is america embracing socialsim

[spartacus]

bail out the banks, in essence semi nationalising them. bail out the car industry. in fact bail out any multi national thats fed on free market capitalism and use tax payers money as a bulwark to stop the collapse. what next? america gets a european health service? now that is pie in the sky. has it occured to anyone else that bush is the most socialist president since f.d.r.

[Kylyssa]

Bush has enacted socialism in the form of welfare for the obscenely wealthy.  I think a "socialist" health care system would be great.  In other countries the system works - sure people bitch about it but is it better to die without medical care?  We already pay as high a percentages of taxes as Europeans do.  They just call the taxes all sorts of different things here so they can pretend they don't count as taxes.  

Just look at your next paycheck, adding up all of the stuff taken out of your check - and count the bits taken for health insurance, too.  It will equal a a big percentage of your wages.  Now imagine that instead of using that money to pay a bunch of bureaucrats to find ways to avoid using that tax money on the citizens (such as the Social Security Administration whose apparent job is to figure out how to deny disabled people benefits long enough so most die before collecting the money they paid in) the taxes were used on useful things such as providing health care for sick people and education for children and for developing clean power sources.  Oh, and the money you currently pay into insurance is paying people to find ways to deny covering your medical care should you become ill.

[curiosityandthecat]

Ironic that the Repubs tried to paint Obama with the Socialist label in order to smear him, yet...

[SSY]

Kylyssa, you have no idea how wasteful the nationa health service in england is. I used to think that healthcare to all, free at the point of need, was great. i then found out that the nhs budget has balooned to 110 billion pounds a year under labour, a 3 fold increase in 10 years.  can tell you from perosnal experience that the standard of healthcare is still shockingly low in many instances.

Social provision of healthcare is profligacy manifest.

I would also contest that you pay as much tax as we do, at least in this country. We may see similar deductions to our pay packet, but due to the massive inflation of stealth taxes, a pound over here will probably buy less than a dollar over in the states, this was true even before the pounds slip against the dollar. To give you an idea, petrol costs a pound a litre over here at the minute, or $6.59456088 a gallon, almost all of the increase in price is due to tax. even trying to import goods from the states ( when that was a good idea ) Brown stings you for around 25% normally.

[DennisK]

bail out the banks, in essence semi nationalising them. bail out the car industry. in fact bail out any multi national thats fed on free market capitalism and use tax payers money as a bulwark to stop the collapse. what next? america gets a european health service? now that is pie in the sky. has it occured to anyone else that bush is the most socialist president since f.d.r.

The government has no control of the money spent.  We should be asking ourselves, "WTF?".  Saying there was a buttload of money spent is the understatement of the millennium.   Under fear we were coerced into throwing money at the situation.  Fear is a powerful weapon of many (if not all) governments.

http://www.cnsnews.com/public/Content/Article.aspx?rsrcid=41183

Where Did the Bailout Money Go? Banks Can’t, or Won’t, Say
Monday, December 22, 2008
By Matt Apuzzo, Associated Press


Elizabeth Warren chairs an oversight committee set up by Congress to oversee the bailout. The Associated Press interviewed her in Washington on Thursday, Dec. 18, 2008. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
Washington (AP) - It's something any bank would demand to know before handing out a loan: Where's the money going? But after receiving billions in aid from U.S. taxpayers, the nation's largest banks say they can't track exactly how they're spending the money or they simply refuse to discuss it.
 
"We've lent some of it. We've not lent some of it. We've not given any accounting of, 'Here's how we're doing it,'" said Thomas Kelly, a spokesman for JPMorgan Chase, which received $25 billion in emergency bailout money. "We have not disclosed that to the public. We're declining to."
 
The Associated Press contacted 21 banks that received at least $1 billion in government money and asked four questions: How much has been spent? What was it spent on? How much is being held in savings, and what's the plan for the rest?
 
None of the banks provided specific answers.
 
"We're not providing dollar-in, dollar-out tracking," said Barry Koling, a spokesman for Atlanta, Ga.-based SunTrust Banks Inc., which got $3.5 billion in taxpayer dollars.
 
