and see how their health care systems work before they go opening their yaps to show the world how uninformed they are.

They're consciously pushing a package of lies in order to keep the actual dodos uninformed--or, actually, worse--misinformed & disinformed.

countries. I always wonder about folks in the states bordering Canada because they must have a better idea than some Americans of life on "the other side."

Still, there are just too many Americans who believe this crap about "socialized medicine." I'm always amazed at how the propagators of this idiocy get away with it.

Has it never occurred to folks that if those countries didn't like their health care system they could change it? The fact that no other country wants our system doesn't tell them something?

Like, all those other countries are just filled with socialists & other lowlife types who don't know any better than to provide universal health care, maternity/paternity leave, long vacations, & high wages for their people.

argument to me. At the time he had never traveled outside of the U.S. He has, now, with his new wife and I wonder if he has somewhat moderated his views...

That is the truth! No other "rich", industrialized country in the world envies the US' health care system.

Single payer health care is extremely popular, and taxpayers continue to keep voting in parties that fund the single payer system.

eligible to be on Medicare!" If you follow up that with the logical progression to single payer, universal health care arguments, you'd probably win them over. How many people in their 50s are facing hardship, if not out and out bankruptcy, because they have developed problems in their aging bodies?

They love it.

". . . and that will give the government the kind of control that it needs.”

Every other western industrial nation has some system of national healthcare that comes with just being a citizen, but that's anathema to this guy. He's allegedly afraid of "government control."

Sheesh!

Who's feeding him these lines. Back in the day we used to call people like him Uncle Toms because he's sure doing somebody's bidding.

And your point would be????


Mostly on the top of your head goober.

Mine too but for different reasons.

Medicare for all, and be done with it.

And why is he against health insurance for everyone?

Single payer sounds exactly right.

Obamacare. Do you think he knows what he's talking about in this one instance!?

thanks Tx

Like getting a hot fudge sundae and a 2 hour massage, without even asking for them.

It's a win win

...just in case, can you explain how stopping Obamacare will result in a single-payer system?

And Democrats won't give up on health care

They're parasitic skimmers that add nothing to the process.

Surely he has been faced with the patients who do not have adequate access to medical care and I would hope he has waived his fees for some of his young patients in need.

The waiving his fees part, that is.

who feels the poor sick and elderly should suck it up or die because they don't deserve any help. There are so many on their side who feel hostile contempt for those who are in need. Its truly unbelievable how many medical doctors live their lives in direct violation of the Hippocratic oath.

good god these people are really fucking stupid.

oh ya...every year i`m sent a big book of options and i have my personal website where i can choose my medical and drug plan.

...was not modeled on the Medicare web site. In another thread, fellow DUer mrmpa was saying that, to look at your ACA application, after you've submitted it, you have to "call the 800#, and ask for that capability," at which point your request is not granted but "prioritized."

What will we do if we get actual healthcare reform?!

And you know what? It's fucking great. You get sick, you go to the VA, they make you not-sick-anymore. The only out-of-pocket expense is an $8 copay on prescriptions. I got cured of a ruptured appendix and had an appendectomy a month later for a total personal outlay of $40. The best part? The second time I went up there, they did surgery on Monday and I was at work again on Friday.

My doctor has both a private practice and a VA practice, and he's told me he MUCH prefers working for the VA.

He's very happy with his new job. He talks with great empathy about the veterans he has as patients because they have so many problems with their lives -- I think he's learned something from the experience and it has made him more humble. He has to commute home to the Boston suburbs from New Haven every weekend, but it's OK with him, even so.

Yeesssssss. To negotiate for lower health care costs among providers. Mwa-ha-ha! And then victory will be ours!

People getting sick and injured should be an EXPENSE to a society. NOT a moneymaking opportunity.

Seriously!



These idiots look at plagues as a goldmine.

How long before one of these evil bastards sets one loose on us to cash in?

Naw,...if there is one thing history has proven it's that evil greedy people never kill for money.

Right?

“What you will see is that a lot of the insurance companies will begin to fold,” Carson speculated. “People will have fewer and fewer options. Ultimately we will have a single-payer system if we don’t stop this from happening, and that will give the government the kind of control that it needs.”

I knew that all along, as it was posted here at DU, and it's happening. People are being freed from working for awful companies that were making them sick as well, just like European healhcare is not tied to their employers. The power of the company store and the plantation is on the way out. They can't hold that threat over employees anymore.

And it was intentional and made gradual. It was designed to end as single payer. I get frustrated by the mewling about it.

The profits were cut from the insurers at a rate that they could not handle. Why do people think they fought so hard?

There is even a clause that when the insurers lost business, workers could go to work for the government at the same rate of pay and benefits or more to administer a Medicare type program. Why is that?

