SkyhookJackson

Then please ignore my posts and continue to be superior in every way. I have been abandoned by other frustrated "elites" as well, particularly when they find that their intellectual efforts have been left in tatters by my brutal version of economic reality. "CommieCare"....yes...I like that. It is pithy, biting, and even has alliteration. Maybe you've been abandoned because it's like talking to a rock.

What made the "booga, booga, booga, are you scared yet" press conference completely stupid was the part about terrorists sneaking into the country. Ya think??? The southern border is so porous you'd have to be an idiot not to assume the "evil doers" aren't already here. People in Arizona have found prayer rugs in their back yards for heaven's sake! And, of course, there are the garden variety, home grown terrorists. This entire country has been consumed by paranoia with Bush, Cheney and the corpse-like Chertoff fanning the flames at every opportunity. We're more apt to die from tainted Chinese fish, a lightning strike or a wayward bus. I am so sick of this bunch.

Those darn, family-value Republican rascals. They just can't stay out of trouble. From today's Miami (Florida) Herald: A Republican state lawmaker charged with offering to perform oral sex for $20 on an undercover male police officer vowed Thursday to defend himself in court and said he would not resign from office. "I am filing a not guilty plea. I am vigorously going to fight this," State Rep. Bob Allen, a co-chair of Republican presidential candidate John McCain's campaign in Florida, said at a news conference. "I am not resigning my office because the people elected me and want me to do a good job. I am going to do a good job for them in finishing this term." http://www.miamiherald.com/775/story/167707.html

Don't dismay, they all say that but come running back for more. What does your rant have to do with Canadian or American health care? Do you think things would be just ducky if Big Al were president? What was Kerry's excuse? Why can't "progressives" mobilize enough political support to prevail on health care or other issues? Just educating the Canadians on the screwed up country to their south . . . and yes, if "Big Al" had been president, I think the United States would have been a better place today. At the moment, the forces that might bring decent health care to the U.S. are hamstrung by numbers. In the Congress they do not have a veto-proof majority and in the Senate they don't have the numbers to prevent a filibuster. Sadly, the Republicans are filibustering virtually everything. Sane people can only hope the 2008 election brings an end to the madness.

Last time I checked, the "nation" was for all of us, not just the "progressives" who think they know what's best for everybody. Start by winning some elections....even the "progressives" in Canada got turfed. I wasn't going to respond to you anymore, but you sure know how to press the right button: Elections. If you will recall, in the year 2000, your boy was appointed to the presidency AFTER the Supreme Court stopped the counting of votes in Florida. (Their conclusion had an amusing passage about it causing irreparable harm to the plaintiff - Shrub - if the vote was to continue. The harm, of course, would have been the loss of the White House.) The votes, as you must know, were later tallied up and - surprise, surprise - Mr. Gore, in truth, won Florida, despite a whole lot of monkey business with the voting machines and overt voter disenfranchisement. Fast forward to 2004. For the first time in history all the exit polls turned out the be "wrong." The same polls used in other countries to verify the "truthiness" of their elections, suddenly failed in the greatest democracy on earth. Mr. Kerry was projected to be a landslide winner based on exit polling and Mr. Bush, unfazed, went to bed early. We all know what happened and the real tragedy was that Mr. Kerry, despite objections from Mr. Edwards, chose not to contest the results. Investigations have been done which strongly indicate more voting machine tampering in Ohio, as well as questionable behavior by their Secretary of State (who, oddly, was a huge Bush/Cheney water carrier in the state) and other election officials. The court battles are still going on and there are new "vote caging" revelations being exposed in the Justice Department's firing of federal prosecutors scandal. True, officially, my side lost and I can't be sure we won't lose in 2008 because of the same dirty tricks. But the real losers have been 3,611 Americans (as of yesterday) and upwards of a half million Iraqis. Meanwhile, Usama Bin Laden, who Bush doesn't think much about anymore (his words), is still dragging his dialysis machine around the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Cute story....I remain un-moved. Corporate culture is neither good or bad, it simply is. Human beings are suffering all over the planet, but all Americans deserve universal health care? Would you accept a lower standard of health care in the USA to spread the wealth for just the basics in SubSaharan Africa? Let's see how many Americans (or Canadians) line up for that kind of egalitarian approach to health care. In the end, we're all in this together. You can't take it with you, BC2004. I'm pretty much done debating you since it's apparent you're in that 26% who would support King George even if he got on television and bashed puppies with a hammer.

