mattp

Dude: relax. There is virtually no prospect that we will see a single payor system any time soon and I don't think any body is even seriously proposing a move toward government provision of actual services.

cc.com'ers talk about all kinds of crap. I personally would actually favor a single payor system and yes, you are right, I think the insurance companies are a major part of the problem. But that is not to say that any movement toward universal healthcare is "socialism." Read that NYT editorial I cut and pasted in the other thread. "Here comes socialized medicine" is a propaganda ploy.

Your average leftist is for all kinds of stuff but in any realistic scenario where we might see a move toward universal healthcare, such as the proposals touted by Obama and Clinton, they are talking about requiring people to buy healthcare and yes there will be some subsidies but "redistributing wealth" and "socialism?" I don't think even Ralph Nadar is taling about having the government run more hospitals or be the boss of your doctor. Further, if we look at what the government is already spending to provide healthcare services for the indigent and the elderly, veterans and government workers, emergency services and research, etc. etc. etc., it is not clear to me how much if any more in taxes you the victim of all of this is going to pay. Even looking at this broad summary of "all proposals however unlikely" I see no proposal for the State to run the provision of services there. The cries of "socialism" have got you worried,but look at the actual proposals before you assume we're talking about big brother running your doctor's office.

I don't believe the current proposals call for the government running any more of the provision of healthcare services than present. I'm not sure to the extent that they even propose the government actually provide healthcare insurance, but neither one of them proposes to restrict or take over existing private healthecare insurance. Meanwhile, as you are morally opposed to socialism, I take it you and your parents will not in any way use medicare? You must also be calling for the closure of all VA hospitals, right?

KK, if you think that having the government run or maybe only encourage an insurance company along side private business offering the same is socialism and are not interested in questioning the baloney scare tactics fed you by insurance companies and others with a financial investment in the present healthcare system, I'm not sure you are in a good place to be calling Kevbone ignorant here. Clearly there are some similarities and some differences between Iraq and Vietnam. I'm guessing Kevbone is saying that he believes we hare or will lose in Iraq, and it is a matter of time before we have to bail.

We could think of a long list of differences. So what? Is your point that if there are some differences there can be no comparisons? And I ask again: what comparisons did you think I made, anyway? I probably did compare something about the two during the last six years of discussion around here but I'm not sure what you are referring to.

Say what? I'm not following you, Scott.

Last year at rougnly this time you had to go well out of the way to find it way off to the right at the bench just below the final climb to the notch.

I have not commented on Russia at all, and if you read my post you will see that I don't "stand behind" Clinton's decisions re: Kosovo. My only point was that you righties keep bringing up Kosovo as the worst ever application of the American military, yet if you look at what happened there, the results (questionable as they are), and the reaction of the rest of the world, it stacks up OK (not great) against virtually every US engagement for the last 30 years. And yes: you are right that it is not over yet. But in what way have I compared Iraq to Vietnam, and what was wrong with the comparison?

I don’t get you guys and Kosovo. Our goals were dubioius and the outcome questionable so I join you and anybody else in being critical about it but was it really the worst example of a misuse of the American military as you serial Clinton-bashsers keep insisting? There was opposition to the effort from some of our allies and we read ongoing discussion of how Clinton inflated reports of atrocities as our reason for going in. There were also some incidents where we were accused of targeting civilians. However, our actions there were supported by all NATO members, there were no U.S. casualties, Milosovich backed down and, after it was over, most of the refugees were able to return. look it up on wikipedia. It was overall a success compared to most other modern American military action: consider Haiti, Somalia, Persion Gulf I, Beirut, the Iranaian Hostage rescue attempt... Isn't the Iraq misadventure 100 times worse than anything we did in Kosovo?

At least he didn't piss off pretty much the entire rest of the world and undermine our credibility and then trash our military preparedness when faced with an opportunity to strengthened our position as world leaders. Your ongoing expressions of a blind hatred of Clinton when somebody criticizes the shrub is not very convincing of anything but that you are obsessed with Bubba.

By the way, just to stay on track here, we could ask who might make a more inspiring leader. The really important question is this one: Who would you rather have at your barbeque, McCain or Obama?

Allright then. Raincheck.

Instead, why don't you come to the beach this rainy evening. We can toast our good fortune to have this great climbers' resource called cascadeclimbers.

I figured as much. You too like to make blanket statements and take pot shots but then exit stage right when I question your rhteoric. My guess is your fears of socialized medicine have something to do with Fairweather's new line of argument.

I'd share that room with you, too. You can back up your buddy Fairweather and Canyondweller can watch.

I didn't state I was too tired to answer your question; what I stated was that I don't know what "privacy and control" issues you are concerned about. I'm guessing you won't stand by the Walter Reed argument, and you may not subscribe to Canyondweller's suggestion that the people for whom the present system doesn't work don't deserve a better system. In a moment of honesty, you might even acknowledge that "socialized medicine" is a misnomer, but maybe there is something to these privacy and control issues.

What are you talking about, Fairweather? I didn't answer some question of yours three years ago so you will refuse to follow up on your arguments when I question them now? If, in the healthcare thread, you want to describe what these "issues of privacy and liberty within a government-controlled healthcare system" may be, I'll gladly tell you what I think about them. Meanwhile, you could explain what you meant about Walter Reed being the future of medicine in the U.S. if we move toward universal healthcare.

