Health Care Reform

[Rick]

Alright, so I didn't see a topic on this yet, so I thought I would start one! Okay, so the biggest issue of the summer, and the thing that Obama has been pushing for the most has been Health Care Reform. Now with every debate, there are going to be people on both sides of it, and there are legit concerns from people who are concerned about it like: How are we going to pay for it? However, in the democratic process there is a right way of doing things, and there are wrong ways, and it seems to me lately that those who have been opposed to Health Care Reform have been doing things the wrong way, mainly with threats, and yelling, and screaming, and disruption. Now, the screaming and yelling I can get over, but the threats are a whole other issue. Mainly because they are really scary, and because some of them are racially motivated. This is just a few things that have happened so far:

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/11/a-district-office-for... : Senator David Scott wakes up to find a 4 foot Swastika on the sign outside his office.

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics/AP/story/1178311.html : Several Democratic Congressmen are faxed Death Threats, One receives a death threat for Obama, and one goes to one of his town hall meetings to find an effigy of him being hanged waiting for him.

http://www.gvnews.com/articles/2009/08/11/breaking_news/01kellymeet... : Democratic Representative cancels several town hall events when at one event a gun is dropped at the event.

And the most terrifying of all: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1205999/Only-Amer... : A man goes to Obama's Town Hall event yesterday with a gun strapped to his leg, holding a sign with the quote "It is time to water the Tree of Liberty" which is of course from the famous Thomas Jefferson quote "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. It is it's natural manure."

I don't know about anyone else, but I am really getting just scared with how our country is handling the Health Care Debate. I am all for debate, and discussion, and if you oppose the Health Care Bill, it is your right too, but when people start showing up to Presidential Events with guns, something has gone terribly wrong. So two Questions:

1: What do you think about the tactics being used by those who Oppose the Health Care Bill?

2: What do you think of the Health Care Bill? Oppose? Agree with it? What would you like added or taken away?

Me? I think the Health Care Bill is absolutely essential to this country. I am sick of seeing people with and without Insurance die because of these greedy insurance companies, and something needs to be done to take them down a peg. I think the only way to do this is to have the Public Option, and put some competition into the market. So.....what do you think?

[sabelmouse]

what are these protesters worried about? that a few cents of their tax money go to someone else's health?

[Virgo d]

exactly what i wants to know why they are so worried i bet they have also invested in some kind of Temporary Insurance .i hope the common sense prevails.

[Gabrielle]

Crap like this is contributing to the fear.

[Mike Bogue]

The agressive/violent side of the debate is being funded through groups that were trying to oppose the reform and realized that normal lobying would not work so they encourage people who oppose the bill to pack the front of the meetings and be very vocal. This when combined with the scare tactics used by the far right, such as repeated references to an imaginary "death pannel" that would decide who gets to receive treatment, combine to make a potentially explosive attitude which is frightening.

That being said I am unsure if the current bill is good or not, but it is very difficult to find real information from either side of the "debate" which is very frustrating.

[JustCallMeBen]

I REALLY don't get the republicans on this. Universal healthcare is a GOOD thing. Just look at European countries (like Belgium) with UAC, they have the bast healthcare overall: lowest child mortality, lowest pricing for both care and medicine, and a higher lifespan.
For crying out loud: a child born in Gaza has a slightly higher life expectancy than a child born in Washington DC (according to the latest Harvard study about wordlwide child mortality)... If you don't get the point: Gaza is practically a war-zone, with trading embargo's forced by Israel all over (including on medicine). How the hell is a child better of there than in de US capital???

The only explanation I see is that the republican party has been corrupted by the multi-billion pharmaceutical industry, and it's members and followers have been told lies about Obama's plan all the time (for example the forced euthanasia on the elder: that is about the most horrible lie I have ever heard...)

It seems the republican voters are being scared by the S-word... Newsflash: Obama's plan would be laughed at by European socialists. From what I understood, these are the main issues it wants to address:
-The government would offer an affordable and fully-covering Health care package to everyone, without expetions for pre-existing conditions etc. The goal is to force the HC-industry to lower their prices and have them accept more people.
-HC companies can no longer reject someone based on pre-existing condition, because they are mainly used as a poor excuse for not paying someone that actually should be paid.
-Shorten the time a medicine can be patented, so new medicine will be available faster for production to everyone, thus lowering the prices of medicine overall.

What the hell is wrong with these things???

[sabelmouse]

cuba is good for healthcare. maybe that is what they are afraid of.

shorten the patent times? lower prises? think of the pharmas. they will bleed!

[JustCallMeBen]

that's why they are doing everything they can to stop this. But srsly, they don't need the massive profits they are getting in the US now: Omega Pharma, one of the biggest European Pharma companies is mainly active in Europe (go figure :p), where prices ARE way lower and patents on medicine ARE shorter, and they are doing just fine, even in the current economical climate

[Kirsten]

The video sheds some light on a few things including showing pictures smuggled out of Cuba of the real hospitals typical Cubans are treated in and explanations of where claims such as those about low infant mortality (achieved by aborting troubled fetuses, for example) and long lifespan come from.

[JustCallMeBen]

70/80 abortions a day?
So... If 70 a day were to be representable for Cuban doctors, and let's say they have 65 holidays a year, and (with a population of 10M) we make a low estimate of 100 doctors performing abortions in the whole country, that would mean every year there are 2.1 MILLION abortions in Cuba a year.

With such an obvious lie, do you buy anything in that video?

When I heard that voice over, I stopped the video. It's just another 'Cuba is bad because it has those darn Nazi-communists!'-video. Sure Michael More portrayed Cuba for the better in his movie, but still: keep in mind all the embargoes that are forced upon the country by the US: they are hardly allowed to import anything!

[Kirsten]

First, you pulled that number of abortion doctors out of your ass. I don't think we can necessarily assume that is a low estimate of the number of abortion providers in a country like Cuba with such horrendous medical services.

Second, nowhere does it say that each doctor performs 70/80 abortions a day. That is only the number for that particular doctor.

Your math is based on completely made-up data and is not reliable.

Fortunately, we don't need made up data to get the big picture here. It's not hard to find. I will have more for you in that area a little later as I have to be somewhere in a little while. Even clearly non-conservative sources such as the Guttmacher Institute acknowledge that Cuba's rate of abortion is dramatically higher than the United States'.

[JustCallMeBen]

I don't think a 100 doctors/11,451,652 citizens is a high estimate... And the number of 70/80 sure was being portrayed as a 'normal' number in this video. You can hardly call the video unbiased, it's clearly set up to discredit the movie sicko and to demonise Cuba's health care system.
Sure it isn't great: Cuba is a third world country for crying out loud.

But ok, let's get the facts:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuba#Demographics
The abortion rate in Cuba IS higher than the European, but not as much as you would suspect from this video. the question remains if this is because of the evil forced abortions, or because parents actually get the choice and enough information.

[JustCallMeBen]

Also, this forum wasn't the place were I expected "you pulled it our of your ass" as soon as I analyse the things you posted... Clearly the video is lying about abortions, OR trying to demonise Cuba.
If that man IS a doctor AND wasn't mistranslated, he clearly isn't representative for any other Cuban doctor, but I just think he's lying about those numbers or seriously mistranslated. If he wasn't, the Cuban population would be dying out... Which it isn't.