Let's run down the key GOP talking points against universal/single payer healthcare shall we?

The GOP has a set of talking points they like to use against universal healthcare.

Let's make a list and seek ways to defeat each one.

I will start

A) Universal healthcare is government healthcare where they tell you when and who to see for medical treatment.

This is absurd big brother fear mongering. Even single payer healthcare which has the most government involvement is purely a mechanism to pay for healthcare with the government supplanting the insurance companies.

Oh wait...John Edwards just fucked that one up.

Provide that, and I'll agree with you.

"It requires that everybody be covered. It requires that everybody get preventive care," he told a crowd sitting in lawn chairs in front of the Cedar County Courthouse. "If you are going to be in the system, you can't choose not to go to the doctor for 20 years. You have to go in and be checked and make sure that you are OK."

He noted, for example, that women would be required to have regular mammograms in an effort to find and treat "the first trace of problem." Edwards and his wife, Elizabeth, announced earlier this year that her breast cancer had returned and spread.

Edwards said his mandatory health care plan would cover preventive, chronic and long-term health care. The plan would include mental health care as well as dental and vision coverage for all Americans.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070902/ap_on_el_pr/edwards_2

They killed Hillary-care just by whispering that you may not be able to pick your doctor.

Or does he mean you have to get checked on a regular basis to stay in the system? And what intervals do you need to get checked out at? None of this mandatory checkup stuff is on the website.

He wasn't talking about being denied the ability to go or the importance of going for regular checkups.

It doesn't even matter what the details actually are, we're talking the right wing here.

All they needed was a quote talking about mandatory care and they will fucking run with it.

I just mean (ha!) that I'm not quite clear on what he meant by the statement.

He says it in his own words:

(It starts with "We mandate preventative care" at 1:28)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9SgIwzumB4&mode=related&search=

Thanks for the link.

in canada they wait 18 months for treatment.
in england they wait 2 yrs for treatment.
in france they wait 135 years for treatment, plus they are french and they don't bathe.
this is communism in an ugly mask.

A) No choice

Having the government pay for your healthcare will not limit your choice of which doctor to see or which specialist. The government should exist as a pay mechanism only not as an arbiter of medical necessity.

B) Bad treatment

Again under single payer the government exists as a pay mechanism. Other legislation covers quality of treatments and legal remedies for malpractice.

C) Long lines

The lengths for treatment and doctor visits has been vastly overestimated for single payer healthcare systems vs underestimated for our own healthcare system. A recent study showed wait times to be comparable even favorable to single payer countries compared with our own.

what's this with you confusing the issue with facts? How DARE you inject facts into this debate? Don't you know that facts just confuse people, so we must avoid them at all costs?

sheesh, some people never learn. gotta be a democrat party person. sheesh.

The experience of the smoking lawsuits made me leery especially as more and more smoking bans were tied to money spent on healthcare.

And I am still leery of a government trying to restrict behavior under the justification it pays for the consequences (and yes there are far more examples than smoking and in many ways all government authority is derived from that premise) but there are people dying out there.

People who are sick and can't afford to be taken care of.

Sometimes you need to be smacked right in the face with your best friend fighting for her life to realize how fucked the healthcare system truly is.

immediately. Tell me you can do that in Canada or Cuba. Also, health care is already free for those who cannot afford it. They just have to walk into any emergency room in the country - day or night -and receive free health care.

no one just walks into an emergency room and gets treated. Where are you hearing this?

Because your scenario is from the 50's.

and cuba, and show me, also, which hospitals you mean here, because, got news for you, two of the three in my city do NOT take indigent emergency room patients.

Most people in this country don't have the health care plan that you do, Mr President. Also, where do you get the idea that emergency room care is free? It's very expensive as a matter of fact.

Nice to have you on DU though, Your Honor.:hi:

in a month, assuming the insurer approves, and after they cut the bill to shreds.

Don't get me wrong, I hate Edwards' plan to mandate annual check-ups for 300,000,000 Americans is absurd.

But your statement about Canada and the UK is factually wrong. Over 98% OF ALL NEEDED TREATMENTS are provided in a timely and almost immediate way. By contrasat, 15% of people in this nation get no health care coverage. I have two relatives who had to wait 2 months with insurance here in the USA to get hip replacement surgery last year. Now, what's so GREAT about that?

cause we have them believing its communistic. Meanwhile that red state is number one in diabetes, obesity and poverty. Its one of our bright shining stars.

doesn't mean it can manage a health care plan for millions of people.

(wrap your heads around that one for a minute)

does it require money? But you do have a point. Who would have thought a political party could so totally mismanage the whole danged federal government?

...Universal Healthcare will never work because the government doesn't know how to manage healtcare....Total lie.


...but the fact is the government have been providing quality healthcare to millions of citizens for nearly half a century.


Quality of that care is up for debate as when both are properly fundeded and run non-partisan, the care, on average, has been more than adequate. The GOP tries to derail the system by underfunding it and appointing flunkies whose whole goal is to run it into the ground and then turn around and say "see we told it this doesn't work."

http://www.miamiherald.com/692/story/212966.html

>>
Speaking later in Manchester, Clinton said her universal health care plan would not involve a single-payer government system.
>>

Ooops. Guess we can't refute that talking point.

Universal health care will just be the first step toward socialism. Look how well it's working in Cuba, North Korea and China.

country not socialism. I guess you prefer the criminals that were installed into our precious White House by the United States Supreme Cowards. Health care is a 'right' not a profit modus operandi for corporate greed. I guess no one in your family has suffered because they could not afford insurance.:dem:

all the countries who spend less on healthcare and who's citizens have better health?

that almost no one understands- just like the last time.

Apparently, the OP isn't interested in a rational health care system- it looked more like an opportunity to take a swipe at Edwards (though unfortunately that swipe has some merit).

I am aware that my candidate is unlikely to push it though she certainly will sign it.

I think Edwards has a good plan but what he did today may have sunk his chances.

because it doesn't adequately address the underlying problems with respect to costs and inefficiencies and because it discounts the effects of adverse selection in the so called Health Market.

Those are the real problems. That the government sponsored plan requires preventative check-ups (you wouldn't have to choose that plan- though others may have similar requirements) is a comparatively minor issue- though it sure seems to have people fired up.

Personally, I WISH that I could have annual check-ups along with the appropriate screenings (just as all my friends who live abroad do as a matter of course). To me, it's a lot like vaccinations- if you don't require them (say, for entering school, Americans will "choose" to put themselves, their children and others at risk- to cut off their noses to spite their faces.

As they (when required) are directly related to communicable disease.

Getting TB or whooping couch is alot different than we as taxpayers having to pay extra money because some ornery old goat hasn't been to the doctor in 10 years and now has a condition that will be more expensive to treat.

The government can do encouragement/education in regards to that.

I want it mandatory that the government pays for it. I am not interested in government control of my health choices.

Calling any healthplan mandatory on the voters part is a political loser.

if you didn't have check-ups and screenings?

Lots of nasty diseases are subclinical. Hep C, TB and HIV come to mind.

So it's more than just a cost containment thing- and more than just relegating a stubborn old geezer to vascular dementia or amputation(s) because they weren't aware or didn't treat their diabetes.

because the last I heard, you can't include it in regular screenings?