Politics
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- PonyBoy0
"free health care" - first off - if you're paying for it... IT'S NOT FREE!
Do you want to be told what Doctor you have to see... or do you prefer to choose yourself? I realize our Insurance system over here BLOWS...
... it's effecting my life in a horrid way right now, lowimpakt - so I do agree w/the Left's view on health care... to a point.
I'm just scared if the Gov. takes over that I'm looking at getting stuck w/the C+ Med student in my 'district' as apposed to seeking out the real care I need...
... if we could find a way to keep the private insurance company from RAPING US and saying 'no... you have a pre-existing condition... fuck off'... I'd be much happier.
It's fucked up - I don't have a solution... but I do know that letting the Gov. take over these BIG DEAL / LIFE-ALTERING 'departments' scares the shit out of me... just have a gander at the state of Social Security... they've done a 'swell' job on that one.
Fuck... goto the DMV... goto the local county tax offices or county assessors... NOBODY GIVES A SHIT ABOUT YOU when you walk through those doors... you fucking GET A NUMBER and weight in line...
... that just doesn't sound like an effective way of handling healthcare.
- designbot0
Interesting info on Sweden:
-Out of a population of nine million people, over one and a half million healthy Swedes have chosen not to enter the labour market and live on welfare instead.
-If Sweden were a state in America today, it would be the fifth poorest. Even more, the total tax pressure is 63 percent. In that perspective, perhaps it is not surprising that not a single large-scale enterprise — like IKEA or Ericsson — has been created in Sweden since 1970
- DrBombay0
The canadian health care system is as good as ours is, and it is state run, quit with that tired bullshit.
- then why are their loads of 'older' canadians that I KNOW PERSONALLY coming down here for their healthcare?PonyBoy
- prove that shit.DrBombay
- you forget that I'm in the land of the 'snowbird', dobs... they come from Canada every year and 'laugh' about the care they getPonyBoy
- haha Rick get a clue. You want to wait 6 months for heart surgery? Here they'll get you in ASAP.tommyo
- show me articles from a reputable source claiming this.DrBombay
- hahaha oh noes does this contradict your sensibilities of the wonderland that Canadian Healthcare system is??tommyo
- how about some articles that have been vetted, instead of some 80 year old from phoenix.DrBombay
- Snowbirds are people FROM cold places going TO Phoenix. So it's one of those 'heard it from the horses mouth' things.tommyo
- so no articles then supporting this?DrBombay
- www.google.comtommyo
- ukit0
The government definitely needs to be there, to create the environment where private industry can work effectively.
The Ron Paul/ destroy all regulations school of thought is appealing for a lot of people, but gov providing no direction/ regulation to society will just allow companies to exploit people.
Think Enron blackouts in CA, Microsoft antitrust, credit card companies charging 30%...you guys trust the free market so much you want to get rid of MORE gov regulation and oversight?
- designbot0
^ What about Cuba, UK, China, etc. ?
I can tell you stories from people I know first-hand that will tell you it's shit.
- tommyo0
Low,
Our schools are pitiful, no amount of increased money can fix them, it's a systemic thing that is killing them. We used to be stellar in this area, but the bureaucracy is strangling them.
Healthcare, yeah we need work on this, however again, I think our government is riddled with systemic issues that are tantamount to too much waste at the top. The gov here basically started this systemic fuckup of a healthcare with their mandated HMO's in the 70's. This idiotic tie between employer and health coverage. Which drove up prices, reduced the freedom of the doctors to provide care and turned the medical field into a paradigm where doctors charge as much as they can, do as much volume as possible and the insurance companies scrape as much as they can off the top. < Gov program from day 1.
Personally, I have very little faith in OUR government run programs.
- as long as it is a for profit system healthcare won't get better. only solution is gov intervention.DrBombay
- designbot0
A guy at work just told me about his uncle that had to get his leg amputated because the "awesome" socialized health care he lives under. Apparently the operating rooms are so unsanitary that his story is common. The doctors went into to do a common procedure and his leg got infected......so much for his leg.
Other stories I have heard of similar situations where it is actually cheaper to do something radical like amputate a limb then it is to do surgery....so instead of considering what is best for the patient, they go with the cheaper solution. Lovely.
