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"Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to it being done at all." – Judge Napolitano via F. Bastiat

Oh man...Atlas is quoting something...I wonder if it agrees with his worldview and seems to answer a question no one asked?!

It agrees with my world view.
Andrew Napolitano himself... Meh.

Damn Socialism being another idea that some people like, though not everyone, and existing. Damn it, why can't the world only have the one ideology that exists in my head? Why can't everyone just think like I do and like the same things I do? Why can't we banish Socialism to the Singularity of the super massive black hole in the center of the galaxy, where it can no longer steal our sweat, brows and bootstraps?

I mean I have never lived in a Socialist state, but I read on the internet someone some where didn't like it. I do the same when it comes to movies. One bad movie review, said movie couldn't possibly be good at all. The time I save from not seeing the movie opens up extra time when I post about how the sales tax on the ticket was too high, the director made me a slave, and the plot had too much red tape in it.

No one has, socialism in the original sense of the word has never been really tried (aside perhaps for some very short lived experiment in Spain in the 30s). Oh, sure lots of countries have called themselves socialist and still do, and we have (deliberately) called lots of countries socialist that were anything but; they were the exact opposite of what I call socialist (and what would now arguably be called libertarian socialism); they were and are oppressive dictactorships with government owned production rather than stateless direct democracies with worker owned production The word socialism has pretty much lost its meaning now.

Really? Where do you live? Out in the middle in the ocean on your own island? You apparently don't know the definition of socialism. And the fact you use state, implies you believe someone has greater authority than you to tell you what to do. Ever paid taxes? I could go on and on, but I'm sure you're just being sarcastic so I'll avoid wasting your time and mine.

Enjoy your "slavery" while you can, it will get worse if you let if fester.

Holy shit! You mean to tell me this whole time American workers have owned the means of production and we didn't even know it? I'm going to have to look into this.

That's actually a really good quote.

It really isn't because it purposefully ignores the fact that the whole reason socialism exists in the first place is that society clearly wasn't doing the things people needed. And still is not.

Unless you believe that society is doing exactly the things people needed.  And still is.

The "American worker" owns most of his production. He pays a portion of that product in taxes and concedes to the state certain specific regulations, which by defintion, no longer makes them the sole owners of their own property. If someone can take from you a portion of your property or dictates to you the means of production, or manipulates and guides you into specific uses thereof, your property becomes part-owned by the state (or third party).

That sort of dicta is socialist by it's very nature. Every government has varying degrees of socialism implemented if volunteerism is diminshed in any way. The US is no different in that respect. It just may be more "free" and less "socialist" than other states in other countries.

Your definition of socialism is so diluted as to be meaningless. Adam Smith qualifies as a socialist under that convoluted meaning.


Yes, but you'd have to willfully ignore all objective reality to believe that.

Somebody explain to me exactly which "ism" that Greece is.

Beyond balking about *not* paying back 50% of their loans. They are balking about austerity measures whereby the government can only spend 120% of GDP each year. I mean WTF!

Socialism wants safety nets to protect some from others.
Communism wants to redistribute only the actual GDP among the workers.
What crazy ass "ism" demands to redistribute wealth that absolutely nobody has created?

Isn't this like saying Andrea Rossi might turn out to be right. So we should all get free electricity now to make up for the obvious unfairness of riches given to future generations?

The greek population has every right to balk. I would balk too if I lived under a corrupt government that was ran by foreign banks and got me and my compatriots in to debt for generations to come. those "austerity" measures are even more idiotic. The only way for greece to ever get back on its feet is by having a growing economy. Killing what little you have as economy does no one any good, particularly if you can not devaluate your currency as greece should.

Here is whats really happening: banks made a fat profits by endebting the greek by corrupting and taking over their government.  Yes, they are spending 120% or whatever of their GDP, but most of that goes to paying back the banks, not the greece population. Now that greece is no longer able to service its debts, those very banks are forcing the hand of the EU to lend money to greece. Not money to spend on reviving its economy, but to pay back the banks. All the while "austerity" measures force greece to do a firesale of what little assets it still has left, like utility companies, heck even islands (!) so the foreign bankers can buy those for pennies on the dollar. If they need any more money for that, they will demand it from the EU as compensation for the losses they made on greek sovereign debt.

BTW, those loans foreign banks are forfeiting; google on odious debt. I would be surprised if only 50% of greek debt was odious and greek people should be under no obligation to pay that back. Of course german and other EU governments have made sure in their agreements to lend greek more money, that those debts will not seriously be investigated. After all, they were hugely profitable for our companies and banks even if they were corrupt and illegal. Its better for us to have future generations of greeks pay for that!

So let's say the default and don't pay a penny back to those greedy bankers. Let's also say the kill or deport all those corrupt government officials. Let's also say they drop out of the Euro currency so they can do what they want with their Drachmas.

A 50% reduction in debt plus austerity measures took them from spending 150% of GDP down to 120% of GDP. Let's say they give up the austerity measures you don't like, but dump the other 50% of debt too. Are you claiming they have a hope in hell of getting by without German/European charity?

Should "the Greek people" choose to go it alone, against the advice of every European neighbor, at what point do you think they become *my* problem? I say never. I'm sure you will differ.

He might at that, but the word has differnet meanings to different people.  There can never be any agreement about what 'socialism' does or should mean because there can never be much more agreement about what Karl Marx intended in his magnum opus 'das kapital'.  It can be interpreted in many different ways, but he was most likely responding to the obvious poverty in the wealthiest city on Earth at that time, London, England.  He never lived long enough to see the fruits of the industrial revolution come to pass, and thus that same abject poverty alieviated by capitalists' own self-serving greed.  Who knows how he would have been changed by that.  As for myself, any society that actively aggresses against a citizen for the simple act of opting out isn't a free society, even if the vast majority of the middle class can reasonablely be considered the privilaged class.

http://www.panarchy.org/spencer/ignore.state.1851.html

If you don't have the right to ignore the state without that same state grabbing you and throwing you into a cage, then you are not really free no matter how much liberty the state permits.

Im not sure what your point is. Should I hate the greek for not repaying illegal and corrupt debts that banks and other companies from my country benefited from ? Not gonna happen. I have no reason to hate greeks, and I will not fall for the caricatures of them being lazy or whatever. The greek people arent responsible for this debacle.

The truth of the matter is Germany, US and other rich western countries and multinationals with the help of institutions like the IMF deliberately ran greece (and so many other countries) in to debts by corrupting their governments, making them dependent on cheap loans they knew they could never be able to pay back, loans that didnt benefit greeks, but for building infrastructure benefiting our oil companies, our rail road manufacturers, our banks, and other companies.  In return for those cheap loans we forced them to implement neoliberalism which really meant allowing our companies to buy greek assets, ports, utilities etc on the cheap. We pretty much took over their government, even helped them to hide the corruption.

Then, once the music stopped, goldman and the like, who fully knew what was happening since they essentially orchestrated it, quickly dumped the toxic assets on greek banks, and rather than lending started shorting greek bonds, thereby ensuring interest rates on those bonds would skyrocket and make the debt unservicable. Clever scheme, they made a fortune on the way up and on the collapse which they timed themselves.

Mind you , its not like greece is unique in this prospect, we do it everywhere. The Balkan, the Mediterranean, Latin America, Africa,.. thats how we try to control those countries.

As for what the greek should do; several Latin American countries where in a position similar to greece. until they elected courageous leadership that didnt surrender to demands of IMF and the big banks for "austerity", commit economical suicide, dismantle and sell off their country; instead they pursued policies that benefited their people and their economy, refused to pay back illegal debts and kicked out the IMF. They seem to be doing relatively fine by themselves now.  I hope the greek find the courage to do the same. Im not demanding they pay for the corruption of our banks and corporations.

Which ones? It doesn't make a good example, unless you give an actual example.

But as long as you are saying, it's not my fault, nor is it my responsibility, then we're good.

Pretty much all of them. Argentina, Brazil, most recently Equador.


No idea what you are saying. Who is "me" in the above quote? If you mean the greek, maybe this will help:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJCHHiQ22GM

No I actually mean *me* "Red", a random American. I've never worked in banking, or taking over foreign governments. Nor do I want to.

So if you are saying that the best thing we (as non-citizens of the target countries) can do is leave countries (and their citizens) alone to work out their own problems. To educate themselves in the ways of productivity and decide on their own rules for civility among themselves, I couldn't agree more.

