are you happy with Obama's progress so far?

[Alexshimshimhae]

Lol ok started reading--then realized how many pages this goes on for.



Simply put I don't necessarily blame Obama FULLY but..I've been putting more faith into the economic apocalypse theory more and more. Mind you America is still a young country compared to the world and so, flipping a few chapters back, I see the US going through somewhat of a revolution similar to europe and all those other places--just modernized (which means most likely uglier).



The bail-outs and all this government intervention for the sake of saving face and "safegaurding investor's faith in the market" is rubbish and frankly a growth of the cancer.



in terms of Health insurance--I for one had a HUGE disdain for it--simply put--we have welfare and all taht as is putting strain on our taxes and all that--the fact that there will likely be more leeches in society due to the thought that "oh...well I mean we have HI anyways so.." made me a bit sick--no matter HOW much I'd like to be idealistic about it--I feel the likely outcome was going to veer off towards the worse end of it--not to mention subpar treatment because of the super packed rooms.



BUUUTTT As explained to me by someone who did a bit more research...ECONOMICALLY there was a good arguement for it. not getting into too much detail, simply put the premiums you pay is partially for the people who default on the bill, so even with the calculations of how much we pay and the increase in taxes, the risk goes down which means more money for stuff and less premiums paid for that risk (or something like that--I didn't look into it yet but the way he explained it made sense)



NOW whether I believe it or not--I'd rather just wait and see...



...worse comes to worst... I figure I can always move to canada xD

 

[CHEVYMAN]

even if that were true, that privitization encourages the best advancements in medicine, it doesn't mean you will live longer. What good is advancement in medicine, if you can't get your insurance company to pay for the treatment. Have you ever been to cuba and seen their health care system ? As for canadians going down south, yes, it happens in very rare instances, where a procedure so rare has to be performed that an american surgeon is more qualified (government pays for this btw), or yes, for certain electives. But you know what ? I don't feel bad that the person who threw out their knee while dirt biking has to wait 3 weeks for surgery because someone with a blocked artery needs to get into the or first. It's called priority, and when your life is at stake, vs waiting a short while for something non-life threatening, i can't argue with that.





.... W...., nevermind, no comment.

wow i don't know where you get your information from but boy you need to do some research on what you are saying!!!! Wow just keep drinking that Koolaid. Canada also has cancer patients waiting for health care also. It's not as rare as you think. Their is a lot of people coming here for health care. believe it or not we have the best health care in the world.

 

[WAS]

wow i don't know where you get your information from but boy you need to do some research on what you are saying!!!! Wow just keep drinking that Koolaid. Canada also has cancer patients waiting for health care also. It's not as rare as you think. Their is a lot of people coming here for health care. believe it or not we have the best health care in the world.

Waiting for cancer treatment ? Please. Show me where this is the case. This is nothing but fear mongering nonsense, probably associated to a fear of "socialist ideals" such as universal health care. I find it insulting that you actually believe us Canadians have a "waiting list" for cancer treatments. Yes, Canadians go down south to America for specific treatments, I made that very clear. A lot of that has to do with our population being 1/10th the size of yours. For rare procedures, and for those that elect to pay for non-life threatening surgeries (athletes for example), yes, they head down south.



Also, I'm not arguing that your health care is not top notch. I believe it is indeed one of the best in the world. My concern is your health care payment system, including the utilization of private insurance companies, whose sole concern is their quarterly profit, and not your health.



Have YOU ever seen Cuba's health care system ? Have you ever seen Canada's ? How about England's ? Switzerland's ? I find it interesting how you can have an opinion without ever having seen or experienced another country's method of doing it. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, I love America, and I find most Americans to be very decent people. However, comments like this are what make the rest of the world stereo-type all Americans as being ignorant and knowing nothing beyond their own borders.

 

[Barry Theal]

I think this sums it up

 

[Lenny]

Waiting for cancer treatment ? Please. Show me where this is the case. This is nothing but fear mongering nonsense, probably associated to a fear of "socialist ideals" such as universal health care. I find it insulting that you actually believe us Canadians have a "waiting list" for cancer treatments. Yes, Canadians go down south to America for specific treatments, I made that very clear. A lot of that has to do with our population being 1/10th the size of yours. For rare procedures, and for those that elect to pay for non-life threatening surgeries (athletes for example), yes, they head down south.



