[J m HofMarN]

Quote

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin called President Barack Obama's health plan "downright evil" Friday in her first online comments since leaving office, saying in a Facebook posting that he would create a "death panel" that would deny care to the neediest Americans.

"The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's 'death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their 'level of productivity in society,' whether they are worthy of health care," the former Republican vice presidential candidate wrote.

"Such a system is downright evil," Palin wrote on her page, which has nearly 700,000 supporters. She encouraged her supporters to be engaged in the debate.

The claim that the Democratic health care bills would encourage euthanasia has been circulating on the Internet for weeks and has been echoed by some Republican leaders. Democrats from Obama on down have dismissed it as a distortion.

Its incredible that this woman still gets media coverage. We banished her to frozen wastes BEYOND CANADA. We even got her to give up her rulership when she took over the aforementioned frozen wastes. Nothing has stopped her! She just learned to live off of furry tundra creatures she killed and then wear their skins for warmth, and write her rantings in moose blood! Still I must admit I love her imagery of a toddler standing before a panel of hooded judge/executioners while they enquire about his level of productivity. Is this hysterical nonsense actually supposed to be taken seriously? And just why is she saying it would deny healthcare to the needy? Everyone knows Obama's real plan is to kill the rich and reform the US as a socialist gulag. He needs the needy to work on his collective farms, DUH.

This post has been edited by J m HofMarN: 08 August 2009 - 12:31 PM

[Spoon Poetic]

I feel like the only person in the country that has actually taken the time to sit down and read the bill, and research it and stuff. Instead of just take what is said on some biased website (that ALSO didn't actually read the bill) that's got the same affiliation as they do as true fact.
...I feel like this bill has become one giant game of telephone. No one reads it, stuff just gets passed around by word of mouth from person to person to person, either getting better and better each time for the democrats, or scarier and scarier each time for the republicans.


No, there is no death panel. No, it does not provide healthcare benefits to illegal aliens.

Yes, there is some crap in there though. Some really crappy crap - talk to just about anybody in the medical profession and you will soon learn why a lot of what's in there just will not be good. Also I think it is ridiculous to have to pay a 2.5% tax if you opt to not get healthcare.

I won't get into all the pros and cons in this post though.




Palin is not the first to think there's a "death panel" that will put old people and retarded people to death - that rumour has been circulating for a while now. But Sarah Palin is crazy and I think we all already knew that. She's also crazy to think anybody gives a damn what her opinion on anything is.

This post has been edited by Spoon Poetic: 09 August 2009 - 01:32 AM

[Dr Lecter]

If your system is anything like the NHS over here, dear God no don't do it. Our waiting lists a blood test is about 5 weeks, if you want a transplant, you'd better start running people over yourself. I had to get an ultrasound about a year ago, the NHS wanted me to wait over a month but since I'm lucky enough to be covered under my parent's private medical plan they get from their work I got seen literally the next day. I didn't have cancer or anything like that, but if I had it would have probably gotten worse in that time.

Honestly, I haven't read much about your new system, but if they say the words "NHS" at any time you're all screwed. You'll be left to die in the corridors of on a trolley because there are no beds left, you'll be left queuing to see a doctor because some guy who cut himself shaving goes infront you.

Also, the only way the thing could work is if everyone has to pay. If everyone who had private healthcare could opt out of paying the tax for healthcare, then only the people that couldn't afford private healthcare would be stuck to pay the bill for healthcare they couldn't afford in the first place.

[civilian_number_two]

Exactly on that last point. I don't understand the fear of socialised health care. You never hear folks in the US carping on about having to pay taxes to keep the roads paved and the police armed. But mention that the unltrasound machine is paid for with tax dollars and the rhetoric leans to Stalinism and gulags.

Pay more for it, and it will be better. Roll back on the military spending by even 5% and you'd have beds for everyone in your country this weekend. To hell with the waiting lists.

Palin's rhetoric is exactly what's wrong with Conservative politics today: it is all about fear. Honestly, guys: don't just cater to the gullible. The educated pay taxes too, and generally they pay more.

[Gobbler]

Aye, that's how it is.





And that's pretty much all that I can add to this topic, sadly. Socialized health care works pretty well here in Germany. At least from my perspective.

[Spoon Poetic]

Did anyone say that not everyone would be taxed for this? No, taxes from everyone will go towards this plan. And the richer you are, the more tax you pay. Which I guess I might be more upset about if I were rich, but since I'm very much not, it makes sense to me.

