The "gun in question" is an AR-15 assault rifle held by a black guy that was interviewed by the onsite MSNBC reporter at an anti-"obamacare" town hall meeting. The fact that he was black and the interview was conveniently cut by MSNBC when they were showing footage of his gun and ranting on about the evil racist white rednecks that want to kill the black president.
The link you have (bizarrely) supplied is a completely separate event in another part of the country weeks ago.
Why the fuck are you modded up your post doesn't even make sense! It's not *that hard* to watch 5 minutes of video.
Intellectual dishonesty is a far worse crime than uneducated ignorance.
Conspiracy theory, what the hell are you talking about?
There's extended *MSNBC* video footage of a black guy holding a semi automatic assault rifle at an anti-"Obama Care" rally.
The pundits on MSNBC were talking about the crazy racist WHITE people turning up at these events armed when there was a BLACK GUY ON SCREEN ARMED TO THE TEETH. The on site reporter even interviewed him! All of which they conveniently cut when they wanted to rant about the crazy white rednecks.
Watch the goddamned video you ignorant shill, then pull your head out of your knee jerk reactionary arse and realise that "your guys" media outlets are behaving just as badly as the media outlet of guys that just got kicked out.
I *really* hated the dishonesty, lies and absolute bullshit that the right pushed onto the world for 8 years and hoped (stupidly it would seem) that the left would be a little better. Boy was I wrong, dishonest AND hypocrites.
Erm the clip is in that link and is exactly as the GP describes and not even one iota as you describe.
There's no fuck up there and may I say after seeing it *holy shit* that's not even mere "bias", that's even beyond Fox news style "editing".
It's carefully edited to appear fully as though it's a white man carrying the gun, very cynically too I might add as it sticks out like a sore thumb and even though I was pre-warned my first thought was that it *was* the white guy whose face was cut to immediately after the loooong close up of the armed individual (so close you couldn't see any skin). Until I saw the edited out extra footage where the camera zooms out on the armed individual and you can see it's some big black dude. MSNBC cut away to the white guys face just before it zoomed out and at the same time the pundits are ranting about the evil white men turning up at these "town hall" meetings armed becasue there's a black president and in your mind the association is made, it's the white guy that has the gun.
It's sick! How can you people stand for that from your media??
Oh and how dishonest can YOU be by the way? Nice attempt at a whitewash, keep muddying those waters of truth...and keep telling yourself that you're better than the "right" and that those sorts of tactics (that I'm sure you used to rail against when Bush did it) are ok because your sides cause is "just".
Because my Mrs came over from England (Manchester) 5 years ago and quite often in public if we ignored a sign or some city rule or social norm in public she'd look around and ask nervously if we were "allowed" to do that and "isn't there cameras?".
So it obviously does affect you, perhaps you just don't know it as you are still inside and have nothing to compare life with cameras in public to life without.
Incidentally she's come good and is as ready to ignore bullshit rules and regulations as any good Aussie now.
"Bill the Copper" didn't used to follow everyone around writing down their every action while in public and storing it to be retrieved at will by the current or future government.
On the other hand "Ivan the KGB Agent" and "Wilhelm the Stasi Agent" did.
I just finished reading 1984 and the attitude towards accepting mass surveillance on display here (more and more accepting as they years go by) are disturbingly close to those in the book.
Having every persons every action in public recorded by the current government is not the same as having a police officer on the beat. And it takes a person a healthy dose of "double think" to convince themselves otherwise.
And we have some fine examples of people doing just that in this very topic.
That would only be the case if you're stupid enough to believe that the number of criminals captured would go up in a linear fashion against the number of cameras installed.
And in that case why not put up a billion cameras or a trillion and we'll be capturing a 10 million criminals a year!
Crime - especially brutal random beatings in public (I'd say something about ultra violence and the prophetic A Clockwork Orange here but it's too depressing) have gone up in the UK over the last ten years - the cameras prevent nothing.
So you wouldn't mind me waiting outside your mother/sisters/girlfriends house and then following them and recording them on camera wherever they go all day everyday?
I think your expectation of privacy in reality probably isn't quite so simple as you attempt to make out here.
It's nothing like the twisted distortion of reality that you have attempted to portray here.
