CNN Poll: Americans Ok With More Government Meddling In Exchange For Cheaper Health Care

Proof • May 30, 2009

Of course, the big lie in that poll question is that government health care would actually be cheaper. And to what extent will the government be meddling in our health affairs?

WASHINGTON (CNN) – A new national poll indicates that most Americans are receptive to having more government influence over their health care in return for lower costs and more coverage.
Sixty-three percent of people questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey released Friday said they would favor an increase in the federal government’s influence over their own health-care plans in an attempt to lower costs and provide coverage to more Americans; 36 percent were opposed.

First, government health care isn’t cheap. Go to Canada. Look at what things cost there. Everything is a whole lot more expensive there than here. That’s because Canada has a big, expensive nationalized health care system to pay for. That’s why anyone living within 100 – 200 miles of America’s northern border knows all about Canadians taking weekend and holiday excursions into America to buy up as much stuff as they can to bring back across the border. Because things are so expensive up north that driving hundreds of miles to shop is a viable alternative to just paying what Canadian businesses have to charge.
As for greater government influence, “influence” is a rather vague term. It’s easy to say that you’re for more influence. It’s a much different matter when you’re 70 years old and the government won’t let you get cancer treatment because you’re considered too old to be worth fixing. Or when you’re 40 pounds overweight and you’re told you’re too fat to get a hip replacement.
Once the government started making those decisions for us – and remember that those decisions are already being made for people in places like Canada and Great Britain – I think a lot fewer people would be in favor of it.
And let’s remember that America is the great pressure relief valve for nationalized health care systems all over the world. Canadians can always opt out of their crappy health care system and come to America to get all the care they need. Britons can pay less for their prescription drugs under government price controls because the companies that make them can make up the difference by charging more in America. If America turns to nationalized health care, the repurcussions will hit more than just Americans.

Tags: Asshats, Domestic Issues, Politics

http://sayanythingblog.com/readers/entry/homosexuality_is_wrong_-_a_compendium move_zig

Let them destroy the country. A little revolution is good for cleansing the gene pool every now and then.

Dammit, does this mean I’ll have to start sleeping in mud and slitting throats again?

I was just getting used to being a FD&H civvie.
http://sayanythingblog.com/ likwidshoe

The leftist idiots believe that they’re responsible for all of humanity’s achievements.

How full of themselves they are! Wow. The gall on some of those idiots…
http://www.indymedia.org/en/index.shtml Angry Vertebrate

Of course, the big lie in that poll question is that government health care would actually be cheaper. — Rob

It would be lying to claim that it is not cheaper. Again, OECD statistics back this up.

Take out the profit-taking off of the sick, overpaid top and middle management and of course it will cheaper.

Also note how the douche-bags always single out two of the most underfunded health-care systems to make their point. Maybe it is the underfunding that is to blame?
http://sayanythingblog.com/ likwidshoe

A new national poll indicates that most Americans are receptive to having more government influence over their health care in return for lower costs and more coverage.

Hey, I’m in favor of that manufactured reality as well!

Too bad that it is not reality, eh?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Petraeus Last Best Hope

Obama knows his Lenin:

“Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalistic System was to debauch the currency… Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million can diagnose.”

Quote by: John Maynard Keynes
(1883-1946) British economist
http://sayanythingblog.com/entry/america_is_back/#c397018 DINO

If it weren’t for liberals, you stems would still be shitting outdoors.
http://sayanythingblog.com/ likwidshoe

Well, liberals did give you rural electrification and the 13th Amendment, so you’re welcome.

That’s another problem with you assuming and thoughtless idiots – taking credit for the work done by others.
http://sayanythingblog.com/ likwidshoe

Because the OECD doesn’t have a big government agenda or anything…

Heh. What a joke.
Mark

Remember what our country was like 2 years ago, 40 years ago.

In 8 years you won’t recognize the place you call America!
http://www.indymedia.org/en/index.shtml Angry Vertebrate

I am laughing at you dumbass.

Where is your’s and Rob’s ample statistics showing the failure of Germany’s health-care system (which is both better and cheaper than the US).

Answer that genius.
http://SayAnythingBlog.com The_Whistler_ofnd

That disputes the Rasmussen poll which showed pretty much the opposite.

Polling now days has become a way to shape opinion rather than tell any truths.
sayanything-4625

Greg, while German taxes are high, so are wages, so it is a win for most people. This is the goal of democracy.

Its a good thing we are a Republic then. Somehow I don’t think the founding fathers had this in mind. They revolted over 3% taxes. That could be why German goods are not very competitive.
2Hotel9

Gang, they “polled” 107 people nationwide. One hundred and seven. And all were registered Democrats, all 107, nationwide.
http://sayanythingblog.com/entry/america_is_back/#c397018 DINO

T

here is NEVER enough funding. Everything is always “underfunded”.

You sound like the defense department.
http://sayanythingblog.com/ likwidshoe

Maybe it is the underfunding that is to blame?

The rallying cry of the government sycophants.

There is NEVER enough funding. Everything is always “underfunded”.

Whatever.
J Bob

“Which is both better and cheaper.” Ok. Facts? Maybe cheaper for the 40% or or of slackers that pay no income tax, but for the people who would really pay for Obama health care (high earners), much more expensive.
JBob

AV- No, “slackers” as in referring to income tax paid, not income. Please try and follow along. It`s easy if you work hard enough.
http://sayanythingblog.com/ likwidshoe

navtechie – Can we stop calling them liberals?

Agreed! That’s why I call them leftists. They’re most definitely not “liberals”. They’re the opposite of liberal.
http://sayanythingblog.com/entry/america_is_back/#c397018 DINO

Sticking with the status quo is not an option.

You are lying when you talk about the people flooding here for health care. You are lying when you talk about other countries systems costing more. You are lying when you claim our system is fine.

We face declining access and quality.

Like all progress, we will redo health care without you. But as always, you will use the new system you fought so hard against.
Then, in the future, you will claim you had the idea first.
robert108

Govt run healthcare(or any govt run business, for that matter) is never better or cheaper. The truth is that govt is not fiscally responsible, so it always drives out the better and cheaper private sector competitors, and creates a bloated, inefficient monopoly with escalating prices. The Big Lie is in the accounting: govt never factors in its own overhead in confiscating taxpayer money for its schemes, and never calculates the lost opportunity cost for what those funds would have produced if left in the hands of those who earned them. Govt may create a “low sticker price” out of whole cloth, but in reality, the cost is simply shifted to the people who don’t use the product or service.
In this case, the healthy pay for the sick, or those who claim to be sick.
It’s just another govt pyramid scheme.
navtechie

Can we stop calling them liberals? They are anything but.

Statists, Commies, Little Joe’s Offspring, lowest common denominator….you choose.

Let them destroy the country. A little revolution is good for cleansing the gene pool every now and then.

Shitheads. All of them.
Mark

63% of Americans are stupid when it comes to health care. They know not what they ask for.
http://SayAnythingBlog.com The_Whistler_ofnd

You mean the ‘tards that can’t take care of themselves and want government to do it all for them?
http://www.indymedia.org/en/index.shtml Angry Vertebrate

J Bob, you’re being lazy. It only takes a minute to Google “OECD health statistics”. And many of us have posted links in the past too.

http://www.oecd.org/document/16/0,3343,en_2649_34631_2085200_1_1_1_1,00.html

And calling people “slackers” based on income is ignorant. Students, for example, often work 10+ hours a day, 7 days a week, while having to live on borrowed money and includes having to work crappy part-time jobs (writing from experience here).

I doubt you’ve worked this hard, slacker.
http://www.indymedia.org/en/index.shtml Angry Vertebrate

Yet, Greg, German expenditure is 10.8% of GDP instead of 15.4% of the US.

And many of the problems you list are all present within the US system too.

Maybe the Germans just have higher standards for efficiency.
rog

from Pravda, you lib assholes. I work in healthcare. If govt gets their hands on it we are all dead. End of story.

It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.

True, the situation has been well prepared on and off for the past century, especially the past twenty years. The initial testing grounds was conducted upon our Holy Russia and a bloody test it was. But we Russians would not just roll over and give up our freedoms and our souls, no matter how much money Wall Street poured into the fists of the Marxists.

Those lessons were taken and used to properly prepare the American populace for the surrender of their freedoms and souls, to the whims of their elites and betters.

First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas then the drama in DC that directly affects their lives. They care more for their “right” to choke down a McDonalds burger or a BurgerKing burger than for their constitutional rights. Then they turn around and lecture us about our rights and about our “democracy”. Pride blind the foolish.

