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Obama has become Bush
#21
It is not possible to see the world change without implementing some of the reforms necessary to make the changes viable. That set as a preamble, how does anyone in government expect to keep the status quo? Is the status quo worth keeping and fighting for?

For one thing, Obama is in his second term of office and there should normally not be another one under his rule (if one considers that he hasn't got his hands tightly and firmly tied, like any other politician from either side of the board.) Maybe that's a thought.

For anyone in power, this is a juggling act. In a way, I'd rather know or believe that the one taking decisions actually knows what they are doing, rather than look like an inefficient, incompetent and ignorant fool. The presidency has become a highly qualified job in modern democracies and one should at all times remember that no liberty is ever to be taken for granted. Things happen. People like Hitler and Polpot happen. People are fooled, one way or another, into thinking maybe these people are the best solution in the short run... but without looking at what goes on elsewhere, how people handle things in other countries and other regimes, there might not be any salvation. I'm going to grant the US president that I trust in his understanding of the highly complex nature of the state of the world and the state of the United States which he has to lead internally and worldwide. I never felt as if I could trust the previous president of the US that way. He always seemed to blunder, to go from one mistake to the next... bumbling his way through the advances of capitalism. I'll grant him that he knew where his money was.

The 80s and 90s were times of great greed, and the powerful United States took it into its hands to lead the world towards so-called 'freedom' but not forgetting that this also meant being able to do big business and to take advantage of systems that were less favourable to local populations than the lucky (not all so lucky, though) American people.

What drives people in power to do wrong is when they can't think, or are unable to implement a degree of social cohesion and of fairness. I doubt that they get elected into power if the people electing them sees them unfit to lead them out of crises and to maintain a certain degree of law and order. President Obama has had to contend with a lot of ill will coming from his compatriots on such things as personal weapons ownership, health care reform and insurance, etc ... Inequalities in the States have sometimes become so blatant that its own people feels it can't take any more immigration, and there is a mindset in the USA that everyone is out to get them. Paranoia, which is well implemented by some factions but also by some of the press and media, comes to mind. Well, of course, anyone could be jealous of the richest nation in the world, but are those people going to come and invade the country? Not so sure. As, I mentioned before, it's a juggling act.

But it is time the huge discrepancies in wealth that the 80s and 90s created in the USA but also all across the world and particularly some states in Europe was addressed in a way that the people, middle classes and working classes particularly, think they have enough to live comfortably and are not running to the next job to make ends meet, nor that immigrants are going to take over. If we manage to keep our democracies secular and not under the threat of any religious thinking or law, we might manage to cope. It is important therefore not to go bankrupt, either financially or morally. Again the juggling act. It is interesting to think that the USA seems to feel threatened by the Islamists as much as we might feel it in Europe where a proportion of the indigenous population already is of Moslem faith. ( I'll add that this part of the population isn't necessarily the enemy of the state). It needn't be a problem if everyone remembers that religion is a private thing and that in no way should it influence our laws or our governments.

Back to the economic problems. Was it such a good idea to give all the manufacturing jobs to Asian emerging countries just to make a buck (or actually millions?)? Obviously not. This is something that happened quite drastically throughout the 80s and 90s. At least, I can remember a time when you went to the USA and actually managed to find products made in the USA. Not in recent years. Look under the product or on the label, it's all made in China.

Our societies, our forebears have fought for a more equal system and any government or politics that stifles the people by creating too big a gap between the haves and the have-nots is doomed to fail. I suppose that's what we call the Decline Of the American Empire... it inspired a Canadian film called just that just under three decades ago, though they saw it mainly through the prism of sexual liberation.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090985/

Such decline is also that of a number of Western countries, which, too content with their so-called fairness of treatment, have not seen rampant capitalism destroy what would be a model of cohesion.

Now, do we need another war, civil or not, to make this progress toward the future? With globalisation and an increasing amount of global concerns, which are not all to do with climate, humans need to learn about more tolerance. How, though, does one rally the human beings on our planet if we don't have, somehow, a common goal, and a similar way of wanting peace? Again, a long battle, one that can come, maybe, with better upbringing and education. The Internet has made the world a global village; now we know what's happening all over the place, but we are also contaminated by a whole pack of terrible lies, some of them life-changing. I think it is every citizen's duty to keep a close watch on what politics, economic factors and religions are doing and how we elect people into power. Some of the power machines, namely industrial lobbies, but also religious lobbies, have gained far too much power. Self-righteousness and personal gain never served humankind.
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#22
You quoted me...
"What is the purpose of ACA ? Will it make health care better or worse?
Which do you expect when you look at the current available evidence?"
......... and didn't answer any of the three questions.
Don't worry about it. I'm used to that when I ask those questions.

