What do you think of Obama's health care an/or economy package(s)

I have to agree with Vess, one thing that's really tempting about America for me as an outsider are the low taxes and the possibility to succeed through hard work.
Over here with a 60% taxrate, spineless democratic politicians and a genral despise against successfull people, let's just say that things could be better.

America may not be perfect but i hope that they don't join the cesspool of shit that is "free" healthcare.

 

We dont have 1850, its 2009. If you forgot that.

 

I know, please elaborate how this still does not apply.

 

I guess Vess and a few others here have never driven or commuted on a toll road. Privatization is a very good thing, but you don't want to overprivatize things like roads. Who wouldn't find it annoying to be shelling out a toll per road for each street you happen to touch on your way to the convenience store at the corner to grab that jug of milk you forgot to pick up while you were at the grocery store (which may have been another 5 roads you drove on before you got home and realized that you forgot to buy milk)? If you get tired of paying the fees manually, you could always opt for one of those monthly toll road subscriptions where you get an RFID sticker to place on the inside of your windshield for automatic approval, but then again - how many subscriptions for each road are you willing to buy if all or most of them were privately built and privately maintained?

Extremism is bad at both ends, but not a whole lot of people have a choice in this current system that some of you are claiming is "pro-choice." It's not about the hardworking vs the lazy. As I mentioned, and as anyone of you can venture out and research, there are many hardworking Americans who flat-out can't afford health insurance... I would love to find an accurate database of statistics regarding how many US-based companies currently provide health benefits (whether in full or just subsidized), and how that number has been moving up or down over the past decade.

It's a very questionable thing to rely solely on private health insurance firms to cover you when their primary goal is to figure out (via any means necessary) how they can avoid having to cover you.

I live on the Gulf Coast here in South Texas. Given that we live in a region that has been hit by large and powerful hurricanes and other tropical depressions that venture into the Gulf in the past, and given the potential for more every season, we must purchase "wind insurance" (it may actually be called something else, such as "hurricane insurance," "wind storm insurance," etc. but you get the point). The private insurance company that we held a policy with went bankrupt and completely folded. They didn't even have any kind of policy, program, or reserve funding to send official notification to all of their thousands of policyholders announcing that "they're no longer covered," and "they better find a new insurance provider very soon" (especially given it was the beginning of summer, which summer and early fall combined form our hurricane season). So, my family had to quickly find a new (and more expensive) policy with a different company. Luckily during that time, their house was still covered for fire damage, otherwise things potentially could've been "over."

Putting faith solely in private insurance companies (especially those who often fly by the seat of their pants) is not what I would ever call "diversification."

There are many hardworking and productive people who need, but can't afford, private health insurance. If universal healthcare isn't the way to go about it, then I hope some other people have some other good ideas, because no matter what, the status quo won't hold forever. Something's gotta give.

 

Are you willing to die if you can't afford the required medical procedures? In a truly private health care system, people who can't pay don't get treated. Healthcare doesn't work in a private market because:
1. You don't know when or how expensive you're medical care will be
2. You can't abstain from needed medical procedures (without serious disability or death)

Here's a short list of some of the more expensive medical procedures

• Defibrillator (pacemaker) - $68,000 to $102,000
• Drugs for a colon cancer pantient - $250,000
• Coronary bypass surgery - $33,500
• Care for premature newborn with severe problems - $168,000
• Liver transplant - $175,000
• Leukemia care with bone marrow transplant - $161,000
• Heart Transplant - $83,000
• AIDS care - $50,000 to $150,000
• Mental health care - $28,000

Sources:
http://images.businessweek.com/ss/08/07/0710_costlymedicine/
http://www.nytimes.com/1988/02/18/u...cedures-are-focus-of-effort-to-trim-bill.html

Now tell me, could you or you're family pay for any of these today? If not, you would likely be liable for most (if not all) of the cost of these procedures with the private insurance plans available today.

 

Bull fucking shit. Your wording is wrong, or your post is plain stupid. First off, having a defribrillator used on you doesn't cost that much. Think about it...even the defibrillator doesn't cost that much.

As for this statement above...with the current private healthcare...you DON'T owe that. My father is being treated for cancer right now...and it is being covered by his health insurance. If I needed a heart transplant, my insurance would cover it.

