If Medicare for Everyone is So Bad, Why Does Every Nation Who Has It Keep It? 10 Questions

Submitted by Dave Lindorff on Mon, 08/10/2009 - 7:33pm.

Guest Commentary

BUZZFLASH GUEST COMMENTARY

Forwarded by Dave Lindorff (based on an idea from one of his readers)

Questions Should You Find Yourself at a microphone at a 'Town Meeting':

1. If Canada's single-payer system is so god-awful, why have repeated Conservative governments at the provincial and national level in Canada never touched it? Canada is a democracy. If Canadians don't like their health care system, why haven't they gotten rid of it in 35 years? Since the system there is run by the separate provinces, many of which are very politically conservative, why has not one province ever tried to get rid of single-payer?

2. Why is rationing by income, as we do it here, better than rationing by need, as they do it in Canada?

3. Wouldn't single-payer mean that companies could no longer threaten working people with the loss of their health insurance? Why is this a bad idea?

4. The bigger the insurance pool, the better. So doesn't having a national pool, as with single-payer, make the most sense?

5. Why should we be allowing politicians who are taking money from the medical industry to write the new health care legislation?

6. How can the Congress be developing a health system reform scheme and not even invite experts from Canada down to explain their successful system?

7. If Medicare--a single-payer system here in America--is so popular with the elderly, how come it's no good for the rest of us?

8. Isn't it true that Medicare currently finances the most costly patient group--the elderly and infirm--so that extending it to the rest of the population--most of whom are young and healthy--would be much cheaper, per person?

9. The AMA, the Pharmaceutical Industry, and the Insurance Industry all bitterly opposed Medicare in 1964-5 when it was being debated in Congress and passed into law, with the right, led by Ronald Reagan, calling it creeping socialism. It became a life-saver for the elderly and didn't turn the US into a soviet republic. Why should we give a tinker's damn what those same three industry groups and the Republican right think of expanding single-payer now?

10. The executives of Canadian subsidiaries of US companies all support Canada's single-payer system, and even lobby collectively to have it expanded and better funded. Why does Congress listen to the executives of the parent companies here at home, and not invite those Canadian execs down to explain why they like single-payer?

BUZZFLASH GUEST COMMENTARY

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Submitted by archieotto on Fri, 03/19/2010 - 9:41pm.

I will try to answer your questions as I see them, in my own opinion.

Canada won't change their health care system because is something is good there is no point on changing it.

Need is what pushed us forward in evolution there for any action based on fulfilling that need a step forward.

It's not a bad idea to have relaxed and worry free people that can be more productive this way.

Having a national pool is far better because it can cover even the most expensive intervention without taking a big hit. The health care legislation should be written by the people's representatives not by the pharma companies.

Why would they want a normal and functional health system that brings them no direct profit? They will chose whatever system brings more money in their pockets.

The elderly have accumulated founds to pay for their health care bills, we haven't and we are a risk for insurance companies.

They work as a business, they want profit. Healthy people would have to pay less thus generating less profit.

Again, it's all about the money.

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More Soros whore lies

Submitted by BruceMajors on Tue, 08/11/2009 - 7:02pm.

