Are leftwingers trying to bamboozle Americans into Universal Healthcare, again?

Question

There seems to be an all-out push for this nonsense lately. Michael Moore's latest propaganda is focused entirely on this objective. This Universal Healthcare push is festering like a swollen boil in politics today, and it is threatening to burst and ooze a fetid puss all over the 2008 presidential election.

It is not very difficult to envision a US government-administered system of socialist medicine: health care with the efficiency of the Postal Service and the compassion of the IRS? No thanks!

Didn't they learn their lesson the first time Hillary tried that rubbish in 1993? She got smacked down, hard. Socialist healthcare is not something that the American people are prepared to tolerate; do you hear us, leftwingers? Not on OUR watch!


The shame of it all is that: trial lawyers like John Edwards and his ilk are responsible for most of the problems plaguing our current health system. Any common-sense attempts at tort-reform is met with furious resistance by the Left.

Women who get breast cancer in Germany are slightly more likely to die of it than breast cancer victims in the U.S. (31 percent vs. 25 percent). For prostate cancer, you are twice as likely to die of it in Germany as in the U.S. (44 percent vs. 19 percent).

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2006/05/02/depends-on-what-the-meaning-of-universal-is

LOL@"the only people who could possibly hate Michael Moore are the super-rich" That's hilarious! I guess American gun owners and 2nd Amendment advocates must all be super rich now? Thanks for your 'input', LOL!!

Answer 1

Yes, probably.

Unfortunately, they want the 85% who are 'adequately covered' to give up that coverage so the 15% who are not [well covered] can get free care [this is a repeat of a survey finding - heard on the dreaded FNC].

Why not compromise a bit and leave the system alone and add something for the have nots?

BTW, there are *never* 42 million without coverage; the number includes people when we change jobs and aren't covered for 3 months or so (but not counting cobra!). The actual number without coverage is *much* smaller.

I notice some of the "answers" berate you for not liking liberals and socialized medicine or not knowing what is fact and what is fiction. Too bad their view of the world is clouded and tinted by the prejudices [we all have] that don't align with reality.

Allow me to repeat a couple of facts {really}:

first, while US healthcare is rated way down in the 20s overall (which is suspect), 85% of our citizens are happy with their service and *the rich* from many other countries come to the US for care (if the best is good enough for rich foreigners, isn't what we can afford good enough??), and

second, there is some possibility that socialized medicine may be unconstitutional - wouldn't that frost the cake?? (how would the libs try to suspend that?)

There is also some possibility that socialized medicine might violate the idiotic Interstate Commerce rules ! Hillary care would have made it *ILLEGAL* for an MD to be in private practice (yes, that's what it said - fines and jail time for being in business!!).

My only technical fine point disagreement with a small part of your statement is that while tort reform is disliked by the left, it is the trial lawyers that scream the loudest and - - wait a minute, what occupation do most members of congress profess??

Never mind, like term limits, very few in power will voluntarily vote to give it up.

Oh well, better luck in our next reincarnation.

added later:
note to Andy -
1) comparing the costs of malpractice suits to the total of health care spending is so bad it isn't even wrong - one falls on the MDs and their insurance and the other is every aspirin bought,
2) oh sure, limiting the competition ought to lower costs - what's that phrase again? supply and demand? How the @#$^ did FedEx, UPS, Mailboxes, etc get started when we had a federal monopoly that delivered mail (did the USPS actually sue to stop the competition?)
3) yes, the CBO is unreliable and political - they counted paper profits and unsecured income to make Clinton's budget look balanced and have ignored the growing income from lower taxes to make Bush look bad
4) Business Week ? are you kidding? that rag frequently *tries* to be apolitical and might even support free enterprise in some articles but otherwise forget it, and finally,
5) based on your comments, I am forced to doubt either your statement of not being a liberal or your understanding of economics and critical thinking.
sorry about that

Note to avail -
cold hearted risk analyst - do you know ANYONE who's life is worth more than $10 million? $20? Not even Bill Gate's assets make his life worth that much (his assets would live on). Why not make the split $25 M for death and $10M plus life-long care for 'damage.'

note to tgate -
I too had friends in the UK that finally had surgery done elswhere. One went to the US and the other risked all sorts of things (especially wierd nosocomial infections) but got care in India.

**NOTE to all - BTW outsourcing isn't just for blue collar jobs - many folks are going to Mexico and India for some of the best available health care on the planet. Ain't competition and free enterprise great !!

*****note to trevor-
that health care alternative in India wouldn't exist without the profit motive and yes, Michael Moore is an *idiot* in my opinion.
If you believe a single thing MM says about being a normal working class guy you haven't done any homework.

See the ref link and others to find out that MM is a millionaire, doesn't pay his workers (and goes to Canada so he doesn't have to pay union scale), sends his kids to private school, lives in Manhattan, etc.

