"Obamacare will be so horrific that it will kill more Americans through deteriorating health care than were lost on 9/11." - Former New York gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino


So Obamcare is right up there with accidental drowning and ulcers...I'm scared.

Actually annually there is roughly 3500 death due to complication following medical/surgical care so if Obamacare kills as many as 9/11, which was just under 3000, then Obamacare would actually improve healthcare and saving a few lives.

5. "It is a massive, undeniable failure and a heap of broken promises." - RNC Chairman Reince Priebus (March 2012)

Most of it hasn't been implemented yet. Has it even had a chance to break promises?

10. "We have the finest health care system in the world, that is what this health care law will destroy." - Sen. Ron Johnson

No, Mr. Johnson. We have the finest health care in the world, but only if you're rich enough to afford it, which is why the system is broken.

The rest of the opposition statements.... WTF am I reading?
1. "If ObamaCare had been fully implemented when I caught cancer, I'd be dead." - Herman Cain
2. "You're going to die sooner." - Sen. Tom Coburn
3. "Obamacare is a crime against democracy." - Rep. Michele Bachmann
7. "t's not the advertising, it's the dog food. Every time anybody has a look at it or has a lick of it, they don't like it." - Charles Krauthammer (March 2012)
8. "It's the most ambitious power grab I've ever witnessed." - Rick Santorum (Oct. 2010)
9. "If I'm the godfather of [Obamacare], then it gives me the right to kill it." - Mitt Romney

/So ashamed my state voted out Russ Feingold to put Johnson in office
//Only senator that voted against the Patriot Act.

"using an individual mandate to solve the problem of the uninsured would be like trying to cure homelessness by ordering people to buy a home." Barack 0bama February 2008

WombatControl: You can run a relatively efficient "universal" system (at great cost)

That must be why the US spends more per capita on health care than other developed nations with universal coverage.

"Relatively efficient universal system" at great cost
vs.
"Horrendously inefficient limited system" at even greater cost

WombatControl: the bigger the problems get
WombatControl: inherent flaws in the system

And these would be...?

cameroncrazy1984: Who, that voted for it, stated that they did not read it?

Depends on your definition of 'read'. There's the Baucus story (new window) floating around, but it's hard to get outraged over unless you're already outraged to begin with.

Cinaed: BillCo: They missed my favorite:

"we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it" - Nancy Pelosi

Better to mock the truth and accept the lies, eh?


More like opening a wrapped gift. With the last minute riders and amendments and behind the scenes editing, you really don't know what it's going to say until it's final.

WombatControl: Health care is expensive. It will always be expensive, and anyone who tries to convince you otherwise is selling you a load of bullshiat.

I totally remember all those Demorats who told me that health care was cheap. What a convincing non-strawman.

"I mean, if a mandate was the solution, we can try that to solve homelessness by mandating everybody to buy a house."

so a mandate is not the solution according to 0bama.

President flip flopper 0bama does it again.

WombatControl: farkityfarker: Universal health care is a concept that's just a bit too advanced for American society at this point. Let's revisit it again in 25 years.

Which is a bit like saying "perpetual motion machines are a concept that's just a bit too adavanced for American society at this point. Let's revisit it again in 25 years."

"Universal health care" is a myth, and unless you can clone doctors and replicate medical equipment for free, it will always be a myth. The way supposedly "universal" health care systems operate is that they ration care, either overtly or tacitly. And the bigger the universal health care system gets, the bigger the problems get. You can run a relatively efficient "universal" system (at great cost) if you live in a homogenous country of 30 million people. Trying to apply that same system to a heterogenous country of 300 million people would make the inherent flaws in the system so big that it would collapse within months.

Health care is expensive. It will always be expensive, and anyone who tries to convince you otherwise is selling you a load of bullshiat.

You're a load of bullshiat.

9. "If I'm the godfather of [Obamacare], then it gives me the right to kill it." - Mitt Romney

Is that a Mormon thing? I could have sworn it was illegal to kill my godchildren.

I'm pretty sure that anybody dumb enough to think they "caught cancer" is too stupid to make projections about how a scenario would play out with their illness under various healthcare regulations, since it's complicated enough to confuse people that actually understand biology, mathematics, gravity.

Dusk-You-n-Me: American Exceptionalism!

Take any counry of similar size and demographics to the United States and it wouldn't work. Hell, the NHS is bad enough, and the UK has 2/3rds our population.

It has nothing to do with America being special and everything to do with basic demographics. If you made France have 300 million people and the same ethnic makeup the results would be the same.

