what more needs to be said about the health care debate?

[Willie99]

<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tbody><tr><th>Are you very satisfied with the quality of your care, somewhat satisfied, somewhat dissatisfied or very dissatisfied?" <table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tbody><tr><th> </th><th style="color: rgb(44, 189, 15);">Very Satisfied</th><th style="color: rgb(48, 25, 255);">Somewhat Satis.</th><th style="color: rgb(159, 26, 163);">Somewhat Dis.</th><th style="color: rgb(196, 48, 10);">Very Dissatisfied</th><th style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Unsure</th></tr><tr><td class="noCenter">6/18-21</td><td>49</td><td>34</td><td>9</td><td>7</td><td>1</td></tr></tbody></table>


</th><th style="color: rgb(44, 189, 15);">
</th><th style="color: rgb(48, 25, 255);">Somewhat Satis.</th><th style="color: rgb(159, 26, 163);">Somewhat Dis.</th><th style="color: rgb(196, 48, 10);">Very Dissatisfied</th><th style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Unsure</th></tr><tr><td class="noCenter">
</td><td>49</td><td>34</td><td>9</td><td>7</td><td>1</td></tr></tbody></table>


"Are you very satisfied with your health insurance coverage, somewhat satisfied, somewhat dissatisfied or very dissatisfied?"
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tbody><tr><th> </th><th style="color: rgb(31, 166, 17);">Very Satisfied</th><th style="color: rgb(70, 33, 255);">Somewhat Satis.</th><th style="color: rgb(156, 11, 156);">Somewhat Dis.</th><th style="color: rgb(184, 7, 7);">Very Dissatisfied</th><th style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Unsure</th></tr><tr><td class="noCenter">6/18-21</td><td>42</td><td>39</td><td>11</td><td>8</td><td>1</td></tr></tbody></table>

 

[Willie99]

we like our health care, we like our insurance coverage

we don't need some fucking loser to fuck everything up

sniff a clue jackass, and fill in the holes retard. Then leave everyone else alone, pea brain.







PS: no disrespect intended towards jackasses, retards and pea brains.

 

[rolltide]

two things here willie

1- extremely small sample size
2- the agenda is already set and it's happening no matter who stands in it's way, it's getting done

the puppet masters have this adminstration by the balls and the impact of the unprecedented and disastrous legislation getting rolled out in record time will not be truly understood for many years.

 

[Willie99]

Rolltide

I don't concur with your sample size comment. The poll sample size of 1,000 people is very much consistent with scientific poll sampling.

The results are also very much consistent with polling data since the Clinton era. In a totally objective question, people are happy with their own coverage, something that they actually experience. As opposed to something they were told by some politician or reported on by some media.

Experience >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>perception

I concur 1,000% with your comment that nobody knows the impact of such legislation. That is true about everything the Democrats are literally trying to "rush through Congress". The honest ones amongst them will even admit such.

 

[brucefan]

Obamacare failed in Europe

posted by Donny Ferguson on Jun 30, 2009


Guillaume Vuillemey, a researcher at France's Institut Economique Molinari, and Philip Stevens, a researcher at Britain's International Policy Network write in today's Washington Examiner about how Obama's proposed government takeover of the health care system has worked in Europe.
Hint. Not so well.
Click here to read the column, or if you live in the metro D.C. area pick up a copy of The Examiner. Vuillemey and Stevens write, in part:

President Barack Obama's proposed "public insurance option" for universal health coverage seems logical: A large public insurance fund will provide quality coverage for the uninsured and force competing insurers to lower costs. In practice, though, one needs only look at what decades of government health care have done to ramp up the financial and quality problems endured by Britain and France.
The Obama plan is supposed to make health insurance more competitive. But heavy subsidies will give it a big advantage, pulling an estimated 118.5 million people from private insurers to the public system. This government-subsidized system will eventually dominate the market in a way that would overrule competition...
...One way government tries to limit demand is to decree which new drugs can be prescribed. Many drugs, widely available in America and continental Europe, are denied to British patients.

