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Re: Socialized Health Care or No?
Wednesday, August 26, 2009 10:59 AM on j-body.org
why is it when i just state that oil companies are profiting about the same or less then most other business you make some giat leap and assume i think they should be unregulated?????

your trying to imply things i never wrote or implied or even was thinking. basically all your saying is because its valuble to the U.S. we should be able to pay next to nothing and the oil companies shouldn't make the same percentage of profit as everyeone else. sure they made 3 trillion in profit. but you guys seem to forget at 10% profit that means they spent around 30 trillion dollars to make that.(if your averaging out to 10% profits)


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Re: Socialized Health Care or No?
Wednesday, August 26, 2009 11:41 AM on j-body.org
I live in Canada. It's threads like this that make me glad I do -- not that our system is anything close to perfect either.

My mother is a cancer survivor. The drugs for treatment were costly, and many were not covered by public health. My aunt has severe diabetes, and while basic supplies were covered, she was unable to manage her condition completely with normal injections. She was much improved when she got an insulin pump -- not covered by public health, but rather by her husband's employer health benefits. He left her, and when she was unable to afford to maintain and buy supplies for the pump, she was instead forced to use the last of her savings to have it removed. Her health has definitely suffered since. My brother-in-law tripped on stairs, and tore a ligament in his knee. He waited 8 months for corrective surgery, and paid $800 for a special brace in the meantime.

So it's not like Canada's health care is a golden ticket. Believe you me, they've got it figured out where they can draw the line. It's sort of like a massively shared insurance plan, with many of the same limitations. They still have a certain revenue, and someone needs to balance the books. We might not all agree on where the "premiums" come from (cough TAXES), or where they ultimately get spent, but as someone raised under this system I take for granted that a hospital visit could be handled any other way. I rather like the idea that they will resuscitate me, stop bleeding, and sew limbs back on without stopping to check my coverage or credit rating.

I don't get a bill when the firefighters come to spray my burning house. I don't get a bill when the police shoot a thug in my business. Is it much of a stretch to put EMTs and health-care in the same category? Sure, you could argue that health is my own problem. Maybe I'm a fat druggie smoker who has it coming, right?

Health concerns us all, as I suspect a strong majority of us would probably prefer not to die. There are definitely ways to improve your odds, but there are always exceptions, and some of those exceptions are people who cannot pay. This may well cost them their life. Are the deserving always able to pay? Does deserving have anything to do with it? Some might say that money and morality have no place together in the same sentence (especially not where capitalism is concerned), but I feel it is an amazing gesture for a county to decide that even if there has to be a price on life, it is willing to budget for it.



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Re: Socialized Health Care or No?
Wednesday, August 26, 2009 12:00 PM on j-body.org
I think most of you are missing the point about health care.

In our current system, health care providers are owned by private companies. Those private companies have an obligation to their shareholders to pay out dividends. This becomes a problem and a huge conflict of interest, because the best way to ensure you are profitable is to deny coverage to sick individuals, or to deny claims to people who are already on your insurance. Try finding coverage for a surviving cancer patient, or someone with a chronic illness. It just isn't going to happen. I guess they should go get a job (even if they're unable) so they can be covered?

The reality is everyone deserves to be covered and no one should stand to profit from denying coverage. If you can't see this conflict of interest, there is no way you will understand why socialized (yes I said it) medicine is really the only solution that is viable. Private companies who have a responsibility to their shareholders have absolutely no business in my health decisions or those of anyone else.



Re: Socialized Health Care or No?
Wednesday, August 26, 2009 12:11 PM on j-body.org
sndsgood wrote:why is it when i just state that oil companies are profiting about the same or less then most other business you make some giat leap and assume i think they should be unregulated?????

your trying to imply things i never wrote or implied or even was thinking. basically all your saying is because its valuble to the U.S. we should be able to pay next to nothing and the oil companies shouldn't make the same percentage of profit as everyeone else. sure they made 3 trillion in profit. but you guys seem to forget at 10% profit that means they spent around 30 trillion dollars to make that.(if your averaging out to 10% profits)


The profit is usually the money made AFTER expenses, such as marketing..... So that 3 trillion is pure profit after the fact. By your reasoning your saying they need to spend 30 trillion in order to generate 3 trillion ? Does this make sense... NO.



