Just try to ride a mouse to an oasis and see how much you wish for a camel.
Yes, you choose to participate in the private health plan your employer offers you, or you choose to have no health plan at all. Some choice.
I actually asked one of my employers (back in Denver, some years ago) if they would give me the money contributed and deducted for my medical insurance so that I could use it to purchase a policy with Kaiser Permanente. What do you suppose the answer was?
Choice, my ass.
Or you choose to buy a private policy.
They were just saving you from yourself, and Kaiser.
I am 55, self-employed, with a history of cancer and bleeding ulcers. There is no insurance available to me at any price.
That sucks. Sorry to hear that. Really. I too am self-employed, but have insurance that I pay a fortune for due to pre-existing conditions. I’ve though about taking a job with a company just to get the insurance. I think with some companies the insurer has to cover every employee, though I may be wrong about that.
That said, I have a question. I intend no snark it all. Do you hold it to be a possibility that while the health reform being debated might be great for you, that it still might bot be something the country should embrace?
Also, regarding your previous post about how we all have to pay taxes. We do, but I’ve not heard anyone describe buying health insurance through the proposed plan(s) as being a tax.
‘An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure’ and all that. First, catching a medical condition early is usually easier and cheaper to treat than catching it late. If everyone has access to preventive medicine and regular check-ups and such, conditions will usually caught at an earlier, cheaper stage. I remember a couple/few years ago reading about an 8-year-old kid in Washington, DC who needed a tooth pulled. Since our health care system is so messed up, he was unable to have it pulled. (I don’t remember the specific situation.) The infection spread to his jaw and he wound up in the ER. After $250,000 of emergency medical care, he died anyway. Because he couldn’t get a $90 tooth extraction. UHC would have saved U.S. taxpayers $249,910 in just that one case. Spread throughout the country, allowing people to avoid expensive ER visits, UHC would be good for the country as a whole. Now, you may object that this is one case. But there’s the other case of the little girl in L.A. who had Kaiser insurance and she was taken to a non-Kaiser ER. She died, too. I don’t know how much was spent to try to save her. But a quarter-million here and a quarter million there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.
I believe that healthy workers are more productive workers. Not all workers have employer-provided health coverage, and it is these workers who are most likely adversely affected by missing days of work. If a worker is sick and loses that pay, then he doesn’t have the money to spend on consumer items. Thus retailers and manufacturers and truckers, etc. are adversely affected. Or the shortage might be the difference between getting needed medication or not. If not, then he gets sicker. Or it might mean not having enough to pay the rent or the mortgage, with the economic ripples and consequences of that. If a worker is sick and productivity is lessened or lost, then that affects company profits. And remember, people pay taxes. Lower income due to illness, or lower profits businesses make because of sick employees, mean less revenue for the government.
Again, you might say that losing productivity or income for a few people for a few days (or weeks, or months) is no big thing. But multiply it millions of times, and the effects start to be seen. One assumes that Fear Itself and other self-employed people are providing value to society and the country, else their businesses would fail. Should a business fail because of illness, if it is otherwise making money? It seems to me that UHC would be a net good for the country financially, as well as morally.
From what I’m hearing, a public option would allow people to choose to buy cheaper, more comprehensive coverage. I think that’s a compromise. I would rather have a single-payer option where I’m taxed for my coverage, instead of having a virtual tax (my current premium) taken from my paycheck. Under the former plan I would still be covered if I am laid off, and I would pay the taxes again when I am re-employed. Under the latter plan, I lose my coverage if I lose my job. Health care should be a public service just like the roads and fire departments and police departments are. Health care protects society just like the police and firemen do, and often from less-obvious threats. Of course people can hire their own security in addition to having the police available. A lot of people do. If someone wants premium health coverage, they can buy extra over and above UHC. But there needs to be a baseline at which everyone is covered. If you want a private room or liposuction, you can use your premium plan.
