Ok. so Obama's health-care legilslation passed.

[01001010]

Wait, what?

the food industry DOES NOT need to report to the f.d.a. if they find harmful bacteria in the meats they are goin to sell you. they simply need to cook the meat and package it in a different way.

He's right, in the sense that the meat industry does not report to the FDA. They report to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service

even if they did need to report an issue it wouldnt matter, because the f.d.a is not a government managed administration.

What classifies as a government managed administration?

The FDA is an agency within the United States Department of Health and Human Services responsible for protecting and promoting the nation's public health.

ask the fda whos job it is to make sure the food is safe and they will tell you the manufacturer, but ask the manufacturer the same question and they will say its the fdas job. this is simply a loop hole for them to bounce back and forth behind.

Again, what?

FDA ensures that the food we eat is safe and wholesome, that the cosmetics we use won't harm us, and that medicines, medical devices, and radiation-emitting consumer products such as microwave ovens are safe and effective. FDA also oversees feed and drugs for pets and farm animals. Authorized by Congress to enforce the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act and several other public health laws, the agency monitors the manufacture, import, transport, storage, and sale of $1 trillion worth of goods annually, at a cost to taxpayers of about $3 a person.

Products found to be unfit for consumers are withdrawn from the marketplace, either by voluntary recall or by court-ordered seizure. These products usually are destroyed, or in some cases, they are reconditioned to be in compliance with FDA regulations. Recent recalls.

 

[63083]

[QUOTE
FDA ensures that the food we eat is safe and wholesome, that the cosmetics we use won't harm us, and that medicines, medical devices, and radiation-emitting consumer products such as microwave ovens are safe and effective. FDA also oversees feed and drugs for pets and farm animals. Authorized by Congress to enforce the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act and several other public health laws, the agency monitors the manufacture, import, transport, storage, and sale of $1 trillion worth of goods annually, at a cost to taxpayers of about $3 a person.

Products found to be unfit for consumers are withdrawn from the marketplace, either by voluntary recall or by court-ordered seizure. These products usually are destroyed, or in some cases, they are reconditioned to be in compliance with FDA regulations. Recent recalls.
]/QUOTE]

This makes me laugh. You know China discovered that some of it's manufacturers were making baby food formula that contained a large amount of a dangerous chemical and they ordered the production of the formula stopped when the realized young babies in orphanages and adoption centers were getting sick and readily dying.
The Chinese government notified the U.S. government and the FDA about what they had discovered but the U.S. government and the FDA refused t notify the public about it. It was not only found in baby formulas. It was also found in powdered milk in candy products manufactured in China. This is not the Chinese government trying to hurt us. It was their attempt to help us, but the U.S. government wants more money. Now I don't know about you guys, but putting a few billion dollars above the lives of tens of thousands of Americans is outright murder and corruption on the half of the U.S. government.

 

[root]

That's not at all what it means. What that is saying is that they can't charge you more if you have a bad medical history.

so person A and person B pay more, even though person A already has pre-existing conditions, and is more sickly than person B, so the premiums of person A don't actually cover their sickness, person B has to pay a little from their premiums as well...

no anyone who thinks that this is wrong needs to stop having any kind of insurance scheme what-so-ever. it is ALWAYS the case that the one person who needs cover won't have put a lot in. ALWAYS.

as an example, for our uber socialist NHS...
per month my employee contributions are £215, my employer also pays £248 in my name, so that's £461 per month (£5532 per year).

It's already the case that contributions to the scheme are based on a percentage of wages.

I didn't use any NHS services last year. but I clearly paid more than my fair share!

the last time I did use the Services of the NHS (personally) was a few years ago when I had some dentistry done.
oh, and of course when my daughter was born.

there are people who earn more than me who pay more than me, and may not have used the services in years, alternatively there will be poorer people who are statistically more likely to be sick, who will make less contributions and will use the service more...

frankly I would rather pay more and use less but know that if and when my hips give out when I'm old, or, (as a smoker) when I get lung cancer, or when I get a little too drunk and wind up in hospital getting my stomach pumped, or when I have more kids than need to be born, or when any of my kids fall off their bike etc, that I can just take them straight to a hospital, and me/they will get treated, and I'll be able to concern myself with getting better, not how I'm going to pay.

