Now you can't have a normal life without participating in this system; without allowing your transactions to be tracked.
If it bothers you that much then live without a bank account and just cash your payroll check every two weeks or whenever. They can track how much you make but can't track where you are spending it.
Now days if, for example, the entire population of new york fought against the US army the whole place could be turned into a blackened crater in the space of a few hours
What makes you think the US Army would go along with turning an American state into a 'blackened crater'?
Yet. It has already been suggested numerous times by some fringe congressmen that we need to suspend the constitution. It's only a matter of time before they actually do.
That would be a neat trick, since there are no provisions in the US Constitution that would allow it to be 'suspended'. Habeas Corpus can only be suspended in cases of rebellion or invasion. You'd also have to suspend the 50 State Constitutions that also protect most of the rights outlined in the Bill of Rights.
I don't see the difference between refusing to turn over an encryption key and refusing to let the police in your house when they have a valid search warrant.
The police are free to knock my door down if I refuse to help them. Just as they are free to take a run at breaking my AES-256 encrypted hard drive. I don't have to help them make their case against me.
Yeah right, because french people are so open minded when it comes to influences themself?
The French have a cultural inferiority complex regarding anything from the Anglosphere. They feel that the French language and culture deserve the same recognition on the World stage as the Anglo-Saxon language and culture. They can be amazingly hypocritical at times -- our actions as the "world cop" don't even come close to the atrocities committed by the French in Algeria or Vietnam. I do always find it amusing that they accuse us of imperialism while forgetting about their own history though.
Oh, and they talked about how Europe, china (?) and especially japan needed the oil from the middle east region much more than USA but didn't helped to keep it political stable and keep the oil flowing.
This is the part that amuses me the most. We get most of our oil from Canada, Mexico and Venezuela. Keeping the Middle East stable is less for our benefit and more for the benefit of the countries that you mentioned. Funny how people never that.
Our country doesn't make the same promises about liberty in a single document which all our countrymen regard as some kind of holy scripture
Our promises of liberty aren't contained within a single document. The Bill of Rights is one of those promises -- State Constitutions are another. Historically speaking many of our rights come from the Common Law. The US Declaration of Independence and the Magna Carta also deserve some mention.
It's like a kid vowing to never go back to school again because a bully once stole his lunch money.
Ah yes, a perfectly legitimate comparison. Schoolyard bullies routinely kill thousands of people.
Wasting all the money you have on going to war in Iraq and Afghanistan when in fact it was a terrorist organisation and not a single country that attacked you, is pretty dumb.
You'll brook no argument from me on Iraq but what's the issue with Afghanistan? That's where the leadership of the aforementioned terrorist organization was located. I see no problem with going into that country to kill or capture them. My only regret regarding Afghanistan is that GWB was so preoccuipied with Iraq that we outsourced the job to the local warlords instead of doing it ourselves. If we had done it ourselves maybe OBL would already be dead.
If you go around spending billions attacking everyone that you feel slightly threatened by, you'll end up in financial meltdown... oh, wait...
The financial meltdown had very little to do with Afghanistan or Iraq. How did either of those wars result in an unregulated market for credit default swaps that equals nearly 5 times the entire GDP of the United States? What did either of those wars have to do with lending standards and sub-prime mortgages? How do you explain the fact that the rest of the World is also suffering when most of the other countries didn't support our efforts in Iraq and contribute very little to Afghanistan (apparently NATO is a one-way street where North America carries all the burden)?
On an anecdotal note, my insured mother and I went to a hospital ER in Modesto, and we waited two hours while she was screaming in pain. Finally, I took her to another hospital ER, and she was taken care of. Even some hospitals - Memorial Medical Center - have ER waiting rooms that suck.
Next time take her out to the parking lot and call an ambulance. They don't generally ignore you when you come in with the EMTs.
Your conclusion is flawed. The reason we're the richest country on Earth is because our government stays at least a little bit out of non-governmental functions, such as health care
I'm pretty sure that favorable geography and not having to fight a war on our own soil since 1865 have played a role in that too. I do understand the sentiment of what you are trying to say but sentiment doesn't get you very far when you are the one bankrupted by medical bills.
whose platform is largely built upon a bad one.
