Brown says

[sniper7]

Speaking of liberal bogeymen, have you seen the Bamster on TV now? Suddenly he's Teddy Rosevelt taking on the banks and insurance companies like they're choking us to death.

If the insurance companies are doing so well, why is their average return on capital around 5%? Shit, that's barely better than a federally insured CD which is a helluva lot less risky than underwriting medical bills of an aging obese population of couch potatoes (like me).

That evil Goldman Sachs just put down a big compensation package for their employees after a banner quarter. But they took TARP money. So what? Once its paid back with interest, our interest in this company doesn't matter anymore. Don't get me wrong, I wish we'd never bailed out Wall Street, Chrysler or GM because losses and failure teach lasting lessons that bailouts do not. Nothing should be too big to fail. Obama wants to ensure this by overregulating and downsizing banks because he's a socialist. I want to let them fail because I'm a capitalist.

Why is it that people just go off on corporations without researching what the hell they are talking about? Why should I give a shit what a CEO gets paid if the company never took TARP money or if they did, paid it back with interest?

What a CEO gets paid is up to the stock holders of their company. Steve Jobs may be a liberal narcissist asshole that I couldn't even stomach an elevator ride with, but who can deny the billions of market cap he's brought home for Apple shareholders? Is he worth a big fat paycheck? Hell yes.

Instead of taxing outsized executive bonuses 75% as the socialists in the White House want to do, we should be ensuring that shareholders have a bill of rights allowing them to discover and call into question the compensation practices of the company without having to wage a proxy war.

I fully agree.

[Irving]

I personally don't think that illegal immigrants are that much of a problem. They are a problem, but they aren't the main problem. I think Illegals are most likely to show up and get in and out as quick as possible, just enough to keep on living. Not to mention the fact that just because you are here illegally, doesn't mean that you've ever needed health care. Mutt already stated the main problem. People don't know what things cost and they don't care. Do you know how many more movies I watch when I don't have to pay for them?

[jake]

patch them up and send them home can have a lot of meaning. when you send kids to school that means they can walk, drive, ride the bus. even then they don't have to go. so why not say exactly what you mean. I don't speak liberal, I don't think liberal. I can't understand bullshit speak.

I said "they can be patched up/made stable (basic human decency after all) and then returned to their country of citizenship." I didn't think that was particularly vague. So what's your alternative? An illegal immigrant shows up at the hospital, and your response is..?

This still doesn't get by the fact that in your mind you want to still give them free health care. that still comes with a price. there should be NO price, NO help, NO anything for illegals.

So your response is they get turned away from the hospital? Ok, fair enough. It's fine if that, and the following, is your idea, but there aren't going to be many people who share your idea, liberal or conservative and certainly not doctors.

The only money I want spent on illegals is fingerprints, photos and a bus ride to the border where they WILL work to build a giant wall, not get paid, get fed only what is necessary and once they repay for their trespasses, drop them in the middle of southern mexico.

See above.

I read links, I look at things to have some kind of basis for believability when there is a reliable source... not word of word of mouth. I can sit here and tell you all day that I am Al Gore but I have had a change of heart. There isn't anything to back that up no is there? Same with your random numbers that are pulled from your ass. Show some links, bring out some of the studies and that gets somewhere. random shit written on the internet has no meaning if you are trying to show facts when you have no proof. more failed liberal logic.

Seriously? You're basically asserting that I made those numbers up, or pulled them off some blog somewhere... I can only assume you didn't take the precaution of actually checking to make sure there aren't any studies out there which is where I drew those numbers from? It's actually more amusing to NOT give you any links and let you keep insisting I made the numbers up. Disagreeing with the results is one thing, but accusing me of lying based on nothing at all, that's classic. Keep going.

where did you go to school?

University of Warwick.

That is my typical response from liberals. they finally realize they spouted out bullshit from their mouths, they got caught and they give up.

You're right, I give up. You caught me out. I made up those numbers. I even planted the studies and stories about the studies. I spent MONTHS putting them out there for an elaborate prank on you, but you're too smart for me. Damn!

oh, and yes I am angry. I am tired of getting fucked all the time thanks to liberal minded morons who think everyone should be handed everything that I work for. My tax dollars are not out there to make illegals lives better. They are supposed to be used to make my life better and to help those who truly need it that also pay their taxes.
And I am not talking about the welfare babies, the ones who live off welfare and don't try to get a job, yet still have the latest and greatest cell phone, 24" rims on their car they bought since they get assisted living, food stamps, a welfare check, possibly some payment for a disabled child (which they don't use that money for) so now they can afford a new vehicle payment.