Who Has It Keep It? 10 Questions By Dave Lindorff Created 08/10/2009 - 7:33pm BUZZFLASH GUEST COMMENTARY Forwarded by Dave Lindorff (based on an idea from one of his readers) Questions Should You Find Yourself at a microphone at a 'Town Meeting': 1. If Canada's single-payer system is so god-awful, why have repeated Conservative governments at the provincial and national level in Canada never touched it? Canada is a democracy. If Canadians don't like their health care system, why haven't they gotten rid of it in 35 years? Since the system there is run by the separate provinces, many of which are very politically conservative, why has not one province ever tried to get rid of single-payer? Canadians come here when they need all the things socialized medicine doesn't supply 2. Why is rationing by income, as we do it here, better than rationing by need, as they do it in Canada? Rofl. This is what dumbo Obama said today in his Potemkin Village fake townhall. It betrays how stupid he and proudwhore are about the way innovations and economies work. New innovations are created, from lasik surgery to cell phones and they arevery expensive at first. The market then makes them cheaper. (Lasik surgery has become much cheaper; only the things paid for by government regulated tax code generated insurance plans have not.) Government programs, to take dumbo Obama's example, the Post Office, do not even innovate. It took USPS decades to figure out a vending machine could sell a stamp,long after private retailers had them selling tampons, songs, snacks, etc 3. Wouldn't single-payer mean that companies could no longer threaten working people with the loss of their health insurance? Why is this a bad idea? Anyone can buy a heath insurance policy or save for medical bills. The reason this threat exists is because government has used the tax code to make people get health insurance through their employers, because if the buy the policy on their own they pay taxes on it 4. The bigger the insurance pool, the better. So doesn't having a national pool, as with single-payer, make the most sense? Wow. Really stupid. So if we added to your pool of homeowner's insurance a bunch of people with vacation homes near a forest that has annual forest fires that would lower your rates? You are just dumb 5. Why should we be allowing politicians who are taking money from the medical industry to write the new health care legislation? You mean like Obama? A progressive group had to sue him to make him release the list of lobbyists he has met with. Big Pharma is behind his nationalized medicine, because they know they can force everyone to pay for more drugs through taxation, and better yet they can regulate upstart competitorcompanies and new drugs off the market 6. How can the Congress be developing a health system reform scheme and not even invite experts from Canada down to explain their successful system? What makes you an expert when your system has waiting lists for people longer than the one veterinary care has in the same country. That's like saying you should invite the KGB to advise you on prison construction 7. If Medicare--a single-payer system here in America--is so popular with the elderly, how come it's no good for the rest of us? Medicare is going bankrupt. That is one reason Obama wants nationalized health care where he can ration treatment to the elderly so they will die and stop costing money 8. Isn't it true that Medicare currently finances the most costly patient group--the elderly and infirm--so that extending it to the rest of the population--most of whom are young and healthy--would be much cheaper, per person? It would be more expensive for the healthy and young if you are taxing them to pay for the elderly and infirm 9. The AMA, the Pharmaceutical Industry, and the Insurance Industry all bitterly opposed Medicare in 1964-5 when it was being debated in Congress and passed into law, with the right, led by Ronald Reagan, calling it creeping socialism. It became a life-saver for the elderly and didn't turn the US into a soviet republic. Why should we give a tinker's damn what those same three industry groups and the Republican right think of expanding single-payer now? Such a dishonest question. If your analysis doesn;t take into account the looming bankruptcy of Medicare,then you are just another ignorant flak whore 10. The executives of Canadian subsidiaries of US companies all support Canada's single-payer system, and even lobby collectively to have it expanded and better funded. Why does Congress listen to the executives of the parent companies here at home, and not invite those Canadian execs down to explain why they like single-payer? You are schizophrenic. You cannot decide if it a corporation approving of something damns it or justifies it. Established corporations always want taxpayer subsidies, including for wages and benefits like health care.

Obama's Potemkin Village

Submitted by BruceMajors on Tue, 08/11/2009 - 6:37pm.

