|
Post by jhar26 on Mar 28, 2010 12:36:46 GMT -5
I'm becoming more amazed each day when I watch the health care debate in the US. In Europe there would be a revolution if health care was taken away from people. In the US there's (almost) a revolution when you give it to them....Unbelievable.
|
|
|
Post by erik on Mar 28, 2010 13:03:08 GMT -5
Heck of a great country we live in here in America, isn't it? (he said sarcastically) It comes down to the centuries-old notion that everybody has to work for themselves, that you're not going to get a hand-out. But when it comes to healthcare, this is not a luxury you work for, it is a necessity. The fact is that America, which prides itself in being first at everything (even though we really aren't), has one of the worst healthcare systems on the planet. We are 37th on the list of developed countries in this area, just barely ahead of allegedly lowly Slovenia, for God's sake! But nobody wants to sacrifice even a small part of their income to ensure the existence of quality healthcare in America because of their hatred of Big Government. And you will notice that these same people who scream bloody murder about government-run health care didn't blink at the Bush Administration flushing $200 billion a year down the toilet for our dumba** incursion into Iraq in 2003. Talk about hypocrisy. It's no wonder the rest of the world once again is laughing their a**es off at the American people's stupidity at refusing quality healthcare that forces the HMOs to behave. But the debate, which is becoming something of a war here, has escalated to the point where at least a dozen Democratic congressmen, including civil rights pioneer John Lewis, have either been physically attacked, verbally slandered, or have had their offices vanadalized by these bunch of right-wing d***heads known as the Tea Party. Anywhere else, this would be judged as Terrorism; here, it is defended by the Right as Freedom Of Speech. Stay tuned.
|
|
|
Post by arjan on Mar 28, 2010 13:45:22 GMT -5
It's popular these days to use the 'freedom of speech' right by right-wing extremists. In Holland party leader Wilders and his fans use it too when they can't think of anything else.
|
|
|
Post by jhar26 on Mar 28, 2010 14:21:03 GMT -5
Heck of a great country we live in here in America, isn't it? (he said sarcastically) It comes down to the centuries-old notion that everybody has to work for themselves, that you're not going to get a hand-out. But when it comes to healthcare, this is not a luxury you work for, it is a necessity. The fact is that America, which prides itself in being first at everything (even though we really aren't), has one of the worst healthcare systems on the planet. We are 37th on the list of developed countries in this area, just barely ahead of allegedly lowly Slovenia, for God's sake! But nobody wants to sacrifice even a small part of their income to ensure the existence of quality healthcare in America because of their hatred of Big Government. And you will notice that these same people who scream bloody murder about government-run health care didn't blink at the Bush Administration flushing $200 billion a year down the toilet for our dumba** incursion into Iraq in 2003. Talk about hypocrisy. It's no wonder the rest of the world once again is laughing their a**es off at the American people's stupidity at refusing quality healthcare that forces the HMOs to behave. But the debate, which is becoming something of a war here, has escalated to the point where at least a dozen Democratic congressmen, including civil rights pioneer John Lewis, have either been physically attacked, verbally slandered, or have had their offices vanadalized by these bunch of right-wing d***heads known as the Tea Party. Anywhere else, this would be judged as Terrorism; here, it is defended by the Right as Freedom Of Speech. Stay tuned. Well, those right wingers are just greedy - that's all. Always ready to quote the bible and talking about the lord this and the lord that, always ready to have their say about abortion and "it's murder because every human life is valuable" but it's all just blabla. As soon as they think it's going to cost them a few dollars human life is something they couldn't care less about. Funny thing is that the healtcare system that they have had for all this time costs the average person much, much more than the government (socialist ;D) healthcare systems we have in Europe - and for a much inferior service at that.
|
|
|
Post by jhar26 on Mar 28, 2010 14:23:51 GMT -5
It's popular these days to use the 'freedom of speech' right by right-wing extremists. In Holland party leader Wilders and his fans use it too when they can't think of anything else. Well, he's a bit like De Winter or Dedecker in Belgium. They always do well in debates because a simplistic hate message is easy to sell with a few one liners.
|
|
|
Post by erik on Mar 28, 2010 19:18:20 GMT -5
What is really weird--and this should tell you something about the schizoid nature of America--is that the Far Right will tell you that Government is the enemy, but those same people so dearly want to be able to run that very entity that they themselves despise.
To any rational person, that attitude makes no sense whatsoever, because if you have a built-in apathy to the government, as virtually all right-wing politicians in America since Reagan have had, you thus lack the ability and the will to make it work. By making it work, I mean make it work for the people, have things decided by the people, and have government be of the people. The Far Right ignores this precept completely and ignorantly. And for all their hollering and b***ching, the size of the federal government in America has gotten bigger, rather than smaller, under Reagan-type right-wingers in a perverse effort to prove that it doesn't work.
So it is with healthcare. The Far Right doesn't want government-run healthcare because they think that corporate HMOs can do a better job. As has been proven in recent years, however, the HMOs pull the rug right out from under their policy holders when those policy holders suffer an illness or an accident that puts them in the hospital, often denying payment for treatment because it's "too expensive." Tens of billions of dollars every year are made by the HMOs off the misery of others, often resulting in permanent disability and even death--and dingbats like Sarah Palin say they do a great job?! What she and others of her ilk are preaching are, in fact, Death Panels; and the system they're preaching is basically Corporate Fascism.
Trust me, folks, we're never going to become a socialist state no matter who's in the White House, not even under a pragmatic executive like Obama. But healthcare cannot be trusted to a bunch of bean-counters and faceless corporate entities. It must be put back where it has always belonged, in the hands of patients and their doctors.
|
|
|
Post by arjan on Mar 29, 2010 1:28:56 GMT -5
Well said Erik. For and most Dutch it's difficult to understand these things going on in this day and age. Maybe there lies a task for popular tv shows like ER or Grey's Anatomy. I don't follow them but as far as I know they never give you a feeling something is wrong with health care in the US.
|
|
|
Post by erik on Mar 29, 2010 9:42:20 GMT -5
Quote by arjan:
In a way, our TV medical dramas do a lot to show that hospitals and doctors are doing their level best in the kinds of conditions they often find themselves in: overcrowded hospitals; overworked doctors; and a hugely necessary but severely underfunded medical system.
And hospitals, doctors, and patients are always being strangled by the HMOs, who care not a fig for anything other than the bottom line. This is why patients who can be saved tend to die: the treatment is either too expensive or too experimental; the patient has a pre-existing condition; or...and here is the coup de grace...they don't have a Swiss bank account. That's how bad the American healthcare system is, and why it may not get fixed until HMOs cease to exist.
|
|