I'm not picking and choosing Maggie, and this problem with the VA goes back for many many years this is nothing new. If your family members have had good luck with the VA then god bless them because that is not the impression most vets get from the VA. Now as a matter of course Maggie I didnt want to put every single story about them I could find but I am sure that everyone here is capable of doing a little research on the subject. I will however agree that the influx of new Vets to the system is going to make it even harder to get any quaility care at the VA and may just provide the motivation to after many years to finally fix a very broken system. Which I for one would be very happy to see, until that time I will not use the VA unless I have too. I can assure you Maggie I'm not alone in my thinking.
Democrats: the more people know about government run healthcare, the less they like
- Thread starter Fraulein Hilda
- Start date
MaggieMae
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Hey! What's wrong with a Yugo?! I owned one of the first, which was a box with wheels and a 4-cylinder engine stick shift, no radio. (I think it had a heater.) It cost me $3,800 in 1984 which was all I could afford to get me around LA just fine. Except on Christmas Day, not too many folks there can do 0-60 in 3 minutes anyway. I did try to take it up to Lake Arrowhead one weekend, though, and it was like the Little Engine That Could.
My point is, most Americans can't afford transportation vehicles that cost as much as a small condominium.
Soaring
Active Member
- May 30, 2009
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I'm a Vietnam vet, and was wounded. I go to the VA hospital quite often, and have generally received good service. My wife goes to the local hospital, and I don't see a great deal of difference except what the services cost. I'm wondering how my care at the VA hospital will change with Obama's national health care system.
MaggieMae
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Freedom Shmeedom. The word is bandied about so much it's lost its meaning. When I think of the "freedom" of Americans, I think of not living in a country where martial law rules, where government dictates television/radio programming, where I could be arrested for infidelity, go to debtor's prison because I owe more than I earn, or [gasp] tax avoidance. It has very, very little (no, NOTHING) to do with how my health care gets paid for.
LOL when DOESNT he resort to name calling
now i wont say i dont do it, because i do
but only after its got to the point when its clear the person is too ******* stupid to get it
MaggieMae
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Navy Navy Navy! we digress.. the very people in here now lauding the ability of the government to run things,, were bitching a blue streak just months ago.. and,, they've managed to double the deficit.. now see? don't wade in too deep,, they'll pull you under! Remember how miserable the care was the vets got???
Progressive Democrats of America has mobilized tremendous grassroots pressure through its Healthcare Not Warfare campaign. This is essentially a campaign for single-payer health coverage, but it also organizes the peace movement to participate and communicates an important selling point. The financial cost of creating a single payer-system would be a fraction of what we spend each year merely on the occupation of Iraq, which Congress and the president have committed to ending.
Checkmate *****!!
LIES pig.. everyone knows you will never be anything but a pig.. pig!! me? I'd rather be a *****,,
Do you wear a black leather jacket and combat boots?
and yet Maggie, with those thoughts the care of life was not a right given in the constitution but mentioned in the preamble. Even then it was mentioned has having a right to Life and not the care thereof.
The "cruel and unusual punishment" clause of the 8th Amendment to the Constitution has been interpreted by the Supreme Court to require prisoners, as part of their humane treatment during detention, to be guaranteed the right to health care. (2)
So the only group of americans entitled to healthcare as a right under the constitution are prisioners.
Wonderful quote by Jefferson by the way, here's another..
"Government is not reason; it is not eloquence. It is force. And force, like fire, is a dangerous servant and a fearful master." George Washington
The "cruel and unusual punishment" clause of the 8th Amendment to the Constitution has been interpreted by the Supreme Court to require prisoners, as part of their humane treatment during detention, to be guaranteed the right to health care. (2)
So the only group of americans entitled to healthcare as a right under the constitution are prisioners.
Wonderful quote by Jefferson by the way, here's another..
"Government is not reason; it is not eloquence. It is force. And force, like fire, is a dangerous servant and a fearful master." George Washington
MaggieMae
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I often wondered if Reagan regretted making that off-handed remark, since he was no doubt collecting a military pension for his service in the Army's First Motion Picture Unit.
Let them read the whole thing Maggie. I wasn't cherry picking.
THE health-care systems of all developed countries face three unrelenting problems: rising costs, inadequate quality, and incomplete access to care. A slew of recent articles, published mainly in medical journals, suggest that the health-care systems of other countries are superior to ours on all these fronts. Yet the articles are at odds with a substantial economic literature.
What follows is a brief review of the evidence. As other writers demonstrate elsewhere in this issue, the American health-care system has plenty of problems. But it is not inferior to other developed countries' systems--and we should therefore not be looking to these systems, most of which are characterized by heavy government intervention, for inspiration.
