A short story in applied socialism; a big learning experience.

[Diuretic]

I bet there are a lot more people come to this country to get our healthcare than their inadequate universal healthcare that you seem to cherish. When it comes to life, and death...they come here. Don't try and overhaul state of the art.

Angioplasty was first done in Switzerland. The first heart transplant surgery was done in South Africa. When it comes to medical knowledge there are no boundaries. But when it comes to the inability to pay for health care it seems the US is a leader. It's a sort of empty claim you make on both counts. One is that the US is somehow the only country that can lay claim to start of the art medical practice. That's nonsense. But even if it were then what good it is if it's not available to everyone? That's really all fucked up.

D. I never said that they paved the way to the success of break throughs of practicing medicine in some areas. I'm laying claim to that we do have the state of art to the practice. D. do you realize how important an MRI machine is in the discovery of diseases? We have more MRI machines in the US than the world does combined. Now this is a fact. I never laid claim about medical knowledge boundaries...it seems you just did. What I'm laying claim to is that we have more accessible medical tests and procedeures in a more timely manner than universal healthcare. If I just had a broken leg or a cold, I wouldn't care about what healthcare I had...but if I have something life threatening, I sure in the hell don't want it left up to the government run healthcare...I want my own insurance. Finally D. Our government was never set up to run a healthcare system. It couldn't run one despite what Old Rocks thinks. It's unaffordable. But, having said this D. There is a way for our government to be part of the solution for healthcare for all. Our government could give tax credits to family's that can't afford healthcare, and could give tax credits to insurance companies to offer healthcare to them. You will never hear that come from the libs, nor Old Rocks. It is viable, but the libs want to gain control over our lives in that regard. I hope you read this and understand that it is possible without universal healthcare.

Got ya. I stand corrected.

 

[Avatar4321]

Actually, when it comes to life and death, people will go where they are able to get healthcare affordably. Even with the cost of travel, savvy people are going where they can afford healthcare. I'm talking about people who do not have health insurance--which are many of my friends.

Many people are leaving the US in order to get surgeries and expensive cancer treatments. They are also importing prescription drugs from places other than the US.

So what you're saying is that your friends don't have enough money for health care, but they do have enough money to fly to third world nations to pay for health care.

I just don't buy it. I know what Health issurance costs, Its not worth it to fly half way around the world for it.

 

[Annie]

Actually, when it comes to life and death, people will go where they are able to get healthcare affordably. Even with the cost of travel, savvy people are going where they can afford healthcare. I'm talking about people who do not have health insurance--which are many of my friends.

Many people are leaving the US in order to get surgeries and expensive cancer treatments. They are also importing prescription drugs from places other than the US.

So what you're saying is that your friends don't have enough money for health care, but they do have enough money to fly to third world nations to pay for health care.

I just don't buy it. I know what Health issurance costs, Its not worth it to fly half way around the world for it.

Agreed. That was a stupid, insipid, disingenuous post on her part.

 

[Chris]

Actually, when it comes to life and death, people will go where they are able to get healthcare affordably. Even with the cost of travel, savvy people are going where they can afford healthcare. I'm talking about people who do not have health insurance--which are many of my friends.

Many people are leaving the US in order to get surgeries and expensive cancer treatments. They are also importing prescription drugs from places other than the US.

So what you're saying is that your friends don't have enough money for health care, but they do have enough money to fly to third world nations to pay for health care.

I just don't buy it. I know what Health issurance costs, Its not worth it to fly half way around the world for it.

If you know what healthcare costs, you know that we are paying twice per capita what the other Western democracies pay for healthcare. Why? Because they don't have to pay overhead for 150 insurance companies, liability lawyers, and Big Pharma. We make money off of sick people. Other countries try to heal sick people.

 

[Sinatra]

Actually, when it comes to life and death, people will go where they are able to get healthcare affordably. Even with the cost of travel, savvy people are going where they can afford healthcare. I'm talking about people who do not have health insurance--which are many of my friends.

Many people are leaving the US in order to get surgeries and expensive cancer treatments. They are also importing prescription drugs from places other than the US.

So what you're saying is that your friends don't have enough money for health care, but they do have enough money to fly to third world nations to pay for health care.

I just don't buy it. I know what Health issurance costs, Its not worth it to fly half way around the world for it.

If you know what healthcare costs, you know that we are paying twice per capita what the other Western democracies pay for healthcare. Why? Because they don't have to pay overhead for 150 insurance companies, liability lawyers, and Big Pharma. We make money off of sick people. Other countries try to heal sick people.

Hey! You are actually on the right track here Chris! That being said, socialized medicine is not the answer if you in fact want the highest quality health care. It has to be some form of private-socialized medicine. That sounds odd, perhaps even contradictory, but it is the truth.

