I've just turned on the debates and in Hillary Clinton's opening remarks she says, "Its illegal in this country to discriminate based upon age, race or gender. It aught to be illegal to discriminate against those who are sick as well!! (idiots in the crowd go wild!!!!)..ARE YOU F'N KIDING ME? WHO WANTS TO INSURE MY SICKLY ASS? ARE YOU NUTS?
That's exactly why health insurance (or any other form of the distribution of health services) should be not-for-profit.
Thats a nice theory, but how do you actually do it? The insurance companies, HMO's etc have a lot of people working for them, a lot of shareholders getting money from ownership in the company etc? I'd love to have free universal care, 7 months ago I hit my lifetime benefits limit and have about 250K left to go before the catastrophic plan I have kicks in. So, in theory it would certainly benefit me to have that, but I don't see how anyone can make it happen at this point.
Well, I don't think the potential loss of jobs/profit is or should be a factor. Millions of professionals are gainfully employed treating cancer patients, they will all lose their jobs/profits if a cancer vaccine is invented but it certainly does not mean it should not be invented. Same principle applies to Universal Healthcare, there are things more important than temporary unemployment and retraining of a bunch of paper-pushers. How Universal Heathcare should work is also more or less obvious, it's successfully implemented in all developed, civilized countries, it's based on private healthcare industry and non-profit government-run, single payer distribution of healthcare services (similar to Medicare). Of course I am not an expert to prescribe how to get there from where we are right now but lots of countries have done it, Canada went through this transformation about 30 years ago, I am sure it would be a slow gradual process but it can certainly be done.
One major expense that Canada does not have, that the US does, is defense. Why? Because why in the hell should Canada maintain a milatary that would be suitable to defend itself with, when they know that if anyone harmed Canada the United States would run in to the rescue. Ditto Europe. I've discussed this in a prior post. Another point, I've heard this several times but do not know if its true, but the United States government already spends more money on average per person for healthcare than Canada does. This is because of various govt retirement programs, SS, VA Healthcare and some people just not paying etc.
I could not agree with you more regarding the defense capabilities and budgets of Canada and our so-called European allies. And you are also right about healthcare costs, the US (not the government but the country) spends more money per capita for healthcare than any other country on the planet. In fact we spend about 33-50% more than any other country. A huge part of it is actually insurance overhead (estimated about 25-40%) and of course a lot of other good and bad factors (better more expensive equipment and higher salaries on one hand but a bunch of unnecessary tests, overweight population, lawsuits etc on the other hand). The point is that in the long run Universal Healthcare will solve most of these problems and will likely lower or contain the cost of healthcare, not increase it.
Administrative costs in the United States are huge. Medicare/Medicade also screws over providers in terms of what they will pay in many cases. I know that right now paying cash to the clinic I'm only paying about 1/3rd of what my insurance company had to pay for similar procedures, when I asked why this was they said its very simple for them to take cash and they are making as much profit off me right now as they did when I was insured due to not having to deal with the insurance company.
Individuals who suffer from the disease of addiction are routinely stripped of all their property at gunpoint, rounded up by the hundreds of thousands, and sent off to prison camps. Does that count as 'discrimination' too? Because it might be a good idea to change this policy as well, if it's not too much trouble.
I think its pretty obvious to anyone who would bother to look that the "war on terror" is the most halfassed battle we have ever waged. Not only that, there is too much money in the sickness for them to change a damn thing. To continue locking up non violent drug offenders though is insantity bordering on criminal behavior. You know what they say though, Facism will come with a happy face "for the good of all".