Curse

Shursh · Aug 15, 2009, 12:44 AM // 00:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by Snow Bunny

What the RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO is wrong with you people?

you know they're never going to see your point, right? we're wasting our breath.

later everyone, only so much i can say.

**cosyfiep** · Aug 15, 2009, 12:53 AM // 00:53

so you're saying that because you have paid more into the system you should get better care?
What about those who couldnt go to college and grad school and arent going to be lawyers...they dont deserve good medical care because they werent in the top 20% of their class??? People do jobs that dont pay 6 figures a year...they dont need good medical care? Come on, everyone should get the same care regardless of what amount they paid in.

I went to college, and grad school mind you, and a private one at that...yeah I had loans to pay when I finished (as well as my husbands college and grad school loans)....we PAID into the system already so we should be getting better care, I think not....if you are sick you should get the care you need NOT BASED ON HOW MUCH YOU PAID INTO THE SYSTEM!

I dont have any kids, yet I pay for the public school here...maybe I should stop paying my taxes since I never am going to have kids. Medicare isnt going to be around when I retire (if I ever get to)...should I stop having that taken out of my paycheck as well?? I have never liked welfare so should I tell my employer to not take that part of the taxes that go to it taken out of my check as well??????

And what about the couple who had a baby only to find out it has major health issues??? Ones that require the infant to be in the hospital for months and then need home care afterwards....does the dad need to be Bill Gates to get that covered?
We dont get to pick if we get sick or injured, we TRY to have a back up plan (insurance and/or savings) but that doesnt always cover it....and lets face it we all cant be lawyers!

KiyaKoreena · Aug 15, 2009, 12:57 AM // 00:57

You suffered through school etc etc... what about the people working their asses off doing all the crap jobs that you need the services of? They get paid so much less, are exposed to conditions bad for their health, but if they didn't do those jobs your happy little world couldn't run. You will use the fruits of their labor and not think twice about how you got it. But someone has to do those jobs and choosing to fill that role shouldn't mean that a person is now second class and no longer deserves decent medical care. Oh wait, we seem to be running into the class system and the upperclass doesn't care about the lower because there will always be more to replace the ones that die.

The entire healthcare system here is broken and corrupted, I don't think socializing it as it stands now is a great idea but I'm also sick of just being told to go and make more money if I want health care. Not everyone can be freaking lawyers, most of us do have to do the crappier jobs that are needed to keep society working. Maybe the cash amount my taxed percentage pays out is smaller, but 5k to me is a hell of a bigger hurdle than 5k is to you.

Edit: I guess my fallacy was in believing the propaganda that people are equal and deserving. Health wise, we've been taught to believe that since there is a cure or treatment for something that we should be able to have access to it, but that just isn't how it works. The US system is whoever has the most money wins, including when it comes to life.

Ditto · Aug 15, 2009, 01:27 AM // 01:27

Quote:

Originally Posted by Snow Bunny

I'm putting in $8000 so that you can go get your surgeries, but you're not putting in anything for me because I make more than you do, because I suffered through college studying, and then suffered grad school, then grad school debt, then applying myself in higher employment.

My you're getting accusatory. Please spare me the tragic story of how you suffered through college. We all have had to pull all-nighters to finish papers or study for exams...it comes with the territory. Last semester was a nightmare for me but I don't go around crying about how persecuted I feel.

Quote:

I do not work towards the betterment of society.

Obviously. You just watch it struggle and complain about how "stupid" people are. I'll give you this, you're absolutely right in your points about people living outside of their means. Its spiraled out of control. My parents generation grew up under the pretense that you must get into the workforce early, and higher education was only for the upper crust. Now we have millions of dislocated workers who have no secondary education because all they've known is their job for the last 20 or 30 years. Clearly it's more than just the health care system that needs reformed in this country. I just personally feel that distancing yourself from the issue, resenting people of lower class than you, and walking around with a huge chip on your shoulder feeling like you deserve it and "they" don't really isn't the answer.