Because they were going to be put out of business. This came out soon after the law was passed, way before the USSC ruled it Constitutional.

The ACA is single payer by stealth. The GOP was right to freak. Can't have Euro stuff here, nosiree!

.. it will "give the government the kind of control it needs." ??? Control that it needs to do what? Is that code for something?

their Anointed One Cruz, to bring the government down to transfer all the wealth of the wicked - meaning the American people as a whole ---

Into the hands of the righteous - meaning them, a boat load of arrogant, misogynist, homophobic Christian Dominionists who think they should rule the world a Kings.

Shows the ones pushing the fear are out to establish their one world religion, and depopulate the USA so that they can inherit the whole place.

All their policies show they want that - from pushing lawlessness, hatred, guns for killing as the solution for every problem, no matter how trivial; with no social safety net such as the ACA expands; and not allowing any of the poor to control their lives, environment, get education, housing, food and healthcare as PBO has worked for and the Euro countries have ---

Well, they had to come up wth something to divert everyone's eyes off the evil they do and they decided to blame it on Obama the anti-Christ, didn't they?

Do you think single payer is a bad thing, that gives some control or power to the governments in Europe so much that their people have been abused with it?

There are several videos on youtube and threads on what the fear mongers are up to and why they oppose the ACA. The canard that the evil gubbermint is out to eat us alive is nothing compared to what they have been encoraging openly. Check my rants in the first pages of my Journal about them.

Single payer is where we're going, and fear of it is what the Teabaggers have been pushing. One can always evaluate, but no need to jump off the cliff in terror. They really do believe that something horrible is going to happen with the ACA.

It's a government program to give people portable health care choices, and keep more money in their pockets.

It ain't the bogeyman they're making it out to be with their code words. If you are having to explain this to some teabaggers, make them think about who wants to see dead people in the USA. Deeds over words and they are killing people right now with defunding the governments.

It ain't Obama, Democrats, the ACA or the government. Make 'em explain their fears. Good luck.

... they're using the religious angle, getting the insane zealots all stirred up, while simultaneously frothing at the mouth in avarice to get their hands on all that money. It's like the 'gument is taking candy from their babies. Freshwest, it's nothing but bait and switch. Like I always say... it's nothing but a shell game. They're all a bunch of effing money grubbing sheisters. Remember Nixon saying "I'm not a crook" and shaking his jowls?

All I know is this: Republicans have become evil incarnate, urged on by their campaign donor corporate backers.

I do believe they have gone too far, though. I know the public has short recall, but how on earth could anyone forget this wasteful $24 billion debauchal in the middle of a recession?

Wouldn't It Be Nice!

It just sucks the candidates in 2008 couldn't support single payer + re-employment / retraining plans to save those people who currently work in health insurance but would've been out of a job. Yes, there was a reason the top candidates supported health insurance reforms. They didn't want to have to get into the details of 250-300k insurance health workers losing their jobs (which is what single payer would've done).

If anything it reveals the current state of our intellectual politics than anything else. If a candidate could've sold single payer, they would've been fucking amazing.

-Laelth

Well, that's technically true, I suppose. If you consider the existence of multitudes of plans for people who can't afford full coverage to really be "options."

It's like muggers complaining that good law enforcement strips victims of the option to pay up more for less severe assaults.

We can easily afford it.

One person on another thread mentioned a Canadian doctor friend who said that there are more MRI machines in Miami than in all of Canada. And there's no shortage of MRI machines in Canada...

In 2011 the government spent about $718 billion on the military, the deficit was $1.3 trillion. Now FY 2011 was an extraordinary year because tax receipts were extremely low and there was extra spending requested due to the stimulus.

But lets say the deficit was only $900 billion. Realistically, lets say we could cut the military budget in half (and that's not totally inconceivable given that a sizable chunk of that $718 billion was Iraq and Afghanistan). So we eliminate $350 billion and we're down to a $550 billion deficit. Lets say we get another $100 billion from taxing the rich.

We're still $450 billion in the hole. And I certainly don't want to cut food stamps, head start, or any other social program, I'd like for us to increase spending on these programs and a whole host of other things that we spend way too little on.

The only way you close the gap (other than gutting Social Security, and I don't want to do that either) is to control the cost of medical care. We spend more per capita on health care than any other country on the planet and we have horrible outcomes to show for it.

... we get from not putting our money in the Cayman bank accounts of MIC corporate owners (here and abroad) and instead putting it in the hands of teachers and firemen and construction workers who will spend it.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-29/billionaires-flee-havens-as-trillions-pursued-offshore.html

I just don't see the point of not reducing costs. Making MRI machines that we don't need is just the same as making airplanes we don't need. It's a wealth transfer to the top with an end product that doesn't benefit the rest of us.

A 20% "re-patrioting" tax on that $9.8 trillion would be a nice chunk of change.

I'm all about reducing the defense budget and taxing the rich, but at a certain point we're "affording" our bloated health care system at the expense of other badly needed investments.

Insurance companies will begin to fold, ahh that would be horrible. .

They employ a lot of people to say 'no, you can't have that surgery/procedure.'

Everyone knows that and so did you Ben Carson. You bought and paid for piece of GOP co. slime.
There was never any doubt that you "elected officials" had you're panties in a bunch about the ACA because the insurance industry was giving you a wedgie.
What I didn't know was that "big insurance" had darned near enough clout to almost screw up the world economy to protect their bottom line.

For such a smart guy, he sure is stupid.

In this country, if you're a specialist (particularly a surgeon) you're expected to be Rich Rich RICH!!!

We already have single-payer in Medicare.

n/t

The insurance companies cannot help themselves. They exist to be predators. They will always push the envelope to drive up the cost of health care because that is how they maximize their profits.

The exchanges simply bring this out into the open. For the first time, we have the ability to to real apples-to-apples comparisons. And when a policy that costs $600/month in California costs $1500/month is State-X for the exact same coverage, the citizens of State-X are going to start asking why. And if this is not enough to stop the predatory behavior of the insurance industry, then people are going to ask, "How much would it cost for Medicare to provide this exact same coverage?"

And when they find out that Medicare can do it for $450/month for citizens in every state, that is what gets us to the public option.

This may not happen all at once. Maybe a future Congress will pass a law that says Medicare has to offer a public option on the exchange, just for the Bronze policies, and just in states where prices are running 25% above the national average.

One step at a time.

The ability to look at the exchanges and begin a fact-based conversation is huge.

Step 1: Get as many people enrolled as possible by 3/31/14 in the current plan.

Step 2: Start talking vigorously about the cases where a public option will be very much in the public interest. Just that discussion will be a factor that drives better behavior out of the insurance companies. And please note that these companies are mostly ripping off the Federal government with their inflated prices in some states. So that measns the public option can be a HUGE factor in reducing the Federal deficit, because if people are paying $400/month instead of $1500/month, the subsidies will be much smaller.

it's a supposedly more credible form of the blatant lie that the ACA is socialized medicine. the ACA will go into effect soon, and it will be abundantly clear that the private insurance companies are still in business, so the lie will have to become less blatant, it will have to take Carson's form: ACA leads to single-payer. With that form of the lie, it will take years to positively disprove.

That would be terrible! Uh, why??

Because it is against the rules to not buy your health insurance from an insurance company? Because they are private companies?

Because government cannot run anything efficiently. Everybody knows that, right?

But didn't the government hire a private company to do the job? On top that, a company in Canada is given the contract, and now they have huge over-runs. And it still is not fixed...

Any fool should have known not to re-hire a company that was first hired by George W Bush.

But, looking at the bright side.

It can only get better from here. Any progress at all will be an improvement. This is called flying by the seat of your pants. But sometimes good intentions can lead to good results.

They say liberals are supposed to be having positive ideals about our future, yet our side is plagued with constant negativity and cynicism.

It's not exactly a leap to imagine it. It's one step at a time in the right direction.

Something that I need single payer supporters to address is someone has to pay to increase the supply of health care providers to handle lots of new patients. Who else but insurance? Those guaranteed payments are what is causing lots of new clinics and urgent care centers to open up right here in my neighborhood. Look around your neighborhoods. Search google for new clinics and urgent care centers opening up. The new clinic across the street from me opened up the same day the insurance marketplaces opened. Think its a coincidence? This country needs more health care providers.

Do folks know that Vermont has signed their single payer system into law and are working on implementation within the ACA? This has to come from the state level like in Canada. It will come sooner than you think. When one or two liberal states do it right, others will want it too. Think about which parts of America are most in need of affordable care and new doctors. Canadian single payer was born in the rural areas of Saskatchewan and Alberta. Read up on how it started there since we are culturally closer to Canada than the other countries that have it. Once California gets it, the rest of the country will eventually follow suit. Their sheer size forces a lot of influence.

We are seeing insurance being independent of employment. We are seeing heavy regulation of the insurance industry. We have a whole new insurance marketplace with transparent pricing and competition and subsidies. We are seeing a noticeable decline in the uninsured rate. There are a lot of very good things in the ACA that if successful and popular will help build up support for future reforms.

Stop thinking that our own party is trying to screw us. We are NOT Republicans!

They have done it before, and they'll do it again. But this just doesn't happen to be one of those times.

Of course the ACA isn't what we all dream of, but compared to prior-law it is a huge improvement.

Let's build on it.

I want better than the ACA, but we are going to have to do this thing one step at a time. We had a 60 year track record of going for the whole enchilada ... and losing every time.