Um, Smokey and the Bandit? Bullitt? You could fit more scientific gear in a Firebird or a Mustang. Or hell, how about a Blues Brothers cop car? From those flicks, Firebirds, Mustangs, and cop cars are invincible!
Not possible, although there are clearly no roads on Mars, they just can't take the risk that the rover might one day need to turn a corner - what a way to waste millions of dollars if the thing gets stuck at a corner millions of miles away with no way for us to free it.
It does work, but there are so many useless apps now. Every day when I load my FB page I have a bunch of new apps to hide. It's like 1990 is back and I'm looking at my email inbox. Then the spam filter came along, and the computer does all that filtering for me.
Gates is well known for stuff like that. He is (or was, since he's semi retired now) passionate about a good product. He is driven in almost the same way as Steve Jobs - they just went about it in different ways. The fact that so many people had just cause to call Windows "annoying and convoluted" would have been very troubling to him - especially since he faced the same issues when using it himself.
That is FUD - the Euro engines exceed the US emissions standards, and have done for some considerable time.
They merely needed to be tested under the US system, to give the same result. The problem was the cost of recertification, not the emissions themselves.
VW obviously thought it was worth it, since they use the same engines in their US models as the EU ones.
All the auto manufacturers needed to do was put the engines they sold in Europe into their American station wagons, and boom - instant mpg benefit. Instead the culture of the SUV arose.
You can't blame the death of the estate car on global warming - there were numerous ways to solve the CAFE issues. The auto industry of course took the path of least resistance "trucks are immune!" - the real blame is the loophole left in there that allowed them to build cheap, unsafe, uneconomical SUVs instead of actually reducing emissions.
Even China sells cars that get better economy than most US vehicles, and it;s not from lack of technology on the part of the US makers - Ford especially, makes market-leading cars in several classes in the UK (none of them SUVs) with excellent engines and vehicle models. It just has to compete here, rather than just building an SUV that has a regulation test that essentially boils down to "does it have wheels? yup! put it on sale!".
So, by your definition, France, the UK, Australia and Canada are all socialist or communist countries?
I live in the UK and I think you would be hard pressed to convince anyone we were a socialist paradise. We do have a welfare state, however.
"A rising tide lifts all ships" - perhaps in theory, but what actually happens is "a rising tide lifts those who can afford a boat; everyone else treads water to try not to drown - if they get sick, they drown"
You are very quick to jump on the idea that any move towards a fairer system for the population of a country means it will swing right over and become a communist/fascist/socialist state. Pure communism, fascism and socialism tend not to work, but then neither does pure democracy. You need a combination of systems to make a country work effectively. A democracy with some authoritarianism is necessary - a position taken by pretty much all of the western countries.
I would take issue that "the only proven way" is the US way, since there are clearly many other countries out there in the world that are doing just fine with the polar opposite of your description of how to do it - a description that fits Victorian Britain very well, by the way - and there is a reason we moved away from that; the sub-class of citizens created by the wealthy few.
There is no such concern as "earning too much money" - you are wilfully misunderstanding what is meant. You can earn as much as you like, just be prepared to be taxed on that income. No one is advocating a cap on what a person can earn. If you make a lot of money, congratulations! You have been successful. What "progressives" want is for you to pay a fair amount in tax, even if this percentage is higher than that of the poorer members of society. The revenue generated will benefit everyone.
And your "town lottery to see which individual gets to see the government doctor this month" hyperbole is just so much nonsense. I live in a country that provides universal healthcare and I can see my doctor (or any other - I can choose) without needing a lottery or causing someone else to be denied care.
And yes, food, clothing and shelter are also rights - which is why the government provides these things for people who cannot afford them (or provides major subsidies for them in some cases).
A society is judged by the way it treats its poorest members, and is ultimately better off if it does provide for them.
The Bill of Rights was written by men, brought before a government of men and signed into law by men. Even if I agree that "God told someone to write this down" (which would be a stretch as an atheist - maybe they were on some magic mushrooms near a bush that was on fire, who knows), it is still a set of laws granted by a government. If you go to a country where the Bill of Rights is not a law, you are not protected by them. The government of the US and the law it upholds is what provides you with those rights.
