Only in America can our government screw up something as important as healthcare.

By rottencommierat, January 25 at 9:13 pm #

Since my CBS reference was about medicare fraud, perhaps you can enlighten us
about the “real” story behind this so I don’t have to go off and read the book you
mention.

Marshall, you are getting your information from corporate media, AKA propaganda central.  They wouldn’t know a fact at CBS if it bit them in the butt.  You should read Michael Parenti to learn a great deal that you’ve missed about how our government, controlled entirely by elites who inherit from robber barons, hides statistics on the truly rich.  The people you call “rich” are those who are called “middle class” in most of the world outside of the American propaganda system, the professionals and small business owners.  These terms are all purposefully nebulous in our system.  I do the news each day as Liberty Underground news, and it is in the public interest (I have a degree in journalism and practice public interest in opposition to corporate interest news, the stuff you read).  Subscribe with an email to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) subject “Join” and you get one email daily, 365 days a year.  I’m sure it will shock you, because you are obviously not accustomed to reading facts

By rottencommierat, January 25 at 7:37 pm #

The problem with your “throw everything at the wall and see what sticks”
response to my post is that you end up with more on the floor than on the wall.

First off, the medicare fraud i speak of is not part of the legitimate private
sector; it’s just plain fraud and it comes from many sources (including state
governments).  If you’d watch the cbs link instead of just arguing the point you
might gain some insight.  Fraud is a fact - period.  And public programs fall
victim to it more easily due to lack of incentive.  If you’re suggesting doing
away with the private sector altogether, keep in mind that fraud is rampant in
socialized societies because you cannot suppress underground economies nor
the internal corruption that spreads like cancer within the public system itself.

You seem confused about healthcare INSURANCE vs. healtcare PROVIDERS,
which are two separate systems. No industrialized countries have socialized
provider networks, and very few have entirely public insurance programs. 
Canada and France, for example, all have private insurance on top of deficient
government policies.  And virtually all industrialized countries are experiencing
major healthcare problems like skyrocketing costs, much higher taxes, lack of
technology, long wait times, and lack of hospital space.  Canada, UK, even
France are good examples of this - part of the reason so many Canadians (and
others) come to the US for treatment.

I’m not sure where you get your taxation figures.  2007 CBO figures show that
the US tax code is quite progressive and most of the wealthy in the US are
working rich, not “capital gains” rich.  This is why the top 1% pay 40% of federal
income tax and top 5% pay 60%.  The poor pay virtually no income tax and do
receive entitlements, so Leona Helmsley is wrong.

http://www.ntu.org/main/page.php?PageID=6

Marshall, January 25 at 6:26 pm

While this worthy plays his one note samba regarding Medicare fraud, which of course does exist, he uses it only as a tool to deflect from the real issue.

Most not Marshall understand that we the people of these United States pay approximately two and one half times that of the next most expensive health care in the world while receiving care that places us at 37th among all nations in receiving said care. This, despite Marshall’s one note samba about the “evils” of Medicare, is the real problem at hand and the real thrust of the reform movement.

Forty seven million Americans, eleven million of them children, have no health care whatsoever, but does Marshall give a flying squirrels ass about them? Certainly not, especially when he can repeat and repeat ad nauseum that Medicare has its flaws.

Those who come here regularly are, I imagine, quite familiar with the erudite and quite deceptive posts of Marshall. Please do not be deceived or sidetracked.

Marshall, the fraud you speak about comes from the “private industry” you talk about.  Private insurers and private hospitals and Big Pharma get our tax dollars, in the end, they merely pass through the government.  You right wingers always begin in the middle, leaving out the most important facts.  The Medical Mafia, as I prefer to call them, give out multi million dollar salaries and billions in profits, while cutting actual health care to finance this, the only thing that matters to them because they are capitalists. They do the same thing with what euphemistically passes for “defense” spending, stealing billions spent on secret weapons programs.  You can blame the government for this if you like, but it is capitalists who are doing the stealing.  They, of course, finance our elections and control mass media to protect this license to steal from taxpayers.  All this leaves us as the only industrialized nation without a health care system, or much as all that filters back to the taxpayers, after all the corporate welfare.  The wealthiest one fourth of one percent have over half of all the wealth and pay almost no taxes, or as their representative, Leona Helmsley so ably put it, “Only the little people pay taxes.”  The ruling class loves it when you kiss their butts

By john from ojai, January 23 at 3:03 am #

“Marshal, My last post warned people to be wary of lobbyists and you assumed
I was talking about you. Interesting.”

sorry john but i’m not a lobbyist - but thanks for attributing
“charm,obfuscation and debating skills” to me.  I consider it a complement but
don’t plan to use my power for evil, only good.

I’m still bemused by your reliance on a fictional hollywood comedy as a
substitute for an informed opinion, but i guess we get our opinions where
we’re most comfortable finding them.