Then their faith in God was destroyed, until their churches, all tens of thousands of different “branches and denominations” were for the most part little more then Sunday circuses and their televangelists and top protestant mega preachers were more then happy to sell out their souls and flocks to be on the “winning” side of one pseudo Marxist politician or another. Their flocks may complain, but when explained that they would be on the “winning” side, their flocks were ever so quick to reject Christ in hopes for earthly power. Even our Holy Orthodox churches are scandalously liberalized in America.

The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Petraeus Last Best Hope

My guns are loaded, my powder dry. Judgement Day is hopefully a long way off. But if not…I’ll blame Obama, And I’ll be ready for the aftermath of Dem liberal folly.

And so should you my friends.
sayanything-5371

Everything is always “underfunded”.

You dipshits dems are always wanting more money, no matter what. What happened to the war on poverty, you know, “The Great Society”? After 40 years and untold billions paid out to create 4 generations of welfare plantation voters have you eliminated poverty? No, because that was never the goal. The goal was to create a slave class of voters who vote for the candidate that promises the biggest handout.
http://ndgoon.blogspot.com/ goon

Sticking with the status quo is not an option.

SURE it is.
http://www.indymedia.org/en/index.shtml Angry Vertebrate

JBob, are you pretending the is no correlation between income and income-tax? Maybe that is true when one can afford the best tax-lawyers and accountants.
bill-tb

Another cooked up poll … Until they see who is their doctor, and what the healthcare ‘post office’ looks like.

Democrats prove you can lie to ignorant people and they will regurgitate the lies. Why do you think they demand the gubbermint schools produce more of them.
raj58045

The question was probably something like, “Do you want free health care?”.
sayanything-4625

Yeah, Vertebrate, we’re all dumbasses…The German Health Care System is in GREAT shape! Better and Cheaper…HA HA HA HA!

http://www.mpi-fg-koeln.mpg.de/people/ws/downloads/Economic Reform and the Political Economy of the German Welfare State.pdf

n the 1990s, the costs of the German health care system spiraled out of control. Between 1991 and 2002 spending on health care increased by 36 per cent.55 The
increase was attributable not only to the extension of the health care system to the new Lander but also to disproportionate growth in expenditure on pharmaceuticals
and the introduction of long-term care insurance. The rise in spending resulted in growing contribution rates. Between 1991 and 2002 contribution rates in the old and new Lander increased from 12.2 and 12.8 per cent to 14 per cent. During the 1990s…Since the beginning of the 1990s, health care reform in Germany has mainly amounted to successive increases in co-payments by patients and in government
support, which have hitherto failed to generate lower contribution rates

Why do you think that National Healthcare is cheaper? Health care insurgence requires a contribution of 13.6% of wages, a cigarette tax and subsidies by the Government.

While cutting the health insurance contribution rate to 13.6 per cent in 2004, the Act also started a move towards subsidising health care through transfers from the
federal budget. The new transfers, financed mainly through a three-stage increase in the tobacco tax, are supposed to cover various non-actuarial benefits (versicherungsfremde
Leistungen). However, as demonstrated in pension insurance, such transfers can become self-perpetuating. In addition, once introduced, tax-financed transfers may constrain future fiscal policy.66 With no explicit link to the extent of versicherungsfremde Leistungen, federal subsidies are likely to seep away in an inefficient system with an endless appetite for fresh cash.

To boot, the German Health Care system is rife with corruption.

A large part of the increase in health care expenditure is attributable to a lack of efficiency incentives and transparency and to over-capacities. The self-governing structure of the health care system allows doctors and pharmaceutical producers a great
variety of strategies to circumvent government efforts to contain costs. Doctors enjoy considerable autonomy in writing bills for treatment and setting fees for their services…The year 2003 became the year of health care reform. Scandals involving financial conspiracies between doctors, insurance funds and drug companies alerted the public to the vulnerability of the health insurance system to abuse and fraud. Among other things, doctors had used their professional autonomy to mislead health care funds
about the costs of treatment, importing cheap products from abroad but charging full German prices.

Maybe the corruption is a feature to you Democrats!
http://sillytroll.com/ Jack

The leftist idiots believe that they’re responsible for all of humanity’s achievements.

