http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2007250152,00.html
Coming soon to America?
I hope American healthcare doesn’t end up like that. Fears of a system ending up like that is what killed Hillary’s (errr Clinton’s) attempt at a national healthcare plan.
But we do need something. Our current healthcare system is broken and based on an old way of life. A way of life where you would go to work for a company like IBM or GM and know that you had a job for life. You’d know that the pension plan there would support you and provide you healthcare after retirement. That way of life no longer exists. People are more mobile. Jobs are more short term and have no guarantees like the old days.
Our current system is based on providing healthcare as an employment benefit. That is the wrong way to go about it. Employers are not who you want controlling your healthcare plans. Every time you change jobs you are faced with selecting a new healthcare plan and getting approved in that plan. God help you if you have a pre-existing condition or some other condition that puts you in what they consider a high risk group. You may find yourself unable to get insurance at all when you need it most. Then once you retire or decide to work on your own you are even more SOL.
We need something different. I looked at Obama’s healthcare plan and was unimpressed. It does not address or solve the fundamental problems. I don’t see how his plan would improve the situation at all other than giving him a talkingpoint for the election.
I need to look at what the other candidates are proposing. It will be interesting to see what Giuliani proposes for healthcare reform.
Here’s a story from a local TV news station:
Individual Health Care Coverage Hard To Get, Expensive
The current system is broken.
Lasik is cheaper now. Cosmetic surgery is cheaper now. Why is that? Because it’s a free market. Competition and new technologies bring prices down. The government stuck it’s head in everything else so those things covered by insurance are more expensive.
In yesterday’s debate, I think Giuliani mentioned something like what Bush’s proposal was. But Giuliani is a loser. He’s still stuck on the idea that terrorists hate us because we allow women to have rights and are apparently free.
More bureaucracy is not going to fix the problems bureaucracy caused.
Yup. Health care in this country is seriously broken. There’ll be no easy answer to fix it and likely we’ll never get a workable solution that will benifit those who really need affordable care. Not as long as the very profitable medical companies and insurance companies are all in bed together with the lawmakers. The only reform that’s likely to get passed will be to the financial benifit of the aforementioned parties.
Just say you’re an illegal alien and you’ll get free health care…pay no tax, and be rewarded in all kinds of ways for breaking the law! 
Their getting free health care has nothing to do with their being illegal. It has to do with their being poor. If you make 3 bucks an hour you can have your emergency room bills erased too
We need some sort of social health care though so that hospitals don’t have to absorb those costs and pass them on to everyone else using the hospital.
There is certainly some sort of solution out there were everyone would be able to get the care they need without it having a debilitating financial impact on any individual or family.
Yes true and I forgot to mention, although it’s already evident, that we pay for all that 'free" healthcare through our taxes.
Not only in taxes but also higher costs for healthcare as the hospitals write off debts from those who can’t pay or offer discounts on the cost of care so they at least get some money, and that all ends up raising the cost of healthcare insurance for everyone else.
Are you able to get affordable healthcare insurance as someone who ones their own business? Are you going to be able to continue to get affordable insurance after you retire? Those can be expensive options for those who work their own business and aren’t a part of a larger healthcare pool plan.
So it should be passed through the government? I would think doing it at the hospital level would make it cheaper instead of sending the money through a heavy bureaucratic system where all the special interests take a cut. As the saying goes, if you think healthcare is expensive now, just wait until you see the costs when it is free.
It’s called charity for the very poor. Others can get insurance to cover the costly unexpected cases. If the individual is buying the insurance instead of the employer, the customer will be more price conscious, bring competition, and lower the prices.
It worked before, back when the government wasn’t messing with the health care system.
Not exactly. Someone making minimum wage who has a pre-existing condition such as diabetes, can not get insurance. If they can even find a company to insure them, they won’t be able to afford the premiums.
No one should ever have to make the decision between food and medicine.