Does the U.S. Spend More on Health Care?
Taken at face value, international statistics show that the United States spends more than twice as much per person on health care as the average developed country. But these statistics are misleading. Other countries are far more aggressive than we are at disguising and shifting costs--for example, by using the power of government purchase to artificially suppress the incomes of doctors, nurses, and hospital personnel. This makes their aggregate outlays look smaller when all that has really happened is that part of the cost has been shifted from one group (patients and taxpayers) to another (health-care providers). This is equivalent to taxing doctors, nurses, or some other group so that others may pay less for their care.
Normal market forces have been so suppressed throughout the developed world that the prices paid for medical services rarely reflect the services' actual cost. As a result, adding all these prices together produces aggregate numbers in which one can have little confidence. One gets a better measure of how much countries spend by looking at the real resources used; and by that measure, the U.S. system is pretty good. For example, we use fewer doctors than the average developed country to produce the same or better outcomes. We also use fewer nurses and fewer hospital beds, make fewer physician visits, and spend fewer days in the hospital. About the only thing we use more of is technology. (See below.)
Spending totals aside, the U.S. has been neither worse nor better than the rest of the developed world at controlling spending growth. The average annual rate of growth of real per capita U.S. health-care spending is slightly below the OECD average over the past four decades (4.4 percent versus 4.5 percent). It appears that other developed countries are traveling down the same spending path we are.
Are U.S. Health Outcomes Worse?
Critics point to the fact that U.S. life expectancy is in the middle of the pack among developed countries, and that our infant-mortality rate is among the highest. But are these the right measures? Within the U.S., life expectancy at birth varies greatly between racial and ethnic groups, from state to state, and across counties. These differences are thought to reflect such lifestyle choices as diet, exercise, and smoking. Infant mortality varies by a factor of two or three across racial and ethnic lines, and from city to city and state to state, for reasons apparently having little to do with health care.
All too often, the heterogeneous population of the United States is compared with the homogeneous populations of European countries. A state such as Utah compares favorably with almost any developed country. Texas, with its high minority population, tends to compare unfavorably. But these outcomes have almost nothing to do with the doctors and hospitals in the two states.
It makes far more sense to look at the diseases and conditions to which we know medical science can make a real difference--cancer, diabetes, and hypertension, for example. The largest international study to date found that the five-year survival rate for all types of cancer among both men and women was higher in the U.S. than in Europe. There is a steeper increase in blood pressure with advancing age in Europe, and a 60 percent higher prevalence of hypertension. The aggressive treatment offered to U.S. cardiac patients apparently improves survival and functioning relative to that of Canadian patients. Fewer health- and disability-related problems occur among U.S. spinal-cord-injury patients than among Canadian and British patients.
Do Patients in Other Countries Have Better Access to Care?
Britain has only one-fourth as many CT scanners per capita as the U.S., and one-third as many MRI scanners. The rate at which the British provide coronary-bypass surgery or angioplasty to heart patients is only one-fourth the U.S. rate, and hip replacements are only two-thirds the U.S. rate. The rate for treating kidney failure (dialysis or transplant) is five times higher in the U.S. for patients between the ages of 45 and 84, and nine times higher for patients 85 years or older.
Overall, nearly 1.8 million Britons are waiting for hospital or outpatient treatments at any given time. In 2002-2004, dialysis patients waited an average of 16 days for permanent blood-vessel access in the U.S., 20 days in Europe, and 62 days in Canada. In 2000, Norwegian patients waited an average of 133 days for hip replacement, 63 days for cataract surgery, 160 days for a knee replacement, and 46 days for bypass surgery after being approved for treatment. Short waits for cataract surgery produce better outcomes, prompt coronary-artery bypass reduces mortality, and rapid hip replacement reduces disability and death. Studies show that only 5 percent of Americans wait more than four months for surgery, compared with 23 percent of Australians, 26 percent of New Zealanders, 27 percent of Canadians, and 36 percent of Britons.
Do Other Countries Do a Better Job of Delivering Preventive Care?
If people have to pay for care directly, it is often claimed, they will be inclined to skimp on preventive care--care that can catch diseases in their early stages, saving lives and money. Yet the proportion of middle-aged Canadian women who have never had a mammogram is twice that of the U.S., and three times as many Canadian women have never had a Pap smear. Fewer than a fifth of Canadian men have ever been tested for prostate-specific antigen, compared with about half of American men. Only one in ten adult Canadians has had a colonoscopy, compared with about a third of adult Americans.