God did not grant those rights in the Bill of Rights - men did, in a government. Stop trying to backtrack.
You tried to claim that governments do not grant rights, when in fact, they do and have done. One of the most important documents in your short history was a bill of rights, passed by a government.
You can try to weasel around it by claiming that "God did it", in which case, God also grants the right to universal healthcare since Jesus healed the sick and didn't ask them if their HMO covered miracles.
So, God says universal healthcare is a universal right too. Better get to passing some sort of bill to enable that right then.
So those 10 original amendments to the Constitution are not rights? Or do you mean "now that everything is the way I want it, no government can grant *any more* rights".
Healthcare is a universal right. Any developed nation with a healthcare system should be obligated to offer it to all of its citizens equally - anything else the creation of a subclass of citizens.
You sound oddly frothy and alarmist - were you this bad when the extreme corruption of the Bush government was carving up the US and other states for their rich buddies?
The bill as it stands right now will not do anything towards universal care, but it's a step towards fixing the current US system (but obviously doesn't go nearly far enough - it is so, so, so tame).
Of all the developed nations, the US is the only one without a universal healthcare system. It is also the one most burdened by debts due to healthcare - both on the government and the personal level.
I think you will find that the exact same yelling and frothing about "extreme corruption" (ie, passing a bill you don't personally agree with) happened back when Medicare was enacted and the world did not implode.
This bill is far from perfect, but it will address some serious issues with the system. Add a decent single payer system, or a fully universal system (alongside the private insurance system) and you might be getting somewhere.
The estimated cost of the bill is somewhere around $1 trillion dollars - that is 1/3 as much as has been spent on the totally useless war in Iraq, and I don't hear the repubs screaming and crying about "fiscal responsibility" on that front.
For 1/3 of what you have already spent on that war you could have easily paid for this.
A good way to reduce the deficit is taxing the population. Reverse those silly tax cuts for the top 1% of the population and there's a nice chunk of change.
Clawing back all that money poured into a sandy crater in the middle east though... you're on your own. Pray it got you lots of oil.
Your 73% figure also seems to be somewhat overestimated. CBS is going with 50% disapproving (presumably everyone who has been making signs that say "obama = socialist" without a clue what the S word *actually means*, with 15% undecided, and %37 in favour. I'm sure some of those 50% disapproving actually have some valid reasons for disagreeing with it though. I will wager that everyone in the "no" category watches Fox News.
The anti-bill special interests have spent a lot of money to get disinformation about what the bill is about, what it will mean and what it will do. Anyone who runs on a platform of "death panels will decide when you are too costly to keep alive" really is just spreading FUD of the highest order.
There has been no corruption and sleaze in passing this bill - it has been right out there in the open, and featured multiple opportunities for Republicans to get involved in it. They spent a lot of time getting things stripped out, but ultimately all voted no anyway. What specific corruption and sleaze can you point to on the handling of the bill, from drafting, to voting, to alterations, to debate? I am all ears.
You already spend *substantially more* on your healthcare system (in GDP per capita) than any other nation.
The idea that you are giving up "freedom and choice" is also another propaganda talking point that the special interests like to trot out - while it is true that you *must* pay NI contributions, you get in exchange the entire healthcare system when you need it.
However, if you choose, you can keep your private insurance plan and never use the NHS (still have to pay for it, but it will never turn you away in exchange), so you can go fully private if you wish.
You also get to chose your doctors and other medical professionals in the UK system as well by the way - that's another one of those "facts" that the anti-healthcare shouties also get wrong. Our doctors are also very well paid.
The bill was obviously supposed to feature a public option for insurance, alongside the requirement to have insurance, but in one of the many revisions and capitulations to the bill it was removed, but with the insurance bit left in - as you say, very nice for insurance companies who don;t want to compete with a low cost option.
