John McCain vs Barack Obama Mega-Politic-Thread of super fun awesomeness.

[Galleleo]

You could have read the article instead of being an asshole. I usually read all of kthx's articles at the very least. Fine though. Keep on with your uninformed opinions and pretend like you actually contribute something.

You obviously didn't even get my point.

[ConcreteSchlyrd]

Why do people even bother posting links to sites that are clearly trying to push an agenda? Do you expect those numbers to be completely accurate? Just because they put together some numbers, threw in some dollar signs, and agree with what you think does it mean the data is correct?

All polls and research data are wrong... so says Izor who is undoubtedly non-partisan! No dude, you can do your OWN research and find out who's telling the truth and who has an axe to grind. MSNBC? Obviously pushing left. Fox? Obviously pushing right. You're right in questioning the numbers, but it's pretty easy (doing even the most rudimentary of online/old-fashioned research) to tell "who's funded by who" or "who's directly linked to what organization."

Who the fuck is the NCHC?

I'd say "the sum of its parts."
http://www.nchc.org/members/members.shtml
That's a fairly wide swath.

earlier some idiot posted another link that was clearly for reform as well.

So anyone for reform is an idiot, just because they have a differing opinion? I don't get this way of thinking--the system IS broken. Just because you're young and relatively healthy now, and thus haven't had to test the system, you think it's problem-free?

I can post some anti-reform links myself but it doesnt make any difference because polls posted on both cnn and fox news show that healthcare reform is unpopular and most people dont see what is wrong with the system because they have real jobs.

I have a real job. I most likely make more than you do. By your logic, I shouldn't be concerned in the least. And I'm worried about the state of health care. Costs have went up something like 119% in the last 9 years. Show me another industry that has that same kind of rising cost trend.

[Izor]

The cost of a lot of things have gone up over 100% in the last 9 years...gas for starters. Milk, eggs...pretty much anything that you can think of besides a major purchase like a car. Hell, even houses had gone up ridiculously until the market collapsed.

I'm not saying that the person is an idiot for having a differing opinion, but for believing something just because its written on a web page and looks good. Honestly, any of us can sit here posting links to pages that are well-written that support a point, but what good will it really do? Fox and CNN/MSNBC, while clearly biased, dont have a specific agenda to push about any one topic. The actual facts posted in their news articles are a lot more credible than those in an organizations website whose specific purpose is to push one topic down someone's throat. If you were against gun control would you really believe something posted on the NRAs website about less strict gun control laws lead to less violent crime when a pro gun control organization's site is saying just the opposite? You can go back and forth indefinitely and it really comes down to your opinion.

I'm young and relatively healthy...see my post about the military healthcare that I received which is a form of the socialized healthcare you'll be receiving under Obamas plan. I had 2 terrible experiences with military healthcare and 0 while I was growing up and had various illnesses like the flu and cat scratch fever (yeah thats an actual disease). In case you are like me and dont want to look it up, the military prescribed me the wrong malaria medication before deployment and horribly botched my reconstructive knee surgery. I've seen both worlds firsthand and can honestly say I dont want my friends or family to ever go through that substandard care I got should something happen to them. We havent even touched the topic of wait times, which I dont have to face being active duty, but I'd hate to be a dependent trying to get an appointment.

[ConcreteSchlyrd]

The cost of a lot of things have gone up over 100% in the last 9 years...gas for starters. Milk, eggs...pretty much anything that you can think of besides a major purchase like a car. Hell, even houses had gone up ridiculously until the market collapsed.

Gas isn't a really good comparison. There's a lot more financial speculation that causes price shifts more than supply or demand. Food perishables haven't gone up by that margin in the last ten years. I don't think you were even buying food back then, but I'm the old fart that actually was.

For a simple reference, from what I can recall (and the statistics put out by the US Ag Marketing Resource Center and other sources), in 2000 a dozen eggs cost about 60-70 cents, where now they hover around 90. Mind you, these are cheap-ass eggs that I don't use, but that's another story. Anyway, I'm just saying that you're wrong. Costs for everything have went up, I agree, but not to the degree that health care has.

But I'm glad that you bring up the housing thing, because there was a major correction in housing costs this year. So maybe, using the same logic, we wait until there's a fucking DISASTER and the costs reset themselves. Of course, that's a dangerous game to play--I'm sure you'd at least partially agree.