I disagree that it's a bad idea. It needs some improvement (the inclusion of tort reform -- something I've called for many times in this thread) but I don't have a philosophical problem with the concept of progressive taxation being used to make health care affordable.
Foreign policy: both parties support the War in Iraq
Correction: Elements of both parties support the War in Iraq but you'll find far more people who oppose it on the Democratic side of the aisle (including the nominee for President) than you will on the Republican side (Ron Paul and who else?)
and foreign interventionism in general. Both parties support an oversized military, based in hundreds of bases around the world, rather than concentrating on protecting our borders. Neither party believes in not being the global policeman.
Americans as a whole have supported foreign interventionism since WW2. You can argue about whether or not that's in our best interests but the results of our last flirtation with isolationism weren't very encouraging.
Wall Street Bailout: both parties supported this, the Democrats slightly more than the Republicans, though the plan was concocted and pushed by Bush and Paulsen, Republicans. The Democrats, under Pelosi, were instrumental in getting this passed.
I don't view it as a 'bailout' -- I view it was a rescue plan -- so I'd imagine that you and I will never see eye to eye on this. I would say that you are painting with a broad brush here though -- there were lots of Democrats and Republicans that opposed the plan. Most of the opposition seemed to come from the far-right and far-left -- the very same people that place ideology ahead of reality.
Spending: both parties support massive spending on things which aren't important: bridges to nowhere, etc.
Define "things that aren't important". I've commented on this many times in the past. It's only unimportant if it's not in your hometown. If it's in your hometown it's "economic development" -- if it's in mine it's "pork".
Abortion, gay marriage: these are distractions for the two parties to make noise about, to distract people from the issues above which affect them far more.
I'm guessing you wouldn't view them as a distraction if you were gay or a rape victim.
Law enforcement: how do they differ here? Neither is against it. What a strange thing to say.
The two parties differ in their approaches to fighting crime. Democrats tend to come down on the side of individual rights and Republicans tend to come down on the side of law and order. Now I'm painting with a broad brush (because our parties aren't as monolithic as the ones in other Democracies) but I think you get my drift.
Gun control: definitely a difference here, but Bush was in favor of extending the idiotic Assault Weapons Ban. Neither party is all that great in being against gun control.
Maybe because the Democratic big-city base is in FAVOR of gun control? I'm personally opposed to it (one of many disagreements that I have with my party) but at least you admit that there is a difference between the two parties.
Immigration: neither party favors reforming immigration laws and securing the border. Illegal immigration is too profitable for business owners.
I find it interesting that you are calling abortion and gay marriage a distraction but wouldn't view illegal immigration the same way? How does an illegal immigrant harm me? I'll grant you that this is one issue that both parties have failed us on -- the Dems are afraid of being called racists and the Republicans like cheap labor -- but I find it interesting that this is an important issue to you while you dismissed the ones I brought up. I guess everybody has their own priorities.
Drugs: neither party favors legalizing any drugs, even harmless marijuana or even industrial hemp.
Well, if this issue is more important to you than any of the differences I've highlighted feel free to vote for a third-party candidate. I happen to be a regular user of cannabis and feel your pain
We'd wear it out using it on barking moonbat liberals like you.
The difference between the barking moonbat liberals and the batshit crazy conservatives is that the moonbat liberals haven't had a vehicle to obtain power in a really long time. But that's ok -- don't let that little fact distract you from blaming them for all of our problems.
Barack Obama supports Linux. I did some freelance work for his North Carolina campaign headquarters, settting up a gentoo box for use as their intranet server. I met BO and talked about linux and modernizing the Federal Government, access to information, etc.
You got a chance to directly talk to a major party presidential candidate and you used it to talk about Linux? I don't know if I should shake your hand or slap you across the face.
As has been pointed out repeatedly for 90% of the issues, both parties are the same.