Well, liberals did give you rural electrification and the 13th Amendment, so you’re welcome.
http://www.indymedia.org/en/index.shtml Angry Vertebrate

Greg, spiraling health-care costs (in the wrong direction) are a feature of all OECD members. There is more value in comparing between the differing systems to assess efficiency.

Even with nearly 50 million uninsured Americans, the system still has a far higher %GDP figure! If the treatment levels are similar then the US system obviously has a far lower efficiency.
brain trust

How about if they phrased the question like this?

Are you in favor of government run health care that is inferior to what we have now and is more costly?

Except for the best military in the world, just what has the government done right?

Liberals Golden Rule – We must all suffer equally!
JBob

AV- Of course there`s a correlation between income and income tax- I never said otherwise. I simply said that the people who will benefit the most from Gov. health care, if we get it, are the group of people who don`t pay any income tax (about 40% of wage earners).. And the people who will pay for it will be high wage earners. A point which you have yet to refute.
http://sayanythingblog.com/ likwidshoe

The leftist idiots are willing to forge on despite their terrible track record at everything. And if we don’t agree to the loss of freedom and prosperity? They’ll push through like the little bastard tyrants they are and then they’ll blame you when you’re FORCED to use the system, as if the situation they crafted and forced us into vindicates their idea.
Stewartized

Greg- I think he`s more worried that somebody dared to say “slackers” than he is with your facts about Gov. health care.
docdave

Don’t you see folks, that the lefties have an agenda that they will pursue damn the facts and the cost.

No one is so blind as those who have eyes but will not see.
http://www.auuggboots.com/ Boots Boots

Poll, never believe that. i have to say: “Everything is under control”.
robert108

Greg, while German taxes are high, so are wages, so it is a win for most people. False! It is a “win” for greedy govt, and a loss for those who are forced to pay for it by having a high percentage of their wages confiscated. This is the goal of democracy. False again! The “goal” of democracy is to let the people decide, not an elite, greedy govt.
http://www.indymedia.org/en/index.shtml Angry Vertebrate

Greg, while German taxes are high, so are wages, so it is a win for most people. This is the goal of democracy.
http://insanereindeer.blogspot.com/ Kenny

Well, liberals did give you rural electrification and the 13th Amendment, so you’re welcome.

Or they gave us neither? Oops.

I’m sorry, who fought against black rights? The Democrat party? Oh right.

It would be lying to claim that it is not cheaper. Again, OECD statistics back this up.

Except that it’s not cheaper. OECD stats ONLY look at the price paid by the consumer at the time of treatment, not the cost.

But the cost of the beaurocracy, the government reimbursement, and cost of extra staffers to comply with government mandates dwarf private costs. So this is a lie. As I pointed out with public vs private schools.

Greg, spiraling health-care costs (in the wrong direction) are a feature of all OECD members. There is more value in comparing between the differing systems to assess efficiency.

So even in command economies this doesn’t work. It’s massively expensive and provides lesser care. Why would we adopt this?

Even with nearly 50 million uninsured Americans, the system still has a far higher %GDP figure! If the treatment levels are similar then the US system obviously has a far lower efficiency.

Yet the number of those “without health coverage” is only around 15 million. This is comprised entirely of three groups of people:

1. Illegals.
2. Young people like myself who have no desire to buy insurance.
3. Those between jobs.

That’s it! Holy crap. Another lie debunked.

Greg, while German taxes are high, so are wages, so it is a win for most people. This is the goal of democracy.

It matters little what you make when government confiscates 90-95 cents out of every dollar you make. If you make 200 grand a year and bring home 20k, you’re in poverty by US standards.
http://sayanythingblog.com/readers/entry/homosexuality_is_wrong_-_a_compendium move_zig

Or you could just be like Rangel and Geither, raise taxes on everyone else, yet not pay any yourself.
syn

I don’t believe this CNN poll; my poll conducted in NYC among numerous 20-somethings (mostly male) indicates;

1) most are quite unhappy about the hefty govt tab they know they are going to pay for,

2) after having witness the govt theft over the last couple weeks, none are buying into the ‘free health care’ meme.

In my poll, most of the 20-somethings who championed Obama are now feeling betrayed by Obama’s empty promises.

I even had one guy, who championed Obama just because his girlfriend swooned over Obama, warning me about the massive spending-debt and gave me a list of places I could go to to learn about the problem.

