This is exactly the kind of thing that has to be stopped.

Health insurers are looking for ANY reason to stop your coverage.
They make money by collecting from healthy people. Not paying for sick people.


http://www.gazette.com/articles/rosa-10 ... tened.html

It is as though 'THE ECONOMY' is the great God and has to be served.

So we have hospitals with empty beds - because it is not economical to open the wards and and man them. The Accountants, must be appeased, even if it means that people are suffering and in pain, waiting their turn for surgery. Or waiting on a trolley in the corridor for a bed, so that they can die with a bit of dignity.

The Economy - is the God. The Accountants are the high priests.

Human dignity and Human suffering doesn't matter. What matters is 'The Economy'.

Now we have 'The World Economy'. God Help Us!!

In my opinion, government imposed health care can be a good thing but it really isn't necessary. Keeping the country's population within a tighter range of earnings would allow more people to afford health care. Rich people only want to be relatively rich. If our country allows people to still be relatively rich there shouldn't be much of a problem.

Award those that excel but don't award them with such astronomical sums.

Off topic, destroy businesses that aren't allowed to fail.

The principle of insurance goes back centuries, and has proved to be a cornerstone of any modern society. If risk can be mitigated in some way, then generally individuals will be much more willing to try new ventures, to invest, to put themselves on the line. This is true with business, and also with individuals. Many companies would likely pass on trying new technologies or methodologies if some kind of insurance was not possible. One of the problems in China today is that workers have had their social safety net yanked, and so feel that they must save a large portion of their meager salary. Therefore they are reluctant to spend, which inhibits the growth of a middle class in that country. In this part of the world we have deposit insurance at financial institutions, because it has been learned through hard experience that it is better to spread the risk around, than have people periodically making runs on the bank when things look a little dodgy, causing economic turmoil for all.

Almost no one in society today could afford to pay for the major medical procedures that very many, probably the majority, will face in their lifetime, certainly if they live to a ripe old age. Not unless they are awfully lucky. And aside from a very few troubled individuals, no one is likely to invite these kind of medical mishaps upon themselves. Yes, I know many peoples eating habits are terrible, and smoking should probably be outlawed anyway, but even if we could convince those so inclined to change, we would still have all the diseases of age, and the environment, and accidents, and what have you.

So we have the ideal situation for group action. Everyone potentially needs this form of insurance, and few are likely to “cheat”, ie: smash their own leg just to abuse the system. The further risk can be spread, the better. In this case it can be spread around 300 million people, which is damn good. For one thing, that means that the higher numbers enhance bargaining power for the purchasing authority. Getting a good price is much more likely if you are buying 300 million of something, rather than a few thousand, such as pharmaceuticals for example.

The ultra-right will insist that comprehensive schemes are not affordable, simply because they are either making money out of some aspect of the medical industry as it now stands, or simply don’t want to pay taxes in general, as they believe in the law of the jungle; or perhaps they are just mesmerized by a philosophy they haven’t explored in much depth. In fact the US pays more per capita for medial care than anyone else, but gets less for it. Medical care in Cuba is free for individuals, and also free from profiteering by health management and insurance firms. By some measures, they have better outcomes than do Americans, such as a better stat for life expectancy at birth. Coming from a small impoverished country, this should generate some thought. In BC, I pay $21 a month for a medical premium, and have access to some of the best medical care anywhere. The system is not going broke here, despite some very generous salaries for health workers.

When the libertarians shout that any comprehensive medical plan is going to cost even more than Americans already put out, one way or another, for medical care (about double what many developed countries pay), I think alarm bells should be going off all over. Where is all this money going?

It is my opinion that health care costs have risen to such huge sums precisely because of health insurance.

When you go to the doctors, and you have insurance, do you ever argue about the bill? $300 dollars to check my kid's knee scrape? Are you kidding me?(example)

Health insurance companies have to go away. Health providers need to provide their services at a reasonable cost. Doctors and hospitols share a lot of the blame for the state of our care network and its availability to the average person.

health insurance companies make every person who walks through the door a potential winfall, and exagerates the amount of money a health organization could reasonably expect to collect for helping them. This almost DEMANDS that they raise their fees to maximize their profit.

I know this is probably an unthinkable idea to the US, but, if a National Health Service starts to overcharge or neglect its duties, its management system can be voted out at the next election.

Surely that has to be a big plus?

johnson1010 wrote:It is my opinion that health care costs have risen to such huge sums precisely because of health insurance.

When you go to the doctors, and you have insurance, do you ever argue about the bill? $300 dollars to check my kid's knee scrape? Are you kidding me?(example)

Health insurance companies have to go away. Health providers need to provide their services at a reasonable cost. Doctors and hospitols share a lot of the blame for the state of our care network and its availability to the average person.

health insurance companies make every person who walks through the door a potential winfall, and exagerates the amount of money a health organization could reasonably expect to collect for helping them. This almost DEMANDS that they raise their fees to maximize their profit.

I think this is a big issue, and one we are experiencing in BC as well.

There is an inherent conflict that arises when a doctor also wants to be a businessman. If he suggests an expensive procedure is required, how do we know which hat he is wearing: medical professional, or sales manager? Probably most doctors have a healthy sense of ethics, but there will be some that do not, and anyway it puts all in an unseemly position. The patient doesn’t know if he is being treated fairly, and the doctor may now be regarded with some degree of dubiousness, and in some cases even good advice might not be followed.

Private insurance companies can play the same game, looking out for their own interests rather than those of the general public. A single public authority can be open to scrutiny, and responsible to the people.

The answer is to have doctors be employees, just like anyone else. They should be funded by the public, and hence responsible to the same. They can certainly be well paid, but we must get away from the idea that every human activity is a chance for someone to make a killer profit, if they can just figure the angle.

Some doctors may rail against this, and in this part of the world we already have lots of complaints. Some specialists have been heard to grumble: Why should I waste my life hanging around here making $300k a year, when I could move to the US and make $600k? I have to wonder when I hear this why they chose medical school. Why not go to Wall Street if money is the goal?

My daughter works in a school which is in 'special measures'. There are kids in that school whose family trees one dare not approach.

They are all related to one another.

The kids have terrible home lives.....which do not conform to what is 'acceptable'....

How do we stop them breeding???

How do we remain humanist and socialist?

Forgive me! It is the unsayable....I am saying it here.....because I can. Thank you.

I've thought a lot about genetic traits. It's obvious that these traits can be found in height, weight, hair, and skin tone - but they can also be found in personality and intelligence. It's really luck of of the draw, though. There can be some curve balls every now and again and I'm no geneticist.

If physical appearance and physical ability can be determined by good genetics, then why isn't there a program where Olympic athletes have children together and either raise the offspring with government assistance or give the children up for adoption to a very select couple who will be funded by the state. This goes for extraordinary thinkers as well.

If someone is found to be one of the smartest people alive - why aren't we making these people pump out kids... or at least making it lucrative for them. It would benefit the entire world, wouldn't it?

Kinda sucks that the idiots are the ones who forget to wear condoms and end up having 17 stupid children. Give it a few hundred years, the collective IQ will plummet.