COMMENT OF THE DAY RUNNER-UP: SPLITTING THE DIFFERENCE “. . . I always laugh when I see some Prius with an Obama sticker pulling into their Perry Home.” [doofus, commenting on The $58 Million Perry Home]
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COMMENT OF THE DAY RUNNER-UP: SPLITTING THE DIFFERENCE “. . . I always laugh when I see some Prius with an Obama sticker pulling into their Perry Home.” [doofus, commenting on The $58 Million Perry Home]
I laugh at anyone with a Prius or an Obama sticker anyway.
Both have been duped. The one with both has been double duped.
I wish Prius drivers would stay out of the left lane
How odd! I drive a Civic with an Obama sticker and live in a Perry town home.
I happen to laugh at people with Repub stickers that are driving on federally funded highways, living on social security, and love their Medicare… all while crying about the big bad “gubment” at a Tea Party.
Brian,
We repubs will never get the money we put into those three government pyramid schemes.
I would prefer they all go away and I keep my money I earned. Social Security is a safety net meant for people after they die (i.e. no payout except for the few luck to live long). Medicare was a way to create a voting block. Of all the silly complaints about health insurances denying claims, at least when they deny your procedure you can still get the treatment by paying for it yourself. When Medicare denies your treatment you are barred from paying for the treatment yourself.
The highways are pay with my taxes. The lack of funding is coming from the pillaging of the HIGHWAY TAXES by transit authorities to build mass transit. Why not make a separate tax for transit services? Oh yeah, people would revolt and not pay for it. And god forbid if we ask urban folk to pay for their transit.
kjb,
“silly complaints about health insurance denying claims”. Was that a joke, or are you really that stupid? Or maybe you have a charmed life and have never dealt with such issues. Lucky you.
Oh and on Social security, unless you die shortly after retirement, you will get back all you paid in and more. Your sense of entitlement, yet somehow being short-changed, is perverted.
I laugh everytime I see an idiot like “doofus” or “kjb434” and the lies spewed about the hole that the refuglicants have buried us under.
Shut the hell up and get out of the way while we fix the mess you fools made.
“Shut the hell up and get out of the way while we fix the mess you fools made.”
Every “fix” proposed by the socialists currently in control of the DNC contributes to worsening every problem they attempt to correct.
[“silly complaints about health insurance denying claimsâ€. Was that a joke, or are you really that stupid? Or maybe you have a charmed life and have never dealt with such issues. Lucky you.]
I deal with and have dealt with these issues daily for over 25 years. The socialists currently in control of the DNC propose to take over, not fix the US healthcare industry. It’s not about controlling costs, it’s about taking control of 1/7th of the economy. For every sob story about someone (actually here legally) not getting the medical attention they need here in the US, there are hundreds of legitimate episodes of government rationed nightmares from socialized medicine countries like the UK and Canada far worse. Why do people from around the world come to the US for treatment that they cannot get in their socialized medicine country?
Republican elitists. Funny.”health care take over?”…it’s an OPTION not a take over. Jeez, turn off Fox news for a minute.
We have a great healthcare system for the insured or very rich. That’s all. Change jobs and go more than 60 days without isurance, with pre-existing conditions, forget it. You just went bankrupt, and that person gets really ill and ends up at Ben Taub, and guess what? we all pay for that.
jacobG,
Why don’t you actually read the bill? You’ll quickly realized that it is not an option and will over time force every to on the government plan. Maybe you should stop believing everything Obama and follow give you in your Kool Aid and think for yourself.
I don’t watch Fox news are any news channel. They are mostly a waste of time or for the extremely bored. Just do some thinking on your own and read and compare many sources. Truth can only be found this way.
Also, you might want to get away from playing party games. Just because I happen to be conservative doesn’t make me Republican. Too many republicans are quite progressive and scare (GW Bush and McCain are top of that list). Boot licking either party will surely mislead anyone.
