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Scholar
#26 Old 24th Mar 2010 at 4:31 AM
"Economies work best when they are left alone to run as the will."

And this has been proven to be false. From the time was had regulation after the Great Depression, to the time before the deregulation had begun, we did not have any economic crashes. As soon as we started to deregulate, we suddenly started to have them fairly consistently. And this last one, where there was almost no regulation at all, was the worst of all. While I'm all for privatization of business, there still must be government regulation and oversight to prevent business from threatening our economy.

As for alternatives to massive overhaul of the health care system, what alternatives? Just about anything you do essentially equates to a massive overhaul; anything less simply doesn't help all that much, and when you have millions dying because they cannot get health care, you should do as much as possible to fix it.

And political correctness is hardly censorship. Stupid, hell yes, but not censorship.

Back to socialism, guess what? Do you pay taxes? That is redistribution of wealth right there. Those taxes pay into government programs like Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security. They pay into police, fire department, other social services, education, public recreation. Your wealth is already being distributed. Furthermore, you are completely wrong about what socialism is. Yes, this idea of "redistribution of wealth" is part of it, but as I said, it is through taxes. Where are you getting this idea it hinders responsibility? It's NOT like the money is directly handed to those who don't do anything. It goes to programs that, if it's a real socialist policy, benefit everyone of every class. Lower, middle, upper. It's about community, it's about helping your fellow people, and making your country better. If we adopted an education system like in Denmark, where citizens not only get free university education, but are actually paid to go to school as long as they show progress, could you imagine how much better off America would be? And it's paid through the people, it's a socialist education system and it works. Your definition of socialism is incredibly narrow. How does it stifle responsibility? As for liking it not being a good argument, when you have numerous countries who do fairly well and are socialist, that's a damn good argument for it.

And your argument about health care seems to ignore the issues completely. Tell those people with preexisting conditions who are DENIED coverage that they can afford it. Note that. DENIED. Not accepted. As in, they will never get insurance because they are DENIED access to insurance. And tell it to those, who do have some preexisting condition, who by some miracle still have insurance only to have their rates so high, they have to choose between coverage or selling their property. "Further, if the market was left alone, insurance companies would have to compete with each other." Except in many places, there is essentially a regional monopoly. There IS no other insurers in the area, aside from, say, Blue Cross. A market left to its own devices is the whole damn problem here.

As for my final point, how are they assuming people are idiots? You have yet to really explain. People know political parties have their own agendas, I don't think there is one damn person who would argue otherwise; that's just the nature of politics. Always has been, always will be.
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Scholar
#27 Old 24th Mar 2010 at 7:19 PM
Clearly we simply can't agree on fundamental political points. Let's get down to the nitty gritty and look at the healthcare bill.

Quote: Originally posted by pg 241
SERVICE CATEGORIES.—For services furnished on or after January 1, 2009, each of the following categories of physicians’ services (as defined in paragraph (3)) shall be treated as a separate ‘service category’:

<snip>

Service categories established under this paragraph shall apply without regard to the specialty of the physician furnishing the service.’’.


This means that physicians will be paid equally, regardless of specialization. Meaning that there will be fewer and fewer specialists coming out of med school, because there is no incentive to specialize. This further leads to a shortage of doctors who can treat certain conditions, or who can treat conditions effectively.

Quote: Originally posted by pg 317-318
‘‘(C) PROHIBITION ON EXPANSION OF FACILITY CAPACITY.—Except as provided in paragraph (2), the number of operating rooms, procedure rooms, or beds of the hospital at any time on or after the date of the enactment of this subsection are no greater than the number of operating rooms, procedure rooms, or beds, respectively, as of such date.


This says that a hospital may not expand without governmental permission. Why? Hospitals are almost always privately owned businesses, but now the government has decided that it wants to be a partner in every one of those businesses. What will this accomplish? What if the hospital needs to expand quickly to accommodate an increase in patients? The government is notoriously inefficient, so it could take months to put through that kind of paperwork.

I have more to point out, but I don't have time right now.
Scholar
#28 Old 24th Mar 2010 at 7:29 PM
Could you provide a link, at least to those specific areas, if possible. I would like to look over them myself.
Scholar
#29 Old 25th Mar 2010 at 4:00 PM
Excuse me for double-posting, but I thought this was significant enough for a double-post.

The Republicans have found minor flaws in the health care fixes during the reconciliation process, which the Senate parliamentarian ruled were violations against the Byrd Rule. That means it must be sent back to the house for these problems to be fixed, vote on again, and if passed sent back to restart the reconciliation process again.

