It didn’t take long to run into an “uh-oh” moment when reading the House’s “health care for all Americans” bill. Right there on Page 16 is a provision making individual private medical insurance illegal.
And after that, they’ll make private billing from your doctor illegal, and private “for profit” diagnostics illegal, and well, there’s not a lot they won’t make illegal to ensure that you, your doctor, your technicians, and your nurses don’t desert the system for greener pastures.
And while you may not learn to love things like “doctor shortages”, “temporary acute care bed closures”, and “dying on waiting lists” right away, your children and grandchildren will, because politicians and union leaders and grade school educators – really, all the leading intellectual lights of your nation – will be hard at work from this day forward, instilling in them the conviction that the health care services they are prohibited from receiving are a cornerstone of your national identity.
So enough with the dissent.
As Canadians can tell you, it’s unpatriotic.
“After setting my foot (which my Toronto orthopedist said was the worst job he’d ever seen), they proceeded to give me a CAT scan, an MRI, and another MRI with a nuclear contrast. Total bill for less than 24 hours was over $30,000 US (nearly $50,000 Cdn at the time). I was facing bankruptcy until I finally got my car insurance company to pay the bill.”
Yeah, that is a pretty good summary of American health system. All of us hobble around with f*kd up bone sets, we spend all of our time submitting to unnecessary medical tests, and then, to top it off, we burn a $100 bill as an offering to the medical gods before we walk in the door of a hospital.
Also, your injuries are always covered by your auto insurance. There is nothing even slightly unusual about that. If you felt like you were “facing bankruptcy”, if was because of your ignorance.
Who was that actress, Natasha something, who bumped her head near Montreal, seemed normal, walked away and died? I guess it is fine with you if you slam your head with and air bag while riding a couple tons of metal into something that the dr just takes your pulse and lets you go, but sorry, I don’t see the point in taking those kind of risks.
What is the death rate from colon cancer in Canada? How easy is it to get a colonoscopy there? Just curious. Oh, that’s right, a colonoscopy is just another uneeded test.
KevinB, you just don’t know what you are talking about.
“Edward, please, go read the whole post @11:45 and then post again.”
Sorry, I read it too quickly the first time.
I understand your intention to close down your business, but hypothetically speaking, could you raise your rates to deal with the increased cost if this comes to pass or are they fixed by some other socialist bureaucracy?
BTW – Waas it not the DEMs that blocked GWB’s efforts to get reform on tort law in the US? Thus protecting the litigation industry!
Why yes it was … 2006 just three short years ago.
Might have been inconvenient to take the COST factor out of the socialized medicine sales pitch.
In an interview by PJTV the Gov. of Texas stated they had limited awards in lawsuits. Does anyone know if that includes medical issues? I know Texas recruited medical personnel in Canada and quite a few medical students went there for electives to pay their tuition. Is it better in Texas? The other place a lot of electives were served was in Akron Oh. of all places because you could get 300 bucks a patient to wander to the ER and take histories. All housing food and even a car were gratis.
Reply to Edward; It’s already $100 per week for infants under 6 months, $80 bucks ‘ week for all other ages, exactly who would I pass this extra cost too ?
And, that’s what I am trying to say. How much of the Gov’t take can we stand before it’s not viable to run the business. After the present Small Business Tax Plan there ain’t much left.
Plus, Lord knows what will happen if gas hits $4.25 a gallon again.
Hospital ships, cruising up and down the coasts, just over the line in International Waters. You’ll be able to pay someone to sail grandma out there in the dead of night.
Or even better, tort reform.
Ratt, gas is 90 cents a quart here. (That’s what a liter is, an American quart near enough.) This is considered -cheap-. It was a buck twenty five a quart not too long ago.
We’ve already been where you are about to go, for like 20 years. It sucks, but you’ll manage. Try jacking your weekly rate to $200, I’m sure the government will respond to the mother’s raging demands with more moolah for child care.
That’s what they do here in Soviet Kanuckistan, man. What do you think we’ve all been screaming and biting the furniture about all these years?
The same way we’ll learn to love their logic:
http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=51162
I’m heading right out to spend my way out of bankruptcy!!
In Canada, folks who can afford to pay for their own healthcare are not allowed to pay for their own healthcare. They gotta stand in line like everybody else. How stupid is that? Ahhh, but you say then they’ll want to opt out of paying healthcare insurance. Not true. People without kids still pay school taxes. I truly believe that those who can afford to pay should have that option. Let someone less fortunate have their spot in the lineup.
by: Ratt at July 16, 2009 11:45 AM
Ratt, that was an outstanding post; I am cc’ing it to certain o-bots I know who think everything he’s doing is A-1. I’m sorry for your situation, friend; you need to let more folks know how this socialist regime is threatening real jobs. I assume you have or will relate the same to your staff.