Some banks said they simply didn't know where the money was going.
 
"We manage our capital in its aggregate," said Regions Financial Corp. spokesman Tim Deighton, who said the Birmingham, Ala.-based company is not tracking how it is spending the $3.5 billion it received as part of the financial bailout.
 
The answers highlight the secrecy surrounding the Troubled Assets Relief Program, which earmarked $700 billion -- about the size of the Netherlands' economy -- to help rescue the financial industry. The Treasury Department has been using the money to buy stock in U.S. banks, hoping that the sudden inflow of cash will get banks to start lending money.
 
There has been no accounting of how banks spend that money. Lawmakers summoned bank executives to Capitol Hill last month and implored them to lend the money -- not to hoard it or spend it on corporate bonuses, junkets or to buy other banks. But there is no process in place to make sure that's happening and there are no consequences for banks who don't comply.
 
"It is entirely appropriate for the American people to know how their taxpayer dollars are being spent in private industry," said Elizabeth Warren, the top congressional watchdog overseeing the financial bailout.
 
But, at least for now, there's no way for taxpayers to find that out...

[Kylyssa]

I guess I think universal health care would be a good idea because people here become homeless because of disabilities because they can't afford health care and can't actually get the SSDI they paid in all their lives.  Many Americans are one major illness away from homelessness.  When you compare people dying from lack of medical care or losing their homes and jobs due to illness with other issues the other issues start to feel less important.

I'm one of those people who is disabled yet cannot collect disability.  I don't have the sniffles or a head cold, I have lupus, a brain tumor, uncontrolled seizures, dangerously high fevers with delirium, random loss of consciousness, and fibromyalgia.  I haven't seen a doctor in about a year as that's when my savings ran out.  My condition has not improved and I cannot get medication for my seizures.  While I make a small amount from my writing I survive only due to the kindness of friends.  I'm one of those little unimportant people dying in the richest country in the world.  I paid my taxes, I paid in my social security but I'm a discard as are uncounted thousands of Americans.  

The money that could be buying my seizure medication and doctor visits and making me well enough to get back to work and be a productive member of society was used to buy guns and bombs and tanks to kill 63-year-old grannies and pre-teens in Iraq.  I'm a little pissed about it.

[Ninteen45]

This here makes me Glad I'm in Scotland. I hope Socilized Healthcare comes to you soon.

[SSY]

While I certainly empathise with your situation, social healthcare is not a system whereby it is expensive, but infallible. there are still many, many people who the system refuses to help. Despite the insane bugets, corners are still being cut where they matter, in the number of beds and nurses. Private companies are hired to clean wards now, the result being outbreaks across the whole country of MRSA and other superbugs. many peple now fear going into hospital, incase they go in for a minor or routine procedure, and get infected with a fatal, incurable illness.

The budget cutting has reached such levels, whereby every illness is now judged on how bady it effects your quality of life, and lilley how many years you will live with or without treatment. If you fall outside that particular hospitals cost per year of life budget, they will refuse to treat you.

My own, personal preference would be for a sytem like france, where the wealthy and poor are both treated, yet the healthcare is not administered by the state, and is therefor much more efficent.

[spartacus]

i`m sure that each nation will have it`s horror stories about their own health services, whether social or private. it would be more interesting to look at the cost effectiveness of healthcare in each nation. in the u.k. it averages out that £1,500 is spent on each person and the n.h.s. has a 95% approval rating amongst the u.k.  also i`m fairly sure that the amounts quoted by` ssy` are actually the annual cost of the u.k.`s welfare system of which the n.h.s. is a part

[Will]

Bail-out's aren't socialism, they're just a government reinforcement of the capitalist system.

What distinguishes all forms of social ownership from capitalist ownership is that the latter involves shareholders whose money employs waged labour and entitles them to a share of the wealth created not by themselves but by the workforce. This money, which is inseparable from the market relationships â€" employment of labor and the sale of its product â€" in which it is invested, is capital.

http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article ... view/7668/

For many in the US, capitalism is a religion; infallible, almighty, and unquestionable. I can't imagine the US moving to less capitalist solutions until things get a lot worse than they are now. It's a shame, too, because I know a lot of people with preexisting medical conditions that have to pay an arm and a leg just for basic medical insurance, if they can even get it.

[McQ]

I am pretty certain we will see some kind of national health care system in the U.S. very soon. I miss the good old days of paying cash, when a broken arm cost $75 to fix.  

[Kylyssa]

What I find interesting about this topic, and it may be an appropriate thing to split off, is that we have come to the point (especially in the U.S.) where we expect flawless, or nearly flawless medical care. And we expect it without waiting. And we expect it to be free, or damn nearly so.

I don't see where you see that.  We expect American health care to be completely incompetent, at least those of us who have used it.  My mother died of thyroid disease - thyroid disease which can be treated by a single pill a day.  For ten years the TSH test was run on her yearly physical showing abnormal levels from the first and clinical hypothyroidism by the second.  Predictably enough her hair fell out, her heart enlarged, and her central nervous system started shutting down.  For years it was obvious she was sick and her doctors (paid for with cash from loans because she was too sick to get insurance and too young to qualify for medicare) supposedly worked to diagnose her problem.  They didn't diagnose what should have been diagnosed nine years before until she was in her terminal coma.  My father is still paying off her hospital bills five years after her death.  All of them would have been avoided by a GP actually reading the blood test results he ordered for his patient.  A pill a day costing less than $8 per month and she'd be alive.  During one of her surgeries (I think when they put in the shunt) she was also given a staph infection which required them to remove several of her ribs and graft tissue.  But this isn't all.

I have thyroid disease as well.  I self-diagnosed it using internet checklists prior to my mom's death.  I repeatedly told my doctor I wanted a thyroid test.  It took me losing all my hair, losing the hearing in one ear and slipping into a semi-comatose state to get the doctor to order a $26 blood test.  I even had Blue Cross Blue Shield - however, the various co-pays for the treatment required for the damage caused by my untreated thyroid disease were still a bitch and amounted to several thousand dollars.  Again, all of which could have been avoided by a doctor listening to a patient and ordering a simple blood test.

I also had a knee surgery prior to this wherein a stray surgical sponge was left inside my knee leading to an infection.

When I slipped and fell getting knocked out two years ago I went to the ER afterward as I've had head injuries before making any additional head trauma more dangerous. (Wow, did I just feel the need to justify why I went to the ER for a head injury?)  They ran a few tests and released me (still vomiting and disoriented), telling me I had a minor concussion and a sprained thumb and wrist and, oh, here, have a prescription for some Vicodin.  I got worse over the next few days, both my hand and my concussion symptoms.  Turns out I had a major concussion and a broken wrist and thumb.  Funny thing is that the doctor that diagnosed these issues did so from films from the same hand x-rays and brain scans the ER doctor had looked at.

Oh, and did I mention that from these brain scans they found a tumor in my brain?  Or that they never bothered to mention it to me?  I discovered I had a brain tumor only because I applied for SSDI and got curious about what was in the big envelope of medical records.  Between the head injury and applying for SSDI I had all sorts of neurological symptoms - you'd think they might mention something about a brain tumor in that time, wouldn't you?

My sister was sent home from an ER to miscarry when she was 6 months pregnant after being required to fill out a form that certified she hadn't inserted anything into her uterus to end her pregnancy.  Several hours later she was back in the ER, bleeding out.  She survived but just barely.  

I could go on and on... no one expects competent care in the US.  I'll have to look them up but several studies indicated that at least thirty percent of all medical diagnoses in America are incorrect, often with dire consequences.

[Wechtlein Uns]

One of the worst things that can happen to america is a socialized healthcare system.

Sadly, stupid people don't realize that the current situation can be solved by doing three things:

1)allow healthcare plans to be bought under a voucher system, and allow them to be transferrable from company to company.

2)Allow healthcare plan recipients to only purchase health insurance according to their particular risks.(for example, someone who doesn't have anything to do with cigarrette smoking might not want to by lung insurance.)

3)break up big pharma into smaller companies that automatically recieve funding to develop cure drugs. This enables competition and keeps the prices for drugs down. Also, get rid of drug patents.

