Whistler,

It’s good to see how much of a stretch you right wing puppets are willing to apply to the health care debate these days. I guess that since the facts don’t support your position, and the “just say NO to all health care reform” campaign was a disastrous mistake, you’ll just keep making crazier and crazier connections until you realize that you need a new tinfoil hat.

NOT ONE PERSON has ever been refused the best care possible.

That is quite possibly the stupidest statement you have ever made and that is an impressive list. Having to go to the emergency room to treat chronic illnesses that would better be treated by a general practitioner is by definition not the best care possible.

Since this guy had already been in the hospital for three days, at what point do you start putting blame on the hospital staff?

42,000 Americans die each year from lack of insurance. Why do you want to continue the status quo?

Actually not. They count a person who is stuck by lightening and instantly

killed in that figure.

Nice try, but if you guys had a point you wouldn't have to lie.

It turns out that someone showing up to an emergency room gets care no

matter what their insurance status.

Whistler:

Can I go to the emergency room and get the chemotherapy I need to stay alive? If so, can you tell me where this imaginary ER is?

Let's not forget Canada. I asked my relatives some questions, interesting answers.

Alberta pays billions of dollars to the federal gov't in Equalization Payments, receiving a fraction back as Federal Transfer Payments. These Federal Transfer Payments serve as a leveling device to equalize the provincial and territorial coffers. Since Alberta is one of the "have" provinces we pay out a lot more than we receive back. This amount of money Alberta transfers to the federal government would pay for our healthcare and a whole lot more if we were to keep it (platform item #1 for the ultra right wing Alberta separatists).

Right now Alberta's health system is in a state of flux (many would say under attack). The provincial government would like to privatize delivery of healthcare wihich would violate the Canada Health Act. Breaking the law in this manner would immediately stop Federal Transfer Payments back to Alberta. I think the goverment is trying to turn our healthcare system into an industry rather than a social benefit.. thereby possibly generating some of it's own revenue. Whether that could be controlled, I don't know. I think that our provincial government does want to provide universal healthcare to Albertan's, but I think it wants to run it like a corporation. As an Albertan I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing if they can retain control. As the primary bread winner for my family who makes a living from within healthcare system it's scary as hell.

As far as insurance goes, until a year and a half or two years ago we paid Alberta Healthcare Premiums, a portion of which was normally covered by your employer as a benefit. These premiums were abandoned altogether and the money now comes directly from taxation (general revenue).

Additionally, you can buy insurance for treatments and therapies not covered by Alberta Healthcare. Dentistry, orthodontics, vision, prescription drugs and the like are not covered. We have Alberta Blue Cross insurance whose premiums are partially covered by my employee benefits that cover a certain percentage of those items.

There are more programs through the American cancer society, the drug companies, and yes even the Government that will get cancer patients what is needed with no regard to income or ability to pay now than ever before Mr Jack. No one in this country dies from lack of "insurance". Too damn many just want "others" to buy it for them!

Whether or not it is inefficient is not the point. Inefficient care is STILL care. If you are getting treated, you are getting treated. Better to be bankrupt and alive than debt free and dead.

It's time to end the corporate death panels that exist with today's insurance companies.

Still looking for that one remaining brain cell? Don't give up yet GOPLESS. Keep looking even if it isn't there.

Look who's talking about a tin foil hat! Project much, Idiot White Supremacist Rejected by today's GOP? Please point out a single individual amongst the conservatives who took a "just say NO to all health care reform" position! Most conservatives, myself included, were pointing to very specific areas in need of reform. You are either delusional or lying (or both).

Your arguments consist of cheap rhetoric, cheaper "straw men" and vile epithets that you should be directing to yourself.

Jimmy: "if you are sick, you get cared for no matter what the cost. end of story."

Im' sorry, but that isn't true. It is factually incorrect.

Nope, dope. If you go to an emergency room, you will get the minimum care required. You will not "get cared for no matter what the cost. end of story." You are a victim of the right-wing anti-reform propaganda. Go look it up, and then I'll welcome you as the newest fan of health care reform.

How does someone die from a lack of insurance? No one is denied life saving medical care in this country regardless of whether or not they have insurance or the means to pay for it. Quit lying.

