – You have had an Aussie,a Canadian and me again -a Brit trying to explain our different health system grouped together as ’socialsed medicine.’
They are.
Mags, any Taxpayer-funded, government-run health care control system is socialized medicine. Socialism is any economic arrangement where the State controls the economy (i.e., the means of production). When the State controls the price of and access to health care, that’s a perfect example of Socialism. Do you have a problem with those terms? If so, why? You’ve already cheerfully embraced the systems they describe.
Anyway, that’s not what you accused me of. You wrote “You have been calling it evil,saying we have death squads,enforced amnio’s and abortion, that we would of killed Sarah Palins son at birth.”
Now, if that “You” was supposed to be general – as in, you’re assuming that EVERYONE opposed to socialized medicine has made these statements – then I’d suggest you consider being a little more circumspect in your hasty generalizations.
- The reason we are different is due to the underlying belief that health ,if we can ,should not be based on ability to pay.
No, that’s not the reason we’re different. The reason we’re different is that we live under very different definitions of government. Our definition – the U.S. Constitution – does not authorize the federal government to legislate itself a health care insurance company or retirement investment firm – using Taxpayers’ money. Up until now, that Constitution has been only hesitatingly violated by our government – at least regarding health care (i.e., Medicare, Medicaid). But recently, that’s changed dramatically.
Our government is now completely out of control, and seeks to redefine (i.e., “transform”) this country into one where the government can simply define its own authority and its own limits – like the UK’s Parliament, which essentially does whatever the hell it feels it can get away with because it has no firm, written restrictions that it can’t change simply by passing new legislation. This is one of the reasons that the UK is so far ahead of the US in terms of decline. But worry not – we’re catching up!
Also, you clearly don’t have a clue about the moral sentiments in the U.S. Few if any people in this nation believe that the necessities of life should be withheld from individuals who genuinely can’t afford them through no fault of their own. Your problem, apparently, is that the People of this set nation have historically set the bar pretty high when it comes to demonstrating a genuine need. This nation was built on individual responsibility. When we abandon that, our culture will decline to the mediocre level most other nations presently inhabit. You will hear this as an insult, I’m sure, but the exceptional history of the U.S.A. was built on a foundation of individual liberty and individual responsibility. And there are many people who aren’t quite yet willing to just throw that away simply because other countries have been convinced by jealous factions to hate America based on lies.
Furthermore, health care is ONLY ONE of those necessities – and that fact is completely lost in this “debate”, which demonstrates that the controversy is not about health care at all, but about government control.
The U.S. has probably the most extensive and complex welfare system in the world. We have welfare at the municipal level (e.g., right here in my city), at the State level and at the federal level. These plans cover everything from aid to families for food to racially-restricted, Taxpayer-backed small business loans for qualifying minorities. We also have welfare that operates at the private level where, just an example, a college or university will often take a goodly portion of tuition paid by Student A (read: their parents) and use that to pay for Student B – always a minority – usually without informing (let alone asking) the person who actually pays the tuition. I have first-hand experience with this, and it’s not charity, it’s theft.
Millions of individual Americans and illegal aliens are ALREADY supported 100% by American Taxpayers who would certainly know much better how to spend what they earn. On top of that, our income is taxed to guarantee loans for those who wouldn’t qualify without those guarantees (this is part of what nuked the credit sector two years ago), to pay an ever-increasing portion of retirees’ health care and Social Security, to pay for the permanent disability care and feeding of people who are “too obese”, “too depressed”, “too tired” and/or too “brain-dead” (after years of drug addiction) to support themselves. That only scratches the surface and doesn’t even begin to cover all the fraud, waste and abuse that is endemic to these complex systems, which have virtually no oversight because it would simply be cost-prohibitive.
On top of all that, the U.S. government sends billions of American Taxpayers’ dollars to other countries like Africa, to feed, clothe, support and supply health care for people there, expecting absolutely nothing in return. No one actually ASKS the American People if this is okay, they simply do it (and history shows it’s been a complete waste – the situation in places like Africa continues to deteriorate). That’s not counting what gets spent sending logistical aid to places like Haiti, Indonesia, etc., when there’s a humanitarian crisis. These expenditures and entitlements completely dwarf our defense spending – even when it’s at its peak like during OIF. Ironically, Defense is one of the very few areas where our Constitution authorized Congress to legislate spending.
ALL of this is nothing short of collectivist wealth redistribution. Even the private health care insurance we HAVE “spreads the cost around” (sound familiar?) while adding an enormous burden on top of the already skyrocketing costs of health care. It’s gotten completely out of hand. As Thatcher warned, our government is running out of other people’s money, just as yours did long ago. BOTH of our nations are buckling under unprecedented, crushing debt – debt which very few citizens of our countries are even AWARE of, let alone comprehend.
Now our government wants to create a whole NEW entitlement, when it doesn’t have the money to pay for the ones it’s already using to buy votes with. This is SHEER INSANITY by any rational measure, yet the socialists in our government persist because they have an agenda – a collectivist one. It’s THAT AGENDA people here are against, not providing health care to the truly needy, which WE ARE ALREADY DOING.
The basic problem is that government sees welfare and cradle-to-grave entitlements as a means to achieving and holding political power. It’s in the State’s best interest to make EVERYONE dependent on some form of welfare, since that’s what keeps the State in complete control. In this country, our government is based on a system that is SUPPOSED to be exactly the reverse. As that system is attacked by people like Pelosi, Reid, Obama and their collectivist ilk, you’re going to see major resistance. Especially on the issue of health care, which is being destroyed, not reformed, through the imposition of socialized medicine here.
- That is why we look on bewildered,you have a civil war and it’s nasty.
Oh please. Try visiting here. Drive around. Walk around. You won’t see ANY evidence of any sort of conflict on this or any other topic (except perhaps for right-of-way on the roads). The “civil war” is a fiction being promoted by those who seek to create yet another “crisis”.
What we have in the U.S. is a minority of very noisy, very influential collectivist adolescent leftists who have managed to move into positions of political power and influence – mostly through decades of expanding the welfare State. Easily 90% of what you see over there is filtered through their propaganda mill, which includes the BBC, Reuters and all other major infomedia. Sites like this one are probably the only place you get to see another side of the story. What’s actually happening is that this minority has awakened the majority, and forced it to get up and start taking action. That action is currently reflected visibly by the TEA Party phenomenon, but there is much, much more going on outside of that.
Those of us who have to support that State – the roughly 100M of us who actually contribute to the tax base in any substantive way – are quite frankly fed up. We are being forced more and more to work for others who COULD support themselves. We are being forced more and more to work for politicians who want to live an elite lifestyle of permanent incumbency. That’s going to end, one way or another. There will either be a complete shift in political power, the government will go bankrupt, or there will be open, armed conflict. And these three aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive. If you choose to see it as “shocking” or “civil war”, rather than trying to actually understand what’s really going on, that’s probably because your state-run media is only telling you what they want you to know.
- The tax payer runs the N.H.S and we don’t give that up easily.
That’s simply ludicrous. The Taxpayer PAYS FOR the NHS. You have no effective say in how it’s run. Your government makes up the rules as they go. The people running NHS are government bureaucrats who, last I checked, formed the largest single voting bloc in the UK. Good luck reforming that system using democratic mechanisms!
- … even a drug ravaged hooker is worthly of our taxes …
Then you are doomed. A drug-ravaged hooker has made his own choice. NO ONE ELSE has any moral, ethical or legal responsible to pay for that choice. None. Altruism is fine, but State-mandated ‘altruism’, as you have in the UK (and we’re getting, here) is just wealth redistribution through State coercion at the point of a gun. By taking on the responsibility for others’ self-destructive behavior, you are simply subsidizing stupidity. When you subsidize something, you always get MORE of it. So, again, good luck with that.
- We don’t hate eachother.
That’s not quite accurate. Your socially suicidal behavior demonstrates that you hate yourselves. And that’s the message you’re sending to your young, who – at the UK’s present rate of decline – will all be Muslims or dhimmis in 50 years unless something drastic changes.
Mags, I applaud you for your life choice regarding midwifery. It’s a difficult, sorely-needed job. But, with respect, you clearly haven’t a clue about what’s going on in your own nation economically and politically, let alone what’s happening here socially and morally.
Dude, I just read your entire dissertation, and I think you’re flippin’ brilliant! I would give anything if this message could get across to the 40% or so of Americans who think Universal Healthcare is a great idea. The question truly is, ” How much is your liberty worth to you? What price can the government put on taking away your individual rights from you for you to believe it will be justified to not, in essence, be your own?”
Godd job! Could you please sell this reason to my liberal brother, my sister-in-law, and my liberal brother-in-law?
Denise
@313 & 319 goy: Firstly, thankyou for such articulate and intelligent responses. With regards to my apparent logical inconsistencies, I did indeed refer to universal healthcare as *extending* services to those unable to afford them. That is, after all the premise of such a system: healthcare for all, regardless of income.