So..... Let's get these 2 points out of the way ............

Buzzer Wrote:#1. The ACA is not a government administered healthcare plan.

#2. It is not socialized medicine.

Point One ACA is not a government administered (healthcare) plan. << you added the word healthcare.

Okay since it's not administered by the government why are there more than 10,000 pages of rules ALREADY in existence and more coming from government bureaucrats who were given power in the ACA legislation to make up more rules and regulations without congressional or executive oversight?

Here's a quote from Washington Post's Fact Checker.

[SIZE="4"]"The Pinocchio Test
We realize this is a bit of muddle. At the very least, one can point to 10,000 pages of tiny regulatory type regarding the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. Frankly, this is to be expected in any large and complex governmental undertaking. Depending on your perspective, the visual of a seven-foot-high pile of documents may be meaningful — or not. That’s a matter of opinion."[/SIZE] That doesn't include any of the regulations in the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact..._blog.html.

So if this isn't a government administered program then the 10,000 pages, the 15,000 IRS agents and the staffs in both the Health and Labor Departments must be working on some top secret plan to keep government from administering the program, right? Then where are the Employer Mandates coming from? Who's putting out the regulations on Health Care Providers? Who's telling insurance companies what they can and can't do?

And when was the last time you heard of the government ever starting any sort of program that they did not set themselves up to administer?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Point Two It (ACA) is not socialized medicine.

This isn't even a challenge to refute. All you need to do is ask "where did the ACA legislation come from?"

Valerie Jarrett, Harry Reid, Van Jones and others gave full credit for writing the ACA legislation ANd the 2nd Stimulus Bill to the Apollo Alliance and its co-founder, Joel Rogers. They were written at the same time with many parts of the ACA structure put into the stimulus bill... the one that had to be voted on before it could be read.

Joel Rogers was the founder of the socialist "New Party" that dissolved before Illinois Senator Obama made his bid for the presidency. Apollo Alliance and all its shoot offs that Rogers heads are all socialist oriented. From the Apollo Alliance you can trace connections to all the major labor unions all the way to the radical fringe. Rogers makes no secret that he's a socialist and has been called on of the most influential people in US progressive politics.

Knowing all this do you really think anyone is so dumb as to believe a man like Rogers could or would write a healthcare bill that wasn't socialist?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So... here's the questions you didn't answer...

What is the purpose of ACA ?
Greater political power (the true purpose of all such programs)

Will it make health care better or worse?
worse of course = more power by expanding bureaucracy. Solving problems cuts govt jobs.

Which do you expect when you look at the current available evidence?
Exactly the same level of performance as the past >> Government will make it worse as it has everything it has taken over.
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#23
Virge Wrote:What is the purpose of ACA ?
Greater political power (the true purpose of all such programs)

Since the ACA was Obama's first major policy item and it took over 2 years of fighting constant filibusters and table-walks, I don't see it as something that increased his political power at all. If anything, just the opposite. He expended a tremendous amount of political capital on it-- half of his first term in office. And given how successfully the right has demonized Obamacare over the airwaves (to the point where people don't even realize Obamacare and the Affordable Care Act are exactly the same thing) I do not believe Obama walked away from the healthcare debate in a stronger position than he started. The only possible "strength" I can see that anyone could argue he gained out of it was that he caused the Republicans to fail in their all but openly stated intent to make sure Obama accomplished absolutely nothing in office and be a one-term President-- but this had more to do with the public's disgust with obstructionist tactics (repeated again during the government shutdown) than with a renewed support for Obama after the 2 year healthcare fight.

Quote:Will it make health care better or worse?
worse of course = more power by expanding bureaucracy. Solving problems cuts govt jobs.

