Sarah Palin proven right! Government tricks beautiful young mom; imposes 1st Death Panel Verdict

The BBQ Pit
481

Competitive pressures, contractual obligations, the fact that they can be sued, and the need to keep their customer bases at least relatively happy to prevent them or their employers from switching to another company. Government has no such constraints in any of these regards. It can do whatever it wants whenever it wants and whoever doesn’t like it can go pound sand.

Look at what goes on with Social Security and Medicare. Their recipients have no idea from one year to the next what is going to be done with their benefits. They might be cut, they might increased, some aspects might be eliminated while others are made to require greater co-pays and deductibles. Their fate and much of their day-to-day living expenses and quality of lifestyle are completely at the mercy of the machinations of Congress and the administrators of those programs.

And so it will go with single-payer health care. Coverages and qualifications and limits will rise and fall with the vicissitudes of governmental economic and political considerations and everyone will be at the mercy of whatever the government decides it will do whenever and however it decides it will do it.

And people will have little practical recourse. Yes, private care options may still be available but how many people will still be able to pay for private coverage or treatment on top the money the government dings them for in order to pay for its program, and how many private treatment centers and physicians will remain in business once most of the populace is driven into the government program? My guess is not many, in either regard.

482

You think the government doesn’t have obligations, that they can’t be sued, or that they don’t have to keep their [del]customers[/del] voters happy to prevent them from electing people who will do what they want?

All of those things also happen with private insurance. You have no idea year to year what will happen with benefits being cut/increased/eliminated. Premiums, co-pays, and deductibles are changed with no explanation. Patients are at the mercy of the machinations of the insurance company and its’ administrators.

483

So, then, the reason that UHC works so well in all those other countries, but wouldn’t work well here is because America is unique. Ah! Well, now we get to it!

And it is unique in that it is poorly managed. By us, apparently, in that we do all the voting that puts the people in Congress, who so poorly manage. Well, that’s a pity, then. Because were it not for that, we could prosper under such a system just like everyone else does. Which is the inevitable conclusion of your, ah, reasoning. America is unique in that one regard, were it not for that, well, socialized medicine would be dandy!

Cuba is run better than America? Sweden? Ireland, Greece? That country that used to be Great Britain, all of them better managed than America? Which explains why they can take a perfectly unworkable premise like UHC and make it run. Except, of course, maybe it isn’t, really, because they are all a bunch of lying liberals, as well as ignorant of how peachy-dandy American health care is for the vast majority.

And your proofs for this position is the rock-solid, incontestable facts of your own experience and probity. You offer no cites, because you don’t need them, and we shouldn’t need them, because this is the Gospel According to St. Arving, that you have the truth, and the truth sets you free, or at least free from citations, or proof, or evidence of any sort whatsoever.

Of course, a reasonable man might quibble. He might point out that if all these countries are so dreadfully socialist, and yet managed so much better than we are, perhaps it is socialism itself which is the factor. Perhaps they are run no better than we are, being democratically elected by people no better than we, no smarter than we, from amongst candidates no smarter than our own. But they are socialistic, and have the advantage of a superior system.

So, the bottom foundation of your argument against UHC in America is because America is uniquely stupid and inept, and what works so well for others cannot work here, because we are too dumb to manage it.

Well, darn!

484

Sure, it can be sued. But who among its supplicants can afford to do so. And when have you ever heard of someone suing the government for denied or altered benefits, much less having prevailed?

Further, once these programs get instituted and become firmly embedded in societal life they are virtually impossible to get rid of, because: one, people become invested in them financially by dint of having been forced to do so; and two, new generations grow up under them and simply accept them as normal and proper.

And with regard to insurance companies doing the same as government, as I’ve said ad infinitum, options exist with a system of private insurance that don’t (in any practical sense) under single-payer.

485

What, so people can choose from several other insurance companies that will screw them over to make a buck? Yay!!!

486

Making bucks is good. It has provided us with advancements in technology, equipment, research and medicines that are the best in the world. Had this country been under the thumb of government health care since, oh, say, the thirties, our medical development now would likely be on a par with what it was in the fifties.

So again, I reiterate that making money is good. I also reiterate that everyone involved in health care, from doctors and pharmacists to nurses and lab techs makes money from it. It’s naive and unrealistic to think that no one should make money from health care.

And I’ll ask again, if insurance companies are primarily in the business of denying health care, why do so many doctors and clinics and hospitals decline to treat people if they don’t have insurance. What do you think, that they’d rather not be paid by insurance companies than to not be paid by individual patients?

And the fact of the matter is that most of the money insurance companies take in from premiums goes back out to pay policy holder claims. After all operating expenses are deducted, insurance companies pay out approximately 80 of their revenue in claim payments. Clearly most people are getting the coverage they’re paying for. Plus I’d wager that a significant percentage of the time when someone has been “screwed” by insurance companies, it’s because their policy never covered the offending treatment to begin with. A large number of people seem to think that if anything they want covered isn’t that they’re being screwed, and that simply isn’t the case. Would you expect your grocer to give you food you hadn’t paid for simply because you happened to need it? Of course not. So why expect insurance companies to pay for coverage they haven’t been paid for?

487

Similarly, would you expect Medicaid to pay for things you’re not eligible for simply because you happened to need it?

