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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Healthcare and retirement security are not about socialism - it's about loading, prioritization, and infrastructure. Ask the folks in Eastern Oregon and rural America if they think our vaunted private healthcare system is working for them. SE Oregon is down to a couple of nurse practioners about to shut down - rural communities are losing the last vestiges of their 'provider networks' as large swaths of our nation are left under-served or with no healthcare service at all.
And in a globabl economy U.S. companies will never remain competitive if they have to directly provide lifetime healtcare and retirement benefits - we are doomed if we remain on that path. The only question now is how to shift to and fund a single payer system where services are still delivered by private individuals and companies. Insurance companies as an infrastructure layer are killing us - the faster they are burned and buried the better.
If you think that the billions - that's right - billions layed out annually in overhead to support an endless litany of duplicate human and technical sales, claims, billing, and payor systems is adding any creativity or innovation to the delivery of our healthcare then I for one would like find out where you're getting whatever you're smoking.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Tens of millions of Americans are already happily receiving "socialized medicine", its called Medicare, and its administrative costs are under 3%, far more efficient and cost effective than private for profit care.
The true socialists are the Republicans who pissed away one trillion dollars in the desert, and socialized the already rich with their biggest tax cuts in history.
This great idea was so the rich would be so thankful they would just go out and create some jobs for the peasants. Another conservative "theory" blown to hell in reality.
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Mighty Hiker
Social climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Doublespeak apparently continues to be alive and well in the Republican Party, and given Limbaugh's rapturous (pun intended) reception, further sharp shocks will be needed to ensure a useful lesson has been learned. Change is never easy.
Perhaps the US could deign to look at what has worked for other countries, and learn from them. Canada, for example.
Someday I hope to hear that there is a reasonably united conservative party in the US, possibly named the Republican party. That party and its leaders will actually act in a manner consistent with their stated beliefs, and in the best interests of the country as a whole. It will be a party whose members represent the diversity of the US, rather than one trapped in demographics. And it will be a party based on something other than fear-mongering, a party that actually stands FOR positive elements of the country's psyche.
I suspect that time is years away.
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stevep
Boulder climber
Salt Lake, UT
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Bluering, almost all the companies you mention were founded and grew substantially during times when top marginal tax rates were much higher. Doesn't seem to have hurt them.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Fattrad, you are wrong.
My brother is a doctor who accepts both Medicare and private insurance patients, for the past 35 years.
He tells me he makes a "smaller profit" on Medicare patients than private insurance patients.
He does NOT, as you say, charge his private insurance patients more to make up for making less on Medicare patients.
He makes $400,000 a year regardless.
Don't you just get so damn tired being WRONG all the time?
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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I personally don't like subsidizing the poor and indigant via my insurance and emergency rooms - it's a ridiculous system where only the insurance companies benefit. We'll be saddle with this rube-goldberg claptrap of a system until the day we have a single payor system where every citizen has equal universal coverage at some base level.
Edit: Norton, I disagree, hospitals are charging the insured substantially more. So are the optometrists my wife just asked for pricing on exams and glasses. Even windshield replacement firms are and a host of others. Insurance as an industry in our country is now a fully-gamed affair driven by profit and greed and long divorced from it's original purpose and intent. Deregulating it further and removing state oversight was fortunately one of the Bush goals they didn't get to.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Exactly Healj, its called Medicare, its single payer, and it provides quality healthcare to tens of millions, and no doubt you will be on it at age 65.
Fatty, however, has already sent his letter to the hated big government telling them he will NOT accept his social security checks, nor will he accept Medicare health insurance.
God bless Fatty for his principled sacrafices.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Fattrad, so what percentage of working families in this country do you think have adequate basic healthcare coverage with affordable premiums as a percentage of monthly income and that doesn't leave them one serious incident from bankrupcy?
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Fattrad, "market rates" are whatever is agreed to.
Medicare does indeed hold down overall health insurance costs by negotiating on a large national scale, lower payments.
Make no mistake, lower costs for your hated big government to pay is a good thing.
The mistake you make is believing that those poor doctor clients of yours just have to charge "more" to make up for the smaller profit they get from Medicare.
No sympathy for your doctors from me, they make plenty.
According to your contorted logic, Wal Mart is BAD for America because its prices are lower for us consumers compared to if we consumers had no Walmart and were forced to pay higher prices at local retailers. Its called free choice, shop anywhere you want.
But the fact is that, like it or not, Walmart's pricing has done more to offer shoppers value than just about anything else in our society.
