MasterOfMeatPuppets wrote:
Under the both the current plan and the original proposal, the government is not taking over the health care industry, yet you are crying and whining like it was some huge Hugo Chavez style nationalization plan. You can't have government regulation without the government being involved.
My comment was in response to an earlier post regarding a one payer system. Relax sparky. No "crying and whining" here. I'm merely speaking my opinion. I don't have much of a problem with the current plan BTW. I don't think it's going to stick, and I think there are some major flaws in it, but I don't see it having much of an impact on me and mine one way or the other.
bane wrote:Young people get sick, sure, but the odds are far more in their favor. I don't have a problem with insurance companies making money. They're a business, they aren't a charity, but I do think that reform is desperately needed. Making a profit is all well and good. Ripping people off isn't. All that said, count me in the camp that doesn't want the government anywhere close to my health care. I have zero confidence in the federal government's ability to run it efficiently.
Tricare, the V.A. and Medicaid work pretty well.
OK. They work, once you discount the tremendous amount of corruption and inefficiency that goes on in that red tape bureaucratic disaster. Yeah, they work great.
No more so than what goes on in private sector medicine. And the people who are covered are not affected by those factors, unlke in the private sector where premiums are still rising at a steep rate.
MotleyMaiden wrote:I don't see how it is any different then being required to carry car insurance. If they rule that requiring health care is unconstitutional will that make requiring auto insurance also unconsititutional??
No, because you don't have to own a car.
In most parts of the country this is simply untrue if you want to be a normally functioning adult. Could YOU go without a motor vehicle, or your wife?
If you don't live in a city with an effective mass transit system, then you pretty much DO have to own a car. You are being disingenuous by citing a technical truth that is a practical untruth. You aren't going to try and debate that, are you?
MotleyMaiden wrote:I don't see how it is any different then being required to carry car insurance. If they rule that requiring health care is unconstitutional will that make requiring auto insurance also unconsititutional??
No, because you don't have to own a car.
In most parts of the country this is simply untrue if you want to be a normally functioning adult. Could YOU go without a motor vehicle, or your wife?
If you don't live in a city with an effective mass transit system, then you pretty much DO have to own a car. You are being disingenuous by citing a technical truth that is a practical untruth. You aren't going to try and debate that, are you?
Eh, that's a convenience thing. Personally, I wouldnt want to try and get by without a vehicle, but I know people that do. In practical terms, it's pretty difficult, but plenty of people pull it off. Regardless, there is no government mandate that says you have to drive. The insurance thing in that regard is just a condition of the privelege. Yeah, it's probably a technicality because most people find it too impractical to forgo driving, but that doesn't make the point any less true.
I don't think the mandate is going to stick ultimately, but I think it's just putting off the inevitable. The plan doesn't work without it, so if the SCOTUS strikes it, the government can and probably will effectively do the same thing by calling it a tax. It's going to happen. It's just a matter of when.
MotleyMaiden wrote:Okay. I see your points. Personally, I think the health care bill was useless without a public option. I don't see how forcing people to buy health care insurance they can't afford now is really going to work anyway.
The main demographic that the government, and the insurance industry, wants to force to buy insurance are the young and healthy. In other words, the people that won't use it. That's the only way that the rest of us will be able to afford it under the current plan.
Just wanted to drop in and say that the young and so called "healthy" are the very demographic that are sucking up resources under the heading of the indigent, at least in an ER setting. None of them have insurance, none of them have doctors, and they are the very population that is most at risk for violent crimes and traumas. I have insured people who can NOT get surgery and surgeons who can't get paid because scheduled surgeries are constantly being bumped by the WILLFULLY uninsured gunshot wounds, stabbings, assualts, and motor vehicle accidents. They come to the emergency room for EVERYTHING - STDs, toothaches, stomach aches, head aches, motherfucking PREGNANCY tests - you name it. We are currently three generations deep into a culture that thinks health insurance is unnecessary and feel entitled to free medical attention and prescription medicine in an Emergency room setting. They are also the most vocal about things not moving quickly enough in a system bogged down by their entitlement.
So yes, they DO need it and should be held accountable for carrying it, because they refuse to be educated about it and they suck up resources from the people who are actually indigent and in need, just because they'd rather use the $40 a week for iPhone apps instead of insurance.
tym wrote:She makes My air head 11 year old Girl look like Nikita Tesla.
No disagreement from me on how fucked up entitlement abuse is. A trip to the ER is an adventure in social and class dynamics these days, especially a trip to a charity hospital ER. Working where you do, you'd know that better than anybody I'd imagine, but my point was that generally speaking, younger people are at a far lower risk of needing expensive drawn out treatment for things like cancer etc. The fact that they don't use it as much is precisely why the industry has to have them in the pool to keep costs in check for the people that do end up needing shit like that. If we're going to do away with pre existing condition clauses without jacking rates to cover the inevitable losses, we have to bring in a bunch of new policy holders that aren't going to use it as much. It's the only way the whole thing works.
