Topic: Health Care (split from I am very confused.) - page 4. (Read 4521 times)

You're not seeing what's relevant here. Chavez can't get medical care in the United States or hardly anywhere else in the first world for that matter. He's a bad figure. He's not going to Cuba for medical care because it's amazing. He's going because his country's is poor and anywhere else could get him killed. Cuba does not offer the best medical care in the world just because Chavez has his doctor there.

Lovely is your "report" dated July 5, 2011. Read the article I've posted a link to that is only 2 days old!

What on Earth is not curable?  Greece was a perfectly viable country for thousands of years. We still worship their ruins. Europe was the birthplace of a lot of greatness in the years before the great whining. Hell even Russia is seeing benefits in Neo-Fascism over Communism. (Not a good thing, but apparently a less bad thing.)

It is all fixable. Even Europe. It just requires solving actual problems rather than addressing fantasy ones.

If nobody is willing to deny Insurance and Entitlement are the root caused of our problem, then it's clear we are all in agreement on the cause of our troubles.

But somehow, more insurance and more entitlement is supposed to address the problem? WTF? It is clear that Democrats don't think Obamacare will solve any of the problems. They acknowledge it will drive total health expenses up. That is exactly the problem they blame the industry for. But still pretending to address some fantasy problem is better than doing nothing at all! Spare me.

The same holds for Greece. Whoever thinks allowing Greece to be irresponsible for their spending will cause Greece to become more responsible for their spending...  

I am hugely in debt and I really need to learn self-restraint. Please, each of you send me 100 BTC! I'm begging you! My life depends on it! Please! Send it now! If you don't help me now, my problems will only become much bigger! Think of how much more it will cost you to help me then!!! For god sakes make the right decision! Send me 100 BTC now! The faster I learn financial restraint the better all of our lives will be!

Yeah, they go to Cuba and get an entire infection across their body from a botched surgery. Lovely.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/07/hugo_chavez_returns_home_amid_reports_of_botched_surgery_in_cuba.html

http://reason.com/assets/mc/jtaylor/paynemoore.jpg

You go to Cuba!... "Hugo Chavez travels to Cuba for medical tests"
Unlike the Saudi Prince you're refering to, Chavez is okay now - http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-10-20/chavez-says-he-s-free-of-illness-following-cuba-exams.html
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Protip: your trolling about not curable things doesn't make europe better or worse


And? Again, more trolling.

Saudi Arabian crown prince dies at New York hospital

It's funny how headlines tend to conflict with the "common wisdom". When you have all the money in the world, and your life is at stake. Where do you go for the best medical treatment? Europe!


So does Greece!

Not at all. They have no incentive to make profit since the government will write them a check anyways. In fact, it's quite the opposite. Most of the government funded clinics are horribly inefficient.

If these companies were profit-oriented, they would actually have incentive to want to keep customers and their business. They would be giving them quality service. When a paycheck from the taxpayers is guaranteed in any capacity, anything goes. Sometimes you'll be lucky to get an appointment without having to miss work.

If a person has the ability to individually deny a service money, they can put it towards a service that actually meets their desires.

If you take that right away, they are left with the short-end of the stick and what the government's lobbyists give them. 

Anyway, it epic sucks and each "private" hospital or clinic try to make as much profit as possible.

The USA doesn't have a private system. Our system has tremendous government oversight and subsidies along with many clinics that are exclusively funded by medicare and medicaid. We just get the facade of corporate logos covering the government funding.

Protips: health insurance and private health system SUCKS

How to fix usa system: wake up and look how things work in europe. Make a PUBLIC system, stop with all the private and insurances idiocies. You all pay enough taxes to have a decent public healthcare

Look who's trolling now! I'm certainly not terrified of anyone getting something for nothing. I'm not worried about the rich robbing our country blind.

Next week I'm taking a friend to get more free healthcare after getting shot in the face. The health care system fixed him up brilliantly cost free. You wouldn't even notice. Even though getting shot was entirely his fault.

You are clueless if you think we are better off we still have him.

One of my favorite rich people just died. He was abandoned by his parents as a baby. He built the most valuable company in the world. Yeah, what an evil fuck up he must have been.

You are clueless if you think we are better off for his loss.


You should turn him in. They pay rewards for turning in fraudsters. If you send me evidence, I'll turn him in.

