Behold: National Health Care

[glassgowkiss]

mattp- fw is an idiot (like his idol GWB). he is also not interested in real issues, like war in Georgia (like his idol GWB). talk is cheap. like this administration he talks big, but when the time is to step into the ring with the equal his balls shrink to the size of raisins, so is his unit and our hero just fades away. it's like trying to argue with pee-wee hermin.

 

[mattp]

I give him a bit more credit than that, GGK. Yes, he is often caustic for no reason (but so are you) and, yes, he often turns tail and runs when faced with facts and coherent argument. However, Fairweather does keep trying to make his points and once in a while he comes up with something I find interesting. Nutty as it may seem I'd really like to see him try to defend his point above or maybe address one of mine.

[Fairweather]

 

Unlike you, I've posted a great deal of substance here. d even find something wrong with one of my sources or arguments.

 

Like this?

 

 

Existing government run healthcare is very good and even the President seeks care at military facilities.

 

Republican fearmongering over "socialized medicine" is complete baloney.

 

Too bad so many right-leaning Americans, and it seems some of our astute friends here at cc.com, swallow a bunch of special interest generated sloganeering about socialized medicine without question.

 

I think you give yourself too much credit, but I'll bite anyway:

If 40 million Americans are without health insurance at any given time, let's assume that like my daughter who recently graduated from college, half of them are in transition. That still leaves 20 million chronically uninsured out of a population of 300 million--or less than seven percent. I have never claimed our current system is good or equitable--clearly it's not. But until privacy and control issues are resolved I just don't see how someone like you is so willing to hand over your life. Please explain.

 

[mtn_mouse]

FW, you're like a jack russel terrier being twirled on the end of a towel. You'll never let go, think you're winning, but somehow you've lost the big picture. Go for it.

[Fairweather]

FW, you're like a jack russel terrier being twirled on the end of a towel. You'll never let go, think you're winning, but somehow you've lost the big picture. Go for it.

 

You're like a cross between Rob and...Kevbone.

[Fairweather]

Hey Fairweather:

I in no way suggested I had read the book and I didn't listen to the Dave Ross show this morning.

 

FWIW: Suggesting a book to someone usually implies that it has been read by the one making the recommendation unless stated otherwise. It's what I've always assumed, anyway. Maybe others see it differently.

[mtn_mouse]

FW, you're like a jack russel terrier being twirled on the end of a towel. You'll never let go, think you're winning, but somehow you've lost the big picture. Go for it.

 

You're like a cross between Rob and...Kevbone.

 

grrr grrr woof woof, hang on boy

[mattp]

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.

 

 

[mattp]

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.

[JayB]

Just thought I'd chime in to suggest that anyone paying 8K a year in premiums might do better by looking into a catastrophic plan with deductibles in the 5-10K range and banking the savings.

[glassgowkiss]

so 79 mil is wrong?

looks like system is working great! what a dush.

[pc313]

[Fairweather]

Everyone must have equally shitty health care. All or none!!

[glassgowkiss]

Everyone must have equally shitty health care. All or none!!

 

ok, so the article says 79 million people have problems paying medical bills. That makes over 30% of population! On top of that there is even greater number of people who manage but still have to make cuts. And you say that system is OK? and your initial post about rats in a hospital? go and see facilities in NYC and see if there aren't any roaches? you are obviously blind fo facts of life. and the fact of life is we can the shittiest health care for the money it costs. Biggest part of the problem are drug companies and insurance companies promoting illness. There is no insentive to be healthy. If your insurance rate was like car insurance- the situation would be easier. However with 60 plus percent of obesity and 20% morbidly obese there is no system that can afford to provide coverage. you must understand that this was deliberate action of food, drug and insurance industry, creating life time of permanent consumers. and the trend continues. there is still no talk about preventive medicine. the insurance company will pay for gastrac bypass and weight loss pills, but will not pay for nutritional counsellings! how stupid is that? so yes, the health care is already shitty and is going to get even more shitty. and the reason is that people in this country don't even know how to feed themselves and how to take care of themselves.

[Dechristo]

your post reminds me of the need for improved mental health care

[glassgowkiss]

your post reminds me of the need for improved mental health care

your posts remind me about value of lithium. keep at it pal

[KaskadskyjKozak]

your posts remind me about value of lithium.

 

Sweet! Get on it then, dOOd!

 

[glassgowkiss]

 

Get on

 

your mom?

[Fairweather]

Glassgow's just a punk.

[Bug]

Everyone must have equally shitty health care. All or none!!

 

ok, so the article says 79 million people have problems paying medical bills. That makes over 30% of population! On top of that there is even greater number of people who manage but still have to make cuts. And you say that system is OK? and your initial post about rats in a hospital? go and see facilities in NYC and see if there aren't any roaches? you are obviously blind fo facts of life. and the fact of life is we can the shittiest health care for the money it costs. Biggest part of the problem are drug companies and insurance companies promoting illness. There is no insentive to be healthy. If your insurance rate was like car insurance- the situation would be easier. However with 60 plus percent of obesity and 20% morbidly obese there is no system that can afford to provide coverage. you must understand that this was deliberate action of food, drug and insurance industry, creating life time of permanent consumers. and the trend continues. there is still no talk about preventive medicine. the insurance company will pay for gastrac bypass and weight loss pills, but will not pay for nutritional counsellings! how stupid is that? so yes, the health care is already shitty and is going to get even more shitty. and the reason is that people in this country don't even know how to feed themselves and how to take care of themselves.

[mattp]

Glassgow's just a punk.

Your punk made a pretty good point here. Aside from the clearly unimformed "if you guys have your way we'll have rats in the hospitals," do you have a point?

[Fairweather]

Glassgow's just a punk.

Your punk made a pretty good point here.

 

Not at all. I'll bet 79 million Americans have trouble paying their bills period. Should we all chip in?

[mattp]

I'll bet 79 million Americans have trouble paying their bills period. Should we all chip in?

 

Yes, if it is the RIGHT thing to do and if it might actually SAVE US MONEY, why not?

[Fairweather]

I'll bet 79 million Americans have trouble paying their bills period. Should we all chip in?

 

Yes, if it is the RIGHT thing to do and if it might actually SAVE US MONEY, why not?

 

What does "trouble paying their bills" mean? Doesn't sound very scientific. I had trouble paying my Comcast bill this month. Will America please help!

[mattp]

So that is your argument against "SOCIALIZED HEALTH CARE" (gasp)? You don't know how much you pay for Comcast?

 

Seriously, we're not talking about metaphysics here. It is basic healthcare that is on the plate. Draw the lines wherever you want. Your taxes already pay for it. Why not have it?