Yeah, I've always been amazed at how similar the Democrats and Republicans are on taxation, foreign policy, abortion, gay marriage, business regulation, law enforcement, gun control, blah, blah, blah.
Mickey increases the number of registered voters without increasing the number of actual voters. This provides an opportunity for disguising vote fraud by adding votes at the end of the night, but staying under the registered total.
That's not as easy as you might think. Here in New York we number each name in the poll book when the voter signs in -- at the end of the day the number of people who have signed in needs to equal the number of votes cast on the machine. The only way we could "add" votes would be to start forging signatures in the poll book. The only way you'd get away with that would be to find four people (the number of elections inspectors at each poll site) willing to go along with it.
It's not as easy to rig an election as you might think.
Then when Republicans try to knock off the BAD registrations you come in and claim they're trying to prevent people from voting?
You'd be claiming that too if the "bad" registration they tried to knock off was your own.
Kinda like all those "felons" that got disqualified in 2000. Most of them weren't guilty of anything other than having a similar name to a convicted criminal.
It mostly consists of tax credits and requiring insurance companies to do things like cover preexisting conditions.
Well, this isn't exactly a new idea. They are already required to cover preexisting conditions when you get your health insurance through open enrollment at your employer. The people who get fucked on preexisting conditions are those who are buying insurance themselves in the individual market (i.e: those who are unemployed or self-employed).
Forcing private businesses to engage in unprofitable activity and forcing both types of premium increases on wealthier taxpayers is indistinguishable from socialism and nobody has stood up with any convincing evidence that it will work in the long term.
Then come up with a better plan. Doing nothing is not an option here. There is no excuse for why the richest country on Earth can't provide it's citizens with access to affordable health care.
Umm, that's part of it. The point of insurance is to pool risk so that disasters (i.e: your house burns down) aren't financially devastating. By transferring the risk to the pool you are sharing the risk with that entire pool instead of carrying it yourself.
Yes my friend. He died in his mid-50s and chose to accept his death rather than fight it. If I had been in his shoes, I would have done the same. It is far wiser to accept death, than to live in denial about the inevitable. No matter how rich you are, or how much "free" healthcare your government gives you, you will not live forever. It is pointless to try.
You realize that not all cancer is an automatic death sentence, right? I might accept death if it was something incurable and treatment was only going to buy me a few months (I watched someone go through pancreatic cancer -- miserable way to go and the "treatment" seemed worse than the disease) but if it was something that could be treated and cured then I'd be damned if I was going to meekly accept death.
A friend of mine went through non-hodgkin lymphoma a few years back. Her first round of treatment cost over $120,000. Her second round over $80,000. I'd really like to hear how you think cutting out the cable bill would enable someone making a middle class salary to save up that kind of money.
Well, around here everything is run through clinics. There aren't any real independent practices left (* that are accepting new patients). When you go to the clinic for a scheduled appointment (i.e: annual physical) you'll get to see your listed doctor (though even then you'll only get five or ten minutes with him or her). Any other time you'll get stuck with whomever is free -- and odds are that's going to be a Physicians Assistant or Nurse Practitioner. So you don't even get to see a real MD yet the office visit charge is still the same. What's wrong with that picture?
Granted, I don't have a problem seeing the Nurse Practitioner (I do refuse to see the PA if they try to shove him off on me). This whole setup just bothers me on many levels -- I never get to see my real doctor when I need to and I'm always in the position of having to explain my medical history to someone I've never seen before (and whom I'll likely never see again). Health care shouldn't be treated like an assembly line, IMHO.
And whose fault is that? Maybe you should stop wasting money on $1000 a year Cable TV, or $900 a year Internet access, or $700 a year cellphone connections, or buying a new $2000 laptop every other year. ----- Maybe then you could afford the healthcare. Let me introduce you to new words: "self-sacrifice" "self-help" and "self-responsibility/initiative".
Oh, blow it out your fucking ass with the self-responsibility bullshit. I don't waste money on any of those things that you mentioned and I have a pretty decent chunk of change tucked away (six months of my income). In spite of all of that I still couldn't afford a major medical diagnosis without insurance. It would bankrupt me.