I’m conservative, but independently minded. I can say I’ve only met a few liberals and conservatives that fall in that category. Being a sheep may get a you a lot of friends, but your principles will always be compromised.
jacobG,
Quit bringing up facts! Just close your eyes and keep repeating to yourself, “We have the best health care in the world.” over and over.
Remember, Swedes and Danes are ordered by their communist government death panels to die at the age of 53 and a half (they are forced to impale themselves on one of those horned helmets). The French are given a bottle of wine by the government at the age of 51 and told to drink it and then hit themselves over the head with it until they are knocked unconscious and die.
Socialism is evil. End the police and fire department!
CK, I presume you mean that for every sob story about someone not getting the medical attention they need here in the US, there are hundreds of randomly invented scare stories about the nationalized healthcare systems in other countries. Take for instance the claim that Stephen Hawking would have been left to die by Britain’s NHS despite the fact that Stephen Hawking has been under the care of the NHS for his entire life and is an ardent supported of it.
And of course we must never talk about the countries that have excellent public/private healthcare systems that arguably are the best model to follow. Countries like France and New Zealand. God forbid we should actually look at other countries and accept that maybe, just maybe, they might have a better system than us.
The number of people from the US travelling elsewhere to get cheaper care is far far greater than the number of people coming here for care. The idea that people are thronging to the US for our healthcare is just laughable.
The best part of the whole Steven Hawking scare-story was that it was obvious that the original person who made up that garbage didn’t even realize that Steven Hawking was in fact British and had lived in the UK all his life.
Another of my favorites was when Michelle Bachmann (the Mensa member of the lunatic right), suggested that she was told by a friend of a friend who overheard a conversation in the elevator that in Japan, the evil government denies health care to critics of the government.
I guess we have to cut these people a little slack. They are so insular and provincial that anything that happens or occurs outside the borders of this country may as well be occurring in a different dimension.
ARP, Jimbo, and jacobG,
Your responses have no facts.
Stephen Hawking supplements his care through private means because the NHS doesn’t provide all of what he needs.
If our healthcare is SO horrible, then why do the majority of Americans in poll after poll are resoundingly rejecting the alternative being proposed. The more they find out about what is actually written in the bill (not what is just said about it) the more they don’t want it.
Thank God many Democrat members in the lower chamber are switching their yes vote to no votes. Pelosi can’t pass the Senate version of the bill. If she could, it would have happened over a month ago. The American people are having their voices heard and they much rather the current system where you are free to actually chose your healthcare versus being told what it is going to be.
kjb,
My first post contained irony meant to point to the ridicules rhetoric used by many on the right who oppose health care reform.
My second post was based on facts. Examples of actual statements made by some of the critics of health care reform. Statements made to frighten ignorant saps in the electorate (more on that below).
Finally, to the poll numbers. The polls are basically all over the place. There are also polls that show solid support for a public option (i.e. government run insurance plan). But that is beside the point. Thankfully, our government does not operate by plebiscite.
Generally the average American on specific questions of policy doesn’t know what the hell they are talking about. It’s totally un-PC to make that statement but it is true. Your average American is not the wise sage, filled with down-home wisdom. That is a myth. The average American is generally a moron, especially on topics such as this. That is part of the reason that you get such contrasting results from polls on topics such as health care, energy, the environment, etc. So, frankly, polls are meaningless.
And the “wise sages” you refer to sitting in D.C. have no clue what is good for average American. That is the whole point of the Tea Party movement. Of course the the D.C. elite think that the Tea Partiers are hate mongers and racist which is absurd. The news media pushes that angle also even though pictures constantly refute that.
I don’t how some disconnected from reality idiot with an Ivy League degree thinks he know what is better for me. The sad reality is that all the groups proposing this healthcare crap in and around the administration have no real world private sector experience. They live in the theoretical world. Assuming that social reaction to their proposals will play out exactly as they want. It never does. And whenever you point that out, the first response was that their intention was good. Intention don’t matter when the results stink. The reality is that socialized (single payper) medicine everywhere it is practice is an abject failure.
