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Political rant part tres - Michael Moore's Sicko
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mac

Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17748
Location: Berkeley, California

Posted: Sun Dec 09, 2007 8:41 am Post subject:

The World Health Organization lists the US as # 37 in the effectiveness of health systems. That work was done by Chris Murray, now at the University of Washington. Not that far behind Canada (#30), and ahead of Cuba (#39), but well behind countries like Ireland. Now, can't we have a more reasoned discussion about how to improve that than simply repeated characterization of all improvements as socialism?

beallmd

Joined: 10 May 1998
Posts: 1154

Posted: Sun Dec 09, 2007 10:38 am Post subject:

I don't know why I bother posting on these political discussion threads, but here goes; Reagan said A government big enough to give you everything you need, is big enough to take everything you have. He then cut taxes, privatized industries and used the saying- I'm from the government and I'm here to help-mocking gov intervention. Well, how did he do? He won two absolute landslide elections (were talking 49 STATES!) and is considered the greatest president of the second half of a century. Now what were you saying about Hilliarycare and a government take over again?

beallmd

Joined: 10 May 1998
Posts: 1154

Posted: Sun Dec 09, 2007 10:46 am Post subject:

BTW when I said I don't know why I bother posting on a political thread, I don't mean to be arrogant-what I am saying is I love all my windsurfing brethern-we have so much more in common than not. I just think these discussions lead nowhere; there are elections to decide all this- you guys vote for who you like etc, this is not Cuba. I always think if I was standing there at the beach and this discussion came up I probably wouldn't say anything and would just walk away until the discussion returned to something more fun.

jpf18

Joined: 13 Aug 2000
Posts: 347
Location: San Francisco

Posted: Sun Dec 09, 2007 11:38 am Post subject:

beallmd wrote:

Well, how did he do?

Here's you answer.
http://zfacts.com/p/318.html
Now someone's got to come in and try to clean the mess up again. It don't take much being a big spender.

jpf18

Joined: 13 Aug 2000
Posts: 347
Location: San Francisco

Posted: Sun Dec 09, 2007 11:59 am Post subject:

Iso... from your first paragraph

isobars wrote:

rated ... dead center ... lambasts ... grilling ... firing ... total Lefties ... such characters ... other such left wingers ... no ... no ... no

Quote:

And I don't even understand your banana republic comment.

Because it seems only bullies are getting ahead and you take your medicine for sure.

Jrobb

Joined: 20 Aug 2005
Posts: 217

Posted: Sun Dec 09, 2007 5:01 pm Post subject:

beallmd wrote:

The Postal service-probably the best run government program;

The USPS isn't government run. It's a privately run and operated government granted monopoly funded solely by postage revenue and other sales.

By it's momopoly status, it appears at first sight like a government agency.

J

isobars

Joined: 12 Dec 1999
Posts: 20935

Posted: Sun Dec 09, 2007 6:07 pm Post subject:

mac wrote:

repeated characterization of all improvements as socialism?

And who has done that? When I invoke the S word I apply the dictionary to the case at hand.

isobars

Joined: 12 Dec 1999
Posts: 20935

Posted: Sun Dec 09, 2007 6:52 pm Post subject:

beallmd wrote:

I don't know why I bother posting on a political thread; these discussions lead nowhere ...

Same here, except that in some cases I've opened the eyes of influential people and have occasionally learned new facts and heard valid arguments myself. Every little bit helps, I keep telling myself at first. But given how few people are interested in proven facts about emotional issues -- whether it's cancer or politics -- I also get fed up with this.

beallmd wrote:

I love all my windsurfing brethern

I don't carry the crap from these discussions over into the real world or even the other threads in this forum, and in a windsurfing thread will give an intolerant liberal assaultmeister the same answer I'd give a thoughtful moderate conservative: BACK FOOT FIRST. OTOH, I've had to conceal my identity in more important newsgroups because some miscreants from another WSing newsgroup stalked me across the 'Net. It left a bad taste in my mouth for liberals they can now overcome only by behaving as adults rather than calling names like children.

beallmd wrote:

you guys vote for who you like

Of course. But we should do some factual homework first. It's a shame there isn't some valid Gospel of Facts at our fingertips that we all believed, so voters' differences could be based on honest differences in value systems rather than in what news channel we grew up watching, what our professors brainwashed us with, or what party our parents belonged to.

