Actually, one of the reasons that seizures of property for RICO and drug offenses were being pushed so hard was that it’s pure profit for the government.
What an interesting and completely irrelevant fact.
What’s irrelevant about it? Are not the police and prosecutors a government run system?
It’s not “profit”, though. Profit goes to shareholders. Giant bags of hash seized by police go to undercover units, or whatever.
Also that is a specific case because of America’s love of the drug war. Do you [Frank] think UHC would be run for profit?
I love drugs.
What’s this about a war, now?
You call THAT toning it down? I’d have hated to see your first draft…
But snark aside, I’m not seeing the fundamental problem with UHC. I get that we don’t currently have the funding without plunging us deeper in debt. I get that. But I see it as a goal to work towards; that someday, if we’re fiscally responsible, we can finally provide everyone with their right to good health.
But why is UHC, as you say, a weaker position than private? Right now, the system excludes those that can’t pay for it. If you’re too poor, you die sick and young. Is this right to you? What if you’re a single mother, and your child is sick and dies because you can’t afford insurance? It’s like clean air or water–without access to proper medical treatment (emergency rooms are a step in the right direction, but are a stopgap measure if aiming to provide care to all), many people won’t even have a chance to climb the ladder of life.
I just think it was a simplistic statement. Police and prosecutors figured out a way to get money into their departments that was not budgeted to them, or so they could all drive around in Camaro’s or whatever.
And that’s why I do have concern about Obama’s plan, mostly because it still involves the health insurance behemoths. As weirddave has clearly shown, they still want theirs. I hope that whatever plan is adopted helps the buggywhip salesmen to be retrained, but the nation does not owe them a living.
Oh for fucks sake, couldn’t you find anything that wasn’t written by people sucking on Scaife’s cock? Hell, you have an article written by a recent graduate of Liberty “University”, who most recently worked for Accuracy in Academia (an outgrowth of Accuracy in Media, funded by Scaife and friends), who is now working for the Business and Media Institute (funded by Scaife and friends), citing Dr. David Gratzer of the Manhattan Institute (funded by Scaife and friends), and getting corroboration from Dr. Grace-Marie Turner of the Galen Institute (funded by Scaife and friends).
Fucking shill.
Oh, and your little anecdotes about short waiting times in the U.S? As I’ve stated previously, shove it up your ass. Perhaps you’ll get lucky and your waiting time to get it removed will be shorter than the waiting times of many (even well-insured) Americans who haven’t experienced these quick results.
I just tried to send you a private message. It didn’t work. So here’s what I was trying to relate:
Yes, I’ll take you up on the $100 bet. A few finer points:
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I just went back to look at the CBO tax burden analysis, and although they come out every year, the data lag about two years. (As in, the 2008 report shows 2006 tax burden.) If Obama is elected and a tax reform package goes through Congress, CBO will surely make an estimation of the change in tax burden due to the bill, but it won’t be based on data of what people actually paid because obviously the real data won’t be in yet. Are you okay with having the results judged by the CBO estimate?
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The CBO estimates do not generally provide data down to “type of individual,” as you suggested in your post. Instead, they provide the percentage of tax paid on income to the income tax, payroll tax, excise taxes, and corporate taxes, and the total percentage of wages paid in tax for quartiles of income, as well as the top 10%, 5%, and 1%. I think we should look at the total taxes paid by the bottom four quartiles. (So if, for example, payroll taxes go up by a little but income taxes go down by more, and there’s a net decrease in taxes for those groups, I win.) That captures the tax situation of the bottom 80%, but since the top quartile and top 10% measures include the taxes paid by the very wealthiest who certainly will see a larger tax bill, I can’t figure out how to fairly disaggregate that data.
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We can figure out how to arrange payment later.
2 things. #1, as you say, we can’t afford it. We can not afford what we are spending now, we can not afford to add trillions of dollars to it. #2, the later part of your post is simply untrue. Poor people have coverage, provided by the government. Hell, poor people have more coverage than they use, 33% of the uninsured in this country don’t even use the government health coverage currently available. There is no kid anywhere in this country who doesn’t have health insurance available to them because they are poor. They don’t even have to be poor, I just helped a guy who makes $88K/year get free health insurance for his kids through the state. Using horror stories, “Won’t somebody please think of the children!” anecdotes and completely inaccurate figures (Like Lobohan and the oft repeated but completely untrue 45 million figure) don’t really help your case.
Actually, you couldn’t be more wrong. Many of the people I work with are hoping for UHC, and soon rather than later, because it will be a windfall for them. It is impossible for any type of UHC to be instituted that doesn’t include existing insurance companies. Nationalizing 15% of the economy would cause an instant depression, and it would destroy any confidence in the underlying economic structure-nobody would want to invest in anything because they would be leery that it would be nationalized at some point down the road. From a purely profit standpoint, I know lots of insurance executives who are licking their lips anticipating such a UHC scheme as it will make their paychecks and stock options go through the roof. I myself would likely make out quite well financially. Hell, after Mass. mandated health insurance for all, the offices there suddenly because the #1 producing offices in the entire country-almost overnight and far outstripping everyone else. For me, personally, financially, UHC would likely be the best thing since sliced bread.
