so, no, they don't get to blame Republicans for it.
Don't get me wrong, there are many things in Obamacare that are positive, and I'm not "blaming" anyone... I just wish the Democrats could have managed to pass a single payer system. They couldn't because the "center" in the USA is so far to the right; moderate democrats in the US would be considered right wing in Europe.
they discovered that the overwhelming sentiment of the voters was to oppose it.
This just isn't true. There is majority support for most, if not all of the provisions of the bill. This idea that "the overwhelming sentiment of the voters was to oppose it" comes from FoxNews and their blatant spreading of disinformation - such as the supposed "Death-Panels".
Just about every Western European country has more doctors per capita than the US. Yet they also have socialized medicine.
Seems like the theory that socialized medicine results in few doctors isn't necessarily true.
It may be that it is possible to have government run medical care that provides good care, but none of the programs I am familiar with do so.
Canada provides good care. Germany provides good care. France provides good care. MANY countries provide good care. You can't just stick your head in the ground and deny that.
The 5 year prognosis for someone diagnosed with cancer is consistently among the best in the U.S.
It also is liable to bankrupt you, or at the very least destroy your financial situation. Also, while you may have a decent chance of surviving cancer in the US, good luck ever getting new coverage once you've had cancer. No insurance provider is going to give coverage to someone who had cancer unless they're forced to.
Obamacare is not the "Republican's health plan" and it is not a compromise.
Actually, the individual mandate is exactly that. It was originally the idea of the Heritage foundation.
The Pulitzer-winning Politifact.com, created by the Tampa Bay Times and its Washington bureau chief Bill Adair, did a fine job of sorting through all this -- even though its work has not always been sufficiently noted by news media colleagues.
It asked 10 conservative ideologues not affiliated with Heritage if they thought Obama was accurate in asserting his health-care plan had Heritage roots.
Nine thought Obama's statement was "reasonably accurate," Politifact.com reported.
and
American Conservative magazine senior editor Daniel McCarthy discussed just that with Politifact.com.
"I don't imagine Ed Feulner would be complaining at all if a Republican president or a Republican Congress had passed a plan that deviated from the Heritage blueprint to the same degree that Obama's bill has," McCarthy told Politifact. "... the overall approach is similar to policies Heritage has long championed, including the individual mandate as well as the insurance exchanges.
"This is only controversial because the wrong party happened to pass the law, and it's poison for any conservative to be identified with it."
Look it up. In fact, the individual mandate was the solution long championed by conservatives, since it is the "market" solution. Democrats wanted (and should have passed) a single-payer system.
I don't know why you say there won't be enough doctors.
I tore my ACL in Germany, and was able to see a doctor within a couple days. I was then scheduled for surgery two weeks later (the delay was to let swelling go down, not because they didn't have enough doctors). I had surgery (spent three days in the hospital - it's an outpatient procedure in the US because insurance doesn't want to pay for hospital stays), and then had comprehensive rehab and follow up visits with the doctor.
You know what it cost me? 10 Euros.
TOTAL.
I wasn't a special case... this is how everyone gets treated. If anything, I might have received sub-par (for Germany) treatment, because I don't speak German very well.
Point is, there are enough doctors in countries with socialized medicine.
Get it through your head - the USA does not have the best healthcare in the world (even though it pays its doctors the most).
This myth that there aren't enough doctors with socialized medicine is exactly that, a myth.
I don't disagree with you. Let's not forget that Obamacare is actually the Republican's health plan, it was a compromise.
I absolutely hate the Democrats for not enacting comprehensive reform while they had the chance. Now that the House is run by Republicans, there's absolutely no chance of meaningful reform ever happening. Certainly not reform that would give Americans better coverage.
This is because FoxNews has pounded it into the right-wing base that anything involving socialism is the devil. Nevermind that socialized medicine would be great for the vast majority of the lower middle-class right wing base.
Just to be clear, I'm an American, I moved to Germany a few years ago.
I don't see why it's necessary to start reforms in only one place... Certainly the cost to become a doctor in the US needs to be reformed. The cost of being a patient also needs to be reformed. The insurance system needs to be reformed.