Ever known anyone that got cancer? Those bills run into the hundreds of thousands. Mind telling me how someone who is making middle class wages can afford to take a hit like that?
Funny you mention this example, because that's EXACTLY what I do. In the event of an accident, buying a used car for $3000-$5000 makes a whole lot more sense than paying ~$15,000 per decade to the insurance rapists. I have the state-required minimum, but I do not insure my car. It's cheaper to just junk it, and buy a used one.
Well kudos to you for being financially responsible. Next time my wife gets sick I'll tell her it's cheaper to just junk her and find a new one.
It's still an issue with those particular doctors and not a symptom of the American medical system.
To an extent it is though. There is a primary care shortage in this country. It's caused by a number of different factors -- PCPs get paid less than most specialists yet have many of the same costs (malpractice insurance).
It's great that you can see your family practice guy on time but do you actually get to talk with him? Build a patient-doctor relationship with him? In my area even if you get to see the doctor on time you never get a chance to really talk with them -- and it's like this at every single health care provider in my town. Too many patients and too few providers.
The FAA is a tricky one but the others most definitely would be unconstitutional if attempted by the Federal Government:
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
Before you say this doesn't work, there are lots of us who do exactly what I just described.
There are lots more of us who don't have tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars lying around.
Your idea would also work with car insurance as well -- it'd be much easier to just pay for that totaled car out of pocket rather than fight with an insurance company -- but isn't the whole point of insurance to avoid financial disaster?
I simply cannot accept these excuses. Unless there is a gun to your head, there is always a way to vote these people out.
That's a laudable idea in theory but you try voting out a Democrat in a district that has 10% more Democrats than Republicans. Short of the Congressman being caught having sex with underage pages his re-election is all but guaranteed.
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Now you can't have a normal life without participating in this system; without allowing your transactions to be tracked.
If it bothers you that much then live without a bank account and just cash your payroll check every two weeks or whenever. They can track how much you make but can't track where you are spending it.
Now days if, for example, the entire population of new york fought against the US army the whole place could be turned into a blackened crater in the space of a few hours
What makes you think the US Army would go along with turning an American state into a 'blackened crater'?
Yet. It has already been suggested numerous times by some fringe congressmen that we need to suspend the constitution. It's only a matter of time before they actually do.
That would be a neat trick, since there are no provisions in the US Constitution that would allow it to be 'suspended'. Habeas Corpus can only be suspended in cases of rebellion or invasion. You'd also have to suspend the 50 State Constitutions that also protect most of the rights outlined in the Bill of Rights.
I don't see the difference between refusing to turn over an encryption key and refusing to let the police in your house when they have a valid search warrant.
The police are free to knock my door down if I refuse to help them. Just as they are free to take a run at breaking my AES-256 encrypted hard drive. I don't have to help them make their case against me.
Yeah right, because french people are so open minded when it comes to influences themself?
The French have a cultural inferiority complex regarding anything from the Anglosphere. They feel that the French language and culture deserve the same recognition on the World stage as the Anglo-Saxon language and culture. They can be amazingly hypocritical at times -- our actions as the "world cop" don't even come close to the atrocities committed by the French in Algeria or Vietnam. I do always find it amusing that they accuse us of imperialism while forgetting about their own history though.
Oh, and they talked about how Europe, china (?) and especially japan needed the oil from the middle east region much more than USA but didn't helped to keep it political stable and keep the oil flowing.
This is the part that amuses me the most. We get most of our oil from Canada, Mexico and Venezuela. Keeping the Middle East stable is less for our benefit and more for the benefit of the countries that you mentioned. Funny how people never that.
Our country doesn't make the same promises about liberty in a single document which all our countrymen regard as some kind of holy scripture
Our promises of liberty aren't contained within a single document. The Bill of Rights is one of those promises -- State Constitutions are another. Historically speaking many of our rights come from the Common Law. The US Declaration of Independence and the Magna Carta also deserve some mention.
It's like a kid vowing to never go back to school again because a bully once stole his lunch money.
