BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: DougR
Date: 14 Aug 09 - 07:41 PM

Alice: Why don't you read the articles in the Wall Street Journal that I posted, THEN, tell me what you think? Reading them won't make you a Conservative you know. It might even add to your knowledge of the subject being discussed. Someone posted a link to a publication titled, "What's good about the NHS," and I read it. Reading it didn't make me a Liberal ...even a Brit.
:>)
DougR

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: pdq
Date: 14 Aug 09 - 07:45 PM

If heric is trying to nudge the discussion back to the contents of the ObamaCare bill, may his tribe increase.

What some airhead on the Jerry Springer Show thinks about the plan, having never read a word of the text, means nothing.

The fact that a couple of British ex-pats think the NHS is just hunky dory, also means nothing.

The idea that a federal dam project actually works and produces electrical power is not Socailism and has nothing to do with socialized medicine. Besides, the proponents of the bill insist it is "insurance reform" and definitely not Socialism.

I want the authors to give us a precisely-worded bill so that legal and medical experts can study it and report back to the public.

I want everyone concerned to take as much time as needed.

The public, as a whole, does not think healthcare is a "crisis", but a problem that needs to be addressed. Carefully.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 14 Aug 09 - 07:50 PM

And with enormous patience. Sixty years is clearly not long enough to solve this incredibly difficult problem...

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 14 Aug 09 - 08:10 PM

""The public, as a whole, does not think healthcare is a "crisis", but a problem that needs to be addressed. Carefully.""

Now, I might just be able to swallow that wholly unsupported opinion, had it come from one of the 47 million who don't have access.

Could you produce some?..........NO! I don't suppose you mix in those circles.

""The fact that a couple of British ex-pats think the NHS is just hunky dory, also means nothing.""

Now that is just TOTAL crap. You have the evidence of a whole nation of beneficiaries of the NHS system, who would cheerfully, and without hesitation, cut the balls off any politico who tried to do away with it.

That's 70 million mate, not "a couple of ex pats". If that's the best you've got to offer, you really shouldn't bother.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Greg F.
Date: 14 Aug 09 - 10:45 PM

Why don't you read the articles in the Wall Street Journal that I posted, THEN, tell me what you think?

Why Douggie, I'm surprised at you for making this disingenuous suggestion.

You've never once felt it necessary to actually read (or for that matter, comprehend) something before critiquing it or telling us it's garbage.

Guess you can only talk the talk, huh?

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 14 Aug 09 - 11:22 PM

Actually, listening carefully to the words of UK conservative politocos, their promises to increase the real budget of the NHS annually through beyond 2011 seem to be undermined by unformulated suggestions of future proposals to ensure sensible use of the system. I suspect that that means that if the conservatives do work their usual malice NHS care will be denied to those deemed undeserving.

But the truth in UK political terms is indeed that any political party that proposed the abolition of universal free at the point of care healthcare based on need criteria would be committing electoral suicide.

It is wholly fantastic that a country without such a system can seek to call itself civilised.

It is also pretty fantastic that only one of the recent US political candidates (Kucinich) really proposed a proper solution. Obama's plans are, it seems to me, reform and not revolution. It is the latter that is needed.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: heric
Date: 14 Aug 09 - 11:36 PM

" . . British ex-pats think the NHS is just hunky dory, also means nothing."

It means nothing because no one is offering us an NHS - They are offering low-deducitble comprehensive policies and expansion of the employment based system with its many, many faults, and the ability to land safely when falling out of it.

Going back to Mr. Harlow's question (and now going to uncomfortable gross generalizations): I've been thinking that as you move further to the left on that spectrum, you get to the guns and religion / Rush Limbaugh crowd who don't fit all the way into the far right. They'd probably be the next most resistant to compassion arguments. They're still smarting from the insult and the election loss. But they are not composed of unintelligent, uneducated overly-excitable (or heartless) rabble. We might think their instincts caused and causes them to vote against their interests then and now, and that they are too angered to be swayed by compassion for the greater good, but (in caricature at least) these are the people who know the sweat value of a dollar, and who refuse to believe in the value of multi-trillion deficit spending.

We haven't been offered the Holy Grail of civilisation here.

In terms of public support (ignoring the "persuasiveness" of industry lobbyists in Congress), winning this, I think, really means winning the middle. (And the middle, trust me, are almost deaf to the left:right screaming.)

