Obama on single-payer health care...

[Ben]

Obama said this, less than six years ago, about single-payer health care:
(And, too, this is what the majority of Americans want.)
"I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer universal health care program. I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14 percent of its Gross National Product on health care, cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody . . . a singlepayer health care plan, a universal health care plan. And that's what I'd like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate, and we have to take back the House."

[BlackMath]

I think the best solution is what we do in Australia.

Public Health care, with extra taxes added on to wealthy people who refuse to use Private when they can afford it.

[uktlover]

I think the best solution is what we do in Australia.

Public Health care, with extra taxes added on to wealthy people who refuse to use Private when they can afford it.

they should do that here in england! stop rich people from using up the NHS as theres not enough funding for it!

[dave252]

lets see if i hear this right, we are the greatest country in the world, but we should do things that countries who arent the greatest do? Should IBM and Microsoft start doing the things that the companies that arent number 1 in in thier fields do? Thats the way to fall off top, do what your inferior competitors do, that will solve all our problems. How about this, get an education , a,better job, a better life and pay for your own healthcare. Stop relying on our goverment and politicians to take care of you!!!!! Why even get a job or try to succeed in life when the goverment will provide all the basics needs in life. Are you helpless, have a brain? If you arent and do, i suggest u start to take care of yourself. That being said, I have no problem subsidising those who CANT do it for themselves, but the overwhelming majority in this country can but think everything should be provided for them. What ever happened to JFK's, "ASK NOT WHAT YOUR COUNTRY CAN DO YOU FOR, ASK WHAT YOU CAN DO FOR YOUR COUNTRY".

[Silcc69]

lets see if i hear this right, we are the greatest country in the world, but we should do things that countries who arent the greatest do? Should IBM and Microsoft start doing the things that the companies that arent number 1 in in thier fields do? Thats the way to fall off top, do what your inferior competitors do, that will solve all our problems. How about this, get an education , a,better job, a better life and pay for your own healthcare. Stop relying on our goverment and politicians to take care of you!!!!! Why even get a job or try to succeed in life when the goverment will provide all the basics needs in life. Are you helpless, have a brain? If you arent and do, i suggest u start to take care of yourself. That being said, I have no problem subsidising those who CANT do it for themselves, but the overwhelming majority in this country can but think everything should be provided for them. What ever happened to JFK's, "ASK NOT WHAT YOUR COUNTRY CAN DO YOU FOR, ASK WHAT YOU CAN DO FOR YOUR COUNTRY".

The healthcare industry makes a killing off pure profits. I know in my state alone they are the msot profitable industry in TN.

[Ben]

So, Obama has said he wants socialized medicine. And the majority of Americans want it. (It's only big pharma and the insurance industry who don't want it. I mean, even doctors and nurses want socialized medicine.
Plus industries could compete A LOT BETTER if they didn't have to pick up the health care tab of their employees. Yep! Industries could compete a lot better with socialized medicine.)
And, too, socialized medicine exists in the military.

[jordyd19]

Obama said this, less than six years ago, about single-payer health care:
(And, too, this is what the majority of Americans want.)
"I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer universal health care program. I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14 percent of its Gross National Product on health care, cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody . . . a singlepayer health care plan, a universal health care plan. And that's what I'd like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate, and we have to take back the House."


wealthiest country in the world?! go back to school

[El Nino]

Obama said this, less than six years ago, about single-payer health care:
(And, too, this is what the majority of Americans want.)
"I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer universal health care program. I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14 percent of its Gross National Product on health care, cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody . . . a singlepayer health care plan, a universal health care plan. And that's what I'd like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate, and we have to take back the House."


wealthiest country in the world?! go back to school

exactly

[Oli]

lets see if i hear this right, we are the greatest country in the world, but we should do things that countries who arent the greatest do? Should IBM and Microsoft start doing the things that the companies that arent number 1 in in thier fields do? Thats the way to fall off top, do what your inferior competitors do, that will solve all our problems. How about this, get an education , a,better job, a better life and pay for your own healthcare. Stop relying on our goverment and politicians to take care of you!!!!! Why even get a job or try to succeed in life when the goverment will provide all the basics needs in life. Are you helpless, have a brain? If you arent and do, i suggest u start to take care of yourself. That being said, I have no problem subsidising those who CANT do it for themselves, but the overwhelming majority in this country can but think everything should be provided for them. What ever happened to JFK's, "ASK NOT WHAT YOUR COUNTRY CAN DO YOU FOR, ASK WHAT YOU CAN DO FOR YOUR COUNTRY".

