In my part of America (a corner of New England and that's all I'll say), the glasses are part of the price and you give them back afterwards, to be processed, sterilized, and repackaged for the next day.
And if a few.. hundred.. Afghanis who prefer peace to tyranny get brutally murdered thanks to Wikileaks, hey, collateral damage, right?
You did hear about that part, didn't you? The released documentation contains hundreds of names of people who are informing on the Taliban to the U.S. military. Their names, their father's names, and the locations of their villages. These are people who object to girls being splashed with acid for the terrible crime of attending school. Spokesmen for the Taliban say that their leaders are already sifting through the material, looking for people to punish.
The American military is a tough group and can survive this. The United States is a tough country and can weather this. It's those innocent people, the "little brown people" that Europeans tend to forget even exist, who will pay the heaviest price.
In fact, let's look at just one of these conditions, because this truly fails the logic test for me. I'm serious, it does.
In what society, for instance, and under what conditions, does the society force a man to rape a woman and then punish him for his deed with the death penalty? You only need to name one, but it does have to fit both conditions.
If you want to do murder instead, go ahead. In what society is a person forced by the society to kill someone and then punished by the death penalty in that society for his or her deed? Please name one for me so that I can study it further and see how your claim holds up under scrutiny.
Murders, rapes, and treason still occur in Cuba, where each person is given a home, a job, and enough subsistence to live upon by the government. Murders, rapes, and treason occur in the U.S. They occurred in the Soviet Union. They occurred in Imperial Russia. They occurred in Europe during the eras of monarchy and feudalism. They occur in India, with its caste system. They occur in remote parts of tribal Africa, where there is little or no overreaching authority.
So if these crimes are the fault of the society, why has every single society so far failed at eliminating them? How would you propose punishing society for forcing these poor people to kill and rape others?
Actually, some preliminary studies suggest that early puberty in girls may be triggered by the presence of a 'stranger male' in the household. In other words, Mom's boyfriend.
And yet poverty is still at the same population percentage, broken families are at an all-time high (over 70% among blacks in the U.S.), the most prominent epidemic is spread mostly by unsafe sexual contact, and I think that people living in places like Darfur might take issue with your claim that everything is hunky-dory.
Education levels in the U.S. have also declined. I invite you to locate a third-grade mathematics book written in the 1700's and take a third-grader through any of its lessons. The U.S. literacy rate is, if calculated through a common methodology using tests on Prose, Document, and Quantitative skills, actually around 60%. (Higher estimates are based on a very low requirement for literacy, and people who pass those tests may be unable to read well enough to even follow simple instructions.)
Sure, there are improvements. In the U.S., for instance, we no longer enslave people on the basis of the color of their skin. (It does still happen in other parts of the world, though.) We've also made advances in technology and medicine. However, your absolute statement that society is better "in every respect", though, is very easily disproven.
Er, not all of my examples involved adapting with changes over time. My great-grandmother didn't touch or deal with a computer until she was in her 90's. What makes you think that the Founding Fathers would have to have transistors explained to them? Do you think the average computer user knows what one is? Silicon? Already in use in the 1700's. Electricity? One of the Founding Fathers was Ben Franklin, remember what else he was famous for?:) How could they possibly understand the notion of binary? Maybe by likening it to a semaphore? That was the earliest form of telegraphy, the Internet being the latest.
Current society? What do you think would be a foreign concept to them? The majority of differences between the U.S. now and in its founding are societal constructs that we hold in common with Ancient Rome.
"...the constitution, a document that has worked into its fabric the ability to amend itself, is considered to be untouchable and unchanging." Then AMEND IT. It's one thing to say, "The second amendment is outdated and we need to change it." It's quite another to say, "The second amendment can be reinterpreted to mean this and that, so that we can change the laws of our country without having to get two-thirds of Congress on board."
My great-grandmother understood what a laptop was the first time she saw one and she was born in 1900. Do you think the Founding Fathers were stupider than her?
I must admit I'm a bit tired of the old argument that people in the 1700's were somehow incapable of understanding today's technology. Do you think they had smaller brains than we do?
My father didn't even have a calculator growing up. He learned to use a slide rule. When the Internet first began to develop, he was one of the first people on it. He quickly learned how a computer works. My grandfather used to repair radios with vacuum tubes. Now he finds old favorite songs on Youtube. It didn't take him long to figure out how to do it.
"The more and more we progress, the more abstract our concepts become..." The part of that which intrigues me is the word "progress". How many children do you think were born out of wedlock in 1770? What was the literacy rate? (I can answer this one right off... in the northern colonies it was universal, because nearly every child was taught to read well enough to understand the Bible.) Did you know that leeches for medical use started making a comeback in the 1980's? Did you know that maggots can clean the dead flesh from a wound and promote healing so effectively and efficiently that only antibiotics halted their use in U.S. hospitals? Did you know that with the discovery of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, hospitals are starting to use maggots again?
Sure, we have made progress in some areas. In others, we have remained the same. In still others, we have regressed. If we want to talk about 'abstract concepts'... have you ever read documents from that era? Have you ever read the Federalist Papers? Of course the Constitution wasn't 'abstract'. You don't want the highest law of the land to be 'abstract'. Have you read Paine's works? Jefferson's? Do you honestly think that they lack the capability to understand abstract concepts? In that area, I believe that we of the Soundbite Era have regressed.
May be worth pointing out at this juncture that people used to marry only two or three years after sexual maturity hit, which means that abstinence wasn't expected to carry you through the rest of highschool and your entire college education until you started "making enough money to marry". A girl, for instance, used to know how to manage a household at 14 and marry at 16, while a guy would start an apprenticeship at age 6 and be a (self-sufficient) journeyman by age 16-17.
Now they think that the fix to this problem is to let teenagers go off having sex with multiple people they will never expect to marry, and just have an abortion if the contraception fails. The problem is that hormonal contraception changes a person's hormonal balance, and that's not a good thing to do to a girl whose body is still developing. Abortion also causes health issues that even miscarriage does not. The going theory is that, since hormone levels rarely rise to the same level for a nonviable pregnancy as for a healthy one, the hormonal fallout of suddenly terminating a viable pregnancy is what's causing the increased risk.
Of course, this doesn't even address the problem of STD's.
If we really want to steer our children towards the most biologically favorable sex lives according to multiple scientific and medical studies, we should reconsider both the society that encourages abstinence during the person's most promising years AND the society that discourages them from entering into stable, monogamous relationships before they start engaging in intercourse.
I might. My calculated caloric intake to avoid steadily gaining weight is 1200-1500 calories a day. And yes, I am an adult, and I might be on the shorter side, but I'm not a midget.
"If you are as poor as you say you are, then a properly run welfare state would see your fortunes greatly improved. I don't agree that it's liberal taxes making you poor, it's conservative politics KEEPING you poor..."
Sorry, you lose...
My father's family escaped from Soviet Russia, and know all too well what happens to the poor under liberal socialism. We're tons richer than the average rural commoner in the average socialist country simply because we have electricity.
The reason why I'm starting to narrow my focus, by the way, is because at this point if I responded to every point you brought up each post would be an increasingly huge essay, and because more and more of your points at this time are starting to sound basically like the most hard-left fringe blogs I've ever seen. Right now you're just shy of the group who believe that White Men created AIDS in order to Kill The Black Man.
