Our health care system was stupid. Insurance companies were screwing it all up. Hopefully this will help fix some of that.
Exactly. We need to follow France, Germany, and Japan. They have the awesomest health care efar
One less-often considered place is Switzerland. I have gone into whatever the Swiss call Accident and Emergency and was very impressed. I'm unsure how the Swiss finance it; I know I was billed as a foreigner, but I was covered under the European Health Insurance Card (still talked of in Britain as an E111, the name of the form it replaces).
I like how the guy says that "health insurance companies are ruining healthcare" when this bill represents a huge handout to the health insurance companies. Requiring every American to purchase their product? Yeah, that'll show 'em!
I don't see what the big issue is. We've had the NHS over here for donkeys' years, and it's worked out all right (I'm not saying the NHS is perfect—we all know it isn't—but it works). I don't quite understand the Republican objections to this—I presume they're based on funding? I don't envision many people minding a small tax increase if it will ensure their health... or the government could save some money by not spending it all on an illegal war in the Middle East...
Actually the Republican Party viewpoint is that health care is a privilege, not a right. There is a widespread belief here in the U.S. that such things as housing, food, and health care are privileges that must be obtained through personal wealth. Any assistance from government in providing these amenities is usually viewed as an attempt at socialism or even communism. This is a fundamental part of the competitive spirit of American Capitalism: Either you sink or you swim.
From each according to his gullability, to each according to his greed.
The view that healthcare is a privelage is absurd. Someone turns up gasping their last at hospital - you honestly wouldn't save them? If not, you are what is referred to in polite conversation as an arrogant elitest cunt.
And, before you ask, I can easily afford healthcare. I'm willing to pay for those less fortunate to get it too. The only reason I dislike paying for the NHS is that a high proportion of that money is wasted in needless administration.
Blood Red Sandman, I heartily agree with you that health care is among the most basic human rights. I'm simply expressing the viewpoint (which I personally find abhorrent) of those who are opposed to a national health care system in the United States. The politics of Social Darwinism are a formidable force in American domestic policy and are wholeheartedly embraced by the Republican Party. Call me a pessimist, but I don't think we will ever see true comprehensive health reform in this country because social darwinism is so pervasive
Another important consideration is that while a majority of Americans (when Obama took office) wanted to have a national health care system, The insurance and pharmaceutical companies (with their armies of lobbyists) spent untold billions of dollars on a media smear campaign discrediting the idea of publicly funded health care. The American public was sold an image of a dystopian system marked by government rationing and "death panels" who decide if a patient's life is worth saving, among countless other myths. The fact is that the reigns of government in the US are held by an alliance of wealthy corporations who make the rules as they see fit to maximize their profits, regardless of the human costs.
Indeed. America is a scary place. However, I think that for the bill to bust through, even if narrowly, is a historic moment. It proves that this new government - for all it still has many of the failings of the previous administration, for all I grant it no trust whatsoever - is making some progress. It may be tiny, but it's there and Obama and Co fought hard for it.
There is hope. Very little; I self-identify as an open cynic but in reality I'm a strong sceptic in that I am still willing to evaluate anything that can sway me from whatever opinion I have settled upon. I recognise that if (imperfect) people like Obama keep banging their heads against brick walls for long enough, eventually the wall will wear through and collapse.
Nearly a trillion dollars shouldn't result in "tiny" progress; not that it's progress for the people I know who "make enough" on paper but still can't afford health insurance, fining them for something they'd only maybe be able to afford if the Obama administration was competent in any of its other efforts.
Read my comment again, and the context it was made in. The progress I talk of is not the content of the bill but the fact it passed at all in the face of a propaganda campaign.
Progress can't be done for progress's sake. When neither side is right, the "victory" of one over the other is a loss for everyone.
For the second time, I talk not of the content but the fact that it is possible to pass it in the face of such an absurd propaganda campaign. I think both sides must recognise that the campaign was ludicrous (though I know they won't), and while the opposers may feel that this was perhaps the wrong bill to break through, the fact that it happened at all is progress. For the second time, read the context in which my comment was made.
Of the definitions of progress, you're concerned about the one where something happens, rather than the one where something happens to make society more competent and evolved?
No. I am concerned that it is possible for something to happen. My point is that we need not be so pessimistic as to think that big vested interests - in this case a propaganda campaign - always win. That makes society more evolved. "Call me a pessimist, but I don't think we will ever see true comprehensive health reform in this country [the US] because social darwinism is so pervasive," - that may or may not be true, only time will tell, but my point is there is now hope where before there was nothing.
Its strange that KDP3 says Dem's are Elitist when all the republicans accuse them of being Socialist? or was it a Nazi i suggest the republicans choose an insult and stick with it.
From the way you speak, you believe that Nazism and Socialism are particularly different?
"We are socialists, we are enemies of today’s capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are determined to destroy this system under all conditions.”
-Adolph Hitler, 1927
Granted, he changed his stance on being a self-described socialist two years later, but this was mostly due to the damage it did to his party's image.
Another way of summarizing the typical attitude towards Social Welfare in the US is "Every man for himself! I've got mine, Go get yours!"
Welcome to First World, Americans!
Not to piss on your parade, but no, I'm afraid this so-called "Health Care Reform" does not qualify as anything close to "First World". It's merely a guaranteed expanded customer base for the insurance companies, by means of an enforced purchase law. i.e. you are fined if you don't want to (or can't afford to) pay whatever exorbitant fees insurance companies decide to charge you for health care coverage. First World health care would be a publicly funded not for profit single-payer system like every other wealthy nation in the world has (i.e. France, Japan, UK, etc.)
Never mind all the deals made to get this atrocity of a bill thrown in. Never mind that some states whose legislators support the bill won't have to foot the bill, which is that much more to force those of us who DON'T like it to pay. Never mind that at least one (likely outdated by now) version of the bill comes with likely-illegal language that suggests that future administrations will be unable to alter or repeal it once passed.
Things like this render the issue of whether a European-style health care system is good or bad a pointless debate for the moment. Between the back-door deals, and trying to nail it down so that future generations can't repeal this overhaul if it's bad, or even improve on it in the unlikely event that it somehow turns out to be good, nobody in their right mind can possibly think that Congress has the people's well-being at heart.