Naitonalized Healthcare...

Random Ramblings
41

So calling me a LIAR is “ACTING RESPONSIBLY”???

Mike, you gotta be kiddin me???

Don’t blame me for stating MY opinions simply because you agree with HIS!

He ASKED for that explanation…It’s not my fault if he looks like a FOOL after it’s provided. He basically called me a LIAR…I provided a DETAILED EXPLANATION of a REAL ESTATE DEAL that he ASKED FOR…Now he looks like the ROOKIE, ONE SHOT WONDER he is…HIS fault…NOT MINE!!!

He’s got NOTHING for experience…That’s NOT opinion Mike…That’s called a FACT…I drove a car last night…Maybe I’ll see if I can quailify for the Indy 500 next month…Hey…everyones got to start somewhere.

But in the meantime I tell other INDY DRIVERS they’re full of BS!!! (but THAT’S not a personal attack right Mike??)

This guy’s a stroker…If you want to take him under YOUR wing…HE’S ALL YOURS!!!

42

This thread is getting really interesting. The personal attacks are out of place, yes, but PO asked for it. PO initially acts like he just wants a debate on the issues, but soon after his real motives come out. He then belittles the viewpoints of non-republicans with his “i’m smarter than everyone” attitude. Then he picks apart every phrase just to sound intellectual.

There are a lot of republicans on the site like propertymanager who makes great posts that are quite entertaining to read. So I’m not ragging on any republicans. I’m NOT a democrat or liberal, left wing or right. Positive Outlook is an aggravating fellow is all I’m saying. The info in his posts is quite decent at times, then the attitude takes over and he just comes off as a complete jerk. Fdjake shouldn’t have got that personal with it, but PO was gonna get it from someone.

43

Mike, you beat me to it… but, YES, I do understand that you make your money going into it, which I learned from this site… which is why I was cautious going in…

That being said FDJAke, the amount of deals you do or don’t do, is IRRELEVANT to a discussion on national healthcare. I’ve NEVER claimed that I am in any way an “expert” in real estate, that is your misguided tangent. Makes for a great distraction though… another straw man bites the dust…

If you would spend just half the time you are posting addressing what is being posted by others, instead of going off on tangents. you’d be MUCH more productive.

“I’ll make $40K on this property with NO PROBLEM…” & “I made $40,000 that day because I have a BUYER ALREADY LINED UP…” - I’ll make and I made $40K are two different tenses, maybe therein lies the problem… I still think it’s BS because I am watching you modify your post as it goes along to fill in holes. BUT, for now, I will just lay it to the side and assume it is a deal… the point regarding it NEVER changed… you’ll give a guy $9K for “5 minutes of his time”, but you’ll watch your “friend” and his wife suffer being “scared to death” instead of showing him ways to birddog or look for deals you need so he partake in your generosity. The other guys Union so he should have insurance…

“He’s got NOTHING for experience…” - in real estate in comparision to other more “experienced” investors, but we are not talking real estate are we, we are talking nationalized healthcare…

Vader - "PO initially acts like he just wants a debate on the issues, but soon after his real motives come out. " - what “real motive” are you referring to - I want to discuss nationalized healthcare, that’s all I’m looking to do which is why I posted the topic in the first place… 90% of my posts directly address the subject at hand.

Vader, if you think challenging what someone believes is “belittling” or “aggravating” that’s your perception. Personally, and I could be wrong, I think it’s because you just don’t like I am posting or can’t rationally defend what you are… I’ve stated MULTIPLE times that I do not believe I am “smarter than everyone” nor do I consider myself 'intellectual", just reasoned and I try to do it without personal attacks for the most part… the rest is your perception…

Now that we’ve endured another excrusion into the irrelevant… Care to get back to the topic at hand?.. nationalized healthcare?

44

Let’s get this back on topic and focus it even more… for those in favor of nationalized healthcare… give us the country that YOU believe has the best healthcare system that keeps costs down, and provides the same level of services, without the wait lists, takes care of the poor and elderly at the same level as everyone else…

Then we can start to get somewhere…

45

The problem with this is determining how much that country actually spends on the “free health care”.

