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Insurance has "spread the costs" which has allowed costs to increase steadily for years. If those who have actually used healthcare were directly paying for it we would have never seen the kind of cost increases we have experienced. The government claims the need to force everyone into the system because of all the dead beats that don't buy insurance will effectively force those insured to pick up the tab. From my experience if you have assets, hospitals will not hestitate to come after them, so it would seem it is only the poor that actualy would be riding the system for free. How does that change with Obama's plan? Tax payers still end up picking up the check for the poor. And the only reason hospitals take non paying patients is that our government forces them to. It used to be handled by charity hospitals, but today public charities aren't good enough. They might have a different agenda that the State.
the cost of even the most basic of health services has gone through the roof
i discovered that this past fall
and i have health insurance
cadillac insurance in fact
yet, when i needed 7 staples in my scalp when i cut my head
it cost me 3500 bucks out of pocket
insurance covered the other 300 bucks
they charged 700 bucks for the stapler, and another 400 for the staples
you can buy the stapler loaded with staples for 5.95 dollars off of amazon if purchased in bulk
12 bucks for just one shipped to my door
seems to me i would be better off with no insurance and pay out of pocket, and save the money i pay towards premiums for the day when i need attention
total time under care in this instance was 5 minutes including irrigating and closing the wound
no numbing agent was used
just a quik water wash, and bacitracin after closure
the health care system is fucked and forcing people into a shitty system isnt the answer
dont even get me started on 'sick-care' and cancer treatments that dont even cure the disease
its a business, and when treated as such with nothing but a money making motive, care will suck and prices will go up
period.
Our system is really based on sick-care, with too many unneeded procedures and medications that are worse than the cure.
Obamacare just puts a government seal of approval on a totally shitty and corrupt business model.
Record bonuses for monopoly-collusion and staplers.
FUCK THE INDIVIDUAL, LONG LIVE INCORPORATED INSURANCE RACKETEERING!
If the individual mandate, which seeks to provide most of the private revenues to fund ObamaCare, is clearly unconstitutional, then no amount of silver-tongued lawyering to defend of this mandate can change this fact.
The only way to make ObamaCare constitutional is to fund it through taxes. The government has a constitutional right to force its citizens to pay taxes for health care, but it has no constitutional right to force its citizens to purchase health insurance from a private corporation.
This leaves Medicare-for-All as the only viable option to achieve universal health care. But because the health insurance industry is the poster child for crony capitalism, they'll see to it that all of our "bought and paid for" politicians will kill Medicare-for-All before it makes its way out of the womb.
Cynthia--The fact that the Central Govt has usurped power and imposed taxes does not mean that that usurpation and imposition are Constitutional. Sure, we live in a nation where the Central Govt does impose onerous taxes on those who earn a decent wage, but I would maintain that it came about the power to impose these taxes UN-Constitutionally.
Additionally, I have always maintained that the Central Government has no RIGHTS. It has POWER. This power was intended to be very limited, granted to it by The People through the States. Lincoln invaded the very sovereign C.S.A. to reverse this notion of LIMITED power, and won, so ever since we have suffered under tyranny (interesting that JWB's actions and the his reference cry to the Commonwealth's motto, "Sic semper tyrannis!" may have been nothing more than the work of a great patriot in defense of liberty).
Rights belong to The People alone, and they are what we have to defend against tyranny and the ever-growing, ever-expanding Leviathan.
If Congress exercises its UN-Constitutional power to tax Americans for health care costs, and creates some sort of enormous bureaucracy to establish and administer administer a MediCare-like system, then there is absolutely no doubt that we, as a nation, are doomed. If our financial situation was not doomed before, it certainly would be with the imposition of such a system on all Americans.
"The government has a constitutional right to force its citizens to pay taxes for health care.."
Spoken like a true Statist ...and socialist
..but we'll never get a vote on that will we?
.."democracy" is not freedom, it's a yoke/joke
Great video
it's spotted the obvious senility our US President suffers from, that he cannot give a speech without saying one thing and contradicting himself before the end (many times over usually)
some people call it lying, hypocracy and man speaks with forked tongue but i think that's harsh on Bummas speech writers who are obviously very senile too
"4 More Years" ...of pathalogical lying?!!
This will come to pass because it's not a matter of Constitutionality as they may make you think, it's a matter of The Corperation of America which operates outside the Constitution. Proof, if SCOTUS was sooo impartial, then why are they divided straight down the party line evenly?
They are making a Corperate desision, not nessisarily a Constitutionaly based one. It's a sham. You just don't know that the Corperation acts seperate from the Constitution. Not your fault.