Personally, other than the fact the guy opines long and loud on a fairly regular basis about the sanctity of marriage and how gay marriage will somehow ruin hetero marriage, I couldn't care less if he hired a hooker. I am curious about where he is today, though. He didn't show up on the Senate floor to vote on an amendment to an Iraqi bill. Suppose the wife carried through with that Lorena Bobbitt thought??? LOL.

That's right...because it is all part of "corporate culture", including government itself. What is so special about health care? Why not universal food, clothing, and housing? About 16% of US GDP is diectly related to health care, and even more is indirectly related. Anybody proposing to change the status quo will definitely have an uphill battle. Why is the "corporate culture" a good thing to you? Is money really more important than the suffering of human beings? You must have read the story about the little boy with a toothache who had been kicked out of SCHIP for lack of funding. He didn't dare tell his mother about the sore tooth because he knew she couldn't afford to take him for care. He developed a brain infection and died weeks later after incurring a quarter of a million dollar bill . . . which you, my friend, are paying.

Unfortunately, CNN seems to be focusing on what they call Michael Moore's "fudged facts" as opposed to the underlying problem. Earlier in the day one of CNN's news readers, Kyra Phillips, urged watchers to stay tuned for a continuation of Michael Moore's interview, adding "if you can stomach it." It's clear what the problem is. If you watch CNN or MSNBC or virtually any other mainstream media in the U.S., the commercial interruptions are filled almost entirely by drug ads. Last Christmas I noticed how strange it seemed there weren't more annoying "Chia pet" ads, cosmetic gift ads, toy commercials, etc. That's because the drug industry is paying the news outlets megabucks to dominate the airways. It stands to reason CNN and their ilk will not screw their benefactors. MSM is part of the corporate culture that loves war and its profits and is now looking at U.S. healthcare through rose-colored glasses. We've got an uphill battle.

Probably would be more "efficient", but who cares? Seniors vote more consistently than any other block, and they will not sit still for watered down Medicare. We just gave them more with Medicare Part D for prescription drugs last year, and even that plan is not standardized. The Clintons found out in 1993 what happens when you dick around with Big Insurance, Big Pharma, Hospitals, Physicians, and Trial Lawyers. There you go. You hit the nail on the head. Our health care industry is controlled by a wealthy bunch of corporate giants. America's very own Soprano family. Truth be told, though, the physicians have been turning tail from the mob and siding more with the patients. Seniors, under universal health care, would not get "watered down" coverage. They would get the same coverage as everyone else. Do you think Medicare is as it currently exists is wonderful? Apparently not since the average retired couple is estimated to need a quarter of a million dollars in retirement funds set aside JUST FOR HEALTH CARE. I, personally, know of a man on Medicare who was paying $900 a month for supplemental insurance. And don't get me started on the drug bill. Yesterday a woman called the Washington Journal on CSPAN during a call-in segment about health care reform. She was weeping and related a story about being on Medicare Part D and hitting the "donut hole." Now her medications - which are necessary drugs for her condition - eat up all but $400 of her monthly income. Somehow I think we can get the Seniors on our side. I wasn't a fan of the Clinton plan because it still included the insurance/pharma industries in their plan, but if it had been instituted we'd be a heck of alot better off today, some 14 years later and tens of thousands of people dead from lack of care. And how many businesses might have stayed on U.S. shores if they hadn't been on the hook for insurance premiums? You should be ashamed that 1/6 of the population of the so-called "greatest nation on earth" cannot afford health care, while the entire population of Cuba, an impoverished nation, has health care. I know, I know. Their hospitals aren't as good as ours, they don't have the specialists we have, yadda, yadda, yadda. All I know is if I lived in Cuba and needed heart surgery, I would have a chance. In the United States I would die.