DB

46

Just choose your best example of what you would like to see… it will give us a jump off point…

47

Government cannot solve the health care issue by universally offering coverage to everyone. Catastrophic, Pre-conditional and chronic health issues need to be set aside and isolated and resolved by the governement and we need to begin by tackling those. The rest of this issue can be fixed by the private sector. I had company issued healthcare insurance for 14 years until this year. It went from $160 every two weeks to $275 every two weeks. $7150/yr. I still would have had $15 co-pay(which I would have been willing to pay much more for lower rates) and not everything is covered 100%. I still would have had deductibles(substantial in some cases) on some services. I finally said enough is enough. I am a family of three and I was able to shop and get my own health insurance coverage for my family for $205/month through GoldenRule, a United Healthcare subsidiary. It’s a straight up $5000 deductible and everything beyond that is 100% covered. If you do the math, this plan will cost me $7460 yr. month. And that is only if I max it out. I setup an HSA and put $150 into this account every month. Even if something catastrophic happens, the most I will spend is $7460 this year. Now if I come down with a disease then the subsequent years could be a problem in getting coverage. The point is I should not be able to shop for a better plan then my 3 billion dollar employer can offer me. Why, because we are subsidizing those who have the chronic issues I talked about above. That is where part of the problem is. We have got to fix this and the governement can help in this area. The other area that needs addressed is tort reform. Who the hell would want to be a doctor nowadays with the malpractice issurance you have to pay? As bad as these issues are to the families involved, we have to find a balance and cap lawsuits. Getting money for the family doesn’t change the event that changed their family. If more doctors are readily available, it will spawn competition to acquire customers and they will need to be competitively priced with other doctors in their area on the services they offer. This will also help bring the overall cost down. There isn’t a magic bullet here folks. Turning it over to the government is not the answer and the private sector can’t do it alone. We already know that doesn’t work because it doesn’t cover everybody. This is one area where the governement and private sector have to work together. But I have no confidence that will happen. Democrats have control, they want universal coverage and they have the votes to push it through. Be careful what you wish for FD Jake & Furnished Owner, because I believe you just may get it.

48
There are a lot of republicans on the site like propertymanager who makes great posts that are quite entertaining to read.

I am NOT a Republican! In fact, I am 100% opposed to what both the Republicans and Democrats have become! I am a conservative (or even libertarian) on every issue and I stand 100% opposed to the socialistic track that our country has been on for the past several decades.

I was watching the news this evening and I heard that the Republicans were having some town hall meetings to discuss their “brand”. That makes me want to throw up! These morons are so out of touch with reality that it sickens me. This isn’t about a “brand” or winning elections - it’s about standing for the principles that made our country great (although I doubt that many people even know what they were at this point).

Everyone better get used to the socialists - at least in the short run, because from now on, I’m throwing my vote away on any decent 3rd party candidate that proves to be a conservative. I don’t care if the Republicans ever win another election or even survive as a party! In fact, nothing would make me happier that to see the Republican party completely destroyed and a party with some principles take their place!

Mike

49
Everyone better get used to the socialists - at least in the short run, because from now on, I'm throwing my vote away on any decent 3rd party candidate that proves to be a conservative. Mike

Voting for your principles is NEVER throwing your vote away.

50

Mike, those who can only think in terms of democrats and republicans missed the whole point of the tea parties as well. You have total idiots like Janeane Garofalo that think it was all about hatred of a black man. And she isn’t challenged by this ludicrous statement? This country is brainwashed and cannot think for themselves. At one time I leaned republican, not anymore. This party aboandoned me quite some time ago. There isn’t a lot of difference between the two parties at this point. One wants big governement, the other wants even bigger government. Both what to control the lives of their citizens. Again, and it can’t be said enough. “A country where people fear the government is tyranny and a country where the governement fears it’s people is liberty.” I too think we are so far away from this principle now(due to progressive statism) we are going to have a difficult time reversing the trend. Schools are being used for indoctrination, the media is nothing more than a propaganda machine used to perpetuate an agenda and no one in Washington has the balls to stand up and say “Enough Already” That’s what the tea parties were about but that message is not part of the agenda so they get dismissed as nothing more than hate rallies, when in actuality it couldn’t have been farther from the truth. You better believe Mike is bitter and I don’t blame him. I am too. Where did common sense go?