State mismanagement has also created waiting lines for hospitals, on average causing 8.6 weeks of waiting. Once inside, budgetary cutbacks on cleaning and maintenance mean higher rates of an antibiotic-resistant variety of staph infection. This "superbug" has turned even routine surgery into a lottery of death This is precisely what happened in Britain. The state provides most health care, via the National Health Service. Patients have almost no say over which physician, surgeon or hospital they can use, while professionals have to conform to government plans and targets...
...America can certainly draw lessons from overseas about saving money on health care. But in the cases of France and Britain, these lessons are in what not to do. These countries show that nationalizing care damages care.
http://www.lp.org/blogs/donny-fergus...iled-in-europe

Whats president Obama's health care really about?


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​

 

[punter]

We have the most expensive healthcare in the world.

We are #1 we are #1 we are #1

What do we get for that? Well, The Secretary of Health was on Lehrer report last we week. One thing we get is that 100,000 people die from things they receive from our hospitals each year. They dont die from what caused them to go to the hospital, they die from what happend to them in the hospital.

Best healthcare in the world eh? Time for you rat wangers to come down on trial lawyers, these doctors should be able to remove the wrong leg without fear of reprisal.

 

[JudgeWapner]

All I know is that if I were living in the US instead of CR, I'd be living on the streets.

 

[tiznow]

at the rate we going

20-30 years from now 70% of the US population gonna be sitting around doing nothing saying keep sending me a welfare check and take care of my healthcare

it sounds all nice in theory

but fails miserably in practice

all these backstops to protect people...just breeds laziness....and eats away at what made our country great....in that there was incentive to go out and be productive and invent new things like cars, planes, trains, ipods, etc.....

people go out work and get rewarded with top quality healthcare.....they did something to get that....and you don't have to a be a rocket scientist or anything to do that either....

the more and more i see the direction of the country the more and more i'm likely leaving this place

if you under the age of 35....its not gonna be a pretty site in 20-30 years on the current path we going....

maybe 5 years down the road the productive members of society will wake up and say enough is enough and get off their asses and do something about it....i can only hope

 

[punter]

Tiz, every civilized society makes it possible for all their citizens to recive healthcare it is not welfare it is what civilized people do. There may be a few people that try to game the welfare system and would prefer to exist on paltry amount that welfare pays rather than work but I would say that the vast majority of welfare recipients are not able to work through mental, physical, age or catastrophic injury.

To pretend that all poor people got that way by not being willing to work is not only niave it is elitist. I know a lady that worked as a waitress from her teens until her eightys when she came down with alzheimer's. Now she is on medicaid. I dont think that she deserves anyone's scorn.

 

[Presto]

The biggest argument for nationalized health care is to help the uninsured. They are made up of some 47.5 million people.

Almost 39 percent of the uninsured are in five states — Florida, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California, all of which are entry points for immigrants. About 21 percent — 9.7 million — of the uninsured are not citizens. As many as 14 million are eligible for existing government programs — Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP, veterans' benefits, etc. — but have not enrolled. And 9.1 million have household incomes of at least $75,000 and could purchase insurance. Those last two cohorts are more than half of the 45.7 million.

excerpt from George Will

 

[punter]

To recive medicaid benefits you may not have more that a small amount of net worth ($2000) in the state I know of so that if a person becomes infirm and needs nurseing home type care they must stay there on their own nickle until the assets are gone. Then they qualify for medicaid.

As for the illegal aliens, these people are young they should not have that many health problems unless the employers are not carrying Workman's comp and sending them to emergency rooms if they are hurt. As I have said the illegal problem is easy to fix just come down on the employers to a point of forcing them out of business and the problem will go away, but no one wants to do this. Personally I think their benefit to this country outweighs their liability.

 

[Rawpimple]

serious with obama in office I am going to quit my job, stop my mortgage payment, and quit paying for healthcare. Guy is brutal!

Just spend more money Obama. Keep wasting money! The people that really know how to use money efficiently are government agencies? Buy a clue Obama!

The problem with healthcare is we have too many f'in people in this country. Tell the poor people to stop popping out kids and stop rewarding people with welfare checks for every kid.

What is next? Once everyone gets healthcare, they will all expect to have the best diagnostic tests. Well guess what, everyone is getting a chest X-ray and that is it. No CT scan, no molecular testing. Plus you will see some dumb-ass physician because Obama will scare everyone from praciticing medicine. I mean who would want to pracitce medicine with skyrocketing student loans, and having to see 100,000 patients in the day just to make an honest living and with the threat of lawsuits?