Given that medicare fraud is estimated currently at $60 Billion a year, Stop
Medicare Fraud.gov’s savings of $1 Billion over four years is rather paltry.  And
if you watch the CBS link I gave you you’d find that the government’s fraud unit
is severely understaffed with no plans for improvement.  In the private sector
this kind of fraud/waste would not be tolerated because people would be
losing monty, but no such incentive in the public sector.  Expanding a flawed
program that’s slated to go broke in a decade or so is just a bad idea.

My country, ‘tis of thee,
Stronghold of big money, of thee I sing;
Land where health care’s denied,
Land where our freedoms died,
From every mountainside
I hear “chi-ching”!

Here is the thing, we keep trying to make this about Obama’s victory, or credibility for the democratic party’s legislature. Proponents for the Senate’s plan use the 45k lives lost a year to a defective national health insurance system as a sword of Damocles, we cannot throw their lives aside because we feel the insurance companies should not reap even greater profits from our hard work than they do already. We must embrace our Serfdom, pay our consumer mandate, or be bound to the corporations that do business in the state we live and work in. If we are self-employed, we must make more money to pay for our insurance or our lack of it.

The thing is, all the Senate bill does is set a precedent that run away health care costs remain and continue to be the sole responsibility of the consumer not the provider. Our health care in the USA is twice as expensive Per capita here than the next most expensive country. Instead of having the providers bear this inefficiency it’s put on the workers back to carry. We are carrying enough burdens from the oligarchy already.

I’m not a Maoist but I can respect the quote, “A revolution is not a dinner party.” Every movement has a social cost. The blood of those 45k that might die this year isn’t on the hands of the people who will stand for nothing less than a single payer policy. It’s on the hands of our corrupt legislature that refuses to pass popular reform and has gone out of their way to create a caricature of health reform that disgusts just about every class of American. If the legislature does push this garbage through all it will do is further alienate them from their base. The only good thing I could see coming from passing the bill would be that it might let us unseat every incumbent that’s running in November in protest, and might even open a window for a 3rd party with a labor orientation.

From my point of view, as someone a little right of Social Democrat, passing it is more politically dangerous to the democratic party than letting it die; but if you know you’re going down, I suppose it pays lock in your seat on the board of Cigna, no?

We’ve already lost on health care.  We lost the second the Democrats stabbed real health care reform in the back, and instead decided to use the bill to push billions out to their corporate backers.

What this bill really does is ban and block all reform for the next four years.  That’s the Democrats ‘answer’ to people’s cries for help in dealing with awful health insurance companies that charge ridiculous rates and then deny all claims automatically.

The Democrats are passing a bill that says all of that can continue for the next four years.

It’s odd—I’m agreeing with both Diamond and Tony Wicher.

Some parts are very complicated but some are simple.
1) Under the current Republican non-plan:
Lose your job and your family loses ALL health care.
2) Republicans claim that everyone can use ERs but that ignores 3 problems:
  a) Hospitals are not insurance companies and by being forced to treat everyone in the ER out of their own pockets, they have to act like insurance companies, FOR WHICH THEY ARE NOT QUALIFIED!
  b) ERs are not designed or structured to be primary care facilities—they are designed for EMERGENCIES
  c) If there’s no care BEFORE the emergency, then the emergency is far more expensive than the preventative care.
3) Of course, Republicans believe in “the free market” until THEY lose THEIR jobs and health benefits.
4) Without universal health insurance, 1000 hospitals will go out of business in 5 years.  Then there won’t BE those ERs the GOP is relying on.  The economy and healthcare are intimately intertwined. 
5) In those 1000 communities where those 1000 hospitals are, they are usually the BIGGEST employer around—and that will kill another 1000 communities…No, the recession’s not over.  The spineless Dims and the malevolent Re-Thugs are guaranteeing it will get worse.  This is why.

The answer was always universal Medicare, Medicaid, or the Fed. Employees health plan.  By being nice and dicking around with Re-thugs and Blue-dogs, that’s been lost.

But even now the so-called leaders of the Dims don’t get it: STOP PLAYING NICE AND START PLAYING HARD-BALL!  You’ve had 3 years of “nice” and you’ve lost Va, NJ and now Mass, plus the health care plan.

GET YOUR HEADS OUT OF YOUR BUTTS!  I got a blast email from Robert Menendez, my Senator.  It said that “we are doing great things in Washington and the wake-up call is we need to let people know that.”

Huh?  Talk about tone-deaf!  No, Senator.  You are NOT doing “great things”—you are dicking around and trying to appease those who will NOT be appeased.  It’s time to acknowledge that bi-partisanship is DEAD in the Senate and act as if the GOP will simply vote “NO” on everything you propose and try to block it.

Senator, either you are an idiot or you are arrogant enough to think I and my fellow citizens are idiots you can fool.  There is no middle road on this one.

Obama has no legacy and none will be created in the next three years, except shame and further national decline.  When he slogs out the front door of the White House in January 2013, the crowds, reminiscent of those that greeted Bush last year, will be singing, “Hey hey . . . good-bye.”

