BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: heric
Date: 12 Aug 09 - 07:58 PM

Not with the implied goal I think you were trying to express in what was actually a statement (command), with a questionable premise.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: heric
Date: 12 Aug 09 - 08:13 PM

The problem I have (coming late to the game admittedly) is that the proponents have phrased this question: "Do we want to be good like the Europeans or do we want to remain bad like we are?" The looney right falls right into the trap with: "Do we want the government to ration care and engage in euthanasia?" My questions are: (1) "Does Congress even know what it wants to do?" and (2) "If we do it, will it make us good?"

If Congress wants to give us something comparable to the UK system, is that what they have done?

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Greg F.
Date: 12 Aug 09 - 09:12 PM

Does anyone disagree with that goal?

That's Anne Coulter (B)and Doug, Bruce. And there's lots more- unfortunately, and to the U.S's eternal shame- where those two came from.

It's Mencken's "Boobocracy" in action, with a vengeance.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: heric
Date: 12 Aug 09 - 09:59 PM

Well now Helen Thomas
just said I have it about right. She says Obama still has time. Maybe, but I have a feeling the Democratically controlled Congress screwed this up for him so badly we'll go on and on as ever - with Rube Goldberg fixes on a flawed employer-based model. There is absolutely no excuse for failing to have a working agenda on this.

(I only disagree with her in that I think there are good options beside single payer, but it's pretty much moot.)

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Michael Harrison
Date: 12 Aug 09 - 11:27 PM

You left out one word in your heading - Great!    Cheers,.......mwh

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Alice
Date: 12 Aug 09 - 11:51 PM

Katy Abram interviewed on MSNBC tonight, the protester from Town Hall meeting

That video of the interview is a pretty enlightening picture of a person protesting something she does not even understand.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: heric
Date: 13 Aug 09 - 01:42 AM

http://www.casavaria.com/cafesentido/2009/08/11/3998/summary-of-hr-3200-americas-affordable-health-choices-act-of-2009-transcript/

http://www.classicalideals.com/HR3200.htm

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: heric
Date: 13 Aug 09 - 01:55 AM

Listening to idiots is enlightening? That is an absolutely bizarre way to choose to get information.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 13 Aug 09 - 08:53 AM

Not with the implied goal I think you were trying to express in what was actually a statement (command), with a questionable premise.

The goal I was asking about was clearly enough stated. It was that of bringing about a situation in which "it will no longer be possible to live in the United States and be denied the kind of guaranteed free or at least affordable access to adequate medical treatment which people in all other developed countries in the world have had for many years."

The "questionable premiss", I take it would be that every other developed country has achieved that position for its citizens. Well, "developed country" is a category which can be defined in different ways - so here is a map summing up the position.

And the question is intended to get some idea as to how far opponents of the reforms under discussion merely believe that there might be better ways of acieving that goal, or whether they actually do not share it.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Riginslinger
Date: 13 Aug 09 - 09:11 AM

But Obama keeps shooting himself in the foot. First there was that Gates thing, and now he announced AARP endorses his plan, after which AARP themselves came out and announced they did not endorse his plan.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Greg F.
Date: 13 Aug 09 - 09:17 AM

"developed country"?? Hell, Cuba has better health care for its citizens than the U.S. does.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: heric
Date: 13 Aug 09 - 10:09 AM

No the premise I question is whether this Congress will go nearly as far as they would have you believe in in expanding the availability of high quality health care , or even as they believe themselves. They are not smart, and to the extent they are, their efforts have to go into being smart politicians. You've never believed me before and you won't now that the problem is not so much that the poor are denied access to care because they don't have cash to hand over. It's understandable that you won't because of the way the contrary but anecdotal evidence is presented in waves. The truth, as I believe it to be, is that while the poor don't have access to preventive care, they get their acute care through Medicaid and other government programs (and some through charity, and some through write-offs.) The more troubling problem is the enormous, nonsensical cost-shifting that is used to finance the industry. The working and middle classes, whether they have elected to forego better (or any) insurance, or have simply gotten screwed by an insurer, shift their care costs by not paying and even going bankrupt, which is a horrible injustice right there. It's even more unjust because the fees they are facing are grossly inflated by an industry trying to make up its losses in providing government funded care, write-offs, and even trying to recoup its "losses" on negotiated rates with private insurers. If you fall out of the private insurance system by your fault or no fault or by health insurer malfeasance or deception, the industry will charge after you for everything they can squeeze, on payment rates they could never get from the government or private insurers.