I didn’t tell him that I already knew Obama is a Statist tyrant, I simply took the his information and agreed with him that what Obama is doing is scary.

Dealing with Obama is like dealing with a friend who is in love with a really bad person; you just have to wait until the bad person beats your friend to a bloody pulp before your friend really understand just how evil the bad person is and when that happens be there for them in a gentle and understanding manner.

Obama is beating down many people to a bloody pulp and in such a short time, that I do not believe he will politically survive 2012.

There are only so many times that a person will tolerate betrayal and once they’ve had enough beatings, with a vengeance they will turn on the bad person who is beating them.
sayanything-4625

Vertebrate,

If you think a national system of health care is the panacea for our problems you are mistaken. Taking 55% to 90% of a man’s income makes for real disincentive for work. Also, each one of those articles I linked to showed that doctors are getting scarce and that many doctors recruited from other countries to fill the gaps. Health care costs are kept down by disallowing procedures. For example, braces (teeth) are used in cases of medical need. Also, many procedures in the US that go against the expenditures against GDP in the US are cosmetic, such as boob jobs, tummy tucks, face lifts, ect. I don’t have enough time to go into the demographic shift and the costs that are going to be imposed on the German (and all national health care systems) in the very near future.
sayanything-4625

Here’s another…

http://www.beratergruppe-ukraine.de/download/Beraterpapiere/2007/w7_en_Handrich Betliy_Crisis of german insurance system – lessons for Ukr.pdf?PHPSESSID=7cc7ed18daabe2fb46b750da66acb5d9

This is a Ukrainian report that is analyzing the current German system because the Ukraine is contemplating health care based on the German model.

Here is what the Germans pay…

(As of 2007)On page two we see that government mandated insurance for German’s amounts to 40.1% of gross wages. There are two required insurance policies for health care, health insurance at 14.3% and nursing care at 1.7% so we have a 16% contribution rate for health care of 16% of gross wages. This is on top of income tax rates of 15% to 45%. This massive contribution is still not enough, the government subsidies the health care system through taxes and a three special cigarette taxes as shown in my previous post.

The authors of the study characterizes the German Health Care system as “the under financed and inefficient health care system.” (Also on page two) They also point out that “During the last decade many western countries, including Germany, have found it to be a mission impossible to maintain the financial stability of the current traditional (health care system) Bismark style HSI system.”

So just think if we pay 16% of our gross income, further subsidize the health care system with taxes and cigarette taxes we can have an underfinaced and inefficient health care system too!
2Hotel9

Don’t read the article, go scan the actual poll. The article is bullshit.
sayanything-4625

Stewart,

You may be right.
http://suitepotato.blogspot.com/ sayanything-4808

This isn’t about giving everyone proper and complete medical care or even substandard rationed care. This is about getting their way.

The only thing the left wants is to get their way. It does not matter to them if they are well and truly right or wrong, only that they get their way.

They’ve condemned millions over multiple generations to grinding state enforced poverty on welfare. They were willing to risk nuclear annihilation at the hands of an aggressive Soviet Union by weakening the defensive strength of the United States and the entire west. They’ve been willing to retard the economic power of the first world which consequently has resulted in a dramatic economic retardation of the rest of the world and the lowest of the world end up falling further into deprivation.

They favor eugenics, abortion, birth control, legal controls on reproduction with criminal penalties, artificial technological retardation, and population reduction.

They have repeatedly made it clear that this and more is within their agenda, and all because of their childish theorizing, enormous egos, and obsession with their own emotional defects.

They are manifestly guilty of depraved indifference and responsible already worldwide for millions of deaths and through their artificial weakening and retardation of this planet’s progress millions more deaths in the centuries to come in unnecessary wars, by diseases, starvation, and perhaps the collapse of civilization itself due to the energy infrastructure damage.

In earlier times of more simple thinking and direct action, they would have been executed for their crimes without anyone shedding a tear. They may still go to the wall at the hands of a mankind led to desolation and ruin by them. In the meantime, they exist at our leisure, at our mercy.

They have no power we the people do not give them. It is time to get that fact back into the minds of the people. The world should not be in the hands of willful spiteful selfish deranged children.

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CNN Poll: Americans Ok With More Government Meddling In Exchange For Cheaper Health Care

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