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: heric
Date: 14 Aug 09 - 11:37 PM

Hey that was quite a coincidental cross-post there.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: DougR
Date: 15 Aug 09 - 01:34 AM

McGrath: "Problem?" Based on your posts alone, I cannot see for the life of me how there is still a problem with NHS! According to most Brit posts, it is the perfect system that the whole world would be wise to adopt! I have read, though, that the system is not without some problems. Rationing of care being a very big one.

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: DMcG
Date: 15 Aug 09 - 02:49 AM

DougR: No-one thinks the NHS is perfect. But look at the speed with which the UK leader of the Conservatives and all his spokemen reacted to the comments of the Conservative MEP on Fox; and also the speed with which the Labour party tried to brand large numbers of Conservative MPs are being in secreat agreement with those same remarks and you will be clear just how valued the NHS is by almost every potential voter in the UK.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 15 Aug 09 - 03:14 AM

Doug, put it another way. All those in the UK who fear "rationing" of care are free to take out insurance policies and go private. Or to go private for cash. Or to travel to the USA (or elsewhere) and pay cash. None of them want to.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: The Barden of England
Date: 15 Aug 09 - 04:41 AM

So there's no "rationing of care" the the USA then? Of course there is - the insurance comnpanies make sure of that! And if you have no insurance then there's no care to ration.
John Barden

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Penny S.
Date: 15 Aug 09 - 06:47 AM

Aren't people forgetting what rationing means? Everyone gets an equal share of a limited commodity. I seem to remember having read that there were people who objected to food rationing when it came in during WWII. And that they tended to be people who could afford to buy whatever they wanted while others went short. Not the towndwellers with no option to keep chickens or rabbits or grow their own veggies.
A conservative politician has fallen foul of the press this week for claiming he is rationed with regard to his salary. Like the opposers of wartime rationing, he is one of those who gains. He is on a salary three times the national average, but is comparng himself with the City types who take home more than he does.
Is medicine going to be a limited commodity in the US if a universal health service comes in? Only if people currently in receipt of good health care are using so much that there is not enough for those who fall through the system. Is the nation incapable of training enough providers, building enough hospitals? If there is not enough provision for all, then it would be right for there to be rationing. As some anecdotal postings about people whose insurance company pulls the plug suggests there already is.
Health provision ought to be a right. For those in receipt to deny it to others is astonishing.
Even more astonishing is the suggestion I have seen that the most vocal opposition is coming from people who claim to be Christians, for whom I would have thought the provision of health care should be a duty.
Penny

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 15 Aug 09 - 07:14 AM

"Going back to Mr. Harlow's question (and now going to uncomfortable gross generalizations): I've been thinking that as you move further to the left on that spectrum, you get to the guns and religion / Rush Limbaugh crowd who don't fit all the way into the far right."

I'm afraid I can't understand the point you are making, heric.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Greg F.
Date: 15 Aug 09 - 10:07 AM

...I cannot see for the life of me how there is still a problem with NHS! According to most Brit posts, it is the perfect system...

I know you think you're a comic, Douggie, but this sort of childish drivel just isn't amusing.

And by the way "Brit" is not a polite term- not that that would trouble you, of course.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 15 Aug 09 - 12:39 PM

In case anyone wants to see that Wall Street Journal editorial, without having to sign up with the Wall Stree Hournal for a trial subscription (which is what googling the Wall Street Journal com esup with), here is Obama's Senior Moment"

I'm less than overwhelmed y it:

For example "Yes, the U.S. "rations" by ability to pay (though in the end no one is denied actual care). This is true of every good or service in a free economy and a world of finite resources but infinite wants. Yet no one would say we "ration" houses or gasoline because those goods are allocated by prices. "

Still it's honest - health care on the USA should continue to be dependent on the person having the money to pay for it. With the highly questionable assertion "in the end no one is denied actual care". I suppose the key phrase there is "in the end" - even when you didn't get the treatment that could have saved you, you will get some kind of care on your death bed.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: heric
Date: 15 Aug 09 - 12:45 PM

It wasn't well written and it wasn't very useful, but I was carrying on with the idea of "how far in the political arena this is an argument between people who agree about the importance of achieving universal health care," and trying to identify who might not even agree with that premise. We can only guess who and how many don't even care about the fundamntal fairness / universal access goals.

I was just trying to think who, if any, might be in that category besides the 10% in my earlier (wild) guess.

For your category of "opponents of the proposals [who] have no intention at all of achieving [universal access]," the answer would be very close to zero by their openly stated arguments. I didn't mean that you were making gross generalizations, I really meant that it was uncomfortable for me that I was trying to engage in mass mind reading.

