Healthcare: The Tipping Point

[spudlyff8fan]

There are probably way more horror stories under the American Healthcare system.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/11/opinion/11krugman.html

Read that because he brings up a good point. Emergency rooms are no substitute for regular care. If you only go when it’s an emergency then it might be too late at that point because you put it off for too long. Some of the most cost effective and successful treatments are preventative. People won’t go if they have to pay out of their ass each time they see a doctor, and the current system encourages uninsured people to do exactly that. They will put off care until it’s too late, they’ll probably die, AND on top of that they’ll financially ruin their families.

That’s nice and very true. Unfortunately, the first thing to go in the current health care plan being proposed is preventative appointments and treatments. Just look at any clip of Meet the Press and whenever a money issue comes up regarding health care they’ll say that they’ve “identified procedures that do not necessarily contribute to the health of the patient.” That’s political jargon for “we’re cutting out preventative care”. And really, we don’t have people dying in the streets because they don’t have insurance.

The current system is horrendous. It’s been said before, but it bears repeating. We are ranked 37th in the world when it comes to health care. (While spending more than just about anyone)

http://www.photius.com/rankings/healthranks.html

And it’s already been more or less proven that the current system is unsustainable. We have to do something. We really have no choice at this point. It would be nice, however, if just for once we could put asides the politics and actually have a rational debate on the best way to go about fixing health care. So many lives are at stake here. Not lives overseas or hundreds of thousands of miles away. Right next door. This is our neighbors, our friends, our families. This is us if and when we should lose our jobs.

Health care is serious business.

The current system is just something you’re in a better position to complain about. The grass is always greener on the other side, and anybody who has gone to a veteran hospital will tell you that this side is greener when actually dealing with both sides.

Being ranked 37th isn’t bad. It’s not like we’ve got North Korea and Vietnam on either side of us. We’re lumped in all the countries that don’t have socialized medicine and the central American countries where the good med schools are.

So… you’re perfectly ok with a single person getting .14% of 2.3 Trillion dollars every year while we have tens millions of Americans uninsured?

Honestly…why should I be? Do you think he doesn’t do enough for his company? Do you think that they could pay somebody, say, half as much and get the same return? He’s making exorbitant amounts of money because he keeps the company afloat. Unless he’s doing a bad job, and as far as I know he isn’t, he’s getting paid exactly what he’s worth.

Really, if Steven Jobs was making .014% (and it is really 0.014%, the dude just doesn’t know how to do math) of all the money spent on electronics, would he generate this level of hate? Probably not. So why single out somebody for doing well in insurance, specifically? Would you rather he take the wheel of a company that isn’t important?

Last of all, it’s not like insurance companies are running away with cash. The entire insurance industry in America had a total profit of $60 billion last year. Compare that with a genuinely evil corporation such as big oil, and it’s ridiculous. Exxon Mobile alone beat out almost the entire insurance industry single-handedly. On average, profit percentages (the actual profit divided by revenue), depending on the company, dance around 6%-8%, while the average for American corporations are between 9-11%.

You can be for health care reform (not Obama’s plan, though, because that’s statistically a shitty idea), but this whole idea that insurance company CEOs are sitting in a castle on top of a crooked mountain where lightning bolts are flying by is not realistic.

[goodm0urning]

Side debate: what can we do about congressmen who don’t read the proposed legislation that comes across their desks before hashing it out and signing it? Go!

[spudlyff8fan]

Spudly, I’d like to see documentation or some kind of record of France’s bonuses to white families having children, if such documentation exists.

http://www.newint.org/issue164/babies.htm

In France, President Mitterand’s worries about the falling birth-rate are inseparable from his concern that his country is losing its ‘Frenchness’. France’s mainly black immigrant population has a higher birth-rate than the non-migrant white population. It is easy to fan fears among the white French that they will, eventually, be ‘outnumbered’ by the black French, who currently form about eight per cent of the population.

Side debate: what can we do about congressmen who don’t read the proposed legislation that comes across their desks before hashing it out and signing it? Go!

Nothing.

[BEWD]

Lol. Wow France. Just wow. Worried about being potentially outnumbered by 8% of the pop?

[angryliberal]

I mean, that article didn’t really spell out that Framce is offering incentives to white families exclusively. At best, it can be somewhat infered from it, but I rather see actual data that supports it…

[BEWD]

^Yeah AL, I was just referring to the comment about the prez, seriously lol.

But I’m also waiting on an actual record of this being put into practice, where black families are being denied pre-natal care, as I’m sure that would’ve made some kind of news.

[angryliberal]

Oh, I was responding to Spud, when I typed that, your comment wasn’t there…

[acllaim]

Side debate: what can we do about congressmen who don’t read the proposed legislation that comes across their desks before hashing it out and signing it? Go!

Don’t re-elect respective congressman or congresswoman.

“identified procedures that do not necessarily contribute to the health of the patient.” That’s political jargon for “we’re cutting out preventative care”. And really, we don’t have people dying in the streets because they don’t have insurance.

Of course, because every time I hear Obama speak I DON’T hear him saying “we’re for preventative care because it cuts costs by preventing serious diseases that could arise in the future.”

Furthermore, there is no logical trail from “identified procedures that do not necessarily contribute to the health of the patient.” to “cutting preventative care” at all. Political jargon my Mexican-Pakistani ass.