But it’s WRONG. It’s anathema to what this country stands for, it’s not the right solution to the actual problem, and I firmly believe that it will make our lives and our standard of living much worse. It’s using a sledgehammer to kill a fly. It’s gutting a system because it isn’t working for 4% of the population, and it’s being sold to the American public with lies and deception. If you want to sell UHC to the American people, be honest about what it will cost and what that will mean to our tax rate, be honest about what the system will involve (care rationing) and be honest about how it will change our lives. If you can sell it on that basis, more power to you, but the fact of the matter is, you can’t, because once the facts come out, most people walk away from UHC.
Fear Itself, I’m sorry about your wife, but it seems to me that what happened was that your insurance wouldn’t pay for an experimental procedure. That’s not unusual. Later on they decided to, unfortunately the timing was such that you wife was no longer eligible. That’s unfortunate for your wife, I certainly hope that it doesn’t prove fatal, but I don’t find anything reprehensible or unusual about that at all. In fact it’s to their credit that they added the treatment to their coverage, they didn’t have to. It seems that you’re upset about the timing. It sucks for you. I’m sorry. But I see no culpability on the insurance company’s part (based upon your post, if there is more to the story, I’m perfectly willing to change my mind) and more importantly, what makes you believe that government sponsored health care will be any different? In almost every way that I can think of, government is less efficient than the private sector. In countries with UHC, speedy access to experimental treatments is not the norm. UHC will be adding layers of bureaucracy and interference between the individual and the care s/he needs, why on earth this is seen as a good thing is beyond me entirely.
Except I’m neither angry nor ignorant, TYVM. Which are you? I counter statements you make with links and facts, and you just slide on by and go to the next point, ignoring that your previous point has been proven wrong.
And that kind of moral bankruptcy is why the Republicans are losing.
When President Obama and a Senate with a super-majority takes office in January, and the so-called “traditional values” of the conservative movement are tossed onto the ash heap of history, I will take great joy in the contemplation of at least one of the following results:
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We tax you until your eyes bleed, and you haven’t got the guts to do anything but suck it up and meekly submit to our will.
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You refuse to pay your taxes, and we throw your sorry ass in jail and forget about you.
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We plant a big progressive boot print on your ass, as you abandon your country and scamper up the socialist paradise of Canada.Take your pick, any one of them will make me giggle.
WTF? What does this country stand for? Fucking over everybody who wasn’t born to the right parents? I swear, all I hear from conservatives is “I got MINE! I worked hard, and I GOT MINE!” Except so many of you didn’t work all that hard; you were born lucky.
Christ, I was born middle class (and lucky). Due to a number of failing in my younger life (most of them my own mistakes), I went down to dirt poor. To be honest, if I didn’t already KNOW that I could get back to middle class, I would still be dirt poor. It was harder than hell to climb my way back up the ladder because life in the country is hard if you weren’t born lucky.
The health care thing is a total hijack but…
I have 3 adult kids. The middle daughter has health problems she can’t take care of because although she has state medical, only some doctors will take it. She is forced to go to the emergency room for most of her needs. That is not saving money, but that’s the way the current system rolls.
My older daughter has insurance through her employer. Due to the high cost of premiums (for not that great of coverage), deductibles, and co-pays she still doesn’t go to the doctor, because she can’t afford to use her insurance.
My step-son, our youngest at 22, has no insurance. He just doesn’t go to the doctor and Og help us if his shitty knee blows out. He also doesn’t go to the dentist (very important preventative care, in case you are too stupid to know).
The current health care system is broken. We should start over. I know we won’t because our politicians don’t really spend much time representing us; they are mostly craven, slimy assholes who only care about themselves.
I wish I had an in to Canada, because I’ve wanted to move to a country with a government that is more in line with what I actually think a government should be doing. Maybe Ginger would leave you and marry me…same sex marraige is legal in Canada after all. But she probably shares your beliefs, so I guess that wouldn’t work out.
Wait are you…are you talking about Medicaid? Medicaid is one of the blotiest, buerecratic, messed up governmnet programs out there. Fixing Medicaid would be an admirable (though incredibly difficult) goal for any politician, and it would probably save us money as well. Citing Medicaid does not earn you credibility. That’s like, anti-credibility. UHC can be done well, but Medicaid is not the way to do it.
What about this? Would you be opposed to substantially changing Medacaid, so that it specifically insures all those unable to currently get health insurance without going into debt? Would that be bad? It’d be an interesting compromise, for sure. And, because of all the wasted $ currently there, it would probably only go slightly higher money-wise, meaning that we’d only have to cut a program or two, or raise taxes slightly, to implement it without raising the national debt.
I see you have embraced the McCain technique of attacking your opponent’s strengths. 
Look fucknut, you have your anecdotes and uninformed opinion. You wanna tell me exactly what I’ve ignored?
What you have ignored, my little stupid flower:
· the currently 45 million uncovered people still get medical care, only now it’s at emergency room prices and it’s paid for by us, the taxpayer.
· The uninsured don’t have preventative care, which makes their health care way more expensive than it ought to be.
