doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Presidential candidate supports INDIVIDUAL RKBA

Larry, I admire the United States. I would not want to live there. Nor would you trade places with any other on earth. I think of Canada as freer, as you do your country. By our terms, we're both right. Cuba today compared to Batista's US Mafia-dominated playground provides the first freedoms the country ever had.

Your extrapolations from healthcare are similar to the one of NATO providing democracy to Kosovo. Kosovo is not a democracy. As Bosnia, another example of might is right, Kosovo will become an EU-US protectorate in practise, its governance subordinate to its protectors.There are 100,000 Serbs remaining in Kosovo.

Yes, Canadian infantry and fighter bombers had a prominent role in that deal, as a NATO member. But already there's questioning here of supporting seccesionist and irredentist movements that want to unilaterally break away, the precedence it sets for Quebecois, Catalans, Basques, Aceh, Chechnya, Kashmir etc.

Determining independence by outside force is a tricky business. I wish Kosovo well.

Do you keep your excellent coverage under a universal system? I should think it would be like elsewhere: you pay through taxes for a universal system. Those who want to pay extra into a private plan that provides Mayo, Lahey and John Hopkins, the choice is yours. Two-tier has always been that way, no?

No, you can't opt out, nor can we opt out because we don't support government policies on daycare, ATVs, gun control, public broadcasting, carbon taxes, abortion, same-sex, the war in Afghanistan or our military exchange commitments with our allies. Imagine the consequences of US opting out on the war in Iraq.

Canadians think of medicare as part of their citizenship.

Regards, King

Cherry-picked? Oh yeah, like all of the other major industrial nations on earth? Like France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Japan, Switzerland, Sweden, Austria, the UK, Denmark, Ireland, Canada, Australia, etc.? Like the OECD countries, all of which have universal health care that outperforms us, and pay less for it?

What is wrong with Americans today? We used to be proud of our leadership, our innovation, our quality, our efficiency. Now we're proud of the most cumbersome, bureaucratic and inefficient health care system in the developed world, and the only thing we're tops in, is the cost.

The UK - you suggest better healthcare is provided in the UK ?

Jack - you pull off Successful Goverment provided health care in your state - or any other and after 5 years I might consider it. It will be interesting to watch from afar.

Dang Larry, Nice to see that the discussion is as honest as it is. Stimulating I tell you.
I think the sentiment of your statement above is usually the basis of many things human. "I got mine and I earned it and to heck with them that ain't." I understand that logic and argument. It is pretty straight forward.
Then of course, we get stories like Steve's unbelievable travail above. So where do you stand on that? Steve is certainly taking it like John Wayne. No issue there. But, from a societal point of view, is it a good thing?
Regards, Jake

Jake, I think the last figure I saw showed 47 million Americans without coverage. About 1/6 of the nation. What I'm not game for is covering those 47 million--some of whom are real tear-jerk stories, others of whom can afford to pay but choose not to--if it means that the rest of us are kicked down to the least common denominator of coverage. According to figures recently published in the Des Moines Register, universal health care in Iowa would cost $550 million per year. They say that it would simply be "cost shifting", because those of us that currently pay for insurance are paying more to cover those that don't, and the lower cost of our insurance will offset the required tax increase. So show me that my wife's employer is going to give her additional take-home pay equal to my tax increase, and show me that we can keep the coverage we now have, without penalty, and I'm willing to listen. (Missouri is our next-door neighbor, so the "show me" stuff occasionally rubs off.)

King, you're confusing social reform with freedom. Cuba has better health care and education now than it did under Batista. But it also has no political dissent, no freedom of speech. The Soviet Union provided better health care and education than Tsarist Russia. Overall improvement, or not? Mussolini made the trains run on time; Hitler built the autobahn. That does not make them, nor the systems they created, worthy of admiration. A very famous American said "Give me liberty or give me death!" Well, death is likely to come sooner with poor health care, but personally I'd rather live free--as the motto of a state bordering your country suggests.

"Secessionist" movements . . . Yugoslavia was an artificial construct, brought about by WWI and the end of the Hapsburg Empire. The people of Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia, Kosovo etc are simply withdrawing from something their ancestors were forced into in the first place. Should the Soviet Union have remained one big, unhappy country simply because a long list of tsars and commissars put it together by force, or should its component pieces have had the opportunity to go their own way, as they have? Secession isn't always bad, nor is it always violent. I doubt it would be if Quebec were to declare its independence, any more than it was when the Czechs and the Slovaks chose divorce. There's even talk of it happening in Belgium.

As for opting out, this country has a different tradition than yours, or most of the world's. We haven't gone nearly so far down the road to socialism. And interestingly enough, some of the countries that have--France being an excellent example--are taking steps in the opposite direction. There has been talk of at least partially privatizing our longest-standing and largest social program, Social Security--precisely so that those individuals willing to take personal responsibility for their own retirement could at least partially opt out.

Americans are big on choice. We tend to look with disfavor on "one size fits all" solutions. That's why you see the skepticism where universal health care is concerned, even though we all realize the system we now have is not a good one. The problem lies in coming up with one that offers coverage for all without forcing people into something that's worse than what they already have, or forcing them to pay more for what they already have to sustain yet another large government bureaucracy.

With HillaryCare and ObamaCare, "another large bureaucracy" is exactly what we'll have. HC and OC would keep in place the massively redundant private health insurance system (a bureaucracy in every company, a mini-bureaucracy for every plan) and simply add another bureaucratic layer.