Then there going to tell you what to eat, how much weight to lose, force your meds to take because your blood pressure is too high, force you to quit smoking, force you to quit drinking liquor, remove firearms from the house with children because there not "healthy" and last but not least, God forbid your found mentally disturbed, PTSD, or found to be afflicted with a disorder called "Nationalism" or a strong sence of "Patriotism" I'm sure that treatment will be in an internment facility or off shore. But.. were getting Obama care alright, mark my words and spread the message I wrote here.
And that my fellow Americans is what they are up to.
The constitution is dead. We are living in post constitutional America. And yea, the Supreme Court is a political dog and pony show.
Obama stuffing it with young female communists really tells you everything you need to know.
I appreciate your comment and consider it to be intelligent and thoughtful.
I hope that you continue to post your thoughts...The comment threads on ZH are fantastic.
Now for the hard part:
Use spell check. Just constructive criticism. I typically say stupid things here and I spell correctly.
If you say smart things and spell correctly, you are likely to have a greater impact.
"You just don't know that the Corperation acts seperate from the Constitution. Not your fault."
Sheep whisperer, I do know. That makes it my fault for entering into a fraudulent contract. It makes it my fault for sitting idle and not destroying the nexus that connects me to grifters and outright thieves.
Silly me, pursuing life, liberty and property while I should be trying to establish a state citizenship for me and my kids (who I ignorantly entered into fraudulent contracts). I'm just dying to paint a target on my back since law enforcement looks so kindly on such matters. If I don't, I'm a big fucking coward pussy and pretty much a thief like them since I'll be accepting their ill gotten gains and riskless profits they produce at gunpoint.
http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3oif28/
It's not about health care. It's about making people dependent on government FOR health care. Thus, under CONTROL.
It's Hayek's "The Road to Serfdom" coming full circle.
Not even close. You are way behind.
Sprite:
The Obamacare bill is a simple bill that when printed out on standard letter size, 20 #paper on both sides and then the pages are stacked, forms a stack about a foot high (30.4 cm.) The amount of payouts for special interests is just a tad on the high side. One of the many problems with it is that the US Constitution's Bill of Rights sections is a bit miss named. It spells out what the Federal Government can't do and anything it can't do is supposed to be reserved for the "States and the People" the Obamacare bill violates the heck out that principal. For instance if an individual US State wants to enact some tax scheme for health care it can do so. There is a section of the Constitution that lets the Federal Government slide into the cracks "promote the general welfare" and "regulate commerce" So part of the fight in front of the Supreme Court is over the commerce clause vs. the 10th ammendment on powers reserved for the states. It gets much more complicated and arcane but that is why you read about the arguments on whether Obamacare is using a "tax" or a "penalty" to get payments from organizations . Then there is the whole "freedom of Religion" thing. Example Should a Catholic Hospital berequired by law to supply, birth control, morning after pills, and abortions on demand. Don't have room to go into all of it. But basically Nancy Pelosi the House majority leader at the time said "We have to pass the bill to know what's in it" Well they passed it an it has taken over three years to find out what's in it even as sections of it were challanged in the courts. It has turned into a legal and financial mind field that has had crippling effects on the US economy.
[quote]
A health care plan written by a committee who's chairman says he doesn't understand it, passed by a Congress that hasn't read it but exempts themselves from it, signed by a President who also hasn't read it and smokes, administered by a Treasury Chief who didn't pay his taxes, overseen by a Surgeon General who is obese, and financed by a country that's broke. What could possibly go wrong?
[/quote]
[quote]
During an Obamacare litigation hearing this week, Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge James L. Graham asked acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal, "Where ultimately is the limit on Congressional power?" The question sounds rhetorical but is not. The administration argues that Congress has Constitutional authority under the Article I Section 8 "commerce clause" to compel uninsured Americans to purchase health care insurance.
The logic goes back to the 1942 Supreme Court case "Wickard v. Filburn" in which Ohio farmer Roscoe Filburn was fined for growing wheat in excess of New Deal--era crop quotas. Mr. Filburn argued that the quotas did not apply to his particular circumstances because he was growing feed for his own chickens, not to sell. But the Supreme Court disagreed, stating that "control of total supply... depends upon control of individual supply," and by growing his own chicken feed, Mr. Filburn was not buying it from others. Also New Deal agricultural programs were so effective, according to the court, that Mr. Filburn should stop complaining about impositions on his freedom and show a little gratitude.
The Obama administration takes this pernicious logic a step further by compelling people to buy things they don't want. Since there is no interstate commerce to regulate, the government mandates it. But Judge Graham's question can be answered by employing the same argument that Chief Justice John Marshall employed in the foundational case of Marbury v. Madison (1803). If Congress can exercise powers that are in practice unlimited, then as Justice Marshall concluded, "written constitutions are absurd attempts, on the part of the people, to limit a power in its own nature illimitable." It is "a proposition too plain to be contested" that the Constitution cannot be used to justify an act that destroys the very limits on which constitutional government is founded.