President Obama seems to be a congenital liar, and perhaps a little more stupid than his fans thought. A product of a long process of social promotion and congenial B studenthood, perhaps. (If he would release his transcripts we would know.) Today he conducted a Potemkin Village townhall in New Hampshire, much like Stalin created fake Russian villages with fake prosperity and villagers ordered to smile and answer correctly to Western journalists. The New Hampshire Potemkin townhall was pathetic, with staged softball questions and a moronic analogy between his proposed public health option and the US Postal Service. Does Obama want us to think the public health option will suck more and more taxpayer money into a black hole, while providing shoddy service, little innovation, and being forced to close hospitals and leave communities with diminishing services, as does the Post Office? Does he think that the governmental Post Office was created AFTER FedEX and UPS came into existence, to keep them "honest" by providing competition? Leaving aside the Obama crew's failure to grasp that insurance companies provide a check on each other, as long as we are free to pick among them (and would provide more options and be more competitive if the government did not regulate them into uniformity with mandates and prevent them from competing across state lines for our business), what about the question of innovation? The US Post Office only managed to figure out a vending machines could sell a stamp decades after private retailers had been using them to sell gum, snacks, condoms, tampons and everything else. Governments do not innovate, and have little incentive to do so. And what of government's failure to innovate if we allow Obama to nationalize the 1/6 of our economy devoted to medical care? One of President Obama's recent statements about the furor he is facing from voters is that it's OK that nationalized medical care may mean old people (and others? the handicapped? disabled? incurable? genetically compromised?) will be strongly "nudged" (to use Obama team member Cass Sunstein's new Orwellian term for totalitarianism) to forego costly treatments and just take pain killers and expire without making trouble, because "we" already ration health care in that those evil insurance companies sometimes say "no" to such treatments. Of course one can always pick an insurance company that does cover what you need treated. Or you can pay cash for a treatment, even if that means mortgaging a house, borrowing from relatives, or appealing for donations. Obama is either dishonest or dumb in that he evades the way innovations happen, perhaps because he intends for innovation to end, or at least be strictly controlled by a federal government that will decide when any are needed. Innovators in a market economy usually create new products and services that are extremely expensive and available only to the wealthy initially, and then are made more cheaply by new competitors entering the market. A recent example being flat screen TVs or cell phones, once luxury items, a few years later, cheap and ubiquitous. Medicine is, or should be, no different, as such things as lasik surgery have shown. Most medical services, other than cosmetic surgery, today are provided in very heavily regulated markets, and paid for by government-controlled health insurance provided to employees through their employers because of the tax code. Consumers do not have the same control they do in their free market purchases where they shop and control the purse strings. As a result the medical technologies covered by current government-regulated insurance have not fallen in price as rapidly as lasik surgery. Overall health expenditures increased from 5.9 percent to about 14 percent of gross domestic product from 1965 to 2001 and to grow to 16.2 percent of GDP by 2008.1 Henry Aaron, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, recently asserted that medical spending continues to rise faster than the GDP because the population is growing and new medical technologies and therapies are constantly being developed to enable more people to receive treatment than previously possible.2 Professor Mark Pauly of the Wharton School of Business stated, “Basically, most of the data I know about indicates that the lion’s share—whatever that is—of the growth in medical spending per capita, even after you adjust for the aging population, is accounted for by what we call technology.”3 For example, before the development of hip-replacement surgery, an arthritic hip was treated with aspirin and a walker. Now a single hip replacement can cost from $20,000 up to $50,000 depending on age and the length of hospital stay.4 Advances in medical equipment also seem to drive medical expenses ever upward. MRI (magnetic resonance imagery) machines involve both heavy capital outlays and additional personnel. The average x-ray costs $80 while a similar MRI machine costs over $1,200 per examination. Unlike x-rays, MRIs can detect brain and muscular disorders.5 Obamacare plans to solve the problem of costs,not by deregulating and allowing consumers to shop as they do with lasik, but by denying you access to the new services. Obamacare means that new drugs, treatments, procedures and medical devices will not come into being. Perhaps we will have a somewhat more equal access to treatment (except for the ruling political class, like Congress, who are more equal than others) unless we are elderly or in some other group deemed socially value-less. But the care we will be receiving will never include anything that did not already exist in 2009. Notes Steve Eisenberg, medical director of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota, September 19, 2001, at www.ssc.k12.mn.us/insuradvminutes.htm. Geri Aston, AMNews staff, “Medicare sound for now, but long-term outlook is gloomy,” April 17, 2000, Amednews. com: The Newspaper for America’s Physicians, at www.ama-assn.org/sci-pubs/amnews/pick_00/gvl10417.htm. “Health Policy Discussion” from “Productivity in Health Care: The Value of Medical Technology,” AEI Conference, February 28, 2001, at www.newt.org/forum_aei_ health.htm. Leigh Hopper, “Hip replacement firm issues recall,” Houston Chronicle, January 23, 2001, at www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/topstory2/788942. Mark H. Gurda, “Rising costs, September 18, 2000,” at www.healthinsure.com/rising_costs.html. Bruce Majors is an unpaid Tea Party community organizer Anarcho-capitalist pledged to eliminating the tax predator ruling class and their media whores

My sister just came home from vacation in England

Submitted by d_toad on Tue, 08/11/2009 - 4:24pm.

