Before Racing To National Healthcare: Listen

[driveby]

We already have universal healthcare, just a really, really bad version of it. Everyone can be treated in the emergency room. We don't let people bleed to death on the street here. Not yet, anyway. So the rich get great healthcare, and the poor get no healthcare until they are at death's door. Does that sound like a good way to run a society? No, it doesn't. The ironic thing is that every other Western democracy has a single payer system, and they pay HALF per capita what we pay for healthcare. Why? Because they don't have to pay liability lawyers, insurance companies, and Big Pharma. There are inherent cost savings with a single payer system. The Germans have had one since 1886!

With a single payer system you would still pick your doctor, and your doctor would still own his practice. There would just be one insurance company, and that would be the government.

but that government can still say ....sorry we are not going to cover your disease...treatment is to expensive....

Wrong. NO ONE CAN BE TURNED AWAY FROM THE EMERGENCY ROOM.

And you know what the most expensive kind of healthcare is?

THE EMERGENCY ROOM!!!

The other Western democracies are much smarter than we are on this issue. A society that tries to make money off of sick people is totally fucked up.

Ask Natasha Richardson what she thinks of it ........

 

[Chris]

but that government can still say ....sorry we are not going to cover your disease...treatment is to expensive....

Wrong. NO ONE CAN BE TURNED AWAY FROM THE EMERGENCY ROOM.

And you know what the most expensive kind of healthcare is?

THE EMERGENCY ROOM!!!

The other Western democracies are much smarter than we are on this issue. A society that tries to make money off of sick people is totally fucked up.

Ask Natasha Richardson what she thinks of it ........

Oh, please...

She refused to go to the hospital.

 

[driveby]

Wrong. NO ONE CAN BE TURNED AWAY FROM THE EMERGENCY ROOM.

And you know what the most expensive kind of healthcare is?

THE EMERGENCY ROOM!!!

The other Western democracies are much smarter than we are on this issue. A society that tries to make money off of sick people is totally fucked up.

Ask Natasha Richardson what she thinks of it ........

Oh, please...

She refused to go to the hospital.

When she decided to go, how long did it take her to get there and why did it take that long ?

 

[Cecilie1200]

Yeah, Heaven Forbid you should be asked to contribute to the health and welfare of the citizens of your country. Since you got yours, **** no.

Damned right, Heaven forbid I should be FORCED to contribute to you. I got mine, go get your own, and get over the idea that you and other, greedy strangers like you have any right to take away from the people I actually care about.

It must be nice going through life believing you and your family will always have the ability to take care of yourselves, never unexpectedly being unemployed, retirement savings wiped out by others just like you who thought only of themselves, a health insurance policy that suddenly denies urgent care because the insurer decides you had a hangnail 10 years ago and so that we a "preexisting" condition to your current problem.

Ah yes, "compassionate conservatism" speaks to what the spirit of America is all about:
ME ME ME !!

It must be nice, going through life believing that someone else should take responsibility for you. I remember feeling like that once. Then I became an adult and moved out of my parents' house.

I realize this is a shocking concept to you, but if a catastrophe hits my life, I'm going to turn to my family and friends, people who actually know me and have reason to inconvenience themselves for me, for help. I might even possibly go to private charities, where people have chosen, out of the goodness of their hearst, to VOLUNTARILY help me. I won't be turning to the government to have them rob complete strangers for me.

And unlike you, I won't EVER have the sheer gall to swan around, touting my compassion and great moral virtue for supporting that robbery. Am I supposed to be impressed by how generous you are with other people's money?

 

[Cecilie1200]

ROFLMNAO...

This nation is not governed on the 'will of the people'... it is NOT a social Democracy... it is a CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC... one based upon valid and sustainable human rights...

YOU DO NOT HAVE A RIGHT TO THE PRODUCT OF ANOTHER MAN'S LABOR! PERIOD...

And there is NO MEANS OF FUNDING YOUR HEALTHCARE WITHIN THAT IMMUTABLE FACT... UNLESS YOU FUND IT.

Want healthcare INSURANCE... FUND IT YOURSELF...

This nation is not governed on the 'will of the people'

Yes it is. If you want to live in a kingdom I'm sure there are several countries that will accomodate you.

Even a "Constitutional Republic" is only as good as its citizens are able to contribute. PI's has got to be the dumbest of the dumb arguments. No country, whether a Republic, a Democracy, or a Monarchy, can possibly survive and expect the lifestyle we enjoy if its citizens are unhealthy (and uneducated, while we're at it).