Nice logic. It sure worked well for GM and Ford didn't it? Toyota (the Inferior competitor) has waltzed past Ford and will soon permanently pass GM as the largest carmaker in the world. Toyota adapted to circumstances, Detroit didn't.

The healthcare system in this country is broken and needs to be repaired or replaced. 50 million people with no coverage, in this society, is unacceptable.

[trish]

lets see if i hear this right, we are the greatest country in the world,

Wrong. There are things at which we are excellent, some things at which we're pathetic and a lot of things in between. We have excellent hospitals, medical schools and doctors. But we have a pathetic health care system. Compare our child mortality rate with the other nations of the world...it's sadly pathetic. U.S. insurance companies will pay to have a diabetic's leg replaced with a prosthetic one, but they won't pay for the care that would have prevented amputation. The whole system is fucked up. We in the U.S. need a national health care system. Canada, England, Australia, France, etc have shown their viability. You want to live in the greatest country in the world? Then lobby your legislators for a civilized health care system.

[hippifried]

Call it whatever you like, but a single payer system is the way to go. All these other schemes & scams are just trying to sell you an insurance policy.

I don't see any reason that the insurance industry should be running the nation's healthcare system. Insurance is a hedge bet.

I don't see any reason that healthcare shouldn't be integrated into the national infrastructure. We did it with transportation, communications, education, the electrical grid, etc...

It's long past time to get over all this stupid red-baiting & get back to the business of making life a little better for out progeny. We're a society. We socialize. That's what societies do. We shouldn't be worshiping economic philosophies. Damn Birchers are worse than any of the commies they whine about.

[arnie666]

I do not understand why the yanks refer to a national health system as socialised. It is normally the people against it who refer to it this way trying to give the impression that it is the first step to a socialist country. I myself am a right wing conservative member of the monday club (far right of the conservative party) and I can count on my hand the people there who don't want a national health care system for every British citizen. We might differ with other parties on how it should be implemented but the basic idea to me is a sign of a modern civilised country.

I like America in fact I think now it does things better than we do on many issues, the main one being the idea of self improvement that any man or woman can get right to the top no matter who he is or what skin colour something I don't think will happen in the UK for many years. I like their views on gun ownership , and I do envy them on their ability to still excecute dirty criminal scum. But this issue I think they should follow us or at least look at other models of health care because it just seems unreal what that health care system is like.Britains is not perfect but I think it is 100 percent better than yours. No talking about the Doctors or Hospitals which there are some first rate ones in the states ,just the system.

[SarahG]

And, too, socialized medicine exists in the military.

BAD example. The VA is a national disgrace. If that's what health care will be like with an American NHS program, then we're destined for a very very rough road ahead.

PLEASE tell me you don't actually want the entire country using basically a bigger version of the VA for ALL their health care? Would you want your family to use such below-par health care?



Nice logic. It sure worked well for GM and Ford didn't it? Toyota (the Inferior competitor) has waltzed past Ford and will soon permanently pass GM as the largest carmaker in the world. Toyota adapted to circumstances, Detroit didn't.

Funny, you omitted how much trouble the Japanese car companies are having right now as well. Not as bad, but things are far from perfect for them.



I don't see any reason that healthcare shouldn't be integrated into the national infrastructure. We did it with transportation, communications, education, the electrical grid, etc...

Ouch, if our public schooling system is what we have to look forward to as far as expectations go for an America NHS, we're in a lot of trouble. I take issue to a lot of your examples.