In essence, Obamacare must be unconstitutional, because if it stands it would remove the limits to Congressional power that the Constitution was designed to impose. The Constitution is not a suicide pact even if Obamacare is.
[/quote]
You evidently are going to ignore the description of the limitations. Facts might get in the way of your rant?
Limitations are changed, precedent is not.
Gonna let common sense get in the way of fascism?
Being an Aussie I am ignorant of the finer points of this debate, and am sceptical of what is doled up on the evening news, so thought to post here.
In Australia, medical services are provided free to those who earn income below the tax threshold. For everyone else, medical services are levied on a sliding scale as a proportion of your taxable income every year. Most of us get a tax refund, and the levy is taken out of the refund, so you just receive a smaller refund cheque. Those of us on higher incomes with lower tax deductions have to pay, but it is not a crippling amount. A few hundred dollars a year.
Whilst our system is not perfect by any stretch it is not completely broken...at least not yet.
Please explain to me why Obama's plan is causing so much anger amongst the majority of Americans.
Thanking in advance
sprite
You are ignorant indeed. Australia is just one part of the Anglo empire. Do not presume that your government is separate from ours in any way that truly matters.
And your country is 91% white, 8% Asian, and 1% other. Demographics impact the viability of socialism in ways most people won't acknowledge.
Socialism in Haiiti? Not viable.
Socialism in Australia? Viable.
Most importantly, it is a handout to the insurance companies which will entrench the continuation of excessive and rising health care costs in the USA.
Additionally, there is a question for some as to whether the government may compel citizens to directly purchase something from a private company (as opposed to first taxing the citizens and then having the government contract private companies).
But for most of the "debaters", it appears to be a shallow red-team vs. blue-team contest.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=30008
If this passes what else can the government force me to buy?
An automobile? (even though I handle my transportation needs now by walking and riding a bicycle).
An iPhone with a multi-year contract? (even though I handle my mobile communication needs now with a cheaper pay-as-go plan).
What other crony industries are lined up now in the halls of congress, chomping on the bit and waiting for their chance to ram their mandated purchases down my throat when this piece-of-shit legislation is rubber-stamped by the Supremes.
Sprite:
Ignoring all the noise and nastiness in the debate, the bottom line is this--many American believe in the idea of liberty. This idea, at the origins of our nation (see, Articles of Confederation and Anti-Federalist Papers), was about individual liberty being paramount, subject to only an extraordinarily limited form of Central Government. But the monied interests and power-monger political and social elite could not allow the rabble such freedom, for such freedom may result in a competition that could result in the rabble usurping the power of the elite. So, the elite was able to write and ratify a Constitution that it could, over 200+ years, manipulate into the bastardized form it is in. The key moment in this transition was, of course, Lincoln's invasion and subjugation of the C.S.A., a sovereign nation of brother Americans to the South of the U.S.A. To the victors go the spoils, including the history, so this event of pure evil is usually described as the Civil War or the War Between the States. It truly was Lincoln's War, or the War of the Northeastern Monied Interests Against the C.S.A. In any case, once Lincoln conquered the C.S.A., he had conquered the notion that the Central Government was limited in its Power in any way whatsoever. This led to the last 150 years of Central Government assertion of more and more power over the States and The People, bringing this once great nation to the brink of political, social, and economic collapse.
Obamacare is not about Health Care. IT IS ABOUT LIBERTY AND THE LIMITATIONS ON THE POWER OF THE CENTRAL GOVERNMENT. If we lose this battle, liberty is destroyed, once and for all. Dead and buried. If we win, there will remain a small window through which the States and The People might yet restore the nation that was meant to be.
"Please explain to me why Obama's plan is causing so much anger amongst the majority of Americans."
Because caring for my health is between me and my doctor, and NOT THE FUCKING GUBMINT.
Sprite - a goodly portion of Americans are too lazy to research the facts, too scared to think for themselves, and are brainwashed by Rupert Murdoch's FoxNews. You are seeing the results of it here at ZH; predicted as far back as the early 1800s by de Tocqueville.
To you FoxNews junkies: if you actually GO to Australia, or Canada, or Norway, etc. - or at least actually ASK to people from those countries about their experiences with their taxpayer paid, govt-run systems - you see and hear NONE of the horror stories Fox lies to you about.
The simple fact is that while the govt-run systems aren't perfect, they do outperform the corrupt, corporate-run one that America has now. Moreover, we (the taxpayer) already pays enough for a govt-run system. If one adds up all the ways the federal govt pays for healthcare (Medicare, the VA, insurance premiums for the huge federal workforce, etc.), it comes to 59% of the healthcare dollar in America. The rest of the G20 spends roughly half what we do, per capital, for (better) healthcare. So...the American taxpayer already PAYS enough for govt-run universal healthcare, we just don't get the healthcare.