If the police wish to follow my every movement then they need a court order - it's called surveillance and yes when in public if someone is following me around writing down everything I do and say that is not protecting my "human rights" that's violating them in a huge way. It's called harrasment and stalking if a police officer does it without the legal authority handed down by a judge on a case by case basis to do so.
Your pathetic attitude toward mass state surveillance is quite depressing by the way, and no a camera can't protect your "human rights"
"CCTV captures chilling moment drug-fuelled thugs beat OAP to death"
"Hells Angels Member Beaten To Death in Sydney Airport"
"Dad of 6 is beaten to death by gang"
All happenened in front of or right next to CCTV cameras.
"Detectives, who will examine CCTV footage, want to speak to a cyclist who was seen in the area. "
Do you think the sorts of crimes that CCTV cameras are supposed to "prevent" are committed by well mannered, forward thinking and highly analytical individuals?
There's a big disconnect between people on these tech sites and reality of the mindset of much of the lower class.
Because if you've spent anytime on the Internet and haven't come across someone ranting against women who want to stay at home to raise their kids as being "pathetic" you're either living in a dreamworld or are one of those people.
I even dated a cool inner city girl who "couldn't stand mums and thier worthless contribution to society".
For women it's mostly borne out of a deep seated jealousy and inferiority, for men I don't know, trying to get into those womens pants by making the oldest play in the book?
Given that (according to Bernanke) "printing" new money now consists of literally adding zeros to a banks balance digitally workers at the mint aren't going to notice anything until months or years later anyway.
Across most of the people that I know that have had babies the woman still does 90% of the heavy lifting once the baby is born.
Despite what the cool inner city chattering classes like to believe traditional roles are still absolutely dominant in western society and really have hardly budged in the last 50 years except where financial necessity requires it. It's a tiny, tiny fraction of people (generally from the same cool inner city chattering class) that have bought into the strange ideology of suppressing and heaping scorn on a womans natural motherly instinct.
So yes while it's accurate to say that "Its not just women who look after the baby you know." for the most part for 90% of couples, it actually is the women who look after the baby and for most they wouldn't have it any other way.
I'll await the tidal wave of "but they don't know what they want because it's not what I say they should want you patronsing misogynist!!11" (without seeing the hypocrisy of course).
Well if the baby's breastfed then it's a little hard for a man. I know I know I'm a "sexist pig" for suggesting that there's things woman can do (and want to do) regarding child rearing that men can't physically do. But I forget myself - there's no difference between a man and a woman, none at all, we're all carbon copies of one another, cogs that can be replaced with another.
Not to mention if mum is staying at home nurturing bub she'll get to have a sleep at some stage during the day (usually after lunch). Dad has to get up early and go into work and I haven't seen many "dad" friendly workplaces that'll let him have a one or two hour nap in the afternoon because he was awake at 3am feeding.
Women who want to nurture children as their instincts drive them to are not welcome in the western middle class and strangely as I've seen it's "career oriented" *women* who have the largest and most open scorn for other women who "just" want to be mums (fuck that for a job - far to difficult!).
- Has two children under the age of 2 and am unthinkably lucky to have woman who bravely embraces her motherly instinct in the face of the never ending assault on it by (mostly) other females who seem to wish that they were men.
Then again a racist who writes "The reason it's OK to make an all-black group but not an all-white group is that white people..." as you did probably should be a little reserved when it comes to labeling others.
So minority white farmers being driven off their land in Zimbabwe purely because they're white isn't racism?
The racism against the Irish, Germans and Polish through the 19th and 20th century in America, the UK and Australia wasn't in fact racism?
Behold world, view the inevitable conclusion of ultra left wing political correctness. Where apparently the colour of your skin determines whether you are allowed to be a victim of racism or not.
I like to refer to our democracy as Federalism Version 2
Our founders looked at the US, looked at Britain and took what they thought were the bits that worked and threw away the bits that didn't work from both.
They really stood on the shoulders of giants and I believe they got it pretty close to perfect.
Double dissolution elections have *never* been kind to Australian governments who force them.
It starts to smell a little to much like brute force when a sitting government dissolves the whole parliament and calls an election simply because they don't want to accept the will of the Senate.
