Am I Crazy - to support National Health Care?

I'm am just getting killed by the "successful" yuppies on another site who just don't believe they should have to pay for someone else's insurance or health care.

Our taxes pay for public education and all kinds of other stuff. Why not health care. Sure is better than for a billions of dollar war where all the money is just being poured down a hole in the sand.

And besides, I think it is a disgrace that we are the richest nation in the world and we are something like 46th in health care - behind Croatia or Serbia, for God's sake.

Wait until successful yuppie has a problem and wants to file a claim. Then see how much their "insurance" covers. :thumbsdown:

No

Something will have to change. The cost of health care is going up, while the number of people with insurance is going down. The dollar is worth less and wages are stagnating. More and more people are going to drop dead in the streets for lack of care.

It's just a matter of finding a national health care system which more people will support than block. As you say, stopping the war would be a nice step toward funding it.

I am also just appalled.

Have we always been so closed hearted? I don't think so. And I also don't think most Americans like it that 50 million are uninsured and locked out of the healthcare system.

I don't know that these are really yuppies - I think that they are more from the X generation. And boy are they into money and success.

can the planet support?

want more population.

If we don't face it, we will all suffer with wars, stravation, and disease. It happened before in the world and it will again. The danger now is that we will use Depleted Uranium and Nuclear Bombs. The earth won't recover like before.

she is 27 and never really wanted for anything. Her parents paid for all 6 years of college and paid her rent until she got her masters. She now works for an oil company making $3000.00 a week. Her argument was why should she pay for someones sick kid or someone who has lung cancer because they chose to smoke.

I used her dad as an example. He is a 60 yr old CPA with a flourishing practice who has worked hard his whole life so that both girls could have a nice life and go to college. He recently bought a tree farm for when he retires. I said, lets say he gets sick and had medical bills out the wazoo that insurance didn't cover. He has to sell the tree farm, sell the family home on 32 acres worth $600,000.00 because my sister has no income. All of the sudden, life as they once knew is no longer. Her reply was..."that will never happen". People just don't get it.

that they "worked so hard for."

or she has to move in with them...there goes her big job. Health care costs are one of the main reasons people are losing their homes.

High paying, educated people are out of work all the time in our global economy. She might be downsized since she makes a bundle. Does cutting down trees sound good to a highly educated person? Happens all the time.

The selfish always think bad thing only happen to stupid people. So far she's been golden (because her parents paid for it). That's why the elite are so arrogant.

The same thing happened to my niece. Her mother bought three houses and didn't sell one to pay for the new one. Then the housing market went bust. I kept warning her but she didn't listen to me. She couldn't pay her mortgage when they didn't sell and wanted to borrow money from us.

Prior to that time, her mother offered to pay for the girls college education. The niece and her husband bought a huge new boat because...they didn't have to pay for college. Everyone was golden up to the housing failures.

I said, if her mother didn't rent those properties or sell one she might lose it all. The niece really got moving to talk her mother into renting and not keeping empty houses with mortgages. I said, if your mother losses everything, gets sick, etc. she might have to move in with you since she is retired. That got things moving.

Ask any rich person and they will tell you they could lose it all just like that. Life is not picky about kicking you in the butt.

"The selfish always think bad thing only happen to stupid people. "


Until.it.happens.to.THEM!

and a bout can wipe out an entire lifetime in one fell swoop.

But you clearly hate America. So off to Gitmo you go! :rofl:

Make sure to point out that our system, such as it is, is woefully inefficient and will wind up costing these selfish, self-absorbed online pricks much, much more in the end.

My young neighbors spend like crazy and look at us like we are poor because we don't.

In the 2006 election citizens said in exit polling that they favored National Health Care.

As far as I'm concerned we should do what is best for us not lable it as Socialism or Communism. Do they call the leaders of Britain, Canada, France, Germany Socialists or Communists? Nope.

Right now what we have is not working...we should think outside the box to solve problems. If they don't work get rid of it. Privitization and corportism is not working as an example of what we should get rid of. But Congress and the President are self serving so we have to keep after them.

Not one manadate of the 2006 election (selection) has been carried out. They did children's insurance that that's it. Then they did hearings which ended up going no where. We asked for health care for all not one age group.

Kucinich made a good point that National Health Care would be cheaper since profit (huge profit for shareholders and CEOs) is involved in private insurance. Right now our health costs are higher than any developed country with worse care. Will the British or Spain buy those corporations any time soon like our energy and roads?

the most important word in the vocabulary of these people.

I think they are too young to realize that even the best prepared people get sick and can't work any longer. Or they get old and can't work full time.

