Product Placement
or do you consider Public health care to be a step towards communism?

You know what I’ve never fully understood is why communism has such a bad name. Back in the day communism was far more advanced than America was as basically it said everybody was equal and should be treated equally. In America at the time women and black people had very few rights.

Also does it mean that free education is a step to communism too?

Product Placement
Well in England, NHS was founded in 1948, so that's been around for 60 years.
…
Can somebody else provide us with a detailed explanation about their health care system?

The NHS was founded after WW2 because the government decided that if money could be found to kill people money could be found to help people. Our tax system pretty much works like PP said happens in Iceland and is quite high. Everything essential that a person needs to stay healthy is free and if you have something serious enough they’ll even pay for travel. If you need meds they’re usually free. If you can’t work because of your condition you get benefits. Anything cosmetic has to be done privately.

Dentistry is free to everyone under 18 and I’m not sure but I think it’s free to students. Also I’m not sure about it but if it’s something super serious with your mouth then I think it’s free too. Everything else you pay.

The NHS has VERY high standards. I don’t know who said about private = higher standards but I can tell you that’s bull.

I’m also quite curious to find out what on earth a “Death Panel” is supposed to be ¬¬

I love the people saying it would never work and they'd never support it because it's Socialism.

But...
Their kids go to public schools
Their grandma is on Social Security
Their grandpa is on Medicare
Their Uncle gets veteran benefits

... ALL forms of Socialism. Deal with it.

I normally don't post vid3eos in the D&D forum, but this guys is right on the mark. Too bad people that oppose it won't even listen...

da_kasha
I’m also quite curious to find out what on earth a “Death Panel” is supposed to be ¬¬

As far as I understand it, it's supposed to be a group that public health programs form that deem if you should live or die depending on if it's considered cost effective to cure your illness or not.

What's funny about that claim is that it's exactly the way private health care programs are being treated today since so many insurance companies seem to be solely driven by profits and denying their costumers treatments = profit for them.

Product Placement
As far as I understand it, it's supposed to be a group that public health programs form that deem if you should live or die depending on if it's considered cost effective to cure your illness or not.

Whaaaaat? That's impressive! I wonder how widely THAT'S believed because that would be some epic spreading of misinformation.

Actually I think this is the biggest problem with the NHS right now. They don't want to let anybody die. Even if they should, even if the patient has their quality of life so reduced by their ailments that they no longer see it as worth living. Elderly people get hooked up to life-support machines instead of being allowed to slip away with dignity. Euthanasia is illegal here and as such is quite an important debate.

Oh the whole however the NHS is a great system. I remember when I first found out America had nothing like it I was quite surprised. It seems almost cruel to deny people treatment or place them into huge debt just because they’ve had the terrible luck to get unwell. I’d think it was the government’s frikin’ JOB to look after its citizens.

None the less. There's shit load of talks that these things are real in the states. Here's a news report suggesting it's existence.



Now that's some seriously twisted mentality right there. My country would be appalled in every possible way if someone in the health care would be found to think like that guy in the interview. He'd be lucky if he'd could get a job as a nurse.

But as you can clearly tell, the media in the states seems to be fairly negative towards the Public Health care plan.

Product Placement

I suppose they think that a large privately owned organization cares more for their well-being.

da_kasha

Product Placement
or do you consider Public health care to be a step towards communism?

You know what I’ve never fully understood is why communism has such a bad name. Back in the day communism was far more advanced than America was as basically it said everybody was equal and should be treated equally. In America at the time women and black people had very few rights.

Also does it mean that free education is a step to communism too?

In the US diction, it mostly seems to imply no freedom and an omni-authoritarian government, sort of like the US is today.

I mean, look at the name, communism, community, yap? If you don't call it like that many good guys are actually a communist society and enlightened. Take for instance:

- The United Federation of Planets, the good guys from Star Trek, it's a textbook example of a communist society, there is no money, every one is aequal, no nobility, nothing. It has no free market and the state plans and arranges for every one to get a share. The initial ideal of communism, but if you don't call it communism then it's suddenly quite enlightened. Only DS9 explores more why such a system is infeasible due to the fundamental nature of man, but all other Trek shows like to just waltz over the nature of man and paint humanity like the most noble heroes in the galaxy, DS9's favourably more critical towards humanity's nobility that Gene Roddenberry had in mind.

