First we have to define why any insurance system works. It is because many people pay into it. When you need it (hopefully not at the same time) you draw your benefits.
In a health system some may never need more than their yearly physical, etc.
Republicans forget this definition of insurance. They say it will be too expensive. Yes that is true since they only include the poor, cheap labor, immigrants, etc. (including women and children of illegals). They mostly don't make enough to pay into it or not at all.
Repubs want to fund insurance company profits and cover cheap labor costs for low wage workers. Corporations win big time.
Here's the bottom line of a government run system. Everyone has to be in on the system or it will be too expensive.
Kucinich has told them that a pay into government system by all would be cheaper. Yet the media has those talking heads...and even President Obama on warning of this and that...saying it won't work for all. Lies once again by our own leaders.
Both party constituents want government health systems without insurance companies. Boy is that scary for the politicans since they get money from them.
Europe has health care for all yet aren't bankrupted by it. Why? Most systems are controlled and everyone who qualifies pay into it. We have the most expensive and poor health system of any developed country. It is more costly than theirs right now (and going up faster than the cost of living).
Paying a tax to health insurance companies is just outrageous when we consider we are the most costly and poor health system in the world already. This won't make it cheaper.
It is too expensive. Care is going down hill quickly.
Too many doctors give patients drugs which are bad for them and don't follow up on warnings, etc. There are drug deaths and seniors are losing their homes.
Most of Congress have good health insurance so they aren't worried. It's our money which protects them. They don't have family in Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. either. That's another subject like health care that is just unfair to be discussed at another time. The elite few live well on our money and labor. It's an oligarcy who can't seem to run the country.
Comments (13)
Europe has health care for all yet aren't bankrupted by it. Why? ---Maybe ,,rationing benefits like Canada.
Too many doctors give patients drugs which are bad for them and don't follow up on warnings, etc. There are drug deaths and seniors are losing their homes---Doctors prescribing drugs provided by pharm. companies that engage in kickbacks,gifts and other perks.
rejean-
http://www.commondreams.org
/view/2009/06/07-0
This claim of rationing and not getting care in Canada is bull.
You need to ask some Brits how it isn't working so well for them.
Well who would've guessed this,,,
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090612/ap_on_go_co/us_senate_disclosures
That's how bidness is done.
There are many problems with health insurance, but that doesn’t mean we should put the government in control. If it’s decided that health care should be paid for with tax dollars, then it’s up to the government to decide how that money should be spent. There’s only so much money to go around, so the inevitable result is rationing.
It’s just the law of supply and demand. Lowering prices increases demand. Lowering the price to nothing pushes demand through the roof. Author P.J. O’Rourke said it best: “If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it’s free.”
When health care is free, governments deal with all that increased demand by limiting what’s available.
The reality of “free” health care is that people wait. In the United Kingdom, one in eight patients waits more than a year for hospital treatment and the British government recently set its goal to keep wait times to less than 18 weeks that’s more than four months! In Canada, almost a million citizens are waiting for necessary surgery and more than a million Canadians can’t find a regular doctor. In the small town of Norwood, Ontario, a weekly drawing is held in which a townsperson wins the right to access the town’s one family doctor.
Governments ratchet down health-care costs in different ways. Doctors went on strike last year in Germany because their government’s system pays them less than they thought they deserved and forces them to work thousands of hours of unpaid overtime. In the United Kingdom, one hospital was inspired to save money money by not changing sheets daily. British papers report that instead of washing the linens, nurses were told to just turn the bedsheets over.
Government is less the answer to our health-care crisis than the problem. It was our government that helped to create the absurd system in which two out of three Americans get health insurance through their employer. In a country where four in 10 Americans change their job every year, this system makes little sense; it leaves people like Readling without coverage when they need it most.
The government also makes insurance expensive by mandating the medical services that policies must cover. Required services vary state by state and include massage therapy, pastoral counseling, acupuncture, hair prosthesis and dentures. Such mandates are a reason why an individual policy in New Jersey costs around $4,000 a year while a policy in Iowa costs only a third of that. Yet insurance regulations make it illegal for someone in New Jersey to buy a policy from out of state…
…The more people control the money they spend on their own health care, the more people shop around and the more providers compete to attract patients by lowering prices while improving quality. It’s putting individuals in control that could turn our health-care sector into the vibrant, competitive marketplace that we see in nearly every other area of our economy.
After all, it’s our body and our health. Shouldn’t we be in control of how our health-care dollars are spent?
Harvard’s Herzlinger said, “Who should decide whether you live or die? Do you want the government to decide? Do you want a health insurer to decide? Who’s gonna make that decision? Is it gonna be a government? Is it gonna be an insurer? Or is it gonna be you and me?”
