Death Panels for All! The health care thread

[Jim North]

Silly question, but surely your fire department and police department counts as socialism too..? And numerous other organisations that are pretty long standing in America.

That's exactly why I said "becoming even more Socialist".

Many people, tho', even politicians, seem to forget about or outright ignore the Socialist elements of our country's organizations, even as they're waiting in line at the US Post Office. Sad but true, an overwhelming number of US citizens wholeheartedly believe that we are a fully Capitalist nation.

These are the same people who think we're also a Democracy. We're not. We're a Democratic Republic, which is pretty different.

[Mercury Hat]

America will never take step one towards socialism!

*drives on government maintained roads, sends children to public schools, relies on government funded police force to keep her safe, enjoys public library books*

NO MORE NANNY STATE

[Jim North]

We shall fund the Anti-Socialist Revolution with our unemployment, disability, and social security benefits!

[MixedMyth]

Silly question, but surely your fire department and police department counts as socialism too..? And numerous other organisations that are pretty long standing in America.

our fire department, our police department, our public libraries, our schools, Social Security, and Medicare. yup.

The most sadly funny thing so far are the people who started shouting at one of the town hall meetings "keep the government out of Medicare!"

[Terotrous]

We shall fund the Anti-Socialist Revolution with our unemployment, disability, and social security benefits!

And then we'll ammortize our vitriol into worthless securities, declare bankruptcy, and apply for millions in bailout money!

They'll never see it coming!

[VinnieD]

I'm the only one on this entire forum who actually has insurance aren't I?

[MixedMyth]

no, but it's amazing the things that some insurance doesn't cover. Or that they try to, and have, wriggled out of.

[Bustertheclown]

The scary part about the "anti" side of the argument is the recent comparison to Nazi fascism. In the last twenty years, the Red Communist bogeyman has lost quite a lot of its power, and invoking words like "socialism" just don't have the weight they did during the years of, and just after, the Cold War. They need new monsters to pin it on, and Nazis have never gone out of fashion as the poster-boys for Evil. Death Panels, forced euthanasia for the sick and old, and various other specters of Eugenic Purity movements seem to be pretty popular imagery propagated within these debates. To me, that people would fall for such a blatant tactic is just disturbing.

[Kevin R Brown]

The scary part about the "anti" side of the argument is the recent comparison to Nazi fascism. In the last twenty years, the Red Communist bogeyman has lost quite a lot of its power, and invoking words like "socialism" just don't have the weight they did during the years of, and just after, the Cold War. They need new monsters to pin it on, and Nazis have never gone out of fashion as the poster-boys for Evil. Death Panels, forced euthanasia for the sick and old, and various other specters of Eugenic Purity movements seem to be pretty popular imagery propagated within these debates. To me, that people would fall for such a blatant tactic is just disturbing.

I'm a resident of Canada, so I don't really have a horse in your race (though I do hope that you get your public option. I certainly owe my own life to having public health care)... but, man, the Obama posters with the small moustaches and the cries of 'Heil Hitler! just shock me. I mean, on one hand, I can see why someone who wants to cook-up a fear/hatred-based attack campaign might immediately think of the Adolf comparison because both Hitler and Obama were excellent Orators (though for much different reasons). On the other hand, though, I would've guessed that this route would be immediately scrapped in the idea phase when one realizes that the Nazi party was conservative, and that one can find far more echoes of their rhetoric (not that this automatically condemns such rhetoric merely by association anyway, but since we're dealing with crippled reasoning...) in the conservative lobbying crowd.

I guess the thinking process never got that far.


(EDIT: And this should also be said: Where were these cries of 'FASCISM!' when Mr. Cheney was in office? Here was a man who was quite plainly a white supremacist, with no regard for laws, national sovereignty, human rights or dignity, or even his own country's constitution, who proceeded to attack and devastate a state with no declaration of war and create concentration camps whereby anyone of Arabic descent might be shipped-off at any time to be tortured unto death for purposes of harvesting false confessions.

That was fascism)

[Phact0rri]

no, but it's amazing the things that some insurance doesn't cover. Or that they try to, and have, wriggled out of.

They are brilliant at taking your paycheque and not using it when your sick. Whats funny is on the net when these topics come up most people are for universal healthcare. Doing street-team canvasing on the issue... oh that's a whole other story. I'd be interested to see how public opinion comes out, but despite what we saw here in LA with the three day "free meds" and the convention center... I think its going to be a close vote.

btw Death panels is the belief they will have government create panels of statesmen to decide when people on life support get the chords pulled. ^_^ also they believe that by reducing the money put into medicare to help finance universal healthcare is going to screw people on medicare coverage.

I'm confused why they don't replace medicare all together honestly.

