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What I'm totally missing out on is either your unwillingness to see or hear,, about how well this dosen't go in the countries who have done it??? and we are talking relatively small countries in comparison to the numbers of people you want this to work out on in your fantasy world.. what you get for medical care in exchange for your 70% tax rate is the opportunity to get in line and wait for care. that's all you get.. some die waiting.. and yes those countries have a shortage of doctors and beds why do you think Canadians bolt across the border and come here for care??? Why don't they go to the mythical land of Cuba for the best care in the world?? doyathink??
And of course, you've only looked at the "right" side (in this case the "wrong" side) of the issue. There's more than enough evidence that the people living in countries who have universal care WOULD NOT TRADE IT for a return to privately run health care. But there's nothing more to say when trying to debate a brick wall.
your mortar has cracks in it donkeyface! so Canada wouldn't trade it but they come here for care?? that's rich.
In contrast to private insurers Medicare doesnt have to spend millions on marketing, advertising, and Washington lobbyists. On top of that, private insurers must generate profits for their shareholders. In 2003, the HMO industry as a whole reported total earnings of $5.5 billionup 83 percent from $3 million in 2002 , according to Weiss Ratings, a firm that assesses the financial strength of banks and insurance companies.
Private/For Profit is worse than Medicare!!!
But its not just the cost of marketing, advertising, lobbying and providing profits for investors that makes a private insurers overhead so much higher. Insurers also have higher administrative costs because they are constantly enrolling and disenrolling customers as people change plans. (The average turnover in an employer-sponsored insurance plan is 20% to 25% a year. By contrast, Medicare patients stay put. Even if they could switch, most prefer Medicares coverage to the coverage they had under a private insurer.)
Whats interesting is that, in the course of interviewing doctors for Money-Driven Medicine, I found that the majority preferred Medicareeven when it paid lessbecause it was so much less hassle. As The New York Times recently pointed out, private insurers make a game out of delaying reimbursement, and designing the forms so that the doctor leaves out one detail, he or she wont be paid.
Do I really need to continue? You're wrong.
The Health Care Blog: POLICY: Why Medicare is More Efficient Than Private Insurers By Maggie Mahar
thats funny Bobo....i hurt my knee on the job.....i went to see MY doc. not theirs....his office as i found out along with many others will not treat any on the job injuries were they have to deal with the govt....ITS A MONSTER HASSELL with them im told.... if i was to use my private Ins., i was told no prob....mmmm?
ROFLMAO !!! Wow how blindly partisan and foolish must one be to make a statement like this?Obama is not making a Fascist play on purpose.
Absolutely ! an orderly and non politicized unwinding of GM's malinvestments through the bankruptcy court would have given the company a chance to survive on it's own, what we will end up with instead is a permanent drag on our economy as the tax payer foots the bill for GMs operational loses. If you want to see how this turns out from a financial perspective just go look at Amtraks books then multiply the numbers by a thousand and you'll have some idea of what these wonderful people in Washington just put you and your children on the hook for.
Ford IS getting fucked since they're now being forced to compete with a tax payer subsidized, government controlled manufacturer. Essentially they are being forced to subsidize their own competitor who is controlled by the very entity that also controls fiscal policy and has regulatory authority.Even Ford would have gotten fucked.
More people are now buying Ford because they didn't take any government $. They have increased their output of F150's and they expect sales to pick up.
Their only problems are:
GM and Chrysler are offering really really low prices, especially dealerships that are closing. yep! got fucked over by democrats
And, Ford has debt. Chrysler and GM got to just wipe out their debt. yep, the taxpayer got fucked over by democrats
But Ford supported the bailout because they knew if GM and Chrysler went under, so would a lot of Ford's parts suppliers. ford didn't want to fuck over the taxpayer like the democrats do
You really don't know what you are talking about son. And you clearly don't know what led us to this mess. yes we do,, democrats and their housing scam and the unions overpriced labor.
Obama is a great man and a great leader. He cares. He wants what is best for all Americans. The GOP, Reagan/Bush/Bush/Rudy/Mitt/MCCain/Gindal/Boehner/etc. They only want what is best for the rich. he don't care about shit,,just obama
Are you rich? Probably not rich enough to be voting GOP. Fucking fool.