My Cav
I give up...
i'm buying a VW those people love trees, so they should love eachother too... "Andy"
Re: Socialized Health Care or No?
Wednesday, August 26, 2009 12:14 PM on j-body.org
Geeky, ShizBlam. Well said btw.



My Cav
I give up...
i'm buying a VW those people love trees, so they should love eachother too... "Andy"
Re: Socialized Health Care or No?
Wednesday, August 26, 2009 2:23 PM on j-body.org
Short Hand wrote:Question here.... do you consider yourself a Christian ? (I am not questioning your devotion or faith.). I just need a simple answer of yes or no.

I can't wait to hear where you're going with this, although I have an idea.


Short Hand wrote:
sndsgood wrote:so oil is only making 12-15% profit +/-. that right there kinda makes me laugh. now 33% is pretty good but not exactly raping you. and as you said, that was just the highest, which means there could be allot of companies down in the 10-15% profit margin, which isnt that tremendous. so many people scream about these companies stealing money when they are just turning a standard profit.


Oil companies have been posting record profits for decades. You can't look at it simply in a perspective of % per dollar. You have to look at the big picture and the BILLIONS of barrels of Oil produced. 15 % profit on billions if not trillions of barrels of oil = $$$$$$. Compare it to the profit margin on other goods such as items at Walmart.. and you see the big picture.

Spoken like a true socialist.

You can, and should look at the net profit margin as a percentage, and as I showed above, it's single digits, not 15%. Why is margin percentage important? Because people invest for a return as a percentage. If profits were squeezed to 1-2%, the risk would be too great to invest in, especially with today's volotile prices. But I'm sure you'd rather see the investors want to back out, so that the companies could collapse. They don't deserve to make billions of dollars on trillions of dollars invested.

Your view can be summed up in one simple word: jealousy.






Re: Socialized Health Care or No?
Wednesday, August 26, 2009 4:47 PM on j-body.org
Greedy Capitalist Pig wrote:
Short Hand wrote:Question here.... do you consider yourself a Christian ? (I am not questioning your devotion or faith.). I just need a simple answer of yes or no.

I can't wait to hear where you're going with this, although I have an idea.


Short Hand wrote:
sndsgood wrote:so oil is only making 12-15% profit +/-. that right there kinda makes me laugh. now 33% is pretty good but not exactly raping you. and as you said, that was just the highest, which means there could be allot of companies down in the 10-15% profit margin, which isnt that tremendous. so many people scream about these companies stealing money when they are just turning a standard profit.


Oil companies have been posting record profits for decades. You can't look at it simply in a perspective of % per dollar. You have to look at the big picture and the BILLIONS of barrels of Oil produced. 15 % profit on billions if not trillions of barrels of oil = $$$$$$. Compare it to the profit margin on other goods such as items at Walmart.. and you see the big picture.

Spoken like a true socialist.

You can, and should look at the net profit margin as a percentage, and as I showed above, it's single digits, not 15%. Why is margin percentage important? Because people invest for a return as a percentage. If profits were squeezed to 1-2%, the risk would be too great to invest in, especially with today's volotile prices. But I'm sure you'd rather see the investors want to back out, so that the companies could collapse. They don't deserve to make billions of dollars on trillions of dollars invested.

Your view can be summed up in one simple word: jealousy.


LOL being as I am from Canada.. WHERE we are not afraid of the "S" word. YES you can call me a socialist. ; ).

-ALSO I do not know how it is even remotely possible to be jealous of something that is non human such as a company...... BUT Hey.. in your world "us socialist's are capable of anything !.

I am also stating something on everyone's mind. DOES a company such as big oil really need to make profits in the multiple billions ? I believe it can and has the right to make profits. (AS IT SHOULD).. BUT I also beleive there is a point of exploitation, which many companies pass threw. I mean if they passed these savings on to YOU OR ME the consumer...... You could spend that money elsewhere.. say HEALTH INSURANCE........ Or buying goods from another industry.......