Snow Bunny · Aug 15, 2009, 02:01 AM // 02:01

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ditto

feeling like you deserve it and "they" don't really isn't the answer.

I deserve what I pay for, nothing more. That's my whole point.

I'm out of this conversation as well, namely because there's no use debating with a group of people who are at the mercy of myself and my ilk.

Inde · Aug 15, 2009, 04:30 AM // 04:30

Some of the naysayers, you do realize that one day you'll be old right? Your money will probably run out. You'll be 90 years old with a host of medical problems and more medication then you can name. Stuck in a nursing home because your children and children's children are too busy living their own lives.

How is all that past education, that past money you earned and now no longer have, that living within your means but hey no one expects to live 25+ years past their retirement, going to pay your medical bills then that are keeping you alive?

That's where some of that money is going. The elderly aren't putting anything into the system... you're right. So they need to be abandoned so that you can continue to live the high life?

I'm not calling anyone out directly but some of you are very much only focusing on YOUR situation, on YOUR current circumstances. While it's okay because hey, self-preservation we're all worried about ourselves, those who make these laws and those who pass these bills have to look at all aspects (or at least I hope they do).

Some are focusing on the leeches of society without realizing that one day, we could all be a leech. Because we are all just one disaster or just a few decades away from having no income ourselves, of getting that devastating diagnosis, of having a child born with a genetic problem, of watching a spouse suffer through an accident and their now extensive medical needs, of having our parent grow old with no one to care for them.

Fril Estelin · Aug 15, 2009, 07:51 AM // 07:51

The only way some people could really be convinced is not with words, but if they, or someone close to them, had to experience first hand how bad this health system is.

I hate this mentality of "I deserve what I paid for", many of my students attempt to hijack us (in the education system) by using that argument to pressure us to give them what they want, not what they need.

We need healthy societies.

unienaule · Aug 15, 2009, 08:32 AM // 08:32

There's really only one important thing. People tout all this government-should-make-crap-cheaper stuff, when this is the reality:

The United States is one of the few countries left in the world where drug companies are allowed to charge what PEOPLE WILL PAY for drugs. Where do new drugs come from? Is it europe, with their supposedly awesome socialized everything? Or Japan, where seeing a doctor is so cheap? Nope. It's here. Because we believe in free markets. If you want cheap stuff, go socialized. If you want good stuff, go free market.

And one other thing, as one of my friends said. "The fall of the Soviet Union isn't exactly a secret."

Nodakim · Aug 15, 2009, 01:26 PM // 13:26

"The fall of the Soviet Union isn't exactly a secret."

Nor is the economic fall,large deficit,a 15% unemployment of the US.

DreamRunner · Aug 15, 2009, 04:15 PM // 16:15

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ditto

That's a flat out lie. I doubt you know anyone personally being treated for cancer. Well I do. And they aren't getting chemo. And not that your argument really has anything to do with this thread topic, but I think you need more knowledge on cancer and chemotherapy as a treatment. Doctors don't just throw chemo at you as soon as you are diagnosed with any type of cancer...there are so many other options. Everyone knows chemo can be a very intense, very invasive treatment. But not everyone that gets chemo has the adverse affects as significantly as your niece unfortunately did. It really depends on the type of cancer, and its progression, to determine how invasive the treatment needs to be. The 13 year old boy's ruling probably had a great deal to do with his age and the cure rate...no one said what kind of cancer it was but with that high of a cure rate it sounds like the treatment was not going to be very extreme.

That's great. My niece is received chemo, my best friends mother died from breast cancer and had Chemo. My grandfather has prostate cancer. But before assuming that I didn't have anyone close that undergoes chemo, you later said I had a family member that did. However, you are right that many does receive the bad end which my niece did. But lets not forget that these effects including short-term memory loss, an inability to concentrate, difficulty retrieving words, trouble with multitasking. My friends mother had enormous trouble finding socks, A.T.M cards and other things.