You are one stupid ass leach...it ain't competing, it's the government mandating them. For the love of God, get your head out of your sorry ass and take a breath of fresh air. I don't give a shit about a CEO's pay, and ain't the fucking governments business to get into the policies of the private sector.
Yes it is. The government makes the rules. You are one dumb son of a cock sucker.
In your world it is...but you would feel comfortable in a communist country. By the way...the best part of you ran down your daddy's leg.
Despite a weakening economy, Massachusetts continued to measure gains in the share of residents who reported having a steady source of health care in 2008, its second year of near-universal coverage, a new study has found.
But the annual survey, taken each fall since 2006, also raised red flags regarding the ability of residents to actually use that care, with growing numbers saying they could not afford needed treatments and many reporting shortages of primary care physicians.
The studys authors wrote that there were lessons for Washington, where Congressional committees are incorporating much of the Massachusetts model into federal health care legislation.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/28/health/policy/28massachusetts.html
"Nothing is more fatal to health than an over care of it."
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
Back in the 1960s, Castonguay chaired a Canadian government committee studying health reform and recommended that his home province of Quebec then the largest and most affluent in the country adopt government-administered health care, covering all citizens through tax levies.
The government followed his advice, leading to his modern-day moniker: "the father of Quebec medicare." Even this title seems modest; Castonguay's work triggered a domino effect across the country, until eventually his ideas were implemented from coast to coast.
Four decades later, as the chairman of a government committee reviewing Quebec health care this year, Castonguay concluded that the system is in "crisis."
"We thought we could resolve the system's problems by rationing services or injecting massive amounts of new money into it," says Castonguay. But now he prescribes a radical overhaul: "We are proposing to give a greater role to the private sector so that people can exercise freedom of choice."
IBDeditorials.com: Editorials, Political Cartoons, and Polls from Investor's Business Daily -- Canadian Health Care We So Envy Lies In Ruins, Its Architect Admits
THIS NEXT ONE IS AN EXAMPLE OF A U.S. Govt. RUN HEALTHCARE SYSTEM.
Fayetteville, NC: When William complained about stomach pains Alice B. took her husband to the VA hospital on several occasions, but he was sent home with heartburn medicine. Finally she took him to a civilian hospital: the diagnosis was pancreatic cancer and the diagnosis for the VA hospital was Veteran Medical Malpractice: the cancer clinic said it was too late for treatment.
Veteran Medical Malpractice Misdiagnosed Cancer VA hospital heartburn medicine needle biopsy |LawyersandSettlements.com
As you can easily see that while it is noble to wish that your fellow citizen not suffer and have access to medical care, perhaps the way to reform it is to motivate those who represent you to provide a marketplace more friendly to competetion. I have made many suggestions here that are well within the scope of the Govts. constitutional powers. As many on both sides have pointed out no one can be turned away from an Emergency room for care in this nation by law. It does cause the costs of care to rise , however costs are a part of commerce and commerce is something that is well within the powers of the Govt. to regulate. Now while it may sound cruel , this nation was not founded on the principles of providing every citizen all their needs. It was founded on providing a free framework for allowing any citizen who wishes to work hard enough and is self reliant to go provide for themselves and their family. It is not the healthcare system I suggest is broken but it is the free framework that needs to be adjusted to meet the demands of its citizens.
ROFLMAO !!! Wow how blindly partisan and foolish must one be to make a statement like this?
Absolutely ! an orderly and non politicized unwinding of GM's malinvestments through the bankruptcy court would have given the company a chance to survive on it's own, what we will end up with instead is a permanent drag on our economy as the tax payer foots the bill for GMs operational loses. If you want to see how this turns out from a financial perspective just go look at Amtraks books then multiply the numbers by a thousand and you'll have some idea of what these wonderful people in Washington just put you and your children on the hook for.
Ford IS getting fucked since they're now being forced to compete with a tax payer subsidized, government controlled manufacturer. Essentially they are being forced to subsidize their own competitor who is controlled by the very entity that also controls fiscal policy and has regulatory authority.
More people are now buying Ford because they didn't take any government $. They have increased their output of F150's and they expect sales to pick up.
Their only problems are:
GM and Chrysler are offering really really low prices, especially dealerships that are closing. yep! got fucked over by democrats
And, Ford has debt. Chrysler and GM got to just wipe out their debt. yep, the taxpayer got fucked over by democrats
But Ford supported the bailout because they knew if GM and Chrysler went under, so would a lot of Ford's parts suppliers. ford didn't want to fuck over the taxpayer like the democrats do
You really don't know what you are talking about son. And you clearly don't know what led us to this mess. yes we do,, democrats and their housing scam and the unions overpriced labor.