I could take almost every one of your points and explain exactly why and how they've been disproven. Unfortunately, at this point it would be a futile gesture, and could take weeks to complete. I'll try to explain the most egregious one, though, in terms you might understand.
If Bush's "tax cuts for the rich" are allowed to expire, then the families between poverty level and lower-middle-class will see a tax increase of about $2,400 per year for a family of four.
I have lived on the working-class edge all my life, and I have personally seen our fortunes fall with the Democrats and rise with the Republicans since Jimmy Carter. I actually might know what I'm talking about.
My family is technically "working class". Liberal policies in my "blue state" have elevated those who qualify for government programs to a higher standard of living, with more disposable income, than the family not on government programs until you reach upper-middle-class.
Internet is our luxury, justified because my husband needs it for some of his work. We have no cell phones. Can't afford them. I have slightly over half the money for food than a family on food stamps. I plant a vegetable garden in front of the house so that we'll have enough to eat without subsisting on bags of frozen french fries. My car is over 20 years old and literally rusting into the ground, but it has to last for another year so that we can buy another used vehicle to replace it. (Being that we live in a rural area, we can't go on public transportation, because there is none.)
The reason why we are conservatives is because the government does nothing to help us, but it taxes us anyways to give a better standard of living to people who don't work at all... and every time we start making just enough money to put some in the bank after meeting our immediate needs, some liberal comes along and puts another regulatory burden or special tax on us. You know Obama's healthcare bill? If it passes, it WILL raise our costs so high that we will be better able to afford the uninsured tax than the insurance payment and we WILL lose our insurance so that we can continue to afford to eat. If cap and trade passes too? Well... I don't know what we'll do. Honestly. We will probably lose our home. Out on the street. One of our children is still a little baby. I try not to think about it.
According to liberals, we don't exist, but I assure you that we do! Do you really think that the majority of those TEA party protesters are rich? Heh, if you only see this country through the prism of certain news agencies and visits to San Francisco where you feel right at home, you probably do. I don't know how I can convince you, if I even can.
Ok, consider this: The country is 40% conservative, 35% moderate, and 20% liberal. Only 1.5% of the population make Obama's definition of "rich", being over $200K/year. (He said $250K during campaigning, but now he says $200K. Anyways.) 20% of the population are upper-middle-class and higher. That means that even if EVERY SINGLE rich person and upper-middle-class person in the country are conservatives, half the conservative base MUST be lower-middle-class or poorer. As it happens, a poll taken in 2006 shows that 47% of people making over $100K/year voted Democrat, so all 20% of the upper-middle-and-higher couldn't POSSIBLY be conservative. (The upper-middle class starts at or slightly below six figures, depending on the state.)
But look at the result yourself. You said that you felt at home in San Francisco, highly liberal and one of the richest urban areas in the entire country. Did you know that they were one of the richest areas of the country? Did you know that they are highly liberal?
I admit I'm tired of people telling me that I don't exist, because a poor conservative struggling through liberal-imposed taxes and regulations doesn't fit into their view of Conservatives Are Horrible People.
By the way, there's some problem in terminology between South Africa and the U.S. where "conservatism" and "Republican" are concerned. Technically, "conservatism" means "keep things the way they are". Currently, the "conservatives" in the U.S. need to change so much that we're technically "liberal". Also, "Republican" refers to maintaining the part of our democratic republic that is, yes, a republic. However, the Republican Party in the U.S. was created for the primary purpose of ending Black slavery and giving Blacks equal rights. So to use the terms "conservative" and "Republican" to describe apartheid are both technically accurate when dealing with the original definitions of the word and completely useless when used to compar
You might be interested to know that I daily hear a rather different viewpoint from one of your fellow countrymen who posts on a smaller forum which I frequent. He and I have had several private-message conversations about the state of his country (South Africa, yes) and mine. One thing that you and he agree on is that the U.S. has the power, to an extent, to make life easier or more difficult for your country.
He is concerned at the effect that Obama's desire to push expensive programs that will entirely bankrupt the U.S., Obama's systematic alienation of both our allies and enemies, and Obama's unwillingness or inability to promote peace in the Middle East might have on his- your- country. He is also concerned about Obama's push to use more of our corn and wheat fields to produce ethanol instead of food. He isn't the only one. Many of my friends and relatives have expressed concern about how lowering our production of food might affect the amount of food that we send as aid to parts of Africa. The liberals say, "You can afford to spend a little more on food to save the planet!" The conservatives respond, "Yes, but THEY (people in parts of Africa and Asia) can't!"
Obama's party have also advanced several plans to raise the price of oil in order to force reluctant people to "save the planet" by using less. The most recent dip in worldwide oil prices coincided with Evil Bush permitting the ban on U.S. offshore drilling to expire. In my area, gasoline dropped from $3.50/gallon to $2/gallon. (It has since risen to about $2.80/gallon.)
As for defanging the bill, I only wish! The original monstrosity was going to cost much more and allow fewer options. If it had been passed in its first incarnation, doctors would be penalized by the government for giving mammograms to women under the age of 50. (In each incarnation, doctors will be punished for doing 'unnecessary treatments' according to the government board created to decide such things, and their first decision was that mammograms were unnecessary before the age of 50 because the few women who develop it earlier in life are more expensive to treat.)
You may stick to your liberal points of view based on the idea of government-coerced redistribution of wealth in order to care for people. I'll stick to my conservative points of view based on the idea that each of us is personally responsible for caring for each other. We'll see who ends up better off in the end...
Oh please don't take Sicko as representative in any way of the U.S. medical system. I live in a rural area surrounded by urban areas. I am 2 hours' drive away from Harlem and one hour's drive away from the prestigious UMASS Medical Center where my son was treated.
In the few cases where I've heard in Sicko or touted by Obama in which people "died of lack of healthcare insurance", they were treated by doctors and in hospitals before their death. Basically, suppose we have Bob and Al, both of whom have a heart problem. Bob has medical insurance, and Al does not. Bob and Al both have a stroke. Bob and Al both go to the emergency room. Bob and Al both get treated. Despite the treatment, Bob and Al both die. Al "died of lack of healthcare insurance" according to those who support socialized medicine in this country.
Want to know what the doctors do when they treat patients who can't pay? They increase the fees of their services. Basically, pretend for a moment that someone's handing out $100 worth of widgets to 10 people, all of whom pay. Each person pays $10 per widget. Now suppose he hands out $100 worth of widgets to 10 people, 5 of whom have no money at all. The other 5 people have to pay $20 per widget.
That is at the heart of the problems with affording health care in the U.S. The higher prices rise to make up for the people who are treated and cannot pay, the more people can no longer afford to pay. That's why doctors who choose to accept no insurance at all are typically able to charge prices for their services that even poverty-level families can afford. I believe this to be at the heart of the answer to America's health care problem.
I'm glad it works for you. I gotta admit, though, one of the most amazing thing to me about countries with socialized healthcare is that they put up with hospitals that DON'T have private rooms, televisions, comfy pillows, etc. I've seen pictures of hospitals in other countries where patients line the hallways and it always seems to me that it's them, not Americans, pardon me for saying this, who are uncivilized.
