ShadowDancerWhen I say, "Why aye, gadgie," in my heart I say, "Och aye, laddie."London, UK
I read that as meaning that it could also be the people's right to healthcare
Biggles<font color=#AAFFAA>The Man Without a Face</font>
That says "nor prohibited by it to the States," so doesn't that mean that unless the states explicitly say "no, you can't do that," then public healthcare is not unconstitutional?
The unconstitutional slant comes from forcing private citizens to buy insurance from private for profit insurance companies. If you don't you are breaking the law and will get fined. Its almost like a Bush plan. The public option was never included. It will be interesting if mortality rates actually go up with this racket. Good doctors will just treat rich people now and the surfs(us) get the doctors that got streight d's. They can't force doctors to do anything. They like to compare car insurance to this but it is a joke. You don;t drive out of your mamas womb in a car. Cars a luxury items, being born in your body is not.
It really is academic at this point. It appears that if they taxed everyone 100% and reposesed all possesions the US goverment would still be in debt and insolvant. All private and public debt is blurred together now. We are bankrupt but you got universal health care through private insurance. As long as america got idol all is well.
Bush was at 2 trillon debt after 8 years now we are burning 1.6 trillon per year. expotental debt and interest sucks.
[QUOTE=Biggles;188068]You apparently have no idea. ;)
I don't really understand why a public health system is against the US constitution, as a lot of people there claimed it is during all the debates. If someone could explain it to me, that would be nice...[/QUOTE]
It's not, what IS against the constitution is Government forcing a law that says everyone must have insurance or be fined for not having it.
:)
Another facet of this whole thing is the fact that the Prez is pushing this through when a large (greater than 50%) portion of constituants didn't/don't want it. Further more having the Democrats push it through without the Republicans help. All this adds up to the people not being represented by their congressmen and representatives that were elected by these people.
Sure this is an old complaint, but it is really coming to a head now. With states suing the Federal government, and the numerous other things occuring that are considered by the norm as unconstitutional, we may be headed for another civil war of sorts.
That is interesting because I have poll numbers which do show a majority. It all depends on your methodology. There is also a lot that is passed under any presidency that is considered unpopular.
all I want is to be able to buy into Medicare. Was that really that much trouble?
Republican help is a joke. It is made quite clear by that party that no amount of negotiation will result in any votes. The people spoke quite clearly on that with the number of seats the democratic party gained last election. If anything I feel that this bi-partisan ideal is what killed healthcare. Had the democrats pushed full steam ahead we would of obtained real healthcare reform.
IIRC states sue the federal government all the time. In this case it just makes great theater for the news shows.
ShadowDancerWhen I say, "Why aye, gadgie," in my heart I say, "Och aye, laddie."London, UK
From the way you explain it I find the whole system to be completely unethical. America has some good things going for it, but healthcare isnt one!
Obama was in Califonia defending Barbera Boxers seat. There are no Repubicans in that district. Her seat being threatned sorta shows where the support is going.
Just heard early this morning, that Greece will need over over 100 billion in bailout(way over what was orignally stated). The IMF gets allot of money from US taxpayers along with all western countries. Now we will all have to bail out the Greek who took 2 month summer vacations for the past 2 decades, and his/her Greek goverent pension and healthcare too. Wow California and New York will also need a bailout too, but how deep are those holes? its a never ending clusterf**k. I am sure the Dow will rally to 36,000 now on this news, skynet and hal9000 will trade stocks till a melt up occures.
Biggles<font color=#AAFFAA>The Man Without a Face</font>
So rather than getting real healthcare reform (and, in particular, fixing the idiotic system that allows patients to sue doctors for failing to heal them, no matter the illness), you got... a system that requires people to give more money to an insurance system running wild.
I'm glad I don't live there...
From what I saw of the mess from an overseas perspective, what croxis said rings fairly true. Rather than offering constructive solutions to a known problem, the Republican party seemed most bent on opposing anything the Democrats offered, particularly anything that might make the US into Sweden (the horror). Meanwhile, the Democrats seemed to think they had an infinite bank balance...