Maybe you should read about cases of Parker Jensen or Chad Green that has parents all over the nation are losing custody of their children amid charges of “neglect” if they refuse to vaccinate or medicate them with pharmaceutical drugs. In real terms, the government is exercising its right to “ownership” of our children. You think this recent case with the boy hasn't happened before?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Inde

I'm not going to get into a medical link discussion with you because for every article you can provide I can provide the counter. Suffice it to say that anyone with slightest bit of googling skills can see cure rates are much higher with chemo for Hodgkins. And as I said before, I think alternative medicine is quackery, of which Burton Goldberg practices and makes a living on (just like pharmaceutical companies). Any article you would provide by him that is linked on his site I would disregard.

I would agree that he is probably making a lot of money from selling alternative medicine. But a parent should be able to have the chance to look at medicines other than chemotherapy when dealing with cancer and the State should not intervene.

Master Fuhon · Aug 15, 2009, 06:45 PM // 18:45

Quote:

On chemotherapy being called 'cure'

One of the reasons I worry about someone else’s health care plan is because reactive medicine is only a temporary treatment process. Cures are the cessation of a medical condition brought about by an improved mental condition. Things are cured when the re-occurrence is prevented; thus, cures will be an ongoing process and not something that is done in the past. In regards to the body, living material remembers injury because that's an important job living material has: to memorize health states. All localized injuries can decrease in significance. As a whole, a person can grow stronger after coping with a local injury. It is assumption that localized injury can vanish based on symptom masking.

The learned immune response reaction is the only thing that should rightfully be called a cure. But even so, injuries leave reminders of their previous existence to aid in the human learning process. These reminders can be recalled deeper when things repeat themselves, to serve as an aid to prevent further repetition. The correct word to use when discussing cancer is 'remission', a type of absence of activity. Chemo isn't a cure, just as drugs or surgery are not a cure. Although the way people work, there will always be large numbers who respond to chemo, drugs, and surgeries in a similar manner; therefore making them possible precipitants of remission. Living material still retains cancer at an undetectable level even after a successful treatment anyway.

Medicine is only a current learning process towards realizing better health. You have to be at a similar health status as other people to get the same results as they did from the same procedures. Some people die faster entirely because of treatments and others credit results from things that get called placebos. It’s likely, however, that a majority of people will be like the mainstream and respond to it.

But as evidence indicates, chemo kills some good in the hopes of getting control over the bad. That's just how modern people like to do things. Bad government and cancer are analogous in the sense that they are problems people reproduce incorrectly over and over to learn a solution for, while making them larger in the meantime. The same mindset of using chemo to treat cancer is a part of a mindset that injects poisons into things to try to produce a reaction where they fix themselves (human mastery is often based on forcing submission). When things are at a certain level of development, they die from not being able to stand up to the toxins; when they are at a different level, toxins aren't necessary; When things are at another point in development, toxins get results. There are known cases where Cancers grow back in the same areas regardless of initial treatment procedure because people repeat whatever patterns produced them. Things called 'cures' often do nothing to stop the pattern cycles.

Quote:

On government/health care system problems

Our health care system is an undeniable mess; and it's a mess because 'health' is the place where all the problems of poor choices accumulate. (They come from neglecting health considerations) The health care system is not the root of the problems that are going on, but its where many of them show. So many things have changed since the founding ideals of the country were written. Self-sufficiency as we once knew it is dead; the new self-sufficiency is spending money while someone else does the work.
Massive junk food industries grew through constantly changing food claims based around propaganda. Nuclear family was encouraged to divide so that parents stopped caring for their children, resulting in their adult children mirroring that lack of concern for parents and their own children. Governing decisions are being influenced by money, with foreign money looking more appealing than taking care of one’s own; this applies for the family government just as it does for the national one.