The guy is a joke. You asked for him America and you will get your healthcare. My bet is that 100,000 number of people dying in the hospital will skyrocket once this guys legislation takes effect. You will have lines to see doctors like crazy. People in there all the time with colds and BS stuff.

How accurate could that 100,000 be when people are admitted to the hospital with a serious illness to begin with? You mean if they didnt go to the hospital and be admitted, they would still be living?

 

[punter]

Lets see, we have the most expensive healthcare system in the world but around 1/2 of our citizens are not covered.

15 of top 20 highest paying professions in this country are in the medical field.

The event of the baby boomer generation ageing will bankrupt the current system.

Obama trying to change this system, according to many here, will ruin the country.

Ooooooooooooooookay!

 

[Mistermj]

We have the most expensive healthcare in the world.

We are #1 we are #1 we are #1

What do we get for that? Well, The Secretary of Health was on Lehrer report last we week. One thing we get is that 100,000 people die from things they receive from our hospitals each year. They dont die from what caused them to go to the hospital, they die from what happend to them in the hospital.

Best healthcare in the world eh? Time for you rat wangers to come down on trial lawyers, these doctors should be able to remove the wrong leg without fear of reprisal.

Complete Bullshit...all lies.

If there is one thing we know...it's that libs lie about anything to get what they want...especially Punt.

You pull everything out of your ass.

There isn't one link or citation to back up your bullshit or put it into perspective.

Forgettaboutit. :>(

 

[punter]

This from the biggest liar ever to frequent the fourm. Mj you are a ultra right spaming waste.

 

[Mistermj]

This from the biggest liar ever to frequent the fourm. Mj you are a ultra right spaming waste.

I just call em as I see em.

You don't like it...cuz you are used to pulling stuff out of your ass as if it is the truth.

It's not.

Got Links for any of your bullshit? :grandmais

Nope...I didn't think so. You never do.

 

[punter]

Just google it. You will not like what you find.
Example:

The Donella Meadows Archive
Voice of a Global Citizen
New SearchThe Most Expensive Health Care System in the World
America has the best health care system in the world, said Bob Dole and the other executioners of health care reform. Once upon a time that claim was true. Now what America has is the most expensive health care system in the world, in spite of the fact that it leaves one-third of its citizens un- or under-insured and ranks 17th of the 24 industrialized nations in life expectancy.

The major reason for the high expense and poor performance is that we are moving rapidly toward an unholy combination of government and corporate health care management. That trend is well documented by Robert Sherrill in the January 9/16 issue of The Nation. Sherrill draws together 11 recent books and articles on drug companies, insurers, hospitals, and doctors. He shows a system that views patients as consumers to be manipulated, health workers as costs to be minimized, and taxpayer support as gold to be mined.

Here are just a few of Sherrill's startling statistics:

- The top executives of the the nation's four largest hospital chains earned a combined one-year total of $14 million, while they were firing housekeepers and nurses and working the remaining nurses 80 hours a week, so as to pay only one set of benefits for the equivalent of two workers. These hospitals rent "temp" nurses, when patient loads rise. The temps may be unqualified, but they don't get benefits and can be laid off quickly.

- Four corporations own seven out of ten of the nation's for-profit psychiatric beds. They treat only insured patients. The treatments take, with remarkable regularity, 28 days -- the cut-off for most employee insurance policies. Some of the major investors in these psychiatric hospitals are insurance companies.

- Private hospitals close emergency rooms to keep out uninsured patients. Meanwhile at public emergency rooms like that of the Los Angeles County Hospital, the average wait is three hours, and 40 percent of the patients are uninsured.

- In the 1980s 550 community hospitals failed. Meanwhile the Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corporation grew from 30 to 311 hospitals in just 14 months. Columbia/HCA's goal is to own a fifth of the nation's hospitals by the year 2000.

- There were 7,000 deaths because of poor hospital care in one year in New York State alone. About four percent of all hospital patients are injured in some way by the hospital. The medical staff in one hospital made mistakes in drug dosage one out of every three times.

- Medicare and Medicaid fraud by hospitals, doctors, and drug companies costs taxpayers $100-$130 billion a year.

- Hospitals routinely bill Medicare, insurance companies, and patients $8 per aspirin or $20 per box of tissues. More serious overbilling occurs at for-profit hospitals than at public hospitals. One private hospital in Georgia charges on average $14,582 to treat a stroke victim; a nearby public hospital charges $6,735 for the same service and same length of stay.