It is my opinion that ignoring this fundamental feature of health care financing in the states, and claiming that eliminating "waste and fraud" is the way to fix things, takes us towards false solutions. Couple that with employer provided insurance so that health consumers almost never assess the true price of anything, and we're not going to go very far with $1 trillion.

I'm all for mandatory large insurance pools to pay for preventive care for all and to provide catastrophic coverage for all. If the federal proposals being sausaged don't even acknowledge the cost shifting or the problems generated in an employment based system they are avoiding fundamental problems.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Alice
Date: 13 Aug 09 - 10:09 AM

Interview of the woman at a Town Hall who doesn't want us to be Russia.

It looks like people completely ignored my post of this interview.

I'd really like some comments after you watch it. (only 5 mins, youtube)

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Greg F.
Date: 13 Aug 09 - 10:28 AM

Comment? OK, She's an hysterical, ignorant moron. Probably wears a tin-foil hat to keep the space aliens from reading her mind.

Unfortunately, a lot of other ignoranr morons believe the absolute crap the Republican National Committee, the AMA, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the drug companies & the insurance companies are flooding the airwaves with & direct-mailing out.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Penny S.
Date: 13 Aug 09 - 02:40 PM

Alice, I can't watch videos on dialup, but it seems likely to be the same dear lady who was on the BBC radio over here.

The country with a "manifest destiny" to have a really important place in the world, and not only can it not care for all its people's health, or for its people in disasters like Katrina, but it fails to educate its people to recognise the phoney when they hear it.

Our BNP lunatics are not running the asylum yet, though they are working on it. But they don't control the media to build up the irrational understandings of the ordinary people, and then broadcast them as if their opinions are valuable.

Penny

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: heric
Date: 13 Aug 09 - 03:15 PM

"Employer costs for health insurance viewed as a percentage of payroll also showed significant variation (Figure 3). In 2005, the median employer cost was 11 percent of payroll, but 25 percent of workers with access to health benefits had employer costs for health insurance that were equal to or less than 6.6 percent of their payroll costs and another 25 percent had employer costs for health insurance that were equal to or exceeded 16.5 percent of their payroll costs. Overall, the percentage of workers in jobs where employer costs for health insurance exceeded 10 percent of payroll rose from 38 percent to 56 percent between 1999 and 2005."

http://www.kff.org/insurance/snapshot/chcm030808oth.cfm

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 13 Aug 09 - 06:01 PM

""That video of the interview is a pretty enlightening picture of a person protesting something she does not even understand.""

I'd go so far, Alice, as to say that is a convincing portrait of a person who is not due for her turn using the family brain cell for several days.

If there is anything going on in that head, to quote the lady herself, "I'd rather not say there is, or there isn't".

What an airhead!

With semi sentient beings like her on the opposite side, I'm sure the pro National Healthcare people can't lose in the long run.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Greg F.
Date: 13 Aug 09 - 07:24 PM

With semi sentient beings like her on the opposite side, I'm sure the pro National Healthcare people can't lose in the long run.

Oh, if only it were true. Always bet on stupidity- you'll never lose money.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 13 Aug 09 - 07:35 PM

"Always bet on stupidity- you'll never lose money."   You would have in November.

Sometimes it seems there's an appetite for defeat...

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Maryrrf
Date: 13 Aug 09 - 08:50 PM

I just watched the video Alice posted. All I can say is "Oh my god".

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Amos
Date: 13 Aug 09 - 10:51 PM

This site from the Administration provides a reality check on the bizarre, the false, and the ugly that gets circulated around by vested interests in the insurance, drug, and other involved businesses.

