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Health Care Reform Isn't About Democrats v. Republicans -- It's About the Citizens of the United States v. the Private Insurance Industry. : politics
It's About the Citizens of the United States v.
The Private Insurance Industry.
No, it's about the citizens' elected representatives v.
The insurance industry.
72% of Americans want a government-run option.
In political terms, that's an overwhelming landslide.
If the new legislation fails to provide a strong public option or fails in general, it will be because of overwhelming Iran-like government corruption.
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Wouldn't that make it "About the Citizens of the United States v.
The Citizens' Elected Representatives AND the Private Insurance Industry?"
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Yes! Sort of a French and Indian War type of nomenclature...
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Yet our war can't go by the alternate name of "the Seven Years War." It's gone for much longer thus far...
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Yes, but 72% of Americans arent aware of who is actually going to be paying the tab.
Even Congress doesnt know how its going to be paid for.
People think "free".
Nothing is free.
Now, what we do know is that the government is incapable of managing money.
Thats true for any administration, and any Congress.
Look at where we are already.
You have to be high to think we should let them manage our healthcare too.
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The trick to functional, effective government is to never, ever, ever vote for a Republican.
They believe with all their hearts that government does not work , and they prove it every time the voters give them the chance.
EDIT: The truth hurts, don't it, boys?
:)
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No, that's the trick to socialism.
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Seems like that happened in the waning days of the Bush II administration when the government had to bail out the banks and Wall Street.
So since we're already there, I say we go ahead and make the best of it...
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Ah f...k it... <raises a glass>
Cheers!
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No, you won't get out of this that easily.
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We never would have had Lincoln in that case.
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Both the Democratic and the Republican parties are barely recognizable when compared to their 19th century manifestations.
All of the proud, southern Red State Republicans of today would have been Democrats in the time of Lincoln.
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Very few people actually think "free".
All us grown ups actually have a good idea of how taxes and government spending work.
We just, you know, think it's worth the money.
If republicans would stop cutting taxes and blowing huge wads of cash on seriously retarded defense projects we wouldn't be in this mess.
Luckily they won't be in power again any time soon so there is some small hope we'll actually be able to have a functioning,competent government again.
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Do you need to be reminded who just spent 3 trillion dollars to "fix" the economy?
Hint: It wasnt a republican, and his name rhymes with Bobama.
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Yeah, well it's sort of hard to have a successful country when your unemployment rate is over 25% You can agree/disagree with the effectiveness of stimulus spending all you want but it does have several sound arguments in its favor.
Edit: Unlike say, space lasers and randomly invading other countries.
Why do you think the economy needs fixing in the first place?
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Come on, stop distorting.
Our largest expenditures are Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid by far.
In a few decades, they will dwarf other unpaid obligations, and everyone in congress bears responsibility for those messes.
Defense projects are a paltry sum compared to those three programs, and even if we had zero DoD expenditures over the next several decades it still wouldn't come close to paying for those three obligations.
Try to distort that, and you're arguing against simple math with partisan rhetoric.
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Simple math is for simple people.
Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid do make up 44% of our federal budget, compared to the DoD's 21%, but they are funded by specifically designated FICA taxes..
Check your pay stub for more details.
The Iraq war, which last I heard wasn't even included in the DoD budget (could be wrong), was funded by a ...
Tax cut? One of these things leads to deficits and the other doesn't, guess which.
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It's About the Citizens of the United States v.
The Private Insurance Industry.
No, it's about the citizens' elected officials moral desire to uphold the oath that they took, and to be re-elected by their constituents to maintain their power v.
The money (the money they can use to buy advertising to sway the sheeple) which is equivalent to the power they can achieve my obliging the private insurance industry.
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The American people aren't taking on the insurance companies directly, their elected representatives - Congress - are battling the companies for them.
Which would be fine if all members of Congress had the people's best interests in mind.
Some are basically employees of the insurance industry and will make things up to scare the people about the possibility of any government run health care program.
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Here's what I predict will happen.
Some kind of bill will pass that will bring most, if not all, Americans under some kind of coverage.
This will make that 72% of the electorate happy.
However, the politicians in Washington still have people in the healthcare and insurance lobbies to make happy.
So, they will make the bill very large and convoluted to hide the fact that it does not fix how those companies have been swindling people and inflating prices for years.
It will simply change the entity paying them from the individual to the government.
The companies will then have free reign to send their prices into the stratosphere, just like existing government contractors, because they no longer have an actual customer to answer to and can just name their price from the gov't.
Eventually, the huge financial load will collapse the economy, and the healthcare bigwigs will run off with all the money just like the bankers did last year, leaving all of us retarded street urchins with our thumbs up our asses wondering what just happened.
That's just my gut feeling on how it will play out though.
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That may very well be, but the Republicans have definitely chosen which side they're on.
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Republican senator proposes amendment to Obama's healthcare plan, requiring Congresspeople to enroll in the public health plan they propose to create
Not all, but many.
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I note the amendment doesn't seem to suggest killing the current government-backed-and-paid healthcare plan for congresspeople.
So what Mr Coburn asks is that congresspeople voting for the plan get the new public plan, and congresspeople voting against keep the old public one.
Sounds like a doucheglican to me.
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You will if it turns out the cost of paying for everyone brings such economies of scale that you end up paying less than you do now for private health care insurance, which is exactly what will happen.
It's also why the rest of the civilized world has already done it and why we pay double what they do for less service and are less healthy.
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Chlamydia is CHEAP to treat.
Like 4 bucks cheap.
Sure. I'd pay that to not worry I'm going to get leukemia and survive then be unemployable for the rest of my life.
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Yea, and they'll be helping you pay for your emergency open heart surgery, and prices will go down for everyone to less than you pay for good health care now.
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The fact is we are already paying.
When someone goes to the ER and they are poor, they STILL get treated.
And that cost gets distributed to all of us.
I think tons of reform have to be coupled with this.
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...which is exactly what will happen.
I would truly love to see this happen.
This is my dream of a single payer health care system that is run properly.
The only issue I have is the government has not convinced me that they can run anything efficiently, in fact they've only convinced me of the opposite.
Oh yeah the other issue is the bill being proposed isn't a single payer health care plan.
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We're not going to get it right right out of the gate, like any big change, it'll come in fits and starts, a few dead ends, and then we'll settle in on a system that works.
The idea that we refuse to make any progress in the right direction until the perfect plan is presented is just preventing anything good from ever happening.
You have to start somewhere.
Other countries didn't get it right their first times either.
If we were smart we'd learn from their experience and skip some of the mistakes, but as a country, we're too arrogant, so we're not that smart.
The government is pretty effective at running a military machine, even if they use it wrong morally.
We can run a good medical machine as well.
It is the nature of large organizations to be inefficient, but they can be dam effective non the less.
With the proper economies of scale, inefficient and effective can still be cheaper than a much smaller more effective private system, and they can already be much cheaper because of the removal of the profit motive.
The profit motive is what fucks up our medical system now, treatment is more profitable than prevention, so that's where the focus goes.
The seeking of profit is very destructive in this case, the free market is not always the best solution.
A doctors motivation should be to keep people healthy, not to make tons of money.
Real doctors, people who are naturally doctors don't do it to get rich, they do it to help people.
Take the crazy money out of the scenario, let the money seekers find different careers, remove the artificial restrictions keeping the licensing of doctors low which keeps their pay up so high, and we'll have many more and much more affordable doctors.
Being the town doctor didn't always mean you were a millionaire, even in this country.
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Make sure not to accept Medicare when your time comes then.
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Yeah, I always say that to my Dad when he bitches about socialized medicine.
He still did it through his cancer treatment that saved his life - all paid for by medicare.
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"Bitch"? What are you, 12?
|I don't want to pay to heal someone stupid enough to get hurt or something
How about someone with cancer?
Does someone's intelligence impact whether they get that or not.
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Almost as importantly if there is government run health care does the government now have the right, correction the duty (for efficiencies sake understandably) to tell me what I can, and can't do to my body?
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You mean...like dictate if its ok to put cocaine/heroin/meth in your body?
Debatable
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For simplicity I would suggest we stick to tobacco which they already allow us to put into our body, and is the most addicting drug , and one of the most harmful (at least when compared with other illegal drugs.
I can't find a convenient source to support this, but I think it's common sense).
