You can come to the US now, we have health care

[antron]

I wikipedia'd it before replying, but I didn't know before I looked into it because we don't have so many divisions of medical services. More ethical than a corporate medical practice by making it easier for a select clientele to make payments through a fee-for-care scheme. Does that about sum it up?

here is a piece in The Economist explaining a succesfull ACO (before it was called an ACO), and how the NIH sent people to study it:
http://www.economist.com/node/16009167

[Jonathan Ingram]

The system in the US has finally started recognizing some of the very basic human rights? - Good. It`s the absolute bare minimum of what constitutes health care, but if it means that fewer working people will die in the coming years, then I guess it`s not completely worthless. Still, bills like this are coined behind the scenes by insurance companies and bourgeois politicians with working class people having no say on the matter. Settling for this bullshit and being okay with it amounts to liberal reformism.

[D]

I´m with Skykid on this one.

[BulletMagnet]

Is it so hard for Americans to think along the lines of "country first, me second".

Thinking about anybody or anything apart from your own immediate gratification for so much as a moment is COMMUNISM. Jesus said so.

I would venture to say (in concert with my previous post) that even if we did have an "appropriate" tax scheme, it is totally inconsequential if our government's spending scheme doesn't have a catastrophic asteroid collision of a reality check.

But Reagan proved that deficits don't matter. Not to mention, everybody knows that all we need to do to make money appear in government coffers out of thin air, in any and all circumstances, is cut taxes for rich people! It's so simple!

[Skykid]

I would venture to say (in concert with my previous post) that even if we did have an "appropriate" tax scheme, it is totally inconsequential if our government's spending scheme doesn't have a catastrophic asteroid collision of a reality check.

But Reagan proved that deficits don't matter.

Ah, one of the great Presidents. Put the country on a path of unsustainable crippling debt for an indefinite ongoing period, and yet he's revered like a god.

I actually feel sorry for this dude when Hitchens ruined him over it.

Patriotism is a helluva drug.

[Ex-Cyber]

I always wished there was a breakdown of what things cost. It would be amazing to see where most of the money goes.

It's worse than that, actually. In many cases, one cannot even get a reasonable idea of the price prior to the treatment being administered, let alone know where the money goes. It's not like you can go to coronarybypasspedia.com and get a dozen competing quotes from hospital surgery fee databases. As far as I've heard, what usually happens is that you shut up and get the treatment because you're horribly suffering and/or dying right now, for fuck's sake; your doctor's practice/partnership/hospital then has employees whose job it is to try to strike the best balance between milking your insurance company and not bankrupting you, by engaging in a bunch of hard-nosed negotiation, fee-shuffling, and rules-lawyering after the fact.

(I say "from what I've heard" because I was on my parents' Kaiser plan until somewhat recently and have been lucky enough to not have any major health problems since then)

[GaijinPunch]

That is why the law mandated that everyone buy insurance. The two provisions are two sides to the same coin. But Republicans see mandated purchase as an erosion of personal liberty (even though it was originally their idea)

But the personal liberty argument has been an illusion ever since Emergency Rooms were required to take all comers (1980s). You cannot gamble with your own life by not purchasing insurance. The ambulance will eventually come get your ass, and everyone else will have to pay for it. And guess what, because you waited so long to get care, you will now be MORE expensive.

There are more caveats to it than that. Say, if a certain expat gets sick while living abroad, and want to repatriate himself. Currently, he would have to commit purgery to get any type of health care. As I'm getting older, this is an asterisk I think more and more about. The other option is to buy US health care while I'm here (and actually use it). This is an option, but if I got ill, AFAIK, there is nothing stopping the carrier from cancelling my policy once I become ill. From what I've read, it is best to join some type of insurance group, where they can't easily pick and choose their clients.

We are an alterative to purely capitalistic practices, we have a .org at the end of our URL. And I bet you still don't know what an ACO is.

But you are unfortunately the exception, not the norm.

[Ed Oscuro]

And the second-guessing begins:

NY Times: Health Care Won, but Congress May Have Lost
Washington Post: Chief Justice John Roberts’s health-care ruling gets plenty second-guessing
Blah, he used that damn broccoli analogy.