However, there's one thing that needs clearing up: Socialized government is a symptom of things already in existence. How people are on the inside will be mirrored in their creations; and this especially applied to creation of government. By removing or preventing the government with force, you’ve still left everything in place that makes it continue. Power-hungry men fight so that the survivor can become dictator. Arrogant men form theocracies where only they make decisions. People with confidence in consensus decisions based on citizen loyalty invite democracy and wider voting access. Socialism is the result of everyone being uncertain of the future and their capacity to take care of themselves. Internally, people will have experienced these states some time before the government gets implemented. And to be clear on this: fear and uncertainty were already prime human motivators and problem causers, but we couldn't recognize it. I don't know too much about advancing beyond socialism; but it most likely involves finally moving beyond acting out of fear and gaining a better identity.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Winterclaw

In order to keep his own insurance costs down and keep his butt out of court he orders a ton of tests. Tests that you had to foot the bill on. But he has to do it to save his own skin. So you have to pay expensive bills and high deductibles in part because the doctor has to pay for malpractice insurance and orders tests on everything for legal reasons.

Testing should be done. Having a high cost on testing is encouraging trial and error treatments on patients. Modern medicine has no such curiosity about disease; only zealotry towards eradication. If the testing costs weren’t so high, perhaps they’d actually know something about the diseases and conditions they were treating because they’d run into some more clear-cut cases. We can only learn from observing more. Working from fear, you put your priorities in the wrong places.

Snow Bunny · Aug 15, 2009, 09:28 PM // 21:28

I've been thinking about this a lot for the past couple of days. I realize that there is a very possible chance I will someday become a leech on society (hopefully not, I am much too scrupulous about saving money, to the point of penny-pinching), but I also realize that many do not understand the staggering amount of people that take this country's comparative generosity for granted, and that this bill, if passed, sets a very dangerous precedent.

I must renege on several points - I don't believe that people don't deserve healthcare; I believe in the sanctity of life, and that people should try to help each other if they can.

With that in mind, I feel that my outright anger at this bill and the many people supporting it is the belief that those who can afford to be taxed extra should be taxed extra; that those who cannot afford taxcare deserve it at the expense of those who can.

I was talking to a friend about this culture of "deserving", that we as a society have come into. "Oh, well I had such a rough week, I should spend money on this iphone; I deserve it". Did all those homeowners deserve those lifestyles out of their means?

Now take that, and apply it to deserving it at others' expense. Helping others is fine, but only one group is targeted for a shakedown. Do they deserve it? Do others deserve their medical care at their expense?

Absolutely you deserve medical care, if you need it, but I'm not so sure you have a right to demand that others should be penalized to benefit you because they make more money. I believe I take much greater issue with this than anything else. Why can't they tax the lower classes as well? A percentage of income would work fine - at the very least you're providing that we really are equal under the law in that circumstance.

Inde, I understand your points, and that a majority of them are directed at my rather selfish attack on this legislation. But this is legislation is putting a bandaid on cancer. It's a solution, but what happens with population increase? You're just going to keep raising taxes on the upperclasses? Perhaps if people tried to actually dissect why costs are so high, it'd be easier to reduce costs.

Doctors charge so much because of the dangers of malpractice litigation - it's absurd how easy it is to sue a doctor. This shouldn't exist. Medication costs a lot because the pharmaceutical companies are granted a quasi monopoly on their products, mainly due to quasi-protectionist FDA measures against foreign-developed medications (with good reason). Competition between pharmaceuticals should be higher, lowering costs. I could go on, but medical costs are artificially high.

Winterclaw · Aug 15, 2009, 10:15 PM // 22:15

Old, but still relevant and a good listen.

unienaule · Aug 16, 2009, 04:51 PM // 16:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by Snow Bunny

Medication costs a lot because the pharmaceutical companies are granted a quasi monopoly on their products, mainly due to quasi-protectionist FDA measures against foreign-developed medications (with good reason). Competition between pharmaceuticals should be higher, lowering costs. I could go on, but medical costs are artificially high.

