Thread: House GOP pens 230-page health bill draft

Originally Posted by [SWC

Erik Thorsen ]I would be a lot happier if my taxes went up the same as the guy making 250k +. As it stands now it does lean towards a redistribution of wealth scenario, through taxes. But I suppose that gets into taxes which is a discussion for another thread.

As far as the health of Americans goes its a very difficult area to make accurate correlations. Mortality rates are higher in the U.S. than many European countries this is true. However, this does not give us a positive correlation to universal health care. There are many factors to weigh, including homicide and suicide rates, motor vehicle accidents, obesity (As you mentioned), poor diet, unsanitary conditions, starvation, exposure to toxic materials, and countless others. It would be very, very difficult to nail down mortality rates to one basic contributor. If America had the best health care on Earth, but for some reason had a homicide rate twenty times that of the next highest country, our mortality rate would express this.

Now, I'm not saying our current system is good. I'm also not saying I like these bills, nor that they appear to be a solution. Even if someone convinced me that socialized health care made sense (which is entirely possible). I would still not support the federal government handling it. It should be removed to the state level.

Well, every other nation spends far less than we do per capita and get universal coverage. In other words, we spend twice the amount as the second-highest country to achieve only 83% coverage. If that is not completely ridiculous, I don't know what is. The amount of money we waste on our system is sickening. When you have private insurers taking up to 20 to 30 cents off every dollar put into the system for administrative costs, as opposed to 2 to 3 cents by the government, you have a problem. Medical bankruptcies, denying of treatment, and rescission are other huge problems. These things don't exist in countries with universal health care.

This bill is not "socialized health care" or universal health care, though. Not even close. My biggest gripes with the bill is that it is not single-payer and it doesn't at least open the public option to anyone who wants it. That's why although this bill will substantially help, it could have helped far more.

Look, this is not to say a single-payer or nationalized system won't have it's share of problems. No system is perfect. The question is which problems would you rather deal with? I choose single-payer.

And as a side note, and this isn't directed towards you, Erik, who was it telling me I was wrong and stupid for saying the Democrats tactically won last Tuesday? For the record, the winners of CA-10 and NY-23 both voted FOR the bill. How did the governors of NJ and VA vote?

Originally Posted by flame

Lets be like europe... oh wait thats why we are here. We said fuck you to Europe and came here to get away from that crap. Insurance wont cure people of their problems. Overweight people are overweight because they want to keep eating not because they dont have insurance. We have drug users that have problems because they abuse drugs medical insurance wont keep them from being addicts.

My employer will be taxed, raise the price of goods and services or cut my pay to compensate. Either way I still lose, and my small business, hopefully it wont be forced out by more taxes.

I'm 100% sure I didn't say "fuck you" to Europe and come here. I'm 100% sure I was born here. It was not my choice. Now that I am here, I want to see a system put in place that works. Ours doesn't, theirs does.

But for the gazillionth time, this bill is nothing like what they have in Europe, so your paranoia about your small business being taxed out of existence is just that, paranoia.

Originally Posted by [SWC

Erik Thorsen ]Yeah sorry Fovezer. I didn't mean to make it seem like I was calling these bills socialized. I was trying to say that it could be possible to convince me to accept socialized health care, but I strongly believe in social programs being run namely from the state level.

I understand you weren't referring to the bill as socialized health care. I was trying to make the point for others who read this that we weren't referring to the bill itself, but rather a hypothetical discussion about theories regarding health coverage. Too many people may get the wrong idea we are discussing the bill, that is all.

To believe that the states should administer such a program is a valid one for argument. I, for one, believe the federal government should administer the program to ensure uniformity among other things, but I am not necessarily opposed to state-run insurance.

Originally Posted by [SWC

Erik Thorsen ]I'm from Milwaukee and anyone who knows our history will know of the successes Milwaukee has had with socialism. At the same time Socialism has largely been a complete failure globally. I will admit freely this is not my best subject, but I am trying to learn as much as I can from this thread.

I disagree that socialism has been a complete failure globally. You can say Leninism, Maoism, Stalinism, and the like have failed. Command economies have also failed. But that is not the whole gambit of socialism. It is a tiny fraction. Socialism is a broad ideology incorporating many different elements. The USSR failed, but Sweden is going strong. So to make a sweeping statement that socialism has failed everywhere is categorically false.