You may find it useful to send people who buy into such garbage.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/realitycheck/



A

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: The Barden of England
Date: 14 Aug 09 - 05:03 AM

This really shows up all the lies that are being bandied about regarding our National Health Service here in the UK. I'm not too sure it can be read from the USA so I've copied it below. Here's the URL:- http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/12/hawking_british_and_alive/

---------------------------------------------------------
**In perhaps the most amusing effort to discredit US President Barack Obama's plan for nationalized health care - if not the most ridiculous - US financial newspaper Investor's Business Daily has said that if Stephen Hawking were British, he would be dead.

"The controlling of medical costs in countries such as Britain through rationing, and the health consequences thereof, are legendary," read a recent editorial from the paper. "The stories of people dying on a waiting list or being denied altogether read like a horror script...

"People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn't have a chance in the UK, where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless."

The paper has since been notified that Hawking is both British and still among the living. And it has edited the editorial, acknowledging that the original version incorrectly represented the whereabouts of perhaps the world's most famous scientific mind. But it has not acknowledged that its mention of Hawking misrepresented the NHS as well.

"I wouldn't be here today if it were not for the NHS," Hawking told The Guardian. "I have received a large amount of high-quality treatment without which I would not have survived."

The best you can say about Investor's Business Daily is that unlike US radio talk host Rush Limbaugh, it has not compared Obama's health care logo to a swastika. ®**

----------------------------------------------------------------
It seems to me that The stories of people dying on a waiting list or being denied altogether read like a horror script is what I am led to believe is what is happening in the USA for people who have no insurance or are just plain told 'That isn't covered'. All of the contributors from the UK to this thread have with one voice told you that we would never let go of our National Health Service, and woe betide any Government that tried to do so. We live here, and in most cases have had need to use the service, for which I for one am truly grateful.
John Barden

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: SINSULL
Date: 14 Aug 09 - 08:26 AM

Bobert,
Both senators from Maine are Republicans. Where are you getting the blue dog Democrat numbers?
We do have Conservative Democrat Congressmen in the House but none in the Senate.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Greg F.
Date: 14 Aug 09 - 09:03 AM

You may find it [Reality Check URL] useful to send people who buy into such garbage.

What would be the point? The wouldn't recognize the truth if it reared up on its hind legs and bit 'em on the ass.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Bobert
Date: 14 Aug 09 - 09:12 AM

Yer right, Sins...

Sorry, I didn't mean to lump the Maine Repubs into the "Gang of Six"... The article I read was talking more about the disporportionate amount of power Senators from small states have in comparasion to highly populated states...

My bad...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 14 Aug 09 - 10:22 AM

First rate little political spat over here arising out of this - Fox News dug out a (British) Conservative Member of the European Parliament, Daniel Hannan, to go on and rabbit on about how dreadful the NHS is.

So now the Tory leader, David Cameron has denounced Hannan as a nut ("eccentric" was the word actually used - have to be formally polite about these things in parliamentary circles), and is waxing passionately about how wonderful the NHS is, and how the Tories are its best friends.

Meanwhile the Labour Party is seeking to use this as a way of showing up the Tories as enemies of the NHS, suggesting that Daniel Hannan is saying what they really think. The point being that this would be a sure fire way for the Tories to lose votes.

There appears to be a strong likelihood Hannan will be disciplined by the Tories for letting the side down so badly, by attacking a "great national institution".

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Maryrrf
Date: 14 Aug 09 - 11:32 AM

Here's an interesting blog post from an American woman who lived in Britain for 15 years, and moved back a couple of years ago. The "comments" section is especially interesting.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: beardedbruce
Date: 14 Aug 09 - 12:27 PM

A little off-topic, but perhaps the place to present it:

"The Great 'Prevention' Myth

By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, August 14, 2009

In the 48 hours of June 15-16, President Obama lost the health-care debate. First, a letter from the Congressional Budget Office to Sen. Edward Kennedy reported that his health committee's reform bill would add $1 trillion in debt over the next decade. Then the CBO reported that the other Senate bill, being written by the Finance Committee, would add $1.6 trillion. The central contradiction of Obamacare was fatally exposed: From his first address to Congress, Obama insisted on the dire need for restructuring the health-care system because out-of-control costs were bankrupting the Treasury and wrecking the U.S. economy -- yet the Democrats' plans would make the problem worse.