Biggles, not only did the republicans just seem to oppose everything the Dems said, but they pumped out so much misinformation about the plan, that people were against it, without actually knowing what it is. some polls show over 50% of the people are against it, but ask those 50% how many actually understand the current plan, most will just regurgitate the falsehoods that have been spewed by those opposed to the plan.
I really agree with Max Keiser and Bob Chapman, the 2 parties are just 1 team with differnt uniforms. The Soviets were at least were honest stating they were a one party state. The 2 party system here are just flip sides of the same coin. With the idea republicans blocking stuff, Obama enjoyed a supermajortiy with his own party and really can do anything he pleases but still has difficutly.
I'm going to disagree with that notion entirely. The problem as I see it now is that we're a one-party nation split through the comfortable center by political and economic interests. While it's easy to say "I like limited growth in my government when it benefits my personal comfort and quality of life", it's far easier to run off and say "They're TAKING AWAY OUR FREEDOM" and declare victory for one side of the political field. The health care debate was just that. Very rarely was the actual nature of the plan discussed. Rather, the concept of socialized health care was taken to either extreme and thrown at one side or the other with some crazy hostile action.
What's truly awful is that nobody will ever take the blame for this stuff. Instead, it's always finger-pointed in some other direction, and those who do accept blame are declared the weakest link and killed off for the benefit of the party. "We're better because that crazy guy isn't here anymore!"
And even if crazy isn't the majority, all it takes are just three or four people on each side to make it seem that way, along with a handful of pundits to make it into a total catastrophe. It's these people who turn any event into something larger than life. Fictious example. Obama gets a new pair of shoes. News: "President Obama sells out national footwear heritage for foreign elastics in the name of socialism." Or "President Obama proudly sporting international economic growth with new foreign trade policies." All because of the purchase of a single pair of shoes.
As things stand now, we've got two parties that are fighting over everything for a reason that isn't in any way clear. Every single action supported by the democrats needs to be opposed by the republicans on principle and vice versa. Instead of having individuals elected to the positions we get extensions of these two parties. The moment something becomes a party issue, independent and rational thought are simply thrown out. Even getting logical, rational things done right now is an uphill battle for this very reason. Take the attempts to properly bail out the banking and automotive industries. While each party made adequate lobbying attempts to put other protections in place for future security, may of these were whittled away by petty debates over whether they were red or blue and not their individual merit.
Nothing ever gets done. And when something does manage to sneak through, it's always mangled and broken.
There never was a way to properly bail out banking or automotive. you let them go into bankrupty. the idea you must keep idoits in business when they really should fall and be replaced by the smarter successful business is what allows the system to be cleaned. What you got now is some sort of strange corporate facists system. They will just make the eventual implosion allot bigger by extending and pretending.
Dick head Cheany with Hallaburton is the same as Rahm Emanuel and Magnetar Capital. they make money off others peoples misfortune and insolvancey. They are both the same.
Obama and Bush both have Gates as warloard at the Pentagon and Bernanke as the money printing press manager. Are they really allot differnt? I submit to you they are just the puppets and the pupetmasters are laughing allot. how much energy is wasted arguing this stupid facts when nothing is really changing.
Europe is a mess,the Euro can implode at any moment. All these countries with so many social programs and they are all heading to a bust. Not allot of military expendures even. It was never the social program itself, it was the management and implimentaion. The PIIIGS of Europe; Portugal, Ireland, Iceland, Italy, Greece and Spain;. But wait Germany actually declined this quarter too. Its all a mirage, insolvcancy distruction is assured. All of these peoples are that bad with a checkbook? The system itself is rigged.
JackN, the problem as i see it, is that our elected officials in both parties are so far out of touch with what it is to be an average American that they cannot represent our interests, These are all some of the wealthiest Americans, How can they know what it means to be struggling in America today?