51

Amen to that.I can’t believe the blame game that’s still got alot of people behind it.When will they wake up and see they were lied to.Obama basically won on his strategy of "change washington"which turned out as usual just another lye from a politician.But it is what the majority of people know needs to really happen.We need govt that has their own values that they vote on not the parties or what a teleprompter says.

52

Brokovich’s post starts to zero in on the fact that there are more options available WIHTOUT the government taking over the whole system… That being said… we haven’t heard from those in favor of nationalized healthcare…

For those in favor of nationalized healthcare… give us the country that YOU believe has the best healthcare system that keeps costs down, and provides the same level of services, without the wait lists, takes care of the poor and elderly at the same level as everyone else…

53

It would be a whole pH.d study to find the best current national health care system in the world! Certainly government planners are doing those studies now. No need to re-invent the wheel when all other first-world countries have universal health coverage of some kind.

I have worked, lived and used the health care systems in 3 countries–Denmark, Switzerland, Japan. That is why it such a no-brainer for me to want universal health care. I had a broken bone set and minor ailments fixed. I don’t remember waiting or the access being difficult.

In Japan our family lived under the Japanese system for 5 years. Our daughter had a hernia operation, son had stitches several times, and we fully used their system just like the locals in our village.

I thought they were excellent on preventative care–parents had to check their elementary kids annually with home-sent pinworm kits. Dentists did check-ups at the schools, we received cards in the mail to go have our chest x-rays at the travelling x-ray van by the grocery store. There were follow-up cards sent if we didn’t go.

The clinics were full of waiting people because their system is different. If you went in with a cough and got diagnosed with bronchitis, they would dispense 3 days worth of antibiotics there in the clinic. Then you had to go back on the 4th day for another exam, and another few days of meds. You NEVER got 2 weeks worth of anything and there were always follow-up visits.

I really liked their pediatric sick-baby clinic. They had a room full of cots. On each cot was a mother with a baby lying on her belly. The babies (vomiting/diarrhea) all had IV’s running. Then in an hour or two they go home. So the babies get well much quicker, rather than waiting like they do here until they are ill enough for a hospital admission.

The dental clinics had viewing windows from the waiting room. It would take 4 visits to get an entire-mouth cleaning, that multiple-visit thing again. Moms usually had their babies/toddlers on their laps in the dental chair while they (mom or child) were being worked on.

If you worked for a big company there would be a health clinic on-site for routine ailments. The boss would excuse you for your exams.

Women who had delivered have an adequate recuperation time; they are not ejected in 24 or 48 hours like here.

The negatives that I learned about were the minimal dispensing of narcotics. The cancer wards were known as “the moaning wards”…
The lack of privacy in exam rooms. After all, we had joined the village, so why SHOULDN’T the other clinic patients overhear everything about the foreigners’ health–it was interesting stuff!

So that national health system seemed to function just fine. The Japanese are also near the top on longevity.

We need something comparable. Let’s get those sick babies and old folks comprehensive clinic coverage and keep them out of our high-cost hospitals as much as possible.

Furnishedowner

54

WOW…That was very intersting!!

Thanks for sharing…I learned a lot from your post.

Having LIVED with other health care systems gives you an incredible insight into what works and what doesn’t.

Imagine what OUR Country could put together if we weren’t spending trillions being the Police Force for the planet.

55

Sadly, both dems and reps believe in being the Police Force of the planet. Ron Paul baby !!! WOOOOOT

56

Nice post furnished. Very informative. It really is refreshing sometimes to see how people in different regions/countries live.

PositiveOutlook the killjoy/analyzer with his condescending attitude should be coming along now any minute to tear apart your post and put his negative spin on it…

57

“PositiveOutlook the killjoy/analyzer with his condescending attitude” - :rolleyes You sound like a broken record, Vader… get some new material or at least if you are going to insult people you disagree with as a matter of discourse, be nice about it or at least stick to what’s being posted…

We’ve only had one or two examples from the Pro National Healthcare crowd, and we need more before we can really start to analyze the pros and cons…

So far, we have…

[i]- Denmark, Switzerland, Japan from Furnishedowner

  • Canada from FDJake[/i]

Let’s keep 'em coming…

58

First of all PO—Right On!
Vader–be thankful the 1st Amendment doesn’t have an IQ standard.

