We may need fewer nurses in the hospital...

"Furthermore isn't it logical for someone who makes 1.2 million dollars a year to pay just a little bit more in taxes than someone who makes 28 thousand a year?"

No. it is NOT logical. The beauty of where we live and way our county is structured has allowed people to progress and better themselves through hard work. We should not punish people for their accomplishments. We should all pay the SAME percentage of tax no matter our current income. Get less of the takers off the grid and make them work for their living too instead of riding on the heals of others.

But ... that is totally a different topic and really has nothing to do with nursing.

rags

Or through inheritance....Or insider trading....Or essentially defrauding millions of hard working Americans out of their retirement and savings funds...You know, that kind of hard work.

Or through inheritance....Or insider trading....Or essentially defrauding millions of hard working Americans out of their retirement and savings funds...You know, that kind of hard work.

True for some but honestly do you think that percentage is very high???

"Or essentially defrauding millions of hard working Americans out of their retirement and savings funds..."

Our government is doing this so it must be right. Right?

I would like to mention too that "inheritance" came from someone's prosperity that was most likely due to hard work and perseverance. You think we should punish their family for that and instead give it to other's that have done NOTHING but accept the handout they believe they are entitled to?

I don't.

rags

Does anyone think that life is fair? Does anyone ever think "How was I born into this lifestyle? Gosh my Daddy was a oil tycoon, or my Daddy was a mechanic, or my Daddy was a bootlegger? Gosh I was so lucky to be born in Haiti? There will always be the rich and the poor. This is one of the few countries in the world where we actually have a functioning and relatively wealthy middle class in comparison to other areas. Rich in this country and even the lower socio-economic folks give a great deal to charitable causes. You may be up one day and down the other. History has shown that socialism in reality breeds more corruption and poverty than our capitalistic economy. It's the best thing going at this point. Come up with something better!

Well, that's easily fixed - here everyone has access to subsidised health care.

Preventative education isn't a panacea - there will always be people who prioritise things other than their health, but there's abundant research showing that every dollar spent on education reduces health care costs by $5-$10 over a population lifespan. That's certainly the case in Australia, despite the fact that most health care is subsidised.

A couple of points for gentlecaregiver about the examples given:

1. dialysis is futile for liver failure

2. is the alternative to treating drug-related overdoses death?

3. the vascular damage associated with diabetes is not only insidious, in over 10% of cases measurable PVD is present at the time of diagnosis (the research is European - T2DM may be diagnosed later after onset of symptoms in patients who are not only at higher risk but also have less access to health care, like poor people on the US); even significant lifestyle change will only slow, not reverse or even halt the progress of complications in someone with significant diabetes-related complications.

Coming from a system where all citizens are treated equally for health care access means that my gripes with non-compliance are solely based on behaviour, with little consideration to economic background. YMMV.

Prevention is key (why one can even BUY cigarettes for the past 30 years is a tribute to our govt run by lobbyists), but nonetheless, as we age, thing wear out. That's just how it is. You can't prevent it. A full 80% of all medical outlays are spent on the elderly. For this reason the medicare replacement voucher system proposed by Senator Ryan is infeasible. (leaving aside my other issues with it). No insurance company is going to insure the elderly. It's a guaranteed loss.

True for some but honestly do you think that percentage is very high???

"Or essentially defrauding millions of hard working Americans out of their retirement and savings funds..."

Our government is doing this so it must be right. Right?

I would like to mention too that "inheritance" came from someone's prosperity that was most likely due to hard work and perseverance. You think we should punish their family for that and instead give it to other's that have done NOTHING but accept the handout they believe they are entitled to?

I don't.

rags

Actually the lion's share of people on the Fortune 50 list inherited their wealth. For example about 14 of the Fortune 20 richest Americans are walmart heirs or spouses that had absolutely nothing to do with Sam Walton's building of the company.

I see absolutely no reason for hardworking taxpayers like nurses to have to pick up the tab for the healthcare costs of their employees. Nor do I see anything the least bit of a hardship in their paying some taxes on their windfalls. The rhetoric that that's somehow infair even as the nation is awash in red ink and politicians are proposing ending a system I paid into for 30 years to compensate is just pure insanity.

I can assure you I have never had a "handout" in my entire life. Also, as someone who has worked with the poor who you no doubt would classify as being lazy and wanting handouts I do take offense to your statement above.

It's tough for people to "pull themselves up by the bootstraps" when they don't have any boots.

Speak it. You're right on target.

To add:

Wal-Mart was the top Fortune 500 company in 2008 (beating out Exxon-Mobil, Chevron, and General Motors) and yet, according to the PBS documentary, "Is Wal-Mart Good for America", they actively encourage their employees (over 60% of which are not covered by the company healthcare plan because with the wages they earn, they can't afford it or because the quality of the insurance coverage is sickeningly low) to apply for public assistance to cover healthcare and other expenses. So basically, Wal-Mart doesn't have to pay out significant insurance premiums because tax payers are covering their insurance costs.

Don't people read anymore?

Edit: Turn off Fox News. It rots your brain. Seriously.

I agree and I have to say it at this point because it's reached the point of insanity. we now have healthcare, education and wealth divisions that rank behind every other industrialized nation in the world. ALL of this has been "accomplished" in the past 30 years and to my thinking, coincides clearly with the heated rhetoric that it's somehow unfair/socialistic/beneficial for the biggest companies and wealthiest individuals to pitch in and thus have transferred the entire tax burden onto labor and wages and consumption taxes (sales tax, gas taxes, etc) that directly effect working families struggling to keep their heads above water.

