Click here.

First of all, with regards to what is commonly known as “medical tourism”. No, I don’t have specific numbers for people coming into this country for the purpose of achieving better or quicker medical care than could be received under a government-run system. However, from what I’ve read, most of the Americans who leave this country aren’t doing so based on availability of necessary medical treatments, but rather for non-urgent procedures based solely on price.

In general, I do not like our current system. I prefer more individual choice and competition in place of bureaucracy and monopoly. The way things work all too often now in the US, it is a bureaucrat making health decisions; I don’t trust “private sector” bureaucrats any more than I trust government bureaucrats; however, it seems that those favoring more government involvement do seem to trust government bureaucrats. I certainly trust someone who has a profit incentive to ensure that I am happy with goods and services with which I’m provided as opposed to a government program in which I’m forced to participate.

In general, monopolies tend to have little incentive for innovation, efficiency, and customer service. The government is the worst of all monopolies, because the government possesses the ability to force your participation. I would also say that in general, corporations are unable to act in a monopolistic fashion without some help from the government. Likewise when “big corporations” end up squashing individuals — usually there’s some collusion with government at the heart of it.

Obviously, there is some role for the government in society, so no, I’m not against, as someone suggested, roads or the Coast Guard (although privatized tollways work extremely well many times). Protecting life, liberty, and property comprise the very purpose of government. Providing goods and services are typically more efficiently and effectively done via a free market, with government acting to prevent fraud and coercion, enforce contracts, and protect individual liberty. Getting the government involved in too much provides more incentive for and means of corruption.

True “health care reform” that provides more individual choice, a freer market with more competition, and that doesn’t favor large corporations that make campaign contributions would be my goal. I don’t trust Republicans or Democrats to provide that.

Thanks for the discussion.

The story has the usual suspects, Blackstone, Carlyle Group

http://peureport.blogspot.com/2009/05/treasury-allows-private-equity-to-buy.html

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1242212406429&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Israel has moved ahead with a plan to build a new settlement in the northern West Bank for the first time in 26 years, pursuing a project the United States has already condemned as an obstacle to peace efforts.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1086339.html

Deja Vu

http://arisfreedomswitch.blogspot.com/2009/05/israel-should-stop-building-settlements.html

Israel obviously wants land, not peace.

Wow, that is one impressive post. I’m saving that text for future arguments with right-wing idiots. Thanks!

I’ll take “for-profit” health care over government rationing any day of the week.

The problem I have with that is that you’re doing it on ideological grounds.
Let me clue you in: Liberals do not believe that the government does things better all the time, no matter what.
For one thing, we’ve just had an object lesson in what happens when loonies take over the government.
We don’t believe that the government should run our TV stations, our private colleges, our computer software developers,, our steel plants, our farms, our railroads, our hair salons or our pet food companies. We wouldn’t vote for anyone who proposed nationalizing most industries. Really. We don’t want it.
In short, we’re not your mirror image.

What we do want is safety, accountability, help for the people who need it, and the prosecution of malfeasance when it is done by the powerful.

What we object to in the health care system are its non-capitalistic aspects. Runaway pricing–bureaucratic delay and deny–denial of access–arbitrariness.

In your free-market vision, competition would keep prices down. If you couldn’t get health care at one place, others would flock to help you. If one company started denying people policies because of pre-existing conditions–why, that would be a phenomenal business opportunity! The insurance companies would keep each other honest by snatching away each other’s clients.

Sounds nice, doesn’t it? It could even work. But even you should admit that that’s not the system we have today.

And yeah, we look at it and see the big corporations, while you look at it and see the anticompetitive roadblocks. Okay.

But if you were honest, you’d agree that we need to dismantle our present system. And if you were thoughtful, you would see that your free-market system will require far more demolition than ours will.

But you don’t see that. Because this is the problem with the Republican Party AND large swathes of the Libertarian Party: you’re never willing to deal with the sins of actual corporations when they’re at odds with your ideal ones. Somehow you’realways standing up for the people impeding free access to the market, squashing competition by non-market means, and gaming the system of justice. The problem is never sweetheart legislation for the powerful–always welfare. And bleating about ‘earning’ when CEOs form their own compensation boards with their friends.

You might not believe this, but if the health care industry worked the way the electronics industry does, we wouldn’t want it nationalized. But it’s an oppressive nightmare, and even then all we’re talking about is replacing the insurance component.

When I’ve had discussions with libertarians about a libertarian free market state and bring up corporate malfeasance, they always say that the solution would be through the courts. And honest libertarians acknowledge that they rely on a strong and fair system of justice.
But the right wing always seems to whine about the ACLLU, trial lawyers, corporate muckrakers, calling them socialists.
And you don’t see that supporting a free market solution REQUIRES strong corporate regulation.