These differences in screening may partly explain why the mortality rate in Canada is 25 percent higher for breast cancer, 18 percent higher for prostate cancer, and 13 percent higher for colorectal cancer. In addition, while half of all diabetics have high blood pressure, it is controlled in 36 percent of U.S. cases, compared with only 9 percent of cases in Canada.
Do the Uninsured in the U.S. Lack Access to Health Care?
Of the 46 million nominally uninsured, about 12 million are eligible for such public programs as Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP). They can usually enroll even at the time of treatment, arguably making them de facto insured. About 17 million of the uninsured are living in households with annual incomes of at least $50,000. More than half of those earn more than $75,000, suggesting that they are uninsured by choice.
Like unemployment, uninsurance is usually transitory: 75 percent of uninsured spells last one year or less, and 91 percent last two years or less. Although the fraction of the population with health insurance rises and falls with the business cycle, it has been fairly constant for the past two decades, despite an unprecedented influx of immigrants with an uninsurance rate 2.5 times that of the native-born population. Guaranteed-issue laws, state high-risk pools, and retroactive Medicaid eligibility make it increasingly easy to obtain insurance after becoming ill.
Are Low-Income Families More Disadvantaged in the U.S. System?
Aneurin Bevan, father of the British National Health Service (NHS), declared, "The essence of a satisfactory health service is that rich and poor are treated alike, that poverty is not a disability and wealth is not advantaged." More than 30 years after the NHS's founding, an official task force found little evidence that it had equalized health-care access. Another study, 20 years later, concluded that access had become more unequal in the years between the two studies.
In Canada, the wealthy and powerful have significantly greater access to medical specialists than do the less well-connected poor. High-profile patients enjoy more frequent services, shorter waiting times, and greater choice of specialists. Moreover, non-elderly, white, low-income Canadians are 22 percent more likely to be in poor health than their U.S. counterparts.
In developed countries generally, among people with similar health conditions, high earners use the system more intensely, and use costlier services, than do low earners. It seems likely that the personal characteristics that ensure success in a market economy also enhance success in bureaucratic systems.
Mr. Goodman is the founder, president, and CEO of the National Center for Policy Analysis. A fuller survey of these and similar data is available at Free-Market Solutions | National Center for Policy Analysis | NCPA.
Socialized failure: dissecting health-care data from Britain, Canada, and elsewhere. - Free Online Library
THE health-care systems of all developed countries face three unrelenting problems: rising costs, inadequate quality, and incomplete access to care. A slew of recent articles, published mainly in medical journals, suggest that the health-care systems of other countries are superior to ours on all these fronts. Yet the articles are at odds with a substantial economic literature.
What follows is a brief review of the evidence. As other writers demonstrate elsewhere in this issue, the American health-care system has plenty of problems. But it is not inferior to other developed countries' systems--and we should therefore not be looking to these systems, most of which are characterized by heavy government intervention, for inspiration.
Does the U.S. Spend More on Health Care?
Taken at face value, international statistics show that the United States spends more than twice as much per person on health care as the average developed country. But these statistics are misleading. Other countries are far more aggressive than we are at disguising and shifting costs--for example, by using the power of government purchase to artificially suppress the incomes of doctors, nurses, and hospital personnel. This makes their aggregate outlays look smaller when all that has really happened is that part of the cost has been shifted from one group (patients and taxpayers) to another (health-care providers). This is equivalent to taxing doctors, nurses, or some other group so that others may pay less for their care.
Normal market forces have been so suppressed throughout the developed world that the prices paid for medical services rarely reflect the services' actual cost. As a result, adding all these prices together produces aggregate numbers in which one can have little confidence. One gets a better measure of how much countries spend by looking at the real resources used; and by that measure, the U.S. system is pretty good. For example, we use fewer doctors than the average developed country to produce the same or better outcomes. We also use fewer nurses and fewer hospital beds, make fewer physician visits, and spend fewer days in the hospital. About the only thing we use more of is technology. (See below.)
Spending totals aside, the U.S. has been neither worse nor better than the rest of the developed world at controlling spending growth. The average annual rate of growth of real per capita U.S. health-care spending is slightly below the OECD average over the past four decades (4.4 percent versus 4.5 percent). It appears that other developed countries are traveling down the same spending path we are.
Are U.S. Health Outcomes Worse?
Critics point to the fact that U.S. life expectancy is in the middle of the pack among developed countries, and that our infant-mortality rate is among the highest. But are these the right measures? Within the U.S., life expectancy at birth varies greatly between racial and ethnic groups, from state to state, and across counties. These differences are thought to reflect such lifestyle choices as diet, exercise, and smoking. Infant mortality varies by a factor of two or three across racial and ethnic lines, and from city to city and state to state, for reasons apparently having little to do with health care.
