Developing World's Parasites, Diseases Enter US

reporter alerts us to a story up at the Wall Street Journal on the increasing prevalance in the US of formerly rare, 3rd-world diseases such as toxocariasis, chagas, and cysticercosis. Health-care legislation pending in the House calls for a full report to Congress about the threat from this cluster of diseases, termed "neglected infections of poverty." "Parasitic infections and other diseases usually associated with the developing world are cropping up with alarming frequency among US poor, especially in states along the US-Mexico border, the rural South, and in Appalachia, according to researchers. Government and private researchers are just beginning to assess the toll of the infections, which are a significant cause of heart disease, seizures and congenital birth defects among black and Hispanic populations. ... 'These are diseases that we know are ten-fold more important than swine flu,' said [one] leading researcher in this field. 'They're on no one's radar.' ... These diseases share a common thread. 'People who live in the suburbs are at very low risk,' Dr. Hotez said. But for the 37 million people in the US who live below the poverty line, he said, 'There is real suffering.'" Update: 08/23 16:55 GMT by KD : The submitter pointed out that the usual "Related" link to the original submission was missing on this story. We are testing a new version of the story editor and this was probably caused by a bug; reported. Here's the original.

Comments

Evil Hollywood plot

[oldhack]

to jack up the rating for House MD. Pathetic, really.

Re:Evil Hollywood plot

[mike.rimov]

Why is this modded Troll??

Its FUNNY

(Sorry that I don't have mod points oldhack :( )

Re:Evil Hollywood plot

[oldhack]

Ug! This "funny" business robbed me of all my goddamn karma.

The US isn't all first world.

[girlintraining]

People are surprised by this? Our inner cities are rotting. Our economy is in shambles. People are living squallor and poverty on an unprecidented scale in this country. We're a breeding ground now for all manners of disease, both social and medical.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[timeOday]

Well, half the voters don't even believe in public health. If the carriers of an epidemic are deemed unworthy of health care, the free market solution is to wait until everybody gets it, then treat those with money. Ultimately that costs vastly more than stamping it out in the first place, but at least nobody gets healthcare they didn't deserve, and isn't that the most important thing?

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Darkness404]

Lack of government healthcare != able to get help. It simply means that things are more expensive for those without healthcare in the short term if they need it. In general there are a lot of "reactionary" people here in the US who will go to the doctor for -anything-, heck, wasn't it just a few years ago where because of the prevalence of people going to the doctors for every little thing was going to create more drug resistant illnesses? In general, if it makes someone sick with obvious symptoms, they are going to get help here in the US. Its just the common reaction, not sure about in other countries (the US is the only country I've lived in for an extended period of time, though I have traveled to many different countries) but in the USA, a lot of people go to the doctor or even the emergency room for every thing.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[couchslug]

"People are living squallor and poverty on an unprecedented scale in this country."

Bullshit. We are not near the poverty levels of the Great Depression, and the impact of poverty is greatly mitigated nowadays.

Our bitter refusal to control our borders ensures the human carriers of "Third World" diseases are free to circulate.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Anonymous Coward]

Lack of government healthcare != able to get help. It simply means that things are more expensive for those without healthcare in the short term if they need it.

No money = unable to get help if no government healthcare.

It's really that simple.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Saija]

Glad to see some sane moderators who changed your "Troll" to "Insightful" score

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Anonymous Coward]

"People are living squallor and poverty on an unprecedented scale in this country."

Bullshit. We are not near the poverty levels of the Great Depression, and the impact of poverty is greatly mitigated nowadays.

Our bitter refusal to control our borders ensures the human carriers of "Third World" diseases are free to circulate.

Yup. Kick out the illegal invaders and those poverty stats change quite drastically.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[girlintraining]

Bullshit. We are not near the poverty levels of the Great Depression, and the impact of poverty is greatly mitigated nowadays.

History disagrees with your assessment; We're circling the drain. Sequence of events in the Great Depression:

1. Debt liquidation and distress selling
2. Contraction of the money supply as bank loans are paid off
3. A fall in the level of asset prices
4. A still greater fall in the net worths of business, precipitating bankruptcies
5. A fall in profits
6. A reduction in output, in trade and in employment.
7. Pessimism and loss of confidence
8. Hoarding of money
9. A fall in nominal interest rates and a rise in deflation adjusted interest rates.

Let's compare that with now --

1. Debt liquidation and distress selling
July 2007: loss of confidence by investors in the value of securitized mortgages causes liquidity crisis. (Housing Bubble goes pop)

2. Contraction of the money supply as bank loans are paid off
In January 2008, a tax rebate is introduced as part of a "stimulus package" intended to stimulate consumer spending. But several months later, all economic indicators say that the average consumer used the majority of their tax rebate to pay off debt.

3. A fall in the level of asset prices
Housing bubble has now popped. In September 2008, stock markets around the world crash. The subprime mortgage market drags several banks to their death and liquid assets all but disappear from the market. Retail outlets start to go out of business, even with deep cuts in pricing.

4. A still greater fall in the net worths of business, precipitating bankruptcies
Early in 2009, a series of goverment-funded bailouts are issued to financial and automotive firms. Many businesses close up.

5. A fall in profits
Pretty sure we've passed this point.

6. A reduction in output, in trade and in employment.
National unemployment currently hovers at 9.7%, the highest ever recorded.

7. Pessimism and loss of confidence
Check!

8. Hoarding of money
9. A fall in nominal interest rates and a rise in deflation adjusted interest rates.

This is the last step in the fall of our economy, and so far the interest rate hasn't deflated -- but everything else on this timeline has been met.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[s4m7]

Lack of government healthcare != able to get help.

Right. We all remember Bush's answer to the healthcare crisis: let them go to the emergency room. ER care is significantly more expensive than proper preventive and general practice care.

It simply means that things are more expensive for those without healthcare in the short term if they need it.

Right. 62% of all personal bankruptcies in the U.S. in 2007 were caused by health problems and 78% of those filers had insurance. Citation That doesn't just make things more expensive for those with healthcare, it makes them more expensive for policy holders, anyone who wants a loan, small businesses, investors, and stockholders. And it's not just over the short term, it has an overall detrimental effect on our nation's economic well being which continues to mount.

In general there are a lot of "reactionary" people here in the US who will go to the doctor for -anything-, heck, wasn't it just a few years ago where because of the prevalence of people geoing to the doctors for every little thing was going to create more drug resista lnt illnesses?

it's not people going to the doctors that causes drug resistance, it's the repeated treatment of the same bacterial infections with a broad spectrum of antibiotics. This has a lot to do with tort liability, a subject I'm not as well versed on as I would like to be. I do think that tort reform should be a part of any comprehensive medical reform, but I think that we have to be careful.

In general, if it makes someone sick with obvious symptoms, they are going to get help here in the US. Its just the common reaction, not sure about in other countries (the US is the only country I've lived in for an extended period of time, though I have traveled to many different countries) but in the USA, a lot of people go to the doctor or even the emergency room for every thing.

"in general" is a stretch in this case. Lots of conditions can't be taken care of in an emergent care setting. This may be true for broken limbs, allergic reactions, and like conditions, but it doesn't address the situation with regard to chronic conditions, diabetes, cancer, and so on. This is the situation that most urgently needs to be addressed. If there was a law like the 1986 "patient dumping" law that applied to chronic care as well as ERs it would cost the medical industry billions. as is they are only required to "stabilize." and then they can ask for your insurance card and or show you the door.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[memnock]

how is the poverty mitigated?

by having tons of cheap, food that lacks real nutritive value, and that contributes to the growing obesity problem of the country? or by the tons of debt that people use to buy things they do and don't need, but can't afford either way, such as houses or big tvs?

if poverty was mitigated, obtaining healthcare wouldn't be a problem for low-income or out of work people. yet, i hear about people with full-time employment who can't afford their health plans.

poverty is one of the factors to affect children early in the education system.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Hurricane78]

The USA really has giant contrast, that most people seem to forget about all too often. I mean there is Manhattan, there is some farm in the worst backwater hole, there is the nearly empty part, rotting of Detroit, there is Alaska which is mainly just forests, There are cities which still look like the hurricane that went trough them two years ago just happened yesterday, etc, etc. And most of it seems to be not shiny at all. It's really sad sometimes, to see the nation rotting away. And I'm not even from the same continent! Reminds me of the Russian backwaters and rusting military too.

I hope that something great emerges out of it... Because that is usually the case with humans...

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[maxume]

You are shadowboxing, none of those things say anything about squalor or poverty (especially if you want it to be depression era poverty, and not food-stamps poverty).

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[memnock]

meant to add this link so you could see the extent, or lack thereof, of poverty throughout the country.
http://proximityone.com/ctyincome.htm

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[timmarhy]

while you are reasonably correct on the causes of the great depression, you fail hard.

1. is over already

2. paying off loans isn't what causes contraction of money supply.

3. if you want to single out houses as the only asset, then yes.

4. yes, there's no getting away from the fact companies have taken a hammering

5. most places have had a fall in profits, there are some standouts though. gold producers are one of them.

6. here is your big fail. jobless rate in 1933 was 24.9% http://www.bls.gov/opub/cwc/cm20030124ar03p1.htm

7. here is your biggest problem - doomers like yourself who are still claiming the sky is falling when their are CLEARLY signs of recovery worldwide.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Anonymous Coward]

In general, if it makes someone sick with obvious symptoms, they are going to get help here in the US.

Yes, and by that point they've very likely been spreading it for weeks.

"Oh, you can go to the emergency room" is not a replacement for proper preventative care, and the latter is a whole lot cheaper too.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[bigattichouse]

Pensacola, Florida (specifically Santa Maria de Galve, pre Pensacola) was founded on a bunch of rich people in Tlaxcala (forgive my spelling) mexico rounding up all the poor people and shipping them off to another country... They also discovered they then had no one around to dig the proverbial ditch.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Hurricane78]

Well, I might sound evil, but don't hate the messenger:
It actually is quite possible, in terms of natural selection, that in the long run, this would mean a more successful nation. Because only those who are successful, would survive.
The first problem is, that money is not exactly what should be our scale to measure success and worth to survive. We can do better than that.
And the second point is, that it would of course be even *more* successful, to pull them *all* up. But is that possible?
The only thing that certainly is not doing a nation any good, is the current state.

My personal opinion is, that this is intentional, because 1. our government is not *that* dumb, and 2. look at who profits from this most. As I said: Personal opinion.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[drizek]

He said unprecedented scale, not unprecedented degree.

Your response would be much more constructive if you address his point.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Anonymous Coward]

Do this and we'll rise to new levels of prosperity and progress -

1. Destroy all forms of organized religion and defrock all priests.
2. Close all prisons; exile all convicted felons to a distant, isolated islands.
3. Allow only 5 years of employment in the academic and civil service sectors.
4. Enforce term limits on all elected offices - one term only.
5. Sterilize welfare recipients.
6. Legalize and regulate all vices.
7. Deny corporations the same legal rights as citizens.
8. Ban political parties.
9. Nationalize the legal profession; no private lawyers.
10. Force all trading partners to adopt worker and environmental protections.
11. All native born residents will attend primary, secondary, and higher level education at no cost. Humanities will be taught only at the primary and secondary levels.
12. Disallow borrowing for speculation.

Fail and the next dark ages starts in our lifetime.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[girlintraining]

here is your biggest problem - doomers like yourself who are still claiming the sky is falling when their are CLEARLY signs of recovery worldwide.

I'm not all doom and gloom... Forty years ago we had a middle class. We don't anymore. We have rich people, and we have poor people... Just like the countries we've been shipping our jobs out to. One of the things that made America what it was is a strong middle class. That's vaporized now under the heat of globalization, and this is something that's come about because of the current economic crisis. Yeah, the economy as a whole may recover, but our quality of life will never be the same. For many people -- there will be no recovery.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[stdarg]

Right. 62% of all personal bankruptcies in the U.S. in 2007 were caused by health problems and 78% of those filers had insurance. Citation [businessweek.com] That doesn't just make things more expensive for those with healthcare, it makes them more expensive for policy holders, anyone who wants a loan, small businesses, investors, and stockholders. And it's not just over the short term, it has an overall detrimental effect on our nation's economic well being which continues to mount.

Health care is too expensive, no question. We're not going to fix it with preventive medicine (source 1 source 2, may be related I didn't check). Spreading out the cost sounds great until you realize that a lot of people don't have insurance because they can't afford it, and won't be paying their full share if they go for a public option either, so the same people who are paying more now will be paying more then too. If you want to make health care more affordable to have to do things to reduce the cost directly. Then more people would get insurance anyway because it would be cheaper.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I think the collapse of the US middle class is in large part the fault of the middle class itself. In a world of increasing sophistication, most people ignored it and didn't adapt to it, and they didn't instill into their children the importance of education. The idea that one can live very comfortably simply being unskilled labor was a foolish one that idea only worked for a generation or two. The economic hegemony of the US post WWII helped feed that idea, but part of that hegemony was sustained by malicious policies against other countries.

Maybe globalization made that middle class collapse happen faster, but an unsustainable situation like that wasn't going to stay that way forever. Closing borders to trade usually hasn't worked out well either, all that does is incite reciprocal action.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Zemran]

"8. Hoarding of money"

The price of gold per ounce has gone right up from $700 to $950 (approx) because people are hoarding money instead of investing in the stock market.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[CodeBuster]

I do think that tort reform should be a part of any comprehensive medical reform, but I think that we have to be careful.

Which will never happen as long as the Democrats are in power. The attorneys, through their firms and state bar associations, are collectively among the largest donors to the Democratic National Committee, Democrat elected officials (i.e. Congressmen and Senators) and Democratic presidential candidates (like our current President Obama). There are two groups that you can bet the farm that Democrats won't cross: lawyers and unions (in that order). No attorney that I know of has ever supported laws which limit their ability to go to court and sue for lots of money (its like freedom of speech to them). The attorneys will fight tort reform tooth and nail and I would be shocked if Obama signs any bill, or at least any bill that actually has teeth, which puts a national cap on damages awarded at lawyerpoint.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Anonymous Coward]

sounds good

email me
coralamp@yahoo.com.au

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Goldberg's Pants]

If preventive medicine is more expensive than the failed system you currently have in place, then why is more spent per capita on healthcare in the US than any other western country, while your system continues to be ranked as one of the worst in the world, falling far behind those who do engage in preventive medicine.

Living embodiment of less for more.

There is an old adage. "An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure."

Your observations of how public healthcare works are deeply, and I do mean DEEPLY flawed.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Runaway1956]

Nothing to worry about, really. This is just Mother Nature's way of enforcing population control. If we think it's bad here, just wait for Mother to get serious in China. The earth's carrying capacity of humankind is being severely tested, so we can expect more of this sort of thing.

(turn on sarcasm here) Health care? Why fight the inevitable? Only the rich are truly fit to survive anyway.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Runaway1956]

"We are not near the poverty levels of the Great Depression,"

Nothing says the we have seen the worst of our current recession. Nothing says we won't see the desperation of the '30's again. The only thing that happened in the '30's that isn't likely to happen again, is the dust bowl. On the other hand, family farms are barely hanging in there because they can't compete with factory farms. If a few of those conglomerations go belly up, we could be in serious trouble. How much of our population are we willing to see die of starvation?

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[sjames]

College has gone from something only the wealthy attend to being quite common. The BA and BS are rapidly becoming what the GED once was.

It doesn't seem to have helped. Unskilled labor was never an option for middle class. Skilled blue collar work was quite commonly middle class.

The U.S. has seen a steady growth in GDP per capita. In spite of that, the middle class is disappearing.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[jasno]

Well, for starters I'd imagine we pay more because we CAN pay more. We pay more, and this creates big companies that develop drugs that get sold for less to the rest of the world - at least it sure feels like it. I'd be happy to see someone contradict that.

We also pay more because many of our diseases are products of our lavish lifestyle - a lifestyle other countries are just now adopting. I'd expect healthcare costs to skyrocket worldwide as diabetes, heart disease and cancer climb to US rates.

Also, does anyone know what the long-term prospects are for the typical European medical system? Aren't they expecting to have solvency issues similar to medicare?

You know, above all else, one thing that seems to be lost in the noise is that we already have a government health care system. If we can't fix medicare/medicaid we don't have a chance of building a sustainable, effective general health plan. I voted for and support Obama, but his decisions on health care have left me baffled. He could have started small and been successful but he bit off more than he could chew. It hurt his reputation and it's hurting our nation.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[jasno]

The BA and BS are rapidly becoming what the GED once was.

Are you high?

I'd love to see some stats. I live in California and most of the people I meet qualify as middle-class. I'm middle-class. My family is almost all middle-class.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Brian_Ellenberger]

People are surprised by this? Our inner cities are rotting. Our economy is in shambles. People are living squallor and poverty on an unprecidented scale in this country. We're a breeding ground now for all manners of disease, both social and medical.

And worst of all, there is a massive wave of over exaggeration plaguing the country! I cannot believe this was marked as 5 insightful. Poverty and squallor on unprecidented scale? Have you heard of the Great Depression? What facts and figures are you quoting? According to the US census at http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/poverty07/pov07fig03.pdf the poverty percentage has been at between 10 and 15 percent since the mid 60s. In 1959 it was 23%, so nearly a quarter of the population was in poverty!

We're a breeding ground now for all manners of disease, both social and medical? Start with the medical. Based on what science? Tens of thousands dying of cholera is a sign of breeding disease. Random cases of strange medical ailments because people in 3rd world countries immigrated to the US is not. What is your solution, stop all immigration? As for social disease, since the founding of the country people have been complaining about various "social diseases" plaguing the US. Heck, the crazy temperance movement managed to get all alcohol banned as a cure for the various social diseases resulting from drinking.

As for the decline of America, I've been hearing it all my life. First is was the Japanese, how they were much smarter and so much harder working than Americans, blah, blah, blah. Now it is the Chinese.

And no, I hate to disappoint you but we aren't going to be the Roman Empire because I don't see any barbarians who are going to come and raze our cities. We do not decline so much as everyone else is catching up to us. And the only reason there is catching up is because almost everyone else was demolished 60 years ago during WWII. There is no fundamental reason that the US should be the sole military, economic, and political power for the rest of human history. If we were a bunch of evil jerks, the US could try and use its power to keep everyone else down. But we don't and good for us for that.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[beadfulthings]

There's a huge difference between "government healthcare" and "public health" at least as the term is used in the U.S. Public health traditionally concerns itself with disease control and prevention in communities of people--both small and large. It is concerned with the prevention of disease in entire populations as opposed to caring for individuals. Huge, enormous distinction there. If we're beginning to harbor populations with these parasitic diseases, we damned well want the Public Health Service involved and making recommendations for prevention, control, and treatment. We need them as watchdogs for occupational health, for control of epidemics (think Centers for Disease Control), and for identification and control of conditions that promote and cause diseases (dirty water, dirty food, the above-mentioned parasites). Even blatantly obvious functions like restaurant inspections fall under the general umbrella of "public health." It's short-sighted to ignore the conditions mentioned in the original article just because they're present only in poor or isolated segments of the population. They won't stay that way for long.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Mr. Freeman]

"If you want to make health care more affordable to have to do things to reduce the cost directly." The only way of doing that is cutting corners and reducing standards for medicine and medical equipment. That's a bad idea no matter how you put it.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Mr. Freeman]

You make an incredibly stupid assumption here by bringing in "natural selection". Natural selection assumes that people die because of THEIR OWN weaknesses.

