Fuck you, Jay. Don’t tell me what I do and do not remember. I am much smarter than you, and I have proven it time and time again.

Universal health care saves money. It saves money and it saves lives. You don’t like it because it goes against your political philosophy.

Every real piece of evidence shows that universal health care saves money. Every single one. But to you and your conservative morons, reality doesn’t matter.

“That’s why when I see John Edwards claiming his universal health care plan will cost only $120 billion per year and laugh.”

You laugh because you are a retard.

It’s as simple as that.

Healthcare costs have risen from 7.2% of US GDP in 1965 to over 16% of GDP today. That increases 9.9% per year to a projection of nearly 20% by 2015.

As of 2005, State and Local governments accounted for 45.5% of health care expenses while private insurance took up 34.9%. 19.4% came out of people’s pockets or from other sources.

Medicare has a far lower administration cost than private insurance. Depending on what numbers you use its 15-33% for private insurance 2-7% for medicare.

You laugh at Edward’s plan, but he isn’t calling for a government funded plan. His plan expands medicare and schip, creates regional pools, reforms some predatory practices and laws and mandates businesses to pick up some of the health care costs for its workers. In other words, he’s not scrapping the for profit system, he’s using it and changing it, maybe, as a transition towards that universal coverage.

Last point, do you think we should end MEDICARE? Without it senior citizens and the disabled would be unable qualify for or unable to afford private insurance. Apparently you think we should let them die.

At the same time, you people want to put in place a similar program designed to cover over 250 million people. In 1965, the government projected that in 2000 the annual cost of Medicare would not exceed $2.5 billion.

That’s why when I see John Edwards claiming his universal health care plan will cost only $120 billion per year and laugh.

Oh, nevermind.

Prove it you lying piece of shit.

“And nobody is going to tell me that a plan that would cover all Americans is not going to have to coincide with some massive tax increases.”

The tax increases would be LESS, LESS THAN what the average person pays for Health Insurance.

Universal health care saves lives and saves money.

And despite your claims that the program is bloated, administrative costs for Medicare are far less than those for private insurance companies. Care providers have to allocate more resources filling out private insurance claims because private insurance companies look for reasons to deny coverage, a practice that gets worse every year.

1.)Exposure to a multitude of potential lawsuits. Any time the hospital went against the insurance company, they would risk potential malpractice lawsuits should something go wrong. in addition, they would be faced with a flood of patients expecting treatment regardless of the position of their insurer. That, too, could lead to more lawsuits from people demanding said treatment (or suing for the lack thereof).

2.)The potential loss of insurance coverage for the entire hospital. Insurers covering the hospital and its staff might withdraw coverage feeling that such a “rogue” institution would be too great a risk to cover.

I’m sure with some more thought, I could think of other reasons, but you might notice a common factor, they all involve insurance (and litigation).

So what we have is even more weight thrown behind the idea of a universal coverage system. You might remember Bush bemoaning doctors being unable to practice their love on their female patients (a classic) because of the fear of lawsuits and rising malpractice insurance costs. Of course, he was only waving the usual false flag in people’s faces to get them to push “tort reform,” another GOP pet project to protect corporate America, but there again, the specter of the insurance Boogeyman looms over the medical industry.

The five year survival rates for cancer are interesting, but raise questions about why there is such disparity between those figures and nearly all other health related statistics where the U.S. often falls well behind other industrialized nations. I wonder how those stats take into account the nearly 50 million uninsured (or under insured) across the U.S.

Which is why it is a disaster August. And attempting to lay the blame at the feet of the 2003 legislation is weak. Medicare is a bloated one size fits all system that costs close to $300 billion a year with spending growth increasing 10% every year (and that percentage is going to keep going up) and no end in sight. And that is what it costs to cover approximately 35 million people. One can only imagine the costs of a program that would cover three hundred million.

And I never declared myself “right” so dispense with that nonsense ok? It’s just absurd to take this particular and example and shout, “YOU SEE!!! THIS IS WHY WE NEED UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE!!!”