BUT as always you prefer the rights of a big corporation over your fellow citizens. You must have this feeling that their prosperity is going to trickle down off their ass crack and go to you .... ?

WRONG. That is for the shareholders.

My 2 cents.



My Cav
I give up...
i'm buying a VW those people love trees, so they should love eachother too... "Andy"
Re: Socialized Health Care or No?
Wednesday, August 26, 2009 5:12 PM on j-body.org
Short Hand wrote:BUT as always you prefer the rights of a big corporation over your fellow citizens. You must have this feeling that their prosperity is going to trickle down off their ass crack and go to you .... ?.

See, this is where you have me, and most other capitalists all wrong.

I believe everyone should have the freedom to take the risks, and reap the rewards that they yield. It is not the right of anyone to have someone else's fortune spread out to them. And it sure as hell is not the right of the government to decide to take from one group to give to another.

And to your point about us being able to afford more if they spread some of that money around, think about this logically. Seriously, at 7.6% net profit, if you took all of that away from them and made them sell the gas with zero net profit, you're talking about saving everyone a few cents per gallon. The average person drives 10-12 thousand miles a year. At an average MPG (throwing this out there, I'm not sure of the actual number) of say, 15 MPG on the low side, that means their using maybe 700-800 gallons of gas per year. If the gas prices for a year averaged $2.50, which they could this year, that would mean a savings of maybe $100 per year, or more simply, just under $2 per week, and that's on a low MPG estimate. Do you really think this would mean people could "spend that money elsewhere.. say HEALTH INSURANCE........ Or buying goods from another industry"? Come on. You're missing the big picture because of the big numbers being thrown around.







Re: Socialized Health Care or No?
Wednesday, August 26, 2009 6:03 PM on j-body.org
After reading through this thread again.. it becomes blatantly obvious why nothing will ever happen. Look at the topics chosen for discussion in a socialized health care thread. It's nothing better than noise.



Re: Socialized Health Care or No?
Wednesday, August 26, 2009 10:42 PM on j-body.org
Greedy Capitalist Pig wrote:
Short Hand wrote:BUT as always you prefer the rights of a big corporation over your fellow citizens. You must have this feeling that their prosperity is going to trickle down off their ass crack and go to you .... ?.

See, this is where you have me, and most other capitalists all wrong.

I believe everyone should have the freedom to take the risks, and reap the rewards that they yield. It is not the right of anyone to have someone else's fortune spread out to them. And it sure as hell is not the right of the government to decide to take from one group to give to another.

And to your point about us being able to afford more if they spread some of that money around, think about this logically. Seriously, at 7.6% net profit, if you took all of that away from them and made them sell the gas with zero net profit, you're talking about saving everyone a few cents per gallon. The average person drives 10-12 thousand miles a year. At an average MPG (throwing this out there, I'm not sure of the actual number) of say, 15 MPG on the low side, that means their using maybe 700-800 gallons of gas per year. If the gas prices for a year averaged $2.50, which they could this year, that would mean a savings of maybe $100 per year, or more simply, just under $2 per week, and that's on a low MPG estimate. Do you really think this would mean people could "spend that money elsewhere.. say HEALTH INSURANCE........ Or buying goods from another industry"? Come on. You're missing the big picture because of the big numbers being thrown around.


Your twisting the numbers here, you do realize how much 1 % is when it comes to an oil company don't you ?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/01/business/01cnd-exxon.html

11.7 billion from Mobil alone....... I am pretty sure the company would not go tits up if it say only made a profit of 2 billion instead....



My Cav
I give up...
i'm buying a VW those people love trees, so they should love eachother too... "Andy"
Re: Socialized Health Care or No?
Thursday, August 27, 2009 4:09 AM on j-body.org
Short Hand wrote:Your twisting the numbers here, you do realize how much 1 % is when it comes to an oil company don't you ?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/01/business/01cnd-exxon.html

11.7 billion from Mobil alone....... I am pretty sure the company would not go tits up if it say only made a profit of 2 billion instead....

Read what I said again, and think about it. I didn't twist any numbers.
I simply pointed out that your statement about oil companies lowering their profits wouldn have a significant impact in the average person's life was a flawed premise.