- The Smurfs? Come on, that village is a communist society, there's no money, and each of the Smurfs has a quality that he's good at that he provides to the rest like baking or carpentry and in return can call in those favours back. There's even the Smurfette who's quality seems to be that she's female and nothing else... oh boy I wonder what she's giving back for those other Smurfs to go fix her TV when it's broken...

- By extension, essentially all those smurf like fantasy villages, like in The Hobbit or all those things.


The point about communism, that it's too optimistic, it doesn't work because of the fundamental nature of man, a selfish little creature. On the other hand, capitalism doesn't work for the very same reason, if you give the employees to much power then they just won't work, if you give the employers too much they'll exploit the employers and the clients alike. So in the end you have to balance it, socialism seems to be a great in between where their power is matched and the most prosperous states are socialist.

da_kasha
You know what I’ve never fully understood is why communism has such a bad name. Back in the day communism was far more advanced than America was as basically it said everybody was equal and should be treated equally. In America at the time women and black people had very few rights.

good point. Take a poll. How many Americans actually know what Communism is besides Satan worship?


Hmmmm

carolyn
By the way there is nothing great about the private health care system... If you work for a large company that offers a group health plan you may be okay. If you are working for a small company or are self employed you are screwed. Insurance rates go up 30% a quarter (we stopped paying for insurance when it hit $800.00 a month for my family... that was years ago, then we fled to Argentina). If you develop a chronic condition, your insurance spikes or drops you. Then no other company will cover you. Thankfully the Argentines saved my life last year. I had a terribly close call and would have died in the States.

Now we are back for family reasons, but at least we are close to Mexico....

(sarcasm)Wow you mean there is actually something good about Mexico? (/sarcasm)

Lol im glad you tell this story because with all the villification of non-aryan countries out in the "liberal press", most people fail to realize how fucked up the health care system is in the US.

manicmerganser
most people fail to realize how fucked up the health care system is in the US.

Oh, you mean like these people?

and these people?

and these

and him

and her

and them too

and all of them

oh and I like those

Product placement, those pictures made me cry.

Those people are awful human beings.

I don't think they understand how democracy works...
Protests are perfectly fine, but they have to understand that their president IS Obama and he was popularly, democratically elected, so that means many more people support his aims than oppose them.

I wonder how many of these dicks protested something worth protesting, like the wars?

I love it that after eight years of a president who invaded nations, cut taxes for the rich, took away many civil liberties and persecuted Islamic and homosexual people introducing public health makes someone a Nazi.

Yeah... That reminds me of what my dad was saying for years during the Bush Jnr administration- That the right in the U.S. was radicalising and moving a lot further to the right than ever before. I tended to dismiss that as being a bit over dramatic and him being too involved with Salon.com, but it appears that he might have been all too correct, at least to some degree.

I would hazard to guess that a great deal of people on the right wing of politics in the U.S. are NOT radical loons that take stuff like FOX as their bible. I would say that the portion of the right that IS like that is just rather vocal and obnoxious.

And if you think about it, that fits- Traditionally a lot of well-heeled, wealthy people will always been conservative and lean to the right in their views because they wish to preserve their power and privilege, and the same with older people who may have leaned to the left when they were younger. But the kind of language and tactics used by organisations like FOX and these far right demagogues does NOT tend to appeal to those sorts of people: it's far too "low class", popularist in a Homer Simpson sort of way, it's crass, pithy, and crude. I'd imagine it would tend to alienate them more than anything.
These aren't the "thinking" republicans.

ozoneocean
I wonder how many of these dicks protested something worth protesting, like the wars?

They didn't.

And I could go on a longwinded liberal rant about how both the war and the healthcare debate are about the wealthy keeping their money through interests in either oil or insurance money, and how most of these protesters were probably paid, but then I'd sound like some sort of conspiracy theorist nuthouse who for some reason likes the idea of a strong central government. But think about it, how many protesters who actually have something to say talk about lives instead of money?

Someone
I love it that after eight years of a president who invaded nations, cut taxes for the rich, took away many civil liberties and persecuted Islamic and homosexual people introducing public health makes someone a Nazi.

I think that everyone who believes that the government can give civil rights are Nazis.

But to be honest, it's funny that Obama intends to keep a lot of the Bush era policies, like the Patriot Act.

Another irony that I can think of is that people believe that the two wars were "worth" protesting, when it was considered "worth" protesting World Wars I and II. Wars are never popular, but they are necessary evils when considered that dictators like Hitler were removed from power through war. I think that the real dicks are the people who believe that they are "good" people by protesting wars by talking rhetoric and never taking the time to research both sides of the issues.

