Sure would love national health careFollow

Maybe that person who couldn't afford it will grow up and discover a method of interstellar flight allowing us to colonize the galaxy!! OMG!

Seriously, what kind of retarded question was that?

Quote:

Kelvyquayo the Irrelevant wrote:

I think he's really an auto-response program that Kao or Danalog invented.. and it has trouble putting words together sometimes; but sometimes the combinations are accidentally amusing... which I GUESS is why they havn't fixed it yet..

Tsk tsk, and only a day after I permanently upbraided your knowledge that anything whatsoever which is said or known is necessarily either/or absolute.

hmm, last I checked http://www.allakhazam.com/forum.html?forum=28;mid=1172381700160476437;num=132;page=2
..as per your usual modus operandi; you covered your ears with your hands and started yelling "I can't hear you!!" and went and hid somewhere.

That's easy. And the original story was a perfect example. For lack of $80 to spend on a tooth extraction a poor family wound up needing $250,000 wourth of medical care. (Note that the poor family was poor because of circumstances, not because of lack of effort at finding a job).

$1 spent on prevention saves $19 spent on a cure. And that's an official statistic spread across many forms of personal and government spending.

If the U.S. is only covering 45% of the population, then poor people in the uncovered part just CAN'T afford madical attention when their health problem is small. It's inevitable that many untreated small problems become large and huge health problems that the system then just can't avoid.

Australia has a hybrid public/private system, where the Fedarel governmant pays for a fixed amount of a G.P.s bill. You can choose to go to a G.P. that charges no more than is covered by the government (and there are a lot of them around), or you can choose to go to a G.P. that charges more, and pay the difference yourself.

Emergeny hospital care is free at public hospitals, and so is surgery for health problems (that is not "elective surgery" such as cosmetic surgery), but you dont' get to choose your doctoer.

You can choose to go to a private hospital where you get nicer meals and nicer rooms, and you get to choose your own doctor. You either pay for yourself or you have to have private health insurance to pay for that.

If you have a low income you qualify for a health care card, which gets you all prescribed medications for no more than $3, and often gets you discounted Doctors' fees.

If you earn enough to not qualify for a health care card, You pay for prescribed medicines yourself. However most medications that cost over $30 each will be paid for by the government... you pay the $30. The government has a list of medications that they will do this for. Some medications don't make this list, because the government has decided that the medication cost is not justified for the health benefit it brings, or the medication is not proven enough to work.

The government also does not pay for medication that is prescribed by a doctor, is proven to work, but is unpatentable, because the medication is found naturally in plants or animals, or in working human bodies. Private health insurance is needed if you dont' want to pay the full price for these types of medications. Which is stupid IMO.

Edited, Feb 28th 2007 10:31pm by Aripyanfar

Donald Rumsfeld said..



you writing his speeches for him then..?

It's a very relevant question. Let me be clear that I'm not advocating any particular action here, but merely presenting an argument for the sake of clarity on the issue.

I asked a very clear question. What is the "species" advantage of providing medical care to those who can't afford it. I was looking at this from a Darwinian perspective. Darwin's models, if applied to a society, would suggest that those who can figure out how to work within the rules/structure of a society and thrive can and should survive, prosper, and reproduce. Over time, this (in theory) would increase the rate of productive (useful) citizens within that society. Everything else being equal, a society that has such "harsh" methods will win out competitively with those that dont.


One could argue that this was a case of socio-economic darwinism. The woman bounced from homeless shelter to homeless shelter. Was this the result of some tragedy? Or a result of her own choices earlier in life? She made multiple mistakes and just plain bad decisions that led to herself and her children having no medical care, not enough funds to have a stable address, and through some set of cicumstances (not clarified in the article) wasn't able to maintain access to what medical benefits did exist for people in her situation.


My question, while harsh, is somewhat valid. Should a society spend huge amounts of effort keeping people alive and healthy who are unable to figure out how to provide even the most basic things for themselves and their children? Is a society better off for having done that, or worse off. I'm well aware what the ethical answer to this question is. I'm asking what the practical answer is. It's not like she woke up one morning and was poor. She traveled in a direction in her life and made a series of decisions that led her to being a poor mother with 5 kids (I think I counted five anyway). And not just "somewhat poor" either...


Does the question make more sense now?

Clearly the child of affluent parents that pay for his medical care is a greater contributor to society than a poor negro child. How dumb was that kid not to be born to parents with money! I mean when I had my choice of parents, I fucked up and only chose middle class ones, so I guess I have a pretty good chance of my socio-economic genes being passed on, but not the best.






Edited, Mar 1st 2007 1:20am by trickybeck

Some fair points there Clouseau, but a flaw.

Yes the poorer you are, the more healthcare you need (Lifestyle indicators, diet, chronic disease) and black people more so (far higher genetic rates of Type II Diabetes etc.)

But don't forget that the UK system is primarily about treatment, not prevention. Because treatment is 'free' it soaks up all the budget leaving little for health promotion etc.

The US system puts far more emphasis on prevention (The prevalent model for Primary Care is HMO's - Health Maintenance Organisations), so the system incentivises lifestyle advice and prophylactic prescribing (and no that doesn't mean rubber johnnies!)

Problem is that HMOs are mostly teetering on the brink of insolvency.

It's still a Shite system though

Or the sensible answer for anyone who understands 'Herd Immunity' is that even if we only consider Immunisation and Vaccination, it only works if (roughly) >90% are immunised.

paulsol the Flatulent wrote:

Quote:

Kelvyquayo the Irrelevant wrote:
I stated "the differene betwixt Knowledge and Truth is only temporal."
baby steps.
knowledge= that which is known
truth= that which is

we are beings in time..... that is from our standpoint THERE WAS a time in which we did not know something..... YET that something may still have been there even though we did not know it.... It was simply Truth.... rather than knowledge..
HOWEVER all knowledge is not REALLy truth... as onlytruth is raelly Truth and knowledge is the process of knowing or believing that you are knowing the Truth... for being that Knowlege is something extra from the Truth it may be said to be made Lies if everything beyond the truth is just Lies, ******* just because something is a Lie does not mean that I is not embedded inside of Truth as well... etc

Donald Rumsfeld said..

Quote:

There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know.

you writing his speeches for him then..?

/derail

I do wish you'd listen, people. It's perfectly simple. If you're not getting your hair cut, you don't have to move your brother's clothes down to the lower peg. You simply collect his note before lunch, after you've done your scripture prep, when you've written your letter home, before rest, move your own clothes onto the lower peg, greet the visitors, and report to Mr. Viney that you've had your chit signed.