If these are typical of the folks we are insuring I don't like the odds of getting a good group rate.

Isn't the secret service afraid one of these people is going to eat our great leader.

Sorry this shows the background side show much more completely.



[This message has been edited by Chuck Schott (10/2/2013)]

I couldn't watch the video - did the poor people in question need to be wearing larger tricorns?

Short answer? No.

So, the point is fat shaming. How novel.

Fat Shaming from Chuck Procreateing Schott!?

What's your cholesterol level, Chuck? Blood pressure? Sugar levels? BMI, clogged arteries, personal choices that may increase your lung cancer, skin cancer, prostate cancer risks? How much fiber do you eat? Do you drink? Please post a picture of yourself so that we may critique you. Because I'd like to know more about the person "I'm insuring."

Need a like button!!

The arguement that the average american health rate is what drives up the costs is wrong, yes we're fatter but we also smoke and drink far less than most European countries. They still pay less for health care than we do, it's the simple fact that having the ability to control the consumer market means you can demand lower cost medical equipment, services and medication. When you can say, hey make me some good fake hips, but make them safe and cheap or I'll get one off these other companies to service our millions of customers. Then you get substantially lower prices, medicare actually proves this in the US market, often receiving much cheaper agreements with medical companies.

People can be any size and be in excellent health or in crappy health. I know a very skinny, active fellow with astronomically high cholesterol because of genetics. He doesn't look like a heart attack waiting to happen but he is.

If we search out only the healthy in insure, we rather defeat the whole purpose of insurance--sharing the risk.

What she said, it's actually detrimental to your wallet for the government to exclude people from receiving health care. Refer to my earlier post, as to why. Actually even stopping the health care bill outright will peobably everyone more in the long run, because when people don't have health insurance and required to pay for services in a sellers market they're often unable to do so. At that point your not only paying for their care but the cost of labor put into trying to get them to pay. You wanna save money your best off supporting the health care reform, bonus you also get to feel good about a chance of no longer living in a country 33rd in life expectancy. Gotta stop looking at a macro issue on a micro scale.


Also I'm annoyed by the general outpouring of stupidty usually contained to a dull roar by the peer to peer echange from one dullard to another. So I have to find some small joy in enraging said uneducated popiulace with logical and factual counterpoints. Carry on unwashed masses!

You do realize your last post is pretty much unintelligible. I have no idea what you meant to say but kudos for your enthusiasm.

The Us pays huge amounts on people who need care but can't afford it, they go bankrupt it kicks back to us plus expenses of trying to collect which adds up. On the same end, the US doesn't negotiate as hard as countries as we don't have a unified buying power to use as leverage. So your left with a market with extremely inflated prices resting on the shoulders of individuals. We pay more in healthcare than most EU countries because of this fact. People getting upset about having to pay more is a silly arguement because it is a solution being played out on a national long term level. Best argument I could see logically to opposing it would be pointing out we're giving more power to a government known for bloated and wasteful spending.

Does that make a bit more sense now?

Last one as at work on my phone, so a bit of a challenge.

[This message has been edited by Garrett Stein (10/4/2013)]

I visited Rome, Italy in 1996 and became ill. I spent 5 days in an Italian hospital. Italy has socialized medicine, and it was a nightmare! I had to bring my own toilet tissue, first to the ER, and then the entire week I was hospitalized. I needed to bring my own hand soap, and silverware.! Not much was very clean by American standards, and the IV drip had to be re introduced into another place in my arm every two hours. My arm looked like the arm of a drug junkie. I am not eager to see socialized medicine in any universal form in the US, needless to say. No doubt it didn't start out in Italy that way, but it ended up being a pretty bad experience. When I got off the plane in Sacramento, and went straight to Kaiser Hospital, they diagnosed the problem (C Difficill), and I was treated and recovered.....just sayin'. ......

vs. in America where nurses tell you privately to supply your own items like Tylenol and personal care items so you won't be charged $5.00 per pill. I had a horrifying experience here at Holy Rosary with the birth of our first child. Substandard care is possible anywhere. Being charged $10,000 for substandard care is what is intolerable.