Obama is a great man and a great leader. He cares. He wants what is best for all Americans. The GOP, Reagan/Bush/Bush/Rudy/Mitt/MCCain/Gindal/Boehner/etc. They only want what is best for the rich. he don't care about shit,,just obama
Are you rich? Probably not rich enough to be voting GOP. Fucking fool.
it's late friday bobo aren't you done yet? screwing your boss over for your wages???
Once again, everyone seems to be under the mistaken impression that the health care program being debated now is universal coverage. IT IS NOT. So the questions are hypothetical at this point. (I have a feeling that it will be a cold day in hell before true universal care is instituted, and that cold day will be when the skyrocketing costs of doing health care as usual begins to hit the pocketbooks of millionnaires.)
As for INSURING Americans, which is what the current health care issue is about, I can see the cost advantages right away if more people feel they can now see a doctor for a small problem rather than waiting until it gets out of control, and then they become a part of the "free" system which taxpayers pay for anyway. The way I understand it, people can buy all sorts of coverage, including policies that cover bare bones, which would include X-number of visits per year for preventive care.
As for the countries Willow asks ME to compare, I still say she asks stupid questions that, if she was really interested in answers, she would look 'em up herself. I get sick of doing her homework for her, only for her to come back at me with some illiterate childish remark using her retarded vocabulary.
then don't do my homework for me,, i stated an opinion,, it won't work,, if you're too lazy to support your allegations that's on you not me.. so there tweakers. I already looked up my answers,, all my answers,, they are the right answers yours are the wrong answers..
I'm sorry, but you are a ****.
Maggie, I'm afriad I have to disagree with your assertion that this is "Not Universal HealthCare" . As I have stated many times on here, no matter how noble the intentions, when the Govt. gets into the business of medical insurance and directly competes with other private carriers who they also regulate. Those other carriers will eventually simply not offer healthcare coverage to anyone that is deemed a "risk" or eventually just go out of the business of providing insurance all together. The end result will be a single payer, single managed, Govt. run Universal Healthcare program. However, I am somewhat brightened by the fact that the Govt. does not have the capacity to run healthcare for an entire nation without private contractors as they do now with medicare.
Yes it is. The government makes the rules. You are one dumb son of a cock sucker.
In your world it is...but you would feel comfortable in a communist country. By the way...the best part of you ran down your daddy's leg.
Yep, that's it, I'm a commy, you stupid little bitch.
This was written in 2004. Back then, you were probably telling us how great the economy was going to be in just a couple years. And it was, for the rich. But their wages went up and ours went down.
Democracy - Not "The Free Market" - Will Save America's Middle Class
Here are a couple of headlines for those who haven't had the time to study both economics and history:
1. There is no such thing as a "free market."
2. The "middle class" is the creation of government intervention in the marketplace, and won't exist without it (as millions of Americans and Europeans are discovering).
The conservative belief in "free markets" is a bit like the Catholic Church's insistence that the Earth was at the center of the Solar System in the Twelfth Century. It's widely believed by those in power, those who challenge it are branded heretics and ridiculed, and it is wrong.
In actual fact, there is no such thing as a "free market." Markets are the creation of government.
Governments provide a stable currency to make markets possible. They provide a legal infrastructure and court systems to enforce the contracts that make markets possible. They provide educated workforces through public education, and those workers show up at their places of business after traveling on public roads, rails, or airways provided by government. Businesses that use the "free market" are protected by police and fire departments provided by government, and send their communications - from phone to fax to internet - over lines that follow public rights-of-way maintained and protected by government.
And, most important, the rules of the game of business are defined by government. Any sports fan can tell you that football, baseball, or hockey without rules and referees would be a mess. Similarly, business without rules won't work.
Which explains why conservative economics wiped out the middle class during the period from 1880 to 1932, and why, when Reagan again began applying conservative economics, the middle class again began to vanish in America in the 1980s - a process that has dramatically picked up steam under George W. Bush.
The conservative mantra is "let the market decide." But there is no market independent of government, so what they're really saying is, "Stop corporations from defending workers and building a middle class, and let the corporations decide how much to pay for labor and how to trade." This is, at best, destructive to national and international economies, and, at worst, destructive to democracy itself.