Putting individuals in control of our health rather than our employers or the government is a better way to cure what ails America’s health system.
Steve ,,My inlaws are Canadian and it is not bull.
Gee this is odd too,,,,,,
All praise Oblabla there is none higher
By Noel Sheppard
June 21, 2009 - 13:22 ET
Realizing that Barack Obama's healthcare initiative has hit some roadblocks in Congress, the good folks at CBS News and the New York Times figured they'd help it along by creating a new poll on the subject that WAY oversampled people who voted for Obama.
Although the then junior senator from Illinois received 53 percent of the votes last November, NYT/CBS surveyed almost twice as many Obama voters as McCain voters.
Before we get to the hilarious inner-workings of this truly disgraceful deception, here's how the Times reported its rigged findings Saturday (h/t Gateway Pundit via NBer slickwillie2001):
Americans overwhelmingly support substantial changes to the health care system and are strongly behind one of the most contentious proposals Congress is considering, a government-run insurance plan to compete with private insurers, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.
The poll found that most Americans would be willing to pay higher taxes so everyone could have health insurance and that they said the government could do a better job of holding down health-care costs than the private sector.
Actually, as Bruce Kezler cleverly discovered, what the poll really found was that most Obama voters support substantial changes to healthcare and are willing to pay higher taxes for a government run system:
[A]ccording to the actual poll data, of the 73% of respondents who said they voted in 2008 only 34% voted for McCain and 66% for Obama.
As can be plainly seen on page 7 of the poll's data, only 73 percent of respondents divulged who they voted for last November. 48 percent said Obama, 25 percent McCain.
What this means is this poll surveyed 66 percent Obama supporters versus 34 percent McCain.
As the final tally last year was 53 percent to 46 percent, this poll WAY oversampled Obama voters.
And you wonder why the survey found so much support for Obamacare?
Honestly, stuff like this should be illegal and any news organization found doing it should be significantly fined.
In any industry you could name, such deception of the public would meet with very serious consequences.
Why are so-called news outlets allowed to get away with such obvious deceit with total impunity?
"In England anyone over 59 cannot receive heart repairs or stents or bypass."
I just read that this morning. I made a new post for it and the it's pending moderator approval. I'm interested to see if it actually comes on the board.
I don't want any government telling me when I'm 59 that I cn have a heart bypass. I don't wany any government telling me what my doctor(s) can and can't do.
As far as you saying seniors are losing their homes, they're not losing their homes because of health care. Seniors have medicare and medicaid. Now, I've heard that medicaid will take a house AFTER a person dies AND AFTER the spouse dies to repay medical bills. So it basically comes down to the offspring that were to inherit that house that loses out.
I don't have a problem with the offsprings losing the house that was not theirs in order for the government to recapture some of the cost of what was laid out in order to help the parents.
If we want to look at how successfully government will run health care, let's just look at the government run Social Security system, medicare and medicaid. All of those programs are on the brink of bankruptcy or should have been bankrupt decades ago.
May as well add AMTRAC to the list.Was to be a temporary takeover then go private.Was'nt that about 35 years ago or so?.Good luck with the car companies being temporary.
TORT reform. Require Insurance companies to take all malpractice suites to court instead of paying out millions for a single case.
Case in point: Man injures hand in fist fight. Doctor has to conjoin the bones in his hand. Man goes out and fights again, causing further damage and sues the doctor!
The insurance company paid out millions instead being forced to take suit to court in which the doctor would have WON! Then the doctor can recoup attorney fees and punitive damages.
Force judge to refer any suspected frivolous suit to the bar association for actions they may deem necessary against that attorney.
Allow doctors to post bond and be self insured. Attorneys make health care more expensive.
Check out Frontline's "Sick Around the World"
A family member had back surgery sheduled. It took three months and he was in great pain. That is America.
Unless you need care you won't get it right away unless it is an emergency. You, your family, etc. will be on the street with debt if you\they get seriously ill. Many bankrupt homeowners will tell you about their health care debt. Gramma is on the streets.
Democracy:
A government of the masses.
Authority derived through mass meeting or any other form of "direct" expression.
Results in mobocracy.
Attitude toward property is comunistic-negating property rights.
Attitude toward law is that the will of the majority shall regulate. whether it be based upon deliberation or governed by passion, prejudice, and impulse, without restraint or regard to consequences.
Results in demagogism license, agitation, discontent, anarchy.
Democracy is the "direct" rule of the people and has been repeatedly tried without success.
A certain Professor Alexander Fraser Tytler, nearly two centuries ago, had this to say about Democracy: " A Democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of Government. It can only exist until the voters discover they can vote themselves largess out of public treasury. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that Democracy always collapses over a loose fiscal policy, always to be followed by a Dictatorship."