Jimmy,

If you need chemo and you live in Canada don't expect to get it for 6 to 18 months. I hope you live that long.

If Barack Obama and today's Congressional Democrats were passing Social Security for the first time, instead of a creating a public program, they would likely be mandating that every American buy an annuity from a private, profit-driven Wall Street firm like Goldman Sachs (who could keep 15%-20% of their payments for overhead, profits and executive salaries) with the IRS serving as Wall Street's collection agency. If they were passing Medicare today, they would be mandating that every American buy a health insurance policy from profit-driven companies like Aetna, Humana and Wellpoint that would start paying benefits with 40% co-pays and $10,000 a year deductibles when they turn 65.

Democrats in Congress, under the leadership of Barack Obama, have now turned that principal on its head and made health care neither a right, nor a privilege, but an obligation for individual citizens and a government-mandated profit center for private corporations. For the first time in American history, Democrats are about to pass a bill that uses the coercive power of the federal government to force every American — simply by virtue of being an American — to purchase the products of a private company. At heart, the Democrats' solution to 48 million uninsured is to force the them to buy inadequate private insurance — with potentially high deductibles and co-pays and no price controls — or be fined by the federal government.

Amazingly from the Huffington Post.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/miles-mogulescu/the…

Everyone knows that the problem is escalating costs. In the end, this comes down to three factors.

1. The legal system has not been reformed in any real way. The slightest complaint is grounds for a lawsuit, civil juries rarely rule against the silliest of complaints, and major awards are common. As a result most medical offices have to maintain not only malpractice insurance whose cost is constantly escalating, but legal counsel on retainer, and that cost is constantly escalating. It is far from unusual for thorny cases to involve active consulting with attorneys before determining the possible courses of actions to be presented to the patient.

2. The cost of items and/or services are geared not only to be competitive with others offering the same within the same service area and demographic, but to be in line with the greatest chance of the most people most regularly buying which involves taking into account that audience's buying power. Home PC consultants can often command $100-$200 per hour in wealthy areas of the nation and much less in poor. No one charges $100 an hour in a region where the average income is only $35K as opposed to $89K. With the collective buying power that the insurance companies represent being insanely huge compared to the average person, the charges are much larger.

3. The research system which would ordinarily work much closer to justifiable books sucks from that same system. They inflate their charges, set their costs according to the income they want and not what can be justified, and they in the end get every penny, and the companies that sponsor it all pass the cost along. Politicians in congress from both parties have long covered for this, and been involved in rigging the system to prevent it from being changed. Insurance companies, medical companies, pharmaceutical companies, one and all have had congress in their pockets for years, getting them to game it all to keep their feeding trough going. It gets even worse as now businesses are expected to double the input from from the individuals with their euphemistically named 'contributions'. Instead of monies flowing by the hundreds of dollars a month from millions of people, you now have two times that. The feeding trough looks endless.

Of course, they've been stupidly greedily blind to the fact that they can't keep increasing their takings, and the first signs of that were the imposition of deductibles and copays as a way of life right up front. Those are the first two things everyone now looks at when shopping for insurance, not monthly premium. To keep getting paid, to keep making their profits at the same time, some things have to be shaved off.

Even as they drop coverage of some things outright and increase out of pocket costs, those things they do cover just keep going up because they pay them because the government and public won't let them refuse and knock the costs back. The bullsh1t claim that they are interfering with medicine is used and no one asks to see the books.

Since the medical industry can't legally charge two different things, they cannot charge the uninsured less. The costs remain what they are, and the uninsured are faced with a necessary service being priced out of their range more and more.

All Obamacare does is add our tax money to that trough.

That's just plain stupid.

Even if Palin was right:

There would be no corporate death panels.

There would be government "I won't pay for that" panels.

Patients would be welcome to go around the panels and still get the surgery.

Canadians had to sue their government to be able to pay for services and/or have private insurance themselves.

In ALL socialist medicine systems, the government decides what drugs are allowed, how many machines a hospital can have, and even how many patients a doctor can see. There is no appeal process, because the gov't effectively runs the medical field.

Not that you care. You'll tell whatever lie is necessary to get this passed.

Dying due to hunger, violence, accidents and other neglectful acts are common but should not be tolerated though. But dying due to this reason is the oddest cause one can die of much more that it happened in the hospital.