Take a look at every other developed nation - they all have effective universal systems that cost them a *lot* less than the US pays. The US is the odd one out here.
I also think an "essential freedom" is the freedom to have access to healthcare at point of need, regardless of your financial or employment status. That is a freedom that millions of Americans (even hard working employed ones) do not have.
Enough energy falls on the surface of the earth from the sun every day to power the US for a year - capturing and harnessing that energy is the tricky part. Even if you can only grab a small part of that energy, it is still more than "adept" as powering much more than just calculators.
Really, the US system is far from perfect, you shouldn't have to make stuff up to criticize it.
and in the case of a lot of medical decisions under the US system (where your insurance company, and not a doctor, decides the care you receive).
Replace US with UK, and 'insurance company' with 'NHS', and tell me it's less true.
Ok, so these are all people I know personally under the US system:
One needs a yearly MRI to screen for return of cancer instead of a normal mammogram due to previous treatments making the mammogram useless as a diagnostic tool. Her doctors have been trying countless times to get this preventative screening done, but the Insurance company will not pay for it, but is happy to pay for the totally ineffective (in the words of her radiotherapists and physicians) X ray screens.
Another friend has been told to measure her blood sugar 5 times a day at minimum to ensure she keeps a careful check on the levels. Doctor prescribed 5 tests per day. Insurance company overrode this treatment decision and have said that 2 tests per day is all that is needed for the type of diabetes she has and will only pay for 2 tests per day - but is happy to sell her extra tests at a markup.
Another one is uninsurable due to a heart condition that was treated when younger. (perhaps this bill will fix that eventually).
Another was left with a $10,000 bill they could not afford after double and triple checking that the hospital they were using for their premature baby was covered and "in network". They were assured several times (including by fax) that this was the case. 3 weeks later, it turns out one of the nurses was contracted in from an out of network hospital so they won;t pay for that and lump them with a $10,000 bill.
A different friend sat in the waiting area with a severe concussion and was visibly poorly while her father argued with the admission desk about whether her job's insurance covered her injury (she fell off an 8 foot ladder while at work). They didn't even look at her until it was certain that they were covered for payment.
A close family member broke her arm and was treated for that, but there were further complications with her shoulder that were causing her major pain. The doctor she was seeing for the arm would not treat her shoulder since it "was a different injury and not covered". She came to visit me in the UK and the NHS took care of it for her (for free), as well as the followup treatment for the broken arm including full Xrays and a PT visit.
At no point when you get sick or need a doctor should you ever have to worry about paying for it - it should already be covered by universal healthcare, paid for via your NI contributions.
The NHS treats people. The insurance companies treat people like cash dispensers. There is a difference.
It is the nature of a welfare state that people will take advantage of it (at both ends - the guys with the $10,000 suits on Wall Street are just as bad as the guy who lives off food stamps and pops out 6 kids to get more), but the vast majority of those at the bottom are not there by choice and do not game the system, and are as a result even worse off.
There will always be scroungers in a welfare system, but the trick is not to get conned into believing that it is anywhere near a majority of those who require the system to survive. The government does attempt (sometimes ineffectually) to prevent abuse of the system, but some abuse is inevitable. It's the small price to pay for a welfare state that looks after those who don't have the means to look after themselves.
The more people who pay into the pot, the less it costs for everyone.
You could see it as "you subsidising your neighbour" or "he is subsidising me" - when everyone is paying in, it does become cheaper for you, even though you are doing something as terrible as making the system better for your neighbour as a side effect for making it better for yourself.
Who cares if your neighbour gets cheaper care if overall it is better for you too.
It still not perfect (needs single payer system), but it's a step forwards, even with all the drastic cuts and compromises made for the Repubs who voted no anyway. Alas.
Oh I know - I'm not saying that the current government is blameless. As a lifelong labour voter, I really do not know what to do at the coming general election.
I have been left in the unenviable position that I may end up "voting party line" because I just don;t have a surefire conviction - ie, that I'l' vote labour not because they have their ducks in a row, but because there really is nothing about the Tory platform that benefits me in any way, and would actually be harmful to me.