From the first page of search results ...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/6092658/Cruel-and-neglectfu...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2000824/NHS-indignity-Peter-Thom...
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2749982/3145-patients-died-nee...
http://www.politics.co.uk/news/2010/12/2/nhs-horror-stories-revealed
You're not the sharpest pencil in the box, are you, Sam?
For some ODD reason, all of your search results have to do with the UK's system. Why would you suppose THAT might me? Perhaps you searched on "horror stories about the UK system", rather than honestly searching to see what people in other countries think of their universal healthcare systems? All 19 of the other G20 countries have universal healthcare. Of those 19, the UK is routinely ranked the worst.
But, OK, let's take the worst case. I entered, for a search, "do the British prefer their healthcare system".
From the first page of search results....(hint: the answer is overwhelmingly "yes"):
http://www.salon.com/2009/08/14/british_nhs/
potentialandexpectations.wordpress.com/2009/08/13/this-americans-experience-of-britains-healthcare-system/
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1916570,00.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/allison-kilkenny/british-defend-their-heal...
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jun/13/world/la-fg-britain-health-care-...
"British fear 'American-style' healthcare system"
In recent weeks, opponents of Barack Obama's health-care-reform plans have criticized Britain's National Health Service (NHS) in an effort to counter the President's proposals for greater government involvement in health care. Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa suggested that his Democratic colleague Edward Kennedy would have been left to die in Britain because doctors would have refused the 77-year-old treatment for his brain tumor, and former House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich wrote in an article that British health care is run by "Orwellian" bureaucrats who put a price tag on life. Meanwhile, the lobby group Conservatives for Patients' Rights (CPR) has been running scare ads with horror stories from British patients on its website. TIME takes a look at what the NHS is really all about.
What is the NHS?
The NHS is a rare example of truly socialized medicine. Health care is provided by a single payer — the British government — and is funded by the taxpayer. All appointments and treatments are free to the patient (though paid for through taxes), as are almost all prescription drugs. The maximum cost of receiving any drug prescribed by the NHS is $12.
(Read "The Year in Medicine 2008: From A to Z.")
How was it formed?
The NHS officially came into being in July 1948, in the wake of World War II, to replace an inadequate system of volunteer hospitals that had, during the war, come to rely on government funding. Doctors and conservative politicians vehemently opposed the NHS in the run-up to its formation, using many of the arguments that opponents of greater government involvement in the U.S. cite today. According to Geoffrey Rivett, author of From Cradle to Grave — The First 60 Years of the NHS, the then head of doctor's body the British Medical Association (BMA), Charles Hill, gave a radio address in 1948 in which he asked, "Do you really want the state to be your doctor?" Today, the BMA is a champion of the NHS and resists any privatization initiatives. In a statement on Aug. 14, BMA chairman Dr. Hamish Meldrum said, "The NHS is not perfect. But the market-style philosophy of the U.S. is a lesson we could do well without."
How does NHS health care compare with U.S. health care?
Like most developed countries, Britain ranks above the U.S. in most health measurements. Its citizens have a longer life expectancy and lower infant mortality, and the country has more acute-care hospital beds per capita and fewer deaths related to surgical or medical mishaps. Britain achieves these results while spending proportionally less on health care than the U.S. — about $2,500 per person in Britain, compared with $6,000 in the U.S. For these reasons, the World Health Organization (WHO) ranked Britain 18th in a global league table of health-care systems (the U.S. was ranked 37th). However, there are measures by which the U.S. outperforms Britain: for instance, the U.S. has lower cancer mortality rates.
Glad to see that you admit that government health care can be horrible. And since NHS has been in existence for 64 years, it is not surprising that people would pick the only thing they know over something they are unfamiliar with. As to other things like "lower infant mortality", it is not as simple as your cut and paste job might seem. http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/08/infant_mortality_figures_for...
But what it comes down to, is choosing your healthcare or having the government tell you what they will give you. I prefer freedom.
Because Obama's "plan" has nothing to do with actual health care or the rising prices in health care. It boils down to a ponzi scheme using the mechanism they call "insurance" (which is not really insurance) whereby healthy people are subsidizing unhealthy people. They've sold it to Americans by declaring that an "insurance" company that charges different prices for different risk pools is categorically "unfair". So they've mandated 3 things: (1) insurance companies may not charge different people different prices based on risk or pre-existing conditions, (2) insurance must cover certain things that are either discretionary or highly likely to occur (my car insurance doesn't cover my tires on my car going bald) and (3) because no one can be denied insurance, a mandate that everyone get insurance. The 3rd point is the sticking point because if insurance companies can't deny you because you're unhealthy, then there's no reason for healthy people to purchase health insurance until they become unhealthy. What would happen is insurance companies would only be insuring unhealthy people and would collapse from cost overruns.
