OK, you tell me if this is "sicko" or what?

Question

- We fall behind most other industrialized nations in just about every area of social need. In percentage of one-year-old children fully immunized against polio, we are number seventeen.

- Averaging over the first years of the new millennium, the United States spends circa $5,200 per person on health care. Canada $2,900; Germany $2,800; Switzerland $2,600; Britain $2,200. Yet, each of them boasts of a longer life expectancy, lower infant mortality, and better U5MRs than we. All have a national health care service that covers all their people. No one is shut out.

- The United States is the only industrialized nation of 28 that does not guarantee access to health care as a right of citizenship.

- Many like to label nationalized health care as "socialist," yet any intelligent citizen KNOWS that we all, already bear the cost and burden for the uninsured. We're already paying the tab.

Answer 1

This blind adoration of all things against our own interests baffles me. The moronic chant of "We're Number One" when, in reality, we are really number 37 or number 68 is numbing. The ever growing list of unaddressed US problems is not limited to the world's most wasteful health care system. It includes a crumbling physical infrastructure, an increasingly illiterate population, an ever regressive system of taxation, dismantled social safety net and the betrayal by a telecommunications industry that was allowed to bill consumers for a system it didn't deliver.

I can understand when paid spokespersons for Exxon-Mobil or Pfizer or AT&T or Kaiser Permanente misdirect our attention with fluff, false choices and outright lies. But what could possibly be the motivation of people much like you and me that parrot these misleading claims against their own interests?

Who are these people that dismiss as socialist anyone who would question our sinking health care system? They surely can't be self-employed individuals forced to troll the insurance industry for affordable meaningful coverage. They surely can't be small business owners trying to provide coverage for their valued employees only to see the cost of that coverage be their fastest growing expense year after year. They surely can't be the employees that see their deductables increase annually as their coverage declines. They surely aren't those who have no coverage.

Who are these obstructionists? Are they the dwindling few who look at their current coverage and think, "It's kind of working now?" Or are they the people who just fear change?

Answer 2

This must be a new generational way of "thinking", because I really don't see that it is anyone else's business what a parent tells a child they believe. How do you get that this is somehow "forcing" anything down a child's throat? Of course, I can see it would be a matter of concern if a parent was telling a child to believe in some satanic blood-cult that encourages the child to belive that it's ok to kill people in the most gruesome fashion possible, but the whole theme of your question is that it's somehow wrong for a Christian parent to tell their children what they, the parent, believe in. Is this some new and desperate tactic to make Christian parents feel "guilty" for introducing their children (of whom what they say to "their" children is NONE of your business) to their religious beliefs? And when you can show me conclusively (much less convince me) that Christians believing in and following the bible's tenets are somehow "suppression", "oppression", "hate" simply because you don;t like it, and all the rest, I might one day actually begin to take you seriously. Until then, even insinuating such is just a laughable joke. Nice try, though. Oh, btw- I used Christians as an example simply because this question in its current form is nothing but a tired re-hash of the same terminology used in previous questions directed solely at Christians. As for muslims or other religious faiths, they can speak for themselves.

Answer 3

Indeed,you are already paying the tab and as your figures show you're actually paying more for a system that is less than it could be.It's an illogical irrational fear these people have that is fed by the private insurance companies.They are the only ones benefiting from the current system and they are very willing and aggressive to keep it that way.
Look what they did to Hillary when she tried or how much they donate to political campaigns.
This is again a case where the fears for taxes(while it would actually be cheaper and better!),doubts and paranoia about socialism of low wage conservatives are abused to prevent necessary positive change

Answer 4

Some people are still babbling about how it takes 'six months' in Canada to see a doctor. Shazam....first off, that never was true, and second a lot of the problems Canada had have long since been addressed. Also, most Canadians live within 50 miles of the US border. US hospitals get paid to treat Canadians. This is a cash cow for us and the Canadians don't have to duplicate services. I don't know why we even listen to these people anymore....bring on a single payer universal health INSURANCE system so we can all get needed treatment and save a lot of money doing it.

Answer 5

More of a shame really but you'll not find a lot of genuine intellect here that first is willing there is a problem and secondly talking about real measures to address the disparity's, such a shame

Answer 6

It's sicko to think that not providing healthcare for everyone is ok in the modern world.

Answer 7

I agree

Answer 8

Who pays that in those countries? Isn't magic money faeries?

You mean you have the right to take my money to pay their health care? That is socialism.

That doesn't mean keep paying the tab. THAT MEANS STOP PAYING! Not pay more!

If they get hurt, can't pay, they settle for less.

I don't owe them.

As to polio, easy solution. We have an immigrant population that brings such things in every day, which is why we have this problem and they don't. Put in strict checks for serious contagious diseases and end illegal immigration.

Answer 9

ok mr. intellident citizen, did any of them tell you why so many of them come from here from canada and germany for haelth care? Maybe because they will wait 6 months to even see a doctor???

Answer 10

No argument here, you are right.