A successful person currently between jobs (thus no insurance) getting hit by a car driven by a stupid person and being unable to pay the bill to save his life is NOT NATURAL SELECTION.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Mr. Freeman]

We don't have a middle class anymore? What the hell are you smoking and where can I get some?

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[GigsVT]

What the fuck is "hoarding of money"? Is that like "saving money"?

We can't live in this Keynesian dream of everyone spending every dime of their income as soon as they get it. Its what made our economy fragile in the first place.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[buswolley]

Health care is a national security issue.

It should be sold as one too. Hell the Department of Defense should provide it too! It would pass too. No one votes against national defense.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[buswolley]

Afew too man too's in that sentence... Damn.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[PachmanP]

"If you want to make health care more affordable to have to do things to reduce the cost directly." The only way of doing that is cutting corners and reducing standards for medicine and medical equipment. That's a bad idea no matter how you put it.

Or fix stuff like my insurance company "negotiating" $900 worth of blood tests down to the $90 they actually pay the lab. If it's $90 worth of blood tests (which it is since the lab somehow stays in business), then say it's $90. That would open a whole world of people being able to get catastrophic coverage and pay out of pocket for the basics which would put people in touch with what it actually costs and provide price pressure.

As the system stands, the buyer has hardly any idea of what the seller is actually being paid. Nobody has any inclination of what the actual cost is. The insurance companies can throw their weight around and get reasonable prices, but the poor schmuck that doesn't have insurance pays MSPR. If I could pay the same "bulk rates" as the insurances companies, my medical costs, excluding anything catastrophic, would be less than what I pay for insurance.

People like to make a big deal out of free market medicine failing, but we don't have free market medicine because the actual cost has been abstracted away from so many of the consumers that there's no cost control.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Anonymous Coward]

because its the governments job to force everyone else to pay for you?

healthcare is not a right. its a good, a service, a professional trade practiced by trademan who deserves to get paid for what he does. and it's not my job to pay for your use of his skills.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[QuoteMstr]

50 years ago, one could be middle class with one income earner per household. Try that today.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[buswolley]

ass.

If your neighbor's house is on fire, would you let your house burn down too be cause you don't want to pay for a fire department?

Health care, much like fire protection, curbs the spread of disease.

Seriously, healthcare is no different than having a standing army. It is for the national defense.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Kral_Blbec]

If you go to the emergency room they already cant turn you away if you are unable to pay. I've met a few people that go there for anything, on the public's tab.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[smchris]

Indeed. Problem solved: "US-Mexico border, the rural South, and in Appalachia". Places I have scant interest passing through, much less surviving.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Anonymous Coward]

8. Hoarding of money
9. A fall in nominal interest rates and a rise in deflation adjusted interest rates.

This is the last step in the fall of our economy, and so far the interest rate hasn't deflated -- but everything else on this timeline has been met.

Hoarding - Saving rate in US has gone from 0% before crash to 5% of earnings now. It's started

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[bosef1]

I'm not sure if this is relevant or not, but in the United States during World War II, many workers in industrial occupations, such as auto workers, faced wage limits and ceilings. In response, companies offered improved non-wage benefits, such as enhanced on-the-job health insurance, retirement health insurance, and retirement pensions. Many of them were retirement packages, which wasn't a problem at the time because no one was retiring, you know, with the war being on. These benefits were continued after the war was over (after all, what union is going to cut benefits?). This allowed for the creation of a "middle" class, if was defined by monetary income, but which had a lot of non-monetary benefits, some of which didn't kick in unless the worker retired.

I wish I could find some references for this; maybe /. can help.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Kral_Blbec]

I work in the operating room. I see how much stuff costs and how it is used. I know the profit margins on the stuff used. I know how much work everyone is already doing, both in their position and in trying to keep costs down. Ask any doctor and they will tell you that surgery is where most of the money comes in from at a hospital. It is the big money maker, not prescription drugs.

I see the doctors trying to decide on what to use for a case based on what it costs. I see them decide not to send something to the lab because it costs to much. I see them take the cheap, difficult route all the time. Why? Because they are trying to keep costs down so they DONT have to charge so much.

Just last week I was in a case where we took a specimen. At first we weren't going to send it out to pathology because it is a minimum 500 dollar charge. That really isnt over priced. It is hard, time consuming work with high liability. Unfortunately, we had a development were the doctor had to send it. He was very pissed that he had to do so because he knew the patient could barely afford it. He didn't want to have to make him pay more.

Do you know how much goes into the medical system? How many people are employed and what they do? You can't cut any of them out. Much of that is due to liability in our legal system, ie having to audit and micromanage every little detail. That costs money because, well, the people doing it need to make a living too.

True, unless you work in the system, you have no idea what is going on. Do you think most people would want to, or would they rather complain anyway? Anyway, what I'm saying is that in most cases, it really can't get much cheaper. We are already cutting corners because we cant afford to do more.

One of the easily and often over looked problems with universal health care, is that there is literally nobody to give it. Staff are already over worked, over stressed, and under thanked.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Anonymous Coward]

The only way of doing that is cutting corners and reducing standards for medicine and medical equipment.

Have you seen the profit margins health "insurance" companies are making? Plenty of room for reducing costs there.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[girlintraining]

I think the collapse of the US middle class is in large part the fault of the middle class itself.

Blaming the victim has rarely been a useful argument. It also happens to be a meritless one in this case. The middle class has disintegrated because the middle class has become a victim of a sudden change in market dynamics, brought on by decisions by our politicians and business leaders to initiate those changes. The labor market, like any other, is dictated by the laws of supply and demand. Demand remains constant but when we allowed companies to use labor outside this country -- to ship jobs overseas and goods back to us, we suddenly and dramatically increased supply but without a corresponding bump in demand -- those third world countries that the jobs went to aren't as economically developed as ours are. They lack the purchasing power parity necessary to create a corresponding demand to maintain the price point of labor.

Net result? The cost of labor in almost every market has fallen through the floor. It means big profits for companies that have infrastructure developed with our dollars and taxes, but relying on a labor pool several times larger. We sacrificed a short term profit gain for a long term loss -- infrastructure is no longer being maintained and America is now rotting from the inside out.

We didn't do this to ourselves -- a few people who wanted to make a few extra bucks in the short term did, and it's cost us our future.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[linzeal]

10-15% of the legal population sure. Count the people who cook your meals, pick your food, mow your lawns, build your roads and McMansions than you would have well over 23%. Keep the illegal immigrants with jobs and start deporting Americans on Social Security who consume the most medical care i.e. millions of dollars of years to Mexico. Fuck old people, I'm sick of taking care of them. Some of them paid less than 80k dollars in to social security and are getting 10x that a year. Old people should have to pay for health insurance like the rest of us.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[s4m7]

He could have started small and been successful but he bit off more than he could chew.

He repeatedly said throughout the campaign that one of his major 1st year issues was going to be health care reform, and outlined most of what has transpired here. If you voted for him because you listened to him during the election, you should have known this was coming.

I also fundamentally disagree that he should have "started small" because it's not like we have a lot of time to dick around with this. The last time major healthcare reform happened in the US was over 40 years ago. The time to make big changes is now, and no matter if he had gone big or small, the other side of the aisle was going to make it ugly for him.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[SPeron]

Didn't adapt to it? Our college graduation rates have been going higher and higher:
http://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/education/phct41/table2.csv
(or see http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/education/phct41.html for cleaner view)
Yet median wage has been *stagnant* for the past 30+ years (columns 3 and 6 are pertinent: http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/histinc/p53ar.html).
Furthermore, I would not call a machinist "unskilled labor". There were many many skilled blue collar workers in the manufacturing sector - the sector that has suffered the most under the recent revisions in the world order.
Now I'd agree with that the middle class is partly to blame, in that the middle class is the majority of this country, still, and has shown a pathetic lack of class consciousness. But much of the blame has to be shouldered by the rich - we are seeing income disparity like its 1920. Indeed, your thesis collapses when you look at the first column of the income table; *mean* income has steadily grown, because GDP has grown. Unfortunately, only the tail end of the distribution (i.e., the rich) has benefited, hence the stagnant median.
The fix is quite easy - tax the wealthy more, and use the money to build infrastucture and manufacturing. That is a proven recipe for economic success, and the one country that is following it religiously - China - is fast on its way to eating our lunch.
Health care for all is a good step in alleviating our problems, and certainly keeping those "dirty poor masses" free of third world diseases that are cheap to treat is a good idea.

But I just don't understand your antipathy to the middle class working people -- do you really think they are "lazy people" who don't have the will to go and get educated? Seriously? Do you know how hard it is for the American working class to, on top of working an underpaying job, go get additional education? I am constantly shocked at how this nation - the nation with the greatest scientific system in the world - has a national political discourse that is completely devoid of basic empirical facts. Like, you know how long it took me to get those census numbers? 30 seconds. You're a slashdot reader with advanced interweb skillz. Go use teh google.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[FooAtWFU]

The reason we have more heart disease and cancer isn't just because of a "lavish lifestyle" (lavish cholesterol can lead to the one, less so to the other), but also because we've conquered most other "easy" diseases. Get us some good old-fashioned malaria, polio, parasites, flesh eating diseases, what-have-you, and you'll see a big drop in deaths from cancer and heart disease.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[IWannaBeAnAC]

healthcare is not a right

That is where most of the rest of the (developed) world disagrees with you. Almost all medical problems happen by chance, to some unlucky person whose dice comes up the wrong way. Why should someone be forced into bankruptcy, or left die of some treatable disease, for something they have no control over? Let me put it another way: suppose that tomorrow you are diagnosed with some rare but treatable form of cancer. Unfortunately the treatment costs one million dollars, and your medical insurance (if you have any) refuses to pay. The cancer is rare enough that, spread across the whole population, the cost of treating all cases per year is rather small. Do you think you should be given the treatment? If so, who should pay?

It is a common argument, "I'm not going to get sick, why should I have to pay for everone else's healthcare?". It works just fine, right up until the moment where you do get sick.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Alex Belits]

There's a huge difference between "government healthcare" and "public health" at least as the term is used in the U.S.

And this is exactly your problem -- you can't separate the two. If people are already sick, they will stay sick unless they will get help.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[DerekLyons]

Forty years ago we had a middle class. We don't anymore. We have rich people, and we have poor people...

I guess all my middle class friends and neighbors and family are figments of someone's imagination.
 
Seriously, your posts are long on hype and completely disconnected from reality.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[s4m7]

We're not going to fix it with preventive medicine

Nobody said that we are. But preventive care cuts the total costs associated with health care. Preventive is a small part of a larger picture.

Spreading out the cost sounds great until you realize that a lot of people don't have insurance because they can't afford it, and won't be paying their full share if they go for a public option either,

Lots of people don't have coverage (including medicare/medicaid) now, and you still pay for it. You pay more because they are not already part of a plan and recieving preventive care as they need it. You pay when the hospital gets stuck with an unpaid bill because costs go up to cover it. You pay more for your insurance because of this.

but this is beside the point because "public option" is not the same as "expanded medicaid." It means you will have a government-funded private institution providing health insurance that is subsidized by tax dollars. It is competition for the status-quo insurers and can be run in such as way as to be pretty close to cost neutral. The public option will bring all individuals and small business' net health care spending (including insurance costs and medicare/medicaid taxes) down. Some other provisions of the house bill add to the tax burden so I can't say the whole proposal is tax neutral. But there's no downside to the public option

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[hairyfeet]

Yep, if you want to see the real effects of poverty and lack of health care just come to AR, right smack dab in the middle of the good old USA. According to my late sister's doctor they have even started using a new acronym for those that die from lack of basic health care "cattle" spelled CATL, which means "can't afford to live". The poor have to live on the cheapest (read fattiest) cuts of meat and basic filler like potatoes. They can't afford a dentist, which means the resulting massive infection caused by a cracked tooth ends up with quite a few dead from heart failure, and the ever rising cost of medicine and health care means that many die of things that could be prevented or treated with $$$ that they simply don't have-

Like my late sister whose ashes I bury next week. Cause of death? Lack of copper and vitamins. Yep, simple lack of vitamins and minerals took my 36 year old sister away from her two teenage boys. But thanks to the royal buttraping we ALL get on even the most basic medicine the copper and vitamins in saline solution she required to live was $1600+ a month, and even with me helping out there was no way to afford it. So she was a case of CATL-can't afford to live. And to add insult to injury my state is one of those that pushed "tort reform" which made it so no matter how horribly a doctor fucked you up your maximum amount is 250k, and no lawyer will touch a medical malpractice case here anymore. So the bastard that we heard from a nurse later was most likely stoned while he operated on my sister, and fucked up at least three other girls, got to just walk away. The only thing that gives me comfort is the son of a bitch lawyer that pushed through tort reform here died broke and in agony, because nobody would take his case after a doctor butchered his nervous system and he blew all his savings on medicine.

So yeah, you want to see a third world country right here in the USA? Come to AR. Hell the southern half of the state is littered with tar paper shacks that look like something out of "Mississippi Burning". You are only seeing a doctor in the ER, and with so many hospitals closing you are lucky if there is more than a "bandaid station" within 60 miles of you, the strong back jobs have all been taking by illegals that live 10 to a house and send the peanuts the company pays them back home, and more and more of our educated jobs are either being offshored or given to H1-Bs. So give it a few more years, with our infrastructure rotting and our cities falling apart, and then we'll look just like Brazil! Yay USA! Sadly more and more we are proving our late great George Carlin's punchline to be true-"You know why they call it "The American Dream"? Because you have to be asleep to believe in it."

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[s4m7]

Do you know how much goes into the medical system? How many people are employed and what they do? You can't cut any of them out.

Except for the insurers. Sure they take a risk, but they've actually calculated nearly all of the risk out of the equation. They're really just a high-interest credit card that you pay on before you spend the money, which can turn around and tell you that you've exceeded your limit before you've spent a dime.

One of the easily and often over looked problems with universal health care, is that there is literally nobody to give it.

Which is why a good bill would do the old education-for-work exchange. Your med school is free if you spend X years working for lower wages in approved clinics.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[s4m7]

I would be shocked if Obama signs any bill, or at least any bill that actually has teeth, which puts a national cap on damages awarded at lawyerpoint.

I too, would be shocked. but again I'm not entirely sure that the definition of tort reform you're employing (which is the one usually tossed around by republicans) is the one we ought to be using.

Malpractice insurance, on the other hand, represents an awfully large slice of the pie in a doctor's office. Perhaps we need a public option for that too.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[s4m7]

they already cant turn you away if you are unable to pay

Well that's not entirely true. They are in fact only obligated to provide stabilizing care for actual emergencies by the 1986 patient dumping law. Anything chronic is generally out.

I've met a few people that go there for anything, on the public's tab.

That's not exactly how it works. The government doesn't reimburse the hospital for patients who come into the ER but have no insurance. The hospital bills the patient. The patient either pays the bill or it goes to collections. If it goes to collections, and eventually the patient does pay, chances are the hospital will only see 25% of that money. The cost to the hospital of "ER Abuse" is distributed across the rest of the hospital and passed on to insurers and eventually gets paid by policy holders. So you're right to imply that the public is still picking up the tab, it's just only the insured, and not all taxpayers who shoulder that particular burden.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Cstryon]

My daughter had Leukemia, she passed away earlier this year. It still works fine, I still shouldn't have to pay for your health care. We got help for hers, but it wasn't all payed for, I still owe money.

But if it wasn't for those tradesmen, with a skill that they worked hard to learn, and if it wasn't for their interest in hematology, and oncology, my daughter would not have gotten the care she did.

Those doctors helped her beat the cancer, (She got sick from having no immune system, that's what we lost her from.) I truly believe that if they didn't earn that money, and say, " Hey, I worked hard to learn this, I will charge for my goods." she wouldn't have gotten expert care.

My dad was a mason for ~30-40 years. He can build a damn good wall, and a damn good house. He could build one for you. Don't you deserve shelter? Doesn't he deserve to get paid what he chooses for his skill and trade? Health care is a need, but I shouldn't have to pay for you to get it. I should be paying those men and women who work hard to learn how to treat people.

Have you ever waited at the MVD? You want those same people to choose when you can be treated?

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Kral_Blbec]

I've already had a ton of people think I'm crazy for going into health care right now. Many, myself included, have remarked that they will leave the field if it goes socialized. Go back to school and do something different entirely.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Fallingcow]

Many, myself included, have remarked that they will leave the field if it goes socialized.

Who's talking about "socializing" the field of medicine? I don't even think Dennis Kucinich is for that.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, if you want to see the real effects of poverty and lack of health care just come to AR, right smack dab in the middle of the good old USA

First, I'm really sorry about your sister; this is a real tragedy. I've never been to AR, and what you describe sounds terrible. However, it truly is the choice of the Arkansas voters - the state of AR voted for McCain-Palin in 2008, and has been a stalwart Republican stronghold in presidential elections (says Wikipedia). That means people there want to maintain the status quo at least, or even repeal of Medicaid/Medicare if the more extreme elements of the Republican party have their way.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Fallingcow]

50 years ago, did those middle class people do anywhere near as much luxury spending as we expect a modern middle class family to do? How big were their houses, on average? How often did they go on vacation, and how much did they spend on them?

I suspect you could easily live by '50s or '60s middle class standards on one moderately high income today.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[spicate]

We pay more, and this creates big companies that develop drugs that get sold for less to the rest of the world - at least it sure feels like it.

Pharmaceuticals only account for about 8% of US health scare spending, and the government already funds a substantial amount of drug development. In fact, the government and nonprofit foundations already fund a huge amount of medical research.

If we can't fix medicare/medicaid we don't have a chance of building a sustainable, effective general health plan.

We don't have a sustainable private system right now either. Insurance companies are doing everything they can to reduce coverage while increasing premiums. How is this better than a public option? One thing Medicare does quite effectively is drive down the costs of care. Ask any doctor. We need a public plan to control costs.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[buswolley]

Troll? I thought it was rather an insightful analogy. We can't afford to let disease spread. Having a piss-poor health system with uninsured, untreated, un-quarantined vectors, the USA remains vulnerable to both natural and intentional attack by bio-weaponry. It is just like fire spreading. Yeah its not my house on fire, but it can spread and come to me. Thus self-interest should lead us to be concerned with the welfare of our fellow human beings.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[jhol13]

Also, does anyone know what the long-term prospects are for the typical European medical system? Aren't they expecting to have solvency issues similar to medicare?

Short answer: no.

Long answer: "we" (not all Europeans are on par) do expect that the price will go up as more and more expensive treatments are developed. Sooner or later we have to deal with that, but at the moment it is not the biggest problem. Neither do we expect diabetes to skyrocket the costs.

I do not know why medicaid/medicare does not work in USA nor why the costs are hugely bigger than anywhere else in the world but it certainly is not "lavish lifestyle".

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[moortak]

http://www.ontheissues.org/2004/Dennis_Kucinich_Health_Care.htm Kucinich was pretty much the only supporter of a single payer universal coverage system.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[moosesocks]

A great majority of Americans have thrown science and logic out the window, and choose instead to vote with their passions and emotions.

