What is Digg?Sponsored by newegg
Ready. Set. Shop view!
newegg.com - Newegg.com Black Friday Sale starting 11/25 3PM PST. No Lines, No Crowds, Click and Save.
264 Comments
- snkscore, on 11/16/2009, -12/+56By "won't rush" the Republican mean they will do everything they can to keep this from passing, including using every possible measure they can think of to stall the process.
- stretta, on 11/16/2009, -15/+56Correct. Mandatory health insurance WITHOUT a public option is nothing more than a subsidy to insurance companies. Glad you understand that.
- NorthMass, on 11/16/2009, -37/+77forcing people to buy insurance is the somehow the solution to our woes. how is that going to hurt the insurance companies when people are forced to join them or else be fined/jailed? this is a clone of RomneyCare in Massachusetts, which has failed horribly and caused health care prices to skyrocket. this bill is straight up fascism, it is a gigantic handout to the insurance companies.
- snkscore, on 11/16/2009, -8/+32You act as if the bill gets better the longer it lingers out there.... This isn't the case.
- NorthMass, on 11/16/2009, -24/+46How is forcing people to buy health insurance "reform"? And how is this going to hurt the insurance companies, when people are going to be forced to buy insurance from them or else face a fine/jail time?
- kaelyiesta, on 11/16/2009, -4/+24Well, that assumes that the time taken by the senate will be spent improving the existing version of the bill. Odds are, they will take their time with lobbyists until the modifications to the bill include more goodies from our tax money to satisfy just enough bribed politicians to get it passed.
- WunderTroll, on 11/16/2009, -23/+43I'm all for deliberate speed, but somehow I don't think Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell had that in mind.
And where the ***** did all of these Republican diggers come from? - MrFunStuff, on 11/16/2009, -12/+29We need health care reform but a public option is just not sustainable. Especially because of the condition that our economy is in. I am very willing to have a intelligent debate about how to fix this problem.
Remember The only reason insurance play such a big part in today's health care is because cost have gotten so out of control. Think about every other insurance that you have. You don't buy car insurance to get in a wreck the next day do you. Health insurance was used only for emergency before the government started intervening and cost started going up.(I will show examples of this in my post)
EX's
The AMA was given the monopoly on licensing doctors. Congress controls the supply of physicians by how much federal funding it provides for medical residencies — the graduate training required of all doctors.
The AMA lobbys too limit the number of doctor's who can legally practice medicine
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2005-03-02-doc ...
In the United States the number, curriculum, and size of medical schools are restricted by state licensing boards controlled by representatives of state medical societies associated with the AMA.
"Mark J. Perry, an economist at the University of Michigan, argues that “we would probably go a long way to solving our ‘health care crisis’” if the “medical cartel” hadn’t prevented medical schools from expanding to meet students’ demands for more places. He notes that American law schools responded to the growing population by expanding the number of places available, whereas medical schools shrunk instead. As a result, their rejection rates rose, frustrating students who wanted to be doctors. The result was fewer doctors to care for the growing population, but it was good for those who did get accepted, as Dr. Perry illustrates in a chart showing that salaries for doctors in the United States are double to triple what their counterparts make in Europe.
One way to relieve the shortage of providers that the medical industry has created would be for the A.M.A. to abandon its aggressive game of turf-protection and allow nurses, midwives, physician assistants and practitioners of alternative therapies such as chiropractors, to offer standard treatments for routine illnesses without physician supervision. For instance, midwifery, once a robust industry in this country, has been virtually destroyed, thanks to the intense lobbying against it by the medical industry. In 1995, 36 states restricted or outright banned midwifery, even though studies have found that it delivers equally safe care at far lower prices than standard hospital births. "
Is A.M.A. Support for Health Reform a Bad Sign?
http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/09/is- ...
We do not need general practitioners for basic medical services. Through force of government intervention, certification and licensing (under the guise of efficiency, standardization and increased professional standards) has removed the entire bottom level of the healthcare system, forcing people to pay higher costs for services that could be provided cheaper, and taking supply away from people with more serious illness.
The 1962 Kefauver-Harris Amendment account for 85% of current pharmaceutical cost.1962, laws passed makes it almost impossible to get a new drug approved. In 1948 one well-know pharmaceutical company (Parke & Davis) had to summit 73 page of evidence to secure the licensing of a drug. In 1968, this same company had to submit 72,200 of data transported by truck, in a effort to have an anaesthetic licenses. Once a lot of these regulation that drive up cost of doctors and medicine are gone it will be cheaper to start up private hospitals.
