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Obamacare, explained.

I was just trying to have fun, OB. My old mantra that the more we seek to be consistent and rational, the more we lock ourselves into self-destructive positions. We need some loopholes to take care of us when logic fails....your virtually religious devotion to "social forces" you're in love with is a huge set of blinders, man. Maybe I have my own "blinders", but at least I'm conscious of the probabilities I am wrong. . . .

Well said. I've been wrong plenty, believe me.
 
Death Panels? You've got to be kidding. They are not "Death Panels" but enlightened progressives, responsible citizens of the new world order,

Did you mean corporate excutives, great capatalistic heros who protect the shareholders with their mighty blade?
 
Two things: First, I think that One Brow's ectopic pregnancy is a great example of how legislating abortion is stupid. I am against abortion, except in the cases of rape, incest or the the health of the mother. The problem is, how do you legislate that? When is rape, rape? No means no, what if she says no 3 seconds before? 1 second before? Same with the health of the mother. What does that mean? Does that include mental health? Physical health? Both? When is it mentally healthy to have a baby?

You can't legislate abortion. It is too complicated. There are too many grey areas. Abortion should be left up to the states to decide, which allows people to decide (for example, if you want an abortion, you know where you can get one and if you don't, you know where to go where that won't happen).

Two, one of the major obstacles in healthcare is the rising costs. Why not let "insurance" be insurance? Why not turn back the clock to the good ol' days and only allow insurance companies to cover major work? Why not say, the "best" insurance you can obtain is a $5,000 deductible, everything else you pay out of pocket (I picked $5,000 because $5,000 won't bankrupt anyone). Costs would drop overnight. When the doctor walks in and says he wants to run 10 tests on you, you will stop him, ask him what the one or two most relevant tests are, and say let's start with those two. Right there, costs just dropped 80-90% (simplified, I know, but the point stands).

Also, get rid of "emergency" rooms. Instead of emergency rooms, have a triage center in hospitals. Then, you can have a nurse/PA do the triage, and either send people home at the beginning or send them off to ortho/surgery/doctor consult. That right there immediately cuts down costs.

Third, put a cap on malpractice. Currently OB/GYN's pay over $100,000 a year in malpractice costs. Let's say you cap mapractice at $1,000,000. So, OB/GYN gets out of school, puts $100,000 in an account every year for 10 years. That means over the course of his career, his costs dropped by 2/3rds, if not by 100%.

There are two examples of very, very easy ways to cut costs...but the only problem is Dr's pay would drop, insurance companies profits would drop, and certain politicians would have one less thing to "give" away.

This is the problem with politics. Nobody wants to work together to fix anything, everyone just wants to be right.
 
p.s. I don't even know if States should legislate abortion (rereading my post, I can see where I contradict myself). IF it must be legislated, it should be up to the states. Different regions think differently, have different cultures, different problems/solutions. This should be left up to the region/culture, if at all.
 
Did you mean corporate excutives, great capatalistic heros who protect the shareholders with their mighty blade?

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to One Brow again.

you're on a roll, OB. Just above are three consecutive posts with excellent and well-stated rejoinders. I love this kind of "fun".
 
all I want is the right to find my own experts and make the best decisions I can. . . . . it's my body and my life. . . . and nobody else's damned business.

You couldn't be more right here, kid. We're all paying for it now anyway (as both general ideologies agree we should as a society)... I'm trying to find the silver lining since the bill is here to stay regardless of minority outrage. There's not much I have more disdain for than providing opportunity to game for a free lunch. This thing has a good chance of providing limits to intervention (as a fallout), if you know what I mean.
 
You couldn't be more right here, kid. We're all paying for it now anyway (as both general ideologies agree we should as a society)... I'm trying to find the silver lining since the bill is here to stay regardless of minority outrage. There's not much I have more disdain for than providing opportunity to game for a free lunch. This thing has a good chance of providing limits to intervention (as a fallout), if you know what I mean.

well, like OB said, we already have corporate execs in insurance and other medical professions weighing in, for the sake of "shareholder value", skating around all the government mandates/regulations, creating a maze that is a potent inhibitor of our choices in medical care. . . .

for example, a cancer patient might be told by a very good doctor that a certain procedure is best for screening/tracking the course of a disease/treatment, and the doc puts in a request for approval from the insurer. . . . and is rejected on some bureaucrat's say-so, sheerly for considerations of economy.

The procedure I speak of in the case I'm referring to, would have shown the situation last April, and other procedures along the way didn't achieve that knowledge until mid-August, and would have reversed the decision on treatment beginning in April. That could have, and might have in fact, cost her her life. And in my opinion, would have actually saved a lot of money, too. . . . for those damned shareholders waiting for their dividend checks.

