Obama Healthcare plain and simple.

[Whitesock]

What I don't see is why they don't run healthcare through buisinesses so people are encouraged to work. I feel like that would be better than just giving out free healthcare.

Either way, I heard that before you can actually get free healthcare through the system you have to pay down 10k green rags, so I don't see how obamacare is any better than privatized healthcare, because all he did really was just take away companies to make a generalized healthcare that benefits the higher up middle class less due to less individualized policies, is still inaccessable to people on medicaid, and is still challenging for the middle class to recieve.

 

[Ninva]

Health Care still isn't free. Shows what you know.

 

[Sim]

Obama's plan is not what I would call "healthcare" yet, though. It would have to be fully endorsed by the government, be free of charge.

It puts a gun to your head and says, "Hand over some of the money that YOU have earned so that we can help out Bob who just got a large medical bill. And doesn't have an much money as you."

Consider that an "insurance" that one day, you too might be confronted with a large medical bill and it will be paid off by the government.

Vest, I get that you seem to think healthcare is working great in your country, and if it is then that is great for you, but the U.S. is a much larger country than any country in Europe, and the fact that we would have to cover an exponentially greater population with full healthcare just isn't feasible in my opinion.

Any country in Europe, maybe, but most of Europe is a union. And with a bigger population than the United States. And with healthcare.

I hate all these countries like Canada and Sweden and Denmark And Germany and France...... who have an awesome Healthcare system.
But they fail to admit one thing....
They have NO army.

2 out of the 5 countries you named were responsible for the two greatest wars in the history of mankind. :nuts:
Germany fell down to an unprecedented alliance of "The big three", the USA, USSR, and the UK, which were among the most powerful countries in the world.

Uhh no most of those coutnries, like the UK, have absolutly shitty healthcare systems...people from all over the world travel to the US. Why? because we have the best healthcare in the world. Its expensive as fuck but hey go get a freaking job dont make me work my ass off just so the government can take out from the money i made and give it to some dumb fucking idiot who can hold a job.
Yes I voted in MA for Brown as a big fuck you to Obamacare and the dems, Obviously the country doesnt want them doing what they keep pressing to do but whatever thats what you get when you vote for a lazy ass man who has never held a real job in his life.

"Go get a freaking job" and you expect them to do what? Work at McDonald's? By 'expensive as fuck' you mean in the 5 or 6 figures, and no amount of working at McDonald's will pay for that. In fact, it's not the amount of work one inputs but rather the amount of money he has in his pocket in order to pay for medical bills. Some don't realize that "success", wealth", and "work" are not words so easily connectible. One of them can easily come without any help whatsoever from the others, depending on many factors in your life.

I might be too inclined toward Free Healthcare, but without it in my country, I'd be either dead or facing bankrupted parents right now, so I couldn't care the slightest what $whatever my neighbor has to pay yearly or so, because I know that when I needed some help from society just to stay alive without bankrupting my parents, I could get it, and I will gladly pay back the favor by paying a $whatever tax yearly.

Oh and hi_im_bob, restrain the extensive swearing or it's you I'm gonna restrain. Thank you.

Yours,
Dax

 

[Whitesock]

Health Care still isn't free. Shows what you know.

I wish you would have read my post all the way through, as then you would see that I talked about how it isn't really free.

Any country in Europe, maybe, but most of Europe is a union. And with a bigger population than the United States. And with healthcare.

And it may be working for people in your situation well, but people who actually have diseases or have been badly damaged still have to come to the USA to get the care they need because generalized healthcare doesn't allow coverage for their problems in their country.

 

[Zakyath]

And it may be working for people in your situation well, but people who actually have diseases or have been badly damaged still have to come to the USA to get the care they need because generalized healthcare doesn't allow coverage for their problems in their country.

I had no idea. Where did you heard that? I don't know how good/bad our health care is actually. It seems to work, though.

 

[Sim]

> And it may be working for people in your situation well, but people who actually have diseases or have been badly damaged still have to come to the USA to get the care they need because generalized healthcare doesn't allow coverage for their problems in their country.

That would be on rare occasions only, because I've almost never heard of that.

Do you know what healthcare covers? It actually covers when you "have diseases or have been badly damaged". Where I live, it covers everything which can be cured in Canada, which is pretty much anything. When I say cure I mean cure. You can't claim totally stupid operations for fun.