Voting lib dem is very similar to not voting, unfortunately - we're not quite so deeply 2 party as the US, but we may as well be.
The love of "everything IT" that has been a feature of the current government has just gone too far, and been messed up with mismanagement, certainly. Direct.gov is a great idea, but there's no need to start putting a computer system in for literally everything, or changing a current one if it's not necessary.
I mean that they literally get no care, beyond the bare necessity (ie, if they come in at the point of death). The reason that your waiting lists are shorter, is that your healthcare system only caters to at best, half of your population. There is an underclass in the US that just do not have access to preventative care, or routine healthcare.
In the UK, no one is being "subsidised by the wealthy" - everyone pays NI contributions in proportion to their income, but the real benefit to the wealthy is that because poor people also pay NI contributions, even if it is literally less money than they themselves pay, overall the cost is lower for the wealthy than if the poor people are left out of the equation.
Everyone pays a little, so it costs less for everyone.
Nothing in the US will get fixed until people can take that leap of faith that says "hey, I earn more than him, so I'd be subsidising his care!" until you realise that you'd be paying less than you are in a system that excludes him paying his smaller share.
There's a reason that every other developed nation in the world uses a socialised system (often in tandem with a private system) - it works very well to spread the cost out so everyone pays less, and everyone is covered.
I do literally mean that those with good healthcare (who are perfectly happy with it and never have problems with cover, or treatments, or bills) are healthy at the expense of a vast proportion of the US population that the system just does not touch (until they come in at death's door and they are bound by law to offer lifesaving care).
Welcome to the debate as seen by everyone on the side of socialised care.
What do you think Palin et al have been doing since Clinton (XX, not XY) tried to deal with this issue many years ago. It has been torpedoed very effectively by people who are determined to keep it the way it is, since it is far less profitable to actually provide proper healthcare to your citizens.
I have spent 15 years debating this issue moderately, while many of my friends have been personally crippled (both literally and financially) by the US system and I am just sick and tired of the anti-healthcare lobby getting away with so much shit, while people I love suffer needlessly.
The US is one of the best and most powerful countries in the world, but your healthcare system is in serious need of change. You are the *only* first world nation that does not provide universal healthcare for its citizens, and you spend *by far* the most money of any country on healthcare as a whole, but it's all going to the wrong places.
I have spent years trying to debate this fairly, in the face of some of the worst lies and distortions I have ever seen, so sue me. I'm sick of it.
If nothing else you now know exactly how the rest of us feel when Palin herself comes out with "death panels", or a right wing publication comes out with outrageous lies like "Stephen Hawking would have died if he'd have been born under the UK system" (he's British, he was, and he owes his life to it).
As a British citizen who (traditionally) votes Labour, I am so far to the left on the US political scale that I consider Obama to be too right wing for my tastes.
I know several people personally who have been denied treatment that their doctor ordered because their insurance companies would not pay, or modified to what the insurance company thought was the best treatment, despite those specific options being deemed ineffective by the doctor.
I also know at least two people personally in serious medical debt and who are now "tainted" (won't be touched by an insurance company since they had the audacity to get sick and require care).
There's a lot of fear being thrown around - my own country's system has been savaged by the special interest groups in the US (death panels! Stephen Hawking would be left to die if he was British and born under the NHS! You can't choose your doctor! You won;t get more than minimum care!). I should have avoided the hyperbole, but I know that there are cases in the US where the insurance company has refused to pay after the fact for a non-pre-approved ambulance trip.
To respond to the first point, not only have I volunteered, but I was my career path in my youth.
I am not disputing that the US has some excellent parts to its system - but the access to that system is severely broken for a large portion of the population.
Slashdot Mirror
I suggest you read the second half of the original post. He doesn't need to use his imagination, he just needs to re-read what he wrote originally.
Um, Smokey and the Bandit? Bullitt? You could fit more scientific gear in a Firebird or a Mustang. Or hell, how about a Blues Brothers cop car? From those flicks, Firebirds, Mustangs, and cop cars are invincible!