Also, I'm not arguing that your health care is not top notch. I believe it is indeed one of the best in the world. My concern is your health care payment system, including the utilization of private insurance companies, whose sole concern is their quarterly profit, and not your health.



Have YOU ever seen Cuba's health care system ? Have you ever seen Canada's ? How about England's ? Switzerland's ? I find it interesting how you can have an opinion without ever having seen or experienced another country's method of doing it. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, I love America, and I find most Americans to be very decent people. However, comments like this are what make the rest of the world stereo-type all Americans as being ignorant and knowing nothing beyond their own borders.

As an American, born in the USA of immigrant parents, with family in Canada, England, Malta, Australia, and elsewhere, with one of my American born cousins immigrating TO Europe, please allow me to say:



Well said. Very, very well said.

 

[WAS]

As an American, born in the USA of immigrant parents, with family in Canada, England, Malta, Australia, and elsewhere, with one of my American born cousins immigrating TO Europe, please allow me to say:



Well said. Very, very well said.

Thanks ! I really do love America, and firmly believe that (ESPECIALLY in the computer development world that I also work in) America has given us all great leaps and bounds in terms of technology, innovation, and progression. But not everything that America does is nescessarily the "best and couldn't be done any better". I just get extremely irritated when people talk about how others are doing things and bashing it, without knowing a thing about it.

 

[Lenny]

Thanks ! I really do love America, and firmly believe that (ESPECIALLY in the computer development world that I also work in) America has given us all great leaps and bounds in terms of technology, innovation, and progression. But not everything that America does is nescessarily the "best and couldn't be done any better". I just get extremely irritated when people talk about how others are doing things and bashing it, without knowing a thing about it.

Agreed. Makes me crazy as well.

 

[Junebug]

If anybody believes Cuba or even England has better health care - then go, ok just go. I don't believe it for a minute and yes I've researched this a bit more than watching some Michael Moore anti-American crap movie.



I believe Obama will be a lame duck after November this year. THe American people are finally turning off Entertainment Tonight and coming out of their Homer Simpson sheeple like coma and realizing that big goverrment is the problem - not the solution, which is contrary to the great empty suit yall voted into the White House.

 

[Junebug]

Chew on this:

Canada's ObamaCare Precedent

Governments always ration care by making you wait. That can be deadly.

By DAVID GRATZER

Congressional Democrats will soon put forward their legislative proposals for reforming health care. Should they succeed, tens of millions of Americans will potentially be joining a new public insurance program and the federal government will increasingly be involved in treatment decisions.

Not long ago, I would have applauded this type of government expansion. Born and raised in Canada, I once believed that government health care is compassionate and equitable. It is neither.

My views changed in medical school. Yes, everyone in Canada is covered by a "single payer" -- the government. But Canadians wait for practically any procedure or diagnostic test or specialist consultation in the public system.

The problems were brought home when a relative had difficulty walking. He was in chronic pain. His doctor suggested a referral to a neurologist; an MRI would need to be done, then possibly a referral to another specialist. The wait would have stretched to roughly a year. If surgery was needed, the wait would be months more. Not wanting to stay confined to his house, he had the surgery done in the U.S., at the Mayo Clinic, and paid for it himself.

Such stories are common. For example, Sylvia de Vries, an Ontario woman, had a 40-pound fluid-filled tumor removed from her abdomen by an American surgeon in 2006. Her Michigan doctor estimated that she was within weeks of dying, but she was still on a wait list for a Canadian specialist.

Indeed, Canada's provincial governments themselves rely on American medicine. Between 2006 and 2008, Ontario sent more than 160 patients to New York and Michigan for emergency neurosurgery -- described by the Globe and Mail newspaper as "broken necks, burst aneurysms and other types of bleeding in or around the brain."

Only half of ER patients are treated in a timely manner by national and international standards, according to a government study. The physician shortage is so severe that some towns hold lotteries, with the winners gaining access to the local doc.

