Obama's Health Care Proposal

Forced price controls? Genius. Pure genius.

Backdoor takeover of the entire health care industry.

Combined with a slew of new taxes.

And it lacks the Stupak ammendment to prevent Obama from paying for every abortion.

Remember how well price controls worked in the 1970s?







What absolute fucking morons we have put into the White House. But hey at least we proved we weren't racist!

 

I don't think it's anything new to have fucking morons in the white house. Quite the opposite, what do you expect? Corporate ass licking cronies...

 

Yep, pretty much 90% of the people put in office are fucking morons, not much of a doubt in my mind about that one. The system they have to participate in forces their hand that direction.

But, on another note. Price controls DON'T WORK. They don't. Any economist will tell you that. It's almost impossible for the government (or anyone) to try and obtain unit elasticity, and setting a price just isn't going to solve it. But, we definitely need some reform, and I wish the republicans and democrats in Congress would drop the god-damned politicking, roll up their bipartisan sleeves, and get to fucking work on FIXING this corner we've worked ourselves into.

Note to Congress:
NO ONE GIVES A FUCK WHO'S GOT THE POWER. JUST FUCKING SERVE THE PEOPLE LIKE YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO.



sorry for that outbreak guys, It's been a long time coming

 

Government doesn't fix problems, government only creates them.

 

Except for the problem of "who should build infrastructure", though perhaps private enterprise could take care of that. I'd say its a dice roll either way

 

The government's terrible at maintaining infrastructure. There's no question that the private sector could do it better, IMO.

 

I think that there's no doubt government sucks at maintaining it. I mean come on, our government couldn't even run a successful brothel. How can you lost money on a brothel? Doesn't every guy want sex?

However, I don't know if there would be much of an impetus for a company in the private sector to create a national system of infrastructure, unless they were trying to control all trade in the nation. I imagine such efforts would be met with resistance from other companies, and so we'd have a more fragmented system than we currently do. Worse? I don't necessarily know. I just know that there would still be issues, only speculation can unveil what these would be.

 

It'd be rather impossible, or at least extremely improbable, for one single company or entity to endeavor to own/operate the entirety of the national infrastructure, were the market privatized--but this is a good thing, the more competition the merrier. I really don't want to get into a detailed discussion about it in this thread since it is completely off topic, but there's many reasons to deduce how it could not only work, but work rather well.

 

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion about healthcare. However everyone is not entitled to their own facts.

It is a fact that we pay more for out system than any other post-industrial country. As a % of GDP. Per capita. However you cut it, we pay more.


It is a fact we get less for it by objective measures. Shorter life expentancy, more chronic illness, etc.

It is a fact we get less for it by subjective measures. Poll show that more people in the US have bad impressions of or think there are major flaws with out system.

And even on wait times, wait times are the same for urgent procedures and is most cases the same for less urgent things. And that's not factoring in that in the US, for many people the wait time is forever because they don't have insurance.


It is not a fact however, as many people like to say, that we have Univarsal Coverage in the US because you can just go to an emergency room and they can't turn you away.

It is true that you can go to an emergency room for a broken arm or even a heart attack, but you cannot show up at the Hospital with cancer and get a 6 month course of chemotherapy or if you came in with that heart attack that you could get the proper to follow up make sure you don't have another one.

So we don't even have that urban legend of Universal Coverage that someone can get treatment and then just stiff everyone else for the bill. An emergency room only has to stabilize your immediate condition, not fix bigger problems.


So we pay more, we get less, and for what? To say that at least we don't have Government run system that evidence shows costs less and gives better results.


The people who say that there is nothing wrong with the system are those that have never been sick. Those who have never had an insurance claim that cost more than their previous 3 monthly premiums to the insurance company.


The argument boiled down to it's essence is this:

Do we want to live in a country where some people die because they can't afford to be sick?

If we can agree that we don't want to live in a country like that, then we are only arguing if we want to pay $X to the government to provide it, or do we want to pay $X+insurance company profit for it.

If we can't agree that we want to live a country where families don't go broke because someone gets sick, and nobody dies for lack of insurance, then you better pray that it's not your son or father or brother than gets sick and gets dumped by their insurer.


And if you argue that it works in other countries, but it won't work in the US is to say that there is something wrong with America. That we can't do what others do.


But we aren't even talking about that kind of change now. This plan is almost exactly what the Republicans released last year as their Alternative Plan. It's expanded a little bit, because when the Repubs released it it was 4 pages long. But the expansion is just a little more logistical details. It doesn't add substance.

And yet even though Obama just threw the Republicans plan back in their face, they'll still fillibuster it.

Because all they know how to do is say "No".

 

This part is so true, and the reason people are getting pissed is because too many people in america dont give a hell about other people so they say "why should i pay more for insurance to cover other people" well in reality their paying for you too, and what if you were to lose your job and lets say you had a wife and she got cancer...what do you do? your screwed. people like to think that stuff will never happen to them, but you cant control that. so why not take control of the things you can so you can prevent it?

 

The more I read about the American healthcare system the more I am amazed by the gross inefficiency with which it seems to be run. You spend more per capita on healthcare than any other industrialized nation yet are generally accepted in the worldwide community to have nowhere near the best level of general healthcare (lower life expectancies, deaths from preventable diseases etc etc).