Also, Health Care Savings Accounts (HSA) enacted under Bush II are GREAT plans that should actually be greatly expanded. Add to them some form of voucher system perhaps, or increased tax credit...this concept remains far too unknown in the country, and I would not be a bit surprised if it comes under attack by the Obama administration. These HSA's offer families the freedom of choice, the benefits of sound medical care management, and often needed tax advantages.

Of course, the insurance industry, and the pro-socialized medicine lobby diminishes the viability of HSA's, but perhaps, just perhaps, they will begin to get more notice as the discussion amps up on this issue in the coming months.

 

[Old Rocks]

So what you're saying is that your friends don't have enough money for health care, but they do have enough money to fly to third world nations to pay for health care.

I just don't buy it. I know what Health issurance costs, Its not worth it to fly half way around the world for it.

If you know what healthcare costs, you know that we are paying twice per capita what the other Western democracies pay for healthcare. Why? Because they don't have to pay overhead for 150 insurance companies, liability lawyers, and Big Pharma. We make money off of sick people. Other countries try to heal sick people.

Hey! You are actually on the right track here Chris! That being said, socialized medicine is not the answer if you in fact want the highest quality health care. It has to be some form of private-socialized medicine. That sounds odd, perhaps even contradictory, but it is the truth.

Also, Health Care Savings Accounts (HSA) enacted under Bush II are GREAT plans that should actually be greatly expanded. Add to them some form of voucher system perhaps, or increased tax credit...this concept remains far too unknown in the country, and I would not be a bit surprised if it comes under attack by the Obama administration. These HSA's offer families the freedom of choice, the benefits of sound medical care management, and often needed tax advantages.

Of course, the insurance industry, and the pro-socialized medicine lobby diminishes the viability of HSA's, but perhaps, just perhaps, they will begin to get more notice as the discussion amps up on this issue in the coming months.

Private socialized medicine. You mean similiar to the Japanese system? Perhaps you could expand on that and compare it to countries that have universal health care.

What we have now is not working. Far too many people going bankrupt because of medical bills. People quite literally thrown out on the streets here in the US because their homes have been sold to pay for medical bills. That is not happening in any other industrial nation.

 

[Old Rocks]

Actually, when it comes to life and death, people will go where they are able to get healthcare affordably. Even with the cost of travel, savvy people are going where they can afford healthcare. I'm talking about people who do not have health insurance--which are many of my friends.

Many people are leaving the US in order to get surgeries and expensive cancer treatments. They are also importing prescription drugs from places other than the US.

So what you're saying is that your friends don't have enough money for health care, but they do have enough money to fly to third world nations to pay for health care.

I just don't buy it. I know what Health issurance costs, Its not worth it to fly half way around the world for it.

Agreed. That was a stupid, insipid, disingenuous post on her part.

Annie, here are the facts

We can be outsourced...elective surgery in India - 14th Nov, 02:59 PM - Nursing for Nurses
Nov 14, 2008 02:59 PM
We can be outsourced...elective surgery in Indiaby birdgardner

Wellpoint soon will offer some medical travel benefits...
Would you get on a plane if your employer made it worthwhile?

http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle...D3aPc:_Yyc:aUU

"Knee replacement surgery that costs between $60,000 and $70,000 in the United States can be done in India for $8,000 to $10,000, said Jill Becher, a Wellpoint spokeswoman."

Trial run for Serigraph, Inc., a Wis. company. Wellpoint will pay travel costs for patient and companion; company will waive deductibles, etc.

And so it begins...
Outsourcing surgery can mean vacation, too

Greening was familiar with the procedure; her sister had the surgery on both hips in Colorado after falling from a horse. That had cost $80,000, Greening said.

But Greening, whose husband, Marti, runs his own cleaning business, faced a problem her sister never had to confront – she had no health insurance. And she didn’t have enough cash to pay for the procedure.

Eventually Greening discovered a United Kingdom-based company called the Taj Medical Group, which specializes in the burgeoning field of medical tourism. The company helped Greening travel to Mumbai (formerly Bombay), have her operation, tour the subcontinent a bit and return home for just a fraction of what the surgery would have cost in Portland.

These days, Greening’s trip can hardly be considered unusual. Experts estimate that, in a phenomenon practically unheard-of a decade ago, tens of thousands of Americans are now leaving the country each year for medical care, much of it major surgery.

Brazil is noted as a center for plastic surgery. India, Thailand and Singapore are drawing increasing numbers of patients for heart, hip and knee surgeries.

In 2006 more than 1.2 million medical tourists visited Thailand, with another 600,000 heading to India for their medical care, according to Charles Runckel, a Portland biologist and director of research at Delphi Health Services, which helps promote medical tourism. Prices in India, Runckel said, average a fifth of those in the United States.