Thes three things would instantly reduce the cost of healthcare by at least 70% Why? Most people who have taken an economics course and passed could see why. Unfortunately, america is filled with stupid people who are taken in by the democrats who use nice phrases like "help the poor" and "the rich need to pay their fare share." These same people voted for obama. and I should know. I used to be one of them.

*note* I realize this could be insulting to people who might think I am refferring to them. First of all, there's nothing in the bill of rights that says people have the right to not be insulted. However, if you can answer these questions, then rest assured I am not talking about you:

1) How does the minimum wage, and rise thereof affect the american economy?

2)Why did america get off the silver standard?

3)What would be the effects of privatization of the american school system?

4) Who or what major groups are opposed to the privatization of the american school system and WHY?

5)Precisely how much does your vote count when determining the next u.s. president, as opposed to your vote when determining a local offical?

[McQ]

What I find interesting about this topic, and it may be an appropriate thing to split off, is that we have come to the point (especially in the U.S.) where we expect flawless, or nearly flawless medical care. And we expect it without waiting. And we expect it to be free, or damn nearly so.

I don't see where you see that.  We expect American health care to be completely incompetent, at least those of us who have used it.  My mother died of thyroid disease - thyroid disease which can be treated by a single pill a day.  For ten years the TSH test was run on her yearly physical showing abnormal levels from the first and clinical hypothyroidism by the second.  Predictably enough her hair fell out, her heart enlarged, and her central nervous system started shutting down.  For years it was obvious she was sick and her doctors (paid for with cash from loans because she was too sick to get insurance and too young to qualify for medicare) supposedly worked to diagnose her problem.  They didn't diagnose what should have been diagnosed nine years before until she was in her terminal coma.  My father is still paying off her hospital bills five years after her death.  All of them would have been avoided by a GP actually reading the blood test results he ordered for his patient.  A pill a day costing less than $8 per month and she'd be alive.  During one of her surgeries (I think when they put in the shunt) she was also given a staph infection which required them to remove several of her ribs and graft tissue.  But this isn't all.

I have thyroid disease as well.  I self-diagnosed it using internet checklists prior to my mom's death.  I repeatedly told my doctor I wanted a thyroid test.  It took me losing all my hair, losing the hearing in one ear and slipping into a semi-comatose state to get the doctor to order a $26 blood test.  I even had Blue Cross Blue Shield - however, the various co-pays for the treatment required for the damage caused by my untreated thyroid disease were still a bitch and amounted to several thousand dollars.  Again, all of which could have been avoided by a doctor listening to a patient and ordering a simple blood test.

I also had a knee surgery prior to this wherein a stray surgical sponge was left inside my knee leading to an infection.

When I slipped and fell getting knocked out two years ago I went to the ER afterward as I've had head injuries before making any additional head trauma more dangerous. (Wow, did I just feel the need to justify why I went to the ER for a head injury?)  They ran a few tests and released me (still vomiting and disoriented), telling me I had a minor concussion and a sprained thumb and wrist and, oh, here, have a prescription for some Vicodin.  I got worse over the next few days, both my hand and my concussion symptoms.  Turns out I had a major concussion and a broken wrist and thumb.  Funny thing is that the doctor that diagnosed these issues did so from films from the same hand x-rays and brain scans the ER doctor had looked at.

Oh, and did I mention that from these brain scans they found a tumor in my brain?  Or that they never bothered to mention it to me?  I discovered I had a brain tumor only because I applied for SSDI and got curious about what was in the big envelope of medical records.  Between the head injury and applying for SSDI I had all sorts of neurological symptoms - you'd think they might mention something about a brain tumor in that time, wouldn't you?

My sister was sent home from an ER to miscarry when she was 6 months pregnant after being required to fill out a form that certified she hadn't inserted anything into her uterus to end her pregnancy.  Several hours later she was back in the ER, bleeding out.  She survived but just barely.  

I could go on and on... no one expects competent care in the US.  I'll have to look them up but several studies indicated that at least thirty percent of all medical diagnoses in America are incorrect, often with dire consequences.