In the end, for the scheme to work, the government is forcing someone to buy what is a essentially a derivatives contract on their health that expires on a monthly basis. The person has to continously roll over the contract month to month in order to have the coverage. In the panetheon of options available to people to pay for medical expenses (saving money and paying in cash, though everyone believes this is unreasonable for some strange reason), the rolling insurance contract scheme is probably the most expensive option AND you're left with nothing if you don't pay the next month's premium even if you've been paying into it for 30-40 years (360-480 months of premiums).
Please define free. Thanks in advance.
http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3oif3c/
The answer to your questions is:
predators DBA government
My life is mine. Got that? My property is mine. Got that? No? Then screw you, and go back to being an utterly brainwashed slave. But leave me out of your self-imposed insanity.
If you concede the principle that someone... and I mean anyone... can force you to do whatever they mandate - then you are a slave. And I mean 100% slave, not 90%, not 50%, not 10%, but 100% slave. Just because a slave master or government doesn't tell you the exact speed you must move your toothbrush back and forth when you brush your teeth does not mean you are not his slave, or the government is not totalitarian. The principle is, if you do not decide for yourself, you are a slave.
The issue is slavery versus freedom. This is also the issue in thousands of other disputes that involve predators DBA government. However, in this case, it is more clear to more people what the principle is here --- that you own nothing, that you must buy whatever those predators tell you to buy, whether you want to or not. Which means, quite clearly, that they can tell you how to spend 100% of your money, and totally control 100% of your life.
All this should be clear to everyone every single time the predators DBA government pass any law, act, statute or regulation. However, most people are terminal morons. In this case, happily, more people seem to understand the principle - that the predators DBA government are saying quite explicitly that people have ZERO right to make their own decisions, that people have ZERO right to spend their own money, that people have ZERO rights period.
The fact is, so-called health care sucks. The health care system has been destroyed by decades of government control, and will certainly get worse as the government controls more and more of it. Those of us with half a brain have completely abandoned the health care system already. I will NOT see a doctor in the USSA, for several reasons. First, the so-called health-care they provide is usually more destructive than not visiting them in the first place. They front as drug pushers for the drug companies who at this point in history pretty much only make new drugs that DO NOT CURE, they only reduce symptoms somewhat, but most importantly, require people take those drugs for the rest of their lives.
Once the so-called health-care system is totally controlled by the government by "Obamacare", the so-called health-care system will be a very important way the government controls and destroys everyone they wish. The predators DBA government already destroy the minds and bodies of people in so many ways, and when they have everyone under their control via their enslaved drug-pushers and butchers, the sheeple will be made even more stupid, more unhealthy, and more unable to defend themselves, or even know what's happening to them. Most people today are already dumber than rocks (and I mean that literally), but you ain't seen nothing yet. Wait until the predators get to pollute the minds and bodies of everyone with their poisons.
You expect me to pay people to destroy me? Up yours! There is no way, no how you can get me to ask for regular health-care in the USSA. This is just one reason I moved out of the USSA and will never return, but this reason will become even more crucial over the next few years if obamascam is implemented. The cost of the health-destruction that the predators call health-care is so obscene it boggles the mind. You expect people to pay those predators, drug-pushers and butchers for destroying them? Hell no! Hell no! Hell no!
Yes, this is a BIG DEAL. It is a BIG DEAL because it overtly cements the principle that everyone is a mere slave and plaything for the predators DBA government. Once they have this in place, there is no limit. They will require you buy everything they want you to buy. What will they force you to buy? Answer: everything that every large company that bribes them (via lobbyists and campaign contributions) to require. Not only that, they will prevent you from buying everything else. If not for huge outcries when these laws and regulations were proposed, it would already be impossible to get natural vitamins and natural herbs in the USSA today. The predators DBA corporations are not satisfied that you are forced to buy their products, they demand that all possible alternatives be eliminated. Much of this has already been done, though vastly more of this remains on their agendas.
Anyone who is okay with all this is not only stupid, they are utterly, completely, totally corrupt intellectually. Anyone who supports predators DBA government forcing people what to do, what not to do, what to buy, what not to buy, how to live, how not to live --- is pure evil. By your acceptance of this, you become the enemy of everyone on planet earth.
How can you accept, much less advocate everyone on earth being the overt slaves of a bunch of predators? You need to answer this, because you and billions of others are partners and enablers of the predators-that-be and predator-class. Only because so many of you sheeple obey, accept, sanction and support the predators-that-be and predator-class can they enslave and destroy everyone and everything good on earth. You are to be blamed for their actions, because without you, they would be powerless losers. Instead, they are the destroyers of mankind. And you made them and their atrocities possible.
