And no, my neighbors don’t have a pot to piss in and everyone in town knows it. They moved up here from the the South two years ago literally with a borrowed car. They don’t have a car of their own let alone two, they rent their home, and they don’t have cable. Interestingly, other than the healthcare they refuse all other governement assistance, though I’d wager they qualify for most of it and could definitely use it. They don’t like handouts “because that’s what I work for”. Unfortunately, neither the husband or wife are very well educated and I don’t think either one actually made it through high school so they end up in these cheesy minimum wage jobs with no future and little benefits. They don’t smoke, do drugs, drink, or any of that. They are honest, good, clean, undereducated God-fearing poor people.

The state system here sucks, genius, which is what I was trying to explain. She has taken her kid to the hospital with the damned card - I’ve driven her - and they evaluate and she sits there for six hours so they can tell her that it’s “probably viral” and to see her regular doctor because the kid isn’t “sick enough” for immediate attention (which is the new thing around here - basically it boils down to I don’t want to be responsible for this so just go see your regular doctor tomorrow). When she has called around to get a regular doctor most won’t take it, and the few who do take the card are so over-booked they can see the kid “just for once next week”, by which time the kid would have needed a morgue. In the meantime my kids get sick, I call my doctor, he says bring ‘em over and there you go. It’s not viral. It’s a nasty form of strep that nearly hospitalized my 5-year-old, and the little girl across the street actually spiked a fever so high and so fast from it that she siezed. Really nasty stuff - glad it’s gone. He only takes “some patients” with the card because he makes more off people like me. It’s just morally wrong.

By the way Pedro - you can’t get an antibiotic without a prescription. Not in this country. Not legally. Not unless they dissolve in a fish tank, apparently. So tell me again - Who’s a dumbass? ‘Cause from where I’m sitting it looks like you, and you’re a pretentious one at that.

So you’re defending Eli Lilly? It’s okay that they pump out a drug that they know causes diabetes and death?

“How many drugs never see the light of day because of fear of a side effect or idiosyncratic reaction?”

Not enough, I’d guess. Seeing as every one of the hundred drug ads that air every hour provides a laundry list of possible side-effects, I’d have to say Big Pharma isn’t all that afraid of them.

“Luddites like you…

Yeah, Pedro, I’m a luddite. I don’t like the system where the drug companies work with lazy doctors to soak billions of dollars out of patients that may or may not need the drugs their pushing, so I must be a luddite.

“…want everything to be risk free…”

Where did I say risk free? How about ambush-free? Eli Lilly refused to warn doctors about the risks of Zyprexa. Even though they knew it could kill their patients. But yeah, I’m the one who’s out of line.

“…and done for free…”

Show me where anyone has ever said that doctors should work for free.

As for the rest of your blah blah blah, if you’re being so screwed by the current system, why wouldn’t you want to change it?

There aren’t two levels of care in this country…yet. Doctors care for people the same way regardless of the insurance they are getting….but that is rapidly going to change when it becomes a one payer system.

Your idiot neighbor gave her kids “fish antibiotics” because she chose to. If they really needed them, she would have purchased them.

Does your neighbor own their own house? Have a color tv? Cable? Internet service? Two cars?

Yea, and then they buy fish antibiotics for their kids and cry about the need for someone else to buy them their health care? Please….

If they are really poor, the state systems will cover their basic medical care. Show up at the er at the county hospital… they will get care.

You get a single payer system, and you better believe that the doctors are going to unionize. Then, like canada or england or germany…you will end up with a real two tiered system where the rich will pay for their access, and we will get around to the government cases when we can. Oh, and the trial lawyers who own the democratic party ain’t going to like it either….all malpractice awards go away for all intents and purposes too, can’t really sue the government easily you know!

Why do I care if my neighbor has to cram fish antibiotics down her kid’s throat? Other than the danger there, and the fact that I have four children who had the same illness at the same time as this kid who got proper care because I have different insurance, and the fact that I’m a citizen of a great nation that as you pointed out is not Rwanda? Hell I can’t imagine why I’d be upset by that. Maybe because under different circumstances that could have been me. That could have been my kid.

What happens when something happens that she can’t manufacture an independent solution for? Then what?

It’s unacceptable.

How many drugs never see the light of day because of fear of a side effect or idiosyncratic reaction?

Luddites like you want everything to be risk free, oh, and done for free (at least as long as it isn’t YOU who is being asked to give away your time)

Stop paying big pharma, stop paying doctors….see what sort of health care system you end up with.

You should look into the current system a bit more closely. I get paid less than 50 cents on the dollar by GOOD insurance companies, it is much less than that when it comes to medicare. Medicare rates for physicians haven’t gone up in over 5 years, and all the insurance contracts are tied to those rates.

Socialized medicine is great…as long as you don’t get very sick. Fine with me….you want to treat doctors like they are rug merchants? Trying getting a hold of a rug merchant at three o’clock in the morning when you have a sick kid……

“I was hospitalized three times…” “That’s the great ’single -payer system’.”

I personally know someone who received Zyprexa as part of his treatment for depression. Now he has type-1 diabetes for the rest of his life. Internal documents show that the good people at Eli-Lilly have known for ten years that their wonder drug causes diabetes (or weight gain, or death) but ignored those findings in deference to the $6 Billion a year they make off the drug.

The drug companies push the drugs, the providers dish them out like candy, the insurance companies pay for them. The doctors get paid, the insurance companies get paid, Big Pharma gets paid, and the patients get screwed. There’s your great private insurance system.

The government may be a lumbering beast, but it’s not even close to the waste-o-matic that the insurance industry is.

