Do you support universal (socialist) health care?

Similar to Canada's. Simple question

Some type of catastrophic converage to all citizens and basic health coverage. People should also be allowed to opt out and be allowed to use that money towards private coverage of their choosing.....

then it could end up being too expensive. It would most likely be the youngest and the healthiest that would do that but then the risk would be skewed for those that remained.

"be allowed to use that money towards private coverage" Sounds like the voucher system that is hurting our public schools. If you want to opt out that's fine but no money is rebated.

Several years ago a daring bunch of caring progressives came up with a single payer health plan for the poor and uninsured in Tennessee called Tenncare.

It was an improvment until "advocates for the poor" and lawyers beat it to death with lawsuits. The mandates from these folks and federal courts bankrupted the plan. The governer of TN just pulled the plug on the system because there was no way that the state could contain the costs of the program. Too bad for the poor that really needed it but the do-gooders really shafted them.

I think now is the time to admit it...come forward with a strong and positive agenda for America.

What have we got to lose?...seriously???

New name to distinguish ourselves from a tainted word... And similar ideals, but not the same ones. One that can be pro-people while being fairly pro-business. AND being pro-country.

You are FOR socalized medicine and AGAINST social security?

More BS.

not Socialist Underground. "We" are not the "socialist party".

I don't think the Democratic Party is socialistic enough.

I like free enterprise (with regulations to keep it from being too vicious).

I do think the government (the people) should take care of it's people. It seems to me that certain natural resources belong to all of us. Water, energy, health care, education and/or job skill training, basic affordable housing (to those that need it).

like Europe.

maybe.

talk about it.

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The socialist party?!
Here are some of the Top-20 contributors to the "socialist" party in 2004:

Goldman Sachs
Microsoft Corp
Citigroup Inc
UBS Americas
JP Morgan Chase & Co
Morgan Stanley
IBM Corp
Viacom Inc
Bank of America

Darned socialists!

Re healthcare: The Swedes spend $1,700/person/year on healthcare. The US spends $5,500. Guess who lives longer? Americans already pay for universal healthcare, we just don't receive it.

It's a Capitalist Party 100%.

It covers the basics. You still have to pay for your own dental, eye care, prescription medications and sometimes therapy.

I recommend seeing the 2004 Oscar winner for Best Foreign Film "The Barbarian Invasion" to get a glimpse of Canadian Healthcare.

That's how the term is understood here.

Yeah, I support it in concept.

But if Bush is the one who creates the policy, and the GOP are the one's instituting it (and they will be since they'll control congress for the next million years or so) then do YOU trust them with your health care?

Why do we need the insurance industry to profit for our healt care?
Single Payer simplifies that. After that, we would just see the physician of our choice.

Controls it.

Frankly, I don't want Bush controlling my healthcare.

I can't stand when people say they want free health care. There is no such thing. If government simply collects premiums or taxes and pays out to the health care and drug corporations, it won't be much different than what we have. With true single payer, you have to have a certain amount of negotiations and price controls, that's what they have in other industrialized countries. Hospitals already have to be cleared through the state to open so that all services in a community are met and so that competition isn't so fierce that it forces a hospital out of business. Single payer will mean more government controls. That does have to be considered.

The problem with free, single-payer health care is that you get what you pay for.

Even the Canadians acknowledge that their health system is in crisis. (Sound familiar?) They speak about the inequities of their two-tiered system, where publicly funded patients wait weeks, if not months, to consult specialists or have routine surgery, while private patients get quick service. In fact, it's a three-tiered system. The very well-to-do travel to the United States for some procedures.

We refer you to a recent editorial in The Windsor (Ontario) Star: ''A growing number of sick and tired Canadians are beginning to look to the US for ideas on how to improve our failing health-care system. But Kerry, inexplicably, is looking north for health care ideas."

This sounds great to you?

You don't think we could do single payer healthcare better than those @#$% Canadians? Why don't you move back to Russia, traitor?

