Obama on single-payer health care...

[chefmike]

what bothers me most is that some of you want the goverment, the same people who have fucked up every social program there is, run our healthcare. lets see, social security will be bankrupt soon, so that tax will be raised, our public schools dont teach, but teachers, at least where i live are doing awfully well. welfare, medicare, workmans comp are all filled up with corruption and fraud with no accountability. every single one of these programs have turned into a huge beaurocrisy that we have to pay for. sure lets put the politicians in charge of this one too. thats why they dont pay into social security, because they have thier own tax payer funded retirement that makes them millionaires when they retire. they have thier own taxpayer funded healthcare that not 1 dime comes out thier pockets. yup, these are the guys i want to control my life. hey, why get a job and succeed when the goverment will provide all the basics needs of life? why not run for public office and get these perks yourself? or is that to much work? why are the insurance companies making such profits? i'll tell you why, because the politicians you want to run the healthcare system are being paid not to change it. my advice to you is to take care of yourself. or are you to stupid or lazy to do it?

Blah blah blah, big government, blah blah blah, don't try anything new, even when there is a problem, blah blah blah

Go back to jerking off in GA

HOWS THIS FOR TRYING SOMETHING NEW! How about making our healthcare premiums tax deductable? how about giving tax break incentives to the insurance companies to give lower income people lower rates? How about giving doctors a tax break to treat uninsured people at minimal or no cost? there maybe better alternatives than giving those a-holes in washington more control over our lives. do any of you really believe that if washington took control of healthcare that your taxes wouldnt go up? think about it, they would have to make a whole new dept of healthcare, overstaff it, pay all these federal employees a salary then pay the doctor and hospital bills. you may not like the current situation, but i would bet my life that in the end you would pay more taxes that your premiums are now. maybe its just my lack of trust in our goverment officials who have done nothing but make themselves and thier cronies rich.

SMDH....yeah right...now where have I heard that tired BS before...it's all about the tax breaks and the trickle down...goddamn big government big spending socialists...megadittos dave...

And BTW dave...you lost...America won...

" A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned to walk forward." - FDR

[SarahG]

You still don't know what you're talking about. My dad didn't go to high school because there weren't any. College preparatory academies were few & far between, only in the cities or near the colleges, & private.

You've got my curiousity, just how far back are we talking?

You're talking about the sliver of people who went to college.

College? Not exclusively, there were more people who finished high school than those who finished college.

We were an agrarian society & economy until WWII.

I quite disagree, but I could see how someone could argue either side of that one.

Expanded secondary education was part of the New Deal stimulous to build schools & keep teenagers out of the job market if possible.

The big change (if there was any tangible "big change" to point to) was the GI bill after WW2 paying for college educations.

High school was elective & still is for the most part. You have more dropouts because you have more people starting in the first place. It's expected. It didn't used to be. What you see as the norm was built up in the post war boom of the late '40s, '50s, '60s, & early '70s.

& that would be where? You try to make it seem like the norm. I'm not a blog-rube.

I am going to use New York state as an example to approach this one, if you don't mind. The concept of high school being optional has pretty much dissolved over the last 10-15 years. There are a few things to point to, like PINS being expanded to age 18 iirc, but it wouldn't be hard to show that it was state BOE policymaking that threw down the NY education system during this time.

Funding was never perfect, and there are some interesting pieces of trivia surrounding how Pataki would "deal" with the budget that would make for an interesting thread on its own, but it used to be that in NY you basically had three ways of getting a diploma "of some kind" relating to k-12 education: Local diploma, Regents diploma, and the GED (and yes, it was possible to get all three). How this usually worked is the local diploma and regents diplomas both had different requirements- the regents diploma requirements being more strict. The idea was anyone who was college bound would go for the regents diploma, anyone who wasn't would go for the local diploma. If you got the regents diploma, you also would get the local diploma upon graduation (two HS diplomas) and both were basically worth the same in the job markets. It was possible for students to get the local diploma sooner, thus finishing high school early instead of dropping out.

The idiots at the state regents board decided, rather unilaterally, that "tougher tests make better students" (this was pre-no child left behind, I kind of think its where the Bush admin stole the idea). So in response, they made several changes. First, they made a cut off year that killed the local diploma, if you wanted a k-12 education you had only the GED and regents diploma to go for. Next, with the regents diploma as your only option they went in and played with the regents requirements, making it far harder and far longer time-wise it would take to meet the regents diploma requirements. Thus there was no longer any way to "finish high school early" and even if you had a brilliant student who happened to know all the material already... that student wouldn't be able to finish early because the system cared more about units of completed courses (as in time) than performance. Aka you needed X years of math, X years of science, X years of English, X years of history... and if you were smarter, they just assumed you'd be put in a tougher "level" of whatever the field was. This was a progressive scheme, the changes weren't immediately in effect (it went by date of graduation, so someone finishing in 2003 had different requirements from someone from 2000, 2001, 2002 or 2004-grades and diplomas during a large range of years are NOT directly comparable to each other).

Then they started with the state tests. I think the goal here was to find a way to slash school funding, if a school wasn't performing well (and the worst performing schools tended to be the inner city ones), they got funding shortages, teachers or admin's would be purged... and it really did a number on the quality of education in middle of the road or borderline schools (pushing them over to be "troubled schools").