There really should be a quiz at the polls, so people who can't identify a picture of Hillary or Bush but can pick Britney Spears' crotch out of a lineup DON'T GET TO VOTE.

beallmd wrote:

if I was standing there at the beach and this discussion came up I probably wouldn't say anything and would just walk away until the discussion returned to something more fun.

I'm afraid I'm so old that I find mentally challenging debate far more interesting than mindless bull sessions about beer, boobs, booms, ball games, etc. But then, I've been that old since I entered engineering school, where we often fought loudly over technical issues way into the night and never took it personally.

Mike \m/

isobars

Joined: 12 Dec 1999
Posts: 20935

Posted: Sun Dec 09, 2007 8:52 pm Post subject:

OK, let’s give this cumbersome DIY approach a try.

capetonian wrote:

[Patients] still have to pay, unless they truly cannot pay.

Of course. But if they CAN pay for it, why shouldn’t they? But if they chose to buy bling instead of health insurance, that -- and the consequences -- are their problem, not mine unless I choose to reward their bad choices by bailing them out. When I ran out of shoestring in college, I dropped out until I could afford to go back.

remember when isobars wrote:

“Check out the demographics of those without medical insurance.”

and rattled off some statistics,

after which capetonian wrote:

Very interesting statistics, can you post your source please?

These and much more like them have been discussed at great length all over balanced and conservative news, news analysis, and talk radio shows for many months now. Their source is the U.S. Census Bureau, at http://www.census.gov/prod/2007pubs/p60-233.pdf , especially page 29.

I keep deluding myself that, after the centrist and right wing sources expose this kind of stuff )it’s almost DAILY!), I’ll see this side of the coin from the left-wing news sources such as most of our major newspapers, broadcast TV, and most cable news channels spouting their sheltered, controlled, managed “news”. People just HAVE to stop paying attention to political rhetoric -- from either party -- presented as “news”. For example, did anyone notice how well The Surge is working, that even the snarky Senate and House leaders have been forced by its results to back off their “Bush failed again and Petraeus is a liar” spew?

capetonian justifiably wrote:

Yikes, are you implying foreign born are not worthy of medical care?

Only if they came here just to get it free and without having paid into an insurance base for it. Why should a non-citizen expect to waltz in here just to get their serious illness treated free or whelp a new citizen at our expense, as so many people do across our southern border?

capetonian wrote:

Part of the issue is that preventative care is incredibly effective at lowering overall health care cost and reducing overburdening of ERs, etc. If people are dumb enough to [insert dumb choices here] and then go and get sick, they become a burden on society, and will likely never recover financially from the costs.

Their impact on society is about the only argument I might support for mandatory health insurance. However, I just can’t bring myself to believe most Democrat politicians’ rationale for it is better and cheaper health care rather than increased voter dependency. Maybe I’m wrong, but does anyone on the planet think Hillary Clinton gives one damn about the little guy except for his vote, considering how she treats ordinary people (e.g., the well-documented incidences involving her staffers, U.S. Marines on duty in the White House, Secret Servicemen) one on one? Besides, I believe people dumb enough to [repeat list] are highly unlikely to get any smarter or more concerned about their health if the rest of us reward their dumb behavior with handouts. Positive feedback ENCOURAGES the behavior it rewards.

Then Capetonian wrote:

I am fortunate enough to make enough money to afford insurance even if it wasn't provided by my employer. However for the majority of the people that report to me, health care would be a big portion of their income if we did not heavily subsidize it, and there was a lot of groaning when the company increase the employee portion from $120 to $220 per month (still less than 20% of the overall cost, but our company has a superb plan).

