http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2012/05/27/former-sen-alan-simpson-r-wy-says-members-of-his-party-have-rocks-for-brains Comments On: Former Sen. Alan Simpson (R-WY) Says Members of His Party Have Rocks for Brains by Charles Mudede en-us Copyright 2013 The Stranger. All rights reserved. This RSS file is offered to individuals, The Stranger readers, and non-commercial organizations only. Any commercial websites wishing to use this RSS file, please contact The Stranger. webmaster@thestranger.com (The Stranger Webmaster) Sat, 18 May 2013 00:00:01 -0700 Sat, 18 May 2013 03:45:00 -0700 Foundation http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss
I believe you were trying to make some point about healthcare rationing. I was simply trying to point out healthcare, like any limited commodity, will always be rationed. It's just a matter of who does the rationing. A group that's directly accountable to the general public and is subject to extensive scrutiny (i.e., Medicare) or a cartel of private groups who, while subject to a byzantine maze of regulations they themselves helped develop, are largely unaccountable.

Further, your arguments about unlimited budgets seem pretty stretched. Nobody's arguing that there's a infinite amount of money we can spend here. What's critical here is how efficiently that money is spent. Hence my point: Medicare/Medicaid is actually incredibly efficient with the money they spend. They have effectively used their scale to negotiate good rates and don't have nearly the same kind of overhead you'll see in the private sector.

That's not to say there isn't room for improvement. There are certainly some wonky parts to government insurance, but on the whole you're better off w/o private healthcare.
Posted by dak7e]]> Mon, 28 May 2012 11:21:02 -0700 The Stranger "My claim is that old people get more medical care in this country than in Britain or Canada and that costs us a lot of money."

Strange, because your ORIGINAL claim was:
"In Britain the National Health Service will deliberately let you die if keeping you alive would cost to much."
http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archive…

And the FACTS seem to indicate that FEWER people die in Britain than die in the USofA (from causes that can be medically ameliorated).

So, because the FACTS contradict you, you now want to re-write what you posted so you can still claim that you were correct when you posted:
"In Britain the National Health Service will deliberately let you die if keeping you alive would cost to much."
Posted by fairly.unbalanced]]> Mon, 28 May 2012 10:13:58 -0700 The Stranger Posted by Ken Mehlman]]> Mon, 28 May 2012 09:24:09 -0700 The Stranger "What I'm arguing is that the government program that pays for healthcare for seniors is exceptionally generous."

That is very strange because your ORIGINAL claim was:
"In Britain the National Health Service will deliberately let you die if keeping you alive would cost to much."

Which you have not been able to substantiate.

Now you want to change that?
But the facts still contradict your claims.

Unless you want to redefine "generous" to mean "more people die in the USofA than in Britain or Canada".
Posted by fairly.unbalanced]]> Mon, 28 May 2012 09:10:41 -0700 The Stranger
I suppose the Republicans are then the fascist party? They're not, of course, but by your logic they are. You're also an idiot, unable to see clear distinctions.
Posted by ryanmm]]> Mon, 28 May 2012 09:05:04 -0700 The Stranger Posted by BetarayBilly2]]> Mon, 28 May 2012 09:02:12 -0700 The Stranger
You're correct, because yours is utterly inferior and unworkable in a modern society. And what gall you have to claim a monopoly on family and work! You're a sociopathic asshole.
Posted by ryanmm]]> Mon, 28 May 2012 08:56:04 -0700 The Stranger Posted by Ken Mehlman]]> Mon, 28 May 2012 03:40:33 -0700 The Stranger
Hint: the answer, like every other piece of evidence out there, makes you look like a blithering idiot.

Further, are you trying to tell me that Aetna/UHC/etc don't operate on budgets themselves? Hell - they also have expensive executive salaries, flash ad campaigns, armies of lobbyists and fidgety shareholders to worry about. There's a reason we pay so much for healthcare but wind up with relatively shoddy service.

Posted by dak7e]]> Sun, 27 May 2012 23:34:20 -0700 The Stranger "Based on the information in the article, can you see how adopting a national healthcare system like Britain's or Canada's would inevitably result in less medical care for old people?"

And NOW you're attempting to project your uninformed opinions into some future "fact".

How about showing how either of those systems result in LESS health care for their people TODAY than we have in the USofA TODAY?

http://www.commonwealthfund.org/News/New…
(stolen from @46)

Well the FACTS seem to be saying that MORE people receive health care under those systems and FEWER people die under those system due to NOT having health care.

Exactly the OPPOSITE of what you're claiming.

But facts don't apply to your opinions, do they?
Posted by fairly.unbalanced]]> Sun, 27 May 2012 22:18:13 -0700 The Stranger Posted by Ken Mehlman]]> Sun, 27 May 2012 21:54:14 -0700 The Stranger http://www.commonwealthfund.org/usr_doc/…
Posted by anon1256]]> Sun, 27 May 2012 21:39:32 -0700 The Stranger "Now, who gets health care via Medicare?"

You do know that every time you ask a rhetorical question that just shows that you have no idea what you're talking about and that you're hoping someone else will fill in the facts for you.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicare_%…
Americans ages 65 and older
and younger people with disabilities
as well as people with end stage renal disease

Your ORIGINAL claim was:
"In Britain the National Health Service will deliberately let you die if keeping you alive would cost to much."