Hospitals here don't check to make sure you're covered before doing a procedure. They just do the procedure and submit the claim. Whatever isn't covered, you pay later. Health insurance companies do free wellness checkups already, and clinics offer it free to people who don't have health insurance.
Basically, what you do with government funding, we do with a mixture of private insurance and charity. The richest of the rich end up using the same hospitals as the poorest of the poor, and the quality is the same for all of us.
I'm not sure we'd have been out sooner from a Canadian hospital. A matter of hours was from arrival to dismissal. Enter a U.S. hospital, and you go to triage in seconds. It took a few hours for them to admit him, check his vitals, get him into a room, have two doctors and a medical student look at his hand, get an ultrasound done (there was no pus so they couldn't culture it), and have someone sign off on dismissal once they'd written out the prescription for me.
The reason why it can take hours once you're admitted and through triage is because emergency rooms are not allowed to turn anyone away for any reason regardless of ability to pay, citizen status, etc. so anyone and everyone who doesn't have insurance and/or is outside doctor's hours will go to the emergency room for anything from congestive heart failure to a sliver in the finger.
See, I'm not from urban America, and I'm probably not from any of the areas you visited. I'm a rural New Englander. I live in an agricultural corridor, and most of what I've learned about the way the world works comes from my experiences in farming. The problem with health care is that everything in the world has a cost. It costs in money, or in time, or in supplies, or all three. Patch your own pants and it costs an hour. Buy a new pair and it costs $15 where I shop for pants. If you make $15 or more an hour, it makes more sense to work an extra hour and buy the pants than to patch them.
The problem comes when things are offered for a lower price than what they actually cost. It's nice to SAY that healthcare should be 'free', but you know as well as I do that if you get your medical degree, set up shop, and do not charge customers, you'll end up with nothing for supper when you're done treating the patients. You'll also be overrun with patients who could afford their own care.
People like free services and will use them more often when they don't cost. How much more do you consume at an all-you-can-eat restaurant? How much more often do you use a free service? When healthcare is free, people no longer ask themselves, "Do I really need this scraped knee bandaged by a nurse?" or "Is my cold really severe enough to warrant emergency treatment?" Why not get it done anyways, just to be sure? It's free!
Different governments handle this in different ways. Many have the government, having placed an artificial cost on the service, now place an artificial limit on the people. They decide how many times a year you can have a physical, which treatments you can receive, how much money you can cost The Society before you're not worth saving. It sounds cruel, but it's a simple fact of life... if you do not govern yourself, someone else will have to govern you.
Are you IN Europe? Your numbers don't match up. You say that 30% of the population earn $5/week. Then you say that the poverty rate is much lower in Europe than in the U.S. and the poor live better in Europe. However, $5/hour is below America's minimum wage, and only about 12% of the population is at or under the poverty level of $22K/year for a family of four, less for a smaller family, more for a larger one. The median household income in the U.S. is second only to Switzerland.
As for the way that the poor live in Europe, I only have one example, a friend of mine in Holland who lost his job during the economic downturns in 2002. I urged him to get some treatment for his chronic, congenital health condition (a form of rheumatism). He had no access to healthcare. In Holland, you must spend about $100 per year before the government kicks in and covers everything, and he did not have that first $100 to spend. There were no low-cost or no-cost charity clinics in his area, as there are in mine. I asked a couple of people also in Holland if they could help him, and got the startling reply that that's what the government is there for, they pay more than enough taxes for it. The lack of generosity startled me, because I am used to seeing someone in need and asking immediately wha
Ok, let's see if I can explain what we have here. Just because TEH GOVERNMENTS doesn't pay for EACH AND EVERY SNIFFLE of EACH AND EVERY CITIZEN does not mean that Americans are murderously greedy bastards who don't care if the poor suffer.
To begin with, there's Medicaid. If you are below poverty level (or above, in some states) you can apply for Medicaid, which is a government-run healthcare program for the poor. Unfortunately, it is rife with problems. The denial rate is far higher than that of private insurance. Unlike private insurance, you risk losing Medicaid if you pay yourself for a denied procedure, so basically if you can't afford it and the government won't cover it, you're out of luck. Also, Medicaid reimburses doctors for pennies on the dollar, so it's harder to find a doctor who will take Medicaid patients. Greedy bastard American doctors? Those who are forced to take more patients than they can afford go out of business as they declare bankruptcy on their massive debt.
But at least there is Medicaid. So if you don't have a job, or if you're making minimum wage with no health care offered through your job, you can go on Medicaid.
Several states also have insurance that covers people up to 400% of the poverty level. Technically, I could go on my state policy and pay half the premium that I do now. I wouldn't, though. Why? It carries with it the same problems as NHS and other socialized medicine programs. It has a higher denial rate and longer lines.
Medicare (the automatic government-run health insurance program for all retirees) has created a new program, Medicare Advantage, that allows your policy to be managed through private companies rather than the government. (The government pays the premium.) It's very popular. Any senior who can get on it, does.
For those who don't qualify for Medicaid or Medicare, or any state-run program, and aren't covered by work, and aren't rich enough to pay for their care outright, there are charity-run hospitals and clinics all over the place. Walmart offers free screening for basic diseases and conditions. So does the Senior Center, the Town Hall, most elementary schools, etc. In addition, the personal charity contributions of the average American dwarf the personal charity contributions of the average European, and much of that goes for medical bills. There are several times when someone in my area has posted a need for help with medical bills, and everyone gives generously. We don't need TEH GOVERNMENTS forcing extra taxes down our throats in order to help our fellow man. We do it out of our own free will, and, more importantly, to the extent that we can afford.
You seem to have some kind of odd reset switch. You don't seem capable of fathoming how anybody can receive any care without either having TEH GOVERNMENTS pay for it or being insanely rich. Therefore, in your mind, if a country does not have socialized health insurance it means that everyone dies of preventable diseases in their youth because everyone else are so uncivilized. How did such an uncivilized nation, I ask you, end up with better survival rates for cancers, higher percentages receiving treatment for chronic diseases, higher percentages receiving preventative care, and lower-income people in better health than those civilized socialized-medicine countries like Britain, Canada, Holland, etc.? How did we end up with the average person receiving newer technologies, experiencing less wait time, and being more satisfied when polled about our level of healthcare?
Let me leave you with a couple of examples of our system in action.
My mother got pregnant when my father was out of work. She applied for state care, was accepted, and had her baby in a private hospital with the best of care, all paid by the low-income programs already in place.
My friend got into an auto accident when he was uninsured. The hospital had to do multiple surgeries and keep him there for weeks, during which they di
"You HAVE $25 a month" Well, yes. If the people of Britain, France, and Brazil normally do not have $25 a month to spend after paying for necessities, that's yet another reason why I don't want to be like them. "Your $25 a month is going down the drain" HOW? I'm not talking about paying premiums for insurance companies. "When hospitals are allowed to turn anybody away" but they're NOT.
In the U.S., if you need help, you go to the hospital, and you WILL get treated. BY LAW. They cannot turn you away unless you do not need treatment. (I took my daughter in once because it looked as if she had black stool in her diaper. They checked the diaper. Turns out it was merely very dark green, mild diarrhea and not blood. So they sent us home, because she was alright.)