Australians place a lot of trust and faith in the Senate and where they see the Lower House as nothing more than slimy untrustworthy politicians they view the Senate as a much higher and esteemed authority - and the senators as trustworthy "protectors" of Australian democracy (more or less).
So when a government goes against the Senate it'd better be damned sure of itself...
His home state of Victoria of which he is an elected government representative has a law banning "altruistic surrogacy" - that is - having another woman carrying a fertilised egg to term then handing the baby over when it's born.
Disregarding any moral argument on the matter, it's criminally illegal in Senator Conroys home state. So what do he and his wife do? "Route around" the law by skipping over the border to New South Wales to have it organised WHILE STILL REPRESENTING VICTORIA IN PARLIAMENT.
So the Victorian minister Stephen Conroy doesn't think he should be subject to the laws of Victoria when he doesn't feel like it (notice he kept his seat in parliament and still lives in Victoria) and the hypocrite thinks he has the moral authority to make judgments to form controversial legislation affecting thousands?!
Convenient isn't it.
The more I learn about these Labour goons the less I like them.
Stupid law in Victoria in my opinion but, so is every law Conroy pushes regarding the Internet I wonder if he'll be understanding to anybody who ignores the federal laws that they don't like.
Much like how in the 1920's and 1930's the western "elites" including Churchill and Rockefeller were openly in love with the Fascists and their magical economies and tightly bound and strictly regimented states, Rudd and Co similarly see China as an amazing combination of state power and industry. They see themselves allying this country closely with the coming super power and in typical low self esteemed Australian fashion (among international political circles) will emulate the big kid as much as possible. Howard did the same thing; doing everything he could to turn Australia into a carbon copy of the US as he was embarrassed internationally by our apathy towards making this country an economic power house as he and his friends wish that it would become. Rudd's doing the same but with China which far more satisfies his idealogical leanings (a career politician certainly doesn't keep themselves fluent in Mandarin for no reason).
Stuff like this is just the beginning of the top down "re-adjustment" of Australia from a country heavily influenced by American and British political values to Asian.
"Finally, private hospitals don't run ambulance services or have emergency departments. That's all done on the public purse. They only do the things that make them money. And when any hospital performs an operation, they bump the cost up for privately insured patients who must pay the difference between the bill and the (lower) scheduled fee."
As an Australian who'se spent quite a bit of time in hospitals (public and private) across this fine nation I'd say you're willfully ignorant.
Here in the ACT it costs an individual $700 to get an ambulance no matter where you're going.
In Queensland everyone has Ambulance cover though a surcharge on their electricity bills.
In NSW also it's up to the individual to pay for their ambulance and the maximum cost is $5000.
I'm only aware of those three states as I haven't used the system in any others but based on that I really don't think you know what the hell you're talking about.
Not to mention there is no "Australian health care" public hospitals here are run by their respective state governments with Medicare providing funding to the States on demand.
And the medicare levy is not a "penalty" it's the COST of running the public health care system. Doctors don't work for free you know. At tax time an individual can be required to pay a $600 medicare levy if they earn above a certain amount each year. Do you have any idea how expensive it is to have the level of public care that we have? Why do you think they have incentives to get people to go private if they can afford it?
And I should hope the public system isn't giving people boob jobs and face lifts!
Finally I've been waiting SEVEN YEARS to get the metal bar out of my leg in the public system, I could have it out tomorrow if I went private so I hardly think that private is as useless as you make out.
Not to mention here in Australia we only have 22 million people. So if they were honest they would be calling for STATE by STATE public health care in the US. And as we *constantly* hear from the "left" in your country California has an economy on par with Germany...well...so why can't it offer public healthcare on par with Germanys? Why does it require the Federal government to do it? And given that California is bankrupt which other states are going to be paying for California to have it?
And given how many people from the UK and continent are quick to bash the fact that people in the US don't want the US Federal Government operating health care when are they going to allow the European Union to start nationalising health care in their own countries?? They'd be horrified at the very thought of it! But the EU vs the US is a much much better comparison in terms of population, diversity, GDP and centralisation than the UK vs the US or Australia vs the US or Germany vs the US.