Markets are a creation of government, just as corporations exist only by authorization of government. Governments set the rules of the market. And, since our government is of, by, and for We The People, those rules have historically been set to first maximize the public good resulting from people doing business.
If you want to play the game of business, we've said in the US since 1784 (when Tench Coxe got the first tariffs passed "to protect domestic industries") then you have to play in a way that both makes you money AND serves the public interest.
Which requires us to puncture the second balloon of popular belief. The "middle class" is not the natural result of freeing business to do whatever it wants, of "free and open markets," or of "free trade." The "middle class" is not a normal result of "free markets." Those policies will produce a small but powerful wealthy class, a small "middle" mercantilist class, and a huge and terrified worker class which have traditionally been called "serfs."
The middle class is a new invention of liberal democracies, the direct result of governments defining the rules of the game of business. It is, quite simply, an artifact of government regulation of markets and tax laws.
When government sets the rules of the game of business in such a way that working people must receive a living wage, labor has the power to organize into unions just as capital can organize into corporations, and domestic industries are protected from overseas competition, a middle class will emerge. When government gives up these functions, the middle class vanishes and we return to the Dickens-era "normal" form of totally free market conservative economics where the rich get richer while the working poor are kept in a constant state of fear and anxiety so the cost of their labor will always be cheap.
When conservatives rail in the media of the dangers of "returning to Smoot Hawley, which created the Great Depression," all they do is reveal their ignorance of economics and history. The Smoot-Hawley tariff legislation, which increased taxes on some imported goods by a third to two-thirds to protect American industries, was signed into law on June 17, 1930, well into the Great Depression. In the following two years, international trade dropped from 6 percent of GNP to roughly 2 percent of GNP (between 1930 and 1932), but most of that was the result of the depression going worldwide, not Smoot-Hawley. The main result of Smoot-Hawley was that American businesses now had strong financial incentives to do business with other American companies, rather than bring in products made with cheaper foreign labor: Americans started trading with other Americans.
Smoot-Hawley "protectionist" legislation did not cause the Great Depression, and while it may have had a slight short-term negative effect on the economy ("1.4 percent at most" according to many historians) its long-term effect was to bring American jobs back to America.
The fact that the "marketplace" was an artifact of government activity was well known to our Founders. As Thomas Jefferson said in an 1803 letter to David Williams, "The greatest evils of populous society have ever appeared to me to spring from the vicious distribution of its members among the occupations... But when, by a blind concourse, particular occupations are ruinously overcharged and others left in want of hands, the national authorities can do much towards restoring the equilibrium."
And the "national authorities," in Jefferson's mind, should be the Congress, as he wrote in a series of answers to the French politician de Meusnier in 1786: "The commerce of the States cannot be regulated to the best advantage but by a single body, and no body so proper as Congress."
Of course, there were conservatives (like Hamilton and Adams) in Jefferson's time, too, who took exception, thinking that the trickle-down theory that had dominated feudal Europe for ten centuries was a stable and healthy form of governance. Jefferson took exception, in an 1809 letter to members of his Democratic Republican Party (now called the Democratic Party): "The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government."
But, conservatives say, government is the problem, not the solution.
Of course, they can't explain how it was that the repeated series of huge tax cuts for the wealthy by the Herbert Hoover administration brought us the Great Depression, while raising taxes to provide for an active and interventionist government to protect the rights of labor to organize throughout the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s led us to the Golden Age of the American Middle Class. (The top tax rate in 1930 under Hoover was 25 percent, and even that was only paid by about a fifth of wealthy Americans. Thirty years later, the top tax rate was 91 percent, and held at 70 percent until Reagan began dismantling the middle class. As the top rate dropped, so did the middle class it helped create.)
Thomas Jefferson pointed out, in an 1816 letter to William H. Crawford, "Every society has a right to fix the fundamental principles of its association." He also pointed out in that letter that some people - and businesses - would prefer that government not play referee to the game of business, not fix rules that protect labor or provide for the protection of the commons and the public good.
We must, Jefferson wrote to Crawford, "...say to all [such] individuals, that if they contemplate pursuits beyond the limits of these principles and involving dangers which the society chooses to avoid, they must go somewhere else for their exercise; that we want no citizens, and still less ephemeral and pseudo-citizens [like corporations], on such terms. We may exclude them from our territory, as we do persons infected with disease."
