Propaganda push for Obamacare (with Federal tax money)

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No, they're not making them up. They are liars not because their facts are incorrect. Rather they--and the people who repeat what they say--are liars because they draw inferences from anecdotes that are not supported by a proper systemic review.

Decisions about care are taken every day--by patients, by doctors and by insurers. There are no death panels--there are simply people doing the jobs that they are hired to do. When private insurers pay the bills for health care, then a claims analyst at a call centre is going to make that call. When government is paying the bills for health care, it's exactly the same kind of decision making, but 99% of them involve no decision on the part of the insurer--the doctor simply proceeds with the treatment, and in the tiny number of cases where a decision is make, the decisions are taken on the basis of law and policy--not on the basis of profit making.

In this country, we get to elect the people that make the rules that govern our medicare systems every four years. But I have never had the opportunity to vote for the people who make the rules that govern the private insurance program that provides my extended health benefits.

The Minister of Health is answerable to me and to my fellow voters every day in the press. The CEO of Sun Life Assurance Company of Canada is answerable to no one except the board of directors and shareholders. And given management control of proxies, even that accountability is pretty illusory.

You paint a compelling picture of the soulless bureaucrat toiling away in a government office somewhere. But you have yet to reconcile that picture with that of a soulless claims clerk toiling away in an insurance company call centre.

Ultimately the proof is in the pudding. Average life expectancy is considerably higher in countries with National Health Services. The NHS means that the UK sits alongside countries like Sweden, Canada and Switzerland in this respect. The USA on the other hand sits below Cuba, Costa Rica and Chile. The USA has the lowest life exectancy and highest infant mortality rate of any developed nation. That's not something to be proud of.

<goes off to chuckle at someone citing the Daily Mail as evidence of ... well anything really>

Daily Mail Song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eBT6OSr1TI

And people take that rag seriously?

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

you deliberately avoided addressing his implicit point that many citizens of more civilized nations certainly have benefited from having timely access to affordable health care [NOT financially ruinous tertiary care], as would american citizens should we collectively get a clue and demand it from our leaders. "the best health care in the world" [HAH! ] is of dubious value if it is out of financial reach of 50+ million working class americans and threatens to bankrupt our nation. the 750 billion [recent study] dollars that we waste on our totally inefficient non-system could easily cover the uninsured, if only there were the political will to do something rather than sit on our fat complacent thumbs and further scapegoat our working class.

Life expectancy depends on more than medical care. There are eating habits, amount of exercise, hygienic environment including quality of water supply. Why attribute to the life expectancy to just the kind of medical system? Also there is the matter of race. One Eight the population of the U.S. is Negro and Negroes have a life expectancy 5 years less than whites.

See: http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/ ... 2s0107.pdf

ruveyn

Yes, because black Americans are more likely to live in poverty, and less likely to have access to medical care. I hardly think blacks are genetically programmed to die sooner than whites.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

To me the problem is not that people are uninsured...

...it is that healthcare has become so expensive insurance is required to afford it.

Don't treat the symptoms, treat the disease. Ideally, health insurance should not even exist. I'm not sure if there is a way to reduce the cost of healthcare that much, but I do believe there are ways to make it cheaper. My late grandma was charged $25 for a single application of an over-the-counter medicine that only costs $3 for an entire tube while staying at a hospital. I mean really?

Apparantly some people don't realise that the founding principles of the Daily Mail were to sensationalise, scandalise and entertain. That is what Viscount Northcliffe, who founded it, said was the purpose of his paper. It was never intended to be a proper a newspaper. It's supposed to be a jolly good read which makes your blood boil. It's very good at it.

The population of Martinique is 90% black African and Guadeloupe is 71% black African. Both of which have a National Health Service and both of which have significantly higher life expectancy than the USA.

why is it that veterinary medicine is so much more affordable than human medicine? huh? only the morally bankrupt can find sanctity in a $25 bandage or $10 aspirin pill.

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not.

Actually that's rather easy, barring gross negligence, you don't see vets getting sued by greedy lawyers all the time, plus they don't have to deal with the same regulations that medicine for human consumption does.

no, i was not, i was concurring with you.

Despite the popular notion, not every malpractice suit is BS.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

I never said that it was... However, a substancial percentage of malpractice lawsuits are frivolous.

How do you know a substantial number of malpractice suits as frivolous? Just because Fox and defendants say they are?

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer