Complete, utter and embarrassing to read let alone believe nonsense.
Which countries that have NHC or UHC are unsatisfied and want to return to American-style health care coverage?
As for waiting in line, I had to wait two months for a procedure to open my throat when it was getting harder and harder to swallow medication. Then I had complications the next day and his entire office was closed for a week. I had not been told and not been given any instructions on what to do.
Warning, I’m about to retell my French public hospital story:
I was injured in a fall five years ago in Paris and was taken by ambulance to the public hospital. I waited for about five minutes in the Waiting Room. It was empty, I think. Then I saw a doctor who gave me a careful exam, cleaned the wound, and gave me a tetanus shot. Everyone was very polite and cheerful. I received the bill after I returned home. The total was the equivalent of $35. That included the ambulance.
Now I don’t expect things to be that good here. But I don’t understand what those of you who are opposed to UHC are actually afraid of.
Not so fast. There is a very important exception to the Fuck’em Rule. It’s called [i[minority rights*. No matter how much power one or the other party has in Congress or in the Executive Branch, there are certain rights that they can’t vote away.
Frankly, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more paranoid group in opposition. "Run for your lives! It’s entitlements! Beware Health Care! It’s NURTURERS!
If you are a conservative, be sure that you are not getting your news just from radio and television talk shows. If you want only conservative input, try respectible sources like the Wall Street Journal or the National Review. And keep reading from multiple intelligent sources.
I have an alternate question, athelas. It seems incontrovertible that major conservative players (Limbaugh, Palin, Beck, Hannity, and more thana handful of Republican senators and reps, names available on request) are outright lying about the health care proposals. Do you agree? If not, we’ll examine some of their specific statements. If so, why is it that the opponents of health care reform must resort to outright lies in order to gain ground in this debate? Why don’t they think that they can win the case on its merits–why must they drum up baseless fear among the electorate?
Where have you been the past eight years? Torture, illegal wiretapping, “free speech zones”, suspension of habeus corpus, indefinite detention without charge, extraordinary rendition, politicization of the Justice Department…and that’s just what the government has been doing. Ask Bill Maher or the Dixie Chicks or anyone who opposed the Iraq war about accusations of disloyalty and treachery. Yup, those darned fascist liberals…
More on topic: I freaking love the NHS. It has yet to lead to the British government running everything; in fact, the past few governments have been busily shoving public services onto the private sector (usually over the objections of the general public), including outsourcing some of the NHS services. This has pretty much always led to a worsening of service quality (case in point).
You can keep your private insurance if you want to.
If that’s the case then it should be simple for you to provide an example. Please point one out. Several if you have them.
I don’t think all insurance companies are bad guys. We do know that private insurance exists and profits in countries with UHC. There also a real danger of opening up a UHC system without sufficient oversight that results in price gouging and abuse similar to what’s been reported in Medicare.
There are serious real concerns to deal with. Killing grandma isn’t one of them. That’s why the bullshit arguments are so frustrating.
One of the UK BUPA tricks is this.
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Do operation and costly complications develop
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Call Ambulance and rush patient to nearest NHS hospital
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Profit
There’s pretty much a guarantee that “Obamacare” won’t happen at all, let alone go further in the future. That’s becauase:
[ul]
[li]America is an overwhelmingly conservative nation, with a strong tradition of skepticism towards any government work[/li][li]America has such lax lobbying and campaign financing laws that big corporations have an inordinate amount of power. Private insurance companies can (and do, IIRC) spend millions of dollars a day to influence politicians and to sway public opinion. [/li][li]The American mainstream media seem to be against the idea. All you hear about is what setbacks Obama has suffered, and what the opponents are saying. There’s very little reporting on any channel what the proposed reform actually does, and which people it can help or how.[/li][/ul]
Regards,
Shodan
From your definition:
I challenge you to find any government program that DOESN’T fit this definition.
Wait -now I’m confused? What happened to the Liberal Media Conspiracy? Have I missed a memo or something?
I expect they will go furyher, this is only the camel toes under the tent. Once the people see that this can work, that they will benefit, they will pressure Congress to extend and expand. We will be lucky to get anything at all out of this Congress, given the awesome power of Big Money to have their way with us.
But as I’ve noted before, they have to kill all of it, down to the last jot and tittle. If any of this makes its way into law, people will benefit, and people will see that the monsters under thier beds are illusions and lies. So yeah, step one of many.
Like America in the Fifties, you mean?
Coming to this trainwreck late let me just recap the only pertinent to the op points I can find within it …
Nothing will stop future voters from electing a government which will change the rules from what is being proposed to something else, to anything else. Nothing prevents voters from getting a government that will mandate no public coverage and the scrappage of Medicaid and Medicare or from implementing government run healthcare.
Duh.
But government run healthcare is not what is being proposed and the campaign to paint it as such, or as a Trojan horse that will somehow inexorably lead to that is specious at best, even if it has been somewhat effective.
This is what GD has become?
Cite for any numbers on that? :dubious:
Stop taunting Laura.
Smartly done, Shodan. A touch, I do confess.
It also started my day with a smile. Thanks.
To all those opposed to “Obama-care” or UHC in any form, I’m very curious to know what you make of these statistics:
[QUOTE]
[ul]
[li] 50% of all US bankruptcy filings are due in part to healthcare costs[/li][li] Of these 50%, 68% already had private health insurance.[/li][/ul]
(source: National Coalition on Health Care)
In short, 34% of the people in this country who file for bankruptcy ended up grabbing their ankles and bending over for the health insurance companies who capped or revoked their payout.
This is obviously a very personal statement I’m about to make, but the above statistics are unacceptable to me. I’m not for UHC because I subscribe to some sort of naive “throw free stuff at the poor” mentatlity, I’m for UHC because health care costs can have a very real and damaging effect on the middle-of-the-road American such as myself. In fact, this happens with surprising frequency.
Also, there was a recent pieceon NPR looking at health insurance recission rates that found that they occur with alarming frequency to the people who need vital health care the most.
Regarding entitlement programs that have been repealed, welfare was reformed in the 90’s to become a temporary program, welfare-to-work, under Clinton and the Republican congress, so a permanent entitlement became a temporary entitlement.