Ah, did you miss the word charity? Have you ever wondered why many hospitals carry a religious-like name? They used to be charities.
Have you ever given to charity? Done a unicycle ride for charity or something? I know, it may be hard for socialists (er… liberals? progressives? whatever you call yourselves these days) to consider charity, as they are in the habit of stealing money from others for these programs.
If there was enough charity to cover the medical expenses of those that could not afford it there wouldn’t be a problem with the healthcare system and these discussions wouldn’t even be happening. So relying on charity as part of a solution to the problem just doesn’t cut it.
You have to get the government out of the meddling they have done which has resulted in the high prices. Then charity can go further.
Further, reduce the taxation and inflation that the government’s meddling has done and the people have more money to give to charity. Instead, we get robbed so much by the government that people can’t afford the healthcare or to give to charities.
Half the labor every person spends is to pay to the government in taxes. And what do we get for that? They break everything they touch. They give us endless warfare and take away the one thing the government is supposed to protect, our liberty.
Fyi, the average percentage of the US entire gross national product (GDP) spent on our [entire] military is UNDER 4%! That’s less than HALF the 10% of Saudi Arabia’s military budget! The US ranks 26th in terms of Military expenditure, which I found surprising! So overall, while it seems astronomically high, we spend less then FOUR PERCENT of our GDP (annually) on the military.
GDP is meaningless. It includes the value of rebuilding something after destroying it. Bomb something, and rebuild it… no new wealth is created. Make a person sick, and sell them the cure… no new wealth.
Military spending is about 25% of the US revenue. Most the rest is for debt payments to those that make money out of nothing, and then medicare/social security. And that’s using the cash based accounting, not the GAAP that the fed requires of corporations. Using GAAP, the federal deficit is $4.2 trillion and the national debt is over $50 trillion.
Yikes!
No wonder why they are inflating the money supply at mid 1970s levels and actual inflation now is over 10%. The world is getting skeptical of the dollar, and it’ll take just one country to start dumping their reserves of it for us to see the dollar boom go bust, like all government created booms.
Ron Paul says it well, about health care, in this vid: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgRUBlNd6fE&mode=user&search=
Where did you get that “25%” figure?
I watched it, pretty good interview with an accurate description of the problem, but like everyone else purposefully vague on the solution, though his idea of basically to start the ball rolling in another direction is better than nothing…
Personally, I think all of the issues of “sucking off the government tit” as a way of life boil down to a need for a change in 2 major areas 1)how our nation votes for our representatives and 2) how we as productive citizens pay our taxes,
Voting is priveledge not a right…I think the general rule of thumb should be that if you are not a contributor to our society the priveledge of the vote should not be yours, we are basically at the point of no return NOW, our society is at the 50% mark of people who in some way are dependant on the government beyond the general need for national security, they’re votes go to the politicians who promise the most $$ to them that come from other peoples pockets, you start an exponentially growing problem that started with 90% supporting 10%, 70 supporting 30, right now it is 50 supporting 50, Very soon it will be 40 supporting 60 and no incentive to be in the 40 and things will go down hill even faster than they have for the past 40 years
Taxes, it is so obvious that this country has to go to The Fair Tax (a national consumption tax), We are already set up to do it with the way states collect taxes, There is no downside to it except that it moves the $$ power out of Washington and puts it back into the hands of the people, Why won’t it happen?? Because right now the socially liberal and the uneducated, apathetic and what have you done for me lately crowd vote together, It has become what I think is an obvious majority in this country and will never be overcome at this point
irs.gov and treas.gov. Revenue is about $2.4 trillion. Millitary spending is about $600 billion. Hmmm… it’s probably higher than that though. That’s just military spending and might not include the waste before the military gets the funds and does not include veterans and other after effects of war. I think it’s around 22 cents per dollar that the IRS wastes before the money gets to the departments.