(I know some Pennsylvanians who fit squarely within Obama's guns and religion classification, were highly offended at the time, and now have knee-jerk reactions against *anything* he says, while still presenting entirely rational reasons for their opposition to these proposals.)

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 15 Aug 09 - 01:11 PM

I wasn't after "mass mind reading" - I was wondering whether the politicians and lobbyists involved are coming up with their own specific alternatuve proposals for achieving universal health care. Because the debate, both here and in the media that I have seen, just does not seem to be carried out in that way. Just knock-about stuff.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Bill D
Date: 15 Aug 09 - 01:31 PM

DO remember that the Wall Street Journal is now owned by Rupert Murdoch, and is showing all the symptoms of being just one more voice of the Conservative agenda.

As to Health Care, it is obvious (to me, anyway) that after many years of something like 1/3 of the country NOT being covered or having very inadequate coverage, any changes will take awhile to tweak and some may, indeed, find some services a bit slower and/or 'restricted' as we strive to train more doctors, adjust the rules & routines and generally learn to navigate the byways.
It will be, in some places, like having paving going on in front of your house...it's inconvenient for awhile, but better in the long run. But you KNOW that many folks will have NO patience, and will characterize any personal inconvenience as 'failure' or even worse.

   I am WILLING to deal with it....I want everyone possible to have basic, decent care, and if *I* have to wait 30 days instead of 3 days for an appointment...so be it! (I often can't get an appt. with a specialist for that long anyway!)

I am disgusted with the cries of **Socialized Medicine**, as if that says anything. It is "quality of life", not some abstract political label that interests me....and far too many folks now have a life that is "on the edge", and would welcome something a bit more 'social'.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Bill D
Date: 15 Aug 09 - 01:43 PM

sometimes an image says it best

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: heric
Date: 15 Aug 09 - 01:51 PM

There is and always has been a cottage industry of alternative proposals. But it all has to be packaged together. The public has just been exposed to the current package(s) selected from the body of literatue and the body politic, which proposals are not themselves fully formed. So that's what we're working with.

(My simple preference for geting something done quickly would be to elimnate the employer's tax deduction for providing polcies, and a mandatory national program to guarantee no-deductible preventive care and very high deductible or catastrophic coverage for all.)

Thanks for the Obama Senior Moment link. I think it comports with my understanding (on its restricted scope of issues), except that the poor are denied preventive and wellness care. The nature of rationing is almost unknown, though, to be born in the as-yet undescribed scope of authority of the yet to be created agencies.

This isn't cause to reject the proposals (or what the proposals end up becoming.)

What I haven't seen, although they may exist in the muliple, thousands of pages proposals, is the great body of consumer protection provisions that make up so much of insurance law. Hoefully they're in there. The immunity from review provisions I did see smack of the government grabbing similar protections for itself that employer provided insurance holds under ERISA (and the governemnt employee programs also have under FEHBA).

It's also true that the US rations by "ability to pay" but in practice the more accurate description is by the availability of insurance, public or private. A point the article doesn't get to, and which the proponents haven't been pushing to my knowledge, is that actuarial fairness is built into larger pools of participants. The larger the better. So while the WSJ makes they point that thousands of carriers in the open market have a different method of rationing than centralized government entities, it doesn't mention the unfairness of smaller pools where the healthy and wealthy get better rates.

I also liked the comment at the end about how AARP can be brought back with prescription benefit sweeteners. Where we're positioned now is that the government has promised to make one really big sausage, and has told us most of the ingredients.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: DougR
Date: 15 Aug 09 - 03:46 PM

McGrath: You must not be aware that NO ONE who shows up sick or injured at an Emergency Room at any hospital in the United States cannot be turned away without treatment. I believe the law was passed in around 1986. Any hospital turning away people who need medical care are in violation of that law. That law is credited with helping to create the run-away cost of medical care in this country.

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Maryrrf
Date: 15 Aug 09 - 04:39 PM

What Doug said is misleading. If you show up to an emergency room with a life threatening condition they have to STABILIZE you. That is, give you the minimum treatment so that you don't die right there. They don't have to treat a raging sore throat, a painful but not life threatening burn, etc. Nothing will be done about a potentially fatal illness that requires ongoing treatment, like cancer or emphysema. And whatever treatment you receive you're liable to be socked with an enormous bill which you will be expected to pay if you have any assets at all. Here's a short article about emergency room rights

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: heric
Date: 15 Aug 09 - 05:09 PM

But that's not the end of the insurance availability story through Meidcaid or other public assistance. I hesitate to show you the crazy California patchwork, but here it is.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 15 Aug 09 - 06:15 PM

I think you said the opposite if what you meant to say there, Doug: "NO ONE who shows up sick or injured at an Emergency Room at any hospital in the United States cannot be turned away without treatment."

