(0 comments)A little bit of a global perspective is always helpful in the heathcare reform debate:
“[A]ll Canadians should have reasonable access to quality health care regardless of their ability to pay.” — Founding Principles of the Conservative Party of CanadaMethinks American Republicans would consider their Canadian counterparts to be downright socialist (or is it fascist, or Nazist? it’s so hard to keep up with the name-calling…)
h/t Yglesias
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Fast Food
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Here’s Grandpa Fustypants on rape and abortion:“If it’s an honest rape, that individual should go immediately to the emergency room, I would give them a shot of estrogen.”
via (4 comments)Unhinged vagina-shackler on Komen’s volte face:Cancer is Cancer! Aboration is Aboration!
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When one party climbs back to power by promising action on the economy, does nothing on it, and instead spends literally all its time trying to hurt the other party. (0 comments)New From The Gingrich-Cain Front
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Leave it to TBogg:
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It’s amazing to me that Mitt Romney brings up France as a scary comparison point to himself so often when he spent years there and speaks the language. It’s such a minor point, but telling. Of all the people running for president, Mitt Romney has to be the most aware that the rightwing caricature of ... (0 comments)Mother Teresa Doesn't Deserve Sainthood
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Wonkette reminded me of one of the provisions that I want to write into my fantasy Constitution:No person who holds any elected office shall be permitted to seek election to any other office until he shall have permanently vacated his current post.
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DOWN THE VINE
Syndication
Once you go national, you never go back--and if the right tries to go back (e.g. in the U.S., cutting the disaster that is Medicare) they get clobbered in elections.
People like their entitlements--no surprise there. They just don't like paying for them.
actually, several recent polls show a majority of americans (such as me) support for a rise in taxes to pay for health care reform
I support a rise in taxes for health reform, too--the elimination of the tax breaks for employer health insurance, so the market is less distorted. That doesn't mean I'm in favor of new entitlements like the Canadian system.
But as for raising taxes to pay for more entitlements, here's the latest poll I've seen.
it is of course all about how you phrase the question. here's a poll back in april: http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/04/06/politics/…
here's a poll from June: http://pollingreport.com/health.htm
another from June http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2009/06/18/health-ref…
In that last poll, people are against my favored idea of taxing health benefits--which economists from across the spectrum agree is one of the best reforms. It's politically unpopular because taxing something "sounds bad", but that doesn't mean it wouldn't be quite helpful. Similarly there is public support for offering a public plan, because people dislike insurance companies, but that doesn't mean doing so will be a positive step forward.
At least Paul Krugman understands that when people don't know much about something, the moral is to "ignore the poll".
Well, most people don't know much about the negative consequences of offering a public alternative to those "evil" profit-driven insurance companies. Thus I've tried to do my small part to share the facts and educate them
and i appreciate your efforts to share the facts. i agree generally with the idea that polls should be taken with a grain of salt, because there will always be millions of idiots who agree with any proposition you put forward.
the only thing worse than our current health care system is librarygrape's commenting system :P
lol, WIN! i'm working on it! :P
You can attack the idea of some form of nation health care by going after examples of national health care in other nations but you seem to miss the point about our current system being a national disaster. On one hand we have the GOP that will spend over 3 trillion dollars for a failed oil war but decries spending less than 1/3 of that to care for Americans. So it seems to be alright to kill people threw government action and inaction but immoral to help care for them.
Hmm, was this directed at me? I definitely see the Iraq war as immoral and unjustified.
I also see national healthcare as a misguided idea that will offer temporary relief to some portion of the underinsured but result in a worse healthcare system over the long term—-worse for America, yes, but also for the rest of the world that adopts American advances once they become cost-effective.
No it was not Gherald, by now I would think that you would realize if I was commenting about you or to you I would address you, as I have before. And you have made it quite clear that you feel that the insurance industry is responsible for the health care advances made in the US today, and that a decent clear cut plan to offer health care to those of us who do not will jeopardize this advancement. And while I do not agree with you or your premise you do have the right to you ideas.