I never said anything about leaving alone. Why wouldnt we trade, cooperate etc with Greeks or anyone else? Im not an isolationist or nationalist. Im just opposed to neocolonialism thinly disguised as neoliberalism or "free trade". As for what we should do, well one thing is expose and prosecute our corrupt businesses, regardless of the nationality of the people they expoited, and not turn a blind eye or go WAY further and doing their bidding just because they are exploiting another nation's population.

edit: if you meant we should stay out of their politics, then yes, we strongly agree. Unfortunately we do nothing else as meddling in foreign countries politics to benefit our corporations.

I mean certainly we shouldn't be messing in other nation's politics. People should be allowed to form what ever kind of government they want. And if they should happen to want a kind of government that, in retrospect, ends up sucking, well then we should all learn from their mistake. If however it turns out to be genius, there is no law against copying productive social structures.


I think we are arguing on the same side. I'm saying no one should be forced to trade on either side of the table. If Greece sets out to keep devaluing their new Drachma, no one should be forced to trade in or hold Drachma against their will. Even if they are evil banks or corporations. If South American countries don't want to sell us oranges, bananas or even oil, we shouldn't force them to.

But if a legitimately recognized national government says, "Bribes are how we do business!" Then that is between the people and their corrupt government. I don't feel the need to overthrow corrupt foreign governments just because I want to eat bananas. If they say the price is 30 cents per pound plus bribes, then that is what the market price is.

Furthermore, I don't feel the necessity to hamstring companies trying to optimize a service for me (like bringing me bananas), by saying they can not compete to the best of their abilities. International trade is the big leagues. If two parties want to make a deal, they each negotiation the best deal they can. Otherwise, there is no deal to be had. Neither side *must* trade if the deal goes against their best interest.

Here's why I don't like socialism, or any sort of idea that has to do with redistributing wealth:

- My wife currently does not have health insurance, because I make too much money (which isn't very much) for her to be eligible for the state health plan.  I have insurance through my workplace with 20% co-pays.
- I pay taxes
- Those taxes go towards the state health plan, which means I am subsidizing other people's health plans, while not able to pay for health care for my own wife.
- If I wasn't working, we could both get free insurance with $0 co-pays through the state health plan.

Just seems wrong that people who work can go without insurance while anyone who does not work can get insurance with $0 co-pays whenever they want.  It almost makes me want to stop working, just to see what would happen.  If anything, it seems as though those people who are working and helping the economy produce more GDP should be the ones receiving benefits of state health insurance, instead of those who are sitting around watching TV all day.

JMO.

Excellent point. I also dont like socialism because I have a company car, and my girlfriend doesnt, so she keeps borrowing mine or I have to drive her around, and then she wants to drive, and she cant drive very well and I fear she will damage it.

Seriously; Im assuming you are in the US; about the only industrialized country in the world where not everyone has healthcare insurance. If for a second you would use your brain, you might find out that healthcare should NOT be related to your job. Its an insane concept, it makes you a slave of your employer (scared to quit to find another job or start a business because you cant afford to lose healthcare), and when you need healthcare most, you likely wont have a job.

Then after you realized that, if you do some reading, you might find out no country on earth has higher health care costs than the US, while most industrialized countries have better healthcare for a fraction of the cost. On many metrics even Cuba does better. Blame your corrupt and idiotic system, rather than "socialism", which has nothing to do with it. Fixing your healthcare system will not only improve your lives and that of 50 million uninsured and many more underinsured, it will also solve your budget deficit overnight. Just dont call it "socialist" I guess, because thats evil!

You mean in socialism some people don't have cars? That is pretty rare in the US. Even people without health insurance have cars. (true sarcasm)



This is pretty clear to everyone. Except perhaps for our president who decided that making it the employer's problem means he doesn't have to make it his problem.



I'm quite certain you will find every American is in favor of improving our health care system. The politicians however keep proposing systems that make, the already clear, problems much worse. We tend to be against that.

Taxpayer funded healthcare isn't the answer to that either.  There are many Canadians who cross the border just to be able to get timely health care.  Like any other public good, health care will be rationed in some fashion.  The US system is broken because it's partially socialized care, and thus has many of the problems that plague social systems (deferred care, lengthy waits, poor service) as well as issues that drive the public want for such social systems (incompatible compensation networks, varied service models, uncovered populations).

The question is this, is provision of health care a right?  No, it's not.  For if it's a right, then you and I have a claim to the skilled labors of medical professionals, and that is as close to slavery as our modern societies will tolerate.  I say that access to health care is a right, and it is in the US but not in many other places.  I have the literal right to be seen by any specialist without discrimination, provided that I can pay his wages as well as anyone else.  That is not the case in Britain, which can deny such access to medicine as a means of controlling the public cost of health care.

Given a choice between the two perspectives; the right to access versus the right of provision, I'll choose access.


The US has been the market for medical innovation for decades.  Without the high potential profits that such a market represents, many of those great health care services that you can get for less elsewhere wouldn't be available at all.  And teh Cuba reference is rediculous.  Again, it's a matter of access.  Sure the political class has access to free & high quality health care in Cuba.  The ruling classes have such access in every nation on Earth.  This is nothing new.  Yet, even the politicos in Cuba would not have such access if the US's semi-free market in advanced medicine did not exist.

I can solve the debate in ten minutes.  If there must be taxpayer funded health care in the US, then it should be simply defined and never require a new government agency to manage it.  Simple enough rule, if a medical procedure, prescription medicine or device was available to the wealthest American 50 years prior to the current year, then the state should have no problem providing such a service through a public clinic.  But if there is a preferred modern procedure, over the counter alternative, or more advanced medical device; pay for it yourself.  In this way, anyone could go to the public clinic, staffed by government employees, to have a bone set and cast or get a polio vaccine. 

As an aside, I work for a major international corporation founded by some guy who invented a light bulb.  Where I work there is a clinic that is sponsored by the company itself, staffed by salaried employees of the company, using modern medical devices invented by the company, that charges nothing for the use of their services during normal business hours.  At the turn of the year, this clinic will be able to handle full 'primary care' for employees (as opposed to just work like a walk-in urgent care clinic, like it presently does) and plans to open up primary care services to all employees and their dependents regardless of which company sponsored health care plan (traditional, HMO) or unsponsored (Health savings account) that said employee has chosen.  At present, the clinic intends to remain at it's current cost point for all services.  This is a model that existed due to 'mutual aid societies' that were very common in the US prior to FDR, and were the model that American trade unions developed around in the 30's & 40's.

Considering that at least some of those same employees have chosen to not use the company sponsored plans, one might just wonder what motive that a souless company only after the pursuit of profit might have to pay the salary of such a clinic staff.

1) Happy employees with healthy children are productive employees and...

2) company sponsored access to affordable health care (not just health insurance) is a kind of goodwill that promotes loyalty among management salarymen and unonized wage earners alike, even when those who are being manipulated know the motive of the company. 

There is a silver lining to employer based health insurance that you might not recognize in a nation that taxpayers fund medical needs.  Another is that, in order to be adequately covered, one actually must be a productive member of society or otherwise be able to pay for care yourself.  Socially darwinistic, perhaps, but true nonetheless.

OMFG! You heartless bastard! (sarcasm)

I pretty sure you just did something a kin to uttering the name of the lord aloud. And you did in public for all to see! Zeus will surely strike you down with his thunderbolt!

Yes, I know that is the wrong god, but all those supernatural deities tend to stick together. They're like evil bankers or CEOs but they don't even have to answer to stock holders.

Irony is that this comes back to my comment about access being more important than provision.  There are some great hospitals in Havana, Cuba.  It's also likely that a poor citizen who can get to said hospital is going to get care so long as the hospital isn't already at capacity with citizens with a higher political value.  It's not true that it matters how good the hospitals in downtown Havana might be, if you can't get transportation to said hospital when you need to.

Then he probably shouldn't run around telling people they don't know the definition of socialism when his is one shared by maybe 0.00001% of the world's population. You can argue over the little details of socialism, how it should be achieved, the proper place of unions, all of that stuff, but the definitions shared by no actual socialists and only fierce opponents who see a socialist lurking in every shadow are most assuredly not what Marx had in mind.


