Bizarre Health Care Reactions

[Cops]

Walmart.

[Mattey]

Exactly, Wal-marts in your area end up costing EVERYONE more money overall. Driving down costs by not providing health insurance to it's employee's. In every town where a Wal-mart is allowed, ACTUAL costs go up. You save money on your apple jacks, but end up paying higher taxes. And if you don't shop at Wal-mart you pay the same for your apple jacks and end up paying higher taxes...

Wal-mart is the perfect example of why the market needs heavy regulation. A race to the bottom benefits no one.

This makes me happy that I live in Montgomery County, Maryland, we're so liberal we don't even allow Wal-Marts in our county *sticks nose up*

[genocidal]

What a crock, Wal-Mart is what's beautiful (read: successful) about free markets. I'm not Jerome though and a debate with a Canadian and a self-described Maryland liberal about the merits of Wal-Mart doesn't interest me.

[Mattey]

Yeah, I assume that you're HIGHLY educated on this topic.

If you feel like educating yourself, read this: http://www.newrules.org/sites/newrul...umarkstudy.pdf

If not, then kindly shut the fuck up.

[Epinephrine]

What I like about Wal-Mart is that their new healthcare clinics are SOOOO affordable at $40 that they pay $8 less than I can charge for a consultation for the exact same care in Canada (assuming it's 1:1 exchange rate, which it's not).

Keep in mind my fee is also supposed to pay for the office, secretary, supplies, insurance, etc so it's not like there's any extra money that's charged to pay for that stuff. But still I have to admit it's a good living. So Wal-Mart is charging a lot more money for the same service and people think it's a 'great deal'. LOL.

[Cops]

What a crock, Wal-Mart is what's beautiful (read: successful) about free markets. I'm not Jerome though and a debate with a Canadian and a self-described Maryland liberal about the merits of Wal-Mart doesn't interest me.

That post was full of negative connotations. It's refreshing to see you write people off based on where they're from.

Anyways, if Wal-Mart is your solution to providing people with cheap health care then good fucking luck, you're going to need it. I'll admit, I shop at Wal-Mart out of necessity. I'm part of the core that lives on a fixed budget and as such I have very little money to work with. I realize that when I shop at Wal-Mart I'm promoting a system that diminishes wealth and prosperity; It benefits the individual in the short run but in the long run hurts us all. It's hard to explain this to people, because naturally they just assume cheaper prices ultimately means its better.

I don't want to stray too far from what Jerome posted, but I can only imagine a system where the only options for the masses is to receive the very basic cost saving medical attention possible. Having no charts or records can be seen as making the individual more responsible for tracking his or her health, but I just don't see this working in a way that benefits people. People are naturally lazy, I can't see the majority actually taking personal responsibility for tracking every single visit, blood test, etc. Hopefully Epinephrine read your link and can respond individually to the twenty ways Wal-Mart will revolutionize your health care system. I think it'd be good to see the perspective of someone who actually works in the medical field, and could make points in regards to what things make sense and which ones don't. I'm not saying all the points won't work, but I think there's some pretty obvious flaws.

[kthx]

Btw guys, it isn't getting past so this thread is sorta pointless.

[Turban]

Not entirely off topic;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5rcnAWaC64

:fear:

[Ilya]

girls like it when you tell them you don't shop at wal-mart because they mistreat their workers

[genocidal]

That post was full of negative connotations. It's refreshing to see you write people off based on where they're from.

Anyways, if Wal-Mart is your solution to providing people with cheap health care then good fucking luck, you're going to need it. I'll admit, I shop at Wal-Mart out of necessity. I'm part of the core that lives on a fixed budget and as such I have very little money to work with. I realize that when I shop at Wal-Mart I'm promoting a system that diminishes wealth and prosperity; It benefits the individual in the short run but in the long run hurts us all. It's hard to explain this to people, because naturally they just assume cheaper prices ultimately means its better.

I don't want to stray too far from what Jerome posted, but I can only imagine a system where the only options for the masses is to receive the very basic cost saving medical attention possible. Having no charts or records can be seen as making the individual more responsible for tracking his or her health, but I just don't see this working in a way that benefits people. People are naturally lazy, I can't see the majority actually taking personal responsibility for tracking every single visit, blood test, etc. Hopefully Epinephrine read your link and can respond individually to the twenty ways Wal-Mart will revolutionize your health care system. I think it'd be good to see the perspective of someone who actually works in the medical field, and could make points in regards to what things make sense and which ones don't. I'm not saying all the points won't work, but I think there's some pretty obvious flaws.

I wasn't arguing that Wal-Mart health care is anything we can rely on or should. All I said is that Wal-Mart is successful and that's a good thing for America's economy. Sure they have some questionable issues in their labor history but almost all successful corporations do. It's pretty well agreed upon that successful business models and economies require some degree of labor repression.