488

By what measure is the American heath care the best in the world? It is not . Every comparison across the world puts us about no. 37. And we pay double.
I saw Cris Rock on TV and he said his mother had recently been ill. Because he was rich, she got great care. He talked about the fancy hospital room with concierge service. He also mentioned a long time ago his dad was ill. That was before he became rich. He felt his mother was sicker than his dad was ,but she survived due to much, much superior care. He said if people really knew the level of care the rich get compared to the masses ,they would be out with torches and pitchforks. STARVIN must be pretty rich and wants to defend the care he gets. But we don’t get that kind of care. Our care in America is second rate, expensive and hard to get.

489

http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/politics&id=7000106

Must have been ugly. God hates ugly.

490

I wonder if we can put the unemployed to work tricking (beautiful) people into losing benefits so they die. We can solve unemployment, eliminate the government having to pay for health care, and get rid of folks who aren’t beautiful enough.

I’m not seeing a downside here.

491

Of course, the difference between those death panels and Sarah Palin’s? They actually are dead. Really dead, not just a ruined credit rating, but pushing the daisies.

Good thing they can sue!

492

Oh good, more lies.

You already lied about this one, why did you feel you needed to repeat it?

I spend a significant chunk of my free time at a charity. They have 12 paid staff members. Is it correct to say they are profiting? Or would a reasonable person say that you are being a deceitful ass.

The word you are looking for is compensation. Doctors, nurses, hospital administrators are compensated for the work they do.

Bill Gates profits from Microsoft, he does not profit from the Bill and Malinda Gates foundation, do you see the difference?

Please stop lying. You are obviously a busy person. Not lying would save you a lot of time and dramatically shorten your posts.

493

Wouldn’t you have to provide them with health insurance?

That means you’d have to hire someone to trick them out of that insurance.

Which means you’d have to give them insurance.

And so on.

Can’t the unemployed just mow lawns and get loans?

494

Well, you gotta get a loan to buy the lawn mower. About $1300 (US), I estimate, according to my life experience.

495

Both my Wife and I have been government employees for 20 years. At no time have either of us tried to cut corners or reduce the services that we give. Both my Wife and I bend over backwards to provide services that are above and beyond what we must do. I work with 500 other folks that do the same.

I take GREAT offense that you Starving Artist, suggest that good people like my Wife and Myself would deliberately refuse anyone service just because we work for ‘the man’. It does not work that way.

You are completely uniformed of the workings of government. And you are just as ignorant of the way private business works.

It has been shown again and again in this thread that you haven’t the first clue what you are talking about, but you continue to put down those very people that work for you.

496

You know, luce, without information on how many of those denials were illegitimate, the percentages you posted on denials mean nothing. If 20 people out of a hundred were denied organ transplants, for example, and their policies didn’t cover organ transplants, it would be…uh…misleading at the very least to use that 20 percent denial rate to imply that 20 people were wrongfully denied coverage by their insurance companies.

And with regard to the two 17-year-olds you cited, certainly there is occasional insurance company malfeasance. My question to you would be why not have Congress implement strict laws and controls to govern how they operate and make the penalties for infraction very severe, up to and including jail time for whichever executives were responsible. I see no reason to put all our heath care in the hands of government in order to solve a problem that is dealt with by force of law when it comes to other companies.

Nonsense. Those people sell their time and skill in return for the money and benefits they receive in return. Thus they profit from the sale of that time and skill. The fact is that everyone involved (volunteers obviously excepted) makes money in one way or the other from working in the field of health care.

And like I said, that’s a good thing. When private individuals profit they feed and house their families, and when corporations profit they spend money on research and development in order to create diagnostic and treatment equipment and medicines, or they invest in themselves, with the result that they hire more people (who in turn feed and house their families) and can provide their service at a lower cost through economies of scale.

And now, if you don’t stop accusing me of lying every time I happen have a different viewpoint than you do, you’re going to hurt my feelings and make me cry.

And now, in order to make things even worse I’m going to have to leave my basement in order to go and meet some family and friends for pizza and beer. I hate it when I have to leave my cozy little subterranean cocoon, but what’re ya gonna do?

497

Now, you know this isn’t true. You know exactly what will happen every year. Premiums, co-pays, and deductibles will be raised. Benefits covered will be lowered. Otherwise, how will they cover their CEO’s 50% pay increase on only $4.7 billion dollars of profit?

498

If you are able to walk, you can get good self-propelled mowers for between $225 and $500, depending on quality, and push mowers for $100 or so at Wal-Mart. But other items are needed to, like weed eaters and edgers and blowers. All in all, a person could all fixed up with a good, brand new setup for $500 or less.

And now pizza and beer are singing their siren song and I’m afraid I really do have to leave.

Chow. (That one’s for you, knight. ;))

499

Well, what we got here, Starkers, is what you call a primo feces case, which is high-fallutin’ for “it stands unless you can prove otherwise”. Now, I realise this might encroach on your religious conviction to avoid offering cites and evidence on any day that ends with a “Y”, so I guess that’s pretty much it.

But, sure, if they’re lying, it ain’t true. What do you figure that number might be, then, that are demanding outrageous services and care that isn’t covered? Accoring to your life experiences, that is, since you apparently have nothing else, whatsoever.

500

PS, about the lawn mowers? Hook, line, sinker. Damn, but you’re easy!