Here in Australia we have public health but also have a thriving private health system, so people who say the "Australian system is great!" while correct as it is excellent generally forget to mention that a large number of people (many middle class - especially families) choose private over public while *also* still paying for the public option (there are tax deductions but nowhere *near* 100%).
Our public system is more of a backstop - a last resort use it if you want but there is better if you choose to pay - and people do.
And our public system does have a *hell* of a lot of problems despite what people who like to bash the US like to make out.
Erm the VA has a long sordid history of running wild experiments on large groups of its patients without their knowledge or consent. So I probably wouldn't use them as an example of how great government health care can be if you want to calm the nerves of people against the government running their health care...
Not to mention if you'd intimately seen the state of some of the public hospitals in the poor outer suburbs of Australia as I have you'd change your tune rapidly; broken equipment, no ceiling and lights hanging down by their cords not to mention filthy (Logan Hospital, Brisbane - don't go there).
Though the public hospitals in the wealthier parts can be very nice as well as I've experienced, though I had to wait five agonizing days (in the geriatric ward strangely enough, I was only 22!) with a shattered leg fasting from 5am to 10pm each day before they could fit me in to operate, they kept bumping me to the bottom of the list - I wasn't so happy about that experience.
Nothing beats the private hospitals though, the best is when public health care puts you in a private hospital as I was fortunate enough to have happen once (because the local public hospitals all had broken equipment of one sort or another so couldn't do a heart scan...).
If you do as a country take on public health care, don't also give up your private health care as it helps keeps the government system honest and vice-a-versa.
Slashdot Mirror
Umm no.
Did you even watch the video?? Apparently not.
The "gun in question" is an AR-15 assault rifle held by a black guy that was interviewed by the onsite MSNBC reporter at an anti-"obamacare" town hall meeting. The fact that he was black and the interview was conveniently cut by MSNBC when they were showing footage of his gun and ranting on about the evil racist white rednecks that want to kill the black president.
The link you have (bizarrely) supplied is a completely separate event in another part of the country weeks ago.
Why the fuck are you modded up your post doesn't even make sense! It's not *that hard* to watch 5 minutes of video.
Intellectual dishonesty is a far worse crime than uneducated ignorance.
Conspiracy theory, what the hell are you talking about?
There's extended *MSNBC* video footage of a black guy holding a semi automatic assault rifle at an anti-"Obama Care" rally.
The pundits on MSNBC were talking about the crazy racist WHITE people turning up at these events armed when there was a BLACK GUY ON SCREEN ARMED TO THE TEETH. The on site reporter even interviewed him! All of which they conveniently cut when they wanted to rant about the crazy white rednecks.
Watch the goddamned video you ignorant shill, then pull your head out of your knee jerk reactionary arse and realise that "your guys" media outlets are behaving just as badly as the media outlet of guys that just got kicked out.
I *really* hated the dishonesty, lies and absolute bullshit that the right pushed onto the world for 8 years and hoped (stupidly it would seem) that the left would be a little better. Boy was I wrong, dishonest AND hypocrites.
Fuck sake...
Erm the clip is in that link and is exactly as the GP describes and not even one iota as you describe.
There's no fuck up there and may I say after seeing it *holy shit* that's not even mere "bias", that's even beyond Fox news style "editing".
It's carefully edited to appear fully as though it's a white man carrying the gun, very cynically too I might add as it sticks out like a sore thumb and even though I was pre-warned my first thought was that it *was* the white guy whose face was cut to immediately after the loooong close up of the armed individual (so close you couldn't see any skin). Until I saw the edited out extra footage where the camera zooms out on the armed individual and you can see it's some big black dude. MSNBC cut away to the white guys face just before it zoomed out and at the same time the pundits are ranting about the evil white men turning up at these "town hall" meetings armed becasue there's a black president and in your mind the association is made, it's the white guy that has the gun.
It's sick! How can you people stand for that from your media??
Oh and how dishonest can YOU be by the way? Nice attempt at a whitewash, keep muddying those waters of truth...and keep telling yourself that you're better than the "right" and that those sorts of tactics (that I'm sure you used to rail against when Bush did it) are ok because your sides cause is "just".
You're a shill.