Not possible, although there are clearly no roads on Mars, they just can't take the risk that the rover might one day need to turn a corner - what a way to waste millions of dollars if the thing gets stuck at a corner millions of miles away with no way for us to free it.
You can have iPlayer when The Daily Show and Colbert Report webfeeds are available again in the UK. The geo-locking of web streams is very annoying.
You forgot to append "while knocking back oxycontin like candy while simultaneously demonising drug users on his show".
Passion is not the same as ability or "too many cooks" syndrome.
It does work, but there are so many useless apps now. Every day when I load my FB page I have a bunch of new apps to hide. It's like 1990 is back and I'm looking at my email inbox. Then the spam filter came along, and the computer does all that filtering for me.
That's essentially what this is.
Gates is well known for stuff like that. He is (or was, since he's semi retired now) passionate about a good product. He is driven in almost the same way as Steve Jobs - they just went about it in different ways. The fact that so many people had just cause to call Windows "annoying and convoluted" would have been very troubling to him - especially since he faced the same issues when using it himself.
This is not about just Safari and OS X - all the details about browser exploits, including for Firefox and Windows are just too scant in detail.
That is FUD - the Euro engines exceed the US emissions standards, and have done for some considerable time.
They merely needed to be tested under the US system, to give the same result. The problem was the cost of recertification, not the emissions themselves.
VW obviously thought it was worth it, since they use the same engines in their US models as the EU ones.
All the auto manufacturers needed to do was put the engines they sold in Europe into their American station wagons, and boom - instant mpg benefit. Instead the culture of the SUV arose.
You can't blame the death of the estate car on global warming - there were numerous ways to solve the CAFE issues. The auto industry of course took the path of least resistance "trucks are immune!" - the real blame is the loophole left in there that allowed them to build cheap, unsafe, uneconomical SUVs instead of actually reducing emissions.
Even China sells cars that get better economy than most US vehicles, and it;s not from lack of technology on the part of the US makers - Ford especially, makes market-leading cars in several classes in the UK (none of them SUVs) with excellent engines and vehicle models. It just has to compete here, rather than just building an SUV that has a regulation test that essentially boils down to "does it have wheels? yup! put it on sale!".
So, by your definition, France, the UK, Australia and Canada are all socialist or communist countries?
I live in the UK and I think you would be hard pressed to convince anyone we were a socialist paradise. We do have a welfare state, however.
"A rising tide lifts all ships" - perhaps in theory, but what actually happens is "a rising tide lifts those who can afford a boat; everyone else treads water to try not to drown - if they get sick, they drown"
You are very quick to jump on the idea that any move towards a fairer system for the population of a country means it will swing right over and become a communist/fascist/socialist state. Pure communism, fascism and socialism tend not to work, but then neither does pure democracy. You need a combination of systems to make a country work effectively. A democracy with some authoritarianism is necessary - a position taken by pretty much all of the western countries.
I would take issue that "the only proven way" is the US way, since there are clearly many other countries out there in the world that are doing just fine with the polar opposite of your description of how to do it - a description that fits Victorian Britain very well, by the way - and there is a reason we moved away from that; the sub-class of citizens created by the wealthy few.
There is no such concern as "earning too much money" - you are wilfully misunderstanding what is meant. You can earn as much as you like, just be prepared to be taxed on that income. No one is advocating a cap on what a person can earn. If you make a lot of money, congratulations! You have been successful. What "progressives" want is for you to pay a fair amount in tax, even if this percentage is higher than that of the poorer members of society. The revenue generated will benefit everyone.
And your "town lottery to see which individual gets to see the government doctor this month" hyperbole is just so much nonsense. I live in a country that provides universal healthcare and I can see my doctor (or any other - I can choose) without needing a lottery or causing someone else to be denied care.
And yes, food, clothing and shelter are also rights - which is why the government provides these things for people who cannot afford them (or provides major subsidies for them in some cases).
A society is judged by the way it treats its poorest members, and is ultimately better off if it does provide for them.