If this isn't a social disease, I don't know what is.

Keeping on topic, the healthcare debate is a great example of this, given that the right wing have successfully managed to convince the masses to actively protest against their own interests by spreading a net of thinly-veiled lies and passionate arguments.

What sort of person would actually believe that the president wanted to start "death squads" without actually verifying the claim?

I'd be happy to have a reasoned debate about the issue -- there are actually good arguments to be had on both sides of the issue. However, reason appears to have left the picture entirely.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[johannesg]

while you are reasonably correct on the causes of the great depression, you fail hard.

1. is over already

That doesn't invalidate his point though. It is a list of steps that are taken in order, not a list of conditions that must all be true at the same time.

2. paying off loans isn't what causes contraction of money supply.

If taking out a loan increases the money supply (as argued in a great many documentaries), then paying it off decreases it. Go see "money as debt" or something similar.

3. if you want to single out houses as the only asset, then yes.

4. yes, there's no getting away from the fact companies have taken a hammering

5. most places have had a fall in profits, there are some standouts though. gold producers are one of them.

If you are trying to deny what he's claiming, you are doing a lousy job. And gold producers as standouts... Could that be because investors are no longer willing to invest in coin?

6. here is your big fail. jobless rate in 1933 was 24.9% http://www.bls.gov/opub/cwc/cm20030124ar03p1.htm

Indeed, and that may yet save us. Or it could be a difference in counting methods, or it could be that the hammer is yet to fall for many.

7. here is your biggest problem - doomers like yourself who are still claiming the sky is falling when their are CLEARLY signs of recovery worldwide.

You mean, "the people who caused the problem in the first place are telling us everything is fine now in the faint hope that we will believe them and start spending like crazy again. But given that they have no credibility left, no one actually believes them, thus perpetuating the downwards spiral."

Not that that is a bad thing. Restarting the spending spree will just start another bubble, making the problems worse in the long run.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Anonymous Coward]

People like to make a big deal out of free market medicine failing, but we don't have free market medicine because the actual cost has been abstracted away from so many of the consumers that there's no cost control.

The AMA (state licensing), patents and import restrictions (drug costs), and irrational expectations (excessive torts) do not help. Until licensing and patents go away, I think the rule should be simple: providers can charge any price they want but must charge the same price to all and cannot discriminate on the basis of network affects (like Blue Cross only and no Humana or cash-only patients). The Medicare/Medicaid price should be the same as well. Of course, the tax favortism of employee-paid health care should disappear. McCain got that right. Obama has that wrong (he has that employer as parents and employees as stupid peons model).

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Anonymous Coward]

Aren't many of the people with these diseases coming from countries that have government health care? Didn't help them much.

Also, interesing that you managed to turn an immigration issue into something more in line with your political beliefs. This article has little to do with poverty or healthcare in the U.S. and a lot to do with immigration patterns in the U.S. and our lack of control of who gets into the country. But you ignore that because it doesn't fit the narrative that you choose to accept and because it enables you to interpret the story in a way that re-inforces what you already believe.

Nice.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[MaWeiTao]

This bullshit people love to spout on a regular basis is infuriating. This notion that the middle class is disappearing. I find it particularly absurd what people define as poor. Are you poor because you're struggling to put food on the table or because you can't rush out to buy the latest offerings from Apple on a yearly basis? I find, far too often that it's the latter.

The vast majority of people in this country own things that we practically unimaginable a few decades ago; large-format flat screen tvs, computers, mobile phones all kinds of media players and the list goes on. Not only do they own these things, but many own several of each. Home ownership isn't that far off of the all-time high. Most families own more than one car. The size of the average home has risen from a bit over 900sq-ft in 1950 to just over 2000sq-ft today. I could go on and on describing how much better off and how much more widespread the middle-class is today compared to any time in the past.

I'll tell you what the real problem is. People are spoiled. They hit a rough spot and suddenly it's the end of the world. They put themselves in debt, have a hard time with the bills because of it, then they start crying poverty. At the height of the housing meltdown I recall sob story after sob story about some person or another losing their home. Only to learn that they overbought and made constant poor decisions with their finances. We've got this entitlement culture, constantly encouraged by the government, where people believe they should be guaranteed a life in the lap of luxury.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Anonymous Coward]

ass.

If your neighbor's house is on fire, would you let your house burn down too be cause you don't want to pay for a fire department?

Health care, much like fire protection, curbs the spread of disease.

Seriously, healthcare is no different than having a standing army. It is for the national defense.

You are a Troll, because you criticise the current US situation. Posting AC: been there, done that. I find you insightful however.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[MadUndergrad]

It represents a large slice of a doctor's salary, yes, but last I heard it represented only about 0.5% of healthcare costs overall.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[jd]

It makes very little difference whether it is unprecedented or not. Diseases need ONE carrier. That is sufficient.

Start looking at the numbers (over a million undocumented, uninsured and entirely legal US citizens live homeless in the New York subway system, and most cities don't bother to try and estimate any more).

Now look at the total in the US who are considered to be living below a living wage (which is a good deal higher than the so-called "poverty line" but is still the minimum for basic nutritional and environmental concerns). It's getting on for 85% of the KNOWN population!

Since the unknown population will certainly lack any kind of healthcare, have a dangerously unhealthy diet, and be living in unsanitary conditions, the population at high risk is going to be much higher than that 85%.

And, no, the suburbs won't be safe. Many people in the suburbs work in cities, and when in cities are likely to come in contact with one or more people who are at high risk. Airborne disease doesn't require more than a single cough.

Swine Flu started in ONE small village in Mexico. It wasn't even looked at by heath officials there until it had spread for months. After Mexico declared it had a problem, ambulance workers and hospitals refused to take anyone with flu symptoms and health inspectors refused to monitor infected areas. Result - it spread out of control.

Health officials in the US largely ignored it even after people started dropping dead. It's now a raging pandemic that was entirely preventable. There were MANY opportunities to stop it, by Mexico and by the US, but cowardice in Mexico and greed in the US resulted in inaction.

Once upon a time, West Nile Virus was practically unknown in the US. It is now a killer that claims lives from all parts of society. Yes, the poor suffer more, but the poor don't suffer exclusively.

The MRSA "superbug" (which kills more hospital patients than any other single cause) originated in ONE hosptial in Australia and can be traced to ONE patient carrying the disease from ward to ward. ONE carrier and we now have a bug that kills globally.

People across society WILL die from these new diseases, and when they do, the newspapers will doubtless claim nobody could have foretold it happening, and that the country was powerless anyway.

From the days of Typhoid Mary, we've known of the dangers even a single carrier has posed. And every malnourished person, every uninsured person, every person unable to take an hour off work to see a doctor for economic reasons, or those who won't for religious reasons, they are ALL potential carriers. Every one of them.

We're damned lucky that the rare diseases that have broken out in the US and Europe in the last hundred years have been relatively difficult to transmit. Marburg being one of the deadlier.

Spanish Flu wasn't a rare disease, just a very deadly mutation of a common one. If you include that, and the hundreds of millions it killed, then we're still damned lucky. That was still before widespread travel, antibiotic-resistant bacteria and antiviral-resistant viruses.

History says there need by just ONE contageous carrier for a global catastrophe. The failure to provide adequate healthcare to hundreds of millions of Americans increases the risk hundreds of millions of times over. The failure to research "less profitable" diseases (the heliobacter-caused stomach ulcers being a classic example) increases the risks even to those who ARE insured and ARE going to the doctors when needed.

And the failure to provide adequate medical care to poorer nations just creates fertile breeding grounds for even deadlier diseases.

Humanity's epitath will likely read: Suicide By Microbe.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Spy Handler]

The US isn't all first world.

Quite true, actually pretty much unavoidable when large portions of your population just recently came from 3rd world.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Dionysus]

Those doctors helped her beat the cancer, (She got sick from having no immune system, that's what we lost her from.) I truly believe that if they didn't earn that money, and say, " Hey, I worked hard to learn this, I will charge for my goods." she wouldn't have gotten expert care.

I'm curious to why you think experts in countries with socialized medicine don't get paid.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Jedi Alec]

I do not know why medicaid/medicare does not work in USA nor why the costs are hugely bigger than anywhere else in the world but it certainly is not "lavish lifestyle".

My guess would be:
a) in quite a few european countries health insurance was(or still is) state run and not intended to turn a profit which keeps prices low(unless your government suffers from banana republic style corruption)
b) we're not inclined to sue doctors and hospitals quite as much as in the US, bringing a lot less lawyers that all want their cut to the deal. In fact I'd be mighty curious to see a comparison of lawyers per patient for the various countries ;-)

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[jd]

France, Canada, Britain and Japan, together with America, are the top 5 leading nations in healthcare. I doubt any of them get third-world "discounts". Aside from possibly Japan, all have horribly bad eating habits - obesity in Britain isn't that much lower than that in the United States.

But let's look at the figures. Britain, PER CAPITA, has half the rate of heart attacks and spends half as much as the US. The four nations I mention pay, on average, 50 cents for every $200 spent on health-care in the US. I'm not sure about Japan, but the rest ALL manage to have public health services.

Now, let's look at the other side, competition. Britain has the NHS which is universal. It also has BUPA (private healthcare that's so profitable it can even afford to run its own damn hospitals), Standard Life, Orchid, HealthTrust, PatientChoice, AXA PPP, Essential Healthcare, HSA, Norwich Union Healthcare, General & Medical,... In short, not what I'd call a shortage.

So, go on. Tell me how a public health service would "ruin" the private insurance companies. Convince me BUPA is just an illusion. Go ahead. Persuade me that Japan is getting medicines "on the cheap" as part of foreign aid shipments to poor nations. Convince me that even those medical marvels invented in Canada, Britain or Japan are more expensive in America solely in order to recoup the costs.

Yes, the top 5% of Americans CAN pay more, and prices have been adjusted to maximize profits not availability, so cater TO those 5%. What about the other 95%? Since America has never been able to adjust the ratio, it will always be 5:95, and that means it doesn't matter what the 95% earn. The prices will simply go up because the profits are all with the 5%.

You happen to be one of the 5%. So is everyone on Slashdot, because nobody in the 95% is spending time talking. Me, well, although I'm in the top 5% as well (or I wouldn't be here), I have medical conditions which make getting insurance a real pain and which mean I spend $250+ a month to stay alive because insurance won't touch me.

I know three people with spinal injuries who would LOVE to get away with something so cheap and none of them have my earning power. They each spend more in a week than I do in a month - those weeks they have enough money to spend on such luxuries. With those kinds of injuries, most work is right out of the question, which means you either have to start off very rich OR live your life on the bread line.

Assuming the people I know are roughly representative of the population, traumatic injuries and life-threatening conditions are likely more common amongst those 95% than serious illness is amongst the 5%.

When I look at America as it exists today, I see a world that is socially backwards, something out of a Dickens novel. Britain hasn't had workhouses for the poor since the Victorian era and abolished slavery in 1770. Even the fruit-pickers in Britain have unions and have a far better standard of living than those in the "land of opportunity".

I happen to think Britain is regressive and repressed in many other ways, and that America has got quite a bit right, but American society is so.... backwards! It's barely better than it was when the Mayflower arrived. In some ways, it might even be worse - I'm fairly sure they didn't have a 1% prison population.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[DerekLyons]

Are you just a poorly designed AI that spits out buzzwords more or less at random? Because your posts get steadily more confused and less connected with reality.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Anonymous Coward]

It actually is quite possible, in terms of natural selection, that in the long run, this would mean a more successful nation. Because only those who are successful, would survive.

Haha yea, those who inherited money and status or got it via sleazy practics - the corrupt, greedy, immoral - are better people. Let's just kill anybody else and see how that turns out. Hey I know something, slavery is good, it's natural selection and free market! What you are against slavery? Well damn, you are a terrorist! :D

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[jd]

In Europe, where students get grants or (at worst) zero-interest loans, that's almost true. Britain has, I believe, over a 50% take-up rate of higher education, although I believe it had a peak of 65%-70%.

America? Well, for starters, the population isn't that well-known. Lots of rural communities and religious communities have a dubious reputation on things like documentation. That makes it hard to get accurate statistics.

Those who do go to University in America are faced with crippling loans that will take much of the person's life to pay off completely, especially if they go for a Masters or PhD. Doctors - well, part of the reason they charge so much is they've got 10+ years of accumulated loans. A few doctors become rich, most probably die in debt.

And who are those who go to University? Well, we can eliminate almost all pacifists - many States WILL NOT take students who have refused "selective service". (Though what's selective about something that's mandatory beats me. It's a bloody draft if you have consequences for refusing.)

We can eliminate most of the 95% of those who are "poor" from the list as well, as poor people can't afford quality education or quality study-time after hours.

The mega-rich don't bother with education, since they can get jobs via the Good Old Boy's Network.

So you're left with moderately rich Republicans, extremists who can get into a religious University, Democrats who have sold out, and those who are just there to take part in the hazings and fraternity drug-outs.

In short, almost nobody I'd give the time of day to. Since I regard almost that entire crowd as a bunch of amoral washouts, the exact number is unimportant. They're not capable of doing anything worthwhile with the education they get, so it doesn't matter how many.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[dnaumov]

I think the collapse of the US middle class is in large part the fault of the middle class itself. In a world of increasing sophistication, most people ignored it and didn't adapt to it, and they didn't instill into their children the importance of education. The idea that one can live very comfortably simply being unskilled labor was a foolish one that idea only worked for a generation or two.

I will openly admit I don't understand that much about the crysis the US is going through, however I do understand the problems of the country where I live, Finland. Ironically, our problems seem to be the exact oppposite. We don't have anywhere near the amount of "raw" labor we need. The higher education system has been over-advertised and overhyped for over a decade and when suddenly big business realised that the wage levels are absurd and started shipping these jobs out to China, India and the western bloc, we ended up with problems. These people raise their nose high up when offered a manual labor job and would rather sit on their asses taking unemployment benefits instead.

Meanwhile, the amount of available manual labor jobs continues to grow and so does the salary level provided by these jobs. If you have some experience doing wall painting, working in the LVI (warmth, water, air) area, laying and fixing pipes, etc etc, you have absolutely no problem getting a job that pays 3000 euro/month or more, which provides for a very nice quality of living in Finland.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[bothemeson]

Lots of posts here with '4' or '5' - few as well considered.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[bothemeson]

With your attitude why wait?

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Anonymous Coward]

I had lymphoma and went through the UK system. I had paid up front through taxes, it is a type of insurance but without the profit motive. I got the best treatment from dedicated doctors and nurses. The treatment was the most up to date. I was also admitted directly onto the haematology ward when I got an blood infection. Their dedicated microbiologist cultured the infection and identified the correct antibiotic

I paid nothing at the point of delivery, there was no one from the insurance company telling me what I could or could not have.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[oji-sama]

What (s)he said. Also, while the experts do get paid, if you really want to see that the treatment is paid completely by you, nothing prevents you going to a private doctor and paying some more. Although unfortunately some of those private treatments are also subsidized... mmmm. Perhaps one should go and get the treatment abroad...

(And nothing prevents the experts from starting a private clinic either)

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oddly in the UK even the private section is sometimes not for profit eg BUPA. It comes from a time when insurance was a way of spreading the risk not screwing you clients. May insurance schemes were mutual and some still are, like the COOP.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[hairyfeet]

And you think VOTING is gonna solve things? Allow me to say BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA! What country do YOU live in pal? Because in case you ain't noticed we have been "Coke VS Pepsi" for at least the past 45+ years, probably longer. Since Obama won anyway, their vote didn't matter, correct? In 4 years you can come back here and see that NOTHING has changed, just as it didn't for Bush, Clinton, Bush Sr, Reagan, Carter, etc.

You see your pissy little vote just can't compete with legalized bribery. Sorry but it is true. if we actually got the will of the people we would be out of Iraq by now, Pot would be legal, we would have affordable health care, etc. But all it takes is the head of a multinational corporation walking into an office with a blank check and yours and millions of other voters desires mean absolutely jack shit. We have been Democrat at the local and state level for damned near 100 years, don't seem to have changed much.

Perhaps you should enjoy this bit by the late Bill Hicks, who was from AR BTW, and notice the even though the man has been dead for 20 years the bit is STILL true. And I would argue that short of completely tossing out the current system and starting over it will be true 50 years from now. That is of course if the teaming masses of ever poorer people don't eventually get tired of it and burn the thing to the ground. Funny how no democracy in history has lasted for more than a few centuries. Most likely because they end up just like us-hopelessly corrupted and tilted against the ever growing numbers of the poor by the ever smaller super wealthy at the top.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Trepidity]

I'm willing to believe that. But it's only worth voting the Democrats out of office on that issue if there's reason to believe that it would happen if the Republicans were in power. But the Republicans controlled both branches of government, with sizable majorities, for six years, and it didn't happen. Instead, we got a ridiculous government-funded prescription drugs entitlement in Medicare Part D---the exact opposite of any attempt at cost reduction.

To argue against the current party in power on an issue in a way that's convincing, you need to find an issue on which there is some viable alternative party that has a better position on that issue.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Anonymous Coward]

I paid nothing at the point of delivery, there was no one from the insurance company telling me what I could or could not have.

Worse, instead there are politicians saying what you can't have. There are limits to public health care too.

Nevertheless, public health care is a luxury which we now are lucky that we can afford for everyone in a developed nation.

Those who say we should not pay for other's healt care are free to move to a developing nation where millions die from starvation and disease because they can't afford better.

I want to live in a nation, a world even, where *everyone* has shelter, food and health care.
How it was paid for is irrelevant!

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Anonymous Coward]

And [I]who[/I] was it that said "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." ? Why, it was Benjamin Franklin...
It's quite sad how far we've strayed from the wisdom that founded our country...

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the problem is FILTHY THIRD WORLDERS.
And you all know it.

THIRD WORLD PEOPLE = THIRD WORLD COUNTRY.

Why didn't this happen 100 years ago, when America was 95% WHITE? Exactly the same environment.
Why didn't this happen when the founding fathers came to America? They and their descendents lived in REAL poverty.

What you call 'poverty' today is NOTHING compared to that.

Filthy third world scum are destroying your country, and you'd literally rather DIE than even talk about it.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well it's a good thing she died than have to live knowing she has a prick as a father. Actually as she laid there dying she probably thought maybe you should have been the dickhead who's number has come up and see you with your holier than thou "I got mine so you get yours or die". Hey buddy, did you know that doctors in other countries where there is universal healthcare, the doctors DO get paid? Wow, and they do say the pricks always live longer. Seriously, I hope you get very painful colon cancer so you can die like an asshole too.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[CrimsonAvenger]

Well, half the voters don't even believe in public health. If the carriers of an epidemic are deemed unworthy of health care, the free market solution is to wait until everybody gets it, then treat those with money.

Hmm, this problem primarily affects the poor. The poor are already covered by public health-care (Medicaid) and have been so for decades, so I don't see how this is relevant.

Other than as an indictment of public health-care, since the problem has arisen since the introduction of public health-care for the poor.

Note, by the way, that passing Obama's version of public health-care would have little, if any, affect on this problem, since the current health-cre reform bills would do little, if anything, to bring more doctors to the out of the way parts of the USA where these issues seem to be appearing.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[CrimsonAvenger]

No money = unable to get help if no government healthcare.