As for negative connotation stuff, I didn't mean any of that negatively. It just is the case that you both feel as you do and you have good reason to. That doesn't mean I want to argue with you, I already know what you'll say and arguing over whether Wal-Mart has an overall good or bad impact on society doesn't interest me. You're entitled to your opinions and they're valid - they also happen to be stereotypical of your self identities. I meant no offense.

Mattey: I'm no expert on Wal-Mart, and I'm sure neither are you, but domestic policy, and subsequently health care, is my field of study/work. If you want to get into a link war I can one-up you, but I'm sure you're going to just glance through what I post just as I did with yours.

http://www.ihsglobalinsight.com/publ...05_walmart.pdf
http://www.be.wvu.edu/divecon/econ/s...rt/Walmart.pdf

[Epinephrine]

Hopefully Epinephrine read your link and can respond individually to the twenty ways Wal-Mart will revolutionize your health care system. I think it'd be good to see the perspective of someone who actually works in the medical field, and could make points in regards to what things make sense and which ones don't. I'm not saying all the points won't work, but I think there's some pretty obvious flaws.

Actually the 20 ways was Jerome's link. So actually while Jerome posted it will cost $40/person, it actually costs $45! So that's $17 more than I can charge per person, man I should work at Wal-Mart :fear:

Seems like the Wal-Mart clinics are just walk-in clinics. Are there no walk in clinics in America? In Canada walk-in clinics are everywhere, are staffed by doctors (not nurses) and don't need to rely on fancy IT systems to diagnose a person. They also often offer proper follow-up because they are staffed by doctors for those without family physicians.

What it seems like is that Wal-Mart really is doing is cherry picking all of the really easy cases (all the coughs/colds/warts/etc) that really anyone with any medical knowledge can diagnose that require no follow up work and charging a premium for doing this while pretending that they are making real healthcare affordable. Then they are directing these people to use the Wal-Mart pharmacy and Wal-Mart optician or whatever to further increase their profits.

I guess if people actually buy this scam, then that's good for them. Too bad it seems from that article that the Wal-Mart clinics don't really provide important primary care such as managing diabetes, hypertension, cancer screening, annual physicals, baby routine check-ups, antenatal care, mental health care, counselling, and so on which actually take up real doctor time.




As an aside, I don't actually have that much against Wal-Mart the normal store. Go to a country like Japan where there there are very little big-box retailers, where things are super inefficient and where mom and pop stores are the norm and you'll see why it's sometimes good to have basic goods in one giant store for low prices. My only problem with Wal-Mart is more of a philosophical problem in that now as a society we're buying all these crappy goods (wal-mart goods are generally crappy aside from the stuff like shampoo) which easily break at a low price as people are too short-sighted or living from paycheque to paycheque to actually buy something slightly more but much higher quality that would last longer. All this ends up doing is creating more factories->more pollution->more garbage and isn't healthy for our planet.

[Mattey]

Btw guys, it isn't getting past so this thread is sorta pointless.

Haha, you are completely retarded.

[Summa]

sorry...i don't support wal-mart

http://www.pbs.org/itvs/storewars/stores3.html

this is a couple years out of date, and practices have gotten worse. but of course wal-mart is "all american" it fulfills the American Dream by putting over 3/4s of its employees below the poverty line. damn....i wanna be a part of that business!

anyways, back to health care.

[D1st0rt]

Montgomery County (Maryland) SUCKS

just had to throw that out there

[Cops]

I already know what you'll say

You're entitled to your opinions and they're valid - they also happen to be stereotypical of your self identities.

I didn't know I identified myself as a liberal of Maryland. I can't even say where I fit on the political spectrum, and that's the beauty of it.

Don't engage in a conversation or reply to me if it's only to say "actually, I'm not talking to you. You're so stereotypical", if this how you felt then why even reply to me in the first place? It's pretty annoying having someone refuse to choose discourse when they think they know exactly what you're going to say, but in reality all human beings are unique individuals with their own thoughts and feelings. I'd like to think that even if I don't see eye to eye with people, I still give them the benefit of the doubt and try to engage in what they're saying rather than building up walls based solely on my perceptions of others. We can't stop our perceptions, we all have them but what we can do is realize them and work towards not allowing them to prevent us from having meaningful conversation. If we didn't engage in conversation with people unlike ourselves then we wouldn't really learn or grow, would we? I've learned more about myself and my own views from conversations with people unlike myself than people who I consider similar to me.

My perceptions of you are that you're a young male who has a strong background in University, however since you've spent more than 5 years in school you've also developed an ego that you know a lot more than others. This might be true, I'm not disputing your intelligence but even the brightest of people still act foolish. I'd like to think intelligence isn't solely defined on the basis of knowing or understanding theories, but the practice in which you use that knowledge. I think it's obvious that placing labels on people and making assumptions that people's opinions are defined by their political affiliation, and not the other way around is rather short sided of you.