Originally posted by: Dissipate
Originally posted by: Hacp
Originally posted by: Dissipate
Originally posted by: AnitaPeterson
How does this encourage illegal immigration?
Look at the public schools. The same thing will happen to health care.
Canada has universal health care, I bet millions of people are rushing there now.
Canada is on the border of a first world country, the U.S. is on the border with a 3rd world country. Do the math.
Again, WTF has this to do with health care???
What is wrong with you, people? Seriously, every time something like this gets discussed, I feel that some U.S. residents are really not human* in their approach to health care. I can talk to people all over the world, but I never get the same kind of chill in my heart as it happens when I talk to die-hard conservative Americans... *(At least, not human in the sense of the so-called "traditional/Christian" values - which, incidentally, most of them seem to be professing!)
I know the U.S. system is perhaps one of the most frightfully efficient in brainwashing its people, especially the younger generations, but seriously... take a good, hard look around you, and realize a few basic truths:
1) Your country is not the best place to live in the entire world. There are advantages, but there are also some frightful disadvantages. If you're young, healthy and make lots of money to buy a lot of crap which gets tossed when it becomes obsolete (it doesn't even have to break down!), the U.S may seem the best place in the world... I guarantee you would NOT have the same outlook on things if you'd be old, sick, poor etc. But these things aren't put in the spotlight... it's things like the new iPhone that get extensive coverage.
2) With the amount of money spent on idiotic wars like Iraq (currently estimated at
$440,000,000,000, or $440 BILLION!) the U.S. could build new schools, hire new teachers and give health care to everyone of your citizens. That's right, make it a CITIZENS ONLY service, based on a producing a green card or a citizenship certificate when requested to do so. Nobody needs to die because of lack of health care. Nobody should have to choose between paying for his medicine and paying for his children's food.
No citizenship card? no service with the rest of the tax-paying population - but you can still go to special volunteer/community/charity clinics and get treated by doctors who are there to help, with generic drugs that don't cost hundreds of dollars per pillbox. Nobody can argue that this isn't an acceptable trade-off - after all, if you're an illegal resident you ARE breaking the laws of the land, so you are inexorably forfeiting some personal rights and creature comforts.
3) The insurance industry - just like the banking industry and (to a lesser extent) the legal system - is a parasitic creation which does NOT respond to any basic and urgent human needs. Its number one purpose is PROFIT, not social responsibility or stewardship. Blue Cross is a huge behemoth, which is absolutely oblivious to whether you live or die. Like many late-capitalist, quasi-post-industrial ventures (remember Enron and MCI, anyone?), it uses instruments specially-created for acquiring concrete, finite resources through virtual, speculative financial mechanisms.
I wouldn't shed a tear for the demise of the insurance industry as we know it... besides which, even the poor, minimum-wage slaves who work in their call centres (and who probably represent a good percentage of this industry's overall workforce) would be glad to see the giants bite the dust.
4) The U.S. claims to be the greatest country on Earth... PROVE IT with things that would really make everyone else take of their hats in your presence... you know, things like "nobody goes hungry here, and nobody dies because of poor healthcare." Don't flaunt your alleged superiority with military force! Does having the biggest stick on the block make you the greatest, smartest and healthiest? If your economy is really so strong, how come your literacy rate is lower than Cuba's??? If you consume 25% of this planet's natural resources, how come your environmental record is not matching your ecological footprint??? If you can't prevent some of your citizens from dying from a wide range of diseases, ranging from malnutrition to obesity, what's the difference between you and the countries or places you deem "uncivilised", like most of Africa?
Some of you here complain that poor people, living on food stamps and social aid are actually using the food stamps to buy "unhealthy" food and cigarettes? How about the fact that this is exactly the model you've been raising entire generations with? Do they know any better? All they're looking for is instant gratification - aren't the wealthy and healthy ones doing the same? Are those socially-dependent people the only guilty party, or is your society sick along with them? How much food do you waste? How much human capital do you waste? What if the U.S. didn't have ANY immigrants? How about if it would just wallow in mediocrity, as all the generations subsequently born within its borders would not aim for anything more than getting rich, buying three cars, and having a house in the suburbia, three kids and a dog? Hasn't anyone here seen "Idiocracy" ?
5) All the industrialized nations have some form of social net, subsidized medicine, some state-ran healthcare system. The rich citizens of those countries can pay for private treatment and drugs, and he poor can receive medical assistance. The systems are far from perfect in all the countries I've visited so far, but guess what? nobody has to sell their house to pay for medical treatment. That is not human, and is not humane.