It's really that simple.

Which is probably why we've had Medicaid in place for longer than most /.'ers have been alive. The poor (those primarily affected by these problems) have had government health-care for most, if not all, of their lives

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[CrimsonAvenger]

No one votes against national defense.

F-22.

When Clinton was President, we drew down our Army to 12 active divisions (one of the reasons the Guard has had to spend so much time in Iraq) and 12 Carrier groups. The post-WW2 military budget cuts that set the stage for the Korean War's opening moves.

Those aren't the only examples, just the most significant since WW2.

In other words, people vote against national defense all the time, often successfully.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[CrimsonAvenger]

The last time major healthcare reform happened in the US was over 40 years ago.

That would be when we introduced free publicly funded health-care for the poor, right? The ones who seem to be having problems with third world diseases now?

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Marcos Eliziario]

Read GP's entire post before running over his/her dead body with your SUV. He clearly mentioned that money is not a good way to measure the fittest. And of course, your example is a bit extreme and doesn't invalidate the former argument. Remember, nature indeed play dices, we are talking about probabilities, marginal issues and trends here, not black and white things. Don't accuse me! I am not mother nature.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[CrimsonAvenger]

Start looking at the numbers (over a million undocumented, uninsured and entirely legal US citizens live homeless in the New York subway system, and most cities don't bother to try and estimate any more).

Citation?

Somehow I doubt that one person in eight in New York City is living homeless in the New York subways, but I'm sure you'll be able to prove me wrong by providing the source of your information...

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[gwern]

> A successful person currently between jobs (thus no insurance) getting hit by a car driven by a stupid person and being unable to pay the bill to save his life is NOT NATURAL SELECTION. Sure it is. Natural selection depends on a *differential* rate of reproduction between possessors of allele-variants. If successful persons die less/reproduce more even at the tiny rate of 1%, so small that pointless anecdotes and examples like yours are irrelevant, the associated allele variants will still win out in the long run! Evolution simply could not work if an allele had to be 100% perfect at preventing death, in your absurd binary example. (There are even full probabilistic models of how long a run it will take for a 1% or n% variation to reach fixation; but those equations are no doubt too complex for someone who has obviously only a pop science understanding of evolutionary theory.)

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Marcos Eliziario]

May I add that as a Brazilian I am deeply disgusted with you, the Americans, having stop exporting jobs for us and had instead sent all of them to China. Actually, not only the jobs, but the technology, the services, the whole fucking thing.

We never had nukes pointed at you. China had/has.

IMHO, you deserve what you have now by your poor choice of partners.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Marcos Eliziario]

Putting it on other terms
If you could go back to 1960 with a dozen humble 386's, loaded with the OS, compiler, and full of manuals, you'd be absurdly rich selling it to the powers of that age. Or you'd be instakilled. Either way, the mortgage would no longer be a problem to you.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Marcos Eliziario]

I hate to tell it in such way, but your post tells me more of American's absolutely insane eating habits than anything else.

I think it's a bit rude to tell it, but eating only processed food, is expensive, and a sure way to lack a good nutrition and leading to problems such as what you have mentioned. I can't even fathom how do you manage to eat canned food.

Have you ever thought about eating vegetables? If you do, you could even support small scale local farming, thus, generating more jobs, depending less on fuel to transport processed food.

I agree that, of course, Brazil has not the same standard of living as the US, but definitely, our cities are not rotting (on the contrary, we are slowly improving), and even our poor have access to a healthy nutrition with vegetables and fresh foods.

Our biggest health problem nowadays is obesity. And that obesity has been caused exactly because we started mimicking your eating standards.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Anonymous Coward]

Your assumption is flat out wrong. Populations with high mortality due to disease tend to switch from K reproduction strategies to r reproduction strategies. What this means is that if you are unsure that any one of your children will live to give you grandchildren, you have more children to increase the likelihood that you will have some grandchildren. Therefore untreated diseases and epidemics paradoxically lead to an INCREASE in population in the long run rather than a decrease, as long as those diseases don't lead to actual extinction.

The two most powerful tools for switching human populations from r reproduction to K reproduction have been shown to be widespread medical care and available education/employment for women. Ironically, these two things are fought tooth and nail by those who complain about minorities "outbreeding" whites.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[BeanThere]

Um, you neglect to mention that Britain has also historically managed to use its strong Pound to recruit thousands of the top, educated doctors from other countries in the world (like South Africa), making good doctors affordable for Brits. Average UK wages = excellent wages for foreigners. America doesn't have that luxury in the same way. The UK probably won't have it for much longer either, as emerging major global economies start to balance out against sloth-ing Western economies.

In order to lure the best people into becoming doctors, you need to pay them well and allow them to charge market rates for their services, and having a socialized system doesn't allow for that.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[jo_ham]

And, had that happened to you and your daughter here in the UK, you would have received exactly the same care, you just wouldn't have to pay for it, other than through your NI taxes, which are considerably less than US insurance premiums (when the actual cost of the premium is considered).

There are a lot a myths about universal healthcare, all of them regularly circulated by people like Faux News and the right wing shouty talk radio hosts, and Big Pharma and Big Medical who have a vested interest in keeping the US system the way it is.

The myth that doctors, nurses, researchers and other medical professions under a Universal system don't get paid properly for their "trade" (in the UK, doctors are handsomely paid for their work) is a total lie. The myth that "the government decides whether you get treated" is also an utter fabrication.

I am very sorry your daughter died and that sometimes, even with the current advances in medicine, that people sometimes can't be saved, but universal care is not the demon that the bought-and-paid for interests in the US advertise it as.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of folks in the states are Christians with a strong Calvinist bent. Basically, if you don't work your ass off and bring home the millions, your are unworthy scum. The sooner you die, the better. After that, God won't have any use for your sorry ass either. Charming, isn't it? Feel the love.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Anonymous Coward]

If I know you want me to die I kill you first.

No debate.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[AirRaven]

In order to lure the best people into becoming doctors, you need to pay them well and allow them to charge market rates for their services, and having a socialized system doesn't allow for that.

Really? Do you have any idea how much British Doctors are paid?

Have a gander at their pay levels on the NHS Website.
They're extremely well paid, by British standards. Heck- better qualified doctors get well into six figures per annum.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[sjames]

I agree the system is deeply screwed up. I don't think that particular screw up is a valid excuse for the middle class disappearing.

The fact in the U.S. is that the GDP per capita is still increasing, but the median income seems to be falling. Follow the money and we will see who to blame.

That the economy is somehow an independent entity that wants what it wants is a nightmare nobody seems willing or able to awaken from. If the result wasn't war, crime, and people dying of curable disease while others accumulate beyond their ability to ever consume and much of our labor is wasted as busywork ( often in the form of expending $20 worth of effort to make sure somebody doesn't get $10 worth of "undeserved" reward), then all of this would be really funny.

Consider, the stimulus is expected to cost !3 trillion dollars. So naturally we should give each man, woman, and child in the U.S. $10,000 and call it done right? That's a lot of loan defaults that never happen, a lot of cash that suddenly becomes available in the economy, people start feeling that they can safely spend again and get things rolling, right?

Of course not, because we can never ever let the masses have an "undeserved" reward, we need to TAKE from them and give to the wealthiest for some reason (that escapes me at the moment). The most we can ever do is momentarily take a little less in the form of taxes from a limited segment of the population (because, of course those too poor to be required to pay taxes are the least deserving of all for some reason that also escapes me at the moment).

All inflation means is that it starts to make more economic sense to employ people to make things here and sell abroad. The people who really get hurt are the ones who wanted to (and were able to) make their money work for them so they wouldn't have to work themselves. That is, the non-producers.

So long as unemployment is kept low or even negative (rather than being artificially increased when things get "too good" for the working class), moderate inflation need not hurt most people at all.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Blakey Rat]

Amen.

Thank you for bringing some sanity to that horribly cynical and pessimistic first post.

Slashdotters: the modern world, the world we live in *right now*, is better than any point in human history in every measurable way. That is a simple fact.

Yes, you're concerned about people below the poverty line now. So am I. But you have to realize that modern Americans in *poverty* have far more luxuries than the richest man on earth 200 years ago.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Gaian-Orlanthii]

You're saying you'd stand back and watch others suffer because your sense of selfishness is more important? Spoken like a true anonymous coward.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Blakey Rat]

I'm not all doom and gloom... Forty years ago we had a middle class. We don't anymore.

We don't?

Either you've raised "low class" up to the 200k income level, or you've lowered "high class" down to about 30k. What the fuck are you talking about "we have no middle class?" What am I then? What about my neighbors? Hell, my entire town? In a town of about 8000, we have... maybe 50 I'd consider wealthy, and a few hundred in trailer parks I'd consider poor. Everybody else is middle class, by any reasonable definition of the term.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Anonymous Coward]

The medication available abroad that is necessary to combat 3rd world parasites is not available here in the US. Even if we have health care for these people, we won't be able to get them the needed medication. We NEED international aid to combat these problems while the FDA clears the meds for use in the US. Hmmm... a bureaucracy has crippled our health care system's ability to help our people. Go figure.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[qbzzt]

Well, half the voters don't even believe in public health. If the carriers of an epidemic are deemed unworthy of health care, the free market solution is to wait until everybody gets it, then treat those with money.

That would explain why we don't have a Center for Disease Control for things like infectious diseases and plagues.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[debrain]

Good post.

You happen to be one of the 5%. So is everyone on Slashdot, because nobody in the 95% is spending time talking. Me, well, although I'm in the top 5% as well (or I wouldn't be here), I have medical conditions which make getting insurance a real pain and which mean I spend $250+ a month to stay alive because insurance won't touch me.

Interesting fact: The richest people in the United States still have a lower life expectancy than even the poorest people of Japan, Canada, and Britain.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[girlintraining]

Are you just a poorly designed AI that spits out buzzwords more or less at random? Because your posts get steadily more confused and less connected with reality.

Yes, and the slashdot moderators are also part of the AI, which is why I always get high marks. The matrix has you man. Better start running.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Cstryon]

I don't doubt that the UK does it right. I guess my side seemed kind of broad. My government can't do a lot of things right, what makes them think they can do socialized health care right.

We already have public options. Here in AZ we have AHCCCS. We have Medicare/Medicaid, and a number of other options per state. All of these have problems.

My country has a history, once they are given power, they abuse it, or screw it up, and point the blame somewhere else. I guess I haven't a problem with socialized health care, but I do have a problem with the way my government handles the things they already have control over.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Minimalist360]

Medicare underpays and private insurers are overcharged. Go to your local hospital, ask them how prices are calculated and why you can't get an answer to "how much will this procedure cost" up front. If you are polite, keep at it, and show a basic understanding of how pricing works, the equivalent of the controller just might tell you all about it. It's actually pretty fascinating and should clear up your idea that medicate drives down the costs of care.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[CodeBuster]

Instead, we got a ridiculous government-funded prescription drugs entitlement in Medicare Part D---the exact opposite of any attempt at cost reduction.

Which the party base widely loathed. Let me say that again: the prescription drug benefit was a boondoggle that was not widely liked within the party (compare with Clinton and NAFTA on the Democratic side). Bush did it as part of an ill considered move to pander to lower income seniors who largely vote Democratic anyway. Besides, prescription drugs really aren't all that expensive as long as you don't demand the latest patented drugs (which are rarely without acceptable substitutes) and if people do want those $20 per pill name brand lifestyle drugs then they can damn well pay for it themselves.

you need to find an issue on which there is some viable alternative party that has a better position on that issue.

The party in power is NOT immune from criticism simply because their peers aren't much better.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Beyond_GoodandEvil]

Furthermore, I would not call a machinist "unskilled labor".
Well, since the machinists at Boeing wanted to add the guys driving the little golf carts all over the shop floor to their machinists union, then some machinists may be considered unskilled.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Vellmont]

It actually is quite possible, in terms of natural selection, that in the long run, this would mean a more successful nation

Right. All you have to do is wait thousands of years for natural selection to just magically solve the problem.

And the second point is, that it would of course be even *more* successful, to pull them *all* up. But is that possible?

Of course. It's already happened elsewhere. Shouldn't the most wealthy country in the world be able to prevent disease in it's own country that only normally occurs in extremely poor countries?

My personal opinion is, that this is intentional, because 1. our government is not *that* dumb, and 2. look at who profits from this most.

Where does this idea that there's this single entity called "The Government" that's making decisions? There is no "The Government" in that sense. It's really just a collection of people who make individual decisions. Some of whose decisions carry more weight than others. I'll guarantee you that the people in public health know this was a distinct possibility. But the legislators making funding decisions answer to different bosses. I guess you could call it intentional, if by intentional you mean the people in power just didn't really care.

The problem isn't with "The Government", the problem is with "The People", or at least a very vocal portion of them who only seem to care about "low low taxes" and also the people who scream about the illegal aliens access to government services. Who do you think is going to hurt the most when taxes are cut and services are lowered as a result? There's no need to invent some big conspiracy here. The causes are quite obvious to anyone who pays attention.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Quakerjono]

I'm not sure it's acceptable to make judgments of this sort (a quarter of the population was living in poverty in 1959 versus 10 to 15% since the mid-60s) specifically because the way poverty was measured changed in the mid-60s with the institution of the absolute poverty threshold by Johnson and the adoption of Orshansky Poverty Thresholds by the US Office of Economic Opportunity in '65. Functionally, you're just comparing rates because they both have a percent symbol in them as those actual numbers were not calculated using the same metric.

A better way to compare a family living in poverty in 1959 (or 1935, for that matter), would be to look at their relative purchasing power. In 1959, a dollar was "worth more" than it is today. A 1959 dollar, which in 1959 would buy a dollars worth of goods, will today only buy $0.12 worth of goods today. This 89% erosion in the actual purchasing power means that a family living in poverty in 1959 could still be argued to be living better off than a family living below the poverty level today.

There are, of course, major problems with this as well. This highlights the central issue that no one seems to be addressing: current mathematical models are insufficient when it comes to representing the actual situation "on the ground". Thus, you can say, "Well, things were worse in the 1950s because poverty was at 25% then," but clearly there are nearly 40 million people in this country alone who would disagree with you on the basis of their access to health care. While numbers certainly have a place in economics, any model that fails to incorporate an existential axis will be flawed, at best.

Economics is, in many ways, a creation of will; what is believed to be true might as well be true because everyone (or at least those sharing the belief) will behave as if it's true. So, while it's hard to objectively say things are "better" now because of a lower poverty rate, it's also difficult to to say they are worse using a strict number comparison.

What can be said, however, and what is indeed disturbing is the calcification of economic stratification in US society. While times may have been hard in the 1950s, it was still possible to extract oneself from one economic level and be upwardly mobile. As a previous commenter pointed out, this may have be due, in part, to an unsustainable labor-focused market. However, simply because one model is unsustainable, doesn't mean other models can't rise to take its place. Those new models are not appearing, thus it is arguable that it is more difficult now for a person born into poverty to climb out of it than it was for a person born into poverty in the 1950s to change their fortune. The American Equation of "Hard Work = Increased Fortune" is no longer true.

This can be seen in a recent study by Berkeley professor Emmanuel Saez where he shows that income inequality is at an all time high for the nation.

So the issue is not so much poverty level, but lack of mobility and all that comes with not being able to move into higher economic classes. As long as this persists, poverty levels are essentially meaningless.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[CAIMLAS]

And I suppose you want people to believe that these problems - as well as the diseases - are largely the fault of the USA, aka Americans, right? Not completely true, or honest.

I recently saw a handful of maps displaying statistical information with regard to various "3rd world" diseases, dividing it up by both state and county. Unless you're paying attention to demographics, you'd never expect the results: these diseases are primarily occurring in southern border states, in counties where there is a significant "Southern" influence. Likewise, many counties in NY and NJ, with high illegal populations, are having these problems.

These diseases aren't due to the decline of the US, per se. They're introduced diseases which come here and spread amongst illegals and those they interact with. This is the kind of thing that the nuts like Pat Buchanan talk about; unfortunately, at least on things like this and the dangers of illegal immigration, they are correct. We would be negligent to ignore their presentation of facts due to their ideological skewer.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[russotto]

May I add that as a Brazilian I am deeply disgusted with you, the Americans, having stop exporting jobs for us and had instead sent all of them to China. Actually, not only the jobs, but the technology, the services, the whole fucking thing.

Relax, dude, we're trying to make that up to you by exporting offshore oil production to you.

We never had nukes pointed at you. China had/has.

You never had any pointed at the USSR either, and China did, so it all evens out.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[russotto]

by having tons of cheap, food that lacks real nutritive value, and that contributes to the growing obesity problem of the country?

I wish you touchy-feely leftist anti-corporate fanatics would learn the meaning of the words you use. You've already stolen "organic", you don't get "nutritive".

if poverty was mitigated, obtaining healthcare wouldn't be a problem for low-income or out of work people. yet, i hear about people with full-time employment who can't afford their health plans.

If employer-paid healthcare plans were eliminated, obtaining healthcare wouldn't be a whole lot cheaper for most people. It's the double separation between payer and patient which has allowed health care costs to spiral out of control.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[CAIMLAS]

I agree with you that healthcare is like a fire or police department. Neither of those, however, should be (or have historically been) federally funded. They, like healthcare, should be a local issue (if we're going to cast it in the light of a security issue at all).

And what are we talking about when we're talking about 'healthcare'? Are we talking about prescription drugs for people who have lived poorly (diabetes) when they refuse to change their lifestyle? Should the fireman risk his existence to save the idiot who refuses to leave his burning home?

If we're talking about epidemics and healthcare when it's a triage or similar situation (emergencies), certainly. But a pregnancy isn't an emergency, and neither is a preventable disease brought on by self-abuse.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[jasno]

Exactly.

50 years ago, my grandfather was the sole breadwinner for a family of 5. He was a tool and die man. They lived well and he even managed to accumulate quite a bit of savings.

But he didn't spend a dime on netflix, cable, long-distance telephone service, or a god-dammed iPhone. He bought modest cars and the family rarely dined out. He didn't pay someone else to wash his car, or mow his lawn, or fix his cars.

How many people could live that like today, without being absolutely forced to?

I've got in-laws who are on the verge of losing their house, yet they absolutely refuse to give up air conditioning, cable TV, and their second refrigerator.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Anonymous Coward]

To argue against the current party in power on an issue in a way that's convincing, you need to find an issue on which there is some viable alternative party that has a better position on that issue.

Er, what? Using your line of rhetoric, saying "We can't oppose the ideas of the Nazis because there is no viable political alternative" in 1930s Germany makes clear, logical sense.

The matter of healthcare is largely an ideological one. I think everyone agrees it's fucked. But without a fundamental system change, you aren't going to fix it with "healthcare reform". There is simply too much "medical establishment" in every element of our life: myriads of state and federal laws, schools, accreditation, and so on all supports the current "drugs and doctors" medical scheme that supports drugging people for little ailments on up through invasive procedures for birth. It's really not something that can be 'fixed' so much as thrown out so we can start over: there's entirely too much vested interest in the status quo by those who control the power.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Rayonic]

We don't have a middle class anymore? What the hell are you smoking and where can I get some?

