Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
We are in this mess due to government regulated medicine and special interests. I believe that medical care is as much as 500% overpriced and priorities are only for profit. Instead of letting people die with dignity they pump them full of medicine, cut them up and keep them alive for a few more months to rake in the govenment cash. The whole system is so screwed up that there is no fix. Outrageous medical school expenses and stupid requirements limit competition while protecting dysfunctional attitudes. Medicine is an example of how government regulation combined with greed creates a system that cannot continue.
When Medicare was implemented, healthcare comprised roughly 5% of the GDP. Today, after 40 years of Medicare, that figure is around 18%. What's more, this has taken place in a time when technology and information systems have allowed more efficiency in care. So the cost of care has increased, adjusted for inflation, while productivity has skyrocketed. This is an astonishing economic contradiction. It should be impossible, yet it has happened.
That's because government intervention in the healthcare marketplace has required a great deal of inefficiency to be built into the system in payment, in records keeping, etc. etc.
What's more, government intervention in healthcare has actually retarded availability of care. Need an example? I live in a city where the suburbs have exploded southward. We also have a lot of fine hospitals in the downtown area. Yet no new hospital has built in the suburbs south of town. Why? Because the government has to approve the building of any new hospital. It also has to approve the acquisition of any new major diagnostic equipment or the introduction of any new service. Naturally, all the hospitals fight one another, so the healthcare consumer gets hosed. And that means if you're having a heart attack, it's going to be a twenty-mile ride to the hospital. All because government has stepped into the fray.
Location: where you sip the tea of the breasts of the spinsters of Utica
8,297 posts, read 14,164,711 times
Reputation: 8105
I always thought that maybe this country could afford health care if we weren't blowing all the taxpayer money on national offense .... fighting foreign wars, and keeping the military big enough to fight 3 overseas wars instead of one for self-defense here.
Maybe we don't need to be the policemen of the world.
How many years of social security could we have paid if it weren't for bank bailout?
I'm so sick of hearing all these lies, lies, lies.
Don't you know they ultimate goal is to keep us poor and uneducated and brainwashed?
I'm an educated, intelligent person. I work hard all the time, and I have to count every dime when I go to the grocery store. Hmmm, how many meals can I get from that butternut squash over there? Any protein on sale today? There's not a chance for me when I get older, not a chance. The day I can no longer work and earn an income is the day I crawl somewhere quiet to starve and die.
I didn't watch the whole thing. I watched the first 10 minutes.
Someone enlighten me, what' the B.S. behind this video? From the parts I saw, it seemed like a reasonable collection of facts.
lol yea. It is not BS it is facts. Not sure how complicated that can be to understand.
What I think the others are thinking is that the government is going to have to dump social security and medicare. Which, IMO, they will do sooner or later. Either a direct write off or more than likely through inflation. It is easier to pay your liabilities with money that is worth less.
We are already seeing the early cracks forming in the economy. We can't pay your social security/medicare benefits if we don't have jobs!
Quote:
I always thought that maybe this country could afford health care if we weren't blowing all the taxpayer money on national offense .... fighting foreign wars, and keeping the military big enough to fight 3 overseas wars instead of one for self-defense here.
That is part of the problem too, but not the entire problem. The video goes to state that we have over promised medicare and social security. Last year we passed a budget that was 400 odd some billion in the red. Ironically, the military budget is in the range of 600-700 billion per year. If we just cut the military budget by 400 billion that would balance the budget, over night. That would be a start.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.