The part that is weird is that if you opt to not have health care - because it's not going to be free, we will still have to purchase it even though our taxes are "paying for it" - you have to pay an additional tax. And you can choose to purchase private healthcare or purchase it from the government, but you are still purchasing it either way, on top of paying taxes for it. Unless of course you opt to not purchase healthcare from either place, in which case you'll just be taxed even more.



I don't love the bill - not because it's sort-of-socialist healthcare (which actually, it differs from the Canadian and European models on several levels). I don't love it because it has some truly dumb and unnecessary stuff in it, on top of the stuff that could potentially be good. Also I am upset that they tried to push it through before anyone could read the dang thing. I am so glad that they didn't vote on it yet and now during their recess they can read it and come up with some good revisions and such.



I am truly sick of republican fear-mongering. None of the bills that have passed the committee stages use taxdollars to pay for abortions, or to cover illegal immigrant money, or to give old people euthanasia. These ads and articles that run this bollocks aren't even twisting information - they're completely fabricating it.

However, there is some pretty crappy crap in the bill, stuff that I guess the fear-mongerers aren't latching onto because it's too hard to get the majority of people to understand the implications. Or maybe because they just haven't even read the bill.

And the democrats, even Obama, are making shit up about it, too. Obama sat there and lied to everyone on several points about how much the bill he's campaigning for will cost and how many people it would cover and some other stuff. Plus his mega-push to vote on the bill before anyone could have a chance to read it. I had high hopes for Obama; I hope he doesn't make stuff like this a habit.


I don't know which is worse - feeding on people's fears, or feeding on people's hopes and not delivering.

This post has been edited by Spoon Poetic: 11 August 2009 - 11:09 AM
Reason for edit:: didn't make my smiley correctly :(

[Dr Lecter]

Spoon Poetic, on 11 August 2009 - 05:08 PM, said:

Did anyone say that not everyone would be taxed for this? No, taxes from everyone will go towards this plan. And the richer you are, the more tax you pay.

Do you have a split personality or something? It was you that suggested that taxing everyone for it was stupid...

I really don't understand how that's different from any other national health system, you pay for it if you use it or not? And if you want private health insurance you pay for that too? Where is the difference?

This isn't an episode of the Twilight Zone is it?

If you're saying that everyone has to pay additional tax that goes towards national health care, congratulations that's exactly the same way it works over here.

This post has been edited by Dr Lecter: 11 August 2009 - 01:05 PM

[civilian_number_two]

Spoon, you pay for the roads too, even if you take the train. And you pay for the police, even if you are never the victim of a crime. And you play for all the existing levels of government, their salaries, their families, their bullshit business trips, etc. Yours is a socialist nation. Government does stuff with public money, and it collects this money through taxation.

The thing I like about the healthcare system here is that you don't have to convince your doctor that you have the right kind of health care for the test he thinks you need. If he thinks you need it, you get it.

My problems with socialism are at the level of government waste and no-bid contracts that serve politicians' personal friends. My problems here rest at the level of a lifelong pension for 8 years' work. The jobs at just about every level are comparable to senior management of wealthy companies, with stock options out the ass. That's the stuff I don't like. Health care is nice, and yes, I could afford the good private insurance if I thought it was any better.

[Spoon Poetic]

You guys don't seem to understand me. What's new? Everything I Say, no matter how clearly I say it, gets turned into something else completely.

WE ALL PAY FOR IT. I GET IT. I LIKE IT. THAT'S FUCKING FINE.

But an ADDITIONAL tax if you choose to NOT have healthcare is over the top.

Want to use your examples, Civ? Okay.

I pay taxes that pay for roads. But then, I take the train and never use the roads. So now I have to pay an additional 2.5% of my income for choosing to not use roads, on top of the taxes I ALREADY pay that goes towards those roads.

I pay taxes for police, but am not a victim of a crime. Since I have not been raped, or stolen from, or assaulted, or anything, well, I get to pay an additional 2.5% of my income towards those cops that I've never had the opportunity to use. ON TOP OF THE TAXES I ALREADY PAY FOR COPS. If this were the case, I think I'd hire someone to deface my property or something.

So. We have to pay our taxes. Some of those taxes are for the healthcare stuff. We all pay that no matter what. OF COURSE that makes sense.

What I said was STUPID is that if you do NOT choose to purchase healthcare, you have to pay MORE than those that ARE purchasing healthcare.

Let me try yet ANOTHER example to make this clear to y'all.