I'm not saying that the person is an idiot for having a differing opinion, but for believing something just because its written on a web page and looks good.

I'm not saying that this doesn't happen, but there are a lot of smart people who actually do some research, and don't rely on a USA Today infographic. I agree, if you buy wholesale into any one source, you're doing yourself and everyone around you a disservice.

But, if a majority of scholars and people who don't really have any direct interest in one specific area stand up and say "hey, there's a problem with this," in a majority, why wouldn't you listen? We have groups that are committed to researching singular topics because the world is far too diverse and complex to have someone boil it down to a single talking point.

You're right, though--in the end, it does come down to your opinion, but what bugs me is that we live in a country that claims to care about all of its citizens, when the reality is that we have a large number of people who have this "me first, you get your own" mentality. We have companies that prey on their own clientele, and get away with it scot free. This country has a long way to go to live up to it's credo, yet we have a decent number of asshats who lord it over the rest of the world like our shit doesn't stink. (I'm looking at you, Wark.)

And that sucks that your military health care hasn't worked out for you, but to compare major surgery to the flu (or cat scratch fever--I looked it up) is a little disingenuous. You're comparing apples to oranges. It's like saying:

"I had a headache when I was in the US, then I moved to Canada and contracted AIDS. I got over that headache, but look at me now! I'm fucking DYING. The Canadian healthcare system sucks."

And not to be a dick, but couldn't you just have had supplemental health insurance that would've allowed you to see whatever doctor you wanted to have your knee surgery? Isn't that what we're talking about? I mean, why wouldn't you do that right now, since our current system kicks so much ass (as others would tell you)?

I just don't buy the "socialized healthcare is the boogeyman" argument. There are a lot of things that are basically socialized in the US already that everyone seems to think are pretty good deals (fire department, water treatment, police, etc). Before we get all crazy, I don't think what Obama is most likely to present is what I think would be the best option, but I'm compromising.

Quite honestly, I think we're at the point that we need to tear down the entire system and rebuild it from square one, but no one in government is suicidal enough to try and pull that card just yet.

[kthx]

The funny thing is you act like you don't see the real problem with any of this.

Lets take Cash 4 Clunkers, the deal was a huge government success, several hundred thousand cars were sold during the deal, and all trades were supposed to be processed in less than a week, IE dealers were supposed to have the money back that they gave the people who bought the cars back within the week. However that isn't happening, some dealers have been waiting since the program started and haven't received one dime yet. So dealers ended up canceling the program earlier because they couldn't afford the overhead when it came to giving people free money without being reimbursed for what they were doing.

So here comes public health care, a government plan on a MUCH larger scale then the program I just mentioned. The government promises cheap and affordable health care to everyone, but its been a month and five million people have been to doctors offices and hospitals using their new insurance they got from the government. But wait, it has been a month and hospitals haven't been payed yet, doctors haven't been payed yet, they want to know where the money they are owed by the government is at. Eventually they are losing so much money from non-payment from the socialized health care that they start refusing government health care.

But wait.. if the government can't get doctors/hospitals the money fast enough that doesn't just mean that they can't accept a government insured person, so a law is put into place that says that all doctors and hospitals HAVE to accept this new brand of insurance. Doctors and Hospitals are literally ruined because sometimes it takes six to twelve months for the government to get them the money they are owed per patient. Health care gets worse, doctors get laid off, nurses get laid off, the highest paid doctors have to go because a new doctor will work for a third of the cost although he might not be as good.

The best doctors, especially the doctors that own their own practices end up not being to afford to run their practices, they have to leave the hospitals, and move to other countries. This means the hospitals make even less money and the best doctors in the world end up going to a country where they can at least make a living doing what they do.

--

Trust me, it will happen.

[Izor]

And that sucks that your military health care hasn't worked out for you, but to compare major surgery to the flu (or cat scratch fever--I looked it up) is a little disingenuous. You're comparing apples to oranges. It's like saying:

"I had a headache when I was in the US, then I moved to Canada and contracted AIDS. I got over that headache, but look at me now! I'm fucking DYING. The Canadian healthcare system sucks."

