Well, I meant N. Ireland, Wales, and Scotland.
I actually count Britain as a seperate thing.

And... eh. I count most the 50+ million as simply unable to afford it, not due to complications. As I said, lesser of two evils.
Oh, and as for your "Better long wait than unable to afford" deal, well, all this comes out of taxes.
People always pay for it, always do.

Dansariki wrote:The US infant mortality rate isn't too bad - 36th or 46th. Out of the entire planet, I'll take the top fifth.

Like the others already pointed out, i was talking only about the developed countries.

wrote:Well, I meant N. Ireland, Wales, and Scotland.
I actually count Britain as a seperate thing.

Then you ought to have said UK minus England.
50 million people! Are you kidding me! Just because they are poor doesn't mean they don't deserve quality healthcare. It is the duty of the state to provide healthcare, education, social security etc to everyone, irrespective of their economic backgrounds.

wrote:Oh, and as for your "Better long wait than unable to afford" deal, well, all this comes out of taxes.
People always pay for it, always do.

Obviously it is better to wait for long than not receive any care at all. And about the taxes, well, I am sure the rich would be willing to pay more taxes & receive free healthcare than pay less taxes & dole out enormous amounts just to satiate the hunger of a few money-crazy business people.

Dansariki wrote:Well, I meant N. Ireland, Wales, and Scotland.
I actually count Britain as a seperate thing.

And... eh. I count most the 50+ million as simply unable to afford it, not due to complications. As I said, lesser of two evils.
Oh, and as for your "Better long wait than unable to afford" deal, well, all this comes out of taxes.
People always pay for it, always do.

You don't get to redefine what "Britain" is just because you're an American. Britain is the island containing England, Scotland and Wales. Oh, and the combined population of Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales is still only 10 million.

Of course healthcare is still paid for by taxes. That isn't the point. The point is everybody gets it, and they're not condemned to substandard healthcare crippling debt after treatment for an accident or severe illness just because they're poor. What gives you the right to deny somebody full access to healthcare just because they're unfortunate enough to be poor? "I count most the 50+ million as simply unable to afford it" So that's okay? Seriously?

Edit: oh, and guess which country's healthcare system is cheaper per capita than the US'? Ah, yes, that's right, it's the UK's horribly bureaucratic state-owned NHS.

This.

What exactly do you mean by "lesser of two evils, exactly?

Oops, thanks.
People in poverty, who can't afford healthcare now, how will they be able to afford higher taxes for healthcare?

What would you rather pay?: thousands of dollars a night for a hospital stay, or a few dollars extra on your taxes? And the cost for healthcare's nowhere near how much the Iraq war's costing you.

Why do Americans hate taxes so much anyway? They pay for services, etc. (mind you, I can't talk, my dad's lazy and still hasn't paid his taxes for 2007)

I'd like to remind N&B and Fuzzy that Dansariki, and quite a bit of the US (55 million registered) are rather conservative.

Dansariki is specifically Objectivist.

So Republicans think that:

Taxes are not cool. Not that anyone think that they are, but logically its not like the government spends it on drinking (if they do then they are ****ed by the public) but on services. They believe, why should our hard earned money be just robbed by the government and spent? What if I don't want to pay for the army? What if I want to save my tax dollars not for public transit but for my own car?

Why pay for people who don't deserve the free heath care, and other services? They just leech off the "hard working Americans".

Plus a few other general ideals not relevant at this point.

Unfortunately, when the whole nation doesn't pay the taxes and want to pay for what they want to buy, then the whole facet must support itself and put more costs on patrons. Like privatized health care.

Nero wrote:Why pay for people who don't deserve the free heath care, and other services? They just leech off the "hard working Americans".

This is the argument raised by conservatives that irritates me most. Sure, in a fair world, those who work hard would get rich and those who can't be bothered wouldn't, but hey, guess what, it isn't! Good people get born into poor families or just get unlucky financially or in employment and work their asses off and never get anywhere. Incompetent people get promoted to high-paying management positions because they kiss ass or they're too incompetent to risk on frontline work. People born into rich families get expensive education, easily pick up a good job, and never work as hard as the aforementioned poor people. People born into really rich families never need work. Etcetera, etcetera.

Of course, there are rich people who got there by working their asses off and people who are poor because they're too lazy and just want to live off benefits, but you simply cannot generalise that to everybody in any way, shape or form. And by making that assumption you are condemning millions of good people to never escaping the poverty cycle and being perpetually looked down upon as lazy.

The world is not fair.
And, properly, I'm an independent.
(Un)fortunately bended slightly conservative by my parents, objectivist by good literature, and independent by my own thinking.

It's a cycle that's gone on for a very long time. I doubt it'll change, although the thought makes for great storylines. People, if they truly want, can escape the cycle and become something incredible (see, great Disney storyline, eh?), and they do this. A few dollars in taxes? Try an extra 15 cents on every dollar.