Whatever he's smoking apparently makes you have depressing delusions, so are you really sure you want some?

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Fallingcow]

That's just who pays. Doctors and hospitals would remain (to more or less the same extent as they are now) private.

Single-payer doesn't mean the government takes over the health care field. The only major country I can think of where the government directly runs the hospitals is the UK, and their health care system is arguably almost as bad as ours (in some ways), which is why no-one is suggesting we do what they've done.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Citizen of Earth]

Almost all medical problems happen by chance

So your theory is that obese smokers are just incredibly unlucky?

I agree with the rest of your post, but the "unlucky" part is nonsense. Better to say that "Some medical problems happen by chance, and they could strike you. What will you do if your private insurer doesn't feel like paying? Your choices are bankruptcy or death."

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Citizen of Earth]

One thing Medicare does quite effectively is drive down the costs of care.

Private insurance inherently creates a price spiral. First there is the 20% profit that that insurance companies skim off the top -- that is dead weight that is completely lost to the healthcare system. Then there is the profit motive of both doctors and insurance companies. Care providers can raise their fees because insurance will pay for it, and insurers make more money if their premiums are high. This viscous circle causes Americans to pay twice as much as they should of the quality of care they receive. And they're proud to do so, since this vast sum that comes off their paycheques isn't specifically a "tax", even though it functions in exactly the same way.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. "Fucking asshole" doesn't even begin to describe you.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Citizen of Earth]

So give it a few more years, with our infrastructure rotting and our cities falling apart, and then we'll look just like Brazil! Yay USA!

You forgot to mention your crushing public and personal debt.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[StopKoolaidPoliticsT]

But the Republicans controlled both branches of government, with sizable majorities, for six years, and it didn't happen. Instead, we got a ridiculous government-funded prescription drugs entitlement in Medicare Part D---the exact opposite of any attempt at cost reduction.

I despise Medicare D as much as any other conservative type... But the GOP didn't have a "sizeable majority" in Congress for 6 of Bush's 8 years.

2001 (107th Congress): Senate starts out 50R/50D with Cheney having the tie breaker. Jim Jeffords leaves the R and caucuses with D, making it 49R/50D until Paul Wellstone dies in late 2002. The Rs didn't even have control for most of this session (everyone seems to forget that).

The House is split roughly 221R/211D for the entire session. A small majority, but certainly not a sizeable one.

2003 (108th Congress): Senate is split 51R/49D. Barely a majority, definitely not enough to even try to break a guaranteed Democrat filibuster if they try to reform tort law.

The House is a ballpark of 227R/207D. A decent majority, but no guarantee that they can ram things through. It also requires the Senate to not stall in filibuster if they do.

2005 (109th Congress): Senate 55R/45D. A good majority, but they still can't invoke cloture, so Democrats will stall tort reform.

The House is about 230R/201D. A sizeable majority, but still meaningless because of the Senate.

2007 (110th Congress: Senate 49R/51D. Democrat control

House: 201R/233D. Democrat control and pretty much a flip of the last House.

Compare that to Obama's Congress: Senate: 40R/60D (filibuster proof) House: 178R/255D. The Republicans NEVER enjoyed numbers anywhere near that... yet the meme is still that they dominated Congress for 6 years of Bush's administrations. They only had marginal control for 4, especially when you take into account the threat of filibuster in the Senate.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[spicate]

A great majority of Americans have thrown science and logic out the window, and choose instead to vote with their passions and emotions.

Can you cite a time when the majority of Americans used science and logic to decide how to vote? I think you're overestimating the decision-making powers of generations past.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[b4upoo]

Perhaps a nasty plague or two might enabled national health care to get really important to the right wing clowns.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[ventonegro]

This makes no sense. Doctors are paid in countries with public healthcare as well. Dare I to say that Cuba has some pretty good doctors?

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Flere Imsaho]

I'm surprised they're not trying to tie it to terrorism in some way.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[jd]

To a very large extent, I agree.

"Full Employment" (Keynsian economics) has some problems, but has to be a part of any sound economic policy. The optimal economic strategy is always going to be what is best for the individual and the group as a whole. The latter half of the equation can only exist if some socialist (in the real sense, not the bogeyman sense used in the US) principles are added to the mix.

However, the first half of the equation turns out to be more important than Keynes had anticipated and for that you do need some free market principles as well.

As far as the current situation goes, handing out $10,000 to each person might well have had a major impact. Paying off mortgages with 1/20th of that (I'm assuming 1 in 20 have some kind of property), thus rigorously fixing the purpose of that amount, and then giving everyone a stimulus check for ($10,000 - payment on that person's mortgage) might be better as it would guarantee the intent.

Yes, you'd get a lot of people complaining that it reduced the freedom on how to spend the money and it's certainly Government interference, but the former is an illusion (some things aren't optional for either individual OR country) and the latter becomes an illusion when you consider the crisis was caused by Government interference and therefore the only thing big enough to correct the damage is the Government.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[SavanaSmiles]

There are national companies that offer discount medical and dental. And it's definitely affordable when it starts at $14.95 up to 39.95 per month per household. That includes dental. Just the hospital advocacy program is worth the small fee. A final bill is 12,000 and it's chiseled down to 900 or so. The hospitcal program is available in any hospital across the nation. The medical and dental is not offered in all states though. What I mean is that if you have the coverage...and have to go to the hospital...that's in every state...any hospital..but in some states ..there are no providers or limited.. If I didn't have insurance I'd definitely be on a program such as that. So there are answers for a lot of the population.. Connie

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[wallsg]

Exactly right. When I was a kid in the 60's and 70's my parents had "major medical", or what would now be called "catastrophic coverage" as you say. They *knew* what it costs because they paid for it. No one knows what their insurance costs now because the company they work for covers most of it. They *knew* what the doctor and prescription bills costs because they paid for it until the deductible was met. No one knows what the costs are now because they pay percentages of the adjusted prices.

Like you say, no one can buy a major medical policy today because of the 10x markup to be negotiated down crap. Of course, you really can't blame the hospitals and doctors trying to make up the underpayment of Medicare and Medicaid my cramming the uncovered costs of those wonderful government programs onto anyone that they can force to pay, but it does render major medical coverage obsolete.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[riverat1]

Medicare is expensive because it covers people 65 and over who generally require higher costing medical care than younger people. Medicaid is expensive because it covers people who have no other place to turn to. If covers people with HIV/AIDS and MS (multiple sclerosis, not your favorite software company), people who have become quadriplegics or have other debilitating conditions and who have exhausted their own resources. Of course it also covers a lot of simply poor people too who tend to be less healthy than the general population. It's not surprising that they have higher costs. If everyone (of all ages) were in medicare instead of letting insurance companies siphon off 20%+ profits we'd probably reduce per capita health care costs by a third.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[riverat1]

A single payer universal coverage system is not socialized medicine, it's socialized health insurance.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think I would trust someone doing their job for their love of it over someone doing it for the over-sized paycheck they're getting. All this free market stuff is bullshit.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Anonymous Coward]

You pay for my health care, and I pay for yours. It seems fair to me, unless you want to be greedy about you having to pay more since you make more money than I do. Also, are you REALLY going to be up in arms about having to pay to keep someone from DYING?

And what the hell is wrong with going to the DMV? Last few times I've been there, I've waited less time to complete my business than to get from the waiting room to the doctor. And that was just DMV walk-ins vs doctor's office appointments. A) You don't go there often (or you shouldn't). B) It beats having NOWHERE to go. I just can't see why people are so against it. Worse case scenario, people pay a little more for mediocre health care for people who can't afford it, and since the public health care sucks so much, most people still use private insurance offered through employment or whatever.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Ihlosi]

Perhaps a nasty plague or two might enabled national health care to get really important to the right wing clowns.

No, it'll just be taken as a(nother) sign that Jesus should be coming back any minute now.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[GordonS3]

other than through your NI taxes, which are considerably less than US insurance premiums (when the actual cost of the premium is considered)

That doesn't sound right to me... I pay £340 a month in NI taxes! That's about $560 USD - is health insurance really that expensive in the US?

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Toy G]

healthcare is not a right.

There you have it, that's your problem. Until the majority of US people won't understand that healthcare IS, indeed, a right that everyone should be able to enjoy, the place will keep rotting away.

Read your constitution better: "...all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Refusing healthcare means refusing the right to Life, and as such it should be deemed unconstitutional.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[moeinvt]

"Seriously, healthcare is no different than having a standing army"

Thomas Jefferson described standing armies as "inconsistent" with freedom. Elbridge Gerry described them as the "bane of liberty" and James Madison said that the "greatest danger to liberty is from large standing armies."

I therefore concur with your conclusion. Allowing our Federal government ro run healthcare is a danger to liberty, and completely inconsistent with freedom.

Note: One would think that after the Federal government lied about the Iraq war, lied about the stimulus, continues to lie about the Wall Street bailouts, undermined our freedom with the USA PATRIOT Act, military commissions act, indefinite detentions, warrantless wiretapping, telecom immunity, etc. etc. the people would be a little more reluctant to trust them with trillions of healthcare $$$ and more of their personal information.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[moeinvt]

"Refusing healthcare means refusing the right to Life, and as such it should be deemed unconstitutional."

I've read The U.S. Constitution and I can't find the passage you're citing. In fact, I don't see any Constitutional basis whatsoever for the Federal government to involve itself in healthcare, and I wouldn't trust the bastards to do it even if it was Constitutional.

As for "rights", no individual should be forced into servitude to fulfill the needs of others. That is completely antithetical to the whole concept of individual liberty. The individual has a right to "life" as in freedom and self determination, not the right to benefit from the fruits of someone else's labor.

I'll entertain an argument suggesting that a society has a moral obligation to provide for the basic needs of its citizens, but I won't accept the idea that there can be individual "rights" which necessitate the compulsion of other individuals for their provision.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[chrish]

See also The Sheep Look Up. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sheep_Look_Up

Is it still a dystopian near-future once it starts coming true? :-\

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[jo_ham]

Yes, it is. Employer-covered plans are heavily subsidised with group rates, and the costs can still be over $500 per employee.

I personally know several Americans who pay over $1000 per month in premiums (and that doesn't include the cost of drugs or other things that the insurance company won't pay for).

Health insurance is ludicrously expensive in the US.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[sjames]

We do seem mostly in agreement.

However, I would argue that it was the lack of sufficient regulation that precipitated the crisis, not excessive interference.

The common "don't blame me" claim banks make is that they only offered those loans because of the Clinton administration pushing them to make loans available to less qualified applicants. However, it wasn't the Clinton administration that decided the loans should be putting first time home buyers into overpriced McMansions rather than the more typical (and much more modest) starter home. It also wasn't Clinton's idea that established mainstream borrowers (like my wife's parents) should be encouraged to take out an outrageous mortgage when they move (they wisely declined that). Finally it wasn't Clinton's idea to provide people with "time bomb" loans.

I do agree that a well regulated market is a necessary component of any proper economy. I say well regulated since an unregulated market would mean no enforceability of contracts and no fraud prevention at least. Unregulated markets also have a strong tendency to degenerate into monopoly or oligopoly.

Of course, as soon as money ceases to be a mere convenient representation of a valuable commodity (like gold), the whole thing is largely artificial anyway. Once the back seat driver takes over the wheel he'd better be prepared to provide more guidance than the occasional suggestion!

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Cro Magnon]

Forty years ago we had a middle class. We don't anymore. We have rich people, and we have poor people

The middle class might be shrinking, but it's far from gone. I know many people who are still middle-class, including myself.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Anonymous Coward]

Which the party base widely loathed.

That doesn't really help. It was still decided, which is what counts.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[vertinox]

Funny how no democracy in history has lasted for more than a few centuries.

You forgot about the Swiss, but hell... They have health care too.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[LunaticTippy]

You're crazy. My grandpa didn't have cellphones or big screen TVs but he had an average house, a nice but modest mountain cabin, went on long car trips with his 6 weeks of time off every year, put 3 children through college (2 masters and 1 PhD) and bought a brand new midrange auto every 3 years all on a paltry Forest Service salary.

My father did just about as well on his very low teacher's salary. Me and my brother? We struggle and worry year after year and our engineering degrees are of little comfort. Our spouses both work. I don't even want kids because I don't see our world being kind to them and my brother has already realized that his 3 and 5 year old daughters will need scholarships and loans to be able to attend college.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[syphaxplh]

Your post implies 1) That you believe health care providers are paid fairly under the current US insurance system (and indeed have much say in negotiating their rates with the insurance companies) and 2) That you believe the cost of medical care is reasonable, and based on competitive free market economics

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Toy G]

Apologies, that's actually from the Declaration of Independence. But still, the interpretation is valid: an individual should have the right to live, and refusing healthcare is a negation of that right.

Besides, I fail to see how providing healthcare would "force into servitude" anyone else. That's simply paranoia. Do you think you are "forced into servitude" already, since your taxes are used to, say, help refugees from New Orleans, or to invade a foreign country? Your taxes would simply help build a (cheaper) national health system that would improve the whole society (and that you might even want to use at some point in your life). In the long term it would benefit you as well: if your uninsured waiter gets sick, chances are that he'll pass his germs to you.

But hey, enjoy your falling standards of wealth and your increase in diseases and epidemics.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[DerekLyons]

No, you get high marks because you spout the right buzzwords - even if the context makes no sense.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[WuphonsReach]

Hoarding of money generally refers to people stashing coins/notes into non-bank institutions. Which removes it from circulation.

Money in a bank can be loaned out. Money in a mattress cannot.

(Not defending the original poster, but that's how I envision hoarding of money as being a bad thing.)

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Gospodin]

Ever hear of charity? Or family? 'Course not. Silly me. When someone, anyone, gets a hangnail, we need a government representative on hand to administer first aid.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[GargamelSpaceman]

Japan has public health insurance. My Mom, who has US based health insurance happened to get sick while visiting in Japan and they fixed her up in a hospital courtesy of the Japanese taxpayers for free or close to it. She said the care was excellent.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[GreyLurk]

I've recently been exposed to the world of Health Care Billing and rates. It's incredibly complex, and frightening. Medicare ends up paying *WAY* less than private insurers, and providers end up having to hike up their rates to the private insurers to cover the difference between cost and Medicare.
   

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Ol Olsoc]

Where do you get your tripe? There's still a middle class, unless you count everyone making minimum wage and below as poor, and everyone making above that as rich.

You don't do your side any favors when you spout off completely wrong "facts".

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[girlintraining]

No, you get high marks because you spout the right buzzwords - even if the context makes no sense.

I'm a 7 line perl script.

Re:The US isn't all first world.

[Hognoxious]

The optimal economic strategy is always going to be what is best for the individual and the group as a whole.

That sounds like two strategies. Two strategies that largely conflict.

Close the borders

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Every time I turn around the US government is finding new and innovative ideas in fomenting anti-immigrant sentiment. Scratch that. The US government is using the same old tried and true methods of fomenting anti-immigrant sentiment. They steal jobs. They bring crime. They bring disease. It's the same old song and dance.

In a world of modern transportation, it is essentially impossible to screen every person who crosses into our country for diseases. The solution isn't more border patrols on the Tex-Mex border, it's better healthcare for those who can't afford it. If the at-risk groups are the border towns and poverty-stricken, it makes sense to help them rather than try to cut off the flow of immigrants.

I used to fly internationally all the time, but with the growing anti-immigrant policies of the US, I find myself having a worse and worse time traveling even though I am a US citizen. The TSA and Immigration Control have made flying a mode of travel that is completely unattractive.

Re:Close the borders

[toppavak]

Really? I travel internationally at least once a year and this is news to me. Aside from putting my shoes through the x-ray (oh boo-hoo you have to spend 30 seconds taking off your shoes) and the exact same 30 seconds it takes at the immigration counter (ok, the lines can be annoying though) I've never run into anything that makes "flying a mode of travel that is completely unattractive" especially since its still a lot faster, quite affordable and not entirely uncomfortable (Its been my experience that its mostly US Air and AA that have drastically lowered the quantity and quality of service they offer, which is why I simply don't use them anymore, its not like they're any cheaper). Oh, but don't let that stop you from bitching and moaning about how travel by air hasn't changed significantly (except in the quality of the free snacks you get on domestic flights) in the past 15 years or so that I can recall international travel.

Re:Close the borders

[TheGreenNuke]

The solution isn't more border patrols on the Tex-Mex border, it's better healthcare for those who can't afford it.

But if they still can't afford what difference will it make if it's better? While I understand what you mean, your actual words help point out the true underlying cause, the cost of healthcare has risen out of control.

Re:Close the borders

[Tablizer]

Every time I turn around the US government is finding new and innovative ideas in fomenting anti-immigrant sentiment.

The government? This is a case where the private sector is more efficient at a task: Rush Limbo and his snake-tongued buddies.
     

Re:Close the borders

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, we gotta pass new and innovative laws to prevent those goddamn wetback mosquitoes from coming in the US and spreading dengue, and don't get me started on those fucking beaner kissing bugs spreading Chagas! Border fence? Border ELECTRIC fence: 1,969-mile bug zapper!

Re:Close the borders

[Anonymous Coward]

Fucking the immigrants is a way to spread diseases, not to mention causing more of the immigrants.

Besides, that "Fix it yourself" attitude is one of those things that is just short-sighted, and easily contradicted by the concept that the world isn't just a bunch of isolated islands.

Re:Close the borders

[Anonymous Coward]

Every time I turn around the US government is finding new and innovative ideas in fomenting anti-immigrant sentiment.

Illegals aren't immigrants.

They are border hopping invaders that need to be shot like any other foreign aggressor.

Re:Close the borders

[Macrat]

Fuck the immigrants. This is MY country, not theirs. Let them fix their own failed states south of the border.

Especially when they aren't "immigrants"

Re:Close the borders

[andymadigan]

Unfortunately the "We'll fix it" attitude leads to invading other countries (Iraq). Further, you can't have a welfare state AND have uncontrolled immigration. So, you have a choice. Have a small government, no government services other than defense and lots of immigrants (that describes the U.S. pretty well for the first hundred or so years). Or, you can have roads, social security, medicare, welfare, public schools, etc. but little or no immigration.

Can we help people in other countries? Sure. Federal money (< 1% of our budget) does go to works in other countries. However, if they decide to come here illegally, the most we can provide them with is helpful transportation at gunpoint back to their own country.

Re:Close the borders

[Ritchie70]

I agree, travel has actually gotten better in some ways since 9/11.

I have never traveled internationally, but the domestic security folks are a lot more competent than they were before the TSA. And they're more accustomed to people who set off the alarm.

My wife has some joints that were replaced, so she can keep "trying again" with the metal detector forever, she's going to beep.

On our honeymoon (in 2000) the security guards at O'Hare Airport couldn't even successfully communicate what they wanted her to do. We flew to Hawaii this year, and they have the glass booth for her to wait in, and it's all professional and handled quickly. By the time I had my shoes back on and the laptops back in the bags, she was walking over to meet me.

Re:Close the borders

[oldhack]

We already did, for buncha bananas no less.

Re:Close the borders

[Anonymous Coward]

I wasn't aware the invasion of Iraq had anything to do with health concerns, but then, I guess that's why GWB was so concerned about biological weapons.