The current system is just something you’re in a better position to complain about. The grass is always greener on the other side, and anybody who has gone to a veteran hospital will tell you that this side is greener when actually dealing with both sides.

I don’t see where your getting your that if all reports show that VA Healthcare is amongst the best out there.

Being ranked 37th isn’t bad.

Except of course, when we spend more than any other country on healthcare.

So why single out somebody for doing well in insurance, specifically? Would you rather he take the wheel of a company that isn’t important?

Because we’re not dealing with electronics satisfaction. We’re dealing with the health and lives of people. If a person is getting such obscene amounts while we still have tens of millions of people without healthcare, ridiculous premiums, and denial of care by exploiting absurd loopholes, something is wrong.

[thurst]

I mean, that article didn’t really spell out that Framce is offering incentives to white families exclusively. At best, it can be somewhat infered from it, but I rather see actual data that supports it…

yeah technically it applies to any french citizen, i believe, but considering the french are unabashedly prejudiced in general it’s probably meant to make more white people. apparently though the program has worked though bcuz other countries with low birth rates are considering implementing similar programs.

[spudlyff8fan]

Yeah, it’s supposed to be a general blanket for any citizen, but just like their ban on turbans, we all know who it’s really targeted at.

[Rhio2k]

Yeah, it’s supposed to be a general blanket for any citizen, but just like their ban on turbans, we all know who it’s really targeted at.

Illegal mexicans?

[Tiberious]

Side debate: what can we do about congressmen who don’t read the proposed legislation that comes across their desks before hashing it out and signing it? Go!

You mean voting on it, right? The only one signing anything is the President.

And what do we do? Vote the motherfuckers out. All 435 seats are up for election in 2010. You know what you must do.

[Manx]

Let me put it to you like this. I know A LOT of people who don’t have health care for varying reasons and they are from all walks of like. Some are illegal aliens. Some of them simply do have jobs that provide coverage to their employees. Others are well-off, self employed people who work hard for their money yet still cannot afford to cover their families. One of them (a co-worker) simply elects not to get company provided health care. his choice. Of those people, one of them is undergoing a life-threatening terminal illness that just came up from a genetic condition and there no way he’ll ever be covered again in his life by any sane provider. He’s still in his 20’s.

Another had a family member get involved in a serious vehicle accident and is now crippled. Family and our tax-dollars footed the bill for all of this care and rehabilitation. But he won’t be covered for life (I forget how long he can be covered), even though he is going to require continual care for the rest of his life. No way he’s getting coverage under those circumstances.

[thurst]

Being ranked 37th isn’t bad. It’s not like we’ve got North Korea and Vietnam on either side of us. We’re lumped in all the countries that don’t have socialized medicine and the central American countries where the good med schools are.

i just caught this…i mean c’mon we’re america being 37th in anything isn’t acceptable unless we’re talking about soccer.

[RoninChaos]

I’m going to ask what I did previously in another thread you posted, Tiberious.

I’m curious. You continue to post these kinds of things but you really don’t every say, well, anything. Why is that? Are you incapable of articulating your thoughts or are you one of the types that just likes to stir the pot to see what happens?

If I don’t get an answer, I may just stop you from posting. How’s that for stepping over boundaries?

[thurst]

wow…talk about getting called out.

[Running_Uppercut]

Ah, yes. Attack not the ideas, but the person.

I attacked your ideas plenty. You just have nothing new or intelligent to bring to the table. I can turn on Glenn Beck for 5 minutes and hear all the horse shit you posted. Again, I implore you to actually use the brain you are so lucky to have. Try using it to form your own informed, cognitive thoughts for once instead of being a blind follower.

[Saikyo_Joe]

I really don’t know what to think about this.

I mean, really, who cares? Whether I want this shit to be rammed down my throat or not doesn’t really matter.

If its going to happen, it’s going to happen, IMHO.

I voted for Nader, so I have every right to dissent. However, its hard to find the truth. I can do some research and find thousands of reasons why Socialism is a great idea or not.

But I never get two serious sides to and argument. sigh Politics…

[System_1]

But I never get two serious sides to and argument. sigh Politics…

That’s probably because, while there may appear to be two sides to any given argument, in American politics, both sides are green and dirty.

[Tiberious]

I’m curious. You continue to post these kinds of things but you really don’t every say, well, anything. Why is that? Are you incapable of articulating your thoughts or are you one of the types that just likes to stir the pot to see what happens?

For the same reason other people post news threads and don’t really say much: to invite discussion on the topic.

If you’ll notice, when I posted the thread about the early word about tax rates on distilled spirits possibly going up (where the quoted section comes from), I was referring to my even earlier thread on the tobacco increase, where I’d tried to get people to realize that taxes on other things deemed unhealthy by the government would be increased or levied.

After all the responses that stated simply ‘this doesn’t affect me, so why should I care?’ in the first thread especially, or even so far as ‘good! Tax that to death!’, I figure that since drinking is ‘more acceptable’ to the crowd here, some warning was due. I’ll freely admit to a little bit of gloating, since my average alcohol consumption rate is approximately one beer a month (see: ‘this doesn’t affect me’).

I’m torn, though, about where discussion of the protester in St. Louis that was assaulted by SEIU members at a town hall should be, though. My thinking is that since it’s part of the HR3200 protests, this would be the place. Of course, what makes it noteworthy is that all the town halls up until now that were protested at remained peaceful until this group started showing up as well.