Most of the Founders advocated - and all ultimately passed - tariffs to protect domestic industries and workers. Seventy years later, Abraham Lincoln actively stood up for the right for labor to organize, intervening in several strikes to stop corporations and local governments from using hired goon squads to beat and murder strikers.
But conservative economics - the return of ancient feudalism - rose up after Lincoln's death and reigned through the Gilded Age, creating both great wealth and a huge population of what today we call the "working poor." American reaction to these disparities gave birth to the Populist, Progressive, and modern Labor movements. Two generations later, Franklin Roosevelt brought us out of Herbert Hoover's conservative-economics-produced Great Depression and bequeathed us with more than a half-century of prosperity.
But now the conservatives are back in the driver's seat, and heading us back toward feudalism and serfdom (and possibly another Great Depression).
Only a return to liberal economic policies - a return to We The People again setting and enforcing the rules of the game of business - will reverse this dangerous trend. We've done it before, with tariffs, anti-trust legislation, and worker protections ranging from enforcing the rights of organized labor to restricting American companies' access to cheap foreign labor through visas and tariffs. The result was the production of something never before seen in history: a strong and vibrant middle class.
If the remnants of that modern middle class are to survive - and grow - we must learn the lessons of the past and return to the policies that in the 1780s and the late 1930s brought this nation back from the brink of economic disaster.
then don't do my homework for me,, i stated an opinion,, it won't work,, if you're too lazy to support your allegations that's on you not me.. so there tweakers. I already looked up my answers,, all my answers,, they are the right answers yours are the wrong answers..
I'm sorry, but you are a ****.
you remember that movie Deliverence! you remind me of that fat little guy.
In your world it is...but you would feel comfortable in a communist country. By the way...the best part of you ran down your daddy's leg.
Yep, that's it, I'm a commy, you stupid little bitch.
This was written in 2004. Back then, you were probably telling us how great the economy was going to be in just a couple years. And it was, for the rich. But their wages went up and ours went down.
Democracy - Not "The Free Market" - Will Save America's Middle Class
Here are a couple of headlines for those who haven't had the time to study both economics and history:
1. There is no such thing as a "free market."
2. The "middle class" is the creation of government intervention in the marketplace, and won't exist without it (as millions of Americans and Europeans are discovering).
The conservative belief in "free markets" is a bit like the Catholic Church's insistence that the Earth was at the center of the Solar System in the Twelfth Century. It's widely believed by those in power, those who challenge it are branded heretics and ridiculed, and it is wrong.
In actual fact, there is no such thing as a "free market." Markets are the creation of government.
Governments provide a stable currency to make markets possible. They provide a legal infrastructure and court systems to enforce the contracts that make markets possible. They provide educated workforces through public education, and those workers show up at their places of business after traveling on public roads, rails, or airways provided by government. Businesses that use the "free market" are protected by police and fire departments provided by government, and send their communications - from phone to fax to internet - over lines that follow public rights-of-way maintained and protected by government.
And, most important, the rules of the game of business are defined by government. Any sports fan can tell you that football, baseball, or hockey without rules and referees would be a mess. Similarly, business without rules won't work.
Which explains why conservative economics wiped out the middle class during the period from 1880 to 1932, and why, when Reagan again began applying conservative economics, the middle class again began to vanish in America in the 1980s - a process that has dramatically picked up steam under George W. Bush.
The conservative mantra is "let the market decide." But there is no market independent of government, so what they're really saying is, "Stop corporations from defending workers and building a middle class, and let the corporations decide how much to pay for labor and how to trade." This is, at best, destructive to national and international economies, and, at worst, destructive to democracy itself.
Markets are a creation of government, just as corporations exist only by authorization of government. Governments set the rules of the market. And, since our government is of, by, and for We The People, those rules have historically been set to first maximize the public good resulting from people doing business.
If you want to play the game of business, we've said in the US since 1784 (when Tench Coxe got the first tariffs passed "to protect domestic industries") then you have to play in a way that both makes you money AND serves the public interest.
Which requires us to puncture the second balloon of popular belief. The "middle class" is not the natural result of freeing business to do whatever it wants, of "free and open markets," or of "free trade." The "middle class" is not a normal result of "free markets." Those policies will produce a small but powerful wealthy class, a small "middle" mercantilist class, and a huge and terrified worker class which have traditionally been called "serfs."