Re: Socialized Health Care or No?
Thursday, August 27, 2009 4:25 AM on j-body.org
Short Hand wrote:

Your twisting the numbers here, you do realize how much 1 % is when it comes to an oil company don't you ?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/01/business/01cnd-exxon.html

11.7 billion from Mobil alone....... I am pretty sure the company would not go tits up if it say only made a profit of 2 billion instead....



You are completely missing the point. Why should a company be punished for making a small profit margin. If you just look at dollars and cents it looks huge but when you look at actual percentage they are not a very profitable market. If you ran your own business you would be pissed i you were told you could only make 2% profit. Its the people that only look at the dollar amount that continually piss and moan about how much the oil companies make.

I would like to know how much of the overall profit is actually due to fuel sales and not the other markets the companies are in.


On topic though. You can be accepted for insurance even if you are in bad shape. I had an uncle pass a few months ago that ran out of coverage because he had been out of work so long with cancer issues. Another company did accept him knowing what was happening to him. It does happen. One of his doctors was from another country that had a socialized health system and even told him that if he had been in that country he would not have received half the care that he did.

Listening to Obama speak and what he wants to do with some of the tests that are performed just kind of scares me a bit. With some of what he wants to do it will leave the door wide open to malparctice suits because a test was not performed that could have found something. He even said in one interview that some tests need to be eliminated even if they do help 1 of of every 100 people. What do you think is going to happen when that 1 person does not get that test and ends up severly ill or dies? Yes there is a lot of wasted tests but they have to be done as a CYA, otherwise in this sue happy society you risk winding up in court.



Re: Socialized Health Care or No?
Thursday, August 27, 2009 4:36 AM on j-body.org
shorthand, do you really need a tv. i think its greedy of you to have a tv when i dont. i think its unfair that you work every day and have enough money left over to buy a tv. that is so greedy of you. does that make sence? thats kinda what your saying, you feel you have the right to tell the oil companies how much they can profit. no diffrent them me telling you that i dont care if you work 2 or 3 jobs and bust your ass and make money.

image you work 30 hours a week and say take home 1000$ a week, now imagine working 40 hours and only making $1000 a week. does that make sence? would you work 40 hours if you new you could just work 30 hours and get the same amount of cash???????

now take your oil companies. they spend trillions of their own money, in the hopes of making 10% profit. now if we take your stance, you feel that they should only get say 2% of that profit. now what would you do as the oil company. would you keep working as hard as you were to make that 10% and then have the goverment take 8% away. or would do like you would at your job, just only work enough so that you only make 2% profit. problaby cutting the worlds oil supply by a good amount, causing prices to rise and a possible oil shortage?



do i think an oil company really needs to make 10% profits, sure i do. no diffrent then a guy down the street, do i feel he should have a tv in every room of his house. hey if he has the money then more power to him. you say you want them to give their profit from their work to you so you can go out and spend on another companies, like a companie like microsoft that has profits in the 25% range. that seems odd. i still can't wrap my head around the fact you feel a company that profits 10% is worse then a company that profits 25% the amount of money is irrelevent. but you can't seem to get away from that.





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Re: Socialized Health Care or No?
Thursday, August 27, 2009 8:26 AM on j-body.org
sndsgood wrote:shorthand, do you really need a tv. i think its greedy of you to have a tv when i dont. i think its unfair that you work every day and have enough money left over to buy a tv. that is so greedy of you. does that make sence? thats kinda what your saying, you feel you have the right to tell the oil companies how much they can profit. no diffrent them me telling you that i dont care if you work 2 or 3 jobs and bust your ass and make money.

image you work 30 hours a week and say take home 1000$ a week, now imagine working 40 hours and only making $1000 a week. does that make sence? would you work 40 hours if you new you could just work 30 hours and get the same amount of cash???????

now take your oil companies. they spend trillions of their own money, in the hopes of making 10% profit. now if we take your stance, you feel that they should only get say 2% of that profit. now what would you do as the oil company. would you keep working as hard as you were to make that 10% and then have the goverment take 8% away. or would do like you would at your job, just only work enough so that you only make 2% profit. problaby cutting the worlds oil supply by a good amount, causing prices to rise and a possible oil shortage?



do i think an oil company really needs to make 10% profits, sure i do. no diffrent then a guy down the street, do i feel he should have a tv in every room of his house. hey if he has the money then more power to him. you say you want them to give their profit from their work to you so you can go out and spend on another companies, like a companie like microsoft that has profits in the 25% range. that seems odd. i still can't wrap my head around the fact you feel a company that profits 10% is worse then a company that profits 25% the amount of money is irrelevent. but you can't seem to get away from that.