While they were there they had two medical issues show up.

1) Forgotten prescription for high blood pressure.
Went to clinic.
Saw doctor in less than an hour
Had an exam
Obtained prescription
Went to pharmacy
Paid 7 pounds for the prescription ($16 for the same drug that costs 5 times as much here)

NO OTHER COST ----And these guys are not Brits.

2) Fear of concussion. Son fell had some head involvement. Went to bed with a headache which was worse in the morning.
Went to the emergency room
Full exam
Observation
Pain reliever issued
Release

NO COST.

These guys are not Brits

I sure wish that I had as much because I do not have a job right now. IE I am one of the 47 Million that would rather have the health care than to have rich insurance executives.

I sure get tired of listening to the White Trash Temper Tantrum

:D

We Received This E-mail from a BuzzFlash Reader

Submitted by Mark (not verified) on Tue, 08/11/2009 - 1:32pm.

just got back from Canada. Was told by tour guide that the Canadian citizens were asked to vote on who they thought had done the most for the country. The guy who won was (? forgot first name )Douglas. He implemented their HEALTH CARE SYSTEM !!!!

Answers to your somewhat lame questions

Submitted by Pine on Tue, 08/11/2009 - 2:59pm.

Ok: 1) They have tinkered with it. There are huge internal problems with the system. 2) Healthcare is not "rationed" in the US, it is just expensive. Hospitals in the US do not turn away patients, no matter what you've heard. The cost of these non-payers is shifted to paying patients. 3) No, it only means that another entity is in charge of it. In the first case there are other options available, in the second case, there are no other options. 4) No. This is a weak and statistically irrelevant point. 5) Why should we let politicians who are vastly increasing their power over the health and welfare of the population write health care legislation nationalizing about 20% of the US economy? 6) First, the Congress is much less interested in the power and money that this legislation moves under their control than seeking to benefit any single person. Second, Canada's system is not viewed as a working and desirable model by most in the US. It is viewed by most as a socialist system good enough for a second world country but not good enough for the US. Sorry. 7) Medicare is used because it is available and cheap. It functions in the US by underpaying the doctors and facilities below market rate. It thereby shifts the real cost of care to private insurance. It is parasitic on the US health care system and could not exist on its own. ANY doctor in the US will tell you how this works. 8) No. Medicare does not carry its own weight in and way shape or form. See answer 7 9) These groups were absolutely right them and they are right now. We are inching toward a socialist America and the decrease in quality of life attendant in that system. 10) I am an executive in a US company with Canadian offices. None of the Canadians I've ever talked with didn't think that US healthcare was of higher quality and that their own care wasn't rationed. If you bother to check, you will find that most large specialty hospitals in the US have a special department, in the case of my hometown, an entire wing, dedicated to servicing paying customers from countries with socialized medicine: the UK, Denmark, ..and CANADA. These are all the people who cannot get care in their own country. This is because their own system has failed them. Look below the surface of your "Workers Paradise" and you will see the dark underbelly of government inefficiency, corruption , favoritism and all the rest that goes with big government. These problems are easily available to you. Just google "Canada health care problems", and you will find more than enough evidence that the rosy picture painted by the socialists is little more than wishful thinking.

Why Do The People Who Can Afford Healthcare Complain Loudly?

Submitted by Phil_Light on Wed, 08/12/2009 - 12:33pm.