To which I say, “Fortunate”? Your success was due to “luck”, not hard work? Because employees don’t like compensation cuts, the rest of the country should be forced by law to subsidize them? Shouldn’t whether a company compensates employees with cash or with health care subsidies be the company’s choice, not a government mandate? It’s a free country, and its system is called capitalism. Nobody makes people work for a company that pays in cash rather than insurance.

Now, remember that isobars wrote:

Many national health care systems, notably those in Great Britain and Canada, are crumbling. 18 weeks to see a specialist is absolutely unacceptable. Other systems may work, but the public tax burden in some of those countries runs well over twice ours in the U.S. … > 250% of ours in some cases.

To which Capetonian wrote:

Please quote your source. I pay income tax at 44.3%. The maximum rate in the UK is 40%. In Canada the rate varies between 39% and 46% depending on which state you live in. Which one of those is 250% greater than my income tax rate?

Not in the U.S. do you pay income tax at 44.3%. Our highest marginal federal rate is 35%, and that applies only to that portion of one’s net income above about $360,000. Top 1% earners average 23.13%, Warren Buffet pays only 15%, and I pay about 19% because I’m dumber than Warren Buffet. If your state income tax runs 21% (it doesn’t), it’s time to move.

One of many global tax data sources is
http://www.mercer.com/pressrelease/details.jhtml/dynamic/idContent/1287670 .
That and many similar data sources generally rate many Scandanavian and European income taxes at >2X ours, and that’s before sales taxes of 25% and more plus other taxes are added.

Canada and the UK add huge sales and other taxes which boost their total tax load into the stratosphere, and it’s much higher yet in such countries as Denmark. Belgium, and Hungary where total taxes easily exceed 50% … 250% of mine.

Then isobars wrote:

Seven national health care trial runs since WWII -- five at the federal level plus Hillarycare programs in WA and TN -- all failed miserably.

[quote="At which time capetonian"]I am foreign born, so please educate me about those episodes.

National/ universal health care is an old horse, debated nationally and tried unsuccessfully five times since WW II. Hillary’s new plan strongly resembles many of them, especially Nixon’s failed 1974 Comprehensive Health Insurance Act. My tipoff came from last week’s newspaper story at http://www.mcclatchydc.com/226/story/22163.html , which is just a beginning for your Google search on our five national NHC battles and trials.

For federally-managed state trials of Hillary’s original blockbuster health plan, Google such words as <Hillarycare 1993 washington state health plan> and <Hillarycare tennessee>. Plan on hours if you want details, or minutes if you just want the bottom line, on Hillarycare’s abject failures. Hillary’s plan was implemented virtually intact in Washington state under the Clinton administration’s close scrutiny, promptly failed miserably, and was repealed. Its details frighten anyone except avid socialists or even fascists, with such government dictates as:
1. Your health care source, including the HMO and the physicians you can use, was dictated under penalty of law.
2. Its fixed, government-specified cost.
3. Cost caps, in the sense that if a test or treatment costs too much, you can’t have it.
4. That you buy insurance against every threat, even though as a 75-year-old single gay male you are highly unlikely to need coverage against ectopic pregnancy.
5. You will also find many reference to Hillarycare’s criminalization of choosing and paying any doctor other than the one her system provides. That rabid mandate has been withdrawn now due to public uproar upon its exposure, but it reveals how she thinks and by itself prohibits me from ever voting for her or her party as it exists today. It’s just one of many reasons her college professors and classmates labeled her a socialist, and she has vowed that any Democrat Party national health care plan will be a very close clone of hers. The day I and my doctor receive huge fines or are sentenced to prison for choosing my wife’s brain surgeon is the day I leave this country, and I do not want to subject myself to any administration which thinks like that.

capetonian wrote:

There is a huge difference between welfare (which I define as being paid to sit on your arse) and access to affordable health care.

