After posting the piece about Nurses traveling to Germany and reading the feedback. I would like to open up a debate on this BB about "Universal Health Care" or "Single Payor Systems"
In doing this I hope to learn more about each side of the issue. I do not want to turn this into a heated horrific debate that ends in belittling one another as some other charged topics have ended, but a genuine debate about the Pros and Cons of proposed "Universal Health Care or Single Payor systems" I believe we can all agree to debate and we can all learn things we might not otherwise have the time to research.
I am going to begin by placing an article that discusses the cons of Universal Health Care with some statistics, and if anyone is willing please come in and try to debate some of the key points this brings up. With stats not hyped up words or hot air. I am truly interested in seeing the different sides of this issue. This effects us all, and in order to make an informed decision we need to see "all" sides of the issue. Thanks in advance for participating.
Michele
I am going to have to post the article in several pieces because the bulletin board only will allow 3000 characters.So see the next posts.
When I was in the military, I had opportunity to interact with some of our Russian Immigrants from the 1970's. Almost to a fault all conservative, btw, having lived in the failed 'utopia' of socialism.
One of the ladies I knew was able to bring her mother to live in the States. Her sister came to visit her mother on a tourist visa, but had to return to Kiev. Before she left though, she wanted to visit an American grocery store. The lady I knew discouraged this thought at every turn.
Finally, before she was to fly back, she demanded to go to a store. She did. And cried and cried and cried over the overflowing number of CHOICES created by countless 'rich' people trying to become more rich by selling to the middle class. She couldn't believe the variety and the lack of wait: all that luxury, at the fingertips of the average consumer. Unfathomable.
THAT is the difference between Capitalism and Socialism. It's not because the Russians were less wise or noble. You cannot 'do socialism' better. It's a failed system. I'll take the inequities in our system any day. Thank God for our system.
You can have socialism; just don't foist it on me. I'm not interested in that kind of 'compassion'. I'm not interested in it because it is truly uncompassionate.
You can have socialism; just don't foist it on me. I'm not interested in that kind of 'compassion'. I'm not interested in it because it is truly uncompassionate.
~faith,
Timothy.
How is universal health care socialism? I live under our most conservative government in Australia. Our university system used to be free; it was actually the socialist Labor government who made us begin to pay for it...
Why do we spend so much time and energy worrying about the cost, and tax base and republican vs democrate. Does no one care about the human issue? While we so smuggly sit on out computors worrying about how much universal is going to cost me there is someone out there worrying and possibly dying or eventually dying . We are suppose to be the compassionate ones, we pride ourselves on being patient advocates, well if we don't advocate for the uninsured no one will.
Underinsured ...not uninsured is nothing new. I remember being 5 years old faced with rhumatic fever and asking my patrents if I was going to die because we couldn't afford the medicine or the daily doctor visits..couldn't get in the hospital. My father worked in the autoindustry then with health insurance. That was many years ago and nothing much has changed. Yes there are Children health insurance programs now but they are for people below the poverty line, what about those that are just above that line?
They are treated like they have money like the millionaires but they are living paycheck to paycheck with nothing extra for co-pays while paying the outrageous health insurance premiums.
All I am saying is let's put the human issue as top priority in this delema
(sp). I honestly believe if we do right for those in need the money will be made available. As a profession we advocate dignity in death well isn't it about time we advocated dignity in life.
Why do we spend so much time and energy worrying about the cost, and tax base and republican vs democrate. Does no one care about the human issue? While we so smuggly sit on out computors worrying about how much universal is going to cost me there is someone out there worrying and possibly dying or eventually dying . We are suppose to be the compassionate ones, we pride ourselves on being patient advocates, well if we don't advocate for the uninsured no one will.
Underinsured ...not uninsured is nothing new. I remember being 5 years old faced with rhumatic fever and asking my patrents if I was going to die because we couldn't afford the medicine or the daily doctor visits..couldn't get in the hospital. My father worked in the autoindustry then with health insurance. That was many years ago and nothing much has changed. Yes there are Children health insurance programs now but they are for people below the poverty line, what about those that are just above that line?