The middle class is a new invention of liberal democracies, the direct result of governments defining the rules of the game of business. It is, quite simply, an artifact of government regulation of markets and tax laws.
When government sets the rules of the game of business in such a way that working people must receive a living wage, labor has the power to organize into unions just as capital can organize into corporations, and domestic industries are protected from overseas competition, a middle class will emerge. When government gives up these functions, the middle class vanishes and we return to the Dickens-era "normal" form of totally free market conservative economics where the rich get richer while the working poor are kept in a constant state of fear and anxiety so the cost of their labor will always be cheap.
When conservatives rail in the media of the dangers of "returning to Smoot Hawley, which created the Great Depression," all they do is reveal their ignorance of economics and history. The Smoot-Hawley tariff legislation, which increased taxes on some imported goods by a third to two-thirds to protect American industries, was signed into law on June 17, 1930, well into the Great Depression. In the following two years, international trade dropped from 6 percent of GNP to roughly 2 percent of GNP (between 1930 and 1932), but most of that was the result of the depression going worldwide, not Smoot-Hawley. The main result of Smoot-Hawley was that American businesses now had strong financial incentives to do business with other American companies, rather than bring in products made with cheaper foreign labor: Americans started trading with other Americans.
Smoot-Hawley "protectionist" legislation did not cause the Great Depression, and while it may have had a slight short-term negative effect on the economy ("1.4 percent at most" according to many historians) its long-term effect was to bring American jobs back to America.
The fact that the "marketplace" was an artifact of government activity was well known to our Founders. As Thomas Jefferson said in an 1803 letter to David Williams, "The greatest evils of populous society have ever appeared to me to spring from the vicious distribution of its members among the occupations... But when, by a blind concourse, particular occupations are ruinously overcharged and others left in want of hands, the national authorities can do much towards restoring the equilibrium."
And the "national authorities," in Jefferson's mind, should be the Congress, as he wrote in a series of answers to the French politician de Meusnier in 1786: "The commerce of the States cannot be regulated to the best advantage but by a single body, and no body so proper as Congress."
Of course, there were conservatives (like Hamilton and Adams) in Jefferson's time, too, who took exception, thinking that the trickle-down theory that had dominated feudal Europe for ten centuries was a stable and healthy form of governance. Jefferson took exception, in an 1809 letter to members of his Democratic Republican Party (now called the Democratic Party): "The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government."
But, conservatives say, government is the problem, not the solution.
Of course, they can't explain how it was that the repeated series of huge tax cuts for the wealthy by the Herbert Hoover administration brought us the Great Depression, while raising taxes to provide for an active and interventionist government to protect the rights of labor to organize throughout the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s led us to the Golden Age of the American Middle Class. (The top tax rate in 1930 under Hoover was 25 percent, and even that was only paid by about a fifth of wealthy Americans. Thirty years later, the top tax rate was 91 percent, and held at 70 percent until Reagan began dismantling the middle class. As the top rate dropped, so did the middle class it helped create.)
Thomas Jefferson pointed out, in an 1816 letter to William H. Crawford, "Every society has a right to fix the fundamental principles of its association." He also pointed out in that letter that some people - and businesses - would prefer that government not play referee to the game of business, not fix rules that protect labor or provide for the protection of the commons and the public good.
We must, Jefferson wrote to Crawford, "...say to all [such] individuals, that if they contemplate pursuits beyond the limits of these principles and involving dangers which the society chooses to avoid, they must go somewhere else for their exercise; that we want no citizens, and still less ephemeral and pseudo-citizens [like corporations], on such terms. We may exclude them from our territory, as we do persons infected with disease."
Most of the Founders advocated - and all ultimately passed - tariffs to protect domestic industries and workers. Seventy years later, Abraham Lincoln actively stood up for the right for labor to organize, intervening in several strikes to stop corporations and local governments from using hired goon squads to beat and murder strikers.
But conservative economics - the return of ancient feudalism - rose up after Lincoln's death and reigned through the Gilded Age, creating both great wealth and a huge population of what today we call the "working poor." American reaction to these disparities gave birth to the Populist, Progressive, and modern Labor movements. Two generations later, Franklin Roosevelt brought us out of Herbert Hoover's conservative-economics-produced Great Depression and bequeathed us with more than a half-century of prosperity.