Look how fucking terrified you are of some poor person somewhere getting something for nothing while the rich rob our country blind.

The biggest Medicare fraudster in U.S. history is the current governor of Florida, but no, it's the poor who are the problem.

Cool. Another needless pseudo-intellectual renaming of a more commonly known term. "Blaming the victim"
But if you'll notice, never one did I blame any victim. Never once did I endorse over paying for insurance.

Many financially poor, want to pay their own bills. Most expect to pay their own bills. The concept of entitlement comes as a shock to most of the new immigrant poor. I live in a southern conservative area where many Vietnamese boat people immigrated. (they call themselves that). They were clearly victims before they left. They were victimized many times by folks here. No one wanted the Vietnamese living among them. The world was not just.

However, it turns out those Vietnamese people were. They worked hard. Pooled their own money. Loaned their own money. Started their own businesses. Paid their own tuition. Paid their own bill. It never occurred to them there should be any alternative. I never heard of a single case of them begging for a bank loan, or purchasing insurance. (Not in the first two decades) Yet there were never complaints of them "draining the system". They always met every obligation. Their society wouldn't let anyone fuck things up for the rest of them. Now people flock to their neighborhoods. They make great neighbors.


I am claiming the root of over priced health care is two fold. 1) Insurance. 2) Entitlement  The two are in fact orthogonal concepts. But psychologically many have conflated the concepts.

1) Insurance causes "price increases" (not provider cost increases) for the obvious reason. Insurance companies *must* pay whatever prices are billed. They negotiate in order to avoid this getting out of hand. In the absence of insurance, medical providers must limit their prices to only what people are actually *able* to pay.

This is a corollary to mortgage loans affecting housing prices. In the absence of mortgage loans the average house would be priced around $80,000. Or whatever it turned out an average family could actually save in a few years.

Both insurance and mortgages were created to help responsible people pay their obligations. Their creation had the unintended side effect of increasing commodity prices. (Not the cost to produce the commodity.)

2) Entitlement is the opposite of helping people meet their own obligations. It should have absolutely nothing to do with insurance or mortgages.

However, some perverted psychologic concept caused envious people to say, "Hey that guy is going to the Doctor but he doesn't have to pay. His insurance company has to pay. What make him so fucking special?" This was a perverted view of course because, on average, everyone with insurance was already paying more for insurance (or being rewarded less in salary) than they would be if they just paid for their own care.

In honor of rainingbitcoins, I'll call this perversion, "Just-World Envy". Envying the victim for getting screwed, and demanding they get screwed too, purely out of fairness.

But like going to a hooker, when confronted with the cost of getting screwed they balked. "He that guy is rich! He can afford to get screwed! But what about me? I'm too poor to get screwed honestly! Hence, the birth of the concept, "Entitlement". I'm too poor to get screwed by the insurance companies. So I'm entitled to rape the doctor.


This perceived entitlement (of not having to pay) is what began the drive up in actual health care costs. These increasing costs compounded the provider's above dive to increase prices. Thus further raising insurance rates, and further screwing the responsible.

Realizing they were being screwed, the responsible began demanding only the absolute best, most expensive, treatments. Shouldn't they be entitled? After all they are paying for all the deadbeat fuck heads?.

Hospitals and Doctors are perfectly happy to sell expensive products if there is a DEMAND for them. And of course there is. Who wants to pay for less than the absolute best health care? Even if that CAT/PET scan is unnecessary medically. At least it, psychologically, makes you feel better knowing you absolutely don't have something the doctor told you that you couldn't possibly have.

Of course, since you are entitled not-to-pay for basic health care. Shouldn't you also be entitled not-to-pay for the unnecessary treatments the responsible are paying for? It's only fair...

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Sure, it's TL;DR

But solving the problem, means first acknowledging the problem. Ask any alcoholic.

Read this before you prove yourself even stupider than I already thought:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis

Cool! A guy who wants to build an "Unjust World" filled with tyrannical people who fail to acknowledge any personal obligations. Go for it! I really think this planet is big enough to try all sorts of experimental societies. Evolution will sort out what works and what doesn't. I'm sure there are many people who want to live among folks like you. Go forth and multiply. Leave the people who want to meet their personal obligations alone.

Holy shit, you can't be real.