Well, yeah - you obviously have to have a bunch of people enrolled in an insurance plan in order for it to work - it's just that the young and healthy do suck up a lot more resources than one might think. A surgery and all of the subsequent hospitalization and procedures add up to A LOT and in many cases, MORE than the treatment for the chronic conditions that the aging population suffer from. Honestly, the demographic that uses the least amount of resources are the actual indigent themselves and foreigners - you know, the population that everyone cries about having to insure.
tym wrote:She makes My air head 11 year old Girl look like Nikita Tesla.
CrouchingStonerHiddenBong wrote:Honestly, the demographic that uses the least amount of resources are the actual indigent themselves and foreigners - you know, the population that everyone cries about having to insure.
You wouldn't think that from the cultural makeup of the waiting room in the charity trauma ER here. I'm gonna hazzard a guess that about 10% of those folks speak English. I don't want to come across as some racist asshole. I understand that most of those people don't have much of a choice. Most of them are working low paying gigs that don't offer any kind of benefits, and I don't think anybody should be denied health care, but a trip to that ER is like walking into a hospital in Mexico City. It's a trip.
I'm sure you're right. We have a huge hispanic immigrant population here. I don't know how the population percentages compare to the rest of the country, but I'm a whole lot closer to the border.
You know, this conversation actually kinda encapsulates every problem in this country, and that's perspective. It's hard to ask someone to see your point of view if they're constantly faced with the exact opposite.
The average American taxpayer doesn't think on a national, much less global, level. What's in your face is what you know. I'm always amused by the people who complain about the Messicans because I'm in a city that is predominately racially divided between white folks and black folks and I'm always amazed when folks in certain parts of the south tell me that they don't have any black friends simply because there aren't many black folks where they live.
tym wrote:She makes My air head 11 year old Girl look like Nikita Tesla.
You're absolutely right. It's a really big country and in some ways Ohio is as different from Texas as France is from Russia.
I grew up in Albuquerque and I didn't know ANY black people as a kid. I think there may have been 2 or 3 black kids in my entire high school. There weren't that many white kids either for that matter, but there were basically no black folks where I grew up.
bane wrote:I'm sure you're right. We have a huge hispanic immigrant population here. I don't know how the population percentages compare to the rest of the country, but I'm a whole lot closer to the border.
Not all those Hispanics are necessarily immigrants. Texas was part of New Spain 100 years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. Some of those folks might have pedigrees going back 400 years right there in Texas.
It doesn't mean they won't pretend to not speak English or be a citizen in order to get free treatment at the ER, but hey, we stole the state from their mother country, why shouldn't they fuck us back for that?
Seriously though, when the Anglos from the US came in and created Texas as a nation, then brought it into the US, a LOT of Spanish landowners were gradually dispossessed. You don't think their great-great-grandchildren feel entitled to go get free ER treatment? Why shouldn't they?
I'm not busting on them for it, just making an observation. It's not too difficult to tell an immigrant from a native though dude. It's all in the footwear. If the guy is wearing a pair of putrid yellow ostrich boots, he's definitely not a native.
It's funny that you make the native comment though, as I was just talking about where I grew up a post or so back. That area is predominantly hispanic, but there are very few immigrants there. Most of those people have been there since the conquistadors.
lerxstcat wrote:
It doesn't mean they won't pretend to not speak English or be a citizen in order to get free treatment at the ER, but hey, we stole the state from their mother country, why shouldn't they fuck us back for that?
Seriously though, when the Anglos from the US came in and created Texas as a nation, then brought it into the US, a LOT of Spanish landowners were gradually dispossessed. You don't think their great-great-grandchildren feel entitled to go get free ER treatment? Why shouldn't they?
Because too much time has passed, let it go. They have a much better life since the U.S. took over that land and they are U.S. citizens so they got the much better end of the stick.
lerxstcat wrote:
It doesn't mean they won't pretend to not speak English or be a citizen in order to get free treatment at the ER, but hey, we stole the state from their mother country, why shouldn't they fuck us back for that?
Seriously though, when the Anglos from the US came in and created Texas as a nation, then brought it into the US, a LOT of Spanish landowners were gradually dispossessed. You don't think their great-great-grandchildren feel entitled to go get free ER treatment? Why shouldn't they?
Because too much time has passed, let it go. They have a much better life since the U.S. took over that land and they are U.S. citizens so they got the much better end of the stick.
bane wrote:
You're unfamiliar with "La Raza", huh?
I'll admit it that I have heard of "la Raza" but never really knew all that much about it, but after reading a few articles such as this http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=13863 I stand by my statement.
I remember studying in the sixth grade about the Aztecs but shit some of the stuff I read tonight was a real interresting refresher. Fuck I killed three hours without knowing it. Good stuff!