Accordingly, Democrats have trotted out various tax proposals to close the gap. Obama's idea of limits on charitable and mortgage-interest deductions went nowhere. As did the House's income tax surcharge on millionaires. And Obama dare not tax employer-provided health insurance because of his campaign pledge of no middle-class tax hikes.

Desperation time. What do you do? Sprinkle fairy dust on every health-care plan, and present your deus ex machina: prevention.

Free mammograms and diabetes tests and checkups for all, promise Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer, writing in USA Today. Prevention, they assure us, will not just make us healthier, it also "will save money."

Obama followed suit in his Tuesday New Hampshire town hall, touting prevention as amazingly dual-purpose: "It saves lives. It also saves money."

Reform proponents repeat this like a mantra. Because it seems so intuitive, it has become conventional wisdom. But like most conventional wisdom, it is wrong. Overall, preventive care increases medical costs.

This inconvenient truth comes, once again, from the CBO. In an Aug. 7 letter to Rep. Nathan Deal, CBO Director Doug Elmendorf writes: "Researchers who have examined the effects of preventive care generally find that the added costs of widespread use of preventive services tend to exceed the savings from averted illness."

How can that be? If you prevent somebody from getting a heart attack, aren't you necessarily saving money? The fallacy here is confusing the individual with society. For the individual, catching something early generally reduces later spending for that condition. But, explains Elmendorf, we don't know in advance which patients are going to develop costly illnesses. To avert one case, "it is usually necessary to provide preventive care to many patients, most of whom would not have suffered that illness anyway." And this costs society money that would not have been spent otherwise.

Think of it this way. Assume that a screening test for disease X costs $500 and finding it early averts $10,000 of costly treatment at a later stage. Are you saving money? Well, if one in 10 of those who are screened tests positive, society is saving $5,000. But if only one in 100 would get that disease, society is shelling out $40,000 more than it would without the preventive care.

That's a hypothetical case. What's the real-life actuality? In Obamaworld, as explained by the president in his Tuesday town hall, if we pour money into primary care for diabetics instead of giving surgeons "$30,000, $40,000, $50,000" for a later amputation -- a whopper that misrepresents the surgeon's fee by a factor of at least 30 -- "that will save us money." Back on Earth, a rigorous study in the journal Circulation found that for cardiovascular diseases and diabetes, "if all the recommended prevention activities were applied with 100 percent success," the prevention would cost almost 10 times as much as the savings, increasing the country's total medical bill by 162 percent. That's because prevention applied to large populations is very expensive, as shown by another report Elmendorf cites, a definitive review in the New England Journal of Medicine of hundreds of studies that found that more than 80 percent of preventive measures added to medical costs.

This doesn't mean we shouldn't be preventing illness. Of course we should. But in medicine, as in life, there is no free lunch. The idea that prevention is somehow intrinsically economically different from treatment -- that treatment increases costs and prevention lowers them -- is simply nonsense. Prevention is a wondrous good, but in the aggregate it costs society money. Nothing wrong with that. That's the whole premise of medicine. Treating a heart attack or setting a broken leg also costs society. But we do it because it alleviates human suffering. Preventing a heart attack with statins or breast cancer with mammograms is costly. But we do it because it reduces human suffering.

However, prevention is not, as so widely advertised, healing on the cheap. It is not the magic bullet for health-care costs.

You will hear some variation of that claim a hundred times in the coming health-care debate. Whenever you do, remember: It's nonsense -- empirically demonstrable and CBO-certified. "

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: DougR
Date: 14 Aug 09 - 01:14 PM

Amos: What is gained by providing a link to that White House website? Obviously, one is going to read the White House's "line" about the heath care (excuse me)health insurance debacle. Not particularly objective, right?