Stupidity is an endemic human fact, and isn't going away anytime soon. Institutionalizing it seems to be going the wrong way, in my not very humble opinion. Procedures that are cutting edge always get the knife on the Insurance Company and Government cutting room operations.

On the positive side, we lucked out in getting into a research program that is going to provide us with very excellent follow-up substantially on the research budget account.

And I share your disdain for the "gamers" who decide to politically support proposals that maybe sound good. . . . too good. . . . and which might very likely lead to general reductions in actual service/care we can access.
 
And I share your disdain for the "gamers" who decide to politically support proposals that maybe sound good. . . . too good. . . . and which might very likely lead to general reductions in actual service/care we can access.

Most the arguments against a government administered program are the same as those used against the status quo. It's inevitable when we pool resources together for the good of all. A good republican conservative can "do the right thing" his entire life, get laid off for a few months and lose insurance, develop a condition, and never get the treatment he's paid a lifetime to receive. That's pretty messed up.

I'm more worried about the implications toward innovation when the last provider of bumper crop sized returns monopolizes buying power as the Europeans already have. Where will the incentive for innovation come from? I'm not anti-academia by any stretch but don't see them as a meaningful or reasonable replacement to our currently fantastic private sector.

Since you're a fan of tariffs, I'd like to suggest one in reverse of sorts--we should have a law requiring every other nation to pay the market price we set for drugs & require importers to sell foreign drugs at the best price given to Euro nations.
 
LOL..

I love how repubs are moaning and groaning over this.

For one, had they actually done something about health care when they were in charge, we wouldn't be having this discussion today. What the hell were you folks doing in that time between Clinton and Obama?

bush-stupid-facial-expressions.jpg


Also, if anyone wanted to know what the GOP's plan for HC was in the 90s, look no further than Obamacare.

Again, the party of accountability is perfectly trying to avoid any accountability for the current situation we find ourselves in.
 
Most the arguments against a government administered program are the same as those used against the status quo. It's inevitable when we pool resources together for the good of all. A good republican conservative can "do the right thing" his entire life, get laid off for a few months and lose insurance, develop a condition, and never get the treatment he's paid a lifetime to receive. That's pretty messed up.

I'm more worried about the implications toward innovation when the last provider of bumper crop sized returns monopolizes buying power as the Europeans already have. Where will the incentive for innovation come from? I'm not anti-academia by any stretch but don't see them as a meaningful or reasonable replacement to our currently fantastic private sector.
Since you're a fan of tariffs, I'd like to suggest one in reverse of sorts--we should have a law requiring every other nation to pay the market price we set for drugs & require importers to sell foreign drugs at the best price given to Euro nations.

We penalize our own producers by requiring them to live up to all kinds of standards onshore, and even encourage them to move offshore in many ways, including making it a sort of contemporary ideal wrapped up in "globalization" or maybe self-immolation, economically-speaking. Even the UN fair trade broker makes some decisions that work to our advantage in specific cases where producers in other countries are receiving government support under "anti-dumping" arguments. I just can't believe how hell-bent on self-destruction our own politicians are.

any kind of trade arrangement that actually puts producers on an equal footing across borders and across various government programs, as the one you suggest, is better for the world than our actions that actually incentivize shipping our jobs overseas, or importing virtual slaves into our country, as Harry Reid does for the Vegas resort owners.
 
We penalize our own producers by requiring them to live up to all kinds of standards onshore, and even encourage them to move offshore in many ways, including making it a sort of contemporary ideal wrapped up in "globalization" or maybe self-immolation, economically-speaking. Even the UN fair trade broker makes some decisions that work to our advantage in specific cases where producers in other countries are receiving government support under "anti-dumping" arguments. I just can't believe how hell-bent on self-destruction our own politicians are.

any kind of trade arrangement that actually puts producers on an equal footing across borders and across various government programs, as the one you suggest, is better for the world than our actions that actually incentivize shipping our jobs overseas, or importing virtual slaves into our country, as Harry Reid does for the Vegas resort owners.

One thing left out of this message is your support for strict environmental standards when economically viable, hence [one part of] your long time tariff angle. Your push for regulation that requires producers from other nations to either live up to our standards or forfeit the incredible benefits of selling into our dynamic markets is as profound as any other suggestion.

Where I read you as misunderstood is conveying a push for "libertarian" ideals when that is not the case at all (you damn socialist :)).
 
One thing left out of this message is your support for strict environmental standards when economically viable, hence [one part of] your long time tariff angle. Your push for regulation that requires producers from other nations to either live up to our standards or forfeit the incredible benefits of selling into our dynamic markets is as profound as any other suggestion.

Where I read you as misunderstood is conveying a push for "libertarian" ideals when that is not the case at all (you damn socialist :)).