No, its not comparing apples to oranges. While I didnt have a surgery or anything major as a child, that doesnt justify the 5 months I had to wait for it (tore the ACL on 9/11/08 got surgery 2/23/09), the anesthetics going wrong during surgery, and the doctor cutting a nerve in my knee. In fact, the only thing that I can say I completely was satisfied with was physical therapy before and after surgery cause I got to get out of work. Also, seeing as how deployment is very common to these people I dont see how they managed to give me a malaria medication that the strain of malaria in afghanistan is resistant to.

[Izor]

I just don't buy the "socialized healthcare is the boogeyman" argument. There are a lot of things that are basically socialized in the US already that everyone seems to think are pretty good deals (fire department, water treatment, police, etc). Before we get all crazy, I don't think what Obama is most likely to present is what I think would be the best option, but I'm compromising.

Have you ever worked with the gov't? Name one thing the gov't does efficiently and I'll name 3 that it does inefficiently. Not well, efficient. Theres a big difference there. The business processes in government are a lot different than that of a normal business

[ConcreteSchlyrd]

No, its not comparing apples to oranges.

Yes it is. Take a step back and give it a good think. Comparing the flu to surgery isn't a good comparison at all. You're trying to force the comparison, and it shows.

While I didnt have a surgery or anything major as a child, that doesnt justify the 5 months I had to wait for it (tore the ACL on 9/11/08 got surgery 2/23/09), the anesthetics going wrong during surgery, and the doctor cutting a nerve in my knee. In fact, the only thing that I can say I completely was satisfied with was physical therapy before and after surgery cause I got to get out of work. Also, seeing as how deployment is very common to these people I dont see how they managed to give me a malaria medication that the strain of malaria in afghanistan is resistant to.

So you had some shitty doctors--guess what? Those currently exist in the private healthcare world, too. Ever heard of a malpractice lawsuit? Yeah, there are a fucking ton of them. Like I said, it sucks that your knee surgery got botched, but you're holding it up as some sort of a "this is what's wrong with socialized medicine" standard, when your true beef is with the actions of the doctors themselves.

Have you ever worked with the gov't? Name one thing the gov't does efficiently and I'll name 3 that it does inefficiently. Not well, efficient. Theres a big difference there. The business processes in government are a lot different than that of a normal business

Half of the stuff I do every day is working with a branch of the government, the other half is with private industry. To tell you the honest truth, the commercial market doesn't have it's shit together any more than the US government does.

Secondly, if you have such a beef with how the government does stuff, why did you join the military? Obviously it's run by the government, which means that you're willingly joining the thing that you think can't operate well. And you're not only going along with it, you're telling it "you can have X number of years of my life."

[Izor]

Yes it is. Take a step back and give it a good think. Comparing the flu to surgery isn't a good comparison at all. You're trying to force the comparison, and it shows.


So you had some shitty doctors--guess what? Those currently exist in the private healthcare world, too. Ever heard of a malpractice lawsuit? Yeah, there are a fucking ton of them. Like I said, it sucks that your knee surgery got botched, but you're holding it up as some sort of a "this is what's wrong with socialized medicine" standard, when your true beef is with the actions of the doctors themselves.


Half of the stuff I do every day is working with a branch of the government, the other half is with private industry. To tell you the honest truth, the commercial market doesn't have it's shit together any more than the US government does.

Secondly, if you have such a beef with how the government does stuff, why did you join the military? Obviously it's run by the government, which means that you're willingly joining the thing that you think can't operate well. And you're not only going along with it, you're telling it "you can have X number of years of my life."

The main point here that you made for me is that you can have a malpractice lawsuit against the private doctor who fucked you up when you cant sue the government for fucking you up. Thanks. Also you addressed surgery vs the flu, but not prescribing the right malaria medicine which is just as routine for military docs with the amount of deployments they have to deal with.

I joined the military in part because my every day job is making decisions that will save money for the US. For example, I inherited a legacy system from someone who went on another assignment out of here and thought it was going to be hard, seeing as how he claimed to have been busy every day...busy enough that he couldnt show up to mandatory formations like PT and busy enough that he needed his friend to get paid 80k to help maintain the servers. Turns out that the legacy equipment wasnt even operational, so for years the government had been contracting out $500k/yr to lockheed martin for their support plus the maintenance costs. In the grand scheme of things, this $500k is not very big toward the budget, but you add up all the numerous instances of such fraud waste and abuse and soon it is a very large number. Since taking over the project I have managed to kill it and save the government those costs, because that is my duty as an employee of the government not to waste taxpayer money. I'm not saying that normal corporations dont have this same behavior, but for their own job security, since money doesnt get printed out of thin air for them, they wont be so wasteful on their spending.

