You’re right. Wow, I had forgotten how, prior to public education, we had a much more egalitarian system. It’s sort of like how our current health care system is so egalitarian, right, in which the rich and the poor alike have the right to hire the best doctors money can afford. Great point!
Daniel
It’s poor form to switch mid-paragraph from the future conditional to the present tense.
As opposed to our current system, in which we have a two-tier system: one for the elite who can afford to pay once for health care, and one for hoi polloi* who cannot.
As someone who would love to have a couple of potentially serious problems checked by a person with even minimal medical training and no means to do so, well, I hope that you will have no need someday to pay for a catastrophic illness by drawing down all of your retirement savings. But if you have to, you can take comfort in the fact that if you survive to live in penury, at least it won’t be in a country with “socialistic medicine.” 
At least health care as it is now is administered largely by extremely competent and well trained physicians and other medical personnel.
The type of doctors and other medical personnel we’re likely to wind up with through government administered health care is the primary reason I’m so opposed to it. Can anyone seriously claim, after having dealt with anyone who is already a member of goverment administered anything, that they perform with greater efficiency, courtesy, drive and capability than that which is performed by those in the private sector?
Um. Yeah. You, however, seem inclined to believe in myths and fantasies so far be it from me to disabuse you of them. :rolleyes:
Oh, do try! For one so knowledgeable and prescient as yourself, I would think the opportunity to ‘disabuse’ me of these myths and fantasies (some of which I have seen/experienced firsthand) now that you have the opportunity, would be too good to pass up. I haven’t seen a know-it-all of your proportions around here in a long time, and so it would be interesting to get your take on just how it is that I happen to be in error here. (I should forewarn you though that I’m about to leave for the evening and so won’t be able to respond right away.)
I’m not Quiddity Glomfuster but to begin with, in the majority of countries with Universal Health care not all services are paid for by the government, and most services are provided by the private sector. So yeah, you are fantasizing.
My Dad was a civil servant who worked with great dedication and competence for less money than he would have made in a comparable private sector job.
When I worked for the state utilities commission, one of the best lawyers on staff, a brilliant young man, was recruited by one of the foremost legal firms in Boston. He left within a year to join the Attorney General’s office, at a considerable pay cut, because he preferred public service, at which he excelled (and he was a damned fine human being all around, too).
I saw good and bad both during my years in state government. One commissioner I worked for has gone on to other, stellar careers in both the private and public sectors. To tar all government workers with such a broad brush is despicable lazy-mindedness.
This is a lie. How likely is it that medical training in this country would change? All socialized medicine would do is cut out the middleman: the insurance industry, which bleeds billions out of the healthcare system every year for its own profit.
Admit it: your real objection is that you don’t want *your * tax dollars paying for medical care for poor people.
What is sad is that people like SA are ignoring that even conservative leaders like Mitt Romney already realize that what we have now is irrational health care, poor people and/or the uninsured do receive health care, but now it comes when their problems reach emergency levels and then it costs more to everyone. And also at that level middlemen are involved (more wasted money that all taxpayers and people already insured have to pay in the long run anyhow).
It seems to me that since the original plan of Clinton went nowhere, it is more likely that new plans similar to the one in Massachusetts are the ones that now will be considered for future universal health care plans in the USA.
I think health care should be separated from one’s employment status, (The Massachusetts plan does not get rid completely of that connection) and more middlemen could be cut; however, as a pragmatist I think the MA plan is a step in the right direction.
Eventually, I still think it will become clear that the insurance industry is indeed the hog in the system, so I believe that plans like the MA one will be the last chance where it will have to show that it is not the hog. (Fat chance of that IMO)
Kindly persuade me that the notoriously incompetent, wasteful and beaurocratic U.S. government and whatever health care program it comes up with to foist upon the American citizenry will be administered at all similarly to the way other health care programs are administered in other countries with entirely different socio-economic conditions and political structures.
I believe, if you will examine my words a little more closely and with less readiness to find fault with this poster with whom you’ve become increasingly exasperated over the years, you will find that my criticism is aimed at the consequences of government administered programs and not toward any government worker specifically. Already we have excellent doctors who will not accept Medicare patients because of both the red tape involved in trying to deal with the government regarding these peoples’ care and because of the relative pittance the government will pay for their services. I have no doubt that should the government take full control and responsibility for health care in this country that we will be left with a situation that provides complicated, frustrating and substandard health care for all. Additionally, it is highly likely that advances in research, medicines, and the development of technology and equipment to treat health problems would grind virtually to a halt.
Wow! It’s two…two…two lies in one! :rolleyes:
First of all, see my post to ETF above. I have zero faith in the U.S. government to administer any social program with any degree of competency whatsoever. It seems to me that just about any government social program I can think of provides about forty percent of what is actually needed, and with about ten times the appropriate amount of complexity and difficulty.
As to your crack about my not wanting my tax dollars paying for health care for poor people, you are simply displaying your own incredible gullibility in swallowing leftie lies about right wing selfishness and lack of concern for others. I would be delighted if some sort of way could be found for government to pay for health care insurance coverage for everyone…in other words, to function as a nationwide group health care plan similar to what one gets when taking employment with a company providing group health coverage. In other words, everyone gets covered, the government pays the premiums and collects whatever taxes are necessary to do so, and American citizens still get to choose their own doctors, treatment, etc. just like they do now under most private company health care plans.