- tommyo0
^^ and what happens when 'more important' issues arise for the gov to tackle? What happens when health is treated like our education system (a bastard child budget item)? When 'cut's need to be made' figuratively and literally. When Social Security eats up 40% of the budget, estimated in some 15 years or something. Sorry but I'd like to remain in control of my own health.
- there is no one saying you can't have supplemental insurance.DrBombay
- TheBlueOne0
I'm in way too much of a good mood today and enjoying the spectacular spring sunshine to get into anything in this thread today...
But I will say this, as I was thinking about it on the drive into work this morning. Despite GetRefresh's digs at me being an "overeducated liberal" a few weeks back, I actually have a degree in political science. I still read an academic political science book or two a month. Doesn't make me smarter or more wise on these fundamental issues than anyone else, but it does make you think about alot of this stuff with more accuracy, depth and implications.
And so, for me, words like "socialism", "communism", "fascism", "trade deficit", "budget deficit", "social contract", "liberalism", "extremism" etc., etc. ...have very specific meanings and contexts, both in terms of political theory and within different historical periods.
It drives me absolutely fucking bonkers to see not only on an internet forum, but also on ALL the mainstream media outlets (Fox, MSNBC, CNN, whatever..) throw these words around with only vague connections to what they really mean.
I'm not academically trained in the design field, but I know enough about it from experience to to call things "type faces" and "type families" and not "fonts". I know about grids, and letter spacing, and proofing, etc. and all that shit. I also now that I can drive academically trained designers fucking bonkers by misusing these terms, especially so when it's not in a casual conversation but when it actually matters - like sending shit off to a printer and having to have an actual discussion with a printer to get things done. I am sure it's something any of you guys deal with daily when dealing with clients.
Look when I see or hear ANYONE throw around things like "US is socialist" "Commies out of the White House!" Or "George Bush / Obama is a fascist!" it's just stupid. I know if I'm having a discussion with people who spout this shit I can't really get into too much detail, or really discuss anything truly meaningful. It's like spending ten minutes discussing why you've chosen Helvetica for the client, explained the white space on the ad material, and some clever bit of kerning to get everything to fit legibly and then the guy throws down a piece of paper with 24 pt Arial Bold on it and says "Hey, my kid did this last night in photoshop, can you make what you did look like this? I like this font alot..."
I mean, the level of discussion on this stuff in the mainstream media sucks total ass. It's borderline Orwellian how they fuzz up and dumb down this stuff. And thats' for neither left or right issues, it's just in the nature of the beast.
I mean how many of you are into whatever - moutain climbing, biking, stamp collecting - whatever hobby or passion you have, and you see some news show do a special on it and you figure, "Awesome, let me watch this..." and five minutes later you're like "Wow, the parts you didn't get absolutely wrong in there entirety, you completely misrepresented!" I've never seen a media report on some of the other things I get into (heavy metal, brazilian martial arts) ever come close to being accurate so I assume everything they cover is half-baked...and knowing politics academically this is triply true for politics in the media..probably because unlike mountain climbing or brazilian martial arts or whatever there are actual interests out there that actually don't WANT people discussing this stuff in detail.
If you ever watch news programs form the 50's and early 60's..wow, totally different. Sure there was a bias there, but it was more a beuaracratic/systemic bias and not one of left/right so much. And on top of that news divisions actually had huge budgets and at least tried to be principled neutral. Now, forget it...journalism is a joke.
Ug, anyway..this has gone on too long..but look if I come across as didactic half the time in this thread or get pissed off easily it's because when someone says something stupid like "US is turning communist!" it just is a total facepalm for me. It has absolutely zero relation to reality I mean there very well might be something going on very seriously with government spending and debt allocation and so forth, but if you're whole argument or line of thought is centrally "USA = Socialism" and you can't go beyond that except for saying "But it is. It's turning socialist because it is..." I just go nuts. I mean I would stare dumbfounded at the asshats on the left who were saying "Oh those FEMA camps are there for when Cheney goes totally Nazi and cancels the elections in 2008!" Ah, nevermind..this went way off track paragraphs ago..I'm just hyped up on too much java and sunshine today
- Damn...how do you write that muchukit
- No one's talking about US being communist, you need to snap out of this 'sunshine' bullshit and get your edge back.tommyo
- We need you is what I'm saying.tommyo
- hahaha! Hey that was just a general riff and nothing to what's going in the last page or two...TheBlueOne
- Well get relevant, quick, or we will smite your name.tommyo
- I'm high on sunshine man...TheBlueOne
- TheBlueOvary
I did just smite your name.tommyo - TheBubonicOrifice
uh huh. Yes I did. No more sunshine, get to work.tommyo - ok, I see someone else is high on something...TheBlueOne
- ukit0
This is part of the problem, people are poorly informed on the issues, and you wonder why we get shitty results.