If we bring up cocaine, heroin, meth, pot, LSD, psilocybin, and lots of others the debate becomes more complex because you have to ask if your willing to let your government regulate what you can put into your body when they aren't necessarily picking up the tab for the harmful effects they cause.
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They can't really, but if we institute a government healthcare system I guarantee you will see something along those lines.
There's always going to be some group the majority can bitch at, and now it'll be the obese, the smokers, etc.
That raise costs that are preventable.
They might not even be obvious about it;
They might just institute taxes on unhealthy food/drink, raise cigarette taxes, put in penalties for preventable conditions...
Instead of the insurance company directly trying to lower costs by denying claims, it'll be government raising money through taxes or something else, and this time, they can say they're doing it for the benefit of the taxpayer!
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Is that what Jesus would do Mr Hypocrite.
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I'm not sure you know what "Caveat Emptor" means
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Obama says he wants to reign in our out of control healtcare industry.
Who's going to reign in our out of control government spending?
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Apparently not the GOP since they've been spending like drunken sailors for the past 8 years.
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And it took Obama only six months to do what the repubs did in 8.
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I guess boot20 and the other downvoters have no answer to your question.
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When Obama spends billions on mass transit, the benefit of that money in the future may be 75% of what's spent, or it may be 150%, and we can have that debate.
In any case, the value isn't zero, and isn't negative.
Bush spent a trillion on blowing shit up, pissing people off, and giving us tons of disabled veterans and homeless to care for.
It's not comparable.
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Neither of you answered his question.
I'll repost it since you're having trouble seeing it:
"Who's going to reign in our out of control government spending?"
I absolutely agree with Obama's goals of improving infrastructure and lessening our dependence on foreign oil, but again, who will reign in the spending?
Also, using George Bush's failures as justification for all of Obama's spending makes for a poor argument -- millions were spent on stupid or unnecessary things in the stimulus -- better than war, yes, but I'd rather see pork completely left out and put toward things that matter, like public schools.
Oh, and we're still fighting a war in Afghanistan, just in case you forgot.
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My point was that to the extent that spending is an investment, it's not "out of control."
"Out of control" makes me think of loading up $12bn of cash into pallets and "losing" them.
Getting us off of oil, fixing health care, etc., sounds like we're finally getting spending under control.
It may not be less spending (at least in the short term), but that's a different question.
The "millions" your linked article cite seem kinda irrelevant, both in size and content--and even then I'm not sure any of the examples were actually wasteful (clean coal is the most likely to be useless I suppose, but only because it's being made out to be further along than it is).
Afghanistan is a pickle.
Not sure what he can do now that Pakistan has nukes.
We're in deep trouble there.
I don't think it's fair to compare Obama's handling of it with Bush's choice to go into Iraq.
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Bailout passes House 263-171
In a stunning reversal the House of Representatives Friday voted 263-171 to pass an historic $700 billion measure to rescue the financial sector, acting just days after initially defeating the plan.
President Bush immediately signed the bill into law.
Democrats in favor: 172
Republicans in favor: 91
Democrats against: 63
Republicans against: 108
$700 billion to banks seems just as wasteful, and the Democrats jumped right into line, just like they did when Bush wanted to go fight his middle eastern crusade, and all his other nonsense -- both parties have shit on their faces, and I don't trust either, not one iota.
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We could spend on the money on things that have some form of ROI in our own nation or piss away billions in other nations where the ROI = 0 or worse, is negative.
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You're correct, under Obama we're likely to see some benefit from the stimulus, but there has been plenty of waste in the Obama administration too.
Pissing away money in general is a bad idea, and spending it at home is best, but I'm concerned about its effect on our nation as we move forward in this century -- I'm not saying it's all bad, just something to be mindful of.
Obama sides with Bush on bank bailout
Obama orders more troops to Afghanistan
Despite Pledges, Package Has Some Pork
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I clicked on one link.
Second paragraph = complete horseshit.
The deal provides $8 billion for high-speed rail projects, for example, including money that could benefit a controversial proposal for a magnetic-levitation rail line between Disneyland, in California, and Las Vegas, a project favored by Senate Majority Leader Harry M.
Reid (D-Nev.). The 311-mph train could make the trip from Sin City to Tomorrowland in less than two hours, according to backers.
High speed rail projects are not pork.
"Could" does not mean "will."
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$64 billion for rail isn't my concern -- it's the first link: Obama sides with Bush on bank bailout
edit: Hopefully you've seen this reddit front-page story today:
The huge bonuses at Goldman Sachs "show that by rescuing the financial system without reforming it, Washington has done nothing to protect us from a new crisis, and, in fact, has made another crisis more likely."
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No, I don't want socialized healthcare either.
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Keep on letting words scare you.
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It's a good thing your not getting it, then.
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Sort of like the insurance companies do now.
Our company had a large number of claims...so they jack everyones rates.
Then, we were encouraged to go to a class on how to eat healthy....
Then they are pushing us to sign onto the insurance company site to do thier programs.
Unless we want our rates to continue going up 20% every year, we have to follow along.
It gets really interesting when stuff like fertility treatments come into play.
25-30 k for that kind of stuff and people know who is taking advantage of that...
And my opinion is that they should...
Since we pay for it.
Unfortunately, it will jack up our rates next year.
So, whether the government is trying to make me quit smoking or my company...
I don't care... its all interference from big brother.
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What is so hard about the concept of the difference between a government and a private company.
When it comes down to it, all a private company can do is "do nothing." They can choose to not help you.
A government can kill you and throw you in jail.
We gave the government a monopoly on force.
We said, you guys can use force and as a condition, you can do very few things.
Mixing a moral cause with the the organization that has a monopoly on force is a very bad idea .
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Wow. Your argument went to retarded super fast.
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The sooner we have socialized healthcare the better.
For the average person with a job and that currently has insurance...
I bet we will pay about the same.
Between what I pay and my company pays it is about 1k a month..
Not to mention co-pays & deductibles.
Rich guys will always be able to afford "premium" service and poor people will always need help (right now they just go to ER).
Not much will change except the number of Insurance Companies that each has its own set of rules.
I agree that government is not always efficient, but having worked in a clinic setting AND also with the government...
Current insurance is not better and probably a hindrance.
It would be streamlined with only one insurance.
People keep on bringing up how horrible Canada has it.
Well, I live fairly close to Canada and have met my fair share of them.
Never met one that complained about health care.
So, in the end...
Who will be hurt?
Rich folk will probably get stuck with more of the bill, but mostly investors, insurance companies & campaign funds.
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Between what I pay and my company pays it is about 1k a month..
Not to mention co-pays & deductibles.
Exactly.
The health insurance premium;
If I add my and company's contribution, then it is about 15-20% of my gross pay, plus dental insurance.
Besides these, I pay a $500 deductible, and co pay of 20%, in network.
If I have to go out of network (1000 deductible, and 40% copay), due to any reason or emergency, I might be in debt for remainder of my life.
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Debt is highly profitable.
Why do you hate the free market so much?
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Rich folk will probably get stuck with more of the bill
Not necessarily--health care is far cheaper in all the socialized healthcare systems, because you don't have the overhead of the insurance companies for common case basic care treatments, and also because people go to the doctor earlier & more often, when their problems are more easily/cheaply treated.
The US insurance companies are parasites, nothing more.
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Some arguments against socialized healthcare have some amount of validity to them even if I don't agree.
The one that pisses me off is the argument that they don't want to pay for some idiots STD medicine or some idiot that's too lazy to get a decent job.
I now have a nice job and good health insurance.
Socialized healthcare will not help me, more than likely.
What happened to just caring about other human beings?
I went through a rough period in my life where I was uninsured for about a year.
If something had happened to me in that time, I could have been financially ruined at a young age or worse, dead from lack of treatment..
Would I have deserved it because I had some bad luck one year?
And there are others that are living at near or below the poverty lines for an assortment of reasons that just cannot afford it.
How civilized are we to turn our backs on these people?
And I'm not even going to go into the dirty tactics by the private insurers causing problems for the people that actually have insurance.
edit: I concede to you StringyLow after doing my own research.
I have done a lot of research on single payer and I did fall for the propaganda.
My entire comment is about single payer.
Take it for that only.
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Care about them on your dime, not with other people's (my) money.
Who do you think you are - Robin Hood?
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Chances are that you have family members that would be living out of a garbage can or dead if it wasn't for our quasi-socialist healthcare system called Medicare.
