What are we doing!? (Little Upsilon)

As an ordinary citizen of the U.S., I'd suggest you STFU before criticizing something of which you know nothing. This is one of the most ignorant posts I've ever seen in these forums.

What is the saying? "Best to keep your mouth shut and let people think you are stupid than to open your mouth and prove them correct"?

I don't know BC But I think Kali sort of has a point. Not that I know much about Aussie healthcare.

U.S. Health care is the best in the world. That is why everyone all over the world comes here when they have a problem that is difficult to solve. Who ever heard of anyone going to the UK or Canada to have an operation? No thanks, keep your broken socialist system. And yes, Odumbo's plan is socialism. Of course, Europeans are so weak minded they are ok with the government running things, which is why the sheeple of Europe will eventually be overrun by Islam. This time America won't be coming to your rescue like we did twice in the last century.

Here in the US, we kicked out the stupid Europeans and their stupid governments (back then it was a King instead of Big Brother).

Here in the US we still have our guns and our freedom, unlike in the UK where they have BB watching over them 24/7. What a pathetic country the UK has become. Unfortunately, the Brits didn't understand that '1984' was a warning, not a blueprint

OK, for us non americans.... If a person with no medical insurance was to walk into an American hospital with problem x. what level of attention would they get? Would they get the full works...diagnosis, treatment, follow up? or would they just get given an asprin?

Xenu you dont have a clue! Our 'socialist' system called the NHS gives poor people like myself access to some of the best treatment available in the world for free. Fine if you are rich and can afford the best you may well hop on a plane to the us, still I hear luxumbourg is pretty damn good and a lot closer.
You have your guns and your freedom ay! Well I have no gun but I am sure I am as free as any american.
If big brother wants to spy on me, then let them waste their time. They will find 60million brits living normal uneventfull lives and a few thousand criminals.
In a century I expect the US will be a quiet little has been backwater. Left behind by china, india and the euroasian islamic empire. If you are lucky you may survive with your gun and your freedom. But the smile shall be long gone from your face.

Okay, non-Americans: it depends. When I was young and had no insurance, I had to pay for my wife's hospital visit. It was the same care as I've seen later, with insurance. When you leave they give you a bill. It took a while to pay it. Some people end up with medical bills they can't pay. Eventually it will go to a collections agency, and they have to decide how far to pursue it, based on how large the bill is and their estimate of your ability to pay it. Eventually it gets resolved. Many bills end up unpaid, and the hospital eats the cost. Some hospitals are for-profit, some are non-profit, but they all have to deal with the same realities.

Some hospitals are better than others. Better hospitals tend to be in better neighborhoods. Even the worst hospitals will give competent treatment, similar to your NHS. In general, hospitals will tend to try to move through more quickly those patients who they suspect won't be able

The trouble America faces is that its highly conservative and very resistant to progress.

The resentment towards the national health services of the rest of the developed world stems from an acknowledgement that whilst they believe they have the best healthcare in the world, they know that it is ineffective for all except the ones who can afford it - leaving what is essentially the population of a moderately sized country without a means to access healthcare. It is a strange yet intriguing jealousy of sorts.

But then the American national psyche has always been based around insecurity and self-delusion.

Xenu has kindly provided numerous excellent examples of this inferiority complex.

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Who ever heard of anyone going to the UK or Canada to have an operation?<!-/Quote-!>

Here we see an example of an argument from ignorance. The assumption that a c

i live in Houston, tx, which supposedly has one of the best medical centers in the world. we have people from all over the world coming here every day to get help. but here are a few things that aren't said about Houston healthcare.

Houston has over 30% of its citizens with no healthcare. and no, most of them aren't illegal immigrants. there is only one major trauma center in Houston. it's easier to get free treatment at MD Anderson cancer hospital (a nonprofit hospital) if you're from out of state or out of country status, than if you're an indigent Houstonian. two of the other non-profit hospitals don't have trauma centers and take very few indigent care patients. when questioned about this, and i have as i work with an organization that advocates for the poor, their answer is that they're primarily a teaching and research hospital.
if you're indigent and on medicaid or medicare and have to g

recently, i was in a conference with the ceo of the Houston medical center and he said that healthcare cost could be dramatically reduced if people would observe the following:
1. eat less and lose weight, if obese
2. drink less
3. stop smoking
4. observe safe sex
5. be less violent
6. not use illicit drugs

obesity alone costs the US about 150b a year. add it up the rest and you can see that the Obama plan probably wouldn't have a deficit.

everybody STFU.....