Overall, according to a study published in Lancet Oncology last year, five-year cancer survival rates are higher in the U.S. than those in Canada. Based on data from the Joint Canada/U.S. Survey of Health (done by Statistics Canada and the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics), Americans have greater access to preventive screening tests and have higher treatment rates for chronic illnesses. No wonder: To limit the growth in health spending, governments restrict the supply of health care by rationing it through waiting. The same survey data show, as June and Paul O'Neill note in a paper published in 2007 in the Forum for Health Economics & Policy, that the poor under socialized medicine seem to be less healthy relative to the nonpoor than their American counterparts.

Ironically, as the U.S. is on the verge of rushing toward government health care, Canada is reforming its system in the opposite direction. In 2005, Canada's supreme court struck down key laws in Quebec that established a government monopoly of health services. Claude Castonguay, who headed the Quebec government commission that recommended the creation of its public health-care system in the 1960s, also has second thoughts. Last year, after completing another review, he declared the system in "crisis" and suggested a massive expansion of private services -- even advocating that public hospitals rent facilities to physicians in off-hours.

And the medical establishment? Dr. Brian Day, an orthopedic surgeon, grew increasingly frustrated by government cutbacks that reduced his access to an operating room and increased the number of patients on his hospital waiting list. He built a private hospital in Vancouver in the 1990s. Last year, he completed a term as the president of the Canadian Medical Association and was succeeded by a Quebec radiologist who owns several private clinics.

In Canada, private-sector health care is growing. Dr. Day estimates that 50,000 people are seen at private clinics every year in British Columbia. According to the New York Times, a private clinic opens at a rate of about one a week across the country. Public-private partnerships, once a taboo topic, are embraced by provincial governments.

In the United Kingdom, where socialized medicine was established after World War II through the National Health Service, the present Labour government has introduced a choice in surgeries by allowing patients to choose among facilities, often including private ones. Even in Sweden, the government has turned over services to the private sector.

Americans need to ask a basic question: Why are they rushing into a system of government-dominated health care when the very countries that have experienced it for so long are backing away?

Dr. Gratzer, a physician, is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

Please add your comments to the Opinion Journal Forum.

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A19

 

[Lenny]

Chew on this:

Canada's ObamaCare Precedent

Governments always ration care by making you wait. That can be deadly.

By DAVID GRATZER

Congressional Democrats will soon put forward their legislative proposals for reforming health care. Should they succeed, tens of millions of Americans will potentially be joining a new public insurance program and the federal government will increasingly be involved in treatment decisions...

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A19

So what's your point? I don't know much of anything in the Health Reform bills, that passed last year, that resembles Canadian or European styled socialized medicine?



Plus you should have posted the date of this article - June 9, 2009. The bill that passed, well after that date, has no public option, no government run health care. So, again, what's the point? That countries with completely socialized medicine are introducing some hybridized private care? Yea, they are. Again, so what? Pure private care isn't going to keep working on it's own anymore than complete socialized medicine is going to complete work. Opinions otherwise are just plain wrong. I ought to know - not only am I still stuck unemployed in Michigan, I'm stuck being handicapped in moving out of here by the fact that neither I, nor my wife, can get health insurance in any other state other than Michigan. You want to know why, then ask, but be prepared for an answer that flies in the face of completely free market principles.

 

[WAS]

If anybody believes Cuba or even England has better health care - then go, ok just go. I don't believe it for a minute and yes I've researched this a bit more than watching some Michael Moore anti-American crap movie.

We didn't say better health care. We said a better system to access the health care that's there. Bottom line is, your private health care insurance companies DO NOT CARE about your health or your well-being. They care about one thing and one thing only, and that's their quarterly profits. You could have the best health care in the world, but if you're unable to access it, then what good is it ? I've lived in various countries, so I know, first-hand, different types of health care systems. Michael Moore's movie is actually very well documented (I'm not a fan of Bowling for Columbine, for example, due to the amount of misconceptions in it). You obviously have a hate for it because you don't want to admit that maybe America's way of doing it (handling health care) isn't the best.