Then, if you are UNINSURED, you get the bill. If you pay $25 on that bill TO THE HOSPITAL, then they leave you alone month to month. Actually, that's just the amount I chose to pay. If you can put any amount on that bill, they have to leave you alone by law. Unpaid medical bills are not allowed to impact your credit rating, by the way.
Many people get misled into believing that they have to declare bankruptcy when faced with a medical bill of as little as $10,000. (That's the average bill of the majority who go into bankruptcy for medical bills.) The truth is that bankruptcy is easy-looking enough and gentle enough (you're allowed to keep your house, your car, and thousands of dollars in stuff... I could apply for bankruptcy right now and lose NOTHING but my credit score) and it makes your medical bills go away.
Obama recently brought up this kid to claim that his mother died as a result of having no medical insurance. The truth is that she didn't go to the doctor while she had her job and insurance for months after the symptoms started. After she lost both, she went to a clinic and got diagnosed. Then she went into the hospital and was treated for eight days. Then she refused to see a doctor, and her own mother doesn't know why. Finally, she ended up in the hospital again, in a coma, and died after a week of unconsciousness there. See? No insurance, and she was treated. Three times. She would've been treated more if she'd showed up for the visits. I can't tell you for sure why she didn't go, but considering that it took her months after the onset of symptoms to go for the diagnosis, I suspect that she was in denial.
Now did she truly die from 'having no medical insurance'? She was treated! She died of pulmonary hypertension, which has no cure. Her life could be elongated by proper treatment of symptoms, but she was going to die of it whether she had treatment or not. Her story is just one of several that the current administration is trying to use to claim that People Are Dying Because You Won't Pass My Bill. Meanwhile, he admitted that his bill would likely not cover the pacemaker implantation for a 100-year-old woman who had it done under private insurance and has lived for at least five years longer since. That woman's daughter asked him outright if his bill would allow her mother's operation to be covered and he hemmed and hawed and said that maybe she'd be better off 'taking the pill' (referring either to painkillers until death or to the suicide pill, not sure which).
How many people are uninsured? The 45mill number is thrown around a lot. If you exclude immigrants, people who qualify for Medicaid and don't apply, and the rich, you end up with 7% of the U.S. population uninsured at any one time. (The numbers are for anyone who has a lapse of insurance in a certain year, so if you lost your job in March and got hired in May and spent one month without medical insurance, you're on the list, even though you have it now.)
So basically, the worst way to read the numbers shows that 93% of Americans are medically insured. A study comparing the U.S. with Canada found that 70% of Americans who are uninsured are happy with their level of health ca
Er, infant mortality is reported differently in the U.S. compared to most other countries. If a baby is born at 24 weeks gestation and dies despite several weeks of treatment, it is listed as an infant mortality. If that happens in many of these socialist healthcare utopias, nobody even tries to save the child and its death is listed as a "miscarriage".
In Brazil, 25 million people lacked access to electricity as of 2006, mostly people in rural areas, and driving barefoot is not only legal but recommended.
"France can do it."
France has started imposing copays on customers and is looking at the American system for other ideas for reform, hoping to bring down the impossible costs of healthcare that is closing much-needed hospitals.
"Britain can do it."
A recent scandal involving elderly people left without pain medication, in soiled bedclothes, without adequate food and drink is just the most recent highlight on Britain's problematic NHS. Waiting lists for procedures are still long, and a decision was only recently reversed that condemned patients with preventable macular degeneration to going blind in one eye before the other could be treated.
I'll stick with the U.S., thanks. I might be paying $25/month for a while if I get hammered with medical bills during a lapse in insurance, but at least I'll get TREATED.
Yeah, because having to pay $11K worth of copays and uncovered expenses isn't much less likely to lead to bankruptcy than having to pay $11K worth of actual doctor's bills, and the poor guys who find the fine more affordable than the mandate will end up with $100K worth of actual doctor's bills for the same procedure.
Note: The bill currently being considered in the U.S. is not "socialized medicine". It is more fascist than socialist, and it creates a situation in which the government controls what insurance covers, but not what doctors charge. It's a curious hybrid that has all of the uncertainties of the free market, all the heavy-handedness of communism, and all the bulk of trying to pretend that private companies actually matter.
Er, there have been recent studies showing that there is a strong correlation between the presence of a father figure in the household and several positive indicators for both male and female children, from lower crime rates to higher self-esteem and better grades. In fact, the birth father has a higher rate of success in this area than an adoptive father, and Mom's Live-In Boyfriend has a worse effect than no man at all.
It's all very well and good to point out the problems of time and attention where single parents are concerned, but how would two lesbians provide a child with a father?
The problem that I have with core classes is that it seems to be geared towards making up for what was once covered in highschool.
In elementary school, we should be learning our tools. In highschool, we should be learning how everything fits together. A highschool graduate should know how to write a research paper, how to give a simple speech, how to do basic algebra, and how a bill becomes a law. A highschool graduate should be able to tell you Newton's Laws, balance a chemical equation, and name the primary organs in the body.
People keep insisting that college is the point at which you specialize, but the typical four-year degree has less than half of its courses actually in your major. My university actually had a mandatory requirement in the first two years for gym class! C'mon, people, we're adults! We should be able to choose whether or not we want to get slammed around the basketball court One More Time!
Basically, I am not arguing against the idea of core classes. I am arguing against the notion that we must continue to emphasize them through college. A classic core education shouldn't take 14-16 years and you should be able to spend more than 6 months learning how to do what you plan to spend the rest of your life doing.
1. Low-salt products are in a container that looks just like the original, only with a different color band on it declaring it's low-salt status. Usually the band is blue, and the original is red, but sometimes the original has no band and the low-salt version has a red band on it. They are set right next to each other, unless all the low-salt versions are stocked in a separate Healthy Choices aisle. Of course, just grabbing the low-salt version without looking at it is not the wisest thing to do, because...
2. Every product also contains a nutritional label, which gives you the raw information of how much sodium is in a certain product and then gives you the percentage of your daily recommended intake based on a 2,000 calorie diet. As a quick For Instance, let's take a look at a can of Progresso Healthy Classics Beef Barley Soup. Here's the label, let's see...
Sodium: 470mg...........20% (Daily Value on a 2,000 calorie diet)
Now let's look at the box of Shake 'n Bake Original Recipe:
Sodium: 795mg...........33% (Daily Value on a 2,000 calorie diet)
Have I just been deprived of the ability to make an informed choice as to which food contains more sodium and what percentage of my daily recommended consumption it contains?
As it happens, I tend to reject them both and go for no-sodium products, like packages of dry lentils and other unprocessed foods. Then I salt them myself while cooking.:)
The reason why you are not aware of any research showing that the native Americans generally suffered more from goiters is because they were not aware of the problem and attempting to correct it until the early 1900's. You may find this link interesting: http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/79/4/642
Most salt sold in the U.S. is also iodized, because the food produced in America tends to lack that essential mineral. It's the reason why the low/no-salt craze has been leading to an increased incidence of goiters.
So if you want to buy your meat reared on a farm and fed on grass in a healthy field and keep cooking it and everything else with no salt, you are going to get very ill from a very preventable thyroid problem caused by iodine deficiency.
Ironically, iodine deficiency is also the most easily prevented cause of mental retardation.
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In my part of America (a corner of New England and that's all I'll say), the glasses are part of the price and you give them back afterwards, to be processed, sterilized, and repackaged for the next day.