And Wilbur, the reason why I am critical is because saying, “We need universal health care” is a wonderful thing. Know what? I would like if every person in the United States had medical coverage. Who wouldn’t? The problem is, whose going to pay for it? Nothing in life comes for free. And nobody is going to tell me that a plan that would cover all Americans is not going to have to coincide with some massive tax increases.

And guess what? There isn’t a politician on the Democratic side calling for universal health care coverage that has the guts to come out and say so. I wonder why that is?

In addition, everybody is avoiding like the plague my question about the doctors and hospitals. Those who point to their heavenly European systems seem to forget that the state over there has a lot of control over the hospitals and doctors. In the United States it is not unheard of for a hospital to charge $5000 a day for a room, and $12,000 a day for a room in intensive care. An angioplasty procedure can cost anywhere from $8000 to $45000 depending upon the doctor who performs it. Does anybody who supports universal health care coverage also support limiting what doctors and hospitals can charge?

I’m just tired of people saying, “I support universal health care coverage” and “Look at Europe” along with other simplistic statements as their model for proving their case for universal health care coverage. It’s weak.

Sure it is. It’s as rational as using a high-profile murder case to argue for increased police funding.

A rational response to that argument might be to say that the one murder is just an aberration, and to adduce statistics showing that the murder rate is quite low, and not increasing.

An IRRational response would be to say “you think increased police funding is the magic cure that would prevent murders from happening?”

Now, which of those responses is analogous to your response on this issue?

Typical right-wing thinking on your part, Jay. No liberal proposal is valid unless it would immediately solve the whole problem, forever. Every conservative proposal is valid even if it doesn’t solve the problem at all, and even makes it worse (e.g. Iraq, Abstinence Only, NCLB, etc. etc. etc.)

Logic- it’s not just for liberals, although if right-wingers tried it they wouldn’t remain right-wingers for long.

An overwhelming majority of Medicare subscribers versus private insurance purchasers show that Medicare is higher quality, cheaper, and lets them stay healthy and live longer. Was there a particular reason beyond the obvious one that you threw a snit over “providing evidence” and then rattled on about “Medicare is a fucking disaster” without any explanation as to that wildly scientific analysis?

Medicare’s biggest problem isn’t with quality of service; it’s with the potential funding issue, part of which is hindered by the 2003 legislation that allowed money from Medicare to be diverted back to private companies (which, as noted, underperform on most levels to Medicare) and which is unfathomably easy to solve (hint: it involves a lot of multi-millionaires and health care company CEOs throwing tantrums)

Of course, that likely turns back around to the real reason you’re demanding a kneejerk fight over universal health care, once again using the timid play of demanding that everyone else prove an exact, specific set of terms for your own debate, to which you declare yourself “right” because no one told you exactly what you wanted to hear. You’re far from the only person to just be thinking that, ultimately, you just don’t want to risk potentially paying more taxes to increase the chance of people like this girl who had the audacity to not be rich staying alive longer. So just say that instead of wasting all our time demanding arguments from us you know already you plan to just ignore and dismiss.

So, yes, we can still use this case to springboard for the universal healthcare. It highlights and area of weakness in the “death by spreadsheet” US system: bean counters making medical decisions.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but there seemed to be a serious problem with wait times in this case as well.

I do hear and understand the arguments Jay and others make against a universal health care system. I find them trivial and snide. UHC is not a magic bullet, obviously; but it’s way better than the system we have now. Is there a legitimate reason to not even give it a trial period? I mean, besides “the shareholders, won’t somebody please think of the shareholders?”

Health care for profit is a fucking heartless model and I would gladly deal with whatever issues Canada an Europe have to deal with in order to not have to go through what the Sarkisyan family went through. For that matter, I would gladly deal with these issues than have to watch the Sarkisyan family go through this.

Jay. You’re a douche bag.

And Megamoze, you’re a cocksucker.

If that’s the game you want to play, I’ll join in.

Go right here to see how the US stacks up against Europe when it comes to cancer survival:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/08/21/ncancer121.xml

You demand “evidence” even in the face of overwhelming worldwide reports and figures that show the US undeniably and woefully behind the rest of the industrialized world in health care.

