Hilary Clinton: The Next Democratic Presidential Nominee?

[aerius]

Now, Axis Kast, explain to me this: just how is a system which covers everybody inferior to a system which misses people?

Because the Canadian system doesn’t cover everybody indefinitely: it covers them only to a point. The same is technically true in the United States, where those in need can usually obtain medical care through welfare channels.

Are you a fucking retard or do you just have a fucking language comprehension problem? As long as I'm alive and in Canada I am covered by the system. Period. End of story. Go shove a toilet plunger up your ass.

[Keevan_Colton]

Now, Axis Kast, explain to me this: just how is a system which covers everybody inferior to a system which misses people?

Because the Canadian system doesn’t cover everybody indefinitely: it covers them only to a point. The same is technically true in the United States, where those in need can usually obtain medical care through welfare channels.

Are you a fucking retard or do you just have a fucking language comprehension problem? As long as I'm alive and in Canada I am covered by the system. Period. End of story. Go shove a toilet plunger up your ass.

But dont you see, the fact they dont provide health care to the dead is a monumental flaw in the system!

[Coyote]

Hillary is a very serious contender. Whether she is the best choice is up for grabs, but she has taken care to forge a voting record that is not so "leftist" as one might seem. Her one "left-wing" position that I take issue with is her gun control stance, but on everything else I think she has a chance.

As for socilaized medicine, I say, let's give it a shot. The current system blows. I have no real access to health care in the US because, quite frankly, I'm not rich enough. This would be a non-issue in a public health care system. I used to be very much against the idea until I saw it in action when I lived in Israel-- I did not partake of it because I was not a citizen, but my girlfriend at the time used the dental care, and her mom was sick with the flu and the system took care of them very well.

Obama is too junior to run-- as a charismatic young Black man it is too easy to say that he is a Novelty Candidate. They'll keep him around and he'll run in a few years, he's not seasoned enough for '08 yet.

It really comes down to who the Republicans run. If Demo Dick Cheney runs, I'll vote for Hillary in a heartbeat and send a check to the NRA the next day. But if, say, John McCain actually gets the seat then Hillary is blown out of the water.

And the choice of who the Republicans run will-- as of this writing-- be determined by whoever proclaims his love of the Great Lord Jesus the loudest, because for the time being the Theofascists still have a head-lock on the Republicans. Hopefully they'll piss in the Cheerios of enough ordinary fiscal conservatives and states-rights pundits to get forcibly ejected from the tent...

... yeah, I'll be right here, holding my breath, uh-huh.

[Coyote]

Because the Canadian system doesn’t cover everybody indefinitely: it covers them only to a point. The same is technically true in the United States, where those in need can usually obtain medical care through welfare channels.

Um, no, I can't.

The current system is priced so high-- and you can thank drug company and malpractice costs-- that a lot of ordinary people have no access to health care. And I don't mean poor Appalacian dregs or guys named Cooter that live under bridges, I mean ordinary working-class families.

A public-accessible health care system will allow ordinary people to take care of the things they need instead of just enduring that little cough or sneeze for a few days, and spreading their germs to all the other workers at their low-wage job sites... and, with people not needing to mortgage homes for sudden emergencies, or borrowing/going into credit debt to cover problems, you have a more resilient economy. Less medical-related bankruptcy, malpractice caps, and regulated drug company profits is a good thing.

True, there won't be a handful of sooper-rich fat cat pharmaceutical types to experiment in trickle-down theory, but there are plenty of other overpaid CEOs to pick up the slack.

[Stuart Mackey]

"frighteningly socialistic health care package". That's beautiful. Come to Australia some time and see the kind of shocking liberial-infested slum-filled dystopia is bred through such policies

Red herring. The chief advantage of a free market health care system is innovation, both in patient treatment and in the degree of interest private firms tend to have in biomedical research.

Socialized health care will inevitably create longer lines for the high-risk patient, a lower quality of care all around as incentives for competition are reduced, and, perhaps most important, less innovation in treatment in reaction to rising demands and bureaucratic red tape.