"Wikileaks is doing great work for the world."
And if a few.. hundred.. Afghanis who prefer peace to tyranny get brutally murdered thanks to Wikileaks, hey, collateral damage, right?
You did hear about that part, didn't you? The released documentation contains hundreds of names of people who are informing on the Taliban to the U.S. military. Their names, their father's names, and the locations of their villages. These are people who object to girls being splashed with acid for the terrible crime of attending school. Spokesmen for the Taliban say that their leaders are already sifting through the material, looking for people to punish.
The American military is a tough group and can survive this. The United States is a tough country and can weather this. It's those innocent people, the "little brown people" that Europeans tend to forget even exist, who will pay the heaviest price.
In fact, let's look at just one of these conditions, because this truly fails the logic test for me. I'm serious, it does.
In what society, for instance, and under what conditions, does the society force a man to rape a woman and then punish him for his deed with the death penalty? You only need to name one, but it does have to fit both conditions.
If you want to do murder instead, go ahead. In what society is a person forced by the society to kill someone and then punished by the death penalty in that society for his or her deed? Please name one for me so that I can study it further and see how your claim holds up under scrutiny.
Murders, rapes, and treason still occur in Cuba, where each person is given a home, a job, and enough subsistence to live upon by the government. Murders, rapes, and treason occur in the U.S. They occurred in the Soviet Union. They occurred in Imperial Russia. They occurred in Europe during the eras of monarchy and feudalism. They occur in India, with its caste system. They occur in remote parts of tribal Africa, where there is little or no overreaching authority.
So if these crimes are the fault of the society, why has every single society so far failed at eliminating them? How would you propose punishing society for forcing these poor people to kill and rape others?
Actually, some preliminary studies suggest that early puberty in girls may be triggered by the presence of a 'stranger male' in the household. In other words, Mom's boyfriend.
And yet poverty is still at the same population percentage, broken families are at an all-time high (over 70% among blacks in the U.S.), the most prominent epidemic is spread mostly by unsafe sexual contact, and I think that people living in places like Darfur might take issue with your claim that everything is hunky-dory.
Education levels in the U.S. have also declined. I invite you to locate a third-grade mathematics book written in the 1700's and take a third-grader through any of its lessons. The U.S. literacy rate is, if calculated through a common methodology using tests on Prose, Document, and Quantitative skills, actually around 60%. (Higher estimates are based on a very low requirement for literacy, and people who pass those tests may be unable to read well enough to even follow simple instructions.)
Sure, there are improvements. In the U.S., for instance, we no longer enslave people on the basis of the color of their skin. (It does still happen in other parts of the world, though.) We've also made advances in technology and medicine. However, your absolute statement that society is better "in every respect", though, is very easily disproven.
Er, not all of my examples involved adapting with changes over time. My great-grandmother didn't touch or deal with a computer until she was in her 90's. What makes you think that the Founding Fathers would have to have transistors explained to them? Do you think the average computer user knows what one is? Silicon? Already in use in the 1700's. Electricity? One of the Founding Fathers was Ben Franklin, remember what else he was famous for? :) How could they possibly understand the notion of binary? Maybe by likening it to a semaphore? That was the earliest form of telegraphy, the Internet being the latest.
Current society? What do you think would be a foreign concept to them? The majority of differences between the U.S. now and in its founding are societal constructs that we hold in common with Ancient Rome.
"...the constitution, a document that has worked into its fabric the ability to amend itself, is considered to be untouchable and unchanging." Then AMEND IT. It's one thing to say, "The second amendment is outdated and we need to change it." It's quite another to say, "The second amendment can be reinterpreted to mean this and that, so that we can change the laws of our country without having to get two-thirds of Congress on board."
My great-grandmother understood what a laptop was the first time she saw one and she was born in 1900. Do you think the Founding Fathers were stupider than her?
I must admit I'm a bit tired of the old argument that people in the 1700's were somehow incapable of understanding today's technology. Do you think they had smaller brains than we do?
My father didn't even have a calculator growing up. He learned to use a slide rule. When the Internet first began to develop, he was one of the first people on it. He quickly learned how a computer works. My grandfather used to repair radios with vacuum tubes. Now he finds old favorite songs on Youtube. It didn't take him long to figure out how to do it.
"The more and more we progress, the more abstract our concepts become..." The part of that which intrigues me is the word "progress". How many children do you think were born out of wedlock in 1770? What was the literacy rate? (I can answer this one right off... in the northern colonies it was universal, because nearly every child was taught to read well enough to understand the Bible.) Did you know that leeches for medical use started making a comeback in the 1980's? Did you know that maggots can clean the dead flesh from a wound and promote healing so effectively and efficiently that only antibiotics halted their use in U.S. hospitals? Did you know that with the discovery of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, hospitals are starting to use maggots again?
Sure, we have made progress in some areas. In others, we have remained the same. In still others, we have regressed. If we want to talk about 'abstract concepts'... have you ever read documents from that era? Have you ever read the Federalist Papers? Of course the Constitution wasn't 'abstract'. You don't want the highest law of the land to be 'abstract'. Have you read Paine's works? Jefferson's? Do you honestly think that they lack the capability to understand abstract concepts? In that area, I believe that we of the Soundbite Era have regressed.
May be worth pointing out at this juncture that people used to marry only two or three years after sexual maturity hit, which means that abstinence wasn't expected to carry you through the rest of highschool and your entire college education until you started "making enough money to marry". A girl, for instance, used to know how to manage a household at 14 and marry at 16, while a guy would start an apprenticeship at age 6 and be a (self-sufficient) journeyman by age 16-17.
Now they think that the fix to this problem is to let teenagers go off having sex with multiple people they will never expect to marry, and just have an abortion if the contraception fails. The problem is that hormonal contraception changes a person's hormonal balance, and that's not a good thing to do to a girl whose body is still developing. Abortion also causes health issues that even miscarriage does not. The going theory is that, since hormone levels rarely rise to the same level for a nonviable pregnancy as for a healthy one, the hormonal fallout of suddenly terminating a viable pregnancy is what's causing the increased risk.
Of course, this doesn't even address the problem of STD's.
If we really want to steer our children towards the most biologically favorable sex lives according to multiple scientific and medical studies, we should reconsider both the society that encourages abstinence during the person's most promising years AND the society that discourages them from entering into stable, monogamous relationships before they start engaging in intercourse.
I might. My calculated caloric intake to avoid steadily gaining weight is 1200-1500 calories a day. And yes, I am an adult, and I might be on the shorter side, but I'm not a midget.
"If you are as poor as you say you are, then a properly run welfare state would see your fortunes greatly improved. I don't agree that it's liberal taxes making you poor, it's conservative politics KEEPING you poor..."
Sorry, you lose...
My father's family escaped from Soviet Russia, and know all too well what happens to the poor under liberal socialism. We're tons richer than the average rural commoner in the average socialist country simply because we have electricity.
The reason why I'm starting to narrow my focus, by the way, is because at this point if I responded to every point you brought up each post would be an increasingly huge essay, and because more and more of your points at this time are starting to sound basically like the most hard-left fringe blogs I've ever seen. Right now you're just shy of the group who believe that White Men created AIDS in order to Kill The Black Man.