That is why i am angry. And liberals like you want to say that is okay.
THAT SHIT OS NOT OKAY, ITS A FUCKING OUTRAGE

I don't remember saying any of that was ok. Link to where I said it was ok, or realize that you were spouting bullshit and give up.

[jake]

I personally don't think that illegal immigrants are that much of a problem. They are a problem, but they aren't the main problem. I think Illegals are most likely to show up and get in and out as quick as possible, just enough to keep on living. Not to mention the fact that just because you are here illegally, doesn't mean that you've ever needed health care. Mutt already stated the main problem. People don't know what things cost and they don't care. Do you know how many more movies I watch when I don't have to pay for them?

I actually like the sound of your idea about removing insurance from healthcare altogether. Is there anyone out there who advocates this, or anywhere I can read more about it?

[sniper7]

I said "they can be patched up/made stable (basic human decency after all) and then returned to their country of citizenship." I didn't think that was particularly vague. So what's your alternative? An illegal immigrant shows up at the hospital, and your response is..?

So your response is they get turned away from the hospital? Ok, fair enough. It's fine if that, and the following, is your idea, but there aren't going to be many people who share your idea, liberal or conservative and certainly not doctors.

See above.

Seriously? You're basically asserting that I made those numbers up, or pulled them off some blog somewhere... I can only assume you didn't take the precaution of actually checking to make sure there aren't any studies out there which is where I drew those numbers from? It's actually more amusing to NOT give you any links and let you keep insisting I made the numbers up. Disagreeing with the results is one thing, but accusing me of lying based on nothing at all, that's classic. Keep going.

University of Warwick.

You're right, I give up. You caught me out. I made up those numbers. I even planted the studies and stories about the studies. I spent MONTHS putting them out there for an elaborate prank on you, but you're too smart for me. Damn!

I don't remember saying any of that was ok. Link to where I said it was ok, or realize that you were spouting bullshit and give up.

Anyone shows up, they provide insurance card or cash/credit card/some method of payment. You can't pay, sorry. That cuts down on a lot of the fraud/free health care problems. If people want to donate money to create free clinics and doctors donate their time that is more than fine, but MY dollars should not be given away freely to people who aren't in the country legally or who are sucking on the .gov's tit in more than one way (welfare, food stamps etc.). those programs were designed to help people who are truly in need until they can get back on their feet. I am all for that, but I condone it's abuse.

Why would I bother to look for numbers that could be random. How hard is it to post a link that shows where you get your information from?
You wanted to post numbers to try to persuade me to believe something you wrote down yet give no backup information? Doesn't work.

And i never implied you said any of that was okay. I placed you in the group of liberals since you are a self proclaimed liberal and you mentioned in an earlier you still want to give away free health care and send them home. the problem with that is they are still getting free health care. the problem still exists and it will be abused when they tell all their buddies about it.
You asked why I was angry and I gave a response, I didn't say you said any of those things. I simply placed you in the liberal category that you like to be in. if you take that as spouting bullshit, then so be it. You still want to give away my tax dollars and my insurance premiums and I have a problem with that.

[jake]

Why would I bother to look for numbers that could be random. You wanted to post numbers to try to persuade me to believe something you wrote down yet give no backup information? Doesn't work.

So that you don't appear foolish by immediately suggesting the numbers are bullshit, I suppose. Why would I make up numbers and publish them via the largest information and fact checking resource in history; I would make myself look stupid if I did.

I wasn't trying to persuade you of anything. You asked me where I got the figures from, I made the mistake of assuming it was a reasonable question rather than a challenge.

And i never implied you said any of that was okay. I placed you in the group of liberals since you are a self proclaimed liberal [...] I didn't say you said any of those things. I simply placed you in the liberal category that you like to be in.

By placing me in that 'group' you are implying I think those things are ok. My politics are broadly liberal. That doesn't mean I rigidly follow some liberal dogma. You're a conservative. There are some conservatives out there who harbor racist attitudes towards our president. Can you see where I'm going with this?

Surely the fact that I'm a gun owner should make you realise that not everyone who calls themselves liberal hold the exact same views.

[clublights]

What a CEO gets paid is up to the stock holders of their company. Steve Jobs may be a liberal narcissist asshole that I couldn't even stomach an elevator ride with, but who can deny the billions of market cap he's brought home for Apple shareholders? Is he worth a big fat paycheck? Hell yes.

Not to Take too much away from your well laid out and very true post.... BUT...