56% of all hospitals in America were privately own and for profit in 1910. After 60 years of subsides for government-run hospitals, the number had fallen to about 10%. Medical expenditures rose by 224% from 1965 - 1989. Number of hospital beds per 1,000 population fell by 44%. Remember what we have now is not a free market system, it's a government managed system and national health insurance is a different type a government managed system.
Over-reaching FDA regulations have caused the premature deaths of millions of Americans, according to research scientist Mary J. Ruwart, Ph.D., who also said federal regulations passed in 1962 are responsible for more than 80 percent of the cost of today's prescription drugs.
Instead of protecting Americans from unsafe drugs, Ruwart said, "these particular regulations, the 1962 Kefauver-Harris Amendments, have proven to be more deadly than all of the drug toxicity that occurred before their passage." She estimated that between 1963 and 1999, 4.7 million people died prematurely while the medicines that could have saved them languished in mandated testing.
"The amendments saved a few thousand lives, but the cost was [in] letting millions die [while] waiting for treatment. That's why the amendments are 'excess' regulation," Ruwart said.
http://www.heartland.org/publications/health%20car ...
Sky-rocketing costs are caused by government intervention in the market, that causes artificially high pharmaceutical cost and a lack of competition.
Total Health Expenditures as a Share of GDP, U.S. and Selected Countries, 1970, 1980, 1990, 2003
xxxxxxxxxxxxxx1970xx1980xx1990xx2003
Australia xxxxxx$252xx$691xx$1,306x$2,886
Canada xxxxxxx299xxx783xxxx1,737xx2,998
Switzerland xxxx351xxx1,031xx2,029xx3,847
United Kingdomxx163xxx480xxx987xxxx2,317
United Statesxxxx352xxx1,072xx2,752xx5,711
Swedenxxxxxxxx312xxx944xxx1,589xx2,745
http://www.kff.org/insurance/snapshot/chcm010307ot ...
Government managed healthcare start out good be gets more and more expensive. Just like Medicare and Social Security. which makes it unsustainable.
"We're officially past the point where Social Security and Medicare insolvency are far-off problems that we can ignore.Medicare is going bust sooner than we expected. And this isn't some crazy, partisan rambling. This is coming straight from the government"
http://www.businessinsider.com/medicare-insolvent- ...
Some people say government is currently trying to tackle the fairness of access, but without significantly decreasing costs.
But those people are ignoring the problem of consistently rising cost. The system won't be very fair when the government cant pay for healthcare because cost got too out of control.
When healthcare cost get too high. Countries will ether start rationing care, meaning people who need care won't get it or countries will start going in to debt to pay for health care which could lead to bankruptcy. None of this is very fair.
Countries all around the world don't want to treat healthcare as a goods but it is. It's a service that requires money to provide. Most people in these countries think government intervention has solved their healthcare issue. But little do they know that it was government intervention in the first place that started prices to spiral up. Government managed healthcare is a ticking time bomb of pain. America's bomb is probably going to go off first. Why? Because Americas economy is going down and healthcare cost are going up. All the people dependent on Medicare and Social Security are going to be left with no help. This could easily happen to any other countries, economies are not static.
Sry for the length it's not a simple argument but you asked. - arkwald, on 11/16/2009, -11/+27citation please
- baja01, on 11/16/2009, -3/+18There is a mailing list somewhere. They do this every once and while. Its kind of cute.
- sb66, on 11/16/2009, -22/+36Wow the selfish retards are out in force in this thread.
- drmangrum, on 11/16/2009, -13/+27Of course not. Even if they do have a workable bill they don't have near the support needed to pass a vote. Like it was said after the House bill passed, it's DOA in the Senate.
I really wish the house would separate the bills into reforms and new programs. The stuff that should be done and all parties can agree on should be put forth now: anti-fraud, opening up state lines, tort reform, etc. The purely legislative stuff. There is NO reasons to block those sorts of initiatives by coupling it with items like the Public Option that will dwell in committee for months or years. - Vesuvias, on 11/16/2009, -2/+14I applaud you sir for bringing this information to the light. However, I feel with the Digg mentality you will end up buried due to the mindless drones that circle this site. They will most likely take your word, and your proof and read the first few sentences and then ADD will set in...
DUGG. - Maddoktor2, on 11/16/2009, -3/+151) Eliminate mandatory coverage.
2) Remove the Stupak amendment.
3) Include a robust public option based on HR676
4) Ram it through with a reconciliation vote.
Forget bi-partisanship - the Republicans don't want it, so give them their wish. - sluggybuggy, on 11/16/2009, -2/+14It's not like Canada has a bloated military budget they're spending all their money on.