[Epinephrine]

The main point here that you made for me is that you can have a malpractice lawsuit against the private doctor who fucked you up when you cant sue the government for fucking you up. Thanks. Also you addressed surgery vs the flu, but not prescribing the right malaria medicine which is just as routine for military docs with the amount of deployments they have to deal with.

Except your two stories have nothing to do with a universal healthcare system, and everything to do with individual doctors fucking up. Anecdotes are fine and all, but they are useless when you're dealing with real problems beyond the level of the soundbite.

[Izor]

I've been fucked up twice in 3 years vs 0 times in 20 years. It was more like 3 different individual doctors that fucked me up, also. The anesthesia guy, the surgeon, and my normal doctor. Are you really arguing that the militarys form of healthcare is good? Its very common knowledge that its much worse than the average care you get in america ask pretty much anyone thats had it. They're held to a different standard than normal doctors in America. They pretty much arent held accountable for what they do.

http://cbs5.com/local/airman.loses.legs.2.1095462.html

This guy is losing his limbs serving our country and its not even in the line of duty...its a routine surgery that was horribly botched by terrible care that he received. What can he do about this? Nothing. He cant sue hes just going to collect disability for the rest of his life and if hes lucky he'll get medically retired so he can collect retirement pay as well. For the few people that are seen by our military docs the number of stories like this and the horror stories I've personally heard are alarming. That's not to say that it doesnt happen in the privatized world, because I've seen enough stories there as well, but if it does happen you can at least get compensated for your anguish.

BTW, I dont know how I'm supposed to attack universal healthcare by saying that the doctors will be less skilled without citing individual doctors in an already existing form of universal healthcare fucking up. You're making this hard on me :/

[kthx]

When the town awoke they found a body laying on the ground outside the hospital. Epinephrine apparently was the Canadian Doctor otherwise known as the Fake Doctor

Phase Change.

[Epinephrine]

I've been fucked up twice in 3 years vs 0 times in 20 years. It was more like 3 different individual doctors that fucked me up, also. The anesthesia guy, the surgeon, and my normal doctor. Are you really arguing that the militarys form of healthcare is good? Its very common knowledge that its much worse than the average care you get in america ask pretty much anyone thats had it. They're held to a different standard than normal doctors in America. They pretty much arent held accountable for what they do.

I'm going to assume that military doctors are still held by the same standards as all doctors. Doctors are a regulated profession, and the profession practices self-regulation. This means that either the military is forcibly covering up bad doctors, or the self-regulation is falling through the cracks. If it's the former, then that's a specific problem with the military and is unique to it. I say this because the military as an organization has the ability to actually silence people, and when you join, you're basically relegating yourself to being ordered around. In the real world, individual doctors/nurses/patients would speak up about things that are going wrong, and private or public it will be rectified, as there is no mentality to play by the 'rules'.

If it's a problem with the latter, then no matter how much private healthcare there is, if doctors are incapable of enforcing standards amongst themselves in the USA, it won't matter.

BTW, I dont know how I'm supposed to attack universal healthcare by saying that the doctors will be less skilled without citing individual doctors in an already existing form of universal healthcare fucking up. You're making this hard on me :/

Well you do so by citing statistics and showing actual outcomes of why universal healthcare necessarily makes doctors less skilled. I really don't see any merits in an argument based on anecdotal evidence. Taking anecdotal evidence as truth is probably the worst and most useless kind of argument that one can make about virtually ANY topic.

Unfortunately for you, if you actually look at the statistics, for basically any measure of healthcare, the USA ranks far below most other developed countries, and below a ton of countries with universal healthcare.

[Izor]

How does it rank below other countries when our hospitals are the best out there???

[ConcreteSchlyrd]

Why is it so hard to reconcile that good hospitals and equipment don't necessarily mean good CARE?

EDIT: Let me break it down for you, since you seem to be stuck on the "USA! USA! We're the best at everything!" tip:

- 20 (or even a hundred) "good" hospitals don't amount to good national healthcare in a nation of 300+ million

- Even if we had 80,000 "good" hospitals... if you can't afford to use them, what good are they?