No one HAS to go on Medicare Fattrad, but it is there, at a lower cost, just like WalMart, for those who choose it.
And after all, isn't "personal responsiblity" and "freedom of choice" your party's real mantra?
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Mighty Hiker
Social climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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40 years of government dominated by the right wing has clearly reduced government spending.
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noshoesnoshirt
climber
dangling off a wind turbine in a town near you
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It's the piggy eyes that really tie it together.
PS: Buttboy
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couchmaster
climber
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How far up the priority list was spending our country into hell while reducing inflows?? Because for the old school republicans like Bush, Bush and Reagan, it looked to be real high up there, maybe that might change but there appears to be no concern at CPAC 2009 about the insane bankruptcy spending the "BORROW AND SPEND" party is into these days.
How the hell can any sane person vote for that sh#t? I'd vote for a tax and spend politician any day, at least they are trying to pay as they go.
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dirtbag
climber
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Ditching the social/religious conservatives is a step in the right direction, but I don't see much other good news for conservatives. Probably the best they can do is wait and see how Obama's policies succeed or fail and be ready, because he does have a mandate to do quite a bit right now.
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noshoesnoshirt
climber
dangling off a wind turbine in a town near you
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"Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill was told "deficits don't matter" when he warned of a looming fiscal crisis.
O'Neill, fired in a shakeup of Bush's economic team in December 2002, raised objections to a new round of tax cuts and said the president balked at his more aggressive plan to combat corporate crime after a string of accounting scandals because of opposition from "the corporate crowd," a key constituency.
O'Neill said he tried to warn Vice President Dick Cheney that growing budget deficits-expected to top $500 billion this fiscal year alone-posed a threat to the economy. Cheney cut him off. "You know, Paul, Reagan proved deficits don't matter," he said, according to excerpts. Cheney continued: "We won the midterms (congressional elections). This is our due." A month later, Cheney told the Treasury secretary he was fired.
The vice president's office had no immediate comment, but John Snow, who replaced O'Neill, insisted that deficits "do matter" to the administration. "
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Fattrad, its time for you to knock off the "socialism" label when you refer to anything that benefits a large number of people who do NOT have the private resources and advantages that you and I other more fortunate folks enjoy.
What you are trying to do constantly is to link Obama and the Democratic party to old world European communism, as in the governing body makes everyone work on communal farms and private enterprize is not allowed. That link you are trying to make is like saying pot smoking will definately lead to heroin use.
Sounds like clear logic to some, but most would think it nonsense. Same thing when you trot out the "socialist" talk,
most think it is nonsense, and only you and the 25% of Americans who make up your core conservative base believe weak cause and effect like that.
Fattrad, stop constantly labeling and looking at everything in a negative way, instead start offering some real world solutions to our problems. Your conservative philosophy was solidly rejected last November by voting Americans. It does not hold water, it is not what people want.
I want to hear you come forth with suggestions that improve the lives of most Americans, not constant criticisms.
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mojede
Trad climber
Butte, America
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The good news IS that Puss Rimjob is the "Conservative Spokesman".
Drugs--check,check (oxycontin and viagra)
Divorced--check,check, check
Smoker--check
Pompous--check
You conserves should be proud of having such a loser represent you--NOW it will be easy to convince the rest of the Amurika to join your band. Riiight.
Hahahahaha!
edit: draft dodger--check
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Fattrad - I'm assuming you're still formulating an answer to that question...
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Ghost
climber
A long way from where I started
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My doctor clients tell me they make oh so very little on medicare partients and charge the inured market rates. The insured are paying for medicare or uninsured individuals.
Jeff, this is not something new, nor is it a function of the insurance business. It is simply the way medicine has been practiced for a long time. Most doctors who practiced before the introduction of medical insurance (in the US) and "socialized medicine" (in Canada) had a two-tier billing system -- market rates for those who could afford it, and much less for those who couldn't. My father had a special drawer in his filing cabinet for patients he knew would never pay -- but that never stopped him from treating them.
There have probably always been doctors who refused to treat the poor, but most believed that part of the deal was to accept that a certain percentage of their caseload was essentially charity work.
For what it's worth, the introduction of universal government-funded medical care in Canada meant that doctors could now be paid for providing care to the poor.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Dingus - agreed, Limbaugh is king of the lemmings shouting 'onward' from the back of the pack as they head over the brink (one more time, with feeling...) - only he and the other leaders are all wearing bungy cords and parachutes.
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Mighty Hiker
Social climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Jeff may have meant to say "the socialist title that WE bestow upon you".
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