Regardless of how it's paid for we are outspending them on healthcare, and a lot of that is paid directly by employers. People like to bitch about taxes, but healthcare is the #1 cost of doing business in the US and it's primarily what is driving all our jobs oversees. - barcardi, on 11/16/2009, -12/+24tyranny of the minority
- veganpa, on 11/16/2009, -26/+37Devin is right -- man, you ignorant mouth breathers make me sick. Ever since Roosevelt, people have tried to fix this unfair and deadly system. The Republicans would personally run over any of us if they thought it would hurt Obama.
- ultraseamus, on 11/16/2009, -4/+15It is funny how the jerk off who responds with a generic attack on republicans gets dugg up, while the guy who honestly tries to answer your question by explaining what the opposition are thinking, gets dugg down. Gotta love the fair and balanced Digg crowd.
- sb66, on 11/16/2009, -5/+15Single payer is the real answer. But American politicians are way too much in hock to the corporations to support that. Must preserve the right to make a profit off other people's misery! Go USA.
- doctorgrim, on 11/16/2009, -8/+18"The U.S. spends much more on health care than Canada, both on a per-capita basis and as a percentage of GDP.[5] In 2006, per-capita spending for health care in Canada was US$3,678,; in the U.S., US$6,714, The U.S. spent 15.3% of GDP on health care in that year; Canada spent 10.0%.[5] In 2006, 70% of health care spending in Canada was financed by government, versus 46% in the United States. Total government spending per capita in the U.S. on health care was 23% higher than Canadian government spending, and U.S. government expenditure on health care was just under 83% of total Canadian spending (public and private)."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Canadia ... - ousthouse, on 11/16/2009, -10/+20Yeah, it's too bad republicans still control congress and the presidency.
- alukima, on 11/16/2009, -17/+27Why are people against this? I just dont get it. We have needed health care reform for a very long time. This is something that will help people.
- Opiate, on 11/16/2009, -2/+12Seeing as health-care is a provincial jurisdiction, here's the Ontario budget.
http://www.fin.gov.on.ca/en/budget/ontariobudgets/ ... - frsrblch, on 11/16/2009, -4/+14This is what you get from them for extending an olive branch and trying to compromise.
- brbeaird, on 11/16/2009, -23/+32Regardless of anyone's stance on health care reform, this is a very good thing. Ramming this through just so the politicians can check a box saying they passed reform isn't good for anyone.
- juankovo, on 11/16/2009, -6/+15Or better yet, they should move this crap back to the state legislatures where it belongs. Why dump 300 million people into one system and hope for the best when you can run 50 concurrent experiments on health care and learn from other states' mistakes?
- sb66, on 11/16/2009, -8/+17and we know republicans like rape...
- deity, on 11/16/2009, -3/+12You are the only one mentioning race. Seems that race is the refuge of those who have no real argument, you just start calling people names until they shut up.
Keep doing it, it will backfire and people will become resentful. - brook011, on 11/16/2009, -2/+11Question : If this is the first time these people have seen the bill, what the hell else are they doing with their time?? Especially considering the gravity of this being passed, and how important it's been and is to Americans.
- Shwaavay, on 11/16/2009, -4/+13You're really moronic for playing the black president angle. Stick with your arguments about knee-jerk reaction to government, that argument has truth to it. Nobody cares about the color of a man's skin.
- altgeeky1, on 11/16/2009, -3/+12>And where the ***** did all of these Republican diggers come from?
Easy. They're using the Ron Paul "web bots" to post the same comments over and over to different discussion threads.
Just take a look at your hometown small newspaper... if the article even contains a KEYWORD relating to healthcare, it will get carpet bombed with new user posts which use verbatim anti-Obama posts all over the place on other sites.
That's why telephone and street polls show a majority of Americans are FOR healthcare reform, irrespective of what you see online... - frsrblch, on 11/16/2009, -1/+9While this bill will (hopefully) stop some of the health insurance industry's more disgusting practices, it won't change the fact that you are still relying on a woefully inefficient insurance system to deliver health care. It's about as small a step towards reform as you're going to find, a sort of compromise between Republicans who would vote down any reform, and progressives who, at the minimum, want a robust public option - like the *****-brown you would get if you tried to "compromise" between red and green in a painting.
There are wingnuts, for sure, but don't go insulting people for not liking a bill that does little more than pander to the health insurance companies. - RGB0099CC, on 11/16/2009, -6/+14In a forum where next to every comment there is a red thumb down and a green thumb up, I don't know if you can really say that we are suppressing your free speech. Yes, I'm assuming that is what you were trying to say with your snide last comment.