This is the stupidest ******* argument in the whole debate. "A great nation needs healthy, educated people, so that means that the government should play nanny." A great nation needs its people to be clothed, fed, and sheltered, too, but that doesn't make it the government's responsibility to give everyone a house, groceries, and a gift card to Macy's. It's the government's job to make sure people are able to get those things for themselves. It's YOUR job to get up off your lazy ass and avail yourself of the opportunity.

 

[Cecilie1200]

Awesome...we have the most advances, just nobody can afford to use them.

Ah, childishly simplistic generalizations. Can't have a good liberal viewpoint without 'em.

Statistics are posted everywhere, even here. Since you and your ilk refuse to accept the facts, people tire of providing you with them.

In other words, "I can't be bothered to have any facts. I just know it's true because everyone says so, and how DARE you challenge the conventional wisdom and insist that I actually say something REAL?"

Thank you for admitting that you're full of shit. Run along.

 

[Chris]

Damned right, Heaven forbid I should be FORCED to contribute to you. I got mine, go get your own, and get over the idea that you and other, greedy strangers like you have any right to take away from the people I actually care about.

It must be nice going through life believing you and your family will always have the ability to take care of yourselves, never unexpectedly being unemployed, retirement savings wiped out by others just like you who thought only of themselves, a health insurance policy that suddenly denies urgent care because the insurer decides you had a hangnail 10 years ago and so that we a "preexisting" condition to your current problem.

Ah yes, "compassionate conservatism" speaks to what the spirit of America is all about:
ME ME ME !!

It must be nice, going through life believing that someone else should take responsibility for you. I remember feeling like that once. Then I became an adult and moved out of my parents' house.

I realize this is a shocking concept to you, but if a catastrophe hits my life, I'm going to turn to my family and friends, people who actually know me and have reason to inconvenience themselves for me, for help. I might even possibly go to private charities, where people have chosen, out of the goodness of their hearst, to VOLUNTARILY help me. I won't be turning to the government to have them rob complete strangers for me.

And unlike you, I won't EVER have the sheer gall to swan around, touting my compassion and great moral virtue for supporting that robbery. Am I supposed to be impressed by how generous you are with other people's money?

It must be nice going through life having never been so sick with cancer that you couldn't work to pay for your health insurance.

 

[Old Rocks]

Proof is in the pudding. Europeans live longer, have a healthier life, and a far lower infant mortality rate than do the citizens of the US. They pay only about 1/2 of what we do for their far more successful system. In Taiwan, the overhead cost for their system is 2%. In the US, the direct overhead is 22%. In these nations doctors decide on your treatment. Here, in many of our private insurance systems, the bean counters do. Wonder why the single payer system clients have a longer average life span?

 

[ScreamingEagle]

Proof is in the pudding. Europeans live longer, have a healthier life, and a far lower infant mortality rate than do the citizens of the US. They pay only about 1/2 of what we do for their far more successful system. In Taiwan, the overhead cost for their system is 2%. In the US, the direct overhead is 22%. In these nations doctors decide on your treatment. Here, in many of our private insurance systems, the bean counters do. Wonder why the single payer system clients have a longer average life span?

Most single-payer advocates point to life expectancy and infant mortality as evidence that single-payer systems produce better health outcomes than the U.S. And, indeed, the U.S. has lower life expectancy and higher infant mortality than many nations with a single-payer system.

The problem is that life expectancy and infant mortality tell us very little about the quality of a health care system. Life expectancy is determined by a host of factors over which a health care system has little control, such as genetics, crime rate, gross domestic product per capita, diet, sanitation, and literacy rate.

The primary reason is that the U.S. has lower life expectancy is that we are ethnically a far more diverse nation than most other industrialized nations. Factors associated with different ethnic backgrounds -- culture, diet, etc. -- can have a substantial impact on life expectancy.

A good deal of the lower life expectancy rate in the U.S. is accounted for by the difference in life expectancy of African-Americans versus other populations in the United States. Life expectancy for African-Americans is about 72.3 years, while for whites it is about 77.7 years. What accounts for the difference? Numerous scholars have investigated this question. The most prevalent explanations are differences in income and personal risk factors. For example, one study found that about one-third of the difference between white and African-American life expectancies in the United States was accounted for by income; another third was accounted for by personal risk factors such as obesity, blood pressure, alcohol intake, diabetes, cholesterol concentration, and smoking and the final third was due to unexplained factors.

Infant mortality is also impacted by many of the same factors that affect life expectancy -- genetics, GDP per capita, diet, etc. -- all of which are factors beyond the control of a health care system. Another factor that makes U.S. infant mortality rates higher than other nations is that we have far more pregnant women living alone; in other nations pregnant women are more likely to be either be married or living with a partner. Pregnant women in such households are more likely to receive prenatal care than pregnant women living on their own.