I'm not too keyed up on there being some limits to government regulation of interstate commerce - in most cases, the 1942 decision that a farmer couldn't grow wheat on his own land for his own use seemed to be a classic case of overstepping the bounds. That said, one of the things that was lost was the ability for the Federal government to attach strings to aid for states, i.e. with Medicare.

[neorichieb1971]

You know, sometimes I just think Americans are just too hard people to deal with. You worry whats right for you, then you worry whats right for others. Then you take on board others opinions and you end up just siding with whos most popular. Its no wonder you just round and round in circles.

At the end of the day drugs should be sold like sweets in a candy shop. They should be sold at reasonable prices. Doctors should be able to afford to play golf, not necessarily own their own golf course. If there is a sick person out there, deal with them. One day they might be the one saving your life.

If I ran the world, I just fucking know the Americans would be the hardest to please. They would sit in the corner bitching over this and that whilst the rest of the world would just get on with it

[ED-057]

the "tax" (penalty) is to offset the risk one causes everyone else if they don't have insurance. everyone gets sick, and everyone gets care. but if you don't pay then the hospital has been shifting that cost to the insured. no more.

The people who are racking up unpaid emergency room bills are most likely NOT the people who will be paying this tax (because they won`t be able to afford it). This simplified argument that you have made is assuming that people without insurance can`t pay for services. Why is that? "How much healthcare costs" and "who pays for it" are separate issues, and IMO it is a mistake for policy makers to focus all their attention on the latter.

After finishing school, I had no health insurance for five years even though I was working. I didn`t accumulate any unpaid medical bills during this time, but if there had been a $200+/month tax in force I would have been fucked.

But the personal liberty argument has been an illusion ever since Emergency Rooms were required to take all comers (1980s). You cannot gamble with your own life by not purchasing insurance. The ambulance will eventually come get your ass, and everyone else will have to pay for it. And guess what, because you waited so long to get care, you will now be MORE expensive.

This is circular logic. Government imposing this requirement on emergency rooms (arguably an erosion of health care providers` liberty) suddenly means that everyone owes something to insurance companies? (because again, it is assumed that nobody who doesn`t have insurance can pay for services at all). And so any further unfunded mandates are not (also) an erosion of liberty?

I`m not arguing that "free market" would be better. But this assumption that "someone else" (whether ins. companies or government) has to pay for services, and the argument that goes along with it stating that anyone who benefits from this owes it to the payers to modify their behavior in the name of reducing costs, is a legitimate threat to personal liberty. Also, a lot of people support a single payer system, but we`re aren`t getting it, and I think it is pretty clear that the reason is because politically powerful interests wouldn`t benefit financially from it.

[antron]

The people who are racking up unpaid emergency room bills are most likely NOT the people who will be paying this tax (because they won`t be able to afford it).

this is about the future, the past is past. get insurance to avoid both the tax and medical bills of astronomical amounts (insurance can no longer have a lifetime cap).

This simplified argument that you have made is assuming that people without insurance can`t pay for services. Why is that?

because it is estimated that the average family pays an extra $1000 a year in extra insurance premiums to cover the unpaid bills of others. people with proper insurance largely don't have unpaid bills.

This is circular logic. Government imposing this requirement on emergency rooms (arguably an erosion of health care providers` liberty) suddenly means that everyone owes something to insurance companies?

it is not circular logic that a law from which everyone benefits should be paid for by everyone. The original ER mandate provided no federal money. The insurance companies have been absorbing this cost (and passing it on of course)

But this assumption that "someone else" (whether ins. companies or government) has to pay for services, and the argument that goes along with it stating that anyone who benefits from this owes it to the payers to modify their behavior in the name of reducing costs, is a legitimate threat to personal liberty.

you make it sound like someone has a choice to not incur healthcare costs. We do not have the liberty to push our bills on others (and the average of all uninsured people do cost everyone else) It seems this group needs to be nudged into covering their own asses (this part mostly isn't about costs, but responsibility).

[xbl0x180]

I would agree with the notion of letting the market decide just as long as people take personal responsibility for their actions (or inactions). I would agree with the notion of universal coverage just as long as people take personal responsibility for their actions (or inactions). The other problem I see is that this does not address the cost of health care, the amount of "specialists" med schools are churning out, big pharma's control on drug costs, and that the U.S. system is built upon emergency care rather than preventive care. It's callous to let someone outside the ER die, but if that person died as a result of their own lifestyle choices, then why should the rest bear the financial burden of taking care for them? This applies whether the insurance company passes the costs to the insured patients or if the govt. decides to cover everyone.