Posted by: Aaron at July 16, 2009 3:29 PM
You forgot your /sarc tag in that post. Unless, of course, you think printing money will benefit the economy; in that case I suggest you google I-N-F-L-A-T-I-O-N for more reading. You might also wish to do a bit of studying of subsidies, which is what happens by propping up inefficient local industries when other less costly and more efficient alternatives are available.
mhb23re at gmail d0t calm
Tim in Vermont:
Because I was driving a rental car, my car insurance company turned down my claim three times before I finally got it approved by their ombudsman. It took almost three months of phone calls and letters to get the matter resolved. So it was hardly automatic.
I’m diabetic. They gave me ONE shot of insulin. That would cost about $1 at any Canadian drug store. They charged me $100 for it. Maybe that’s not exactly burning $100 bills when you go in, but it comes pretty close in my book.
And two separate studies in the US, one from Harvard and one from the American Bankruptcy Institute show that nearly half of all personal bankruptcies are triggered by medical events – even among people who are insured. There are so many co-pays, deductibles, and uncovered expenses (such as prescriptions and physiotherapy) that even people who are insured go broke from medical expenses.
Now, Tim, on what basis do you believe I don’t know what I’m talking about?
KevinB
You are correct in your assertion of the [democratic] lawyers wrecking the healthcare system in the US. The specific case of OB-GYN’s leaving was due to the frivolous lawsuits of none other than lawyer and democratic contender John Edwards himself.
So, aside from lawyer driven costs, have you thought that the reason they bilked you was that you were a foreigner and they saw the opportunity to bad their under-funded budget (assuming you were taken to a public hospital.)
In the US, you have the choice between losing your money or losing your life. Oh, the humanity. Except that here, you have no choice and if the government wants to save money by denying you care you are just expected to lose your life. Who’s the moral one?
The US system puts people over money. A public hospital can’t legally deny care to anyone. They can bill you later but they must provide care. Would you rather die with lots of money or live with none? The choice is yours in the US but that choice is denied here.
The Canadian system demands we lower our standards to the lowest common denominator so that we all die equally. The Canadian system is a US HMO with a monopoly and without accountability.
This is ‘one helluv’ a post.’Kate’. Thanks.
Visit http://www.conservative.org for Live Streaming Commentary of all Votes and Hearings on Capitol Hill as Well as the Day’s Conservative News. http://WWW.CONSERVATIVE.ORG
We’ve already been where you are about to go, for like 20 years.
That’s what they do here in Soviet Kanuckistan, man. What do you think we’ve all been screaming and biting the furniture about all these years?
Posted by: The Phantom at July 16, 2009 10:09 PM
Obama has already caused me to double my BP meds. I don’t scream or bite too much these days I am too busy saving money, stocking up the pantry and keeping my powder dry.
You know I always knew Democrats were Liberal and they wanted money for their pet-projects, like saving a lizard, or a tweetie bird, or the homeless, or some wetlands, or a desert, or some african kids, but here lately the Democrats lead by Obama want to destroy Capitalism the very structure America was built on that provided them the funds to carry out their carzy liberal projects.
It boogles the mind at which Democrats attack anything Conservative Christian Republican and Lord help you if you turn a profit.
,
There may be a silver lining here. Once the USA has nationalised health care, we have to get rid of our system, otherwise we’ll be like them!!
Under ObamaCare, euthanasia will be a covered
benefit.
I find it terrifying that the Democrats want
to hurry a health care bill through as fast as
they can. A bill which no one in Congress will
read but vote for…and as in the Cap & Tax bill,
add 300 pages of pork amendments.
Oh, wait, now I get it…(smacking forehead)
Congress won’t have to participate in what they lay on us peons. Full speed ahead!
“Because I was driving a rental car, my car insurance company turned down my claim three times before I finally got it approved by their ombudsman”
Then they were screwing with you.
Was your leg set in LA by an orthopedic specialist, or the ER Dr? I am just curios, because, in the US, the ER doctor usually gives you something for the pain, sets your leg temporarily, if it needs to be done for you to move, gives you some kind of a splint, then sends you to an orthopedic specialist, who sees you next day, or the day after in exceptional circumstances, to properly set your leg, put it in a cast, inserts pins, or whatever is required. Is that the procedure you followed?
I am not going to spend time finding which shell the bean is under in your bankruptcy studies, so, for the sake of argument, lets say that they are true.
