This is not about Christianity, it's about smart business. You don't reward losers/stupid people. You make them learn personal responsibility. Like don't buy the booze, cigarettes, drugs, extra plazma tv's, new cars every year or so etc.... and then b!tch about how poor you are and how you can't afford insurance. And stop having kids you can't afford and expect the government/ winners/taxpayers to pay for them too.
Universal Health Care
- Thread starter Asguard
- Start date
This is not about Christianity, it's about smart business. You don't reward losers/stupid people. You make them learn personal responsibility. Like don't buy the booze, cigarettes, drugs, extra plazma tv's, new cars every year or so etc.... and then b!tch about how poor you are and how you can't afford insurance. And stop having kids you can't afford and expect the government/ winners/taxpayers to pay for them too.
Your attitude is selfish and greedy. We all pay for roads, disease prevention (CDC), all kinds of services, there's no reason we should let Americans die because some corporation wants a slightly bigger bottom line.
Ok.
Anyway, since sandy's out of here, what I was going to explain was this:
I was an engineering consultant for two years. Trying for the entrepenurial thing. Nothing grand mind you. I have a modest home, typical middle america lifestyle. BUt for those two years I was sans insurance. Why? Because, even with my modest lifestyle and perfectly reasonable consultants income, I could not afford the health costs! I would have had to sell my house. Literally. I had to all but force the company to hire me as a regular employee so I could taqke advantage of the bulk pricing of insurance that only large companies get!
You all can figure out what this means.
Anyway, since sandy's out of here, what I was going to explain was this:
I was an engineering consultant for two years. Trying for the entrepenurial thing. Nothing grand mind you. I have a modest home, typical middle america lifestyle. BUt for those two years I was sans insurance. Why? Because, even with my modest lifestyle and perfectly reasonable consultants income, I could not afford the health costs! I would have had to sell my house. Literally. I had to all but force the company to hire me as a regular employee so I could taqke advantage of the bulk pricing of insurance that only large companies get!
You all can figure out what this means.
HA! Exactly! Read my last post.
Who has to pay for this healthcare? I do. So do all my friends. We have to pay for the healthcare GIVEN to people who choose not to have it. Sorry, but I don't want to pay for your healthcare. Just like I don't want to pay 70%
of my taxes for schooling your kids, but I have to. Socialized healthcare is bad. Bad for people. Bad for America.
So the good Samaritan was a fool ?
"The United States spent $4,178 per captia on health care"
Figure one: health spending per capita shows that the UK only spends 1,461 per capita
Now on to infant mortalitiy rates 7.2 per 1000 live births in the US
Compared to 5.9 per 1000 in the UK
Sweeden on the other hand spent $1,746 per capita and has a infant mortality rate of 3.5 per 1000
http://dll.umaine.edu/ble/U.S. HCweb.pdf
University of Maine
2001
pritty conclusive results dont you think, the only thing i havent managed to find at the moment is exact figures for the percentage of spending by goverment compared to private but im sure you can guess what that will look like
Figure one: health spending per capita shows that the UK only spends 1,461 per capita
Now on to infant mortalitiy rates 7.2 per 1000 live births in the US
Compared to 5.9 per 1000 in the UK
Sweeden on the other hand spent $1,746 per capita and has a infant mortality rate of 3.5 per 1000
http://dll.umaine.edu/ble/U.S. HCweb.pdf
University of Maine
2001
pritty conclusive results dont you think, the only thing i havent managed to find at the moment is exact figures for the percentage of spending by goverment compared to private but im sure you can guess what that will look like
We are trying. It's hard to overcome the social bias and mythology surrounding "socialized" medicine and the very real corporate power that's behind it.
We are getting to that point something has to be done. Because the condition continues to worsen. Our healthcare costs increase by more than 10 percent a year and the average income only increases a few percentage points.