The second you said trillions you lost my interest. You have no idea what you are talking about. PROFIT = money made AFTER the fact, AFTER expenditure. THIS covers MARKETING. LIKE I told you before in this thread..... if you had to spend 10 billion to make 2 billion like you said.. ALL major corporations would be tits up right now. Which is simply not true.



What you dolts have to understand here is that I am not AGAINST the company making profit, what I am against is the blatant exploitation on the way to YOU or I in order to please shareholders. It is a necessity of life here in N.A. and when only a few companies hold it all.. You get the picture.

Quote:


On topic though. You can be accepted for insurance even if you are in bad shape. I had an uncle pass a few months ago that ran out of coverage because he had been out of work so long with cancer issues. Another company did accept him knowing what was happening to him. It does happen. One of his doctors was from another country that had a socialized health system and even told him that if he had been in that country he would not have received half the care that he did.

Listening to Obama speak and what he wants to do with some of the tests that are performed just kind of scares me a bit. With some of what he wants to do it will leave the door wide open to malparctice suits because a test was not performed that could have found something. He even said in one interview that some tests need to be eliminated even if they do help 1 of of every 100 people. What do you think is going to happen when that 1 person does not get that test and ends up severly ill or dies? Yes there is a lot of wasted tests but they have to be done as a CYA, otherwise in this sue happy society you risk winding up in court.


Funny.. Cancer treatment patients here get fantastic treatment......(Having a great uncle who got fantastic treatment himself.) Your uncles life expectancy would NOT have changed here.... The only difference is he would have not needed insurance.. THE "public" option would have taken care of him.

-ALSO I will not go threw the quality of care thing again with any of you. AS long as the W.H.O. rates more Universal Health Care systems above yours, you are SOL. Last I checked.. you are below us.... (AND GCP/QUickLilCav.. give me a break on insulting the WHO.. it has the finest medical minds in the world involved.. I highly doubt you have the qualification to insult such a group or judge its efficiency. )







My Cav
I give up...
i'm buying a VW those people love trees, so they should love eachother too... "Andy"
Re: Socialized Health Care or No?
Thursday, August 27, 2009 10:29 AM on j-body.org
the doctor that told him that was from Canada. just didnt want to throw that in there to avoid any statements about how great your health care is, but I guess that does not matter now. Out of curiosity, what percentage of your taxes goes to cover your health care??



Re: Socialized Health Care or No?
Thursday, August 27, 2009 12:15 PM on j-body.org
i think we could all sit here and tell individual stories of someone who got good or bad treatment on either side.





short hand ummm i know what profit means, they are making 10% profit. but again soon as you hear they are making trillions you tend to close your ears so im done with you. i'll continue fighting for a country that lets you keep what you earn and you keep figting to take what other people earn for yourself.


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Re: Socialized Health Care or No?
Thursday, August 27, 2009 12:46 PM on j-body.org
Short Hand wrote:(AND GCP/QUickLilCav.. give me a break on insulting the WHO.. it has the finest medical minds in the world involved.. I highly doubt you have the qualification to insult such a group or judge its efficiency. )

First, I never insulted the WHO, I argued the premise of their ratings system, and I stand by it.

Now, if you want to start calling me out on my qualifications, back up your qualifications to judge me on it.






Re: Socialized Health Care or No?
Saturday, August 29, 2009 2:56 AM on j-body.org
Greedy Capitalist Pig wrote:
Short Hand wrote:(AND GCP/QUickLilCav.. give me a break on insulting the WHO.. it has the finest medical minds in the world involved.. I highly doubt you have the qualification to insult such a group or judge its efficiency. )

First, I never insulted the WHO, I argued the premise of their ratings system, and I stand by it.