Perhaps the biggest drawback of infant mortality is that it is measured too inconsistently across nations to be a useful measure. Under United Nations' guidelines, countries are supposed to count any infant showing any sign of life as a "live birth." While the United States follows that guideline, many other nations do not. For example, Switzerland does not count any infant born measuring less than 12 inches, while France and Belgium do not count any infant born prior to 26 weeks. In short, many other nations exclude many high-risk infants from their infant mortality statistics, making their infant mortality numbers look better than they really are.

In areas where a health care system does have an impact, such as treating disease, the U.S. outperforms single-payer systems. For example, the U.S. has a higher five-year survival rate for victims of heart attacks than Canada, due to the fact that we do more bypass surgeries and angioplasties in the U.S. Hospitals in the U.S. also commit fewer errors than hospitals in countries with single-payer systems like Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom

Free Market Cure - The Myths of Single-Payer Health Care

 

[AllieBaba]

The Netherlands kills live babies and old people all the time. I wonder if they count those as "infant mortalities"?

 

[Harry Dresden]

Wrong. NO ONE CAN BE TURNED AWAY FROM THE EMERGENCY ROOM.

And you know what the most expensive kind of healthcare is?

THE EMERGENCY ROOM!!!

The other Western democracies are much smarter than we are on this issue. A society that tries to make money off of sick people is totally fucked up.

Chris you dont go into emergency rooms to get treatments for your chronic diseases.....you go for EMERGENCIES....you dont go in there for weekly dialysis treatments....there is a difference between an EMERGENCY and CHRONIC ONGOING DISEASE's.......

 

[Harry Dresden]

Proof is in the pudding. Europeans live longer, have a healthier life, and a far lower infant mortality rate than do the citizens of the US. They pay only about 1/2 of what we do for their far more successful system. In Taiwan, the overhead cost for their system is 2%. In the US, the direct overhead is 22%. In these nations doctors decide on your treatment. Here, in many of our private insurance systems, the bean counters do. Wonder why the single payer system clients have a longer average life span?

Most single-payer advocates point to life expectancy and infant mortality as evidence that single-payer systems produce better health outcomes than the U.S. And, indeed, the U.S. has lower life expectancy and higher infant mortality than many nations with a single-payer system.

The problem is that life expectancy and infant mortality tell us very little about the quality of a health care system. Life expectancy is determined by a host of factors over which a health care system has little control, such as genetics, crime rate, gross domestic product per capita, diet, sanitation, and literacy rate.

The primary reason is that the U.S. has lower life expectancy is that we are ethnically a far more diverse nation than most other industrialized nations. Factors associated with different ethnic backgrounds -- culture, diet, etc. -- can have a substantial impact on life expectancy.

A good deal of the lower life expectancy rate in the U.S. is accounted for by the difference in life expectancy of African-Americans versus other populations in the United States. Life expectancy for African-Americans is about 72.3 years, while for whites it is about 77.7 years. What accounts for the difference? Numerous scholars have investigated this question. The most prevalent explanations are differences in income and personal risk factors. For example, one study found that about one-third of the difference between white and African-American life expectancies in the United States was accounted for by income; another third was accounted for by personal risk factors such as obesity, blood pressure, alcohol intake, diabetes, cholesterol concentration, and smoking and the final third was due to unexplained factors.

Infant mortality is also impacted by many of the same factors that affect life expectancy -- genetics, GDP per capita, diet, etc. -- all of which are factors beyond the control of a health care system. Another factor that makes U.S. infant mortality rates higher than other nations is that we have far more pregnant women living alone; in other nations pregnant women are more likely to be either be married or living with a partner. Pregnant women in such households are more likely to receive prenatal care than pregnant women living on their own.

Perhaps the biggest drawback of infant mortality is that it is measured too inconsistently across nations to be a useful measure. Under United Nations' guidelines, countries are supposed to count any infant showing any sign of life as a "live birth." While the United States follows that guideline, many other nations do not. For example, Switzerland does not count any infant born measuring less than 12 inches, while France and Belgium do not count any infant born prior to 26 weeks. In short, many other nations exclude many high-risk infants from their infant mortality statistics, making their infant mortality numbers look better than they really are.