-Electric grid worked fine when nationalized, when it was being taken seriously. But, nationalization was a response to a problem that never existed in the first place. Electric companies were fairly competent for decades before nationalization.

-Public schooling... surely you are joking? Sure, it's better than nothing, and it is better than religious institutions having a monopoly on education... but our public schools make the DMV look like the definition of efficiency :shock: Significant portions of our schools have a 50% or higher drop out rate, a disturbing amount of those have as high as 75%! Think of that for a minute, for every 4 kids that go in some of these districts, MAYBE, on a good day- 2 will graduate! All children left behind essentially proves that we're only capable (or willing?) to put bandaids & ducttape on hemorrhaging wounds... meanwhile our schools are now more segregated than at any moment in our nation's history since the civil right's movement, and something like 60% of those minority dominated schools are the worst funded ones (http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090114/us_nm/us_usa_segregation_2)....

-Public transit? Maybe there was a time when we were good at making those post roads that justified judicial review... but the reality of today is that our roadway infrastructure was designed & built decades ago, and in most cases are dangerously unable to coupe with their modern traffic use, dangerously unmaintained, and dangerously encourage the bumper to bumper grid lock that causes air quality problems. Some states are looking at selling off roadways to private or foreign institutions to become toll roads, because we're so inadequate in handling their care, expansion, and funding.

[hippifried]

You don't know what you're talking about.

As a babyboomer, I'm a member of the first generation of Americans expected to advance my education past the elementary level, just because I'm an American. My father was considered an educated man because he made it all the way through the 8th grade. His father would hire the local wizard each year to tell him how much grain was in his bins. He didn't know how to do the math. He could read & write to an extent, & count his money. That's all he needed.

We take education for granted, as if it's always been there. We're a literate country now, & each generation is better educated than the last. This bullshit that the schools are all fucked up because some kids drop out of high school, or don't know who the 40th President was, is just a lame excuse for cutting funding. We can do better & we can do more, but all this hogwash that public education is a failure is just that.

As for segregation: Modern schools aren't segregated. People just go to school where they live. The schools reflect the demographics. It ain't the same as having the white school & the negro school a block apart, with rules that force separation. It's going to take a few more generations to change those demographics. Racial demography in the society at large is not controlled by the school system.

The electrical grid isn't nationalized. Whatever gave you that idea? Oh wait. Are you one of those ideologues that thinks that if there's any government involvement, it must be socialism? Education isn't nationalized either.

The feds built the interstate highway system in 30 years. The US highway system is still there. You can still get your kicks on route 66. It's just that a large portion of it is I-40 now. I'm not sure which interstate/s take you north from OKC to Chicago, via St Louis & Joplin.

Nearly every road in the US, paved or not, was built & is maintained by some government entity. So are the systems that bring water to your tap, pipe out your waste & treat it so it doesn't contaminate your drinking water, & dispose of your trash. Everything you do is dependent on a national infrastructure system, regardless of who controls the various parts.

The problem with the healthcare system is that it's in the control of the insurance industry. Why? It's all gotten totally out of control. Prices & premiums have gone through the roof. Why? Oh there's lots of excuses & finger pointing, but the reality is that the insurance industry is out of their league. There's 300 million people here. With any downturn in the economy, people can't afford premiums that outstrip their mortgage payment. The payees get hosed too, because the providers raise their prices to cover the cost of uninsured people who have nowhere else to go but the ER. Everybody's looking for deep pockets to stick their hands into. The only thing the government can control is what they pay for directly, & they're forced to pay "market price". It's gotten so convoluted that more & more doctors won't even take cash anymore. Somebody needs to step in & take charge. There was a single payer plan on the table back in '93-'94. The insurance companies, hospital associations, AMA, etc..., convinced the public & the Congress that they were better equiped to run the industry if the government would just stay out of the way. They've had another 15 years & the initial payers have taken it on the chin. Insurance is a hedge bet. They can't deal with this. They've completely screwed it up & it's going to take an army of accountants to even start to straighten it all out. 99% of what goes on in the ER can be handled at a clinic for a tenth the cost or less. It all goes down from there. Insurance companies have gotten even more bloated & bureaucratic than government, & they're only accountable to their shareholders. At least the government is open to scrutiny.