For example, we don't need more fancy drugs to take care of obesity and its negative health effects. We need less costly preventive care that would decrease the number of diagnosed cases. In this instance, I'd be very much for a tax on junk foods and drinks that would go towards paying the health bills of fat-arses who've been shoveling those junk foods into their troughs. The usual complaint is that "healthy foods cost so much;" well, if a McDonald's burger was worth $10.00, people'd think twice about eating that garbage. The same goes for cigarettes and alcoholic drinks - tax the hell outta those in order to help pay for the health care costs their consumers incur

[CMoon]

In this instance, I'd be very much for a tax on junk foods and drinks that would go towards paying the health bills of fat-arses who've been shoveling those junk foods into their troughs. The usual complaint is that "healthy foods cost so much;" well, if a McDonald's burger was worth $10.00, people'd think twice about eating that garbage.

Beautiful except that the [fast] food industry is one of the major corporate conglomerations that tells the government what to do. I imagine this will be as much an upward battle as the whole greenhouse gas issue has been. Except for a few pointed documentaries, the US is still in denial.

[xbl0x180]

In this instance, I'd be very much for a tax on junk foods and drinks that would go towards paying the health bills of fat-arses who've been shoveling those junk foods into their troughs. The usual complaint is that "healthy foods cost so much;" well, if a McDonald's burger was worth $10.00, people'd think twice about eating that garbage.

Beautiful except that the [fast] food industry is one of the major corporate conglomerations that tells the government what to do. I imagine this will be as much an upward battle as the whole greenhouse gas issue has been. Except for a few pointed documentaries, the US is still in denial.

Otherwise, I can see why there was loud cheerin' and hootin' during one of the Republican debates about health care when the question of "letting someone die" came up. In this instance, if taxing the junk foods and correcting people's lifestyle behaviours aren't an option, then cheering for "letting someone die" [as a result of their own actions] starts to make sense...

[CMoon]

LOL; yeah, I remember that part. Letting those poor dumb bastards who don't have health care die is the fucking american way of life and needs to be cheered on!

[BulletMagnet]

It's callous to let someone outside the ER die, but if that person died as a result of their own lifestyle choices, then why should the rest bear the financial burden of taking care for them?

Therein lies the question of how many of our "choices" are completely our own...when some poor slob who's worked hard and honestly all his life still needs two jobs to pay the bills (which, of course, never happens in the good ol' U S of A), gets home late and is too tired to cook (for several people, if he's got a family) and too short on cash to buy fresh ingredients in the first place (if there's even a store like that within reasonable driving distance), how much of his decision to order takeout is really his? Feel free to make the typical "he should just pack up his entire life and move and start over, who's stopping him? Anyone can do that at a moment's notice" right-wing argument, but don't expect a dignified response.

In this instance, I'd be very much for a tax on junk foods and drinks that would go towards paying the health bills of fat-arses who've been shoveling those junk foods into their troughs. The usual complaint is that "healthy foods cost so much;" well, if a McDonald's burger was worth $10.00, people'd think twice about eating that garbage.

As CMoon said, the big food producers have way too much money to throw around (and thanks to Citizens United have pretty much no limits on using it) for this to be feasible, short of some huge media-led uprising against the less-then-ethical practices of the food industry (and again, since media conglomerates benefit from many of the same loopholes and inside access that other industries do [or are outright owned by them], this ain't gonna happen) - seriously, how many ridiculous subsidies go to giant agri-producers and whatnot in the name of snuffing out local-grown competition? Not to mention how long it took for the gov't to bother putting ingredient and nutrition labels on anything, and how incomplete they still are thanks to industry lobbying (oh, sorry, "protected speech")...think it's an accident that there's no RDA percentage listed next to sugar, as there is for most other components?

[DragonInstall]

Taxing fast food products and make those companies go out of business, seems very impractical to me. Besides the American people are already pretty sick and tired of taxes to begin with, I doubt they could ever pass a bill that would do that.

If only people could have some self control and take care of themselves instead of wanting to be spoon fed their entire life... Too many useless people who do nothing but drag down the ones trying to do well in their life.

Too fat? well we have to blame someone for that other than your own self control. Obviously it's not your fault... etc etc etc. Seriously... isn't this the problem Greece was having? Just a bunch of people who have some self entitled complex?

