I can imagine the perfect health care system. You are given a card, and if you get sick or injured you go to a doctor or emergency room and present that card and they give you whatever examinations, tests, treatments, surgeries, therapies and/or medicines you need to get better.
There are no co-pays, deductibles, billing statements or any red tape. The doctors provide care to patients based on their own judgment without worrying what some bureaucrat or bean counter thinks. Doctors and other medical professionals are fairly compensated for their work commensurate with their education, skills and experience.
It goes without saying that all doctors are both honest and competent, but if they occasionally make a mistake the patient or his/her will be fairly compensated for their injuries and economic losses without needing an ambulance-chasing shyster trying to win the malpractice lottery jackpot.
Everyone in the country is covered under the same plan, and everyone receives the best medical care available in the whole world. Coverage will be a tax-free employee benefit for everyone who works 10 or more hours a year and/or fully deductible for the self employed. Poor people will of course pay nothing.
If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. Everybody gets a pony.
And we shall call it “Single-Payer”.
Now doesn’t that sound perfect? Okay, obviously that idea is unworkable. There is just no way that everyone is getting a pony. But that other stuff is cool, right?
I admit I was once a big-government liberal. Obama soured me on the Democratic party but it was Obamacare that made me realize that big-government liberalism DOES NOT WORK.
First of all, big-government liberalism (aka “Progressivism”) is utopian. It is premised on the idea that we can use government to make the world a perfect place. When the people are properly enlightened the whole world will live together in peace, harmony and prosperity without the need for religion. Once 100% enlightenment is achieved government will be obsolete, but until that day come government needs to guide people to enlightenment. To each according to his ability, from each according to his need.
In order to create a system of universal, affordable-for-all healthcare you need to have government involved even if they are not in control. Some people can’t afford healthcare. Some people cannot afford all the healthcare they need. Others can afford more health care than they need. A lucky few can’t afford healthcare but don’t need any.
Socialized medicine is where the government runs health care. All the hospitals and clinics are owned collectively by the people (i.e the government) and all doctors and other health care professionals are public employees who work for the government. (Obamacare is not socialized medicine. It’s even worse than that.)
In theory, Single-Payer is not socialized medicine because the hospitals and clinics are privately owned and the doctors and other health care professionals are either self-employed or they work for private medical companies. In practice you still have a government-enforced monopoly controlling health care.
We can, thru government, force those who can afford to pay more to subsidize those who can pay less or pay nothing. Socialized medicine and Single-Payer both do that. So does Obamacare. On the other hand, so did the system that existed before Obamacare.
And that is the dirty little secret of healthcare reform.
The problem was never really the availability of healthcare and/or healthcare insurance. The problem with our healthcare system (then and now) is COST. We spend too much money for the amount and quality of healthcare we receive. WAY TOO MUCH of the money we spend on healthcare goes to things other than providing healthcare.
Obamacare DOES NOTHING to control healthcare costs. It doesn’t guarantee you will be able to find a doctor nor does it do anything to ensure that if you find a doctor you will receive proper care.
Obamacare GUARANTEES healthcare insurance company profits.
—————————————————–
END OF PART 1
The Crawdad Hole 
This post is an example of what happens when you are rolling along and then someone or something interrupts your train of thought and afterwards you can’t find that train again.
Are you blaming the sweet little cherubs again?
Naw, this time it was my mom. Apparently her computer (a newer and more powerful PC than mine) had a stroke or something. My son says it’s either the power supply or the motherboard.
Same with my PC. It’s out being “fixed” right now. I think the repair guy took one look at it and ordered a new convertible.
My son’s recommendation was a new computer. Her old (newer than mine) one has been nothing but trouble since the day she brought it home.
Fixes everything……..and saves him time. Mine is too new and I’m too stubborn, but this is first I’ve ever had someone else fix, and I’m nervous.
Just a couple of weeks ago, our computer died and we were without one for a week. It was rough going, but I got a bunch done around the house.
That’s sorta my fear. Without the PC around a honeydoo list might suddenly spring from the woodwork. Not a pleasant thought.
I find that just getting a new computer is always the answer. Then again, I’m a software guy. Now if the software is broken, obviously that can be fixed. 🙂
🙂
MYIQ
read my link to Ace of Spades. look at the plan for health care in this country
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/353154.php
per Ace of Spades there is a 6th gruber video. the man who found the videos says it will get worse
scary
Dirty rotten secret #2. It always gets worse.