Now, if you want to start calling me out on my qualifications, back up your qualifications to judge me on it.
Since when does he need qualifications to ask you what YOUR qualifications are? Apparently they must be sufficient that you are some how qualified to judge the WHO's rating system...

As per your explanation of our worse health, how do you explain things like infant mortality rates and such?! Are our infants eating too much McNipple? I don't think so. Our lifestyles - while they contribute greatly to the matter - are not the whole picture. The notion that we have the world's best health care over any other nation - that is propaganda plain and simple. It just isn't true.

In a partially related matter though - here are some good malpractice reform ideas I found while searching for something else(that I forgot to bookmark and never found in the end).

Quote:

Driven to despair by skyrocketing insurance premiums and malpractice woes, US physicians are marching in the streets for tort reform. They're demanding federal legislation that, for starters, would limit noneconomic damages in malpractice suits to $250,000.

Some legal experts, however, say America should look beyond its borders for a more drastic solution. So what can we learn from how the rest of the world handles malpractice cases?

Stunned by huge awards handed out by juries? In Canada, judges try the vast majority of malpractice cases.

Outraged by the contingency fees of plaintiffs' attorneys that gobble up one-third or more of court-awarded damages? Germany bans them, while the United Kingdom limits a victorious plaintiff's attorney to twice his customary fee.

Skeptical of dueling expert witnesses? German judges appoint their own neutral experts.

Sick and tired of litigation, period? In New Zealand, malpractice cases bypass the courthouse. They're adjudicated through a no-fault system run by the government.

To be sure, foreign legal systems may not hold the key to resolving the US malpractice insurance crisis. Some experts argue that steep premiums stem more from the business cycles of malpractice carriers and the financial fallout of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks than from frivolous suits and swollen jury verdicts. And the approaches that other countries take don't always produce the results you'd expect. Nevertheless, the way the rest of the world treats malpractice claims challenges long-held assumptions about the American justice system.
There is more to that article that I didn't copy





Re: Socialized Health Care or No?
Saturday, August 29, 2009 5:39 AM on j-body.org
bk3k wrote:Since when does he need qualifications to ask you what YOUR qualifications are? Apparently they must be sufficient that you are some how qualified to judge the WHO's rating system...

He didn't ask, he said he highly doubts my qualifications. That was a judgement, and I threw back to him why is he so qualified to make that judgement. Big difference.

Also, since when do you have to be qualified to question things, or make an argument for or against something? I've made a case against the WHO's ratings system in another thread, and that was only regarding a couple of the statistics they use.

bk3k wrote:As per your explanation of our worse health, how do you explain things like infant mortality rates and such?! Are our infants eating too much McNipple? I don't think so. Our lifestyles - while they contribute greatly to the matter - are not the whole picture. The notion that we have the world's best health care over any other nation - that is propaganda plain and simple. It just isn't true.

There are any number of factors that come into play with some statistics like IMR that have nothing to do with the healthcare system. That's exactly why I have a big problem with the way the WHO rates countries.

Here is another thing that can give you an example of how things can be skewed by factors other than the healthcare system (direct quote from the WHO report):

In Europe, health systems in Mediterranean countries such as France, Italy and Spain are rated higher than others in the continent.

Do you know what the biggest difference in individual ratings is? Overall health. Since Mediterranean countries not only have the most mild climate in the world, and the foods they eat also tend to be healthier, doesn't it stand to reason that the health care system might not be the reason for the better overall health? For one, they eat tons of foods with olives and olive oils, which is known to promote a healthy cholesterol balance, and they are near the bottom of the chart in rates of heart disease. I could fill up an entire thread on things like this, but you get the idea where I'm coming from.

By the way, here's the source of my data on the last paragraph: WHO statistics on heart disease related death

bk3k wrote:In a partially related matter though - here are some good malpractice reform ideas I found while searching for something else(that I forgot to bookmark and never found in the end).

I haven't read that article yet, but I will say that I agree whole-heartedly that malpractice reform is where the biggest cost reductions can be made, and I've said it a number of times. I've also explained why Obama will not do it, which is the fact that the tort lawyers are some of his biggest supporters.





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