The thing about this whole bill anyway, states can opt out of it... so what's the point? It can be a government thing, then no states actually want it, so nothing changes.

can you honestly see some states opting out? the real trouble with the opt-out scheme is that richer states will tend to opt-out, (rich = statistically less likely to be sick, also statistically more likely to be able to afford private health care), yet states with higher concentrations of poorer people will more than likely opt-in, lots of poor people who are probably sickly, and need healthcare yet can't afford the insurance premiums.

the trouble with a scheme like this is it really does have to be all or nothing. states shouldn't be able to opt out. people should be able to opt out. so I could either choose to have private healthcare from the government, or choose to have private healthcare from a insurance Co. the only difference is the name on my policy. -and that the government healthcare will not discriminate.

You know China discovered that some of it's manufacturers were making baby food formula that contained a large amount of a dangerous chemical and they ordered the production of the formula stopped when the realized young babies in orphanages and adoption centers were getting sick and readily dying.
The Chinese government notified the U.S. government and the FDA about what they had discovered but the U.S. government and the FDA refused t notify the public about it. It was not only found in baby formulas. It was also found in powdered milk in candy products manufactured in China. This is not the Chinese government trying to hurt us. It was their attempt to help us, but the U.S. government wants more money. Now I don't know about you guys, but putting a few billion dollars above the lives of tens of thousands of Americans is outright murder and corruption on the half of the U.S. government.

it was melamine, (as in the plastic stuff that they make camping plates/cups out of). is was solidifying inside the babies kidneys and giving them large plastic kidney stones.
the reason that they used the melamine was because they'd thinned out the milk powder to make it go further, but then it didn't look right when it was made, (too pale) so they dumped a load of white plastic powder in it to give the right colour/consistency.

Are you sure that the government didn't say anything? or is it actually the case that there weren't really any affected products?
certainly in Britain there weren't really any affected products, save for perhaps a few products found in speciality Chinese supermarkets. there weren't really any products containing the Chinese milk powder in regular domestic stores, (like tesco/asda etc)...

 

[Atomic Rooster]

Making Health Care Worse

What is so wrong with the current medical system in the United States that we are being urged to rush headlong into a new government system that we are not even supposed to understand, because this legislation is to be rushed through Congress before even the Senators and Representatives have a chance to read it?

Among the things that people complain about under the present medical care system are the costs, insurance company bureaucrats' denials of reimbursements for some treatments and the free loaders at hospital emergency rooms whose costs have to be paid by others.

Will a government-run medical system make these things better or worse? This very basic question seldom seems to get asked, much less answered.

The "Costs" of Medical Care: Part III

Over the years, scandal after scandal has shown waste, fraud and abuse to be rampant in Medicare and Medicaid. Why would anyone imagine that a new government medical program will do what existing government medical programs have clearly failed to do?

If we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals and pharmaceutical drugs now, how can we afford to pay for doctors, hospitals and pharmaceutical drugs, in addition to a new federal bureaucracy to administer a government-run medical system?

 

[root]

Making Health Care Worse
The "Costs" of Medical Care: Part III

What is so wrong with the current medical system in the United States that we are being urged to rush headlong into a new government system that we are not even supposed to understand, because this legislation is to be rushed through Congress before even the Senators and Representatives have a chance to read it?

really, the guys who are voting on the laws haven't even bothered to read it?

Will a government-run medical system make these things better or worse? This very basic question seldom seems to get asked, much less answered.