What Maryff wrote there fits with my understanding of the situation, which underlay what I wrote.

If you turned up to an emergency room here with a life threatening condition you would definitely be referred on to get the kind of continuing medical help that you needed, over and above any immediate emergency help you might need.

But accident and emergency services are not the way most people with serious illnesses get help under the NHS. The normal way is for people to consult their family doctor, who refers them for specialist help, if that's what is needed. I imagine that's the same way as in America - except that here it doesn't involve paying anything, or making an insurance claim.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: heric
Date: 15 Aug 09 - 06:48 PM

(To be clear: The insurance claim is processed by the provider, not the patient. You don't need cash. If the patient turns out to be covered by a private or public option, then the provider will get it's payment. It may be entitled to some further contribution from the patient for which it will follow up. The entitlement may come from the plain terms of the insurance that the patient expected, or it may come because the provider is not bound to accept the insurance terms as payment in full. If it turns out their is no coverage obligation, private or public, then the provider will go after that person whole hog, at "fair value" rates much higher than it would have accepted from the private insurer or the public program. That's where the cost-shifting ramps up - and where the working and middle classes Face the Beast.) (The truly poor and the truly rich have nothing to fear.)

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Greg F.
Date: 15 Aug 09 - 07:02 PM

Doug? MISLEADING?

Not at all. What he's spouting is absolute crap.

And this statementof his:
That law is credited with helping to create the run-away cost of medical care in this country. is all the proof one needs.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Alice
Date: 15 Aug 09 - 07:11 PM

I have to correct a misconception that people have about emergency rooms and care in the US.

I have had to go to the emergency room for myself and my son over the last 20 years with things like broken bones, chest pain, etc., when we had no health insurance. There is only one hospital here. The DO NOT have to admit us - they demand first that I guarantee with a credit card or some other statement that I sign that I will pay all the costs. The costs are NOT discounted. They DO NOT treat you for free or even have to admit you if you do not have insurance or enough money or credit to pay. People on the right have been lied to about this and they believe that "everyone can get care" at the emergency room. WRONG!

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Peace
Date: 15 Aug 09 - 07:18 PM

Re. ER care from the American College of Emergency Physicians.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Alice
Date: 15 Aug 09 - 07:41 PM

Here is a doctor who writes that people who do not care for themselves "are people who really don't deserve health care reform".
Do some patients not deserve health care reform? Aug 6, 2009

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 15 Aug 09 - 07:43 PM

Incidentally, in the UK, even if you have insurance (I used to) and you obtain a referral to the insurers' OWN hospital, the hospital will seek to have you agree to pay if the insurer declines cover. I caused much annoyance when I refused to agree to that in a BUPA hospital, and sat in the waiting room amending their standard terms so that they agreed that they would bill their owners, the insurers, and not me.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: bobad
Date: 15 Aug 09 - 07:44 PM

Further to Peace's post:

Hospitals have three obligations under EMTALA (Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act)

   1. Individuals requesting emergency care, or those for whom a representative has made a request if the patient is unable, must receive a medical screening examination to determine whether an emergency medical condition (EMC) exists. Examination and treatment cannot be delayed to inquire about methods of payment or insurance coverage, or a patient's citizenship or legal status. The hospital may only start the process of payment inquiry and billing once the patient has been stabilized to a degree that the process will not interfere with or otherwise compromise patient care.
   2. The emergency room (or other better equipped units within the hospital) must treat an individual with an EMC until the condition is resolved or stabilized and the patient is able to provide self-care following discharge, or if unable, can receive needed continual care. Inpatient care provided must be at an equal level for all patients, regardless of ability to pay. Hospitals may not discharge a patient prior to stabilization if the patient's insurance is canceled or otherwise discontinues payment during course of stay.
   3. If the hospital does not have the capability to treat the condition, the hospital must make an "appropriate" transfer of the patient to another hospital with such capability. This includes a long-term care or rehabilitation facilities for patients unable to provide self-care. Hospitals with specialized capabilities must accept such transfers and may not discharge a patient until the condition is resolved and the patient is able to provide self-care or is transferred to another facility.

Wikipedia

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Bill D
Date: 15 Aug 09 - 08:27 PM

It may vary from state to state...and even within one state. I have NOT looked up the details for Maryland.