- In Florida 40 percent of the doctors own their own testing facilities. Patients of lab-owning doctors are subjected to almost twice as many tests as patients of other doctors, and the charge per test is more than twice as high. Doctors who own MRI imaging equipment order four times more MRI scans than doctors who don't.

- American doctors are six times more likely to perform cardiac bypass operations than doctors in Europe; two to three times more likely to perform hysterectomies, twice as likely to do cesarean sections. American doctors take more X-rays per patient and give higher doses of drugs. This medical aggressiveness does not produce higher survival rates, only higher costs.

- Only one in eight of the patients who experience medical malpractice actually sues; only half of those who sue receive settlements. Malpractice suits account for less than one percent of the soaring cost of U.S. health care.

- The average wholesale price of drugs in the U.S. is 32 percent higher than it is in Canada. Almost 40 percent of medicines are sold to people over the age of 60, and 40-50 percent of those medications are unnecessary or even harmful. Each year more than 650,000 elderly Americans are hospitalized because of reactions to prescribed medications.

- Two drugs are used to counter blood clots in coronary arteries: streptokinase at $200 a dose and t-PA at $2,200 a dose. The larger seller is t-PA, not because it is more effective, but because it is better marketed.

- Of every dollar in health insurance premiums Americans pay, 37 cents goes to insurance company overhead.

- Canada's national health care system covers 25 million people using fewer administrators than Massachusetts Blue Cross, which covers 2.7 million. The average American doctor hires twice as many people to handle paperwork as the average Canadian doctor.

- The answer to soaring costs is supposed to be health maintenance organizations, or HMOs. But premiums in American HMOs are rising twice as fast as costs, patients' choice of doctors and treatments is limited, waiting times are increasing, and services are cut to the bone. HMOs are not "managed competition;" they are anti-competitive monopolies.

Our health care system is wildly profitable for its owners, at enormous cost to patients, workers, and taxpayers. If it is the best health care system in the world, it is so only because the more one knows about it, the more one resolves to take very good care of oneself, in order never to have to go near it.

(Donella H. Meadows is an adjunct professor of environmental studies at Dartmouth College.)


Copyright Sustainability Institute
This article from The Donella Meadows Archive is available for use in research, teaching, and private study. For other uses, please contact Diana Wright, Sustainability Institute, 3 Linden Road, Hartland, VT 05048, (802) 436-1277.

 

[bodyforlife]

Lets see, we have the most expensive healthcare system in the world but around 1/2 of our citizens are not covered.

15 of top 20 highest paying professions in this country are in the medical field.

The event of the baby boomer generation ageing will bankrupt the current system.

Obama trying to change this system, according to many here, will ruin the country.

Ooooooooooooooookay!

Punter,

The 46 million people figure that is being bandied around is pure nonsense, but sounds good to try and sell the program. Not sure where you get 1/2 the country since we have over 304 million people.

While it’s not technically wrong to say that there are roughly 45.7 million uninsured, it’s grossly misleading to use this number as an indication of a crisis. More important, this statistic has led to the widespread belief
that there are 45.7 million people in this country who can’t afford health insurance—and don’t have access to health care.

In a nutshell, Punter..

There are supposedly 45.7 million uninsured.

But 18 million earn more than $50,000 (and can afford their own insurance).

More than 10 million aren’t U.S. citizens.

And as many as 14 million qualify for government programs like
Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP. Obviously, there’s some overlap in these numbers. But the critical question is—who’s left over?

Sadly, there are people who really do fall through the cracks. These
are the chronically uninsured working poor. They are people who
hold down jobs and struggle to support families. They earn less than
$50,000 per year, but too much to qualify for government help.
And because insurance is so expensive, they simply can’t afford it.
There are roughly eight million of these chronically uninsured, and
they really do need help.18 (It should be noted that even though they
don’t have insurance, they can still get emergency room care for, say,
a broken leg, visit a community hospital, or a community clinic. But
they aren’t covered for routine check-ups and preventative care.)
Any attempt to solve the uninsured problem should focus on this
narrow slice of the 45.7-million pie.

As for the supposed cost advantage of universal health care? That’s
an illusion, too. True, other developed nations may spend less as
a percentage of GDP than the United States on health care—but
so does Sudan. Without considering value, such statistical acrobatics
are worthless.