Oh good, this again. Canada has a higher life expectancy and lower infant mortality rate than the U.S.

Also:



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_Canada

Once again, unpleasant facts stand in your way, but I'm sure they'll be forgotten by tomorrow, to be replaced by uncited assertions that line up more properly with your beliefs.

They have a higher life expectancy because they have a lower infant mortality rate.  They have a lower infant mortality rate because they record infant deaths differently.  In the US, if a fetus is delivered naturally, and was not known to already be dead before labor began, it's counted as an infant death instead of a late term miscarriage.  Thus skewing the life expectancy stats compared to nations that don't include infants that die during or shortly following birth.  I'm not sure how Canada does it, but it's still apples to oranges.  There is also the differences in a higher likelyhood of a US citizen dying as a young adult due to risker lifestyles.  Extreme sports have participants from everywhere, but they are almost invariablely invented here for a reason.  Also, Canada doesn't have nearly the minority population that the US has, and blacks are prone to heart disease for genetic reasons, just as an example.  There are so many things affecting the overly simple metric of life expectancy that comparing two different nations like that is apples to oranges.


Those aren't facts, they're statistics.  Numbers never lie, but the polled sure as hell do.  What kind of result would you have expected?

Seriously? That's your response? That the rate of Canadians going to America specifically for medical treatment is not one quarter of 0.5%, but in fact much, much higher because 17,000 Canadians all lied on the survey? And then they all lied on repeated surveys about how satisfied they were with their medical care, as did the British, while Americans told the truth?

Also, the reason Americans die younger than Canadians? Extreme sports!

Honestly, you couldn't make this shit up if you tried. Just how intellectually dishonest are you capable of being in the name of Free Market Jesus?

More damned dirty lies from lying liar socialists, I guess?

I also love this one:


I notice that there's always an American company with pockets full of money waiting to broadcast the full experience of every Canadian who's ever waited 8 hours in an emergency room, but they somehow manage to ignore all of the times we wait just as long. And none of the media ever seems bothered by the fact that 45,000 Americans a year die due to lack of health insurance (http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2009/09/new-study-finds-45000-deaths-annually-linked-to-lack-of-health-coverage/), which you'd think should be a pretty big deal, but hey what do I know?

Canadians are certainly an interesting breed.

There are really only two conceptually different types of public health care system.

1) Everyone is entitled to a certain level of care paid for by the government. Those who want better care can pay for it on their own.
2) Everyone is entitled to a certain level of care paid for by the government. No one is allowed to purchase better care than that received by every other person.

The last I checked, Canada was in the second category. They are also very proud of the equality of their concept. I find Canadians some of the most civil people on the planet. I don't find your statistics very shocking. It is clear most Canadians would rather wait in line out of respect for civil equality, than sacrifice that principle even if the additional cost for immediate service was trivial to them.

I, however, am a whiny bastard. When I get sick, if I can pay extra to get treated, then get back to bed... Well fuck stoicism.

----

(Edit) I wonder if there are any Canadian bitcoin users? I would be shocked to find even one who thought their Loonie currency should be abandoned just because it was mandated by fiat.

So you dont feel like you have a right to education, or a right to justice, or a right to security, because claiming the skills of educational professionals or judges or police officers is close to slavery? Doesnt make sense to me.


First of all, you seem to be confusing universal health insurance with free medicine. I dont know any place where healthcare is entirely free, I dont even think on cuba; but where I live everyone has insurance, which means that medical costs arent going to bankrupt you and your kids, but its not free. Well, technically, there is a maximum ceiling of medical bills, no matter how much healthcare you need, depending on your income, there will be a ca 2500 euro per year limit. Anything over that is free, even if you are hospitalized 365 days. But that doesnt mean I dont have to pay a dime if I go see a heart specialist, it means having a heart attack or car accident wont put me in a position where I have to sell my house or deny my kids a proper education.

Secondly, Britain is hardly a shining example of socialized medicine. In fact, its as close to the US system as any EU country and about as bad as it gets around here. Its no wonder the US insurance industry likes to point to the UK.  We point to the UK as proof of why privatized health insurance doesnt work.

THirdly, about the right to access; it exists here just as well. Its not mutually exclusive with the right to provision, its a  false dilemma. You are free to go to see any specialist you want. Depending on which type of specialist and the urgency of the condition, you might need to see a general doctor first. Actually, you dont even have to, but if you dont get a letter of referral, insurance wont pay the cost. If you pick a private hospital or a specialist that works outside the public system, the insurance may not pay or may pay only a small amount of the bill. Sounds imminently reasonable to me. You do have choice here as well. Its just that the public system is pretty darn good that hardly anyone feels a need to go outside of it.


Thats a plain silly system. Preferred modern procedure should be insured as well, if its deemed to be worth the cost. Yes, someone will have to make that call, and therefore it will never be perfect, but the idea that only rich would be able to afford, say, state of the art dialysis, because there are machines from the 1950s that also work to some extent, is ridiculous. Thats not to say I dont agree that anyone feeling they should spend or waste money on a unproven or extremely expensive treatment with dubious advantages shouldnt be allowed to do so. Its not like you can not do that over here, there are private clinics, who's costs for the most part are not covered by our universal health care. Thats fine by me, but the public insurance system shouldnt  only pay for WW2 medicine; it should pay for any reasonable treatments.

BTW, if you got rid of your private insurance cleptocracy, for the money the US spends on healthcare you could afford to give everyone state of art treatments. You spend 2x to 3x as much on healthcare per capita as most EU countries (while providing services for only part of them). I honestly dont feel like Im not receiving state of the art healthcare, but imagine what it would be like if you would triple the budget.

I'm in the first category. I think the system works wonderfully, although I don't feel I get "better" care by paying extra. I get "speedier" care. I can bypass some queues. This is something my company pays for me to have me back on the job quicker. I guess it pays off for them.

The comfort in having a baseline service in healthcare is wonderful. And I think the maximum fee for healthcare is about €500/year here, that includes both treatment and medication.

Perhaps I shouldn't use any -ism words at all as they do in fact have many different interpretations by many people. However and notwithstanding that, if your modus operandi is to force a man to relinquish his property for a purpose other than self-defense (or for restitution), you would be stealing, injuring or enslaving. Frederic Bastiat described this as the difference between legal plunder and extralegal plunder.

Legal plunder was where you could legislate laws or statutes which could expropriate another man's property for purposes other than lawful defense. Examples of this would be: government health care, welfare programs, unemployment insurance etc.

Extralegal plunder was more obvious, but neverthess equivalent in its effect. These were things like stealing, murdering, raping, kidnapping, etc.

I'll leave you with one of his quotes as that would be very apropos to this thread, considering the fact it actually began with someone paraphrasing him.

"Collective right, then, has its principle, its reason for existing, its lawfulness, in individual right; and the common force cannot rationally have any other end, or any other mission, than that of the isolated forces for which it is substituted. Thus, as the force of an individual cannot lawfully touch the person, the liberty, or the property of another individual—for the same reason, the common force cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, the liberty, or the property of individuals or of classes.

For this perversion of force would be, in one case as in the other, in contradiction to our premises. For who will dare to say that force has been given to us, not to defend our rights, but to annihilate the equal rights of our brethren? And if this be not true of every individual force, acting independently, how can it be true of the collective force, which is only the organized union of isolated forces?

Nothing, therefore, can be more evident than this: The law is the organization of the natural right of lawful defense; it is the substitution of collective for individual forces, for the purpose of acting in the sphere in which they have a right to act, of doing what they have a right to do, to secure persons, liberties, and properties, and to maintain each in its right, so as to cause justice to reign over all."

I don't know where "here" is but €500/year seems pretty in inexpensive. I imagine that is on top of your normal taxes.

Without making an specific accusations, I do want to point out something that you can only learn through experiences. There is a dramatic difference between "good" care and between "great" care. All doctors are not alike.

For example, my Aunt is 95 years old, and has a blood disease. She was expected to die 5 years ago. However, she so vibrant and active that her doctor thought he should put some extra effort in her treatment. She got blood transfusions almost twice a week for several years. She still gets them every couple of months now. However, if she needs help when her particular doctor is on vacation, the other doctor's best medical judgement is to treat her very basically. She is 95 years old, they think. Why waste good blood! This cause her to spiral downhill until her doctor comes back and treats her properly. Then in less than a day she is up walking and out in the world again. Keep in mind, both of these "standards of care" come from within the same hospital and are provided using standard government medicare insurance for the elderly. She does not pay extra to be treated properly.