Why is it so important to you that humans be slaves?
As a free man and a physician, I applaud you and heartily agree.
Health care in America is overpriced, overregulated, overprescribed and a vehicle for employing and enriching lots of middlemen bureaucrats, predatory lawyers and duplicative government and private “regulators.” The complete ignorance of nutrition, holistics and alternative therapies is scandalous. Obamacare will just heap more overhead and dead weight onto a system teetering towards collapse.
The simpletons who support Obamacare proclaim “universal coverage” as it’s noble overriding goal. Well folks, we already have universal care. If you show up at the ER we have to treat you, by law. If you have no insurance, you will be billed for some obscene amount. But if you don’t pay, which is almost always, we eat the bill but get to show our bondholders our wonderful receivables column. It’s all just a game. But the cost of providing said services is real. You and I pay for it, in taxes, fees, and absurdly expensive premiums.
Some people say healthcare is a right. These are the same people who expect to receive it and don’t provide it. Health care is not a right; it is a service. Doctors are oath-bound to relieve suffering and minister to the ill. But what happens when the entitlement mentality decides to milk this obligation to the point of exhaustion? So many Americans have been corrupted by the social-welfare state mentality of entitlement and the larcenous self-serving stratagem of milking anything that can be gotten “on someone else’s dime.” We see patients show up to the ER with self-inflicted health issues (i.e. obesity from overeating or eating crap; drug use; alcoholism; smoking) with their $400 iphone and fancy tattoos and jewelry, with no insurance or intent to pay, who arrogantly demand “treat me, fix me!” No shame, no remorse, no appreciation, no sense of civic or moral responsibility, and most likely to sue because their self-esteem was damaged by an ill-fitting hospital gown.
So the man who labors earnestly, lives responsibly, eats intelligently and sacrifices and sets aside funds in case a physician’s or hospital’s services are needed deserves no better than the erstwhile drug addict working off the books, paying no taxes, hanging at the bars, with no savings or assets, with the $400 iphone and fancy tattoos (and Hepatitis C which he is getting treated for free with very costly ribavirin and interferon injections courtesy of John Q Public)? To all the liberal do-gooders out there who are so adept at dispensing good deeds that others have to perform: your utopian dream is unsustainable, unfair, and unrealistic. It is going to collapse as it flies in the face of basic fairness, individual rights, personal responsibility and fundamental economics.
Whether or not Obamacare stands, it will be rendered moot in a couple of years when the entire welfare-state socialist nanny state in America comes crashing down with the [overvalued] US dollar.
As a free man, you support getting rid of the AMA's monopoly on healthcare in America, right?
<crickets>
You know what? At this point in history, I'd be willing to bet that most doctors over the age of 50 would be happy to disband the AMA in exchange for the predators DBA government getting completely out of health-care. Any good honest western doctor has nothing to fear from chiropractors, natural herbs, medicine and techniques, eastern herbs, and all sorts of alternate therapies. They know they don't have the best answers to every health issue, and they don't need to. There's plenty of health problems to keep everyone who can help busy for the rest of their lives... and they all know this.
If Obamacare goes into law, I can almost guarantee you that 50% or more doctors older than 50 years old will QUIT, take early retirement or do something else. And they should. You'll be lucky to see an assistant nurse within 5 years.
As another Australian, I am embarassed my co-national apparently does not understand the nature of a constitution and the limits it imposes on governments, in the US case like Australia, restrictions on what the federal government can do.
Even if Obamacare was an absolutely brilliant plan, which it is not, it is plainly unconstitutional and therefore the federal government has no power to impose it, though individual states may have the constitutional power to do so.
My co-national, like many other people, does not understand that part of the reason Australia's health policies still look marginally sustainable is the US subsidises health cost around the world to the benefit of not just Australia but all other Western countries that boast about their "wonderful" health systems relative to the "expensive" US. Most of those countries employ government buying policies for pharmaceuticals and other aspects of health care that suppress local prices for those items relative to the US (studies documenting this are readily available). But this works only because those prices are not suppressed in the US, allowing the pharma companies to recoup their enormous costs at the expense of the US. If the US ever insists on price equality for pharma throughout the developed world, everyone else's healthcare system will suddenly start looking a lot less sustainable.
Don't be too embarrassed for your fellow Aussie. He may have read this:
http://www.australianclimatemadness.com/2012/03/censorship-comes-to-aust... ...
and therefore be quite ahead of the curve. As Australians are about to find out, and Merikans have known for some time, what the "federal government" can or cannot do is as much determined by something called "the Constitution" or State Rights as 'supply and demand' determines the price of gold.
There will be no "health care system" in the forthcoming 'right\left' Big Brother State...only Eugenic Programmes for the Underemployed.