Affordable health costs and a mandatory national health care system are almost unrelated, in that a NHC system essentially spreads the load without inherently lowering costs. Certainly Paul’s health care would cost him a great deal less if the government robbed Peter to pay for it, but is that fair to Peter, and does it motivate Paul to get off his arse, make more money, and buy health insurance instead of a big pickemup truck? Does it make any particular surgery cheaper? Sounds like a good excuse for mandatory health insurance, but why not motivate it with incentives, as the Republican candidates do, rather than the judicial system, as the Democrat candidates do?

Now, when isobars wrote:

The primary excuse for mandatory national/universal health care is twofold: buying votes with taxpayer money (or mandatory insurance proceeds) and creating greater dependency of more people on bigger government. This smacks of socialism, which should raise the hair on the back of every American’s neck.

capetonian, twisting some phrases, wrote:

Enlighten me on how making sick people better smacks of socialism.

Careful with the word games; I caught on to them the first time a pack of hyenas discovered I’m on the right side of the fence, and I refuse to play. You’re talking about sick people and affordable health care, when the topic -- and my remarks -- refer to a government-mandated and government-regulated (maybe even government-run) health care system funded by money taken at gunpoint (i.e., under penalty of law) from every citizen. That is forbidden by our constitution and -- by definition if the government manages the care -- is socialized medicine.

Because it’s self-evident and discussed almost daily on centrist and right news analysis shows, I was surprised when capetonian wrote:

expand on what you mean by creating greater dependency on bigger government.

A NHC system will require oversight (i.e., new government employees). Its effect -- I believe its very purpose -- is to make citizens ever more dependent on the government, a primary objective of the Democrat Party. (Democrats pander to the lower economic half for their votes, while the Republicans pander to industry. Many of that lower half don’t realize that “their” jobs are provided -- i.e., owned -- by the very industry the GOP supports.) IOW, the Democrats want our well-being dependent on the government’s redistribution of our heavily taxed collective wealth, while the Republicans want us to get rich earning our OWN money and tax it more lightly so we can sustain growth. On a scale from socialism to capitalism, where do those objectives fall?

capetonian wrote:

a Blue Cross Blue Shield bureaucrat is in charge of my health care. If we had a national healthcare system that person would continue doing her job, the only difference being that his/her salary would be paid by the government. So, what is the difference?

Our government, especially its bureaucratic agencies, is extremely inefficient and largely incompetent. Neither its structure nor its individuals have any organizational incentive for efficiency or competence, unlike the private sector in which profit provides the carrot and the risk of getting fired provides the stick. The more involved the government is in our health care, the more likely it is that the bean counter deciding whether you deserve a transplant is a GS-5 who worked yesterday at the DMV. (And I’m commenting on the DMV’s customer service reputation, not its function.)

capetonian wrote:

I agree that the Dept of Education is screwed up, but that has more to do with the American system than the concept of government provided education. I attended a public school in South Africa from Grade 1 through 12, and from what I can gather talking to my American friends, the education I received was as good as any private school here.

You make my point exceedingly well. In addition, our public school system is rushing downhill into socialism and rampant, dangerously excessive political correctness. Examples include forcing our children to give the school supplies they bought to a “collective” pile of supplies, the elimination of scholastic or athletic competition.

capetonian wrote:

I completely agree with your comment about the IRS (said only slightly tongue in cheek) ... I live in the real world and recognize that congressmen and senators will never give up their pensions so we will never be able to get rid of the IRS.

Not tongue in cheek at all. A solution -- a WONDERFUL solution I believe after hearing it debated by experts for scores of hours -- is the Fair Tax. The reasons that will take many more years (the idea has been around for two decades) to be implemented are at least threefold:
1. It will strip the Congress of MANY controls over our lives and greatly impair their ability to buy our votes with pork.
2. The public is being lied to and unintentionally misinformed about it every single day. Only after most voters have read its defining bible, The Fair Tax Book, can it be forced upon our elected officials. I have heard many scores of objections to the fair tax, and every single one was shot down by the plan’s authors and congressional supporters. (No, I’m not going to debate it with uninformed people who refuse to read the book.)
3. It eliminates the IRS, which will not go down quietly.

