Standing in the misty rain yesterday evening, Mike Cook surveyed his backyard, dotted with empty flower beds he’s not sure he’ll be able to plant.

"Every time I bend over, my nose starts bleeding," Cook said, adding that he had been counting on his backyard gardens to lift him out of the winter doldrums and add color back into his life. "They took that from me. This has stopped my life in its tracks."

Early yesterday, Cook and three co-workers were robbed at gunpoint while assembling copies of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for their morning distribution routes. One of the gunmen kicked Cook in the face, and he suffered nerve and retina damage in addition to a broken nose, cheekbone and eye socket.

This morning, Cook, 43, met with a surgeon to decide whether it would be better to heal without intervention and run the risk of permanent double vision in his left eye or to surgically implant a metal plate in his cheek to hold his eye in place.

The few scrapes and minor bruising on Cook’s face belie his severe internal damage, just as the robbery resulted in Cook’s loss of only $1 and coins but has shaken him to the core.

Police have no suspects.

Interviewed in his living room, Cook said his immediate future rests on what surgeons tell him today.

He lacks health insurance, which only adds to his angst. "The ER doctor said, ‘You can be a burden to society if you go on disability and don’t get these things taken care of because you will have visual problems if you do not heal properly. Or, we can take care of this and worry about how we’ll pay for it down the road.’ "

Cook said he hopes the Missouri Crime Victims’ Compensation Program will help offset his costs.

source:

http://www.showmenews.com/2008/May/20080508News006.asp

__________________
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the public alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

HL Mencken (1923)

That is one problem with our current system. He apparently has a job, but no coverage. Operations like these are extremely expensive and can put you in bankruptcy. About 50% of those facing bankruptcy are the result of catastrofic medical costs.

I still think we need some kind of universal heatlhcare siminlar to what we do now with Medicare/caid. You still pay for your insurance. The doctors are not employees of the government. It will provide care for more people at a lower total cost than what we are paying which is the highest per person of any industrialized nation with a 37% overall rating for quality.

Right, now I am advocating socialized medicine like all those socialist commie countries.

Wait a minute. Isn't there worker's compensation in Missouri? The US?

Apart from that, yes, every country needs universal health care for its population. It's just sensible.

Now wait for the usual crap from the ideologues

__________________
Blowhards-R-Us

But.... but...... then the world is less Darwinian!!!

oh wait... they don't believe in Darwin either.

__________________
"Trust none of what you hear And less of what you see" Springsteen

When the Founding Fathers protected our right to free speech, I think that meant we were supposed to use it.

Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi was the world's most unhinged lunatic. He's now dead. So that moves Ann Coulter up to first place - David Letterman

O, when she is angry she is keen and shrewd; / She was a vixen when she went to school, / And though she be but little, she is fierce. — Shakespeare

51 days left http://www.backwardsbush.com/

I'll bite. I, like most Americans, oppose a government-led universal health care insurance system.

http://rasmussenreports.com/public_c...ral_government

29% favor such a system, 39% oppose it (31% unsure).
46% believe such a system would result in a decrease in the quality of care, and 16% believe quality would increase.
42% would expect prices to rise, 25% would expect prices to decrease.

Not to suggest that the consensus view is necessarily the right view, but it will mean that we'd be implementing a system most Americans do not want.

Personally, I'm of the belief that the problem with American health care isn't the 40 million Americans who don't have health insurance - it's the 250 million that do have it. Huge insulation between the buyer and seller usually discourages the buyer from shopping around. Why should one shop around for health care? There's no real incentive in a system where someone else is paying the bill. So given that consumers are going to accept whatever price is offered, what incentive do providers have to worry about productivity or cost control?

During WWII, the government imposed wage controls, effectively prohibiting employers from extending cash raises to employees. How did those employers continue to attract workers? By offering non-cash benefits, like health insurance. Competition among these companies pushed each of them to offer increasingly attractive policies - first-dollar coverage for routine ailments like ear infections and colds, and coverage for things that are not even illnesses, like pregnancy. People came to expect insurance to cover everything. Furthermore, tax breaks allow employers to purchase health insurance at favorable rates - so even if employees preferred less coverage, it made sense to buy increased coverage at a lower price.

Let me pose a theoretical question: what if automobile insurance covered all expenses associated with keeping your vehicle running? If it paid for your gas usage, you wouldn't care about how much you use, or how much it costs per gallon. If your insurance covered oil changes, mechanics could charge $100 and you wouldn't care, as long as the insurance covered it. Prices would skyrocket.

And unfortunately, that is why health insurance costs are as steep as they are right now. People have no incentive to get a good price for care, only to ensure that insurance will cover that price.

How will government reduce those costs? I don't have much confidence in the government as a prudent buyer ($800 hammers, anyone?). While I suspect there will be some savings in reduced paperwork costs, the real savings will come from the government deciding which procedures it will and won't cover. Once in charge of health care choices, the government can simply start denying procedures and care ("rationing"). This is in fact how costs are managed in most socialist medical systems. Worse yet, as the government will now be paying for your health care, they have incentives to tax or outlaw "unhealthy" behavior.