If socialized (I refuse to use the term nationalized-lets call a turd a turd here) healthcare is so wonderful, then why are the European citizens trying to get rid of the current system.

Employer-paid medical insurance started off as a benefit. Benefits were perks used to attract highly desirable applicants/employees to a company. (This is elementary, I know)
You see, companies like to hire talented individuals. Well, at some point along the way, the term “benefit”, apparently became synonymous with the terms “right” or “entitlement”. It used to be that a family’s household budget included health insurance, if that family wanted to carry it. The Free Market system worked back then, because the progressives, liberals, socialists, fascists, whatever lefties want to call themselves this week, hadn’t gotten a stranglehold on the system yet.

I make $12.50 an hour as a termite treater. (Now you know why I’m trying to break into the RE arena) I have 5, yes F-I-V-E, children. My wife makes about $14.00 an hour. And worse yet, we live in this travesty called Michigan (I figure we will leave last to turn off the lights). We are scraping by. I bring this up because, technically I guess, I should be one of those downtrodden begging for the " Messiah" to save me. I take full responsibility for my current station in life. I am also taking action to change. Change that I can believe in, and it doesn’t involve O.B.A.M.A.'s help. I don’t want a government healthplan. I don’t want my medical records put on a national database. I don’t want to pay for anybody else’s healthcare, with the exception of maybe the U.S. military’s. Let Congress pay for their own damn healthcare.

BTW, yes, the military has a pretty awesome healthcare system. I’m not familiar with TriCare, but I was very familiar with Champus. Part of the reason that system works however, is that taxpayers are paying for a small percentage of the nation’s population by covering the military and dependents. Think of the military as a company. (Work with me here, yes I know the military doesn’t generate revenue) That company only has to provide insurance for its employees, which lets the benefit dollar go further. Now imagine that every man, woman, and child in the country is covered by that same insurance. The benefit dollar is going to go near as far because their isn’t a much money per person to pay for coverage. So who is going to make up the difference? The big, bad rich people? If America isn’t America anymore, there is nothing stopping them from moving to a more financially-friendly country. And how long before Warren Buffet and Bill Gates gets tired of footing that bill and realize their socialist views may have been a little off-base and naive. Oops, look they just became residents of Grand Cayman.

Just like every other socialistis program, socialized healthcare sounds good on paper, but will be a devastating failure in practice.

59

This is just MY take on this…You can agree with it or disagree, that’s fine.

What is a HEALTH INSURANCE COMPANY???

Think about this for a minute…

They make…NOTHING. They aren’t actually TREATING anyone. They’re not INVENTING new medications, they’re not staffing hospitals.

So what DO they do???

*They collect MONEY from business and indivduals. (Gee… doesn’t the U.S. Goverment do that too?)

*They set pricing for Doctors, Hospitals, procedures, medications.

*They determine WHO can get what care, at what price, and what medications those people can get. (Sort of like RULES or LAWS)

*Now…Instead of that Money being sent to “DOLLAR BILL McGUIRE” so he could pay himself $125 MILLION in a single year. Or Don Baptista of Blue Cross Rhode Island paying himself $1.8 Million a year and getting a FREE $600,000 “loan” to build himself a new home… Maybe that money could be POOLED “just like it is for OUR MILITARY” and with the PROFIT MOTIVE removed and MILLIONS more paying into that pool a better system could emerge?

In my State… Cities and Towns are banding together to GROUP their employees into larger POOLS. These largers pools (sometimes as small as 1000 employess) LOWER insurance rates dramaticallly.

Case in point…Three nearby Cities simply combined their teachers, Firefighters and Police into a single pool and the savings were over 50% for Blue Cross. We’re talking about MAYBE 5,000 employees here. And at a 50% DISCOUNT Bluecross is STILL making MONEY!! My question is…ALL those Cities had been sending CHECKS to Blue Cross SEPARATELY for YEARS…Those checks ALL arrived at the SAME BUILDING (Blue Cross Head quarters) They all went into the same account. So WHY all of a sudden the 50% price reduction???
It happened because the Local GOVERMENTS put the pressure on BLUE CROSS. Blue Cross didn’t cut those rates IN HALF out of the goodness of their hearts…They were FORCED to do it. So…for YEARS…Tax payers…Over paid Blue Cross by 50% for a benefit that could have been provided at HALF the PRICE…THAT’S how you give $600,000 FREE loans to your CEO while paying him $1.8 million/year!!..I don’t know about others…But if THAT’S EFFICIENT…There IS NO “efficient” in the current world of Health Insurance.