I would suggest interested parties reading The Wall Street Journal's editorial in today's edition (August 14, 2009). It would be interesting, I think, for supporters of the NHS to counter the criticizem of that program included in the editorial, and for that matter, comment on the editorial as a whole. The title of the editorial is, "Obama's Senior Moment,"

Another article of interest in today's WSJ, especially to Mudcatters who have been denied insurance because of pre-existing conditions, is one titled, "What to Do About Pre-existing Conditions," by John H. Cochrane, professor of finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and author of "Health Status Insurance."

Google Wall Street Journal and when you reach the website, click on "Opinions."

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 14 Aug 09 - 01:49 PM

Any response to my question about whether the universal health cover is seen as a desirable and achievable goal by critics of the proposed reforms? Or is thta something they think America should get along without?

In this context the NHS is a red herring since, for better ore worse, that's not what's on the table. (I'd be inclined to say "for worse" along with the overwhelming number of people who actually use it, and know what they are talking about, but then we would, since we know what they are talking about. However it's not for export, and of course there are a host of other ways of organising universal health care in operaqtion around the world.)
..........................

As for that Wall Street Journal editorial, it doesn't really stand up too well: "However, there's an ocean of difference between coverage decisions made under millions of voluntary private contracts and rationing via government." I can't see why there is any particular significant difference, and insofar as there is, I'd far sooner trust the NHS way of doing it than be at the mercy of private insurance companies.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Alice
Date: 14 Aug 09 - 02:08 PM

OMG, Doug, you think the Wall Street Journal's opinion is unbiased?

ha, ha, ha, wow,

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Peter T.
Date: 14 Aug 09 - 02:26 PM

Winston Churchill, March 1944:

The discoveries of healing science must be the inheritance of all. That is clear. Disease must be attacked, whether it occurs in the poorest or the richest man or woman simply on the ground that it is the enemy; and it must be attacked just in the same way as the fire brigade will give its full assistance to the humblest cottage as readily as to the most important mansion. Our policy is to create a national health service in order to ensure that everybody in the country, irrespective of means, age, sex, or occupation, shall have equal opportunities to benefit from the best and most up-to-date medical and allied services available.

from an article today at www. salon. com on Churchill's support for the NHS and other notes on the neo-con liars and delusional morons in the US.

Peter T.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: heric
Date: 14 Aug 09 - 02:39 PM

I would hope that every American on the list is a critic of the proposal. There is only one thing I can think of that is un-American, and that is a failure to question authority.

Are there any opponents of the proposal(s) on the list? I searched way back for quite a percentage of postings, expecting I might find DougR and pdq perhaps. But DougR repeatedly said he was just seeking information and opinions. pdq said "Yes, 100% of respondents should say that 'all people should have access to quality health care'. Pollsters ask silly questions quite often."

Unless and until someone says otherwise, I think the answer to that is pretty clear.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 14 Aug 09 - 02:50 PM

""There appears to be a strong likelihood Hannan will be disciplined by the Tories for letting the side down so badly, by attacking a "great national institution".""

There's a good reason why Hannan is a member of the European, rather than the UK Parliament.

He is a loose cannon whose views on many subjects are diametrically opposed, not just to Tory policy, but to plain common sense and common decency.

I'm not quite sure HOW this nut managed to get himself elected, but my guess is a mixture of terminal apathy and no competition. Had Kermit the Frog stood against him, Europe would have gained a new "green" politician.

He is just one of those affronts to the body politic, who has bought a ticket for the EU Gravy Train, and the only upside of that is that he is in a place where he will have minimal influence, and cause minimal damage.

Suffice it to say, that those who believe any part of the claptrap he spouted in the US will succeed only in showing themselves to be at least as stupid as he.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 14 Aug 09 - 02:58 PM

""Churchill's support for the NHS""

And although he had changed sides, at this point Churchill was a committed right wing Tory.

So much for the NHS being "SOCIALIST" medicine a la Stalin.

It was supported even by those who were well to the right of Attila the Hun, and still is.

There is no politician in the United Kingdom who would even DREAM of its abolition.