Really?
Because my Mrs came over from England (Manchester) 5 years ago and quite often in public if we ignored a sign or some city rule or social norm in public she'd look around and ask nervously if we were "allowed" to do that and "isn't there cameras?".
So it obviously does affect you, perhaps you just don't know it as you are still inside and have nothing to compare life with cameras in public to life without.
Incidentally she's come good and is as ready to ignore bullshit rules and regulations as any good Aussie now.
No.
"Bill the Copper" didn't used to follow everyone around writing down their every action while in public and storing it to be retrieved at will by the current or future government.
On the other hand "Ivan the KGB Agent" and "Wilhelm the Stasi Agent" did.
See the difference?
I just finished reading 1984 and the attitude towards accepting mass surveillance on display here (more and more accepting as they years go by) are disturbingly close to those in the book.
Having every persons every action in public recorded by the current government is not the same as having a police officer on the beat. And it takes a person a healthy dose of "double think" to convince themselves otherwise.
And we have some fine examples of people doing just that in this very topic.
That would only be the case if you're stupid enough to believe that the number of criminals captured would go up in a linear fashion against the number of cameras installed.
And in that case why not put up a billion cameras or a trillion and we'll be capturing a 10 million criminals a year!
Crime - especially brutal random beatings in public (I'd say something about ultra violence and the prophetic A Clockwork Orange here but it's too depressing) have gone up in the UK over the last ten years - the cameras prevent nothing.
So you wouldn't mind me waiting outside your mother/sisters/girlfriends house and then following them and recording them on camera wherever they go all day everyday?
I think your expectation of privacy in reality probably isn't quite so simple as you attempt to make out here.
It's nothing like the twisted distortion of reality that you have attempted to portray here.
If the police wish to follow my every movement then they need a court order - it's called surveillance and yes when in public if someone is following me around writing down everything I do and say that is not protecting my "human rights" that's violating them in a huge way. It's called harrasment and stalking if a police officer does it without the legal authority handed down by a judge on a case by case basis to do so.
Your pathetic attitude toward mass state surveillance is quite depressing by the way, and no a camera can't protect your "human rights"
"CCTV captures chilling moment drug-fuelled thugs beat OAP to death"
"Hells Angels Member Beaten To Death in Sydney Airport"
"Dad of 6 is beaten to death by gang"
All happenened in front of or right next to CCTV cameras.
Time to grow up ey?
"Dad of 6 is beaten to death by gang"
"The attack is believed to have been recorded by two nearby CCTV cameras. Police are currently studying the footage. "
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4161/is_20061015/ai_n16785042/
"Student beaten to death yards from home"
"Detectives, who will examine CCTV footage, want to speak to a cyclist who was seen in the area. "
Do you think the sorts of crimes that CCTV cameras are supposed to "prevent" are committed by well mannered, forward thinking and highly analytical individuals?
There's a big disconnect between people on these tech sites and reality of the mindset of much of the lower class.
Is that a genuine question??
Because if you've spent anytime on the Internet and haven't come across someone ranting against women who want to stay at home to raise their kids as being "pathetic" you're either living in a dreamworld or are one of those people.
I even dated a cool inner city girl who "couldn't stand mums and thier worthless contribution to society".
For women it's mostly borne out of a deep seated jealousy and inferiority, for men I don't know, trying to get into those womens pants by making the oldest play in the book?
Worse is buying a $5 dollar silver coin for 35 reserve bank $1 coins where 5 years ago it cost 8 reserve bank $1 coins...
Our money is becoming worthless.
Given that (according to Bernanke) "printing" new money now consists of literally adding zeros to a banks balance digitally workers at the mint aren't going to notice anything until months or years later anyway.
Across most of the people that I know that have had babies the woman still does 90% of the heavy lifting once the baby is born.
Despite what the cool inner city chattering classes like to believe traditional roles are still absolutely dominant in western society and really have hardly budged in the last 50 years except where financial necessity requires it. It's a tiny, tiny fraction of people (generally from the same cool inner city chattering class) that have bought into the strange ideology of suppressing and heaping scorn on a womans natural motherly instinct.