Then they decided the regents exams (you had to take a state test to "finish" a regents level course) were too easy, and made those harder... only they weren't even competent enough to make that right, botched almost everyone they modified, and in the end they had several years of regents exams where there were questions with more than one correct answer (however only one of those actually counted), or questions with no correct answer at all. Yes I realize multiple guess has students select the BEST answer, not the CORRECT answer- but it's only easy to do that for topics like history or English where content can be dictated from ideological grounds... its very hard to buy that bullshit cop-out argument when we're dealing with math (if a question asks "What is 1 + 1? A- 0, B- 5, C- 15, or D- all of the above?" there is no best answer!). These tests were so terrible, mind you, that even the elitist schools, the ones where grades are always perfect, statistics and funding are good, and nearly everyone graduates- had people failing these tests left and right. The situation everywhere else, was far more draconian with the state saying in the same breath "we fucked up... but tough shit, it says you failed, you failed"

Drop out rates not only suffered (especially in the schools most prong to having problems with this "policymaking") but since there was no local diploma to fall back on, all these drop outs had no choice but to go for the GED... while not having a means to make a living in the meantime. Then with the PINS revisions, kids who didn't want to be in school, who knew they wouldn't be able to finish it & get that regents diploma, were forced to stay in school taxing funding, and burdening the students who knew they still had a chance... by filling classrooms with students who knew the futility of their situation.

Schools with a 50-75%+ drop out rate do exist, I've seen them and I've observed classes in them (however that was years ago when I had the absurd notion of going for edu cert.). Even if they don't make up a majority of the schools in a given state (imho they do not make up the majority of schools), how many 50-75% drop out rate districts do you think is acceptable? Any?

I would argue that any school with a 50% drop out rate, is a failure And I would argue that merely throwing money at these schools isn't going to be the answer, at least no more of one than assuming "tougher tests make better students."

The VA has its own hospital system. Not to be confused with the military hospital system. Both have their problems, but neither has any relation whatsoever to a universal single payer plan.

I have been saying VA consistently because I know it is separate from the military hospital system. The VA is the closest we have to a British-NHS program, which is what I have been saying consistently.

Nobody's talking about a takeover of the healthcare system.

I don't know who this "nobody" is, but there absolutely are people talking about a takeover of the health care system. How many Americans do you think have decided in their minds that "the current system [in total] is broken beyond hope and we need a gov replacement"?

Just the financial system. That's where the problem lies.

That's where one of the problems lie, it isn't the only problem.

Free the employer from sole burdon of coverage, & you make them immediately more competitive with companies from countries around the world who have already dealt with this problem.

Free the employer from the burden of coverage and they'll drop their health care programs like a pile of bricks. What would that accomplish? Leaving most people with no choice BUT to use the gov programs. That would take away peoples' options, not increase them.

[hippifried]

You've got my curiousity, just how far back are we talking?

1920s. But there weren't any substantial changes in the education system until the post war boom.

College? Not exclusively, there were more people who finished high school than those who finished college.

There still is, but high school wasn't what we think of today. We still call it college prep, but the reality is that nowadays it's considered an extension of primary education instead of a process to weed out the college population pre-emtively.

The big change (if there was any tangible "big change" to point to) was the GI bill after WW2 paying for college educations.

Yes, that was major, but even then, the majority of GIs being discharged weren't highschool graduates. There was a boom in trade schools & apprenticeships after the war. Community colleges sprung up all over the place. There was no big rush of people going back to plow fields. The post war industrial boom was huge & lasted for over 25 years. It changed the face of America, created our current suburban culture, & turned education beyond the primary level into an expectation. All the examples of attempts to stem the dropout rates are about enforcing that expectation, including making highschool compulsory & raising the age of majority.

I have been saying VA consistently because I know it is separate from the military hospital system. The VA is the closest we have to a British-NHS program, which is what I have been saying consistently.

What does the British system have to do with single payer? I keep seeing these comparisons, but they just muddle the issue. Instead of looking at the Brits, take a look at Hawaii. They've had a single payer system for decades. There's other areas in the country too, but as far as I know, Hawaii's the only statewide system.

You should really read the original Clinton plan. It bore no resemblance to the British or European system. It didn't bear much resemblance to the propaganda that sunk it before it ever got debated in Congress either. All this red-baiting is doing a disservice to the country. We're the only industrialized nation in the world who ties healthcare to the ability to land a job that provides it. It's killing our competitiveness in the global & domestic markets. It's just blind ideological nonsense, & there's no reason for the American people to continue putting up with it. Fix the financing & you cure the problem. There's no reason for government to run hospitals & clinics, & there's no reason for anyone to think that that's the only alternative there is to what we have now.

[dave252]

maybe you socialized, nationalized healthcare nuts should look at those countries who have it very close. most have high unemployment near 20%, tax rates close to 60%, gas, near $10 a gallon. a pack of smokes $10. and who do these prices hurt the most? the poor, the rich will always be able to afford these things. i guess you are just looking for a hand out, yup we should aspire to be like france!!!!!

[trish]

Dave, perhaps you skipped over the part where hippiefried explained:

You should really read the original Clinton plan. It bore no resemblance to the British or European system.

Perhaps you should look more closely at your argument and fine tune it so that at least make it look like you're following the conversation.

[BrendaQG]

Here's an alternative to Soclized medicine. Have the government do two things at the exact same time. As part of the same law. Establish a national living wage law. Whereby employers would be required to pay enough money so that a full time employee could afford to buy his or her own healthcare for their family. While at the same time mandating that the insurance providers all provide a universal basic health care plan which would cover everyting, including prexisting conditions. The government would then only have to pay for the healthcare of unemployed people which we can easily afford. Part of this deal would be that employers would not have to provide healthcare anymore. They would instead give that compensation directly to you. If someone is irresponsible enough to take that money and spend it on firvilous crap that's their own stupid fault.