As I said, the United States is where the vast majority of the world's drugs come from for a reason, and that reason is that they are able to fund it here. I can't prove that it's a cause and effect, but I'd say it's pretty darn likely. Read John Stossel's report on drugs and drug companies if you're interested.

Fril Estelin · Aug 16, 2009, 05:40 PM // 17:40

An interesting take on the problem (seen on Regina's twitter):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ht_W5_Ogh0U

Rocky Raccoon · Aug 16, 2009, 05:59 PM // 17:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fril Estelin

An interesting take on the problem (seen on Regina's twitter):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ht_W5_Ogh0U

I hope that people understand what that clips says about the US, it's sad and hopeful at the same time.

Fril Estelin · Aug 16, 2009, 06:13 PM // 18:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by Risky Ranger

I hope that people understand what that clips says about the US, it's sad and hopeful at the same time.

What's worse: (some, not all I guess) poor people get to queue late, get tired during the process, performing less than others, which increases the pressure on them and may lead them to a worse situation.

Some people need more healthcare than others, because they have a more fragile immune system or other reasons. Helping them is a way to make them able to actually contribute to society, instead of living a life to survive while unwell/ill.

Over the course of the 10 years I've contributed to the French and UK health system, I've given a lot more money than I've directly used, but I'm proud of contributing to the life of fellow citizens who need it more than me, some of which contribute to my life indirectly.

I realise that being European in this thread is a little off-topic, but I still want to contribute this viewpoint because I feel that the "marxist"/"socialist"/etc. word in this discussion is an excuse to throw in the bin the whole idea.

Marvollo Gaunt · Aug 16, 2009, 06:43 PM // 18:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by Theocrat

Oh, but we do! You see, we have as much money as we need. It just happens to not exist yet. Don't fret though; a quick call to the Federal Reserve, and we can get as much as we want!

great idea, let's just inflate inflate inflate! and drive the value of that pesky dollar down down down!

Inde · Aug 16, 2009, 06:48 PM // 18:48

Snow Bunny, I only point out your argument because I used to fight and believe in the same thing. So I know where you are coming from. I've seen first-hand those who use ER's as their personal doctors for a cold. Knowing they can't be denied treatment and they don't have to pay. I know someone personally who has faked an illness just to receive short and long term disability. I know of the abuses in the system. And yes, the system would get worse before it gets better.

And perhaps I am being just as selfish! I want it changed because the current system doesn't work for me. You don't want it changed because the current system is working for you.

It is a band-aid. I don't think any solution I've heard is good quite honestly. There are flaws with it all, considering that there are those who will take advantage, find the loop holes, and profit from it no matter what we do. I don't know what the solution is either.

zwei2stein · Aug 17, 2009, 06:09 AM // 06:09

Not-so Hypothetical situation:

Just like everyone needs health care to stay alive, they also need ... food. And even more than that, they literally need it to survive on daily basis.

Since there are those who are poor enough not to be able to afford necessary diet, we need food care system for whole nation. Extra taxes for rich to fund it, food stamps redeemable at state owned restaurants given out to everyone whose income is lower than certain amount. We need socialized food distribution.

Fair or not fair?

---

Yes, society needs garbagemen and shop assistants; Obviously not everyone can be lawyer or doctor.

But society also needs people who are able to actually work and output something. Anything, really. If society keeps throwing health care, food, housing, entertainment, education, etc, etc ... on someone who does not output anything, well, what motivation is there to work? Why does someone who was jobless for years actually deserve to be kept alive if he does not do anything to earn his right to live except by being alive?

If garbageman is better off not working and quitting job or not getting another job after being fired, something has failed.

If shop assistants only real reward for working hard are money that can just be used to buy neat toys, something has failed.

People need motivation to keep going. That motivation is, amongst many others, good health care. You should not let people die if they get to life threatening trouble, but no-one should get A+ service when suffering common cold if they can't afford it either.

Also, socialization is pretty bad for quality of services (Everywhere & In any case). When you take competition out, people will stop caring and do shitty job.