That should tell you something, given that we too have our rapacious insurance, and drug, companies, and also, unfortunately, our acquisitive corporate moguls.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: heric
Date: 14 Aug 09 - 03:26 PM

Our good President has been prevaricating, by the way. Of course there are multiple mechanisms to achieve rationing, as there must be. A potentially powerful one is the executive agency's ambiguously constrained discretion in provider rate setting. There's the authority to prohibit facility expansion. There are certainly many others.

The most fascinating part to me is the 8% of payroll cap on employer obligations. This has astounding potential. I assume the companies with higher paid employees are the ones who beat the 8% solution, sometimes by a large margin, and the ones with lower paid employees are the ones who hit up to 16%. I won't presume to guess what long term effects that will have. This should work to prevent people from "falling out" of the private insurance system into limbo. (?) But if government rates entirely dominate the market by a large margin, there have to be rationing effects from that as well.

It's interesting to ponder that 8% of all pre-tax payroll from every salaried citizen still leaves a $1 trillion shortfall.

More questions: What are the proposals doing to ensure portability? Do we just forget about it and let job-changers flow into the public programs? How do you force an employer to keep its employees on an existing private program if an employee wants to keep it, and for how long? Even if they are at 16% of payroll? Can the employer and the insurer both be held hostage to one employee? That can't be the way it works.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 14 Aug 09 - 03:55 PM

So then, heric, in spite of all the hoohah everyone in the USA is agreed that universal health care for all has to be provided, and will be provided, one way or another.

Well, sixty years after the NHS was set up, it's good to know that the USA is going to join the civilised world.

Funny that it just doesn't sound like everyone is agreed on that essential issue.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: heric
Date: 14 Aug 09 - 03:59 PM

You asked about critics on this thread. I don't speak of any crazies on the Jerry Springer style "news"casts. I don't care about them.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 14 Aug 09 - 04:13 PM

My query was "whether the universal health cover is seen as a desirable and achievable goal by critics of the proposed reforms?"   Nothing about limiting that to "critics on this thread".

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: bobad
Date: 14 Aug 09 - 04:19 PM

"That comment has caused a minor buzz in the U.S., as have remarks by two British women featured in a video made by the lobbying group Conservatives for Patients' Rights, which opposes Obama's healthcare proposals.

Both women are seen criticizing the NHS for its policies on cancer treatment; one says that not getting a Pap smear in time signed her "death warrant." But the two women have told the British media that they were misled into thinking they were being interviewed for a documentary on healthcare reform, not a political attack ad.

Kate Spall, whose mother died of kidney cancer while awaiting treatment, said she was appalled by how her words were being used by the lobbying group.

"I feel I was duped," she told The Times of London. "The irony is that I campaign for exactly the people that socialized healthcare supports. I would not align myself with this group at all."

In addition to defending the NHS from conservative critics in the U.S., some in Britain have now gone on the offensive, expressing incredulity that the U.S. boasts of being a superpower while leaving tens of millions of its people uninsured.

"The United States lies between Costa Rica and Slovenia in the World Health Organization's ranking of health-care systems . . . which puts them in 37th place," Keith Hopcroft, a doctor, wrote in The Sun's commentary piece. "The U.K.? 18th. I rest my doctor's case."


http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-britain-health15-2009aug15,0,2736574.story

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: heric
Date: 14 Aug 09 - 04:59 PM

Sorry, Kevin, I missed that you were asking for responses ABOUT what people who aren't here think. But luckily (a) that's what the vast majority of the postings here have been about, and, (b) you already hashed that through with pdq on July 21, regarding poll results possibly indicating that 20% of Americans don't want other Americans to have access to quality health care.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Alice
Date: 14 Aug 09 - 05:00 PM

You can listen to recording of the town hall meeting at
http://ypradio.org/

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Greg F.
Date: 14 Aug 09 - 05:10 PM

Now, there you go again, Alice (as our dearly departed senile president Reagan was wont to say) using "Doug" and "think" in the same sentance.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Greg F.
Date: 14 Aug 09 - 06:01 PM

What is gained by providing a link to that White House website?