Probably a clue to my "socialism" is my sometimes enthusiastic reading of Lyndon LaRouche literature. He's an FDR Democrat who, like me, despises the likes of Obama and Clinton just as much as the Bush Dynasty. I realize these folks are in fact all mental cases who live in fantasy-land, imagining they are the intelligent protagonists of a "New World Order" that is in reality a rehash of European feudalism. People like FDR and Hubert Humphrey and John Kennedy actually cared about America and American people, and would not bow to the Queen, let alone ignore all the bars against having Brit subjects/citizens/dupes, enamored at the prospect of kissing the feet of Brit Royals and maybe even being "knighted", have the power to run our country.

Our Hollywood moguls today are believing they are the true intelligentsia fit and entitled to guide the planet, but they all bow to Brit nobility and fantasize about making America socialist on the Brit model. Not to rehash the fact, even Marxism was set up and run by the Brit parlor pansies who are the puppeteers par excellance in the whole world. Every other Empire that has ruled has done it with a heavy jackboot while slaughtering the peasants, but the British Empire in its present apparition is practically invisible and unfelt. . . . well, at least it is unrecognized. . . . . by the peasants who roar around the countryside in virtual riot thinking they are their own masters. . . . but somehow don't notice the fences, gates, and mansions of the elites, and never think to bother them or disturb their quietude.

"socialism" is a dirty word only because it has been the tool of elitism in the hands of the small circles of the actual rulers of our planet. The fact that they abuse and exploit the concept does not decrease the wisdom or efficacy of cooperative action by the people, and for the common people. Join a credit union. Start any kind of cooperative and manage it in the group interest, and unless the people managing it are idiots, they can do better than we can one by one. This kind of cooperative enterprise is actually the root of corporate enterprise, before it is "taken over" by the exploiters and short-term managers who routinely gut the business while enriching themselves. . . .

The "WE the People" rebellion started out in simple integrity, but as a nation we have let the scoundrels take it over and use our government against us. Our media and our schools brainwash us, our police and prisons condition us to blind obedience.. . .our politicians obey their "interests" as obsequiously as they tell us what we want to hear and join in the mesmerizing chants for "globalism", or whatever facet of local management, . . . to take care of us. . . , they say.

But they have robbed us of everything, taken everything we once valued, and now they're telling us there's no room for us on planet Earth, or in our hospitals, or eldercare homes, or on the streets. With Obamacare, we will find full-time jobs becoming largely a thing of the past, and we will all be part-time minimum-wage earners who have to pay the tax for our medical care. . . . and accept less care while doing it.

Well, you're the second person in this world who has divulged the fact of my "socialist" leanings, but I only ask you to observe. . . . the "socialists" I deplore are the toady plantation managers who mean to whip us in the fields to get more work out of us, and rape us in our shanties in the night. The "libertarian" in me is the underground railroad rebel who will try to open up a way for you to get out, and regain your liberty as a real, free, human being. My wife complained at once about me being a "socialist", and she has always been right. But she accepts my "socialism" as consistent with the original intent of folks like Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and the main dreamer who invented our Constitution, Madison. He was forced away from his pure equality of the citizens ideal into the representative democracy by serious reflective classical scholars who could read Greek and Latin and who could understand how their governments declined. Protecting the government from elitists and perhaps idealists/ideologues. . . . from a few power-hungry despots. . . . is the only way you can make a government serve its people, or in the long run, make a government last.

Early Mormons were socialists of an idealistic if naive stripe, but they learned to fear. . . . then respect. . . . and today have learned to ape. . . . the worst elements of mobocracy and elitism. . . and do it better than the bankers or boardroom chairmen of cartel empires ever did. I didn't want Mitt to be the choice against Obama only because he would have been even more deadly and effective against human rights than Obama could be. I supported Ron Paul, despite his intellectual failings, simply because he believed in liberty for every American.

I don't say our founders had it all right. . . . but if we want to resolve our problems today we will have to understand what they understood about how governments can go wrong, and take effective measures to prevent those dangers. And do it without throwing out the baby of social conscience with the bath water. . . . the stinking filth of governance however represented in verbiage that in fact is virtually the Orwellian opposite of it's every claim. . . . .that serves as pretext for stripping us of our human dignity and liberty, and in fact brings us into bondage and abject servitude.
 
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Sorry repubs, for 8 years I had crap I didn't want jammed down my throat from your President. TARP, wars, NCLB, TSA, Pat Act, tax cuts for the rich, Medicare part D, stimulus packages, etc.

Now you folks are going to have to "endure" 8 years of stuff you don't like.

Karma's a bitch.
 
Sorry repubs, for 8 years I had crap I didn't want jammed down my throat from your President. TARP, wars, NCLB, TSA, Pat Act, tax cuts for the rich, Medicare part D, stimulus packages, etc.

Now you folks are going to have to "endure" 8 years of stuff you don't like.

Karma's a bitch.

Comments like these embarrass democrats.
 
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