I went and checked your figures on this. It appears your claim that health spending is larger than military spending is nominally correct even if you include the 100 billion for Iraq which is not included in the official budget. However, the difference is not large (640 billion vs. 660 billion). Social security is another 570 billion so saying that health spending exceeds military + social security is wrong.That said, those numbers do not include the income from medicare deductions off paychecks. These amount to 57% of money spent. Accounting for those premiums means that net healthspending is only about 400 billion which is much less than the military spending. Thank you for confirming my claim...Medicare payroll taxes are paid by employer and employee as revenue to the US Treasury, and as such are not separate premiums. Social Security is off budget and collections are a net gain as of now. The main point of my claim, even with the small difference, is that the Medicare/Medicaid/SCHIP entitlement programs are recurring outlays that will only grow larger....not so "wars". Even if I basically agree with your numbers, it's obvious that single payer, universal care, with the government bargaining with providers, would be more efficient than the current mishmash. Incorporating Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP and the VA into one health care entity would eliminate 3 giant, budget items. The current Mitt-inspired options being offered by some candidates (Obama and Edwards, specifically), on the other hand, would create 50+ (territories) separate systems for delivering health care, all dealing with private insurance companies. That's a recipe for a worse nightmare than we've already got. The insurance companies have to be taken out of the mix. Their mission in life is to make money and the only way to make money is to deny care. If the fire department was "for profit," they might let your house burn down if you didn't ante up. The police department would allow your home to be burglarized. The school system would turn your kid away at the door. "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." 18,000 lives are lost each year because people cannot afford insurance. As for recurring outlays not meaning "wars." Don't count on it. My money's on Shrub dropping bombs on Iran in the not too distant future. Back to the original topic, Michael Moore and "Sicko." Anyone who didn't catch him on CNN with Wolf Blitzer might enjoy watching the video here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discu...dress=385x39570

The principle opposition to the legalization of marijuana in the USA comes not from the fact that people smoke it. That's part of it, but the primary impetus came from the oil industry (hemp-ethanol as a competitor to oil) and the pharmaceutical industry (pot as a competitor to big pharma for selling happiness). It was big oil that got pot made illegal in 1927. Those are interesting tidbits I didn't know. Why am I not surprised? I thought there might be a turnaround on industrial hemp in the U.S. for fuel, but apparently not under the current regime.

A bit off topic, but industrial hemp can be grown in Canada, can't it? The good ole U.S. of A. won't allow it. I guess they're afraid someone will roll up a shirt and smoke it.

Sadly, China owns us - Fearless Leader has charged his Iraqi war on a Chinese credit card. That is why the U.S. government is so reluctant to stop bacteria-ridden fish, tainted produce and deadly toys from coming into our country. All you can do is read labels and hope for the best and not buy the $3.99 a pound Chinese tilapia. I try to buy only whole foods from U.S. sources and keep my large vegetable garden going from early May to early November. I hope the Chinese clean up their act. It would be nice to buy a can of mandarin oranges again someday.

The US federal government already spends more on health care than Social Security and Defense combined. In fact, the Medicaid program is the single largest threat to US budget solvency in the future because of the large and retiring boomer generation. The USA's Great Society programs were created during the Vietnam War / Cold War....next! More of a reason to institute universal health care in the United States. All health-related programs could be incorporated into one (including the VA system) and the government could strip the profits and negotiate prices with providers the same way the insurance companies now do. Of course we'd go belly up if we gleefully paid $10 for an aspirin (10 cents for the aspirin, $9.90 in the insurance company profits column), but that isn't likely to happen. You, BC2004, of all people, should be praying we get universal healthcare. As it stands now, I should thank you on behalf of myself and 46,999,999 others, for footing the bill for our health care. When we can't pay, the hospital eats the bill, raises the fee for services and passes it along to the insurance companies. Bingo . . . your premiums go up another 10%. With the profit taken out of health care, it's highly unlikely any additional taxes would come close to the amount spent by most people on health insurance premiums. More money for you, BC2004 - you've gotta love that!

They already do....see Medicare, Medicaid, and Department of Health and Human Services budgets. And if we didn't engage in wars of choice on countries that were no threat to us we could afford universal health care. What is it? 275 million a day or thereabouts?

Spare me the drama please....junior can join the armed forces and go to Iraq to earn $40K and more in education credits. Tell me about the 46 million who are dying in American streets again. Wow. This post, more than any other I've read on this site, illustrates what is wrong with America. I've always said the difference between Democrats and Republicans is that Dems want everyone to do well, Republicans only think of #1. BC2004's solution is to send the young people into Dubya's quagmire? Amazing.

What if Gore is right? What if we could have stopped it . . . or slowed it down . . . and didn't? I'll be dead, so it doesn't make a difference to me, but many of you have children who will have children. Will the world still be habitable? Sometimes it seems that ALL conservatives believe one thing and ALL liberals believe the exact opposite, no matter what the subject. With so many reputable scientists convinced of global warming, it's a bit rash to assume they're all lefties with an ulterior motive of some kind (stocks in solar panels, maybe?). By the way, who the heck is George Reisman?