Obama is not going anywhere close to a single payer system with his health care reform bill. The government is not going to be making decisions about your medication etc.
What we will end up with is at most is probably a system where everyone is required to have some kind of private insurance, along with tax credits and/or gov assistance for people who can't afford it.
You guys should actually welcome this because if things stay as is health care costs are going to bankrupt our gov. Current health care system is massively more expensive than a "universal," government-run one would be. Getting everyone or nearly everyone insured as Obama wants to do is a cost-saving/ deficit reducing measure in the long run.
- designbot0
WAIT A SECOND....
Who is using the term Socialism or any of others in here?
- *keeps hand down.
I know better, TBO has already spanked me for even suggesting this in the past.tommyo - Sorry..was staring at GetRefresh's tshirtTheBlueOne
- hahahdesignbot
- *keeps hand down.
- lowimpakt0
" Low, Our schools are pitiful, no amount of increased money can fix them, it's a systemic thing that is killing them. We used to be stellar in this area, but the bureaucracy is strangling them."
so what is your solution?
1. No more investment
2. what next??
- DrBombay0
40,000,000 citizens without health care.
Isn't some coverage better than no coverage?
This is the fundamental difference between me and conservatives, they just don't give a fuck.
- You don't really get it man. Yeah conservatives are evil fuckers who want the poor to die. That must be it.tommyo
- Dear Tommy,
please respond.
Love, cricketsDrBombay - so take a stab at a solution.DrBombay
- Conservatives only legislate economics, that should tell you something.DrBombay
- It's systemic. Fix the system. Here I'm going to right an analogy post right now.tommyo
- HOW?DrBombay
- ukit0
I think the upcoming health care debate will have a lot of people surprised at what they thought they were getting. A lot of people who support Obam seem to think they are going to get free insurance, ring wing seems to think it will be gov making decisions about your health.
When in reality there was not a single "mainstream" Dem who proposed single payer in the 08 campaign. You have to go the fringes of the party to find someone even proposing that.
Obama and Hillary had a long debate during the campaign over whether we need to mandate private insurance, or whether it was enough to try to lower costs in the private system. Obama was against the mandate, although it looks like he might change his mind on that.
- tommyo0
My solution would be to revise the system. What's throwing more money at it going to do? It's a failing, antiquated system. Pumping more money into it blindly would be a waste. I forget the numbers so I won't even quote them but there was a study done about the public school system in NYC and it was compared to a church run school that serviced 1/3 of the children. The NYC administration staff was in the thousands, I want to say 3 thousand (again, from recollection). The church run system was 11. 11 people and they had much higher test scores than the NYC. I tried quickly to find the study again. I'll see if I can find it later. But yes, I believe our education system is not dire from a lack of funding, it's dire from a clusterfuck system.
- designbot0
I have been a tremendous predicament with health care myself, and I think this lends credibility to my stance. With my first son, my wife was pregnant and we did not have any health care because we were both contracting at the time. We attempted to get help from our state (Minnesota at the time) and sign up for a type of state health care. Unfortunately we made "too much" (which trust me, was not much at all) to be eligible for help and we couldn't go to any of the "low income" hospitals for the same reason. We were screwed.
In the end, after exhausting all roads to get help to pay for our medical needs, we ended up paying out-of-pocket. We were expecting the worst...average cost for child birth is around $5,000 - $7,000! Money we certainly didn't have. We could not sign up for any health care plan on our own as pregnancy is considered a pre-existing condition and not covered. We were screwed.