But now the conservatives are back in the driver's seat, and heading us back toward feudalism and serfdom (and possibly another Great Depression).
Only a return to liberal economic policies - a return to We The People again setting and enforcing the rules of the game of business - will reverse this dangerous trend. We've done it before, with tariffs, anti-trust legislation, and worker protections ranging from enforcing the rights of organized labor to restricting American companies' access to cheap foreign labor through visas and tariffs. The result was the production of something never before seen in history: a strong and vibrant middle class.
If the remnants of that modern middle class are to survive - and grow - we must learn the lessons of the past and return to the policies that in the 1780s and the late 1930s brought this nation back from the brink of economic disaster.
I never called you a commie, dumbass, I said you would feel comfortable in a communist coutry. Don't put words in my posts...they are stated the way I intended to be stated.
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 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.
Socialized failure: dissecting health-care data from Britain, Canada, and elsewhere. - Free Online Library
Bobo really won't want to look at this part of socialized healthcare vs. private sector healthcare. We are the best in the world, and I mean best in the world. The second site gives you links to worldwide socialized healthcare information.
The Problems with Socialized Health Care
I'm sorry, but you are a ****.
you remember that movie Deliverence! you remind me of that fat little guy.
Ned Beatte?
When I fantasize about you, I tie your neck around a tree like those hicks did the other one. And then I say, "willow, you're gonna do some prayin, and you better pray good".
And you don't have to be told to squeal like a pig.
God you must be ugly.
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We're trying to figure out just how much you don't realize.
Maggie, I'm afriad I have to disagree with your assertion that this is "Not Universal HealthCare" . As I have stated many times on here, no matter how noble the intentions, when the Govt. gets into the business of medical insurance and directly competes with other private carriers who they also regulate. Those other carriers will eventually simply not offer healthcare coverage to anyone that is deemed a "risk" or eventually just go out of the business of providing insurance all together. The end result will be a single payer, single managed, Govt. run Universal Healthcare program. However, I am somewhat brightened by the fact that the Govt. does not have the capacity to run healthcare for an entire nation without private contractors as they do now with medicare.
You're an idiot. Sooo sick of going over things with you and then find you saying the same bullshit a post or two later. MORON Alert!!!
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We're trying to figure out just how much you don't realize.
What don't I realize ? please enlightment me ? I understand the practice of when you can't make a valid point just throw out vague insults but do you understand how transparent your tactic is?
What I do realize is that the current nationalized health care plan that we already have in place (Medicare) is currently running in the red and is carrying a projected long term UNFUNDED liability of $36.3 trillion, which if left unchecked threatens to bankrupt the nation. How long do you figure we can continue to keep monetizing debt to pay for all these social experiments? Do you care about the financial future of your country ? Does plundering the property of your fellow citizens and their children who may not want or need this "program" seem like justice to you?
Are you kidding me, all this talk about how well the Govt. runs things, obviously none of the people doing the talking have ever had any treatments at a VA hospital or for that matter ever taken Amtrak just to name a few. The number of Govt. run programs that have failed or cost 10 times more than the private sector are staggering.
VA Hospital Problems to be Examined by Congressional Panel - AboutLawsuits.com
A congressional panel will look into the recent problems at VA Hospitals that occurred in at least three states, where thousands of veterans were potentially exposed to HIV, Hepatitis C and other diseases caused by unsterilized equipment.
The U.S. House Committee on Veterans Affairs oversight and investigations subcommittee scheduled a hearing for June 16, 2009, to inquire about the issues that resulted in letters being sent to10,555 former VA hospital patients recommending that they obtain blood tests because they were treated with equipment that was not properly cleaned between patients.
The VA is a good example of a Govt. run healthcare system and what not to do with one. There you have patients waiting forever for treatment and medications, being misdiagnosed time after time.
Want a really good example, of how the Govt. spends you money wisely, as I won't post it hear but it is easily searchable. Take a good long look at how long and how much the Govt. has spent on trying to replace the US Air Force Tanker and still not a single new aircraft is in service after billions of dollars have been spent. Yes there are a lot of people employed in DC working on this , pushing paper from one cubicle to another and it's a classic case of over tasking a mission. Which the US Govt. has made a science out of.
Willow I belive this next quote pretty much says everything I need to say I suppose.
Benjamin Franklin:
They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security