Runckel said large medical centers in Asian cities are building facilities with the latest high-tech equipment specifically to service medical tourists.

“The average American hospital can’t hold a candle to these centers,” Runckel said.

Robert Martindale, chief of general surgery at Oregon Health & Science University, said he couldn’t agree with that statement. But, he said, many of the claims being made by the companies touting medical tourism are valid

 

[Avatar4321]

If you know what healthcare costs, you know that we are paying twice per capita what the other Western democracies pay for healthcare. Why? Because they don't have to pay overhead for 150 insurance companies, liability lawyers, and Big Pharma. We make money off of sick people. Other countries try to heal sick people.

Is making money somehow wrong? Should Drs, lawyers, insurance agents, etc all starve because someone like yourself thinks they should be spending their day working their ass off and saving peoples lives without getting compensated for their time and skills?

You don't have a right to be healthy. Sometimes you have an opportunity to be healthy. Sometimes you dont. No one is entitled to the labor of others. People should be generous with their labor, but that doesnt mean you have the right to demand they fix your problems.

You may not like it. No one really has to like it. Its just a part of life. It's reality. Government cant change it. And any government that isnt grounded in reality tends to turn very ugly very quickly.

 

[Sinatra]

If you know what healthcare costs, you know that we are paying twice per capita what the other Western democracies pay for healthcare. Why? Because they don't have to pay overhead for 150 insurance companies, liability lawyers, and Big Pharma. We make money off of sick people. Other countries try to heal sick people.

Hey! You are actually on the right track here Chris! That being said, socialized medicine is not the answer if you in fact want the highest quality health care. It has to be some form of private-socialized medicine. That sounds odd, perhaps even contradictory, but it is the truth.

Also, Health Care Savings Accounts (HSA) enacted under Bush II are GREAT plans that should actually be greatly expanded. Add to them some form of voucher system perhaps, or increased tax credit...this concept remains far too unknown in the country, and I would not be a bit surprised if it comes under attack by the Obama administration. These HSA's offer families the freedom of choice, the benefits of sound medical care management, and often needed tax advantages.

Of course, the insurance industry, and the pro-socialized medicine lobby diminishes the viability of HSA's, but perhaps, just perhaps, they will begin to get more notice as the discussion amps up on this issue in the coming months.

Private socialized medicine. You mean similiar to the Japanese system? Perhaps you could expand on that and compare it to countries that have universal health care.

What we have now is not working. Far too many people going bankrupt because of medical bills. People quite literally thrown out on the streets here in the US because their homes have been sold to pay for medical bills. That is not happening in any other industrial nation.

Well, the Japanese system has its flaws - and with its aging population, the younger generations are experiencing increased financial obligations to keep the system in place - similar to what we have here with SS and Medicare, etc.

But, when comparing their system to ours - I think the Japanese has a system that would be easier to strengthen within the common framework already in place, whereas our system is terribly flawed - I have long supported some form of reform, but fully government run health care is not the solution. ALso, the Japanese do spend less per GDP than we do on health care, but that might be due to the fact Americans are way too fat. Obesity is costing all of us a ton of $$$$.

I do know this - one of my longtime friends runs a small family health clinic. He makes a decent low six figure wage, but the costs of his insurance and then staff to coordinate all the paperwork, he actually loses money for medicare/medicaid patients...he says if he had to do it all over he would have gone into specialized medicine. That is where the real money is in this country - cutting up patients. No money in preventitive medicine, but all the problems. That is messed up.

Yes, something needs to change with our healthcare system - but what and how?

 

[elvis]

If you know what healthcare costs, you know that we are paying twice per capita what the other Western democracies pay for healthcare. Why? Because they don't have to pay overhead for 150 insurance companies, liability lawyers, and Big Pharma. We make money off of sick people. Other countries try to heal sick people.

Is making money somehow wrong? Should Drs, lawyers, insurance agents, etc all starve because someone like yourself thinks they should be spending their day working their ass off and saving peoples lives without getting compensated for their time and skills?

You don't have a right to be healthy. Sometimes you have an opportunity to be healthy. Sometimes you dont. No one is entitled to the labor of others. People should be generous with their labor, but that doesnt mean you have the right to demand they fix your problems.

You may not like it. No one really has to like it. Its just a part of life. It's reality. Government cant change it. And any government that isnt grounded in reality tends to turn very ugly very quickly.

of course it's evil. haven't you read the Communist Manifesto? it's highly recommended by chris.

 

[neurosport]

I just came from a grocery store. While the wife was shopping I read about the plight of a local child that was born without the soft areas in it's skull. They are doing the neccessary surgery to insure the childs survival, but the insurance does not cover the special helmut that the child needs. And both parents were just laid off from their jobs. In every other industrial nation in the world, this would have been taken care of.