Chew on this:

My views changed in medical school. Yes, everyone in Canada is covered by a "single payer" -- the government. But Canadians wait for practically any procedure or diagnostic test or specialist consultation in the public system.

The problems were brought home when a relative had difficulty walking. He was in chronic pain. His doctor suggested a referral to a neurologist; an MRI would need to be done, then possibly a referral to another specialist. The wait would have stretched to roughly a year. If surgery was needed, the wait would be months more. Not wanting to stay confined to his house, he had the surgery done in the U.S., at the Mayo Clinic, and paid for it himself.

Such stories are common. For example, Sylvia de Vries, an Ontario woman, had a 40-pound fluid-filled tumor removed from her abdomen by an American surgeon in 2006. Her Michigan doctor estimated that she was within weeks of dying, but she was still on a wait list for a Canadian specialist.

Indeed, Canada's provincial governments themselves rely on American medicine. Between 2006 and 2008, Ontario sent more than 160 patients to New York and Michigan for emergency neurosurgery -- described by the Globe and Mail newspaper as "broken necks, burst aneurysms and other types of bleeding in or around the brain."

Only half of ER patients are treated in a timely manner by national and international standards, according to a government study. The physician shortage is so severe that some towns hold lotteries, with the winners gaining access to the local doc.

Sure, you'll find stories anywhere about the "exception to the rule", where someone slipped through the cracks. No system is perfect, and this happens, even here in Canada. Yes, I said earlier several times, we Canadians DO send patients to the USA for very specific treatment. Again, the USA has a population that is 10 times our size, your doctors and surgeons sometimes have more expertise in very specific areas. But you're missing something here. Even though these patients were sent to the USA, guess what, the government fronted the bill. No $250,000 bill for these folks. These people got the best care possible, even if it wasn't physically in Canada, and our universal health care system covered it. These people didn't die or get denied an insurance claim because the procedure was going to cost a pretty penny.



Half of ER patients aren't treated in a timely manner ? Probably true. What is missing from that statement is the fact that many people go to the ER when they have a common cold. Or a stmach flu. Or a nose bleed. Every hospital in Canada works on the triage system. You are seen by a nurse the minute you walk in, they do obs (blood pressure, pupil dialation check, etc) and do an assessment. If your problem is deemed to be non-life threatening, you are then prioritized, then yes, you wait. And to be quite honest, I don't feel bad for the person with nothing more than a nose bleed having to wait, while the cardiac arrest patient gets into the ER first. I've been to ERs in the north of my country, and on the east and west coasts, and this practice is the same everywhere.



A lottery for getting a family doctor ? I love how the article author says "some towns" and doesn't name them. I live in a "town" of 24,000 people, with the nearest city of 1.1 million people being 1800 miles away (I live right next to Alaska, decently close to the arctic circle). There is no shortage of family doctors here, and I've never heard of a lottery to get one. This is either some stretched truth, or a completely false statement, again, probably trying to promote capitalist anti-socialist ideals.



Oh, and I see the article is from the Wall Street Journal. Interesting. Take a look at the board of directors for News Corporation, the owner of the Wall Street Journal. See what publically traded stocks some of those individuals own, or better yet, take a look at what other boards some of them sit on. I'll take that article with the largest grain of salt I can find.

 

[CHEVYMAN]

So what's your point? I don't know much of anything in the Health Reform bills, that passed last year, that resembles Canadian or European styled socialized medicine?



Plus you should have posted the date of this article - June 9, 2009. The bill that passed, well after that date, has no public option, no government run health care. So, again, what's the point? That countries with completely socialized medicine are introducing some hybridized private care? Yea, they are. Again, so what? Pure private care isn't going to keep working on it's own anymore than complete socialized medicine is going to complete work. Opinions otherwise are just plain wrong. I ought to know - not only am I still stuck unemployed in Michigan, I'm stuck being handicapped in moving out of here by the fact that neither I, nor my wife, can get health insurance in any other state other than Michigan. You want to know why, then ask, but be prepared for an answer that flies in the face of completely free market principles.