- “INSURANCE is not HEALTH CARE”
I think you may have been splitting hairs somewhat in deconstructing my argument there. If I step aside from my example, my intent was to pose the question: why should someone on a lower income have reduced access to healthcare than someone on a higher income?
In your response to Mags, I think you’ve homed in why many outside the U.S (such as myself!) don’t quite understand the size and ferocity of the opposition to universal healthcare: it is very much rooted in your culture and history. It seems not at all an objection to the principle of helping others in deserving need, but an objection to being *forced* to do so.
I liked your point about being robbed of the freedom to be altruistic – I do understand that! In my situation here, my taxes do support a universal healthcare system. The only choice I have is whether to be annoyed about it or not. I choose not to be, but if I saw rampant abuse of our system my opinion might change. It is certainly the case with welfare… many have a genuine need but some are ripping the system off for all they can. BUT I wouldn’t want to throw the baby out with the bath-water. Refinements to prevent abuse, yes, but not dismantling the whole thing.
My standpoint is a collectivist/socialist one, and you could fairly accurately describe me as a “leftie” or “liberal”. What am I doing on this site? Well, apart from throwing in my 2 cents worth, I’m interested to find and engage with some actual people rather than relying on the some of the rubbish filtering through the media. Coming from the completely opposite standpoint, you’ve given me some food for thought (sorry I can’t do your dissertations justice by the way!).
It really does boil down to the individualist vs the collectivist. Two pretty much irreconcilable standpoints. Whilst I may be happy to live with *some* curtailment of freedom in the name of the greater good, I can certainly appreciate how that sentiment is an anathema to any U.S individualist.
Thanks again Goy – the next time I see someone shaking their head at U.S resistance to the healthcare reforms, I’ll try to convey some of what I’ve gleaned here to improve understanding. To finish off with, you do have me very much on side in terms of objections to the specific implementation: doing it via compulsory insurance is very much “in-your-face”, and the timing (in the middle of a recession) is just plain idiocy!
…let me chime in too with admiration for goy’s #319. There’s plenty of fabulist and paranoid fantasy in a lot of Americans these days but goy demonstrates that occasionally one of us can rise to coherence and explain a principle or two.
He alluded elliptically to the amount of personal charitable giving American private citizens o, year in and year out it’s substantial, at or near the world top per capita –not to try a brag here but to further counter the politically convenient picture of selfish greed being the objection to turning the rest of the country over to a massed charge of new gov’t (‘in by ten, two hours lunch & out by two’) bureaucrats.
@321. DM:- … I did indeed refer to universal healthcare as *extending* services to those unable to afford them.
Well, not to belabor the point, because you’re clearly open to understanding the breadth of the issue here and I greatly appreciate that, but the “universal healthcare” legislation recently passed here does not do that. That’s at least a part of the reason why more than half the people in this country want this thing repealed immediately.
- why should someone on a lower income have reduced access to healthcare than someone on a higher income?
Well, let’s skip whether or not I was deconstructing – everyone, and I mean everyone seems to think that insurance coverage guarantees access to health care. It doesn’t. Especially not government-controlled insurance. Be that as it may, the answer to your question can be found in realizing that health care is no different from any other commodity necessity of life, as I’ve been trying to point out. Singling it out as somehow “different” from things like food, water, clothes, shelter, transportation and all the rest is just a form of the Special Pleading fallacy. That is, you can ask the very same question, but substitute any of those other commodity necessities for the word “healthcare”, and you’ll get the following answer: in an economy where one is responsible for paying for what one receives, one gets the quality one can afford.
Again – EVERYONE in this country has direct access to health care. To claim otherwise (and I’m not saying you are, necessarily) is plain foolishness. What people aren’t willing to recognize – because the leftists control the vocabulary – is that it’s not access that’s the problem, it’s the cost. Since cost is the problem, that is what we should be looking to correct. But government has no incentive to do that. Paul Ryan pointed this out explicitly during the “Health Care Summit” charade. The fact is that socialized medicine fits the Democrats’ Statist agenda.
Looking for newer and more novel ways to “cover” the cost simply encourages it to keep skyrocketing. This is basic common sense when we think about it. But the Appeal to Emotion fallacies constantly broadcast by socialists, combined with Americans’ addiction to ostensibly “free” health care, which they “pay for” with a NO-LIMIT HEALTH CARD CREDIT CARD (aka “insurance card”) and a nominal co-pay that in no way reflects the actual value of the services received, all tend to destroy common sense and turn the discussion into a shouting match about everything BUT the real problem.
- It seems not at all an objection to the principle of helping others in deserving need, but an objection to being *forced* to do so.
There’s definitely that, but as you point out later, the bigger issue right now is that this nation simply can not afford to pile another TRILLION DOLLARS in public debt onto the pile of debt we already have. The U.S. credit rating is in the toilet and their days of unlimited borrowing from Taxpayers and other countries is over. If we were in Australia’s admirable situation, where the debt-to-GDP ratio is among the most sound of all nations, I know fewer people would be opposed to it (on fiscal grounds). But as things stand, it is simple, unmitigated insanity to create what will ultimately be a multi-trillion-dollar entitlement program under the current conditions. And that’s to say nothing about the impact this legislation is already having on business (read: our economy).
Incidentally, be mindful of that fact that your very low debt-to-GDP ratio will allow your health care system to absorb enormous inefficiencies and waste before it becomes a fiscal burden. That’s NOT a good thing. that’s how Medicare got so bad here. Again, look at Japan. They used to have one of the most admired economies on the planet. Health care is not ALL that’s wrong with it, but it’ll be one of the final nails in Japan’s coffin.
- Refinements to prevent abuse, yes, but not dismantling the whole thing.
If that’s all Oz needs, then consider yourself extremely lucky. Our system needs to be completely gutted. The bureaucratic waste, fraud, abuse, political corruption and sheer size of the welfare State in the U.S. is simply no longer “fixable”.
- … you’ve given me some food for thought …
Well, I appreciate that – the feeling’s mutual, at least in terms of trying to find clearer ways to explain this issue to folks who don’t live here. I have no quarrel with self-described liberals who take the time to make an honest argument regarding their ideology. I have the advantage of knowing what motivates the attraction to that ideology, and I don’t hold that against anyone any more than I hold self-labeled “conservatives’” opinions against them. But the level of deceit, intellectual dishonesty, lack of reason, ignorance of history and sheer, sophomoric vitriol that comes from most of the left is the rule, unfortunately, not the exception. That, I don’t have patience for anymore.
- It really does boil down to the individualist vs the collectivist.
I disagree, and here’s why. If you look at the breadth and depth of the history here (and, in large part, that of Australia’s – at least what I know of it), what you see is the first time in history where a nation’s potential has been maximized by simply maximizing individual liberty and individual responsibility. What the question of society really boils down to is this: which system is most sustainable, that is, which one benefits the greatest number of people in the most holistic way?
That question was answered a long time ago by any measure: a representative Republic, governed by a Constitutionally limited government and supported by a capitalist economy where equal opportunity (not outcome) is guaranteed through the rule of law. Collectivism and socialism have never worked. They can’t. They’re based on a version of human nature that does not exist and will never exist. Only capitalism positively exploits the unchangeable, Darwinian nature of humanity, which has been conditioned for self-preservation first, by millennia of natural selection. When the individual potential of each person is maximized, the “common good” is maximized. It can NEVER work the other way around, because there IS no such thing as a collective mind or a collective nature. We are not the Borg.
… the timing (in the middle of a recession) is just plain idiocy!
Amen.
PS, as far as the individual vs the collective, to me that’s to say a living creature vs an abstract concept. has anyone ever known an individual? talked to one? been in a family or group with an array of them? yes of course, that’s ‘life’, how we live. But you’ll never shake hands with a collective –never meet, talk, break bread, or having any human transaction with one.
Oh yes, you’ll meet and interact with plenty of individuals who represent other individuals who align themselves toward something or other and call the grouping a ‘collective’. But the collective has no being –it’s only a thought, only an idea.
So a contest of individual vs collective is between individuals who disagree with an idea vs other individuals who agree with that idea.
Therefore, to assume the natural superiority of the individual is to deny legitimacy to the master/slave principle, and, conversely, to assume superiority of the collective is to endorse that master/slave principle.
Master/slave being the archaic political form, there is no way around the fact that the term ‘progressive’ is complete Orwellian newSpeak –to be what is being called a ‘progressive’ is to be in fact a regressive –a reactionary –a royalist –who naturally, since he has yet to gain all the control over you he wants, hides his intent, and hides it in the only hiding place there is, in the chaos of signs and portents that fills all the universe except for the little islands of system order, the human minds that –tho the chaos rolls & crashes and carry so many out to sea –still choose yet to resist.
buddy,
If actions and outcome are guides, “progressive” has only one practically applicable meaning: fascist.
g
p.s. thank you
Excellent article, thank you Dr. And for those who are in other countries, and defend their “Wonderful” socialized medical healthcare, do not know anything else. Of course it’s wonderful to them, they’ve never had any other kind of care. So if the government tells them how good it is, it must be true.
How many people from other countries, come to our country, for medical care?? Thousands.