Sorry Sandy, Sandy is a really good example of why we do not have universal healthcare services in this country. Billions of dollars have been spent by the healthcare industry not only on our elected representatives but on the citizens re-enforcing all of the notions espoused by Sandy. I have been in these kind of debates in the SciForums and with other Republicans outside the forum and there just is no convincing them...no matter how many facts you have, and no matter how logical you are, this sizable section of the electorate is convinced that socialized medicine is almost as bad as satan. These ideas have been very carefully re-enforced by the Republican Party and Healthcare Industry over the course of several decades. You can refute every single point with fact and they will not be convinced.
Sandy may not know that there are instances within the United States where socialized medicine is succefully in place and have been for decades.
Most notably, our Military and with our senior citizens in the form of a medicare program. Unfortunately, our Republican dominated congress and president Bush passed a prescription drug bill which gives medication to senior citizens at a reduced. This was one of the drug industry responses to keep people from leaving the country to get prescription drugs. This medicare prescription drug law forbids the government from negotiating price for the medications with the drug companies. Our government is bound by law to pay whatever price the drug industry demands for drugs covered under this program.
Earlier last year, the Democrats gained a slim margin of control over our Congress. Immediately, the drug companies begain flooding the air and TV waves with advertisments on the horors of allowing the the government to negotiate witht the drug companies for lower prices. I frankly was astonished with the quickness of the ad program and how they were justifying the restrictions on price negotiations. In the United States it is legal to lie (freedom of speech), especially with respect to politics. Republicans and corporations have learned that if you lie, you can confuse the heck out of the electorate and that is all you need to do to keep them from taking action.
This is not an argument of logic. It is an arguement of emotion...cultivated with with ads, and apeals to old fashioned values in our churches. Logic will get you no where with the Sandys and the rest of the Republican base that has been carefully cultivated over the course of decades. In their world, Non Republican sources of information are lies. They are always oppressed by evil liberals...all good strong emotional arguements, but not very logical.
What is amazing to me and what more Americans need to understand is that socialized medicine is not a bad thing. We have limited socialized medicne today for our military disabled veterans and our senior citizens. And it works very well. Whenever I hear folks from other industrialized countries talk about healthcare, they all seem very pleased with what they have and would not trade it for what we have in the United States. The arguements that Sandy and others provide against it just melt away, both the subjective and objective arguements.
Sandy references not wanting to pay for folks who do not have medical insurance. Suprise she is paying for it now if. Medical providers are required to provide emergency service anyone. So all of those uninsured folks are using our emergency services to get medical treatment. And of course they cannot pay their bills. So who pays for that cost. It is those who have insurance. Those costs are operational costs that are passed on to those who have insurance. As more and more folks cannot afford insurance this situation will continue to get worse. So something must change. As you know treating average folks through your emergency services is a very high expensive way of providing healthcare services.
What we should be doing is examining every aspect of the health care delivery system for efficiency and quality. For example, globally medical doctors globally only receive about six years of training. In the United States doctors are required at a minimum to train for at least eight years. Are those extra years necessary? Do they yeild a beter doctor? I think not. But that extra training adds to the cost of our healthcare system.
Now I don't want to hurt Sandy, because I like her. But she is misled as are many people here in the United States. Over the course of the last several decade we have seen the emergence of something refered to as Neo-Conservatism. This is a political philosophy orginated with a guy called Leo Strauss. It is very uggly. If you have a few moments I suggest you look up some info on Leo Strauss.
Will the American electorate get past this..God I hope so!
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Leo_Strauss
http://www.uregina.ca/arts/CRC/pdf/The making of a Straussian.pdf
Neocons divide the world into good and bad. It is a very easy concept to understand. The United States is good any thing or one opposing their leadership is bad…liberals are immoral. Any information not complimentary to their cause is heretical.. Information sources that are not putting forth party line cannot be believed and must be infected with liberalism. Neocon followers are carefully taught they can only believe information coming from sanctified Republican sources.
http://www.rightwingnews.com/quotes/coultertreason.php
http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/10587.html
By the way, I am a life long Republican. But I am not very happy with my party...have not been for more that two decades...since the Neo-Cons took over. Again, I do not want to trash or hurt Sandy. I value her, she is a good human being...just a wee bit misled through no fault of her own.