Bob makes a meager 30k per year, just enough for him and his family to not starve or have to live in a box.
Joe makes 400k per year.
Bob and Joe both pay taxes, some of which is used for this government healthcare business.
Well, after taxes and mortgage and food and utility and everything else both Bob and Joe have to pay for, Joe has plenty of money with which to purchase his healthcare plan, whether he chooses to use the government stuff or private stuff, so he does so.
Bob on the other hand, has nothing left after all of that, and is in fact lucky he didn't get his water cut off this month. His kids are covered for free under medicaid because they are kids, but he and his wife are not, because the government is not just handing out free healthcare to everyone. They just absolutely do not have any money left after all their bills and taxes, so they do not purchase healthcare.
So that means that now Bob has to pay an additional $750 per year in order to NOT have healthcare. On TOP of the taxes he has already paid for the national healthcare stuff. That $750 gone could mean that Bob's family don't get to eat enough anymore, or may lose their only car, or whatever. However it certainly wasn't enough for healthcare for both he and his wife.

Is that clear yet?

Of course everyone should pay the taxes that go towards roads, cops, government workers' salaries, welfare, and perhaps healthcare if one of these bills passes. I never said I disapprove of that. It only makes sense to do it that way.

The part I don't like is that if you don't purchase healthcare, you pay MORE (a LOT more) than if you don't purchase healthcare. Paying the tax whether you use it or not is one thing. But paying MORE to not use it is ridiculous. It's a punitive tax that doesn't make sense.

Here is the other thing. People seem to think that now everyone's going to be getting free healthcare. Well that is not the case. What is happening with this bill is the government will create their own insurance company to "compete" with the private sector. You will still have to purchase the healthcare, paying your premiums and your deductibles and all that. The plan is that a) the government insurance company will charge somewhat less and b ) this will cause competition which will make the private insurance companies bring down their premiums and deductibles as well. On top of this, there will be new laws governing every hospital and every doctor, not just the ones paid for by the government insurance - things like, how and when hospitals can expand, how much doctors get paid, and paying doctors/hospitals/surgeons based on "healthy outcomes" versus what procedures they try. Also some changes to medicaid and medicare will be made, which I hope will make it easier for people falling under the poverty line to qualify for free healthcare, but it's not clear yet as to who will qualify and why. (As of right now you pretty much have to be pretty dang poor, as well as being under 19 or pregnant.) Plus the bill has a whole bunch of other stuff that honestly I don't care to get into right now as it's not pertinent to this particular conversation where I've somehow been made into the conservative pig once again.


So let me repeat. I am not upset because we are trying to get some national healthcare. I think that would be great if we did it right. I am not upset that everyone has to pay taxes towards it whether they use it or not. Of course that makes sense, just like all the other taxes for roads and cops and all that other crap you pulled out, Civ.

I am upset that you must pay a whole hell of a lot more tax if you opt to not have healthcare, than if you opt to have it.

Plus a few other things that really just don't work. Read the bill and maybe you'll see how it differs from national healthcare models that seem to work pretty well, and why it is somewhat upsetting in some ways.

However I have agreed time and time again that it is also nothing like the fear-mongerers are trying to make people believe it is.



I am so sick and tired of people twisting what I say on these forums. It is not like that on any of the other forums I debate on. Try arguing my points for once instead of pretending I said something I didn't and then arguing that.



Edit: I realize the first post I made in this thread it could be a little unclear as to what I meant, even though I still never said "taxing everyone for it was stupid." My second post I was pretty sure I was fairly clear in what I meant when I said

Quote

The part that is weird is that if you opt to not have health care - because it's not going to be free, we will still have to purchase it even though our taxes are "paying for it" - you have to pay an additional tax. And you can choose to purchase private healthcare or purchase it from the government, but you are still purchasing it either way, on top of paying taxes for it. Unless of course you opt to not purchase healthcare from either place, in which case you'll just be taxed even more.

This post has been edited by Spoon Poetic: 11 August 2009 - 11:38 PM

[J m HofMarN]

The additional tax is a punishment for doing something really dumb. In the event that the government can make health care affordable to everyone, and someone decides not to get it out of an absurd fear that Obamanazis will come perform experiments on them or whatever, and then that person gets into a car crash or some other tragedy, society has to pay the bill. So what Obama says is you either pay for health coverage, or you pay more money that will help lessen the impact of your stupid decision in the event that you need health care.