Don't worry, Porter. It won't be too cold and this way you don't have to remember your sunglasses. Just the Jolly Roger.

Does anybody else want to pick up where Fairweather left off? Is there a credible argument that trickle down economics actually has worked or will work?

I think there is a big difference between Mt. Rainier and a 14,000' peak in California or Colorado. Even for Rainier, I wore full-on plastics and looked longingly at other climbers' lighter boots last time I was there, but for Mt. Whitney in the summer it would be nuts to wear the plastics.

Buzzkill? Sorry guys. Speculation and comment are one thing. Calling for a public shaming seems to be a little premature at this stage. As I said: from that article it doesn't sound good. You guys are probably right that these irresponsible criminals should hang from the nearest tree, but it looks to me as if there is some (small) chance that more information will put things in a different light.

Gotta love the Kangaroo Court. We focus on two or three sentences from a newspaper article published by those blood sucking journalists, we have no response or statement from the subjects of our "investigation," and we're all calling for them to be publicly humiliated because that will solve whatever the problem was. I gotta say the article does not sound good, but do we know what happened, or what they thought they were trying to do, or what the injured climber actually said about it, or .... ? I know I would never do that, though. Nope. I'm waaaaay better than those loosers.

I'll make it easy for you. You don't even have to click your mouse: New York TImes, 9/27/2007: The Socialists Are Coming! The Socialists Are Coming! By PHILIP M. BOFFEY The epithet of choice these days for Republicans who oppose any expansion of government’s role in health care programs is “socialized” medicine. Rudy Giuliani has used the “s-word” to denounce legislation that would enlarge a children’s health insurance program and to besmirch Hillary Clinton’s health plan. Mitt Romney has added a xenophobic twist, calling the Clinton plan “European-style socialized medicine,” while ignoring its similarities to a much-touted health care reform he championed as governor of Massachusetts. Other conservative critics have wielded the “s-word” to deplore efforts to expand government health care programs or regulation over the private health care markets. Our political discourse is so debased that the term is typically applied where it is least appropriate and never applied where it most fits the case. No one has the nerve to brand this country’s purest systems of “socialized medicine” — the military and veterans hospitals — for what they are. In both systems, care is not only paid for by the government but delivered in government facilities by doctors who are government employees. Even so, a parade of Washington’s political dignitaries, including President Bush, has turned to the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., for checkups and treatment, without ideological complaint. Politicians who deplore government-run health care for average Americans are only too happy to use it themselves. Nor are they eager to tar the vast array of government hospitals and clinics that serve our nation’s veterans. For one thing, the veterans’ hospitals, once considered a second-rate backwater, now lead their private sector competitors in adopting electronic medical records and score well for delivering high quality care at relatively low cost. Even when the veterans’ hospitals were rightly criticized this year for their part in the disgraceful failure to care adequately for soldiers injured in Iraq and Afghanistan, there was no clamor to junk or privatize the system, only demands to make it better. Mayor Michael Bloomberg startled most New Yorkers two years ago when he asserted that the city’s public hospitals are “better than the great teaching hospitals” all around them. Although some deemed his praise hyperbolic, the city’s billionaire, entrepreneurial, free-market-enriched mayor thought he knew quality when he saw it, even if it was socialist at its core. The country’s vast Medicare program is one step less socialized — a “single-payer” program in which the government pays for the care and sets reimbursement rates, but the actual care is delivered by private doctors and hospitals. When Medicare was launched in 1965 it was routinely denounced as socialized medicine, but it has become so popular that politicians deem it the third rail of American politics, sure to electrocute anyone who tries to cut it or privatize it. No politician is eager to brand 43 million beneficiaries as socialists at heart. Meanwhile, the two current butts of the “s-word” are such hybrids of public and private elements that it is hard to know how to characterize them. The State Children’s Health Insurance Program, or S-chip, was denigrated by one Republican congressman this week as “a government-run socialized wolf masquerading in the sheep skin of children’s health.” It might better be thought of as a “double-payer system” in which the states and the federal government put up the money, the states take the lead in defining the program and the actual care is typically delivered through private health plans by private doctors and hospitals. The “s-word” seems even less appropriate for Senator Clinton’s proposed universal health care plan, which seeks to bolster employer-provided health benefits and create new purchasing pools to help individuals buy private policies at low group rates. True, her plan would expand government regulation, and she wants to make a Medicare-like option available to compete with private policies. But that would only lead to a socialized, single-payer system if everybody were to choose the Medicare-like option. There is no special magic in government-run or government-financed health care. Medicare has serious cost-control and financing problems, and the veterans’ hospitals could take a turn for the worse, as they have in the past, should federal funding shrivel. Private health care systems have strengths of their own, are favored by many patients and often provide care as good as any. The take-home message for voters is this: Look behind the labels to judge health care proposals on their merits. Whenever you hear a candidate denounce something as a step toward socialized medicine, it probably isn’t. More likely the politician is demagoguing the issue or is abysmally ignorant of the inner workings — and real, not ideological, failings — of the country’s multifaceted health care system.

Faarweather: did you look up the link I posted which I said made those two bold points you find "not substantitive?" While you are at it, scroll up and read my prior posts discussing the same issues. Read the NYT edtiorial and then respond. As to privacy and control issues, what are you talking about? I'd discuss these points if I knew what to respond to.