My aunt currently has a very strange spinal cord problem resulting from a tumor which limits her mobility, and neurosurgeons here said it was the first time they'd seen or heard of this. She didn't have to move to anywhere though, and it didn't cost a buck. She got a total of twelve, distinct operations, spanning over a year. Try to find even one insurance that would've covered for this in the United States, none of them would have, for various bureaucratic reasons. It's not quite hard for them to find something in the clause that excludes your situation. Without insurance, the bill would've skyrocketed. Her family's having financial difficulties right now, since she isn't working, so there's no way she could have paid that bill.

 

[ReVolver]

> And it may be working for people in your situation well, but people who actually have diseases or have been badly damaged still have to come to the USA to get the care they need because generalized healthcare doesn't allow coverage for their problems in their country.

That would be on rare occasions only, because I've almost never heard of that.

Do you know what healthcare covers? It actually covers when you "have diseases or have been badly damaged". Where I live, it covers everything which can be cured in Canada, which is pretty much anything. When I say cure I mean cure. You can't claim totally stupid operations for fun.

My aunt currently has a very strange spinal cord problem resulting from a tumor which limits her mobility, and neurosurgeons here said it was the first time they'd seen or heard of this. She didn't have to move to anywhere though, and it didn't cost a buck. She got a total of twelve, distinct operations, spanning over a year. Try to find even one insurance that would've covered for this in the United States, none of them would have, for various bureaucratic reasons. Without insurance, the bill would've skyrocketed. Her family's having financial difficulties right now, since she isn't working, so there's no way she could have paid that bill.

I have something similar to your aunt's condition but I got mine at birth (genetic problem), and yea the bill is killing me, I have to waste a percent of my monthly income to pay for it, I'll probably be dead before I fully pay it.

 

[hi_im_bob]

"Go get a freaking job" and you expect them to do what? Work at McDonald's? By 'expensive as fuck' you mean in the 5 or 6 figures, and no amount of working at McDonald's will pay for that. In fact, it's not the amount of work one inputs but rather the amount of money he has in his pocket in order to pay for medical bills. Some don't realize that "success", wealth", and "work" are not words so easily connectible. One of them can easily come without any help whatsoever from the others, depending on many factors in your life.

I might be too inclined toward Free Healthcare, but without it in my country, I'd be either dead or facing bankrupted parents right now, so I couldn't care the slightest what $whatever my neighbor has to pay yearly or so, because I know that when I needed some help from society just to stay alive without bankrupting my parents, I could get it, and I will gladly pay back the favor by paying a $whatever tax yearly.

Oh and hi_im_bob, restrain the extensive swearing or it's you I'm gonna restrain. Thank you.

Yours,
Dax

So let me just understand this. You think it is better for someone to instead of work at McDonalds sit on their hinney (because we cant swear anymore) and just accept free government handouts, while I on the other hand work every day really hard a portion of my paycheck is taken to pay for the lazy mans healthcare while Im screwed over because I am not poor enough to get huge govt subsidies. This is a system which just encourages people not to work. It redistributes wealth and punishes people for earning more money.

So your neighbor makes more money than you, has a nicer house but boom new healthcare tax makes it so that they can no longer to afford their house because their spending so much more money on YOUR healthcare, since when did it become their responsibility to pay for YOU?

 

[uberfoop]

So let me just understand this. You think it is better for someone to instead of work at McDonalds sit on their hinney (because we cant swear anymore) and just accept free government handouts, while I on the other hand work every day really hard a portion of my paycheck is taken to pay for the lazy mans healthcare while Im screwed over because I am not poor enough to get huge govt subsidies. This is a system which just encourages people not to work. It redistributes wealth and punishes people for earning more money.

He's not suggesting that people do nothing, he's pointing out that "hard work" does not make health care affordable. You seem to be under the rather dated impression that hard work always equals success, and that it's easy to move up in life in America. The lack of a cultural barrier to climbing up the social ladder does not signify that doing so is easy or practical.
The (large number of) lower class workers who hold two jobs to barely scrape by and wind up developing chronic health problems due to their harsh jobs and lack of health care probably wouldn't take you very seriously if you trold them that they wouldn't have trouble getting health care if they would just go get a job, or work harder.

So your neighbor makes more money than you, has a nicer house but boom new healthcare tax makes it so that they can no longer to afford their house because their spending so much more money on YOUR healthcare, since when did it become their responsibility to pay for YOU?

It already is their responsibility to pay for you in many respects, as it is yours to pay for them. This is not a new idea, it's the same idea that's powered all of your taxes for all eternity. So unless you're entirely opposed to all taxes, you can't possibly disagree with these taxes on the grounds that you stated in the above section.

Thus, you're presumably bitter about something else. A quick brainstorm would suggest that perhaps what you're actually bitter about is:
1-Concerns that people will abuse a large government service and be lazy, or
2-The idea that health care is one of the things that taxes should provide, or
3-The size of the taxes

(1) is a logical concern according to many views of human nature, and seems to be what you're arguing in the first section of your post. However, to this point I would simply point out that the countries that have actually been using universal health care systems don't seem to be suffering from excessive health care abuse. Note that that group of countries includes every industrialized nation except for the United States, so if this was actually a serious issue, there would be a lot more uproar than there is.

(2) is indeed entirely arbitrary, and falls into the debate of what should be considered basic needs to be provided by the government or not. It's also something that isn't as visible as an issue to those who are either wealthy enough to have easy health care or who are lucky enough to not have serious health problems. The argument then tend to fall into the question of whether the general well-being of the people of a nation will be improved by universal health care. I address this point by noting that every industrialized nation, except for the only one that wouldn't know because it hasn't implimented a universal health care system, seems to be saying "Yes."

(3) is justified if you agree with (2), as a part of the answer to (2).




To the final tidbit about the neighboor losing his house, I really have little pity for that guy. Buying a house on the fringe of your finances is exactly the behaviour that struck our economy a rather hard blow in the celiac plexus a couple years ago. THAT'S the sort of irresponsible crap that we should e afraid of, not people not working a job for some imaginary reason that you seem to be created (even with free health care, the working poor can't exactly get by without a job...).

 

[sqrage]

Not to mention that this bill targeted healthcare for the middle class. The lower class has been getting free healthcare for many many years.

 

[ElderKingpin]

i like the idea, but. I am afraid that the government might be too wasteful to properly utilize the vision.

 

[hi_im_bob]

He's not suggesting that people do nothing, he's pointing out that "hard work" does not make health care affordable. You seem to be under the rather dated impression that hard work always equals success, and that it's easy to move up in life in America. The lack of a cultural barrier to climbing up the social ladder does not signify that doing so is easy or practical.

I would disagree with you completely on this point. I know many immigrants who came with nothing to this country worked their asses of and our now sending their kids to college, while owning a house and living a better life than they could have. They worked hard, expected no government handouts have moved up a level and are making sure their kids have better lives so on this point I completely disagree with you.

It already is their responsibility to pay for you in many respects, as it is yours to pay for them. This is not a new idea, it's the same idea that's powered all of your taxes for all eternity. So unless you're entirely opposed to all taxes, you can't possibly disagree with these taxes on the grounds that you stated in the above section.

I again disagree. In the system you pay towards the lower class, but the lower class is exempt from paying many taxes and receive subsidies from the government. So who is helping to pay for my healthcare once I reach X dollars worth of income? No one while I am still forced to help pay for someone elses.

Thus, you're presumably bitter about something else. A quick brainstorm would suggest that perhaps what you're actually bitter about is:
1-Concerns that people will abuse a large government service and be lazy, or
2-The idea that health care is one of the things that taxes should provide, or
3-The size of the taxes

(1) is a logical concern according to many views of human nature, and seems to be what you're arguing in the first section of your post. However, to this point I would simply point out that the countries that have actually been using universal health care systems don't seem to be suffering from excessive health care abuse. Note that that group of countries includes every industrialized nation except for the United States, so if this was actually a serious issue, there would be a lot more uproar than there is.

(2) is indeed entirely arbitrary, and falls into the debate of what should be considered basic needs to be provided by the government or not. It's also something that isn't as visible as an issue to those who are either wealthy enough to have easy health care or who are lucky enough to not have serious health problems. The argument then tend to fall into the question of whether the general well-being of the people of a nation will be improved by universal health care. I address this point by noting that every industrialized nation, except for the only one that wouldn't know because it hasn't implimented a universal health care system, seems to be saying "Yes."

(3) is justified if you agree with (2), as a part of the answer to (2).

1) Before this healthcare bill medicare was something one of the closest things the US had to universal healthcare. This years total of money lost to medicare fraud an estimated 60 Billion!!!!! (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/10/23/60minutes/main5414390.shtml) proof that there is already way to much fraud and taking more of my tax dollars for a new healthcare bill will only contribute to the outrageous amount of fraud that exists in govt systems.

2) I dont care what most other countries do. The United States has always driven to make independent ideas based on what the people of this country VOTE for and therefore I could care less what other countries do with there tax dollars.

3) kinda confused with that point.

To the final tidbit about the neighboor losing his house, I really have little pity for that guy. Buying a house on the fringe of your finances is exactly the behaviour that struck our economy a rather hard blow in the celiac plexus a couple years ago. THAT'S the sort of irresponsible crap that we should e afraid of, not people not working a job for some imaginary reason that you seem to be created (even with free health care, the working poor can't exactly get by without a job...).