Well, Douggie, those like yourself who don't have the shadow of a clue about what the White House is actually proposing- judging by the lies, bullshit & nonsense they keep spouting- might at least gain a factual basis for their hysterical ranting.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 14 Aug 09 - 06:04 PM

you already hashed that through with pdq on July 21, regarding poll results There aren't any posts on this thread from pdq on July 21, not now anyway.   

In any case poll figures aren't the real issue - what I'm not clear is how far in the political arena this is an argument between people who agree about the importance of achieving universal health care, but disagree about exactly how this can be done, and how far is it the case that opponents of the proposals have no intention at all of achieving that.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Azizi
Date: 14 Aug 09 - 06:28 PM

I'm not sure if this has been posted on Mudcat yet, but I understand that it has been around the Internet for years:

"Once again, for the benefit of the goernment-can't-get-anything-right flock:

I AM AN AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE SHITHEEL

This morning I was awoken by my alarm clock powered by electricity generated by the public power monopoly regulated by the US Department of Energy. I then took a shower in the clean water provided by the municipal water utility. After that, I turned on the TV to one of the FCC regulated channels to see what the national weather service of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration determined the weather was going to be like using satellites designed, built, and launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. I watched this while eating my breakfast of US Department of Agriculture inspected food and taking the drugs which have been determined as safe by the Food and Drug Administration.

At the appropriate time as regulated by the US congress and kept accurate by the National Institute of Standards and tTechnology and the US Naval Observatory, I get into my National Highway Traffic Safety Administration approved automobile and set out to work on the roads build by the local, state, and federal departments of transportation, possibly stopping to purchase additional fuel of a quality level determined by the Environmental Protection Agency, using legal tender issed by the Federal Reserve Bank. On the way out the door I deposit any mail I have to be sent out via the US Postal Service and drop the kids off at the public school.

After spending another day not being maimed or killed at work thanks to the workplace regulations imposed by the Department of Labor and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, enjoying another two meals which again do not kill me because of the USDA, I drive my NHTSA car back home on the DOT roads, to ny house which has not burned down in my absence because of the state and local building codes and fire marshal's inspection, and which has not been plundered of all it's valuables thanks to the local police department.

I then log on to the internet which was developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration and post on freerepublic.com and fox news forums about how SOCIALISM in medicine is BAD because the government can't do anything right."

http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/forums/index.php?plckForumPage=ForumDiscussion&plckDiscussionId=Cat:338a2432-3a3c-459f-9c58-00df

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 14 Aug 09 - 06:48 PM

Excellent, Azizi! ;-)

Only on one thing in there do I disagree. The Federal Reserve Bank is not a socialist institution, it is a privately owned bank, a corporation, and it masquerades AS a federal government institution simply by calling itself the "Federal Reserve", which is an oxymoron meant to mislead people into imagining that it's a publicly owned and run institution which it definitely is NOT.

Most Americans don't know that. Look it up.

Your main point is quite correct. The morons who attack socialism on principle seem to have no idea that their society cannot function without a large amount of socialism which they depend on every day of their lives.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Peace
Date: 14 Aug 09 - 06:50 PM

First, socialism isn't a bad thing.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: heric
Date: 14 Aug 09 - 06:54 PM

I would guess that the opponents coming from "don't mess with mine" aren't evolved sufficiently to have compassion for others in their heads at all - it's not even an issue. It is interesting that the proponents haven't used ethics arguments in any substantial way (just taking it as "given" I suppose.)

The other how-you-gonna-reason-with-them group of opponents would be the Ruby Ridge no government no time no how crowd that the media likes to present for entertainment value. (There is a tiny group of Libertarians with some well structured Constitutional arguments that get confused into this group - but they have little influence.)

I suppose those two groups (of people who just don't care and or who care but still won't be swayed by compassion arguments) could add up to almost 20% starting from the right side of the spectrum but I really don't think so. (Maybe 10%?? Wild guess by me and no credible source whether pollsters or otherwise can tell us the true number.)

Attacking the looney right or yelling at the opponents (or unpersuaded) that they must be looney right doesn't strike me as a productive direction to choose.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Peace
Date: 14 Aug 09 - 06:59 PM

The Canadian Looney.