I've been through the Secretary of State Office, the DMV, and the Post Office, I dare say that I would rather have both options, one for those who need it, and have them realize the nightmare of an inefficient government system, and be able switch away from it.

Why both? Because to have the federal government choose just one for us all would be unamerican.

Shiba Naganori
Another irony that I can think of is that people believe that the two wars were "worth" protesting, when it was considered "worth" protesting World Wars I and II. Wars are never popular, but they are necessary evils when considered that dictators like Hitler were removed from power through war.

How are these wars necessary? What have they solved?

How about not starting a war debate here. If you want to argue about the legitimacy of the Iraq/Afgan wars, start a new thread about it.

Also Shiba I sincerely recommend that you thoroughly research the term Nazi, before making that type of accusation. Otherwise you risk calling EVERY WESTERN GOVERNMENT, apart from the US Nazis, which you just did.

Apart from that, I don't see anything wrong with the idea of creating some sort of twin public/private system where people could chose to be a part of the public health care. Should they decide to take a private insurance, they would be exempted from the health care tax.

Shiba Naganori
but they are necessary evils when considered that dictators like Hitler were removed from power through war. I think that the real dicks are the people who believe that they are "good" people by protesting wars by talking rhetoric and never taking the time to research both sides of the issues.

lol!
Something you may have missed-> the bad guys are the ones who invade and start the wars.

Soooo, that's sort of not a good position to take, ya know? ;)


-------------------------------
If the reason that some Americans are against public healthcare is because they're against federal government initiatives, wouldn't that make the U.S. rather immature as a country? O_o
I mean almost every country started out as being made up of weak, pathetic little states, principalities, duchies, regions, territories or whatever. Even Australia. As we matured we centralised. This happened all over the globe. The only places that really avoided it were German and French principalities like Luxembourg and Monaco who survived as parasites playing the bigger neighbours off against each other.

It strikes me that what they're after isn't conservative, or liberal, or even libitarian... It strikes me that they want a return to a kind of colonial fantasy world that never existed and could never exist.
Heaven help the United states if these people ever DO realise their aims; not only China will walk all over it, but even places like the central and South American countries, Cuba and even Canada. :)

It's like they want a Chuck Norris version of America: A little actor man with a big blonde moustache in a big cowboy hat, high healed boots and an even higher voice. All show and fakery. Image and no balls.

Someone
Something you may have missed-> the bad guys are the ones who invade and start the wars.

Technically Bill Clinton started the war with an act of a agression with Operation Desert Fox.

You're missing one major point, and that's holding onto the sovereign nation as a part of their own, just as Saddam did to Kuwaitt. Last I heard Bush was talking about a pull-out timetable for Iraq, and if I'm not mistaken, the people of Afhganistan had their very first election.

Although I'd have to point out that the US declared war on Japan, not Germany during World War II, so shouldn't people still be upset over that?

Shiba Naganori
War war war

Stop talking about this in this thread.

Start a new thread if you want to argue about the war.

Edit: Here you go. I started one for you. Go here.

Shiba Naganori
Although I'd have to point out that the US declared war on Japan, not Germany during World War II, so shouldn't people still be upset over that?

....

Yeah, how dare they declare war against a nation that launched a surprised major offensive against them?

Sheesh.

I support "socialized health care" from a central authority.

However, I doubt the USA could ever administer or even create one that worked anywhere near as well as the NHS. Medicare and Medicaid? Want to see a federally run health care system in the USA? How about the Veteran's Administration Hospitals.

Sorry, with the USA's population and present layers of government the USA just couldn't do it.

As for ozone's fantasy of colonial America; read the pulitzer prize winning volumes in the Cambridge history of the USA or all the piles of primary documentation (Colonial newspapers?) and then comment. It wasn't anywhere close to what the modern Conservative movement says it was.

As for the demonstrators; ever read the posters from the other side? Go to any demonstration and you'll find such radical signs on both sides. I met Abbie Hoffman, I was in the middle of the Anti-apatheid protests in the 1980s. My sister was in the middle of the rise of Feminism and protests against Nixon's escalation of the Vietnam war. This is the inevitable knee jerk to the 1960s. Does that make it right? No, but IT IS CONSTITUTIONALLY PROTECTED FREE SPEECH AND ASSEMBLY!!!!! They have every right to do that. Period.