Parsifal.....the whole eat less, lose wieght, stop smoking thing is BS....u see in the U.S we have the FREEDOM to do things that don't hurt other people but the flip side is we get to pay for it ourselves.

I don't want the fucking government telling me what to fucking do all the time. If I wanna smoke & die from cancer or eat McDonalds 3 meals a day that's on me. I get to pay for it myself and pay the doctor bills.

That's the American fucking way.

Kali..you dumb son of a bitch....Jimmy Carter was the worst fucking president in my lifetime. If he said anything was good it was probably the most God awful shit pile ever thought of.

"Xenu you dont have a clue! Our 'socialist' system called the NHS gives poor people like myself access to some of the best treatment available in the world for free."

I don't want to read the rest of the partisan, ignorant, or just plain anti-American BS that people are throwing out there (not all of you, just some). The important thing to ME as an American is that this is NOT free. The foundations of our country were built on the principles of limited government and expanded personal freedom (and responsibility). Socialized Medicine is a step away from that. We lose a little more of our own freedom, and yes, MOST of us will have to pay for those who don't pay for it. There's nothing free about it.

Yes, we need to fix the problems with our system, but to say it's any worse than the British, Canadian, Australian, or Dominican Republic, is just away to mindlessly follow the direction that a b

Dougie . . . you should settle down.


Parsifal . . . 'drug companies spend much more on drug research for maintaining chronic illnesses rather than finding cures for illnesses. there's more money in maintenance of illnesses than curing illnesses.' . . . so true. Now if i were to place a wager (and I am a bettin lady) I'd put the house on the line, that if Healthcare was socialized in america, and the tab was on them, we would have alot of the diseases in the US stamped out immediately. Becuase it would be cheaper to cure rather than maintaining.

Well Said.

Now the younger people were very organized. They showed that during the primaries and pre election. But with town hall meetings, Im sure most were scheduled for work or class at the time. It is unfortunate that that is proly a fact. I'd have to check, but all town halls I heard of were on weekdays during work or school hours.

Yes Doug...no reason to get all crazy on us. BC...our system is worse than UK, Canada, Australia and 34 others...including the Dominican Republic. These rankings come from the World Health Organization, they are the respected authority in this matter. Look them up.

People keep saying the US health care system is great, but only if you can pay for it. They don't realize that most Americans can pay for it. If only "the rich" can afford it, then we are very rich indeed, because well over 90% of Americans can afford it, and most of the other 10% get by. Parsifal describes how poor people in Houston have to wait 6 months to get an MRI. To most Americans that sounds horrendous...but it's about in line with the wait for the average Canadian or Briton, isn't it?

Pars, Wendy, you have a problem with US pharma companies, why don't you just buy those drugs, the ones that will cure instead of just treat conditions, buy them from foreign companies? Or stand up to the man and stop buying Lipitor, just get open heart surgery and cure that condition, that'll show them.

US corps spend far more than any other country, and far more per capita, on drug research. Canada, which doesn'

Okay whiteboy, I did some research on that ranking system by the WHO (not the won't get fooled again Who). First off, they didn't rank the DR above the US. Look it up.

But more important--it's a ranking system. If anyone is familiar with the ins and outs of country ranking systems, it's we here at SC. How do they rank the countries?

Health Level, basically life expectancy: 25%
Responsiveness, respect for patients, including amenities, choice of doctors, and speed of service: 12.5%

Financial Fairness, % of household income spent on health care: 25%
Health Distribution, how wide a distribution of health care there is in the population: 25%
Responsiveness Distribution, how wide a range of "responsiveness" in services: 12.5%

They place a huge emphasis on fairness and equity. A country could have no hospitals and no doctors at all, but if it's no doctors for everyone they&#

As a Briton I've never had to wait for medical treatment much beyond the natural requirement of doctors to organise patients by appointment. This includes corrective dental treatment, appendicectomy as a means of treatment for appendicitis and the removal of a potentially cancerous mole. From diagnosis to treatment for all of the above the wait was decidedly negligable - though the orthodontist did require me to wait until all of my baby teeth fell out.