I can give you other personal examples of a father in law receiving "good" care in two different local hospitals while remaining near death, but then being "life flighted" three states over to a noted hospital for "optimal" care. He recovered in less than a day.

My own father is 10 years past a stroke and 5 years past colon cancer. You would never know to look at him. He went to the cancer research hospital where they invent the drugs and treatment processes. His doctor sees 500+ colon cancer patients a year. The practical reality is a doctor who sees 5 colon cancer cases a career may still be a good doctor. But there are "better" doctors, and there are clearly "best" doctors for any given medical problem. Again this was medicare, not out of pocket premium care.

I learned this problem most clearly by sitting on a jury. A guy was injured an a car accident. He broke his leg. His doctor testified that it was the most complication leg operation he'd ever had to do. There were multiple screws and pins. It was a horrific injury and this poor gentleman would be on crutches and in constant pain for the rest of his life. The doctor seemed competent and serious.

Then the defense asked another doctor to testify, he said "My name is... I'm the head of sports medicine for...". They asked him if he had seen an injury like this before. He said, "Yes, I do 300 of those a years. It is very common in high school and professional sports." And when they asked him what was the expected recovery rate was, "100%" he said. He was dead serious. I really felt bad for the guy who went to a "good" doctor when he really needed to go to the "best" doctor. And this was just for a broken leg!

Most people know instinctively that you should hire the "best" lawyer you can find. After all, your freedom may be at stake.
Doctoring they think, "is a noble profession" I can trust them, they all look out for my best interests. After all, it's not like I'm risking my freedom, it's only my life.

You have good, bad and fantastic specialists everywhere; it doesnt depend on what sort of healthcare system you have or who pays for it. Its just that some people are more gifted than others, and you cant teach certain gifts at a university. But if healthcare system makes any difference in that regard, perhaps its the fact I can afford to go see the same surgeon that makes international football stars travel here for their treatment as he happens to be a world authority when it comes to knees. For me its not more expensive than any other hospital or any other knee specialist, although obviously, I may have to wait a while as no healthcare system in the world can make him work 20 days per week.

Having affordable healthcare also means you can get second and third opinions and not have to worry too much about the costs. And all too often its a good idea to get second or even third opinions on complex issues. Even doctors are mere mortals, and as you rightly point out, not all of them equally qualified or experienced. And even the gifted ones get it wrong on occasion.

Keep in mind all of my examples happened in the US. None required extra costs. Most of them involve medicare (public healthcare).

I had a friend who was shot in the face. (Not accidentally.) It was treated completely free including follow up plastic surgery to remove a dimple. If I lined up my friends you could not tell who it was. Again, this was done 100% free for someone who has never worked a day in their life. No insurance, no co-pays, no judgement, no threats of lawsuits, no bill collectors. It just gets done.

Somehow the rest of the world has gotten the view that the US has some kind of 3rd world healthcare. It is simply not the case. We have expensive healthcare because of rampant irresponsibility and wackko billing systems. But the actual care is top notch. The rest of the world hears about "high infant mortality" but we walk through hospitals where they regularly save 1 and 2 pound pre-mature babies that would die elsewhere and never having been recorded as a "live birth". This sort of pre-infant care turns out to be very expensive and it runs up all of our cost averages. But quite frankly, absolutely no one is interested in average care.

Well, I never said no one in the US got good healthcare or free/subsidized/insured healthcare. I guess much depends what state you live in, but the fact remains you have over 50 million people with no insurance and over 25 million with inadequate insurance. Thats 42% of your population under 65. Forty two %!

The other facts are just as glaring. Child mortality is among the highest of industrialized countries, life expectancy among the lowest. Cost is at least twice that of other countries. Or to quote this study:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/06/23/us-usa-healthcare-last-idUSTRE65M0SU20100623

"U.S. scores dead last again in healthcare study".

Look, Im all for free markets and market competition, but for some things it just doesnt work, and it shouldnt surprise health insurance is one those things. Keeping people alive just isnt economical and the incentives are perverse and constantly conflict with morality.

It is really an interesting statistic depending on how you spin it. That means 50 million people tend to get healthcare without paying anything. Sometimes it comes from government run health facilities. Often times they get care and just decide not to pay the bills. We have no debtor's prisons for such things. (Nor am I suggesting that we should)

So if you are suggesting that more people in the use should be responsible for paying for their healthcare costs, I couldn't agree more. It would bring the overhead down substantially for those now paying the bills. However, nothing proposed so far aims to make this imbalance better. That is the really sad thing.



Out of 191 countries on the planet. "The United States ranked last when compared to six other countries -- Britain, Canada, Germany, Netherlands, Australia and New Zealand, the Commonwealth Fund report found."

Come on New Zealand had 4 million people. The Netherlands has 16 million. California and the US are pushing those respective numbers in illegal immigrants alone.


But the study is clear about one thing, we are fat and nobody likes to go to the doctor. We are fat because we are very efficient and productive in feeding ourselves. Even our poor are fat. Our food tends to be good, cheep, and restaurant service is fast. Even Europeans get fat when they come here. Should we take better care of ourselves? Yes we should.



I'm pretty much all over these forums saying health insurance is the cause of our problems not the solution. Employer based health insurance is the stupidest concept of them all. I'm quite convinced that nobody should have health insurance. I am however in favor of people receiving proper health CARE. (Feel free to review my other posts on this subject)

Yes, €500 is on top of taxes. You pay a token amount for your visits and medication. Once you hit the ceiling the rest is free (subsidized, stolen by force by honest hard working non leeching people who really shouldn't be forced to pay for anyone but themselves) or whatever you'd like to call it.

I'm happy for your anecdotal evidence and I too have similar stories. I have friends with cancer who have undergone major surgery and are currently on drugs which would make a rather large hole in anyone's wallet. One pill he takes daily costs around $15 and that's just one. $450/month and no income since he can't work while undergoing treatment. Oh, the chemotherapy isn't billed to him. Just the drugs he takes at home. He's quite happy that his only concern is to get well, not how expensive it will be to get there.

I've been hospitalized about 5 times. Great care every time. Same with my wife. My mother in law more times than I can count. Transporting her 500km by ambulance to a hospital closer to her home from where she was hurt, cost €0.

A friend got sick while pregnant. Airlifted to specialist care in the city next to us. Free of charge. Specialist? Free.

Another friend have a chronic disease that should have killed him years ago. He goes to a specialist in another town for treatment. Treatment he could not possibly afford by himself.

I've never heard the term "medical bankruptcy" until I visited the US. I wish the term didn't exist.

That's kinda funny.  You have basicly an annual deductable, like so many Americans.  Yours is just a tad higher than my family deductable.  A notable fact that I find incrediblely amusing.  What country is this, anyway?

Where did you find that bs?  We have roughly 3 million adult citizens that are uninsured, half of which still have access to subsidized health insurance.  That's about 1% of the population.  There is not a single child citizen that doesn't have access to subsidized health care, including those not born in the states themselves, such as Puerto Rico.  For that matter, all US citizens have access to subsidized health care, regardless of age, including felons; for anything immediately threatening.  Illegal immigrants don't, but you weren't counting them, were you?  After all, I wouldn't have a right to your taxpayer funded health care simply by traveling there, would I?  Are you saying that all those funds that I pay for international health coverage while out of country is a waste of my money?  Great!  If I get brain cancer, a plane ticket is far cheaper than health insurance anyway!  I can drop my coverage altogether!  Hey, can I stay with you?

You seem to take things a little more defensively than I intended. I'm not calling your system bad. Indeed, I don't even know what system you use. I'm saying the US system doesn't operate as it is perceived to operate from afar.

However, no matter what system you use, no one should ever *be required* to give up the right to decide exactly what level of care they want to receive. Sometimes, it really matters. Sometimes those decisions are life and death.

Some countries with universal health care do require people to relinquish these rights. Canada prefers one tier for everyone. The UK is reputed to make it difficult to switch counties for care. (I am not an expert on foreign care) Most countries, however, do not require one size fits all healthcare. Most countries allow people to buy "supplemental" insurance or to pay for extra services beyond those automatically afforded to others. However, being responsible for your own additional medical services doesn't make you evil.