The American republic has always had that kind of politically radical speech and demonstration going back to the American Revolution and I hope it always will. This is all well documented in newspapers and broadsides going back to John Peter Zenger.

You won't find many proponents of americas health system because it is in fact broken. Unlike others though I believe this is because we don't have enough free competition in the medical field.

The chief problem is the cost. Costs are Federally set and cannot be changed except (literally) by an act of congress, in order to ensure that medicaid and medicare do not become cheaper than private insurance. This measure ironically designed to protect private companies from losing customers to government funded initiatives back fired over the years resulting in skyrocketed costs. These high costs drove insurance companies to the verge of bankruptcy. In response they had to start denying more claims and introduce stricter coverage plans to stay in the black.

Additionally hospitals and clinics are subject to strict dispersal and deployment rules and have almost monopolistic holds over their coverage areas. It takes years of local state and federal applications, fees, and costs to open a new medical center of any kind and that's before you have to spend money of on the costly building of the facility, its equipment, and the ongoing costs of supplies and salaries almost always outweighs the benefits to a company for opening a new business. That and many types of franchise and chain arrangements are simply put: banned.

In effect there is no more supply and demand factor on costs and new competition is not allowed in a given area. Private? Yes. Competitive and part of the capitalistic free trade model? Hell no.

That said I don't think that the USA would be able to effectively run a universal health care system. The fed is neither efficient nor trustworthy enough. We need less legislation not more.

Product Placement

manicmerganser
most people fail to realize how fucked up the health care system is in the US.

Oh, you mean like these people?

and these people?

and these

and him

and her

and them too

and all of them

oh and I like those

I wish I could give you +rep for those pics.


There you have it folks the overly educated American people.

I can feel people begin to swell up their chest and drop a tear at the mention of those words The American People.

Despite their ignorance, I feel sorry for them, I really do. The Poor fucks. The poor stupid fucks.



BTW, have you noticed that a lot of these "Tea Party" motherfuckers are more like colonial loyalists rather than the rebels they claim to be? For chrissakes, they're doing everything contrary to what the anti-crown colonists stood for:


1. They're against destabilizing the status quo
2. support the ruling system blindly


Just a thought.

ozoneocean

Shiba Naganori
but they are necessary evils when considered that dictators like Hitler were removed from power through war. I think that the real dicks are the people who believe that they are "good" people by protesting wars by talking rhetoric and never taking the time to research both sides of the issues.

lol!
Something you may have missed-> the bad guys are the ones who invade and start the wars.

Soooo, that's sort of not a good position to take, ya know? ;)


-------------------------------
If the reason that some Americans are against public healthcare is because they're against federal government initiatives, wouldn't that make the U.S. rather immature as a country? O_o
I mean almost every country started out as being made up of weak, pathetic little states, principalities, duchies, regions, territories or whatever. Even Australia. As we matured we centralised. This happened all over the globe. The only places that really avoided it were German and French principalities like Luxembourg and Monaco who survived as parasites playing the bigger neighbours off against each other.

It strikes me that what they're after isn't conservative, or liberal, or even libitarian... It strikes me that they want a return to a kind of colonial fantasy world that never existed and could never exist.
Heaven help the United states if these people ever DO realise their aims; not only China will walk all over it, but even places like the central and South American countries, Cuba and even Canada. :)

It's like they want a Chuck Norris version of America: A little actor man with a big blonde moustache in a big cowboy hat, high healed boots and an even higher voice. All show and fakery. Image and no balls.

HAHAHA I wish I could +rep you for that!

Shiba Naganori
Why both? Because to have the federal government choose just one for us all would be unamerican.

Oh noex.

manicmerganser
I wish I could give you +rep for those pics.

There you have it folks the overly educated American people.

I can feel people begin to swell up their chest and drop a tear at the mention of those words The American People.

Despite their ignorance, I feel sorry for them, I really do. The Poor fucks. The poor stupid fucks.

Do I really have to drag out images of all the ignorant posters and demonstrations from the other side? Let's insult these Americans because their opinion isn't the same as mine.

As for the comparision with the American Patriots and Loyalists of the American revolution, please do some in depth reading of some historical treatments of the period especially primary source material. Both sides used those arguments.

bravo1102
Do I really have to drag out images of all the ignorant posters and demonstrations from the other side? Let's insult these Americans because their opinion isn't the same as mine.

I can't imagine they could be as bad as those.

This was posted in WTH.