When I was very young I also had to undergo various forms of assessment in relation to speech therapy, with the eventual aims of treatment in one form or another. By the end of it the treatment turned out to be teaching my mother and father BSL. It ended up being a medically funded college course in order that they could become fluent and in turn support my needs as I grew up.

Waiting lists are not a reflection of the quality of service, but rather a result of the number of people who

I wake up in the morning feeling ill and call the Dr. If I am very ill I will see the Dr that day. If I am not so ill maybe 3 days later. I go see the Dr, I get my treatment. I am free from worrying if I can afford to go to the drs. I am free from the worry of can I afford the treatment. I am free from the worry of any debt collector knocking on my door. Americans have freedomn from government. Brits have freedom from worry. Our state controlled health service is more than good enough to deal with the day to day and even not so day to day illnesses. Only if you have some rare disease or problem are you likely to run into some trouble.
I have the choice to go to the Drs or not. I have the choice to except the treatment or not. I have the choice to request an alternative treatment. I have the choice of a second opinion. In my opionion this is freedom enough.

Seems like many of you need to be quiet until you know what value medical care really has.
Cuts and sprains, sniffles and bruises really mean sweet f*ck all, wait until really important conditions effect your young, fresh, care-free lives, then come bleating about costs and injustices.
I have experiences of both the US and the UK systems and so feel marginally more qualified to comment than most of you. The UK NHS wastes fortunes of tax payers money on useless management and needs to be repaired pronto, the UK people don't have a choice, this is tax. This would be the road the current US president would have The States go down. Or the US could stay as is and the populace pay fortunes individually to corporate share holders. Either way the available funds are not being used to the optimum. So take your choice, your government squandering billions or your city financiers doing the same...
From my experiences the UK has an unsurpassed

@ DougieBear well, yes I must have sounded dumb -I was half asleep when I posted that. Jimmy Carter indeed - was Bill Clinton I ment (I would tend to agree re Jimmy Carter). But nice to know that you know all about courteous civilized discourse. Of course insults & trash talk make you sound tough & intelligent. I was really impressed & if ever any jobs for clowns come up, I will let you know - get you off the dole queue.

Still, nothing I heard here that makes me want to change my opinion. The US has a very good health system - if you are rich. A pathetic system if you arn't.

And of course Socialism is so evil, & unbridled unfettered capitalism is so good. That evil Obama, forcing socialism on US citizens, he will be taking away their right to bear arms next

Dougie Bear,
yes you have the right to do with your life whatever you want, but don't ask us to pay for it. many areas in the country are now charging people for recuing them when they take unnecessary risks, like base jumping etc. why should we pay for healthcare for people blantantly abuse themselves?

the whole issue of entitlements is not just a US issue. developed nations are getting older and this is effecting social security and healthcare. unfortunately, no one is willing to belly up and see that dramatic changes are going to take place. when ss in US was passed after wwii, life expectancy was about 60. no problem, the gov't won't have to pay that long for ss. now it's different. we're living to be close to 80 and people spend an average of 10 days in icu in the last year of their life. can you guess what a day in icu costs. hard choices are going to have to be made. and if we don't take responsibility for at least living a healthy life, then the gov't will decide who/how/and what will be prescribed. why should we all have to pay for people's healthcare who are grossly obese? whether you are on a private plan or a gov't plan, we all pay for that. as said before the same goes for the other five catagories of

OMG, most of you are a bunch of socialists, lol.

History has shown and will show again that because of the competiveness of human nature some amount of Capitalism forming a base, in combination with a lesser amount of Socialism ,desired because of the compassion in that same human nature, must be the best system. Period.

All other forms are merely pipe dreams, doomed for failure(many have failed in just recent times), at this point in human evolution, at least until the aggressive/competitive gene in us is bred out.

It appears here in U.S. we are well on our way to do just that.

Scary stuff.

Wow, I have to give it to the propaganda masters on this one. We'll never be on the same page, they have us all thinking we live in different worlds.

They sure did learn a lot by studying the evil men and systems their fathers put down in the last century. They are friggin masters at it. So subtle, so effective.

Can evil eugenicists offer your children another fluoride rinse, since the vast majority of you are still asleep?

Watch this to prevent brain decay.

Well said JoJo.

[Solomon turns the spot light he's holding 45 degrees. The spot becomes a larger and larger circle as it shines into the darkness allowing those willing to look to see this.]

There really are monsters, they just don't live under my bed.