A G O N Y

Do you mean for profit insurance companies that deny paying patients healthcare so they can make more money?

Insurance is a racket, has always been a racket, and will always be a racket. I don't want profiteers deciding whether that liver transplant I need is too costly so they will keep denying or delaying it hoping I die before they have to deliver. Fuck that. Socialized medicine in some form is the only way to go if you want a healthy populace.

V I want to see what the two bulldog pups look like now.

I will post some pics soon, they are getting big... Calia is a monster.

-V

Pry i know you are passionate about health care, and i am not saying things are not broken.

I am saying is the government has it paws in to much, Adults are that Adults its not my job to help them unless i want to. If you want basic health care i could be fine with that if they where only allowed to go to government clinics and hospitals (military health style).

They shouldn't be allowed to go to USC or UCLA or City of Hope or any other For-profit or non-profit hospitals unless they buy their own additional health coverage or the hospital on their own grants the use of the basic government health plan patients.

Oh if I could think of a way, I would do away with for-pay healthcare altogether. Making health a commodity is immoral in my world which I fully understand is very close to fantasy land.

i'm pretty laid back politically but for health care i think everyone should be taken care of, young, old, middle aged etc - only the rich have access to the best care is bullshit - if you want to deny medical care to people why not deny them education, water, food, power, hey why not round them all up...

as for the people who think national healthcare is a socialist direction, well we have welfare, social security, taxes, public education, public utilities, water districts, police and fire depts, a military... oh shit those are all things that wouldn't be government operated in a capitaist society.

Doomsayer wrote:as for the people who think national healthcare is a socialist direction, well we have welfare, social security, taxes, public education, public utilities, water districts, police and fire depts, a military... oh shit those are all things that wouldn't be government operated in a capitaist society.

doubtful. More likely corporations would pick up the tab, raise the prices, etc... Coca-Cola highway, that'll be $2 please, drive through. or maybe the telecoms will take it over and bundle it up for us into a nice package deal!

I'm not terribly up to date on all this, but I can tell you this about health care in a certain other country... I know a girl from Sweden that's here in the states to study at a local university. She ended up getting pregnant on a visit home with her old boyfriend. Her parents are very well off, and instead of flying her home to have the abortion she wanted (a entire separate debate I know) they paid out of pocket to have it done here. That confused me, so I looked into it a bit. It seems that even though in Sweden all health care is covered, the quality is such that people who need minor/major surgery were flying into the U.S. and parts of Europe to have it done there at their own expense. Her dad also told me most of the high end doctors/surgeons over there had most of their training in the U.S. as well.
Now I'm not saying that this is definitive proof of "what works", but in this case a very wealthy man chose our heath care over his own, which was free. And I say "free" loosely, because after he told me how much he was paying in taxes (if I remember correctly it was over 50%) it's not really free at all. Personally I feel that's the main reason that particular system wouldn't fly here in the states. People already complain about taxes, imagine if we hiked it up over the 50% mark...
Anyways, just my two cents from what little I know from a personal experience.

You guys don't get it. We ALREADY pay more money per capita than ANY OTHER NATION for health care. Yet, our system is the WORST. The democrats want you to believe that they have to raise taxes for everyone to have universal health care. What they don't want you to know is they don't have the balls to stand up to the millions of dollars that hospitals, drug companies, and insurance companies throw at them in campaign contributions and lobbying. Raising taxes won't solve anything, they need to scrap the entire system and start from scratch, but that won't ever happen. There is too much profits to be made in the American health care industry.

Do you honestly think they deny people treatment for life threatening conditions? That money comes from somewhere. We all pay higher premiums for it. Wake up.

We have the worst of both worlds in our current system.

People who cannot pay for basic services are quite often treated anyway, and those participating in health plans of whatever type pay for it anyway. You see, having to provide service without charge is a "loss" and that is conveyed as "loss" by the hospitals, drug companies, etc involved in the chain and charged to their paying customers.

On the other hand, what happens to profit? It goes into their pockets of course, and is gone immediately, not banked, not stored against future cost overruns or loss. It's just gone, so some rich asshole at a drug company can send another kid to harvard.