I personally believe the solution lies in eliminating incentive to purchase group coverage and allowing folks to buy levels of coverage in accordance with their needs. For me, that would be a high-deductable plan where I would pay out-of-pocket for most doctor visits. For others with greater needs, a lower deductable plan might make more sense. What doesn't make sense is forcing all Americans to purchase uniform coverage as selected by a few know-it-alls.

Personally I believe the solution lies in not making health care a commodity in an open market. You Americans, well those of you who don't believe in universal health care, have really been sucked in. Still, as your numbers show, that's how you want it, so that's how it will be I suppose.

__________________
Blowhards-R-Us

There is plenty of health care in the United States. There is quite a bit of Socialist provided health care in the United States (ie Medicare). There is no Socialist run Health Care System in the United States.

Another problem is that Insurance Companies can bully doctors into providing certain treatments or running their business in a certain manner, this can be too costly and too confused for some doctors thus they opt to not work for any insurance companies.

In everyone's rush to abandon religion they have left behind a powerful community support system, the individual church. I wouldn't expect Europeans to understand this, perhaps no nation other than America would be able to as it was an instrumental part of our developement. In addition to the beneficent church there are organizations such as the Free Masons, Lions, and Shriners which love to help people. I also find it ludicrous that there are no charities, endowements, or other functions that are unwilling to donate money or services for necessary medical needs of genuinely poor people.

The Constitution for these United States does not grant the Federal Government the right or privelege to be involved in any Socialist Health Care scheme. This is a State issue without an appropriate Constiutional Amendment and supporting legislation.

That is simply not true. Call your college and ask for a refund.

Article I, Section 8 of the US Constitution: The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; . . .

__________________
No one ever asks whether the glass is too big!

That is like taking Clause 3 of the same section^1 and saying it gives the Federal Government the right to set the price of corn being sold in the same state it was farmed in. Your view of the "general Welfare" may even allow price regulation.

Had the clause read "...and general Welfare of the people..." I might agree with you but it speaks of the Union, the country. The welfare of a country is a different matter than the welfare of a person.

The country, the several states, and the people are seperately identified entities in that document.

You are wrong.


^1 Article I, Section 8, Clause 3

The US Supreme Court says your are wrong, as I explained here. This matter is so settled that no one even raises the point anymore.

__________________
No one ever asks whether the glass is too big!

Does not contradict

Though it is in serious disagreement with Amendment X.

For convenience's sake (assuming you are more learned than I) I ask you:
1.) Were the Federalist Papers written after the Bill of Rights were approved?
2.) Was the Bill of Rights written by the authors of the Federalist Papers?

Do your own research. You are trying to avoid the subject.

You said the Constitution did not allow the Congress to enact national health care legislation. The General Welfare Clause has been interpreted more broadly than you like, but it does permit Congress to do precisley that. If your theory had any validity, Medicare would have been ruled unconstitutional.

__________________
No one ever asks whether the glass is too big!

to Dogger;

The quote you referred to had nothing to do with the general Welfare being applied to persons rather than the country.

I have no idea why Medicare hasn't been ruled uncostitutional but the SCOTUS is a joke; willing to redefine whatever it pleases, observe foreign law, and even reverse its own rulings. I'm reading straight from the Constitution & Amendments, the documents which exactly grant the specific powers of the Federal Government.

If popular opinion does not agree with what is written, the opinion is no less wrong.

The powers to provide for the General Welfare are listed in Section 8 just as the powers to provide for the common Defence are.

Simple English:
The first set of underlined text is what the Congress has the right to do for the raising of funds to pay for the second set of underlined text.^1 The second set of underlined text is clarified in the rest of Section 8 and in Clause 1 of Article VI. The preceeding sections are procedural while Section 9 specifically prohibits the Congress from certain things as Section 10 prohibits the States from certain things..

The Constitution is the material; from it, specifically and solely, cite where the Congress is not limited to the things they are granted there in. You have claimed the Congress has powers not specifically delegated to it by the Constitution.


^1) Clause 6 of Section 8 of Article I also says that the United States has the right to issue Securities.




It was incidental and a polite request. I replied relevantly.

Sorry for being so testy. We just finished beating this subject to death in the McCain Health Care Bash Thread . I'm not in the mood to plow that field again, but you should read it.

You also might consider this post.

__________________
No one ever asks whether the glass is too big!

Jillian believes this nonsense too. The Framers and creators of the Constitution were VERY clear. The document LIMITS power, it does not GRANT unlimited power. The section you mention does NOT mean what you claim. It is a preamble to the limits imposed on Congress and the Government. It does not GRANT power to do what ever the hell the Government wants.

When the issue of a Bill of Rights came up, the argument made against it by those that wrote the Constitution was that the Constitution only gave specific powers, no "general" powers and that as a document it was easier to list powers granted then to list those NOT granted. They argued no Bill of Rights was needed because the Constitution did not in fact grant far reaching unlimited powers.

Further the Federal Government has NO power to do anything for PEOPLE, it is a compact between States, leaving the States to handle people matters within the confines of the Constitution.

__________________
The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd. Indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.

-Bertrand Russell

Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are more pliable

-Laurence J. Peters

I never said that you had no right to have an opinion. I just said that it was, in fact, worth nothing.

-Maineman ( on 12 June 2007)