Too often you’re just the yapping dogs of the oligarchs.

But I’ll have to keep my new telescoping spring-loaded whack-a-troll club on my belt for now…

And…. I’m off again (busy day…..)

Pensions Probed Succumb to Placement Agents of Campaign Finance

“When you look at some of who the placement agents are, you say these are people who are really not in the financial business,” said Orin Kramer, who oversees pensions as head of New Jersey’s Investment Council. “These are politically connected intermediaries, and that’s not a way it ought to operate.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aJ6iadKJ6BfU&refer=us

stateofthedivision Says:

Doodlebug, enjoy the Rush, Cheney, Limbaugh, Steele, Rove website. News is now found elsewhere than TP.

See you missed my point again. You think you’re the only person who gets other news sources and that you are keeping us informed. If we want to just accumulate President Obama’s negatives they are everywhere. That’s not why we come HERE.

Oh, and 5th, I dunno who put a curse on you but I’d hurry up and apologize…

;-)

Bears repeating, this…

Unfortunately, the US views their citizens as ATMs and cannon fodder.

And as Michael Moore pointed out, even the people who have money and pay their premiums don’t get care, often getting canceled when they make a justified claim.

Why not discard the pretense and just call it:

“Cannibal Healthcare: We’re here to profit from your misfortune.”

I sliced the top of my thumb off with a razor blade and had it stitched back on plus a tetanus shot.
I was stabbed in the foot with a garden fork. Two small bandages and some painkillers
My brother broke his arm
My other brother broke his kneecap
My eldest brother had a hole-in-the-heart operation and annual post-op checkups.
I spent a week in hospital with a fractured skull.

Cost: Nothing out-of-pocket and no increase in the NHS contributions from my parent’s paychecks.

My mother spent a month in hospital dying from the ordinary ravages of old age. In fact once we’d settled all the necessary affairs she told the doctors to take her off life-support, which they did without interference from religious/political groups.

Cost: Zero. No claim against her estate, Nothing. Zip.

US Healthcare
I had extreme strep throat that nearly asphyxiated me. Antibiotics; $200 (One week’s wages.)
Mangled two fingers in a saw blade: Stitches and fingernail re-attached, tetanus shots, antibiotics, overnight stay. Cost: $2,000 (Three week’s wages)
I had an abscess, treated with antibiotics. Cost: $400 (One week’s wages)

Oh yeah, and when I was part of a US health insurance scheme the rates went up every year, regardless, until my small business couldn’t afford it any more.

FactSlam in 3…2…1..

Okay, so you’d choose #37 in the world over a ‘government plan.’ (We’ll skip the ‘rationing’ claim since its a unsupported.)

So you would turn your nose up at the #1 health care system in the world: France?

The French system strongly discourages the kind of experience rating that occurs in the United States, making it more difficult for insurers to deny coverage for preexisting conditions or to those who are not in good health. In fact, in France, the sicker you are, the more coverage, care, and treatment you get. Would American insurance companies cut a comparable deal?

Then there’s this recent survey which puts the lie to the canard about the US being ‘happy’ to put their lives in the hands of insurance flunkies looking to shave benefits and deny coverage to save the corporation money:

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development says people in Denmark, Finland and the Netherlands are the most content with their lives. The three ranked first, second and third, respectively, in the OECD’s rankings of “life satisfaction,” or happiness.

There are myriad reasons, of course, for happiness: health, welfare, prosperity, leisure time, strong family, social connections and so on. But there is another common denominator among this group of happy people: taxes.

Northern Europeans pay some of the highest taxes in the world. Danes pay about two-thirds of their income in taxes. Why be so happy about that? It all comes down to what you get in return.

The Encyclopedia of the Nations notes that Denmark was one of the first countries in the world to establish efficient social services with the introduction of relief for the sick, unemployed and aged.

It says social welfare programs include health insurance, health and hospital services, insurance for occupational injuries, unemployment insurance and employment exchange services. There’s also old age and disability pensions, rehabilitation and nursing homes, family welfare subsidies, general public welfare and payments for military accidents. Moreover, maternity benefits are payable up to 52 weeks.

In other words, some nations give a damn and provide for their citizens rather than throwing them to a pack of bottom-feeding insurance and hospital robber barons whose mere single contact can reduce the American family to utter tin-cup destitution.

F#@K that.

Do they really think we’ll all panic & riot in the streets?

Who’s got the antiviral antidotes? Not you or me. Who, then?

And how about Baxter pharma sending out antiviral meds that contained live virii? Another media blackout on that story.

Today’s media:
Not
Even
What’s
Said

Hey. He’s a complicated guy.

I guess.
.