[Kevin R Brown]

They are brilliant at taking your paycheque and not using it when your sick. Whats funny is on the net when these topics come up most people are for universal healthcare. Doing street-team canvasing on the issue... oh that's a whole other story. I'd be interested to see how public opinion comes out, but despite what we saw here in LA with the three day "free meds" and the convention center... I think its going to be a close vote.

...I'm just curious: in an ideal world, if the insurance company does not attempt to cheat you, how does health care presently work in the United States? I'm under the impression that you essentially just choose a provider and pay them a monthly premium (like any other kind of insurance), and this premium has you covered in the event of certain health problems, correct?

I mean, as an outsider who has not had to deal with problems that exist within such a system, it doesn't actually sound too broken. Are the premiums just unreasonably expensive? I understand that the company CEOs make a ton of money, but that alone - IMHO - isn't really a reason to hate them (Warren Buffet makes a lot of money, for example, and he is - just maybe - one of the best human beings on the planet that I've ever met. I was working at an NPO when he literally walked in the door one day and personally handed my boss a Berkshire Hathaway cheque that was so large she just started sobbing and literally collapsed to the floor. One of the best days I've ever had).

[RPin]

I mean, as an outsider who has not had to deal with problems that exist within such a system, it doesn't actually sound too broken. Are the premiums just unreasonably expensive?

The private healthcare system has many built-in problems due to its for-profit nature. Both public and private healthcare systems work the same way: at their core, they're basically money pools that you pitch-in little by little so that you don't have to afford your medical expenses all by yourself when you get sick, be with your taxes or your paycheck. But medical companies will never see things this way, they have an obligation to maximize profits, so of course they're going to see your medical bill as a loss, and not a duty. And I think that's the exact term they use: medical loss/liability. Health insurance companies are different from other companies in that investors don't buy stocks based on market performance: they look at the company's medical loss records. If a company spends too much on what they're actually supposed to do (as in, pay for your treatment), their board have a lot of explaining to do to Wall Street. They're not put in control of these companies not to be nice guys, but to bring money back to these stockholders, and so you'll have a flawed system where you have to foot your bill even though you're covered, be it co-pays or simply a complete denial of treatment.

This reality is much more scarier than the death panels people talk so much about. You guys have Wall Street white collars deciding who gets to be treated and who doesn't. Isn't this much, much worse than putting the government behind it?

[Bustertheclown]

They are brilliant at taking your paycheque and not using it when your sick. Whats funny is on the net when these topics come up most people are for universal healthcare. Doing street-team canvasing on the issue... oh that's a whole other story. I'd be interested to see how public opinion comes out, but despite what we saw here in LA with the three day "free meds" and the convention center... I think its going to be a close vote.

...I'm just curious: in an ideal world, if the insurance company does not attempt to cheat you, how does health care presently work in the United States? I'm under the impression that you essentially just choose a provider and pay them a monthly premium (like any other kind of insurance), and this premium has you covered in the event of certain health problems, correct?

I mean, as an outsider who has not had to deal with problems that exist within such a system, it doesn't actually sound too broken. Are the premiums just unreasonably expensive? I understand that the company CEOs make a ton of money, but that alone - IMHO - isn't really a reason to hate them (Warren Buffet makes a lot of money, for example, and he is - just maybe - one of the best human beings on the planet that I've ever met. I was working at an NPO when he literally walked in the door one day and personally handed my boss a Berkshire Hathaway cheque that was so large she just started sobbing and literally collapsed to the floor. One of the best days I've ever had).

To paint it with a very broad stroke, the break comes from the capitalistic aspect of the system. Insurance companies, like any capitalistic corporation, do not exist solely to provide for the well-being of those who pay into it. Instead, they also exist to turn profits for their shareholders. The two states of existence can, and quite often do, clash. Commonly, those clashes end with people who are insured being denied benefits, or raises in premiums, copays, or other insurance costs, or a degradation in the breadth or quality of coverage to offset costs. This then leads to a slough of other problems, which have caused a quite regular rise in the costs of healthcare in the U.S., across all levels of care. Currently, over $2 trillion is being spent on healthcare annually in the U.S. That is a ridiculous amount, and much of it stems from the inflation caused by a system that relies on for-profit insurance providers.

[Killbert-Robby]

Silly question, but surely your fire department and police department counts as socialism too..? And numerous other organisations that are pretty long standing in America.

our fire department, our police department, our public libraries, our schools, Social Security, and Medicare. yup.

The most sadly funny thing so far are the people who started shouting at one of the town hall meetings "keep the government out of Medicare!"

Look, those things aren't socialist! Because they're AMERICAN

[Jim North]

...I'm just curious: in an ideal world, if the insurance company does not attempt to cheat you, how does health care presently work in the United States?

