Having read previous threads of his, I think that’s a mere debating exercise.
I wonder if study is not too grand a word, here. After all, the Heritage Foundation is known far more as the intellectual propaganda arm of the Republican Party than as a clearinghouse for academic papers, no?
(emphasis added with a sniff of disdain…)
Brisk, to be sure, rather less stuffy than one might expect from a “study”.
Ummm, yes. Quite.
A pity they haven’t the author’s unblinking and non-partisan perspective, so free of political bias.
But they do paint a stark picture of the disaster that socialized medicine has unleashed upon the hapless Yurpeens. As well as an entire systems teetering on the brink of catastrophe. About ten years ago.
How’s that disaster/catastrophey thing working out for ya?
Lyke eye sed, single paier gust meaks cents.
That’s not a study. It’s a series of opinion pieces written by some conservative European think tank members. How shocking that the Heritage Foundation picked some conservatives to comment on European health care!
As far as the VA goes, it seems to be doing rather well, regardless of what your sister’s ex-boyfriend told you.
Second Base!
How about instead, you address the posts we’ve already made that roundly dispute your assertions?
Or the posts that SA’s made that roundly dispute his assertions?
[RIGHT]{DarkRed}=CMC[/RIGHT]So, somehow it costs more to hire a lawyer to sue the government that it does to sue a private corporation, or something? :dubious:
Well,
The problem is that even if he does address the posts we’ve already made, I’ve no doubt that either a quick search or a short wait will provide us with a post that contradicts whatever he says.
CMC fnord!
Context, crow, context.
The point is that one can prevail against insurance companies.
But I’m sure you knew that.
If one has the money and time and has not actually died from denial or delay of treatment, yes one can.
Insurance companies don’t care if they get sued for denying benefits. The worst that can happen is they will be forced to pay the benefits that they should have paid in the first place. They know that it is a net gain to deny benefits, because most people can’t afford to sue, or won’t live long enough without treatment to see the end of litigation.
Insurance is one of those backward industries where it’s profitable to delay delivery. I’m not shocked at all that they exploit this to the full.
See, by ignoring this, you show people that you really aren’t about debate, you do move the goal posts, and you aren’t worth engaging with. See, I didn’t believe that about you, just because others said it was so. That’s why I just kept engaging with you. But I see now they were right on the money and you’re ‘poor me, I’m just smarter than all of you’, shtick is really too lame for words.
Are you Erin Brockovich? Or that kid from the Rainmaker?
That kid died before he got treatment, though he did win the case. Or at least his family won in suing for wrongful death. What a glorious pyrrhic victory!
Clearly we need more inspiring fictional examples, like Tom Hanks in Philadelphia. He lived long enough to see his case decided in his favour, though he did get to enjoy the big dramatic courtroom collapse scene first.
Granted, it was about wrongful dismissal and not health insurance, but still…
Then why do they ever pay anything?
And yet they pay well enough and often enough that virtually everybody I’ve ever known personally who has to have something done doesn’t think twice about insurance paying for it, and doctors and hospitals often refuse to take patients who don’t have it. Plus, insurance companies operate on a three to seven percent profit margin - comparable to your neighborhood grocery store. So all this tells me that insurance companies pay pretty well and often and that all the whinging around here about how they don’t is either inaccurate, exceptional, or, shall we say, less than honest.
And Bryan, I’ve been waiting to see what you thought about the Heritage Foundation piece and the VA office I linked to.
Good point about fictional examples, btw.
:dubious:
Hey, Guin, I posted a couple of pretty good cites to illustrate the problem I have with the government being in charge of my and my family’s health care. One pertains to problems in Europe and the other to the VA here in the U.S.
Notice how, even though a couple of posters paid lip service to handwaving them away, they were largely ignored?
This is what happens with cites around here that fly in the face of the herd mind around here, and it’s why I generally refuse cite demands. Cites accomplish nothing. We can throw cites at each other till the sun goes down in it won’t make one. bit. of. difference. in how anyone thinks. Cites in line with the herd mind will instantly be regarded as probative and cites opposing the board’s herd mentality will be instantly dismissed.
So the thing to do is argue things based on what life experience, common sense, and innate judgement tell you is right, and so that’s largely what I do here. My experience in life, everything I’ve heard first hand and much of what I’ve read, lead me to view government and the way it operates in a very negative light, thus I don’t want it making health care decisions for myself and my family or other people I care about. I also believe that it’s a bad thing to be relying on the government to provide for us in the first place. William F. Buckley had several things to say that I think sum up my view of government quite well. He said:
“There is an inverse relationship between reliance on the state and self-reliance.”
“The best defense against usurpatory government is an assertive citizenry.”
“Government can’t do anything for you except in proportion as it can do something to you.”
I believe that these are the kinds of things which ought to be being discussed in regard to what kind of government the country wants, rather than the typical one around here in which “conservatives want to see people dying in the streets”.
There are many, many ways that the small number among the 15% who don’t have coverage could be met. After all, we largely solved the problem of hunger with food stamps, and we managed it without the govenment getting involved and telling grocery stores which foods they could sell and what they had to charge for it, and which foods we could have in which amounts and with a constantly changing place in line to get into the store in the first place.
This country does not need the U.S. government to take over it’s health care system. It also does not need to live under the tyranny of a nanny state government which seeks to create a benefactor/supplicant relationship between itself and the populace. After all, most people love their parents but they still prefer living on their own. So why enter into a parental relationship with a nanny-state government that doesn’t know you from Adam and cares about you even less, which is hidebound and bureaucratic and makes no provision for exceptional or unusual cases or circumstances, and literally holds your fate in its hands?
These are the things we need to be discussing, and not whether some VA office in another town works better than the VA office in the cited town.
Fortunately, the insurance industry never drops customers in need of care. Oh, wait.
“WellPoint Routinely Targets Breast Cancer Patients”
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory?id=10446307
emphasis mine
Ahh, the stupid just gets better and better!!!