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I just found it hilarious that he was willing to toss out 7% of the population (via his own calculations) that are apparently legitimately getting screwed. If not harboring a "**** you got mine" attitude is naive than I don't particularly care for your opinion.
There are other reasons that UHC should be instituted that are outside of "people don't have insurance", but in order to believe that those reasons exist I guess you'd have to be pretty naive.
I'm not even going to touch your xenophobic tripe regarding illegal immigrants.
I understand the reason illegals are here. They want to make a better life for their families.
So, say that I, a US Citizen, breaks the law in the effort to make a better life for my family. Am I granted amnesty for robbing a bank, embezelment, money laundering, or thrown in jail for a lot years?
These people are costing tax payers billions of dollars by being here illegally. Sorry, we need to fix our own before we can take everyone else's problems.
And sorry if I am not apologetic that America has gotten fat, lazy, their priorities upside down. This is the best place in the world to go out and improve yourself.
This same 46-48 million number of uninsured that keeps getting spread around by proponents of a UHS is being quoted from a Census Bureau study about health care in 2007. http://www.census.gov/prod/2008pubs/p60-235.pdf
What they don't tell you about the numbers is interesting:
1. 9.7 million of those are not US citizens
2. 17.5 million of those make over $50,000 a year
3. 10 million were age 18-64 and didn't work
so if you take out the foreigners and people who choose not to pay for healthcare even though they can afford it, you are left with approx 20 million uninsured. Out of 300 million people. That is less than 7% of the population.
So we need UHS to take care of 7% of the population. Isn't that wonderful.
The irony is heavy. The people that are most for UHC are the same ones that can't figure out to pay their own taxes. Well of course they want "free" health care, because it will only be free to them. Of course they are willing to finally pay their taxes if they can dictate their policy to others. The whole no one else is smart enough excuse is utterly ridiculous now.
Interesting because I have lived in the UK for over twenty years and have never met a Brit who would swap for private healthcare.
And having lived in the US for 3 years most people I met were pretty disatisfied with their healthcare, costs and treatment.
Having a pre-existing condition for a start mean you are basically given a death sentence if something serious occurs. Unless you are Millionaire. even then it can possibly still eat into your capital pretty quickly.
Being French I also don't know any French people for would either, having lived in Germany, Austria , Italy and Spain same thing too.
And I am over 25 , had to fight through 10 years of Leukaemia and am now disabled.
The NHS in the UK is hardly perfect I grant you that but being poor does not have to mean death or having to sell your house to pay for treatment.
I have had to use the NHS over and over again in the last few years and it has still a long way to go to be completely user friendly, no denying it but I would never have chosen the American system over it. Not in a million years.
I suspect that should the UK government ( or any other European Nations for that matter , including the very right wing ones ) ever decide to do away with National Universal Healthcare the country would erupt into bloddy Revolution and it would be political suicide.
As for France it is still the best healthcare in the world , with top hospitals usin the very latest in medical techniques and equipment, no waiting lists and the patient is always in charge . You want a new specialist because you don't like your current one, you open your yellow pages, and make an appointment. A right wing country with Universal healthcare which works. Wow. What a shock. It can be done.
The most my Grand-Parents ( as an example because of being people who during their last years of life went from procedures to procedures for various ailments ) had to wait to see a specialist was about 4 days. For an Operation if not urgent it was about 2 weeks, if urgent ( but not emergency) under a week. Hardly the woes some Americans believe.
French Healthcare is also excellent in terms of preventative medicine with regular check ups and Doctors try to stop the problem before if occurs ( early detection is huge in France) and palliative care. The country is also dotted with excellent recuperation hospitals so that emergency hospital beds are not tied up and home nursing is also an option if you prefer that as a patient.
What's more I know a lot of medical staff in Europe both as a patient and socially , Doctors, Surgeons, Nurses , Specialists and not one of them would change to a private healthcare.
Healthcare should be a universal human right. Any civilised society worthy of the name would refuse to allow poverty to be a bar to healthcare access.
Universal healthcare can work. It will never be perfect but I think the US are hardly the country to throw stones considering the millions uninsured.
The American health system is the most expensive in the world ( almost twice as much as the French system) and delivers very little.
how many people live in france compared to the US? And since when is France right winged, did I miss the revolution?
Disabled in England? Guess you don't have much time left if something else happens to you. Cost effieciency and all, hope you don't mind. And don't act like they don't refuse care, because Obama wants to model his plan after that one.
In America we have healthcare for the disabled, the elderly and children. Everyone else should be able to fend for themselves. People choose to live in poverty because they are lazy and don't want to work to better. I shouldn't have to foot their bill too.
sorry, I still didn't see one recent report on how much this would cost overall per year. Studies done 20 years ago are invalid because a lot has changed since then. Individual states are easier to insure than 300 million people, that is why it is easier in the smaller countries to follow this socialist concept.
Individual states are NOT easier to insure in a UHI type plan when you haven't addressed the problem across the entire system.
And that is addresssing the cost of healthcare and procedures.