6) The rise of leaders like Chavez and Lula da Silva points out to greater needs in the Americas - and no matter what you think about them and their set of political and economic measures, they have a SOCIAL CONSCIENCE - which is more than can be said about many U.S. leaders and "regular" citizens.
7) It makes me sick to hear that subsidized medicine destroying the pharma industry and crippling future research. Let me tell you something: research will go on no matter what, because it's inevitable. The pharma industries worldwide are peaking. Besides which, most of those making this fearful assumption always think from a narrow national (U.S.-centric) perspective, as if the U.S. were the best and only medicine source in the world. Never mind that the Russians have the best ophthalmologists in the World.
You want to talk about research and leadership? look no further than the five largest pharmaceutical companies in the world: Pfizer, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Novartis, Sanofi-Aventis and GlaxoSmithKline. Google is your friend!
Pfizer is a U.S. company (created by confiscating a German firm during WWI) and its star products are Viagra ("woohoo! let's give week-long erections to old men!") and Zoloft (an anti-depressant!); its most consistent presence in the media is due to its aggressive fight over patents with countries all over the world. Because they don't want cheap, generic drugs to chew on their profit margins (although Pfizer is the largest pharma in the world...)
Bristol-Myers Squibb is a British company, which makes baby formulas and infant vitamin supplements.
Novartis is a Swiss company, formed after the merger of Ciba-Geigy and Sandoz - a large manufacturer of generic drugs and the inventor of LSD (!)
Sanofi-Aventis is a French company, producing prescription and over-the counter heart medications and vaccines.
GlaxoSmithKline is a British company, known as the leading contributor to a multinational alliance to eliminate elephantiasis, a parasitic disease which threatens over one billion people in 83 countries. They DONATE half of the medication necessary for this project.
Notice something strange? Out of the five, only one is a U.S. company (which, despite its stock growth, is most famous for legal bickering, catering to horny old men and turning children and housewives into complacent, happy and - let's not forget! - "well-adjusted" individuals.) The other four are (gasp!) thriving in countries with strong traditions of social responsibility and universal health care services.
Doesn't this give you the nagging feeling that maybe there's something more to life than money and profits? I'm not an American, and yet I remember some quote about "equality, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"... strangely enough, I look at your Bill or Rights and all I see is "life, liberty and property."
Is it possible that your greed makes you oblivious to other, equally important aspects of life? Are you so entrenched in individualism to forget that man is, essentially, a social animal?
No matter how much you foam at the mouth, no matter what names you call them (and how much of their own private stance can be considered wrong and/or hypocritical), people like Michael Moore, Noam Chomsky, Mike Judge, Morgan Spurlock or even those who made the "Loose Change" video are not traitors. They are actually true patriots, in that they are trying to point out what they (and others) perceive to be weak points in their home society, and they should be applauded, not vilified for this effort.
The fact that these people are going against the grain of the main entertainment-oriented media (which is one of the scariest aspects of the U.S. society, from my own professional perspective) makes them outsiders and exposes them to ridicule... a perfect, cruelly ironic reversal of the situation of the dissidents in the former Communist bloc, who were also shunned by official mass media, but praised by those who had heard of their work.
But I am diverging from the actual question posed in the original post. The answer is: how do you think the rest of the (Western, capitalist, socialist, industrialized, civilised, Judeo-Christian - pick your favourite adjective!) world succeeded in establishing national/socialized/subsidized healthcare programs? How did France do it? How did Germany? Sweden? Italy? The Soviet Union? Poland? Are you telling me that "the nation that put a man on the moon" is incapable of taking care of itself? Your own answer should be "how much of a sacrifice are you and your peers willing to accept?" Perhaps loose the second donut on your lunch plate? make an extra car payment? How about paying an extra $1,000 in taxes for a single year in your life, which would put roughly 200 BILLION in the public coffers in one single bold stroke?
How dare you complain that there's not enough money to care for your own people, while your military is industriously blowing up other people, halfway around the globe, all expenses paid?
Blame your problems on immigration? terrorism? international conspiracies against you, because "they hate us for our freedom/prosperity/lifestyle" ? ...really?
It's your problem, but you feel compelled to make it everyone else's problem as well, and then you innocently wonder why Americans have such a poor image in the eyes of the rest of the world.