Alright let me try and explain with a different example. My mom owns a small business that has slowly but surely expanding. One of her main problems in making a profit is not her lack of work or opportunities in her field but the fact that the government takes so much of her paycheck and uses it towards taxes. Now that they want to take even more out of her paycheck plus start making everyone in her office covered there is a serious question as to whether my moms business can stay afloat. She is just getting more and more screwed over as the govt makes her spend more and more money on things that are not good for her business. Yes many people are uninsured but they made the decision by themselves believing it would be for the good of the company in the long run, but now it is no longer up to them the govt has stepped in and has said you will all be insured and like it.

I will finish this long post by saying A) giving handouts will not solve a single problem and B) governments are terrible at running anything.

A) If you were in school and your teacher said I will give everyone in this class an A and you dont have to do any work what incentive would you have to do any school work? Giving people handouts is not a solution just constantly throwing money at a problem will not solve anything.

B) Using the United States as an example please name ONE major government group that is run efficiently. People used to say the post office, it is now going bankrupt. You always go to the DMV and wait forever because the people there are not under the same pressures as a for profit company. When you work in/ for a govt organization the idea is well we just raise taxes and make people pay for our short comings instead of a for profit company which will work to make itself efficient so that they can make money.

-------------
Elderkingpin agree with you 100%

 

[uberfoop]

I would disagree with you completely on this point. I know many immigrants who came with nothing to this country worked their asses of and our now sending their kids to college, while owning a house and living a better life than they could have. They worked hard, expected no government handouts have moved up a level and are making sure their kids have better lives so on this point I completely disagree with you.

I too know such people. The fact that moving up the social ladder is difficult and requires substantial luck does not make it impossible.

However, I've known a greater number of people low on the social ladder who have worked hard and haven't succeeded in getting far.


I'm not going to bother debating this point further unless something else enters the argument, since this is just fact-hurling and there's nothing to debate. I am inclined to disagree with your implication that hard work always results in a climb up the social ladder, and my observations from literature and people I've known seem to agree with this. Whatever.

I again disagree. In the system you pay towards the lower class, but the lower class is exempt from paying many taxes and receive subsidies from the government. So who is helping to pay for my healthcare once I reach X dollars worth of income? No one while I am still forced to help pay for someone elses.

What the froodlenutzsky are you even arguing against at this point? Bracketed income tax rates? Again, this is an argument that is hardly directed towards health care but more towards the government in general (and, in particular, a taxation style practiced by pretty much every country out there us included).

Bracketed income tax is actually extremely reasonable from the perspective of surplus spending, by the way. An example:
Suppose person 1 makes $20,000 and person 2 makes $30,000, the income tax rate is a flat 25% (yeah, this is strictly for the purpose of example), and the cost of paying for basic needs is $14,000. By this system, person 1 only has $1,000 to spend beyond basic needs and person 2 winds up with $8,500. Person 2 thus has 8.5 times as much surplus spending money as person 1 despite making only 50% more money. Now suppose that legislation decides that this is ridiculous and changes it to a bracketed tax system where person 1 has to pay 15% taxes and person 2 has to pay 35% taxes. Person 1 winds up then with $3000 surplus and person 2 with $5,500 surplus. Even under this (absurdly) bracketed system, person 2 lands ~80% more surplus than person 1 despite making only 50% more, so with regard to surplus spending, this is still to his proportional advantage.

1) Before this healthcare bill medicare was something one of the closest things the US had to universal healthcare. This years total of money lost to medicare fraud an estimated 60 Billion!!!!! (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/10/23/60minutes/main5414390.shtml) proof that there is already way to much fraud and taking more of my tax dollars for a new healthcare bill will only contribute to the outrageous amount of fraud that exists in govt systems.

That's also a form of fraud which should be extremely easy to combat with a well-integrated system and a little bit of review, both of which the article says they're working on working in. The main issue was that the system didn't have the supervision that it required, which it said is presently being fixed. Based on what I read, then, I consider the issue to be neither an inherint flaw in the system nor one which will last.

2) I dont care what most other countries do. The United States has always driven to make independent ideas based on what the people of this country VOTE for and therefore I could care less what other countries do with there tax dollars.

It's true that we shouldn't do something just because every one else does it; I certainly don't want to be making some appeal to popularity. My point wasn't so much that everyone does it, but that it's tried and true because everyone does it and it seems to be working well for them.