I believe that national health care reform that includes a public option is in the best economic interest of this country. American industry, large and small, is at an economic disadvantage against foreign competitors who do not have the burden of employee health care. Health care premiums are doubling every ten years; that is unsustainable. If the titans of business are not behind socialized medicine yet, they will be very soon, or else they will simply stop offering health insurance to their employees. We are very near to a total breakdown in our system of health insurance.
I don’t advocate free health care for everyone, except those who are truly indigent. I expect to pay premiums for my public option health plan. But by removing it from the for profit insurance industry, and imposing the bargaining power of the federal government, I believe we can offer health insurance at affordable prices to all Americans.
The alternative is to institute onerous regulation on private health insurers. Ban exclusion of people with pre-existing conditions. Force them to insure everyone, not just those in arbitrary “groups”. Cap annual premium increases. If the insurance industry finds that unattractive, tough beans. I really have no patience with parasites who have for years abused their power against their customers.
It is offensive to me to treat health care like a commodity, to be offered to the highest bidder, and withheld from those at the bottom of the economic ladder.
As I said, I expect to pay a premium for my public health insurance. But I would be naive to promise that income taxes in general won’t go up to subsidize those members of society who are unable to pay as much as I can. I think taxes should go up. The wealthy in this country are under-taxed, and should be exploited more fully to cover the expense of national health insurance. And if history is a guide, the country will prosper with higher taxes.
You’ve pushed this thread to umpteen-billion posts. Go back to any one of those where you gave an opinion on how likely people are to do XYZ, and I guarantee you it will be unsupported. Your ideas about how the world works are entirely based on your personal experience with worst-case scenarios and popular myths.
As a general example, let’s think back to that discussion about health care costs and bankruptcy. You said that people don’t really go bankrupt from medical costs, you were given cites that they do, you came back with something like, “Well, sure, they SAID medical costs, but who really knows,” people argued that no, you really can’t lie on things like that, and your response was something like, “I still think they’re lying, and even if they weren’t, they would have had the money if they hadn’t spent it on frivolous things,” and then disregarded multiple examples of how people can be hit with ridiculously high costs that they have no possible way to be prepared for.
Please explain how it makes me a hypocrite to be polite to you outside of this forum. Apparently I missed the rule where you have to be rude to people you dislike all the time. (Note: I never said that I would claim to **like **you outside of the Pit. **That **would be hypocritical.)
You have no facts. You have willfully ignorant opinions with nothing to support them outside of “'cause I said so.” When people ask you for cites, you decline. When people provide counter-cites, you say they don’t count. You don’t engage in a debate–you soapbox with your fingers in your ears. I’m just here to chuck rotten tomatoes at your face while you do it.
Uh, OK. I haven’t posted to this thread for three days and I’m pushing up the post count? :rolleyes:
As I thought - you cannot support this claim with proof.
What a lovely example of how you all either cannot be bothered to think or just twist things for fun! Or both. Anyway -
What I really said, if you’d actually bothered to cite it, was that the studies provided were biased to the creation of a UHC (you understand the concept of bias, right?), and did not show any of the other expenses that these people may have had prior to the medical ones. I provided cites from sites that have no interest in a UHC pro or con showing that far too many people in the US live on the financial edge, so that medical expenses are just one of the things that push them over. I provided examples of how people cannot be bothered to be responsible for themselves and wondered why it is that those of us who are responsible should be required to bail the irresponsible out again. Such as all of these junk mortgages.
But, all you see is me not rushing to support yet another government program to make sure that no baybee goes without.
Ah, then the truth comes out. If you were to meet me outside of the forum and I stated that I have no desire to pay for insurance for even more 100’s of thousands of people, you would not be polite? Or, if you just plain found out who I am? You cannot be polite to me at any time in this forum, would it not be hypocritical to be polite at any time in real life?
Unless he’d prefer gerbils…
Would this be the one: For Want of a Dentist?
That’s the one. Off on the age by four years; but yes, that’s the story I remember.
And the thread has been pretty quiet since you stopped posting. I’m sorry, were you **not **trying to prove my point there?