I like my HMO. I’ve aleady been paying for the uninsured for the last 20 years. I do not think anyone should go broke or die because of lack of affordable healthcare, but that is not what this bill is about.
If it’s so good for us, then why is Obama, his family, congress and their families exempt from it??
HEALTHCARE SURVEY: UNITED STATES, ENGLAND & CANADA
By Joel Rosenberg, from “Joel’s Rant”, a politically conservative blog
A recent “Investor’s Business Daily” article provided very interesting statistics from a survey by the United Nations International Health Organization.
Percentage of men and women who survived a cancer five years after diagnosis:
U.S. 65%
England 46%
Canada 42%
Percentage of patients diagnosed with diabetes who received treatment within six months:
U.S. 93%
England 15%
Canada 43%
Percentage of seniors needing hip replacement who received it within six
months:
U.S. 90%
England 15%
Canada 43%
Percentage referred to a medical specialist who see one within one month:
U.S. 77%
England 40%
Canada 43%
Number of MRI scanners (a prime diagnostic tool) per million people:
U.S. 71%
England 14%
Canada 18%
Percentage of seniors (65+), with low income, who say they are in “excellent health”:
U.S. 12%
England 2%
Canada 6%
I don’t know about you, but I don’t want “Universal Healthcare”
comparable to England or Canada.
These results are completely consistent with virtually all other reports you can fund regarding the status of healthcare in England and Canada as compared to that which we take for granted in the United States.
If there is anyone who would prefer to be seriously ill in a country other than the United States I’d be interested in hearing from you.
Moreover, it was Sen. Harry Reid who said, “Elderly Americans must learn to accept the inconveniences of old age.” He is “elderly” himself but be sure to remember his health insurance is different from yours as Congress has their own high-end coverage! He will never have to learn to accept “inconveniences”!!!
———————————————
COMPARE THE PAST 19 PRESIDENTS’ CABINETS
Here are the percentage of each past president’s cabinet who had worked in the private business sector prior to their appointment to the cabinet.
You know what the private business sector is — a real live business, not a government job.
T. Roosevelt….. 38%
Taft………………. 40%
Wilson ………….. 52%
Harding…………. 49%
Coolidge………… 48%
Hoover…………… 42%
F. Roosevelt….. 50%
Truman……………50%
Eisenhower……. 57%
Kennedy……….. 30%
Johnson…………..47%
Nixon……………. 53%
Ford………………. 42%
Carter…………… 32%
Reagan……………56%
G H Bush………. 51%
Clinton …………. 39%
G W Bush………. 55%
And the winner is:
Obama…………… 8%!!!
Yep! That’s right! Only Eight Percent!!! the least by far of the last
19 presidents!! And these people are trying to tell our big corporations how to run their business? They know what’s best for GM…Chrysler…
Wall Street… and you and me?
How can the president of a major nation and society (the one with the most successful economic system in world history) stand and talk about business when he’s never worked for one? Or about jobs when he has never really had one??! And neither have 92% of his senior staff and closest advisers. They’ve spent most of their time in academia, government and/or non-profit jobs — or as “community organizers” when they should have been in an employment line.
DO YOU WANT THE INEXPERIENCED TEAM OF PRESIDENT OBAMA AND HIS COMMUNITY-ACTIVIST CABINET AND CZARS TO ADMINISTER YOUR HEALTHCARE IN THE CHICAGO STYLE?
Goy is on FIYAH!
Onlooker in disbelief:
To set the record straight from someone who has lived in Germany for almost 20 years. The healthcare system is not free in Europe and the price for the private insurance is very expensive. But with private coverage you have a choice of who will perform the operation or put you out for the proceedure. People who can afford the very expensive private insurance will be assured the very best and most qualified doctors, as opposed to some intern or by American standards, an unqualified medical technician. Almost 50% of ones salary is taken in taxes. There is federal value added tax (VAT) at 19% and may go up again to meet spending. Gas costs about $8 a gallon. The state pays for health insurance if unemployed and it usually doesn’t cover a lot of dental and no eyecare. There are loopholes in business regulations that all but gives small business owners no choice but to hire only partime help only because if they hire full time then they pay higher payrole tax, pay for 6 weeks vacation, pay for expensive private insurance (about 75%-employer payed and 25% employee payed) and still have to carry the employee; and pay them, for long term dissabilies. This is only the tip of the iceberg. A restaurant or hotel pays all their taxes up front and then has to settle at the end of the year; tax assements are made by state workers who decide how much you could make during the year and you must pay the tax up front…it goes on and on, this is why I’m against O’care.
319. goy:
A bit of ramble. I have not said that the U.S should introduce the N.H.S .All i and others have done is actually the same as you,explaining why the N.H.S is supported here.
‘any Taxpayer-funded, government-run health care control system is socialized medicine’
You do know that we have a democracy? Elections here are won or lost on healthcare.
The Tories were kicked out because of that issue,we didn’t like what they were doing with our taxes in the N.H.S.
‘Do you have a problem with those terms? If so, why? You’ve already cheerfully embraced the systems ‘
Even Thatcher didn’t try to abolish the N.H.S. So was she a socialist/communist?
‘ then I’d suggest you consider being a little more circumspect in your hasty generalizations.’
Your right i did generalize,so sorry.However i was responding to your comment,you said,
‘Meanwhile, how awful or how great the NHS is, is of absolutely no
concern to anyone in the U.S.’
Is that besides the people who think it is evil I work in it ,does that make me an evildoer?
Or American who think we have death squads!?
‘No, that’s not the reason we’re different. The reason we’re different is that we live under very different definitions of government.’
So why are you comparing other health systems to the U.S?
You can’t get any bigger government control then a womans right to choose what she does with her body.
Wanting the government to come between patient/doctor relationship and be able to force women to continue with a pregnancy and childbirth is scary.
‘ This nation was built on individual responsibility. When we abandon that, our culture will decline to the mediocre level most other nations presently inhabit.’
The welfare system here is different to health care.Nobody believes lazy scum should have 10 kids from 8 different mothers and can’t work because of a bad back(no wonder)and expect the tax payer to foot the bill.
It is too generous and gets abused.
It’s different when in comes to their health.It’s about us not the scumbag’s.
‘no fault of their own.’
If the drugged hooker is pregnant,is that the fault of the baby?
Would you object to your taxes going in that direction.
How do you sit and judge who’s life is worthless even if they make bad decision’s.
‘You will hear this as an insult, I’m sure’
Yes but i am used to it,elsewhere you can discuss oppossing
views without insults.
‘other countries have been convinced by jealous factions to hate America based on lies.’
You don’t still believe that old chestnut.Shouldn’t i be able to base my view on your belief we are ‘mediocre’ and the need to insult me ,were they lies?
Shouldn’t we be angry with the lies being told about the N.H.S .
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/08/18/the_most_outrageous_us_lies_about_global_healthcare
Why would we be jealous when we hold completely different ideologies?
Let me reassure you nobody is jealous ,it’s a hilarious assumption.
The main reason the British critisizes the U.S,is due to the fact,the I.R.A was funded,armed and politically supported by Americans who killed British and Irish civilians.
‘You have no effective say in how it’s run’
I work in foundation hospital.
They have been created to devolve decision-making from central government control to local organisations and communities, so they are more responsive to the needs and wishes of their local people
NHS Foundation Trusts are a type of NHS organisation, established as independent, not for profit public benefit corporations. They are independent legal entities owned by their members who include patients, staff and local people.
Foundation trusts are granted a licence to operate by the Independent Regulator, Monitor, and are not under Government control.
The majority of the members of the Board of Governors must be members of the public, and it must also include at least one staff member and one representative
The Secretary of State for Health has no powers of direction over them.
http://www.unison.org.uk/foundation/pages_view.asp?did=511
‘you clearly haven’t a clue about what’s going on in your own nation economically and politically’
So i live here , i work in the N.H.S but you believe you know more about it then me?
From now on i will refer to you as Yoda.
‘Your socially suicidal behavior demonstrates that you hate yourselves. And that’s the message you’re sending to your young,
‘Oh please Yoda try visiting here. Drive around. Walk around. You won’t see ANY evidence of any sort of conflict on this or any other topic (except perhaps for right-of-way on the roads). ‘
This might come as a surprise but other countries send aid to Africa.Other countries helped in Haiti ,what has that got to do with anything,do you believe you should get more in return?
Is that why you send it?
I am not interested in a ‘debate’ on who’s the greatest and all that exceptionlism stuff,i am only explaining and correcting comments made here about the N.H.S
@330. mags: – I have not said that the U.S should introduce the N.H.S.
Not sure anyone claimed you did. Your other accusations, however, were clear.
- The Tories were kicked out because of that issue,we didn’t like what they were doing with our taxes in the N.H.S.
Not sure what this demonstrates. By all accounts the UK economy is circling the drain pretty seriously. If this is a reflection of what you call democracy, then the British people are, arguably, pretty self-destructive… just like the recent manifestation of Americans’ political choices.