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Hell, you're already paying.
A non-insured person gets care and can't or doesn't pay - insurance companies and providers negotiate pricing - Hospitals and Doctors inflate pricing to cover the losses - insurance companies raise the premiums of those who can pay, either through employer provided plans or self-insured, to cover their costs (they are for-profit companies).
So those of us insured are already carrying the burden.
If I have a choice of who will give me better care options, I'd choose the entity who wants me healthy, working and paying taxes to the one who is trying to make a profit by taking in premiums...
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I'm paying higher rent to cover people who trash their apartments and disappear.
I don't want the government controlling rent.
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Then go live in Assholistan.
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Judging by your tone and demeanor, assholistan is whenever you are (probably the same place as the guy you responded to).
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Yeah, I can't stand assholes who get all sick and stuff
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Dude, fuck you . You're resorting to direct attack when you're the one imposing a new rule .
You're the one advancing the idea that you should be allowed to do anything to anyone ever .
Never forget you're the interventionist - even if what you're doing seems like or might be the best thing ever .
You will ALWAYS have to explain why you're literally taking things from people .
I cannot believe you've been upvoted for a direct attack.
By the way, my argument here as absolutely nothing to do with wither or not socialized health care is a good idea, but with the concept of doing anything at all .
Learn to explain and rationalize your ideas or die in a fucking fire .
As an example of my reasoning, I did not mod theashertm's original post at all - I did downmod you.
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Dude, it's a fucking post on a website.
Step away from the computer, go outside and take a breath.
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That's layman's terms for exactly what I said to justgeekin
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God, you people are fucking retarded.
Grow up. Welcome to society.
Assholes like you aren't in charge anymore for a reason.
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What happened to just caring about other human beings?
It's not just caring about other people.
There's this idea that once people actually start getting along, that's the end of the problem/solution process and life is boring thereafter.
To those who think this, I give you...
SPACE!!! As it is, it takes a shitfucking fuckshit-shitload of money just to get anyone into space.
I believe that mainstream space travel will require the cooperation of this planet's population, which starts with helping people who you might think you're above.
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You can have conflict and internal debate without death and violence.
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It's called charity, and it doesn't come with the threat of being put in a government cage.
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I'm sad to say it, but you have been misdirected by the propaganda distributed by the insurance industry.
Please pay attention to the following differences:
Socialized medicine is when the government pays the doctors, owns the hospitals and also pays the medical bills.
Single-payer, not-for-profit insurance is when the government pays privately owned hospitals -- who privately employ doctors -- on a Net 30 basis which means that the government writes a single check to the hospital for healthcare services at the end of the month instead of cutting a check for each individual case as is now the norm with private insurance companies.
Medicare works this way.
The number of doctors in the U.S.
Has increased by almost 3 times since the early 70's.
Meanwhile, the number of healthcare administrators has increased by THIRTY times.
This is the obscenity of contemporary healthcare in the United States.
The insurance companies drive up costs with administrative bullshit -- and deny care to the gravely ill and least profitable patients -- and collect a "reasonable" profit margin on the gross total.
No one is proposing "socialized" medicine.
What is being proposed is making the healthcare industry pay doctors and hospitals in one lump sum for their actual costs with the payments to them being shared by the population at large.
Doctors and nurses will get paid what they are worth.
God knows they deserve their paychecks for what they have to go through -- the understanding of people from the chemistry of proteins to the wicked awful smells they make.
The only thing that will change is that there will be 400 BILLION dollars not spent on disputing whether two caps of Advil should have billed at $12 each or whether that eye cancer your mom was diagnosed with was a "pre-existing condition".
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It's socialized health care insurance .
There, I said it.
"Single-payer, not for profit." - that is just a euphemism, come on - who is being misdirected by propaganda?
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Blah Blah Blah...
Words Words Words...
God dammit! does everything have to be so wordy?
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No doubt, man. Someone take a dump on something and send a link.
Let's get this party started.
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You said something, but no evidence to back it up.
No details, no nothing.
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Wait a minute, fuck head....
The deal is single payer, not-for-profit insurance, like Medicade.
The idea is that everyone will get the same fucking insurance coverage as any Congressmen and Senators.
So FUCK YOU DISTORTION ASSHOLE .
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If you think that the average American will get health care as good as the average American politician, then YOUR BRAIN IS FUCKING DISTORTED.
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It's not. Because there is still a private market.
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What the fuck are you talking about??
Make "what" more worse??
What kind of worms do you have in your head??
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I gotta be "G" and smoke some place where I can relax in "Thugs Mansion".
There ain't no talking because I'm 20 some-odd years.
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Last night at the Marvin Gaye show, I was there to sing.
I enjoyed every moment of the show.
I had a bunch of peppermint schnapps and sung every word I knew.
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Obama is a president.
He doesn't get to decide everything.
I know that's a strange concept after his predecessor but congress and the people are the ones that will ultimately bring about change (or not).
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Single-payer, not-for-profit insurance is when the government pays privately owned hospitals -- who privately employ doctors --
Thank you!
This nails it, anyone who proposes socialized medicine is going to get both barrels not just from the insurance lobby but the Pharmaceutical/Health Products lobbies as well as the Health Professional Lobbies (the American Medical Association etc...).
It would be political suicide.
Instead what we have is a proxy war between the Health Insurance backed Republicans, vs.
The Pharmaceutical and Health Professional backed Democrats, both Dodd and Kennedy mentioned in the article take substantial financial contribution from pharmaceutical lobbies, hospital and doctors associations like AMA and AHA.
These latter lobbies want the rest of Americas 45 million covered so that more people will be able to afford their ridiculously marked up prices while they maintain their 30% profit margins.
Nothing is going to change or get cheaper, so I don't understand what all the fighting is about.
The only thing that will drive prices down at this point, is either an entirely socialized scheme, or a strongly libertarian scheme with insurance companies largely removed from the picture (which I address lower down on this thread) both with pretty uncomfotable side effects.
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Sure, that's what they want, but by accepting public care they will face lower profits.
With health care inflation at 10% a year and expenditures at 2.6 trillion per year, the option of keeping costs at today's levels and ever rising is just not possible.
The public plan will trap private health services within a model that we define, instead of the other way around.
They may see it as more customers, but in the long run it's a giant scheme to regulate costs.
We made a huge mistake not doing this back in the Clinton years when US health care was more competitive with the rest of the world.
Now it will be very hard to lower costs since we've allowed 20 years of endless inflation.
So it's true we probably won't get immediate savings that make US health care competitive in price, but in the long run we can keep costs from rising and therefore get them back in line with the rest of the world.
We can demand aggressive price regulation as well, the first step is to get a public option in place so we have leverage in the market instead of prices being entirely controlled by insurance and health providers.
There is absolutely no supply and demand driving down prices in the US, so price regulation is a must.
That's what you do to monopolies, regardless of political ideology, both conservatives and liberals are supposed to support anti-monopoly laws.
In any case doing nothing will lead to a collapse of the system, but it will be 20 more years of insane prices and the rich getting great care while we pay the burden of the premiums.
Why do you say costs will not go down?
They are lower in every nation that has public health care, much lower.
Even France who has the worlds top ranked health care pays 30% less per person and their health care inflation is only 7% instead of 10%.
To only reason to believe costs can't go down is to believe that American's are incompetent and unable to accomplish the same goals as Chile, Slovena, Spain and many other nations that don't have the reputations for innovation that we do but who are currently paying far less and living just as long.
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The point about losing health insurance while unemployed is a good one.
I've had the opportunity to raise capital to start my own company for the past year, but I'm hesitant to do so because I can't justify using investors money to pay for my own health care.
If the United States had universal coverage, I would make a go at it.
I think this is one of those unspoken negatives around privatized insurance.
It inhibits people from taking chances because lacking the coverage is a big risk.
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No matter what size a business is, dealing with the US health care system is a massive drag.
It is one of the reasons it can be so hard for US companies to remain competitive with foriegn companies.
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You better hope you don't change jobs after this public option shit is passed.
There is a clause on page 16 of the bill that states that a person can no longer change or sign up for new private insurance after the enactment of the bill.
So much for competition.
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It's not really caring for all humans to arbitrarily decide to take money from one to help another, it, like all state interventions robs everyone to benefit a specific person or group of persons.
If you'd like to help people, I encourage you to help them in your own way.
