It's over on Health Care.

[Marc39]

Also, no tort reform! What happened to change we can believe in?

 

[leftysergeant]

If the person I'm alluding to did not have the finest healthcare insurance, he would be dead. Between doctors and nurses, a total of 72 people cared for him.

Not so in the Obamanation.

Prove it. Prove that the current proposals outlaw private coverage.

Then again, why should any of us give a rat's. We couldn't afford it.

Most people can't afford the blood that the for-profit companies suck out of us for bare-bones coverage.

 

[leftysergeant]

Also, no tort reform! What happened to change we can believe in?

Tort Deform is a corporatist Republican wet dream, not part of the rational american aggenda.

 

[leftysergeant]

It is also interesting how the whole debate has been spun from "healthcare reform" to "health insurance" reform.

The problem is not with the quality of care available. The problem is with the blandly malicious bean counters who are busy looking for ways to keep from providing it to us after they have our money.

 

[Marc39]

Tort Deform is a corporatist Republican wet dream, not part of the rational american aggenda.

Uncapped med malpractice awards are a big part of the rational american aggenda, whatever that means.

 

[leftysergeant]

Uncapped med malpractice awards are a big part of the rational american aggenda, whatever that means.

Prove it. Only people I hear snivelling about it is the investor class and polluters who think that they can later use the myth of "corporate personhood" to extend it to their crimes against humanity.

They don't matter, in debates about what is good for humanity.

 

[Marc39]

Prove it. Only people I hear snivelling about it is the investor class and polluters who think that they can later use the myth of "corporate personhood" to extend it to their crimes against humanity.

They don't matter, in debates about what is good for humanity.

No.

 

[dudalb]

Prove it. Only people I hear snivelling about it is the investor class and polluters who think that they can later use the myth of "corporate personhood" to extend it to their crimes against humanity.

They don't matter, in debates about what is good for humanity.

Yawn. More Neo Comm rhetoric from Lefty.
And it is just as bad as the mindless rhetoric from the Right Wing of the poltical spectrum.

 

[ProbeX]

The more Dr. Obama talks to audiences in that fake street dialect in a pathetic attempt to try to connect wit da common man, the more I know he's sinking.

When you say "street talk", do you mean the mostly Southern-fried, undereducated Dixie-whistling protesters with signs reading:

Obama Baraq are fashist commy!
H'es a nazzi!
Deth to Obama!

... You're right. That's pretty tacky and isn't a harbinger of good things to come.

 

[leftysergeant]

Given that one of the purposes of government is to "promote the general welfare," then, in times of crisis, what benefits the well-to-do is less important than what helps the victims of the collapse of whatever system failed to prevent that crisis.

The investor class made this mess, let them sit down and shut up while we fix it.

 

[kellyb]

Tort Deform is a corporatist Republican wet dream, not part of the rational american aggenda.

I have to disagree. "Defensive medicine" is a reality and accounts for a HUGE part of our inflated healthcare spending.
I figure Obama is wanting to just get the bare bones of the reform through first, and will brave angering the lawyers with tort reform later.

But seriously, talk to some MDs here and some MDs from other countries, and it's clear that our MDs admit to doing all kinds of superfluous, expensive crap to us out of fear of being sued.

 

[Sword_Of_Truth]

Well those people are Americans too, so they're part of your culture, like it or not.

You may like to see yourself as a progressive, but you sound like a little spiteful fascist.

Imagine a nation where the political class talks the way Lefty does, all day, every day with the same buzzwords and catchphrases and the same "intensity"...

Is it any wonder that they worked themselves into killing more than 100 million people?

 

[ARubberChickenWithAPulley]

The problem is not with the quality of care available. The problem is with the blandly malicious bean counters who are busy looking for ways to keep from providing it to us after they have our money.

No, but the problem is with the price of care to begin with, not to mention simple things like the supply of demand of nurses and primary care doctors doctors (here's a hint: we're short on both), drastic overuse of expensive procedures compared to other countries with no quality improvement to show for it (e.g. we are the number one user of MRI and CAT scans on the planet. Per capita, no country comes close, yet our health outcomes are no better), the amount we pay for pharmaceuticals, the fragmented nature of how we regulate those "blandly malicious bean counters" and so forth.

Health insurance is an important issue. It is not anywhere near the only one.

 

[Marc39]

I have to disagree. "Defensive medicine" is a reality and accounts for a HUGE part of our inflated healthcare spending.
I figure Obama is wanting to just get the bare bones of the reform through first, and will brave angering the lawyers with tort reform later.

But seriously, talk to some MDs here and some MDs from other countries, and it's clear that our MDs admit to doing all kinds of superfluous, expensive crap to us out of fear of being sued.

I read, somewhere, that defensive medical procedures account for $500 billion/year in costs.

 

[Pardalis]

Prove it. Only people I hear snivelling about it is the investor class and polluters who think that they can later use the myth of "corporate personhood" to extend it to their crimes against humanity.

They don't matter, in debates about what is good for humanity.

So every time you use your car, or buy any product you are also committing a crime against humanity.

 

[kellyb]

I read, somewhere, that defensive medical procedures account for $500 billion/year in costs.

I think I read somewhere that it might be upwards of 30% of our total healthcare spending.

 

[SezMe]

As I posted in another thread, California passed medical tort reform in 1975 effectively wiping out punitive damages. Hasn't done a damn thing to lower insurance premiums.

 

[SezMe]

I've got to say, lefty, that your potty mouth, intolerant posting style damages your own cause. Give it a rest.

 

[SezMe]

No public option, no Obama second term.

ETA: Unless Palin is the Republican nominee. If Obama doesn't have a public option in the legislation, I doubt somebody like Mitt Romney would let that happen. Mitt would have the perfect opening.

I disagree. I recently read an article (I can't find a link just now) that described what was left out of Social Security when it first passed. It was amazing. But slowly the holes were patched. Obama is probably thinking along the same lines. And he will spin passage of any health care package as a huge win for America.

 

[dudalb]

And it is not like a UK style Single Payer system was a realistic possiblity anyway.