WHy.. why do you think that it costs so much? Of course if you do not address alot of other issues you are going to have high costs problems.
The UHI failed because it addressed only 1 issue.. not the others effecting it at the same time
I would bet that they wanted it to be and set it up to be a failure so that all of you on the right wing can say "see it doesn't work"..but you're stupid if you think it's going to work when you are not addressing other issues within the healthcare business.
I know people that have 2 cars with 1000/ mo payments that cry about paying for healthcare.
Maybe someday the US can get it's priorities straight on what is important.
They cry about the COST of healthcare.. wether they had those cars or not.. health insurance shouldnt take up 21% of a FAMILIES INCOME!!! If I had 2 cars that cost that much too I would still say the cost of healthcare is WAY TOO HIGH FOR THE AVERAGE PERSON.
BTW..if you look at the report that they posted the "average" household doesn't spend 12K a year on cars.. Transportation was around $8,000/year and that could include ALL FORMS of transportation (think commuters, gas, maintenance, insurance for said transportation)..
So your "friends" are not the "average".. and if they are still paying for healthcare they haven't sacraficed a priority so that they can have their "car"... and they are STILL completey right about bitching about the cost of healthcare.. Health insurance is equivalent to a SECOND MORTGAGE these days
BTW.. I'm not sure what "model" they are operating off of.. if it's not working..it's not the right formula.. again the UK system is excellent and the Swiss plan is not too bad either.
Maybe you should read up on it and get some knowledge on it so you actually know what you're talking about rather than just spewing rhetoric
Last edited by TristansMommy; 04-01-2009 at 06:29 AM..
To the contrary, there is quite a movement across our borders from other countries to take advantage of our system, and none in the opposite direction. Does not support your theory very well, does it?
Sorry I haven't read all the posts yet but I just had to correct this VERY incorrect statement. Last summer I was in England and there were articles in the newspapers raising hell about the amount of AMERICANS coming to England for healthcare and then not paying because they couldn't. There are quite a few people that go all over the world for specialists. The US does not have ALL the top doctors and hospitals.
sorry, but how many canadian nurses do you know? I work with quite a few that came down here for higher wages and less taxes. The other part of the story, labor costs. I wonder how far my salary will be cut so you can have "free" health care. I wonder what the wait time for your dialysis treatment would have been...
A March 2, 2004, article in the Canadian Medical Association Journal stated, "Saskatchewan is under fire for having the longest waiting time in the country for a diagnostic MRI—a whopping 22 months."
A January 19, 2008, article in The Globe And Mail states, "More than 150 critically ill Canadians – many with life-threatening cerebral hemorrhages – have been rushed to the United States since the spring of 2006 because they could not obtain intensive-care beds here. Before patients with bleeding in or outside the brain have been whisked through U.S. operating-room doors, some have languished for as long as eight hours in Canadian emergency wards while health-care workers scrambled to locate care."
I guess the question is, where will we go when we can no longer get the health care here???
Yeah.. so the Canadian system has some problems..
But again.. YOU CONVENIENTLY IGNORE THE STUDY. that is in DIRECT opposition to your posts..
IF THE PROBLEM WERE SO BAD AND WIDESPREAD we'd certainly see more than .5% of the Canadian population seeking healthcare.
Those problems, BTW are NOT widespread throughout Canada. Because each Canadian state manages their own within the gov't UHI that there are SOME sections of Canada that have issues.. and many other places in Canada that do not.
As for your nurses.. well I have news for you... U.S actually RECRUITS from Canada because we have a nursing shortage in this country
Many people migrate or move from place to place for better money all the time... and a better cost of living.
Here is a link to an article about just that.
http://www.cna-aiic.ca/CNA/documents/pdf/publications/Media_Backgrounder_May9_2007_e.pdf (broken link)
Lastly. I ask you why you keep bringing up the Canadian system? Because I have not once mentioned that I was all for the Canadian model of healthcare.. that I was more in favor of the UK system and the Swiss model to look at. Although I think it would be important for all models to be looked at across the world and pick what works best for our country.. and fix what those other countries might have gotten wrong
Or do you just keep brining up Canada because it's the only system you are armed full of rhetoric and hyperbole for??
so how does gov't healthcare fix anything then? I will still be paying extra on my taxes because I make more, for insurance for my neighbor. So you sitll haven't fixed the problem, you just got the gov't involved to muddled it up further.
HOw hasn't that fixed the problem?? Well for one.. you will actually GET access to healthcare you pay for.. as opposed to paying for healthcare twice (through your taxes) AND through your premiums. Healthcare costs are driven down which affects and benefits everyone across the board.
... but it sounds like you are only concerned about yourself.. which is the typical right wing argument against a UHI Never mind that we're the ONLY industrialized nation and the wealthies nation in the world, yet we rank so poorly on the World Health Orginizations list of countries and their healthcare
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california is superior?!?!?
Never mind that we're the ONLY industrialized nation and the wealthies nation in the world, yet we rank so poorly on the World Health Orginizations list of countries and their healthcare