Yeah, good intentions...or just exploitation of them? You be the judge!

Re:Close the borders

[Anonymous Coward]

I think today is the first time I have read slashdot comments and been utterly disgusted by a large amount of the non-troll posts. I never realised how racist slashdot really was.

Re:Close the borders

[andymadigan]

Who said it had to do with health? I thought we were talking about failed or autocratic states. That does some times lead to health problems among citizens.

GWB invaded Iraq for revenge and oil. However, it was a "bad" government, and that was an underlying cause.

Re:Close the borders

[mysidia]

They are also diseases that are common among immigrants, and that follow them in.

They may be old arguments, but that doesn't detract from their indisputable accuracy.

Particularly with these diseases which were previously unique to areas that immigrants come from. It is eminently clear where the disease is being sourced from.

The diseases are not ones that can be effectively treated by healthcare, there is no cure/effective treatment known to most of these diseases, the prognosis is not good, if you should catch one, your life will almost certainly be cut short, even if you have the best health care money can buy, the parasites cause permanent scars.

In most cases, the better good of society would be better achieved by quarantining people found to have these diseases.

Providing health care services to everyone who can't afford them does not fix these diseases. Ultimately research would be required into a cure -- the free market and large profits that can be made, are ultimately, the incentives for this research to get conducted.

However, it indeed would be beneficial to the public for screening for these diseases to be mandatory and required for employment and travel within the US.

At least it would encourage people who unknowingly have the disease to get checked, and attempt whatever (unfortunately damaging) treatments are available, to help get a handle on the epidemic.

Re:Close the borders

[mysidia]

In a world of modern transportation, it is essentially impossible to screen every person who crosses into our country for diseases.

Sure, it's possible, but requires further inconveniencing people who wish to cross, and reducing the throughput (the rate at which people are legally allowed to cross borders). And might have a negative impact on tourists, if it took them several days waiting in line to get screened and admitted.

It is also more expensive (the most likely reason it's not actually done) and requires more paperwork to keep track of screening results and prove who's been properly screened to allow them to pass security.

With regards to US immigrants who are likely to have this disease "Modern" transportation means the automobile, which has been around since oh 1900, probably using a 15-year-old old clunker they loaned out at a junkyard for a few hundred $100.

There have not been any significant transportation enhancements in recent decades that justify lax border controls, or letting people in with proper health screening.

Instead it is the number and frequency of people wishing to cross borders.

Re:Close the borders

[Virak]

So, how does it feel to be completely lacking empathy or any sort of care for your fellow humans?

Re:Close the borders

[mysidia]

"help them rather than try to cut off the flow of immigrants."

This flies in the face of basic security principles. Any firewall admin should be able to tell you how ugly that sounds.. don't even try to cut off illegal traffic at your borders, without making sure they don't pose a threat???

Perhaps banks should stop worrying about alarm systems and trying to cut off the flow of bank robbers, instead, they should give out some free money, so they can help people not pose a risk to the bank.

I think of it as like an IT department trying to stop computer worms and secure the network, by getting all the computer users free windows antivirus software to install on personal laptops they plug in at work. Rather than dealing with the real issue... things migrating into the corporate network, without IT so much as looking at them, much less closely assessing whether what they are bringing in poses a risk.

In fact, the flow of more immigrants increases the number of "poverty-stricken", because they arrive in that state. But many of these are illegal immigrants, and the flow is difficult to control.

Thus the cost of helping them out will continue to grow, as it's a continuously expanding group. Moreover, helping them out encourages more of them to cross the border.

Much like a bank offering free money to would-be burglars as an incentive not to break in, will lead to more crime.

Re:Close the borders

[Zemran]

It is annoying because most of it is theatre. I do agree that security has improved a bit but I not see why you had to take your laptop out and put it in a different tray to be x-rayed, are they saying that the x-ray machine cannot see through the laptop case? Why is it that I can put a bottle full of liquid in my hold luggage but I cannot carry a drink of water onto the plane? No one has successfully blown up a plane with a drink of water but there have been plenty of bombs in the hold. Even when you talk about the problems your wife has, you are talking about metal scanners (gun scanners), when was the last time you were scanned for explosives? It is mainly theatre and that is annoying.

Re:Close the borders

[superdave80]

Every time I turn around the US government is finding new and innovative ideas in fomenting anti-immigrant sentiment.

Last I checked, the US allows over one million legal immigrants into the country every year. If that's "anti-immigrant", then the government sucks at it.

...The solution isn't more border patrols on the Tex-Mex border,...

Wait, what does border patrol have to do with immigrants? Or are you now talking about illegal immigrants?

...They bring disease...

If you are talking about illegal immigrants, the problem is that they might very well be the source of these diseases. The problem is we can't tell for sure, since they have ignored our immigration laws and waltzed right in without being checked out by us.

Re:Close the borders

[GigsVT]

People tend to forget that socialism is inherently an isolationist philosophy.

The main reason Germany felt the need to expand its borders after the national socialist party took over was to ensure natural resource independence.

Re:Close the borders

[Anonymous Coward]

White Americans, what?
Nothing better to do?
Why don't you kick yourself out?
You're an immigrant too.

Re:Close the borders

[alan_dershowitz]

It's not necessarily the immigrants. If you look at TB numbers for example, what you find out is that the majority of the TB sources in the USA are citizens who have come back from a trip out of the country. However, the percentage overall of TB carriers who are of foreign origin, legal or otherwise, has jumped, and the fact remains that treatment resistant TB is coming from places that don't have it under control.

As far as crime is concerned, my statement is "My home town never had a gang until it got a Mexican gang." I'm not attributing it to anything in particular about Mexicans, it just so happened that a spike in crime was directly attributable to the rise in legal and illegal immigration from Mexico into my home town because the perpetrators were easily identifiable.

Re:Close the borders

[Black Parrot]

Fuck the immigrants. This is MY country, not theirs.

Rio Grande, Bering Strait, or Atlantic Ocean - how did YOUR ancestors get here?

Re:Close the borders

[Anonymous Coward]

What did you consider racist? My grandfather was a German coming from Russia in 1907 and I can look at the log from when they signed him in at Ellis Island and he had to prove that he was "disease free." He had to prove, in fact that he had never even been mentally ill. Was that racist? I have always felt that it was just common sense. Why is it racist to want to protect your country from diseases that are common in other countries?

Re:Close the borders

[Spy Handler]

Can you name one country that has allows as many immigrants into its borders as the US? Total numbers, percentage of population, however you want to count. Please.

Would that be Japan? Sweden? France? China? Or some other socialist paradise that I don't know about?

Re:Close the borders

[dunkelfalke]

When counting by percentage of population, Sweden would actually be pretty much on par with the USA (12.3% and 12.81% respectively). Germany's immigrants are 12.31% of the whole population, in Austria there are 14.9%, in Canada 18.76% and in Switzerland 22.89%.

All of the countries I have listed do have socialized medicine.

Re:Close the borders

[jd]

Actually, unless DNA shows you have Native American blood, you're all bleedin' immigrants. And probably quite some number of these supposed "immigrants" actually ARE Native Americans. Some are probably of Spanish descent, but frankly you'd be better off sending them back to Spain rather than Mexico.

(After all, the head of the FBI pointed out in his letter over the Lockerbie Bomber that we should not show any sign of weakness or softness to terrorists. And what was Cortez and his cohorts but the worst terrorists of all? Send all the Latinos packing back to Spain.)

Re:Close the borders

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately the "We'll fix it" attitude leads to invading other countries (Iraq). Further, you can't have a welfare state AND have uncontrolled immigration. So, you have a choice. Have a small government, no government services other than defense and lots of immigrants (that describes the U.S. pretty well for the first hundred or so years). Or, you can have roads, social security, medicare, welfare, public schools, etc. but little or no immigration.

What the hell ? What's this stupid dichotomy ? In France, we have both lots of immigrants and good social services. How come ?

Re:Close the borders

[CrimsonAvenger]

Actually, unless DNA shows you have Native American blood, you're all bleedin' immigrants.

Actually, even if you have Native American blood, you're an immigrant. Or do you somehow think that immigrating from Siberia 10,000+ years ago makes you less an immigrant?

Hint: humans didn't evolve in the Americas, hence any human in the Americas came from elsewhere, and would qualify as an immigrant to America.

Re:Close the borders

[jd]

First arrivals are technically immigrants, yes, but usually get the benefit of aboriginal status.

Re:Close the borders

[BeanThere]

Actually, unless DNA shows you have Native American blood, you're all bleedin' immigrants

Wrong, wrong, flat-out wrong. A descendant of an immigrant is not an immigrant.

immigrant n. A person who leaves one country to settle permanently in another.

You're confusing individuals with their offspring, which is a pretty stupid mistake: I am not my grandfather, you are not your grandfather - understand?

Re:Close the borders

[CrimsonAvenger]

First arrivals are technically immigrants, yes, but usually get the benefit of aboriginal status.

You are assuming that modern Native Americans were "first arrivals", rather than, say, the descendants of the third wave that wiped out or conquered the previous two waves. A shaky assumption at best.

The fact that the North American governments are silly enough to give "special" status to some people who claim to have been here first doesn't make someone who came here by way of Siberia less an immigrant than someone who came here by way of Ireland.

Personally, I'm tired of the distinction. We conquered the Amerinds. Before that, they conquered each other. There is little, if any, evidence that any particular group of Amerinds were the "first arrivals" in any particular place.

Get over it.

Re:Close the borders

[Anonymous Coward]

>Who said it had to do with health?

If it didn't, then there's really no point in bringing it up, as it's events out of the scope of the discussion.

Re:Close the borders

[Blakey Rat]

Every time I turn around the US government is finding new and innovative ideas in fomenting anti-immigrant sentiment. Scratch that. The US government is using the same old tried and true methods of fomenting anti-immigrant sentiment. They steal jobs. They bring crime. They bring disease. It's the same old song and dance.

Uh, the US allows more immigration than the vast majority of first-world countries. Have you ever tried emigrating to another country? I've looked into moving to New Zealand for example-- the requirements are insane. If you don't have a PhD, you might as well not even try. In comparison, someone from New Zealand moving to the US is almost trivial.

Now, I've heard your arguments applied to *illegal* immigration. But not immigration in general. Remember the motto on the Statue of Liberty? We follow that model pretty damn closely.

In a world of modern transportation, it is essentially impossible to screen every person who crosses into our country for diseases.

It's possible to screen legal immigrants for diseases, as we know who they are and where they are living. It's impossible to screen illegal immigrants, as they stay under the radar of government (for obvious reasons.)

The solution isn't more border patrols on the Tex-Mex border,

Border patrols stop *illegal* immigration. Which are you talking about? Your post is so confused, I have no idea.

I used to fly internationally all the time, but with the growing anti-immigrant policies of the US, I find myself having a worse and worse time traveling even though I am a US citizen. The TSA and Immigration Control have made flying a mode of travel that is completely unattractive.

What the hell are you talking about? You're living in your own little fantasy world.

Look, air travel is more popular than ever. The TSA has made flying *slightly* more inconvenient than ten years ago, but it's still far more convenient than any other method of traveling internationally. Immigration hasn't changed at all, as far as I'm aware, and in any case, only illegal immigrants would have to worry about that. For everybody else it's a rubber-stamp.

Re:Close the borders

[m50d]

Unfortunately the "We'll fix it" attitude leads to invading other countries (Iraq). Further, you can't have a welfare state AND have uncontrolled immigration

Why not?

Re:Close the borders

[Max von H.]

When counting by percentage of population, Sweden would actually be pretty much on par with the USA (12.3% and 12.81% respectively). Germany's immigrants are 12.31% of the whole population, in Austria there are 14.9%, in Canada 18.76% and in Switzerland 22.89%.

All of the countries I have listed do have socialized medicine.

Switzerland doesn't have socialized medicine. Every resident of Switzerland *must* subscribe to a MANDATORY PRIVATE health insurance. While the insurance companies can't deny the basic coverage, the extra coverage (dental, care in private clinics/hospitals, etc.) is up to the insurer's whim. There are public hospitals, but they require insurance. The premiums for the basic, mandatory coverage are not indexed on revenue like in the other countries you cited, a poor family will pay the same as a billionnaire. Think $300/month per person, minimum, whether your unemployed or are making good money. If you're poor, the state will help you pay for it but you can't opt out.

Since the country is home to big pharmaceutical firms and large insurance companies, drugs are commonly priced 3 to 10 times more expensively than in neighbouring countries and, in general, health care in Switzerland is one of the world's most expensive. It is IMHO one of the most flawed system, just after the American one due to the collusion of insurance companies and pharmaceutical firms.

I don't think any health system should be designed to be profitable. Maintaining your population in good health is expensive but it's a small price to pay for a prerequisite to prosperity. Mind you, it would cost a whole lot less to have a universal health coverage in the USA than to wage war for a month in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Re:Close the borders

[andymadigan]

Adjusted for population, the U.S. naturalizes 2x as many people per year as France. That's not even counting illegal immigration.

Re:Close the borders

[Anonymous Coward]

There are plenty of people (certain ethnic groups, those who choose non-western med.) who simply don't trust doctors or (young) decided they don't need to cost of health care and decide to gamble. It's not often these people are accounted for in the "OMG no health care" rhetoric from the Democrats.

These developing world diseases are not coming from people flying in on A380's.

Re:Close the borders

[jd]

Then all who call themselves "nth-generation Americans" are confusing themselves with their nth generational ancestors?

"Fascinating" as Spock might say.

Re:Close the borders

[Tablizer]

"Calling names" was not really the "sin" I was addressing.

Re:Close the borders

[techno-vampire]

Oh, I see. That makes it all right, does it?

Re:Close the borders

[Tablizer]

No, but don't confuse apple sins with orange sins.

Natural Selection

[Sponge Bath]

You want globalization? Well here it comes. You don't want globalization? Well here it comes anyways. Attention citizens of the cosmos: be prepared for a brutal culling of the herd. Nothing personal, it's just the mechanics of the universe.

Re:Natural Selection

[sjames]

Attention social evolutionists: poor people in the U.S. have guns and little to lose. When they have nothing to lose, the bullets will fly.

Re:Natural Selection

[Anonymous Coward]

Note from the field: I haven't seen anything as such yet.

Re:Natural Selection

[MadUndergrad]

Mod parent up. This is a good reason for a social safety net if I've ever heard one. So what if they don't "deserve" it? At least it'll keep them from robbing and murdering you.

Re:MUCH MORE IS COMING

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep. Just ask the French. There are some Muslim neighborhoods that the French police won't even enter. The Europeans are being bred out of their own lands by the remnants of the Ottoman horde. And in the US, the south especially, Latino racial superiority is rampant. Our latest SCOTUS justice subscribes to Latin supremacist ideology. La Raza is the hispanic version of the KKK. We turn a blind eye as they flow across the border to wipe the asses of rich angst-filled white folks' kids, then they pop out a baby citizenship anchor and teach their children about reclaiming their stolen land from the white devils.

If only Madagascar...

[gardyloo]

...had shut off all seaports and airports sooner.

Vibrance!

[Baldrson]

I, for one, welcome our new parasite overlords! Parasite Rex gives unto us that ultimate in human values: vibrance - yea a veritable cornucopia of ecological foment that is by the body of an AIDS patient.

Re:Vibrance!

[jd]

Too late. Mitochondrial DNA was originally a parasite, and there are far more non-human cells in a human being than human cells. There's hardly anything actually human for a new parasite to be the overlord of.

Re:Vibrance!

[Baldrson]

You're so provincial in your definition of "human"! When I speak of a veritable cornucopia of ecological foment as the body of an AIDS patient, do you think I am speaking of an ecology or of a human or perhaps, duh, of a human ecology? The important thing about ecologies is whether they help help each other have babies the way, say, dogs and humans have done for so long that they are genuine symbionts -- or whether they can show up, party, and move on like a coked out 70s rock band in a Hilton. The thing that makes these new parasites overlords is that they are mobile so they are unencumbered by such mutualistic constraints!

SHUT DOWN EVERYTHING

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not too late! Close the borders! Shut the airports! Hope to god it doesn't go lethal!

Re:MUCH MORE IS COMING

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a "conservative", but you know, I've never like the "conservative" position on immigration. Immigrants are people - and typically pretty motivated, hard-working people with dignity and rights like everyone else. Who are we to say "you're not allowed in my country"? A bunch of racists?

Perhaps if we didn't spend half as much effort stigmatizing them or threatening to deport them, they'd be better-positioned to seek treatment.

It's the flu!

[russlar]

It's that new flu strain I keep hearing about, the H1B flu!

Re:It's the flu!

[Tablizer]

It's that new flu strain I keep hearing about, the H1B flu!

It's real: I got hit so bad, I had to take a year off.
     

Re:MUCH MORE IS COMING

[MichaelSmith]

If it was easier to enter the country legally fewer people would do it illegally. Then it might be easier to apply health checks on the way in.

Uncontrolled immigration

[amightywind]

Uncontrolled immigration is the obvious problem. Encouraging illegals with free government services adds to it. Keep the disease ridden out and the problem goes away.

Re:Uncontrolled immigration

[Jack9]

Uncontrolled immigration is the obvious problem. Encouraging illegals with free government services adds to it. Keep the disease ridden out and the problem goes away.

While I agree on the goal and general reasoning of that statement, not the specifics nor the conclusion. First of all, trying to discourage illegal immigration is probably the single most effective way to improve most US Citizens' daily lives, quickly. I think Obama has failed in this regard. That being said, you cannot "keep diseases out" by trying to restrict human movement (if contraband can cross, humans will), but you can reduce the effects on large populations by attempting to do so. The goal is to expose the population to disease in stages allowing for awareness, strategic and tactical countermeasures to be developed, and to build immunity or resistance if possible. This is best accomplished by leniency toward immigration in border towns with strict (and HARSH) enforcement in large population centers. See, Switzerland, where there's a bounty for turning in illegals (in the form of classic "illegal immigration" and expired visas).

Talk like an infected pirate day

[Tablizer]

Aiy captain, I be gotten scurvy!

This isn't funny

[Anonymous Coward]

My college roommate has been working with Mexican families here in South Carolina for the past two years.

He was diagnosed with drug-resistant TB back in June.

Re:This isn't funny

[BadAnalogyGuy]

It wouldn't be a problem if the US weren't so allergic to the TB vaccine.

Thank God for HMOs

[MartinSchou]

Well, at least there are no government bureaucrats standing between the sick people and the doctors who could detect and treat these diseases.

USA, USA, USA!

Or something ... it is quite disappointing to see the world's richest country with what is at times the best health care in the world unable to keep simple infections and parasites from affecting a large portion of its population.

Re:Thank God for HMOs

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem to think a national health service is some kind of magic bullet, as citizen of a country with such a organization, i can say that it's not guaranteed to work the way it's supposed to...

Re:Thank God for HMOs

[Anonymous Coward]

it is quite disappointing to see the world's richest country with what is at times the best health care in the world unwilling to keep simple infections and parasites from affecting a large portion of its population.

Fixed that for you.

Re:Thank God for HMOs

[Anonymous Coward]

Large? The article specifies very small numbers of infected. Honestly if I weren't so lazy, (from being infected with parasites no doubt), I would find data for these types of infections over the last few decades.