I could take almost every one of your points and explain exactly why and how they've been disproven. Unfortunately, at this point it would be a futile gesture, and could take weeks to complete. I'll try to explain the most egregious one, though, in terms you might understand.
If Bush's "tax cuts for the rich" are allowed to expire, then the families between poverty level and lower-middle-class will see a tax increase of about $2,400 per year for a family of four.
I have lived on the working-class edge all my life, and I have personally seen our fortunes fall with the Democrats and rise with the Republicans since Jimmy Carter. I actually might know what I'm talking about.
You have now met a poor conservative.
My family is technically "working class". Liberal policies in my "blue state" have elevated those who qualify for government programs to a higher standard of living, with more disposable income, than the family not on government programs until you reach upper-middle-class.
Internet is our luxury, justified because my husband needs it for some of his work. We have no cell phones. Can't afford them. I have slightly over half the money for food than a family on food stamps. I plant a vegetable garden in front of the house so that we'll have enough to eat without subsisting on bags of frozen french fries. My car is over 20 years old and literally rusting into the ground, but it has to last for another year so that we can buy another used vehicle to replace it. (Being that we live in a rural area, we can't go on public transportation, because there is none.)
The reason why we are conservatives is because the government does nothing to help us, but it taxes us anyways to give a better standard of living to people who don't work at all... and every time we start making just enough money to put some in the bank after meeting our immediate needs, some liberal comes along and puts another regulatory burden or special tax on us. You know Obama's healthcare bill? If it passes, it WILL raise our costs so high that we will be better able to afford the uninsured tax than the insurance payment and we WILL lose our insurance so that we can continue to afford to eat. If cap and trade passes too? Well... I don't know what we'll do. Honestly. We will probably lose our home. Out on the street. One of our children is still a little baby. I try not to think about it.
According to liberals, we don't exist, but I assure you that we do! Do you really think that the majority of those TEA party protesters are rich? Heh, if you only see this country through the prism of certain news agencies and visits to San Francisco where you feel right at home, you probably do. I don't know how I can convince you, if I even can.
Ok, consider this: The country is 40% conservative, 35% moderate, and 20% liberal. Only 1.5% of the population make Obama's definition of "rich", being over $200K/year. (He said $250K during campaigning, but now he says $200K. Anyways.) 20% of the population are upper-middle-class and higher. That means that even if EVERY SINGLE rich person and upper-middle-class person in the country are conservatives, half the conservative base MUST be lower-middle-class or poorer. As it happens, a poll taken in 2006 shows that 47% of people making over $100K/year voted Democrat, so all 20% of the upper-middle-and-higher couldn't POSSIBLY be conservative. (The upper-middle class starts at or slightly below six figures, depending on the state.)
But look at the result yourself. You said that you felt at home in San Francisco, highly liberal and one of the richest urban areas in the entire country. Did you know that they were one of the richest areas of the country? Did you know that they are highly liberal?
I admit I'm tired of people telling me that I don't exist, because a poor conservative struggling through liberal-imposed taxes and regulations doesn't fit into their view of Conservatives Are Horrible People.
By the way, there's some problem in terminology between South Africa and the U.S. where "conservatism" and "Republican" are concerned. Technically, "conservatism" means "keep things the way they are". Currently, the "conservatives" in the U.S. need to change so much that we're technically "liberal". Also, "Republican" refers to maintaining the part of our democratic republic that is, yes, a republic. However, the Republican Party in the U.S. was created for the primary purpose of ending Black slavery and giving Blacks equal rights. So to use the terms "conservative" and "Republican" to describe apartheid are both technically accurate when dealing with the original definitions of the word and completely useless when used to compar
You might be interested to know that I daily hear a rather different viewpoint from one of your fellow countrymen who posts on a smaller forum which I frequent. He and I have had several private-message conversations about the state of his country (South Africa, yes) and mine. One thing that you and he agree on is that the U.S. has the power, to an extent, to make life easier or more difficult for your country.
He is concerned at the effect that Obama's desire to push expensive programs that will entirely bankrupt the U.S., Obama's systematic alienation of both our allies and enemies, and Obama's unwillingness or inability to promote peace in the Middle East might have on his- your- country. He is also concerned about Obama's push to use more of our corn and wheat fields to produce ethanol instead of food. He isn't the only one. Many of my friends and relatives have expressed concern about how lowering our production of food might affect the amount of food that we send as aid to parts of Africa. The liberals say, "You can afford to spend a little more on food to save the planet!" The conservatives respond, "Yes, but THEY (people in parts of Africa and Asia) can't!"
Obama's party have also advanced several plans to raise the price of oil in order to force reluctant people to "save the planet" by using less. The most recent dip in worldwide oil prices coincided with Evil Bush permitting the ban on U.S. offshore drilling to expire. In my area, gasoline dropped from $3.50/gallon to $2/gallon. (It has since risen to about $2.80/gallon.)
As for defanging the bill, I only wish! The original monstrosity was going to cost much more and allow fewer options. If it had been passed in its first incarnation, doctors would be penalized by the government for giving mammograms to women under the age of 50. (In each incarnation, doctors will be punished for doing 'unnecessary treatments' according to the government board created to decide such things, and their first decision was that mammograms were unnecessary before the age of 50 because the few women who develop it earlier in life are more expensive to treat.)
You may stick to your liberal points of view based on the idea of government-coerced redistribution of wealth in order to care for people. I'll stick to my conservative points of view based on the idea that each of us is personally responsible for caring for each other. We'll see who ends up better off in the end...
Oh please don't take Sicko as representative in any way of the U.S. medical system. I live in a rural area surrounded by urban areas. I am 2 hours' drive away from Harlem and one hour's drive away from the prestigious UMASS Medical Center where my son was treated.
In the few cases where I've heard in Sicko or touted by Obama in which people "died of lack of healthcare insurance", they were treated by doctors and in hospitals before their death. Basically, suppose we have Bob and Al, both of whom have a heart problem. Bob has medical insurance, and Al does not. Bob and Al both have a stroke. Bob and Al both go to the emergency room. Bob and Al both get treated. Despite the treatment, Bob and Al both die. Al "died of lack of healthcare insurance" according to those who support socialized medicine in this country.
Want to know what the doctors do when they treat patients who can't pay? They increase the fees of their services. Basically, pretend for a moment that someone's handing out $100 worth of widgets to 10 people, all of whom pay. Each person pays $10 per widget. Now suppose he hands out $100 worth of widgets to 10 people, 5 of whom have no money at all. The other 5 people have to pay $20 per widget.
That is at the heart of the problems with affording health care in the U.S. The higher prices rise to make up for the people who are treated and cannot pay, the more people can no longer afford to pay. That's why doctors who choose to accept no insurance at all are typically able to charge prices for their services that even poverty-level families can afford. I believe this to be at the heart of the answer to America's health care problem.
I'm glad it works for you. I gotta admit, though, one of the most amazing thing to me about countries with socialized healthcare is that they put up with hospitals that DON'T have private rooms, televisions, comfy pillows, etc. I've seen pictures of hospitals in other countries where patients line the hallways and it always seems to me that it's them, not Americans, pardon me for saying this, who are uncivilized.
Hospitals here don't check to make sure you're covered before doing a procedure. They just do the procedure and submit the claim. Whatever isn't covered, you pay later. Health insurance companies do free wellness checkups already, and clinics offer it free to people who don't have health insurance.