The US system is a start, it's a bit of a stretch to call this a step in the right direction. It's a screaming infant flailing in the right direction and throwing his pacifier in that direction. But, at least it knows that the right direction will mirror the Western European or Canadian systems. Once we get this thing passed and the world doesnt burn down, that shows that sort of socialized medicine doesnt kill caucasian babies for sport. The next step after that is to prove that actual socialized medicine doesnt involve gulags. So, maybe ten years down the road,we'll have a useable healthcare system.

and as a result Me, Obama, and our communist friends spend the rest of our lives deep frying and consuming the souls of the middle class. But perhaps I reveal too much.

To those of you who say that this is too slow and we're not doing enough and so forth, people are screaming at our senators, holding protests all over the place, and bringing guns and shit to town hall meetings over a bill thbat basically says everyone has to participate in capitalism by purchasing healthcare. If a bill came through trying to give away affordable healthcare for everyone I cant even imagine the reaction from the hysterical-stupid right wing.

This post has been edited by J m HofMarN: 12 August 2009 - 01:01 AM

[Dr Lecter]

I don't understand this philosophy that national healthcare is similar to private, hell I wouldn't even class it as close. Unless it's just cos we brits royally screwed up our system, basically the NHS count the people they've needlessly killed by the tonne. It wouldn't be so bad but the government pumps billions into it, and its still awful. For all that money we could afford to stay in Iraq!

Also, tax on not using the trains? What's strange about that, we have that here, it's called the congestion charge.

To be fair, if you can afford to pay for private medical insurance as a private citizen (you guys are citizens, we're bitches of the crown (or more commonly known as "subjects")) you must be pretty wealth, you can probably afford it. The only people I know with private medical insurance get it through their employer. So, would you still have to pay the tax in that case?

Why do you have to opt not to have the healthcare to have private healthcare? If I get knocked down in the street, an NHS ambulance wouldn't just drive away leaving me (after the driver had ran me over obviously) to get seen to by a private doctor. We're still cover by both, the ridiculous thing is that you can opt out of it at all.

All I can say is the whole system sounds weird, but still better than ours. But then I think hiring butchers to be brain surgeons would be better than what we got.

This post has been edited by Dr Lecter: 12 August 2009 - 05:32 AM

[Spoon Poetic]

But Jm, what about the people that still cannot afford healthcare? They should get taxed even more? Because like I said, this isn't making healthcare free. It's making it more affordable, for some. Maybe even many. But not all. So those people will have to pay an additional tax.


And Dr. Lecter I think you are still confused with what I was saying. With this bill you can choose to purchase healthcare from the government's new insurance company, or you can opt to buy it from a private company, or you can opt to not have healthcare at all and pay an additional punitive tax instead. If you get your insurance from *anywhere*, as long as it meets "government regulations" you do not have to pay the additional punitive tax.
You may have taxes on not using the public transit system, but that kind of makes sense, and is different from taxing just not using roads period anyway. Do you have punitive taxes for never having a crime against you, which was Civ's other shining example?
Breaking it down again, if you have insurance, from anywhere, as long as it meets certain criteria, you have no extra tax. But if you have no insurance, or if your insurance doesn't meet certain criteria, you will have an extra tax. It doesn't matter whether it is private or public. Having healthcare = no tax. Not having healthcare = big extra tax. Am I making sense yet?


And just fyi, not having healthcare does not mean the U.S. foots the bill. It means you have to pay a shit ton of money for anything you get done. Trust me, I know from experience. (Lots of it, unfortunately.) Hundreds of dollars for every doctor's visit, hundreds for every blood test, thousands for MRIs, tens of thousands for surgeries, etc. You pay your own bill. There are some places that will charge less based on your income but they aren't getting money from the government to make up for the rest. There are times when you can get a "hospital sponsorship" but that doesn't come from taxes, either - it comes from a fund created by private donations. Most of the time you're just stuck with a huge bill, and if you don't pay you get in legal trouble. Granted you can make very small monthly payments for the rest of your frickin' life but you are still going to pay. Not having healthcare does not use tax payer money to get yourself fixed up healthy - or else don't you think more people would be taking advantage of that? Most of the time when you can't afford healthcare (and don't qualify for free healthcare like medicaid) you just live with being sick or injured the best you can until something happens that could kill you. Because you're not going to get care for free just because you need it and you don't have insurance. If a doctor drops a bill, it's because he is being very kind and I guess he has enough other patients that can afford their bills that he doesn't need your money so much - not because he's being reimbursed with tax money.