So yes while it's accurate to say that "Its not just women who look after the baby you know." for the most part for 90% of couples, it actually is the women who look after the baby and for most they wouldn't have it any other way.
I'll await the tidal wave of "but they don't know what they want because it's not what I say they should want you patronsing misogynist!!11" (without seeing the hypocrisy of course).
Well if the baby's breastfed then it's a little hard for a man. I know I know I'm a "sexist pig" for suggesting that there's things woman can do (and want to do) regarding child rearing that men can't physically do. But I forget myself - there's no difference between a man and a woman, none at all, we're all carbon copies of one another, cogs that can be replaced with another.
Not to mention if mum is staying at home nurturing bub she'll get to have a sleep at some stage during the day (usually after lunch). Dad has to get up early and go into work and I haven't seen many "dad" friendly workplaces that'll let him have a one or two hour nap in the afternoon because he was awake at 3am feeding.
Women who want to nurture children as their instincts drive them to are not welcome in the western middle class and strangely as I've seen it's "career oriented" *women* who have the largest and most open scorn for other women who "just" want to be mums (fuck that for a job - far to difficult!).
- Has two children under the age of 2 and am unthinkably lucky to have woman who bravely embraces her motherly instinct in the face of the never ending assault on it by (mostly) other females who seem to wish that they were men.
Then again a racist who writes "The reason it's OK to make an all-black group but not an all-white group is that white people..." as you did probably should be a little reserved when it comes to labeling others.
Minority white farmers in Zimbabwe care as they're driven off their land and out of the country by the powerful ultra racist black majority...
When are the people who constantly condemn the evil racist white man going to start condemning the racist apartheid black mans state of Zimbabwe?
That would be never.
Really?
So minority white farmers being driven off their land in Zimbabwe purely because they're white isn't racism?
The racism against the Irish, Germans and Polish through the 19th and 20th century in America, the UK and Australia wasn't in fact racism?
Behold world, view the inevitable conclusion of ultra left wing political correctness. Where apparently the colour of your skin determines whether you are allowed to be a victim of racism or not.
The double think is depressing.
I like to refer to our democracy as Federalism Version 2
Our founders looked at the US, looked at Britain and took what they thought were the bits that worked and threw away the bits that didn't work from both.
They really stood on the shoulders of giants and I believe they got it pretty close to perfect.
Troll?? What a waste of a mod point ya tool.
Double dissolution elections have *never* been kind to Australian governments who force them.
It starts to smell a little to much like brute force when a sitting government dissolves the whole parliament and calls an election simply because they don't want to accept the will of the Senate.
Australians place a lot of trust and faith in the Senate and where they see the Lower House as nothing more than slimy untrustworthy politicians they view the Senate as a much higher and esteemed authority - and the senators as trustworthy "protectors" of Australian democracy (more or less).
So when a government goes against the Senate it'd better be damned sure of itself...
Whatever he is he's a goddamned hypocrite.
His home state of Victoria of which he is an elected government representative has a law banning "altruistic surrogacy" - that is - having another woman carrying a fertilised egg to term then handing the baby over when it's born.
Disregarding any moral argument on the matter, it's criminally illegal in Senator Conroys home state. So what do he and his wife do? "Route around" the law by skipping over the border to New South Wales to have it organised WHILE STILL REPRESENTING VICTORIA IN PARLIAMENT.
So the Victorian minister Stephen Conroy doesn't think he should be subject to the laws of Victoria when he doesn't feel like it (notice he kept his seat in parliament and still lives in Victoria) and the hypocrite thinks he has the moral authority to make judgments to form controversial legislation affecting thousands?!
Convenient isn't it.
The more I learn about these Labour goons the less I like them.
Stupid law in Victoria in my opinion but, so is every law Conroy pushes regarding the Internet I wonder if he'll be understanding to anybody who ignores the federal laws that they don't like.
Rudd and Conroy are secretly in love with China.
