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Old 03-25-2010, 01:51 PM   #16
Nakor
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in that case I understand where you're coming from on the abortion thing. It actually turns out after further research that I was wrong; abortions in clinics in British Columbia are not covered, but ones performed in hospitals are. In some ways it becomes hard to compare our countrys' needs, when America is so much more conservative than Canada. It's a whole different playing field.

Here's another interesting thought about health care coverage: At a call centre I used to work at someone asked the site manager why they had outsourced to Canada rather than just keeping it in the states. The manager explained that while they had to pay higher hourly wages in Canada, the overall costs were much lower, because the company had to pay much lower premiums to offer health insurance. Health insurance was the #1 reason the jobs went to Canadians and not Americans.

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Old 03-25-2010, 01:59 PM   #17
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As someone outside the US I'm curious if, now the bill has passed, there's a concensus on everyone trying to make the best of it; or if are there factions that will strive to disrupt it?
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Old 03-25-2010, 02:05 PM   #18
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There are currently 13 states that are filing a lawsuit saying that several portions of the bill are not constitutional. I think you can count on opponents continuing to try to disrupt it.
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Old 03-25-2010, 03:01 PM   #19
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I am also a foreigner (with respect to the USA) so, although I have followed the debate, it doesn't touch me personally. I also don't know all the details of the bill, but probably neither do the majority of the Americans. But we can easily see from here that the USA health care system is in some serious problems: (1) Way too many people are uninsured, some because they don't care but many because they just can't pay the insurance premium or because no company wants to insure them. Last night I saw on TV an item about someone who needed a heart operation, was uninsured and they had to sell their house and live in their car. (2) American health care is way too expensive. Their are several causes for this, a.o. the claim culture, the - probably too high - salaries of doctors and, very important, the power of the insurance companies and the health care industry in general. Our own health care is about half the price of that in the USA.

I have seen a chart correlating the cost of health care with the price in different countries, and surprisingly there are several countries with comparable or better health care than the USA with much lower prices. So although the health care in the USA is probably quite good, that isn't the cause of the high price.

I understood that the bill's main objectives are to attack the 2 problems mentioned above: making health care available to all people, and diminishing the cost. Maybe someone with more knowledge about it can try to tell us what the main points of the bill are. I personally believe these would be valid points. Cheaper is always better if quality remains the same, and my pro-life stance says that people shouldn't die because they can't afford health care. This applies especially to children who usually don't have a say in these affairs.

I am reasonably content with the system we have here in Holland. We don't have a national health service like in the UK, but the government is involved in the health care. Mainly because most hospitals get some kind of government budget. But the insurance companies are commercial. There is a basic health insurance package, and the government decides what it covers. Everybody is obliged to get this package and the insurance company is obligated to accept everybody. The insurance company sets the price for the package, but for reasons of competition they don't have much leeway of course. Besides this they can offer additional packages and they can refuse clients for these. But the ususal life threatening treatments are included in the basic package. All your bills go to the insurance company (there is a basic yearly amount that you have to pay yourself). Besides the premium that you pay to the insurance company you also pay an income-dependent amount to the government, and this is used also to subsidize the hospitals and probably medical research.

Sometimes waiting times are a bit high (I think this has to do with tight budgets), but these can be overcome. I needed a heart operation a couple of years ago, and the waiting time was several months. It was not a life threatening situation and if it would have been I would have gotten priority treatment. But my insurance company supported having me operated in Germany, where there were no waiting lists and health care is better than here (and not more expensive). Germans are just better organized.
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Old 03-25-2010, 03:05 PM   #20
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As someone outside the US I'm curious if, now the bill has passed, there's a concensus on everyone trying to make the best of it; or if are there factions that will strive to disrupt it?
Congressmen have received death threats and been the targets of direct violence over it.
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Old 03-25-2010, 03:12 PM   #21
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That won't stop anything. The last thing this administration cares about is the Constitution. Or U.S. citizens. You know, the same way you people treat Freedom of Speech here.

What goes around, comes around....
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Old 03-25-2010, 04:55 PM   #22
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I'm not American, and I don't pretend to have a full understanding of the health bill, but fwiw, it's always seemed a bit of a no-brainer to have government involvement in health care. Quite apart from the moral duty of concern for the welfare of your fellow citizen, there's the pragmatic consideration that a healthy population is likely to be more economically active, and in the last resort, able to provide more fit recruits to the armed services.

(Also means I can read posts informing me of the $500-odd cost for a couple of immunisations and risk the follow-on cardiac arrest knowing I'll be treated on the NHS )

I'm also concerned by the danger that if health care is left entirely to private enterprise, then unprofitable conditions or treatments may be neglected. The dearth of research in (for example) new drugs for TB and malaria may provide an example here.
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Old 03-25-2010, 05:30 PM   #23
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That won't stop anything. The last thing this administration cares about is the Constitution. Or U.S. citizens. You know, the same way you people treat Freedom of Speech here.

What goes around, comes around....
If you honestly think health care is unconstitutional, you should at least point out in what ways you feel it is so. The number one biggest problem with the health care debate is the sheer amount of insults being thrown around. This whole issue would be a lot better for everyone if the whole country engaged in open and honest debate rather than just throwing around words like "unconstitutional," "socialist," or "totalitarian" without backing up why they feel it is so or offering their opinion on how it could be corrected not to be.