A democracy is majority rule and is destructive of liberty because there is no law to prevent the majority from trampling on individual rights. Whatever the majority says goes! A lynch mob is an example of pure democracy in action. There is only one dissenting vote, and that is cast by the person at the end of the rope.
Republic:
Authority is derived through the election by the people of public officials best fitted to represent them.
Attitude toward property is respect for laws and individual rights, and a sensible economic procedure.
Attitude toward law is the administration of justice in accord with fixed principles and established evidence, with a strict regard to consequences.
A greater number of citizens and extent of territory may be brought within its compass.
Avoids the dangerous extreme of either tyranny or mobocracy. Results in statesmanship, liberty, reason, justice, contentment, and progress.
Is the "standard form" of government throughout the world.
A republic is a form of government under a constitution which provides for the election of:
an executive and
a legislative body, who working together in a representative capacity, have all the power of appointment, all power of legislation all power to raise revenue and appropriate expenditures, and are required to create
a judiciary to pass upon the justice and legality of their governmental acts and to recognize
certain inherent individual rights.
Take away any one or more of those four elements and you are drifting into autocracy. Add one or more to those four elements and you are drifting into democracy.
Our Constitutional fathers, familiar with the strength and weakness of both autocracy and democracy, with fixed principles definitely in mind, defined a representative republican form of government. They "made a very marked distinction between a republic and a democracy and said repeatedly and emphatically that they had founded a republic."
A republic is a government of law under a Constitution. The Constitution holds the government in check and prevents the majority (acting through their government) from violating the rights of the individual. Under this system of government a lynch mob is illegal. The suspected criminal cannot be denied his right to a fair trial even if a majority of the citizenry demands otherwise.
Difference between Democracy and Republic, in brief:
Democracy:
a: government by the people; especially : rule of the majority.
b: a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections.
Attitude toward law is that the will of the majority shall regulate, whether it be based upon deliberation or governed by passion, prejudice, and impulse, without restraint or regard to consequences
Republic
a: a government having a chief of state who is not a monarch and who in modern times is usually a president : a political unit (as a nation) having such a form of government.
b: a government in which supreme power resides in a body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by elected officers and representatives responsible to them and governing according to law.
Democracy and Republic are often taken as one of the same thing, but there is a fundamental difference. Whilst in both cases the government is elected by the people, in Democracy the majority rules according to their whims, whilst in the Republic the Government rule according to law. This law is framed in the Constitution to limit the power of Government and ensuring some rights and protection to Minorities and individuals.
The difference between Republic and Righteous Republic is that in the Republic the Government rules according to the law set up by men, in the Righteous Republic the law is the Law of God. Only in the Righteous Republic it can truly be said "One nation under God" for it is governed under commandments of the only One True God and there is no pluralism of religions.
Autocracy declares the divine right of kings; its authority can not be questioned; its powers are arbitrarily or unjustly administered.
Mobocracy: 1. Political control by a mob. 2. The mass of common people as the source of political control.
Steven, myself and my entire family have had health care ALL of our lives. Some family members are young, some are middle aged and some are seniors. Every single time we were ill we got excellent health care. No one lost their homes. If it was an emergency, we went to emergency. It it wasn't an emergency, we went to our doctors. If we needed surgery, we got surgery. All of this was in a timely manner.
And I'm talking about approximately 100 people that I'm talking about just in my family. And then there are the families of friends that I've had over the years. None of them lost their homes because of health care. None of them waited for a long time to get the health care they needed.....unles, of course, it was something they did.
My mother right now badly needs knee surgery. She's refusing to have it. She's needed it for two years. The doctors want her in right now. She's CHOOSING not to follow their instructions. Any negative results of that will be my mother's fault; not the health care system's fault and not the doctors' fault.
I'm talking about all of this being health care in AMERICA. Seniors have Medicaid and Medicare. So you should not be trying to say that seniors lose their homes in America because of health issues.
Any government program ALWAYS loses money. And if we wind up having a government health care system, not only we will ALL lose as taxpayers, we'll all lose because we will get substandard care.
As in England, no one over 59 can get heart stints or heart bypass surgeries. That will happen here. If we go to universal health care (government paid health care), we'll go to the backward system that Canada and England have.
In England if you're 59 or older they won't give you heart stints or a heart bypass.
Just let it be known that if we go to Universal Health Care, which is government paid and government managed health care, our system will be just like England's, and if you're 59 and you need heart care, forget about it. They don't allow you to have it.
I made to NEW POSTS about this, and they both say "Pending Moderator Approval." I'm figuring the Obama gang doesn't want Americans over 59 to know this.