Searching for posts by you in the Pit to threads with at least 2,200 replies, I returned 545 posts by you. Assuming they’re all from this thread (is there another Pit thread with over 2,200 replies to which you’ve posted?) that means you are **personally **responsible for almost 24% of **all **posts in this thread. Obviously, the numbers don’t include all of the posts that were spawned by a futile attempt to prove to you through crazy things like “logic” and “data” that you’re a retard.
How’s that for a cite, bitch?
I didn’t want to slog through over two thousand posts, most of them since you started shitting all over this thread, and that makes **me **the problem?
I skimmed through the first thousand posts, just for you. Here’s a sampling of you offering your opinions as facts without any data to back them up:
722: UHC = giving the segment of society that doesn’t give back the opportunity to take even more
758: government support leaves people unable or unwilling to care for themselves
811: people who go bankrupt from medical costs through their own fault because of actions they took before the medical costs were incurred
844: people on welfare have lots of babies because they know the government will pay for it
901: illegal aliens are a big drain on public medical costs; children of people on welfare grow up to be on welfare
915: apparently claim that another poster has to be lying, because everyone knows that illegal immigrants never just start doing things legally; everyone knows that illegal immigrants come here to mooch off of our government programs and pay no taxes
919: being unable to purchase health insurance is “a temporary condition - which can be avoided - for anyone who chooses not to demand that someone else pay their way”
What? I think you misunderstood. By “this forum” I meant the Pit. I’m not talking about the message board as a whole. The Pit is specifically a place for rants, especially against other posters. The normal rules of polite society don’t apply here. If you don’t like it, you are, as I have mentioned, free to restrict yourself to other areas of the site.
So, in summary, you dumb twat, it is not hypocritical to be rude to someone in a place designed for rudeness but polite to someone outside of it. Shockingly, different venues sometimes have different rules of interaction. Or do you think it’s hypocritical to not shit in your bed, since you shit in a toilet?
I was apparently pointing out something that is over your head - that I am not the sole reason why a thread is posted to.
How many posts did the “babyhaters” thread go to?
It will be weak if it turns out that your search included at least one thread other than this one. See how critical thinking works?
You made the problem yourself, by making claims you cannot back up.
As for your listing of my posts, I can tell just by looking at them that the summaries are based on your bias, so I am certainly not going to go looking for them, quoting them and then explaining them to you. If you would like to pick one and actually provide what I said, we can discuss it.
Do you post to anyplace other that the Pit?
What an idiotic comparison. Anyway -
So you say that the only reason you are rude to me is because it is the Pit and it is allowed here? You do know that it isn’t required that you be mindlessly rude, right?
No one can possibly be this retarded. You have to be a troll.
Things you do not understand are rarely retarded.
Nor is this a particularly good way to divert attention from the fact you cannot prove your claims. 
I gave you post numbers (and summaries of the posts) where you posted opinions as facts without any cites to back them up. You may disagree with my summaries, but whether or not the cites are there isn’t up for debate.
Thank you for continuing to prove that you live in your own crazy world where you’re never wrong, though.
I’ve done my part. You, of course, will continue to avoid yours, because your position is unsustainable.
More interested in being right than being informed.
Willfully ignorant.
Unable to think critically lapping up whatever fear mongering nonsense is spewed out.
Retarded.
Off her meds.
I don’t care which, it’s so sad, really.
That you have so many citizens with their head so far us their asses, largely because of their political leanings, leads many in the world to believe you have exactly the health care system you deserve.
Wow. 46 pages and the pile-up is still going on?
Jesus, is thing still alive? And when the hell is **Rand Rover **going to pony up everything he offered?
Merely pointing to something and calling it a cite doesn’t make it so. You expected that I would find those posts and try to figure out what part of them you were interpreting the way you were, after I asked you specifically to cite what it was you were misinterpreting. The whole post? Some part of it? Which part? None of which touches on you expecting that I do the work to prove you right… :rolleyes:
Then I said “If you would like to pick one and actually provide what I said, we can discuss it.” to which you called me a troll. Shrug. You want to prove a point, you do the work.