(Not to mention, every time I do hear socialist used as an insult down there, it irks me a bit. Canada is an incredibly socialist country by comparison to the US, so hearing socialist used as an insult kind of feels like a knock against our country.)

Oh, and freedom of speech only applies to the government being unable to create laws that would prohibit it. If it applied to private property like forums, the entire Internet would probably end up looking like 4chan. :\
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Old 03-25-2010, 05:30 PM   #24
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What really wonders me, is why the USA has become such a polarized country. Unfortunately, here I also see some signs of such a polarization appearing, although we have most of the time been a country where consensus played a big role. (It had to because that was the only way to fight the threat of the water.)
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Old 03-25-2010, 05:54 PM   #25
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What really wonders me, is why the USA has become such a polarized country.
It was always polarized. It's only in the last ten years or so that people have easy, direct access to those on the other side of whatever issues they care about--the internet has made it obvious that we don't mostly agree on most subjects, and a lot of people are freaking out about that.

More than ten years ago, most people only talked with people they mostly agreed with on political issues (in part 'cos political opinions tend to run in communities), and if they knew anyone who strongly disagreed, it was a single person, not another whole community. And while they knew that, somewhere-out-there other opinions were dominant, they didn't have to think about that. They got their views on what America-in-general believes from news media, and thought it was biased toward "the other side," whatever that was.

Then, internet. Boom. All of a sudden, 10,000 blogs from *every perspective imaginable,* each with its own fanatic following. People had a hard time ignoring opposing opinions, or relegating them to "that one lone kook" or "those freaks who live in [city]." Looking for new news & blogs that agreed with you found a dozen that were directly opposed, because they use the same keywords.

A lot of the polarization and activism is just shock that "those people" really exist, and in seriously large numbers.
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Old 03-25-2010, 05:57 PM   #26
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I think that the polarization has been what has made the debate about health care reform so rancorous. Years ago opponents cited the free market system as being the better approach to health insurance and pointed out the flaws they felt were inherent in national schemes and those for it pointed out that there were many people without coverage for even basic needs. They would then try to reach some middle ground of understanding, but mostly failed.

Medicaid, the program for the poor is too small, but came as the result of such engagement. Medicare, the program for the over 65 group works fairly well, but has problems unforseen in the mid sixties, such as the high cost of medications. These two programs came as a result of compromise and cooperation while having opposing views.

These days both major parties play to their "base" so much that there is no compromise. More than likely one or both houses of Congress will go to the Repbulicans this fall and then there will be seen all sorts of Democrat shenanigans to impede the Republican agenda just as there is now the same from the Republicans.

It is a very disheartening situation and getting anything done becomes more and more difficult. I realize this is somewhat off topic, but I felt the urge to give my view of why this is such a horrible situation that we find ourselves in here.
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Old 03-25-2010, 05:58 PM   #27
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I never said it was unconstitutional. I was responding to the previous post. I stated that the current administration wouldn't let the Constitution or U.S. citizens stop them from pushing this plan through. And I'm the guy who was threatened in this forum for joking around about becoming a Canadian citizen over this bill. So, there is no open exchange? Fine. I'll go.
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Old 03-25-2010, 06:00 PM   #28
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I never said it was unconstitutional. I was responding to the previous post. I stated that the current administration wouldn't let the Constitution or U.S. citizens stop them from pushing this plan through.
If you're not saying it's unconstitutional then why would the constitution stop them?

No criticism intended, just don't understand the logic there.
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Old 03-25-2010, 06:03 PM   #29
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Medicaid, the program for the poor is too small, but came as the result of such engagement. Medicare, the program for the over 65 group works fairly well, but has problems unforseen in the mid sixties, such as the high cost of medications. These two programs came as a result of compromise and cooperation while having opposing views.

.
I understand that you are a provider and may see things differently, but I gotta tell ya' from the family end Medicare is a nightmare. coming into compliance with income vs. benefits vs. savings vs. allowances is NUTS! I've had to deal with it with 2 grandmothers and a mother in law. to make sure that everything is kosher the enrollee has to be one step out of the poor house. it is one of the most depressing things I've ever seen
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Old 03-25-2010, 06:12 PM   #30
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I think one political problem that we in the US have is that for six years (2001-2006) the Republicans controlled the federal government. They occupied the White House, had majorities in both the Senate and the House, and their nominees made up a majority of the Supreme Court.

Yet they have little to show for it that I can think of. Not only in terms of grand accomplishments, but just in terms of bills passed that benefited the American people.

So today we have a situation where the Democrats pass the health bill. The Republicans say that they favor health reform, but not this bill. This bill is too flawed in many ways.

The problem as I see it is that the American people have no reason to believe the Republicans. They had six years to put forth their health bill (remember, the idea of health care reform was put into play in 1993 with Hilarycare), and they did nothing.

Commentators behave as if we have a two party system in which one party represents the liberal point of view and the other the conservative. Yet I can't think of anything the Republicans have done which can fairly be called conservative. For example, the whole Iraq War thing is out of Woodrow Wilson's playbook, not a conservative's. If there is a Republican member of Congress who agrees with the political views of conservative commentators like Pat Buchanan or Joseph Sobran or Christopher Manion, I am not aware of him.

I guess what I am saying is that those Americans who do not agree with the liberal agenda are stuck being represented in Washington by politicians who are grossly incompetent or insincere or stupid. I think that that is a real problem for the country.
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