So I do not think the punitive tax makes sense even in your example, Jm. Though it does make a little more sense than to give a punitive tax to those who simply cannot use their money on health insurance.



Also, Dr. L, most normal national healthcare isn't too similar to private, but the way this bill is trying to create it, it would be. It'd be like private healthcare except with more hoops to jump through and more government officials holding the puppet strings.

This post has been edited by Spoon Poetic: 12 August 2009 - 11:07 AM

[Dr Lecter]

I wonder if Gordon Brown is a member of these forums... he recently made an announcement that he was bringing in a tax on not being the victim of crime. More controversial was his plan to bring in tax on being a victim of crime. Other taxes being considered: not using the roads, breathing air, not breathing air, drinking bottled liquids, drinking tap water, and free thought.

This post has been edited by Dr Lecter: 13 August 2009 - 03:18 PM

[civilian_number_two]

Spoon, I suspect it was my not reading your post closely enough, but yes, that is dumb and I missed it. I get the idea behind it if I squint my eyes and try to look at it the right way (the tax has to be less than the cost of insurance, or everyone has to be covered whether they're insured or not), but you're right, it won't work that way, if you're sure you're reading it right. Here if you are below a specific income you are covered without having to pay. Your fellow in the example, with his well-below average income and dependents, would be covered without paying anything.

My concern regarding the Conservative backlash here is the same: Socialism is a word used in the United States to describe tax-funded public spending that you don't like. Tax-funded public spending that you do like is never called Socialism. If the Conservatives were to say "This doesn't work for this reason or that other one, and more discussion should be held," then their politics would be comparable to those of the Founding Fathers they frequently praise. But since everything is Gay Panic or Socialist Fear-Mongering or Terror Threat or various other forms of hyperbole (unemployed Palin's Cassandra cry of euthenasia!), they are a pretty big joke among the educated (whome they call "elite," which is a bad word, because education is bad).

From your description of the taxes, it sounds like your President doesn't understand Socialism. This doesn't surprise me; after all his birth certificate was forged and he's a secret Islamic assassin. Everyone knows Islamic assassins know nothing about Socialism.

Agreed that Lecter's example of a congestion tax is not the same as a no-road tax. That's a bullshit tax designed to "get people out of their cars," in other words "people with cars must have some money, let's get some of it, cause we know no tax will ever force people to use the overcrowded public transit if they don't have to." We have something similar here: in Canada, or at least in Vancouver, it seems that any government can create any new tax now so long as the tax or the rhetoric behind it contains the word "green." Our planet is getting stupid: don't please anyone try to explain to me the idea behind carbon offset sales. Every time I think about that nonsense my brain gets smaller. So anyway, because I use a car I have to pay tax to keep transit running (we call it "Air Care"). If I didn't have a car I wouldn't pay that tax, even if I still didn't use transit. Meanwhile the price of public transit, a system lauded as "green" and allegedly supported by these taxes and user fees, keeps going up. And the majority of the people using it are poor and carless, since every effort to improve public transit to the wealthier areas of town (where everyone owns a car or two) are resisted by the rich who don't want ugly train lines or bus loops in their neighbourhoods. So nobody's getting out of their cars, tax or no tax.

We Canadians understand Socialism very well.

[Spoon Poetic]

Okay it's not a direct 2.5% of income, it involves some sordid calculation (involving another tax bill) that I can't quite muck through the legalese (or the math) to figure out. 2.5% of income over some number that some other bill determines. Anyway I may have gotten that part a bit off at first but I definitely didn't read it wrong other than the exact amount the tax will be. There is definitely a tax on those who do not have health coverage that meet a bunch of requirements. I just double checked. Cite my sources, you say? Slag through the bill yourself, whydon'tcha.

Nah, just kidding.

SEC. 59B. TAX ON INDIVIDUALS WITHOUT ACCEPTABLE HEALTH CARE COVERAGE.


So yeah, it's stupid and unnecessary.

There's a bunch more crap in there that is stupid and/or unnecessary, too. I am severely disappointed. I also wish Obama would quit making shit up about this bill. I can't believe he's slinging around so many lies that are so EASILY checked and found to be false. It's not even just a simple "positive spin." It's outright lies. The AARP endorses his bill? Ah, how about not! Things like that really make me sad. Because I had high hopes for him, and he's doing such dumb things that are so easily avoided!

This post has been edited by Spoon Poetic: 13 August 2009 - 07:06 PM