I think we may be coining a new term for a rotten lying cheating money grubbing rat’s ass . If you call someone a “real Gruber ” you know they are pretty bad
Shouldn’t that be a “rotten lying cheating money grubering rat’s ass”?
However you wish it; yes, money grubering works for me too !!
Grubermench
Gruberment politics…
Today at my knitting group, 2 women were discussing obamacare and how many people have been helped since its inception. Tried to point out the problems and was scorned / called a republican. They’re so deep into the den. speaking bull that they can’t see the problems. Since I like the group and enjoy knitting I decided to only talk about non-political matters. They also hate Scott Walker but can’t understand that the dems. ran a very weak candidate, snowboarder Mary Burke. They saw no problem with a rich woman choosing to relax / partying for 2 years. The reason she lost was all the money those evil Koch brothers poured into our state refusing to believe that the unions, planned parenthood and Steyer poured tons of money into ad buys for her. We even had Bill C. cut an ad for her plus the big four compaigned for her.
End of rant.
I had a similar conversation today, but instead of obamacare it was more in the OWS vein and of course the election of the eeeevil R’s……must be in the air.
That’s the very reason why I quit going to my knitting group. There are a few outspoken ones, and I was afraid that I couldn’t keep my mouth shut, and would get in a heated discussion with them.
Were people always this outspoken or am I just tuned in to it more?
Some Wisconsinites are very special. I think it’s the water.
Some of that water has run downhill into northern Illinois. I can’t talk ACA or globull warming or Gruber. GRUBER !!! They have never heard of him. Welcome to southern Wisconsin/northern Illinois.
They are GruberVoters and don’t know it!
http://ulstermanbooks.com/benghazi-massacre-witnesses-turning-dead/
what is going on here? is this why the foot dragging by the backtrack bunch wait until all the witnesses are dead?
Or two more years, whichever comes first.
OK Klown I’m confused because it seems you’re conflating some things. You can’t have a socialized system where the people collectively own all the hospitals and clinics (UK type system) and also have a system where all the doctors are self-employed or work for private medical companies.
The VA would be a homegrown example of a UK type system and should be a good indication of how well our government could run such a system.
Medicare would be a good example of the second type system, which is actually socialized insurance or socialized coverage. In countries with this type system doctors are still free agents but the entire population basically has medicare.
Which system are you advocating? They are completely different. I can’t have a cogent debate until I know what it is you’re proposing. I’m intimately familiar with a variety of health care systems and each has their pros and cons. There is also a lot more to the debate than simply costs. There are a myriad of reasons that costs go up, but there is also the fact that medical costs have risen much faster than incomes which is also squeezing so many. There are a lot of pieces to the puzzle.
I wasn’t advocating any system, I was just pointing out problems and flaws. My specialty is figuring out what’s broke, somebody else will have to fix it.
Well there are problems and flaws in any system.
Exactly!
Gruber 6.0:
FRIDAY WTF: 21 Year Old Spoiled Brat Daughter Sues Parents For College Tuition And WINS:
More here:
http://hotair.com/archives/2014/11/14/new-jersey-judge-orders-parents-to-pay-estranged-21-year-old-daughters-college-tuition/
That is some kind of cray cray. NJ is really screwed up. I honestly don’t understand how the parents can be ordered to do jack shit for a 21 year old, she’s legal the world over.
Except she can still be on their insurance for 5 MORE YEARS. So there must be a mindset that if you have kids to put on your health insurance, you can pay for their education… Really, we need to take away the vote for anyone under 36 unless they are living on their own and self supporting.
And the result? http://www.njassemblyrepublicans.com/?tag=parents-paying-for-college
Since when do your parents owe you a college education? It’s great when they can help, and they do, but it’s a gift, not a duty.
Hope this doesn’t become California law. My teenager is getting Cs and Ds in school, but insists that he is ENTITLED to go to college (and he clearly means one of those 5-year-party type schools) because “it will be the time of his life” and “he would feel deprived if he didn’t go.”
Not that I’m knocking college, but I am ready to put my own head through the wall from the frustration of trying to explain to him that sometimes it makes sense to take a year or two off after high school, to get some real-world experience and firm up what it is that you want to do. Which may or may not be college. Tbh, he is exactly the kind of kid who would benefit from a few years in the military. It certainly straightened my younger brothers out; both of them were drifting through life before they enlisted. Although only one of them turned it into a career (he’ll have his 20 years very soon), they both ended up productive members of society, and that’s not exactly the track they had been on before.