The current system is flawed, but far better than anything government run (such as disability...which is VERY poorly run...or a VA hospital.)

Stop misleading people.

 

I'm talking about a pacemaker, which is similar to a defribrillator, and if you needed a heart transplant, there is no guarantee your insurance would cover it.

Chances are you would be liable for some if not most of the cost of those procedures. Its not misleading because this is private insurance standard practice. They usually have
1. A deductible you have to pay
2. Will only cover a certain % of the total expense
3. Have a cap on total money they will spend in any year

For example, my healthcare insurance has a $300 deductible, covers 90% of in-network care (or 60% of out of network care), and only covers up to $100,000 per person per year. I'm sure if you look at your insurance benefit plan, you'll find something similar.

The problem is that private insurance companies have a perverse incentive system. Money they collect from you (in the form of premiums) goes to their profits while money they pay for healthcare claims reduces their profits. If you were a profit maximizing insurance agency, you would try to collect as many premiums as possible while paying as little healthcare costs as possible. They even have a term for screwing people out of paying claims, its called rescission.

 

Personly i think healthcare for all is a brillent thing. We have it in the UK with the NHS (National Health Service). Yes its a bit of a piss up in a brewery atm cus of bluddy Gordan Brown -_-' but NOBODY EVER should be denied health care beause of how much cash they have in pocket. It is putting a price on life which is inhuman. I find it ironc how Hamster complains about it when the uk is 20th in the world and the USA is 97th in the world for health care just behind Czech republic which i find rather funny :p

 

My grandfathers aftercare took 14 years, it was completly free.
Try to find that in america.

 

These days no. you wont. I want america to change back to its old "House call" system. Basically back in the day you would have your family Dr. This man would probably work for upwards of 100 families. He would schedule yearly checkups where he would go to the home and perform minor physicals. And if there was an emergency (Flu, broken bone ect.) You would call him and he would come right over. Then if there was a really big problem there would be specialists that he could call and that's when it would be expensive. This system was personal and human and saved many lives it situations got extreme there were facilities that could take care of it.

This system of voip the risks of the hospital itself many people who go into a hospital contract Elyseés from others that are there and become more sick. However the benefit of a hospital is that the specialists are nearby within an arm's reach(or the sound of an agonizing yell). In a free market there is room for both systems allowing freedom to the people that choose whatever care they prefer. With the government system they can only use the faculty style medical care.

And to you mayama. America has the best medical specialists in the world and the best research facilities. This is due to a sometimes loaded price of Medicare. We are the number one developer of new drugs(non recreational, and otherwise (lol)). And there's no such thing as a free lunch someone paid for your grandfather's treatment and you should be grateful to them not the government. The government is nothing without its people and the growing majority of Americans not want government Health Care. So it is a crime for the politicians to try and force it on us. If we're greedy selfish people that would let 'em and die because he can afford Health Care then it's our choice to be so and that is what we're defending.

One final thing this movement of which president Obama is a part of. Is becoming a global movement, an effort to create a global government. A non military conquest inspired by the same Ideals that inspired Adolf hitler's NAZI movement(to better mankind). We need to be sceptical of Any movement this size.

 

With public healthcare people are dying too. They die because they don't have the time to wait in queues.

Mayama: oh sure if I didn't pay for it EXPLICITLY it was free. Yeah.

 

"National Socialist German Workers' Party"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_German_Workers’_Party

He wasent singing about jew killing on the campigne trail.

 

Let's save the New World Order conspiracy talk for a different thread, perhaps over at one of Alex Jones's crazy websites.

 

Yeah ofcourse, fits in your right wing mindset.

 

I don't know the exacts of my fathers healthcare, but he has a small co-pay. My own insurance has no copay...and I'm covered full out of network, I just have to do a little extra paper work. There are certainly some shittier healthcare plans out there, but it's no different than a warranty program for a car. You get what you pay for.

Healthcare for all means: No matter how hard I work to better myself, someone else is leeching off of me. Getting a raise of a bonus this year will just mean more taxes to pay. If I were helping actual working people, that'd be one thing...but Obama's program takes me off of my own healthcare, which I LOVE. I don't want it taken away. I want my own healthcare. Currently though, I pay welfare for some people who need it, but in large for fat blobs who just don't want to work and milk the system....