The Bill of Rights was written by men, brought before a government of men and signed into law by men. Even if I agree that "God told someone to write this down" (which would be a stretch as an atheist - maybe they were on some magic mushrooms near a bush that was on fire, who knows), it is still a set of laws granted by a government. If you go to a country where the Bill of Rights is not a law, you are not protected by them. The government of the US and the law it upholds is what provides you with those rights.
God did not grant those rights in the Bill of Rights - men did, in a government. Stop trying to backtrack.
You tried to claim that governments do not grant rights, when in fact, they do and have done. One of the most important documents in your short history was a bill of rights, passed by a government.
You can try to weasel around it by claiming that "God did it", in which case, God also grants the right to universal healthcare since Jesus healed the sick and didn't ask them if their HMO covered miracles.
So, God says universal healthcare is a universal right too. Better get to passing some sort of bill to enable that right then.
"Government cannot grant rights."
So those 10 original amendments to the Constitution are not rights? Or do you mean "now that everything is the way I want it, no government can grant *any more* rights".
Healthcare is a universal right. Any developed nation with a healthcare system should be obligated to offer it to all of its citizens equally - anything else the creation of a subclass of citizens.
You sound oddly frothy and alarmist - were you this bad when the extreme corruption of the Bush government was carving up the US and other states for their rich buddies?
Healthcare is a right.
The bill as it stands right now will not do anything towards universal care, but it's a step towards fixing the current US system (but obviously doesn't go nearly far enough - it is so, so, so tame).
Of all the developed nations, the US is the only one without a universal healthcare system. It is also the one most burdened by debts due to healthcare - both on the government and the personal level.
I think you will find that the exact same yelling and frothing about "extreme corruption" (ie, passing a bill you don't personally agree with) happened back when Medicare was enacted and the world did not implode.
This bill is far from perfect, but it will address some serious issues with the system. Add a decent single payer system, or a fully universal system (alongside the private insurance system) and you might be getting somewhere.
The estimated cost of the bill is somewhere around $1 trillion dollars - that is 1/3 as much as has been spent on the totally useless war in Iraq, and I don't hear the repubs screaming and crying about "fiscal responsibility" on that front.
For 1/3 of what you have already spent on that war you could have easily paid for this.
A good way to reduce the deficit is taxing the population. Reverse those silly tax cuts for the top 1% of the population and there's a nice chunk of change.
Clawing back all that money poured into a sandy crater in the middle east though... you're on your own. Pray it got you lots of oil.
Your 73% figure also seems to be somewhat overestimated. CBS is going with 50% disapproving (presumably everyone who has been making signs that say "obama = socialist" without a clue what the S word *actually means*, with 15% undecided, and %37 in favour. I'm sure some of those 50% disapproving actually have some valid reasons for disagreeing with it though. I will wager that everyone in the "no" category watches Fox News.
The anti-bill special interests have spent a lot of money to get disinformation about what the bill is about, what it will mean and what it will do. Anyone who runs on a platform of "death panels will decide when you are too costly to keep alive" really is just spreading FUD of the highest order.
There has been no corruption and sleaze in passing this bill - it has been right out there in the open, and featured multiple opportunities for Republicans to get involved in it. They spent a lot of time getting things stripped out, but ultimately all voted no anyway. What specific corruption and sleaze can you point to on the handling of the bill, from drafting, to voting, to alterations, to debate? I am all ears.
You already spend *substantially more* on your healthcare system (in GDP per capita) than any other nation.
The idea that you are giving up "freedom and choice" is also another propaganda talking point that the special interests like to trot out - while it is true that you *must* pay NI contributions, you get in exchange the entire healthcare system when you need it.
However, if you choose, you can keep your private insurance plan and never use the NHS (still have to pay for it, but it will never turn you away in exchange), so you can go fully private if you wish.
You also get to chose your doctors and other medical professionals in the UK system as well by the way - that's another one of those "facts" that the anti-healthcare shouties also get wrong. Our doctors are also very well paid.