Currently in Canada, the populace is demanding that PRIVATE medical care be made available. They want private insurers and doctors outside of their national system.
In Britain, they are lucky enough that a parallel private system is available for anyone who doesn’t want to go into the NHS system.
The sad part is that nobody is offering true solutions to the main issue which is cost. The cost can be made to be lowered if we go back to the system we had prior to the late 60s. A system where patients pay upfront costs for all minor care and insurance handle all major or catastrophic events. Couple that system with private HSA accounts and you have a system that works.
Another issue that never gets cleared up is that NO ONE IS EVER DENIED HEALTH CARE. Private insurance may denie a procedure, but the care is still their if the patient wants it. The care will cost a fraction of the charge that goes to the insurer if the patient pays on their own. On top of that, the medical practitioner is always willing to work out the payment of that care. This is completely different than VA care (which I’m very familiar with in dealing with my father) and Medicare/Medicaid. If you are in any of these government systems and you are denied a procedure, you have little to no recourse. You are prohibited from going outside on your own.
Some other facts:
-The existing government based healthcare in the US denies more claims and service than private health insurance
-Fraud in the government based healthcare far exceeds than that of private health insurance
-The big complaint about private health insurance company profits at the expense of care is a idiotic. The biggest profit of health insurance companies averages around 3.5%. Not to much compared to many other companies.
But the types of healthcare being denied are very different between government healthcare and private healthcare. Part of the reason private healthcare is so expensive is because we over-utilize it. We go to a specialist rather than a GP for everything. We have far too many sets of duplicate labwork and tests carried out because different providers do not share records adequately. We demand the latest brand name pharmaceutical that we just saw advertised on TV even when a cheaper generic is oftena better medication. All of these costs add up and a lot of them are unnecessary. As Americans I firmly believe we should be being denied healthcare more, we should just be being denised the healthcare we don’t need rather than the healthcare we do need.
Oh, and if a government plan denies a procedure the patient would still be just as free to go and pay for it themselves as they can with a private insurance plan. Are you seriously suggesting that a government run plan would somehow bar people from buying individual procedures from doctors themselves?
Jimbo,
I’m not suggesting it. I’m saying it does. I have a father in the VA system and I HAD grandmother in the Medicare system
They barred from receiving care. Unless you forge your I.D. or get another social security number, once you are in those systems, it is very hard to get out.
But they would have both been very free to pick a doctor in the phone book, call them up and use a credit card. They’re not barred from receiving care the care, just from receiving it through VA or Medicare.
A 2009 poll by Nanos Research found 86.2% of Canadians surveyed supported or strongly supported “public solutions to make our public health care stronger.”
A 2009 Harris/Decima poll found 82% of Canadians preferred their healthcare system to the one in the United States, more than ten times as many as the 8% stating a preference for a US-style health care system for Canada.
A 2008 Strategic Counsel survey found 91% of Canadians preferring their healthcare system to that of the U.S. In the same poll, when asked “overall the Canadian health care system was performing very well, fairly well, not very well or not at all?†70% of Canadians rated their system as working either “well” or “very well”
Boy, you’re right, those Canadians are really crying out for US style healthcare.
Jimbo,
If the go out the system, they would have to go under the table not use their ID and social security number. The required reporting by doctors would catch them. Yes, it sad, but these two systems is what the overall healthcare legislation is based upon.
About your Canadian survey:
How many of those people had to actually received lifesaving treatment? How many of those people actually had to have surgical procedures?
The reality is that the average person doesn’t mind the system because they don’t need to use it.
I’ve read those survey’s before and have have seen several analsys in Canadian and US journals picking them apart.
