You just can’t work with this Kucinich guy.
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By the way, Dr. David Gratzer reminds me an awful lot of the character Sheldon on the TV Show the Big Bang Theory, not that I watch it or anything.
Piece of Mindful 
That’s why I contributed to his campaigns for the presidency and congress. This so-called Dr. Gratzer in just another bought and paid for ideological twerp.
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You got to watch this several times. At least once, focus on the reaction of those sitting behind Gratzer. Most of the reaction appears to be “Damn, this assholes getting his butt kicked.”
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I glad Dennis referenced the 50M uninsured.
That number been rounded up to include illegal aliens, ones that swim rivers and fly triangular spaceships.
Damn another utube, sorry Mark.
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Swede, you’ve got a tether in your nose that keeps you tied to industry swill. If you want to know who the uninsured are, take in a wide swath of information, including the U.S. census and surveys by professional organization. Look hard for source data. Everything you need to know is out there – it’s as if you’ve been trained not to find it.
Here’s Kaiser Foundation. http://www.kff.org/uninsured/upload/7553.pdf.
It’s based on three major surveys taken in 2003, when the number of uninsured was only 44.7 million. It explores the meaning of differing results from differing polls. It explores the financial, ethnic and health status of the uninsured population. It is but one of many scholarly approaches to the subject, and alone is not definitive. Insurance industry data, which needs to be factored in and evaluated as well, should be taken with a huge grain of salt, as they are financially self-interested.
Problem is, Swede, that you are going to have to move your eyes across the screen and down, one line at a time. The screen will not move for you. It is not a YouTube. You are at a serious disadvantage here.
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Via USA Today.
One thing is clear: Undocumented immigrants are driving up the number of people without health insurance. The Pew Hispanic Center estimates that 59% of the nation’s illegal immigrants are uninsured, compared with 25% of legal immigrants and 14% of U.S. citizens. Illegal immigrants represent about 15% of the nation’s 47 million uninsured people — and about 30% of the increase since 1980.
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OK – you’ve done some Googling. Sounds about right.
Now, the 15% of illegals are not here on their own – they are enticed here by employers who hire them illegally, and don’t provide health insurance or any other benefit and who pay less than minimum wage. Since the employers are getting off free, we are absorbing the benefits to the employers, and not the illegals themselves. If you want to fix that problem, go after the employers.
Regarding the other 40 million, you will find that many are free riders, people who can afford but don’t want to pay insurance premiums. You will find that many are working poor, who get no insurance at work and cannot afford it on their own. And you will find that many are people who have preexisting conditions that insurance companies refuse to offer coverage to.
Fair enough? Now, solve the problem. One thing I know for sure – whatever the solution is, it will not come from private insurers, whose main task is to game the system for their own benefit.
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You’re right about the working poor and cases, as your self, who’s been denied because of pre conditions.
But what would the truly hard cases be? 20M? Combine the with the 15% who are unhappy with their current plans and what ya got?
What ever it is, it’s small compared to the satisfied 85%, gamers or not.
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<<<See the 9:34 pm comment over and down. Getting too skinny here.
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I’d also like to address one the pitfalls of a government run program.
Politics.
Politics will pay a role in who gets treated and who get funded. Right now we’re funding AIDS (15,000 deaths) at the same amount as cancer (600,000 deaths). I think the same is true for heart disease. Will Siclke Cell Anemia research cut into non discriminatory ailments? Will aborted fetuses go to the highest bidder? Will you get better care because of how you’re precieved to vote?
Via Glen Reynolds.
But under a national healthcare plan, the “market” will consist of whatever the bureaucrats are willing to buy. That means treatment for politically stylish diseases will get some money, but otherwise the main concern will be cost-control. More treatments, to bureaucrats, mean more costs.
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That is simply not the way it has played out in the other industrialized countries. It’s a scare tactic.
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That’s the way is already being played, Mark. AIDS and stem cell research. The private sector is having successes with adult stem cells and ignoring stems. It took governmental intrusion to bolster stem with politically motivated monies.
Now is it going to get better or worse?
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Stay focused here – we are talking about people who don’t get basic care.
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Typically, health insurance for an individual is costing around $5,000, and a family of four over $12,000. Per capita spending is at a bout $7,900. More than half of the medical costs in this country are spent on 10% of the population, with 1% of the population using up an astounding 22% of costs.
For so long as you are in a good demographic, and the risk of having to expend large dollars on you is low, private health insurance companies will provide you with good coverage. But inevitably, you will end up in that sector of the populaiton that needs the most care, and health insurers will not touch you.
So you’d better hope you don’t expereince what happened to me – have good coverage, but incur a preexisting condition, have your company drop coverage, and then try to get coverage in the open market. Worse yet, you could get cancer, and your insurance company will go looking back through your medical hisotry all the way back as far as they can, looking for a reason to dump you.