All too often, the heterogeneous population of the United States is compared with the homogeneous populations of European countries. A state such as Utah compares favorably with almost any developed country. Texas, with its high minority population, tends to compare unfavorably. But these outcomes have almost nothing to do with the doctors and hospitals in the two states.
It makes far more sense to look at the diseases and conditions to which we know medical science can make a real difference--cancer, diabetes, and hypertension, for example. The largest international study to date found that the five-year survival rate for all types of cancer among both men and women was higher in the U.S. than in Europe. There is a steeper increase in blood pressure with advancing age in Europe, and a 60 percent higher prevalence of hypertension. The aggressive treatment offered to U.S. cardiac patients apparently improves survival and functioning relative to that of Canadian patients. Fewer health- and disability-related problems occur among U.S. spinal-cord-injury patients than among Canadian and British patients.
Do Patients in Other Countries Have Better Access to Care?
Britain has only one-fourth as many CT scanners per capita as the U.S., and one-third as many MRI scanners. The rate at which the British provide coronary-bypass surgery or angioplasty to heart patients is only one-fourth the U.S. rate, and hip replacements are only two-thirds the U.S. rate. The rate for treating kidney failure (dialysis or transplant) is five times higher in the U.S. for patients between the ages of 45 and 84, and nine times higher for patients 85 years or older.
Overall, nearly 1.8 million Britons are waiting for hospital or outpatient treatments at any given time. In 2002-2004, dialysis patients waited an average of 16 days for permanent blood-vessel access in the U.S., 20 days in Europe, and 62 days in Canada. In 2000, Norwegian patients waited an average of 133 days for hip replacement, 63 days for cataract surgery, 160 days for a knee replacement, and 46 days for bypass surgery after being approved for treatment. Short waits for cataract surgery produce better outcomes, prompt coronary-artery bypass reduces mortality, and rapid hip replacement reduces disability and death. Studies show that only 5 percent of Americans wait more than four months for surgery, compared with 23 percent of Australians, 26 percent of New Zealanders, 27 percent of Canadians, and 36 percent of Britons.
Do Other Countries Do a Better Job of Delivering Preventive Care?
If people have to pay for care directly, it is often claimed, they will be inclined to skimp on preventive care--care that can catch diseases in their early stages, saving lives and money. Yet the proportion of middle-aged Canadian women who have never had a mammogram is twice that of the U.S., and three times as many Canadian women have never had a Pap smear. Fewer than a fifth of Canadian men have ever been tested for prostate-specific antigen, compared with about half of American men. Only one in ten adult Canadians has had a colonoscopy, compared with about a third of adult Americans.
These differences in screening may partly explain why the mortality rate in Canada is 25 percent higher for breast cancer, 18 percent higher for prostate cancer, and 13 percent higher for colorectal cancer. In addition, while half of all diabetics have high blood pressure, it is controlled in 36 percent of U.S. cases, compared with only 9 percent of cases in Canada.
Do the Uninsured in the U.S. Lack Access to Health Care?
Of the 46 million nominally uninsured, about 12 million are eligible for such public programs as Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP). They can usually enroll even at the time of treatment, arguably making them de facto insured. About 17 million of the uninsured are living in households with annual incomes of at least $50,000. More than half of those earn more than $75,000, suggesting that they are uninsured by choice.
Like unemployment, uninsurance is usually transitory: 75 percent of uninsured spells last one year or less, and 91 percent last two years or less. Although the fraction of the population with health insurance rises and falls with the business cycle, it has been fairly constant for the past two decades, despite an unprecedented influx of immigrants with an uninsurance rate 2.5 times that of the native-born population. Guaranteed-issue laws, state high-risk pools, and retroactive Medicaid eligibility make it increasingly easy to obtain insurance after becoming ill.
Are Low-Income Families More Disadvantaged in the U.S. System?
Aneurin Bevan, father of the British National Health Service (NHS), declared, "The essence of a satisfactory health service is that rich and poor are treated alike, that poverty is not a disability and wealth is not advantaged." More than 30 years after the NHS's founding, an official task force found little evidence that it had equalized health-care access. Another study, 20 years later, concluded that access had become more unequal in the years between the two studies.
In Canada, the wealthy and powerful have significantly greater access to medical specialists than do the less well-connected poor. High-profile patients enjoy more frequent services, shorter waiting times, and greater choice of specialists. Moreover, non-elderly, white, low-income Canadians are 22 percent more likely to be in poor health than their U.S. counterparts.