If the insurance company does not attempt to cheat you? It works one of a few ways:

You have no insurance and are completely poor, possibly even homeless. You go to the nearest free clinic - if there even is one - which is understaffed, underfunded, understocked, overworked, and overwhelmed. Even here there is a chance they won't take you because you make too much money, which really just means you're sitting very uncomfortably right on top of that razor's edge that's forever between a rock and a hard place.

You have no insurance and are very poor, but still have at least a minimum wage job or slightly better. You go to the nearest regular clinic, which will cost you anywhere from thirty to two hundred dollars per visit if not more . . . almost invariably this will be the exact amount of all your cash not going into bills or food any given week or month. So much for those new shoes, Billy! While your standard clinic can help with a great deal of the more minor problems, if there's anything even slightly major going on with you, they're not going to have the expertise, equipment, and/or time to deal with it and will want to send you to a much more expensive doctor elsewhere that you can't possibly afford.

You have work-provided insurance. In this case, it's not the insurance company that'll try and screw you over, but your own workplace, and they'll try to do it in one of two ways. The first is pretty simple . . . the payments you have to make out of each check to get the insurance service threatens to shuffle you down to the previous step in this treacherous ladder in regards to everything but medical bills. You've got no shoes, Billy, but at least you're not hacking up a lung, right? In the second screw-over, the insurance is simply a way of covering their asses. Because of the extremely hazardous nature of the workplace involved, you are almost certainly going to need that insurance if you're gonna be able to physically keep working for them. And that's not guaranteed. Just like the insurance company, you can betcha that most workplaces are going to try and find some way to convince the insurance people that they shouldn't pay out because it raises their premiums.

Pretty much everything above that is all dependent on whether or not your insurance company likes you. If you're fairly well off monetarily already and have good insurance that doesn't try to fuck you up the goat ass, then things are all gravy except in the most severe of circumstances. You still have to pay a fair amount into said insurance, especially if you have to use it a good bit, but hey, you're rich or at least mighty comfortable, so what do you care, right?

If I may be allowed to paint the situation in an even broader stroke that Mister Buster, just think of it this way . . . remember all those stories and news reports and all that about how toy company executives would have their products made from substandard and sometimes outright toxic, lethal parts simply because it'd be more cost-effective and therefore help line both their and the shareholder's pockets even more?

Just imagine that way of thinking as applied to insurance companies.

[Rkolter]

Just an addendum to Jim's post -

Federal law requires any hospital to help you until stabilized regardless of your ability to pay. Two things to keep in mind though - they'll still BILL you. Inability to pay doesn't negate the requirement that you pay. And "stabilized" means just that. Not cured. Just stable enough to make it through the immediate crisis.

Yes, there are very publicized cases of people being dropped off in neighborhoods from hospitals and left to wander. Those are the rare exceptions. Hospital staff aren't there because they make the "big bucks" - they chose their careers, almost overwhelmingly, because they care.

A bit about socialism - it's a total red herring. It's used by people who want universal healthcare more than those opposed to it! It is a topic that can be easily dismissed as behind the times, as ignorant, as self-serving or as hipocritical. Which of course, it is. You'll notice in this thread, nobody said, "RAR! It's Socialism and that's BAD!" Yet, half the thread is about how the socialism arguement is wrong.

Try this arguement instead - are you willing to cut social security if we institute universal health care? One of the biggest worries of those on the fixed income social security provides is that they cannot afford their perscriptions or their medical care. Now those two costs would be free - if we aren't simultaneously trying to hand a big bonus to every social security recipient, then isn't it reasonable we take some of the social security payments back?

Before you say "NO!" remember, social security is INSOLVENT. It cannot pay for itself, it is hemmoraging money at an unheard of pace and there is really no way to fix it at this point. Reducing payments would at least help preserve social security for a longer timeframe.

Before you say "YES!" remember, right now they are not giving a cost of living raise this year to Social Security and there is an uproar, despite that raise being tied to inflation, which is negative this year. But people feel entitled to that yearly bump... if they are upset they aren't getting a bump they don't deserve this year, how will they react to a deliberate cut in benefits?

[Killbert-Robby]

You'll notice in this thread, nobody said, "RAR! It's Socialism and that's BAD!" Yet, half the thread is about how the socialism arguement is wrong.

You'll also notice that outside of this thread thats at minimum the #2 reason why people don't want universal healthcare, and as such is going to be involved in a debate on the subject? Not to mention that most of the posters here are for universal healthcare, and as such, well, you can't use this thread as an example, because there ARE no anti-healthcare people, so of course its going to seem as if pro-u-h people use the socialism fallback more.

[Rkolter]

You'll notice in this thread, nobody said, "RAR! It's Socialism and that's BAD!" Yet, half the thread is about how the socialism arguement is wrong.

You'll also notice that outside of this thread thats at minimum the #2 reason why people don't want universal healthcare, and as such is going to be involved in a debate on the subject?