To be honest, after having experienced first hand (in and out of hospitals) the medical system in the US military, the US private sector, France, and now Germany, I can tell you that the US private system is completely broken. It needs to be reformed on many levels.
The American medical system is about making money first, and healing patients second. As an American, one tends to not realize this because that's all one knows.
What incentive do you intend to provide people to do the hard work necessary to become properly trained doctors?
That they get to become Doctors, to heal people, and they will still earn an excellent living?
As for the doctors who got into medicine just for the money, fuck them. They're a major part of why the American healthcare system is so broken. They're the ones that give you unnecessary treatment and procedures because it makes them more money. They're the ones that prescribe drugs you don't need because they get kickbacks from big pharmaceutical sponsors.
The USA would be better off without those "doctors".
I don't understand this argument that cutting science funding is good, but raising taxes on "job-creators" is bad.
I'll accept that raising taxes on millionaires might (MIGHT) result in less jobs being created through new investment.
Now you need to accept the obvious fact that cutting science funding WILL result in less jobs. You know, those jobs you're cutting. Jobs that were doing the best possible thing they could be in terms of real economic growth - research which will lead to new technology for the future.
Now you have thousands of unemployed scientists. You've squandered one of your most important resources, the intellectual capital of your country.
Good thing those rich guys still have so much money so that they can POSSIBLY invest it in generating jobs. Hopefully they don't decide to invest it in things like financial derivatives or foreign economies.
Then we have less revenue from the scientists paying taxes AND we don't have as many jobs. Sweet plan, dude.
If we didn't get scientific gain (which we did) or prestige (which we did) out of the Apollo Program, you're acting like the money spent was lost. It wasn't... it was spent on building a massive American aerospace industry. It was spent on salaries for hundreds of thousands of workers.
The Apollo program had all the benefits of the Military-Industrial complex without the downside of having to kill people or conduct atomic tests to avoid looking like you're wasting money.
It works in Germany anyways, so clearly you can have parallel systems. The public medical care is great here, but there are also private hospitals you can go to if you want to spend more money on more expensive insurance.
Here's a thought, maybe doctors have other considerations than salary when considering where to practice?
Also, the path to becoming an MD in the US is ridiculous, and is a big part in why doctors favor going into private practice in the USA. If MDs didn't leave school with hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, maybe they could afford to work for a smaller salary.
But then we would need to have the government pay for higher education... which would be terrible, right?
So, you want to start conscripting people to be doctors, nurses and other medical professionals? Otherwise, you are still trusting private entities to not "charge more and more for healthcare services," because if private individuals do not go into the medical professions, how exactly is the state going to provide healthcare?
What, the state can't build hospitals, pay doctors, and charge reasonable prices for services? The state can't set maximum prices for procedures? Why exactly do you think that private individuals would stop going into the medical professions if the government was setting, or even paying their salary? Maybe the people who become doctors to become rich would go to Wall-Street instead (and maybe not, since nothing about socialized medicine precludes the existence of private doctors), but either way, fuck those assholes. If you only become a doctor to get rich off of the sickness of others, fuck you.
Socialized medicine can easily co-exist with private medicine (and it does in many countries). There is no reason that it can't; the poor and middle-class get healed in public hospitals, and the rich pay whatever they want to get healed in 5 star private hospitals. The only thing the existence of socialized medicine prevents is the ability of private practices to price-gouge their customers, since their customers always have a cheap alternative.
Defense is a legitimate function for government. It's in the fucking Constitution! Healthcare is not in the Constitution ergo it's not the government's job to do it.
Right, because a few rich white aristocrats 250 years ago should have the last say as to what government should do. Even the founders knew they wouldn't be right about everything, nor could they include everything in a document as short as the Constitution (that's why we can amend it). Besides, "health-care costs" as we know them did not exist when the Constitution was written.
That should end the argument but it never does with the havenots who want to steal shit from the haves.
Nobody is stealing anything from anyone, unless it is the rich stealing the lives and pursuit of happiness of the poor by using their labor while they are healthy, then casting them aside when they become ill.
