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 Posted: Mon Oct 19, 2009 7:14 pm
Most of our GDP is debt and that percentage continues to grow. so most of that $14.26 trillion amounts to being imaginary wealth.
we could have a DGP of 20 trillion, but what happend to zimbabwe even at half it severity would totaly crush our economy.
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Posted: Tue Oct 20, 2009 5:15 am
Government healthcare is fine, take it from an Aussie. America's healthcare system is simply not in line with comparable modern developed states. http://www.jsonline.com/news/wisconsin/64677772.htmlEnlisting in the army to pay for cancer treatment? That simply would not happen here.
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Posted: Tue Oct 20, 2009 9:28 pm
your right ours isint, but giving control of it to the government is not the answer. Giving government more and more power over people lives is never good in the long run.
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Posted: Tue Oct 20, 2009 10:10 pm
Since when do people care about the long run? Mostly, people think only in the short term and damned be the consequences.
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Posted: Wed Oct 21, 2009 12:03 am
James628 your right ours isint, but giving control of it to the government is not the answer. Giving government more and more power over people lives is never good in the long run. Would you say the same about public schools?
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Posted: Wed Oct 21, 2009 12:57 am
probably not. "Giving control of health care to the government" is just a one-liner that need never be explained. This is how debates are done in America.
The truth is the Aussie is right. EVERY other developed country in the world has some sort public health care system. And they ALL have higher life expectancies than the USA. God Bless the USA, but clearly he blesses those more who take care of their populations better.
That includes Cuba, by the way (though no one ever seems to want to answer this). A poor a**, non-developed country like Cuba takes better care of its citizens than the USA and they have a higher life expectancy than the USA. Sure the government of Cuba has control over health care....and what evils befall them????....they get to LIVE LONGER! gasp! Shock! OMG how horrible! oh the humanity!!!!!!!
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Posted: Wed Oct 21, 2009 8:46 pm
Quote: Would you say the same about public schools? to an extent, the way thing are soposed to work is that the states handel education not the Federal Gov. in Texas we got it one better, the school districts have alot more say over their own district than in alot of other states. Quote: and they have a higher life expectancy than the USA and tens of thousands choose to flee to here to live out those longer life expectancies...
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Posted: Thu Oct 22, 2009 7:06 pm
well....you'd be amazed at how much having access to Taco Bell will change your attitude
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Posted: Tue Oct 27, 2009 7:20 pm
James628 Quote: And personally, I'm just flat out against Government Run Health Care. I love how their defense of it harming private insurance was to highlight the faults of the post office. I know. I just shows you how stupid they are.
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Posted: Wed Oct 28, 2009 2:36 am
DanskiWolf James628 Giving government more and more power over people lives is never good in the long run. Would you say the same about public schools?
I would. I've wanted to liberate education for years. If you'd like to know how and why, start a thread and then PM me.
On health care reform: I want reform, but not gov't administration. Universal HC (and independence from emploter-provided HC) can be achieved with tax credits for insurance and charity.
Portability (being able to move from one insurer to another) requires a little more ingenuity. The hurdle is how to move someone after s/he develops an "existing condition". Since current insurers charge higher monthly premiums on people who arrive with problems, people are motivated to stay in place after developing a problem (and they're really screwed if their HC depends on an employer that lays them off or goes out of business).
The simplest solution is for the gov't to just insure everyone nationwide, regardless of condition, and be done with it. However, simple is not ingenious. Gov't admin introduces a whole raft problems and side-effects of its own, not the least of which is a tendency toward monopolization (e.g. the "single" in "single-payer" public option).
A more elegant solution is this:
1) Require each insurer to use the same monthly-rate schedule for all subscribers, regardless of prior condition. Insurers could still set whatever rate schedules they wanted by age and sex.
2) Let each insurer to attach a lump-sum entrance fee to each and every prior condition they care about. Anyone applying for insurance would need to pay the sum of all fees for all existing conditions in order to start coverage. An insurer could set its fees at whatever level it thought fair.
3) Require each insurer to accept anyone who applies and pays, but...
4) Here's the kicker: When you leave an insurer, the insurer pays YOU for all conditions you have when you exit (not what you had when you started), and the insurer must use the same numbers it's charging people to come in.
If you had just #1 & #3 (popular policies among democrats), then people would wait uninsured until they were sick, and then they'd grab "insurance". Insurance rates would rapidly soar to a virtual "pay as you go" price (as has already happened in Washington state where those two policies have been in effect for a while).
Inserting #2 motivates people to start insurance while they're young and healthy, so that they won't need to pay some steep fee. That still leaves the problem of how to move from one place to another, and that's what #4 solves.