But there are better models working well out there. Truly universal health care has only one bureaucracy, one set of rules. That's why basic health care is more cost-efficient in the OECD countries.

Right now, private health care administration costs eat up 19 to 24 percent of every premium dollar - while government administration costs for Medicare, Medicaid and VA care are running below 10 per cent.

Every doctor's office, every clinic, every hospital in the US has paid staffs doing nothing but paper-shuffling, trying to sort out who pays what to whom, from among hundreds of different insurance plans. Most of the dollars paid to those people would be spent on providing health care in a universal system.

The "show me" attitude only proves the blinkered view of so many Americans - we seem to be unable to look beyond our own borders, where dozens of developed nations are protecting all of their citizens, and achieving better health care outcomes at far lower cost. They've been "showing" us for years - if only we'd look.

Meanwhile, our "system" blindly allows people to die while private insurance companies deny coverage and their CEOs pocket multi-million dollar salaries and stock options. What amazes me is that so many Americans accept this like sheep, and just keep getting fleeced. The very fact that a US veteran has to re-mortgage his home, max credit card debt and accept handouts from neighbors in order to pay for necessary health care should be a wakeup call for everyone here.

America's squeamishness about universal health care reminds me of Churchill's remark, "You can count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else."

I am not sure what health care has to do with double guns other than the fact that most governments that have socialized health care are also smart enough to know people should not own guns. Do the people coming from Canada for health care in a count as immigrants? I guess that now that the auto industry has proven you can't pay health care and compete with Asian makers we need to put our country into the same problem.
bill

I lived in Canada for three years. There was major concern over health care fraud. Why? I mean everyone's covered, right?
A friend's 27 year old wife died after a miscarriage because they used drugs and didn't have a laser or fiber optic camera to find the bleeding and stop it.
My secretary's mother fell on the ice in March and smashed her shoulder. They bound up her shoulder, and were still "considering" what to do in June, when she went to doctors in Rochester, NY and they told her she would require extensive surgery to break bones that had begun to knit in the wrong positions.
Do not get sick on Ray (sp) days. ALL the doctors close up shop on the same days. The Prime Minister of Ontario wanted all doctors to close a set number of days each quarter to control costs. He didn't come up with the idea of them all closing on the SAME days; they did that.
I cannot imagine the U. S. Government doing ANYTHING efficiently. Actual costs will skyrocket. And the poor souls who pay taxes will take it in the rear again. What about the "poor"? I don't care. It's called natural selection. Besides, it is against the law for a hospital to refuse care for any reason, so why does anyone NOT have health care now? Just because they do not have a regular doctor so they can get a temporary handicapped sticker does not make me lose a wink of sleep.
"Certain" candidates are just buying votes again. Welfare revisited.

Well, Virginian, at least you're honest about it. Many here would agree with you, but don't have the cojones to admit it.

Anecdotes are meaningless. My son-in-law was brought into an ER with a smashed elbow and painful wrist. Despite his request, the ER people said the wrist was just a sprain and didn't need an X-ray. It was a weekend accident, and he had to wait three days before they could find a surgeon to work on his elbow (multiple pins and plates needed).

A month after the accident, his wrist was still swollen and painful. He went back to the ER, where an X-ray showed it to be broken and half-mended wrong. They had to re-break his wrist and reconstruct it.

So bad things happen. Everywhere. And anyone can come up with anecdotes about health care failures. Everywhere. But it is well documented that OECD countries with universal health care cover more of their people, at less cost, and achieve better outcomes, than America does.

You can't deny the facts. You can only close your eyes to them.

I read through these posts this morning and admire the thoughtful and friendly expression of opinion. What I have not read is any ideas for solutions to the cost of health care. Availability of care is not an issue. Emergency rooms in the USA must examine and treat everyone who claims illness, real or not. People don't die here because of refused claims either. They can and will be treated. The question is who pays the bill and how much does it cost.
The solutions to this question in my opinion don't require more government but less. The answer is not more insurance but less. Self employed people have the option of a medical savings plan that allows for high deductible insurance at low cost along with a checking account that is used to pay for standard care. All costs are tax deductible and the rollover in the account are there to grow tax free in perpetuity. This gives the individual the ability to negotiate charges before care is given.
If this opportunity was offered every citizen of this country we could take back control of our health care and the costs involved. If people who currently have employer provided health insurance took a pay raise instead of the insurance and were allowed to buy a MSP they would be far ahead financialy and in control of their care.
Many Americans have also been brainwashed into thinking that if they don't have health insurance some calamity will befall them. Stop and think about how much you personaly have spent on health insurance in the last ten years and compare it to what the care you have required would have cost out of pocket. Health insurance has become some sort of safety blanket, the lack of which causes some sort of uneasiness in many people.
Another possible solution is a return to states rights where the Federal government relinquishes the power of taxation back to the states where it belongs. In this scenario every state would have the ability to establish its own system of health care if it so chose and every citizen would have the option of picking a state to live in that suited there own ideal.
I know these ideas are long shots at best but maybe they are something to work from. The most important things to do in my opinion are to remove the power and influence from the insurance industry, take control of your own health care and leave government out of the equation.
One last qeustion for everyone to chew on. What would happen if a groundswell of people gutsy enough to to take a risk for their own independence dropped their health insurance? Or quit paying their Federal taxes. Change can happen but not by itself.
Peter