BTW: You say you can't trust private entities to resist the temptation to charge more and more for healthcare services? What the fuck do you think will stop the government from doing the same? Both entities are made up of people and thus both can and do succumb to the temptation equally well.
The Government is not a for-profit entity. The goal of a government run health service is not to make money, it is to keep people healthy. If you want examples of this working, look to the health-care systems of Northern and Western Europe, or indeed almost any other country that one wouldn't consider an emerging economy. Private health-care is a recipe for ever increasing costs, there can be no doubt about it...
If you don't like the service they are providing (or not providing) you're just shit out of luck. You have no other entity that you can turn to, and if you do you likely face jail time if your truly resist Uncle Sam. And, you probably won't be able to vote the bastards out for years anyway. Think man! Think!!!
You need to think, not me my friend. Nobody is saying that you MUST use government health-care. If you have the money and want to go to a private doctor/hospital, nothing prevents you from doing so under socialized medicine. Again, look at Western Europe, Germany for instance. There is fantastic socialized medicine which is basically free, but if you want to pay for things like a private room, better food, more expensive doctors, you can! You just go to a private hospital instead of a public one.
I don't know where people get this idea that socialized medicine means private doctors will go away... it's just ridiculous. Do private automobiles disappear when public transportation is built? No? I'm done responding to you. You're obviously just regurgitating what right wing pundits have told you, and are unable to think any of your "ideas" through to their logical conclusions.
On a side note, what do you have against reducing the size of government and federal spending?
What do I have against it?
I believe everyone should be provided healthcare by the state, because I don't think we can trust private entities to resist the temptation to charge more and more for healthcare services (because they know we HAVE to pay it...).
I believe the government should regulate what pollutants industry is allowed to dump into the earth/water.
I believe the government should provide free education to all of its citizens.
I believe the government should regulate financial industries and banks.
Frankly, I believe there are MANY things the government should do, because either they are the only ones who can do it, or because the sector should not be trying to make a profit.
If you want to reduce government, set your sights on the massive "defense" budget. Leave what (limited) social services the USA has alone.
It's not really a double standard, it's just that the US treats all foreigners as potential enemies, and thus undeserving of privacy. This may be an antiquated way of thinking, but the US is certainly not the only country guilty of it, and it's somewhat reasonable given the scar that 9/11 left on the American psyche.
Anyways, I agree that the US needs to move past its mentality that treats all foreigners as sub-humans who don't deserve all the rights that American citizens have. It's one of the more disgusting elements of US law and foreign policy.
No kidding rights, property, and law are all just concepts we have invented to maintain order in society.
No kidding rights, property, and rule of law can all go away quickly and things can dissolve into disorder. That's called a revolution, civil war, or state of anarchy.
You think you're some kind of genius for figuring that out? Everybody knows that without enforcement (and therefore, someone to enforce them) laws are nothing more then words.
People don't down-mod you for saying things like that, these are well known truths. They probably mod you down because you take those facts and extend them, elaborate on them, and use them to reach idiotic conclusions about how the world is on the verge of descending into chaos and the "law of the jungle".
I'm pretty sure the location of AF1 isn't some big secret... It's not like it's some anonymous little private jet. It's a big ass 747 with the seal of the President on it. Hard to hide. If the President is trying to fly around in secret, they won't use the call sign "Air Force One" for the plane he's on anyways.
Speaking as a European, I have to ask whether there is an American far left at all? Seriously, are there any socialist/communist/actual left wing politicians in any position of power whatsoever?
No, there aren't, and that's exactly my point. The far right is alive and well in the US (how many Tea Party members are there in Congress?), but the far left, or even the moderate left, is basically non-existent. What's considered left in the US would barely pass for centrist in Europe.
A building is not comparable to a corporation as a building is not a legal entity,
You said it yourself right there! A corporation is a legal entity, not a person! Saying a corporation is a person is the same as saying a marriage license is a person... it's ridiculous.
To be honest, it doesn't really matter if a conservative will say the same thing; there's no reason that we both have to be wrong.
Again, just compare the American right to a European far right party such as the Front Nationale, and the views of the American left to a European far left party, such as the Parti Communiste.