Now you can start insurance cheaply while young, develop some problem, cash it out when you want to move, and use the lump sum payoff to buy your way into another plan elsewhere. This enables people to change jobs, move across country etc without being drop-kicked on med insurance.
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Posted: Wed Oct 28, 2009 3:17 am
mr_zoot they ALL have higher life expectancies than the USA... That includes Cuba, by the way Not quite. According to the CIA Factbook rankings, Cuba is a few places behind the US now. However, life expectancy is a misleading measure of a health care system. After all, there are many factors affecting life spans, starting with genetics and continuing through exercise (or lack thereof) and diet. For all we know, Cubans live long because they have a different racial mix than the US, exercise more, and eat less fat. The US also delivers many premature babies that other countries don't. Many die in incubators, weighing heavily on infant mortality stats and a little on overall life expectancy. A better measure of a health care system is to measure what happens when somebody gets sick enough to require professional diagnosis and treatment. In such survivability stats, socialized med falls flat, as conditions usually cured in the US can be mostly fatal in the UK and France. However, you won't see any info that logical coming from the democrats who are foisting socialized medicine upon the American public. The democrats know that just slightly less than half of all Americans depend on gov't for either jobs or handouts. One more big program will create put them over the top, creating a majority dependency society that (the democrats believe) will vote them permanent majority rule. With a political motive like that, they're pulling out all of the stops, so demagoguery trumped general welfare early in the debate. For a more thorough treatment of the myths and fallacies surrounding the health care reform debate in the US, see the chapter on such in this book by Thomas Sowell.
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Posted: Wed Oct 28, 2009 8:58 am
And quite a few places behind.
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Posted: Thu Oct 29, 2009 3:06 am
Uncle Jeff mr_zoot they ALL have higher life expectancies than the USA... That includes Cuba, by the way Not quite. According to the CIA Factbook rankings, Cuba is a few places behind the US now. However, life expectancy is a misleading measure of a health care system. After all, there are many factors affecting life spans, starting with genetics and continuing through exercise (or lack thereof) and diet. For all we know, Cubans live long because they have a different racial mix than the US, exercise more, and eat less fat. The US also delivers many premature babies that other countries don't. Many die in incubators, weighing heavily on infant mortality stats and a little on overall life expectancy. A better measure of a health care system is to measure what happens when somebody gets sick enough to require professional diagnosis and treatment. In such survivability stats, socialized med falls flat, as conditions usually cured in the US can be mostly fatal in the UK and France. However, you won't see any info that logical coming from the democrats who are foisting socialized medicine upon the American public. The democrats know that just slightly less than half of all Americans depend on gov't for either jobs or handouts. One more big program will create put them over the top, creating a majority dependency society that (the democrats believe) will vote them permanent majority rule. With a political motive like that, they're pulling out all of the stops, so demagoguery trumped general welfare early in the debate. For a more thorough treatment of the myths and fallacies surrounding the health care reform debate in the US, see the chapter on such in this book by Thomas Sowell. other than genetics..... all those other factors are better handled under a universal system because it opens access to preventative care.
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Posted: Fri Oct 30, 2009 3:00 pm
mr_zoot Uncle Jeff ...life expectancy is a misleading measure of a health care system. After all, there are many factors affecting life spans, starting with genetics and continuing through exercise (or lack thereof) and diet. For all we know, Cubans live long because they have a different racial mix than the US, exercise more, and eat less fat. The US also delivers many premature babies that other countries don't. Many die in incubators, weighing heavily on infant mortality stats and a little on overall life expectancy. other than genetics..... all those other factors are better handled under a universal system because it opens access to preventative care. I'm not sure what you're saying. "Universal" simply means that everybody is getting care (or insurance coverage). It doesn't say anything about how it is delivered. My earlier proposal is universal, because tax credits would be calibrated until they funded enough charity to cover even the most indigent. However, unlike the proposals in Congress, it would leave all health care provision, insurance and management private rather than giving it to gov't administration. In fact, with my proposal, the current gov't plans (medicare, medicaid and veterans' benefits) could all be rolled out of gov't. So what was it that you thought would engender better preventative care? Can you use other words for what you were really after?
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Posted: Sun Nov 08, 2009 4:59 am
preventative care is the simple, basic health care, like checkups, and health advice from your doctor that people surprisingly do not use. Only those with a good insurance policy go to the doctor for check-ups when they are HEALTHY....but this type of preventative care is cheaper and incredibly effective.
when it costs $100 plus just to shake your doctor's hand, however, the uninsured and those with crappy HMO's do not take advantage of preventative care. They only ever go to the doctor when they are obviously ill rather than at the first onset of symptoms or just for a check up.
Making health care cheap or free would remove the disincentive to make use of preventative care.
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