[SarahG]

As a babyboomer, I'm a member of the first generation of Americans expected to advance my education past the elementary level, just because I'm an American. My father was considered an educated man because he made it all the way through the 8th grade. His father would hire the local wizard each year to tell him how much grain was in his bins. He didn't know how to do the math. He could read & write to an extent, & count his money. That's all he needed.

Only the working class would have seen 8th grade as "educated" even back then. Just because your father didn't finish high school doesn't mean that is characteristic of America's professional-class of the time.

The middle class had embraced secondary education long before the 30s-40s, and certainly were graduating above the 8th grade. In fact by the mid 30s Richmond begun an experiment aimed at tweaking public education programs & durations, randomly split their schools up so that some students went through a modern K-12 program, some went through an accelerated 1-11 program and at the end both groups were tested to see how graduates compared. The drop out rates, and standardized test findings both showed that the two programs produced essentially equivalent groups of students... a program that would have been laughable if "8th grade was sufficient".


We take education for granted, as if it's always been there. We're a literate country now, & each generation is better educated than the last.

Bullshit. America used to dominate technical and scientific fields, graduated more scientists and engineers than any other country. Today we have to import them from other countries because we simply don't have the graduates to fill our domestic needs.


This bullshit that the schools are all fucked up because some kids drop out of high school, or don't know who the 40th President was, is just a lame excuse for cutting funding. We can do better & we can do more, but all this hogwash that public education is a failure is just that.

Gee, the next time I see a newspaper article showing a district with a 75% drop out rate, I should go find the principle and shake his hand for the successful institution of learning that he's running. How could anyone consider a district with a 75% drop out rate to be anything BUT a failure?


The electrical grid isn't nationalized. Whatever gave you that idea?

Before you say I don't know what I am talking about, you really should go read some history books and see the history of our grid. :roll:


Education isn't nationalized either.

No, I never said it was nationalized. I said it was socialized (surely you know the difference?).


At least the government is open to scrutiny.

You mean "in theory". Until the VA is fixed and functioning properly, the idea that the feds could "fix health care for the entire country" is absurd. All we've done is close VA hospitals and slash funding whenever the budget gets tight (like to pay for a never-ending war in Iraq). If what flies at the VA passes as the model of American health care, and that's the most respected/prestigious demographic in the country, then how do you think health care is going to go for groups that don't have that degree of respect?

If you think the feds can handle socialized health care, fine- prove it by showing a federal health care program similar to NHS that has been tweaked to operate sufficiently. Simply has not happened yet in this country.

Maybe there will be a day when we'll have a half-way decent VA program and be ready for American-NHS, but that day surely isn't today.

[trish]

America used to dominate technical and scientific fields, graduated more scientists and engineers than any other country.Only for a brief period starting after World War II when a number of prominent European scientific leaders took up residence in the U.S. for obvious reasons. When government got a load of the atomic bomb, funding for science and science education skyrocketed. Still Russia beat us into Earth orbit. That scared more money and effort into science education and we experience a brief period of scientific brilliance and dominance. Eventually the federal government retreated from it’s commitments to education and at the same time placed uncountable unfunded mandates on public schools. Even State support of public schools has dwindled. In most States the bulk of K-12 is funded on the back of local property owners. Wealthy districts have excellent schools and excellent retention. Poor districts predictably suffer. Children in poorer districts cannot afford the benefits of private education. A thousand dollar voucher makes life a little easier for a wealthy family to send their progeny to a prestigious private, but it doesn't begin to cover the costs. Public education and true commitment on the part of state and federal goverment is the only solution.

[dave252]

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?