Basically, what you do with government funding, we do with a mixture of private insurance and charity. The richest of the rich end up using the same hospitals as the poorest of the poor, and the quality is the same for all of us.
I'm not sure we'd have been out sooner from a Canadian hospital. A matter of hours was from arrival to dismissal. Enter a U.S. hospital, and you go to triage in seconds. It took a few hours for them to admit him, check his vitals, get him into a room, have two doctors and a medical student look at his hand, get an ultrasound done (there was no pus so they couldn't culture it), and have someone sign off on dismissal once they'd written out the prescription for me.
The reason why it can take hours once you're admitted and through triage is because emergency rooms are not allowed to turn anyone away for any reason regardless of ability to pay, citizen status, etc. so anyone and everyone who doesn't have insurance and/or is outside doctor's hours will go to the emergency room for anything from congestive heart failure to a sliver in the finger.
See, I'm not from urban America, and I'm probably not from any of the areas you visited. I'm a rural New Englander. I live in an agricultural corridor, and most of what I've learned about the way the world works comes from my experiences in farming. The problem with health care is that everything in the world has a cost. It costs in money, or in time, or in supplies, or all three. Patch your own pants and it costs an hour. Buy a new pair and it costs $15 where I shop for pants. If you make $15 or more an hour, it makes more sense to work an extra hour and buy the pants than to patch them.
The problem comes when things are offered for a lower price than what they actually cost. It's nice to SAY that healthcare should be 'free', but you know as well as I do that if you get your medical degree, set up shop, and do not charge customers, you'll end up with nothing for supper when you're done treating the patients. You'll also be overrun with patients who could afford their own care.
People like free services and will use them more often when they don't cost. How much more do you consume at an all-you-can-eat restaurant? How much more often do you use a free service? When healthcare is free, people no longer ask themselves, "Do I really need this scraped knee bandaged by a nurse?" or "Is my cold really severe enough to warrant emergency treatment?" Why not get it done anyways, just to be sure? It's free!
Different governments handle this in different ways. Many have the government, having placed an artificial cost on the service, now place an artificial limit on the people. They decide how many times a year you can have a physical, which treatments you can receive, how much money you can cost The Society before you're not worth saving. It sounds cruel, but it's a simple fact of life... if you do not govern yourself, someone else will have to govern you.
Are you IN Europe? Your numbers don't match up. You say that 30% of the population earn $5/week. Then you say that the poverty rate is much lower in Europe than in the U.S. and the poor live better in Europe. However, $5/hour is below America's minimum wage, and only about 12% of the population is at or under the poverty level of $22K/year for a family of four, less for a smaller family, more for a larger one. The median household income in the U.S. is second only to Switzerland.
As for the way that the poor live in Europe, I only have one example, a friend of mine in Holland who lost his job during the economic downturns in 2002. I urged him to get some treatment for his chronic, congenital health condition (a form of rheumatism). He had no access to healthcare. In Holland, you must spend about $100 per year before the government kicks in and covers everything, and he did not have that first $100 to spend. There were no low-cost or no-cost charity clinics in his area, as there are in mine. I asked a couple of people also in Holland if they could help him, and got the startling reply that that's what the government is there for, they pay more than enough taxes for it. The lack of generosity startled me, because I am used to seeing someone in need and asking immediately wha
Not sure where to start.
Ok, let's see if I can explain what we have here. Just because TEH GOVERNMENTS doesn't pay for EACH AND EVERY SNIFFLE of EACH AND EVERY CITIZEN does not mean that Americans are murderously greedy bastards who don't care if the poor suffer.
To begin with, there's Medicaid. If you are below poverty level (or above, in some states) you can apply for Medicaid, which is a government-run healthcare program for the poor. Unfortunately, it is rife with problems. The denial rate is far higher than that of private insurance. Unlike private insurance, you risk losing Medicaid if you pay yourself for a denied procedure, so basically if you can't afford it and the government won't cover it, you're out of luck. Also, Medicaid reimburses doctors for pennies on the dollar, so it's harder to find a doctor who will take Medicaid patients. Greedy bastard American doctors? Those who are forced to take more patients than they can afford go out of business as they declare bankruptcy on their massive debt.
But at least there is Medicaid. So if you don't have a job, or if you're making minimum wage with no health care offered through your job, you can go on Medicaid.
Several states also have insurance that covers people up to 400% of the poverty level. Technically, I could go on my state policy and pay half the premium that I do now. I wouldn't, though. Why? It carries with it the same problems as NHS and other socialized medicine programs. It has a higher denial rate and longer lines.
Medicare (the automatic government-run health insurance program for all retirees) has created a new program, Medicare Advantage, that allows your policy to be managed through private companies rather than the government. (The government pays the premium.) It's very popular. Any senior who can get on it, does.
For those who don't qualify for Medicaid or Medicare, or any state-run program, and aren't covered by work, and aren't rich enough to pay for their care outright, there are charity-run hospitals and clinics all over the place. Walmart offers free screening for basic diseases and conditions. So does the Senior Center, the Town Hall, most elementary schools, etc. In addition, the personal charity contributions of the average American dwarf the personal charity contributions of the average European, and much of that goes for medical bills. There are several times when someone in my area has posted a need for help with medical bills, and everyone gives generously. We don't need TEH GOVERNMENTS forcing extra taxes down our throats in order to help our fellow man. We do it out of our own free will, and, more importantly, to the extent that we can afford.
You seem to have some kind of odd reset switch. You don't seem capable of fathoming how anybody can receive any care without either having TEH GOVERNMENTS pay for it or being insanely rich. Therefore, in your mind, if a country does not have socialized health insurance it means that everyone dies of preventable diseases in their youth because everyone else are so uncivilized. How did such an uncivilized nation, I ask you, end up with better survival rates for cancers, higher percentages receiving treatment for chronic diseases, higher percentages receiving preventative care, and lower-income people in better health than those civilized socialized-medicine countries like Britain, Canada, Holland, etc.? How did we end up with the average person receiving newer technologies, experiencing less wait time, and being more satisfied when polled about our level of healthcare?
Let me leave you with a couple of examples of our system in action.
My mother got pregnant when my father was out of work. She applied for state care, was accepted, and had her baby in a private hospital with the best of care, all paid by the low-income programs already in place.
My friend got into an auto accident when he was uninsured. The hospital had to do multiple surgeries and keep him there for weeks, during which they di
Now I have no idea what you're talking about.
"You HAVE $25 a month" Well, yes. If the people of Britain, France, and Brazil normally do not have $25 a month to spend after paying for necessities, that's yet another reason why I don't want to be like them. "Your $25 a month is going down the drain" HOW? I'm not talking about paying premiums for insurance companies. "When hospitals are allowed to turn anybody away" but they're NOT.
In the U.S., if you need help, you go to the hospital, and you WILL get treated. BY LAW. They cannot turn you away unless you do not need treatment. (I took my daughter in once because it looked as if she had black stool in her diaper. They checked the diaper. Turns out it was merely very dark green, mild diarrhea and not blood. So they sent us home, because she was alright.)
