The health care thread

[werldhed]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/04/franken-calms-down-health_n_277687.html

Thank god we elected him instead of Coleman.

[Fender]

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/st ... rong/print

I can't even finish it. Some weird combination of tl;dr and FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU....!!!

first few paragraphs for the lazy...

Let's start with the obvious: America has not only the worst but the dumbest health care system in the developed world. It's become a black leprosy eating away at the American experiment — a bureaucracy so insipid and mean and illogical that even our darkest criminal minds wouldn't be equal to dreaming it up on purpose.

The system doesn't work for anyone. It cheats patients and leaves them to die, denies insurance to 47 million Americans, forces hospitals to spend billions haggling over claims, and systematically bleeds and harasses doctors with the specter of catastrophic litigation. Even as a mechanism for delivering bonuses to insurance-company fat cats, it's a miserable failure: Greedy insurance bosses who spent a generation denying preventive care to patients now see their profits sapped by millions of customers who enter the system only when they're sick with incurably expensive illnesses.

The cost of all of this to society, in illness and death and lost productivity and a soaring federal deficit and plain old anxiety and anger, is incalculable — and that's the good news. The bad news is our failed health care system won't get fixed, because it exists entirely within the confines of yet another failed system: the political entity known as the United States of America.

Just as we have a medical system that is not really designed to care for the sick, we have a government that is not equipped to fix actual crises. What our government is good at is something else entirely: effecting the appearance of action, while leaving the actual reform behind in a diabolical labyrinth of ingenious legislative maneuvers.

Over the course of this summer, those two failed systems have collided in a spectacular crossroads moment in American history. We have an urgent national emergency on the one hand, and on the other, a comfortable majority of ostensibly simpatico Democrats who were elected by an angry population, in large part, specifically to reform health care. When they all sat down in Washington to tackle the problem, it amounted to a referendum on whether or not we actually have a functioning government.

[Geebs]

I know I brought this up in the other thread but:

In the US, if you develop diabetes you're uninsurable and have to pay for all treatment

In the UK, you get free perscriptions

it's like the Yanks have taken the ancient concept of disease being the moral fault of the victim and run with it

[bitWISE]

My mom can't get life insurance due to having breast cancer even tho it's been in remission for 5 years.

[HM-PuFFNSTuFF]

http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/ ... ight-wing/

[Fender]

In the US, if you develop diabetes you're uninsurable and have to pay for all treatment

That's simply not true. I'm all for reform and everything, but that is blatantly false.

[Whiskey 7]

I would go crazy living in the USA. The level of public discourse is appalling.

Yep. I am truly blessed being born and bred down under

Wonders ..........A work mate of mine a few years ago, went through a messy (yet I now recall a simple) divorce and then moved to the US

Another earlier work mate move to the US in the early 90's just so he could carry (means wear a sidearm in public)

These both really sad cases IMO, but each to his own I s'pose

[GONNAFISTYA]

A very interesting take on "teh Health Care":

It also points back to the question (a frustratingly good one) of why the advocates of a public option and just reform in general have not simply explained this as allowing people to buy into Medicare at any age. Because, essentially, that's what it is. And I think I could pretty much guarantee you that if the question in the public mind was "Would you like the option of buying into Medicare before you turn 65?" the opposition would be vastly diminished.

This isn't just rhetoric. This is the most accurate and graspable explanation of what's being proposed. Indeed, the big secret not many people are discussing is that in the current iterations of the 'public option' in most of the bills in committee that 'option' isn't given as an option to many people. Most people aren't allowed to access it. And it's designed that way in order to put a crimp on any competition it might provide to private sector insurers.

But what we're stuck with is 'public option,' which a crew of bamboozlers have warped into some sort of Logan's Run government program in which your ten year old will need to make his case for his future contributions to society to ensure he can get his broken leg set rather than be euthanized and ground into Soylent Green to feed yet more illegal aliens on welfare.

Click for more

[bitWISE]

Obama just laid down the pimp hand. Incredible speech.

[R00k]

The republicans are acting like fucking children.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/0 ... 81480.html

[Fender]

transcript
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/10/us/po ... wanted=all

and a nice way to read long articles surrounded w/ crap: http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/

[U4EA]

The republicans are acting like fucking children.

It's ok though, cause he apologised: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32767813/ns ... re_reform/

Fender, that Readability link is awesome, many thanks

[Ryoki]

transcript
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/10/us/po ... wanted=all

Damn he's good...

[4days]

aye, i actually read all of that. wish we had speakers/speechwriters like that over here.

and that readability thing is great

[Fender]

http://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/health_care/plan/

[plained]

yea pretty cool link man

[Hannibal]

Excellent speech, now let's see what's in the pickel barrel after we get the lid off'n it.

[R00k]

and a nice way to read long articles surrounded w/ crap: http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/

Thank you.

[Chupacabra]

I would go crazy living in the USA. The level of public discourse is appalling.

Yep. I am truly blessed being born and bred down under

Wonders ..........A work mate of mine a few years ago, went through a messy (yet I now recall a simple) divorce and then moved to the US

Another earlier work mate move to the US in the early 90's just so he could carry (means wear a sidearm in public)

These both really sad cases IMO, but each to his own I s'pose

am i the only one that has a hard time understanding whiskey7's posts? consider that this is one of whiskey's better posts. everyone gives plained so much shit, but he's relatively easy to understand.

[menkent]

if you imagine his posts in a steve irwin voice they make more sense.

[R00k]

New rule: Whiskey has to start all of his posts with "Croikey:"

[shaft]

http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICL ... otest.html

[R00k]

You frequenting geoff's favorites now shaft?

[obsidian]

So, if we rounded up all those protesters and exported them to some distant island, you would be infringing on the rights of many this one time, but on the flip side, the future of the country would become infinitely improved. I think in this case, a wrong will indeed make a right.

[shaft]

You frequenting geoff's favorites now shaft?

haha, link was passed to me. i figured it would be a good conversation piece for this thread. never even heard of the site, but the formatting is shit.