So you missed entirely my point about government health care effectively screwing poor people who get sick?
Probably because you haven't posted any evidence that government health care screws anybody.
The lowest guy on the totem pole always gets the screw by the government. Poor people in other nations don't have the option to fly to the United States, do they? Which means in Britain, Canada (arguable based on geography), or any other place with one-size-fits-none health care, the poor person will be treated as a statistic, denied treatment, and will die.
Do you have any evidence that poor people aren't treated or are you going to keep parroting the baseless Republican talking points that say how horrible a public option is? I have never heard anybody from other countries say that they were dissatisfied with their nation's health care. I have family living in England and they were appalled when they found out about how our system is run.
Allowing them to purchase only the coverage they need will not result in these problems because you are not trying to impose a universality onto a specific need. Universal health care would only work if every person's health needs were universal, and they simply aren't.
There is something universal about health needs: everybody has them. You are making a ridiculous and baseless assumption that a public doctor is going to treat every stomachache the same.
When I get a headache I need to throw up and take some tylenol (it's usually stomache related). When an elderly woman gets a headache it might be the onset of a stroke. A system that treats us the same (apply blunt remedy to headache) screws her and saves me... but I didn't need saving, I just had indigestion!
Do you have any evidence that would suggest that the public system would treat them the same? Any doctor, even a dirty socialist doctor working for the evil government, would be able to distinguish between those two things.
This guilt trip legislation will do nothing but increase the cost of running the massive anti-smoking bureaucracy. Not a single lifespan will be increased by adding the additional layers of nagging, your delusional idealism aside. The outright banning of alcohol didn't stop people from drinking, what makes you think bigger, scarier labels will stop people from smoking?
Simple, because a ban on drugs is a gross injustice, but educating the people about the drugs helps to actually solve the problem at hand.
Better suggestion: Get government out of all health care decisions and funding (abolish Medicare and Medicaid), thereby making any arguments about "taxing the system" irrelevant. Instead create a truly free-market system, not the fake mixed system we have now, where you select each specific element of coverage that you need and are charged based on the options you select. Everyone could afford routine exams if people my age could just select catastrophic coverage instead of being forced into a plan with tons of idiotic mandates for routine care and covered medications. I'm 22, I don't need my plan to cover Viagra, Ex-lax, Prescription drugs, and have a $15 copay on routine exams. I just need emergency room coverage for catastrophic illness or injury. Hell, I don't really need it at all, but it's mandated in Massachusetts.
That's the thing about health care: you don't know what you "need" until you need it. Good luck trying to get health care after you come down with Parkinson's disease (or something equally as uncurable atm).
Obesity and every other health ill is not caused by fizzy drinks and cigarettes, it's caused by people who don't exercise off the calories because they have a boring-ass desk job that consumes 60 hours of their week or more between working and driving.
Actually, you are wrong.
Soda does cause obesity (and other health risks).
The main sweetener in soda – high-fructose corn syrup – can increase fats in the blood called triglycerides, which raises the risk of heart problems, diabetes and other health woes.
This sweetener also doesn't spur production of insulin to make the body “process” calories, nor does it spur leptin, a substance that tamps down appetite, as other carbohydrates do, explained Dr. George Bray of the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, La.
In short, if you drink soda, you will get fatter and your body loses the ability to get rid of those calories. In addition to that, you won't eat any less despite the fact that you are already absorbing tons of calories, causing you to gain even more weight.
America doesn't live as long because we work longer hours in more stressful careers for more of our lives.
We do work longer hours, but that only cuts back on productivity. Multiple studies have shown that a shorter work week increases output. I can find one for you if you like, although this has been known for quite a long time.
Americans also don't live as long because we are born less healthy and every attempt to encourage people to become healthier is shot down by people like you as an invasion of freedom, even in this case where people are simply trying to educate people on the fact that cigarettes kill 50 people every
hour.
This work ethic is why we went from a band of angry rabble-rousers to sole world hyperpower in 200 years.
Decreasing the stress in the workplace will only help us become stronger, increasing productivity and morale in both the long term and short term.
America living on average to 80 instead of 82 or 87 isn't a big enough problem for me to abdicate control over my health to the government. I don't measure my compassion based on how much I care about aggregates. I'd rather have the average American live to 65 in exchange for getting the truly sick the health care they need for debilitating illnesses than have the average American live to 90 because we leave the truly sick to suffer in agony and die over the course of decades.
I'd rather be able to go to an emergency room and not have to worry about whether or not my health coverage is going to be revoked because I went to an emergency room.
Government systems only lead to superfluous care for the healthy and slow, cruel death for the sick.
Do you have any evidence for this?
A government bureaucrat will have to "approve" getting treatment for your disease based on a fixed amount of government resources.
Just like a health insurance company currently has to approve of you getting treatment for your disease based on how much money they feel like extorting from you. Quit creating a false dichotomy: there is always going to be something above you sorting out the health care, whether it is a politician (who is trying to make people happy) or a CEO (who is trying to make his wallet happy). The free market system is more intrusive since they would be allowed to discriminate, while the government is not.
Oh what's that? You have a genetic condition that you didn't even know about? Sorry but your health care is no longer valid, good luck!
Oh what's that? You were dying so fast that you couldn't make it to an approved hospital? Sorry but your health care is no longer valid, good luck!
I find it hard to believe that you would rather have a company whose only motive is profit in charge of your medical decisions, and not a system that actually gives a shit about whether you live or die. Where are you getting this idea that you have to talk to your congressman before getting medical treatment? There is no governmental interference between you and a doctor if you are hurt, but with insurance companies ruling the roost, there is a shitload of interference...and if you decide to seek your own treatment, you are left to die by the insurance companies.
Maybe you should stop repeating Republican talking points ("government bureaucrat" lol) and see what is actually happening to people on a daily basis because of the system that you treasure so much. The world isn't separated into red and blue. Instead of posting logical fallacy after logical fallacy to delude yourself into believing anything that opposes democrats, why don't you try forming an opinion of your own using sound logic? Your posts would be funny if they werent representative of a frighteningly large (but thankfully dwindling) portion of the voting public.
At least we agree on one thing: the current system of health care is fucked and it needs to be changed to something better before more people die because they are too poor.
When a rich man in any nation on earth gets sick with a fast-acting, terminal illness does he fly to Britain? To Canada? No. He flies to the United States of America, because he knows he will get high-quality, expedient treatment from the best doctors in the world. He will not have to wait for some lifetime bureaucrat to drag out his bifocals, read his chart, mull it over in his mind for a week, and then send back an approval or rejection notice via snail mail to his possibly rotting corpse.
...and when a poor person in these dirty socialist nations gets sick, they go to a doctor and get treated before the problem gets worse without risking losing his health insurance. It is ridiculous to be living in a system where your health insurance can just disappear when you need it most like Americans currently do.
That's the danger of letting government be your health care provider and the public scolding mechanism: eventually you will be subject to their control and they will treat you as just another statistic. It always starts small, on easy targets like cigarette companies.
Can you give any evidence that would indicate that putting government in charge of health care is going to make the government care about us any less than they do at the moment?
Can you give any evidence to suggest that letting government give us health care is going to lead us to being under their control? That sounds like a slippery slope fallacy to me.
The US Government is entitled to nothing but constant suspicion and scrutiny. Our Constitution exists to restrict government, not enable it. But I bet they don't teach that in school anymore, do they? They replaced civics with sex ed, no doubt.
Putting your asinine comment about sex ed aside, you are right, the government is entitled to nothing but constant suspicion and scrutiny...which is why most people think that government health care is the best option.