The new health care program doesn't kick in until 2014 and until then you are paying for it NOW. As it gets closer the Government is going to make it where the insurance companies are going to get squeezed out and here comes single payer program.Remember when your president OBAMA said you can keep your provider, that ain't happening.Your health care will be run by your government and their isn't anything you can do about it. So sit back and enjoy your new found socialist country. Send all of your taxes to the Government and let the dictator run the country. ENJOY GUYS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Oh and maybe you should sit down and read the bill it's only 2,500 pages that's all :spot KEEP DRINKING THE KOOLAID

 

[CHEVYMAN]

chew on this:

Canada's obamacare precedent

governments always ration care by making you wait. That can be deadly.

By david gratzer

congressional democrats will soon put forward their legislative proposals for reforming health care. Should they succeed, tens of millions of americans will potentially be joining a new public insurance program and the federal government will increasingly be involved in treatment decisions.

Not long ago, i would have applauded this type of government expansion. Born and raised in canada, i once believed that government health care is compassionate and equitable. It is neither.

My views changed in medical school. Yes, everyone in canada is covered by a "single payer" -- the government. But canadians wait for practically any procedure or diagnostic test or specialist consultation in the public system.

The problems were brought home when a relative had difficulty walking. He was in chronic pain. His doctor suggested a referral to a neurologist; an mri would need to be done, then possibly a referral to another specialist. The wait would have stretched to roughly a year. If surgery was needed, the wait would be months more. Not wanting to stay confined to his house, he had the surgery done in the u.s., at the mayo clinic, and paid for it himself.

Such stories are common. For example, sylvia de vries, an ontario woman, had a 40-pound fluid-filled tumor removed from her abdomen by an american surgeon in 2006. Her michigan doctor estimated that she was within weeks of dying, but she was still on a wait list for a canadian specialist.

Indeed, canada's provincial governments themselves rely on american medicine. Between 2006 and 2008, ontario sent more than 160 patients to new york and michigan for emergency neurosurgery -- described by the globe and mail newspaper as "broken necks, burst aneurysms and other types of bleeding in or around the brain."

only half of er patients are treated in a timely manner by national and international standards, according to a government study. The physician shortage is so severe that some towns hold lotteries, with the winners gaining access to the local doc.

Overall, according to a study published in lancet oncology last year, five-year cancer survival rates are higher in the u.s. Than those in canada. Based on data from the joint canada/u.s. Survey of health (done by statistics canada and the u.s. National center for health statistics), americans have greater access to preventive screening tests and have higher treatment rates for chronic illnesses. No wonder: To limit the growth in health spending, governments restrict the supply of health care by rationing it through waiting. The same survey data show, as june and paul o'neill note in a paper published in 2007 in the forum for health economics & policy, that the poor under socialized medicine seem to be less healthy relative to the nonpoor than their american counterparts.

Ironically, as the u.s. Is on the verge of rushing toward government health care, canada is reforming its system in the opposite direction. In 2005, canada's supreme court struck down key laws in quebec that established a government monopoly of health services. Claude castonguay, who headed the quebec government commission that recommended the creation of its public health-care system in the 1960s, also has second thoughts. Last year, after completing another review, he declared the system in "crisis" and suggested a massive expansion of private services -- even advocating that public hospitals rent facilities to physicians in off-hours.

And the medical establishment? Dr. Brian day, an orthopedic surgeon, grew increasingly frustrated by government cutbacks that reduced his access to an operating room and increased the number of patients on his hospital waiting list. He built a private hospital in vancouver in the 1990s. Last year, he completed a term as the president of the canadian medical association and was succeeded by a quebec radiologist who owns several private clinics.

In canada, private-sector health care is growing. Dr. Day estimates that 50,000 people are seen at private clinics every year in british columbia. According to the new york times, a private clinic opens at a rate of about one a week across the country. Public-private partnerships, once a taboo topic, are embraced by provincial governments.

In the united kingdom, where socialized medicine was established after world war ii through the national health service, the present labour government has introduced a choice in surgeries by allowing patients to choose among facilities, often including private ones. Even in sweden, the government has turned over services to the private sector.

Americans need to ask a basic question: Why are they rushing into a system of government-dominated health care when the very countries that have experienced it for so long are backing away?