A state-managed health care system also opens the door to greater erosion of a long-standing American tradition of rejecting certain drugs for longer periods of time than is the tendency in Europe, where there are fewer trials per capita before a particular pharmaceutical is approved for sale and use. (This creates a potential for sometimes significantly larger-than-average waves of patients with negative – sometimes fatal – side-effects as every new drug enters the market.)

snip

Ando was talking about Australia. You do realise that Australia is actually in the South Pacific and not Europe?

[Darth Wong]

I love the way Kast trots out the "bureaucratic red tape" canard even though precedent and observation have shown that the American plethora of private insurers and HMOs produces vastly more paperwork than the Canadian single-insurer system. That's a recurring theme with people who attack socialized medicine: they try to disprove its observed attributes in favour of their repetitive head-in-sand claims about what they believe you should expect from a socialized health-care system.

[Stuart Mackey]

snip. That's a recurring theme with people who attack socialized medicine: they try to disprove its observed attributes in favour of their repetitive head-in-sand claims about what they believe you should expect from a socialized health-care system.

Never look at facts that contradict your world veiw, in short.
I think a lot of such cases come down to education and upbringing not to mention life experiences. Over here, and I genralise a bit when I say this, someone like Axi may have either: Had a well off upbringing within a right leaning weathy family and a good education, and have the ivory tower complex.
Or will have come from a poor family, but be quite smart, do well despite the odds but forget that not everyone is as smart as them or have the same oppertunities, for whatever reason and have an ivory tower complex.

[Elfdart]

I love the way Kast trots out the "bureaucratic red tape" canard even though precedent and observation have shown that the American plethora of private insurers and HMOs produces vastly more paperwork than the Canadian single-insurer system. That's a recurring theme with people who attack socialized medicine: they try to disprove its observed attributes in favour of their repetitive head-in-sand claims about what they believe you should expect from a socialized health-care system.

I had an appointment last week to get a bone scan and MRI on my leg. At the last minute I get a phone call from the specialist's office telling me my insurance won't pay (they changed their mind -assholes), so I now have to wait until February 6. On the bright side, I have more than enough time to fill out 24 pages of forms.

[weemadando]

Fuck - I did have a massive post, but it got lost due to board-back up timing.

Long story short:

8 months of treatment for glandular fever and associated liver condition.

Total cost to me: under $1000 over eight months including all tests, medications and appointments. The vast majority of this cash was later reimbursed to me through medicare. And, while I was off work for several months and later unemployed, I was still covered by sickness benefits and medication allowance which allowed me to continue to pay the rent and bills and cover all my medical expenses...

So, Axis, obviously public health care doesn't work in the slightest.

[Durandal]

Not to side with Axis here, but when discussing the possibility of socialized healthcare in America, we should discuss socialized healthcare in America. Seriously folks, if I can think of any group of people who could completely fuck up an implementation of public healthcare, it would be the United States Congress.

That's not to say that it wouldn't be better than the system we have now, but I wouldn't hold my breath expecting it to be as good as Canada's or Australia's.

[SirNitram]

Not to side with Axis here, but when discussing the possibility of socialized healthcare in America, we should discuss socialized healthcare in America. Seriously folks, if I can think of any group of people who could completely fuck up an implementation of public healthcare, it would be the United States Congress.

That's not to say that it wouldn't be better than the system we have now, but I wouldn't hold my breath expecting it to be as good as Canada's or Australia's.

Well, that's not what's being said. What's being addressed is the fact it's the same, cookie-cutter criticisms which have been thrown out a dozen times, by a long-standing member who should know better.

[Plekhanov]

Not to side with Axis here, but when discussing the possibility of socialized healthcare in America, we should discuss socialized healthcare in America. Seriously folks, if I can think of any group of people who could completely fuck up an implementation of public healthcare, it would be the United States Congress.