Most other people will also do the same, but I don't think we have the right to force someone who doesn't want to pay for another person's healthcare to do so.
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What happened to just caring about other human beings?
There's nothing wrong with caring about other human beings, but legislating required charity isn't something I agree with.
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Please look at the cost of health care PER CAPITA in the United States vs ANY OTHER country.
Fine, don't be charitable.
Be as greedy as you want.
Health care in the US still costs entirely too much.
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You say this:
I now have ...
Good health insurance.
Socialized healthcare will not help me...
and then you say this:
...the dirty tactics by the private insurers causing problems for the people that actually have insurance...
Do you see any irony?
Socialized healthcare will not help you because you are insured, and yet insured people are finding that even they need socialized healthcare to protect themselves from the companies that operate the insurance.
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You know that one year of bad luck you refer to?
I've been experiencing it for over a year now...and I'm employed.
Imagine that.
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Well if you think that's bad just wait until you get older and you really literally can't live without health care.
To not see the complete need to get health care prices under control is just to be too young to have experienced the reality of US health care prices.
In the US nobody is suggestion socialized health care.
That is what the UK has.
They are suggesting single payer health care which is more like wholesale insurance, doctors and hospitals remain private.
Calling it socialized is inaccurate at the least and propaganda at best.
The problem is that American seem to be easily convinced that everything run by the government cost more money, when in fact most of these government programs cost less than private programs and offer far more stable prices over the long run.
On top of that the medical industry does not particularly benefit from supply and demand because hospitals are very expensive and have limited service areas.
It's not like building convenience stores or banks across the streets from each other to compete, you can't do that with hospitals.
You have to look at actual demand and service area limitations.
If you build a huge hospital in an attempt to lower prices and you don't have the demand unlike a McDonalds you are going to be losing money hand over fist.
So services that seem highly necessary to the public generally benefit from being centralized and usually government is the best way to do that since private industry basically refuses to cooperate.
Private industry could have standardized prices and care and beat government to the punch, but the chose to ride out the profit train instead and now reform is being demanded.
That was a choice made by the private health care industry and it was a mistake which has cost us trillions of dollars so far.
I'm actually no in public health care to help people.
I support it strictly to get costs under control because I realize that costs are the real point of concern and costs are the limiting factor in care.
People only don't have insurance for two reason, because they don't need it or because they can't afford it and eventually everybody needs health care.
Public health care lowers prices in every other nation that uses them, and not by a small margin, but by huge amounts per year.
You're talking about saving 1 trillion dollars per year if we had a health care system like Canada.
That is an enormous amount of money to effectively inject back into the economy and diversify into other industries and jobs.
It means more US jobs and potentially higher pay, though lets face it, most of the savings will go to our corporate masters bottom line, not out salaries.
That is mostly a problem with allowing huge monopolies to exist which can abuse their workers.
Government and the people need to work together to break down corporate power and get control of their nation back.
We need to stop acting as if government is some alien entity which we can just blame for everything that goes wrong.
Government IS the people and the people are the ones sitting by apathetically allowing corruption to reach record levels before getting off their asses.
Sickness however is not static, it will rise and fall with ecological conditions.
Things like climate change are most likely to increase health care costs.
I would rather the quality of health care fluctuate than the affordability because mediocre health care is still a hell of a lot better than no health care, which is what more and more people have every year running 10% health care inflation per year.
That means costs double every 10 years.
Today's 2.6 trillion will baloon up to 5.2 trillion and dwarf the entire federal budget.
Health care will be 30-40% of the GDP is we continue to do nothing.
So really there is no choice to keep private health care, at least not in the form we have now.
It's just 100% unsustainable and every other industrialized nation in the world is proof that public health care is more affordable while offering similar or even superior quality in most cases.
It's not really a hard decision when you look around the world and every other comparable nation has public health care which costs anywhere from 50-30% less.
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We need to stop the insurance companies from scamming the American public.
I don't care how we do it, but I'm tired of my health care costs going through the roof, but if I actually get sick, my health care company dropping me.
Worse yet, if I get sick, I can never get health insurance again because I have a previous condition.
It's a scam to force the healthy to pay to an ever growing and highly profitable industry.
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No its really about Democrats+Republicans + lobyists from Private Insurance Industry Vs Citizens of the United States
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You are right!
Even if I put on my best rose-colored glasses, I can maybe see it as "99% of Republican politicians, and 60% of Democrat politicians, plus lobbyists and industry...
VS 1% of Repubs, 40% of Dems (in congress) and most of the 300 million or so citizens".
It's important, I think, to understand that we have two parties who trade off power but who are both in the pockets of corporations...
But also when considering our next moves it makes sense to also understand that one of the two is more in the pocket of corporations than the other.
They keep their power by getting us to concentrate on the latter instead of the former.
It's clear that as a population we need to start flushing the toxic career politicians out, but to move in the right direction, we can apply that pressure best by rejecting the Repub positions first.
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As a conservative, I can't believe the tripe some republicans are rolling out against health care reform.
I think that many people buy it more for hate against Obama than the feeble arguments themselves.
Especially considering the unbelievable eight years we have just been through.
It's clear in my mind the republicans wish to remain the party of no significance for the foreseeable future.
But do not underestimate their ability to derail reform.
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Republicans of today are simply not conservatives, that's the confusing part.
A conservative wants to save money, enforce anti-monopoly laws and keep government out of people's houses.
The GOP couldn't be much more opposite to those views.
They push their moral majority on the public, they've spent and expanded government at record amounts that blow away anything the Dems have spent and in the last 40 years of GOP power we've seen corporations grow, consolidate and monopolize are record levels.
We gone from dozens of major media stations to 6 major media stations under the GOP watch.
We gone from small businesses to overwhelming support for mega corporations and big box stores.
That's ALL happened under a consistent GOP majority.
It's easy to blame Dems but the reality is they been the minority party since Nixon so we given almost a generation of power to the GOP and now we are spreading the blame.
They are fake conservatives.
Read a bio on Teddy Roosevelt if you care to see the mindset of a real conservative.
The great conservatives such as Roosevelt and Lincoln would have nothing to do with today's Republican party, it's a joke to call it a conservative party.
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Wait, where's Ron Paul in all of this??
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He's busy with Bruno right now.
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Does he speak up about this sort of shit?
Free market fails in the health care industry.
So he might just shut his face.
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THE FREE MARKET NEVER FAILS!
SOME AUSTRIAN GUYS SAID SO AND THEY'RE NEVER WRONG ABOUT ANYTHING!!!
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He's dead set against any government meddling with the private insurance industry.
He thinks it's still 1992.
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Ron Paul would probably want direct payments to doctors in an attempt to streamline and simplify the system, but the fact is a system like that would lower life expectancy and make health care completely unaffordable to an aging and chronically ill public.
So basically Ron Paul has made no serious attempt to trackle health reform, he has distanced himself from both solutions and offered very little insight into what he would do.
Not that it matters, Paul is no in any position to do anything the GOP is splintering into divisive factions and the libertarians have only a tiny percent of the vote.
He may seem like an important figure, but in reality Ron Paul is just another Nadar or Perdue.
He is also very very old so libertarians/republicans need to think about the future and finding a leader who isn't a total pushover, but also maybe has a little more actual education in economics and law and certainly is younger and more charismatic.
There are basic requirements of marketability in selling your political ideology and Ron Paul really doesn't fit the model.
He is old, he is frail looking, he isn't particularly well educated, and being an evolution denier really hurts his marketability to the more logical minded conservatives..
The ones who actually want fiscal responsibility and anti-monopoly laws because they understand basic economics and see evolution is not particularly a reasonable thing to question.
To say you don't believe in evolution is basically to no understand what the word means.
Ron Paul means to say he doesn't believe in the origin of man, but you can't say evolution isn't real.
You may as well try to deny gravity is real it's happening all around you.
How does bacteria become resistant to anti-biotics if not via evolution?
How does insects become resistant to pesticides?
How does inheriting the traits of your father happen if not via evolution.
You can believe man did no originate from primates, but you can't deny the observable facts of evolution and claim to be logical minded or embracing of science.
The spike of creationist support is definitely in decline for now, so it's really a bad angle to try to argue especially for Republicans who need tolerance and sanity in their party.
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Lobbying simplified.