[xbl0x180]

I didn't say those people were blameless. We're all victims of our own bad decisions, except some of us can still - kiiiind of - afford to hold our own. Take for example, what BulletMagnet wrote: Some poor schlub chooses to have kids he cannot take care of, so he has to work two shifts, and, as a result of all of that, he has to resort to feeding his family a buncha garbage while making fast food joints rich in the process. Once the whole family becomes diagnosed with diabetes, heart disease, or some other kind of chronic illness as a result of being fat-arses (i.e., obese), then they become a burden to the health care system (which is already corrupt to begin with). A herd of fat-arses with diabetes is money in the bank for big pharma and the "specialists," so it's not in their best interest to promote a healthier lifestyle... and since people aren't responsible for their actions because they've made way too many stupid life choices to make an effective change for their own future, then it should be up to the govt. to prod them along: tax the hell outta that s***, make everyone else get off the trash lifestyle, and offer universal healthcare that is slightly affordable and focuses on being preventive (by also restricting the amount of specialists being churned out by med schools, as well as the influence big pharma has on the industry)

[BulletMagnet]

Taxing fast food products and make those companies go out of business, seems very impractical to me. Besides the American people are already pretty sick and tired of taxes to begin with, I doubt they could ever pass a bill that would do that.

You are aware that our current tax rates (especially for the uber-rich, of course) are at their lowest rate in over 50 years, right (and before you go off on me, the particular article I linked was written by a member of the Reagan administration)? In any event, I seriously doubt that most any tax one could pass on this sort of thing (assuming the current Republican crop would ever consider any manner of tax increase at all) would bring most of these companies anywhere close to bankruptcy...perhaps force the top executives to settle for gold-plating their yachts instead of diamond-encrusting them (which, when you think about it, is an even greater threat to freedom, isn't it?).

Take for example, what BulletMagnet wrote: Some poor schlub chooses to have kids he cannot take care of, so he has to work two shifts, and, as a result of all of that, he has to resort to feeding his family a buncha garbage while making fast food joints rich in the process.

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt here and assume that you simply missed the fact that I listed the kids as a hypothetical (let alone the possibility that he started a family during better times, then was blindsided by the recession, or his boss simply deciding that paying slave wages to a Bangladeshi would be better for his bottom line), as opposed to choosing to disregard it to make your retort more persuasive...in any event, the fact of the matter is that one doesn't remotely need to have these sorts of "bad decisions" on their conscience in order to struggle (thanks in large part to how uneven income distribution has become, if you ask me).

For whatever it's worth, I could offer my personal situation as a case in point: despite having a college degree (and no debt, thanks to a scholarship and other cost-cutting bits), no girlfriend/wife/kids, no expensive hobbies (save the occasional video game purchase), no criminal record, and no crippling health problems or the like, the full-time job I'm working at would have to at least double my current salary to even give me a minimal chance of moving out of my parents' house and keeping my own place...and that's with absolutely nothing left over to put away for retirement or the like. Yes, I do get health insurance from said job, but even that's rather cold comfort when I make more per hour at my part-time retail gig, which I haven't been at as long.

I've done my best to be the sort of citizen you describe above, and have almost nothing to show for it: frankly, the only reason I'm not out on the street right now is because my folks have been kind enough to keep a roof over my head up 'til now (other people's folks don't have that option - in that sense I'm one of the lucky ones). The "bootstraps" crowd, in the meantime, is telling them (and me) that I'm useless and entitled, and that they should throw me out. So tell me, what do you think they ought to do?

Y'know, for my own good?

[DragonInstall]

Well in California, they have been trying to increase taxes here and there. I think all of them were denied by the public, even a 1$ increase tax on cigarettes. Even though they said it was for cancer / health research, most of the people knew that it would probably go into government waste like pension / government salary.

I mean if you can't raise taxes on goddamn cigarettes in Cali... I think people are fed up with it in general.

I'll say that living in Cali made me hate government in general. So many hidden fee's and taxes, it's like they're trying to slide anything onto the public. Of course those who don't work & leech off the system don't have to worry about these things.

snip

If they tried just a little bit, they could get a meal more healthy than fast food. Maybe I just hold people's potentials too highly?