Did a quick bit of research comparing government expenditure on healthcare in the US to that of our universal/socialized healthcare (the NHS) here in the UK. Came back with a few figures that I found interesting. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but the biggest federal healthcare expenditures come in the form of Medicare and Medicaid within the US right? I looked them up and in 2008 (the most recent data I could find) the total cost of Medicare and Medicaid was $813.5 billion (Source, Page 2). This works out at $2,675 (per capita in 2008) if you divide by 320 million (US population).

By contrast the expenditure here in the UK on the NHS was £103 billion ($161 billion, Source). Again, divide this by the population (62 million) and you get $2,609 (per capita in 2008). How are we able to provide universal healthcare for all for less than simply the federal expenditure per citizen on healthcare programs designed for the disadvantaged?

If you then look at the total cost of healthcare in America that first report pegs it at $7,681 per captita for 2008, almost 3 times the expenditure per capita here in the UK. I'm not saying that socialized healthcare is the answer for America; I just find that interesting. How inefficient must big government such as in America be!?

 

The only reason I support healthcare reform, is because I'm tired of back door paying for all of the idiots out there without health insurance.

I'm tired of them going to the emergency room, having the hospital write off the expense on their taxes, which makes my taxes go up. Also, they charge me more, or for useless tests, because I have insurance, to also help make up for not getting paid for the uninsured when they come to their office.

So, if we can make it where that doesn't happen, I'm for not having a national healthcare plan. However, that'll never happen, because people would be dying in the streets from no care, at greater numbers than they already are.

 

If you're going to try and make this discussion about facts, please provide source citations for all your facts so I can demonstrate to you that they are biased liberal lies.

Consider this: If you found out that the facts you have based your conclusions on are flat wrong, would you change your conclusion?

 

All arguments aside don't you think his timing is terrible? During a depression and a war on terrorism on two fronts they want MORE taxes to pay for something MOST TAXPAYERS ALREADY HAVE. If you pay a lot of taxes you are usually responsible enough to have health care.

Just another example of the parasites trying to use government to justify feeding off the working class. Most of you little college kids arguing for health care have never had a job and been raped by the state.

We should be stopping useless spending not starting more entitlement programs.

 

I don't know about that. Have you ever seen photos of New York city at the dawn of electricity when the market was perfectly competitive? There was literally not enough space to fit all of the electrical wiring. I think that this is an instance in which you would need a third party (in so many words, government) to step in and limit this overpopulation.

Obviously the most ideal would be an oligopoly of businesses, but you can't really guarantee that an oligopoly is established beyond chance without government intervention. I just sort of feel like any way you slice it, there is always a point in which you'll need some kind of third party to resolve an issue.

Sorry to be off topic OP, that's the last of my digressions. Shade I'm sure we'll discuss further in other threads

 

I'm not sure New York has ever had a "perfectly competitive" market for any 'public good', but even so... you're referring to the "dawn of electricity", it wouldn't surprise me if there were some proverbial growing pains with the implementation of a relatively new technology at that time.

 

I'm going to see if I can find the photo's I've seen, where there is literally a ceiling of power wires over the street, it was pretty much as perfectly competitive as it can get- it's not something you hear much about because it got so bad the government came right in and had to lay down some regulations. Growing pains or not something had to come in and change it.


And... uhhh... to stay on topic for the OP,

Health Care reform... I'm for it!

 

This is most asinine thing I have ever read.

Google any of the facts I posted, you will find thousands of studies and objective data about it and few if any that say that we pay less, or that we get better results.

But those thousands of pages of data are all lies.

Then you seem to be making the case that I chose to believe lies to back up what I have built up in my head as reality.

But by the very nature of your first sentence saying that any evidence you disagree with is a liberal lie, you are demonstrating that is it you that is clinging to a disproven idea depsite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.





Back in 1994, I used to be just like you. Rush Limbaugh listener, thought everything was part of a liberal conspiracy.

Then in 1997, I got sick.

My illness cost my parents their life savings. My parents work to this day, despite my dad being nearing 80 and my mom nearing 70. My parents spent their life savings and took out a second mortgage to pay for my medical bills after my insurance company dumped me. They have never gotten out from under that.


So when it happened I started to question all the things I believed about how great our healthcare system was. I started looking into it for myself.

And I found that all those things that Rush and Fox had told me over the years were dead wrong.

I looked at the numbers and talked to people who live with illnesses in other countries and I changed my opinion about the health care system.

People in America do go broke for want of access to the system. I'm one of them.

People in America do die because they can't afford to take care of a health problem. I know because had my parents not been there to help, I would have been one of them.


The people who say that it's the best system in the world are ideologues who have never been seriously ill. Because the failures I experienced in the system were enough to make me questions what I believed and when I did research, I found that all the things I'd been spoonfed were wrong.


The deifinition of an ideologue is someone that clings to failed ideas, even in the face of overwhelming evidence that they are wrong.

And that's you buddy. Willfilly ignorant ideologue. You won't google it for yourself to see because you know you are wrong. You can't find any evidence that backs up what you are saying, so you dismiss all evidence to the contrary as lies. And before you even look at the data you've decided it's lies.

And then worst of all, your a hypocrit because you accuse other people of doing what you know deep down inside, you are doing yourself.


So why don't you just show one study from something you think is a reliable source that contradicts what I have said? Just one. If anything I would post would be a lie, then surely it must be easy to find reams of data that tell the truth.

So where is it?

 

Sorry dude, I'm definitely all for your side on this one, but citing google really isn't a solid citation... Hate to say it but, if you want credit, do the work