- Even Thatcher didn’t try to abolish the N.H.S. …
You avoided the question. If you don’t like the terms, just say so.
- So why are you comparing other health systems to the U.S?
Again – since this doesn’t seem to be getting through to you – *I* am not doing that. I already KNOW that our health care system is far superior to any other in the world. The fact that our government has spent decades encouraging prices to rice, and encouraging over-consumption, and we don’t impose price controls… all that makes it appear more expensive, which is an irrelevant measure anyway. As I’ve already clearly stated, and you even copy/pasted, I don’t consider the evils or the triumphs of the NHS significant in any way, because it’s been implemented under a system of government that allows it. Ours doesn’t allow it. And if socialized medicine is allowed to stand here, then our Constitution just became completely meaningless, just like the UK’s.
- Wanting the government to come between patient/doctor relationship and be able to force women to continue with a pregnancy and childbirth is scary.
Hardly. I personally don’t advocate making abortions illegal so, again, you seem to have me confused with the stereotype you prefer to denigrate. What I will not accept is being forced at gunpoint to pay for someone else’s choice. If they CHOOSE to engage in activities that ultimately make them pregnant, then they have CHOSEN to take responsibility for the consequences – whether that’s keeping the child, or incurring the cost of “health care” (which it’s not, since it’s completely elective) associated with an abortion. Subsidizing stupidity will only get you more stupidity, until your society crumbles under the weight of it.
- The welfare system here is different to health care.
Irrelevant. To understand the resistance to socialized medicine here, you need to understand that. Health care is a universal necessity. The one and ONLY reason it’s an issue – at least here in the States – is because the price of that necessity has been encouraged through government meddling to increase to a level where people have problems paying for it. If you don’t think socialized medicine is abused in exactly the same way welfare in general is abused, then I invite you over here to see it in action in the context of SSDI abuse.
- How do you sit and judge who’s life is worthless even if they make bad decision’s.
Try again. I haven’t judged anything, worthless or otherwise. You’re the one projecting that judgment. All I have said is that people are responsible for their own choices. Forcing someone else pay the cost of those choices is nothing less than slavery.
- Shouldn’t we be angry with the lies being told about the N.H.S .
Sure. Assuming they are lies. Just so, Americans have every right to be angry with the lies told about us.
- They have been created to devolve …
Mags, your lengthy description here is nothing less than an outline of an organization that is completely regulated by the government. Who makes local operational decisions is irrelevant. The fact is that the NHS is 100% funded by the taxes paid into the public trough. It will be the same here.
…other countries send aid to Africa.Other countries helped in Haiti ,what has that got to do with anything…
Trouble with comprehension? Try reading it again and noting the context, and resist the knee-jerk urge to immediately compare to other countries. The POINT was that in the same way Americans’ wealth is redistributed without their consent, ALL of this foreign aid is sent without any direct consent of the governed – whose wealth is being given away. Got nothing to do with what any other country does or does not do.
- I am not interested in a ‘debate’ on who’s the greatest and all that exceptionlism stuff,i am only explaining and correcting comments made here about the N.H.S.
Clearly, just like our clueless president, you don’t understand that being exceptional doesn’t necessarily mean being the greatest. Understanding “all that exceptionalism stuff” is a fundamental requirement in understanding what America is. If you’re interested in understanding why most American want socialized medicine repealed, and want no part of an NHS-style system, no matter how good you think it is, then you have to “get” that. Our president clearly doesn’t. You exemplify most of the rest of the world with your disinterest in getting it either.
@331. goy:
“The fact that our government has spent decades encouraging prices to rice, and encouraging over-consumption, and we don’t impose price controls…”
Please educate me. How has the government encouraged price increases and overconsumption? And, are you really a proponent of price controls? How can a free market system accept price controls (assuming no illegal anti-competitive behavior)? Why would anyone invest in a health insurance business?
Thanks in advance. Your analysis is well presented throughout this conversation.
@332. Pullman: – How has the government encouraged price increases and overconsumption? And, are you really a proponent of price controls?
I’m absolutely not a proponent of price controls. My point was to compare our government’s form of meddling with others’ – those DO implement price controls, which makes their costs come out lower per capita.
On your first question, the detailed discussion I offer is here. For the abbreviated version of my personal take on this, it’s easiest to work backward.
The vast majority of health care consumers in this country “purchase” health care with a No-Limit Health Care Credit Card (aka “insurance card”) and a nominal co-pay which has absolutely no relationship to the actual value of the care provided. Thus, decisions about health care consumption are not very circumspect. We’ve known this since the RAND health insurance study conducted in the ’70s, which found that people with high-deductible, low-premium insurance, who paid for routine health care out-of-pocket, consumed less health care than those with comprehensive, group plans – with no difference in health outcomes. The “insurance will cover it” mindset affects both the consumer and physician, who prescribes up to 40% more care than is medically necessary (by some estimates) because it’s legally advisable due to lack of tort reform (a perennial failure of government, for obvious reasons).
In addition to promoting over-consumption – which increases demand and, therefore, price – prepaid, first-dollar comprehensive health care insurance has four inflationary effects on the price of health care.
- First, by acting as a middleman between health care provider and consumer, it destroys their direct economic relationship. This completely neutralizes the standard economic model that keeps all other commodities relatively affordable, opening the way to virtually infinite price increases over time. Instead of being controlled by what the market (i.e., the consumer) is willing or able to pay, price is effectively ‘controlled’ by an odd sort of proxy monopoly formed by the accidental cartel of health care insurance companies. These companies have far less incentive than the consumer to hold prices down because as those increase, they simply raise premium rates to compensate. This arrangement essentially removes all substantive downward pressure on health care prices. Since the price of any commodity tends to increase until some force acts to prevent it, the result has been four decades of skyrocketing health care costs, far exceeding the rate of inflation.
- Second, the insurance industry adds its own business costs, profit and other financial burdens. These are significant. In 2009, the top ten health care insurance organizations employed approx. one quarter million people. And while unemployment over the rest of the economy doubled, from approx. 5.5% to 10%, these companies saw an average 6% increase in the number of employees. Also, any insurance company profit it taxed, which is an expense that is simply passed on to the customer. 100% of the burden imposed to support this enormous workforce and all the associated support facilities must ultimately be shouldered by private sector employers, their employees and those with private plans through insurance premiums, effectively increasing the cost of getting health care.
- Third, group insurance amplifies the effects of resource pooling, which artificially encourages costs covered by a group to increase beyond the ability of any one member to afford them individually.
- Finally, composite billing rates of $1000/hr and beyond, have drawn the profit-seeking attention of the corporate world into the health care industry, prioritizing profit over affordable, quality care.
Why do most people use comprehensive, group plans? Simple – they’re tantamount to an entitlement at any job. Employers almost universally provide a comprehensive, group health care insurance benefit. The reason? Mainly two. Lately, any large company that doesn’t offer the benefit is hounded into submission by the media and the left. Even the rumor that a company doesn’t provide “acceptable” insurance – as with Whole Foods and WalMart – results in the company being harassed publicly. This benefit is subsidized by the government through tax breaks.
Before government began actively encouraging this type of benefit through subsidies, it regulated businesses with more than 25 people by forcing them to offer a federally-approved HMO (prepaid, comprehensive, managed care) plan along with their other plans (HMO Act – 1973). This regulation specified an “acceptable” level of insurance, much like the recently passed socialized medicine does, which was of course comprehensive coverage, as opposed to high-deductible / low-premium insurance. Before that, the government intervened extra-Constitutionally in 1965 when Medicare was enacted: quasi-comprehensive health care coverage for retirees.
Thus, various forms of comprehensive, group health care insurance have been effectively foisted onto the market through government meddling, for decades. That meddling has, in turn, accelerated health care cost increases as outlined above.
To be sure, much of the blame for skyrocketing costs can also be placed on the consumer, who is effectively addicted to getting ostensibly “free” health care. The system that provides that illusion is responsible for encouraging health care costs to skyrocket. Those rising costs are the real cause of the health care “crisis”, not the so-called “uninsured”.
Believe it or not, that’s the ‘short’ version.
There is a country where the government has programs to provide, to all of its citizens, health care, education, housing, clothing, food, and everything the people will ever need! North Korea, the most socialist nation on the planet. Rather than trying to change our nation to be more like North Korea, wouldn’t it be better for the liberals to move there?
For those of you who believe that Canada has a good, desirable national health care system, see the following story about Canadian Prime Minister going to the U.S. for heart surgery:
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/newfoundland-labrador/story/2010/02/01/nl-williams-heart-201.html
I guess that Canadian health care system is good enough for the masses but not good enough for its politicians. Either that or Canada does not have heart surgeons and sends all its heart patients to the U.S. for surgery.
Canada has a two tier health system. Those who can afford it can go to another country and buy the health care they need. Those who cannot afford it wait in line in Canada. I have a friend in Canada who was a (working) nurse. He/she told me that, in Canada, more people die waiting for surgery than the number of people dying during surgery. I don’k know whether this is true or not, but that is what I heard.
