You will, if you read the fine print on your pay stub. And I daresay that deduction – plus the difference between your salary as it is now and as it would be if your employer did not have to factor in its health-insurance contribution as a labor cost – is rather more than the amount of your income tax payment that would be attributable to universal health care if we had it. At least, the experience of Europe appears to bear that out.
Why are you drawing such a large distinction between the “voting public” and the “general public”? Most adults in this country can vote; felons and noncitizen residents, taken together, are a small minority of the general population.
Yeah, it’s been a while since I had a job with insurance, but I seem to remember a spot on my paystub where it said how much insurance was costing. I was fairly certain this was deducted from what I would otherwise make, so its not so much that my employer was paying for insurance as they were automatically deducting it from my pay.
I think he means people who actually do vote, rather then those who can (but in most elections don’t bother).
Maybe. I’m not really trying to debate universal healthcare in this thread, but was just giving my impression as to why that issue never seems to get any real traction at the federal level. Also, it’s not clear that if we instituted universal healthcare, whether employers would give you all the money they now pay for insurance on your behalf. Things never seem to work out like that in the real world.
Congresscritters tend to not listen too much to people who don’t vote. And many of the polls that we see are of the general public, not the voting public.
And Hugo Chavez offered to give heating oil to poor people in the U.S., and was turned down. Because it was a PR stunt. Just like Castro’s. Remember, Castro and Chavez were willing to pull those resources from their own people, who are much, much poorer than even the lowest quintile in America. How does that fit your notion of social justice?
Well, that and the fact that if he brought them to Canada for medical care, he’d have to pay for it. It’s free for people who live in Canada, not foreigners.
Why not ask? You could ask the people who need heating oil if they would be willing to accept such assistance from such an aggressive and divisive figure as Chavez. You could make the case that the President of Venezuela is a destructive and dangerous force in international affairs, and sacrifices must be made to thwart him. Might point how poorly he fares in comparison to our own Leader. Maybe they would spurn his offer. I’d bet against it.
Or maybe a New Orleans man who’s been treated like used toilet paper by his own government might scruple at his child being cared for by a doctor from - gasp! - a Communist regime! Again, probably not.
Though I am heartened to see Sam analyze the situation in terms of working class solidarity. It shows considerable progress.
I think he did, or is. CITGO (the state owned Ven. oil company) donates heating oil in New England and Chicago and probably other places in the US as well.
Honestly I don’t see anything wrong with taking it. He likes the anti-US rhetoric, and his economic policies probably aren’t great in the long term for his country, but its not like he’s Hitler (did I just reverse Godwinize?) or anything .
I don’t see anything wrong with taking it either. Besides, oil is a commodity, and it’s naive if you think you can not buy it from one producer and make a difference. It basically all goes into the same pot.
I’ve found lots of anecdotal reports that Doctors in Cuba recommend termination of any high-risk pregnancies. Why? Because A) abortion is so common and accepted that it makes sense, and B) because Cuba tries to artificially inflate key metrics like infant mortality by rewarding doctors who hit goals set for them.
The article goes on to point out that infant mortality is a common ‘baseline’ statistic for health care because it tends to be a good indicator of overall care. But not in the case of Cuba, because Cuba games the statistics. For example, the mortality rate of children from age 1 to 4 is 11.8, which is 34% higher than in the U.S. Also, consider maternal mortality:
So… Cuba games the system to make the numbers look good by A) encouraging termination of high-risk pregnancies, B) casually aborting babies early when women stop menstruating, and C) throwing all their resources at infants to keep them alive until age 1, after which their deaths are no longer considered to be ‘infant mortality’.
Sam: Your cite needs a math course. 56.9 per 1,000 is 5.69%, not 59%. Looks like an anti-abortion, agenda driven web site, too, btw. I’m a bit confused, though, because they cite X number per “woman”, not per pregnant woman, so it’s hard to tell what they’re talking about. I’m assuming they mean per pregnancy.
Maybe, maybe not; the numbers in and of themselves don’t necessarily tell the whole story. I think you are jumping to conclusions about the reasons for the high abortion rate in Cuba.
I have firsthand experience with Soviet health care; the Soviet Union was notorious for its high abortion rate. I haven’t seen any widespread allegations of forced abortions in the Soviet Union; however, the lack of available effective contraceptive methods and poor reproductive education led to huge numbers of unwanted pregnancies, which are far more likely to be aborted. (That, and well, people are much less likely to carry a pregnancy to term, given other options, if their living conditions suck. To name one example, the number of children per woman was much, much higher outside of major urban areas like Moscow and St. Petersburg, where couples didn’t necessarily have to wait years on end for apartments of their own, during which they often lived in miniscule apartments with their in-laws. Also, the birthrate in Russia in particular has nosedived since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and all the social and economic dislocation that caused.)
So yeah, there were lots of abortions under Soviet socialized healthcare, but not because any government official was holding a gun to pregnant women’s heads. Yes, it sucks that anyone should have, much less feel the need to abort, an unwanted pregnancy (and I’m about as pro-choice as they come). But a woman deciding that abortion is the best of some really terrible alternatives is a far cry from forced abortion.
And then there’s the scent of fresh agenda in the air, for instance…
When the author is straining every nerve to give the appearance of well-sourced and statisticly sophisticated information, this sort of direct political judgement is a bit unnerving. It would be a bit like reading an abstract about say, breast cancer in America and coming across a line like “…of course, all of this serves the interests of George Bush and his health industry cronies…”
Might be true, I might agree, but its presence is a bit jarring, the scent of agenda begins to hang heavy in the air…
And this…
Perfectly sensible. Our faith is restored, we are in the presence of sober and unbiased minds…
Oh, my. Seems a bit unfair, don’t you think? Sets the bar a bit high.
The “imprints” of “indoctrination”? You mean the doctor shines a light down your throat and instead of “Say Ahhh” its “Say Dictatorship of the Proletariat”?
I suppose we must. If Castro claims to be able to seize control of the State of Missisippi, he must be delusional. Hard to argue with that reasoning. Kinda scary as well.
Dr. Kildarro, Trotskyist Revolutionary Podiatrist. Dedicated to osteopathic medicine and world domination!
I’ll take that bet, I bet for no it doesn’t get any better. For years the US embargo was a non-issue because Cuba was heavily subsidized by the USSR, during those years if you wanted medicine you got family abroad to send it to you. Nothing has changed since the fall of the USSR.
Why are you drawing such a large distinction between the “voting public” and the “general public”? Most adults in this country can vote; felons and noncitizen residents, taken together, are a small minority of the general population.