Now, this is something I’ve just come up with off the top of my head, and I’m sure that many arguments can be put forth against it. Maybe such a plan would work; maybe it wouldn’t…but I would be all for giving it a try. No plan is without problems. The question is which way would provide the best health care for America’s citizens? Still, it puts the lie to your lie that I don’t want to contribute to health care for others.
With the Bush administration of course incompetency is to be expected, so we will have to wait for a change in government to properly tackle health care reform.
Besides you seem to have missed my last post. the MA plan already fits your ideas that are not original at all, it is only your ignorance being shown here that demonstrates that you are still ignoring that even in other countries with universal health care the government is not controlling everything.
Bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit.
I absolutely do not believe you. “Hey, you, the Uninsured, trust me, having no doctor at all is better than having a doctor who reports to a bureaucracy. I have your own interests at heart here, not my own selfishness.”
Bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit.
You are simply lying–or stupid, and we know you’re not stupid–if you think the [baby] of universal healthcare should just be thrown out with the [bathwater] of potential bureacracy. Bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit bullshit.
Countries WAY less organized than the US successfully implement universal healthcare. To insist that the hurdles that would need to be overcome totally trump the basic human right of universal healthcare is just simply dishonest, or evil. You pick.
Look: in a democracy, you depend upon the individual members of society to keep it running. Like in a factory, all the equipment needs to be in good repair. You insure your machinery; you insure your populace.
How is it NOT in the general best interest of this nation to have healthcare available to all of the people who make it up? You selfish rich white assholes will still have private insurance companies available to fund your private healthcare providers. You’ll have Country Club Clinics for you who are allergic to riffraff. But you’ll live in a country with a healthier populace. Win win win win win.
So quit the bullshit and admit that you’re just too fucking shortsighted and selfish to insure the entire nation you live in, and not just the rich white people.
GIGO, yes, your post came in while I was composing mine. And trust me, government incompency when it comes to administering social programs preceeds the Bush administration by decades. IMO, the U.S. government, for any number of reasons, is simply incapable of running social programs well.
lissener, have you just gone completely off the wall? Are you so thoroughly invested in the righties-are-selfish-and-evil bullshit that you’ve so eagerly swallowed that you have somehow totally missed what I said to you in my last post? Apart from the fact that you have no fucking idea what you’re talking about with regard to me, my philosophies, and/or my lifestyle, did you not see that I actually support the idea of government funded insurance coverage for “everyone”? My quarrel is with the government determining what kind of coverage I’m eligible for, how much they will pay for it, and who will be allowed to provide it. I’m also dubious to the point of abject disbelief that the government will fund the research and development necessary to make advances in new medicines, technology and equipment that would take place should health care be driven by private enterprise as it is now. By and large, government programs are stagnant programs.
The accusations you’re making about me typifies the exact type of knee-jerk, do-something-even-if-it’s-wrong attitude that has fueled much of the opposition to social changes favored by the left for decades. Nowhere have I said I disapprove of universal health care for everyone. I just oppose universal health care that is expensive, inadequate, stagnant, and administered by beaurocrats who couldn’t care less about the people whose health they are in charge of because to them we’re only case numbers.
Your completely inaccurate accusations regarding my own circumstances and beliefs are also typical of leftie SOP for the last several decades as well. You don’t agree with me on this subject, so your response is to accuse me of all sorts of things that not only aren’t true, but which you would have no way of knowing as a matter of fact anyway. You can trust me when I say that you don’t have the vaguest idea what you’re talking about when it comes to me personally. I’m not a rich white asshole (well, I am white…and guys like you ocassionally make me an asshole, but in the main I’m not ), I’m not rich, I don’t belong to a country club, and I don’t have a private health care provider. I simply believe that the government by and large sucks, and I don’t want it dictating my health care.
'. . . and I’m willing to extrapolate from that that I don’t want it providing basic healthcare for ANYONE ELSE either."
Who cares if it “typifies” anything? that doesn’t make it wrong; that’s just a convenient excuse for you to dismiss it. I didn’t read it anywhere, nor am I just dittoing some figurehead who dictates my opinions; they’re 100% my own. Typify this.
Dishonest prick.
And *how *exactly is that not monstrously selfish? You don’t want your healthcare “dicated to you,” :rolleyes: , so the rest of the uninsured world can go DIAF, as long as you’re saved that indignity? What a towering heap of solipsistic hubris, you lying prick.
And you are complaining against lissener? You are just showing even more ignorance:
Let us see some examples that show that government can do well:
http://www.cjnetworks.com/~cubsfan/libgood.html
Even more examples in the link, BTW that page is titled Accomplishments of Liberalism, but I don’t quite agree: a good number of conservatives supported those government programs.
Fuck you! I’m not wasting another another moment on your silly ass.
Dishonest *cowardly *prick.
Wasting seconds? Like you’re going to convince me that your selfserving illogic is anything other than solipsistic prickery? Waste some seconds on yourself, prick.