However, this could be very significant, because the possibly now exists to reinsert the public option and an expansion to Medicare and Medicaid. This may pass the House, because it passed the House much earlier with the public option in it. The question here is the Senate. If they can have the public option and these expansions with the bill, and found not to violate any rules of reconciliation, which the Republicans cannot filibuster, the necessity of a 60 vote majority is null (which is required to defeat a filibuster), and hence it would just need a simple majority.

Sorry if I'm a little off, since this deals with congressional procedures and such, but the main point is, is that the House possibly could put the public option back in and language to expand Medicare and Medicaid, and maybe get it all passed, if there are no objections by the Parliamentarian.
Scholar
#30 Old 25th Mar 2010 at 8:39 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Oaktree
This means that physicians will be paid equally, regardless of specialization. Meaning that there will be fewer and fewer specialists coming out of med school, because there is no incentive to specialize.


This part is a little concerning. The amount of money going to be earned should never be the main incentive for practicing medicine. It suggests that someone is only going into a medical specialisation because they're going to become rich, and not because of the patients involved.
Scholar
#31 Old 26th Mar 2010 at 11:17 PM
Nekowolf: Here is a link to the bill: http://candicemiller.house.gov/pdf/hr3200.pdf

If what you mean by "put the public option back in" is that those who don't qualify for Medicare or Medicaid aren't forced to take the government option, I think that would make the bill somewhat more acceptable. I still think that there are major flaws with the amount of control the government is trying to gain over hospitals and doctors.

TRIriana: Not all specialists do it for money, but a very large percentage do. Under the current healthcare system (pre-bill), students going into med school are encouraged to specialize because they will make more money, and med school is notoriously expensive. I have always been more interested in being a general practitioner myself, even if it does mean that it takes longer to pay back student debt, so that particular part of the bill doesn't directly impact my career aspirations. However, there is a definite need for specialists, and without the incentive of higher pay, there may not be enough specialists. I can understand where the bill is coming from, because there is currently an overabundance of specialists and a lack of GP's, but I think that a better way to handle that would be to make med school acceptance into a specialization more selective.
Scholar
#32 Old 26th Mar 2010 at 11:33 PM
Thank you for the link. I'll have to look at it a bit later. Anyhow, I meant that the original House bill had a public option in it. It was taken out during the merger between the House and Senate bills, or taken out at some point before the (I can't quite recall). Then when the fixes were going through reconciliation, the Republicans found a flaw which violated reconciliation rules, so the package of fixes had to be, well, fixed. I was a bit confused by this part (regarding if it was the House or the Senate), but I believe the Senate had a chance to put it the public option into the reconciliation package.

Unfortunately, in my perspective that is, they did not, instead promising to possibly look at the public option again later (though a lot of us progressives are very doubtful of the Senate). They still redid the package through reconciliation and got it passed, however.
Theorist
#33 Old 27th Mar 2010 at 11:02 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Oaktree
This means that physicians will be paid equally, regardless of specialization. Meaning that there will be fewer and fewer specialists coming out of med school, because there is no incentive to specialize. This further leads to a shortage of doctors who can treat certain conditions, or who can treat conditions effectively.

Sorry, this is just factually incorrect nonsense due to snipping. Subtitle B Provisions are amendments to service categories for Social Security. It amends Subsection (j) of section 1848 of the Social Security Act (42 U.S.C. 1395w–4) to

A. refine the service categories defined in paragraph three of the section of the SS Act by adding several more definitions to the Service Categories defined in paragraph 3: Evaluation and management services (related to health care services), preventative services, and the rather vague "all other services not described."

Basically it's saying that this provision says that the government can, but not shall, pay for more services in the same schedule as already provided by Social Security. Not anything nefarious, unless you're vagueness adverse - but an awful lot of things in government conclude with stuff to the end of "and anything else we didn't think of this time" so that if they did forget something someone can theoretically waive the specifics and apply the spirit of the law.

B. "Service categories established under this paragraph shall apply without regard to the specialty of the physician furnishing the service" means that physicians can apply for compensation no matter what their specialty is. Nothing else. Just standard "do not show bias in considering these categories" boilerplate, which might be a specific redefinition of a previous allowance for showing biases in consideration of specialties in another section, but I'm not about to wade through the entirety of Social Security unless someone starts mailing me a check each month while I do it.

Quote: Originally posted by Oaktree
This says that a hospital may not expand without governmental permission. Why? Hospitals are almost always privately owned businesses, but now the government has decided that it wants to be a partner in every one of those businesses. What will this accomplish? What if the hospital needs to expand quickly to accommodate an increase in patients? The government is notoriously inefficient, so it could take months to put through that kind of paperwork.