 

You won't be forced to switch... you can keep what you have... However, if you are getting it through your employer, either in full or subsidized, the employer can choose what they provide to you (as they always have been able to), so it's possible that later on they may stop doing so (thereby forcing you to seek your own unsubsidized private insurance) or change what they are willing to pay for or subsidize, and move you to the public plan to save the company money and reduce the fringe benefits offered to its employees. As many companies have been rapidly dropping or changing their health benefit programs in recent years, it's kind of happening anyway (just that there's no public plan to fall back to, *yet*).

Here's the bill (Title II will be most relevant to your concerns):
http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h3200/text

 

I think you are overestimating the number of people gaming our social welfare system. There are definitely some people like you describe, but these programs help way more hard working American's then people who don't want to work. That was the point of the 1996 welfare reform act (to force people on welfare to work).

Also, you may have some great health insurance now, but what happens if you lose your job or you're company decides to cut out some of the more expensive benefits? From what you describe, I bet you're health insurance program costs quite a bit. I wouldn't be surprised if they start cutting costs by reducing your benefits or requiring you pay more of the cost of your insurance.

 

No, freedom is you and everyone else being able to do whatever they want without being limited by anything including the laws of physics and causality. What humans are is the merest fraction of an iota of free and the differences between countries are about as relevant as the difference between white and brown eggs to someone starving to death.

Philosophy aside, for people to be 'free' as you suggest, a lot of people have to lose their freedom. Every time someone dies or gets sick because of lack of healthcare, the people who didn't pay for that healthcare are taking away their freedom, which seems somewhat hypocritical. The same goes more or less for all forms of law, laws are people saying 'You can't do this so that I don't have to have this done to me'. It gives freedom to the people who don't want to commit crime and don't want it to be committed against them, but it takes freedom away from the people who do want to commit crime. Now of course you may argue that criminals don't deserve freedom, or that that sort of thing is neccesary. Well saying people don't deserve freedom seems a bit odd, why don't they get to decide who deserves freedom? Deciding that for them is taking away even more freedoms. It might even be neccesary to take those freedoms away but that doesn't change what you're doing. Any instance where one group of people are forced to abide by the decision of another group is a destruction of freedom.

So saying you're doing it in the name of America's freedom really doesn't cut it, you might be doing it in the name of your freedom because you don't stand to lose by it, but not America's, because I guarantee you there are people in America who would benefit immensely from socialised healthcare.

America also has a comparatively quite unhealthy population, which suggests that its healthcare system isn't working very well. You can do all the research you like and have all the specialists you want, but if nobody can afford to pay for those speciailists and the benefits of that research then it's not helping your population much. A research doctor is a doctor not healing the sick in a hospital, if more doctors are engaged in research than in active practise compared to other nations then that suggests a rather bourgeouis society, if a doctor has nothing better to do than research either your country produces an abnormally large number of doctors or there isn't much demand for them in hospitals (if there was, they would be in hospitals being paid ridiculous sums of money for doing a very demanding job). As Americans generally are not in perfect health and as far as I know, they do not have an unusual penchant for becoming doctors, there should be a great demand for doctors in hospitals. As there apparently isn't, the logical conclusion is that there are sick people, but they aren't going to hospitals. That isn't a good state of affairs.

I see you use capital letters and punctuation.

You know who else used capital letters and punctuation?

The NAZIS.

German capitalises every noun in the sentence and has extra punctuation. I think you are a NAZI sympathiser.

 

lol, the betterment of mankind.

If you take this from the nazi standpoint, it means that the "Arian race" would dictate what everyone did as overlords of the world because they are better than everyone else.

But in the context of doctors, I believe that the term "better" is in reference to getting over medical conditions.

whatever, this thread has lost anything that it may have had in the first few pages, where people were actually arguing about whether health care was a good thing or a bad thing, and not whether it's a plot to "Rule the world", which the UN already does.

 

The UN doesn't and is powerless by and large, but when you bring things up like that in this thread you only further it off its course, as Vess was doing.

Pages 6, 7, 8, and 9 (as well as the earlier pages) of this thread contained some well-formed arguments and concerns, and have been about whether or not health care is a good/bad thing. I guess you just haven't been reading the thread in its entirety, because despite a few people trying to derail it, it has offered an intriguing discussion to those of us actually interested.

If you don't like the thread, gtfo.