Dr. Gratzer, a physician, is a senior fellow at the manhattan institute.

Please add your comments to the opinion journal forum.

Printed in the wall street journal, page a19

Great wright up but you can't change some minds even with facts:nixweiss

 

[WAS]

The new health care program doesn't kick in until 2014 and until then you are paying for it NOW. As it gets closer the Government is going to make it where the insurance companies are going to get squeezed out and here comes single payer program.Remember when your president OBAMA said you can keep your provider, that ain't happening.Your health care will be run by your government and their isn't anything you can do about it. So sit back and enjoy your new found socialist country. Send all of your taxes to the Government and let the dictator run the country. ENJOY GUYS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Oh and maybe you should sit down and read the bill it's only 2,500 pages that's all :spot KEEP DRINKING THE KOOLAID

Please, enlighten me why "socialist" health care reform (specifically, universal health care) is such a bad thing ? As a Canadian who has lived in both types of systems, I can tell you from experience that universal health care is much better. Also, I pose this question to you: Does every American deserve the right to equal health care treatment ? Is it morally right that someone in financially desperate times, who doesn't have health care insurance because they choose to feed their family instead, gets sick and dies because they can't afford treatment ? Or loses their home ? Or comes close to losing their business ? There's a detailer on this very forum that owns and runs his own detail business, who is currently living on the streets because he got sick and can't afford the hospital bills. He lives in his truck, worries about what's going to happen, faces bankruptcy, all while trying to build his business up. Maybe you want to tell him that a capitalistic health care system that is only out to make a profit is the best system out there ?



I don't like saying this, because no one deserves it, but maybe you need to get sick to see how flawed your system is. In my experience, the proponents of the private health care insurance industry are those that have never had to use it to any real extent. Those who are opposed are generally people who have had to use the system, and actually understand how it works.



Oh, and BTW, the government is a not a "dictator". You elect representatives, in both in congress and in the senate, as well as your president. Just because health care becomes universally run by the government, doesn't make your government a dictatorship. I suggest getting some education on the different types of government that exist before making comments that make you look ignorant.

Great wright up but you can't change some minds even with facts:nixweiss

Those aren't facts. They're misrepresentations and they leave out important key elements, that I already mentioned above. It's what we call "propaganda". Nice of you to completely ignore my comment on doing some research on News Corp's board of directors. Are you simply unable to look at things objectively ?

 

[CHEVYMAN]

Get ready America this is what's coming:Ontario recorded the shortest wait time overall (the wait between visiting a general practitioner and receiving treatment) at 15.0 weeks, followed by British Columbia (19.0 weeks) and Quebec (19.4 weeks). Saskatchewan (27.2 weeks), New Brunswick (25.2 weeks) and Nova Scotia (24.8 weeks) recorded the longest waits in Canada. This is what happens when the Government doesn't want to listen to the people

 

[CHEVYMAN]

One other example :Mountain-bike enthusiast Suzanne Aucoin had to fight more than her Stage IV colon cancer. Her doctor suggested Erbitux—a proven cancer drug that targets cancer cells exclusively, unlike conventional chemotherapies that more crudely kill all fast-growing cells in the body—and Aucoin went to a clinic to begin treatment. But if Erbitux offered hope, Aucoin’s insurance didn’t: she received one inscrutable form letter after another, rejecting her claim for reimbursement. Yet another example of the callous hand of managed care, depriving someone of needed medical help, right? Guess again. Erbitux is standard treatment, covered by insurance companies—in the United States. Aucoin lives in Ontario, Canada.

Remember now someone said these cases are few and far between right? (i don't think so)

 

[CHEVYMAN]

Please, enlighten me why "socialist" health care reform (specifically, universal health care) is such a bad thing ? As a Canadian who has lived in both types of systems, I can tell you from experience that universal health care is much better. Also, I pose this question to you: Does every American deserve the right to equal health care treatment ? Is it morally right that someone in financially desperate times, who doesn't have health care insurance because they choose to feed their family instead, gets sick and dies because they can't afford treatment ? Or loses their home ? Or comes close to losing their business ? There's a detailer on this very forum that owns and runs his own detail business, who is currently living on the streets because he got sick and can't afford the hospital bills. He lives in his truck, worries about what's going to happen, faces bankruptcy, all while trying to build his business up. Maybe you want to tell him that a capitalistic health care system that is only out to make a profit is the best system out there ?