I want what most Americans want which is Medicare for all. Obama is losing at this point because he is young and wet behind the ears, is letting other supposedly more experienced and qualified people handle everything from national security to the economy, is not leading and does not stand for anything. I say let this travesty of a bill die and let that be a lesson to Obama. Progressives like me are his real popular base. Without us he’s nothing. He’s smart, maybe he will yet learn who his real friends are.

losing health care is THE ONLY OPTION.

have oreobama implode before our eyes

is the only way to have 2 party charade go poof!

rethugs have 0 credibility.

even if they came back, they’ll screw it up even more.

the revolution will be even faster to come.

Let’s precipitate a total political and constitutional crisis.

it’s all rotten,  we need to break it all down to start it from scratch again.

either that or someone somewhere must find a way to vaporize the evil empire.

By diamond, January 22 at 7:10 pm #

Can’t really respond to your post because you dismiss opposition by saying
things like “republicans hate the poor”.  This isn’t rational discussion, its
demonization and is used to end discussion.  so enjoy your point of view but
don’t expect a legitimate discussion about it.

By john from ojai, January 22 at 6:29 pm #

John - you sound rather afraid to discuss the issues and like diamond above,
prefer to dismiss opposing viewpoints by simply framing them as sponsored
talking points.  I notice you didn’t take issue with any of my statements, only
my character.  But i back up my statements where possible with credible data
(like the 60 min. show on medicare fraud i posted earlier).  I used the word
“socialist” because that’s exactly what single payer insurance is… unless you
think “socialism” is a bad word?

btw - “thank you for not smoking” was a fictional drama not a documentary so
i’d beware of relying on hollywood stories for your viewpoints.

Marshall I live in a country where we’ve had a national health care system since the seventies and we have one of the best health care systems in the world. In spite of the doctors’ predictions that the sky would fall and we’d all end up living in gulags everything worked and still works. People who have a functioning universal health care system just can’t understand how Americans can have allowed themselves to be treated this way for so long. Listening to Sarah Palin and other dinosaurs ranting about death panels merely sends a message to the world that fascism is alive and well in the Republican party. People who live with a functioning health care system can’t understand why one of the richest countries in the world has people being treated for medical conditions and having their teeth pulled and thrown in buckets in a field- as happens annually when that American millionaire pays for free dental and medical care for anyone who turns up in the field. The present health care system America has is a model for everything you should NOT do and must be reformed. A thousand mile journey begins with the first step but the Republicans are determined that the first step will never be taken. Not because they genuinely think it’s a bad idea but because they hate the poor and fear the working class who outnumber them a million times over. They like their working class to be semi-literate, in poor health, overworked and underpaid as a punishment for not being righteous and rewarded by God, like them. Besides which it makes it harder for workers to stage an uprising and overthrow their corporate, military and political masters if they’re poor, ignorant, exhausted and sick. That might sound crazy but the Republicans are the party of crazy. McCain’s rendition of Bomb, Bomb,Bomb Iran put that beyond all debate.

By AmericanDisgrace, January 22 at 11:20 am #

“A ‘for profit’ medical system, like any such system, will always seek maximum
profit. It will encourage illness because like any business, it will create the need
into which to deliver the cure.”

Your statement might sound good in a socialist manifesto, but the logic is
flawed.  The part of the system we’re talking about changing is the health
INSURANCE system - a system which benefits by LOWERING treatment costs so
it pays out less to affect cures while collecting the same premium.

Even if we were talking about removing profit from the healthcare DELIVERY
system (which no one is), there’s ample evidence this would reduce the quality
of healthcare.  For example, drug companies are investing heavily in vaccines
for numerous things that can only be treated: like Alzheimers and cancer. 
Preventing these afflictions reduces the need for costly treatment. 
Governments don’t do this, the private sector does.

Not only that, but the medical industry isn’t a simple monolithic monopoly. 
Drug companies are different from medical services companies are different
from equipment manufacturers are different from doctors, etc…  Each has
different (sometimes conflicting) interests and thus exerts different influences
on policy direction.

What crap. The health insurance bailout bill is an atrocity. Make people buy expensive crappy insurance. Give millions of tax payers dollars to greedy badly run health insurance companies.  No, the people have spoken in the only way they can by “throwing the bums out”.

This is an odd post for “Truthdig”.  Why would any of us be concerned about Obama’s legacy?  People have lost their jobs, can’t pay for insurance, losing their home.  Really they are.  And the Versailles Court is worried about Louis’ legacy.  Oh my, this is what Naomi Klein was talking about.  People are worried about Obama as a brand, not worried about America and Americans.

Boyarski is derived from the Russian “boyar” which is exactly what this author is at the court of Tsar Barack I.

Don’t forget that the BILL SUCKS and the people don’t want it. He has no one to blame but himself by starting with a bad bill and compromising it further by cutting backroom deals and playing games with congress to serve corporate interests over the interests of the country. Learn the hard way that we aren’t so stupid and that we could see through the act.