The truth of the matter is that the "center" in the US is further right than the "center" in Europe. Perhaps both sides are equally radical (As measured in distance from the center), but there's no arguing that the American left is MUCH more centrist than the European left... while the same cannot be said about the American right.
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so, no, they don't get to blame Republicans for it.
Don't get me wrong, there are many things in Obamacare that are positive, and I'm not "blaming" anyone... I just wish the Democrats could have managed to pass a single payer system. They couldn't because the "center" in the USA is so far to the right; moderate democrats in the US would be considered right wing in Europe.
they discovered that the overwhelming sentiment of the voters was to oppose it.
This just isn't true. There is majority support for most, if not all of the provisions of the bill. This idea that "the overwhelming sentiment of the voters was to oppose it" comes from FoxNews and their blatant spreading of disinformation - such as the supposed "Death-Panels".
Just about every Western European country has more doctors per capita than the US. Yet they also have socialized medicine.
Seems like the theory that socialized medicine results in few doctors isn't necessarily true.
It may be that it is possible to have government run medical care that provides good care, but none of the programs I am familiar with do so.
Canada provides good care. Germany provides good care. France provides good care. MANY countries provide good care. You can't just stick your head in the ground and deny that.
The 5 year prognosis for someone diagnosed with cancer is consistently among the best in the U.S.
It also is liable to bankrupt you, or at the very least destroy your financial situation. Also, while you may have a decent chance of surviving cancer in the US, good luck ever getting new coverage once you've had cancer. No insurance provider is going to give coverage to someone who had cancer unless they're forced to.
Obamacare is not the "Republican's health plan" and it is not a compromise.
Actually, the individual mandate is exactly that. It was originally the idea of the Heritage foundation.
The Pulitzer-winning Politifact.com, created by the Tampa Bay Times and its Washington bureau chief Bill Adair, did a fine job of sorting through all this -- even though its work has not always been sufficiently noted by news media colleagues.
It asked 10 conservative ideologues not affiliated with Heritage if they thought Obama was accurate in asserting his health-care plan had Heritage roots.
Nine thought Obama's statement was "reasonably accurate," Politifact.com reported.
and
American Conservative magazine senior editor Daniel McCarthy discussed just that with Politifact.com.
"I don't imagine Ed Feulner would be complaining at all if a Republican president or a Republican Congress had passed a plan that deviated from the Heritage blueprint to the same degree that Obama's bill has," McCarthy told Politifact. "... the overall approach is similar to policies Heritage has long championed, including the individual mandate as well as the insurance exchanges.
"This is only controversial because the wrong party happened to pass the law, and it's poison for any conservative to be identified with it."
Look it up. In fact, the individual mandate was the solution long championed by conservatives, since it is the "market" solution. Democrats wanted (and should have passed) a single-payer system.
I tore my ACL in Germany, and was able to see a doctor within a couple days. I was then scheduled for surgery two weeks later (the delay was to let swelling go down, not because they didn't have enough doctors). I had surgery (spent three days in the hospital - it's an outpatient procedure in the US because insurance doesn't want to pay for hospital stays), and then had comprehensive rehab and follow up visits with the doctor.
You know what it cost me? 10 Euros.
TOTAL.
I wasn't a special case... this is how everyone gets treated. If anything, I might have received sub-par (for Germany) treatment, because I don't speak German very well.
Point is, there are enough doctors in countries with socialized medicine.
Get it through your head - the USA does not have the best healthcare in the world (even though it pays its doctors the most).
This myth that there aren't enough doctors with socialized medicine is exactly that, a myth.
I absolutely hate the Democrats for not enacting comprehensive reform while they had the chance. Now that the House is run by Republicans, there's absolutely no chance of meaningful reform ever happening. Certainly not reform that would give Americans better coverage.
This is because FoxNews has pounded it into the right-wing base that anything involving socialism is the devil. Nevermind that socialized medicine would be great for the vast majority of the lower middle-class right wing base.