This hospital, the nearest one to me, has struggled with its committment to emergency treatment for years. You cannot find on the website any direct statement of whatever actual law it operates under...just 'suggestions' about applying for free or reduced cost care.
I do know they had to restrict emergency obstetric care recently, as they were simply inundated.


Here is a Wash Post article from 2006
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/30/AR2006063001871.html

from this sire
"Hospitals are affected too, mostly as poor immigrants without health insurance show up in emergency rooms, accounting for much of the traffic at such places as Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring."

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Peace
Date: 15 Aug 09 - 08:50 PM

congressmen who own pharmaceutical stocks


Google that.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Peace
Date: 15 Aug 09 - 09:02 PM

What do war, Congressmen, Senators, and the defense/offense industry have in common? The answer, if you haven't already guessed is "profits."

Conflict makes money for the military industrial complex, and the cronies they place in Congress, the Senate, and the White House.

An investigation by Ralph Forbes from American Free press reported on May 05, 2008 that more than a quarter of US senators and congressmen have invested at least $196 million of their own money in companies doing business with the Department of Defense (DoD) that profit from the death and destruction in Iraq [1].

The report also edifies that 151 members of congress invested close to a quarter-billion dollars in companies that received defense contracts of at least $5 million in 2006. These companies got more than 275.6 billion from the government in 2006, or $755 million per day, according to Fedspending.org [2]. In 2004, the first full year after the current Iraq war began, Republican and Democratic lawmakers-both hawks and doves invested between $74.9 million and 161.3 million in companies under contract with the DoD [1]. No wonder the Democratic congress kept approving the enormous spending bills on the war, since a significant portion of it happens to end up in their deep pockets.

The report elucidates further that investments in these contractors yielded Congress members between $15.8 million and $62 million in personal income from 2004 to 2006, through dividends, capital gains, royalties, and interest [1]. Certainly, as the war went on and escalated, so did the increase in profits.

Interestingly, the report also mentioned that members of the senate foreign relations and armed services committees which oversee the Iraq war had between $32 million and $44 million invested in companies with DoD contracts. Per example, war hawk Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), chairman of the defense-related Senate Homeland security and Governmental Affairs Committee, had at least $51,000 invested in these companies in 2006. Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), who voted for Bush's war, had stock in defense companies such as Honeywell, Boeing and Raytheon, but sold them in May 2007. [1].


from

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?aid=8920&context=va

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Alice
Date: 15 Aug 09 - 09:27 PM

PRIVATE hospitals do not have to admit patients who cannot pay if they deem, for example, that a broken leg is not a life threatening emergency. In rural states, like Montana, people often live hundreds of miles away from any kind of hospital.

The only hospital in our area is a privately owned hospital. If you have a broken leg and cannot pay and you are not on Medicare or Medicaid, then they can tell you to try the other privately owned hospitals 150 miles away. Those hospitals don't have to take you either, if your problem is not life threatening. One of them, in Billings, is a Catholic hospital that does tend to be more charitable. The hospital here and the second hospital in Billings are Lutheran non-profits, private hospitals, and are not as charitable.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Greg F.
Date: 16 Aug 09 - 07:40 AM

Right you are, Bill. Its those fu$kin'poor illegal immigrants screwing the system up.

Thanks for interjecting another Republican Shibboleth into the discussion.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: heric
Date: 16 Aug 09 - 11:27 AM

What a pickle we're in now. Even HHS Secretary Sebelius said Saturday that providing citizens with the option of government-run insurance isn't essential to the Obama adminstration's proposed overhaul of U.S. health care. Obama is directing the charge at health insurance reform. Health CARE reform requires costs containment, but health insurance reform mostly requires mandates which increase the flow of money to the providers. Obama has to make people not fear cost containment, and in his editorial he says don't worry we'll do it by cutting waste and fraud.

People would redirect their own energies to cost containment if they felt the costs, which they don't with employer mandates and low deductible policies, both of which are centerpieces of the proposals.

Health insurance is different than other insurance. It is basically a payment facilitating mechanism with cost sharing.

If abandonment of the 8% solution is about to happen, that's a powerful tool for cost containment lost.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Ebbie
Date: 16 Aug 09 - 11:53 AM

Columnist Leonard Pitts, Jr. wrote about the recent chaotic townhall meetings and he used a line I like: "With apologies to Franklin Roosevelt, the only thing they have to sell is fear itself. "

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: heric
Date: 16 Aug 09 - 11:55 AM

Instead of an honest discussion about the cost and funding for people who don't have access, today we are into what's in it for me. What's in it for everybody is relegated to a side issue on the safety net for people who fall out of employer provided insurance.