Fairly good question

If the government has some magic way of reducing costs-- rather than shifting them around, including shifting them to the next generation-- they have certainly not revealed that secret. The actual track record of government when it comes to costs-- of anything-- is more alarming than reassuring.

but it seems that they don't have an answer.
so rather than saying (Q)will this make things better? (A)we just don't know enough about it to tell you.

they say (A) be afraid, be very afraid, the government can't be trusted, we don't know how, we don't know why but there's just something about that guy that we just don't like the look of.
he's not been in government long enough to actually do anything, and much more hasn't actually done anything real in the time he's been in office. and any fiscal stimulus packages were pretty much needed as a result of the last government, (well actually as a result of the last governments lack of control over the financial sectors, -and that was a world wide problem!).

What about insurance companies denying reimbursements for treatments? Does anyone imagine that a government bureaucracy will not do that?
Moreover, the worst that an insurance company can do is refuse to pay for medication or treatment. In some countries with government-run medical systems, the government can prevent you from spending your own money to get the medication or treatment that their bureaucracy has denied you. Your choice is to leave the country or smuggle in what you need.

Which countries? really, I can't think of any...
in fact isn't it the case now that if you wanted to seek alternative treatment that wasn't offered by your insurance policy that you could invalidate your policy?

However appalling such a situation may be, it is perfectly consistent with elites wanting to control your life. As far as those elites are concerned, it would not be "social justice" to allow some people to get medical care that others are denied, just because some people "happen to have money."

So it's now social justice that you can only get treatment if you can afford it?
I often don't wish ill on people but I hope this guy looses his job, (which is probably paying for his insurance, then I hope that his wife and kids get sick.
i'm sure he'll change his tune then, and what he calls social justice now will soon become socially unjustifiable.

But very few people just "happen to have money." Most people have earned money by producing something that other people wanted. But getting what you want by what you have earned, rather than by what elites will deign to allow you to have, is completely incompatible with the vision of an elite-controlled world, which they call "social justice" or other politically attractive phrases. The "uninsured" are another big talking point for government medical insurance. But the incomes of many of the uninsured indicate that many-- if not most-- of them choose to be uninsured. Poor people can get insurance through Medicaid.

WTF???! he just goes around in circles, makes little sense, and finally settles on the fact that the poor can always fall back on a woefully inept government backed scheme anyway...
so what's the beef here? you can always get Medicaid, that's a more socialist scheme in that it's freely available to all and state backed? the problem is that it's woefully inept? he objects to poorer people having medical care?

Free loading at emergency rooms-- mandated by government-- makes being uninsured a viable option.

Within living memory, most Americans had no medical insurance. Even large medical bills were paid off over a period of months or years, just as we buy big-ticket items like cars or houses.

This is not ideal for everybody or every situation. But if we are ready to rush headlong into government control of our lives every time something is not ideal, then we are not going to remain a free people very long.

is being tied to a hospital financially for possibly the rest of your life truly being free?
is not being able to afford to get treatment because you've effectively exhausted our credit at a hospital being free.

Perhaps he thinks that the poor could just re-mortgage to pay their medical bills when and if they are in trouble rather than buying insurance?

oh no, wait, when big American banks lend a whole load of money to people who can never afford to pay it back then all kinds of bad stuff happens, (sub-prime debt)

Ironically, it is politicians who have already made medical insurance so expensive that many people refuse to buy it. Insurance is designed to cover risk. But politicians have mandated that insurance cover things that are not risks and that neither the buyers nor the sellers of insurance want covered.

In various states, medical insurance must cover the costs of fertility treatments, annual checkups and other things that have nothing to do with risks. What many people most want is to be insured against the risk of having their life's savings wiped out by a catastrophic illness.

But you cannot get insurance just for catastrophic illnesses when politicians keep piling on mandates that drive up the cost of the insurance. These are usually state mandates but the federal government is already promising more mandates on insurance companies-- which means still higher costs and higher premiums.

the only part of the article that I see no fault with.

All this makes a farce of the notion of a "public option" that will simply provide competition to keep private insurance companies honest. What politicians can and will do is continue to drive up the cost of private insurance until it is no longer viable. A "public option" is simply a path toward a "single payer" system, a euphemism for a government monopoly.