Ah k-- You've replied to me in the past (and just now) with a new top-level comment, rather than clicking the "Reply" button under mine, so I couldn't be sure who the "You" was. A generic plural, I guess.
I don't think the insurance industry in particular is responsible for advances, but I do think the private for-profit market is responsible, and that a public plan that attempts to control costs in an anticompetitive fashion (e.g. using its muscle to pay lower Medicare rates) will jeopardize advancement.
Have you looked at the Wyden-Bennett plan? I'm not quite on board with everything in it, but it looks like a better means to the end of providing more and lower-cost care, because I don't see it disrupting the market as much as a pure public plan would. It includes my favored reform of removing employer tax credits. And the CBO made cursory estimate that it'll be revenue-neutral by 2014, which is a big plus compared to the trillion dollar holes over 10 years being proposed by liberals (e.g. Ted Kennedy's plan)
More info here:
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthy_Americans_Ac…” target=”_blank”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthy_Americans_Ac…
<a href="http://wyden.senate.gov/issues/Legislation/Health…” target=”_blank”>http://wyden.senate.gov/issues/Legislation/Health…
The reason that I seem to be all over the place on my comments is because I am. The reply and comment sections of this blog really does not like explorer and I have problems posting when and were I want or even staying on the blog long.
sorry about that. have you tried upgrading to internet explorer 8? i've heard it eliminates a lot of issues. i've been using firefox for a while now and prefer it to IE
I am thinking about upgrading to 7 totally, if I can move all my schooling to it without losing stuff. With being out of work and being in school online I have to be careful. Also there is the point that this is the only place that I have trouble. However, my IT guy, my son-in-law, wants to do a total clean and reformate before fall classes. That might help. Also whatever you are doing is helping a lot, things are settling down and running a lot better now.
you're not even on 7 yet? no wonder you've been having problems. :) have you thought about firefox? i started using it a year ago and i luvs it long time. very stable and renders images much better. also very forgiving and less crashes and weirdness.
There are many reasons to not use IE--this is just one more
<a href="http://getfirefox.com” target=”_blank”>http://getfirefox.com — 3.5 just came out. Good stuff.
[insert crack about its development being supported by a "public benefit organization" ]
lol, you communist hippie! only the profit motive produces excellent stuff!!! ;-)
Gherald, just because our experiences are different, and that I disagree with you, does not mean that you do not make me think about the issues. I did a little research between online classes, and discovered some interesting data. For the top revenue producing drug companies in the world, eight of them are European; in fact six of them are in the top ten. In terms of sales for the top 15 world wide drug companies the Europeans hold five of the top six spots. If a National Health Care plan will kill research and development how do these companies maintain their competitive edge?
the whole R&D in drugs thing is a bit of a canard, but for a very weird reason. any well-funded drug company in the world can make a killing in drug manufacturing in many ways because those drug companies can rape the american drug consumer with insanely high prices. in many ways our health care system subsidizes the production of drugs for more needy countries, mainly because we pay in many cases 3-10+ times the price charged in other countries. i don't really know what my point is. wolverines!!
There is more to health-care R&D than drugs. And what matters is having a profitable market for a drug, not where its company is based. Nationalizing the world's best health-care market that pioneers the most advanced treatments won't kill health-care R&D, but it will slow it considerably.
LG is right about our expensive prices subsidizing other countries. You can't charge an African $10,000/year for his AIDS cocktail when he's living on a dollar a day.
We still have a major disagreement in terms. We cannot have the worlds best health care market when we have such a large number of people who cannot even get health care because the insurance companies will not cover their preexisting conditions.
I said best market in the context of selling a product.
What you're talking about is "most covered" or "most affordable coverage", something like that.
I will pass on letting the same people who handle the roads take care of my body….but thanks anyway.
yeah, thank god we don't entrust the health of our veterans, seniors or the disabled to an evil government health care program. oh wait…
Of course the point is if the legislation passes you can opted out if you want, and under the current system millions of cannot even get coverage.