Where are you getting this from? Is there a poll? I'll retract my statement if there is, but the only people I hear bringing up the socialism arguement with any frequency are the media, making me think it's media-fueled and not actually what people believe.

[Jim North]

Hospital staff aren't there because they make the "big bucks" - they chose their careers, almost overwhelmingly, because they care.

Yes. I had been considering coming back and adding something like this to my post myself.

It's been my personal experience that the doctors, nurses, orderlies, and what-have-you who work in US hospitals and clinics aren't bad people. They're just trapped in a bad system just like the rest of us.

A bit about socialism - it's a total red herring. It's used by people who want universal healthcare more than those opposed to it! It is a topic that can be easily dismissed as behind the times, as ignorant, as self-serving or as hipocritical. Which of course, it is.

Well, see, but it isn't always, as I mentioned before.

Now, before I really go into this, don't get me wrong. I'm pro-universal health care, for my own family's sake at the very least if not out of a concern for the entire American race. And though I'm not strictly affiliated with any specific economic system, my Anarchist leanings mean I tend to have some Socialist leanings as well from time to time.

But!

As has been mentioned before, the US is actually quite the Socialist little institution as it stands. Fire and police, post office, social security, and so on. But look at the state that those groups are in at the moment, and have been for a very long time. In many places across the nation, they face the same problems as the free clinics I mentioned in my previous post. Putting another social project in the pot - especially one as ginormously hugemongous as social medical care - is going to strain things even more than they already are. Sure, you can take money from the social security system since universal health care is going to provide some of those benefits anyway, but you need way way way more money to fund something this big than what can be garnered from that, which likely means a cut into these other systems.

I don't know about where y'all are living, but I don't think the road & transit people here in Branson can take any more hits! They've already contracted out one huge section of road to be rebuilt and pretty much owned by a private company because the city ran out of budget for it while they were halfway through building it themselves. And just right by my house we've got a road that's been half-built, torn down, and half-built again about three times now due to the weak structural integrity of the ground they've been trying to build on . . . that certainly can't be healthy for the city's coffers. And these are just smaller symptoms of a much larger problem that's plaguing the US as a whole. Starting up yet another fully public industry isn't going to help that any.

Really, as Sir Kolter has just said, some of these systems are bleeding money at a ghastly rate. They simply can't support themselves, at least not more than just adequately, and so it's highly unlikely that they'll be able to support each other. That money's gotta come from somewhere.

If we look outside the US, there's been some pretty spectacular shows of Socialism imploding, crashing, and then exploding. The biggest of these was, of course, the USSR (which was Socialist, yes, not fully Communist), which went from being our enemies to our friends primarily because their system went kerploof! and they needed help to get themselves back on their feet again. Of course there were other mitigating factors involved there than just "Socialism doesn't work!", but it's still not a very good sign. And while not quite as spectacular a fallout, I've gathered that when a full-on Socialist candidate (not just one of those partially Socialist ones they've got running around up there) gets elected into a local office up in Canada, said locale tends to find its economy getting run into the ground during that term.

So, while they can theoretically be averted or avoided, real life application shows that Socialism does have many pitfalls and potholes that can bring the system to the brink of disaster and beyond if not handled properly, and a number of the people out in Washington simply don't think they can do so. And they may be right! So get rid of those incompetents, hey? I'd do it myself, but I'm bound by principal not to vote and far too lazy to bother with assassinating them at the moment.

As I said, I am definitely for universal health care. I think that whatever problems it may cause down the road, it'll be worth it because at least we might be able to face those problems with clean bills of health. I just don't want to see the opposition's side of things to be completely belittled or even have focus shifted away from those points of theirs that actually are legitimate. Yes, okay, there may be far far more people preaching pro-Socialism to promote the plan compared to those preaching anti-Socialism to oppose it, but regardless of the size of the group, the size of their arguments can't be ignored.

[Alias Pseudonym]

Well, of course you've got to have some socialism, cause you've got stuff that needs to be done but isn't really profitable, like roads and law enforcement and putting out fires. Pure laissez-faire capitalism is practically anarchy.

The USA should definitely adopt socialist medicine. That way we in Canada won't lose so many doctors who can make more money down there, and you won't have the same problem because where are your doctors gonna go?

The only problem with Universal Heathcare is that it also tends to be less well managed healthcare and you have more lineups that you would otherwise. That and the 'doctors can make more money in the USA' problem. But that doesn't apply if you ARE the USA. Also, rich, extremely self-centered people with good insurance are better off with the USA's current system, and there's also the fact that any sort of change in a system like that is hard to make and the benefits have to be serious. Also it would mean a tax hike and that's not something any government want's to be responsible for. Personally I think our way is better. Medical treatment shouldn't be something you have to pay for.