JamesC: The guy who went to the USA for heart surgery wasn’t Prime Minister. He’s a provincial Premier. Kind of like a state Governor. No matter, though, you’re mostly correct in the 2-tier comments.
We have one system for all citizens, but no laws preventing people from crossin the border and buyin whatever y’all wanna sell ‘em. Y’all market health care like it’s burgers and cars, dude, and your for-profit doctors and hospitals will add revenue to the P&L from anybody willing to pay. It’s just business.
Two questions:
1) How many dollars enter the American economy from Canadians buying health care, legally, completely above-board, and mostly at a premium?
2) What is Canada paying to deliver absolutely free health care to those Americans who have fraudulently obtained Canadian health cards?
Newsflash, bro: the answer to 2) is not zero!
The central point of this thread is that some Americans are freaking out because they might have to subsidize health care for Americans. Well, we Canadians feel for ya. Really. We know how it feels. We are doing it now and have been since 1970.
You’re welcome.
Goy, you have a for-profit health care system. Blaming the consumer and the government seems off base.
Costs are rising because the system itself encourages it. How many times have we seen the Money Honey on the floor of the NYSE scaring the crap out of investors because some Health Care company’s ROE is down by a quarter point?
So the Board of Directors tells the Officers to cut costs and increase revenues immediately. The sky is falling because we don’t have enough rich sick people.
You must believe me – we definitely don’t want your economy to suffer because it hurts our economy. The Dems’ health care bill has nothing to do with universal health care. It gets more people covered, but adds yet another tier to an already out of control system. I cannot fathom how it will work.
Hope you can accept that profiting from sick people seems wrong to the rest of the developed world. I think America has taught the rest of us that marketing ignites some of the demand.
“Weeknights after 8 pm! Come to Big Bobby Buck’s for free Ammo with every MRI! Some conditions apply.”
And before you go calling us Commies and Socialists… keep in mind that WE elected a Conservative federal government in the last 2 elections.
We just don’t have a system that charges ‘whatever the market will bear’ for health care.
@Grateful Canadian – you have a for-profit health care system.
And this is a problem… why?
We have for-profit agriculture, a for-profit food industry, for-profit utilities, for-profit textile and apparel industries, for-profit housing markets, for-profit automotive industries, plus numerous for-profit markets required to support ALL of them. ALL of these markets provide commodity goods and services that are basic necessities of life, no different from health care. ALL of them remain relatively affordable. All except health care. Why? Because we don’t pay for them through the abuse of comprehensive, group insurance.
- Blaming the consumer and the government seems off base.
I can’t imagine why. American consumers have grown passive, ignorant and apathetic regarding the cost-ratcheting effects of the way they abuse insurance to pay for health care. Most assume they’re entitled to ostensibly “free” health care insurance through their employer, or provided by the State. Most are completely ignorant of how much their health care actually costs. Many probably couldn’t even tell you the difference between their primary, specialist and prescription co-pays without looking at their insurance card. And the government has encouraged Americans’ addiction to ostensibly “free” health care with forty years of meddling in the health care market. Two weeks ago they demonstrated why. No, it’s not off base at all.
- Costs are rising because the system itself encourages it.
I don’t know what you mean by the “Money Honey”, but that’s exactly what I’ve been saying for years: the system – that is, the completely corrupted and broken health care market – encourages skyrocketing health costs. That’s the ENTIRE system, not just the “for-profit” health care provider part of it. You’re mistaken if you think profit alone is causing costs to skyrocket. There’s no evidence to support that.
The way we pay for health care completely dissociates the consumer and provider economically. This removes almost all downward pressure on price. ALL commodity prices tend to rise with no downward pressure to stop them. Health care even more so because almost every aspect of the broken health care market encourages prices – and consumption – to rise.
- The Dems’ health care bill has nothing to do with universal health care. It gets more people covered, but adds yet another tier to an already out of control system. I cannot fathom how it will work.
I couldn’t agree more. It will do nothing but make an already unsustainable situation much, much worse, as I’ve said.
- Hope you can accept that profiting from sick people seems wrong to the rest of the developed world.
What about profiting from people who need to eat? People who need clothing? Electricity? Water? Transportation? Profiting from those people isn’t “wrong”? See the problem yet?
Profiting from services to “sick people” (health care) is no different from profiting from services for “ignorant people” (education), “hungry people” (food industry) and “cold people” (utilities). When people can’t or won’t provide for all of their own basic necessities, others will ALWAYS profit from providing those necessities FOR them – to the great benefit of both! There’s nothing ethically, morally or economically wrong with that. Where this becomes a problem is when the price of the necessity becomes so high that increasing numbers can no longer afford it. That’s what has happened with health care. This has little to do with profit and everything to do with the way in which the free market has been corrupted in ways that have resulted in skyrocketing costs.
- I think America has taught the rest of us that marketing ignites some of the demand.
I doubt it. I mean, I doubt that the rest of the world has learned anything from what’s happening here because what’s happening here is so completely distorted even right here in the USA. It’s not possible that anyone outside America is seeing what’s actually going on. For instance, because we don’t have government price controls on health care, our costs there have skyrocketed. Outside the US, that translates to “they have the costliest health care in the world”. Well duh – that’s because we don’t yet have government sitting on the price knob, controlling what doctors can earn, controlling what radiology groups can charge, and controlling we pay for every drug, procedure and test, the way other countries do.
That said, marketing definitely increases demand, artificially – especially in the area of pharmaceuticals. Direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription medications which can’t be purchased without a doctor’s involvement do nothing but artificially increase demand for marginally-tested drugs FAR beyond the actual medical need. This increase in demand artificially increases price, over-consumption and, ultimately, the cost to the consumer and Taxpayer.
- …WE elected a Conservative federal government in the last 2 elections.
Heh. “Conservative” is a relative term.
- We just don’t have a system that charges ‘whatever the market will bear’ for health care.
Don’t be silly. Of course you do. In your case, the State simply determines what that market will bear.
Most people think that it is wrong to steal what seniors have earned and give it away to illegal aliens to buy votes? Obviously, some of us do not share the liberals’ latest definition of “fairness”. Has it ever occurred to you that most people in countries with socialized medicine think their quality of healthcare is fine because they just don’t know anything else? That their governments tell them that their socialized medicine is just great to keep them complacent and to keep the demand for quality down, and the costs under control for what the government can afford. Socialized medicine, by definition, has to be based upon lies. They lie to the general population because, you know, that their elites are getting the best quality of care available. That is what Obama will eventually do here as things fall apart and the quality of healthcare descends to socialist standards. But there will be plenty of liberal propaganda to know nothing, be happy. Just like Cuba.
Goy you said,
“Profiting from services to “sick people” (health care) is no different from profiting from services for “ignorant people” (education), “hungry people” (food industry) and “cold people” (utilities). When people can’t or won’t provide for all of their own basic necessities, others will ALWAYS profit from providing those necessities FOR them…”
You can have the final word on this one.
Hey Goy, I agree. Your most recent post pretty much says it all.
You’ve captured the essence of how the rest of the world views the USA and explained why Americans routinely commit fraud by stealing Canadian health care services, paid for by my tax dollars.
Good day, good luck, and God Bless America (for they need it and will take any advantage they can wrap their hands around).
goy ,
Grateful Canadian sums it up with your quote,
“Profiting from services to “sick people” (health care) is no different from profiting from services for “ignorant people” (education), “hungry people” (food industry) and “cold people” (utilities). When people can’t or won’t provide for all of their own basic necessities, others will ALWAYS profit from providing those necessities FOR them…”
That is how the U.S see’s their fellow citizens.Elsewhere in the civilized world
we treat the right to life differently.Remember me? I work in the N.H.S.
It’s founding principals in 1948 were ,
•That it meet the needs of everyone
•That it be free at the point of delivery
•That it be based on clinical need, not ability to pay
These same principals apply today,at no point here has life been devalued so that those who can’t pay for healthcare are not as equal as those who can and deserve access to help.
- Your most recent post pretty much says it all.
And it was carefully worded to elicit exactly that response so that you would show your socially suicidal, collectivist colors. For if it’s wrong to profit from providing health care services, then it’s wrong to profit from any of the other enterprises listed there. A society run on that basis – where everything is “free” – is not sustainable, because nothing is ever “free”. Someone always pays. A society run on this fantasy – where those who provide goods and services are coerced into doing so at their own expense rather than benefiting from their efforts, or where people of means are coerced into supporting others who could take care of themselves – is not sustainable.
So it will have to suffice simply to note that anyone who buys into that collectivist Utopian nonsense can’t be reasoned with. Human history could record a thousand collapses of the Soviet Union, and such people would still rush in to make the same mistakes.
So, “profit” is a dirty word?. Heh. More like you simply don’t comprehend it. American society – a constitutionally-defined republic, supported by a capitalist economy – was founded on the notion of mutuality. That’s something most of the rest of the world has never really understood and likely never will. Europe, in particular, went from being ruled by kings, warlords and czars to being herded by tyrants, to being cared for by a therapeutic, parental State. Canada, much the same, minus the tyrant phase. Such nations have subjects, not citizens, who live to fulfill the whims of their governments, not to pursue their own happiness.