Then, if you are UNINSURED, you get the bill. If you pay $25 on that bill TO THE HOSPITAL, then they leave you alone month to month. Actually, that's just the amount I chose to pay. If you can put any amount on that bill, they have to leave you alone by law. Unpaid medical bills are not allowed to impact your credit rating, by the way.
Many people get misled into believing that they have to declare bankruptcy when faced with a medical bill of as little as $10,000. (That's the average bill of the majority who go into bankruptcy for medical bills.) The truth is that bankruptcy is easy-looking enough and gentle enough (you're allowed to keep your house, your car, and thousands of dollars in stuff... I could apply for bankruptcy right now and lose NOTHING but my credit score) and it makes your medical bills go away.
Obama recently brought up this kid to claim that his mother died as a result of having no medical insurance. The truth is that she didn't go to the doctor while she had her job and insurance for months after the symptoms started. After she lost both, she went to a clinic and got diagnosed. Then she went into the hospital and was treated for eight days. Then she refused to see a doctor, and her own mother doesn't know why. Finally, she ended up in the hospital again, in a coma, and died after a week of unconsciousness there. See? No insurance, and she was treated. Three times. She would've been treated more if she'd showed up for the visits. I can't tell you for sure why she didn't go, but considering that it took her months after the onset of symptoms to go for the diagnosis, I suspect that she was in denial.
Now did she truly die from 'having no medical insurance'? She was treated! She died of pulmonary hypertension, which has no cure. Her life could be elongated by proper treatment of symptoms, but she was going to die of it whether she had treatment or not. Her story is just one of several that the current administration is trying to use to claim that People Are Dying Because You Won't Pass My Bill. Meanwhile, he admitted that his bill would likely not cover the pacemaker implantation for a 100-year-old woman who had it done under private insurance and has lived for at least five years longer since. That woman's daughter asked him outright if his bill would allow her mother's operation to be covered and he hemmed and hawed and said that maybe she'd be better off 'taking the pill' (referring either to painkillers until death or to the suicide pill, not sure which).
How many people are uninsured? The 45mill number is thrown around a lot. If you exclude immigrants, people who qualify for Medicaid and don't apply, and the rich, you end up with 7% of the U.S. population uninsured at any one time. (The numbers are for anyone who has a lapse of insurance in a certain year, so if you lost your job in March and got hired in May and spent one month without medical insurance, you're on the list, even though you have it now.)
So basically, the worst way to read the numbers shows that 93% of Americans are medically insured. A study comparing the U.S. with Canada found that 70% of Americans who are uninsured are happy with their level of health ca
Er, infant mortality is reported differently in the U.S. compared to most other countries. If a baby is born at 24 weeks gestation and dies despite several weeks of treatment, it is listed as an infant mortality. If that happens in many of these socialist healthcare utopias, nobody even tries to save the child and its death is listed as a "miscarriage".
I'll stick with the U.S., thanks.
"Brazil can do it."
In Brazil, 25 million people lacked access to electricity as of 2006, mostly people in rural areas, and driving barefoot is not only legal but recommended.
"France can do it."
France has started imposing copays on customers and is looking at the American system for other ideas for reform, hoping to bring down the impossible costs of healthcare that is closing much-needed hospitals.
"Britain can do it."
A recent scandal involving elderly people left without pain medication, in soiled bedclothes, without adequate food and drink is just the most recent highlight on Britain's problematic NHS. Waiting lists for procedures are still long, and a decision was only recently reversed that condemned patients with preventable macular degeneration to going blind in one eye before the other could be treated.
I'll stick with the U.S., thanks. I might be paying $25/month for a while if I get hammered with medical bills during a lapse in insurance, but at least I'll get TREATED.
Yeah, because having to pay $11K worth of copays and uncovered expenses isn't much less likely to lead to bankruptcy than having to pay $11K worth of actual doctor's bills, and the poor guys who find the fine more affordable than the mandate will end up with $100K worth of actual doctor's bills for the same procedure.
Note: The bill currently being considered in the U.S. is not "socialized medicine". It is more fascist than socialist, and it creates a situation in which the government controls what insurance covers, but not what doctors charge. It's a curious hybrid that has all of the uncertainties of the free market, all the heavy-handedness of communism, and all the bulk of trying to pretend that private companies actually matter.
Er, there have been recent studies showing that there is a strong correlation between the presence of a father figure in the household and several positive indicators for both male and female children, from lower crime rates to higher self-esteem and better grades. In fact, the birth father has a higher rate of success in this area than an adoptive father, and Mom's Live-In Boyfriend has a worse effect than no man at all.
It's all very well and good to point out the problems of time and attention where single parents are concerned, but how would two lesbians provide a child with a father?
The problem that I have with core classes is that it seems to be geared towards making up for what was once covered in highschool.
In elementary school, we should be learning our tools. In highschool, we should be learning how everything fits together. A highschool graduate should know how to write a research paper, how to give a simple speech, how to do basic algebra, and how a bill becomes a law. A highschool graduate should be able to tell you Newton's Laws, balance a chemical equation, and name the primary organs in the body.
People keep insisting that college is the point at which you specialize, but the typical four-year degree has less than half of its courses actually in your major. My university actually had a mandatory requirement in the first two years for gym class! C'mon, people, we're adults! We should be able to choose whether or not we want to get slammed around the basketball court One More Time!
Basically, I am not arguing against the idea of core classes. I am arguing against the notion that we must continue to emphasize them through college. A classic core education shouldn't take 14-16 years and you should be able to spend more than 6 months learning how to do what you plan to spend the rest of your life doing.
I'm sorry, are you in the U.S.?
:)
1. Low-salt products are in a container that looks just like the original, only with a different color band on it declaring it's low-salt status. Usually the band is blue, and the original is red, but sometimes the original has no band and the low-salt version has a red band on it. They are set right next to each other, unless all the low-salt versions are stocked in a separate Healthy Choices aisle. Of course, just grabbing the low-salt version without looking at it is not the wisest thing to do, because...
2. Every product also contains a nutritional label, which gives you the raw information of how much sodium is in a certain product and then gives you the percentage of your daily recommended intake based on a 2,000 calorie diet. As a quick For Instance, let's take a look at a can of Progresso Healthy Classics Beef Barley Soup. Here's the label, let's see...
Sodium: 470mg...........20% (Daily Value on a 2,000 calorie diet)
Now let's look at the box of Shake 'n Bake Original Recipe:
Sodium: 795mg...........33% (Daily Value on a 2,000 calorie diet)
Have I just been deprived of the ability to make an informed choice as to which food contains more sodium and what percentage of my daily recommended consumption it contains?
As it happens, I tend to reject them both and go for no-sodium products, like packages of dry lentils and other unprocessed foods. Then I salt them myself while cooking.
The reason why you are not aware of any research showing that the native Americans generally suffered more from goiters is because they were not aware of the problem and attempting to correct it until the early 1900's. You may find this link interesting: http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/79/4/642
Most salt sold in the U.S. is also iodized, because the food produced in America tends to lack that essential mineral. It's the reason why the low/no-salt craze has been leading to an increased incidence of goiters.
So if you want to buy your meat reared on a farm and fed on grass in a healthy field and keep cooking it and everything else with no salt, you are going to get very ill from a very preventable thyroid problem caused by iodine deficiency.
Ironically, iodine deficiency is also the most easily prevented cause of mental retardation.