This is false too, and based on a non-critical reading also. The full title of where you found that was the provisions for "REQUIREMENTS TO QUALIFY FOR RURAL PROVIDER AND HOSPITAL OWNERSHIP EXCEPTIONS TO SELF-REFERRAL PROHIBITION." The cherry-picked quote you produced is from the requirements on how to be covered by the exceptions. I didn't read the entire subsection, but just a five minute look at the real document suggests that what the issue with proscribing new facilities is is that these physician owned rural hospitals might engage in fraud by constantly expanding their facilities and earn the exceptions provisions while they're running at a higher profit than the government assumes is appropriate for them to earn the subsidy. It also says they can't give out loans while qualifying for the exceptions, or make big payouts to investors in the hospital while they're getting federal funds.

In Republican accusatory terms, this is the big money equivalent of having lots of kids so can you always apply for welfare. Except the government generally feels more comfortable telling corporations what they can spend their money on and receive handouts than they do telling poor people what they can and can't do with their vaginas. It's a good thing.
Forum Resident
#34 Old 28th Mar 2010 at 8:07 AM
It's hard to hold anything close to an intelligent discussion about health care reform while there are all these Fox News/Teabagger-type lies out there to deal with. It's as if people want to believe the worst, so they panic themselves into believing it, even when the sources are proven repeatedly not to be credible.
Lab Assistant
#35 Old 29th Mar 2010 at 7:45 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Doc Doofus
It's hard to hold anything close to an intelligent discussion about health care reform while there are all these Fox News/Teabagger-type lies out there to deal with. It's as if people want to believe the worst, so they panic themselves into believing it, even when the sources are proven repeatedly not to be credible.


Quoted for truth.

I've talked to way too many people who oppose this health care reform, some very passionately, but have no idea what they are talking about. They simply refer to right-wing talking points and obvious (to me, anyway) scare tactics. Nothing to me in politics is more frustrating than a passionate but ignorant group of people.

It's all a game of politics. Republicans know how to incite passion amongst their base and they're knowingly doing it by unanimously opposing and spreading fear (according to Congressman Eric Cantor, Republican). People are being exploited and they don't care to educate themselves otherwise.

No wonder 32% of people still believe Obama was a Muslim and 25% think he wasn't born in America (both according to Harris Interactive polls).

If you were a Sim, would anybody want to play you?
Scholar
#36 Old 29th Mar 2010 at 8:00 PM
Don't forget the, what was it, 70% believe he's socialist? Too often have I heard terms like socialism, Marxism, Communism, fascism used (incorrectly) interchangeably.
Scholar
#37 Old 7th Apr 2010 at 12:37 PM
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has ruled against net neutrality.

What is net neutrality, you may ask? Well this is just one aspect of it. Let's take my internet service provider, Charter. Comcast is a competitor, and is sending out advertisement through the internet, which goes through Charter, since they are the service provider.

Under net neutrality, Charter cannot do anything to the information Comcast is sending. Nor the advertisement of any other competitors. As the name applies, the internet is neutral territory.

However, without net neutrality, service providers can interfere with information on the internet, such as those from competitors.

Is that a shillelagh in your pocket, or are you just sinning against God?
Theorist
#38 Old 7th Apr 2010 at 10:22 PM
An appeals court ruling isn't a necessarily a ruling against anything, it's a ruling against misapplications of law in the original court case. In this case the appeals court isn't as much making a case against net neutrality as it's making a declaration of the enforcement authority of the FCC as detailed by its own definitions and such, which isn't the same thing at all. In practical terms the FCC will almost certainly win the day in this, since ultimately it can just keep rewriting its regulatory language until a court agrees with it, but just as certainly internet providers will delay any application of FCC regulation as long as possible because it has an impact on their profits. No one in Congress wants the internet to become a television really, not even the most diehard media corporate loyalists, because that would tick off an awful lot of voters, and they absolutely wouldn't like the chilling effect a dramatic rise in internet prices might cause to their constituencies.

Anyways, the sky is not falling.
Scholar
#39 Old 7th Apr 2010 at 11:06 PM
I was just reciting what was on the news. Apologies for any mistakes on my part.

Is that a shillelagh in your pocket, or are you just sinning against God?
Inventor
#40 Old 7th Jun 2010 at 1:32 AM
I was told by a man (my boyfriend's mum's fiancée, he used to Teach) that Al-Qaeda was started by America and they were going to use them to attack some other country and most of the weapons they have they got from America and then they turned on them or something like that...