But thankfully we ended up paying only $1,200 for the entire birth! After speaking with the hospital and letting them know we were paying out of pocket, they were excellent about working with us to keep costs down. I think there are certain holes in the system that need to be patched, but we really do have great health care in this country. Very few people are actually turned down to receive help. With socialized or government health care, more people would be turned away. Once the system reaches it's "cap" and the money is gone, that's it as far as I understand it. The coverage would be far worse, and everyone would be flipping the bill. I just don't get it, and I've been through it.
- oops my text got a bit jumbled there.designbot
- Ah, my brother is going through this right now with his first baby,,,TheBlueOne
- Ahh sorry to hear that. If he can't get help somehow, he should do the same (work with the hospital and tell them he is paying out of pocket)designbot
- pocket)designbot
- I actually told my wife I would deliver our son in a home birth....haha no joke :)designbot
- Great post man. I've often wondered since it seems in the best interests of the health care industry to do this sort of thing.tommyo
- TheBlueOne0
A couple of points on health care. Now, I'm in favor of some system of nationalized healthcare, or at least some improvement over what we have, because it sucks. But I also know there are no easy answers, and no matter what we end up there will be compromises. But just a few things:
I remember having a conversation with a guy very against any sort of nationalized healthcare, promoting the free market solution. And he said "Do you want the government making your healthcare decisions for you? Do you? You want some bureaucrat somewhere telling you what you can and cannot have? No. You want your doctor to make those decisions."
And I said, "You are absolutely correct. I want my doctor to make those decisions, but right now it seems like the bureaucrat at my insurance company is making those decisions and not my doctor."
He kinda just grunted at that.
--------------------------------...
Admission, my wife is a Japanese born doctor.Under the current system here in America, some doctors are going out of certain critical medical fields because of insane malpractice insurance fees.
In Japan, which is a nationalized health care system, doctors are leaving certain critical areas because not only are they held accountable civilly for potential malpractice or negligence, but are also held CRIMINALLY responsible a priori. Thus Japan has a giant dearth of OBGYN's and surgeons, lot's of primary care though.
Doctors in Japan also make considerably less than they do here, although it is a good salary. Doctors also work far harder in Japan with less support staff for clerical and medical follow up.
My wife thinks Japan is a better system for some things (primary care, geriatrics, etc...) and not so good for other things (trauma, OBGYN, cardiology...). She does feel though that doctors in Japan are more involved with patients and devote more time to them overall - now is this because of the culture or the medical system? Don't know..maybe both.
---------------------------
Anyway, whatever we have here in the States is just not working. It's bankrupting too many people, and too many people aren't getting even the primary care they need. How do we address this? How do we fix this? Is the right to health a right that falls under the "right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?"
- tommyo0
Okay here is analogy of how I see gov programs and the view of the liberal vs the view of the conservative.
Let's say that gov is a mechanic cheese shredder. It's output chute isn't tuned very well and only 60% of the cheese we put in actually makes it to the bucket below.
Liberals want to put more cheese in the machine to achieve a full bucket. Conservatives want a better tuned chute. Both will render generally the same results.
Oversimplified and stereotypical, yeah. But that's what analogies are by nature.
- but how do you do it, you never fucking get into any specifics beyond your dumb analogiesDrBombay
- Rick you've never once offered any solution other than letting gov take care of you.tommyo
- Saving money by having more people in the group is how businesses get good insurance rates.DrBombay
- Take this same idea and apply it to the general public. Based on the Medicare model.DrBombay
- 40 million people would love some medicare style coverage vs. nothingDrBombay
- If you show me an example of anything that gov has paid less for than a citizen, I'll send you a fucking mermaid.tommyo
- Negotiating prices downward has worked for Medicare, it would work for prescriptions to, minus pharm lobbies.DrBombay
- When is your magical free market going to come out with a solution? Fuck it until then, right? Fuck everyone who can't afford it?DrBombay
- afford it?DrBombay
- Again, these logical leaps you make man. I've got no response, go ahead and attack me for it.tommyo
- So then just keep doing nothing... Do you see why this policy stance is a failure?DrBombay
- TheBlueOne0
Hey, I am so fucking blown away by the level of discussion right now. You guys rock.