In a free market, both parties of a transaction profit. In the case of education, the “ignorant” person acquires the means to transcends her ignorance. In the case of food, the “hungry” person acquires sustenance. In the case of utilities, the “cold” person acquires heat and light. And in the case of health care, the “sick” person acquires care. None of these people walk away from the transaction with less value than what they went in with.
If I can provide a commodity or a service, I will profit by providing that service. And in an even nominally free market, I won’t profit unfairly (i.e., any more than the market will allow), because my customers are always free to go elsewhere for a better price – that is, a price THAT IS WORTH THE VALUE THEY ARE GETTING IN RETURN. The great caveat there, of course, is that they must be allowed to, and must take an interest in understanding that value (this is absolutely NOT the case with health care). My profit may be cash, my customers’ will be to receive something they either can’t or don’t want to do for themselves.
Mutuality.
But when the government steps in and tries to “level the playing field”, pretending – with the aid of Appeal to Emotion fallacy – to lift the tiny minority of truly needy by penalizing everyone else, and enforcing what amounts to coerced charity, that mutuality is corrupted and ultimately destroyed. And not only that, the inevitable waste, corruption, fraud, bureaucracy and politicization involved in the coercion becomes a cancer that destroys the society itself. That’s what socialism and, specifically, socialized medicine is all about: the corruption of natural human mutuality, community and volunteerism which, when left unmolested by an overweening State, all human societies exhibit in some form. The State is not capable of replacing these qualities. The spectacular collapse of the U.S.S.R. – which the U.S.A. is now emulating – Japan’s failing health care system and the UK’s NHS are all perfect examples of this.
- That it be free at the point of delivery
No commodity or service is “free”. Someone always pays. The sooner you figure that out, the sooner your disintegrating culture will have a chance to save itself.
- That it be based on clinical need, not ability to pay
Yeah, that’s working out so very well, isn’t it…
…in the 21st century the NHS had received more money than it knew what to do with. “It was like giving a starving man foie gras and caviar. The NHS has not managed that largesse well”. … “Between 1997 and 2007 NHS inputs – by that I mean cash – went up by 60%,” he said. “But NHS outputs went down by 4%. Two thirds of the money we put in just went into pay.”
Spending on the NHS has risen to more than £127bn, almost a 10th of national income. “Even worse, when you take into account social care health, you find that the Department of Health now accounts for almost a third of public spending”.
Social suicide. In slow motion.
“That it meet the needs of everyone; That it be free at the point of delivery; That it be based on clinical need, not ability to pay”
What I actually said was “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”
But your version is close enough for government work.
> mags and karl,
I repeat, there is such a country where “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need” is implemented – North Korea. Please just take yourselves and move there instead of forcing the rest of us (using the coercive power of a government, i.e., at the point of a gun) to live under such a socialistic regime. I am sure that you will be happy under the paradise of collectivism achieved by Dear Leader, the Great General, the Rising Sun of the 21st Century.
> A Canuck
“you’re mostly correct in the 2-tier comments.”
Your (Canadian) 2-tier health coverage is a natural and unavoidable outcome of any socialized health system. This is because, in any socialized/coercion based system, there are, by definition, at least two tiers of people – those being coerced and those who apply the coercion. In short, “some animals are more equal than others.” See, George Orwell, Animal Farm (1945). Further, the “more equal animals” have all the power. The power may nominally be based on “laws” or other social structure; however, the power is, ultimately, the raw power to destroy and to kill (be it implemented via IRS, local sheriff enforcing “court orders”, or any others who have guns).
goy,
“Social suicide. In slow motion.” The motion just sped up a notch.
James,
mags and karl,
I repeat, there is such a country where “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need” is implemented – North Korea. Please just take yourselves and move there instead of forcing the rest of us (using the coercive power of a government, i.e., at the point of a gun) to live under such a socialistic regime. I am sure that you will be happy under the paradise of collectivism achieved by Dear Leader, the Great General, the Rising Sun of the 21st Century.
Firstly i have stated iam in the U.K and work in the N.H.S. I do not care what health system you have,i have been objecting to the mis-representation of us.
I am not sure what century you are living in ,in the U.S.
To believe that us with our ‘socialised medicine’ are living like North Korea ,being led by our government at a point of a gun leaves me in despair but full of pity.
Goy,
‘Free at point of delivery’
Everybody knows our taxes pay for the N.H.S. The expreesion means that we have already paid for it,so when we need it it’s available and we don’t have to pay then.Get it?
I could explain how the N.H.S works,whats covered what isn’t,why it’s widely supported,the problems with it,some solution’s,the difference between countries systems,what i like about other countries healthcare,what i have learned after working frontline for 20 years,but nobody would be interested.
You all seem to have fixed thoughts and are unwilling to learn or absorb anything that deviates from your limited view of the opinions of people around the world. .
- The expreesion means that we have already paid for it,…
Well then that would make it PREPAID, wouldn’t it. That’s not “free”. Get it?
We do exactly the same thing here. It’s called HMO and/or comprehensive, group health care insurance, i.e., “prepaid” care.
… nobody would be interested.
Very astute. How you destroy your nation economically is your own affair.
mags,
Thank you for your explanation – sometimes, my brain is a little slow and requires some help.
If you would bear with me, I would like your help in understanding the UK system a bit more.
FIRST, a question about UK taxation and collection system:
You state that “[e]verybody knows our taxes pay for the N.H.S.” yet assert that “to believe that us with our ’socialised medicine’ are living like North Korea, being led by our government at a point of a gun leaves me in despair but full of pity.”
I know for a fact (I worked with the US taxation system) that a person owing US taxes has their bank account emptied (the amount taken by force) by the government. Further, if that person persists in refusing to pay taxes, he/she is arrested (by men bearing guns) and jailed. In the US, this threat of force make most people pay taxes.
Accordingly, it puzzles me why you believe that your tax-funded health care system is not enforced at the point of a gun. Perhaps this is because in UK, tax is not collected using force or threat of force. What does US use to collected taxes? I admit that I am ignorant as to how taxes are collected in UK. It is a volunteer system? I just don’t know.
In any event, my point is that, in the US at least, a nationalized/government-run system that is funded by taxes IS enforced at the point of a gun. Again, in the US, in all practical purposes, we are not able to just refuse to pay taxes without having the government just take the money (from bank accounts, taking the house, etc.), and, in the end, arresting and jailing us. Again, if the UK tax collection/enforcement is different, please let me know. Seriously, I may try to move there.
SECOND, a question about possibilities of other services (potentially related to the NHS):
Further, if the UK system really works, I would not mind having something similar in the US (or moving to UK). In fact, may be we can improve on the health care system by adding the following services too:
National Food Services (NFS) with the following priciples:
•That it meet the needs of everyone
•That it be free at the point of delivery
•That it be based on level of hunger, not ability to pay
(hunger and famine are terrible things that no civilized society should allow, let alone a superpower like the U.S.; and without food, we cannot remain healthy, so perhaps, we can make N.F.S. a part of the N.H.S.; besides people should not go hunger and die just because they cannot pay)
National Education Services (NES) with the following priciples:
•That it meet the needs of everyone
•That it be free at the point of delivery
•That it be based on the level of ignorance, not ability to pay
(as an old TV advertisement used to say, “a mind is a terrible thing to waste”; besides, ignorance leads to unwise choices in health matters, so perhaps, we can make N.E.S. a part of the N.H.S.)
National Housing Services (NHoS) with the following priciples:
•That it meet the needs of everyone
•That it be free at the point of delivery
•That it be based on the local climate and acceptable level of protection, not ability to pay
(U.S. citizens should not be allowed to be homeless; oh wait, we already have something like this, its called “Section 8″ housing, but it is based on “ability to pay” or, more correctly, “inability to pay”; again, exposure to elements leads to declining health, so perhaps, we can make N.Ho.S. a part of the N.H.S.).
National Transportation Services (NTS) with the following priciples:
•That it meet the needs of everyone
•That it be free at the point of delivery
•That it be based on the desired distance to travel, not ability to pay
(Its not fair that some people get to drive expensive cars like Bentley’s and gas guzzlers like Hummers while others walk or take public transportation; and again, exposure to elements while walking may lead to declining health and we cannot make sick people walk, so perhaps, we can make N.T.S. a part of the N.H.S.).
Man, I can get used to these! After these services are up and running, maybe I can quit my job!
Where do I sign up?
goy/james,
I have tried to reply but i have had some problems posting.
‘We do exactly the same thing here. It’s called HMO and/or comprehensive, group health care insurance, i.e., “prepaid” care.’
Yes i know ,good for you.I am explaining what we do. We pay national insurance
depending on our income and everybody is covered.When ill we don’t have to produce anything and the care given is equal not just those who can’t afford it.
‘Very astute’
If you are not interesred in how other healthcare systems work then stop going on about it,like your some expert.
Is that how you learn in the U.S? Just explore sketchy details,all one-sided?
How can you say that our nation is being destroyed economically when you have no clue how it works?