And I believe in that leechers theory, mostly. Nothing in my mind is as black and white as that, but there are a great many people who would unjustly (or unfairly, pick your term) use the system to their benefit.
I would.
And I'm supposed to be the norm.
Alas, I have little faith in the good of people, and I resist nationalize (in any form) healthcare because of that, the inefficiency of government, and the fact that I see no other example in another country that is better than the US. To clarify - the UK and Canada do not set examples I see as better than the current system. I do not mean to say either are perfect, but that I accept this imperfect cycle and system.
Neither are fair.
Whether a person dies on a waiting list, in his home, or in his home, unable to afford treatment, both, plainly, suck.
Taxes are important, needed, and, if high, disallow some things.
In the aforementioned example, I'd prefer a man die in a nice house he was just able to afford, unable to get treatment, than a man in the slums on a list.
No doubt the term 'slum' will raise bloody hell with Sentynel, so I amend "comparative."
Compared to the man in a nice house, it'd be a slum. Either way, I see the man who dies in a low-land-value housing area as worse off than the one in a fairly nice neighborhood going downhill.

I'm currently a little sick, and the NyQuil is just now wearing off, so if something seems convoluted, just ask. Please, quote in question.

Your turn.

I have met enough good people crippled by bad starts in life to know they exist in sufficient quantities to be worth caring about. A few get lucky. Most don't. I don't have any statistics for how many of your 46 million people without health insurance are "leechers" and how many just unlucky - I'm not sure it's something that could ever be quantified - but I know they exist and I am not prepared to write them off simply because some people may abuse the system. (I would not deprive anybody of healthcare, but this debate has clearly moved beyond just that issue.)

Other than people waiting for organ donors (which is an entirely different matter and probably only solvable by making organ donation compulsory, a distinctly unpopular move, for reasons that escape me), few people are killed by the wait for their operation. I won't pretend it doesn't happen, nor that you don't get long waiting lists for less critical operations, but it's unusual for people to die waiting for an operation.

As for better countries than ours, I can only point at the liberal democratic socialist nations in Northern Europe (Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland). Infant mortality rates are among the lowest few in the world (all four fall within the best seven by UN numbers), and they score amongst the best in Human Development Index, the Satisfaction With Life Index (which correlates strongly with health, wealth and education), and GDP per capita (both nominal and PPP). GDP per capita adjusted for purchasing power parity (PPP) is the only ranking I've listed where the US beats any of those four Scandinavian nations (I discount Denmark here because its politics are closer to mainland Europe than the other Scandinavian nations), and it still loses to Norway.

Dansariki wrote:It's a cycle that's gone on for a very long time. I doubt it'll change, although the thought makes for great storylines. People, if they truly want, can escape the cycle and become something incredible (see, great Disney storyline, eh?), and they do this. A few dollars in taxes? Try an extra 15 cents on every dollar.

It's not so easy to escape the cycle of poverty. Especially, if you are born poor & there is an uncaring system, you lose out in a big way from the very beginning. So we have to deny such unlucky people basic rights just because there are a few people who have no scruples about exploiting the system? Plus, its not always that only the poor in your country who can't afford proper healthcare. Even the middle-class struggles at times. And the lazy people be damned. They will suffer on all counts, so they just being stupid.

I love How unfortunate that I started all this.

Erm. Dansariki, I suggest rereading your post...

Sentynel wrote:Edit: oh, and guess which country's healthcare system is cheaper per capita than the US'? Ah, yes, that's right, it's the UK's horribly bureaucratic state-owned NHS.

I looked up the stats on this. Money spent per person on healthcare in 2007 in the US: $7,290. In the UK: $2,992.

wikipedia wrote:More money per person is spent on health care in the United States than in any other nation in the world,[6][7] and a greater percentage of total income in the nation is spent on health care in the U.S. than in any United Nations member state except for Tuvalu.[7] Medical debt is the principal cause of personal bankruptcy in the United States.[8]
The US pays twice as much yet lags other wealthy nations in such measures as infant mortality and life expectancy. Currently the U.S. has a higher infant mortality rate than most of the world's industrialized nations.[nb 1][12] The USA's life expectancy lags 42nd in the world, after most rich nations, lagging last of the G5 (Japan, France, Germany, UK, USA) and just after Chile (35th) and Cuba (37th).[13][14][15][16][17] The World Health Organization (WHO), in 2000, ranked the U.S. health care system as the highest in cost, first in responsiveness, 37th in overall performance, and 72nd by overall level of health (among 191 member nations included in the study).[18][19] A 2008 report by the Commonwealth Fund ranked the United States last in the quality of health care among the 19 compared countries.[20]

According to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, the United States is the "only wealthy, industrialized nation that does not ensure that all citizens have coverage" (i.e. some kind of insurance).[21][22] The same Institute of Medicine report notes that "Lack of health insurance causes roughly 18,000 unnecessary deaths every year in the United States." [21] while a 2009 Harvard study published in the American Journal of Public Health found a much higher figure of more than 44,800 excess deaths annually in the United States due to Americans lacking health insurance.[23][24]

I could go on. Wikipedia is full of it.

Ok, ok, I give.

Socialists - 1

Conservatives - 0

=P

Dansariki wrote:Brown's Annoyed

That's about the most biased source you can find, but it's no secret that Brown's incompetent and going to lose the next election by an epic margin.

I am waiting to follow the elections. I support...the Green party!=p

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/w ... 860616.ece

Anyone have a solution to the Afghanistan and Iraq messes?