Ah yes, a perfectly legitimate comparison. Schoolyard bullies routinely kill thousands of people.
Wasting all the money you have on going to war in Iraq and Afghanistan when in fact it was a terrorist organisation and not a single country that attacked you, is pretty dumb.
You'll brook no argument from me on Iraq but what's the issue with Afghanistan? That's where the leadership of the aforementioned terrorist organization was located. I see no problem with going into that country to kill or capture them. My only regret regarding Afghanistan is that GWB was so preoccuipied with Iraq that we outsourced the job to the local warlords instead of doing it ourselves. If we had done it ourselves maybe OBL would already be dead.
If you go around spending billions attacking everyone that you feel slightly threatened by, you'll end up in financial meltdown... oh, wait...
The financial meltdown had very little to do with Afghanistan or Iraq. How did either of those wars result in an unregulated market for credit default swaps that equals nearly 5 times the entire GDP of the United States? What did either of those wars have to do with lending standards and sub-prime mortgages? How do you explain the fact that the rest of the World is also suffering when most of the other countries didn't support our efforts in Iraq and contribute very little to Afghanistan (apparently NATO is a one-way street where North America carries all the burden)?
On an anecdotal note, my insured mother and I went to a hospital ER in Modesto, and we waited two hours while she was screaming in pain. Finally, I took her to another hospital ER, and she was taken care of. Even some hospitals - Memorial Medical Center - have ER waiting rooms that suck.
Next time take her out to the parking lot and call an ambulance. They don't generally ignore you when you come in with the EMTs.
Your conclusion is flawed. The reason we're the richest country on Earth is because our government stays at least a little bit out of non-governmental functions, such as health care
I'm pretty sure that favorable geography and not having to fight a war on our own soil since 1865 have played a role in that too. I do understand the sentiment of what you are trying to say but sentiment doesn't get you very far when you are the one bankrupted by medical bills.
whose platform is largely built upon a bad one.
I disagree that it's a bad idea. It needs some improvement (the inclusion of tort reform -- something I've called for many times in this thread) but I don't have a philosophical problem with the concept of progressive taxation being used to make health care affordable.
Foreign policy: both parties support the War in Iraq
Correction: Elements of both parties support the War in Iraq but you'll find far more people who oppose it on the Democratic side of the aisle (including the nominee for President) than you will on the Republican side (Ron Paul and who else?)
and foreign interventionism in general. Both parties support an oversized military, based in hundreds of bases around the world, rather than concentrating on protecting our borders. Neither party believes in not being the global policeman.
Americans as a whole have supported foreign interventionism since WW2. You can argue about whether or not that's in our best interests but the results of our last flirtation with isolationism weren't very encouraging.
Wall Street Bailout: both parties supported this, the Democrats slightly more than the Republicans, though the plan was concocted and pushed by Bush and Paulsen, Republicans. The Democrats, under Pelosi, were instrumental in getting this passed.
I don't view it as a 'bailout' -- I view it was a rescue plan -- so I'd imagine that you and I will never see eye to eye on this. I would say that you are painting with a broad brush here though -- there were lots of Democrats and Republicans that opposed the plan. Most of the opposition seemed to come from the far-right and far-left -- the very same people that place ideology ahead of reality.
Spending: both parties support massive spending on things which aren't important: bridges to nowhere, etc.
Define "things that aren't important". I've commented on this many times in the past. It's only unimportant if it's not in your hometown. If it's in your hometown it's "economic development" -- if it's in mine it's "pork".
Abortion, gay marriage: these are distractions for the two parties to make noise about, to distract people from the issues above which affect them far more.
I'm guessing you wouldn't view them as a distraction if you were gay or a rape victim.
Law enforcement: how do they differ here? Neither is against it. What a strange thing to say.
The two parties differ in their approaches to fighting crime. Democrats tend to come down on the side of individual rights and Republicans tend to come down on the side of law and order. Now I'm painting with a broad brush (because our parties aren't as monolithic as the ones in other Democracies) but I think you get my drift.