Ignorance is not them problem it’s the illusion of knowledge.
James,
FIRST, a question about UK taxation and collection system:
We pay Like i just said to Goy,we taxes according to income ,it’s’ Pay as you earn’
‘It puzzles me why you believe that your tax-funded health care system is not enforced at the point of a gun.’
It is not, in actual fact, the state or the government which is responsible for the NHS. It is us. We pay for it. We use it. The state is merely a prism through which the money and the care must pass. The NHS is us taking care of each other.
Healthcare and the welfare state are viewed differently.Nobody has the right to use our taxes to fund their workless life. It is taken very seriously .
http://campaigns.dwp.gov.uk/campaigns/benefit-thieves/
The same with tax evasion.There is punishment for this,that is because we (the taxpayer)want that to happen.
The government works for us and is held accountable for their policies.
So no,we don’t feel the government enforces it’s will at gun point?
The N.H.S is widely supported here.Across backgrounds,income,age,wealth,class etc
When Americans started calling it evil and spinning lies,it led to a big love in and we nearly invaded you.
The government does OUR bidding.
It’s not so much how much we pay in taxes,it’s what they do with it,the policies put forward.
We have a fundamental belief that for as much as we can health shouldn’t be based on the ability to pay.
If you can’t see a difference between your fellow citizens life and the ‘examples’ you list then so be it.
The U.S uses it’s taxes to fund a huge army to make you feel ‘safe’ that sounds
socialism/communism.
Should everybody have their own fire sevice and police force?
When poor people are charged with crimes you provide them with counsel,because you feel everybody has a right to do so.
Again on the same lines we just feel that health shouldn’t be based on ability to pay.
Come to the U.K you will be welcomed.Visit Liverpool where i am ,it’s a beautiful city.
- If you are not interesred in how other healthcare systems work then stop going on about it,like your some expert.
First you write that no one would be interested, then you whine because I agree. Not a recipe for credibility.
- Is that how you learn in the U.S? Just explore sketchy details,all one-sided?
Maybe this hasn’t been getting through to you the many times I’ve written it, but I DON’T CARE how a country deals with this issue unless their government is defined by the same Constitution we have here. Last I checked, the UK had a Constitution that is defined by the whim of Parliament. Translation: they do what the hell they want, legally. It doesn’t work that way here and, if you read our Constitution you’ll discover why I couldn’t care less about the NHS. That is: our government HAS NO AUTHORITY to run a health care insurance program using Taxpayers’ money. Our government presently does what the hell they want illegally, and they’re about to find out how popular that is this November.
So please stop kidding yourself – the flaws or merits of the NHS have no bearing on the U.S., and it’s got nothing to do with “sketchy details”. Our free market system could easily bring commodity health care costs back into equilibrium with other relatively affordable commodities if it were allowed to function. The one thing that prevents that from happening is the nonexistent economic relationship between the health care provider and the consumer. That relationship is destroyed by government-subsidized (and now, mandated) comprehensive health care insurance. Essentially, the government is requiring the very thing that has caused health care costs to skyrocket so fast in the first place. The UK, Japan and other countries use price controls (largely unsuccessfully over the long term) to deal with high costs, which is straight up socialism. That’s legal and welcome in those places, but not here. Here’s an example of why.
- Ignorance is not them problem it’s the illusion of knowledge.
Right. Like your illusion that NHS health care is “free” when, in fact, it is actually prepaid. Very good point.
mags,
Thanks for your explanations. Again, I admit that I do not know much about the UK NHS system. Although I have visited many European nations, UK is not one of them. I have visited Germany, France, Spain, and Italy. My daughter studied at U Cambridge. As for Canada, I have been to Canada a number of times and spoken with many Canadians.
Though I cannot yet agree that universal health care is good for US, I would like to have a better understanding of the NHS (UK) and the Canadian health care system.
Your description of NHS sounds like it is not much more than a giant medical insurance run by the government rather than by private companies.
Are the service providers (doctors, nurses, etc.) all employees of the NHS? Can a doctor have a private practice? Can a doctor provide services to a patient outside of the NHS and charge the patient directly? Or, just choose to have a private practice?
In NHS, does the participant (citizen/patient) select which doctor he/she wants to see? Can the patient be treated by a doctor outside the NHS and pay the doctor separately?
Can a citizen opt out of NHS? If he/she opts out, does he/she still must pay the portion of the tax that is used as premiums for this government run insurance?
Thanks in advance for your answers.
james,
I truly appreciate your message,thats all we wanted was the chance to explain.
‘Though I cannot yet agree that universal health care is good for US,’
I am not saying that you should adopt our system. I’m be fairly indifferent, and wouldn’t deign to comment on another country’s way of doing things, were it not for the fact of the tell of lies about the NHS, and that is intolerable.
This explains our reaction to being dragged into your issues’s.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gf2E2Yi58iw&feature=related
.
‘Are the service providers (doctors, nurses, etc.) all employees of the NHS? Can a doctor have a private practice? Can a doctor provide services to a patient outside of the NHS and charge the patient directly? Or, just choose to have a private practice?’
We have a private health service as well.We can choose where we work.Even if you have been trained by the N.H.S it doesn’t mean you are compelled to work there.
Some work for both.Any doctor/nurse etc can provide any services outside their
contractual duties to their job
In my line of work,some of the consultants have private I.V.F. clinics.
Because of our support in the ideology of the N.H.S the majority including me
choose to stay(we get paid the same).
The N.H.S does involve the private sector,we sell services,the profits going back into the hospital.We have a private cosmetic surgery unit run by N.H.S staff,again profit goes back into the hospital.
It is not, in actual fact, the state or the government which is responsible for the NHS. It is us. We pay for it. We use it. The state is merely a prism through which the money and the care must pass. The NHS is us taking care of each other.It is the cornerstone of Britain. It is the beating, human heart of this country.
I work in a FOUNDATION HOSPITAL and this might explain it better.
http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Healthcare/Secondarycare/NHSfoundationtrust/DH_4062852
‘In NHS, does the participant (citizen/patient) select which doctor he/she wants to see? Can the patient be treated by a doctor outside the NHS and pay the doctor separately?’
There is difficulty with local GP’S due to having to serve the local community but hopefully that is improving.If you can’t register with who you want the N.H.S has to find you one.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/6198820/Patients-can-register-with-GP-anywhere-they-want-says-Health-Secretary-Andy-Burnham.html
With other services it is better.
http://www.nhs.uk/servicedirectories/Pages/ServiceSearch.aspx
You can go to a private doctor directly or second opinion or as many as you want.
There is no limit to the amount of health care provided to one person over any period of time.
I know the U.S has emergency cover and can’t refuse a patient care.I am just explaining how we staddle the two.
And yes a patient can see and pay a doctor directly outside the N.H.S.
‘Can a citizen opt out of NHS? If he/she opts out, does he/she still must pay the portion of the tax that is used as premiums for this government run insurance?’
That is an interesting point. You can’t opt out,national insurance is payed at source -your wages,depending on income.
Nobody wants to opt out. Even the wealthy who never use it are not demanding that.
The N.H.S started following WW2. The country was in rubble,and soldiers were returning with terrible injuries.
Soldier’s from all backgrounds had fought and died together ,but their recovery
was based on their wealth.
That was unexceptable ,so they were all treated.The country liked that and wanted it for all the citizens.
The belief that health shouldn’t be based on ability to pay.Churchill(you all like him)was around at it’s inception.
That was in 1948,so in a democracy if the citizens wanted to opt out that should of been done by now. All poltical parties support the N.H.S that reflects society.
James on reading my comments,i can see i am making it look that an utopia devoid of problems that is not the case.
We can (and do) critisize it,but nobody else can.It’s taxpayers run insurance not government.
I can’t stress that enough about our relationship between government and taxpayer.
Ours isn’t the best way,the model in France and Sweden is better.
We are having problems with asylum seekers flooding the service.The N.H.S is not a bottomlist pit, not everything is or should be covered,there is need for personal responsibility.
Again,i appreciate your time.
RE: Canadian, 297.
Didn’t an elected official of Canada come to the U.S. for heart surgery or some sort of heart treatment? What happens once we downgrade our health system to yours and you need such?
RE: Mags, 321.
Is your system financially viable or is it breaking with some looking for ways to cut costs? If so, is some of the cost cut suggestions, suggestions on who might be excluded from treatment or what conditions have to be met before treatment?
Goy,
‘First you write that no one would be interested, then you whine because I agree. Not a recipe for credibility’
If nobody is interested then please refrain from commenting on it.The only reason i butted in was because posters where saying that the U.S high mortality
rate is due to us not reporting live birth’s.
That’s not true .But nobody was interested in the truth,only in the negative.
Did you know the answers to the questions asked by James?
I know you are saying that what Obama has done is against your Constitution.
If our health systems are so irrelevant why have you posted an article from the
Guardian newspaper about the N.H.S.?
If your Constitution is so brillant how can an illegal leader be doing illegal things but your waiting till November to prove it.