  Kill it!

Mr. President:
You gave the Congress the chance to pass health care reform; you never dictated ANY details, just general provisions.

Now it’s time to just dictate “Medicare For All” and present the well-known single-payer system that everybody already knows (and except for Republicans it is loved by all).  Polls still show single-payer gets approval in ranges of 56% to 76%. 

The details of premium payments are comparatively simple to work out. 

Use the KISS principle and let the Republicans and the conservative talking heads butt heads with the preponderance of the electorate.

Obama’s mistake was believing that he could outline some general principles,
wave his arms in his first state of the union address, and then a “reform” bill
would magically move through both chambers of congress and somehow come
out the other end smelling like roses. Well, the smell is quite the opposite of
that, and we all know why this is the case. Congress is too corrupt, and
vulnerable to too much influence and tinkering of legislation by lobbyists who
represent the very same interests they are trying to reform. The exact same
thing has been happening with the financial “reform” bill, if you’ve all been
following that gem. The whole process only confirms to people what already
seemed blatantly clear: this government is broken, be it run by Democrats or
Republicans doesn’t matter. It is unfortunate, but Obama apparently did not
spend enough time in the Senate to understand the depth of congress’
corruption and rottenness, on both sides of the aisle.

How can anyone think they could possibly legislate any kind of “reform” at all?

That Senate health reform bill was one of the most twisted, most
unprogressive, most offensive pieces of legislation imaginable. It was not a
step forward. It was several different tiny steps forward in areas that are
straightforward and could have easily passed both chambers on their own
merits (pre-existing conditions, coverage limits, etc.), but the remainder
amounted to raising taxes to shovel at this enormously bloated health
insurance industry without any meaningful cost controls with teeth. It did
nothing to change the structure of the health industry as a whole, which is
nothing better than a static pyramid scheme (i.e., you never get to move up the
pyramid). It was a disaster! And almost nobody liked it, whether left, right, and
center. I’m glad it failed.

The same goes with financial reform. The bill currently moving through
congress has been passed through the hands of many junior Democrats from
formerly GOP-held districts who needed to add special clauses and
amendments for the big banks and Wall St in order to raise the kind of war
chest they will need to be competitive in the next election cycle. They don’t
care a wit about financial reform, they only care about keeping their seats,
which in turn is all about caving to special interests to get the cash spigot
flowing in their direction.

Maybe if Obama tries again, but doesn’t leave it up to congress to legislate and
craft the bill, the result might be better off than this past round. But that’s what
Clinton tried to do, and that didn’t work either!

For the above reasons, and more, I’m now convinced that we will never see
adequate reform of anything until we reform the gov’t itself, which means
reforming elections as well as lobbying practices. As the Supreme Court
demonstrated yesterday, this is also impossible to do by means of ordinary
legislation alone. So what can be done? Lose hope?

No. We can change the constitution. The 28th amendment, which is long
overdue, should explicitly remove campaign contributions from free speech
protection. The Supreme Court cannot possibly argue with that. Checkmate.

Amending the constitution is hard! But worth the effort, for liberals, centrists,
and conservatives. All we need to do is channel the presently existing angst
and populist furor to this end, and it would make things much easier. Simply
channel the rage, and use the health care and financial reform bills as an
example of why this is such an emergency situation, and needs to be done! If
one party opposes it, then self-reform the other party, and let the voters show
their anger at the polls. It would work.

Then we can reform health care and the financial industry, and lots of other
ones are sorely needed as well…

By wildflower, January 22 at 12:28 am #

“Actually, this is not true and studies have shown Medicare does just fine. Most
of the fraud involved in Medicare stems from fraudulent claims and billings
from the insurance industry”

Which studies are those and what evidence backs your claim that most
medicare fraud is from the insurance industry?  Your WellCare article is not
proof of that (btw - WellCare has since been reinstated).

Suggest you look at this link for more on Medicare fraud:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/10/23/60minutes/main5414390.shtm
l

By john from ojai, January 22 at 12:18 am #

I was referring to healthcare delivery, not healthcare insurance.  No one is
calling for socialization of healthcare delivery.

By wildflower, January 22 at 12:28 am #

“Actually, this is not true and studies have shown Medicare does just fine. Most
of the fraud involved in Medicare stems from fraudulent claims and billings
from the insurance industry”

Which studies are those and what evidence backs your claim that most
medicare fraud is from the insurance industry?  Your WellCare article is not
proof of that (btw - WellCare has since been reinstated).

Suggest you look at this link for more on Medicare fraud:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/10/23/60minutes/main5414390.shtml

By john from ojai, January 22 at 12:18 am #

I was referring to healthcare delivery, not healthcare insurance.  No one is
calling for socialization of healthcare delivery.