The US fits into this second category. We call this optional supplemental insurance, "medical insurance" because the initial tier requires no insurance at all. Indeed the US does have a level of care afforded to everyone without cost. We don't call it "insurance" though. It is called mandatory care. Many people want the bar for mandatory care to be set higher but indeed there is a bar.

Outside of emergencies, often times to receive this free level of care, you are required to stand in lines with people you wouldn't normally associate with. People often find this demeaning. They argue the bar should be set higher so they don't have to associate themselves with such people. To avoid having to be associated with mandatory care, or to avoid having to pay for their own care or to avoid purchasing insurance, many people choose to go to regular for-profit medical providers then just don't pay their bills. This drives for-profit cost up for those that do want to pay.

Approximately 42 percent of adults aged 19 to 64 years old -- 75 million people -- were either underinsured or didn't have health insurance in 2007

http://health.usnews.com/health-news/family-health/articles/2008/06/10/25-million-americans-are-underinsured


Traveling, no. Living here, yes.

Someone pays. Thats the funny thing, you pay 2 or 3x more per capita than other countries while only covering part of your population. The cost per insured person is therefore closer to 4x what other industrial nations pay, yet you get worse healthcare for that. You have to be some ideologue with blinders on to defend the US system when all the numbers show so clearly its not just bad, its horribly inefficient.

No matter how you slice it,  or how you spread the cost, the US system is ridiculously expensive while offering worse quality.


Okay, so you probably do better than Zimbabwe. Is that your benchmark? Try Cuba.


So what, the bigger the scale, the more efficient you could make it. Its harder to get costs down on small scale, a country like the Netherlands has no leverage over pharmaceutical companies compared to the US.  If you can do it on a scale as small as that, surely you could do it on a state level in the US?


Yeah those cliches again. While they may have some truth, they dont explain the results. Read the article. US smokes a whole lot less than europeans, and you are younger.  I also dont think your babies are born fat, so how do you explain child mortality?

Anyway, its your health and your tax dollars. If you are happy spending 3x more for worse quality just so you dont have to call something "socialist", then thats your choice. Im sure happy with my healthcare system and I dont care what you call it.

"Underinsured" is not remotely uninsured.  It's also a vague term.  In the case of this report, it means that 25 million Americans "had inadequate health insurance to cover their medical expenses".  In other words, 25 million Americans no longer have insurance that pays for all their medical costs.  I have no doubt that I will soon be added to this metric, since I will be switching to a health savings account soon.  By my own will, BTW.  My prior health insurance falls under the 'cadillac plan' tax in Obama's health care law, so the company can't afford the costs anymore.  This past year, the average plan value was just under $16K per employee.  Thanks for that promise that I wouldn't have to change plans if I liked mine, Obama!

No contest there, the question then is why is it so inefficient?  I may be too close to see the big picture, but from where I stand it's because of government regulations into the medical industries, not despite them.


The "worse quality" meme is provablely false.  The vast majority of medical advancements over the past 50 years or so came from American doctors and scientists working for companies with a profit motive, whether the doctors themselves were motivated by money or not.  There is literally nothing that you can get medically that I don't have access to, even if you can get it cheaper.  Your high quality care is a direct result of our highly inefficient system.


We do way better than Cuba, too; on average.  Even Casto's health has benefited from American capitalistic medicine.  Which is, itself, and irony; considering that our federal representatives have repeatedly tried to kill him.


Have you bothered to follow this thread?  I addressed this already.  The methods of record keeping is different.  For example, if an infant is born dead, but there was no evidence that the fetus was dead before labor began, that baby is counted as a infant in the US, but not in many other nations until it survives for several minutes outside the womb.  Many other stats are skewed in similar ways, because the standard methods of record keeping is different between countries.  In the US, if a pregant mother is murdered, it's recorded as a double homicide.


You're happy with it because you're ignorant of what the costs are, and I'm not talking about monetary costs.  Pray you never have to find out.

http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba596

Not only that, the US is far wealthier (https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2001rank.html) than New Zealand and the Netherlands combined:

United States GDP - $ 14,660,000,000,000

New Zealand GDP - $ 117,800,000,000

Netherlands GDP - $ 676,900,000,000

And to boot: Monaco, highest listed (https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2102rank.html) life expectancy, had a substantially lower GDP compared to the US: $ 976,300,000 (2006 est.)



No, you didn't address it. You need to show how they are different in Canada from the US, rather than assuming it is. Do the needful and back up this so far unsubstantiated claim.

So I have to support my claims while others do not?

I'm pretty sure I already acknowledged the payment system was horribly inefficient. However, we pay that 2 or 3x you refer to for health care, not for insurance coverage. People get care, whether they are covered or not.



I can only presume you live in one of those six countries. Otherwise your argument about quality of care would be moot. Which one?



The point wasn't of scale. The point was our "costs" you keep referring to include paying for free healthcare for illegal immigrant populations the size of the countries you are referring to. But you knew that. We are obviously such bastards that way.



We have universal care in Massachusetts. The other 49 haven't expressed interest. But if it works out there others may take notice. Interestingly the folks in Massachusetts were pretty strongly against the latest federal plan.



We eat more then you smoke. And curiously, smoking seems to kill people less expensively than obesity. (tongue in cheek)

But curiously, have you looked at our birthrates by demographic group? Unlike Europeans that simply don't breed at all. In the US the poor out breed the rich by quite some margin. And if you saw the kids you would see that many are indeed born fat or at least get that way remarkably quickly.

But even so you may find that is not such a scandal as you are led to believe. Cool Graph (http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=sh_dyn_mort&idim=country:USA&dl=en&hl=en&q=us+child+mortality+rate#ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=sh_dyn_mort&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=country&idim=country:USA:FRA:CUB:MEX:DEU:CAN:GBR&ifdim=country&tdim=true&hl=en&dl=en) The lines are actually all pretty close together. If you figure that many of our births come from recent Mexican immigrants, the numbers start to make a little more sense.

By the way, I'm quite certain you will find we die in more car crashes (because we drive 10 fold more than Europeans). We also have many different types of "death by misadventure". Sometimes crazy people drown their kids in cars. Other times teenagers shoot each other. Mostly this excess mortality isn't a result of a poor medical care. It's because lots of us are a bit less "civilized" then in other countries.



I'm also pretty happy with my healthcare system, my costs, and the results I receive. I wouldn't switch places with anyone. However, I don't remember calling anything socialist.

Im sure thats what the insurance and pharmaceutical companies want you to believe. Yet somehow European and other nations have government controlled health insurance yet are 3x as efficient. So, follow the money. Who pockets all that money? Maybe your doctors make a better income than ours, but thats not going to explain it.  So who wins? If not you the taxpayer, if not the government, if most likely not or not in a meaningful way the medical professionals. AFAICS, that leaves insurance and pharma companies. Let check that theory and google on it:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/feb2010/prof-f19.shtml

$12.2 billion in profits for the 5 biggest US insurers. Not bad. That buys you a few senators no doubt.  And if you give everyone the same insurance, whats the point of these companies, what value do they add? None, they just make your life hard trying their damnest not to have to pay or get sick customers.

Then the other suspect; big pharma:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmaceutical_industry

Top 20 companies, $110 billion net profits. Granted, globally, but there you have it nonetheless.
Mind you, big pharma is an actual industry that does provide very obvious added value, its not like Im oppososed to them being commercial and making profits, but those kinds of number tell you you are paying WAY too much.
And they are paying way too much to your politicians.


What a nonsensical argument. Are you measuring the quality of your health care by "invented in the US" advertisements of pharma industry on tv or what? Gimme a break.


Actually, you dont on a lot of important metrics, like child mortality:
http://www.ageofautism.com/2010/05/us-lagging-behind-much-of-europe-cuba-chile-and-united-arab-emirates-in-child-mortality.html
Despite comparing the worlds richest country to one of the poorest third wold countries thats under half a century embargo.