I don't see why it's necessary to start reforms in only one place... Certainly the cost to become a doctor in the US needs to be reformed. The cost of being a patient also needs to be reformed. The insurance system needs to be reformed.
To be honest, after having experienced first hand (in and out of hospitals) the medical system in the US military, the US private sector, France, and now Germany, I can tell you that the US private system is completely broken. It needs to be reformed on many levels.
The American medical system is about making money first, and healing patients second. As an American, one tends to not realize this because that's all one knows.
What incentive do you intend to provide people to do the hard work necessary to become properly trained doctors?
That they get to become Doctors, to heal people, and they will still earn an excellent living?
As for the doctors who got into medicine just for the money, fuck them. They're a major part of why the American healthcare system is so broken. They're the ones that give you unnecessary treatment and procedures because it makes them more money. They're the ones that prescribe drugs you don't need because they get kickbacks from big pharmaceutical sponsors.
The USA would be better off without those "doctors".
I'll accept that raising taxes on millionaires might (MIGHT) result in less jobs being created through new investment.
Now you need to accept the obvious fact that cutting science funding WILL result in less jobs. You know, those jobs you're cutting. Jobs that were doing the best possible thing they could be in terms of real economic growth - research which will lead to new technology for the future.
Now you have thousands of unemployed scientists. You've squandered one of your most important resources, the intellectual capital of your country.
Good thing those rich guys still have so much money so that they can POSSIBLY invest it in generating jobs. Hopefully they don't decide to invest it in things like financial derivatives or foreign economies.
Then we have less revenue from the scientists paying taxes AND we don't have as many jobs. Sweet plan, dude.
The Apollo program had all the benefits of the Military-Industrial complex without the downside of having to kill people or conduct atomic tests to avoid looking like you're wasting money.
Here's a thought, maybe doctors have other considerations than salary when considering where to practice?
Also, the path to becoming an MD in the US is ridiculous, and is a big part in why doctors favor going into private practice in the USA. If MDs didn't leave school with hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, maybe they could afford to work for a smaller salary.
But then we would need to have the government pay for higher education... which would be terrible, right?
That's why you have the government set a maximum price that can be charged for a procedure.
So, you want to start conscripting people to be doctors, nurses and other medical professionals? Otherwise, you are still trusting private entities to not "charge more and more for healthcare services," because if private individuals do not go into the medical professions, how exactly is the state going to provide healthcare?
What, the state can't build hospitals, pay doctors, and charge reasonable prices for services? The state can't set maximum prices for procedures? Why exactly do you think that private individuals would stop going into the medical professions if the government was setting, or even paying their salary? Maybe the people who become doctors to become rich would go to Wall-Street instead (and maybe not, since nothing about socialized medicine precludes the existence of private doctors), but either way, fuck those assholes. If you only become a doctor to get rich off of the sickness of others, fuck you.
Socialized medicine can easily co-exist with private medicine (and it does in many countries). There is no reason that it can't; the poor and middle-class get healed in public hospitals, and the rich pay whatever they want to get healed in 5 star private hospitals. The only thing the existence of socialized medicine prevents is the ability of private practices to price-gouge their customers, since their customers always have a cheap alternative.
Defense is a legitimate function for government. It's in the fucking Constitution! Healthcare is not in the Constitution ergo it's not the government's job to do it.
Right, because a few rich white aristocrats 250 years ago should have the last say as to what government should do. Even the founders knew they wouldn't be right about everything, nor could they include everything in a document as short as the Constitution (that's why we can amend it). Besides, "health-care costs" as we know them did not exist when the Constitution was written.
That should end the argument but it never does with the havenots who want to steal shit from the haves.
Nobody is stealing anything from anyone, unless it is the rich stealing the lives and pursuit of happiness of the poor by using their labor while they are healthy, then casting them aside when they become ill.
BTW: You say you can't trust private entities to resist the temptation to charge more and more for healthcare services? What the fuck do you think will stop the government from doing the same? Both entities are made up of people and thus both can and do succumb to the temptation equally well.
The Government is not a for-profit entity. The goal of a government run health service is not to make money, it is to keep people healthy. If you want examples of this working, look to the health-care systems of Northern and Western Europe, or indeed almost any other country that one wouldn't consider an emerging economy. Private health-care is a recipe for ever increasing costs, there can be no doubt about it...