In areas where a health care system does have an impact, such as treating disease, the U.S. outperforms single-payer systems. For example, the U.S. has a higher five-year survival rate for victims of heart attacks than Canada, due to the fact that we do more bypass surgeries and angioplasties in the U.S. Hospitals in the U.S. also commit fewer errors than hospitals in countries with single-payer systems like Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom

Free Market Cure - The Myths of Single-Payer Health Care

your wasting your time....SE.....to some of the posters here, this is the worst system around, and thats it..... dont wanna hear any positives about the US system and definitely dont want to hear any negatives about the other systems....because to certain posters here....they dont exist....

 

[Yukon]

My God but you people are so sad.

 

[elvis]

Proof is in the pudding. Europeans live longer, have a healthier life, and a far lower infant mortality rate than do the citizens of the US. They pay only about 1/2 of what we do for their far more successful system. In Taiwan, the overhead cost for their system is 2%. In the US, the direct overhead is 22%. In these nations doctors decide on your treatment. Here, in many of our private insurance systems, the bean counters do. Wonder why the single payer system clients have a longer average life span?

Why don't you move there, then?

 

[elvis]

It must be nice going through life believing you and your family will always have the ability to take care of yourselves, never unexpectedly being unemployed, retirement savings wiped out by others just like you who thought only of themselves, a health insurance policy that suddenly denies urgent care because the insurer decides you had a hangnail 10 years ago and so that we a "preexisting" condition to your current problem.

Ah yes, "compassionate conservatism" speaks to what the spirit of America is all about:
ME ME ME !!

It must be nice, going through life believing that someone else should take responsibility for you. I remember feeling like that once. Then I became an adult and moved out of my parents' house.

I realize this is a shocking concept to you, but if a catastrophe hits my life, I'm going to turn to my family and friends, people who actually know me and have reason to inconvenience themselves for me, for help. I might even possibly go to private charities, where people have chosen, out of the goodness of their hearst, to VOLUNTARILY help me. I won't be turning to the government to have them rob complete strangers for me.

And unlike you, I won't EVER have the sheer gall to swan around, touting my compassion and great moral virtue for supporting that robbery. Am I supposed to be impressed by how generous you are with other people's money?

It must be nice going through life having never been so sick with cancer that you couldn't work to pay for your health insurance.

then there's you who's such a too much of a shit stain to pay for his own insurance when you can afford it. Have fun going broke when you need an operation, fuckhead.

 

[elvis]

My God but you people are so sad.

Yes we are so sad that you continue to pollute the board with your presence.

 

[Cecilie1200]

The Netherlands kills live babies and old people all the time. I wonder if they count those as "infant mortalities"?

If they're newborns with birth defects, no. I believe they count them as stillborn. I know at least one European country - I believe it's Sweden, but I won't swear to it - counts as stillborn any newborn child who doesn't live for a certain number of days after birth. The US, on the other hand, counts as a live birth any child who actually takes a breath outside the womb, even if he dies in the next instant.

 

[Yukon]

The Dutch do permit euthanasia on demand. However they are a week cowardly drug crazed people. Like the rest of Europe they would be better served if Germany were to once again take control of their government and civilize them.

 

[Harry Dresden]

The Dutch do permit euthanasia on demand. However they are a week cowardly drug crazed people. Like the rest of Europe they would be better served if Germany were to once again take control of their government and civilize them.

hey Yuke you got friends?....your in the green now.....

 

[mskafka]

Funny... a benefit of employment.... for the likes of the Military, Bush, Clinton, Cheney, Carter, etc

Not exactly the same of just giving it away

But nice try

Giving it away? Hey we will be paying taxes to pay for it. Nothing going to be given away. The difference is that there will not be a middle man (insurance companies) taking a cut for doing nothing. All the money will go to medical expenses instead of fat cat corporate CEOs.

Why is it that right wingers love to get screwed by big buisness?

Which means those that pay taxes will be providing it for everyone, whether they pay taxes or not...

Sorry... but you are not OWED a damn thing for your personal care, health, and well being from anyone else on this ******* earth

You're an adult... earn it and pay for it yourself

The government does not exist to be your insurance company.. what next? Government single payer auto insurance?

This is why left wingers just don't get it...

Yeah. By Gawd yer raht! God helps those that help themselves, raht.
If you've got juvenile-onset diabetes, a congenital heart defect, cancer, or any range of medical problems and you lose your job and health benefits from outsourcing....and THEN, your Cobra runs out! You find a new job that doesn't have health benefits, so you try to seek out your own insurance coverage and BCBS or whoever doesn't want you because you have a pre-existing condition. Medicaid is an option, but these deadbeats don't need to be looking for a handout....RIGHT?

So what do you do? You die. You're an adult right? And you just need to suck it up and be a man.

What a bunch of bull****. Those of you that believe this, I just hope that you don't ever have to experience this. Your complacency in life will disappear overnight.