Gun control: definitely a difference here, but Bush was in favor of extending the idiotic Assault Weapons Ban. Neither party is all that great in being against gun control.
Maybe because the Democratic big-city base is in FAVOR of gun control? I'm personally opposed to it (one of many disagreements that I have with my party) but at least you admit that there is a difference between the two parties.
Immigration: neither party favors reforming immigration laws and securing the border. Illegal immigration is too profitable for business owners.
I find it interesting that you are calling abortion and gay marriage a distraction but wouldn't view illegal immigration the same way? How does an illegal immigrant harm me? I'll grant you that this is one issue that both parties have failed us on -- the Dems are afraid of being called racists and the Republicans like cheap labor -- but I find it interesting that this is an important issue to you while you dismissed the ones I brought up. I guess everybody has their own priorities.
Drugs: neither party favors legalizing any drugs, even harmless marijuana or even industrial hemp.
Well, if this issue is more important to you than any of the differences I've highlighted feel free to vote for a third-party candidate. I happen to be a regular user of cannabis and feel your pain
We'd wear it out using it on barking moonbat liberals like you.
The difference between the barking moonbat liberals and the batshit crazy conservatives is that the moonbat liberals haven't had a vehicle to obtain power in a really long time. But that's ok -- don't let that little fact distract you from blaming them for all of our problems.
Barack Obama supports Linux. I did some freelance work for his North Carolina campaign headquarters, settting up a gentoo box for use as their intranet server. I met BO and talked about linux and modernizing the Federal Government, access to information, etc.
You got a chance to directly talk to a major party presidential candidate and you used it to talk about Linux? I don't know if I should shake your hand or slap you across the face.
As has been pointed out repeatedly for 90% of the issues, both parties are the same.
Yeah, I've always been amazed at how similar the Democrats and Republicans are on taxation, foreign policy, abortion, gay marriage, business regulation, law enforcement, gun control, blah, blah, blah.
Mickey increases the number of registered voters without increasing the number of actual voters. This provides an opportunity for disguising vote fraud by adding votes at the end of the night, but staying under the registered total.
That's not as easy as you might think. Here in New York we number each name in the poll book when the voter signs in -- at the end of the day the number of people who have signed in needs to equal the number of votes cast on the machine. The only way we could "add" votes would be to start forging signatures in the poll book. The only way you'd get away with that would be to find four people (the number of elections inspectors at each poll site) willing to go along with it.
It's not as easy to rig an election as you might think.
Then when Republicans try to knock off the BAD registrations you come in and claim they're trying to prevent people from voting?
You'd be claiming that too if the "bad" registration they tried to knock off was your own.
Kinda like all those "felons" that got disqualified in 2000. Most of them weren't guilty of anything other than having a similar name to a convicted criminal.
It mostly consists of tax credits and requiring insurance companies to do things like cover preexisting conditions.
Well, this isn't exactly a new idea. They are already required to cover preexisting conditions when you get your health insurance through open enrollment at your employer. The people who get fucked on preexisting conditions are those who are buying insurance themselves in the individual market (i.e: those who are unemployed or self-employed).
Forcing private businesses to engage in unprofitable activity and forcing both types of premium increases on wealthier taxpayers is indistinguishable from socialism and nobody has stood up with any convincing evidence that it will work in the long term.
Then come up with a better plan. Doing nothing is not an option here. There is no excuse for why the richest country on Earth can't provide it's citizens with access to affordable health care.
No, the point of insurance is to transfer risk
Umm, that's part of it. The point of insurance is to pool risk so that disasters (i.e: your house burns down) aren't financially devastating. By transferring the risk to the pool you are sharing the risk with that entire pool instead of carrying it yourself.
Yes my friend. He died in his mid-50s and chose to accept his death rather than fight it. If I had been in his shoes, I would have done the same. It is far wiser to accept death, than to live in denial about the inevitable. No matter how rich you are, or how much "free" healthcare your government gives you, you will not live forever. It is pointless to try.
