It’s no great trick no matter how amazing it may seem to you.
Liberals are to Bush as wile e. Coyote is to the Road Runner.
You don’t have to read minds to know that the coyote is going to shop at acme
I wasn’t interested in wading through an old, long article looking for the facts you’re trying to cite. But I did reload the page ten times and each time the giant advertisement was for a pharmaceutical company.
The eleventh time it was for a tire company, so the article was more credible that time.
Maybe you should have read my post yourself.
That’s because you didn’t read my post yourself.
Did that days ago. You’ve got some catching up to do.
Might have us confused. Do you bear a striking resemblance to George Clooney as well?
So Bequerel shouldn’t have accepted that his photographic plates were exposed because there was no theory to account for it?
Damned if I know. I’ll go back to the site and see if I can find out what happened. It’s certainly not impossible that some other way must be found to finance universal health care and I’m confident one can be found. After all, congess votes another $100 billion for Iraq every so often without even breathing hard.
Well, if he just “accepted” them, he’d never have explained where they came from would he? That’s the key. Why are they paying less (assuming they really are)? If it’s just because we pay an extraordinary amount in the last 6 months of our lives, then I’m not so sure the alternative is particularly “better”.
Oh, I’m sure plenty of ways can be found. I’m no big fan of universal healthcare financed out of the federal budget, but if were a choice between that and Iraq, I’d take the former any day. My preference, though, would be neither. Leave it up to the states to take care of this.
Ah, I see what you mean by “accept.”
I guess I don’t know for sure what you mean by “pay an extraordinary amount in the last six months.” Do you think it’s bad? I do. I see no point in spending a couple hundred thousand to keep an 80 year old alive for another couple of weeks.
My grandson was born severl months premature in 1987. The total bill for his stay in Loma Linda hospital was $350,000. Glad as I am that he is still around for visits, I have to question the wisdom of such expenditures. Is having him around worth that much to the rest of you? It better be because you helped pay for it. They had some hospital insurance but when the average person is presented with that kind of bill they are helpless. The hospital paid for it by charging more to those who could pay.
States are OK with me, but the states have a poor record in such matters. In addition, why duplicate the administrative staff to run things 50 times?
I think that should be left up to the individual.
Democracy. If the people don’t vote to have it, why force it on them.
That argument can be used for almost anything the states do. Different states have different economies and different cultural norms. We’re a big country, and one size does not fit all. But if several smaller states decide to band together to pool resources, that’s great-- no one is going to stop them.
Gee, that sounds swell, John. The poorer states will share resources with their more advantaged neighbors? Or is it more likely that the poorer states will be sharing resources with the equally disadvantaged neighbors?
Seems to me if there is an advantage to be had by pooling resources, that same advantage would be multiplied by gathering the largest pool possible, i.e., the whole country.
Oh lordy, yes, 2005 was so long ago that people just learning to walk weren’t even born. Unfortunately for you, the further back one goes — say, to the dark ages of the late 20th century — the Canadian patience was already petering out. To connect the dots, they’re becoming more disgruntled over time. By the year 2000, for example, an Angus Reid poll determined that 73% of Canadians thought their health care system was “in crisis”. Six months after that, the number had increased to 78%. What you won’t take the time to read says basically that patient wait-times have become intolerable in a significant number of cases. Doctors are fleeing for the US, where their wages are tied to the market. Patients seeking expedited or advanced care also are crossing the border. I would reckon that if your private polling shows a positive attitude, it does not include the above groups.
They can pool resources whichever way they voluntarily choose. And there are problems as well as advantages to “pooling resources”. Ever notice that bigger isn’t always better?
But, as I’ve said in other threads, I’m not much in favor of this policy, so the more you guys who are in favor of it insist that it happen at a national level, that’s fine with me. I doubt very seriously we’ll see it in our lifetimes.
A veritable whiplash of irony.
Yes, of course. I am just a humble man incapable of the great logical leaps you seem to accomplish so easily.
I confess it just looks like you showed an example of reading Bush’s mind. Doubtless, it is as you say, and my poor reading skills are why I did not see the part where you explained how you do that neat trick.
Perhaps you could show me that post?
I could, but I see absolutely no reason why I should.
You made some rather inflammatory statements about a post of mine that you hadn’t even read. Kind of you to admit it. But I hope you see why I have little to say to you.
Scylla
Oh, piffle. Does the Republican Party have a longstanding sympathy for the business community? I daresay. Is it likely that the representatives of the health insurance industry would expect a sympathetic hearing for their plight? Likely. Has he publicly expressed views counter to this movement? Well, yes, in a more or less direct fashion, wagging his veto pen like a flasher wags his Cheney. It seems to safe to surmise GeeDubya’s views.
What is in Bush’s mind? I can tell you this much: it is the mind of a man who has never in his life worried about affording first-class health care for his children.
Oh come off it. You know as well as I that the reason you are not providing a link to this imaginary explanatory post wherein you explain the source of your mindreading powers is because it doesn’t exist.
Perhaps you should change your location from “Freedonia” to “Dodge City.”
You overgeneralize and assume too much to make a cogent argument. Your argument is:
Republicans sympathize with business.
Health insurance is a business.
Bush is a Republican and will sympathize with them.
But:
Do not Democrats also like Business?
Does this bill in question jeopardize the interests of health insurance companies?
What, you want to conduct this at the Big Golden Book of Politics level?
You are on safe ground.
Irrefutable, you got me there!
They are his people.
And this is a big but!
Gasp! I reel, I stagger. Forced to the question, teeth agnash, yes, yes! I confess! Democrats like business, too! Woe! Woe! Whoa…
I like cheese popcorn. Surely do. I also like flashing green eyes and a kicking rack. You see where I’m going with this, scooter?
Not in my estimation, we’re mostly concerned with helping people who can’t afford thier product at any rate.
No objection if the cost is also left up to the individual.
And it’s often not the individual who decides. There are people who just can’t seem to accept the fact that the comes a time when there’s not a damned thing you can do no matter how much is spent.
We don’t have a democracy and our representatives represent the wishes of their ordinary constituents less and less. People seem to have expressed a pretty strong desire to get out of Iraq but the politicians don’t get it done.
One advantage of the central government taking on the job is that it evens out income disparities among the states. If the cultural norm of a state is to let low income workers go without health care until the situations gets so serious they go to an emergency room, I guess that’s OK. It does seem a tad shortsighted, though.
People do get health care sooner or later. Many wait until they must go to an emergency room. And it all gets paid for somehow. It seems to me that paying for a rational system is a better choice.
The cite in this post gives one reason why Canadian per capita costs are lower than ours. Their administrative health care cost is 16.7% of the total per capita while ours is 31%. If we reduced ours to that same figure our cost would drop from about $3350 to about $2770. I also think that health experts agree that better preventive care would also reduce total cost by a rather large factor.
Perhaps you may so, but as a party your actions don’t really support that. Democrats do not help poor people get healthcare. At best, you wish to take money from some people and give it to other people to help people that can’t afford health care.
I don’t really see an moral high ground in being charitable with other people’s time and other people’s money.
In any event, the people that will be helping the people who need health care will be the people in the health care industry. The pharmaceutical companies that make the drugs and the Doctors and support who provide the health care.
I see centralized health care as a further dilution of the limited resource of health care within a system that suffers catastrophically from overdilution as it is, limiting freedom and innovation and ultimately lowering the level of care to all.
Socialization always does this.
The defense “we want to help people” does not absolve one from the consequences of the actions taken under the banner of that phrase, nor do stated motivations make a bad idea a good one.
If you want to help people, go volunteer.