Healthcare

[Jonesy47]

If it turned out that establishing universal health care would cause my company to drop that part of the benefits and I'd have to join the line then I'd probably be against it. From a high level if more people have access to health care that means more people will use it and consequently more lines.

All i hear from this is "Me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, etc..."

You seriously just said that you would dislike more people having health care just because you'd have to wait in a bigger line. Reminds me of assholes blowing past you on the freeway going 90 because, obviously, their jobs/lives are more important than EVERYONE elses. No dude. You are no better than ANYONE ELSE on this planet. Sometimes, equality means having to wait in bigger lines. Think about someone else for a change.

Somehow, i get the feeling that all of our problems in the united states could be blamed upon the last 40-50 years of parenting.

[ieatramen]

Maybe I am just big fat skeptic, but it just seems like this will be taken advantage of. Theoretically if someone loses their job and are "down on their luck" they could just hang out and not only be fed food from the government but also receive free doctor's visits for anywhere between 22 months to 5 years to forever depending on how well they work the system!

But I do see the point that there are people out there who are genuinely hurting and genuinely need assistance.

Hmmm...

[Hatta]

And if you have a certain illness that they don't want to research, they won't help you.

You can come up with horror stories from both sides. There's a saying "the plural of anecdote is not data." The data show that countries with universal health care spend less on health care, and have healthier citizens.

Being against universal health care because you might get a rare disease that might not be covered under a hypothetically very poorly run universal health care system is silly. That's a vague and very slim risk. A real and specific danger is that if you live long enough, you will get heart disease, or diabetes, or prostate cancer, or any one of a number of common diseases. If you're unlucky enough to lose your job (we're getting close to 10% unemployment, and still rising!), that's it for you. 22,000 people die each year because they did not have insurance. That's not 22000 uninsured people who die, that's 22000 deaths that would be prevented if they were insured. Tell me, how many people die because the death panels in Canada refuse to treat them? Lets debate with data, not with fear mongering.

It's worth pointing out that the 22,000 figure is over 7 times the number of people who died in the 9/11/2001 attacks. Rationally, this means that universal health care is 7 times more important than the war on terror ever was.

[ieatramen]

Hatta,

You are an idiot for comparing 9/11 to healthcare. Everything else you said makes sense, though.

[Hatta]

Maybe I am just big fat skeptic, but it just seems like this will be taken advantage of.

If you're really concerned about being scammed, you should worry about the insurance companies first. We pay more than any other developed country for our health care and we get worse results from it. That is a huge scam, people freeloading can't even come close to that.

[Hatta]

ietramen, why exactly? If you feel it's worthwhile spending a trillion dollars to avenge the lives of 3,000 americans, isn't it also worth a trillion dollars to save the lives of 22,000 americans?

[gtmtnbiker]

I think one of the issues with healthcare is that we (consumers) don't really know the cost and are unable to do any sort of comparison shopping. Too often, insurance negotiates rates and we just pay the deductibles. Who knows how many needless tests are done because it's covered.

Recently my wife took my daughter to the dentist who wanted to do x-rays to see if her adult teeth are coming in. She was late to get her first teeth in so consequently her baby teeth take longer to come out than other kids. But she has lost some baby teeth already so it's not really a concern for us. So we told the dentist no, that it was not necessary.

Another time I went for my annual checkup and while there, asked a few general questions. Later on, I found that there were some separate charges that I had to pay because of those questions. In other words, because of the way the office coded it, it didn't fall under annual checkup which was free. I raised a stink with the doctor and he dropped it from my charges.

I think this is one of the reasons why we have high medical costs. We don't truly know how much things cost and are unable to easily shop around.

[ieatramen]

Hatta, I agree with you wholeheartedly about being ripped off by the insurance companies. So why doesn't the government, being the all powerful entity that is, put caps on big business insurance companies regulating how much they can charge so that people can afford insurance? If the insurance companies are the bad guys why does the taxpayer have to pick up the scraps so to speak.

The 9/11 thing is apples and oranges man. The money facts are true, but trying to compare the two trying to make one sound more important than the other just doesn't make sense. It's like comparing teen suicide to drunk driving deaths -they are both horrible, but there just isn't any comparison.

[Limewater]

Also the US provides our armed forces with government run health care and it's considered one of the best health care options you can get.

Until you're out of the service and dealing with the VA hospitals. Then you're in one of the worst.

I might actually post something substantive to this discussion later. Right now all I have time for is snark and derision. I'm serious about what I wrote about the VA, though.

[Hatta]

So why doesn't the government, being the all powerful entity that is, put caps on big business insurance companies regulating how much they can charge so that people can afford insurance?

Well, they're trying to do this without scaring the free market fundamentalists too much. Price caps are a huge interference in the market. A government run non-profit option (which isn't (supposedly) supported by tax payer dollars), would provide competition for the insurance industry. "Competition" is one of those key words that makes free market fundamentalists moist.

Personally, I'm in favor of single payer. I don't give two shits about insurance company profits.

The 9/11 thing is apples and oranges man.

I dunno, I tend to think that human life is human life. Death by terrorist attack is not fundamentally more tragic or worth fighting than death by cancer. Given that we have only so many resources, we should put them to use in the way that saves the most lives. That way is universal health care.