You have been hornswoggled. email me if you don't believe it or you read the facts and give him up for the limosine pseudo-liberal he is; his other supporters have given him up when they looked into the facts about this swindler.

Answer 2

Yes, it's been all over the place. Do you know why they're doing it so strongly right now? Because so many people are against the war in Iraq, and many feel that our next president will be a Liberal, so they're trying to reinforce Liberal objectives. If the present administration is weak, the Libs will add any agenda it chooses, healthy for this country or not, being if a Lib does get elected, so many people voting on the issue of the Iraq war, will let others slide in, like Universal Health Care. Scary, isn't it?

Answer 3

Most people are missing the whole point of this health care debate, and that is whether socialized medicine is desirable and feasible in the U.S. Even more important, is it even necessary from a cost standpoint?

Let's start with the desirability factor. I am living the socialized medicine nightmare here in Europe. You don't want to go down this road. It doesn't matter which country you cite, I have friends all around Europe, and most of them will completely their rights to so-called "free" care in favor of fast, reliable, and high quality service.

People who can afford the alternative will often fly to other countries, especially to Germany and Switzerland, which have lots of pricey but high quality facilities. Do you really want some doctor under a socialized medicine regime doing surgery on your knee? Let me tell you about the attitude under socialized medicine: the human spirit is crushed and apathy prevails. It's like the horror stories of waiting in line for two hours to get bread in Communist Russia.

Doctors simply don't care. Why should they? It's actually in their best interest to ignore you as much as possible. They don't get paid anything additional for good service. There is no such thing as an "appointment", even when you are told when to arrive. You have to wait like a schmuck along with 30 other weary-looking people who look like a dog that's been kicked around its whole life. You do not instruct the doctor about what YOU want. The doctor has the final say. Want an MRI? HA! Good luck. Unless you are willing to pay for it, goodies like this are R-A-T-I-O-N-E-D..... I don't care if you are talking about France or the Czech Republic. There is only so much money in the budget, and doctors must exhaust every other option before sending you for "expensive" diagnostics.

Do you really want the same treatment as "Loquitia", the perennially pregnant welfare momma and her poorly disciplined kids? About 85% of people have good coverage. You want to make a guess how many of the rest really can't afford health insurance, as opposed to those who squander their money on Starbucks coffee and cable tv? We Americans have gotten so used to this "entitlement" mentality we can't even conceive that our parents often lived very modestly.

Think back to the Hurricane Katrina debacle. Maybe 5% of the people who stayed were truly unable to leave. The rest made a stupid, stupid decision. They claimed they didn't have money for a bus ticket out of town. Really? I'll bet they had $15 for a case of beer and cigarettes, didn't they? This idea that people can't afford health insurance is often nonsense. They may not have a large income, but they squander their money on non-essentials, like drugs, alcohol, restaurant dinners, cable tv, fancy sports shoes for their children, beauty parlor treatments, etc. (ever notice how many of those women in Hurricane Katrina had some $50 nail job and and expensive hairdos?)

Rather than throwing everyone into the nighmare of socialized medicine, we should force people to be responsible for their own health and finances. If someone is really below the poverty line, then the government could give them additional tax credits for getting private health insurance (these tax credits ALREADY EXIST, by the way!).

Socialized medicine just means a monstrous bureaucracy, substandard care, and the government controlling more of our lives. Don't be duped.

Answer 4

You are completely right about this, but the Left are crazy for universal socialized health care and they are bleating in the answers.

The reason the Left wants it is that they want powerful well paid government jobs for themselves. They also want to prefer their friends for cutting edge treatments that will be denied others, for example, in Australia's socilaized medicine, homosexuals are preferred over others in access to medicines, and women are preferred to men in access to cancer medicines.

Health is too important to be something that is at risk at each election. The losers who are in favor of socialized medicine are the same people who opposed Bill Clinton's dismantling of welfare, which is the greatest enduring achievement of his presidency.

The reason that we treat businessmen and businesswomen differently from murderers in the ghetto is very simple - business is an activity that benefits others in general - quite apart from the person whose business it is. On the other hand, murderers in the ghetto do not benefit anyone except themselves. They are the ultimate in selfish people. Business serves the wants of others. Murderers do not. If people get killed by want of reasonable care in the conduct of a business that benefits people apart from the owner, serious criminal penalties are not an appropriate response, unless you want poverty and misery.

Michael Moore is a middle class rich guy, who panders to the prejudices of the unintelligent. Michael Moore rails against corporations, claims he won't invest in stocks on moral grounds, but his IRS filings state Moore has owned stock of Halliburton, General Electric, Merck, Pfizer, Sunoco, Ford, Tenet Health Care, and McDonald's. (See Peter Schweizer's book - "Do As I Say (Not As I Do) Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy."

