Obama's recent commentsFollow

There's nothing to excuse.

I think he took off the pin solely so Fox news can have something to talk about on the weekends this political season.

Actually, most of us want UNIVERSAL health care or single payer health care, not "free" health care. You want health care, you gotta pay for it. That's only fair. What we want is for companies to not be allowed to reject insurance coverage for critical surgeries because they are too expensive. We want companies to not be allowed to refuse coverage for someone who has a pre-existing condition. We want health care costs to be reasonable; for me high deductables are fine as long as there is catastrophic coverage. Many bankruptcies for families in the US are due to unmanageable medical debt totalling hundreds of thousands of dollars.

I'm grumbling over the fact that my crown on a busted tooth set me back $420 last week, but that's only fair considering my insurance covered half of it. It was (partially) my fault for not flossing as a kid and I'm paying through the nose for it today. But $420 is small change compared to the $7000 ambulance bill a friend of mine has to deal with since he had no medical insurance.

One of the biggest annoyances I wouldn't mind seeing repealed is the permission for pharmaceutical companies to market directly to consumers. Prior to that change, they could market to medical professionals but not directly to consumers. Now the major big pharma companies spend ridiculous amounts of money on advertisements for drugs people usually don't need. It should be a doctor's decision to review the medication available for a particular illness, since a patient has neither the training nor information access to make an informed decision. Blasting them with ads just has patients going to doctors and saying "I have X symptoms so I must need X drug" when X drug has nothing to do with whatever disorder, real or imagined, they actually have.

So now, we have big pharma companies devoting all this cash to direct to consumer advertising, when that money could be better spent on research and development. And who pays the cost of all that direct to consumer advertising? Why, the consumer -- and their insurance companies -- of course.

Edited, Apr 21st 2008 12:18pm by catwho

Then there has never been any freedom in Western nation.

Wait, maybe Russia in the early 90s. And some of the Baltic countries.

And Iraq too, since the US invaded.

So yes, great theory.

Absolutely.

Taking your money and giving it to the poor is creating equality.

Nah, I'm one of those Socialist Commies up north in USSC.

Equality can be viewed in different ways, I was just showing you're ignorant *** a different view.

Well, technically, it's one of the many, many places where we differ.

But we both like German sheperds, so there's always that.

Except that's not what the agenda that's being pushed. The problem is with the word "universal". See. Because not everyone can afford to have health insurance. Not everyone works at a job that provides it. And, as you've noted, that health insurance doesn't always cover everything.


What's being pushed is that the government (ie: the taxpayers) provide health care to those who can't afford it. The cost presumably being born by those who can. So, someone making 20k a year gets "free" health care. Someone making say 85k a year gets "more expensive" health care. Both receive the same "universal" health coverage, but one group pays more for it, while another group pays less, and yet another group pays nothing.


That's exactly what we're talking about when we say "free health care". If the government takes money out of my paycheck based on my income level and uses it to create a fund that provides everyone with the same level of health care regardless of income level, that's exactly the "free health care" many of us are opposed to. Because it's no longer me providing for myself and my family's health based on my own financial capabilities. It's me paying for myself and my family, and maybe someone else and their family too.


If you really believed that "you gotta pay for it. It's only fair", you wouldn't support any Dem on this issue.

True dat...

Absolutely false. If we take the Canadian system as an example

We'd be rock fucking stupid because there's no parallel at all to our current system OR one anyone has proposed?