[trish]

Social security was doing just fine until some of you assholes out there elected officials who don’t believe in social security. Medicare is tremendously popular and successful. As I said above, the public schools in wealthy districts are among the best in the world. In districts where parents have jobs and families aren’t on the move, teachers in fact are able to teach quite well. You already admit private insurance isn't working. They're bilking us all and the government has been unwilling to step in. Why? Because there are assholes in government who don't believe in governing. But hey, if you don’t like assholes fucking up YOUR government and YOUR programs don't get rid of the programs. Ever hear the baby and the bath water? Try electing people who believe in those programs. The viability of public schools, public infrastructure, public health and public healthcare has been proven over and over again at various times in this nation and in other western nations.

[SarahG]

Public education and true commitment on the part of state and federal goverment is the only solution.

Exactly. I am sure there will be a day where the feds could handle a national NHS program, but if we can't handle stuff as basic as the VA system or public schools- I have very little reason to be optimistic about universal health care under today's environment.

You have to be able to walk before you can run, and the feds simple refuse to, in practice, commit themselves to the few things that they have socialized. Saying something is socialized is not in and of itself a criticism, I have nothing against socialized education... what I have a problem with is socializing education and then only pretending to be committed to those programs. Why is that such a problem? That should be self explanatory.

Even more problematic is the idea that showcasing the failures of our schooling system is just an excuse for increasing spending. There are real, tangible, important problems in our schooling system (we have a schooling system, not an education system- an important difference). We need the spending for our schools, its taking that funding away that got us in this shit-hole to begin with.

[SarahG]

Medicare is tremendously popular and successful.

Is the bar really that low? Medicare shows just how much our politicians would use government health care to cater to special interest groups. Remember the prescription drug plan that was passed a few years back? I do, I actually read (er, started to) the massive multiple phonebook-thick program. The politicians didn't even bother to write the law for that one, the special interest groups did. There wasn't a politician in the country that knew a paragraph of what that bill entailed... if that's what we have to look forward to for NHS, I am genuinely concerned.

Medicare is NOT the closest our government has to NHS. The VA system is the closest we have to NHS, yet no one wants to talk about that because it would be admitting that our politicians refuse to give a shit about veterans... and if we accept that at face value, it means they certainly won't give a shit about anyone else.

Sure, we can blame the politicians all we want for "ruining programs" but, those politicians are in office for a reason... they're who we keep electing into offices. Until we show that we can handle 1- electing into office politicians who actually care about these programs, 2- actually put our money where our words are and fix these existing programs then there is no reason at all to pretend that American NHS would be any different from the VA (or any other government program that has been butchered by neocon officials).

To say nothing of what would happen to NHS-coverage for socially volatile issues when neocons get into office. Suppose we get American NHS in 2010. What do you think would happen to the coverage of stuff like reproductive rights, fertility rights, and std treatments once the conservatives take control of DC again? The other big elephant in the room is that the return of conservative dominance in DC is a matter of when, not if.

[Oli]

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

[SarahG]

Go back to jerking off in GA

Jerking off? That doesn't fit in with abstinence only education (anyone remember Jocelyn Elder?).

[El Nino]

Nice Dave

[Oli]

Jerking off? That doesn't fit in with abstinence only education (anyone remember Jocelyn Elder?).

Or our recently departed President's administration.

[hippifried]

Only the working class would have seen 8th grade as "educated" even back then. Just because your father didn't finish high school doesn't mean that is characteristic of America's professional-class of the time.

The middle class had embraced secondary education long before the 30s-40s, and certainly were graduating above the 8th grade. In fact by the mid 30s Richmond begun an experiment aimed at tweaking public education programs & durations, randomly split their schools up so that some students went through a modern K-12 program, some went through an accelerated 1-11 program and at the end both groups were tested to see how graduates compared. The drop out rates, and standardized test findings both showed that the two programs produced essentially equivalent groups of students... a program that would have been laughable if "8th grade was sufficient".
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.