Kylissa please read my post in its entirety and you'll see that I did say that, "There are so many people who legitimately need and can benefit from simple, free treatment to improve the quality of their lives.". I'm very sorry about the way your mother was treated (or mistreated and misdiagnosed), but that is part of my point. There are simple ways to treat a lot of things. But we do expect perfect health care. That is my bigger point. We do not tolerate mistakes or unwanted outcomes.

Everyone will die from something, whether it be accident, illness, or other means. Medicine is not ever going to be perfect because we are biological organisms, each and every one, and no one can be treated in exactly the same way. Even identical twins have certain differences that make them unique, and therefore their treatment must be individualized. Doctors are human. They miss things. It is not due to malfeasance on their part, or that they don't care about people. I would have liked very much that my father's doctors would have correctly diagnosed him with Pancreatic Cancer. But they didn't. Why? Because it was the least likely thing for him to be sick with, and they treated him as best they knew how, for six months, until they realized what is was. Too late. Dead three weeks later.

If you haven't been in their shoes, it is very easy to get upset with medical personnel. They fight a losing battle every single day. And despite your opinion that you expect incompetence, I've been in a hospital or physician's office every single working day for the past 19 years, and I can tell you with complete confidence that as a whole, in general, we expect and demand near perfection from health care professionals.  

You are angry with medicine, it seems. I'm sorry that you are. You have suffered a lot and had to deal with things most people never do. I'm not minimizing your suffering. What I don't understand is why you seem to blame the entire health care field for it though. You cannot make a wide assumption that the entire field is incompetent from a study of one person (you). And to be perfectly clear, I am not saying our medical system is perfect. I never did. In fact it is breaking down and does not work properly. But what I said was that we expect it to be perfect. We expect all doctors and nurses to be perfect...to diagnose everything correctly all the time. That is impossible.

That is all I'm trying to say. Please don't misinterpret that.

[Will]

One of the worst things that can happen to America is a socialized health care system.

Sadly, stupid people don't realize that the current situation can be solved by doing three things:

1)allow health care plans to be bought under a voucher system, and allow them to be transferable from company to company.

Vouchers? Can you elaborate?

2)Allow health care plan recipients to only purchase health insurance according to their particular risks.(for example, someone who doesn't have anything to do with cigarette smoking might not want to by lung insurance.)

How many illnesses or accidents do you think are foreseeable?

3)break up big pharma into smaller companies that automatically recieve funding to develop cure drugs. This enables competition and keeps the prices for drugs down. Also, get rid of drug patents.

If several big pharmaceutical companies can all, simultaneously have high prices, what's to prevent that with a few more companies?

These three things would instantly reduce the cost of healthcare by at least 70% Why? Most people who have taken an economics course and passed could see why. Unfortunately, america is filled with stupid people who are taken in by the democrats who use nice phrases like "help the poor" and "the rich need to pay their fare share." These same people voted for obama. and I should know. I used to be one of them.

I'm going to have to ask for some evidence to support that 70% figure. So far all we might have are vouchers, and quite frankly current medical voucher systems aren't saving even a fraction of that.

*note* I realize this could be insulting to people who might think I am referring to them. First of all, there's nothing in the bill of rights that says people have the right to not be insulted.

There are forum rules. And the social contract probably applies, too.

1) How does the minimum wage, and rise thereof affect the american economy?

Regardless of what some people might say, it effectively ended slavery by proxy. No longer can people be paid ludacrisly low amounts because they can't find work elsewhere. There's a reasonable limit put on the lowest wages to ensure that people aren't taken advantage of.

2)Why did america get off the silver standard?

This is way too long to get into.

3)What would be the effects of privatization of the american school system?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creationism

4) Who or what major groups are opposed to the privatization of the american school system and WHY?

This is also too long to get into.

5)Precisely how much does your vote count when determining the next u.s. president, as opposed to your vote when determining a local offical?

A lot less. California has one vote per 627,253 residents in the electoral college.

I doubt anyone on this forum would call me stupid, and I think that universal health care would do a great deal to eliminate wasteful industry and would help a great deal of people in need. 1/6 people being uninsured isn't going to be solved by minor tweaks in the system. It needs an overhaul.

/threadjack