The over-reaction to this article is amazing. :)

Re:Thank God for HMOs

[Rakshasa Taisab]

MartinSchou is a person from a country with a dysfunctional health care sector. He just met a new friend, Mr. Anonymous Coward. Mr. Anonymous Coward is also from a country with a dysfunctional health care sector.

Re:Thank God for HMOs

[Zemran]

And does this country you live in forbid you taking out private health insurance or is it really a matter of you have more choice than an American? Do you think that health insurance always works the way it is supposed to?

By your use of the term "national health" it sounds like the UK and I have listened to a lot of the debate in the US where they have made it sound like people in the UK are forced to use the National Health Service when this is not the case. There are many private health options and so it really is better than the US.

http://www.bupa.co.uk/ is just one of the options for the British, there is also the NHS....

Re: Thank God for HMOs

[Black Parrot]

it is quite disappointing to see the world's richest country with what is at times the best health care in the world unable to keep simple infections and parasites from affecting a large portion of its population.

We lack that most basic of technologies: giving a damn.

Re:Thank God for HMOs

[jd]

Remember to put your option in the oven to bake at gas mark 6. And here's one I prepared earlier.

Re:Thank God for HMOs

[dkf]

Well, at least there are no government bureaucrats standing between the sick people and the doctors who could detect and treat these diseases.

Sure. You've got private bureaucrats instead. More cost, less accountability. Tell me again how it's better.

HELLO, Where has everyone been for 200+ years?

[cenc]

I am sorry. Invasive species and diseases have been entering the U.S. since the first pilgrims got off the boat with their pock infested blankets. The U.S. has always turned a blind eye to the poor dying of them, until they spread to the middle class and rich. Now congress thinks this is an emergency?

I think author of this article needs to spend sometime getting to know their American history book. The only thing that has changed is there is now more poor. How about treating that disease?

Re:HELLO, Where has everyone been for 200+ years?

[Anonymous Coward]

First off, it's closer to 400+ years. The Virginia Colony was founded in 1607.

since the first pilgrims got off the boat with their pock infested blankets

The Pilgrims arrived in 1620, and settled on the ruins of a Native American village - a village left in ruins because the inhabitants had been wiped out by disease. Namely, smallpox. And, yes, it could have come from traders trading pox-infested blankets to the natives.

So it predates the Pilgrims, and can be traced back to the first explorers to ever reach the "new" world.

Re:HELLO, Where has everyone been for 200+ years?

[TheGreenNuke]

So the 200+ was inaccurate how? By my awe inspiring knowledge of math, 400+ years is merely a subset of 200+ years and no thus need to correct him.

Re:HELLO, Where has everyone been for 200+ years?

[BeanThere]

Poverty is not a disease. Disease is just a common false metaphor for poverty - an insidious metaphor that leads people to try "treat" poverty as if it were a disease, which invariably doesn't work.

Re:HELLO, Where has everyone been for 200+ years?

[cenc]

It was not completely accurate I will admit, but I thought it unfair to blame the U.S. government for something that happened before it was formed.

Re:HELLO, Where has everyone been for 200+ years?

[cenc]

No shit?

Re:HELLO, Where has everyone been for 200+ years?

[BeanThere]

Uh, you're the one who said it. "The only thing that has changed is there is now more poor. How about treating that disease"

Scaremongering: yes, anti-immigrant: no

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right that it's scaremongering, but you're wrong on the reason.

This is more scaremongering from the left over healthcare. They're now trying to persuade us that if we don't blow trillions of dollars on national healthcare, the US will turn into a third-world cesspool.

Which is hilarious, because we've all seen what happens when the government tries to "help" people. We all saw what happened with Katrina. Until the government finally backed down and let private charities in to help, it was an unmitigated disaster. We're still experiencing what happened when the government stepped in and tried to regulate home loans: a destroyed economy.

So if personal experience and facts don't work, the left is now reverting to "we're all going to die of parasites" - which is, as the article points out, ludicrous.

Re:Scaremongering: yes, anti-immigrant: no

[Entropius]

If we have a government that -- in the most general case -- fucks things up whenever it tries to help people, then we have a far bigger problem on our hands than whatever problem we're trying to solve at the moment.

On no one's radar?

[davidwr]

Well, they are on someone's radar, and now they are on a lot of people's radar.

Of course, if you really wanted to get attention, you would find some way of saying how good these diseases were, then all the cable-tv talking heads would mock you and your fake-evil plan to spread the news about these diseases would succeed in a way that would make Barbara Streisand proud.

Developing World's Parasites, Diseases Enter US

[shreshtha]

"...Diseases Enter US" what *Enter* means??? Does this mean that when US got status of developed it was free from all diseases and fully refined Ingot??? I think it is birth place of many more serious diseases.

Re:Developing World's Parasites, Diseases Enter US

[pommiekiwifruit]

For example the 1918 "Spanish" flu is thought to have come from the USA.

Rich

[mindbrane]

Remember the end of 'War of the Worlds'? IIRC, at least in the old film, the narrator speaks of God in His wisdom populating our little blue planet with microbes that defeat an invading alien horde that we with all our military might and technology can't stand against. If, of the 5 (Pollution) Horsemen of the Apocalypse, pestilence should be the big winner then the irony of it all playing off the end of the 'War of the Worlds' will be a sauce so rich and thick in irony as to be perfectly suited to Pestilence's feast.

Certainly globalization plays a part, but, perhaps, more importantly, we're poking big holes in the biomass. Threatened species adapt and the little microbes whose hosts were, in some cases, shuffling around the globe, and, in others, driving to extinction have to adapt. Adaption may entail making the leap to a new species and, along with our livestock, we're the most like landing spot.

The first test of an intelligent species is ensuring its survival. We now adequately know the limitations of our biosphere, we know its interconnectedness, and yet, we can't act rationally. There are now 6 billion of us, if you accept that there will be 9 billion then I hold that there will be 12 billion before we have international laws in place to stop us from destroying ourselves. 12 billion is just my loose estimate based on current numbers and the projected growth in the face of our current plight. Given our natures are a blend, of greed, lust, fear and shame tempered by altruism, and, further given our current and projected circumstances I think our best chance is runaway economic growth spinning off R&D that might mitigate against our most pressing problems. If we've any safety to look forward to it's ironically in numbers because the talent necessary to solve the problems we face doesn't seem to stem directly from industrialization or advanced infrastructure, rather, it's the small percentage who can manage and extend our knowledge base.

Which is why we screen at the border

[emarkp]

This is one reason why having an actual immigration policy and enforcing it. Most countries in the world do this, but for some reason the US doesn't.

Re:Which is why we screen at the border

[BeanThere]

Actually illegal imigration is a problem in many countries, especially most developed countries.

At least we don't have Soclaiist Medicine!

[David Gerard]

President Barack Obama has asked Americans not to believe "rumors" that his health reform initiatives will lead to a government-run health care system, push Medicare recipients to die rather than run up their bill or lead to widespread euthanasia of the Republican "base."

"Let me start by dispelling the outlandish rumors that reform will promote euthanasia, or cut Medicaid, or bring about a government takeover," said Mr Obama. "That's simply not true. Furthermore, our proposed tests would still rule Sarah Palin as being human and actually alive, despite the evidence from the brain machines."

Sarah Palin has spoken in horror of the centralised "death boards" she says Obama wishes to introduce, instead of the ones that individual hospitals run now to send people home to die when their money runs out. "Scientists like Stephen Hawking would have been killed off by the National Health Service," she said, "if they'd grown up in Eng-er-land!"

Peter Ferrara from Fox News refused to buy Mr Obama's claims. "The Obama health plan is based on evidence -- but evidence leads to science, and science leads to Darwinian evolution being applied to you and yours! He'll raise health costs, make freedom of choice illegal, ration health care and build a machine feeding illegal aliens in luxury on the corpses of aborted Republican babies, sacrificed in a gay Muslim Kenyan ceremony. You can buy my book on it at heartland.org for just $19.99. Call now! Operators standing by!"

Re:At least we don't have Soclaiist Medicine!

[Entropius]

I think I saw that story on Fox News last night.

Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you really think the few hundred politicians who's election to the office is financed by the richest 5% really care about loosing the poorest bottom of the society?
Do you really think that the wealthiest think that the poor bastards even deserve to live?
War, hurricanes, new diseases hitting that segment of the overpopulated, under employed masses are really seen by them a godsend to quietly get rid of them by "natural ways".
Do you really think, the USA, the home of the wealthiest upper crust will ever create universal health care?
What good would do that for the top 5%?

Re:Who cares?

[izomiac]

Why wouldn't the wealthy care about the poor? It's not like sociopathy is correlated with wealth, beyond that caused by being stigmatized by much of the other 95% of the population. Just look at the current setup... Our legislators tend to be wealthy, as are those who donate to their campaigns. Even so, those making >$100K are paying around three fourths of the taxes (top 50% pay 97%). Most government programs, OTOH, benefit the poor quite a bit more than they benefit the rich since the rich have other means of acquiring what they need.

So, simply by looking at past and current actions, the rich seem to care quite a bit about the poor. You can keep your cynicism by attributing that to needing cheap labor for mundane jobs, but I think it's more that one doesn't tend to care much about others until one's own needs are met. I won't say that the government doesn't have a pro-wealth bias, but overall it seems setup to protect the poor, otherwise you'd see the poor paying a lot more in taxes or mandatory service, and getting a lot less for their money/efforts.

Re:Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you trust politicians that you consider corrupt to create a health care system?

No shit, Sherlock!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Parasitic infections and other diseases usually associated with the developing world are cropping up with alarming frequency among US poor, especially in states along the US-Mexico border..." Which isn't surprising given our government allows every illegal motherfucker free run of the country.

This is a National Security problem

[ub3r n3u7r4l1st]

Consider this, unknown diseases spreading in big cities in the U.S. , and people refuse to seek treatment because they have no insurance and cannot afford any health care at all.

Who said U.S. has the best health-care system? Our system is very similar to that of ..................... China's.

Re:This is a National Security problem

[night_flyer]

maybe if they would do something about illegal immigration, this wouldnt be an issue...

Re:This is a National Security problem

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a reason countries with universal health care access tend to avoid third world diseases and it's not due to immigration, illegal or otherwise. Guess again.

Re:This is a National Security problem

[ub3r n3u7r4l1st]

Europe has tons of illegal immigration from Africa and Middle East. Have you heard of any swine flu or SARS outbreak there?

The thing is , if there is bio-terrorism in the U.S. , we could all be in trouble.

What really concerns me

[Anonymous Coward]

I think something should be said about how little we've really done in terms of medical science. We've vaccinated a lot of conditions out of existence, but what have we cured (fixed after infection/affliction) in the past 50 years or so? If we have a trillion dollars to blow up Arabs we should have a trillion to cure diseases.

US exports GM foods to 3w countries

[Anonymous Coward]

In other news, US company Monsanto exports barely tested genetically modified food and seeds to third world countries.

neglected infections of poverty

[Nom du Keyboard]

neglected infections of poverty

How pathetically Politically Correct can we possibly be?

Re:MUCH MORE IS COMING

[mysidia]

If it was harder to enter the country illegally, more people might follow the legal path.

Technology and better barriers ought to be able to help there. 24 hour wide-angle CCTV surveillance of the borders should help. Remote operated FLIR guns could be utilized to get exact positions on intruders.

It would also help if certain presently illegal drugs were regulated and made legal to own and make/sell by certain US companies to adults in limited amounts for on-site-only consumption.

Wiping out the drug smuggling business would leave border patrols able to devote more resources to other issues.

Seeing as so many of their resources are actually spent on stopping smugglers.

The US satisfying eliminating smugglers' profit would eliminate a major incentive for illegal border crossings.

And the regulated US companies profits would be taxable, to boot, plus they could be forced to pay for their customers' eventual rehabilitation needs.

And for the first time in those "products'" history: provide clear warning labels, and a level of quality meeting regulatory standards: reduced deaths due to homemade "fillers" and other impurities, by regulating what fillers get used, and by limiting allowed purity.

(But they should only do this for substances that are being produced or likely to be producable in Mexico in quantity)

kdawson: Firehose Link to the Story Submission

[reporter]

This time, "kdawson" forgot to add the Firehose link to the story that I submitted and that "kdawson" accepted for publication on SlashDot.

Does anyone know how I can contact "kdawson"?

Immigrants can cause massive problems.

[Anonymous Coward]

In Norway, out of the last 55 assault rapes committed in the capital of Oslo, 100% was committed by immigrants. This is according to official police numbers and not denied by anyone.

I would actually say that YOU are the one who suffers from a particular mental debilitating insanity that makes it impossible to recognise that immigration can bring problems with a range of seriousness levels, sometimes so much that the cost of immigration can well outweigh the benefits. You apparently don't spend a day not coming up with new and creative ideas for DENYING that immigration can cause massive problems, which is just as bad or even worse than what you accuse others of.

IMMIGRATION

[p51d007]

Which is why we use to SCREEN everyone entering the USA. To keep out sick and people with disease. Thanks to the crybaby libtards, those days are over.

Re:IMMIGRATION

[thetoadwarrior]

So there were no illegals under the Bush administration?

Re:IMMIGRATION

[Quakerjono]

There was a douchebag had a dog and Jingo was its name-o?

This comment displays not only a profound lack of information regarding both immigration policy AND simple population movement, but a lack of knowledge about disease vector transmission.

Unless you're suggesting that the US hermetically seal itself off both from all population movement as well as all importation from outside sources, then you're fighting an un-winnable battle.

But yeah, go ahead, blame the "crybaby libtards" because it's more important to have a binary answer than a correct one.

Mod parent troll

[Anonymous Coward]

For idiocy.

The problem is uncontrolled immigration.

[reporter]

girlintraining wrote, "People are surprised by this? Our inner cities are rotting. Our economy is in shambles. People are living squallor and poverty on an unprecidented scale in this country. We're a breeding ground now for all manners of disease, both social and medical."

You have omitted an important aspect of the problem. Uncontrolled immigration is precisely hurting those American citizens who are living in "squalor and poverty". Illegal immigrants are suppressing the wages of such Americans by about 8%.

Worse, according to the report by the "Wall Street Journal", illegal immigrants inject disease into neighborhoods of impoverished Americans.

The Americans living in the upper/middle class simply do not experience the pain and suffering that Americans in the lower class endure due to illegal immigration. So, naturally the Americans in the upper/middle class favor uncontrolled immigration. They want the cheap vegetables that illegal-immigrant labor provides even if it means hurting the Americans in the lower class.

That is the ugly truth.

Counterexample: Japan

[reporter]

There is nothing wrong with opposing uncontrolled immigration.

The people living in a nation have the right to determine the criteria for admitting immigrants. The French think so. The Germans think so. The Japanese think so.

In fact, Japan is the perfect example of a country that attained tremendous wealth without massive uncontrolled immigration. Note the Japan is nearly devoid of the natural resources with which the USA is blessed. Yet, the Japanese transformed a barren rock into the 2nd richest nation in the world.

The American claim that the USA needs illegal immigrants to pick the vegetables and to perform other unskilled labor is simply incorrect. Japanese society works quite well without illegal immigrants.

Unlike the Americans, the Japanese do require the immigrants (i. e., the few immigrants that Tokyo admits) to be screened for diseases.

Utter ignorance to the first degree.

[Anonymous Coward]

People are surprised by this? Our inner cities are rotting. Our economy is in shambles.

And hence, without explicitly saying so (because that might be open for criticism), but just implying, that there is some form of connection between the state of the economy and this situation.

Parasitic infections aren't explosive over the course of a year and a half. A year and a half ago the economy was still booming. The state of parastic infection was still as it is today - hence, your unspoken connection between the state fo the economy and the rate of parasitic infections can be thrown in the dustbin.

What other connection is there?

Maybe this one: The rate of parasitic infections is drastically up in all the areas heavily affected by immigration from poor countries where the rate of parasitic infections is high. Or in other words, regardless of the economy or other issues: if people with illnesses immigrate, the rate of illness in the country they immigrate to increases. It doesn't take a rocket scientist.

Re:Utter ignorance to the first degree.

[buswolley]

That is why we need universal health care. We can't let it fester and spread.

Political Correctness Blocks Common Sense

[reporter]

emarkp wrote, "This is one reason [for] having an actual immigration policy and enforcing it. Most countries in the world do this, but for some reason the US doesn't."

The Americans cannot enforce an immigration policy because doing so is politically incorrect. So, essentially, the USA has open borders. Anyone can come whenever he wants.

Even the French, who supposedly are oh-so-liberal, strictly enforce the rules for an orderly welcoming of legal immigrants. After Nicolas Sarkozy became president of France, he toughened the rules and insisted that all immigrants must learn Western values and the French language.

Admittedly, the French did not always treat immigrants in this way. During the 1970s and the 1980s, the French took a lax attitude to immigrantion. As a result, France swelled with illegal and legal immigrants from the Middle East and Africa. About 20% of the people living in France today trace their ancestry to the Middle East and Africa, and this 20% vehemently rejects assimilation into French society. These folks periodically riot, destroying property and killing French bystanders.

Re: Political Correctness Blocks Common Sense

[Black Parrot]

The Americans cannot enforce an immigration policy because doing so is politically incorrect.

Or maybe there's just too many people with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.

Look at the revolt that the Republican leaders got from their own people when they floated the idea of a border crackdown to boost their falling popularity a few years ago.

Re:Political Correctness Blocks Common Sense

[Archon-X]

I'm fairly sure you're uninformed about what you're 'reporting'.
Why's that? I've been living in France, illegally, for the last two years, with absolutely no issue.

Each time I pass border control, I'm stamped in and out. On top of my 'visa denied' stamp.

Hell, I was in the prefecture and they didn't care.

With that said, despite being a member of the commonwealth, etc, getting into the US is always an effort, even with an APEC travel card.

Infantile death in the US...

[jeffasselin]

The infantile death rate in the US is one of the highest in developed countries.

A significant portion of your population is affected by diseases that are mostly present in third-world countries and can be handled easily with proper health care and social measures.

And some of you still think universal health care is a bad idea?

Re:Infantile death in the US...

[criptic08]

Parent better be at +5 insightful/uncomfortable truth when i check it tomorrow!!

Re:Infantile death in the US...

[Anonymous Coward]

We count ALL infant deaths. Most countries don't count deaths of babies born prematurely, and some places don't even count it if they die within the first few months (like Cuba.)

Hardly a fair comparison.

Irony

[Lord Kano]

500 Years ago, Europeans came to the western hemisphere and brought all kinds of diseases that the native population had no immunity against. Now, the descendants of those Europeans are getting diseases for which they have no immunity from the descendants of the natives from so long ago...

LK

Re:MUCH MORE IS COMING

[WindBourne]

actually, before 9/11, it was trivial to apply AND fairly easy to get in. We were one of the easiest ones to get in. Since 9/11, I know that it has tightened, but not sure how much.
Therefore, I think that the words that you are grasping for, is if MORE were allowed in, or perhaps if we lowered our standards of what we were looking for. As it is, I believe that we are one of the largest in shear numbers, and even rank up there in terms of percentage. That includes countries such as Russia and Brazil who have much lower population densities than we do.