Better. I've answered why in detail in previous posts. What I know is that before the ACA, insurance companies were spending as little as possible on claims and even finding pretexts for bumping people off by labelling their illnesses as "potentially pre-existing" whenever possible. What I have from your post is a "but bureaucracy is always bad" as the supposed counter to that. If the bureaucracy we needed to get private health insurance regulated to the minimums they are today under the ACA is 'bad', what the private healthcare system was without bureaucracy was worse. I'm not going to pretend that insurance companies accepting payments for services they had every intention of trying to avoid providing when insurees became sick and overwhelmed with hospital bills is preferrable to the law today out of some boogeyman ideological opposition to the concept of any bureaucratic involvement.

And as much as I don't mind answering these questions, I'm unclear what any of this has to do with an allusion that the entire concept of the healthcare reform attempt was somehow tied to or sprang from somehow trying to disenfranchise whites or offer blacks reparations for slavery.
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#24
Buzzer Wrote:And as much as I don't mind answering these questions, I'm unclear what any of this has to do with an allusion that the entire concept of the healthcare reform attempt was somehow tied to or sprang from somehow trying to disenfranchise whites or offer blacks reparations for slavery.

at the end of the day, those that have medical insurance doesn't know what it's like for those who didn't have medical insurance but now can under aca
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#25
Buzzer... I just thought back... I believe the only other time you and I have had a disagreement was about the incompetence of the Veterans Administration which isn't unrelated to this.

You and I are at a complete impasse over one issue.
I asked if ACA would make healthcare better or worse. You said better. There's not one shred of evidence to back up your optimistic view. Nothing in the history of the federal government and its bureaucracies since 1912 supports believing -- that just this once --- government will perform a task as efficiently and economically as the private sector. Carrying this discussion any further would be pointless if we can't agree on the basic facts. Sure would like to make a substantial bet on this for the year 2024.
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#26
Virge Wrote:Buzzer... I just thought back... I believe the only other time you and I have had a disagreement was about the incompetence of the Veterans Administration which isn't unrelated to this.

You and I are at a complete impasse over one issue.
I asked if ACA would make healthcare better or worse. You said better. There's not one shred of evidence to back up your optimistic view. Nothing in the history of the federal government and its bureaucracies since 1912 supports believing -- that just this once --- government will perform a task as efficiently and economically as the private sector. Carrying this discussion any further would be pointless if we can't agree on the basic facts. Sure would like to make a substantial bet on this for the year 2024.

The government is not "providing healthcare." I made this clear in my previous response. It is not possible for me to go to the government and get "government healthcare" unless I work as a government employee, or am disabled in some manner. What I can get are private insurance policies which may be partially subsidized based on income level, though a government website, which must meet certain new higher standard minimums as far as preventive treatments offered and how much premium money must be spent on healthcare claims. And I cannot be turned away, and I cannot be bumped off because I found out I had something that might possibly be a long term illness.

I don't know how many different ways I can say it-- this isn't government provided healthcare. I can tell you the name of my policy provider if you like. They're a private sector company. The extent of government involvement is checking to see if I qualify for any subsidies and using the exchange website, and the fact that they have to comply with new minimums in the ACA, and cannot boot me off my policy if I get sick.

If you don't like the ACA, that's fine. But saying you are against it because you don't feel government bureaucracies can provide widespread services very well, it doesn't make any sense, because health insurance providers for non-government employees are still the same private companies they were 5 or 10 years ago.
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#27
You keep going back to ACA not being govt administered.... No matter how you stack this up.. If the government is making all the rules, enforcing all the rules, telling doctors, hospitals, insurance companies, and the general public what they can and cannot do............ THEY ARE ADMINISTERING and in control of the program. and considering that it is all being put together and administered by "progressives'... what we know of this today is not what it will be in ten years. Remember that it was less than 2 years after ACA was passed that GAO came out with figures saying the cost of ACA would be more than double what the public was originally told. That alone should be a great indicator of how "efficiently' this program will evolve.

And I won't even start on the nightmares I've experienced personally since going off county payroll and converting my insurance to an individual policy.... or the limits on services not made by my doctors but by bureaucrats.
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#28
Virge, you need to specify what you mean by healthcare getting "better" or "worse". How do you measure that? The quality of care? Mortality rates? Physician and hospital bed density? Costs per patient? If you actually look at international comparisons you'd know that the claim about the private sector's superior efficiency compared to the public sector merely comes down to right-wing claptrap.