Bill Clinton believed that while government could do a lot of good, there were many things government could not do. And those weren’t just words. Clinton succeeded in cutting back, reforming, or ending a lot more useless programs than any Republican.

While I would love to support the Republicans, as of right now, the Democrats are the only ones to really show results cutting government. Well, one Democrat anyway.

If there were less people they could give it to, they would. Do you think I just walked into an office and walked out with Medicaid? A team of doctors filled out a dozen - paged document, and I recertify my income every year. They’re just aching to get you to misfile a paper, so they can bounce you off the rolls.

I once was faced with choosing food for my family or paying a co-pay for medicine. I chose the food, and ended up in a $480 ambulance to get hundreds of dollars in emergency treatments.

I went to a clinic with possible asthma. I was hospitalized three times before they figured out how to deal with it.

That’s the great “single -payer system”. Do you really want to inflict that on everybody? When I say there shouldn’t be socialized medicine, I’m not being selfish, I’m doing everyone else a favor.

Sorry for the delay in my response. I don’t have internet at home right now, so i’m limited to work access.

Anyway, it sounds to me like so-called socialized healthcare is really just Medicaid expanded to cover everyone. Which was my original point of contention with your opposition to it. You’re on socialized healthcare, just a limited version. I say that because what we’re talking about with a single-payer system is taking tax dollars to pay for people’s healthcare.

Boing!

Isn’t that what Medicaid is? Taking tax dollars to pay for people’s healthcare?

So either I’m wrong about what a single-payer system is, or you need to get on the trolly and support expanding the Medicaid system that you use to cover all Americans.

Why you compare that to socialized medicine is beyond me.

…Do you even know what “socialized” even means?

And I will call it “socialized medicine” the minute that you call public schools “socialized education”, public transportation “socialized transportation”, the police “socialized security”, and the army “socialized national defense”.

Also, it is partially paid for by the state, so that Medicaid is slightly more “generous” in NYS than in, say, Georgia.
It is automatically given to people on SSI; Medicare is given to the elderly and to people who have been on SSD for two years.

Finally, although more doctors accept Medicare than Medicaid, doctors may refuse both.

You’re not an idiot. It’s a government program, so it takes years in the system to get the hang of it.

Socialized medicine would be way more complicated, way more bureaucratic, and way more expensive.

Why you compare that to socialized medicine is beyond me.

It already exists, right? So how can I deny it to anyone?
The fact that it exists is part of the reason that I know that the 47 million who others claim don’t have a health care plan includes people that could get Medicaid, but don’t have it, because they don’t know how to get it.

You’re talking about something radically different. You know who abuses Medicaid? Providers.

Actually, Frank, it doesn’t bother me that you get your health insurance through the government. I believe that a single-payer healthcare system would be good for this country. So bully for you if Uncle Sam is footing your medical bills.

The reason that I called you a hypocrite is that I thought you were opposed to having socialized healthcare in the US. It was my understanding that you feel it’s a huge waste of tax money and isn’t really necessary in the first place (though you still haven’t backed up your claim about there only being 8 people in America that want health insurance but don’t have it because they can’t afford it.)

So I’m sorry if I mistook your position on this. I had no ideea that you support socialized healthcare for all Americans. I mean, the way you talk about it being “money for nothing” and “spending other people’s money,” I couldn’t help but get the impression that you opposed it.

“I’m also eligible for health care at the VA Hospital. Would it bother you if I went there?”

Not at all, Frank. In fact, I think our government should do more to make the VA Hospital system more efficient so our veterans get the care they deserve.

The only way it would make you a hypocrite is if you opposed socialized healthcare for everyone else. But I guess you don’t. My mistake.

Go here, and read “How do I know if I qualify for Medicaid?”

Anyone in that situation should receive Medicaid. My point was not that people should not have health care. My point is, and was, if you re-read my previous post, it says. “Subtract from those 47 million those who … could have access to free health care, but don’t know how,or haven’t done so yet, or are in the process of applying…”

I am not suggesting doing away with Medicaid or Medicare. I’m not even talking about people abusing the system — hardly anyone does, because hardly anyone can.

But I think it is not my hypocrisy or selfishness that bothers you; it is your own. If you were really interested in health care for every one, it wouldn’t bother you where I got my health care.

I’m also eligible for health care at the VA Hospital. Would it bother you if I went there?

Think about it. Would I still be a hypocrite?

Oh,yeah. You want to really reach for the Maalox? I don’t pay taxes.

I can figure out you’re a hypocrite. Why is government-fininced health insurance good enough for you, but not everyone else? Why don’t you cancel your Medicaid membership and go get yourself some private insurance? How can you deride anyone who suggests that socialized healthcare may be good for this country when the entire time you’re sucking off that teat yourself? Doesn’t that strike you as just a wee bit two-faced?

Like when you said, “You may be willing to pay extra taxes for health care, but others may be unable, or unwilling to. I’m thinking about them.”

You’re thinking about them? You mean when you suck up some of that extra tax money that they pay every month so you don’t have to go get private health insurance? Is that when you think of them?

“I’m on Medicaid, because I’m eligible.”

Well, shit. I guess that makes it okay then, right? You’re gonna grab every last cent worth of taxpayer-funded services because you can. great, Frank. Did you ever think that if you didn’t use services you don’t need, the gov’t might not have to provide them, which in turn might lower your taxes?

Nah. I guess it’s easier to just bitch about teh Libruls.

What we need is someone with a healthy skepticism of power, like Bill Clinton.

For a guy with a “healthy skepticism of power”, he sure luxuriated in it.

What we need is someone with a healthy skepticism of power, like Bill Clinton. Not well-meaning but naive people who believe that for every problem there is a government solution.