I have a similar argument from an education standpoint. At the federal level they are almost all business owners and/or lawyers. They legislate mandates assuming education works like a business, and it doesnlt.
ShadowDancerWhen I say, "Why aye, gadgie," in my heart I say, "Och aye, laddie."London, UK
A good reason for a revolution then! You could shoot some politicians [I]and[/I] some lawyers, all for a good cause! :p
The "free" healthcare in UK isn't all that great to be honest.. Like everything in here, it works in the fast food style.
In and quickly out.
I've had chest pains for the last three days now, so I went to have myself checked this morning. I got in pretty fast, sure. They checked my heart rate and so on. Took some blood. My heart rate (eeg?) was abnormal, they checked my pulse or something a few times and basically kicked me out after 4 hours. Didnt get my blood results back, or hear anything back from them. Didn't get any diagnosis. They basically just said that I should take some paracetamol for it.
Now.. In Finland, I might've had to pay some money for the care, maybe 20 euros - 40 euros or so I guess, but they would not have just let me go without you know.. Actually diagnosing what's wrong. I had similar thing about 9 years ago, and I did not do anything about it until after a week or so when I started blacking out quite often. Turned out I had some kind of severe heart problem at the time. These are things I explained to the doctor today, but he didnt seem to be even listening.
[QUOTE=PSI-KILLER;188118]There never was a way to properly bail out banking or automotive. you let them go into bankrupty. the idea you must keep idoits in business when they really should fall and be replaced by the smarter successful business is what allows the system to be cleaned. What you got now is some sort of strange corporate facists system. They will just make the eventual implosion allot bigger by extending and pretending.
Dick head Cheany with Hallaburton is the same as Rahm Emanuel and Magnetar Capital. they make money off others peoples misfortune and insolvancey. They are both the same.
Obama and Bush both have Gates as warloard at the Pentagon and Bernanke as the money printing press manager. Are they really allot differnt? I submit to you they are just the puppets and the pupetmasters are laughing allot. how much energy is wasted arguing this stupid facts when nothing is really changing.
Europe is a mess,the Euro can implode at any moment. All these countries with so many social programs and they are all heading to a bust. Not allot of military expendures even. It was never the social program itself, it was the management and implimentaion. The PIIIGS of Europe; Portugal, Ireland, Iceland, Italy, Greece and Spain;. But wait Germany actually declined this quarter too. Its all a mirage, insolvcancy distruction is assured. All of these peoples are that bad with a checkbook? The system itself is rigged.[/QUOTE]
I'd like to clarify my observations on some of these points. First, the bailouts. With regard to automotive, this is an industry that has been facing a difficult time maintaining competition in a world where the dollar's value declined and others were already receiving significant government subsidies. Do you believe Hyundai and Toyota manage to pull so much profit while undertaking such immense R&D projects as hybrid drive trains and complete short-term model line overhaul? Nay. Enormous government investment paves the way for their profit margins, and even they were struggling to really get anywhere. Though I'll admit that Chrysler should have been killed off (It's not like they've contributed anything of value lately). All of that money given to GM was more or less returned in the best possible form: Expanded hiring, increased sales, and higher manufacturing using local suppliers and their employees. As far as this bailout went, it was not so much an outlier as leveling the playing field.
This whole automotive thing was a drop in the bucket compared to the money shoveled into the arms of the banking firms. What really hurt this country was the complete lack of accountability when it came to throwing money at these companies. Nobody once stopped to think about why they were hemorrhaging hundreds of billions of dollars, or what steps could be taken to stem these losses. Very few people even bothered to consider the possibility that they willingly put themselves into that position in order to maximize personal employee profit. And yet we gave them what amounted to hundreds of billions of dollars in free money to "try harder next time." So now billions of dollars are simply gone, having vanished into the pockets of bankers everywhere. Why? Because nobody had the balls to demand accountability.
Consider this: unlike banking, GM has nearly paid off its loans and is much better structured than before.
I'm also going to disagree that having people occupy a position of power doesn't necessarily make them do bad things. When it came to the Bush administration and its staffers, what was really going on was not that people with immense personal interests were being put into positions of influence, but rather people with a dangerous willingness to blindly say what they were told were put into key places. One such man is Mr. Gates. So far, he seems to have been fairly reasonable in upholding the administration's relatively peaceful stance (or did I somehow miss the starting of another large-scale international campaign?).
The entire [b]world[/b] is a mess. Why? Not because of social programs, but because of the global economic downturn. Everyone everywhere hurt and will continue to do so for some time. It's the very nature of a worldwide depression. The real question is is whether or not everyone can act quickly and concisely enough to heal the targeted regions and rejuvenate the various local economies and regrow faith in the currency itself.
I agree with most everything you said except the GM deal and the war is not as bad as it use to be with Secretery Gates peace dove. Iran is next no matter what. I think when they really run out of idea to paper over the collapse.
With GM paying back bailout money with more bailout money. Using mark to model accounting to show the US goverment is making the correct decisons is the same thing Greece/goldman sacks did to get into the European Union. COOK THE BOOKS. GM will always be in the hole. It is now a welfare company that will suck the goverment titty for life. The idea goverment create anything I have difficulty agreeing with. Goverments will always just consume becasue they must to provide services. If the command economy was all that and growth generating we would all be speaking Russian now.
GM bondholders got screwed in this goverment takeover deal. You will find it solved nothing. Ignoring 300 years of bankrupty law and changing accunting laws for bail out companies/banks for a quick fix does not actually fix any problems. Since the unemployment rate is over 10% still I don't see what benfit it provided. I guess we still have Cadallacs.
but a massive cost of the US health care system, and the real reason why nothing will NEVER change, is the lawyers. When the average bill a doctor has to pay for his own personal malpractice insurance is about 70,000 dollars a year. You have an unsolvable problem.
Zha, you wanna know why he charged you a 150 bucks just to stick a needle in your arm? now you know where at least 50 to 100 bucks of that money is going O_o.
Comments
It really is academic at this point. It appears that if they taxed everyone 100% and reposesed all possesions the US goverment would still be in debt and insolvant. All private and public debt is blurred together now. We are bankrupt but you got universal health care through private insurance. As long as america got idol all is well.
Bush was at 2 trillon debt after 8 years now we are burning 1.6 trillon per year. expotental debt and interest sucks.
I don't really understand why a public health system is against the US constitution, as a lot of people there claimed it is during all the debates. If someone could explain it to me, that would be nice...[/QUOTE]
It's not, what IS against the constitution is Government forcing a law that says everyone must have insurance or be fined for not having it.
:)
Another facet of this whole thing is the fact that the Prez is pushing this through when a large (greater than 50%) portion of constituants didn't/don't want it. Further more having the Democrats push it through without the Republicans help. All this adds up to the people not being represented by their congressmen and representatives that were elected by these people.
Sure this is an old complaint, but it is really coming to a head now. With states suing the Federal government, and the numerous other things occuring that are considered by the norm as unconstitutional, we may be headed for another civil war of sorts.
Who knows...
all I want is to be able to buy into Medicare. Was that really that much trouble?
Republican help is a joke. It is made quite clear by that party that no amount of negotiation will result in any votes. The people spoke quite clearly on that with the number of seats the democratic party gained last election. If anything I feel that this bi-partisan ideal is what killed healthcare. Had the democrats pushed full steam ahead we would of obtained real healthcare reform.
IIRC states sue the federal government all the time. In this case it just makes great theater for the news shows.
Just heard early this morning, that Greece will need over over 100 billion in bailout(way over what was orignally stated). The IMF gets allot of money from US taxpayers along with all western countries. Now we will all have to bail out the Greek who took 2 month summer vacations for the past 2 decades, and his/her Greek goverent pension and healthcare too. Wow California and New York will also need a bailout too, but how deep are those holes? its a never ending clusterf**k. I am sure the Dow will rally to 36,000 now on this news, skynet and hal9000 will trade stocks till a melt up occures.