The bill was obviously supposed to feature a public option for insurance, alongside the requirement to have insurance, but in one of the many revisions and capitulations to the bill it was removed, but with the insurance bit left in - as you say, very nice for insurance companies who don;t want to compete with a low cost option.
Take a look at every other developed nation - they all have effective universal systems that cost them a *lot* less than the US pays. The US is the odd one out here.
I also think an "essential freedom" is the freedom to have access to healthcare at point of need, regardless of your financial or employment status. That is a freedom that millions of Americans (even hard working employed ones) do not have.
Enough energy falls on the surface of the earth from the sun every day to power the US for a year - capturing and harnessing that energy is the tricky part. Even if you can only grab a small part of that energy, it is still more than "adept" as powering much more than just calculators.
Solar *is* nuclear power. The reactor is just rather... large.
Really, the US system is far from perfect, you shouldn't have to make stuff up to criticize it.
and in the case of a lot of medical decisions under the US system (where your insurance company, and not a doctor, decides the care you receive).
Replace US with UK, and 'insurance company' with 'NHS', and tell me it's less true.
Ok, so these are all people I know personally under the US system:
One needs a yearly MRI to screen for return of cancer instead of a normal mammogram due to previous treatments making the mammogram useless as a diagnostic tool. Her doctors have been trying countless times to get this preventative screening done, but the Insurance company will not pay for it, but is happy to pay for the totally ineffective (in the words of her radiotherapists and physicians) X ray screens.
Another friend has been told to measure her blood sugar 5 times a day at minimum to ensure she keeps a careful check on the levels. Doctor prescribed 5 tests per day. Insurance company overrode this treatment decision and have said that 2 tests per day is all that is needed for the type of diabetes she has and will only pay for 2 tests per day - but is happy to sell her extra tests at a markup.
Another one is uninsurable due to a heart condition that was treated when younger. (perhaps this bill will fix that eventually).
Another was left with a $10,000 bill they could not afford after double and triple checking that the hospital they were using for their premature baby was covered and "in network". They were assured several times (including by fax) that this was the case. 3 weeks later, it turns out one of the nurses was contracted in from an out of network hospital so they won;t pay for that and lump them with a $10,000 bill.
A different friend sat in the waiting area with a severe concussion and was visibly poorly while her father argued with the admission desk about whether her job's insurance covered her injury (she fell off an 8 foot ladder while at work). They didn't even look at her until it was certain that they were covered for payment.
A close family member broke her arm and was treated for that, but there were further complications with her shoulder that were causing her major pain. The doctor she was seeing for the arm would not treat her shoulder since it "was a different injury and not covered". She came to visit me in the UK and the NHS took care of it for her (for free), as well as the followup treatment for the broken arm including full Xrays and a PT visit.
At no point when you get sick or need a doctor should you ever have to worry about paying for it - it should already be covered by universal healthcare, paid for via your NI contributions.
The NHS treats people. The insurance companies treat people like cash dispensers. There is a difference.
It is the nature of a welfare state that people will take advantage of it (at both ends - the guys with the $10,000 suits on Wall Street are just as bad as the guy who lives off food stamps and pops out 6 kids to get more), but the vast majority of those at the bottom are not there by choice and do not game the system, and are as a result even worse off.
There will always be scroungers in a welfare system, but the trick is not to get conned into believing that it is anywhere near a majority of those who require the system to survive. The government does attempt (sometimes ineffectually) to prevent abuse of the system, but some abuse is inevitable. It's the small price to pay for a welfare state that looks after those who don't have the means to look after themselves.
The more people who pay into the pot, the less it costs for everyone.
You could see it as "you subsidising your neighbour" or "he is subsidising me" - when everyone is paying in, it does become cheaper for you, even though you are doing something as terrible as making the system better for your neighbour as a side effect for making it better for yourself.
Who cares if your neighbour gets cheaper care if overall it is better for you too.
It still not perfect (needs single payer system), but it's a step forwards, even with all the drastic cuts and compromises made for the Repubs who voted no anyway. Alas.