Re Marshall: “profit motive drives responsibility better than govt. run systems
which is why medicare is rife with fraud. . “

Actually, this is not true and studies have shown Medicare does just fine. Most
of the fraud involved in Medicare stems from fraudulent claims and billings
from the insurance industry such as these companies:

“. . . Medicare barred WellPoint Inc., the second-largest U.S. health insurer by
revenue, from signing up new Medicare customers because it allegedly denied
prescriptions to some and overcharged others. . .

. . . WellCare was one of the overall worst performers among all plans,” said
Abby Block, Medicare’s chief of private plans, in the letter… More than 2,500
WellCare Medicare plan customers in January complained about their services,
including many who said they had difficulty obtaining prescription drugs, Block
said. . . “

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/politics/content/health/epaper/2009/02/20/
0220wellcare_copy.html?cxntlid=inform_sr

Marshall, quit smoking mass quantities of crack, it destroys brain cells.  Our current system is broken, and the Fix in the Senate would make it worse, while for a time saving the Medical Mafia which currently runs the horrible system we have.

If we do nothing, in a short while, less than a decade, the current system will tank, and we can replace it with single payer for the good of all, getting rid of the massive corporate bureaucracy and wild costs, while providing quality care for everyone

We spend more individually on health care (for lesser quality services) then people pay on taxes in single-payer countries (and anyway the tax line is progressive, meaning the richer you are the more you pay—thus it is equalizing.)  There is no logical reason to keep the extremely expensive corporate health insurance industry going—and certainly not paying less for real, unlimited full healthcare for all in taxes.

Too see with 100% ACCURACY what will become of the
“Health Care Option”

read the new post in the May 15th Prophecy titled
The Forward Actions of Obama
http://lastdaywatchers.blogspot.com/2010/01/forward-
actions-of-obama.html

Here is a brief excerpt

“Remember it was May 15th Prophecy that told
you back in April 2008 in the post The Defining
Moment and The Economic Collapse Prophecy well
before the word “Bank Bailout” became known to the
vocabulary of America, that Satan would use his pawn
George W Bush to lay the foundation for his economic
takeover

Stocks tumble as Obama takes on banks”

By wildflower, January 21 at 7:35 pm #

profit motive drives responsibility better than govt. run systems which is why
medicare is rife with fraud and powerless to do anything about it.  For example,
our health delivery system is a for profit system and works quite well which is
why no one is calling for socializing it.

Most of the countries that you claim have eliminated profit motive from their
health insurance systems (none have socialized delivery btw) do in fact have
plenty of private insurance.  France, Britian, Canada… all have private insurance
to augment the insufficient public coverage.  Canada’s public system is plagued
with problems for example - long wait times and lack of up to date technology
outside of metro areas.

The citizens in the countries you mention may not be going bankrupt through
direct health care costs, but they pay the high taxes that indirectly pay those
costs.  don’t buy into the michael moore fallacy that socialized healthcare is
free; it’s not.  Our health insurance system needs work but socializing it ain’t
the answer.

Kissing corporate butt is not the same thing as health care.  True, our tax dollars would go to corporations to insure the working poor, but these policies would be worthless, since the working poor cannot afford to pay the deductibles, so would still be without health care.

This program is a plan to enrich corporations that make billions in profit and pay executives millions in individual salaries, corporations dedicated to keeping from providing health care in order to maximize profit.

I don’t understand how anyone calling themselves progressive can support this catastrophe.  It will throw good money after bad, with a broken health care system to show for it.

Better to leave things as they are and watch the current system go under from the weight of bureaucracy, greed and mismanagement, so that we can have a new system of the people, by the people and for the people, replace it, a single payer system that actually works, cuts bureaucracy, cuts cost, and provides much better health care for everyone.

Just pass the damn bill?

It’s over baby

No, the senate bill does not provide anyone with medical care.  The only sad thing about obama’s downfall would not be him, but that most people are so stupid that their energy and time would probably not go into radical direct system change through drastic electoral reforms, but voting for the republicans—who are the same cynical power-for-us dead end as the democrats are. 

And while systems that have had single-payer or an NHS in place for decades have their own little issues (and ones that we could work around—such as in Canada, where the issue is a lack of coordination between provincial and state governments) people there can still go to any doctor they want; can go to the hospital without worrying about being bankrupted, and generally live longer, healthier lives than we do; and their systems cost less than what we pay (though I personally don’t care about the ‘cost,’ healthcare is a human right and we are the richest nation in the world.)

Re Marshall: “I would urge you to consider how many of the countries in your list are actually successful at implementing universal health care.” 

And I urge you to remember the goal of a for-profit health insurance industry is to make money for their shareholders. This fact will never change. Other civilized nations recognize and understand this, which is why they’ve eliminated the profit motive from their nationalized health plans. It’s also why their citizens are not going bankrupt as a result of family medical emergencies.