If you don't like the service they are providing (or not providing) you're just shit out of luck. You have no other entity that you can turn to, and if you do you likely face jail time if your truly resist Uncle Sam. And, you probably won't be able to vote the bastards out for years anyway. Think man! Think!!!
You need to think, not me my friend. Nobody is saying that you MUST use government health-care. If you have the money and want to go to a private doctor/hospital, nothing prevents you from doing so under socialized medicine. Again, look at Western Europe, Germany for instance. There is fantastic socialized medicine which is basically free, but if you want to pay for things like a private room, better food, more expensive doctors, you can! You just go to a private hospital instead of a public one.
I don't know where people get this idea that socialized medicine means private doctors will go away... it's just ridiculous. Do private automobiles disappear when public transportation is built? No? I'm done responding to you. You're obviously just regurgitating what right wing pundits have told you, and are unable to think any of your "ideas" through to their logical conclusions.
That's the best you can do? "Mexican cops can be assholes too"?
On a side note, what do you have against reducing the size of government and federal spending?
What do I have against it?
I believe everyone should be provided healthcare by the state, because I don't think we can trust private entities to resist the temptation to charge more and more for healthcare services (because they know we HAVE to pay it...).
I believe the government should regulate what pollutants industry is allowed to dump into the earth/water.
I believe the government should provide free education to all of its citizens.
I believe the government should regulate financial industries and banks.
Frankly, I believe there are MANY things the government should do, because either they are the only ones who can do it, or because the sector should not be trying to make a profit.
If you want to reduce government, set your sights on the massive "defense" budget. Leave what (limited) social services the USA has alone.
Next you're going to tell us we can't spell color either... or civilization.
Anyways, I agree that the US needs to move past its mentality that treats all foreigners as sub-humans who don't deserve all the rights that American citizens have. It's one of the more disgusting elements of US law and foreign policy.
2. Anonymously leak memos that show "scientists" you funded were making up data
3. Have FoxNews report "Scientists make up data, Global Warming a Fraud!" without reporting who paid the scientists.
4. Completely discredit all global warming research by association.
5. Profit!!
6. ??????
No kidding rights, property, and rule of law can all go away quickly and things can dissolve into disorder. That's called a revolution, civil war, or state of anarchy.
You think you're some kind of genius for figuring that out? Everybody knows that without enforcement (and therefore, someone to enforce them) laws are nothing more then words.
People don't down-mod you for saying things like that, these are well known truths. They probably mod you down because you take those facts and extend them, elaborate on them, and use them to reach idiotic conclusions about how the world is on the verge of descending into chaos and the "law of the jungle".
I'm pretty sure the location of AF1 isn't some big secret... It's not like it's some anonymous little private jet. It's a big ass 747 with the seal of the President on it. Hard to hide. If the President is trying to fly around in secret, they won't use the call sign "Air Force One" for the plane he's on anyways.
Most REAL miners use dynamite, pickaxes, shovels, and heavy machinery.
Speaking as a European, I have to ask whether there is an American far left at all? Seriously, are there any socialist/communist/actual left wing politicians in any position of power whatsoever?
No, there aren't, and that's exactly my point. The far right is alive and well in the US (how many Tea Party members are there in Congress?), but the far left, or even the moderate left, is basically non-existent. What's considered left in the US would barely pass for centrist in Europe.
A building is not comparable to a corporation as a building is not a legal entity,
You said it yourself right there! A corporation is a legal entity, not a person! Saying a corporation is a person is the same as saying a marriage license is a person... it's ridiculous.
Someone making 30k a year is only paying 15% anyways.
Again, just compare the American right to a European far right party such as the Front Nationale, and the views of the American left to a European far left party, such as the Parti Communiste.
The truth of the matter is that the "center" in the US is further right than the "center" in Europe. Perhaps both sides are equally radical (As measured in distance from the center), but there's no arguing that the American left is MUCH more centrist than the European left... while the same cannot be said about the American right.