Oh I know - I'm not saying that the current government is blameless. As a lifelong labour voter, I really do not know what to do at the coming general election.
I have been left in the unenviable position that I may end up "voting party line" because I just don;t have a surefire conviction - ie, that I'l' vote labour not because they have their ducks in a row, but because there really is nothing about the Tory platform that benefits me in any way, and would actually be harmful to me.
Voting lib dem is very similar to not voting, unfortunately - we're not quite so deeply 2 party as the US, but we may as well be.
The love of "everything IT" that has been a feature of the current government has just gone too far, and been messed up with mismanagement, certainly. Direct.gov is a great idea, but there's no need to start putting a computer system in for literally everything, or changing a current one if it's not necessary.
I mean that they literally get no care, beyond the bare necessity (ie, if they come in at the point of death). The reason that your waiting lists are shorter, is that your healthcare system only caters to at best, half of your population. There is an underclass in the US that just do not have access to preventative care, or routine healthcare.
In the UK, no one is being "subsidised by the wealthy" - everyone pays NI contributions in proportion to their income, but the real benefit to the wealthy is that because poor people also pay NI contributions, even if it is literally less money than they themselves pay, overall the cost is lower for the wealthy than if the poor people are left out of the equation.
Everyone pays a little, so it costs less for everyone.
Nothing in the US will get fixed until people can take that leap of faith that says "hey, I earn more than him, so I'd be subsidising his care!" until you realise that you'd be paying less than you are in a system that excludes him paying his smaller share.
There's a reason that every other developed nation in the world uses a socialised system (often in tandem with a private system) - it works very well to spread the cost out so everyone pays less, and everyone is covered.
I do literally mean that those with good healthcare (who are perfectly happy with it and never have problems with cover, or treatments, or bills) are healthy at the expense of a vast proportion of the US population that the system just does not touch (until they come in at death's door and they are bound by law to offer lifesaving care).
Welcome to the debate as seen by everyone on the side of socialised care.
What do you think Palin et al have been doing since Clinton (XX, not XY) tried to deal with this issue many years ago. It has been torpedoed very effectively by people who are determined to keep it the way it is, since it is far less profitable to actually provide proper healthcare to your citizens.
I have spent 15 years debating this issue moderately, while many of my friends have been personally crippled (both literally and financially) by the US system and I am just sick and tired of the anti-healthcare lobby getting away with so much shit, while people I love suffer needlessly.
The US is one of the best and most powerful countries in the world, but your healthcare system is in serious need of change. You are the *only* first world nation that does not provide universal healthcare for its citizens, and you spend *by far* the most money of any country on healthcare as a whole, but it's all going to the wrong places.
I have spent years trying to debate this fairly, in the face of some of the worst lies and distortions I have ever seen, so sue me. I'm sick of it.
If nothing else you now know exactly how the rest of us feel when Palin herself comes out with "death panels", or a right wing publication comes out with outrageous lies like "Stephen Hawking would have died if he'd have been born under the UK system" (he's British, he was, and he owes his life to it).
As a British citizen who (traditionally) votes Labour, I am so far to the left on the US political scale that I consider Obama to be too right wing for my tastes.
It does have some truth to it though.
I know several people personally who have been denied treatment that their doctor ordered because their insurance companies would not pay, or modified to what the insurance company thought was the best treatment, despite those specific options being deemed ineffective by the doctor.
I also know at least two people personally in serious medical debt and who are now "tainted" (won't be touched by an insurance company since they had the audacity to get sick and require care).
There's a lot of fear being thrown around - my own country's system has been savaged by the special interest groups in the US (death panels! Stephen Hawking would be left to die if he was British and born under the NHS! You can't choose your doctor! You won;t get more than minimum care!). I should have avoided the hyperbole, but I know that there are cases in the US where the insurance company has refused to pay after the fact for a non-pre-approved ambulance trip.
To respond to the first point, not only have I volunteered, but I was my career path in my youth.
I am not disputing that the US has some excellent parts to its system - but the access to that system is severely broken for a large portion of the population.