And I thought you’d question me on my inflation figures, as it differs from the underreported official CPIs (think hamburger replacing steak in their CPI). Using the same CPI methods of the early 80s, gives us the 10% inflation. The fed has incentive to underreport it because they have so many expenses based on it, such as social security, and of course it gives the fiction of the government and economy doing well.
Instant runoff voting, and/or what I’d like is to group all the reps in the state to not have geographical districts, but to have each candidate get X number of supporters to be on the ballot, and then take the top Y number of candidates to be the reps. Both would put an end to the two party duopoly.
No. The purpose of government is to secure the rights of the people. That’s the only purpose. We need to get back to that purpose. Your inalienable rights are to life, liberty and property, among others. Government can’t take your property and you owe nothing to the state, for those basic protections.
Nope. The money still goes to Washington. Money is still accessible to special interests. It’s revenue neutral for them. All it changes is the efficiency of the theft of the money from the people. Good in that respect, but it still doesn’t solve the problem.
The income tax as it’s being applied is not constitutional. Ron Paul advocates eliminating the income tax and replacing it with nothing. No FairTax. The facts are that the only taxation allowed by the constitution is to tax the states directly (per capita), tax imports/duties, and tax the incomes of government chartered entities. Right now the government has first dibs on the fruits of your own labor, all of it, if they want. They have the guns to enforce it. What does that make you? A slave.
The legal situation is that they created a government chartered entity, a trust, with you as the trustee. The trust has the same name as you, and is distinguished from all other entities with the same name by giving it a unique number. The socialist insecurity number (SSN). As the trustee, you hold a card, which clearly states on it that it belongs not to you, but to the SSA. You also hold other assets for this trust. Anytime you use that name and number in a contract, the contract is with the trust, not you. Apply for a job with that name and SSN, it’s not you who got the job, it’s the trust. If you perform for the trust, they don’t care as long as the contract is being complied with. Buy a home with that name and SSN, the home belongs to the trust. Open a bank account with the name and SSN, the account and it’s contents belong to the trust. Buy anything with the money in those accounts, the purchased asset belongs to the trust. I’d recommend never using your SSN for any job or when opening a financial account. Then the fruits of your labor belong to you, not the trust, and the assets in your bank accounts belong to you. For now, yes, comply with the income tax, because they have the guns and your efforts to change the system are better spent outside of gitmo or jail. If you really want to not pay taxes, you need to do a lot of studying and the government is usually a step ahead and will highly scrutinize your every move. Yes, war is peace, slavery is freedom…
Maybe we should’ve listened to Nostradamus, er, I mean Thomas Jefferson, when he said:
Like all fascist societies, they give the people just enough to not start a revolution and oust them. The tides are turning and like all empires, they will eventually collapse. Who knows what the outcome will be then.
Interesting discourse but, bringing this thread a little more back on the healthcare track, here’s an interesting tidbit for digestion;
My wife works for a local hospital that is an official not for profit organization. In their annual report for this past fiscal year thier ‘profit’ was $17 million. I’m not sure where that money’s going but it was paid for, primarily by the insurance premiums of the patients. I don’t know if this is a typical profit margin for a hospital but it seems to me that they’re overcharging by a good bit in the name of making up for losses imposed by the indigent population who also uses the hospital services. These ‘losses’ are also the reason that insurance premiums continue to rise to the tune of double digits, annually. So that’s two entities who are compensating for those poor people who can’t afford medical bills by overcharging. Add to that the doctors and other specialists who provide services to the hospitals and we’re getting tripple billed. Pisses me off !! When was the last time you saw a doctor driving a beat up 20 year old Ford station wagon or heard of a health insurance company in financial trouble? They’re all making money hand over fist and we’re the ones paying the bill. 
I’m not against the health care system having to compensate for indigent patients, they deserve decent heathcare too, but when some (insurance company or hospital) CEO is walking away with a multi-million dollar annual bonus on top if it, I get a wee bit upset.