Do you think that, in order to save the credit rating of people who choose to be uninsured, we should embark on a program that cuts care to the elderly, based on “cost effectiveness”
Remember a couple things, you can’t really lose your home in a bankruptcy unless you can no longer make the payments after having the remainder of your debts discharged. In fact, you can even keep your cars, if you can still make the payments. So, assuming that the reason you declared was due to medical expenses, once they are discharged by the judge, you are sitting there with your house and car and a three year ding on your credit.
KevinB
To avoid the above consequence to individuals who won’t pay for health insurance for whatever reason (remember, the poor have Medicaid), do you think it is right to restrict the health care available to everyone by law?
If you say, what about the near poor, I say, drive a crappier car or live in a more modest home, and spend the money on health insurance, where you should have spent it in the first place, but you *gambled* in order to drive a nicer car and have a nicer home, then lost.
Also, it sounds like you were making a claim on your insurance for driving a rental car in a foreign country.
My wife just left to fly back to Malaysia to get treated, yesterday she was told that she would not see an neurologist till Oct and then get an MRI sometime after that. This is for a syndrome that attacks the nerves and can do significant damage if left untreated, thankfully she never gave up her Malaysian citizenship for this very reason. Except now I am off of work till I arrange babysitting, but that cost does not show up in their planning.
Hospital ships, cruising up and down the coasts, just over the line in International Waters. You’ll be able to pay someone to sail grandma out there in the dead of night.
Or even better, tort reform.
Posted by: Black Mamba
Too funny!!! Unfortunatly it looks like an all too likely senerio. Real life has over taken satire it seems.
Obama dosent want to give health care to people . He wants health care to control people as we know all to well in the Canada’s.
Its an instrument of intrusion for all manner of federal control, including overturning what should only be State law.
“It ‘boogles’ the mind the way the Democrats attack anything Conservative Christian Republican..”
-Ratt
Gee, and the Repubs don’t attack anything Democratic/Liberal? I thought that was sort of the point – you know, two party system, each fighting for their own philosophy, etc.
But what, pray tell, is ‘Christian’, remotely, about Republicanism/Conservatism? How does purposely acting in direct opposition to the principles articulated by Christ make conservatives ‘Christian’?
Case in point: the spirited movement to deny poor kids access to health care, at the behest of your corporate overlords, as is seen on this blog?
Case in point: the spirited movement to deny poor kids access to health care, at the behest of your corporate overlords, as is seen on this blog?
Odd… I always thought it was illegal in the US to be turned away at a hospital if you couldn’t afford to pay. Doubtless there are many instances reported by the drive-by media on this; I must have missed them. Certainly, this is not the socialist healthcare practice in Ontario, where you get the benefit of comfy chairs in Emerg, and can get some serious reading accomplished before you’re treated (I’ve finished short novels on occasion). Nor is it the practice in England, where the solution to “fixing” waiting times for folks delivered by ambulance to Emerg wards was to refuse to unload ’em until they could free up a bed; poor old Uncle Harry could just deal with his stroke or whatnot in the ambulance, until St. Whatever was ready to see him.
Medicare & Medicaid are deeply in the red in every state, and the “Christian” solution is to completely wipe-out the privatized healthcare solution that works for the vast number of Americans who choose to participate (nobody’s fooled by the “47 million without healthcare” canard) and socialize EVERYTHING? So now EVERYBODY gets to wait for rationed care, eh? That’s some solution, all right, but typical of socialism: the equal distribution of misery.
And how many millions of illegals are draining the public health system options in the US? Don’t think they aren’t set on the border for immigration reform, and then they can waltz across for their “rightful” care, too.
The US system is plagued by 2 significant problems:
1. Payment via 3rd parties (HMOs and insurance companies), and this promotes excessive costs
2. Insane tort law, where bloodsucking lawyers get rich suing doctors for routine procedures. Once, a reasonable defense was that if somebody was harmed by a MD doing a standard or commonplace procedure (i.e., something that worked in the vast majority of cases) and some unexpected problem arose, they could use. Not any longer. The US could reduce healthcare costs dramatically by limiting tort law in this area, and you would see a reduction in the amount of redundant testing and diagnostics MD’s require for CYA purposes.
Supply and demand applies to medicine, too. Who’s going to go through med school and pay outrageous malpractice insurance to have their wages garnished by the government? As was noted in another post, the US may soon find that nobody is actually forced to become a doctor, or a specialist. And, doubtless there will be an equal number of landmark medical breakthroughs under the nationalized medical system, just as there are under all government-run schemes. It’s in the bag.
Ahh, well. America has the unparalleled braintrust of the likes of obama, pelosi, reid, frank, dodd, and now franken… I’m sure it’ll all work out for the best; just look at what they’ve achieved for the automotive and banking sectors.
mhb23re
at gmail d0t calm
Everyone knows, mhb, that you can get cared for at the hospital in the US – and lose your home trying to pay for it as a result.