So, in view of the above, what makes the US better than Australia in this case, and many others like it. In France, Germany, Great Britain, ect. this would have been taken care of as a matter of course. Here, our compassionate Conservatives care nothing about our children.

I just came home from a grocery store. While the wife was shopping I read about the plight of a cancer victim. The cancer victim was an 84 year old woman. This type of cancer care wan't covered in the UK, Germany, France ect. But our medical coverage did take care of this woman, and she is alive today because of it. Here our compassionate concervatives healthcare system took care of the elderly.

That's because children don't vote.

And when it comes to 80 year old women Vote is the only thing they do.

 

[editec]

I've read a little of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, not all of it, in fact, not even half of it. But the little I did read informed me that that bloke nailed it in time and place. Against what I think was a backdrop of economics based on imperalism, colonialism and mercantilism, Smith brought in some (then) radical ideas about how economics could work to benefit the ordinary person. To those who say Smith was a genius, I concur. If a genius is a person who can see clearly, through the obfuscating received wisdoms and conventional thinking of one's own times, then Smith was a genius. I think it was he who gave us the idea of "enlightened self-interest" which is at the heart of the idea of capitalism and its associated mechanism of free markets and its iron laws of demand and of supply.

What's interesting about Smith is that he had effectively no similarity to the free marketers that now claim him as their intellectual godfather.

Absolutely correct. Adam Smith WORKED for the ministry to trade of Britian which was the most PROTECTIVE nation on earth at the time he was writing Wealth of Nations.

The charactization that the NEO-Cons make of his work is completely the opposite of what he said.

Smith's analysis was limited to an agrarian society and economic structure in which the large-scale utilization of wage labor that currently dominates economic relations was not conceivable.

Yup. His support of free trade had to so with trying to grow CORK IN ENGLAND or making WINE in England, which clearly was a argument for free trade, but only for free trade of thing for which your nation has NO CHANCE of competing.

He was completely opposed to FREE TRADE as we practice it. He and the government he worked for believed in HOME INDUSTRIAL GROWTH...in other words ADAM SMITH WAS A PRTECTIONIST.


Smith supported "free markets" inasmuch as he believed they would lead to equality, and would likely support a more egalitarian perspective if alive today. For instance, [ame="http://www.amazon.com/Adam-Smith-Radical-Egalitarian-Interpretation/dp/0748623523/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1238286620&sr=1-1"]Adam Smith: Radical and Egalitarian[/ame] is a good read on just that topic.

I wonder at the 'lesson' or 'message' you took from that experience coupled with your prior readings? From your posts, it seems the lesson was lost.

It's interesting how you say something...but effectively say nothing.

Lot of that goiing on here.

We have nation of people who can talk and effectively say nothing that makes sense.

They're the most successful of the ruling class, in most cases since the ruling class right now has had to learn how to talk without acually responding to the issues at hand.

We are nation feasting on lies.

 

[Bern80]

Unregulated capitalism is a short road back to feudalism. Unregulated capitalism leads to exactly the sort of economic debacle that we see today. Capitalism and Socialism are not Gods or religions to be enforced for the sake of rightouness, but tools to be used for the betterment of all in society.

Except for the minor detail that are 'unregulated capitalism' is actually regulated quite a bit.

 

[Red Dawn]

Last semester Texas Tech had an economics professor who said he had never failed a single student before, but had, on one occasion, failed an entire class. That class had insisted socialism could be successful wherein no one would be poor and no one would be rich, socialism was the great equalizer

sounds like a completely fabricated and made up story. A lie, if you will.


What is it about Cons, like this blogger, like Joe Not the Plumber, and like the girl with the fantasy story about a black obama supporter beating her up, that they feel like they have to lie and make shit up to support their failed rightwing ideology?

 

[garyd]

Are you kidding students parents may have themn there to learn, but half the ones I knew were there primarily to party hardy and stay stoned and or drunk.

I took math for the Elementary school teacher many years ago, after I changed my major from Math to Elementary education. I'd taken Calculus under the guy teaching that particular class. Math for the elementary school teacher is basically math for people who have been avoiding math like the plague ever since they first had a choice. I was the only male in the class what ever that means to you.

When I walked in the door the prof looked at me and said, "What are you doing in here?

I said, "I changed my major to elementary education and I am told I have to take this class."

He replied, "Take this class? You could teach this class."

I now have a bunch of ladies staring daggers at me.

And the prof said, "If I decide to grade this class on the curve I won't figure his grade into the average.
So don't worry about it ladies." To me he said, "Here is the syllabus. Note when the reviews for the tests are and when the tests are. The revies are optional the tests obviously are not."

Easiest A I ever got.