I beleive Jenna was not of legal drinking age at the time... I believe Jenna and non-Jenna were picked up for phony I.D.s. In any case, people shouldn't be so quick to judge Mr. Gore III. As I recall, Mr. Bush (43) was bailed out numerous times by Poppy Bush (41), both in business deals and legal frays and it was long after his 24th birthday.

Desperate people do desperate things. Wouldn't it be wonderful if our U.S. tax dollars went for health care instead of bombs?

I just read an interesting article in the Los Angeles Times. Much to my amazement there is something even worse than American health insurance companies. Canadians might want to keep an eye out for predatory practices such as those described in the article. Money, money, money. It trumps all. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-fi-re...l=la-home-local

I'm not a lawyer or a banker, so I can't explain how one can still keep their house, but it might have to do with the type of bankruptcy being declared. You mention that a person can keep $50,000 equity in a home, which would suggest that any value above that could have been mortgaged, so as long as the person involved could keep making house payments, even if they are unable to keep making medical payments, the bank would have no reason to foreclose. I would guess that most people declaring bankruptcy don't have hundreds of thousands of equity in a home. If they do have that kind of equity, they are hardly "bankrupt." If the medical bill is $250,000 and you've got $200,000 equity, you're definitely bankrupt. It may very well happen in Canada, but it's fairly common in the U.S. My husband is involved in the banking/real estate field and just last week dealt with a foreclosure because of medical bills and a refinance for medical bills.

Since when don't you lose your home over bankruptcy?? Laws differ from state-to-state with people gravitating toward Florida if they suspect they will be driven into bankruptcy because they have more generous laws which allow people to keep their homes. I personally know an individual who moved from the northeast to Florida for just that reason, although given a choice he would have remained in his home of many years with his family nearby. The state I live in allows a whopping $50,000 worth of equity in a home. If you declare bankruptcy here, the only question is which brand of used mobil home to buy after you've lost your home. I'm sure the Canadian system has its flaws, but compared to the nightmare below the border, it looks like heaven from this American's perspective.

Thank you for sharing your experience with the Canadian system. When I quiz Canadians about their system, the vast majority have stories such as yours. I wasn't going to relate a personal "war" story, but it seems appropriate since you've told yours. Three years ago, just a couple of months after dropping our health insurance here in the U.S. because it had gone to unaffordable, near quadruple digits each month, I suffered a gall bladder attack. I had never had one before and have never had one since. It was horrible, but the pain was unmistakable. Not wanting to put the family into overwhelming debt, I took to my bed and gobbled left over pain killers from a dental procedure. Shortly thereafter I began experiencing pain on the other side, that shot up the back: pancreatitis. Sometimes it happens after severe gallbladder attacks. Stupidly, I continued to treat myself. Finally, at the end of 2 weeks when I couldn't bear the pain any longer, I scheduled an appointment with a gastroenterologist. I had to wait 5 days. During that time, my condition began to turn around. I kept the appointment and the physician agreed with my diagnosis and was about to admit me and call a surgeon when he heard the magic words: "No insurance." The treatment suddenly changed. After a couple of cursory tests to be sure I wasn't in immediate threat of death, I was sent back home to recover. (Did I mention this condition has a 25% mortality rate, even for mild cases?) Here's where the story gets interesting. A young Canadian woman was visiting my neighbor several weeks later. I kid you not, she had the identical medical event. She was immediately taken to the local hospital and later transferred to a major medical facility an hour north of here. They contacted Canadian health authorities who made the decision that it would be more economical and just as safe for the patient if they FLEW A PRIVATE JET WITH MEDICAL STAFF TO PICK HER UP AND TAKE HER TO A CANADIAN HOSPITAL. They did and she eventually recovered completely. That's the difference between being an uninsured American and a Canadian.

There are some contrasts between Canada and the U.S. http://www.rbcinvest.theglobeandmail.com/s...exHealth/1/1/9/ It's interesting to note that Canada ranks 13 and the U.S. is number 45 in life expectancy. Infant mortality rates are higher in the U.S. as well. That's from the Central Intelligence Agency World Facts site. Canada also fares better on the World Health Organization's ranking of health care systems, 30 over the U.S. at 37. You must be doing something right.