By wildflower, January 21 at 3:31 pm #

“thirty-two of the thirty-three developed nations have achieved universal
health care”

Wildflower - I would urge you to consider how many of the countries in your
list are actually successful at implementing universal health care.  The
countries most cited as shining examples are in fact universally failing at its
implementation; health care costs continue to rise in these countries (as
everywhere) and they all suffer major problems in one area or another (like wait
times, availability of latest technology, availability of trained professionals, lack
of suitable coverage that doesn’t require additional private coverage, etc…) 
Free universal socialized health care is a myth.

Re Bill Boyarsky: “This is just what the Republicans want. They have been fighting a health reform bill.”

America needs to forget the Republicans. The Republicans have an asocial mentality when it comes to looking after the health and welfare of the U.S. Citizenry.  At this point, the party exists solely to collect our tax money so that they may create wars where their constituents can make big bucks.

Obama and the Democrats need to continue moving forward on the health care reform because it’s what America desperately needs. They need to forget “Barbie’s Massachusetts Ken” and focus on reality, and the fact that thirty-two of the thirty-three developed nations have achieved universal health care:

Norway
New Zealand
Japan
Germany
Belgium
United Kingdom
Kuwait
Sweden
Bahrain
Brunei
Canada
Netherlands
Austria
United Arab Emirates
Finland
Slovenia
Denmark
Luxembourg
France
Australia
Ireland
Italy
Portugal
Cyprus
Greece
Spain
South Korea
Iceland
Hong Kong
Singapore
Switzerland

http://truecostblog.com/2009/08/09/countries-with-universal-healthcare-by-date/

President Obama’s so-called “health care plan” is nothing of the sort, it’s a terrible “private insurance plan” tailor made for the insurance industry to make billions of dollars, please, let this corporate giveaway mistake die a merciful death.

JV99
“Medicare is a disaster that will sink the Federal budget in a few years”.

Am I to deduce that the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan are really blessings which will erase the Federal debt in a few years?

And when was the last time that your mom changed your diapers?

The present “health care” bill is certainly lost, as it should be.  It was a terrible bill and the voters of Massachusetts sent Mr. O and company a message about it.  They would be well advised to listen to the message instead of pointing fingers at each other.

JV99
“Medicare is a disaster that will sink the Federal budget in a few years”.

Am I to deduce that the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan are blessings which will make me a billionaire in a few years?

Ans when was the last time that your mom changed your diapers/

“Nervous liberals up for election in 2010 would begin abandoning the president.”

And please explain to us why that would be so bad. Obama and the Democratic Congress perfectly embody the Democratic Party’s ethos of being a slave to the lobbyists. I happily voted for him but Obama himself has turned out to be the biggest disappointment as a president in my lifetime.

A meme is beginning to rise up from the nether worlds, though it is still sleepy with disconnect. If the two party system still prevails in 2012, Palin or Beck may very likely be our next president. In order for the two party game to be gone with the wind in time for 2012—limiting ourselves to that playing field will be fatal—there is something that will need to occur in late 2010.

There are 19 Democratic Senate seats up for grabs and every single house seat. Progressives and Independents are already beginning to understand that there is no future in the Democratic Party.

For a monster party of progressives and independents to emerge in 2012—remember, nature abhors a vacuum—the Democratic Party must first be thoroughly decapitated in 2010. A stake must be driven through its heart and its body burnt in an offering to the great god Change.

Moreover, the Republicans must also decisively recapture both houses of Congress in 2010 so that it can no longer disclaim responsibility for the hard times that will overtake this country.

Then progressives and independents can let the populist rage do its dirty work, but they can also offer an alternative to the Tea Party movement.

We will see what we will see but we might wish to get out ahead of this bandwagon and do what is necessary in November 2010 even if we have to hold our nose in the voting booth.

It’s not so much a pact with the Devil. It’s a pact with a billiard ball wherein we make a bank shot that offers progressives—that will assuredly include Democrats who have long since abandoned their party—a real chance to retake the night in 2012.

Why would a failure of Mr. Obama be bad? I think it could possibly be extremely healthy if voters finally wake up and stop voting ever again for hot air blowers who ask them to “believe”. Believing belongs in houses of worship but not in the voting booth.

Blaming concerned House members for “killing thousands of uninsured persons”, as Mr. Boyarski does, is vile. In this case the real killers are Lieberman et al. and the Republican Senators. Get that into your empty cranium Mr. Boyarski, get that into your empty cranium. Yes, I am furious because of your vile finger pointing in the wrong direction.

Medicare is a disaster that will sink the Federal budget in a few years.  Small
business is being strangled by employee health care costs.  Pre-conditions are
freezing out millions of older workers. Millions more have no insurance.

The abortion that the Democrats cobbled together does nothing about this and
leads to a train wreck Medicare-2 down the road at a cost of trillions.

Rip it apart and start with one thing at a time.  No pre-condition lockouts first. 
Tear Medicare apart and make it an HMO with only selected doctors who are
employees of the system only and turn it over to a private company like Kaiser
to run.

