percentage wise I have no idea except that in other countries with the same tax structure they provide free healthcare....and in those countries the Government overseas the healthcare providers, issueing licenses (and revoking them) paying reasonable claims to proven liability cases, using tax dollars to provide healthcare services on its own, ....... they dont tax you and then say "your on your own"

its not perfect by any means but neither is the US system, but they realize that people get sick...sometimes very sick, ...and do die, and that doctors are indeed fallible.

 

Well, if you don't know what percentage of the total cost of healthcare malpractice insurance is, why are you so convinced that it's the overriding problem in the U.S. system?

Mind you, I'm not defending the U.S. system. It's just that one of the "solutions" one constantly hears from the right wing of the political spectrum is so-called "tort reform"...which would either limit damage awards (in which case it wouldn't save very much money), or eliminate them entirely by preventing people from suing doctors for malpractice.

 

Effects of Medical Malpractice Policy Options

"The direct costs associated with [medical malpractice] claims and insurance represent less than 1 percent of total health care expenditures in the United States."

http://www.randcompare.org/analysis/mechanism/medical_malpractice

 

Ok, fair enough, I did only find one report that estimates the cost at 10%

http://www.ahip.org/content/default.aspx?bc=39|341|320

then there is also this...

Did you know?
46%: Percentage of compensation that actually goes to the plaintiff in a medical liability case, after litigation and lawyers’ fees.


57%: Proportion of orthopaedists who avoid caring for high-risk patients for fear of liability repercussion—the highest of all specialties surveyed.

the latter being the most disturbing,

as I mentioned other countries run their own hospitals, through tax $...still there are many who opt to go "private" with personal health insurance, but its an option that will get you better care than the public service. and trust me, the uninsured wish they could go private !



But at least no one will never get turned down for care because of no insurance,

 

Thank you, DL....but I wanted HIM to look it up.

 

Stalin once said "hang a capitalist and he will sell you the rope". I never thought he was so right.

People are so biased and brainwashed that they see health care as threat to their liberties but when your president is elected with less popular votes than his opponent (2000) I say your liberties and freedom has been seriously damaged and all that talk about people's will is just BS.
There's more to freedom than the possibility to choose an insurance policy and carrying a 9mm.

 

Kimiko obviously got herself that clone machine. :wink:

 

One thing that is really tedious is responding to people who don't have the faintest idea what they are talking about and of course won't even take the time to find out.

The pharmaceutical companies most surely did not want health care reform. But they are also extremely powerful. That's why president Obama sought a compromise with them and got it.

Here's the truth. The overriding ideal President Obama promised in his campaign was to get things done. And I'm sure you conservatives really wish he turned out to be an uncompromising idealist because it would guarantee nothing changes and nothing gets done.

But conservatives don't have a leg to stand on when it comes to being hypocrites when the entire conservative ideology of this nation is a lie in the way it is preached and actually practiced.

And it was that lie in practice that brought us to the point we are right now.

The single payer system is not the only answer as we are seeing now. But it is the only long term solution to a health care system that is both ineffective and mathematically unsustainable. The sooner we accept that reality the better off we will be.

Here's the real joke Deidre dear. While democratic candidates lost as governors of two states those races were decided on local issues and as exit polls showed most voters did not see the elections as having anything to do with President Obama.

But in the one race that was actually relevant to national politics the conservatives/Republicans such as Sarah Palin and several other GOP party members went all out to endorse the MOST conservative candidate in the House of Representative race which ended up being won by the Democratic Candidate Bill Owens even though that seat has been held by Republicans for decades.

And just what would that have to do with the US other than the Western allies were willing to completely overlook that fact during and after World War II?

Let me answer that for you. Absolutely nothing. Nothing being proposed is even socialistic let alone communistic. Once again this is just hysterics on the part of conservatives who have lost contact with reality.

Name one thing happening in the US now that amounts to communism? You can't for two reasons. One you have no understanding of the term and two, once again there is nothing that even remotely resembles communism happening now or in the future.

Of course you're not aware of any talking points being given to you. That's the whole point of brainwashing people like you to become pawns in the same game that helps them exploit you.

Now let me prove that to you. I'm betting all you really know is that one talking point. You don't know how many people come here for treatment or more importantly WHY they might come here from other countries. You also don't know that those are the exceptions when other countries actually have better health care and pay less for it when it comes to their whole populations.

In other words because you're brainwashed that's all you can do is spout dogma with no real knowledge or understanding of your own.

See what I mean. You make a claim, but when it comes to anything to base the claim on you say the actual numbers don't matter. And if I asked instead of the numbers, can you at least tell me what kind of treatments they seek here that they can't get at home, you wouldn't be able to tell the that either.

Instead all you're really doing is regurgitating something you've heard and believed without even questioning yourself about it.

 

Stumbler - after all these years, I confess to a kind of awe about your ability to string out multi-quotes into a novella-length response . . . I think it used to bug me because I didn't have the stamina to multi-quote-respond as prolifically.

But now I am resigned to the fact that yours will always be bigger than mine

 

Sorry Stumbler, I did not read all of your post. I laugh at people who think socialism is communism or that Marxism is cammounism like it was in the USSR. What was in the USSR, as I am sure you already know, was Stalinism, not true communism or Marxism.