As if that would explain the stats, common get real. From the above link:

The U.S., which is projected to have 6.7 deaths per 1,000 children this year, saw a 42% decline in child mortality, a pace that is on par with Kazakhstan, Sierra Leone and Angola.
"There are an awful lot of people who think we have the best medical system in the world," said Dr. Christopher Murray, who directs the institute and is an author of the study. "The data is so contrary to that."
Even many countries that already had low child mortality rates, such as Sweden and France, were able to cut their rates more rapidly than the U.S. over the last two decades.
[..]
Although the U.S. spends nearly twice as much per capita on healthcare as most other industrialized countries, researchers are finding substantially higher levels of preventable deaths from diseases such as diabetes and pneumonia.
[..]
Another recent study by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation found that the rate of deaths among women giving birth has actually increased in the U.S. over the last two decades




Always useful to check the source. From the about page:
The National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy research organization, established in 1983. Our goal is to develop and promote private, free-market alternatives to government regulation and control, solving problems by relying on the strength of the competitive, entrepreneurial
private sector.

That sounds like an objective source.Lets see what medical scientists have to say on that:

http://www.otohns.net/default.asp?id=8832

Looks like you dont live any longer than europeans (in fact, your life expectancy is substantially shorter) you just know sooner you will die. I guess thats something.

You do realize that noting the fact that Americans are, on average, much wealthier than other nations tempers some of the differences in actual monetary costs, right?  For example, if I make the American median income (around $31K per year, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_household_income) even a rate of 3 times the cost of care means that, as a realtive percentage of my income, my health care costs less of my income than literally half or more of the planet, even if I had no insurance at all and paid every dime from my own pocket.  New Zealand rings in at about $20K per year, while the Netherlands rings in at about $24K.

The median income of the entire planet is only about $7K per year (http://www.boston.com/news/world/articles/2007/10/07/average_earnings_worldwide/) and that includes Americans.  That means that Americans near the poverty level (In 2009, in the United States of America, the poverty threshold for a single person under 65 was US$11,161; -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_threshold) earn almost twice as much as half the population on Earth, while also being with public transit distance of some of the best hospitals on Earth.  As has already been noted, they get 'mandatory' treatment whether they can pay for it or not.  You can't honestly expect that the lower half of the rest of the world could have access to nearly the same care, even if they could tax their own citizenship to pay for it at a third the cost that the US pays for.

Again, not contest.  But so what?  They are amoral corporations seeking profits.  They still have to 'innovate' continuously in order to do so.  Pharma patents die in the US after 15 years, after which the company loses it's profit advantage to generics manufacturers.  They cost too much, yes.  But they have produced the largest volume of advancements in the history of the world in pursuit of that gob of cash.  Your own society has benefitted unmeasurablely from the inefficiency of the American medical system.

I challenge you to remove every medical advancement that your own nation pays for, but that was created by a for-profit corporation in the United States, and then try to judge how high the quality of your care is then.  You are more dependent upon the US than you care to acknowledge.

And Cuba isn't known for skewing the stats for PR reasons, either; right?  You choose to trust the CUban government that they are better than the US on this?  IS that credible?  Chile is more trustworthy, but how many babies are born without records in either nation?  IF a baby is born in Chile in the slum andit dies, is it recorded?  I doubt it, but it sure will be here.

You quote articles that depend upon government stats from Cuba, but complain that the link that I provide has been produced by a gropup with an obvious bias?  Really?  Why am I even talking to you?  Because they admit to bias, they are falsifying the stats, is that what you believe?


I didn't make the claim that Americans live longer.  There are many other factors that contribute to that, including cultural and racial influences.  Is the gun crime that kills young black men in Chicago a sign of a dysfunctional health care system?

"The primary cause of the disparities between racial and geographic groups is early death from chronic disease and injuries, an analysis of data from the Census Bureau and the National Center for Health Statistics showed."

http://health.dailynewscentral.com/content/view/0002418/42/

And then there is the dramatic range in life expecancies between racially identified sub-cultures...

"Asian-American women living in Bergen County, NJ, enjoy the greatest life expectancy in the US, at 91 years. American Indians in South Dakota have the worst, at 58 years"

And then, what about locale?  The states with the highest life expecancy also happen to be those with the greatest population concentrations, implying that proximity to urban medical centers plays a significant role in life expecancy as well.  Europe is much more densely populated than the US, is it not?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_life_expectancy

What the hell? Do you just make this stuff up off the top of your head? How do you not know that there are 50 million people without insurance in the U.S.?

http://www.gallup.com/poll/121820/one-six-adults-without-health-insurance.aspx
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-16/americans-without-health-insurance-rose-to-52-million-on-job-loss-expense.html
http://money.cnn.com/2011/09/13/news/economy/census_bureau_health_insurance/index.htm

Every one of your posts seems to contain at least one, if not several, bald-faced lies. I don't really feel like you're arguing in good faith.

While I will concede that it's very likely higher than 3 million since the economy crashed, this poll hides some very important details.  First, I said adults & citizens.  This poll includes children of uncovered adults as being uncovered as well.  Being uncovered by your own choice or the lack of action by your parents doesn't really count, because there isn't a single child of a US citizen that isn't eligible for state subsidized coverage.  Not one.  The poll states that they only consider 18+, but by extending their population percentages to the entire population they assume children as well.  A deeper look at the source will also support this position.  Nor does the poll exclude non-citizens from the polled pool, for there is no credible way to do so.  Something that is bound to skew those numbers.  I wouldn't be shocked at all to learn that there were more than 3 million uninsured illegal aliens alone in the US who also happened to have a cell or landline, but not insurance.  If they are citizens, then they also likely have access to subsidized insurance coverage; depending upon the state and the particulars of their situation and/or medical conditions.  Lack of knowledge of such programs isn't anyone else's fault either.  Perhaps I should have been clear that I was talking about adult citizens who were either not eligible period or have explicitly chosen to not pursue such subsidies.  This is akin to the crap about Americans on food assistance (http://hotair.com/archives/2011/11/02/food-stamp-use-reaches-record-45-8-million/), sure the rising trend is evidence of rising need, but it also indicates rising eligibility.  For example, my household is eligible for WIC (woman and infant children) and several of my kids are eligible for state sponsored health insurance, and my household income now pushes six figures.  Why are we eligible?  Because we are also agents of the state, because we are state certified foster parents, and wards of the state live within my household.  Which is also why I know a great deal about those kinds of state subsidized programs.  I literally cannot refuse those programs for these kids, because they are not my kids.  The state is their legal guardian, and I'm the employee.  I can't reject the WIC or Passport (the child health insurance plan) for those kids any more than I can refuse their scheduled vaccines, whether I have a religious objection or not.  I'm bound by contract to abide by the state's policies, and one of them is that the state supports foster children through such programs.

Further, this poll also includes a great many working adults who have access to an employer's plan, but choose not to participate for whatever reason, which skews the low income and younger than 30 brackets.  As well as including those over 65 who don't consider themselves insured, despite the fact that anyone over 65 that isn't eligible for Medicare didn't pay at least 10 years of (payroll) taxes nor a spouse that paid such taxes. (https://questions.medicare.gov/app/answers/detail/a_id/10/~/who-is-eligible-for-medicare%3F)  The only people that such is true are those who are wealthy enough to not need to work at all or those who were not productive citizens long enough to count.  There are so many things wrong with this for me to pick at, I'll stop there for brevity.

Yes, clearly you know more about polling than Gallup does and they never thought of a single one of your concerns. You've busted the case wide open.

Oh, and good job ignoring the link that cites very similar numbers from the Census Bureau.

Fuck it. I'm wasting my breath here. Believe whatever batshit crazy you want as long as it supports your extremist views. 45,000 Americans died last year and another 45,000 will die this year because of apologists like you. That's really all that needs to be said, unless you plan to correct Harvard Medical on their methodology in that study.

Someday you might understand that there's a difference between being a critical thinker and trying to bend reality to fit your worldview. It won't be today, though.

Same to you.

Thats a nonsensical argument. You seem to imply that by overpaying for a completely unnecessary cleptocracy of for profit health insurance, you are somehow advancing medical science; I can only laugh at that. Insurance companies arent the ones driving medical innovation, they just pocket the money, essentially leaching on the system and making killer profits at the expense of people's health.

Pharmaceutical companies do innovate, but having a national health insurance changes nothing about that. We buy the same drugs you know, the same scanners and medical equipment, those companies still have the same incentive to develop new equipments,  drugs and treatments. Our hospitals are no different than yours, they have to control their costs while striving to provide the best healthcare they can, we do have competition between hospitals. All we do is essentially cut out a middle man who's business incentive is selling insurance to healthy people that are less likely to need it and not paying to people who actually do need it;  spending gazillion on advertisements, legal costs and lobbying benefiting no one but their shareholders and politicians.