Let's take a superficial look at some international health statistics from OECD, WHO and The World Bank. Death rates and life expectancies for the whole population in OECD countries do not basically differ much (although the US lags behind a little bit in life expectancy compared to Western Europe). However, if you look at infant mortality - a common indicator used in demographics to measure health on the population level - The United States is wayyy above the Western European average. The same goes for the mortality rate of children under 5 and maternal mortality (women who die during birth or pregnancy). Well, at least the United States can be proud of its low level of new incidents of tuberculosis (can't say much the same about people with HIV/AIDS).

Granted, these are very broad measures and certainly the healthcare system is not the only factor, which contributes to such things as life expectancy or infant mortality. However, OECD has some statistics of physician density and the number of hospital beds per 1,000 population. How is the United States doing on these scales compared to other OECD countries? Well, not so great, at least compared to many European countries (perhaps because American people are too busy taking MRIs?)

So, let's look at healthcare systems and the economics of it. First, as can be expected, the United States has the poorest health insurance coverage compared to all other OECD countries. In other words, the United States has the biggest portion of people who are not covered by any health insurance. This coincides with the highest level of private health insurance coverage. Not really a big surprise since the private sector distributes goods and services according to the ability to pay, not according to need.

Okay, so the level of health inequality might be really high compared to many other OECD countries, but how about the costs? Evil socialist universal healthcare must really be a drag on the economy. Well...not really. It's true that public expenditure on healthcare is much higher in countries such as France, Germany, Sweden or Finland than in the US. But, as a percentage of the total GDP, not so much. In fact, the total expenditure on health (as percentage of GDP) is significantly higher in the United States than in other OECD countries. The same is true with per capita measurements.

In summary: public healthcare is not a drag on the economy and it's not inefficient. Actually, it's quite the opposite, which is quite an achievement from governments operating in a capitalist economic environment. The difference between universal healthcare and private insurance based healthcare is merely that the former allocates health services more evenly to the whole population while the latter operates by the inequalizing logic of the market. The difference is also that corporations and the rich have to finance the healthcare of poorer people disproportionately in the former system. Boo hoo.
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#29
Virge Wrote:You keep going back to ACA not being govt administered.... No matter how you stack this up.. If the government is making all the rules, enforcing all the rules, telling doctors, hospitals, insurance companies, and the general public what they can and cannot do............ THEY ARE ADMINISTERING and in control of the program. and considering that it is all being put together and administered by "progressives'... what we know of this today is not what it will be in ten years. Remember that it was less than 2 years after ACA was passed that GAO came out with figures saying the cost of ACA would be more than double what the public was originally told. That alone should be a great indicator of how "efficiently' this program will evolve.

And I won't even start on the nightmares I've experienced personally since going off county payroll and converting my insurance to an individual policy.... or the limits on services not made by my doctors but by bureaucrats.

The ACA has absolutely nothing to do with what happens between you and your doctors and nurses in terms of the direct providing of care or how that care is provided. It is a regulatory change to coverage practices by insurance companies.

The ACA has most certainly not mandated restrictions on what insurance companies can cover or instructed doctors or insurance companies that they cannot provide or cover certain services anymore. The entire goal of the ACA was entirely the opposite, to stop the longstanding practice of entirely refusing to insure people who had chronic or long-term conditions or were in any way going to be insurees that were likely going to actually file medical claims here and there.

If you've experienced a marked drop in what is covered for you after leaving a state-provided insurance plan and entering the private market, then you are simply dealing with all of us have been dealing with in the private market since way before the ACA. The ACA did not create the hassles in dealing with the private insurance market or getting them to pay on claims, it sought to alleviate the predatory extremes to which they were doing so. As a matter of fact, in the pre-ACA market it's entire probable you would not have been able to find any private insurer at all, or only at a prohibitive premium like adult diabetics faced in trying to acquire coverage.

If you were sick at all, you couldn't get insurance. That was the way the private enterprise market ran things. Do you feel that's a functional way to run access to healthcare? The people who need it are entirely on their own, and healthy people are afforded the privilege of paying premiums for a policy which might be honored if you get sick?
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#30
Buzzer Wrote:The ACA is not a government administered healthcare plan.
Really? Not a government run system? They why are the "exchanges" set up and administered by the government?

As for Romneycare, he himself stated that that plan would work for individual states but not on a national level. Also the Dem. legislation in Mass. made large changes to the bill.
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