Http://www.goliathflores.com-a.googlepages.com/Lobbying-Simplified-3.jpg
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Going Dutch: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/03/magazine/03european-t.html
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That was a good read, upvote from me :)
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Yea blame the Democrats who've been trying to pass health care since the 90s, that makes a lot of sense.
The republicans are always against the interest of the people and for the interest of corporations, that's been their MO for last 40 years.
Democrats aren't perfect but to not make the obvious distinction that they've wanted health care reform for 20+ years is just living in denial.
When the public is unhappy they want to blame everyone, but the facts favor Democrats to help citizens and Republican to help corporations.
You can't deny that.
The Democrats are pushing reform through pretty damn quick and the GOP had the last 8 years of majority to do the same and did nothing.
They got the AMA endorsing their plan now and GOP is backed into a corner.
It's not as if the GOP would be reforming health care unless they were forced to do so...
And it's clear the Democrats have been trying to pass health care since the 90s.
Hate Hilary Clinton all you want, but if you backed public health care 20 years ago when the Clinton's had power we'd have literally saved trillions of dollars by now, probably enough to offset the entire bailout so far.
You are living in denial to say the GOP and the Democrats are on the same ground, the Dems always have a harder time agreeing and sure many of them are getting bribes, but reform is happening and it's no coincidence it's happening under a Democrat majority.
Republicans just don't give a shit about the plight of the working man.
It the GOP that pushed deregulation on the country and debt spending and it's no coincidence that spending and deregulation rewarded corporations it's all part of their ideology of rewarding the rich which in their minds trickles down to the public.
Times have changed though and people are buying the trickle down bullshit anymore and rightfully so.
Before the GOP domination of politics in the last 40 years the nation was, without a doubt, running much more efficient.
It's only since deregulation that we've seen costs skyrocket, debt skyrocket, personal wealth shrink and banks failing.
Be honest and put the GOP in it's place and acknowledge the difference in ideologies.
I'm not saying you can trust the Dems, but history shows their bias leans toward the working class and the GOP bias leans toward the wealthy class.
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The democrats only interest is to control you, stop sugar coating it
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I wouldn't say they have been trying to pass health care reform since the 90s.
I would say they tried once briefly and failed.
And many years passed in which they covered themselves in shame sucking Bush's dick.
And then they tried again to pass health care reform at the very nadir of their credibility.
They will fail and then move on to the next stimulus and new round of bailouts.
This time the states!
Thus binding them to the federal government and it's banking masters in this time of crisis.
Or so they think.
Tick.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
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No, it's about the people of the US against the healthcare lobby groups and bad legislation.
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Private insurance industry = republicans
in case you didn't notice
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The American People == Private Citizens
Private health care == Health care run by citizens
What we have in this country, right now, is not by any means a "free-market" system.
We have a botched interventionist policy that needs reform (don't get me wrong).
Some people say, "more intervention, just the correct kind this time, will do the trick" - I happen to believe that we need to stop all the intervention and withdraw all federal holdings in insurance/medical industries (would force most major companies to file bankruptcy), remove any and all federal legislation and let the system build itself as it will according the needs of the consumers in a true market society.
I highly recommend reading Hans-Hermann Hoppe's essay "A Four-Step Health-Care Solution".
It can be found at mises.org, here: http://mises.org/freemarket_detail.aspx?control=279
The most important bit:
To deregulate the industry means to restore it to unrestricted freedom of contract: to allow a health insurer to offer any contract whatsoever, to include or exclude any risk, and to discriminate among any groups of individuals.
Uninsurable risks would lose coverage, the variety of insurance policies for the remaining coverage would increase, and price differentials would reflect genuine insurance risks.
On average, prices would drastically fall.
And the reform would restore individual responsibility in health care.
Edit: It occurs to me I should clarify: I am supporting this philosophy as an uninsured 19 year old American worker.
I work full time, and again, have no insurance whatsoever.
I have no bourgeois perspective - I ride a bicycle to work.
Anyways, a persons perspective is of no difference, it's just - I thought i'd clarify I'm not heartless - in fact, I believe a free market system would best serve the poor and disadvantaged (capitalism is: mass production for mass consumption).
Please don't down mod if you disagree.
I have presented my case without anger and without insult - Not only is it reddiquette, its also just rude.
If you disagree, don't mod at all, and if you'd like, click "reply' (i'd love to hear your opinion!)
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The primary problem with a truly free market is the unmitigated transference of wealth to the top.
Once enough of it gets up there the whole economy becomes top heavy and collapses (see: every relatively free economy that has every existed).
Lots of tactics have been used to combat this: forced land redistribution in ancient China and Rome worked well, a progressive tax system with HIGH marginal tax rates worked pretty well for us in the middle of the twentieth century, etc.
Nothing that has ever worked, to my knowledge, has allowed the free market to carry on unfettered.
I'm a pretty pro free market guy myself.
I just also happen to believe that certain things aren't markets and commodities, such as life, and that the free market left to its own devices will wind up destroying itself, leaving us with an economy that is on the opposite extreme.
In conclusion: moderation, not purism.
There is no magic fix all.
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I used to agree with you, honestly.
In fact, I believe I've even pointed out exactly those instances.
Recently I've been reading "Human Action" by Ludwig Von Mises (the writer whose foundation hosts that essay I linked to) - the theory of the business cycle just makes so much fabulous sense it hurts.
Anyways, the lesson, in a nutshell, is that honestly, very few countries have ever tried a true free market society.
Those that have became the so called "golden ages" of their time (ancient greece got close, Austria/Hungary/Germany and their scholars of the 1800s, and the United States in between 1800-1913), where all close to a true free society (obviously, each had their problems, slavery in the US and Greece is an easy target).
The problem, in my opinion, is that one of two things happen to free societies;
They get destroyed, because free people have no use for weapons (they are not productive!), a la Austria and Greece, or they get co-opted by government interventionism (either abroad peacefully or warlike, or at home productively or corrupt - it does not matter).
When we do see free markets, which are an instant by product of free people, we see the crown jewels of human achievement.
Look at the car industry in the US between the dates I mentioned compared to now - Look at the life expectancy rates between the US and the USSR/Russia in those same dates.
Wherever the distribution of labor is worked out by the free will of individuals, art and society spring up.
I don't know - I'm certainly not saying its a 'magic fix', it's just...
The only logical path.
I do agree with you though, and in all honesty, I would certainly (in my perfect society) vote to leverage a small tax on say, vanities (maybe something that does harm?
I dunno, perfume that uses Ambergris?) - and give that to the sick and disadvantaged.
But that would be the "great liberal american" thing to do, the kind of smallish symbol of kindness - on the other hand, universal health care would be laugh out of the room!
Also, I'm not trying to say health is a commodity - but its a decision that should be left up to the host organism.
Doing everything we can to lower health care costs is our number one goal - we cannot be concerned with corrosion or the elimination of choice.
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The issue I have with that argument is that what you describe as a golden age in America (1800-1913), I see as an era when the majority of the population lived in squalor, labor had no rights and was frequently abused, and J.D.
Rockefeller owned no less than 25% of the entire nation's GDP.
Furthermore, comparing it to the USSR would be hard as the USSR did not exist at that time, and Russia was more or less a free market capitalist economy just coming out of feudalism.
It really doesn't surprise me that we were doing better than them, as pretty much everyone was doing better than them.
On the other hand the general increase in overall quality of life across all classes seen in America during the 40's 50's 60's is unparalleled in human history.
It wasn't too shabby in terms of art, culture and society either.
This was precisely when our marginal tax rate was at its highest.
Sure it had its problems, all periods have problems, but economically speaking, we have yet to do better.
For Greece I'll assume you're referring to Athen's golden age under Pericles.
It was a highly militant society more or less under the tyranny of Pericles himself.
Nothing close to free.
And far from having any use for weapons they picked a very long and costly fight with Sparta right before they got hit with a nasty plague.
Likewise, Rome's golden age occurred right after Augustus took power, and their society moved from a relatively free republic to a rather ruthless monarchy.
I guess what I'm saying is the argument isn't really supported by history.
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A few problems, just off the top of my head
insurance is cheaper to provide for large companies.
Without regulation, we'd end up with very few options and no real competition (as we have).
A healthy market requires many small companies, some of which will go out of business.
What does one do if their insurer goes out of business when they need treatment?
Insurance companies that cheat (e.g., don't have enough capital to handle a once/decade bad year) can drive companies that do the right thing out of business.