Those Cities simply POOLED the MONEY being COLLECTED and SENT to a Private Business (Bluecross) If health insurance is simply about COLLECTING REVENUE, PROCESSING PAPER WORK and SETTING RATES…

We have a GOVERMENT that is doing ALL of this RIGHT NOW and has been for decades. Why are we letting people like "DOLLAR BILL McGuire make $125 MILLION Dollars a YEAR off something like this???

People worry about big bureaucratic Goverment. That’s EXACTLY what an INSURANCE COMPANY IS!! It’s actually set up that way to discourage people from pursuing claims. A classic example of this is the famous insurance company slogan of “The FIRST TRY is always… DENY.”

The Goverment ALREADY collects money from indivuals and business.
They ALREADY set prices for a slew of things we NEED. Utilities come to mind. State College tuitions are another.
They NEGOTIATE CONSTANTLY with suppiers, unions, ect.
The frame work is ALREADY THERE.

Health Insurance Companies have become some of THE MOST Profitable businesses on the planet. GREED has overtaken that industry with $125 MILLION a year pay checks. All that money received by an Industry that MAKES NOTHING…They simply collect YOUR MONEY, and cuts checks.

My question is…

Why ISN’T our GOVERMENT DOING THIS ALREADY???

Maybe the answer to this is some type of HYBRID system. Maybe a BASIC health plan for ALL Americans. Something that would prevent hard working people from going BANKRUPT because they get sick or hurt. Think about this…Those bankruptcies hurt THOUSANDS of businesses a year when what THEY ARE OWED is cut in half by a bankruptcy judge. Maybe a HYBRID system could help prevent that. With this system people who wanted a HIGHER LEVEL of coverage could pay for it out of their pockets but get that coverage at rates based on MILLIONS of pooled participants.

Just my opinion.

60

To chime in with some additional experience (30 years of living in Sweden) from Nationalized/Socialized health care systems.

I think both sides has their benefits. When I lived in Sweden I always knew that I could get health care if I got sick, broke my leg etc. Take my mom for example, she is an educated master pharmacist, when she was 28 she was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and it has been going downhill from there, she had to quit working when she was 35 because she would break her fingers when carrying things that were too heavy, my dad was a truck driver making minimal wage and we struggled mightily growing up just putting food on the table. The one thing that we could count on for my moms benefit was the she always got taken care of from a medial point of view. There is a fairly low out of pocket expense per year that you need pay before the rest becomes “free”.

The downside to all this is was shown to me in the early 90’s. The “free” health care was running out of tax money to spend because the government decided to spend it on immigration or roads or budget deficits or saving failing banks or whatever it felt like, this has since then lead to a huge waiting time for the sick. If you are in need of for example a knee surgery, you can wait up to two years before an appointment becomes available. During the mid 90’s several private hospitals opened up and you could purchase separate private health care insurance and use these hospitals instead as the wait to get in was much shorter. You still however have to pay the taxes to support the government provided health care.

Since then I have moved over here and seen what is both good and bad with private health care, I honestly believe that my mom and dad would have been homeless here given the same circumstances they had in Sweden.

The biggest problem I can see has been discussed earlier in this tread, the affordability of health care is getting worse as the doctors need to pay their high malpractice insurance.

I love this country and will never leave but I think that greed has gotten the best of a lot of people. Why is it so darn easy to sue anyone over anything in this country??? Half if not more of every law-suit is coming from some lazy ass bastard that just want free money (Sorry for the rant).

I also agree with Jake that the insurance companies are nothing but a private government taking our well earned money and the doctors money for doing nothing, there should be some type of governing method for ensuring that their profits are not on the level they are now. I am not sure that the government is the right tool for this but to me the insurance companies are nothing but predators that suck as much money as they can out of everyone. The idea that the first claim is automatically denied just makes me sick…

So in conclusion I just wanted to say that neither one of the two systems are perfect, there is always people taking advantage of whatever system is in place. My feeling though is that there has to be some way that we can assist people who without their own fault needs health care without putting them on the street.

Just my 2 cents…