In a good world, people could have honestly discussed how much we can pay for the benefit of those who are not being properly served, and how much of that we are willing to pass off onto our grandchildren.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: heric
Date: 16 Aug 09 - 12:19 PM

Another question: Instead of setting up multiple new government agencies, why isn't this just a discussion about expanding the entitlements to and benefits under Medicaid, and forcing the employed uninsured to pay 8% of their pre-tax salary?

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Stringsinger
Date: 16 Aug 09 - 01:27 PM

The solution is easy. Tax the rich more. Reduce taxes for middle-class and poor. Take the money out of the hands of defense industry. Regulate the insurance industry. Regulate
Wall Street. Emphasize Preventative Care. (Stop eating Big Macs etc. and stop smoking)

We afford Single Payer but the fat cats are opposed. Their roadblocks are so transparent. Greed, power and money. They want you sick. Then they can refuse you coverage.

Obama just made a fatal deal with Pharma. The insurance rates will now go up.
Do you trust the insurance industry to kick back 80 billion? Maybe if they make five times that amount.

The argument is a red-herring. NH works in every other civilized country in the world.
Who is standing in the way? Guess.

Frank Hamilton

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Bill D
Date: 16 Aug 09 - 01:40 PM

Oh crap, Greg! That's not the point! The point is that the SYSTEM is overloaded...immigrants are merely one aspect in some areas! The issue is **UNINSURED**, no matter what the source & causes.

We need more & better doctors and a better way to control costs, and immigrants ARE 'one' of those costs. We also need fewer people of ALL types, but you can guess what Republican Shibboleths even hinting at that would stir up.

None of these issues are gonna be even addressed, much less solved, if we don't confront them openly and discuss them in detail.

If you just sweep these issues under the rug and pretend they aren't there, you just end up with a bumpy rug that everyone trips over.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 16 Aug 09 - 03:16 PM

And providing a nice little earner for private insurance companies...

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Bill D
Date: 16 Aug 09 - 03:22 PM

I am afraid... today's paper says that The White House has 'almost' decided to give up on the "public option" in order to get ANYTHING!

THAT will please the private insurance companies...

BAH! (You may quote me)

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Maryrrf
Date: 16 Aug 09 - 04:19 PM

I was so hopefull that finally we would get universal access to health care in the United States. It is so long overdue. But now I don't think it's going to happen. And I don't blame Obama. I blame the American people for allowing themselves to be manipulated like lambs going to the slaughter. Ignorance, and an attitude of misplaced individualism that places little value on the good of society as a whole. And in many cases the people who oppose it most vehemently are precisely those who would benefit.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: heric
Date: 16 Aug 09 - 04:28 PM

(If indeed it's all sunk) I don't blame Obama but I do blame the Congessional Democratic leadership. (If it's dead) they just squandered the Obama Advantage on the most important thing they could have done.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: Rumncoke
Date: 16 Aug 09 - 05:26 PM

This Autumn I will get a phone call to attend the local clinic and have a 'flu' jab, along with a lot of other elderly and those who get any 'flu' badly - I've now begun to qualify on both counts rather than just the latter one.

The NHS has a policy of vaccinating those vulnerable to the virus and the system swings into action once the equinox is past.

I have a defunct thyroid so I get all the Thyroxine and blood tests I need, and all other prescriptions are free as well.

Not far away my grandson and his parents are being visited (late on a Sunday evening) by an expert on breastfeeding as he is not getting it right.

He has had all the care he, and his mum, needed since a couple of weeks after conception, and he is now just over two weeks old. He too will be called into the clinic to have his jabs, he will be checked over regularly, have free dentistry, eye tests - doctors whenever his mum thinks he's unwell, free medication as needed.

How US citisens can tolerate the health system they have I do not know nor understand.

How various people have got away with what has been said about the NHS is equally incomprehensible.

Anne Croucher

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 16 Aug 09 - 06:10 PM

I blame the American people for allowing themselves to be manipulated like lambs going to the slaughter. Why? All the polls I've seen indicate there's still a solid majority of the public want reform, even if there's a rather noisy minority who are against it.

Subject: RE: BS: Nationalized Healthcare, good? bad?
From: heric
Date: 16 Aug 09 - 06:41 PM

Because you can put lipstick on a pig and call it reform. The WHOLE POINT of electing Obama was about doing right by each other. IS. I should have said is.