That’s sad, because the Fair Tax’s very extensively researched benefits to every U.S. corporation and citizen are enormous.

capetonian wrote:

I have no personal experience of the VA ... wife did a rotation at the VA as part of her medical school training... good things about the VA compared to Kaiser, Cedars and UCLA. [VA] technology is decades ahead of any other health care network she has encountered. Their computer system allows them to share medical records throughout their entire network (she could access MRI scans here in LA that were taken in IRAQ or Germany, or view all past drugs prescribed to a patient, regardless of the department that prescribed them). … system set up to remind the physicians that patients who are high risk in any common area (e.g. prostate cancer in men over 50) needs to have annual testing. ... VA will remind patient ofcheck up. ... VA ranked best in class ... outranked private sector health care in patient satisfaction for 6 years running, while spending 20% less per patient than that spent by the private sector.

I have been in the VA system since 1988. I could go on for many pages about VA administrative and medical incompetence which has devoured many hundreds of hours of my time in doing their administrative and medical jobs for them. I’ve had to write about a dozen quasi-medical papers (several providers have asked me what my medical specialty is), some included in my permanent VA medical records, to obtain VA care and often save myself from it. My differential diagnoses solved medical problems several neurologists and otolaryngologists had been unable to resolve over many years. Their medical record and medication system is indeed very advanced … except for the three times the system has lost my records and I had to spend scores of hours regenerating them for the VA. My VA docs tested me for prostate cancer, all right, but had no clue how to interpret the simple, one-digit PSA results. As a direct result of their three-year delay in recognizing my prostate cancer, the likelihood that it will kill me increased ten-fold, to over 50%. The university teaching hospital cranial and abdominal surgeons/ professors I personally picked to perform my VA surgeries were excellent, but the two VA recovery wards I subsequently spent 10 days in were nightmares of incompetency requiring my own medical knowledge, my assertiveness (you guys ain’t seen nothing), and even my physical intervention in a few instances to save myself from ruptured bladders, central nervous system damage, incorrect meds and diets, and much more. I suspect this problem and many others will get both more widespread and more intensified as doctors get ever more fed up with the ever-increasing pressure, constraints, and requirements and the ever-decreasing benefits of ever-more government intervention in health care. 1/3 - 2/3 of physicians surveyed say they would not go to med school again given a do-over, 1/2 of all new physicians graduate in the bottom half of their class, and guess which half migrates towards government (VA) jobs.

And that’s a flea on the tip of the iceberg. My more recent university surgeons had to intervene to correct some of my VA recovery ward problems, but said my complaints were so well-known and oft-documented that further evidence was of no use. They simply advised me to get the hell out of there ASAP and advised me by telephone until I was safely ambulatory.

capetonian wrote:

If [people clogging ERs for routine care] had decent primary health they would go there rather than the ER.

Some would, but many INSURED people will not seek or even accept preventative care, or even ANY care until it’s critical. But if these ER abusers prefer insurance, why don’t the more capable 90% of them get off their butts, clear their heads, get an education, get a better job, earn more money, quit buying crap they don’t need and charging crap they can’t pay for, invest first and eat in restaurants later, have fewer babies, drive cheaper cars, shop at Walmart, and buy their own damned health insurance? Their bad choices are not the public-at-large’s fault and should not be rewarded with the public’s money.

Now … where’s the EJECT lever in this thing? I got a LIFE to get on with.

beallmd

Joined: 10 May 1998
Posts: 1154

Posted: Thu Dec 13, 2007 4:20 pm Post subject:

I do believe Isobars ended this inane debate! congratulations-I raise a Bass ale to you.

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