Typical scare monger-ing BS.
the author (author like story writer not journalist like news writer) is just playing on the whole "red under every bed" fears. like somehow another option in a market is going to destroy the market and turn it into a state run monopoly.

It won't destroy the market, just like another insurance broker won't destroy the market.

At the end of the day it is just another insurance broker. instead of the policy being underwritten by a bank, it's being underwritten by the treasury.

we have state run healthcare, anyone can get treated, there are still loads of private doctors and dentists, private ambulance services, and a fair few private insurers.

the idea that the government entering this market will destroy it is just bull.

as for the second article

Over the years, scandal after scandal has shown waste, fraud and abuse to be rampant in Medicare and Medicaid. Why would anyone imagine that a new government medical program will do what existing government medical programs have clearly failed to do?

If we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals and pharmaceutical drugs now, how can we afford to pay for doctors, hospitals and pharmaceutical drugs, in addition to a new federal bureaucracy to administer a government-run medical system?

Nothing is easier for politicians than to rail against the profits of pharmaceutical companies, the pay of doctors and other things that have very little to do with the total cost of medical care, but which can arouse emotions to the point where facts don't matter. As former Congressman Dick Armey put it, "Demagoguery beats data" in politics.

of course the pay of doctors matters! of course the cost of medicines matters!

I'm not saying that doctors should work for a minimum wage, if I go in for some surgery I don't want to doctor to be worrying about whether he can afford to make his rent for that month, I don't want him to have had an uncomfortable nights sleep on a cheap bed because he can't afford something better.
http://www.payscale.com/research/US/People_with_Doctor_of_Medicine_(MD)_Degrees/Salary
the average surgeon earns $200,000 a year.
assuming that they work a 40 hour week, that's $96 an hour.

The people who just can't afford the health care are the people who earn like $8 an hour, the doctor earns this in the five minutes he takes to wash his hands before the operation.

to think that this isn't a massive factor in the amount of money that healthcare costs is just plain ridiculous.

having said that I don't advocate the communist method where everyone gets paid set amounts by the government for the jobs that they do.
just that for this story writer, who thinks he's a "journalist" to argue that it's not a contributing factor is just rubbish.

 

[root]

Waiting in long gasoline lines at filling stations was exasperating back in the 1970s, but waiting weeks to get an MRI to find out why you are sick, and then waiting months for an operation, as happens in countries with government-run medical systems, can be not only painful but dangerous.

You can be dead by the time they find out what is wrong with you and do something about it. But that will "bring down the cost of medical care" because you won't be around to require any

I see... so what he's saying here is that his insurance is all paid up. he's got no prior condition and f**k everyone else?
He can get his MRI scan when he has a headache. whilst the child living in a home with poor parents can't.

but that's not his concern, he doesn't care. and he calls this "social justice", I've never before so badly wished ill upon someone as I do this cock of a wanna-be journalist. just so that he can walk one mile in the shoes of the people he is essentially saying shouldn't be able to have access to medical care. Then we'd see if he changed his tune.

 

[63083]

it was melamine, (as in the plastic stuff that they make camping plates/cups out of). is was solidifying inside the babies kidneys and giving them large plastic kidney stones.
the reason that they used the melamine was because they'd thinned out the milk powder to make it go further, but then it didn't look right when it was made, (too pale) so they dumped a load of white plastic powder in it to give the right colour/consistency.

Are you sure that the government didn't say anything? or is it actually the case that there weren't really any affected products?
certainly in Britain there weren't really any affected products, save for perhaps a few products found in speciality Chinese supermarkets. there weren't really any products containing the Chinese milk powder in regular domestic stores, (like tesco/asda etc)...

Melamine is more less like lead in its effect on the human body in that it destroys brain tissue and other critical organs. And it is even worse than lead in that it doesn't leave the body for years, if you even lucky enough to have any of it leave at all. And all the time this chemical is in the body, it is doing it's damage.