The effort is afoot to make it impossible for Americans to get cheaper pharmaceuticals from countries like Canada...
continued here: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111115/15345616781/sopa-will-have-gra...
As a European who once lived in the USA for a time, I can tell you it is an extremely strange, bizarre country in many ways, and the conventional ideas you have from living in other developed nations do not apply.
The USA is much more corrupt in the legal and regulatory systems. Nearly everything there turns into a grift and a gaffe helping some group of rich families or big corporations, totally screwing the average working person. They have no working class or middle class political representation that is effective. Their two big political parties are fakes, both funded by the oligarch class. Obama is a friend of George Bush and Bush policies are basically continued as you can see.
On a superficial level, you see the bizarreness in the fact the US still has a death penalty, with Obama happily putting to death his fellow black people. And they have a gulag of 2.3 million prisoners, hundreds of thousands of them innocent. Their prison system is slave labour for corporations.
The US is dominated by a lawyer - judge mafia that regularly confiscates and steals assets from honest people, as the big banks are now doing there (MF global stealing billions in customer funds). The corrupt US judges are protected by a corrupt US media, both owned by the oligarchs, which fools the world. Google and Wikipedia are both CIA companies effectively controlling the global internet.
The media corruption means that some aspects of US society - like how corrupt their courts are - are not understood even by US citizens, until they know someone closely who is a victim.
The US government is intrinsically so corrupted by money interests, that Americans who are 'radical' do not think in terms of social democracy - they think in terms of minimising government, hence American political alternatives centre around minimal-government quasi-anarchists like Ron Paul. Americans fear the word 'socialism' and use it as an insult, they have not experienced governments that work well caring comprehensively for people's lives.
Things that work well in Europe - like universal health care, whether socialised, or the universal private insurance system like we have in Belgium - turn out to be functionally impossible in the US because of corruption and milking people dry whenever anyone can pay.
With Obama's health care plan - which may have been set-up in advance to fail, while giving the government a chance to collect higher taxes in the meantime - the Americans have to suffer from the following:
- Millions of Americans still won't have health care
- American health care will continue to get worse while various medical and insurance companies and other wealthy interests continue to milk the system
- Working Americans will need to pay thousands more out of their own pocket, for worser-quality health care, managed by a criminal government in ways that harm the average person ...
The Americans are not getting a private insurance system like in Belgium, where universal health insurance is quite low cost, and everyone is covered.
They are getting a system of increased billings of hundreds or a thousand or more per month, for a system of health care managed to benefit corporate criminals, and where tens of millions of Americans will still not have health care, or health care that is even worse than now.
From a US point of view, the US citizens are not getting 'health care' from Obama. - They are getting an extra bill for $1000 per month on their already strapped, semi-impoverished budget, and increased enslavement to a criminal class who will have more power to decide when to deprive them and how much sooner they will die.
Americans, who hardly ever travel (only 15% of Americans have a passport, most of them have no idea life is much better outside the US), do not understand that other societies have much better systems ... and, in parallel, people in other countries do not understand how corrupt and sadistic things are inside America.
@bank guy I guess you haven't been to Detroit. So, OFA is hiring Euro-shills now. Interesting when so many Americans are so willing to sell out their country for a buck, they find you instead. Keep it up, Comrade.
Indeed. Legal authority Jonathan Turley voices doubts about the sincerity of the bill:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/forum/2011-02-03-turley03_ST_N.htm
Turley's opinions on the evolving US police state make for easy yet thoughtful reading over time, btw:
http://jonathanturley.org/latest-column/
I travel to Europe and Asia frequently and am always reminded how everyone seems like a castrated slave and they enjoy this! Any place governed by such a creature as the EU should be a laughing stock and it really has become that. America, for all its problems, can survive what's coming. Europe will not. On second thought, America might not either based on the degree it has become more like Europe. The social service net is unsustainable in either case. Are you willing to fight to force me to pay for the care of others? I doubt it. I can assure you many are willing to fight to be free from such slavery. Bet on that. I do prefer the metric system though. 5.56 mm works fine.
So the only reason Americans are not pouring into to Greece and Spain is because we don't get out much? I thought you folks were broke due to out of control public spending. We are broke because of corruption. Is there a difference?
yes, there is. like 2+2=4, eventually it adds up. Greece has higher levels of corruption and out of control public spending, for example.
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good comments here, but I note that nobody mentioned this little thing about employers and health care in the US. I think it's really, really relevant, to the point to assume that some better form of universal health care would be already in place if the big corporations would not have another little bonus-pork by managing what IMHO is the private business of their employees...
You have comprehensively stated the salient points, but I take exception to a few.