NOTHING you have provided has substantiated that claim.
Now you're resorting to rhetorical questions.

Meanwhile, the statistics seem to indicate that more Americans go without health care than people in Britain.

This "reading comprehension" thing doesn't work for you, does it?
Posted by fairly.unbalanced]]> Sun, 27 May 2012 21:35:21 -0700 The Stranger
"Currently, Medicare does not abide by a budget. It is not run like the Canadian or British healthcare systems. Instead, it pays whatever is deemed "reasonable and necessary." Because of that, costs are shooting through the roof: The Congressional Budget Office estimates that Medicare spending will more than triple by 2050."

Now, who gets health care via Medicare?
Posted by Ken Mehlman]]> Sun, 27 May 2012 21:06:47 -0700 The Stranger You fail reading comprehension.

From that link:
"And it's true that in Canada and Britain, the two countries most often cited in discussions of what nationalized healthcare might mean, some patients report having to wait months for some elective treatments."

See the word "elective" there?

Also from that link:
"One of the ways the British and Canadians save money is to punt elective surgeries to a lower priority level."

Again, look up the word "elective" because it obviously does not mean what you believe it does.

Also from that article:
"When that very same survey also looked at cost problems among residents of different countries, 24% of Americans reported that they did not get medical care because of cost."

So you are claiming that a system where 24% do not receive medical care (for non-elective procedures) is the same or better than a system where all receive medical care but between 27% and 38% have to wait for elective procedures?

"You can read about how the British and the Canadians keep their citizens healthier at less cost by giving less medical care to old people here:"

I don't see where they are "giving less medical care to old people" in that article.
Posted by fairly.unbalanced]]> Sun, 27 May 2012 20:52:47 -0700 The Stranger
Yes, until you turn 65 and then you are covered by a government program (Medicare) w/ no cost controls. Every other western democracy decides each year how much public money it wants to spend on health care. That means sometimes people don't get the care they need in a timely fashion because there is no money left in the budget. On the other hand Medicare has no set annual budget. In effect American senior citizens are treated to an all you can eat buffet of medical procedures courtesy of Uncle Sam.
Posted by Ken Mehlman]]> Sun, 27 May 2012 20:42:50 -0700 The Stranger
http://articles.latimes.com/2009/apr/07/…

Posted by Ken Mehlman]]> Sun, 27 May 2012 20:25:05 -0700 The Stranger
You've got a cancer that can only be cured via an incredibly expensive and experimental process. Unfortunately your new employer has a cut rate healthcare plan that is well known for denying any procedure that hasn't gained widespread acceptance in the medical community.

How long does it that sack of gravel you call a brain to realize the tired "government death panels" argument is pretty meaningless when we're currently stuck with a (virtually unaccountable) private sector that already excels at killing its customers?
Posted by dak7e]]> Sun, 27 May 2012 20:20:28 -0700 The Stranger http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/12/world/…

Posted by anon1256]]> Sun, 27 May 2012 19:37:46 -0700 The Stranger "In Britain the National Health Service will deliberately let you die if keeping you alive would cost to much."

Given the depth of the ignorance you have expressed on other issues, you're going to have to provide something more than your claim that that is the case.

"Canada doesn't formally ration care, but the waiting lists for some procedures are so long that a person can quite literally die of old age while before he or she gets to see a doctor."

I'm sure that that sentence means something in your head, but it is really meaningless.
If there is a 1 week delay for a procedure the patient can die "of old age" prior to the appointment date.

And yet there aren't too many Canadians willing to trade their situation for the USofA's model.
Posted by fairly.unbalanced]]> Sun, 27 May 2012 19:26:14 -0700 The Stranger
@35 The military can't be truly privatized so long as the American tax payer is footing the bill. In the 1870s, when the Belgian parliament wouldn't give King Leopold the money he wanted for his imperialist adventures in Africa he turned to private investors. Maybe that's how we should do American wars.
Posted by Ken Mehlman]]> Sun, 27 May 2012 19:16:43 -0700 The Stranger
Seattleblues, I do all those things too, and I'm not only a Democrat I'm a screamingly liberal one as well. You have your head so far up your ass it's embarrassing to all humans.
Posted by Dem]]> Sun, 27 May 2012 19:09:28 -0700 The Stranger Posted by anon1256]]> Sun, 27 May 2012 18:36:55 -0700 The Stranger
Defense issues generally, and the wars in particular, have very little to to with the average American. Halliburton's excesses are, if anything, just a miscellaneous sort of irritation, for we are not directly paying for these stupid, unnecessary wars.

However, if we have a direct service that is billed by the government to us (whether that be municipal, county, state, or federal) the curiosity and the Moral Outrage comes bubbling to the surface. One only needs to take notice of the theatrics associated with any "Get Jesse" or Robert Mack righteous ang-o-rama broadcast to know what I mean.

Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, (hopefully) Obamacare -all of them are, and will continue to be, under the same sort of scrutiny, and occasional simple-minded scandal, that the "defense" budget has never had to deal with. At least since that corrupt old fraud Reagan first bought his corporate funded medicine show to the national stage.


Posted by Catalina Vel-DuRay]]> Sun, 27 May 2012 18:26:10 -0700 The Stranger Posted by anon1256]]> Sun, 27 May 2012 18:22:47 -0700 The Stranger