There’s another reason health care costs more in America. And it’s
not just because we are a very wealthy nation, demanding the most
expensive treatments, technology, and drugs. We’re also investing
more in medical research. Other countries are nowhere close.
Today, the United States is far and away the world’s leader in
medical research and development. America produces more than
half of the $175 billion of health care technology products purchased
globally. And U.S. governmental outlays on medical research also dramatically outpace those of other nations.

Other nations deal with the “problem” of high medical costs by
simply imposing price controls, refusing to pay an amount that
reflects the true costs of innovation. Needless to say, such controls
cut deeply into the incentives for innovation within those
countries. But they also reduce revenue flows to American firms
that have done—and continue to do—the expensive and very
risky research. As a result, U.S. firms find themselves strapped
for resources as they search for the breakthroughs that everyone
around the world welcomes and uses.

Should we get into how much it cost to develop a drug, Punter?

According to a study from the Tufts University Center for the
Study of Drug Development, it takes about $1.3 billion to bring a
single new drug to market. And only two in 10 approved drugs
earn enough to cover the cost of research and development.

What about the price of human lives that were saved domestically and abroad by creating these drugs?

Should we talk about the ridiculous rankings of the WHO and how they determine what effect Healthcare is? I can go on all night about some of the claims you are making. I just wished you weren't so close-minded on this stuff. There is more than one way to solve this problem. It's unfortunate people have lost sight of what it means to compromise. The same people that complained about the previous administration are acting in the exact same fashion. The same arguments they used against the previous administration can be used just as effectively against them (and probably more so). I would have so much more respect for both sides if they could just stop spinning everything and try a little honesty. But apparently rising above the bs would be too much of a "class act" thing to do.

 

[punter]

How much spin is there to the facts that in healthcare: we pay too much, Top people in the business make too much, our cost are out of line with other countries, our results are inferior to other countries and drug companies bribe our congressmen and fuck us in the asses.

 

[bodyforlife]

To save space, I'm not going to use the quote button Punter. Without even doing any research, I can poke holes in some of Sherrill's stats:

-Sherrill bring up Medicare and Medicaid fraud, which is pretty apparent. But who's system is this? He's actually making a case against a government run system.

-Much of the testing, c-sections, and the like are done for defensive measures to protect against malpractice suits (might account for the low amount he comes up with)

-His comment about medical aggressiveness not producing higher survival rates is flawed if he is using data from WHO.

-Canada does not accept all drugs in their government plan (especially not costly ones). And if you attempt to purchase a non-plan on your own, you face the penalty of having to pay for the entire cost of your care (even the care covered by your plan).

-He claims Canada's healthcare system uses fewer administrators than Mass. Yet, Mass. is a close to a government program as we have in this country and it has been a failure.

-The comment about how much goes to overheard is bogus. Here's a better description of why there's the discrepancy...

A recent study by the Council for Affordable Health Insurance,
the administrative costs of Medicare actually total around
5.2 percent. Meanwhile, the administrative costs of private sector health care total about 8.9 percent. A similar study by
PricewaterhouseCoopers found that only 6 percent of private
health care premiums go to administrative costs and a full
86 percent of premiums go to providing actual medical care.
The reason that official estimates were so far off was that they
didn’t account for Medicare’s hidden costs. For instance, the Medicare Trustees report doesn’t include things like the salaries of managers and administrators or the marketing costs associated with advertising new policies like the Medicare
Part D drug benefit. Private health care providers, on the other
hand, include all of these expenses in their estimates of administrative costs.

On top of that, Medicare passes off a great deal of its costs to
private payers. A recent study showed that, in Washington State alone, $738 million in charges were shifted to private payers to make up for underpayments by Medicare and Medicaid in 2004.
That same year in California, private payers and hospitals paid an extra $45 billion to compensate for unpaid Medicare costs.
Indeed, even though proponents of government health care insist that the uninsured represent a “hidden tax”—that is, those with health insurance pay a hidden tax to subsidize the care of those without health insurance—the reality is that the “uninsured” add only about 1 percent in hidden costs to the price of the insured’s insurance plan. A far greater hidden tax is caused by government

Medicare and Medicaid programs’ low reimbursement rates which
add as much as 10 percent in hidden costs, or subsidies, to those paying for private health insurance.