What professional class? You're talking about the sliver of people who went to college. We were an agrarian society & economy until WWII. We would probably have pulled out of the depression years earlier if not for the dust bowl. What we would consider middle class was a small part of the population, & most of it got wiped out by the depression. Expanded secondary education was part of the New Deal stimulous to build schools & keep teenagers out of the job market if possible. The depression & war industrialization brought on the mass flight to the cities. 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.


America used to dominate technical and scientific fields, graduated more scientists and engineers than any other country. Today we have to import them from other countries because we simply don't have the graduates to fill our domestic needs.
Actually, we still dominate technology, & we've always imported brain power to do it. So what?


How could anyone consider a district with a 75% drop out rate to be anything BUT a failure?
& that would be where? You try to make it seem like the norm. I'm not a blog-rube.


Before you say I don't know what I am talking about, you really should go read some history books and see the history of our grid. :roll:
The grid is nationalized the same way the rails are, or the cross-country phone lines & pipelines. It's all regulated & built under eminent domain, but still in private hands.


I never said it was nationalized. I said it was socialized (surely you know the difference?).
Yeah whatever. All schools are socialized & always have been. That's the structure. The only education that isn't socialized is private tutoring, & a case can be made that that's socialized for the most part too. Got a point? By the way, red-baiting doesn't work.

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. You're comparing apples & oranges. Nobody's talking about a takeover of the healthcare system. Just the financial system. That's where the problem lies. The clinics & outpatient facilities will happen because that's what'll get paid for. That'll empty the waiting rooms at the ERs & make them manageable, without the 10 to 12 hour waits. When you have full access to the books of the providers & the accounting expertise, you can affect the market price. Free the providers from the insurance chaos & they'll streamline. It doesn't even take the insurance companies out of the picture entirely. It just creates a buffer & eliminates the ability to pay caveat. Private insurance companies are already working with medicare, & it seems to work fine. A few bumps here & there, but it certainly simplifies things for the patient.

Healthcare shouldn't be tied to a job. The only reason we have that in place is because all this started with union contracts & trust fund accounts that farmed out the details to those with expertise. It wasn't perfect but it worked. It's too limited. We can do better, make it more inclusive, & cheaper in the long run. 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. Wage raises & personnel increases are easier to absorb also. There's no downside to doing this.

[trish]

You have to be able to walk before you can run, and the feds simple refuse to, in practice, commit themselves to the few things that they have socialized.

Sure, we can blame the politicians all we want for "ruining programs" but, those politicians are in office for a reason... they're who we keep electing into offices.

Forgive me for quoting from two distinct posts, SarahG. But on these points we agree. The problem lies not entirely with the commitment of politicians, but with our own commitment. If people are committed to public education, they need to elect officials who won’t sabotage public education with unfunded mandates and idiotic testing schemes. They need to elect people who won’t cut education at the first sign of a budget crunch. Public education works when people are dedicated to it. The same is true of social security, government health care etc. All we have to do is decide what we want and commit ourselves to it.

This realization establishes a basic asymmetry between public and private. Without oversight or regulation, no amount of public commitment will improve private insurance, or private education. Short term cost effective strategies will always trump strategies that are long term and more costly on the short run. That’s why insurance companies are willing to pay for prosthetic limbs but not for the care that would have prevented the diabetes that killed the limb in the first place.

[addicted]

Obama is like a fighter that has taken a dive. He has givien into all the demands from corrupt healthcare titans that financed his campaign which is the biggest con job in american history.

[dave252]

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.

[hippifried]

Tax tweaks aren't going to fix anything. It only affects the higher brackets & doesn't expand the pool.

[dave252]

Tax tweaks aren't going to fix anything. It only affects the higher brackets & doesn't expand the pool. if you make it affordable, it does expand the pool. when computers first came on the market, the prices were out of reach for the common man, when they became reasonable, did the POOL expand? When dvd players first came out, they were expensive, now you can walk into walmart and buy one for 39 bucks, everyone has a dvd player, the pool expanded! hd tvs, the same thing. so if you have incentives to make healthcare insurance affordable the pool will expand.

[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... :roll:

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.