73% of Americans want universal health care. The only ones that don’t are the dupes who blindly regurgitate whatever their corporate overlords tell them to repeat in the name of profit.
Glad to see you’re carrying on that grand tradition here.
“that you can get cared for at the hospital in the US – and lose your home trying to pay for it as a result”
So, let me see, in which states can you lose your home in a bankruptcy if you still have the income to pay for it? bleetie, I am calling BS on you, and I expect that since “everyone knows” it, you can provide some evidence that you are not either a mindless dupe or a liar.
The only way you lose your home in a bankruptcy in the US is if you have lost the means to pay for it, for example, your job. How do medical bills make you lose your job?
bleetie? ….. bleetie?
tim in vermont:
Don’t worry about bleetie. He uses cheap logical fallacies, such as appeal to belief (“everyone knows that…”) to try to sway others to his argument. That’s an easy one to sidestep, but as long as you’re into cheap fallacies, bleetie, how about this one:
Everyone knows you can die waiting for diagnosis treatment in Canada since healthcare is rationed because it’s “free”. Or everyone knows you can go ages without proper diagnosis in Canada because there aren’t enough specialists. Everyone knows it is almost impossible to get a GP in Ontario because there are too few of them. Hey – this is fun!
Actually, it isn’t “fun”, and there is more grim truth to the thoughts above than should be true. I know folks who would have died in Ontario awaiting heart bypass surgeries, and had to go to Detroit to have the operations done. My mother has spent years shuttling from specialists her GP recommended, but has been unable to see anybody in a larger center because the GP won’t make the call; why shouldn’t she be able to go to whom she chooses?
I also challenge bleetie for proof of his “73% of Americans want universal health care”, and call BS on that. Reasonable estimates put the “uninsured” at someplace between 10 to 15 million, once you remove the illegal aliens, those who choose not to enroll in an insurance plan, those who are in between jobs (with no healthcare paid by employers, etc.). The “40 million” figure is a loaded number played by the left.
More and more Americans are getting wind of what socialised medicine really means: line-ups, lack of choice for doctors and specialists, reduced numbers of doctors, reduced medical technology and innovation, lower quality of care, etc. Those are facts, not the normal leftish drivel that bleetie is spewing, above.
Is money a problem for people facing healthcare issues with no insurance? Yes. Medicare & Medicaid are there to assist in this case, but they are overspent in every state; bleetie thinks the “magical” solution is to thus place EVERYONE on a Medicaid-type plan. Brilliant. So who pays for that? Oops… I forgot: the “rich”.
For the $trillions obama & co. are earmarking for socialised medicine, the “rich” will soon include the middle class.
Solutions could include tort reform as I mentioned above, and getting the government regulation out of the medical business, where their meddling has caused costs to spiral out of control (similar to the meddling that caused the housing bubble). More people could afford catastrophic medical insurance if they weren’t forced to pay ridiculous premiums that covered every malady known to man: AIDS, port wine stains, the works. But the governments won’t allow this, so premiums are often not affordable.
Regurgitating leftish bromides above, such as bleetie happily partakes, won’t solve the problem. Honest dialogue and getting statist control out of the process is a good start, and getting the government to recognize it is a major reason why US healthcare has become unaffordable by too many is vital to the process. It wouldn’t hurt to remember what Reagan once observed (paraphrased):
“Don’t ask the government to solve the problem, as more often than not, government is the problem.”
mhb
Certainly is entertaining to listen to you so-called ‘Christians’ work through through your labyrinthine reasonings as to why you want to deny poor kids healthcare.
When the real and only reason of course, is that you’re ass-sucking stooges of the corporate elite.
Good work, guys! Row harder!
… and when bleet(ie) and the left are backed into a corner and assaulted with facts, not rhetoric, they come out a huffin’ and a puffin’ with the ad hominems. Who saw that coming?
At least you’re consistent in your approach, pal.
mhb
“Good work, guys! Row harder!”
Wowsa bleetie. I ain’t no Christian, I am an atheist. I just have sympathy for Christians, I guess that would make me a “Christianist lover” in your world
I made a simple declarative statement that you could have refuted with a simple counterexample. I was leading with my chin, and guess what, you couldn’t find one.
I know this is anecdotal, but following this link on SDA and watching the clip, you’ll hear somewhat less than “73%” approval for the idea of nationalized healthcare.
mhb
I know this is anecdotal, but following this link on SDA and watching the clip, you’ll hear somewhat less than “73%” approval for the idea of nationalized healthcare.
Small-town America speaks up.
mhb
Obama’s approval number on health care is under 50% now. I am sure that name calling of his opponents will raise that number back up to something that scares moderates, so “Row Harder” bleetie!