And yes, melamine has been individualy proven in various small labrotories to be a toxic, and if ingested in sufficient quanitity, lethal. And the FDA and the government knew and did not recall it because they make billions off of Halloween candy. Thousands of kids across the U.S. died last Halloween from Melamine poisoning from their candy containing large quantities of powdered milk (A.K.A. Melamine). Look it up yourself if you don't believe me. It was all over FOX, CNN, and CBS until the FDA ordered them to take it off. Real shame the FDA cares about this little bit of money compared to the lives of thousands of children.

 

[root]

Melamine is more less like lead in its effect on the human body in that it destroys brain tissue and other critical organs. And it is even worse than lead in that it doesn't leave the body for years, if you even lucky enough to have any of it leave at all. And all the time this chemical is in the body, it is doing it's damage.

And yes, melamine has been individualy proven in various small labrotories to be a toxic, and if ingested in sufficient quanitity, lethal. And the FDA and the government knew and did not recall it because they make billions off of Halloween candy. Thousands of kids across the U.S. died last Halloween from Melamine poisoning from their candy containing large quantities of powdered milk (A.K.A. Melamine). Look it up yourself if you don't believe me. It was all over FOX, CNN, and CBS until the FDA ordered them to take it off. Real shame the FDA cares about this little bit of money compared to the lives of thousands of children.

I wasn't disbelieving you, I was just asking if the lack of recall was because it didn't affect many products...

As a matter of fact I also got my information wrong anyway. melamine wasn't added to the watered down milk to change the appearance it was added to give an apparent rise in the nutritional value of the milk (and milk powder).

There are apparently safe level guidelines issued by the world health organisation. what I'm tying to say is, did the government not recall the products because there were not many affected products, or because whilst there were affected products, it was not suspected that the products should be ingested in such quantities as to cause problems...

I read that in 2007 there was a animal feed recall because the feed was found to contain melamine... I just find it hard to believe that the government, or even the companies that knew that they were sourcing milk products from China and were possibly affected didn't do some tests on the products. why would they recall animal feeds, but not people feeds?


having taken your advice and 'researched' it myself.
I can't find anything on thousands of death caused by tainted candies.

I did find that in canada, they found an affected product, and issued a recall
http://www.adlawbyrequest.com/2008/...ndy-recall-cites-melamine-contamination-risk/

I can find lots of people 'ranting' on you tube about oh the hooro, and won't somebody think of the children... but no real news...
lots of forum posts too...


anyway... then I came across this:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/booster_shots/2008/10/check-halloween.html

The FDA DID issue a product warning. against the ONE sweet in America that was made with tainted milk...

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1077775/is_chocolate_halloween_candy_dangerous.html
the company that makes them issues a product recall.

Cadbury issued a product recall of things made in their Beijing plant

also in that article is says that up to September 26th 2008 not one incident has been reported to the FDA over death by melamine.



so... I guess that kind of shoots the bottom out of that one.
FDA = bad because it didn't warn us... ummm it did
there have been thousands of melamine related deaths from candy... ummm, no their haven't
there were no product recalls... umm yest there was, three, white rabbit candies, cadbury chocolate that was made in china and chocolate coins that may have been bought in Canada.

also I know that melamine is toxic, there was nothing I wrote to suggest it wasn't.


further searching shows that the levels of melamine found in the cadbury chocolate were within the safe limits as defined by the WHO, but cadbury chose to recall the product anyway.

 

[superman22x]

Again, what?

Finger Pointing, it's an extremely common way to make people complain less, and just kind of push the problem back and forth with out actually fixing it until it slowly fades away.
An example of this, not with the FDA, but in Ford and Firestone Tire.
The Ford explorers were having a small problem, where, if the tire was underinflated, it would heat up, the tread would peel off, the exploder would flip, and the passengers would die. Who's fault is it? Ford's? Firestone's? Well, they never decided. They just kept pointing fingers, and never solved anything other than avoided lawsuits because there was no one at fault...

 

[01001010]

Making Health Care Worse
The "Costs" of Medical Care: Part III

...and let me guess, you have a perfectly fine private plan at your disposal?

^