Anyway, Im going to have to agree with rainingbitcoins, clearly you dont want to face the facts about your broken healthcare system because you think it clashes with your ideology.  The reality is that when it comes to health insurance a free market ideology clashes with morality, as there is no economic incentive to insure (or even treat) people with poor health, particularly if they are unproductive people. Trying to fix that basic contradiction with complex rules simply doesnt work. Accepting health is not a tradable economic asset and access to affordable healthcare a human right, works better. As it turns out, its cheaper too.

That's an interesting perspective that I haven't heard before. So there is free care available to every American, if they want it? Even proactive care?  
I've talked to a lot of people, co workers, friends, relatives, all in the US and never heard this before. What I've been told is that you can't be denied emergency care, so you would have to wait until your condition is severe and then go to the ER. Proactive care is something you'd have to pay for yourself. Have I've been lied to?
I would understand that waiting for a disease to become severe before treating it would drive up costs.

I've never been in a hospital in the UK, but German and French care is great in my (granted, very limited) experience.

And I don't mean to be defensive. It's just that anecdotes doesn't really say much. There are great examples and poor examples in every system. I can give you some real horror stories from our system too. Both the public and the private side.

Yes. By MoonShadow. Repeatedly.

He also said that illegal immigrants can't get emergency care, which, of course, is not true:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Medical_Treatment_and_Active_Labor_Act


I wouldn't listen to a word of his bullshit. He's clearly not interested in an honest argument, and the facts are whatever he wants them to be. You'd have better luck convincing your cat.

No, not really.  'Proactive' care, which I assume means preventative care, isn't easy to come by for free if you are an adult under normal circumstances.  Every major city that I've ever lived in has some kind of public clinic system that one can go to to get such care for free, but it's usually funded (primarily) by a charity organization and tends to be continuously overworked.  However, if you have some kind of established condition that the state considers a disability, such as visual impairment, you can generally get get preventative care coverage via the state's Medicaid block grant programs, but those vary by state.  The statement that only 'emergency care' can't be denied is mostly true, but loses details.  The laws that govern this vary by state, but basicly result in the same end.  Every hospital, in order to be considered a 'public' hospital and receive the many legal and tax benefits of being a public hospital (as opposed to a private corporation, such as the Mayo Clinic) must have and maintain an "emergency room" with a minimum set of equipment, medical staff and 24/7 operations.  These emergency rooms cannot deny service to those who enter the emergency room based upon ability to pay nor, for the most part, the nature of the medical condition.  The only thing that can to discourage the use of the emergency room is to triage the low priority cases, but if you can wait long enough, you will be seen even for simple things that aren't remotely life threatening.  These emergency rooms are a significant operating cost for the hospitals, but less than the legal benefits that they usually receive.  So, as a means of controlling costs, the hospitals will often band together to sponsor the free clinics (in order to offload much of the demand) in major urban areas while encouraging the inclined employees to volunteer some of their time there; while also charging insurance companies enormous markups for emergency room visits, thus resulting in insurance companies sponsoring 'urgent care' clinics with late hours and engaging in publicity campaigns among their covered clients to encourage them to choose the urgent care clinics for "less than emergency" immediate care needs.  The point I making is that, even though care is often not funded by government structures, access to care exists even for the poorest Americans.  It just comes in  variety of forms which are often not widely known.  Another such example are religious aid networks such as Medi-Share (www.medi-share.org) which is a mutual aid/cost sharing network that most people wouldn't consider to be insurance, even though that would be it's net effect.  My mother-in-law is blind, and thus receives coverage under medicaid rules, but those rules don't cover heart surgery.  Yet she received a triple bypass two years ago for next to nothing, because her surgeon was in a charity based cost sharing network.  She knew nothing about such a network, and as such couldn't have applied for the aid unless her doctor had told her about it.  Americans, as a rule, really do tend to care about one another; it's just that Americans, as a rule, don't consider such care a right.  We consider it charity.

I didn't say that they never had such support, but they aren't generally aware of it.  So a phone poll asking if you have insurance coverage isn't going to get a yes out of such people.  I don't know anyone who considers patients rights to be insurance coverage anyway.  You are talking about different things.

Why don't we all be honest about it? Why should any industry be forced to assist another person if they aren't under any contractual obligation (uncoerced consent) to do so? Why should doctors be forced to admit or assist any patient if they don't want to? Why should their salaries be regulated? Why should any "public" universities or colleges limit graduates in the medical industry? Why should the industry control the number of doctors at all? Why should government regulate pharmaceutical costs? Why should government be involved in the medical industry, including education in the first place, except beyond provable physical injury?

Additionally, if you don't like your insurance carrier (any kind mind you), get another one, or go without. If you don't like it, compete or get out of the way. If there was a cure for every ailment, including death and pain, and I was the only person in the world who had it, and I charged a billion currency units, tough nuggies. You can't force me to give it to you. That would be theft and a violation of my personal liberties (aka slavery).

I won't label the above socialist as that word has been bastardized one to many times, but it comes awful close. Nevertheless I'll refrain. Suffice it to say, I will call it a form of slavery.

Life was never fair, and never will be. Trying to force it to be fair is far worse. Get over yourself. Cry me a river.

Honestly, it was a little hard to parse your post. That act deals with the right to not be refused emergency medical coverage and I thought that's what your post referred to. Based on your follow-up post, it looks like I made an incorrect assumption. But you do vastly overstate the availability of aid programs, and the simple fact is that if everyone did know about them, the programs would go broke in 10 minutes. 45k people a year aren't dying because they simply didn't know where to look, and state medical assistance is often difficult to qualify for. There are a shitload of people in my situation - they make too much to get any kind of assistance, but aren't offered insurance through their employer, and couldn't begin to afford non-employer-subsidized insurance without forgoing food or housing.



I don't know. Perhaps because letting the decision of whether someone lives or dies to a cutthroat businessman who profits more if you die is the most dumbass idea I've ever heard.

And of course this coercion you all talk about never seems to apply to regular people coerced by big business. I've actually noticed that a lot of you seem to have weird ideas about what that word even means. A couple months ago, I had to quote the damn dictionary at Atlas because he couldn't understand that you can coerce someone without literally threatening to kill them.


You have all of the compassion and human emotion of a serial killer, and the value system of a 4th grade bully. Also, you belong to an organization that made Joe McCarthy look sane and moderate by comparison.

Maybe, maybe not.  Neither of us could ever know until it's tried.


You keep mentioning the 45K people per year thing.  Where do you come up with that number?  You keep calling me a liar, even when I present support for the position, but you just leave that number hanging out there like it's an accepted fact.  I don't even know where it comes from.


I doubt it.  What state do you live in, how much do you make, and who is your employer?  My wife worked for Wal-Mart for years, after quitting Proctor & Gamble.  She loved the job.  The pay sucked, but strangely enough P&G's pay scale wasn't exactly stellar, even though she had a BS in Biology and worked in her field as a microbiology lab tech.  The health care offered wasn't exactly great either, but their legal aid support (something that I've yet to see from any employer I've ever had since the USMC) was outstanding.  The primary reason that Wal-Mart employees are twice as likely to get public assistance (over competitors such as Target), is because Wal-Mart's associate legal aid will help them get it.

Give me some details, and I will show you that you are wrong.

Yes, there is free care available to every American. However, not in an analogous way to how Europeans use that term. In the US this level of care was created as a safety net for "the poor". However, without attempting to sound too sarcastic, the group called "the poor" has a very low barrier to entry.

I know plenty of folks from upper-middle class families who decided to rebel or otherwise become dysfunctional. They simply go down to the county agencies and declared themselves "in need" of assistance. There is no judgment rendered about why your "wealthy" family would choose not to help you. Nor is there judgement about why they might choose to become dysfunctional. The British have a term called "going on the dole" which carries similar connotations to what I describe above.

So these programs are not entirely free in the European sense. It requires you to declare yourself as being "in need". Some would say whose in these programs are required to pay with their dignity. Rather than strict regulation, a dignity barrier keeps these programs from growing exponentially. Interestingly, many states have extensive advertising and out-reach programs to try and convince "needy" people to sign up for these programs.