That's not to say that it wouldn't be better than the system we have now, but I wouldn't hold my breath expecting it to be as good as Canada's or Australia's.

I fail to see what's so uniquely bad about the US congress, from a local perspective the British Parliament leaves much to be desired but still managed to create the NHS, pretty much every other industrialised country has managed to do something similar.

It’s unlikely that any newly introduced system would initially operate as smoothly as the NHS or similar right from the start but once the major bugs get ironed out there’s every reason to expect that the huge amounts of money lavished on healthcare over there might actually start paying off.

[The Dark]

Some facts on healthcare:

In 2000, Princeton and Johns Hopkins researched the cost of various medical procedures in the 30 industrialized nations that make up the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

The United States spent 13% of its GDP on health care (highest of all nations)
Switzerland spent 10.7%, and Canada 9.1%
The median for the OECD was 8%

Public per capita expenditures in the US were $2051
Median amount was $1502.
This means that implementing a "socialist" nationalized healthcare system of median efficiency would mean a 25% drop in public health care costs.

Per capita private expenditures in the US were $2580
Median amount was $451

Pharmaceutical costs ranged from $93 in Mexico to $556 in the US

Doctors per 100,000 were lower in the US (2. than median (3.1)
If state controls reduce the number of doctors, why are we lower than the "socialized" systems?

Germany and Switzerland both have lower health care costs, despite having more per capita hospital visits, longer average length of stay, and more acute care beds (ICU) per capita.

[Illuminatus Primus]

It has a motive/goal which is more than can be said for such gems as "because he has nice hair" or "well he looks presidental" have got going for them.

I'm not supposed to feel its a poor attitude because there are poorer ones? Okay?

[Uraniun235]

Not to side with Axis here, but when discussing the possibility of socialized healthcare in America, we should discuss socialized healthcare in America. Seriously folks, if I can think of any group of people who could completely fuck up an implementation of public healthcare, it would be the United States Congress.

That's not to say that it wouldn't be better than the system we have now, but I wouldn't hold my breath expecting it to be as good as Canada's or Australia's.

What's the implementation of Medicare and Medicaid been like? (I heard somebody on talk radio raving about how great Medicare has been, but that doesn't really count.)

I would think that those programs would be a pretty good indicator of how well a full-service national health care system would be implemented.

[Patrick Degan]

I love the way Kast trots out the "bureaucratic red tape" canard even though precedent and observation have shown that the American plethora of private insurers and HMOs produces vastly more paperwork than the Canadian single-insurer system. That's a recurring theme with people who attack socialized medicine: they try to disprove its observed attributes in favour of their repetitive head-in-sand claims about what they believe you should expect from a socialized health-care system.

Indeed. The delicious irony is that the private HMO system made the Harry & Louise nightmare come true in America.

[Plekhanov]

Personally, I'd vote for her just because she's seen what the job entails, and not to put too fine a point on it, she's FEMALE.

I've long been a believer that we've had enough male presidents, it's time to let a woman have the helm.

Wow, that's great logic if I ever heard it.

If every Presidential candidate throughout history had been a woman do you really think that you wouldn’t get excited about the prospect of a male occupying the white house?

What's the implementation of Medicare and Medicaid been like? (I heard somebody on talk radio raving about how great Medicare has been, but that doesn't really count.)

I would think that those programs would be a pretty good indicator of how well a full-service national health care system would be implemented.

I saw a clip of the ‘debate’ on West Wing in which the younger candidate claimed that the administrative costs on medicare were 1% no idea where they got that stat though.

Indeed. The delicious irony is that the private HMO system made the Harry & Louise nightmare come true in America.

'Harry & Louise nightmare'?

[Xon]

'Harry & Louise nightmare'?

My Googling tells me "Harry & Louise" where an attack ad written by the various mega-med companies to attack & destroy Clinton's proposed healthcare reforms. The scenario depicted is basicly USA healthcare today as the result of "socialized" healthcare