Back in '87 a fifth grader picked on me. No one should ever go to school. Just sayin...

Yes, some countries have lousy socialized medicine. Some countries have stunningly wonderful socialized medicine. Depends on where you are. Italy has never been exactly what you could call fully functional. Try France. Medical care there is superb!

I cannot comment on the healh care in France, nor the state of their economy. However I intend to check on both, just for my own satisfaction..

May I suggest a head injury?

Often we tend to generalize. Socialized health care tends to differ from country to country. I don't think you can compare Italy to Sweden or Germany. When we asked Canadians if it was their choice to go to Montana for health care because their health care system was so bad, they politely told me I was (mistaken)nuts. In Sweden we were told that the cost for hospitalization was $35 a day no matter what the illness or treatment, up to a ceiling, then it was free. And that was how horrible socialized medicine was.

Italy has always been a bit of a mess economically, but it is good to look at both sides of what we're moving into. As it stands now, we as a richer nation should expect to spend a bit more of healthcare costs, but not the huge over inflated costs we have now. Comparing to sweden is hard, fun fact the also adjust fines based on your income. Due to this a CEO of a major corporation holds the record for most expensive speeding ticket at over over 100,000 dollars.

Ironically the World Health Organization ranks Italy's healthcare 2nd only to France.

Did you ever think that over weight people, drunks, drug users etc. will probably die earlier, and will be off the gov. programs much sooner than healthy people?????

David, you are right, The World Health Organization, does indeed rate Italy's Health Care second to France! However, France includes spa treatments and taxi rides to the doctor, which they are looking to drop, if possible. Most of the countries do have pretty high tax rates, from 41% on up....am still looking into Germany, so can't comment on them yet.....

Lets remember that if they are not insured you are paying for them anyway. In our American system hospitals, doctors, clinics and labs all have to make money or go out of business. When uninsured who can not pay get medical attention, the amount they can not pay gets shifted to those who are insured or can pay. That is what the Affordable care act is trying to solve. It uses two methods, one get everyone insured so bills are getting payed and do not need to be shifted to few who normally are insured. Second the act limits the insurance companies profit margin to 25% instead of the 40 to 60 % they are running now. Incase you are wondering who is starting and paying the anti Affordable act noise, look at who has the most to gain. If the Republicans were smart, they would be stressing how this is all based on their plan from Mass. when Mitt Romany was governor.

You make some very good points, Steve. My concern is, as the government takes over more and more of the citizen's lives, the costs will go up, and the efficiency will go down.; the bureaucracy takes on a life of its own and the government determines just what our choices will be. When things are universal, they are not always better! I personally like Kaiser Permanente and if US Health Care were patterned after them, I would be pretty darn good. Perhaps Obamacare needs more study, greater understanding by the people, a little more time to implement, and discussion about how it will be paid for. The possibility of a 50% (or more) income tax rate on the working class will eventually reduce us to two classes--the very rich, and the struggling.....which would not be a good thing. (I want to thank you for a civilized discussion)

Efficiency? There's very little efficiency in our health care system because there's no incentive to be efficient. There is no free market competition because nobody knows what procedures cost so they can't comparison shop. Healthcare companies don't have to worry about that at all.

Did you read about the survey where someone (I can't remember who) went to hospitals all over the country and asked their standard fee for certain procedures, like knee replacements. Prices were ALL over the place, varying by tens of thousands of dollars, and there was no consistency.
Crappy places were expense. Great places were cheap. It was different for every procedure. Then they asked how the costs were calculated.

And a great silence fell over the land.

Our current system is an abysmal disaster based on the basic premise that investors should make a profit on human suffering and that decent human beings must die because they aren't rich enough to pay for what they need medically.
I would take about any 'socialized' system in the world over what we have now, where people are literally left to die due to financial constraints and a person's first thought when receiving a diagnosis is not 'how can I focus on getting better' but 'will I have to file bankruptcy.'