In other words, Swede, all you are saying is “I’ve got mine, so screw you.” You will not always have yours. Private insurers are only interested in making money on you,not keeping you healthy.
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And you’re saying.
I’m screwed, so now I want everybody to suffer.
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I don’t get it, or maybe I do. You look at success all over the world and call it failure, and bend over backwards to the point where you have your head up your ass to call our system a success. You’re at odds with reality. But politics does that to people.
I have the luxury of evidence to support my case – massive evidence. You’re left looking for this hokey reason or that, but in the end, you always come back to “I’ve got mine, you’re screwed.”
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Evidence like the WHO?
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Challenge: Find me one country with a public health system where the majority of people are not happy with it. Find me one country that wants to go to our system.
On the other hand, the majority of people in this country want change.
The Soviet Union fell because people living there learned what it was like for people in the west and wanted that for themselves. So too do US citizens realize what it is like in other industrialized countries, and we want what they have. Are we as democratic as the old Soviets? Can we make change in our country like they did,or is our vaunted freedom just an illusion?
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Here’s some of your worldly successes.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2201659/posts
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Challenge: Find me one country with a public health system where the majority of people are not happy with it. Find me one country that wants to go to our system.
Until you do that, you got nothing.
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These people aren’t happy.
http://www.handsoffmyhealth.org/multimedia
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<<<
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Swede – you have not examined the accuracy of the claims put forth nor the economic interests of the people who put these things together. It’sgoing to get worse -much worse – we are going to be swimming in lies that originate in the PR firms on Madison avenue. It’s very hard to make constructive change in this country becuase of our extensive and well-financed system of propaganda.
You’re really behaving badly here,repeating every gerrymandered bit of “information” you can get your hands on without verifying its integrity. You’re grasping at straws.
I repeat: Challenge: Find me one country with a public health system where the majority of people are not happy with it. Find me one country that wants to go to our system.
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Most people are reasonably healthy. Most people don’t need the vast techno advantages that have evolved here in the US.
These satisfied peoples you address in other countries come in two variations. One, they’re young and healthy and have yet to rely on their systems. Two, they’re in the bottom half (income, no taxes) of the general pop. and the quality may suck, but it’s free.
So to answer your question to poll every man, women and child in Canada or England, the majority will side with you.
But that doesn’t make it right. The majority likes Pizza, I just don’t want to be forced to eat it every day.
My buddy Steven just came out with this Video on the downfalls of the Canadian system.
You may not want to watch. But maybe some of your patrons will catch a few minutes.
http://www.handsoffmyhealth.org/multimedia
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Wrong one. Don’t mean to embed, does it on autopilot.
You want the truth, you can’t handle the truth. Favorite Nickelson quote.
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Jesus! You just made that up. Pulled it out of your ass. You have no clue as to general demographics of these countries. Your notion that the bottom half are paying no taxes is squarely at odds with your notion that these countries are overtaxed. (Your attitude that the bottom half here pay no taxes is deluded too, self-serving and ignorant of the many taxes they do pay.) You are clueless to the benefits of public health care, not the least of which is that people live their lives and don’t worry about it like we do.
You are yet to absorb the full meaning of “anecdote”. Finding that other countries are quite happy with their health care systems and don’t want ours,you simply made up a lame-assed excuse why. That was pathetic.
I’m done here.
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You/pollsters don’t make stuff up?
I went to the poll that says the majority wants Obama Care. And this is what I found. Sweetness and Light contribute.
“Of course we are by now used to our one party media heavily over-sampling Democrats to prove to us how popular their agenda is.
But this latest New York Times poll would even make the Mullahs in Iran blush.
For buried in the details, rather than trumpeted in their slick graphics, is this breakdown:
Who’d you vote for in 2008?
Obama 48%
McCain 25%
So, in their wisdom, The Times saw fit to solicit the views of Obama voters over McCain voters by a margin of 48 to 25 percent.”
Your poll is biased. That being said the European/Canadian polls are too.
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Professional pollsters adjust the data according to data set – that is,when they have a sampling bias,they adjust the results to counterbalance that bias.
Honestly – the polls are for real.Most of them agree on health care, and have for decades.
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That’s funny Mark. I went back to the NYTimes For more info.
There’s no mention of polling adjustment.
I guess we’re just supposed to take them at their word.
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I learned about adjusting results when I was questioning exit poll results – they mess with them after the fact to make them conform to the actual vote. Turns out there is quite a bit of adjusting that goes on to make the sample conform to the general population. And it’s not dishonest, it’s a generally accepted practice.
They do random sampling based on phone numbers. But the fact that the sample is random does not guarantee that it conforms to the general population. So if teh sample says 48-28 D v R, they will adjust the outcome to reflect would it would be if it had been an accurate sample with the D v R as it actually is – 45-35 or something like that.
Anyway, you’re barking up the wrong tree. You’re pulling a Natelson here,starting with your conclusions, and working backward to evidence that supports you.
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