As for the programs themselves, Medicaid is the most commonly known outside of the US. However there are a multitude of state and locally managed programs in every jurisdiction. Originally these started with "county hospitals" and emergency rooms like you mentioned. However, that mechanism of service is needlessly costly and generally silly. As such the programs expanded away from the hospitals to county and community "clinics" that serve the same need. Keep in mind that these programs only start the process, they also arrange many medical procedures outside of their programs. These extended procedures are often provided pro-bono by private doctors and for-profit hospitals. (Or maybe for tax write offs. I don't judge motivations. I just watch care happening.)

As others have already pointed out, every child qualifies automatically. Mothers qualify automatically as well. This does provide preventative care, vaccinations, checkups, and especially pre-natal care. Even illegal aliens qualify. Where I live county clinics make every announcement in both English and Spanish. If you sat in the clinic you would be proud of how "progressive" this all seems. The biggest obvious "gap" though is in automatic coverage of working age males, especially the white ones. These folks are expected to take care of themselves. If they can't they are expected to ask for help before receiving benefits. They can qualify of course, however, society tends to charge them a lot in dignity for doing so.

---

The other tiers of health care are "Medicare Insurance", "Private Medical Insurance", and "Self Pay".

Curiously, those who demand the absolute best care aspire to pay for it themselves. *The Rich* never ask, "what is the best insurance?" That question seems entirely silly to them. Obviously, the best care is what they need (or demand) at that moment. Optimal care means, care unconstrained by others who would have them receive less.

---

NOTE: In no way am I declaring our current system as optimal. I'm not even declaring it better than anyone else's system. But before we can improve it, we must understand what it currently is and how it got to be that way. That helps us see what could make it better, and what has already made it worse.

I thought I'd linked that one in this thread, but I must have been thinking of a different one. Here you go: http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2009/09/new-study-finds-45000-deaths-annually-linked-to-lack-of-health-coverage/


That's a little too much info to share on a public forum, but I will say that I work for a small business subcontracting to a larger one in the IT sector and make about $25k/year. A few years back when I was closer to $20k, I was in financial trouble with medical bills and car trouble, and I wanted to see if I qualified for anything, so I headed down to the DPW office. When I told the woman who interviewed me that I made that much and was a single person without kids, she looked like she was trying to choke back a laugh. She told me that I was welcome to go ahead and apply, but that I realistically didn't have a chance.

Hmm, not exactly an unbiased source, but certainly more trustworthy than taking Cuba's government statistics at face value.  I'll accept that number, but what would the number be otherwise?  The implication of the study is that those 45K people wouldn't have died otherwise, but realisticly speaking some percentage of them would have, if for no other reason than some percentage of people that are uninsured are in such a situtation because of their own life decisions, and thus some percentage of them aren't going to get the care that would have saved them even if it were free.  People still die unnecessarily in the best of European style health care systems, and not all because they are delayed or denied care.


I will assume that you are a straight, white male then.  Nonsmoker?  Do you have a particular religion or political ideology (but I repeat myself) you are willing to share?  Where your parents married until you were 18?  Where did/do you attend college?  If you have never gone to college, what is the nearest public university and how old are you?  Would you be willing to consider signing up as a weekend military reservist or national guardsman; or have you ever been a military "brat"?  Or had a parent who was a member of the armed services, even before you were born?  Are any of your ancestors verfiablely of the American Indian tribes, as far back as your great-grandparents?  Did you grow up any urban districts that could have been "federal enterprise zones" (basicly poor enough to get federal funds for small businesses)?  Were either of your parents 'naturalized' citizens?  What state are we talking about?

I'm sure that isn't even an exaustive set of questions, for I'm sure that there are programs that I'm not aware of

Letting them die? Was I the one that caused their death? If someone dies in Timbuktu, and I had the cure, am I responsible for their death? Where are you going with this?


I'm only interested in the version of coercion which involves threats of injury. Me having more money, more insurance, more health care, more assets, more intelligence, more cures, and more things in general, does not equate to threat nor effectuate coercion.


You don't get it do you?; and don't assume that you can equate my example to what I'd do in any particular situation. I do care. I would help. I do have values, morals, scruples, sympathy, empathy, compassion and charity regarding the plight of others.

However, I have zero tolerance for a government which tries to force the above. There is no such thing as forced compassion, forced empathy, or forced charity, to name a few. Forcing the aforementioned is the antithesis of the meaning of those concepts. Government forcing those sorts of things destroys the very nature and purpose of what it means to have those characteristics.

I was demonstrating that force of expropriation is not justified. Nothing more, nothing less. Get a clue.

Yes, they should back up their claims as well. But I also don't care about any of the other (yours or theirs) claims, I am interested in that one claim and that one claim only.


So, again, how does Canada count its infant mortality different than the US? You yourself said you weren't sure how they did it, so how can it be apples and oranges when you don't know there are even oranges involved?

Fair enough.

My google-fu could not produce anything official from the Canadian government, but according to this article (http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/08/infant_mortality_figures_for_us_are_misleading.html) Canadian stats, as well as some European stats, don't consider a baby born with a birthweight of less than 500 grams as ever have been alive, whereas I have already mentioned, US stats would have if there were no direct evidence that that same fetus was already dead before labor began.

"
Low birth weight infants are not counted against the "live birth" statistics for many countries reporting low infant mortality rates.

According to the way statistics are calculated in Canada, Germany, and Austria, a premature baby weighing <500g is not considered a living child.

But in the U.S., such very low birth weight babies are considered live births. The mortality rate of such babies - considered "unsalvageable" outside of the U.S. and therefore never alive - is extraordinarily high; up to 869 per 1,000 in the first month of life alone. This skews U.S. infant mortality statistics.

[...]

Some of the countries reporting infant mortality rates lower than the U.S. classify babies as "stillborn" if they survive less than 24 hours whether or not such babies breathe, move, or have a beating heart at birth.

Forty percent of all infant deaths occur in the first 24 hours of life.

In the United States, all infants who show signs of life at birth (take a breath, move voluntarily, have a heartbeat) are considered alive.

If a child in Hong Kong or Japan is born alive but dies within the first 24 hours of birth, he or she is reported as a "miscarriage" and does not affect the country's reported infant mortality rates.

[...]

Too short to count?

In Switzerland and other parts of Europe, a baby born who is less than 30 centimeters long is not counted as a live birth. Therefore, unlike in the U.S., such high-risk infants cannot affect Swiss infant mortality rates.

Efforts to salvage these tiny babies reflect this classification. Since 2000, 42 of the world's 52 surviving babies weighing less than 400g (0.9 lbs.) were born in the United States."

That is a quote from another article (http://pjmedia.com/blog/the-doctor-is-in-infant-mortality-comparisons-a-statistical-miscarriage/?singlepage=true) which also contains these two gems...

"Norway boasts one of the lowest infant mortality rates in the world. But when the main determinant of mortality — weight at birth — is factored in, Norway has no better survival rates than the United States.

Pregnancies in very young first-time mothers carry a high risk of delivering low birth weight infants. In 2002, the average age of first-time mothers in Canada was 27.7 years. During the same year, the same statistic for U.S. mothers was 25.1 — an all-time high."

Unfortunately the author of the second article doesn't provide references that I can find, so I can't follow her any farther down the rabbit hole.  She also happens to be this woman (http://www.lindahalderman.com/) so you can discount her opinon on the matter considering she is one of those evil conservative doctors who hate life and thus are drawn to public service instead.

Does this adaquately asnwer your question?

EDIT: And there is also this comment from another doctor on the first article...

"As a physician it is common knowledge that the U.S. healthcare system is unrivaled in the care delivered to high risk pregnancies. This country also has (by far) the most advanced neonatal ICU's in the world as well as the best neonatologists. It is annoying to read WHO (World Health Organization) statistics which continue to suggest realtively high infant mortality rates in the US, when it is just the opposite."

I can't believe I overlooked this gem.

The Census Bureau gets it's data from polling US households.  Randomly on a yearly basis, and all that they can every 10 years.  It's often a paper poll, as opposed to a phone poll, but that also introduces self-selection bias because Americans don't have to respond to the random annual poll at all and can simply return the decadal poll with their name and number of household members while leaving the rest blank, and many do out of principle.  I have every time I have received the poll.  Make all the assumption you want about the demographics of those who refuse to reply, but no matter how you spin it, it's still just another poll.