Edited Apr 21, 2011 by WIN007
mistake

We've all paid for health insurance our entire lives, never used, and when we need it - we won't be able to "afford" it and we will all DIE. Funny how that works!

Does anyone think that life is fair? Does anyone ever think "How was I born into this lifestyle? Gosh my Daddy was a oil tycoon, or my Daddy was a mechanic, or my Daddy was a bootlegger? Gosh I was so lucky to be born in Haiti? There will always be the rich and the poor. This is one of the few countries in the world where we actually have a functioning and relatively wealthy middle class in comparison to other areas. Rich in this country and even the lower socio-economic folks give a great deal to charitable causes. You may be up one day and down the other. History has shown that socialism in reality breeds more corruption and poverty than our capitalistic economy. It's the best thing going at this point. Come up with something better!

How about you produce a few citations for your assertions and then the rest of us come up with something better. Because with all due respect all I see there is a lot of rhetoric and emotion. No, as JFK aptly noted, life is not fair. That's all the more reason for those who have the fat end of the stick to stop snifling and using the political system to gain even more or somehow sobbing and crying that Karl Marx is coming to paint the White House red if they are ever asked to pitch in anything.

Even as someone who is a firm believer in the neoclassical economic model, in healthy, functional system a vote is awarded one per person and not one per dollar. Furthermore a tax code inherently DOES engineer social statements and missions. A strong country with the best quality of life for the most uses this and promotes solid infrastructure and avenues of class mobility much of which does have to be engineered in the tax code and of which the infrastructure does have to be laid down with government spending.

If all you want is a system where wealthy families get their way and too bad for anyone else, that's called a plutocracy and it yields a fuedalism that does not offer a happy lifestyle for everyone else. There's plenty of past and current history to support this.

Edited Apr 21, 2011 by WIN007
mistake

We've all paid for health insurance our entire lives, never used, and when we need it - we won't be able to "afford" it and we will all DIE. Funny how that works!

No reason to accept it as a given. Nurses with the physicial work they do and the things they are exposed to have a right to healthcare programs they paid into . There's nothing "entitled' about it; people have paid into these programs for years.

The politicians for the uber-wealthy are just trying to divide everyone against each other like always.

I paid for 25 years into Medicare. If Senator Ryan and his party want to end it and replace it with a worthless voucher system cutting myself and my peers off to pay for another windfall for their donors, everyone getting cut off should stand together and demand the present value of what they paid into it and refuse to pay another nickel into it for the current recipients. (if they know they are going to be affected rather than just those behind them, they'll be far less likely to accept it as well).

Are you French? A few years ago I took an American tourist off a plane with a broken hip. He fell in Paris. The ambulance took 40 minutes to reach him. He didn't get any pain meds until he had been on the floor for several hours, never mind the ambulance or the ER. So from injury to morphine was about 18 hours according to him. Then, five days later he was still waiting for surgery- and bailed, arranging to fly home. I was transporting him from the plane to the hospital, seven days after his injury, in constant pain, with an unstable hip. This did not impress me.

Anecdotes, even if true, are not a good way to measure a healthcare system. After all, we could all tell similar horror stories of domestic institutions and then some. The way to measure a health care system is by quality indicators, accessibility and cost.

For example for years I heard stories on Fox, et al about the terrible state of the Canadian system. When I actually worked there though and used it it was nothing like that at all.

what about nurses who have paid into healthcare programs their whole lives, but now have gone part time, per diem or agency? They are ____________. Only option - individual plan, pay 5,000 per year for you and your kids, and a $10,000 deductible per person per year. No short term, long term, prescription, dental, eye, nothing. Where is a nurses' organization to buy health insurance as a group?

True for some but honestly do you think that percentage is very high???

Inheritance makes up a far larger percentage than elbow grease, I'm sure, for a few reasons:

The agricultural revolution is over.

The industrial revolution is over.

I guess you've never heard the term "old money" before.

"Or essentially defrauding millions of hard working Americans out of their retirement and savings funds..."

Our government is doing this so it must be right. Right?

How does pointing a finger at the government excuse the actions of the citizenry??

Oh yeah, it doesn't.

I would like to mention too that "inheritance" came from someone's prosperity that was most likely due to hard work and perseverance. You think we should punish their family for that and instead give it to other's that have done NOTHING but accept the handout they believe they are entitled to?

The "all people who accept public assistance are lazy and good for nothing" argument. Haven't heard that one before. [/sarcasm]

You want to know what real punishment is?

A single mom, whose husband was permanently injured on the job after twenty years of employment as a machine operator for General Motors, who has to work three jobs to support their 3 children and still make use of the local food bank in order to feed them all. You want to talk about fairness. She works hard too. If it were all based on hard work and not pure luck and connections, why isn't she wealthy? Oh I know...Because the American business model is pyramid shaped and paying her (and others like her) $7.40 an hour to break her back is how the rich gets rich. Look around, son. You've got a lot of learning to do.

It's so funny to me the sheer denial of the middle class. So many are only a few paychecks away from the food stamp line because they don't actually OWN anything. Their homes, their vehicles, their computers, their televisions, their college educations, their children's college educations, are all leased, paid for on credit, owned by the bank - and not nearly enough savings to cover their credit balance... A disaster or debilitating illness away from the poverty line and pointing fingers from their 12 mpg SUV at the "wasteful" lower class.

What's worse is they actually believe that Republicans care about them. They don't care about you. They do not care about you. They rally your support against taxing the rich without ever telling you that you will never make enough money per year to ever be affected. And you eat it up. And spit it out vehemently in political conversations, screaming "Socialism!!!"

There's so much wrong in the world that is easily visible if you only look around. What's it going to take to wake you up?

Edited Apr 21, 2011 by metal_m0nk