Steve Jobs' is paid $1.00 dollar a year from Apple Inc. True he gets HUGE bonuses .. however those are mostly in stock ... he has a VERY vested interest in making sure Apple does well. If Apple fails he not only fails as a CEO he loses his net worth in a VERY parallel and linear way.
This .. in MHO is how EVERY Company should run ( yes Apple is doing VERY well and this is working out VERY well for Jobs... but when he took the job at Apple it was in the red ... badly. )
When CEO's are taking millions in cash bonuses WHILE a company is failing is where the issue lays in MY eyes. AIG big fat cat's getting bonuses??? Are you kidding me ? I thought a bonus was for doing a GOOD job.

On one hand .. yeah sure the "Pay Czar" is some serious government over the bounds line stepping horse crap. But... if your gunna take taxpayer cash ... you should not be getting a bonus for running the company into the ground.

[sniper7]

So that you don't appear foolish by immediately suggesting the numbers are bullshit, I suppose. Why would I make up numbers and publish them via the largest information and fact checking resource in history; I would make myself look stupid if I did.

I wasn't trying to persuade you of anything. You asked me where I got the figures from, I made the mistake of assuming it was a reasonable question rather than a challenge.


By placing me in that 'group' you are implying I think those things are ok. My politics are broadly liberal. That doesn't mean I rigidly follow some liberal dogma. You're a conservative. There are some conservatives out there who harbor racist attitudes towards our president. Can you see where I'm going with this?

Surely the fact that I'm a gun owner should make you realise that not everyone who calls themselves liberal hold the exact same views.

You still haven't posted your links. you obviously can't read. post a link when you post numbers or you are full of shit. go look at the other posts and when someone has a story or numbers they place in their post they have a link. just because you are a liberal doesn't mean people should believe you. and yes you are in the liberal group.

I suggest you call yourself an independent than if you feel that way, not a liberal. You can go where you please with your talks, you will dig yourself a deeper hole.
There are idiots who are gun owners out there as well. the more and more you speak, the more and more you don't listen, the more and more you appear to fall into this category as well.

[cebeu]

Fodder pro-n-con depending on your perspective. That said, here's some back-ground [w/ sources] that outlines the numbers often regurgited by the left when trying to rationailize support for reform and "tug at America's heart-strings."

For the record (my bias)-- I have nothing but disdain for proponents of socialized care. Are there improvement opportunities with respect to health care services delivery and insurance industry reform? Of course, but I expect greater solutions to prevail because this socialist experiment is an arrogant slap in the face to all Americans and a long-term fiscal disaster [entitlement] in the making if implemented.

Source: http://www.factcheck.org/

http://www.factcheck.org/2009/03/uninsured-us-citizens/
Uninsured U.S. Citizens
March 10, 2009

The "47 million uninsured" figure is from the 2006 U.S. Census Bureau report. In 2007, the Census Bureau reported that the number actually declined somewhat, to 45.7 million people under 65 (the age of Medicare eligibility)…79 percent of the uninsured are native or naturalized U.S. citizens. The remaining 21 percent accounts for both legal and illegal immigrants…[more snipped]

Sources:
Kaiser Family Foundation. "The Uninsured: A Primer." Oct. 2008.
Carmen DeNavas-Walt et. al. "Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2007." United States Census Bureau. Aug. 2008.

Source: http://www.factcheck.org/
http://factcheck.org/archives/search-results/?cx=006313184908531579811%3Ahm8n5-dxba0&cof=FORID%3A10%3BNB%3A1&ie=UTF-8&q=How+many+uninsured+die+every+year&sa=Search
Dying from Lack of Insurance
September 24, 2009

A new study from researchers with the Harvard Medical School found that 45,000 deaths a year can be attributed to the lack of health insurance. Our readers ask: Really? And, they want to know, isn’t this finding actually from the single-payer advocacy group Physicians for a National Health Program?

[more snipped]

The 45,000 deaths figure became the basis for an eye-catching billboard from the Health Care for America Education Fund, a group associated with Health Care for America NOW, a coalition of liberal and union groups backing health care overhaul efforts.

[more snipped]

Now, on to the tough question: Is the 45,000 figure accurate? We can’t say for sure, but scores of other studies also conclude that persons without health insurance have a higher chance of dying prematurely than those with health insurance…The 45,000 estimate is at the high end of estimates, but earlier studies also have put the number of excess deaths from lack of insurance coverage in the thousands:

Source: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2009/aug/20/bill-pascrell/pascrell-says-22000-americans-die-yearly-because-t/
Pascrell says up to 22,000 Americans die yearly because they don’t have health insurance
July 30, 2009, PolitiFact rated as True a statement by Democratic Rep. Bill Pascrell of New Jersey that "as many as 22,000 Americans die each year because they don’t have health insurance." We based that ruling on the same study that Pascrell did. Subsequently, a reader pointed out a paper published last spring in the online edition of the journal HSR: Health Services Research that contradicts the study Pascrell relied on. So we are changing our rating to Half True and providing this new analysis.