It appears that those among us who could actually afford private health care doth protest the loudest. 68% of all bankruptcies are based on the inability of people with health insurance to actually cover their medical expenses after insurance! With only four major companies in the business of providing healthcare for 85% of all the current health care insurance business. When you move from company to company you are often transferring health insurance from one company to another yet with the same insurance provider. One major medical condition will mean you'll hit your lifetime cap pretty easy (odds are one in four) you'll be with the same insurance company irregardless of your company of employ. If you can afford private insurance, why should you care how the increased pool of insured people could be easily and cost-effectively be managed. Who cares what you call it? Socialized medicine, healthcare for all, or social democratic medication? As it stands, 47 million Americans do not have health insurance and the way it works currently is; the rest of us will pay for them at County or General Hospitals long after the point of their needing minimum medical care. They couldn't afford to come in early and proactively have some basic routine detection tests. Not without insurance! Heck basic blood work runs $1,500.00 a pop (or should I say stick). Most of the time when someone shows up at a County Hospital, they're at the end of the problems manifestation and going to need major medical care! This at a time when States and Municipalities are struggling to keep Police and Fire people at work for their citizens protection. Nothing in their budgets can include defraying the medical costs of their uninsured citizens. Doesn't it make sense to spread the cost around? Make more than 250K a year? Got medical care you like now? Great keep it and you pay for it. Then you won't be a drain on a system designed for the rest of us who can't afford it. There is a huge discrepancy between the wages paid to the regular working employee and an executive in most American corporations today. Don't talk to me about corporations paying their fair share of taxes, cause that just doesn't happen! Often wages at the executive level can be 100X greater or more than a regular employee (non management). How can today's average American Corporate employee and yes, even the corporation which may underwrite or subsidize a large portion of their medical insurance, continue to pay increasingly higher premiums and get increasingly less in terms of health care in return? I don't think any of these options is viable as is? I hate to shatter your illusory myth about American Health care being at the top of the heap! Sure, people queue up to come here for all sorts of cardiac and cancer care from all over the world. That's becuase we lead the industrialized world in the rate of cancer, heart disease, and the prevalence of diabetes per 100K of population. Sure we're going to have a lot of doctor's specializing in these areas because we're head of the leader board in manifesting these diseases. Then there's the insurance company's! Tales of trash the claims abound in many of the managed care company's. Execs regularly coming down to the claims departments and saying, "Okay, everything off the desks (meaning into the trash)." Claim paper work lost, hospitals giving up on the myriad of papers which need filing and supplemental documents for expensive procedures (remember we lead the big board in these high cost maladies) in the end the patient ends up getting a Collection Agency after them to get the money the hospitals and doctor's had long ago given up on. And you're right! Why should we let our current politicians legislate our health care? They're campaign contributions are derived from many of the insurance company's with much money to lose. Why is single payor not even an option? Because they're currently spending our premiums on a campaign of misinformation to the tune of 1.5 million dollars a day! Sounds to me like you might be one of those with lots of money influence from the money talks misguidance that abounds. These days of wine and roses in the insurance industry really need to come to an end. We're the only industrialized nation out of the big twenty without healthcare for all. You think this is a system that works? You've got to be kidding me! But then again, what do you care about anyone else for, we're just service providers paving the road to your retirement.

You didn't answer these questions at all

Submitted by dlindorff on Tue, 08/11/2009 - 3:04pm.

You gave ideological responses that simply show you are a right-winger who fears "socialism." In fact, single-payer is not socialist at all, anymore than Medicare is socialist.. It is simply the government being the paymaster for healthcare. Canada has private docs, and private hospitals. And while like any system, it has its problems, Canadians love it, as demonstrated by their keeping it in place now for almost two generations, and actually expanding it to include more things. You are wrong that the US doesn't have rationing by income. My daughter teaches in the NY public school system. As a new second-year teacher, she can only afford the second-tier health ins. option offered by the school district. When she tries to find a gynocologist in the plan's system, they are all full in her borough--can't take another patient. Many parts of New York, as in many cities, simply have no doctors, because the population living there is too poor. Thos people have to use emergency rooms for ordinary care, at huge expense to all of us. Many kinds of care are simply not provided under Medicaid, the program for paying for care for the poor. That is rationing too. You say we are "inching towards a socialist America." Geez--even Sweden and Norway, which have much more of a public health system, are not socialist. They are profoundly capitalist. Canada is certainly capitalist. Get a grip! If we have anything that smacks of "socialism" it is the government's welfare system for corporations. There is really no "market rate" for health care in America. To have a market, you have to have educated consumers who have the ability to pick and choose their health care providers, but people don't even pick their insurance. Their employers pick it, and then they're stuck with the docs in that plan, who get paid what the insurer wants to pay them. Medicare does set what docs get paid, but doctors have the option of not accepting Medicare, and very few have opted not to accept it. Apparently, they're happy for the business. by the way, I did check with Canadian subsidiaries of US companies, talking to the execs at Ford, Chrysler, GM, ATT, Intel and other operations there, for an article that appeared in Treasury&Risk magazine. As you'll see if you bother to read that and other articles, they speak highly of the Canadian system, which takes the burden of paying for employees' healthcare off of their backs and spreads it over the whole population. They have a lobbying organization that is asking Ottawa to broaden the system to add prescription care and long term care. Your local managers may just have picked up on your own ignorant antipathy towards the Canadian system and are afraid to tell you that they like it. The big problem you cannot answer, is why Canadians, a democratic and freedom-loving people, have been not only supporting their health care system now for over 35 years of liberal and conservative governments, but expanding and improving it. Dave Lindorff www.thiscantbehappening.net