I'm glad I don't live there...
From what I saw of the mess from an overseas perspective, what croxis said rings fairly true. Rather than offering constructive solutions to a known problem, the Republican party seemed most bent on opposing anything the Democrats offered, particularly anything that might make the US into Sweden (the horror). Meanwhile, the Democrats seemed to think they had an infinite bank balance...
I know!
What's truly awful is that nobody will ever take the blame for this stuff. Instead, it's always finger-pointed in some other direction, and those who do accept blame are declared the weakest link and killed off for the benefit of the party. "We're better because that crazy guy isn't here anymore!"
And even if crazy isn't the majority, all it takes are just three or four people on each side to make it seem that way, along with a handful of pundits to make it into a total catastrophe. It's these people who turn any event into something larger than life. Fictious example. Obama gets a new pair of shoes. News: "President Obama sells out national footwear heritage for foreign elastics in the name of socialism." Or "President Obama proudly sporting international economic growth with new foreign trade policies." All because of the purchase of a single pair of shoes.
As things stand now, we've got two parties that are fighting over everything for a reason that isn't in any way clear. Every single action supported by the democrats needs to be opposed by the republicans on principle and vice versa. Instead of having individuals elected to the positions we get extensions of these two parties. The moment something becomes a party issue, independent and rational thought are simply thrown out. Even getting logical, rational things done right now is an uphill battle for this very reason. Take the attempts to properly bail out the banking and automotive industries. While each party made adequate lobbying attempts to put other protections in place for future security, may of these were whittled away by petty debates over whether they were red or blue and not their individual merit.
Nothing ever gets done. And when something does manage to sneak through, it's always mangled and broken.
Dick head Cheany with Hallaburton is the same as Rahm Emanuel and Magnetar Capital. they make money off others peoples misfortune and insolvancey. They are both the same.
Obama and Bush both have Gates as warloard at the Pentagon and Bernanke as the money printing press manager. Are they really allot differnt? I submit to you they are just the puppets and the pupetmasters are laughing allot. how much energy is wasted arguing this stupid facts when nothing is really changing.
Europe is a mess,the Euro can implode at any moment. All these countries with so many social programs and they are all heading to a bust. Not allot of military expendures even. It was never the social program itself, it was the management and implimentaion. The PIIIGS of Europe; Portugal, Ireland, Iceland, Italy, Greece and Spain;. But wait Germany actually declined this quarter too. Its all a mirage, insolvcancy distruction is assured. All of these peoples are that bad with a checkbook? The system itself is rigged.
They do what the people who pay their bribes want.
In and quickly out.
I've had chest pains for the last three days now, so I went to have myself checked this morning. I got in pretty fast, sure. They checked my heart rate and so on. Took some blood. My heart rate (eeg?) was abnormal, they checked my pulse or something a few times and basically kicked me out after 4 hours. Didnt get my blood results back, or hear anything back from them. Didn't get any diagnosis. They basically just said that I should take some paracetamol for it.
Now.. In Finland, I might've had to pay some money for the care, maybe 20 euros - 40 euros or so I guess, but they would not have just let me go without you know.. Actually diagnosing what's wrong. I had similar thing about 9 years ago, and I did not do anything about it until after a week or so when I started blacking out quite often. Turned out I had some kind of severe heart problem at the time. These are things I explained to the doctor today, but he didnt seem to be even listening.
Dick head Cheany with Hallaburton is the same as Rahm Emanuel and Magnetar Capital. they make money off others peoples misfortune and insolvancey. They are both the same.
Obama and Bush both have Gates as warloard at the Pentagon and Bernanke as the money printing press manager. Are they really allot differnt? I submit to you they are just the puppets and the pupetmasters are laughing allot. how much energy is wasted arguing this stupid facts when nothing is really changing.
