Wow, your reading comprehension skills are pathetic. Here you can choose to have supplementary insurance so if your non-urgent treatment has a 3 week waiting list then you can get it immediately. If anyone here died from not receiving care because of bureaucracy or waiting lists their would be media investigations and heads would roll. I have supplementary insurance mainly for the dental and eye coverage. If I needed something that was an emergency I’d still go through the public system, supplementary insurance is for bunions or other non-life threatening diseases things that may, MAY, have a waiting list.

SaveFarris, when my mother had cancer she had health insurance, which was great even though the deductible was huge. After her treatment they raised her premiums to the point that it was ridiculously unaffordable, essentially canceling her policy. If she has a reoccurrence or another fatal illness right now in America she won’t be covered for any treatment. Do you really not see the ridiculous situation of American health care? People are dying right now because they can’t afford to be treated. Tens of millions of Americans are uninsured. Tens of millions are underinsured. Your argument of people dying in universal systems is ridiculous because if the number of people died in a universal system from waiting was 1/10th the number that die in America currently for being uninsured the public would be demanding accountability.

Geragos said Cigna twice took Sarkisyan off the liver transplant list and purposely waited until she was near death to approve the transplant because the company didn’t want to pay for her after-care.

Yeah, that’s so much better than the government.

SaveFarris says: “That’ll really help you when you’re dead because you didn’t get your treatment.”

You realize that is happening right now under the system you have, right?

You realize private insurance agencies get to dictate which treatments are ‘cost effective’?

You realize they can decide that a ‘pre-existing’ condition is the root cause and deny all treatment?

Nothing you can say about Universal Health care is worse than it is under what you have now.

Yeah, like I said, it sucks, because the government won’t implement it perfectly. With the current system though, you still wind up dead because the insurance company decided it’d be more profitable for them to not cover the treatment and let you die.

Mm-hm. Big Insurance and Big Pharma, teh kidzz like to call ‘em.

That’ll really help you when you’re dead because you didn’t get your treatment.

Over here I have supplementary health insurance on top of the universal insurance provided by the government. For about US$1000 a year I have the option to receive some treatments that may have a waiting list quicker through the private system, no deductible.

So even though we have to pay for Universal Health Care, anyone who actually wants to see a doctor before they die has to pay for ADDITIONAL insurance? Doesn’t sound like overall costs are going down after all. Which is what opponents of the plan have been saying all along.

This is true. Over here I have supplementary health insurance on top of the universal insurance provided by the government. For about US$1000 a year I have the option to receive some treatments that may have a waiting list quicker through the private system, no deductible. That also covers any GP visits, and a certain amount of dental and optometry. Plus that covers both myself and my partner. Universal health care actually makes private health insurance work better and more affordable!

Ponies and Unicorns for everyone!!!

Way to dodge the issue, Farris. Kudos.

Do you really think we haven’t thought this through? We understand that the government will have to make decisions about what to cover and what not to cover. That kinda sucks, but at least that way there is an accountability mechanism; if the government policy doesn’t cover something it should, or vice versa, someone is going to call them on it. That’s not the case with private insurers, because they can do pretty much whatever they want.

But, for the sake of argument, let’s say government run universal health care would badly impact coverage. There’s two obvious arguments as to why we should do it anyway: 1. The private insurance industry could still exist to help fill in the gaps at a significantly reduced cost. 2. It’s still a better system than one that causes people to go into bankruptcy because they cannot pay unexpected medical bills.

Ponies and Unicorns for everyone!!! Those British sure are spending less. But let’s compare coverage, shall we?

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91996282

Universal health care will save you money. And it will get you better results, because the primary goal of universal health care is … health care. The primary goal of private health care is profit.

The easiest way to do that is to get people to pay you money when they are healthy, and not pay for their health care when they are sick.

There’s less bureaucracy in universal health care. You can look at the overhead in Canada and the United States to see that.

Hell, you can look at government run health care vs. private section health care in the United States to see that.

So, are you ignorant, or lying?

And that’s a serious question.

Are you lying to us trying to scare people to prevent them from adopting universal health care? Or are you really this stupid?

A health plan that doesn’t, for example, have to be in effect for over a year before my wife and I can consider having kids? I’d pay a little extra in taxes for that.

My understanding of Obama’s universal health care proposal as described during the primaries and general election is that it only called for the government to subsidize a standardized health care plan. It did not replace the health insurance industry wholesale. In fact, private insurance companies could implement the plan themselves, and people would still be free to choose other private plans.

So my point is, the cost to the taxpayer to implement Obama’s proposal wouldn’t come even remotely close to the $2.4 trillion figure you referenced. And so long as the government implements the standardized plan well, it will help bring that figure down.

And evolution. But that’s also for another thread. Oh, and the tenets of the Laffer Curve. Oops, another thread. Oh, and homosexuality being a choice or not. That’s a good debate for another thread. “The U.S. is a Christian Nation.” “Saddam attacked us on 9-11.”

Hard to believe that any of these are debatable points outside the fringes of extreme Wingnuttia (i.e., the modern Republican party).

What happened to “95% of Americans won’t see a tax increase. Not. One. Dime.” I have a feeling that’s going to join “Read My Lips” on the Greatest Hits package.

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