Sex offenders? Seriously?

Oh, and all of those *entitled* people who think they're too good for insurance? I'd like to know how they're supposed to afford $700/month insurance on an $1100/month minimum wage, but fuck it they're poor and worse than rapists.

Kill yourself. No seriously, kill yourself and every other retard who still believes the Just World fallacy past age 8. Even if you're trolling, kill yourself.

1) Everyone should be entitled to ACCESS to health care.
Meaning there should be no discrimination based on race, creed, color... or any damn thing. People get sick. People get care.

2) Everyone should be REQUIRED to pay their own bills. Period.
Insurance is what people buy to meet their obligation to pay their own bills.
If you don't need insurance to meet your personal obligations, well good for you!

If you decide for some magical reason that you are special. You are *entitled* to avoid your personal obligations. Well then, I think society as a whole should give you, and all people like you, a loud "Fuck You!". Does that mean we revoke (1). No. But it means we revoke your access to as much of society as necessary so that people instinctively realize the necessity of meeting their personal obligations. You should be treated at least a scornfully as we do with sex offenders. Your name should be put on a public list.

We already went through exactly the same process with student loans. We wanted everyone to be *entitled* to get an education (we still do). But a ridiculous number of people decided they were *entitled* to not repay their loans. These people are/were Fuck Heads. So did we do away with student loans? No. Did we provide free college to everyone. No. We said, you are going to have to pay back your loans. One way or another. Pay, or we as a society are going to garnish your wages and make you pay. The same principle we use for child support, crime restitution, etc. The system isn't fixed yet. But it has stopped getting worse.

People often use the requirement to buy auto insurance as their model for health care reform. To that, I give a big, WOOT!, WOOT!, WOOT!!!

In my state, we have a requirement to provide "proof of financial RESPONSIBILITY" before you receive the privilege of driving. To people without deep pockets, this means getting a third party with deep pockets to commit to helping you meet your obligations should your need emerge. If you happen to have a rich uncle, you can create a financial responsibility trust fund or some such. Most people just buy insurance.


No one in a free society should ever be *mandated* to forgive someone else of their obligations. That is tyrannical.

If you choose to help someone meet their obligations out of friendship, compassion, charity or family, you should be praised by society. You can award yourself the personal attribute of "Good Character." I personally will call you *awesome!*

And if a Fuck Head denies his obligations all the way to his personal end. If he dies endorsing his tyrannical *entitlement* remain above any societal obligations. Well then, we as a society should posthumously and ceremonially revoke his citizenship. We should carve his name into granite on a monument of ignominy. "Here lists those who in there whole lives, were never good enough to live among us. May God Fuck Their Souls!"

Hopefully then, in the future, we will hear stories not of people who were "born poor, but made themselves rich." But we will hear stories that go, "I was born of two Fuck Heads. But I grew up and earned my own Good Character!"

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Wow, I just went back and read the first post on this thread. I guess I'll have to mark my post here...

Sorry!

The 'Obamacare' thing is a work of art of which any fascist would be proud.  The government forcing people into the private and completely parasitic insurance industry in such a way that the industry no longer has to take a loss on those who actually need it, and they have no effective limit on costs either.  And the drug companies are left completely free to run the racket they bought under Bush-II.

The whole system preserves the basic principle of re-distribution of wealth.  You see, over the course of a lifetime a certain fraction of Americans actually can accumulate something worth taking.  When they are sick which, conveniently enough, often turns out to be near the end of their life, they are vulnerable to extortion so they will happily part with a great number of assets.  Retaining the unbelievable cost of drugs and 'treatments' facilitates this.  Thanks for nothing, Obama.

Probably true, but this is a meaningless number. In the United States, a big part of the value of health insurance is holding down the amount you have to spend on health care through taking advantage of tax incentives, negotiated prices, and so on.

If you hire a consultant to decide what product to buy, how to pay for it, and who to buy it from, you'll pay more than if you bought that same product from that same persona at that same price without hiring the consultant. It does not follow that you wasted money by hiring the consultant. Without the consultant, you may have paid more for an inferior product.

In the United States, health insurance does much more than just pay for your health care.

Unfortunately, it's worse than that. That's what the purpose of a health insurance mandate would be if it were not broken. But the Obamacare mandate is too broken to even do that.