Keep in mind I'm not against the new healthcare system. I just don't like it when people think it's up to the government to cradle them in life.


Also bullet do you think from how you work you deserve to have more luxury? I don't see how your situation is hopeless and so horrible at all. You have a degree, health, a house to live under, income...? I mean how much are you making an hour to be in a situation where you can't do anything? Even my cousin who doesn't even have a college degree took a half a year course and got a job and lives in his own apartment.

[BryanM]

The weirdness iit is pretty thorough. Some are under the impression that a single payer system is more expensive than what we have.

And it probably would be, if gouging caps aren't implemented.

In practice, SP is cheaper than what we have. It's not all about hippy "love thy neighbor" bullshit, it's also about braking a bit on the spiraling budget.

"Stay where we are" was by far the worst position to take. It had to change; even getting rid of the emergency room "okay if you're dying five minutes from now we'll try to help" rule made more sense than the quo of status.

America's "sue first ask questions later" attitude is eating it from the inside out.

Honestly there are lots of factors...

Myself, I prescribe to the idea that when you have an excess of wealth in a country, inherently the financial and medical industries will gorge on people to "soak up" this excess.

In my darkest moments I think we honestly have more than enough for the full blown Socialist phase - Alaska is already 1/12th of the way there with their oil dividends alone.

But every time he pops up with his wanky swagger and cowboy hat smile I just want someone to punch him in his stupid fat cat face

I never heard his inhuman smile described as "cowboy hat". "Baleful", maybe...

I guess the mi-go have you pretty well fooled.

I imagine that we will soon see attitudes similar to my co-workers and wife take hold in America

Yeah man that's what I love most to do with my life. Spending hours in waiting rooms for no reason.

I think I'll go to the bus station and take a nap on one of their steel girder benches. Maaaan those things are comfy, how they dig rivets into your flesh..

That's just how we roll in the O-C.

You worry whats right for you, then you worry whats right for others. Then you take on board others opinions and you end up just siding with whos most popular. Its no wonder you just round and round in circles.

You know that Russian fox breeding study, that attempted to domesticate foxes by breeding the tamest ones of a generation? And how it was only a few generations until they had puppies that wagged their tails and barked?

It kind of horrifies me to realize how domesticated we have to be from artificial selection. Sexual selection alone put these tumorous bags of fat on our women; the part of our brains where we want to figure things out on our own has had to have withered away sometime since the industrial revolution. At the latest. Agriculture and its big brother feudalism had to have got the ball rolling...

Letting those poor dumb bastards who don't have health care die is the fucking american way of life and needs to be cheered on!

I don't know if I got all the "hurm" rabble moments from the primary this year down in my brain:

* A gay soldier in Iraq getting booed for being gay.
* Ron Paul getting booed for suggesting our foreign policy contributes somewhat to why the middle east hates us.

Are there any more? I'm terrified, because there must be and I'm missing them.

Seriously... isn't this the problem Greece was having? Just a bunch of people who have some self entitled complex?

Not so much. Greece has the same problem Burkino Faso and the United States has: corruption and being owned.

The only difference is a matter of degree. It is very possible the armageddon debtbugs rave about, that the payments on our debt (to our own banks) will overrun the entire budget, may happen some day. But it won't be the doing of the powerless peons, for the powerless peons.

All the fuckin' ants can do is start some fires and get themselves killed if they step out of line. Purifying the cattle further in the next generation.

[BulletMagnet]

Well in California, they have been trying to increase taxes here and there. I think all of them were denied by the public, even a 1$ increase tax on cigarettes. Even though they said it was for cancer / health research, most of the people knew that it would probably go into government waste like pension / government salary.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but if memory serves in California things are set up so that voters have a lot more direct control over whether tax increases and the like go through...and (again, if memory serves) ever since that provision was enacted pretty much every tax increase has been shot down, revenue has plummeted and the state is knee-deep in debt. As you say, I'm sure that frustration with tax dollars going to things voters would rather they didn't plays a part (believe me, as someone opposed to the Iraq war I know that feeling very well), but I'd be more inclined to turn the magnifying glass on the prevailing "I've got mine, the rest of you can go rot" philosophy of recent years.

I just don't like it when people think it's up to the government to cradle them in life.