Right. Like your illusion that NHS health care is “free” when, in fact, it is actually prepaid. Very good point.
Nobody says it’s free,only you.It’s free at point of delivery. Do you really believe for the last 60yrs we have been unaware that our taxes have been paying for the N.H.S?
It means you won’t concur further costs depending on the problem.
Someone with a sore thumb and someone having cardiac surgery are the same .
We pay according to our income but have the same access and cover.
Bankruptcy due to healthcosts happens in U.S that is unheard of here.
‘that is defined by the whim of Parliament.
Translation: they do what the hell they want, legally.’
I have no idea what you are talking about you will have to me some examples.
Tony Blair was shoved out because he led us into an illegal war in Iraq.
At the moment we hate all politician’s for abusing our tax payers through exspences.Is this what you are talking about?
It’s funny that you simply finally spoke up! I have been waiting for an individual to bring this out to the open! Anyway… good post. I will be back.
The Universal Health care proposed by Barack Obama is only one of its kind. Why? People should be responsible in their actions, their vices and habits. If that fat lady doesn’t want to be cured of her obesity, then Obama should think twice about the reforms of universal health care. Why should we be forced to pay for the costs of other people’s irresponsibility? I am one of those people who love to help other people, but in the blog I have read, I was amazed because it was just not a person who was just writing a blog and being selfish to talk about his rights but being responsible citizen in a nation. I salute you!
GOOD FOR YOU, Doctor. Proud of you.
I agree that there are many people who are irresponsible, and directly cause their medical problems. Some have multiple pregnancies w/o insurance, some abuse alcohol, and some overeat until they go blind…I agree that for the people that take care of their health this is not fair that they have to foot the bill for others irresponsibility……However, it is important to take into consideration, that there are factors at play that cause individuals to abuse their bodies and let their health go to crap…..some times its because these people are so poor that they cannot afford proper nutrition, and have to eat a fat filled diet. Some people are so depressed w/ life that they could care less about proper diet etc. To think that just because you are from a high class society and have the time and energy to go the gym and exercise gives you the right to blame impoverished people who can barely get up in the morning is wrong. Some people work 80 hrs/wk just to put food on the table…..the last thing they are thinking about is getting on a treadmill and looking good in a swimsuit…..You have to take into consideration Mental Illness as well…..Mood Disorders cause people to abuse drugs, alcohol and Food……I know healthy people will never agree w/ this, but if someone is clinically depressed, they will often let their health go…..Should we condemn these individuals to die?
It is actually MUCH CHEAPER to eat healthily than to eat junk food or a high-fat/sodium/sugar diet. So I don’t buy the argument that “these people are so poor that they cannot afford proper nutrition, and have to eat a fat filled diet.” That’s ridiculous. The same $6 you spend at Kentucky Fried Chicken you can instead spend on vegetables or bulk beans and so on — if you want to. And you get much more nutrition-per-dollar if you shop wisely.
It isn’t free health care. It is social justice and seeing the value of all individuals. Free market health care is only a “reasonable” solution if you are a callous prick. Yeah, try telling a six year old kid who has cancer that it is his or her fault they can’t receive treatment because they don’t have health insurance. Cause six year olds can be held perfectly responsible for their actions. The vast majority of the population does things that are detrimental to their health. There are obese doctors for crying out loud. Yeah, only idiots support universal health care, in spite of that it has worked dozens of times all over the world.
All of you capitalistic people care about ultimately is yourselves and aren’t what soem of you despite what you say “Christian” are opposite of being. Everytime a true capitistic president “Regean” was in office in the states that we have spent enormous amounts in government spending in wars. We have kicked the mentally infirmed out on the street for somehtings they cannot control. Looking at the disabled they cannot help being blind, deaf, etc either. If the private market cannot be willing to comprehend this they cannot complain about thier own ignorance or stupidity for that matter. The same things with unregulated markets prior to the sixties with women as well like their right to vote or whatever. Then, you look at unregulated markets like monopolies Sherman Anti-Trust law of 1888 and the slavery issue were stopped ty the government.
I cannot stand narrow minded bigots in my country. If you don’t like paying taxes, leave then to your own wasteland world of the third world where services aren’t there. Its a universal good not a thievery tax. God, how loathsome are you guys? Sorry apathetic wealth upper class plutarchies of hate and greed seething with just money not God in your hearts. Who gives a sh-t rightt? You hateful demons spawns from the underworld.
a. It was left-wing disabled rights activists who advocated for the insane asylums of California to be closed, and Reagan acquiesced to their bidding when he was governor. It was not some heartless capitalistic plot, but rather a way to finally rid society of the cruel old-fashioned insane asylums.
b. The whole point behind the article is that some ailments are beyond our control, but many are fully within our control, and yet no distinction is made between the two types of unwellness.
c. The people doing the complaining about their taxes being misused against their wishes are the people who contribute about 90% of all taxes paid. If you get your wish and all the whiney capitalistic heartless taxpayers stomped off to live in their own “wasteland world,” the people left here on Earth would be left without anyone to pay the bills. Society would instantly collapse, and the bottom 70% of the economic scale, who only pay about 10% of the taxes, would be left to fend for themselves, and all entitlements (including health care) would go unfunded.
Before you spout off about your right to spend other people’s money, perhaps put a little thought into the consequences of your suggestion that all the complaining taxpayers “leave.” You need them more than they need you.
Amen to that and yet somehow they call themselves the Christians, I think we live in upside down world at this point.
I am 26 years old and have had type 1 diabetes for 10 years. For those of you who don’t know, that is a genetically inherited chronic disease. I have always taken good care of my body. I don’t smoke, do drugs, or drink alcohol, and I exercise regularly. I eat a very nutritional diet, as dictated by my disease. No sugar, 30-40 carbs a day, veggie and protein heavy. I work a minimum wage job and take classes at my local community college. I’m trying to become a computer and networking technician – you know, get a job with the Geek Squad or something (just to start out, I don’t want to work there forever).
My costs for prescription meds are phenomenal. I pay $230 for insulin – and that’s just for the fast-acting insulin. The slow-acting insulin costs around $50, my test strips cost $70, syringes cost $25. That totals $375 a month, and that’s not counting the doctor’s fees. My insurance covers only a fraction of the costs of the office visits and bloodwork I need done. And I say ‘need’, not because I’m unwilling to forgo the ADA suggested 4 a year doctor visits. I just got done paying off my last visit earlier this year in April – some $300 – and now my doctor is threatening not to renew my prescriptions unless I make another appointment.
Not to be melodramatic, but it seems to me that’s akin to pointing a gun at someone’s head. I can’t afford it, financially, but I can’t afford not to, in terms of sustaining my life.
People say that that’s how it’ll be with universal health care – they’ll be forced to buy insurance and forced into the doctor’s office when they can’t afford it. Well, for some of us, that’s how it is now! And it’s outrageously expensive, despite the “competitive market” or whatever! It’s gotten so hard to afford even the basic necessities, I actually researched whether or not I’d be eligible for Medicaid. Turns out, I’d have to let my diabetes get so out of control that I needed to have a limb amputated.
I’ve read a lot of comments bemoaning people who are lazy, morally corrupt, and/or ignorant indulging in their self-destructive habits. You guys hate these people, and don’t want to throw anymore money their way. Fine. But what makes you think that these are the people that make up the majority of the unhealthy? I’ve read statics (2009) reporting that 44% of Americans suffer from AT LEAST 1 chronic disease. That includes cancer, diabetes, high cholesterol, heart attack, stroke – caused by genetic predisposition, not bad nutrition.
And what’s so bad about trying out a new thing? We can always vote it out if it doesn’t work. (Or do you honestly think that Hitler and the Third Reich will come goose-stepping into the country as soon as the ink dries?) Cause the thing we got in place, I am far and away not the only one – or even part of the minority! – for whom it doesn’t work. God forbid I lose my job and can’t afford COBRA. I’ve got a pre-existing condition – no insurance company will touch me without constant coverage. So if the government wants to make those conditions more affordable, I say: Hell Yes!
All you smug people who drew the long straw from the gene pool – welcome to (a fraction of) my world. Maybe it will teach you a little humanity.
Nobody is saying we should deny coverage to those folks (like you) whose ailments are not their fault; this essay is about preventable medical expenses.
The number of people with diet-induced diabetes far far exceed the comparatively rare cases like yours of genetically-caused diabetes. People like yo should be on SSI, and I’d have no problem if we as a society paid for that. But across-the-board universal health care to pay for everyone’s poor decisions is a different story altogether.
As for your claim “We can always vote it out if it doesn’t work.” Ha! That;s the whole point. No we cant vote it out. Once it’s in, it’s likely to stay in forever, or until the country collapses.
The opposition of the healthcare bill is racist at it’s heart, no if’s and’s or but’s. 85% of the proponets of the bill have been at times proposed by the White government causcus at some point of another but since it was all encompassed and requested to pass by the black president, no white congress person really wants it. LOL, I know it more to it than that but hey, since you all are so ignorant on this RED site, thenehll, I might as well dwell in the idiocy as well.