Consider eliminating medical insurance all together and let people themselves
drive down medical costs when they have to pay themselves.  Give subsidies to
people who need it that they spend themselves.

Hard times require hard decisions.  Not stupid Congress B@#^S%*) like the
current bill and how it was done.

Why are the Democrats afraid of a Republican fillibuster? The President can use his bully pulpit to remind the public that every day the Republican senators obstruct government, thousands of Americans die from lack of health care. I think the Republican senators lack the fortitude to fillibuster every day to the next election. What an image of the senators reading mind numbing articles 24 hours a day 7 days a week, ignoring all the pressing concerns of the country.

No, don’t just “pass the damn thing.” Do the “right thing” which is single-payer universal health care!

Intellectuals agree, there must be a solution to our problems.  Ideas generate solutions, thinking outside of the box generates solutions.  With this being said, I’m all out of ideas, they’ve been completely extinguished by conservative media.

Its a shame.  I can hardly stand to listen to the pundits of the extremist conservative right.  You know, I consider myself a socialist/ capitalist liberal.  Believe me, you can be a socialist capitalist liberal lol.  I’ve always pondered why what appears to be two completely distinct ideologies cant live together peacefully…possibly creating a brand new ideology.  For now, I call it socialist capitalist.

However, there are some issues where i find myself in the pragmatic middle ground, possibly a bit conservative to be honest.  This is because I think for myself. 

My sister, whom I dont always see eye to eye, which is not to be expected, have fantastic conversations about politics.  Our conversations are engaging and generate a wealth of ideas.  She like myself is NOT a fox news or major news network pundit or talking head.

My family:  Fox news addicts.  I cannot have a decent conversation with them about anything and I will go as far to say that when I talk to them about anything in regards to a public option, I get the wrath of hell as if I were sitting in front of the great conservative messiahs rush limbaugh, glenn beck, anne coulter, sean hannity….etc AND THIS LIST CAN GO ON.

So getting to my point, I really feel all this anger and confusion and brainwashing all have one thing in common, major network media, TV, FOX NEWS, CNN…the talking heads.

What can be done about this?  The only answer I have is turn off the tv.  But, thats all regular people have anymore these days to keep them connected to the world.  Its so disheartening.  We have such potential as a society to be something really special, to work together, end sickness, hunger, corruption.  To build great things, live comfortably and in total peace.

We can do this, however, this seems to be completely contrast to the ultra conservative agenda.

I know it sounds utopian, but thats me and I like to think that way.  I’m not calling for state run radio, lord no.  I’m calling for an answer to a problem in which the solution must be action, humanity needs to join in.  Fighting amongst ourselves is pointless and doesnt get any thing worthwhile accomplished.  Getting mad doesnt help either.

There is no “health care battle”. There is a shameless grab for money to stuff insurance company coffers & line the pockets of corrupt politicians. Obama needs to distance himself from Reid, Pelosi, & Frank…pronto.

No public option? The healthcare bill is already lost. There is no point in passing it and hoping for incrementalism later. That’s and empty promise.

As a dem-O-crat from Massachusetts, I say let this bill die. It’s already brain dead anyway.

I wonder at the logic of those who recognize the need to address fraud in Medicare by simply tossing it in the garbage. What Marshall fails to note is the human wreckage created by such casual rejection as well as the real cost to this nation of failing to corral our huge expenditures in the inefficient health care we currently have here.

Then again, that is this posters modus operandi concerning most issues.

By de profundis clamavi, January 21 at 4:58 am #

Medicare For All - sounds good doesn’t it?  But Medicare is broken.

Shrinking numbers of Doctors accept medicare patients because its
reimbursements don’t keep up with going rates.

Medicare is rife with fraud.  And because it spends little on fraud prevention,
it’s overhead costs appear lower.  But they’re not; they just don’t include the
fraud numbers because they don’t even track them.

Like other large government entitlement programs, Medicare suffers from bad
stewardship.  Its funding is subject to financial raiding to support other
spending programs and budget shorfalls.  This is what happens when political
entities are given control of huge spending programs - not to mention the
difficulty, waste, and inefficiencies of managing large programs that share
oversight among state and federal governments.

Medicare is underfunded and will be going broke soon, gobbling up an ever
larger proportion of GDP in order to bail it out.

The main reasons health care costs rise have nothing to do with whether health
care is private or public.  They have to do with the costs of technology and
treatments - neither of which are addressed by expanding Medicare.

The fact is that universal coverage will simply cost more and there’s no way
around that.  Projections that predict massive cost savings through reduced
inefficiencies are entirely bogus since you can’t project savings you don’t know
about.  I’m not saying that we shouldn’t strive for greater coverage - we
should.  But just expanding medicare is nothing more than stretching an
already flawed program to accommodate more people while pretending there
will be some kind of achieved economy of scale.

Expanding Medicare = bad idea

The public is well aware the current bill is a huge bonus for the insurance companies, which is why their stocks rose ahead of the Senate vote. If the Democrats just ram it through, the Tea Party will simply go out there and accuse Obama of pulling off some sort of “fascist coup,” scaring more people and winning their votes.