THESE are GREAT Q's!!

Submitted by kennethetucker on Tue, 08/11/2009 - 10:32am.

THESE are GREAT 'questions'/observations. As is usual, it's the question that makes ALL the difference. Start asking better questions, folks. The reich-wing fear-mongers have 'spooked' the herd and it's on the verge of 'stampeding' (just like '93). One PISSED OFF Viet Vet ('72-'73)

Healthcare in CA

Submitted by remoran on Tue, 08/11/2009 - 10:25am.

"Never stop questioning." - Einstein I have friends in both the English and French parts of Canada. Their take on heathcare. It works, period. Single payer is the only logical way to go. something my idiotic country will not do. Simply unreal but when one has a private financial system to run things, corruption, incompetence and bankruptcy is the rule. Very sad to see and yes, we have Woodrow Wilson to thank for creating a disaster that took 96 years to happen. 1913 - The Fed 1912 - The IRS Any questions?

Any Elected Official

Submitted by cal1942 on Tue, 08/11/2009 - 8:14am.

doing actual public service would understand the benefit of single-payer. The ten points above are absolutely unchallengeable, an open and shut case. The advantages of such a system aren't just a direct benefit to all citizens, business would benefit as well. The trouble is more than half of our elected officials are only interested in the prestige of the office and/or to use that office for future significant financial reward. Actual public service ranks way down the list. Campaign support from the private health insurance industry, the private for profit health care industry and big Pharma are means to those ends. This goes all the way into the White House. Obama got more campaign support from the aforementioned in 2008 than any other candidate. Maybe that's why he never submitted a bill and seems willing to sign most anything. All Presidents are eager to have a legacy. What counts is the effect of that legacy. Too often in recent decades it seems that the attitude is not to leave behind a legacy but to possess a legacy. Big difference. If a President can boast that he/she got "reforms" passed they are happy that THEY have a legacy. Doesn't matter if those "reforms" were an actual benefit to the nation. This is one of the ways where office holders of our era differ from some office holders in the past. Not that the past was golden and motives pure. It wasn't. It's that in the past a larger percentage of elected officials actually ran for office for the sake of public service. Many felt that their legacy was connected with public good. I can't help but remember this little lesson. A place in the Roman Senate became a matter of prestige intead of service. Then they exempted Senators from taxation, then the Sentor's family, then the Senator's class ...

Single payer

Submitted by Doug Roberts on Tue, 08/11/2009 - 7:18am.

From the previous comments I read here, even so-called progressives can't get it together. The system you have now is broken but it makes the insurance companies,the pharmaceutical companies, private hospitals and other special interests rich. Do you think they will give all that up for the public good?? With the left pulling in so many different directions, you don't have a hope in Hell of making any changes. I think the U.S. is messed up in so many ways (economy, foreign policy, erosion of civil rights, increasing religious extremism, access to health care, etc.) that there is no real way to save it. We are witnessing the fall of an empire. Perhaps it is time. D. Roberts, Thunder Bay, ON

You're probably right

Submitted by cal1942 on Tue, 08/11/2009 - 8:35am.