Private insurance companies have a choice of where to make efforts to improve their profits--e.g., by making care more efficient/cheaper, or by becoming trickier about denying care to expensive clients (esp on individual policies, where there's little to no risk of losing future business).
The latter is of no benefit to society, but much more attractive to a private for-profit insurance company.
Health care is special in the sense that an untreated, uninsured citizen affects my health and that of my family.
E.g., someone that can't afford to immunize their children puts my children at risk.
One can lose a family member because their spouse sleeps with a friend who went to a prostitute who wasn't regularly checked for STDs.
People get mugged on the street so that the uninsured can raise money to get a needed operation.
Now your well being isn't important enough to me to get me to pay for all your health care personally, but overall having everyone insured improves my quality of life enough to make it worth my share of everyone's health care bill.
It's a perfect case for government intervention.
The "free-market" for certain treatments, esp.
Those for life threating diseases, doesn't work at all, and this has been well known for ages.
If you're going to die, your doctor can charge you any price he/she choses.
And for the record:
Public health care == Health care run by the people, for the people--because that's our system of government.
You act as though the government is some sort of foreign occupier or totalitarian system.
It isn't. You or I or any one of us can run for office and make it better.
It may be more interventionist than you'd like, but that's purely because you have failed to convince enough of your fellow citizens that that's the correct path.
Now you could react by questioning whether you're really so sure of yourself, or you could decide that you're just smarter than everybody else.
Instead, you seem to have decided that government cannot do anything right.
No, government just doesn't do what you want it to do, because you're an oddball.
Live with it.
edit:
i'd love to hear your opinion!
Sheesh!
I take you up on the offer and your buddies downmodded me in seconds.
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Public health care == Health care run by the people, for the people--because that's our system of government.
So then why stop at health care?
Why not have "the people" run every aspect of the country?
The system of government you're describing, when you conflate politics with economics, is precisely totalitarian.
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Stop waiving your hands.
There are plenty of things where a profit motive works fine.
It does not for health care.
The profit motive just kills people.
About 20,000 every year.
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Also, ponies should be able to fly.
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Allow a health insurer to offer any contract whatsoever, to include or exclude any risk, and to discriminate among any groups of individuals.
Uninsurable risks would lose coverage
And who decides what is an "uninsurable risk"?
What do we do with the people deemed "unisurable risks"?
Speaking as one who is discriminated against unfairly by the current health care industry and who is currently (wrongly) in the "uninsurable risk" group, I think Hoppe is a cold son of a bitch.
Its easy to say this shit until it is you who are unable to buy care for some stupid reason that doesn't even make sense.
You're 19 - so you're still bulletproof.
I used to be bulletproof too.
That wears off eventually.
I have hereditary hemochromatosis - a genetic condition that tends to onset at about age 40 in men and post menopause in women.
It is nothing more than a metabolic propensity to absorb excess iron.
Left untreated, iron builds up in the heart, liver, kidneys and other organs and can result in diabetes, cirrhosis, kidney failure, and heart muscle damage.
Sounds nasty and expensive, right?
The treatment is to donate four units of blood at the local blood drive per year.
That's all it takes to keep my iron saturation levels normal.
Not only is my "treatment" free, there is a societal benefit.
Yet I'm still denied coverage.
US health care system is currently a free market system run amok.
The primary problem is that the profit motive results in insurers working to keep care scarce in order to maximize profitability.
To do this they deny coverage to people they consider risky and deny claims.
However, its not maximum profits we seek.
Americans want maximal coverage for all at the lowest price.
This is our desired goal and no free market driven system will achieve that goal.
Instead, Americans have expressed the desire that health care be treated as a non-profit public service.
Other things people demand as non-profit public service include emergency services (fire, police, ambulances), electrical power distribution, and where I live (on an island in puget sound) affordable ferry service to the mainland as an extension to the internet highway system.
These are things that clearly benefit the public good but are either too big or too unprofitable to be taken on by private enterprise.
If the free market will arise to satisfy every need - why did no private enterprise take on the construction of the interstate highway system?
If it did not exist, what are the odds that it would be built today?
When a population substantially agrees on a desire for a public service, they charge their government with raising the money and providing it to the public.
So it should be with health insurance.
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There are some things that should be beyond the profit motive.
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Having a healthier nation will, in the long run, bring much more profits and other benefits to US, than keeping tens of millions without insurance.
For many poor people and many people on welfare, the obstacle on their way to prosperity and financial independence is their health.
Health care reform will become a net benefit, despite possible job losses within the insurance industry.
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A lot of posts about this lately.
We should just have one huge megapost so people can stop making the same arguments over and over
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After thinking about it for a while, I trust the government to provide health care for me more than I trust them to 'defend' U.S.
Interests. With health care, if they screw it up, there's no where to hide.
The people paying for it are directly interacting with the system.
On the other hand, the armed forces are almost always deployed overseas.
The people paying for it have no oversight of what they're paying for.
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1 in 5 Americans think the Earth revolves around the Sun.
With that said, no matter how logical your argument for universal healthcare, there is going to be someone who cannot grasp how serious the risk is if we stay on the present course of status quo.
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This is my favorite stat for explaining contemporary foolishness for just about any issue.
If people believe this in our supposed modern society, we're a long ways from solving all our humanly problems.
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I believe you meant to say that 1 in 5 Americans believe the Sun revolves around the Earth.
Www.8bm.com
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That's what he meant to say but he fucked it up royally.
In fact, he fucked it up so bad that he made himself into one of the very people he was trying to ridicule.
A terrible slip but fun for me as I'm drunk as hell and tripping on the irony.
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1 in 5 Americans think the Earth revolves around the Sun.
I really hope you have that backwards...
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I've posted this in another thread, and will post it again here, because it is just as applicable:
No one ever says this because it doesn't fit in to either right or left political ideology, but the problem is not with the way we run insurance (i.e private vs.
Government run) but in the existence of medical insurance in and of itself, that is there is a big corporate or government entity that when the need arises is expected to pay the price of whatever the medical service provider and pharmaceutical company demands for services rendered, leaving no incentive to charge reasonable fees.
Anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of economics can tell you this is a perversion of the normal economic model.
Those providing the service do not compete with each other, rather the competition lies between middle men (insurance companies) that interact with all the same service providers.
There are several factors related to the inflation of medical coverage in the United States.
One is the amount of doctors available.
The American Medical Association beginning in 1910, decided everyone would benefit from fewer, more highly trained doctors, and that medical schools should raise standards, tuition and improve facilities, the number of medical schools then dropped from 131 to 81, and of course the fee doctors charged went up.
Soon after it was the American Hospital Association that expanded prepaid hospital service plans that had just been developed to the community level, a precursor to Blue Cross Blue Shield (set up in the 1930s) this eliminated the need for hospitals to offer competitive prices against each other, as they all began to pull money out of the same pool.
Prices again went up.
The real spike in health care inflation happened as a result of what happened in 1940-1960, when we went from under 20mil people insured to 140mil, or aprox.
75% of the country.
After which, health care costs went up approximately 6.5% per year until 1970 and continued at a rate of 4% since, until it spiked at 90% in 2004 and then dropped to where we are now, at 85% covered.
Despite advancements in technology that have made the same level of health care cheaper, and other methods such as outpatient care, the price of medical coverage is through the roof, but then again so are doctor’s salaries, hospital profits, and the markup on pharmaceuticals.
If one eliminated health insurance from the equation, they immediately get a 20-30% drop in coverage prices because A) they are no longer burdened with the insurance industries 10% overheard or B) 10-5% profit margin, neither of which goes toward medical treatment, but furthermore eliminates an undetermined C) the burden of insurance fraud which is levied on normal consumers and is not always caught (no insurance means no entity to defraud)
Furthermore hospitals will not be able to charge $791 for a pair of $12 dollar stockings as price competition between hospitals will be reintroduced, hospitals know that joe sick pack does not have the deep pockets that an insurance company or government entity does, and will be forced to charge a reasonable amount, then the salaries for doctors, nurses, as well as the cost of education for each will go down accordingly.
Finally if one were to open to US medical field up to qualified foreign doctors, the price of physicians would go down, supply and demand.
It seems that Nobel Laureate economist Milton Friedman agreed with me, at least in principal.
Sources: A history of the development of the US medical insurance industry
Journal of Economics and Finance - A Note on Health Care Inflation - PDF!