Edit: I'm not trying to make people angry, I just want to know more. But I do believe that it's probably true. I bet the American gov. have tons of secret organisations like that...
Scholar
#41 Old 7th Jun 2010 at 5:05 AM
I learned in one of my history classes that the CIA helped him get started. I tend to take things I learn in my history classes with a healthy dose of skepticism considering the number of half-truths and untruths I've been taught, but this seems to have some degree of truth to it.
Theorist
#42 Old 7th Jun 2010 at 7:35 AM
The CIA funded the anti-Soviet resistance during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, providing them with money, training, and weapons. Many of those figures were always radical Islamic fundamentalists, including Osama Bin Laden, but during the invasion and occupation by the Soviets all of that was more or less ignored on both sides because of the shared struggle against the Russians. I'm not sure if that correctly translates into "started by America" anymore than it would be fair to say the Soviets created the Taliban by giving Afghans of a certain train of thought a reason to band together and start hanging out together, but we were certainly (and not very secretly) instrumental in keeping them around instead of letting a bunch of Russian tanks and helicopters blow them all up.

Anyways, not a secret, definitely not a secret organization...it was all a CIA operation started under President Carter and lasted until after the Soviet forces withdrew while the first President Bush was in office. It would be more properly described as the CIA supported the Afghan mujahideen for ten years, solidifying a militant base in Afghanistan that Al Queda and the Taliban drew from. The Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan seemed well versed in US tactics because they are, as they are with last generation US military equipment. It's worth noting that the Taliban had to fight the mujahideen themselves though, to establish their own rule of law. Basically we helped built an army without a country, militarized gangs and warlords in the pursuit of fighting off the Soviets and then once the Soviets left we packed it all up and left without offering any further support because we recognized all along that these were people not necessarily friendly with the United States.
Instructor
#43 Old 7th Jun 2010 at 10:32 AM
I love teaching about that in my classes--many of the students are not at all aware that one of the mujahideen groups became the Taliban. But this is also now one of the reasons that the US is being so careful about withdrawing from places we might not supposed to be--it was that power vacuum that arose after the US withdrawal that allowed the Taliban to come to power.

That part I like is that, once the Taliban came to power, they made it a big priority to stomp out the poppies, because of course drugs are prohibited under the Quran. (Never mind that poppies were about the only reason Afghanistan had an economy). They were successful--got it down to about 17 acres total (from 12,000, I think--don't have my notes right here). So, in appreciation for their efforts in the war on drugs, George W. Bush sent them about 40,000,000 to help the poppy farmers find new lines of work. That was in May of 2001. 'Spose they used that money for new jobs training? Ha.
Inventor
#44 Old 7th Jun 2010 at 12:07 PM
Oh. ^^
See, in my school, (secondary school) the ONLY history they ever taught was world war II, and maybe once every month or so we'd do another era for like a week then back to WWII...
Anything I've learned about history (or about anything, besides very basic maths and english) was from TV or other people, :/
Scholar
#45 Old 7th Jun 2010 at 11:16 PM
I thought about starting it as a new thread, but it might be best in here.

BP and the courts. It seems that a lot of judges in the South have ties to big oil. So, I had a thought; why not hold the case in Washington D.C.? If I'm correct, you are supposed to hold criminal cases in the areas they were committed. Well, this is so disastrous, it's going to affect, is affecting, multiple states. So if that's the case, why not say that as a nation, we were victimized? Why not hold it in our national capitol?

Personally, I say fine them for every last dime spent on this, plus extra. Even if it means they go bankrupt.

Oh yeah, and; Fuck you, British Petroleum. Fuck you hard.

Is that a shillelagh in your pocket, or are you just sinning against God?
Scholar
#46 Old 8th Jun 2010 at 2:03 PM
No, that was a joke.

Is that a shillelagh in your pocket, or are you just sinning against God?
Mad Poster
#47 Old 8th Jun 2010 at 6:30 PM
I thought Jedis had their own religion...

But that's not quite the same thing as a political party (well, at least not to people outside of North America).
Scholar
#48 Old 8th Jun 2010 at 9:32 PM
But that's like, what, a few thousand, -tops- out of several million? :P

Is that a shillelagh in your pocket, or are you just sinning against God?
Mad Poster
#49 Old 8th Jun 2010 at 10:22 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Nekowolf
But that's like, what, a few thousand, -tops- out of several million? :P


So? A small number can end up having a lot of influence. Just look at the Nazis...

There were over 300,000 Jedi in England in Wales in 2001. That means they outnumbered Sikhs, Jews, and Buddhists. Of course, a number of those people may have listed their religion as "Jedi" just to make a point. But still, that's a lot more than a "few thousand" people!
Scholar
#50 Old 9th Jun 2010 at 2:14 AM
Really? I must say that I am surprised.

Is that a shillelagh in your pocket, or are you just sinning against God?
 
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