They are treated like they have money like the millionaires but they are living paycheck to paycheck with nothing extra for co-pays while paying the outrageous health insurance premiums.
All I am saying is let's put the human issue as top priority in this delema
(sp). I honestly believe if we do right for those in need the money will be made available. As a profession we advocate dignity in death well isn't it about time we advocated dignity in life.
The reason WHY I'm opposed to universal healthcare is because I care about the human issue. Universal healthcare will create a worse system for more people then the system we have now. That's simply not compassionate.
More people will suffer from inadequate healthcare resources and gaps in the system and waits for care under universal healthcare then without. Yes, there are some gaps in the current system; I've advocated that we address them and I've pointed out that we DO address many of them now. For example, without EMTALA, the system would be much worse.
Simply put however, no matter the gaps in the current system, they are far less caustic, for far fewer people, than universal healthcare would be. I'm against universal healthcare BECAUSE I'm a patient advocate.
I have the perfect idea for expanding healthcare coverage by gov't further up the poverty line.
Most districts in this nation fund a hefty chunk of education through property taxes. Let's create a national voucher system that allows parents to opt out with a voucher at near 60% of the value of public education with all the excess tax proceeds going to a healthcare pool.
For example, it takes on average, I believe (numbers off the top of my head) 9,000 dollars/yr to educate each child in the public education system, based on a combination of local property taxes, state income taxes and federal education expenses.
If we allow parents to opt out of the system with a 5,000 dollar voucher, to be given to the private school of their choice with a mandate that it must cover 80% of the cost of tuition (parents would only have to pony up a grand a year), then for every parent that chooses to opt out of the public education system, we could take the 4,000 dollar savings to gov't and pool it into an 'insurance' fund that expands further up above the poverty line. The more parents that opt out, the more people get covered.
Parents could keep their children in the public school system; this change would only affect parents that chose to 'opt out'.
It's a two-fer; it will create greater opportunity, creativity and competition in the education of our children (and appeal to conservatives) AND it will free up more tax dollars for healthcare (appealing to liberals).
It would possibly free up of billions of dollars as parents take positive steps to improve their children's education.
I somehow suspect, however, that those that support turning our healthcare into a restricted socialist system will not allow freeing our children from socialist education as a result, no matter if billions of dollars could be in turn invested in saving individual lives.
It's as I said: at its roots, universal healthcare is not about healthcare at all; it's a proxy fight about socialism vs. capitalism. It's a debate that only has the luxury of being advocated because those that advocate it have the luxury of living in a capitalist world, free from first hand experience of the vastly uncompassionate devastation that socialism creates.
section 1. uniform system of public schools. the stability of a republican form of government depending mainly upon the intelligence of the people, it is the duty of the legislature to establish a general and uniform system of public schools. the legislature shall make such provisions by taxation or otherwise as will secure a thorough and efficient system of public schools throughout the state. sec. 2. prohibition as to aiding sectarian school. in no case shall any public money or property be appropriated or used for the support of schools wherein the distinctive doctrines, creeds or tenets of any particular christian or other religious sect are promulgated or taught.
in other words schools are schools and health care is health care and the two are to be handles separately.
the tendency of most people is that as they increase their level of education and study is to become more progressive as individuals. this is not socialism it is instead a reflection of individuals developing a capacity for deeper levels of analysis which recognizes that the roots of problems are multifactorial that require multiple types of interventions.
some problems are simply too large for any single individual or institution to handle. health care is one of those problems and by definition this means collective action through government and the legislative process is needed to solve the problem. bringing up education and vouchers was a rather crude attempt to divert the discussion away from the real issues of societal fairness, opportunity and health promotion.
Our tax code gives the extremely wealthy a pass from sharing in the real costs of having a civilized society. Our current system concentrates wealth at the expense of providing opportunity for the middle class and avenues for people to move into the middle class. In other words as Warren Buffet famously observed it is wrong for him as a Billionaire to pay an effective tax rate that is lower than his secretary. Your anger is better directed at the corporate thieves than it is at the poorest and most vulnerable members of society.