You realize that not all cancer is an automatic death sentence, right? I might accept death if it was something incurable and treatment was only going to buy me a few months (I watched someone go through pancreatic cancer -- miserable way to go and the "treatment" seemed worse than the disease) but if it was something that could be treated and cured then I'd be damned if I was going to meekly accept death.
A friend of mine went through non-hodgkin lymphoma a few years back. Her first round of treatment cost over $120,000. Her second round over $80,000. I'd really like to hear how you think cutting out the cable bill would enable someone making a middle class salary to save up that kind of money.
Where in the constitution does it give the government the power to regulate when and where you wear a seat belt?
It isn't.
Or for that matter, require a license to drive a car
It's not. Might be in your state constitution though.
Or for that matter tax your income?
That one is easy
Well, around here everything is run through clinics. There aren't any real independent practices left (* that are accepting new patients). When you go to the clinic for a scheduled appointment (i.e: annual physical) you'll get to see your listed doctor (though even then you'll only get five or ten minutes with him or her). Any other time you'll get stuck with whomever is free -- and odds are that's going to be a Physicians Assistant or Nurse Practitioner. So you don't even get to see a real MD yet the office visit charge is still the same. What's wrong with that picture?
Granted, I don't have a problem seeing the Nurse Practitioner (I do refuse to see the PA if they try to shove him off on me). This whole setup just bothers me on many levels -- I never get to see my real doctor when I need to and I'm always in the position of having to explain my medical history to someone I've never seen before (and whom I'll likely never see again). Health care shouldn't be treated like an assembly line, IMHO.
So, this month, healthcare has cost me $27,627. I can barely afford my deductible; you really think people can pay that kind of cash out of pocket?
Dude, just get rid of your $1,000/yr cable bill as electrictroy suggests. You'll be able to pay off those medical bills in 27 years if you do that!
And whose fault is that? Maybe you should stop wasting money on $1000 a year Cable TV, or $900 a year Internet access, or $700 a year cellphone connections, or buying a new $2000 laptop every other year. ----- Maybe then you could afford the healthcare. Let me introduce you to new words: "self-sacrifice" "self-help" and "self-responsibility/initiative".
Oh, blow it out your fucking ass with the self-responsibility bullshit. I don't waste money on any of those things that you mentioned and I have a pretty decent chunk of change tucked away (six months of my income). In spite of all of that I still couldn't afford a major medical diagnosis without insurance. It would bankrupt me.
Ever known anyone that got cancer? Those bills run into the hundreds of thousands. Mind telling me how someone who is making middle class wages can afford to take a hit like that?
Funny you mention this example, because that's EXACTLY what I do. In the event of an accident, buying a used car for $3000-$5000 makes a whole lot more sense than paying ~$15,000 per decade to the insurance rapists. I have the state-required minimum, but I do not insure my car. It's cheaper to just junk it, and buy a used one.
Well kudos to you for being financially responsible. Next time my wife gets sick I'll tell her it's cheaper to just junk her and find a new one.
It's still an issue with those particular doctors and not a symptom of the American medical system.
To an extent it is though. There is a primary care shortage in this country. It's caused by a number of different factors -- PCPs get paid less than most specialists yet have many of the same costs (malpractice insurance).
It's great that you can see your family practice guy on time but do you actually get to talk with him? Build a patient-doctor relationship with him? In my area even if you get to see the doctor on time you never get a chance to really talk with them -- and it's like this at every single health care provider in my town. Too many patients and too few providers.
Are those all unconstitutional too?
The FAA is a tricky one but the others most definitely would be unconstitutional if attempted by the Federal Government:
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
Before you say this doesn't work, there are lots of us who do exactly what I just described.
There are lots more of us who don't have tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars lying around.
Your idea would also work with car insurance as well -- it'd be much easier to just pay for that totaled car out of pocket rather than fight with an insurance company -- but isn't the whole point of insurance to avoid financial disaster?
I simply cannot accept these excuses. Unless there is a gun to your head, there is always a way to vote these people out.
That's a laudable idea in theory but you try voting out a Democrat in a district that has 10% more Democrats than Republicans. Short of the Congressman being caught having sex with underage pages his re-election is all but guaranteed.