Horror Story of horror stories - Article about a 2.7 million dollar medical bill
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Great points but...
If the salary of physicians drops dramatically, how then do you plan to compensate people for undergoing 8+ years of education and years of on-site training...
Willingness to help others can only go so far when you have hundreds of thousands in loans hanging around.
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You assume the drop will be dramatic, there is no "dramatic" way out of this.
Even if it were dramatic, how is that compaired to the suffering of everyone else?
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Point taken but lets say that it is dramatic...
Less incentive means less people who will desire to go through it all...
Meaning less doctors.
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Less incentive will mean less tuition meaning a less "it all" to go through.
The market evens everything out.
MBA courses, Law Schools, and Medical Degree cost money because schools expect people to be able to get a job that can pay off the absurd amount of debt they levy on those who seek such degrees.
It doesn't actually cost anywhere near that much money to train people to read books and sit trough classes all day, nor does it cost that much money to force those on a medical degree paths to work in a hospital for virtually nothing for several years before they are a full fledged doctors;
Though you would never know looking at the tuition rates.
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I'll admit they may play up the costs but don't forget that there are a lot of resources that must be paid for in medical school that go far beyond any normal tuition.
The teachers themselves are doctors and must be compensated well to attract them to teaching.
Medical schools are also required to purchase liability and malpractice insurance for all students under their wing.
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Number one is the fact that your teachers themselves are doctors and must be compensated well to attract them to teaching.
Not if the alternative, practicing medicine, pays less, the incentive to attract them to teaching will be much less then as well.
This economics stuff is all quite well interrelated and like the price of medical care, inflation and deflation are quite synergistic.
malpractice insurance for all students under their wing.
Doctor with less money means they are less of a target for malpractice lawsuits!
Meaning lower malpractice insurance rates!
:D All of those resources you are referring to are already inflated because of the exact same principals.
Even the normal textbooks, no one in their right mind believes they cost hundreds of dollars per to write or print.
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I like this comment - I just don't get the inane ramble I read a few comments below...
Bonus points for Joe Sickpack;
Even if it comes from somewhere else it's new to me!
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Here is my delimma.
We are not handing health care over to a benevolent government - we're handing it to one who either mows down brown people directly, or subsidizes it (Israel) - one that wiretaps, has heinous drug laws that imprison minorities - I don't trust them with health care reform.
There was something on reddit earlier today about how they spent some $18 million to build a single website =\
Once we go 'single-payer' there is no going back and we should take the time to resolve our other issues and show that our government is competent enough to handle a task such as private health insurance.
- and this would be my argument if I was going to just cave in and realize that I will be coerced into this system and imprisoned, fined or by some other means punished if I don't accept my labour is going to be directed to something I may not support ala income tax.
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...and guided by the wisdom of Ted Kennedy
Is that the same Wisdom that led him to let some poor girl riding as his passenger drown after he drove his care while drunk into a lake, and the same wisdon that led him to not report it until the next morning?
Edit: Is this the same Ted Kennedy whose sixth largest financial contributor in the 2006 election cycle was the Pharmaceuticals/Health Products Industry?
No wonder this article pins it all on insurance and ignores the real money makers, those who determine the price, the hospitals and pharmaceutical companies.
Again here you Americans go, following around false saviors with unterior motives.
Or is this that the Same Cris Dodd who has receive 10% of his political contibutions for his 2010 Senate Race from the Health Professionals and Pharmaceuticals/Health Products Industries?
Who is absent form this list?
Health Insurance.
Whose going to make money from thier plan?
Doctors, Pharmaceutical companies and Health Product companies...
Both sides of your dichotomy are working to fleece you.
Edit: This was a reply to a deleted comment: Pharmaceutical companies spend more money on Marketing than on R&D, Usually around 15% is spent on R&D.
Source Meawhile profit margins can be as high as 30%, (normal profit marging for a business is 5%) - Source Oh but its ALL the insurance companies.
2002 2003 2004 Pfizer 28.3% 8.7% 21.6% Johnson & Johnson 18.2% 17.2% 18.0% Merck 13.8% 30.4% 25.3% Bristol-Myers Squibb 11.8% 14.9% 12.3% Wyeth 30.5% 12.9% 7.1% Eli Lilly 24.4% 20.4% 13.1% Abbott 15.8% 14.0% 16.4% Schering-Plough 19.4% -1.1% -11.4%
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Blah blah blah. You lose.
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I don't pay american taxes, or have to suffer American Insurance (anymore), I'm afraid you lose.
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So, you're just some loser bitching about another country's internal issues.
No, you lose. Jesus, do you lose.
Get a fucking life.
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I didn't say it wasn't my country, learn to read.
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I can read. You implied what you implied.
At this point I could give a fuck about your games.
You're a small man for bringing up Chappaquiddick.
Very small. It's pathetic to bring up at this point, especially considering the situation we find ourselves in.
But one thing is for certain.
You're on the other side than I am and you have lost this one.
Huge loss. Public healthcare is going to happen and will be here to stay, forever, like Social Security and Medicare.
Sorry your boys acted like children when they were in charge.
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Well comrade, you are a sad man for supporting a man like Kennedy, just because he is in your party.
You're on the other side than I am and you have lost this one.
I am not on you side, but on the other I am not.
Again with these assumptions and dichotomies.
Its the electorate like you, on both sides of the political spectrum, which is why we have such shitty politicians.
Sorry your boys acted like children when they were in charge.
Didn't like the neo-cons either.
You are the one governed by them more that I, so I guess they are your boys.
Public healthcare is going to happen and will be here to stay, forever,
You know what is also there to stay forever?
The military industrial complex.
Now you (not me) are going to have to lift the burden of that $705 Billion dollar travesty AND a new one that is going to be equally as big.
Enjoy your debt.
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And unfortunately, the private insurance industry will win.
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WHAT THE FUCK PEOPLE!
IT IS THE 21ST CENTURY.
NO ONE SHOULD DIE BECAUSE OF FINANCIAL REASON.
THERE SHOULD BE NO DEBATE.
Murder for profit health care has proven their point.
You can make a killing, by collecting hundreds, even thousands of dollars, a months for decades, and the denying that person treatment that can save them.
( And make a killing on the bottom line)
FUCK ANYONE WHO SUPPORTS OUR CURRENT SYSTEM.
YOU SUPPORT MURDER FOR PROFIT HEALTH CARE.
F U C K !
! ! !! !!! ! 1 ! !
! !
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There are some non-profit HMOs...
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There is a lot more benefits to socialized health care that people don't realize.
I live in a country with it, so I will break it down:
You never have to worry about health care for employees.
Hiring/Firing is easy.
It is very easy to start a company when you don't need to worry about healthcare for your family.
Going to school if a lot easier since you are always covered, so education and career changes are smoother.
It reduces addiction.
A drug of alcohol addict never looses coverage for their problem if their life goes into a downward spiral, for instance loosing your job.
It reduces crime, see the above point and add in inmates in prison getting help for their phycological problems.
It means great doctors.
They spend their time and energy focused on medicine, and have no clue about health insurance bureaucracy.
Billing is done through a single computer program.
You get great statistics.
You can gather up all the info from the central billing/tracking system and see emerging threats quickly, or how well drugs are actually working.
It's a big money saver since the focus is not on profit.
For instance, it is common to send you home from the hospital early and have a nurse sent to you house to change bandages and check on you.
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My aging, conservative parents have been generally healthy and are satisfied with their private insurance policy.
That said, they refuse to believe that their private health care will punt them IN A HEARTBEAT if they come down with something serious - and my mom as a family history of cancer while Dad has been smoking for 40+ years.
This alone keeps me from resting easy without a socialized option out there.
It wouldn't be a cure-all, but at the moment I carry a constant terror of what could be diagnosed any day.
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In most areas of the country, the insurance market is dominated by one or two large providers.
Rather than bargaining for lower rates, large insurer conglomerates are transferring the higher prices charged by hospitals to patients and padding their profits.
Between 1999 and 2008, as premiums increased 117 percent for families, the profits of the top 10 insurance companies grew by approximately 1,000 percent.
During the same period, insurers merged more than 400 times, but employee premiums increased nearly eight times faster than average U.S.
Incomes.
Large insurers have little incentive to bargain for lower prices, and smaller insurers do not compete on premiums to gain market share.