Viking Solution = Blame the rich people, the problem with that is it is never enough, the rich can never give enough, you will keep taking more and more and more and more, like a parasite. News Flash, the top 1% of income earners pay 38% of the taxes in the United States, so why not take more money out of their pocket right so we can give Illegal Aliens health care right? after all Viking isn't that the "fair" thing to do. Don't we really deep down want everything to be "equal" for everyone? The problem with you're angry mindset is that you resent wealthy people because you feel they are not contributing enough to society, even though as from a statistical standpoint they pay more taxes than you ever could.
Again, blaming "corporate thieves" is not the solution to this problem. We cant blame Hallburton and Enron for all the problems in the world, I obviously see where you are coming from sir.
In my opinion, your anger is better directed at the illegal alien hordes invading the emergency rooms and using it as a primary care setting, think about how much of your precious tax money you could save if we stopped doing that...Oh thats right, you want the Rich to pay for that right? Because "whats the big deal, just take more money from them, they have more anyway". LOL - People with money dont agree with you.
Viking Solution = Blame the rich people, the problem with that is it is never enough, the rich can never give enough, you will keep taking more and more and more and more, like a parasite. News Flash, the top 1% of income earners pay 38% of the taxes in the United States, so why not take more money out of their pocket right so we can give Illegal Aliens health care right? after all Viking isn't that the "fair" thing to do. Don't we really deep down want everything to be "equal" for everyone? The problem with you're angry mindset is that you resent wealthy people because you feel they are not contributing enough to society, even though as from a statistical standpoint they pay more taxes than you ever could.
Again, blaming "corporate thieves" is not the solution to this problem. We cant blame Hallburton and Enron for all the problems in the world, I obviously see where you are coming from sir.
In my opinion, your anger is better directed at the illegal alien hordes invading the emergency rooms and using it as a primary care setting, think about how much of your precious tax money you could save if we stopped doing that...Oh thats right, you want the Rich to pay for that right? Because "whats the big deal, just take more money from them, they have more anyway". LOL - People with money dont agree with you.
Yikes, as a nurse what do you do when one of those "illegal alien hordes" comes into your hospital?Also if you are working as a nurse , I doubt if you are "rich", so why so vehemently take their side, the middle class has been made to pay a higher share of taxes than the rich, dont they deserve a break?
Feingoilds rhetoric is good but the proposal doesn't sound solid. By the federal government supplying half the grant and then leaving each state accountable for the other half would be great if each state were wealthy enough to do just that. I already live in one of the most taxed states in the union and have the highest poverty level ,we can not afford more taxes to fund this idea . I guess I could move to a rich state like Texas but I might be confused for a horde of illegal aliens. I don't think it is possible for each state to take on this burden, we can't even keep the roads paved.
ZASHAGALKA, RN
3,322 Posts
When I was in the military, I had opportunity to interact with some of our Russian Immigrants from the 1970's. Almost to a fault all conservative, btw, having lived in the failed 'utopia' of socialism.
One of the ladies I knew was able to bring her mother to live in the States. Her sister came to visit her mother on a tourist visa, but had to return to Kiev. Before she left though, she wanted to visit an American grocery store. The lady I knew discouraged this thought at every turn.
Finally, before she was to fly back, she demanded to go to a store. She did. And cried and cried and cried over the overflowing number of CHOICES created by countless 'rich' people trying to become more rich by selling to the middle class. She couldn't believe the variety and the lack of wait: all that luxury, at the fingertips of the average consumer. Unfathomable.
THAT is the difference between Capitalism and Socialism. It's not because the Russians were less wise or noble. You cannot 'do socialism' better. It's a failed system. I'll take the inequities in our system any day. Thank God for our system.
You can have socialism; just don't foist it on me. I'm not interested in that kind of 'compassion'. I'm not interested in it because it is truly uncompassionate.
~faith,
Timothy.