Much like how in the 1920's and 1930's the western "elites" including Churchill and Rockefeller were openly in love with the Fascists and their magical economies and tightly bound and strictly regimented states, Rudd and Co similarly see China as an amazing combination of state power and industry. They see themselves allying this country closely with the coming super power and in typical low self esteemed Australian fashion (among international political circles) will emulate the big kid as much as possible. Howard did the same thing; doing everything he could to turn Australia into a carbon copy of the US as he was embarrassed internationally by our apathy towards making this country an economic power house as he and his friends wish that it would become. Rudd's doing the same but with China which far more satisfies his idealogical leanings (a career politician certainly doesn't keep themselves fluent in Mandarin for no reason).
Stuff like this is just the beginning of the top down "re-adjustment" of Australia from a country heavily influenced by American and British political values to Asian.
Dark days ahead for Australia.
"Finally, private hospitals don't run ambulance services or have emergency departments. That's all done on the public purse. They only do the things that make them money. And when any hospital performs an operation, they bump the cost up for privately insured patients who must pay the difference between the bill and the (lower) scheduled fee."
As an Australian who'se spent quite a bit of time in hospitals (public and private) across this fine nation I'd say you're willfully ignorant.
Here in the ACT it costs an individual $700 to get an ambulance no matter where you're going.
In Queensland everyone has Ambulance cover though a surcharge on their electricity bills.
In NSW also it's up to the individual to pay for their ambulance and the maximum cost is $5000.
I'm only aware of those three states as I haven't used the system in any others but based on that I really don't think you know what the hell you're talking about.
Not to mention there is no "Australian health care" public hospitals here are run by their respective state governments with Medicare providing funding to the States on demand.
And the medicare levy is not a "penalty" it's the COST of running the public health care system. Doctors don't work for free you know. At tax time an individual can be required to pay a $600 medicare levy if they earn above a certain amount each year. Do you have any idea how expensive it is to have the level of public care that we have? Why do you think they have incentives to get people to go private if they can afford it?
And I should hope the public system isn't giving people boob jobs and face lifts!
Finally I've been waiting SEVEN YEARS to get the metal bar out of my leg in the public system, I could have it out tomorrow if I went private so I hardly think that private is as useless as you make out.
Don't bother misleading people anymore thanks.
Not to mention here in Australia we only have 22 million people. So if they were honest they would be calling for STATE by STATE public health care in the US. And as we *constantly* hear from the "left" in your country California has an economy on par with Germany...well...so why can't it offer public healthcare on par with Germanys? Why does it require the Federal government to do it? And given that California is bankrupt which other states are going to be paying for California to have it?
And given how many people from the UK and continent are quick to bash the fact that people in the US don't want the US Federal Government operating health care when are they going to allow the European Union to start nationalising health care in their own countries?? They'd be horrified at the very thought of it! But the EU vs the US is a much much better comparison in terms of population, diversity, GDP and centralisation than the UK vs the US or Australia vs the US or Germany vs the US.
Here in Australia we have public health but also have a thriving private health system, so people who say the "Australian system is great!" while correct as it is excellent generally forget to mention that a large number of people (many middle class - especially families) choose private over public while *also* still paying for the public option (there are tax deductions but nowhere *near* 100%).
Our public system is more of a backstop - a last resort use it if you want but there is better if you choose to pay - and people do.
And our public system does have a *hell* of a lot of problems despite what people who like to bash the US like to make out.
Erm the VA has a long sordid history of running wild experiments on large groups of its patients without their knowledge or consent. So I probably wouldn't use them as an example of how great government health care can be if you want to calm the nerves of people against the government running their health care...
Not to mention if you'd intimately seen the state of some of the public hospitals in the poor outer suburbs of Australia as I have you'd change your tune rapidly; broken equipment, no ceiling and lights hanging down by their cords not to mention filthy (Logan Hospital, Brisbane - don't go there).
Though the public hospitals in the wealthier parts can be very nice as well as I've experienced, though I had to wait five agonizing days (in the geriatric ward strangely enough, I was only 22!) with a shattered leg fasting from 5am to 10pm each day before they could fit me in to operate, they kept bumping me to the bottom of the list - I wasn't so happy about that experience.
Nothing beats the private hospitals though, the best is when public health care puts you in a private hospital as I was fortunate enough to have happen once (because the local public hospitals all had broken equipment of one sort or another so couldn't do a heart scan...).
If you do as a country take on public health care, don't also give up your private health care as it helps keeps the government system honest and vice-a-versa.