Excuse me asshead. I asked for evidence to support the contention that universal health care coverage is the magic elixir that would have prevented this girl’s death. I’m not talking about a comparison between the United States and everybody else.

I’m merely talking about the absurdity of using this case as a springboard for universal health care coverage.

You have Alicia up there touting our ’single payer healthcare’ – Medicare – saying “it works.” Medicare is a fucking disaster and is only going to get worse as the boomers start retiring. She also talks about the VA. I urge anybody that wants to brag about that “socialized medicine” (that’s what she called it) visit a VA hospital and hang around there for a week and then tell me how excited you are about expanding such a system across the United States.

Also, I see that CS got a furlough from the drunk tank and is here spouting his usual brain dead nonsense, acting like a big tough guy from the safety of his Canadian perch behind the keyboard. CS you are such a freaking coward.

This falsely presumes that a) the family wasn’t adequately covered and b) that everyone can afford all the insurance they’d ever want and simply choose not to. Both presumptions come from absurd ignorance and a sociopathic lack of understanding or compassion.

First, the family had insurance. But even those with adequate insurance can have their claims denied. It happens frequently. It is the directive of the company employees to look for any and all reasons to deny a claim. That is a FACT.

Second, insurance costs have spiraled out of control in this country, and are becoming increasingly out of reach for low and middle income families, with premiums costing in the hundreds and even thousands of dollars a month. So not getting all the bells and whistles in coverage is not a matter of choice any more than you can simply decide to live in a $500 million mansion.

Does that mean that if you support the war in Iraq, you must be writing your post from your station as an American soldier fighting for the cause you believe in? No? I didn’t think so.

As for us, we, unlike you, are trying to improve OUR system because it’s broken and needs fixing.

By the way, you know what I hate

You mean OTHER than brown people and the poor?

Jay. You’re a douche bag. You demand “evidence” even in the face of overwhelming worldwide reports and figures that show the US undeniably and woefully behind the rest of the industrialized world in health care. They (meaning every country but us) live longer, live healthier, PAY A LOT LESS for the same care (you’d think that would put a twinkle in your right-wing eyes since that’s all you guys care about), and insure every citizen.

All you’re left to do is stick your head in the sand and nitpick some issue that’s supposedly wrong with those vastly superior systems and act like it’s the ONLY issue worth of measure. Which, of course, you do:

In addition, there are serious issues in Europe and Canada with wait times.

No health care system is going to be perfect, and no one has suggested otherwise – except for the dishonest conservatives using lack of perfection as their ridiculous excuse not to adopt universal health care, even though that is precisely how they DEFEND the inferior and more expensive American system.

That said, the wait times in Canada and Europe are, like everything else you utter, dishonestly overstated compared to the American health care system.

Do you have any evidence to support this?”

Yeah, every other industrialized nation does it, and every other industrialized nation get better results.

Ian: “If you want socialism just move to Europe? Oh, wait, forgot .. ya’ll don’t put your money where your mouths are.”

Or maybe they want to stay and make the country better.

Asshole.

“By the way, you know what I hate … people who don’t get the insurance plan they need and then complain when the company doesn’t cover it. You can’t”

You fucking ignorant piece of shit.

She had insurance. The insurance company decided that letting her die was good for the bottom line so they killed her. It’s as simple as that.

Fucking asshole.

I hope you get real sick and the insurance won’t cover it. I hope you get to sit in a hospital knowing you are going to die.

Better yet, I hope you family gets sick so you can see them suffer and you will have to live with knowing you support a system that kills.

And to top it off, you fucking sub-human scum probably consider yourself Christians.

You’re absolutely right: the whole system in which health-care companies, hospitals and doctors are motivated by profit rather than the health of the patient, needs to be changed.

Do we have proof that a more civilized health-care system would have saved this particular girl’s life?

No.

Do we have proof that a more civilized health-care system would cure all disease and prevent everyone from dying?

No.

Is it reasonable to demand such proof before we make any changes?

No.

Come back when you’re ready to discuss the issue rationally, Jay.

But we should just trust the magical free market to figure it out when the problem can be solved, but for the fear of boogedy boogedy socialism.