Single payor is no panacea either - look at Britain's NHS. I lived in Norway for a few years - their health care system also sucked if you had a chronic disease. A friend's mother had to wait 3 years for back surgery for herniated discs, and was crippled for those 3 years, waiting. That is, of course, only one small example - there are lots more, and it happens every day in simgle payer systems. Americans, generally, dislike government and wish it to be very small, because we know just how readily they can fuck up anything. We also know that our health system is so costly because of that same government interference - cost shifting and mandated insurance coverages.
I also disagree that life is"much better" outside the US. I have travelled extensively in Europe, a bit in the Middle East and some of Asia, particularly SE Asia. I see it as different, not necessarily better or worse in any one respect. Yes, the US has a gulag, primarily composed of folks who are caught up in our stupid and useless "War on Drugs". It needs to be done away with, and drugs need to be legalized. Europe has better food, by far, and doesn't allow Monsanto to mess with their food - kudos to them. Of course vacation time is much better in Europe...for those with jobs. I think Europe has a problem with providing jobs; your job regulations are possibly worse than ours. Other than that, Europeans forget one other thing - the US is so large and varied a land mass that just "seeing the US" can take your entire life. SHould Americans travel more ? Yes, but then again until fairly recently we could go to the islands, Mexico and Canada with no passport.
" I lived in Norway for a few years - their health care system also sucked if you had a chronic disease. A friend's mother had to wait 3 years for back surgery for herniated discs, and was crippled for those 3 years, waiting. That is, of course, only one small example - there are lots more, and it happens every day in simgle payer systems. "
Lies - as would be obvious is you ever travelled.
Tort reform and true competition.
When my daughter was born 20+ years ago there was a sign in the Doctors office that said the of the $3,000 he was charging for his services $1,600 was going for insurance! Let the patients rate the doctors on the internet and only allow lawsuits for gross negligence. Every bad outcome should not be blamed on the Doctor.....it's not like the guy gets up at 2:00am to go to the hospital to be a fuck-up.
Get the gubbmint out of medicine exept for certain things. Too many regulations!
Sell insurance across the nation, putting up false boundries at state lines just makes healthcare the victim of busybody state legislators.
Connect the patient with the cost, price discovery will only help. The reason we even have employer supported health insurance was the result of wage and price controls.....the only way you could give an employee a raise was to pick up his/her health insurance premiums.
As a sidebar- we do have the best healthcare in the world in spite of ourselves.
And dat's dat!
Dog
I'm 110% for tort reform.
I keep harping on this on the comments, but TORT REFORM IS A CREATURE OF THE 70s AND HAS ALREADY BEEN IMPLEMENTED IN VIRTUALLY EVERY STATE. Further, the SCOTUS has placed hard limits and strict guidance on what constitutes an appropriate punitive damage award for due process purposes (generally, 10x compensatory, but subject to higher multiples depending on the number of parties affected by the Defendant(s)' actions). Quite a few states have implemented hard caps on punitive damage awards, except in cases of "malice" or the intentional misdeed.
If you want to go back to some of the earliest debate on the topic, you have to venture into the mid-late 1800s... At the time, railroad companies wanted states to pass legislation limiting the amount of damages railroads faced when persons were killed building and/or using and/or operating railroads... the policy argument was that the railway was an intricate part of the national transportation system and should be given priority. When innocent bystander(s) were killed by a railroad's negligence (presumably easily prevented if their feet could get held to the fire), the citizenry got fed up pretty quickly... ultimately causing quite a few states to pass constitutional amendments banning any limitation on damage awards...
Those who complain about tort awards have a much safer environment than yesteryear to do so... and, further, in an age of corporate and governmental greed, limitations on damages for J6P is one of the last bastions of not only freedom, but the rule of law. [note: THIS DEBATE ALREADY HAPPENED A COUPLE CENTURIES AGO AND WE ALREADY ANSWERED IT... the only difference between then and now is that the sheeple were little less braindead].
PS, I challenge you to do some research. First, if you eliminate inflation, then have malpractice rates really increased over the last 15 years? Second, if so, was the rate of increase constant? Third, if not, what might have caused the rate of change to increase? Fourth, where tort reform has been implemented and rates have decreased (less inflation), is it attributable solely to tort reform or other factors? Last, and probably most importantly, where tort reform has been implemented, was there also a corresponding cap on the rates insurance companies could charge? (note: insurance is a regulated industry).
I think most people would be surprised at malpractice insurance costs given the hysteria surrounding them... [note: for some reason doctors seem to keep practicing (and spending the shit out of money) despite these unbearable costs]
So then why don't we switch to a 'loser pays court costs' system, like the rest of the world has?
Don't know about you, but the biggest ads in my phone book are those for lawyers who want me to sue somebody with them. Does that suggest a moral, fair system to you? Or does it seem like a cash-sucking predatory system, that's out of control?