The fact that we shouldn't necessarily do things just because everyone else does doesn't mean that we should ignore things that work well. That sort of independance on principle is forced ignorance. You're effectively saying that we should reinvent every wheel we come across, or, in this case, simply not use a wheel when there is one available.

And no, the United States was never built to make decisions directly based on what people vote for. That's why I&R policies exist only in some areas on a localized level. The branches of the Federal Government exist so that things won't be decided strictly on popular vote.

3) kinda confused with that point.

My idea was that the cost issue would work it's way in as one of the issues that would have to be discussed in concluding whether the general well-being as descussed in 2 would be improved, and thus point 3 was dependant on point 2 and did not need to be discussed independantly.

Alright let me try and explain with a different example. My mom owns a small business that has slowly but surely expanding. One of her main problems in making a profit is not her lack of work or opportunities in her field but the fact that the government takes so much of her paycheck and uses it towards taxes. Now that they want to take even more out of her paycheck plus start making everyone in her office covered there is a serious question as to whether my moms business can stay afloat. She is just getting more and more screwed over as the govt makes her spend more and more money on things that are not good for her business. Yes many people are uninsured but they made the decision by themselves believing it would be for the good of the company in the long run, but now it is no longer up to them the govt has stepped in and has said you will all be insured and like it.

I will agree that the issue with company profit margins and the potential of presently small margins to be crushed by an extra cost is a potential issue with forcing companies to deal with health care. In most cases it's not an issue, but there are some businesses where working out the kinks could be problematic.

Truth be told, I probably feel almost as uncomfortable as you do by the structure of our current health care reform. I only differ in that I like the idea of universal health care, and I actually think that, because of this problem that you brought up, health care should actually be handled even more by the government than the current plan's implimentation, since such issues could be smoothed out. And because government health care can actually wind up costing less overall, thus giving more room to smooth out such kinks; and yes, government-operated health frequently does cost much less than privatized health care. The United States, with a mostly private system, spends far more per capita on health care than countries with universal health care tend to.

A) If you were in school and your teacher said I will give everyone in this class an A and you dont have to do any work what incentive would you have to do any school work? Giving people handouts is not a solution just constantly throwing money at a problem will not solve anything.

Student performance analysis and provision of basic needs are two very different things. Again, this argument depends on whether you consider health care a reasonable thing to treat as a basic need or not. Which I, and many others, do.

B) Using the United States as an example please name ONE major government group that is run efficiently. People used to say the post office, it is now going bankrupt. You always go to the DMV and wait forever because the people there are not under the same pressures as a for profit company. When you work in/ for a govt organization the idea is well we just raise taxes and make people pay for our short comings instead of a for profit company which will work to make itself efficient so that they can make money.

In the case of health care, though, the system is actually laden down with a bunch of BS costs that happen largely because of private distribution. You know how much is spend on asymptomatic wisdom tooth removal each year here? It's estimated at several billion dollars. A government program would be less willing to pay that money, thus saving several billion dollars each year. Hence why I think that a government program that supervised spending would actually, if anything, be capable of reducing costs.

I may seem idealistic in the context of the present state of things. Again, I don't agree entirely with where the current plans are going and think that the reform needs a lot more balls to work.

 

[hi_im_bob]

I agree with you that both the rising the social ladder and discussing taxation prices is an argument for another time, but I disagree with what you said on both accounts and because both things are included in the healthcare bill i disagree with the bill as well.

Medicare fraud might be easy to combat but so far it hasnt been stopped and for years this has been going on. Just saying that there working on it isnt good enough for me to hope and pray that someone will eventually solve the issue. Until the government learns to handle the money I am giving it, I dont see any reason to continue paying more taxes while so much is wasted.

When you say that universal healthcare works well for countries please elaborate because from people I know it does not. My mom works in the hotel industry (internationally) and all of her clients that are wealthy enough make sure to come to the United States for healthcare. This includes a very wealthy business man who has dual citizenship in Canada and the UK. So I dont think it is fair to say it works in other countries.

In the middle of the recession major companies are going to have to lay of thousands of workers to cover all of the new healthcare costs. On one hand Obama wants the economy to do well but then he encourages practices that are hurting all companies?

As far as the school example goes im just trying to make the point that in what case will giving someone something for free encourage them to work? (giving a poor person free healthcare isnt going to make them want to break out of the dependence on the government)

On the last point you didnt answer my question, there is no government organization that is run cost-efficiently. Making healthcare government run will waste so many tax dollars.

I will agree that the system needs reforms but when it is so clear that people for the most part were unsure of this bill and then the Democrats just rammed it through congress using undemocratic means you cant tell me that doesnt piss you off a little bit?

 

[The Helper]

Hall of Fame!