 

England France and Germany have had universal health care for years and its worked damn well over here, iv never had to wait in a long line or have had shit treatment and from experiencing it first hand i say that it would be a damn good idea to have universal health care in the USA. just beause you don't have the money for an operation dosent mean you should die.

sarah plin said that if Steven hawking was british and was treated under the NHS then he would be dead. theres one problem with that however: Steven hawking IS british and dose owe his life to the NHS (hes profesor of physics at Cambridge uni for heavens sake)

 

How does this add up?

About easttexasbadboy32
Gender
Male
Age
30

Your profile says you are 30 years old. Did you really graduate from high school at the age of 15?

According to my arithmetic, you could not have graduated any later. Five years in college means you were there at the ages of 16, 17, 18, 19, and 20. "Almost 11 years" means you just barely finished paying off your student loan. Graduating from high school at the age of 14 gives you a more convincing chronology, but it is not at all convincing that you graduated three years early.

If you are so intelligent that you skipped two or three grades you could have easily gotten a full tuition scholarship. I think it is more likely that you did not even learn grade school arithmetic, or that you are, shall we say, making stuff up.

 

DO YOU REALLY KNOW??

Well of course not. YOU haven't been down to YOUR school and school board so YOU don't know if they're one of the good ones of the bad ones. YOU don't know what YOUR school is doing or how.

Well no, obviously you don't. First because YOU don't know if YOUR school is providing something of value and so you could be complaining about nothing and again running around in hysterical circles blaming the federal government for YOUR problem.

I bet we understand it better than you do. Let's see, have you fulfilled the personal responsibilities that come with YOUR liberty? If you haven't. If you haven't taken part in the democratic process, if you haven't really studied the issues and looked for solutions then you can't talk about anyone else being personally irresponsible.

It really is that simple.

But wait its not Kimiko that doesn't understand liberty its you. YOU can't define YOUR own liberties and you scream they are being threatened while YOU are already ensnared and brainwashed.

I couldn't stop laughing out loud over this quote. You rattle on and on about how you're willing to accept the constitutional violations President George Bush committed and then when YOU'RE obviously willing to sacrifice any number of liberties for some sense of temporary safety it makes you the one who does not deserve liberty nor safety.

Now that cracked me up.:excited:

And BEWILDERMENT is the perfect description for your current state of mental capacity. Now, its self inflicted bewilderment. You can't expect to really know anything when you don't even think about the things you think you know.

OMG I swear you're going to make me wet my pants I'm laughing so hard. Let me look at that again. What did you say? Our health care system is to expenses and the GOVERNMENT CAN ADDRESS THAT.

Oh holy shit, not that is possibly the biggest contradiction of an entire argument in all my forum born days.

I agree but since here you're advocating actually spending more money that's hardly conservative of you. Unless what you really mean is let those of us who can pay for health care have it, and those who can't go without out.

But now you have two choices. Are you going to actually deny anyone who can't afford it health care and allow them to just die in the streets? Or are you going to say they should receive health care?

Answer that one for me would you Tex?

Well stop getting your panties all in a wad and going around getting all hysterical. Get YOUR ass down there and fis YOUR problem.

I believe you. I believe you and many other Americans would and have gone to war, fought and died over what we call liberty and they didn't have any more of an idea of liberty than you do.

It doesn't mean they weren't right in what they fought for or anyy less courageous and heroic about it. They done just as good and maybe even died happy defending a word they didn't really understand.

Explain what this one means to me will you Tex?

But ya see the 6% plus what ever they pay out and what it costs them to run their industry. Which has extremely high administration costs because it takes a lot of people to fuck millions of Americans out of insurance benefits they thought they had.

 

In the United States those on the right like to speak on behalf of others. They say that universal health care is a terrible system, and that people in England, France, and Germany are really suffering. During the War in Vietnam they said that the South Vietnamese wanted to be protected from Communism.

 

If beeing ruled by someone that did not get the majority of the people's votes is part of your definition of freedom then I feel sorry for you.

 

There actually are enlightened, educated Americans over here. We find Sarah Palin to be an international embarrassment.

She isn't very well informed. In the Republican Party that doesn't matter.

 

That's because I've discovered and employ many time saving new technological advances. For instance I've programed all my word processing programs to open with a blank page full of commas. That way all I have to do is put the words in between them.

If I ever get the OED downloaded and can just automatically mix the words in with the commas and all I have to do is erase the ones I don't want you guys have really had it.

 

That's really funny!

You can subscribe to the OED online...

 

In the United States those on the right have an easier time yelling, "You're a Communist!" than they do of explaining why 45,000 people should die every year because they are part of the 47,000,000 Americans without health insurance.

Also, the ability to make distinctions is a mark of intelligence. The right wing nut cases who dominate the Republican Party have trouble distinguishing between a liberal Democrat and someone who thinks Joe Stalin's slave labor camps were justified by historical necessity.

 

This ability could be applied to any type of nut, but not coconuts as they are seeds and not nuts.

(Did you spot the distinction made there? :excited