BTW, all this is coming from somebody who has a nice-sized college savings account earmarked specifically for this kid. That I would happily use for college if he earned that privilege through, I don’t know, DOING HIS HOMEWORK and getting decent grades. Or I would happily use it for trade school. Or to get him started in a business.
Unfortunately, he has a dad who thinks that anything other than going straight to college from high school is an option fit only for peasants and “white trash” (his words, not mine) like me and my family. Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to marry a lawyer….
I just don’t want to waste (and that’s what it would be) my extremely hard-earned savings on a college education for a kid who isn’t mature enough to benefit from it and who literally has no idea what he wants to do other than be rich and famous.
None of my other kids (i.e., the ones live here full-time) are like this, and the entire experience is making me begin to believe that nurture might be more important than nature.
If he joins the military he can save for college while having the time of his life. Some of my best stories come from my service time in Germany.
I know, right? But we both know that the advent of the all-volunteer military quickly transformed military service into something that was primarily for “those people.” I’m proud of my brothers; my son and his dad and that side of the family believe themselves too good to serve.
Wish I had an edit button. Unfortunately, the kid’s got no reason to save for college–I have a 529 account for him and the other side of the family is pretty wealthy. If I tried to temporarily withhold the money (to get him to at least take a year off), number one I would be dragged into court so fast my head would spin, and/or number two the other side of the family would just pay the bill in full (making sure that he knows that I don’t love him enough to want him to be educated or some foolishness like that). The kid leads a consequences-free life, which is pretty scary stuff.
Best part is the daughter’s going to an out of state school, that costs even more. So a NJ law makes the divorced couple pay for out of state school for a daughter that no longer talks to the parents. An interesting legal question would be, what if the parents both move out of NJ? Then no one lives in NJ, neither parent nor the adult daughter. How then could NJ order them, say living in VA, to pay for a daughter going to school in NY (or wherever she’s going)?
Actually I’m pretty sure PA doesn’t charge out of state tuition, in fact it’s the only state that doesn’t as far as I know.
PA does– Temple is 15K in-state/25 out-of-state
Maybe it’s only one or two schools? It’s either UPenn or Penn state or something with Penn in the name that has an asterisk by their name in one of the college ranking lists. The asterisk says they don’t charge out of state tuition. I guess I thought it was all schools but perhaps it’s a particular school, but I’m not sure which one except that it had PA in the name.
That reminds me of my civ pro final exam.
Boy, I sure wish I had known about this judge when my college money (that I personally earned) ran out and I had to drop out of college (and ended up couch-surfing homeless for several months to boot).
Rich Lowry:
“Obamacare GUARANTEES healthcare insurance company profits.”
*****
The Repub. vs Dems on Obama care is street theater. I looked at the 5 year stock charts on “health care” corps, Wellpoint, Unitedhealth, Aetna, Cigna, etc. and they look pretty much the same. Beginning about mid-2012, when PPAHC begins to kick in, the stock prices go up at about a 45 degree angle. Politicians of both “Parties” will continue to get their bribes to continue the fraud until Obamacare financially implodes in 2019-20.
It appears that the money goes to both parties equally, with a slight trend to the Repubs. As an example, BCBS, top reciepients were Peters(D), Alexander(R), Boehner(R), Begich(D), McConnell(R).
That was just this last election cycle, look back a couple of years ago and you’ll see the dems were getting most of the money. Big companies like that know how to read trends, they saw the handwriting on the wall and decided to hedge their bets. It’s disgusting no matter who gets the money. Honestly if you stop to think about it, that money could have gone to medical care for patients or it could have gone to lower premiums.
But to be fair, not one Republican voted for final passage of Obamacare.
OT. My honey is really smart. (In spite of falling for me). Years ago she start giving cheap tool kits as graduation, etc. gifts to young-uns first time heading out on their own. Over the years her kids, nieces, nephews, etc., have regailed her with stories of how tools in those kits have rescued them in time of need. Which leads me to Harbor Freight’s latest sale. 105 household tools – everything you can possibly imagine – in a 4 drawer latching chest for 39.99. In time for Christmas. Who said there’s no Santa?
What a great idea!!!!
Funny you mentioned that: I just purchased one yesterday for a gift to a friend who is always borrowing tools – I realize I’m hours (day) late commenting but I’m always playing catch-up on this blog.