As a final icing on the cake, even though we have the "participators pay for the overages" concept of social medicine (in the first case described here), we also have the special concept that pry brings up, in that you can pay for medical services in good faith for all of your life, with the expectation you are "covered", and then just get raped in the ass when the time comes to be treated because you are not a "good risk" in the eyes of privately held, non accountable insurance forms. With no recourse provided by our legal system other than civil court action, which has a terrible history of favoring the side with money.

Do you work at a salary company? than you pay for socialized medicine. A certain portion of the salary that could be going to you is considered burdened and paid into taxes and whatever health care plan your company participates in. This is paid *whether you elect to participate in that plan or not* mind you, as it's a bulk company cost and scales to head count. It is not unusual for this mulitplier to be 1.35 to 1.40 original salary. Remove the 11% or so for payroll taxation, and you can see that there is still a considerable sum going to things like medical plans.

I am a reasonable well paid professional and have been for a lot longer than most of you (since you are all young whipper snappers). Over my career I have paid a huge amount, most people would consider a retirement-fund kind of amount, into medical systems that were the only ones available to me (that is, "private" systems). It's not the idea that some of that money goes to support people who can't afford their treatment that pisses me off. It's the idea that for decades that entire industry has been driving enormous profits at my expense, when I have generally been very healthy and supply almost no risk to them (non smoker, not overly fat, exercise, etc). They suck money out of me like any other schmuck, and the only thing it does is make them richer. If we're going to have that arrangement, I'd much rather have the money used to actually help somebody.

-Remagi

I agree with Remagi for once! Er yah...

I think the whole system is BS too .. I'm a healthy non-overweight (hahahahaha) individual as well, and I can't even get my new life insurance policy approved because I have an eratic heartbeat (which I've had for years). Some asshole thinks I might croak so I don't pass their "healthy" test...

Such horseshit... thankfully if your policy is $300k or less, in most cases you don't need a physical ... so I just have to have multiple policies... how's that for a broken system!

-V

As a teacher, the education system is severely broken on many levels. If the same problems plague the healthcare system and the oil/car industry (which we haven't talked about), we're in for a world of problems.

The big problem in all these areas (imho) is that we glorify the acquisition of wealth above all other things.

Don't get me started on education. There's a reason I have a masters in music ed. and I'm fixing PC's for a living...

There is much screwed upness going on.

The big move recently in Afganistan was poppy eradication. I saw a family friend yesterday that is getting redeployed back to Afgan and I asked him "how goes the poppy eradication?" He tells me that they are looking the other way at the poppy fields now in exchange for the drug lords turning over the taliban.

Medicine should be socialized imho.

Thank freaking god that our legislators have the time to be concerned with video games.

Adrienna wrote:You guys don't get it. We ALREADY pay more money per capita than ANY OTHER NATION for health care. Yet, our system is the WORST. The democrats want you to believe that they have to raise taxes for everyone to have universal health care. What they don't want you to know is they don't have the balls to stand up to the millions of dollars that hospitals, drug companies, and insurance companies throw at them in campaign contributions and lobbying. Raising taxes won't solve anything, they need to scrap the entire system and start from scratch, but that won't ever happen. There is too much profits to be made in the American health care industry.

Do you honestly think they deny people treatment for life threatening conditions? That money comes from somewhere. We all pay higher premiums for it. Wake up.

what i found funny is that if you look at Hillary's major campaign contributors, almost every one of them is a major pharmaceutical corporation.

Pry, I said I feel sorry for you because of what i stated above, and because she has no real political platform other than, ZOMG IM BILLS WIFE.

Teling me that isn't true wont work. Go out on the street, ask people what they think. 4/5 pro Hillary people like her "because we get Bill back". That scares me.

I am however voting for Ron Paul. Not because I think he can win, but because I want the country to see that people do want major change. He does want national health care. He is for STATES RIGHTS, which I am a huge advocate of. He is a strict constitutionalist, which I respect and admire. He also hasn't sold out to major lobbyists and changed his campaign accordingly.

Some of the platforms he has are a little odd, however, they have no chance of congress approving them, so it is a moot point.

My biggest fear is that we elect Hillary on no other notion other than shes a woman, and Bill is her husband. It would mean the great decline of this society.

Hillary Rodham ran for senate.... Hillary Clinton is running for President.