I don't like saying this, because no one deserves it, but maybe you need to get sick to see how flawed your system is. In my experience, the proponents of the private health care insurance industry are those that have never had to use it to any real extent. Those who are opposed are generally people who have had to use the system, and actually understand how it works.



Oh, and BTW, the government is a not a "dictator". You elect representatives, in both in congress and in the senate, as well as your president. Just because health care becomes universally run by the government, doesn't make your government a dictatorship. I suggest getting some education on the different types of government that exist before making comments that make you look ignorant.





Those aren't facts. They're misrepresentations and they leave out important key elements, that I already mentioned above. It's what we call "propaganda". Nice of you to completely ignore my comment on doing some research on News Corp's board of directors. Are you simply unable to look at things objectively ?

Just a small bit of information: If anyone and i mean anyone where to go to any emergency room at any hospital across this great country of ours they would have to take you in whether you have insurance or not..

 

[Lenny]

The new health care program doesn't kick in until 2014 and until then you are paying for it NOW. As it gets closer the Government is going to make it where the insurance companies are going to get squeezed out and here comes single payer program.Remember when your president OBAMA said you can keep your provider, that ain't happening.Your health care will be run by your government and their isn't anything you can do about it. So sit back and enjoy your new found socialist country. Send all of your taxes to the Government and let the dictator run the country. ENJOY GUYS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Oh and maybe you should sit down and read the bill it's only 2,500 pages that's all :spot KEEP DRINKING THE KOOLAID

My wife's COBRA ran out, and before it happened, we applied for health insurance with different insurance companies.



Except for Blue Cross-Blue Shield of Michigan, we got rejected by every other insurance carrier, all for pre-existing conditions. Mine - I have a little osteoarthritis (no prescription meds taken), and I take Lipitor. Normal for a guy 51 years old. My wife was rejected for having acid reflux, which she handles with OTC Prilosec, and for one prescription she takes for menopause, which hit her as full blown menopause after a hysterectomy.



Blue Cross-Blue Shield of Michigan has to take us, because in 1977, they went bankrupt, and Michigan bailed them out on two conditions: they recharter themselves as a nonprofit, and they have to take anyone. No preexisting conditions exclusion. This is the only state that has this insurance situation right now. Otherwise, my wife & I would be unable to get health insurance that we are willing to pay for. We're also both still job hunting, and now this unexpected complication now ruins our ability to leave the state to look for jobs else where, until the health care reform bill kicks in 2014 and no insurance company can refuse coverage. I'm well aware what it will do to the insurance companies. Tough. I can't wait 15 years to get health insurance under Medicaid. I need to be able to buy it now, and have the freedom to relocate without the possibility of losing my health insurance.



So, you pretty much know what I think you can do with the sanctimonious attitude.

 

[Lenny]

Just a small bit of information: If anyone and i mean anyone where to go to any emergency room at any hospital across this great country of ours they would have to take you in whether you have insurance or not..

Right, like that helps with maintenance health care, for things like, oh, my high cholesterol (which isn't affect by my losing weight) or the meds my wife has to take, post hysterectomy.

 

[CHEVYMAN]

HERE'S ANOTHER FROM EUROPE :When Richard Eckley was diagnosed with kidney cancer, doctors offered him an unenviable choice.



If he stayed with the NHS, he would be offered a drug giving him a one in six chance of beating the cancer. If he was willing to pay, he would receive a drug that would double his chances of survival — but he would lose the remainder of his NHS cancer care.



Eckley, 68, a working farmer from Hay-on-Wye, Herefordshire chose the second option and has been denied consultant appointments, scans and blood tests on the NHS.



THIS MUST BE PROPAGANDA TOO! You know i understand our health care isn't perfect but the direction we are headed is the wrong way. It's this way and it doesn't look good