If Joe Average gets hit with a massive health care bill, in the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, I'm thinking his loss of income will simply be the icing on the cake of his financial destitution. The point is that no one should have to lose their home to pay for health care.Originally Posted by Redleg
Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't roughly half of all American bankruptcies due to medical costs? And aren't the majority of those bankruptcies involving people who had medical insurance?
As for the insurance compnaies cutting people off, they do it pretty much at will from what I've seen. They have the money, the lawyers, and they are fighting back when healthy; the patient is fighting sick, often broke, and with the least costly legal backup.
What's too general about Joe Average getting hit with bills beyond his (and most normal people's) ability to pay? It's neither rocket surgery nor brain science to see that getting a monstrous health care bill is detrimental to one's economic well being. Socialized medicine does not hit the patient with any such bill.Originally Posted by Redleg
I prefer the method where all health care required is mandated by law.Originally Posted by Redleg
My argument is simple; all medical costs to all patients should be covered by a government run socialized health care plan. Ba-da-bing!Originally Posted by Redleg
Basic health care is a personal responsibility, no one denies that. But a girl I grew up with got meningitis in Grade 1 and required ten-years of horrendous treatments to cure her, I would have been hard pressed to hold either her or her parents responsible for her illness. As Forrest Gump said, "*** happens."
I'm only saying what should and can be done. Don't blame me because your elected officials aren't doing it. Most industrialized nations have socialized health care. We demanded it and we got it. You're going to have to do it for yourself.Originally Posted by Redleg
Sure, if you need help putting the BBQ together or are drunk and need to talk to someone, call uncle Fred. But unless Fred knows how to tie off an artery or diagnose a heart defect in a child, I'd prefer to keep him hands off the more serious stuff.Originally Posted by Redleg
Aren't we all. But the point is still valid that young people with low paying jobs are probably very hard put to get insurance coverage that will cover all potential problems.Originally Posted by Redleg
But it should be done. If you guys can free the slaves, split the atom, put a man on the moon, and claim sole superpower status and leadership of the free world, then I'm sure you can manage to take care of your own people. Otherwise, what are you doing it all for? Pardon my ignorance and/or naive mental state, but isn't "America taking care of Americans" the whole raison d'etre of America?Originally Posted by Redleg
Everything is a bureaucracy. You can't buy a chocolate bar without encountering some level of bureaucracy. Life without bureaucracy is life in a cave. And since nothing is perfect, and since bureaucracies are omnipresent in today's society, you're kind of stuck between a rock and hard place.Originally Posted by Redleg
Governments and corporations are both guilty of waste and coruption. The difference is I have more control over my government than the corporations.
Blaming the current conflict addresses a trillion dollars or more of the issue. And that trillion dollars+ does not take into account the damage done to the economy by having tens of thousands of wounded soldiers coming home who will require further, often life long, medical care, and who will no longer contribute to the economy of the country. It's a pooch screwing of Everest-ian proportions.Originally Posted by Redleg
If Bush hadn't gone bonkers and ruined your economy, you would have the option taking on a reasonable deficit for a certain period of time, a financial shock absorber of sorts, to finance a socialized health care system and get it on its feet until the system and finances are worked out.
Not good enough. Not by a country mile. Especially not good enough in a country as prosperous as yours and one that espouses Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness as the basic tenets of it's social structure. And whose only reason, it appears, for not having socialized health care, is that it lacks the will to overcome the problems inherent in building and administering such a plan. It smacks of defeatism and I don't buy it for a microsecond.Originally Posted by Redleg
The assistance that is there is too little. People are being cut off or denied out of hand.Originally Posted by Redleg
What I understand is that tens of millions of Americans have no health insurance and millions more are underinsured.Originally Posted by Redleg
If millions of your own people are in dire need of life saving assistance and you do not think that is an adequate reason for the formulation of a national social plan to help them... what is?
As stated, I'll take the government I don't trust over the corporation I don't trust any day.Originally Posted by Redleg
Of course. Every system has holes. Every system has waste. Every system has people fall through the cracks. But at least socialized health care has as a fundamental, legal, and inviolable social-contract tenet of its very existence that all people will be treated equally without any regard to their income or ability to pay.Originally Posted by Redleg
My God, that sounds so American I might just bake an apple pie.![]()
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