:evilgrin:

Seriously, the problem here is that we have half-assed universal healthcare. Anyone can get treated in an emergency room, which is very expensive, but not everyone can visit a doctor's office, which is relatively cheap. How f-ed up is that? :wtf:

people with insurance wait weeks, if not months, to consult specialists or have routine surgery, while people without insurance get no service.

The Canadian system is underfunded. But despite that, they STILL spend less per capita to cover every single person than the US government does just by itself.

So what if people have to wait for elective surgery? 18,000 people per year in the US die because they can't afford treatment.

Wait. One and NONE.

Try again.

Also try the WHO World Health Rankings and be smited.

He created his own plan. Buy into the federal health plan that all federal employees already have. Bush talked about small business pooling together to buy insurance. It was stupid because we've already got the pool, the federal employees plans. I just wanted to buy some inexpensive health insurance, insurance I could afford. *sigh* Now I get to wait until I'm at death's door to see a doctor. What a plan that is!

film at eleven.

Canada isnt a socialist nation, nor is their health care a socialist concept. Methinks you use the term to preload the answers....sorry it isnt working.

The British and Canadian models (rather similar) both have a flaw or two, one of which is long waits for the poor. But waiting is better than doing without entirely as we see here in America so often.

We need to change a system in which over 42 million of us have no health care whatsoever.Calling an attempt by a nation to bring sanity to a nations health care needs "socialism" is just a poorly thought out concept.

It's just that it happens to be in the lobby of the Emergency Room.

The poor in Canada at least have a chance of getting some preventative care.

Just saying, it isn't that much of a drawback. :shrug:

Other than that, cherry picking the healthy and leaving the sick to die without access to health care is a good way to spread plagues and we will get plagues over and over again even in our country. A majority of killer diseases can be stopped with good health care before they spread into the population at large.

Try again.

Knee jerk reactions are just that, jerky.

and yes, i support universal health care, and no, i don't support socialist health care

The thing about employer sponsored health care is it is a built in incentive to not hire older workers. As you age your premiums go up. The more children you have the higher the premium. Your own or your family medical history can work against you being hired (longterm disease-diabetes, skin cancer, high blood pressure etc) Single payer govt. funded health care would end a level of bias. It could take all of the above issues out of the work place where they don't belong. It could also provide great benefits children, schools and all of us with children in schools by getting communicable bugs treated.
Personally, there were things I had to schedule 1-3 months in advance anyway. Since I no longer have health ins. and have used the emergency room once for an emergency I can tell you it was almost 3 times as expensive as the charges to my insurance plan had been previously.
Another interesting note is checking the AFL-CIO web page for the highest paid CEOs.

Rather than discuss universal=socialist definition. Sheesh, too tired of false choices...

Here is a good link to explain single-payer.

http://www.grahamazon.com/sp/what.php

Seriously do you know anyone that has been turned down for treatment that they would have gotten in a country with "universal healthcare" like the UK or Canada?

My mother-in-law has no job and no insurance. She also has no problem seeing doctors 2 to 3 times a month and takes thousands of dollars worth of medicines every year. The hospitals and doctors send her bills and nasty collection letters regularly, she simply trashes them and doesn't pay, and yet they continue to see her when she comes back again. She has also had her medical debt absolve through bankrupcy twice in the last 5 years.

I'm not that familiar with Canada, but I have spent a fair amount of time in the UK, and thier NHS is a mess. Most people in the UK who are on the waiting list for arthritis surgery will die of old age before thier turn comes. Is that what we want here in the U.S.

I cna tell you one thing for sure, if I had a serious medical condition in England my blue-cross ass would back on the next flight to the United States.

I liked John Kerry's plan. Hell, that's why I voted for him.

It's a matter of we ARE going to have it, like it or not. If you look at the demographics of our country, the aging of the population coupled with the cost of healthcare, it's clear that it's inevitable.