When Democratic Rep. Bill Pascrell of New Jersey said on July 30 that "as many as 22,000 Americans die each year because they don’t have health insurance," the number he cited was an updated version of one originally calculated by the federally chartered Institute of Medicine. In 2002, an IOM panel of more than a dozen medical specialists estimated that 18,000 Americans died in 2000 because they were uninsured. They came up with this figure by looking at long-term studies that measured the links between insurance status and death rates. The IOM then used annual statistics on insurance rates and deaths to determine an estimate of extra deaths attributable to the lack of insurance.

[snip]

But a more recent paper raises questions about the IOM's conclusions.

The paper, published online in April in HSR: Health Services Research, is by Richard Kronick of the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine at the University of California (San Diego) School of Medicine. Using data on adult health and mortality from the National Center for Health Statistics, which is a part of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Kronick concludes that the Institute of Medicine's estimate (or any that replicates its methodology, such as Dorn's) is "almost certainly incorrect."

The most notable difference between the Institute of Medicine's data — which were drawn from the CDC's National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey as well as the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey — is that Kronick adjusted it for a number of demographic and health factors, such as status as a smoker and body mass index. When he did that, "the risk of subsequent mortality is no different for uninsured respondents than for those covered by employer-sponsored group insurance." In other words, once you compare death rates in an apples-to-apples fashion — comparing insured smokers to uninsured smokers, for instance — the likelihood of dying evens out. This, in turn, would mean that IOM's estimate of 18,000 deaths would drop essentially to zero.

[snip]

[tmckay2]

well, i too haven't read every post in this thread so what i say may be repetitive.

as someone who works in the health care industry and deals with insurance about half my time at work, ill give my two cents on health care. first off, i cannot believe we are even considering an over arching health care system that covers everybody like canada and britain have. its unrealistic. well, i suppose if you want sky high taxes, then its doable, but otherwise its completely unsustainable. not only that, but you are just trading one evil for another. some people here can't get adequate care because they are too poor, in the government system you would see people still not get care, itll just be different people. my wife's entire family is from canada and all but her parents still live there. most are engineers, following in her grandpa's footsteps. they come over the border all the time to pay for care, especially diagnostics. her grandpa was told he couldn't have surgery done on his heart because he was too old and fragile and it was too risky for the cost. so he came across and the family pitched in and paid for it. her uncle had terrible back pain from an accident at work. couldn't sit, stand, lay down, nothing. they said it would be 8 months to get an MRI. so he went to michigan, paid $500 and got it checked out. turned out he had a disc out of place. my point is, you hear horror stories here, but there are horror stories elsewhere as well. its the nature of the beast. this is the real world we live in, no system is perfect.

i don't pretend to have the answer, its a difficult problem. we can't keep health care as it is, thats for sure. part of the problem is the huge spike is law suits in theis country, part is people (particularly illegals) going to the ER for every little problem, where they can't be turned away, part is government programs creating a society that thinks it deserves this and that and won't go out and get it for themselves. lots of things. but i can tell you if they pass health care reform as it is you are simply exchanging one bad for another, plus a whole ton of money. im not a cold, heartless bastard that thinks since i have the money to buy healthcare and others don't thats their problem, but for the good of a nation we need to realize the warm fuzzies we get when talking about covering everyone just isn't a realistic answer. it sounds nice on paper (which is why some of its supporters think you are just an evil person if you don't agree) but in a country of 300 million it can't be done effectively. people try to use switzerland and such as examples, and thats just dumb. a country of a million versus a country of 300 million has way different dynamics.

i think it would be ideal for either states or communities to have their own programs since they know how to better care for their people and where the needs are as opposed to the federal government just trying to get it with the shotgun effect. too much waste and corruption if you do that. but i fear at the local levels the government doesn't care enough to put forth such effort. it used to be back in the day communities took care of themselves and each other, but now every relies on the feds.

as far as insurance companies, i have no problem with them being taken out of the picture if its effective, but remember insurance companies are just a business like any other. they need to make a profit. they aren't evil, theyre just a business that has to ensure it survives. remember also insurance companies employ many people. they do a lot of good aside from the "bad".