Europe is a mess,the Euro can implode at any moment. All these countries with so many social programs and they are all heading to a bust. Not allot of military expendures even. It was never the social program itself, it was the management and implimentaion. The PIIIGS of Europe; Portugal, Ireland, Iceland, Italy, Greece and Spain;. But wait Germany actually declined this quarter too. Its all a mirage, insolvcancy distruction is assured. All of these peoples are that bad with a checkbook? The system itself is rigged.[/QUOTE]
I'd like to clarify my observations on some of these points. First, the bailouts. With regard to automotive, this is an industry that has been facing a difficult time maintaining competition in a world where the dollar's value declined and others were already receiving significant government subsidies. Do you believe Hyundai and Toyota manage to pull so much profit while undertaking such immense R&D projects as hybrid drive trains and complete short-term model line overhaul? Nay. Enormous government investment paves the way for their profit margins, and even they were struggling to really get anywhere. Though I'll admit that Chrysler should have been killed off (It's not like they've contributed anything of value lately). All of that money given to GM was more or less returned in the best possible form: Expanded hiring, increased sales, and higher manufacturing using local suppliers and their employees. As far as this bailout went, it was not so much an outlier as leveling the playing field.
This whole automotive thing was a drop in the bucket compared to the money shoveled into the arms of the banking firms. What really hurt this country was the complete lack of accountability when it came to throwing money at these companies. Nobody once stopped to think about why they were hemorrhaging hundreds of billions of dollars, or what steps could be taken to stem these losses. Very few people even bothered to consider the possibility that they willingly put themselves into that position in order to maximize personal employee profit. And yet we gave them what amounted to hundreds of billions of dollars in free money to "try harder next time." So now billions of dollars are simply gone, having vanished into the pockets of bankers everywhere. Why? Because nobody had the balls to demand accountability.
Consider this: unlike banking, GM has nearly paid off its loans and is much better structured than before.
I'm also going to disagree that having people occupy a position of power doesn't necessarily make them do bad things. When it came to the Bush administration and its staffers, what was really going on was not that people with immense personal interests were being put into positions of influence, but rather people with a dangerous willingness to blindly say what they were told were put into key places. One such man is Mr. Gates. So far, he seems to have been fairly reasonable in upholding the administration's relatively peaceful stance (or did I somehow miss the starting of another large-scale international campaign?).
The entire [b]world[/b] is a mess. Why? Not because of social programs, but because of the global economic downturn. Everyone everywhere hurt and will continue to do so for some time. It's the very nature of a worldwide depression. The real question is is whether or not everyone can act quickly and concisely enough to heal the targeted regions and rejuvenate the various local economies and regrow faith in the currency itself.
[url]http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/world-news/final-destination-iran-1.1013151[/url]
With GM paying back bailout money with more bailout money. Using mark to model accounting to show the US goverment is making the correct decisons is the same thing Greece/goldman sacks did to get into the European Union. COOK THE BOOKS. GM will always be in the hole. It is now a welfare company that will suck the goverment titty for life. The idea goverment create anything I have difficulty agreeing with. Goverments will always just consume becasue they must to provide services. If the command economy was all that and growth generating we would all be speaking Russian now.
[url]http://radioviceonline.com/gm-repays-loan-to-us-actually-not-really/[/url]
[url]http://www.forbes.com/2010/04/23/general-motors-economy-bailout-opinions-columnists-shikha-dalmia.html[/url]
GM bondholders got screwed in this goverment takeover deal. You will find it solved nothing. Ignoring 300 years of bankrupty law and changing accunting laws for bail out companies/banks for a quick fix does not actually fix any problems. Since the unemployment rate is over 10% still I don't see what benfit it provided. I guess we still have Cadallacs.
but a massive cost of the US health care system, and the real reason why nothing will NEVER change, is the lawyers. When the average bill a doctor has to pay for his own personal malpractice insurance is about 70,000 dollars a year. You have an unsolvable problem.
Zha, you wanna know why he charged you a 150 bucks just to stick a needle in your arm? now you know where at least 50 to 100 bucks of that money is going O_o.