· 25 million people have half ass insurance that would still drive them broke if they got sick.
· Half of all bankruptcies have 12,000 or more in medical bills. Do you think an unexpected 12,000 expense (coupled with time off work) could drive the average family to bankruptcy?
· For profit insurance companies routinely deny care or authorize less care than someone needs. You don’t think they do, but you’re a fucking stupid jingoist assclown who thinks your limited experience equals data.
· You can still go bankrupt even if you have health insurance.
· We spend more than twice as much per capita as Canada right now. And they cover everyone.
· People in Canada, the UK and other UHC countries generally like their healthcare systems.
· People in America are routinely denied coverage because of health conditions.
· Coverage is often priced out of reach.
In short, you’re a fucking ignorant tool. And the stupid, blind masses just like you are responsible for putting this country into the state that it’s in.
And I see you’re using the tried and true Obama tactic of restating the problem and then acting like you’ve accomplished something. Every single one of the problems you’ve mentioned has simple, effective, cost efficient market based solution, but you don’t care. you don’t want to hear about anything except for justifying a massive, unprecedented, unfunded, unneeded entitlement program. Fuck off. When you care about solutions, we can talk.
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sigh Medicare and Medicare ARE what government run health care IS. That’s what you get. Proponents of UHC never seem to recognize that, or believe that somehow this time it’ll magically be better/more efficient/different somehow. Ask anyone who has had dealings with a government agency, ANY government agency, if their experience is any different than, say, my mother who was diagnosed with cancer and then forced to wait over 6 months to begin treatment by the Medicare bureaucracy. There is no magic bullet people, that’s how the government runs things. Lobohan runs on about “bills over $12K bankrupting people.” That’s true, bills that high could easily do that. A person with Medicare hospitalized for 5 months will exhaust his lifetime benefits AND still be on the hook for $40K. This is better? Lobohan mentions that people in Canada, the UK and elsewhere generally like their healthcare. This is true and not true at the same time. It’s true that they like their healthcare, but they also routinely put up with delays in care that we would find unacceptable here AND both Canada and most of Western Europe are currently moving away from full socialized health care and injecting private, free market solutions into their plans to save money and increase efficiency. Canada, for example, which does it better than just about anyone (Oh BTW Lobohan, did you know that it’s not free up there? It varies Province to Province, but Canadian citizens do have to pay insurance premiums for some of their benefits) is currently suffering from a severe shortage of GPs, at the same time an average of one private clinic a week is opening to meet the demand for care(a free market solution).
The point (and it’s one that I rarely if ever get to make, as soon as the words “I don’t support government sponsored UHC” come out of my mouth the response is usually attack! Attack! Attack! from people for whom socializing the U.S. is a religeous calling) is not that there aren’t problems in the health care system in the U.S., there are. And they need to be addressed. And I think government has an important role to play in addressing them. No, the point is that UHC is a ridiculous overreaction to the problems in our system, and is more of an entitlement looking for a justification than it is a solution to our problems, one that will do much more harm than good.
Why don’t you rattle off the simple, effective, cost efficient market based solution? Could it be because you don’t know them? You’re a stupid sheep who’s in love with the idea that the market is the solution to all things. It isn’t. The market doesn’t work for health insurance because profit directly detracts from service.
Bullshit. It’s a patch. An overarching system would be both more efficient and cheaper. For instance every other country with UHC is more efficient than Medicare.
Not true. That’s how inefficient government runs things. Other countries have seamless systems where you walk in, get the treatment you need and walk out. No beauracracy. The trouble with you “market will fix it” drones is that you think it will be the DMV. Utter stupidity driven by the scare tactics of the right.
No UHC will mean no one is bankrupt for medical bills.
Market solutions make money for the insurance companies, they do not increase efficiency of health insurance. Profit by definition takes away money for treatment. An organization that doesn’t make profit has more money for treatment. You can’t be so stupid that you can’t understand that.
So? Of course some things aren’t going to get covered. To say that countries that have UHC are looking to transition to a market based system like ours is an outright lie. UHC systems are all universally better than ours when it comes to coverage, cost and efficiency the only thing they have against them is slightly longer waits for non-urgent care. That’s not to say the market can’t play a role, but it will be smaller and more marginal.
The problem is your pathetic and delusional devotion to a market based solution is wrong. Thankfully more Americans are catching on to that.
You know what? I give up. Profit = bad government = good. Corporations are evil, bureaucracies are bliss. Remove my brain and allow me to join you as one more drooling drone. You’re not interested in any solutions, you just want to evangelize. Preach on Brother! I’m out. I’ll save my time and effort for rational people.
You’re too fucking stupid. Educate yourself. Read “Perfectly Legal” or “Free Lunch” by David Cay Johnson. You can keep pretending at being clever by suggesting that I’m just jealous, but that’s obvious bullshit.
That’s a classical example of a straw man. In no way am I anti-market. For widgets and cars and tvs and the value of labor of course it makes sense. For something that is inherently unprofitable, like say paying someone’s medical bills it is not.
But I guess a nuanced view of life would be too hard to bother with, right?