The trial lawyers are entrepreneurs, but they are entrepreneurs in the one lawful activity, apart from boxing, where people are paid to hurt others and there is no remedy.

Trial lawyering is an ultra-hazardous activity aimed at hurting other people. Accordingly, it should not enjoy the ordinary commercial freedoms, which is the sense in the old rules banning class actions, legal advertising and contingent attorney's fees. It does not mean that these old approaches are the correct policy settings, but anyone who thinks that trial lawyering is an ordinary business activity should be happy to have a nuclear reactor in their neighborhood.

People who think that socialized medicine will be cheaper just do not understand government and markets. In 1930, it was a legitimate argument that one government monopoly would be cheaper and more efficient than the ruinously competitive private firms. But today, only a fool would think that the way to cheaper and better goods and services is to ban competition.

So far as the National Health Service in the UK is concerned, people who now pay for health care in the USA, now pay taxes for a useless state system and then pay for private insurance, as well.

Unfortunately, today we do not have Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan to tell the Democrats what rubbish socialized medicine is. His successor is Hillary.

What the Left want is to ensure that access to the best health care is something that they can get by being political apparatchiks, rather than earning an honest living.

Communism failed to deliver automobiles, houses, washing machines, etc., yet it had the "benefits" of central planning and the right to use terror. Why should the US government be better at it? There are many people in Russia who have steel teeth because they could not see a dentist for over a year and so they lost their teeth. This is the reality that is coming.

Once socialized medicine comes, some firm like Halliburton will make a fortune out of it, and then Moore will be railing against that.

Insanity is doing the same thing over again, expecting a different result. Enough of this was done in Russia to show this is insanity.

Answer 5

They keep trying to convince us how much better off we'll be under universal healthcare, run by the government. This is the same government that can't even balance a budget. If you want to use Medicare as an example of a government run healthcare service, don't forget to mention that the program is currently underfunded in the range of 14 to 32 trillion dollars. The war in Afghanistan and Iraq, which is currently, I believe, costing 100 billion dollars per year, would have to last between 140 to 320 years to equal that figure.

Answer 6

They try to drive it home by stirring up peoples emotions. Like telling them the elderly and children are suffering and dying because of high insurance and medicine costs. They fail to explain the dynamics of it and what it'll do to the best damn medical field in the world, not to mentino our taxes. Our great medical field will be rendered impotent and full of government bureaucracy.

If we can get rid of medicaid and medicare, and get the government totally out of the medical fields free market, and stop with all the frivolous lawsuits against doctors and hospitals. The prices on everything related to medical treatment will plummet. Let the damned free market truly dictate prices.

Answer 7

In 2003, the Netherlands spent 9.8 percent of its gross domestic product on health care, below the spending levels in Germany, France, and Canada and more than one-third less than the United States. Even under the constraints of this budget, the Netherlands has implemented a number of health sector reforms that have led to important quality improvements.

While no nation can be deemed "the best" in terms of its health care system, the United States is consistently outperformed in such areas as the prevention of medical errors, the provision of timely care for all citizens, and coordination of care. The U.S., it would seem, could learn from models and best practices used in countries that have achieved these higher levels of performance.

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

Let's get with the program.

Answer 8

Well i agree that the government has a track record of being unable to manage anything they control
first thing you would lose is R&D because if there is no money in it they will not do it.
second is level of care, I find it hard to believe that all the bad hype is just that when all my friends in canada and England come here for any major health care and pay out of pocket instead of waiting for free care at home. I have many doctors that are friends that are refusing to treat medicare and medicaid patients as there is no money in it. Emergency rooms are overflowing with patients that should go to doctors but they can use thier Access there and its free. I have two friends both in England one female that they found polops and wanted to do papsmear she had to wait 16 weeks the other was a guy that found lumps in his throat and had to wait for MRI and biopsy 42 weeks almost a year for what most insurance companies will allow at time of discovery both needed surgury and after 2 years came to US and paid for treatment. Is it hard to figure out that the leading trend setting hospitals in the world are in the US not in countries with socialized medicine doesn't seem to hard to figure this one out
and before you ask no I'm not a Republican
My own father was saved by cutting edge cancer surgery twice................where you guessed it the US is the only place offering it at this time.

Answer 9

Health care in America is an over regulated business, it has never functioned in the free market, when it does costs will go down, as long as Congress is involved in anything costs go up.

So if you want costs to go down vote for someone who is not pushing for congressional interference in states rights issue.

If you want FREE health care you can kiss my shiny white a$$, I am having a hard enough time paying for mine much less yours, so forgetta bout it

Great article on this phone crisis if you can stomach some truth.

http://www.szasz.com/iol23.html

Answer 10

Is the medical industry buying influence from politicians on both the left and right in order to defaud US citizens out of billions of dollars of health care costs, and to prevent us from having socialized medicine?

Do you think that this should be legal?