Don't worry though, you have the important thing down. It is always the leftists who are your enemy and it is always the conservatives who are mine. As long as we both make sure to remember that, we will continue to make great strides improving this country. - dalittle, on 11/16/2009, -0/+8McConnell is rich and gets free government run health care like all members of Congress. He does not give a crap about regular people, he is trying to help the few continue to line their pockets at everyone's expense.
- eugenetabisco, on 11/16/2009, -4/+12Skywise -- do you understand the concept of digg at all? Bury down and bury up is what people do. Your post would have to be taken away to qualify as denying free speech. Burying your inane viewpoint (yes, my opinion) is not taking away your free speech.
And judging by the way the Republicans have emphatically announced they will vote no against all real health care reform (except this mysterious non-existent one they keep touting), for McConnell to ***** everyone saying they will deliberate the bill at all is insulting to the intelligence of those with intelligence (IE those who understand free speech) - ironhide, on 11/16/2009, -2/+10Skywise, I've been buried by your ilk plenty of times, so quit whining. Or is it only ok for conservatives to bury liberals? That is what you seem to be saying.
- Quaestor44, on 11/16/2009, -7/+15More people are realizing how terrible it is the longer its out there. You're correct.
- DavidTrom, on 11/16/2009, -15/+23You are right; forcing people to buy insurance from the same crocks running the system now is horrible. The solution to this nightmare is simple , Single-payer!!!!. But Republicans rather cut their right hands that allow it
- ironhide, on 11/16/2009, -1/+8"Who's whining?" - um, you.
- nmessick, on 11/16/2009, -1/+8Canada also pays its doctors and hospitals much less than we do. Until we fix the underlying reasons our healthcare is so darn expensive, the affordability of our system will not improve. The overhead of private insurance is only a small part of a very big problem, and shifting the cost from a private to public system is not going to fix things.
- Moralogic, on 11/16/2009, -3/+10If oldhick is right, then I guess we need to go over why you have to be ***** stupid to not want insurance in the first place.
- MrFunStuff, on 11/16/2009, -1/+7Again sry about the length.
I just wanted to give a good argument. - arkwald, on 11/16/2009, -11/+17Well here is the thing.... if nothing gets passed and things keep going the way they are going do you expect them to get better or even stay the same? We are not in a stable situation you can't use the whole "if it ain't broken don't fix it strategy" when the system is getting closer and closer to collapsing.
It will be sad when all these "SOCIALISM EXTREME!!!!" voices wonder why they have to pay $250 just to see a doctor and need to mortgage their house if a loved one has to get surgery. I guess your only worth a damn if you can work yourself to the bone, if not then too bad. - farmergreg, on 11/16/2009, -3/+9Did u attend one town hall. The reason isn't because he's black we just want to be free and unlike you I won't sell my freedom at any cost.
- RatatRatR, on 11/16/2009, -7/+13Which will then be painted as failure by Obama.
- WasabiBomb, on 11/16/2009, -9/+15Insurance, whether privately provided or through the government, relies on economies of scale. The more people in the insured group, the more secure that coverage is. As a thought experiment, try to imagine how well an insurance company could do with just *one* customer- odds are, that company would go out of business, because one medical emergency would quickly outspend the customer's premiums.
In other words, the more people who participate, the better and more secure the program is.
And, by the way, the goal is not to "hurt" the insurance companies, it's to make sure that everyone has access to healthcare. But then, you knew that. - trdrstv, on 11/16/2009, -0/+6nah, if they want to kill it, they just need to pass House Resolution 615 ...
"Under the current draft of the Democrat healthcare legislation, members of Congress are curiously exempt from the government-run health care option... I have introduced an Amendment to the Pelosi health care bill [House Resolution 615] that will automatically enroll all Members of Congress and all Senators in the public option."
http://fleming.house.gov/index.html - dalittle, on 11/16/2009, -2/+8How come Mitch McConnell is still using the government run health care that all members of Congress get if he thinks it is such a bad idea? In fact how come all the people voting against it are not giving up their government run health care?
- ww3ace, on 11/16/2009, -8/+14But I want affordable healthcare NOW!
- altgeeky1, on 11/16/2009, -3/+980% of all statistics are made up on the spot, including yours.
Canada spends 43% of it's GDP on health care? That's unimaginable. Even if you MEANT to say, they spent 43% of their TAX revenue on health care, you'd still be way off.
Which is exactly why you made the conscious decision to not cite any sources for this "fact" that no one else has ever heard of. -
Show 51 - 100 of 268 discussions
© Digg Inc. 2009
— Content created and posted by Digg users is