Personally, I seriously doubt that it will matter. As long as we allow anybody that lives here to grab a job, it will continue to be an issue. Only once we follow the rest of the west and insist that everybody who has a job be LEGALLY able to work there, will this change.

Re:MUCH MORE IS COMING

[Anonymous Coward]

that has nothing to do with it. they do it because if they were legal citizens they would have to pay social security, income tax, all that good stuff. this way, they work under the table, keep all the money, and never have to bother with those boring things legal citizens are required to do.

Re:MUCH MORE IS COMING

[alan_dershowitz]

You are just trading one huge problem for another. We don't live in the third world, we live in the first world. We expect a certain quality of life. The third world is enormous. Industry in the USA competes on price. Therefore it is always desirable for business to take advantage of labor that will work on wages that can't support a first-world standard of living if you can get them into the country. It doesn't even matter if they have kids that grow up expecting a first-world standard of living because you can still always bring in more from outside the country.

Do you desire a first world standard of living? It's thanks to things like the forty-hour work week, labor rights and the minimum wage, all things that immigrants in the third world are used to compromising on. So you can ease immigration restrictions all you want, the third world will always have people that will work less than what is legal and create a market for illegal, untrackable labor that is not getting those health checks. You can keep allowing more until there's no restriction at all and health checks are irrelevant because you're living in a world where so many people live and work without even basic health care.

Re:MUCH MORE IS COMING

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a funny alias you've got there, Glen Beck.

My favorite part of the rant you've started on is it ends with, "we have to make sure illegal immigrants aren't getting health care!" Because, as we all know, preventing sick people from seeing doctors is a great way to stop the spread of disease. Just like wars for peace, the loss of individual rights for freedom, and "de-escalating" a verbal confrontation by pulling a gun - as Paultard Challis McAffee demonstrated earlier this week.

!racism

[Anonymous Coward]

!racism

YMBNH

[Anonymous Coward]

But it's not just slashdot. Racism, xenophobia, and nativism are becoming more widespread in the United States. Right-wing groups in Europe are also in ascendance.

Here is the U.S., there are several elected federal officials with ties to hate groups. That includes one Libertarian ideologue who is very popular here on slashdot...

There is a big huge wave of the nastiest amateur hate since the SA out there. I wish it was just confined to slashdot, but it is so much worse than that.

Southern Poverty Law Center Report: Return of the Militias

Re:I love that I was modded down by idiots

[Anonymous Coward]

It was probably modded down by bush-sucking neocon syncophants who think bush is teh awesomez. To these dissonant losers, bush didn't spend his first term as president refusing to bust employers of illegal immigrants.

Re:MUCH MORE IS COMING

[j. andrew rogers]

If it was easier to enter the country legally fewer people would do it illegally.

As a point of fact, the US allows more legal immigration than any other country in the world. It is not as though the US is stingy about letting people immigrate compared to the rest of the world. Canada beats the US on a per capita basis, though generally North American immigration policy makes the rest of the industrialized world look like a joke. Compared to the EU, the US is positively libertine with its immigration policy. What, precisely, is so horribly wrong with US immigration policy that does not make most of the rest of the industrialized world look even worse? Exactly how many more millions of immigrants must the US accept every year before the US earns your approval? The entire EU, with twice the population of the US, only accepts a measly 1.8M immigrants.

The US is pretty liberal about who it accepts as well. From Wikipedia: "Of the top ten countries accepting resettled refugees in 2006, the United States accepted more than twice as much as the next nine countries combined..." The US may have policy problems, but its willingness to accept immigrants is not one of them.

Re:MUCH MORE IS COMING

[MichaelSmith]

Yes but how open are the legal channels, as compared to the illegal ones? The porous north and south borders are obviously a problem here.

US Border Policy == ???

[Anonymous Coward]

From my own experience (as a 'johhny foreigner')
1) Assume everyone is a terrorist
2) Presume they are guilty so they get fingerprinted & mugshoted.
3) Then only let those who can persuade the 'jobsworths' on Immigration that they have not come to the us to blow up the Empire State Building or Mt Rushmore.
4) If they have been to the US before, check to see if there are any outstanding speeding or parking tickets in their name. If so deport them on the next flight brandishing them as undesirables even though the offense(speeding on Mass Tpk) was some 18 years before.
5) If they finally let you in it is with the stark warning 'Don't step out of line or you will be in Gitmo before you can say I want a lawyer'

And you say the US has no border policy? Sounds like one to me.

And yet,

[WindBourne]

that is NOT my rant. My rant is that illegals are a major part of why America no longer invests into Automation. At one time, America was at the forefront of automation, now, we are falling WAY behind esp. in Ag..

Look, illegals do pull services that they are not suppose to have and others that do not pay their taxes. So what? There are others that pay into the system and will not be able to pull from it (Unemployment and SS comes to mind). BUT, I DO object to the hit on the long term economic impact that IS happening because of illegals. Their is no way to counteract it EXCEPT by removing those jobs from them.

Re:And yet,

[Anonymous Coward]

Way to change the subject, toolbag. How do you get from "OMG teh illegals haz dizeazes" to "they are making us stop automating"?

Oh, and the new American version of automation is to get a brown person to do it - either here or overseas. Because apparently our new economic plan is to all get rich selling houses to each other; that's going well, right?

Re:MUCH MORE IS COMING

[value_added]

As a point of fact, the US allows more legal immigration than any other country in the world.

LOL. Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, right?

Sorry, you're a victim of a myth. On a per capita basis, the US accepts roughly the same number of immigrants (and/or refugees) as many western European countries, but less than other countries. By contrast, Canada accept far more. Hell, I think Greece has higher immigration numbers.

And if you factor in the anti-immigrant rhetoric and attitudes prevalent across so much of the US (and the lack of such things as health care and basic social safety nets, I'd suggest that the US is hardly a welcoming place. That's been true historically and it's true today. In the past it was the Chinese, then the Irish, then the dirty Jews and Italians; today it's the Mexicans! The reason, for example, why the US has low immigration numbers and continues to spend less per capita on charitable foreign aid than most industrialised countries, is that the US simply doesn't like and has never liked foreigners, least of all when they try to immigrate. That is, until years pass and they blend into the landscape and we recognise them as citizens like everyone else.

Granted, it's a big and wealthy country. So total numbers or dollars spent are bigger. But then, so what?

As for the article, the immigration process does require a complete health check, so the issues related to the spread of infectious diseases are addressed. The problem, however, is that not everyone who comes here is eligible to become part of that process, and there is no free public health care for them or anyone else. Consider tuberculosis, for example. Mandatory screening when applying for a green card, but the rates of infection in the US go up by 20K cases per year.

37 million poor?

[Cannelloni]

That's 8,3 percent of the population!!!! How is this possible in modern times?

Re:37 million poor?

[maxume]

There will always be people that are poor for some reason or another, even if everyone got the same exact number of economic credits by way of governmental redistribution, other people would like their wives more, or their jobs more, or enjoy the shows that were on television more, or whatever.

If you compare actual historical standards of living, instead of mindlessly comparing historical government statistics, those 37 million are doing okay. If you shop and cook for yourself, you don't even have to eat low quality calories to get by on a pretty thin budget.

"3rd world"?! Is the 80's back?

[QuietR10t]

I was just getting my head around memorizing all the different G's and all the countries within them and you toss me back to the "world" ranking? I knew I shouldn't have thrown those 80's school books away!

Hardly surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

America is a third world country. They don't even have universal healthcare provision. What civilised country treats its citizens in this way?
Even countries that have suffered severe economic terrorism such as Cuba have a significantly better infant mortality rate.
I was shocked to see recent news coverage in Europe of totally ignorant Americans criticising the UK healthcare system - a system which if you look at statistics, and despite the particularly unhealthy lifestyle of some British people, achieves significantly better results universally, in nearly all areas, than those who are actually covered by insurance in the US.
If America does not change tack, it is heading for a massive economic meltdown. I'd start with a 90% cut in military spending, and a closure of all US military bases abroad.
'Free Trade' laws need to be abolished to prevent the exploitation of other nations' poor, and the attack on the basic wages of the domestic labour pool.
What about about a redistributive tax system? Why should the US system be loaded against the majority of people, effectively allowing corporations to legislate to maximise profitability at the expense of everyone else. The vast majority of Americans are NOT stakeholders in the corporations that enslave them. The right wing in europe always argued that we should all be shareholders - but with what do we buy in to this system, if we can't even afford food, housing, and to save a decent pension for retirement?
When I have visited the United States, I have been appalled by the shocking level of poverty evident in most cities. I have been all over Europe, and have never seen such social degradation, and such intrinsic poverty, and hopelessness. I really feel sorry for those who have to live in this country - a country where everything is committed to maintaining the interests of Americas ruling elite, their corporate allies, and the massive military industrial sector, at the expense of its own citizens, and to the detriment of the rest of the world.

Dupe

[CrashandDie]

Slashdot frontpage already has a story about Twitter Developing Location-Based API

Peak US

[assert(0)]

Just another sign that the US (flyoverland) is turning into a third world country. Americans, sorry, your golden age is at an end. Your civilization has jumped the shark. Thanks for all the fish!

Re:Peak US

[myowntrueself]

Americans, sorry, your golden age is at an end

IIRC, George Bernard Shaw said "America is the first nation to pass from barbarism directly to decadence without the usual intervening period of civilisation".

Re:Counterexample: Japan

[thetoadwarrior]

France and Germany are part of the EU and therefore loads of people from other countries can come and go as they please. So I'm not sure why you've mentioned them.

1% of Japan's population are registered immigrants. As of 2004, they have 250,000 illegal immigrants. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/3708098.stm

Japan also knows they are look at a serious population decline and will need immigration more and more in the up coming years. So no, the Japanese have no solved any problems. My guess is that their illegal population would be higher if if whites, latinos, etc didn't stick out like a sore thumb.

There are problems with immigration but it does not help when people spread so much uninformed bullshit which you find quite often with Americans and the English. These two countries seem to be blessed with quite a high percentage of anti-immigration spackers. Maybe they realise their countries have committed genocide and shat all over other nations so they're afraid payback is coming.

But there is no need to worry, no one is interested in genocide like your immigrant ancestors were when they moved in on the Indian's land.

US is becoming third world

[Anonymous Coward]

slowly but surely

Re:If only Madagascar... the great flu game

[Anonymous Coward]

For those who don't get this joke, check out
http://www.thegreatflu.com/

damn you Madagascar, I could have ruled the world!!

Re:kdawson: Firehose Link to the Story Submission

[deimtee]

submit a shitty story.

manufacturers suggested ... public relations?

[Anonymous Coward]

MSPR or MSRP. C'mon, it's the only acronym you used, at least get it right.

Your problem started in the 1600s

[fantomas]

If you'd kept out folk from Spain and England coming in with alien illnesses in the 1600s you'd have been in a better position than you are now. Maybe that is the root of the problem?

Infant death rates misleading

[Renevith]

Infant death is more common with low birth-weight and/or early babies. Lifestyle choices in the US, such as obesity and teenage motherhood, drive more low-birth-weight babies than in other countries. That has nothing to do with the health care system, unless you include "social measures" (in this case forcing people to adhere to your personal standards).

The real test of a health care system is to control for those factors. Strip away the effect of the number of low-weight babies are born here, and ask: if you're going to have a low-weight baby, where is it more likely to survive?

No one denies the problem. Our infant mortality rate is double that of Japan or Sweden. But we live different lives, on average, than people in those places. We suffer more obesity (about 10 times as much as the Japanese), and we have more births to teenagers (seven times more than the Swedes). Nearly 40 percent of American babies are born to unwed mothers.

Factors like these are linked to low birth weight in babies, which is a dangerous thing. In a 2007 study for the National Bureau of Economic Research, economists June O'Neill and Dave O'Neill noted that "a multitude of behaviors unrelated to the health-care system such as substance abuse, smoking and obesity" are connected "to the low birth weight and pre-term births that underlie the infant death syndrome."
[...]
The National Bureau of Economic Research paper points out that among the smallest infants, survival rates are better on this side of the border. What that suggests is that if we lived under the Canadian health-care system, we would not have a lower rate of infant mortality. We would have a higher one.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-oped0823chapmanaug23,0,7962367.column

Re:MUCH MORE IS COMING

[Blakey Rat]

Yes but how open are the legal channels, as compared to the illegal ones?

Already more open than almost every other nation on Earth. I mean, seriously, what more could we do?

The porous north and south borders are obviously a problem here.

Yeah, because they're huge borders and they've always been borders with friendly nations so we've never bothered to really defend them in any serious manner.

Re:MUCH MORE IS COMING

[Blakey Rat]

LOL. Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, right?

Right, you gigantic asshole.

Sorry, you're a victim of a myth. On a per capita basis, the US accepts roughly the same number of immigrants (and/or refugees) as many western European countries, but less than other countries. By contrast, Canada accept far more. Hell, I think Greece has higher immigration numbers.

And your point is...?

And if you factor in the anti-immigrant rhetoric and attitudes prevalent across so much of the US (and the lack of such things as health care and basic social safety nets, I'd suggest that the US is hardly a welcoming place.

There is no "anti-immigration rhetoric." YOU ARE FULL OF SHIT. I've literally never, ONCE, heard a single person in the US complain about legal immigration. That includes everybody I've known in real life, any TV or radio I've listened to-- that sentiment simply DOES NOT EXIST.

There is anti-illegal immigration rhetoric. You're a retard if you don't realize that that's something completely different.

The reason, for example, why the US has low immigration numbers

It does? You haven't proven that yet, buddy... you can't work off of points you haven't yet addressed!

and continues to spend less per capita on charitable foreign aid than most industrialised countries, is that the US simply doesn't like and has never liked foreigners, least of all when they try to immigrate.

Look, I don't know what redneck hell-hole you got your impression of the US from, but: FUCK YOU.

As for the article, the immigration process does require a complete health check, so the issues related to the spread of infectious diseases are addressed. The problem, however, is that not everyone who comes here is eligible to become part of that process, and there is no free public health care for them or anyone else. Consider tuberculosis, for example. Mandatory screening when applying for a green card, but the rates of infection in the US go up by 20K cases per year.

Gee, I wonder why that is? Could it be because of *illegal* immigration? Immigrants who don't go through that complete health check you just mentioned because they're under the government's radar? HMM! WHAT A PUZZLER!!

Jesus Christ you're an asshole. Praytell, what country do you come from, that's so much better than the US when it comes to immigration? The aforementioned Greece?

Tommy Douglas

[The Yuckinator]

"Saskatchewan was told that it would never get hospital insurance. Yet Saskatchewan people were the first in Canada to establish this kind of insurance, and were followed by the rest of Canada. We didn't have Medicare in those days. They said you couldn't have Medicare - it would interfere with the 'doctor-patient relationship'. But you people in this province demonstrated to Canada that it was possible to have Medicare. Now every province in Canada either has it or is in the process of setting it up."

"Sure things have changed. Hair has gone down and skirts have gone up. But don't let this fool you. Behind the beards and the miniskirts, the long hair, this generation of young people, take it from me, is one of the finest generations of young people that have ever grown up in this country. Sure they're in rebellion against a lot of our standards and values and well they might be. They have got sick and tired of a manipulated society. They understand that a nation's greatness lies not in the quantities of its goods but in the quality of its life."

Speech in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, November 27, 1970
From Doris French Shackleton, Tommy Douglas, p. 309-10.

Tommy Douglas Father of Canadian Healthcare.

(also grandfather to Jack Bauer)

Big companies' PR overstates their...

[bussdriver]

The medical companies advertise more than any other group and employ PR on levels that most nations at war could only dream of. They have inflated their importance in our lives when they are not required. Mankind did and can still go on with out them. In many ways the situation is analogous to some science fiction reality where our perception of reality is being controlled-- not with sci-fi technology but with old fashioned corruption and the social sciences. Big tobacco was a huge foe that took 30 years before anything was done (and they grew globally as a result;) this cabal is virtually unstoppable by comparison. Plus they can mobilize more frightened employees to spread the PR which is easier in a economic depression.

People do not realize they spend little money on actual drug research which was and still is largely done outside their companies. The migration of researchers will just go the other direction if they are shutdown. Say that they fund half the research (which I highly doubt) and you don't ignore the many useless inventions they put tons of money into (like male enhancement)--- mankind can continue without any of it. We will just make discoveries slower; sure, some people suffer while waiting-- but at the same time, you can't simply solve scientific problems by throwing more money at them! (assuming that they can be solved at all.)

It is pretty much all over dude

[coryking]

Thanks to nutcases like fox news and friends, it has just become more socially acceptable for a rapidly shinking party composed of racist fools to make a huge stink and get attention. We need more of the majority to call these idiots what they are--idiots, and dismiss their arguments entirely. It isn't worth arguing with racist idiots and we do a massive dis-service even thinking about their arguments. In short, we need more Barney Frank's who tell them to shove it.

Re:MUCH MORE IS COMING

[Anonymous Coward]

If it was easier to enter the country legally fewer people would do it illegally. Then it might be easier to apply health checks on the way in.

I like this logic; you hear it all the time in favor of legalizing drugs too:
"if we make drugs legal, we can reduce illegal drug use".

I think we should apply this logic to all aspects of our legal code.

If we make it legal to pay people for sex, there would be less illegal prostitution.

If we make it legal to just take stuff we want, there would be fewer cases of theft.

If we make it easier to kill people that piss us off, there would be fewer murders.

By golly, I do believe you have found the solution to all of the world's crime problems! We should nominate you for a Nobel Peace Prize.

Capitalism working as it should

[RockDoctor]

But for the 37 million people in the US who live below the poverty line, he said, 'There is real suffering.'"

... and so they die, painfully, taking their children and families with them. This terrorises their poverty-stricken friends and neighbours into begging, borrowing or stealing (or drug-dealing) to make more money so that they can afford basic health care. All is for the best in the the best of all possible worlds. Capitalism rolls on.
Film at eleven.
Honestly, is anyone even surprised by this? This is one of the biggest socio-economic forces in the history of the world working exactly as expected. The only reason not to point out that Marx predicted this 150 years ago is that he was trumped about 40 years earlier by Malthus.
I resisted the capitalist urge to buy a second edition of Malthus a couple of weeks ago. I had a better use for the £200, and I can get it cheaper on Project Gutenberg. But I did have to resist.

Well, half the voters don't even believe in public

[Anonymous Coward]

health care". Typical Slashdolt lament!

Hey fuck you, come to my country legally and I will think about helping you. In the meantime go back and take your fucking diseases with you and while your at it, take the bleeding heart slashtard with you since they are so fucking concerned with the general welfare. They can put their concern in other places besides their mouths and do something in these rotten countries before they cause pandemics by illegally invading my country. Oh and dont go whining about how europeans invaded this continent, I dont fucking care and had nothing to do with it and am done with trying to reconcile guilt for which I bear no responsibility.

Idiots

"Bugs"

[ps2os2]

I am betting that the "bugs" were created by poor MS coders and their lack of care as to what kinds of security a machine has.

Pollution and disease on a single planet

[minstrelmike]

We think we can throw things _away_ or bury them where they will never ever bother us again, but that isn't true. It is a single planet. I call it Aquarium Earth. Anything that happens on one side of the planet will happen on the other. We're all in the mess together.