Medicare For All.

Three words you can put across in the elevator.

Easily understandable by everybody, and well worth supporting. But it would hurt the insurance companies, and that would hurt Democratic Senators.

Instead, the Dems try to deliver to us a “health care” plan that goes one step further from Blue Cross and WellPoint’s ad campaigns: in the past, they took their members’ premiums and spent it on advertising to PERSUADE us to buy their insurance, and they spent more money on lawyers and administrators to deny coverage when it was needed. Now, they take their members’s premiums and spend it on lobbyists and Democratic Senate re-election campaign contributions to take the ad campaign one step further - now the law will tell us we HAVE to buy their f@$&ing; insurance, and you can bet the lobbyists will make sure the law will be full of loopholes for the insurance companies to continue over-charging and denying coverage.

The concept of mandatory private “health” insurance is fundamentally flawed. It deserves to fail, along with Bill Boyarsky’s notion that an empty box labeled “health care reform” is better than nothing. The voters of Massachusetts did us all a favor by giving the President and the Senate Democrats a bloody nose. 

Medicare For All.

Is that something you can remember and repeat?

Remember it and repeat it, and don’t stop until it becomes reality.

Forget Bill Boyarsky, and Harry Reid, and Ben Nelson, and Joe Lieberman, and Rahm Emanuel, and Barack Obama.

G. Anderson shouldn’t your questions more appropriately be directed to the Republicans who have voted as a solid block against this bill, as they will vote against any bill which reforms the scandalously dysfunctional healthcare system America has? So scandalous it operates more as a form of socialism for the rich, the doctors, the hospitals and the private health insurance companies than as a genuine insurance against medical costs. Why in the hell won’t they do it? Because Obama thought there might be one or two decent Republicans who would put conscience above party politics. I could have told him what would happen. There are virtually no Republicans of that kind.

The Republicans have been in the White House calling the shots for much longer than the Democrats, have had more Presidents and they also control the rabidly right wing mainstream media. How hard would it be for them to do the right thing? Not hard at all. Did they make any attempt to do so, ever? No, they did not. None of the obstacles that dog Obama’s every move on health care reform were ever there for them but they did nothing and worse than nothing and took huge sums in payola from the health insurance companies to do nothing. Where is your scathing attack on them for their years of inaction and inertia while the people who paid their salaries went without medical care and desperately needed drugs and died? It seems that the only thing that will satisfy critics like you is for Obama to not only pass this bill but to walk on water while he does it. It’s not good enough to look at the mess and blame Obama you need to look at the history of the mess and find out who made it in the first place. I’ll give you a clue: their mascot is an elephant and it’s the elephant in the room on the war in Afghanistan, the economic meltdown and the health care industry. Obama didn’t create all this: he’s just the guy who has to fix it and the Republicans are determined he won’t fix a damn thing and that he will carry the can for all their failures and misdeeds. How you can’t see this is beyond me.

And Bill lists this as an obvious after thought…“Worse yet, many thousands more Americans will die because they don’t have adequate medical care..”  as though the Senate bill would provide that…

Wait a minute..is that if it does pass or doesnt? Bill doesnt really care…just make Obama and the Dems look good

Here is what Obama and the Dems have in the works (Conrad-Gregg Bill) for “balancing the budget”
:http://unsilentgeneration.com/2010/01/20/obama-cuts-deal-that-will-reduce-social-securitymedicare-and-all-entitlements/#comment-2657

Since I am sure the “deficit” is being run up by sick grandmothers and not war and Wall St.

Maybe Bill thinks that 15 million more on unfunded medicaid is “adequte medical coverage”..its not. HOw can Congrss “extend Medicaid”, Bill , when it is funded fed/state 60/40? Unfunded mandates…If the Dims had bothered to sned more of the “stimulus bill” to the states , rather than “tax cuts”, the states might not be so broke…how are the states supposed to pay for it, Bill? You dont care..

Then, he has the nerve to go on:

“This is just what the Republicans want. They have been fighting a health reform bill because they know their victory would kill the entire Obama program, give them big gains in the 2010 election and leave the president fighting desperately for re-election in 2012.

That’s the cost of losing this health care fight.”

The “health care fight” waas lost when Obama got elected..Bill exposes that he is just another Democratic party hack. All he cares about is Obaam being re-elected..not the “thousands who will die” “worse yet”...

Take a good long look, Mr. President…

Yes, all this has been said before, the need is well known, well understood and felt deeply by American’s everywhere.

So then I ask you why in the hell won’t they do it?

Why aren’t they willing to break a few eggs to make an Omelet?

Is the Democratic party, full of gutless wonders, who are afraid that the Republicans are going to get mad at them for misbehaving?

Or are they so used to compromise, so used to living on pork, that all they know how to do is play it safe, while people are dying?