I don't know, do you really think very many people feel that way? All I ever seem to hear these days is complaints about the encroaching nanny state, even in places where there's absolutely nothing of the sort happening (my personal favorite case in point is how the NRA keeps insisting that Obama is going to take everyone's guns away, when to the best of my knowledge he's said, let alone enacted, pretty much nothing whatsoever on gun control since he's taken office). Are there freeloaders? Sure. Should they be dealt with? Undoubtedly. Are there enough of them to be the primary cause of our coffers bleeding dry? That's where things start to sound class warfare-ish to me.

Also bullet do you think from how you work you deserve to have more luxury?

Maybe my perspective's off, but I don't think I'm asking for a heckuva lot out of having a full-time job...a few decades ago somebody in my position could at least get himself an apartment (at the moment, even the most minimal of lodgings would easily decimate my paycheck), and after a few years could raise a family without the need for a second income. And this is before you even consider that worker output has increased in recent years, and the power of unions (constantly invoked as an obstacle to growth) has become a shadow of its former self...I'm no Superman, to be sure, and I don't expect to be paid like one, but to be perfectly frank most people aren't Superman and never have been, they're just folks who are more or less content to work for most of their lives and be able to live with at least some sense of dignity while they do it. Not too long ago this group was considered the backbone of the economy...these days they're worthless freeloaders, because the REAL patriots are the ones stabbing backs and raking in billions.

And as far as my salary goes, let me put it this way...there's been talk of a minimum wage increase in my state (which the governor doesn't support, so it'll probably never go through), but if it does somehow pass then it's a de facto raise for me.

[Ex-Cyber]

The thing that gets me about the personal responsibility argument for chronic illness is that last I heard, most risk for chronic illnesses is not actually modifiable. Family history and age tend to top the lists of risk factors. In other words, even if you were to scrupulously follow an ideal lifestyle, you'd be lucky to cut your overall disease risk in half, let alone by the 95+ percent that some people seem to expect. Type 2 diabetes is probably the closest thing to an exception (where IIRC avoiding obesity cuts the risk by something like 75%).

Even then, the lifestyle factors are not especially well-understood in detail/practice; experts disagree (sometimes vehemently) about what constitutes a "healthy lifestyle", and whether it's even feasible to substantially increase the portion of the population that follows a prescribed lifestyle. I can think of only a few specifics that everyone seems to actually agree on:

1) Heavy drug use is bad (but low-level alcohol use might be good)
2) Total lack of exercise is bad (but large amounts of high-intensity exercise might be neutral or bad compared to a modest amount of moderate-intensity exercise)
3) Starvation is bad (but routine fasting and/or eating 1200 calories a day instead of 2000 might be good)
4) Habitual overeating is bad (but having "cheat days" on otherwise restrained diets might be good)
5) Micronutrient deficiency is bad (but micronutrient supplementation may or may not be good)
6) Trans fats are bad (but nothing; they're just artery-clogging junk)

Most of the rest is immensely prone to influence by preexisting biases, culture, etc.. Buddhists want to believe that a vegetarian diet is healthy, Japanese traditionalists want to believe that whale meat is healthy, macho dudebros want to believe that steak and Jack Daniels are healthy, Prius drivers with "Coexist" bumper stickers want to believe that organic arugula and cage-free chicken are healthy, MMA fighters want to believe that being kicked in the gut is healthy, Korean people want to believe that sleeping with the fan on will kill you, and so on. Virtually every study I've heard of that has methodically compared prescribed diets (as opposed to comparing a prescribed diet against a "standard" one) has come to roughly the same conclusion: if you actually follow the diet, some measures of health will improve, and the primary practical difference lies in how likely people are to actually follow the diet. The prevailing hypothesis seems to be that actually giving specific conscious thought to your diet is the key factor.

(my personal favorite case in point is how the NRA keeps insisting that Obama is going to take everyone's guns away, when to the best of my knowledge he's said, let alone enacted, pretty much nothing whatsoever on gun control since he's taken office)

Oh, it's not just to the best of your knowledge. The head of the NRA not only admitted this, but actually fucking held it up as "part of a massive Obama conspiracy to deceive voters and hide his true intentions to destroy the Second Amendment". That's just the beginning; he goes on to describe, at length, how the conspiracy was hatched before Obama was even sworn in so that the mighty NRA wouldn't make him a one-term president. I wish I were making this shit up.