See my comment above headed Any Elected official. What fragments "progressives" is, in part, obsessive Obama worship and most importantly a liberal schism between traditional liberals and neo-liberals. Get rid of the neo-liberals and the nation may have a fighting chance. And the monster elephant in the room is unnecessary war and a massive military establishmment and presence around the world. Reach has far exceeded grasp. If you tend towards wagering here's where to put your money: Withdrawing from Afghanistan/Iraq, eliminating more than 700 overseas military installations and cutting other massive defense spending won't happen. The finance industry will remain dominant, foolish trade agreements will remain in place, our manufacturing base will continue to erode. Instead, entitlements will be sacrifced on the alter of empire. As always, self-inflicted wounds.

1z0-031 dumpsThe finance

Submitted by marrydavidson on Tue, 06/01/2010 - 11:30pm.

1z0-031 dumpsThe finance industry will remain dominant, foolish trade agreements will remain in place, our manufacturing base will continue to erode. Instead, entitlements will be sacrifced on the alter of empire. As always, self-inflicted wounds.1z0-043The finance industry will remain dominant, foolish trade agreements will remain in place, our manufacturing base will continue to erode. Instead, entitlements will be sacrifced on the alter of empire. As always, self-inflicted wounds.oracle 1z0-047 dumpsThe finance industry will remain dominant, foolish trade agreements will remain in place, our manufacturing base will continue to erode. Instead, entitlements will be sacrifced on the alter of empire. As always, self-inflicted wounds.mcitp dumps

The Noise In The Distance...

Submitted by neoconned on Tue, 08/11/2009 - 5:17am.

...is the sound made when empty-headed Red Staters and Birthers and Dittoheads attempt to think - which doesn't happen until their corporate health care providers deny them care deemed vital to their continued health and welfare.

Then join me in calling for two new amendments

Submitted by ETS on Mon, 08/10/2009 - 8:37pm.

What is needed, even more that "Medicare" for all or a Canadian style single payer health care system, though France, Germany, Japan and the Netherlands all have mixed public/private systems and they work quite well. Oh, yes France has the number one health care system in the world. But arguing with the merits of single payer is not the reason for my post.

O.K., I digressed. What is needed is two amendments to the U.S. Constitution: One for the public financing of all elections, from the presidency on down to city dog catcher, the other overturning the corrupt 1886 Supreme Court decision on Santa Clara County v Southern Pacific Railroad which has been accepted by generations of business lawyers as conferring "person-hood" on corporations.

Two simple amendments to the US Constitution will change everything, remove all roadblocks to real progressive reform.

ET Spoon

French healthcare

Submitted by bogwart on Tue, 08/11/2009 - 6:53am.

"Oh, yes France has the number one health care system in the world." How so? On what evidence do you base that assertion? A nine-year old study? Just to declare my interest, I am English.

I'd say the WHO study, until new data comes along...

Submitted by ETS on Tue, 08/11/2009 - 7:58am.

will suffice for now.

BTW, if you are living on the other side of the pond, you have no dog in this fight. Do you?

ET Spoon

Support Single Payer Health Care

Submitted by Joe Citizen on Mon, 08/10/2009 - 8:26pm.

HR 676 is essentially Single Payer Health Insurance modeled on Medicare. It has been around since 2003. (So at least it could not be called Obamacare.)

I am throwing my support to that proposal and would urge anyone interested in a fair and just single payer system to do so also.

Although the radical right is thoroughly fanatical in their opposition to HR3200 and the other new proposal via claims of euthanasia, free care for illegals, rationed care and so on, the truth is more worrisome.

It appears the new law may be nothing more than a private insurance welfare act which criminalizes those who do not have insurance while guaranteeing rising costs, high profits and exorbitant pay packages for CEOs and executives. Admittedly, there are a few bones thrown at the howling pack.

Look at HR 676. It needs some work, but the concept is sound and much better than the corporatist Frankenstein now being created:

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c109:H.R.676:

big jump

Submitted by estebanfolsom on Tue, 08/11/2009 - 5:20pm.

what's the big jump? the government owns a car company half of the largest insurance company and has propped up the financial sector what's the big deal about healthcare that actually would benefit everyone? single payer/universal coverage let the insurance companies fend for themselves instead of the people estebanfolsom

dfsdf

Submitted by doubleface on Tue, 08/10/2010 - 5:31am.

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If Medicare for Everyone is So Bad, Why Does Every Nation Who Has It Keep It? 10 Questions

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