Instead, they “follow the pricing of the dominant insurer” and compete on risk.
As the Urban Institute has pointed out, “competition in insurance markets is often about getting the lowest risk enrollees as opposed to competing on price and the efficient delivery of care.”
No shit.
All the free market Ron Paul people like to talk about competition and efficiency.
That is the last thing business wants.
Without proper regulation, business will tend to consolidate into larger and larger megacorporations in order to gain a stranglehold on the market and raise prices.
If they can't do that, they'll fix prices.
It's natural and happens in any capitalist system if you let it.
The fact that it's happening with health insurers is especially worrying because it's so important, yet some people will still bang the free market drum.
Ideology trumps reality I guess.
Free markets work fine with proper regulation, but I wouldn't trust it with any amount of regulation for healthcare if it means the poor won't have proper access to heathcare.
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Without proper regulation, business will tend to consolidate into larger and larger megacorporations in order to gain a stranglehold on the market and raise prices.
Actually, this is what happens when you don't have a free market.
Compliance with regulations is costly, this favors larger businesses and stifles competition.
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But when the dust settles, remember that if this succeeds, there is an "obligar" by any citizen when voting in 2010, 2012, 2014, show your gratitude for the Democratic party!
It won't be the Conservatives, the Republicans, and certainly not the Libertarians that pass (I operate off the premise that if in the majority, a conservative party would never introduce Healthcare legislation, hence they can only "pass", or "reject" by way of vote) any type of Healthcare reform.
If you think the Democratic or Liberal ideology and its elected constituents are just a little less of a "sell-out", think again!
The video doesn't lie, nor the congressional record!
It's also a little silly not to point out that logically speaking, this is, on many levels, very-much about Liberalism versus Conservatism.
There is cleary one side of the spectrum against any type of Healthcare reform, where the other side, is clearly working to effect Healthcare reform.
We live with proxies people, we have elected representatives that are *responsible for making laws, establishing regulation, hearing grievances, etc.
And so, if that is a fact, how-can-this not be about Liberal versus Conservative?
We have no practical way to interface, enforce and effect systems, processes, etc.
To institute things like Healthcare reform, alternative energy, economic reform, etc.
Other than using our elected representatives & senators to represent "us", the people!
Wake up!
You can debate all you want, but when looking at the numbers, it's very clear liberals are "predominantly" inclined to support and are actively trying to effect Healthcare reform.
But I tremendously respect the essence of your post---
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Right. it's citizens vs republicans AND democrats!
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And similarly:
Purchasing Household Items Isn't About Democrats .s Republicans -- It's About the Citizens of the United States v.
The Private Retail Industry.
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A healthcare thread:
I'll bring some facts.
At the moment the USA pays roughly 15% of its GDP, 5% more than any other nation, and pays more than DOUBLE the average per capita for healthcare.
How much? DOUBLE This is extremely wasteful.
Universal Health Care makes sense.
The UK enacted health reform in 1948.
Just after the nightmare of WWII they were broke.
Universal Health Care saves the country money.
The US system in extremely costly and ineffective at delivering healthcare.
It is very effective in transferring money into the pockets of the Insurance companies and Medical establishments.
World Healthcare Organization rankings by performance
1 France
2 Italy
3 San Marino
4 Andorra
5 Malta
6 Singapore
7 Spain
8 Oman
9 Austria
10 Japan
11 Norway
12 Portugal
13 Monaco
14 Greece
15 Iceland
16 Luxembourg
17 Netherlands
18 United Kingdom
19 Ireland
20 Switzerland
..
....
.
37 U.S.A
World healthcare Organization rankings by per capita spending (Medical research spending not included)
1 United States: 4,271
2 Switzerland: 3,857
3 Norway: 3,182
4 Denmark: 2,785
5 Luxembourg: 2,731
6 Iceland: 2,701
7 Germany: 2,697
8 France: 2,288
9 Japan: 2,243
10 Netherlands: 2,173
11 Sweden: 2,145
12 Belgium: 2,137
13 Austria: 2,121
14 Canada: 1,939
15 Australia: 1,714
16 Finland: 1,704
17 Italy: 1,676
18 United Kingdom: 1,675
19 Israel: 1,607
20 Ireland:
America #1 in spending yet #37 in performance.
Need more be said?
The USA pays as much out of the public purse as the average OECD nation, more than nations like France, Germany, the UK, Sweden, yet unlike the average OECD nation does not have any form of universal coverage
On top of the public purse monies the citizens of the US pay ANOTHER amount of cash, equal to the amount they pay in taxes, from their own pockets for their personal healthcare.
So the USA pays approx DOUBLE the OECD average and yet manages not to have Universal Health Care.
It's a hell of an achievement.
How can Americans pay for a Rolls Royce and yet take delivery of a Chevy with a puncture?
Why won't the USA consider the solution every other Western nation has found ?
This is why.
The Medical-Industrial Complex has donated $833,259,267 directly to members of Congress.
Not counting the huge amounts of money given to presidential candidates like Obama, McCain and Kerry, the biggest donations have gone to the 3 worst industry shills who have been well-paid to make sure there will never be effective, robust health care reform:
Arlen Specter (R-D- PA- $4,026,933)
Max Baucus (DLC- MT- $2,833,731)
Mitch McConnell (R-KY- $2,758,468)
And when you just go right to Big Insurance, the non-presidential candidates who got the biggest legalized bribes were the 7 senators who have been tasked with the job of killing effective health care reform.
Ben Nelson (DLC-NE- $1,196,799)
Max Baucus (DLC- MT- $1,184,113)
Joe Lieberman (DLC- CT- $1,036,302)
Arlen Specter (R-D- PA- $1,035,530)
Mitch McConnell (R-KY- $929,207)
Chuck Grassley (R-IA- $884,724)
Health Care In America
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No it's not. It's about reducing the price of medical care.
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Oh America - I really don't understand you sometimes...
I can't even see how this is a debate.
Public health cover just works, people who are sick get treated, and nobody gets bankrupted along the way - of course there is the occasional bureaucratic disaster, but they happen in the private sector too!
In Australia, Medicare is about the only thing a government wouldn't dare touch.
That they lose government is a given, the only question would be if it happened at an election or sooner!
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The problem is we already pay as much tax as y'all do in Australia, but you have health care, the US can't afford it.
It just goes to show the US government is completely inept at running anything efficiently, and somehow or another you think the US government, with government insurance, will drive down the cost of health care?
They can't even get rid of the Algae in the reflecting pool on the mall in DC, what makes you think the US government can fix all of this?
The US government is broke, it needs to fix it's own house before it trots off and does this type of stuff.
It's just downright irresponsible.
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I just sat on the phone for an hour for a "town hall meeting" with congressman Bill Posey, I was never chosen to speak.
He ranted continuously about the government getting between the constituents and their doctors.
It was no meeting.
He was dictating the terms and words of the three or four huge insurance companies he and the republican party represent.
Most of the "town hallers" were a misinformed, desperate, (90% of the callers were on medicare and happy with it ) group of seniors.
Posey, at one time mentioning that three thousand were "taking part".
It is horrifying that these cons get in office praying on the fears of old folks and the vast uninformed only to further worsen their lot in life, while they work in truth representing a small pack of very powerful insurance companies.
Shame on this creep and all the congressional and senate sell outs.
It is repulsive to actually hear them "at work".
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They are talking about a public option to buy into government health plan or go private.
Does anyone know if there is an option to not buy any plan public or private?
Or will you be forced to buy one or the other?
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That's not decided yet, but it's a possibility.
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Ultimately, when people get done squabbling over financial concerns, the debate OUGHT to be about true science v.
The profit-driven, pharmaceutical-based research about health and healing.
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We will see who is on the side of citizens and who sides with the insurance companies.
No matter what, I ask everyone to remember next November.
If you return the culprits to office again after they screw you or fail to reward the right thinkers then you have failed twice.
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Biosynthesis of silver nanoparticles from Staphylococcus aureus and its antimicrobial activity against MRSA and MRSE.
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It's about how much freedom you are willing to lose to get something for "free".
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You guys think America is inept but look at how we run our fucking army and navy and air force.
They are the biggest fucking meanest military ever, and yet we can't run an efficient health care system?
GTFO!!!!
There's simply a conflict of interest, the insurance lobby wants health care to remain the same forever, while we depend on our military to remain a strong nation and theres no fucking aroud with the military.
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