[xbl0x180]

Number of deaths for leading causes of death
•Heart disease: 599,413
•Cancer: 567,628
•Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 137,353
•Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 128,842
•Accidents (unintentional injuries): 118,021
•Alzheimer's disease: 79,003
•Diabetes: 68,705
•Influenza and Pneumonia: 53,692
•Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 48,935
•Intentional self-harm (suicide): 36,909

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/lcod.htm/


While I do agree that people are predisposed [genetically] to succumb to certain types of illnesses, there are trigger factors and other choices people make for themselves that ensures they will get the disease. Notice how "obesity" isn't listed here even though there's a s*** ton of fat people in the U.S. That's because "being a fat-arse" isn't the diagnosis itself, but a trigger for some of these chronic/costly illnesses. As far as cancer goes, skin cancer is the most common form of it and some of those cases were preventable. Hell, at this point, I don't mind if a chick sprays on that orange crap on her skin if it means she won't get cancer later on. The most lethal form of cancer is lung cancer, of which smoking is the leading cause... another preventable disease.

http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/skin/
http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/lung/

Accidents/unintentional injuries include motor vehicle deaths, but if that includes driving while intoxicated or driving recklessly (i.e., too fast), then I'd hardly call that "an accident." That's a conscious decision. Even though these are death stats, I am sure it's costly to treat those who survive such... accidents.

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/acc-inj.htm

[BryanM]

6) Trans fats are bad (but nothing; they're just artery-clogging junk)

Actual data sets for this?

Studies are one of the most brutally biased things in the world, we know for a fact that not wearing a bra after wearing one daily will reduce the distance between your nipple and clavicle, but the big bad bra companies keep us under wraps.

Uh, but with like fat and the money making placebo of statins is concerned, it is seriously fucking nuts. I vaguely remember something like a data set that suggested saturated fats were still "good for you", just less so, but the summary still tried to pose them as being "bad".

Further it seems that calcium is a big player in heart disease, and the suggested % of the stuff on nutrition labels is like a 5x overdose or something..

I can get behind corn juice probably being none too great without much convincing, tho.

[xbl0x180]

6) Trans fats are bad (but nothing; they're just artery-clogging junk)

Actual data sets for this?

Studies are one of the most brutally biased things in the world, we know for a fact that not wearing a bra after wearing one daily will reduce the distance between your nipple and clavicle, but the big bad bra companies keep us under wraps.

I would like to see more of this study.



It's funny that heart disease isn't very prevalent with Mexicans even though their pan dulce has trans fats out the waz00. They also tend to cook everything with lard and all that has done is clog up the sewer lines

[Skykid]

Studies are one of the most brutally biased things in the world, we know for a fact that not wearing a bra after wearing one daily will reduce the distance between your nipple and clavicle, but the big bad bra companies keep us under wraps.

I would like to see more of this study.

[Ex-Cyber]

6) Trans fats are bad (but nothing; they're just artery-clogging junk)

Actual data sets for this?

Not handy; I just couldn't recall anyone actually arguing for incorporating trans fats into a healthy diet, in contrast to the rest (particularly saturated fat, which is held in some quarters to be absolutely essential to a healthy hormonal profile).

[ED-057]

We do not have the liberty to push our bills on others

Now hold on right there. You have just stated multiple times that:

people without health insurance = unpaid bills that are passed off to others

You have stubbornly resisted acknowledging my hint that a person without insurance COULD conceivably pay their bills. (If not, why does the hospital even bother mailing out the bills?)

Now you say that bills can`t be pushed on to others? Obviously that is not true. It is not a "liberty," but it is happening. WHY? Because legislation allowed it. Government created this particular problem, of unpaid bills being pushed on to someone else. You can`t turn around and blame it on people who are poor or just chose not to buy insurance. These "irresponsible" people were only taking advantage of what the system allowed. The Ayn Rand crowd (not me) would argue they were simply acting in their own rational self interest.

a law from which everyone benefits should be paid for by everyone

This sounds nice for about five seconds, until it degrades into a fight about exactly how much each person paid versus how much they gained. That is THE downside of the socialist approach. This is my point, and is one of the concerns I have with the ACA. (the others being massive overhead, and the general lack of any downward pressure on costs)

[neorichieb1971]

You all pay car insurance don't you?

Same thing isn't it?

There is nothing wrong with socialistic, what is wrong is united Statist.