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isnt the republican party in the pocket of big business like the librals are here?
if so wouldnt THEY be putting pressure on the republicans?
The way it seemed to me this should be a no brainer
for the left wing its about social justice and human rights but for the right wing its about ecernomics both of which say that a free top class education system and a free top class medical system including preventative primary health care are essential. otherwise you end up with either illierate uneducated staff that cost a lot to reskill and then on top of that they get to sick to work and cant afford to get better so the employer has to start again. They are both part of the essential infustructer of our econermie
if so wouldnt THEY be putting pressure on the republicans?
The way it seemed to me this should be a no brainer
for the left wing its about social justice and human rights but for the right wing its about ecernomics both of which say that a free top class education system and a free top class medical system including preventative primary health care are essential. otherwise you end up with either illierate uneducated staff that cost a lot to reskill and then on top of that they get to sick to work and cant afford to get better so the employer has to start again. They are both part of the essential infustructer of our econermie
It is a no brainer. But it is not about logic, it is about emotion and control. Our educational system has and continues to degrade. I am begining to think it is by design. With globalization, you do not need a large educated population domestically because you can reach out to other areas of the globe at lower cost. Educated folks are much more dificult to control politically. On the left, the labor unions are more interested in increasing their compensation that educating our children. So ironically both left and right wind up on the same side of the education coin in the United States.
And both parties are in the pocket of big business...but especially the Republican (Conservative Party).
And both parties are in the pocket of big business...but especially the Republican (Conservative Party).
you haven't a clue to what your talking about. insurance that will accully cover you is expensive a lot of people cannot afford it. the economic benfits should be enough reason alone to get universal health care
No. I'm not discussing ANYTHING with you. You and spidergoat have personally attacked me. I'm done here. Nice debate, boys. Resort to personal attacks and avatar desecration. If I did that I would be banned in a heartbeat.
do you understand the difference between an economic good and a public good
When Clinton tried to pass her Rube-Goldberg Health Care Scheme, the result was the Democrats lost control of congress for the first time in forty years! The people do not want government run healthcare. Every interaction we have with the government is unpleasant. The DMV, the IRS, the Police. Dealing with the government means long lines, inefficient service, and surly, arrogant workers, it sucks.
As Jefferson said, the government that governs best, governs least. Allowing the government to take over 16% of the economy is hardly "governing least".
No, I don't. Direct comparisons of infant mortality between different countries can be very misleading. The US counts every baby, no matter how young, or how sick, or how premature. Many nations do not. Many of the deaths we report in the US are counted as "still born" in the rest of the world. From Wikipedia:
So which countries does that make a difference in, and how much?madanth said:
Sweden and the UK, for example - are they hiding their dead babies as stillbirths ? Canada? Israel? Netherlands ?
How are they rigging their height stats, disability rates, and prorated lifespan numbers, making the US look bad ?
The US has worse health care stats than most comparable countries in almost every general category possible. The US spends twice as much per capita on health care as most of these countries - often, even, more tax money and public expenditure (our taxpaid veterans', children's, and old folks health care is much more expensive due to lack of universal health care otherwise). Our taxes are higher, total for health care, than some of these systems.
It's theoretically possible that the US could establish universal health care on a single payer plan for about the same tax bill already being paid. Other countries have. The extra coverage would be essentially free, once the backlog of untreated illness and injury had been cleared up.
Clearly the US system is broken, and breaking further. The central problem seems to be basing health care access on employment, and setting up a market system for rationing it. There is no way to set up an efficient market for health care, and the need correlates negatively with employment. It's a stupid system - the problems and idiocies are completely obvious.
Many factors, other than the healthcare system, have a huge impact on issues such as life expectency. Llfestyle, overeating, lack of exercise, obesity. All of these factors influence those stats and are beyond the control of the "health care system". The health care system comes into play when dealing with specific diseases. And when you measure outcomes for specific diseases, the US outperforms all the socialist paradises out there.
People come from all over the world for treatment in the US. Most major medical advances originate here.
Of course the healthcare system is not perfect. But most of us would rather try to address specific problems rather than scrapping the whole system.