Even people who have planned carefully can lose everything. Overnite if they happen to have a huge medical bill.

On what type of national health care system you support.

We need to start and use other systems which are successful.

Then, they won't have the money to buy a BMW, fancy clothes, etc.

People who haven't had a real sickness in their family, have no idea what happens and how quickly a severe medical condition plunges them into "the poor house".

Our current system does not adequately spread the risk. Further, our current system does not really encourage investment in preventive care. A health insurer isn't going to pay for a lot of preventive care because it takes years or decades to produce results. By then, most insureds have changed insurers several times.

Insurance companies spend too much on marketing, CEO salaries, stockholder returns, ways to deny care, impediments to care, etc.

In any event, these fuckers need to watch -- really watch -- "Sicko". And maybe visit a nursing facility and see people who were doing well financially until the auto wreck, cancer, mental illness, fall, etc., struck.

Appealing to them about fairness and that everyone deserves adequate health care, won't work. They are the new Libertarians/Republicans who believe "as long as I can get mine (or have mine), the hell with anyone else."

But, I suppose most of us here know all this.

after they had theirs.

becomes more and more mired in economic problems, the issue of health care will become increasingly radicalized. As it should; in my experiences and from my observations, health care is badly broken in this country. No one should live in fear of becoming ill because they don't have the resources to care for themselves and their loved ones.

If there's endless money for the defense industry, then there's money for basic human needs.

They've got a typical "I've got mine, screw you" attitude. Because they are currently young, healthy, and successful, and don't think they will ever be jobless. Typical freeper types.

There was a freeper a couple years ago who posted a message over there. He'd always opposed national health insurance. Then his wife got sick and had to go on disability, and he lost his job. Suddenly, when faced the prospect of losing his home and life savings, with no real job prospects, this freeper, who looked down his nose all his life at those shiftless losers who couldn't hold a job or didn't properly save for retirement, suddenly because an advocate for national health insurance.

They couldn't care less about anyone else for their entire life, but if it happens to them, they suddenly change their tune.

ask them if they are proud of the fact that more than 100,000 Missourians have no health insurance.

What the hell do they think insurance companies do????? They take their "hard earned money" to pay for someone elses healthcare WHILE MAKING A PROFIT from their "hard earned money".

Medicare for all system would be CHEAPER as there is no need to make a profit and pay CEOs millions per year.

I declined my company-provided health insurance.

I also buy cars I can afford to pay cash for, so I can keep liability only on them. Not a big fan of insurance companies, and I'll do whatever I can to not provide them with a profit.

if they're so "successful," i wonder what they're worried about, national health care means less layers of bureaucracy and less dollars wasted on paper pushing and more dollars going directly into care -- it will put more money in their pocket as well as in yours and mine

are you sure the yuppies you're arguing with are real people? they're probably pod people -- parasites who work in the insurance industry and whose "success" depends on stealing other people's access to care

We're about 60 trillion dollars in debt, if you include the unfunded liabilities coming up. We CAN have it, but we have to be willing to give up something else. I would love to see us close all of our foreign military bases and cut defense spending back to something sane, like about 5% of what it is now. If we did that, we could afford Universal Health Care.

As it stands, we can't.

First, there are enormous savings that can be made in a properly managed system with the emphasis on prevention.

Second, you cut out the 30% or so that goes to non-health care like marketing, profits, dicks to deny claims, etc.

Third, we can raise taxes a few points if necessary in the short run. In the long run, the businesses will be glad to be relieved of providing health care and taxes will simply pick up what they were paying through another channel.

I certainly agree on the military aspect. We don't need a military capable of conquering the world and imposing our will on others, with or without health care reform. Using our military for Defense is much less expensive and effective.

Finally, it is just something we have to do even if it costs some of us a bit more.

and with liabilities coming up, including the aging of the baby boomers, we're beyond dead broke, we're in the hole, and really deep.

There is an overall cost savings in universal health care's adoption in the things you mention (a cost savings in the private sector), but how does that translate into an increase in money in the federal budget? You are assuming that the costs saved by eliminating the parasitic health insurance industry would go directly toward funding national health care. That is not what would happen without a dramatic increase in taxes and regulation, one that just about cannot pass through congress.

The fact we're going to have to face is that we are deep, deep, deep in the hole financially. With a recession piling on top of that. We need to get our fiscal house in order before we start adding liabilities. IOW, we have to pay off our credit cards and buy groceries before we pay for what is, in essence, a luxury item (at least in terms of governmental programs - I'm certainly not classing medical care for individuals as a luxury).

(your check should have seen a big increase) but they spent it. Greenspan helped Bush steal it. It was robbery for the future of Baby Boomers.

