Yup, but what does that have to do with the price of rice in China? A bad bill bill is a bad bill no matter how you slice it.
OK, what would make it better?
to me it sounds like...
at present a proportion of your taxes goes towards medicare/medicaid, this is socialised healthcare, just the provisions available on this are inadequate, and the system is open to fraud.
so why is the system open to fraud? does this bill do anything to change this?
to me the answer is yes, but bear in mind that you can never eliminate fraud all together because people overall are bad and out for themselves... but
medicare/medicaid are a socialist system, you don't pay into it, yet when you're in trouble you put your hand out and beg, and the government coughs up.
this bill aims to provide a third option, a capitalist style health insurance scheme, that's all it is. forget for a moment that it's underwritten by the government, what if it was underwritten from the personal bank account of bill gates? all that it is doing is providing a third option that aims to be more efficient and offer a cheaper price.
go to your health insurer, stalk the CEO for a while, you'll find that he wears nice suits, lives in a big house, might even make it onto the forbes rich list? where do you suppose that money comes from? you the insured.
I see nothing in any of those reports that say the middle class are not insured. I see numbers for low income "working" families and those who were temporarily without health insurance. It looks like the vast majority of the uninsured (85%) are native or naturalized citizens.
$40,000 isn't really stretching it when the median household income is about $50,233.
I'm not sure on this, class is a moneyless function of status.
you can have upper class people who have no money.
you can have working class people who do have money
but lets assume that money and class are linked. $40,000 is the kind of wage a household might expect if there was one professional in the house. or perhaps 2 young people just starting their careers? are the young not entitled to healthcare, are the old not entitled to healthcare?
I'm not reading random crap on the internet, facts are facts.
I will NOT stand to be placed in a queue amongst leeches of society for surgery that could save my life or my family's life.
I will NOT stand to pay healthcare for people who f***ed around their entire life.
I will NOT stand to let the elderly be placed on a waiting list for surgery and get denied due to age.
Answer me this.
Can you think of one single government agency that does their job better than somebody of that same profession in the private sector?
Don't worry on answering that, it's a trick question.
I invite you to visit a VA hospital then visit your local privately owned hospital. Only then will you understand the difference.
Reading random crap? I assume what you mean is that you won't give anything that doesn't agree with your point of view the time of day...
can I think of a single government agency that does their job better than a private firm?
yes, many state run ambulance services run better than private ambulance firms, most private run "security" services are not as well run, trained or professional as the average beat police man/woman.
many private land owners employ parking wardens who don't work as well, (or within the rules) as state/council run parking wardens, and thus they issue illegal fines etc...
can you give me an example where there are private companies doing a better job that the state run services, the overlap between state run and private run sectors is actually so small that I doubt that you can find any.
But seriously im from a country where we thankfully have a national health service which is free for all as i said before regardless of your wealth class or education . There is also a private healthcare industry in the UK however that is only taken up as a general rule by the extremely wealthy in this country and even then they are still entitled to NHS healthcare at any time
Firstly, many people (not just the rich) take out private health plans, for a start think dental care...
if you need to have a check up on your teeth you pay for this, (not the total amount that you would seeing a private dentist) but the cost is still there, split with the state.
the only way that you can get dental care totally for free is by emergency, for example you may have lost all your teeth in an accident, have a dangerously infected cyst, have severe and chronic tooth pain that may be dealt with in A&E.
but our health service suffers in the same way that an earlier poster pointed out, (might have written or been in an article) that too many people expect far too much stuff.
great examples being experimental drugs, (non-essential) plastic surgery, sex change operations, or fertility treatment. all based around the idea of a fundamental human right, (i.e their 'condition' is causing them distress).
fertility treatment, having kids is a privileged, not a fundamental human right, and if you can't have kids, then you should save yourself for IVF, consider adoption etc.
sex change operations, I'll agree if you are one gender and really feel that you should be another, this is terribly sad. but it's not your human right to have gender reassignment surgery, and the state shouldn't have to pay.
non essential plastic surgery, if you;re horribly disfigured in an accident, then by all means healthcare should cover you!, if you just want bigger tits, then you should save yourself, bigger boobs are not a human right.
experimental drugs, unproven and experimental drugs, can be a life saver, but the might also not work, insurance (whether private or state run needs to work with the known to work. not the might work.
Right. . .
Name one government run program that is efficient.
right... I took exception to this in the article that you posted as well.
in that case, name me one African American that is not a slave
name me on British person that's not travelling out in the world to build colonies and conquer the world.
name me one Italian that's not trying to build an empire by invading other countries
oh, yes, times changed, the Romans empire fell, and the Romans stopped invading other countries, British colonial rule ended over a hundred years ago, slavery was abolished...
and governments change as well. I think it's quite unfair to judge people based on their past. and unfair to judge a current government based on governments of the past.
to point to the actions of different individuals of the past that have nothing to do with the current administration is ignorant at best. times change. people change governments change...