AofSHQ is on fire today:
OUCH
GruberGate:
That’s not quite true. Private insurance won’t end – employer-paid private health insurance will end. Private health insurance will still be around, but you’ll be forced to buy it with after-tax dollars, whether you want it or not. And, of course, your employer is certainly not going to pass the benefit dollars on to you in increased salary.
The end result of this is:
1) The government gets more money
2) Employers get more money
3) Health insurance companies get more money
4) *You* get less money – but then you don’t really count, now do you?
GruberGate II
Bonjino was filling in on Hannity’s radio show today and talked to soem Demcoratic party hack. After asking him about Gruber, the hack referred to him as an “idiot.” Bonjino then played the clip of Max Baucus talking about how Gruber was an MIT economist and how all of his numbers were the result of extensive research and were so important to “explaining” to CBO how Obamacare would reduce costs. The Democratic hack was flip-flopping like a fish out of water over that.
I wish I’d heard that – – – except I really cannot listen to Hannity. So I have to say “Thank you” for that summary.
the part that gets me the most on the gruber tapes is that one man who had some questions about obamacare found all this. the msm had it’s head to far up backtrack’s ass to even look or question
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tom-blumer/2014/11/11/man-who-has-found-damning-gruber-vids-faults-medias-failure-uncover-them
Why would the media be expected to publish news. Their job is to shape perception and change opinions.
and protect and defend bronco. never forget that.
Oops! My bad!
I like the way the Gruber incident has had a well planned roll-out. They keep dropping a new film example of Gruber and his smug elitist Progressive cohorts laughing at the stupidity of American citizens, each day. Then they are pushing the story all over the internet and blogs and of course FOX is covering it but the dinosaur media networks are trying to hush it up by not covering it. Which just further ruins their reputations as a place where people turn when they want news.
It is like this Gruber release has been planned to take down old media and Obamacare. I’m loving it!
If they dumped it all at once it would be a 1-day story.
from Senator Ted Cruz
The unadulterated truth. It’s called extortion in other circles.
I just watched Monuments Men. When I first saw the previews I thought it sounded stupid. It has Clooney and Damon in it and their more recent movies have mostly sucked. As a general rule I despise Hollywood versions of history.
I must say it was a good movie. They mangled the history a little and added some drama, but all in all it is definitely worth watching.
We liked it.
Editor’s note: St. Louis Post-Dispatch has obtained and released Ferguson, Mo., police officer Darren Wilson’s radio calls and police station surveillance videos from the day Michael Brown was shot. They appear to show the Wilson’s encounter with Brown was brief. – @stltoday – Jimmy
Read more on stltoday.com
http://www.stltoday.com/news/multimedia/special/darren-wilson-s-radio-calls-show-fatal-encounter-was-brief/html_79c17aed-0dbe-514d-ba32-bad908056790.html
That sure doesn’t follow the lies from the race-baiters.
Dedicated to the creators of Romneycare / Obamacare
The Dems in Congress are starting to waffle on immigration which is making the White House nervous. Sen Sessions will nickel and dime them through the budget process on everything he doesn’t like starting in January. Pro-amnesty Boehner is being out maneuvered by Sessions (who is privately counseled by Ted Cruz who is whipping the House Republicans) in the House. Senate Dems say they want the amnesty edict after the budget which has deadline of 12/15 but Bronco has already been drawing “red” lines which don’t line up with reality. Dirty Hairy Reid has thrown Obama’s flunky attorney general pick to the wolves in January in payback. He may do it with the budget too with a continuing resolution to fund the government through the party switcharoo come January to save Dem Senators who are up in 2016 from having to vote on more Bronco failures since that is what wiped them out in 2014.
The WH internal rationalizing is bizarre and delusional. “Senior administration officials have said they’re concerned about the Republican backlash, but they’ve concluded from the election that voters want results from Washington. The positive response this week to Obama’s landmark deal with China to cut greenhouse gas emissions, officials said, supports their conclusion that Obama can’t hold back because of fears over how the unilateral actions would be received by Republicans.” The denial and magical thinking in this paragraph is scary. http://www.politico.com/story/2014/11/president-obama-immigration-112915.html
So why don’t these ladies take their street show to Tehran ? That would impress me 😀
http://www.thelocal.it/20141114/topless-feminists-target-political-pope
Good, someone went there……..
everybody pony….