And borrowed against several times after it was stolen.

That money is gone.

Right now our car industry is moving to Canada (Detroit in ruins with empty houses, etc.) because they have National Health Care and it is cheaper to manufacture there.

Without it the other developed countries with free health care for business are stealing our jobs.

Senator Carol Mosley Braun (D-IL) said it years ago. People made fun of her saying it was Socialism...Communism, etc.

Off the subject but important regarding her letter.

http://www.estherpollard.com/1993/081293.htm I don't agree with her regarding this spy. He did a lot of damage to our intelligence agency (although not as much as Rove and Bush). In the past Pollard would have received the death sentence as required by law for spying. Our spies may have died from his information...or our security threatened from the technology secrets sold. He did get a break Carol.

http://www.jonathanpollard.org/sentences.htm Seems we are pretty lenient with spies over the last few years. Why is that? Afro-Americans serve more time for stealing a car or doing drugs. Even Libby hasn't been punished for his crimes...period.

Mossad illegals were rounded up after 911 and sent back to Israel. What is that? If you spy for our "friends" you go free? Israel gets away with too much.

We could pay for a lot of health care with the billions we send to Israel. They have free health care we don't. They attack other nations with our money and weapons. We have idiots in Congress. When are they going to look after our best interest with our money?

from the manufacturers to the taxpayers. And Canada doesn't have a world-spanning empire to sustain, they don't have welfare check nations like Israel, Egypt and Saudi Arabia to support, and they don't have to worry constantly about defending South Korea, Germany, Japan and the rest of the world from the other rest of the world.

We've taken on too much. We may be the richest nation in the world (I don't know if that's really true anymore) but we're also the biggest spenders in the world, by an amount that exceeds our wealth.

We can't afford new expenses right now. We have to cut costs.

We didn't learn from their mistakes. Where is our $4 trillion dollars George?

We are the largest debtor nation much like Argentina four years ago. Their leader took off with their treasury and left them. Ours just steals it for his friends and remains in power.

As Kucinich always says "We are ALREADY PAYING for universal health care; we just aren't GETTING it."

You are talking about the total cost of healthcare we pay as a nation (of which the majority is private sector costs) versus what they pay as governments for their versions of universal health care.

The difference is that their governments are, by and large, not broke and in debt. Our government is. We can't afford our current obligations, much less any new ones.

I'm not against universal healthcare, but it is something we need to put behind ending the war and putting our fiscal house in order.

--and use them to provide CARE instead of denial of care. Whatever extra bells and whistles people would want would still be out of pocket, of course.

A private company contracts with an individual to provide a service and you're saying the government could just "commandeer" the payments made voluntarily between those parties? And wouldn't the private individual simply cancel his insurance and stop paying premiums?

It sounds great on paper, but there'd be a million ways around something like that, even if it did withstand constitutional muster, which I don't think it would.

Health care is a public good, period. The same constitutional permission given to promote the general welfare with fire and police protection applies to health care. There isn't any horseshit about "choosing the fire protection that's best for your family." You just pay your property tax, directly or indirectly, and if your house catches fire, they just send a truck out. A heart attack is not the slightest bit different IMO.

,...selfish ways, finding gratitude for the public-sponsored health care either their kids or they, themselves receive.

There is NO EXCUSE for ANY AMERICAN to go without health care. NONE!!!

But they line up at the gas station for todays ass gouging with no problem ...

Funny how those who rail against taxes dont seem to mind being 'taxed' by greedy supporters of the 'tax hating party' ....

The profit motive has no place in public health care ..... It distorts the market, and denies the less fortunate .... The nonsense that free markets produce efficiencies is revealed false by the FACT of outrageously HIGH and rapidly escalating prices in health care for the last 30 years ....

Over half of all bankruptcies are because of health care costs.

If you don't have health insurance in this country, you're probably going to die one day from lack of proper medical attention. You won't get the test you need, the attention you need, the care you need. You'll be taken by ambulance past ten hospitals, while expiring, because at those hospitals, no insurance means GO TO HELL, YOU DEADBEAT!!

Shameful, and uncivilized.

Like patients of the NHS in Britain?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=515332&in_page_id=1770

A&E patients left in ambulances for up to FIVE hours 'so trusts can meet government targets'
By DANIEL MARTIN - More by this author » Last updated at 01:01am on 18th February 2008

Comments Comments
Seriously ill patients are being kept in ambulances outside hospitals for hours so NHS trusts do not miss Government targets.

Thousands of people a year are having to wait outside accident and emergency departments because trusts will not let them in until they can treat them within four hours, in line with a Labour pledge.

