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

Peter, you haven't been paying attention: http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/CancerPreventionAndTreatment/story?id=4038257&page=1

bill, you're right that OTs often tend to stray, particularly when we inject a little politics into our discussions, as this one. The magic of the board is that they don't take up the time and space of others, only those who click here. For me, it provides discussion with members of extraordinary knowledge and wide experience in a polite and respectful forum. I value inquiry and debate.

Larry, where's the freedom and choice of 47 million Americans---almost half again Canada's population---who can't afford private health insurance or private medical bills? Their choices are bankruptcy or no treatment or illness or death. We come at this from different ideologies---and fair enough---but all I see is misery and loss of productivity, not to mention loss of dignity, often without fault of their own.

Jack, the problem is, no one here in the States--or at least none of the candidates--is proposing the systems you hold up as models. Don't show it to me in Canada or Britain or Sweden or anywhere else. Show me the proposal for THIS COUNTRY. Show it to my elected representatives. If I like it, I'll tell them I think it's a good idea. If enough of them like it and the president also likes it, then we'll have it. But the fact that no one of political significance is talking about what you seem to want them to talk about means it won't happen here any time soon. Maybe you'd better run for office.

King, some of those 47 million ARE expressing their choice--by not paying for coverage they could afford. Why? Because they're gambling they won't get sick, and because they know they'll get treated in the emergency ward if they do. Some certainly can't afford it. But once again, we're talking social programs, not freedom. A country can be free, yet without socialized retirment programs, socialized medicine, etc. Cuba is an example of a country that isn't free, hasn't held an election for about 50 years, but offers its citizens socialized medicine.

King, I spent the summer of 1980 on active duty at Ft McCoy, WI. We were one of three destinations for about 100,000 Cuban refugees that came over in the "boat lift". The other two were Ft. Chaffee, AR and Ft. Indiantown Gap, PA. I don't know about you, but I'd have a feeling something was pretty wrong with the good old USA if, all of a sudden, 3 million people were to pick up and leave because they couldn't stand living under Bush. (That'd be the rough equivalent of 100,000 Cubans, given the difference in population.) And of course thousands of Cubans had already fled, long before the 1980 boat lift. Would you think things were just fine in Canada, King--govt health care and all--if 350,000 Canadians were to pack up and leave all at once?

To some people, free speech is more important than free health care. That may be why our founding fathers put freedom of speech in the Constitution (the very first amendment, in fact), but not free health care.

Everyone seems to have had their rant. The quadrennial silly season is here. Hurrah!

I suggest that politicians cannot simply ignore the Bill of Rights, and that the upcoming hearing of the Supreme Court on Second Amendment rights (the first such consideration in well over 50 years) is far more germane to gun ownership than the upcoming election.

Stay tuned.

Jack, I read the above article and don't see how Cigna could have prevented the transplant. The family should have insisted on the operation regardless of financial liability and taken Cigna to court later.
I think we need to take control of our own health care, not allow government or insurance companies control.

Try checking into a for-profit American hospital without the administrators going through your pockets, Peter. I can't even get a routine checkup at my local clinic without showing a current insurance card! No hospital takes on six-figure surgical procedures without making sure they'll get paid. The family didn't have the bucks, which is why the medical team was trying to get it out of Cigna.

The opposition to universal health care on this forum is very long on opinion and hearsay, and totally devoid of facts. The facts show that US health care is the most expensive on earth, and one of the less cost-effective. And that around the world (and here at home) government-run programs are more efficient and providing better health care outcomes.

If anyone here has evidence to the contrary, I'd sure like to see it posted!

Jack - are you refering to the Kevin Drumm Study ?

I am referring to data from the World Health Organization 2000 World Health Report, from The Economist, from Family Magazine, from the University of Maine - all of which I have referenced here, and provided links to some.

Opponents of universal health care, as usual, seem to be immune to facts. So far they've only posted unsupported opinion.

Now Jack, I expect this is not the first sociological/political discussion which was supported by rhetoric and emotional statements rather than facts.
Like the line from the Bogart movie: "Facts? We don't need no stinkin' facts."

Jake

Facts? Can you prove that the publishers of these "facts" have no personal agenda in their writing? I ask this question because the "facts" are counter to my own personal experience. Free anything is going to be abused by a crowd. And, universal health care is certainly not free. I'm sure it will be tax supported (there is no "goveenment money," only tax money). Having dealt with Social Security all my working life (oof the farm and in jobs where you got paid directly), I have no thought of being allowed to opt out. Further, I have to question the foundation of the concept of effeciency improvement. Are we going to demand higher productivity of the current health care workers? Reduce the number? Cut their pay? Other ideas on higher efficiency?

I really wish I could feel warm and fuzzy about universal health care. But, I don't. So far, nobody has convinced me that I will be better off - as well off - or, even slightly worse off. I think my taxes are fixing to go roofward to pay for all the services that people, currently held in check economically, will have free access to under universal health care.

Money is the usual rationer of goods and services. All goods and services are economically scarce. Demand is held in balance with supply by price. Government decision as to who gets what and when is the substitute for financial control.

Anyone here who currently has health care insurance that is eager to trade it in for some form of universal coverage?