In developed countries generally, among people with similar health conditions, high earners use the system more intensely, and use costlier services, than do low earners. It seems likely that the personal characteristics that ensure success in a market economy also enhance success in bureaucratic systems.
Mr. Goodman is the founder, president, and CEO of the National Center for Policy Analysis. A fuller survey of these and similar data is available at Free-Market Solutions | National Center for Policy Analysis | NCPA.
Socialized failure: dissecting health-care data from Britain, Canada, and elsewhere. - Free Online Library
STAND4LIBERTY
Independent Libertarian
- Jun 5, 2009
- 355
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You know when you quote from somebody, it's probably a good idea to find out what they meant when they said it, instead of just attempting to adapt the words to the meaning that suits your own purposes.
Given his stance on centralized government and government largesse Thomas Jefferson would have been the last person to support any sort of national healthcare system, especially given this nations current financial situation. As far as your quote goes how does forcing some people to pay for something that they neither want nor need (and potentially cannot afford) at the point of a government sword NOT constitute destruction of their happiness? I don't no many individuals who upon being forcibly robbed of the fruits of their labor find any happiness in the fact.
MaggieMae
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Then why are so many "rich" people on board with this? Like doctors.
Fraulein Hilda
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Stockholm Syndrome. But it will pass.
It's a subsidy for doctors and insurance companies.
But the dirty little secret is that Obama will fire doctors and will put insurance companies out of business.
It's a subsidy for doctors and insurance companies.
But the dirty little secret is that Obama will fire doctors and will put insurance companies out of business.
MaggieMae
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The insurance won't be mandated. If you like your existing policy, you can keep it. Yes, for people who want insurance and can't afford it, subsidies will be available. As for illegals, I expect in order to apply for any health insurance (bear in mind, the insurers will be the same ones who exist now), an applicant will need to provide a bevy of personal information. If someone is here illegally and wants to remain in the shadows, I can't see him applying for health insurance because he would be reported. Or should be anyway.
Those who don't sign on for any insurance at all, and then decide they want to at a later date, can do so but will be penalized a small percentage of the lowest monthly premium of available policies.
All details can be found here, but keep in mind that these are the PROPOSED clauses for the Health Care bill. Skip to about Page 30 to read the options proposed.
Expanding Health Care Coverage: Proposals to Provide Affordable Coverage to All Americans
Last edited:
Do you know anyone who is on Medicare????? Hmmmmmm, it may be less costly, but guess what, some physicians are refusing to see Medicare patients because the government is very sloooooowwwwww to pay the bill, and the reimbursement is very low. Thats' why all those medicare patients go out and pay to get supplemental health insurance. Maybe you need to check your facts.
WillowTree
Diamond Member
- Sep 15, 2008
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Progressive Democrats of America has mobilized tremendous grassroots pressure through its Healthcare Not Warfare campaign. This is essentially a campaign for single-payer health coverage, but it also organizes the peace movement to participate and communicates an important selling point. The financial cost of creating a single payer-system would be a fraction of what we spend each year merely on the occupation of Iraq, which Congress and the president have committed to ending.
Checkmate *****!!
LIES pig.. everyone knows you will never be anything but a pig.. pig!! me? I'd rather be a *****,,
Do you wear a black leather jacket and combat boots?
Yes!
MaggieMae
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None of this is being done for some sort of Hitler-esque power control. It's being done out of necessity to keep the economy from collapsing in the immediate future. If you think deficit spending looks out of sight because of the fixes already put in place and those planned to keep the economy from spiraling out of control, you ain't seen nothin like what the deficit spending would be if the country was forced to climb back up the mountain after crash landing to the bottom. The term "foreign aid" would take on a whole new meaning. WE would suddenly need some ourselves.
WillowTree
Diamond Member
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Last edited:
Fraulein Hilda
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Yes it is, it's all about power. It's an effort to crush the private healthcare industry and make one monolithic government run system.
Democrats know when people learn of the details of this, it's dead. That's what the hurry is all about.
Democrats know when people learn of the details of this, it's dead. That's what the hurry is all about.
MaggieMae
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People still working at General Motors will not be receiving government paychecks. As Sealy pointed out, true fascism means everyone (EVERYONE) except the rulers works for the government. That isn't the case with GM, that isn't the case with the banks, and it won't be the case with health care.
MaggieMae
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You're just too hilarious, Willow. I've come to the conclusion that you're the USMB's mascot--running the field and waving wildly to the crowd in your funny animal suit.
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