So wait a minute. On one hand when you cite polls showing Americans are happy with their current health care and that this is evidence that the American health care system is great and proves how terrible single payer health care systems are (like say, in Canada).
But on the other hand, when presented with polls showing that Canadians overwhelming support their single-payer health care system, to you at least, this is not evidence that their system is working (and providing good care) but that they simply don’t know what they are missing this side of the border?!?
If the single payer system in Canada is so terrible, why hasn’t one of the major political parties called for switching to the American model? The Tories have been in power there for years. Where’s the action to bring back the good ole free market in health care?
See, the answer is that no mainstream party in Canada is calling for the abolition of the Canadian single payer system because almost everyone supports it, left and right. It is comparably cheap (they spend less on health care per capita than we do) and it provides good results (much better results than our system).
The same can be said in the UK. David Cameron, who will in all likelihood be the new Prime Minster in the next few months is a Tory (Conservative Party) and he is calling for an expansion of the NHS! In fact, he lauds the system for the excellent care provided to his late son Ivan who was born with cerbral palsy and other rare birth defects. He calls the NHS “fantastic and precious fact of British life.”
In fact, when a Tory MEP Daniel Hannan went on Fox News last year to criticize the NHS, Cameron almost threw him out of the party because his statements were so extreme. Not surprisingly though, Fox News (and their Republican allies) portrayed him as a fair representative of British public opinion.
The average person in every country doesn’t have to use the system, you’re right. However far fewer of those people in the US are satisfied with the system when compared with other countries. In fact out of the 30 nations in the OECD we fall 18th in percentage of the population satisfied with their healthcare. Also, despite spending 50% more per capita than any other of the 30 nations on healthcare, our average health index (admittedly a rather complex index calculation) is only average. So why are we spending all of the extra money if it doesn’t make us any healthier?
Going to stop my rant now as I’m the first one to usually moan about people bringing politics onto a real estate blog. Unfortunately you and I are probably not ever going to agree on political issues. All I can say is that having lived with both types of healthcare I know which one I was less satisfied with.
I would like healthcare for everyone, who wouldn’t, the problem is our existing $12,000,000,000,000 debt and future obligations for SS, Medicare and Medicaid that total an estimated $60,000,000,000,000 which are unfunded by the way. Adding more costs to the system is insane, keep in mind interest rates are at historic lows, I fear what will happen when rates rise to their historical average, how will we pay Japan and China for financing our debt? The sad truth is we need to cut back on existing entitlements. Everyone knows huge tax increases are coming and I just wish the additional receipts would go towards paying down our debt but that’s a dream w/ O at least until November.
Cross hits a nail on the head. The massive dept the Obama administration has piled up in just one year, simply cannot be added to. Add to that, all of the proposals the “masters of transparency” have put in the bills passed by both houses of congress do nothing buy INCREASE health care costs. They do not decrease anything. I’ve handled healthcare for over 20 years and this is the most clueless bunch of people I’ve seen in a long time. This country desperately needs some sanity in office and it ain’t there now. This is ALL about a power takeover, not improvement of anything. It’s all about an attempted massive shift of employment from the private sector to the public sector.
I’m one of those bastards who, when seriously ill, will drive up to the ER, open the car door, and roll out onto the driveway.
I’ve worked a long time without comprehensive healthcare: anything serious comes up, and I’m screwed. Yet I’m a productive American! educated, employed, law-abiding. Just not endowed with great health care.
There’s no way that healthcare reform will impact our nation’s enormous debt.
Getting citizens healthy (yes, including the old, the currently-sick, the fat, the alien-american, the cigar-smoking) is the best way to move forward from this low-point in our country’s history.
Sheesh you all! this is such a class issue it makes me sick!
(don’t make me drive over to Ben Taub!)
“There’s no way that healthcare reform will impact our nation’s enormous debt.”
Now there’s one of the most naive statements made on any of the Swamplot posts. Nothing like adding more trillions in entitlements to the economy crippling national debt.