The hold-ups mean ambulances are not available to answer fresh 999 calls.

And stick your horror stories of universal health care where the proctologist puts his finger.

If you want insurance that gives you more than universal health care, knock yourself out. I'm worried about the 40 million who don't have it, not those who do. And I'm really not concerned about people like you, who rationalize that such universal care will somehow be worse than what we have now.

We rank well below some small countries. Canada and the UK rank above us in medical care. Public Citizen has been warning us against this horror. We rank below 35th.

I'm sure you've heard the horror stories in this country?

I got to sit with my 88-year-old grandmother for 5 hours after she had a stroke.

Don't know if I blame our healthcare system, or the waiting room full of neighbors from the south who couldn't speak English. I know it burned me up at the time that she paid taxes for 70 years, but came last in line after 50 or so people who didn't.

they went to doctors. Our emergency rooms aren't doing well because of it.

It is a VERY right-wing unreliable British tabloid. You have right-wing talk shows, we have the tabloids.

Thatcher and Blair have done their best to undermine the NHS, which ran much better pre-Thatcher. Still it is infinitely better than not having it!

I think my usual source from across the pond is the guardian. I just happened to remember seeing that article a few days before, so I looked it up again when this topic came up.

Thanks for the tip - I'll keep that in mind if I see news from them in the future.

We need to introduce some socialism to the mix if we are really committed to promoting the general welfare.

Social Democracies.

We can do what is best for it without labels. Money doesn't buy happiness. Money at the top and a large number...none at the bottom makes us 3rd world.

Instead of calling them out, or, calling them names, you should try to educate them. They think they have to pay for everyone else like the poor or lower income by spending more of there income through higher tax's. This isn't true and so they need educating. UHC is the ONLY way to go. People that get sick will wind up in the hospital whether they have insurance or not. Most ER's have long waiting times because the people without insurance use it as there primary healthcare provider because they can't get there own family doctor. When people think of UHC the first thing that comes to mind is higher tax's because they hear europeans talking about tax's.

Our healthcare system is broken. Unless we fix it now it is only going to get worse. Premiums are getting so expensive even the middle class are having a hard time paying it, even if they have it subsidized through there employer, along with all the other bills they have. It's gotten to the point many jobs don't even offer company subsidized premiums. They just can't afford it. Your left to pay for it your self. With a single payer system where every US citizen is paying into it, that will lower the rates tremendously because the funding goes to one system. My best suggestion to you when the Yuppies say they don't think it's fair they have to pay for everyone else would be to say, "your not going to have to pay for everyone else with UHC because with everyone paying into a single payer system it will most likely decrease what your paying for your insurance now. Tell them this plan would force costs of care to be lowered because there would be no competing company's. Also, tell them it would lower the waiting times in ER's because everyone would have a family doctor to go to which is the beginning of preventive care".

I think if I were picking between Hillary or Obama's healthcare I'd have to pick Hillary's. She doesn't have UHC but it's about as close as we have when you look at both of there plans. I don't agree with people oping out of healthcare. Everyone should be forced to have healthcare like everyone is forced to pay tax's, pay social security, pay for state tax's, pay for medicare.

I don't think it is possible to educate him. He already knows all there is to know about just about everything in the whole world.

When virtually all national political leaders, an entire group of multi-billion dollar industries, both major political parties, the overwhelming majority of business leaders and financial pundits, our rugged individualist creation myth, about 80 or 90 million 17th century wingnuts posing as christians, every major mass media outlet, the sitting administration and all candidates for the presidency say you're nuts... you'd be crazy not to believe it.

If it's any comfort, I'm equally insane but my madness remains hidden for the time being. But there's murder in my heart every month as I pay another month's protection money -- which will add up to $14,088 by the end of the year -- and then still have to grovel to get some routine, mainstream, necessary drug or procedure covered.

Yup, we're nuts to want to change the best health care system in the world.


wp

Let me see if I get this straight-America can spend trillions of dollars in a campaign to kill people in Iraq, yet we can't afford to give health coverage to our own citizens?

What rot.....

Republicans who flat out oppose health coverage have no compassion or empathy- why do these people even bother to worship Jesus- a guy who spent all his time helping the less fortunate?

I live in MA, and you may have heard Mittens claim all MA citizens have health coverage-Well, the way it works is citizens are required to buy health coverage,or face fines. Thats makes sense-If you can't afford health coverage, you pay a monthly fine. Typical Republican anti logic. But it's a sweetheart deal to the Health Provider companies.You pay for coverage out of pocket, they profit.

God forbid we use tax dollars to help Americans!