This isn't "American exceptionalism" this is universal laws of economics.

Pincy: The system we have right now also rations health care you dolt. And nobody said it would be "free". And there are plenty of ways to encourage more people to become doctors and nurses and what not. We can build up the infrastructure as needed.

You don't understand what "rationing" means. Under your silly definition of "rationing" then everything is rationed.

And no, you can't just "encourage" people to become doctors and nurses. There's only a given number of people at any given time that 1) have the academic aptitude to become a doctor; 2) actually want to do it; and 3) can make it through the rigorous process.

This is an example of a fundamentally flawed economic argument: you're saying that some central planner should "encourage" people to become doctors and nurses and build "infrastructure." But doctors and nurses can't be produced like widgets - and if you try and "produce" more doctors and nurses you have to spend more money to do it.

If you want to know why "universal" health care doesn't work, take a look at what both Canada and Germany have done. The Canadians artificially capped medical school enrollments a few years back to "cut costs." What happened? They ran into a severe doctor shortage -- so then they spend a bunch of money to train more doctors, and then they found that costs were increasing once again. Germany's done much the same thing: they've artificially capped doctor's salaries to keep costs down. So now German doctors have to fly to the UK on weekends to perform surgeries on patients rich enough to afford surgeries that the NHS won't pay for.

Advocates of "universal" health care think that it's some magic system where everyone gets great care and doesn't have to pay for it. They never actually understand how those systems work and can't see the flaws in them.

Here's why it doesn't work. To have a "universal" health care system you have to have a system that removes the normal signals of a market (namely prices). But since you don't have normal market signals, you have to have central planning. And central economic planning never works in practice, because without price signals there's not enough information to centrally plan an economy. It doesn't matter how well-educated or smart your central planners are, they can never do better than an organic system based on prices.

So no, it's not about "American exceptionalism," it's about economies of scale. The flaws of universal health care are, well, universal, and not country-specific.

JusticeandIndependence: BillCo: They missed my favorite:

"we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it" - Nancy Pelosi

It's weird how you've brought this up at least 4 times in the past two days and still keep getting the quote incorrect. Even though it's been pointed out to you each time. Weird.

There's nothing weird about it, considering the source. BillCo is a bloomin' idiot.

Regardless of where you are on this subject, there was something really telling about the quotes: the size of them.

Only one "against" quote required more than two lines of type to express it's point.
Not a single "for" quote could be expressed in less than three lines of type.

If the "for" people are losing the war of words, maybe they should start using smaller sentences.

None of the article's "anti" quotes are effective, because they fail to use a zero instead of an O, as in 0bama. That's how you know you've got a deep thinker.

WombatControl: it's about economies of scale

you clearly don't understand the concept of economy of scale

WombatControl: You don't understand what "rationing" means. Under your silly definition of "rationing" then everything is rationed.

You're pulling everyone's leg here, right?

WombatControl: farkityfarker: Universal health care is a concept that's just a bit too advanced for American society at this point. Let's revisit it again in 25 years.

Which is a bit like saying "perpetual motion machines are a concept that's just a bit too adavanced for American society at this point. Let's revisit it again in 25 years."

"Universal health care" is a myth, and unless you can clone doctors and replicate medical equipment for free, it will always be a myth. The way supposedly "universal" health care systems operate is that they ration care, either overtly or tacitly. And the bigger the universal health care system gets, the bigger the problems get. You can run a relatively efficient "universal" system (at great cost) if you live in a homogenous country of 30 million people. Trying to apply that same system to a heterogenous country of 300 million people would make the inherent flaws in the system so big that it would collapse within months.

Health care is expensive. It will always be expensive, and anyone who tries to convince you otherwise is selling you a load of bullshiat.

When you say that you can run a relatively efficient "universal" system of health care "at great cost" in a country of 30 million, can you let us know what country to which you refer? Can you also explain what "at great cost" means relative to the cost of say... the US health care system per capita?

Descartes: Not a single "for" quote could be expressed in less than three lines of type.

dang it , missed Biden's quote, but then, Biden doesn't really count for anything

WombatControl: rufus-t-firefly: BillCo: They missed my favorite:

"we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it" - Nancy Pelosi

How about:

Link (new window)

JUSTICE SCALIA: Mr. Kneedler, what happened to the Eighth Amendment? You really want us to go through these 2,700 pages?

(Laughter.)

JUSTICE SCALIA: And do you really expect the Court to do that? Or do you expect us to -- to give this function to our law clerks?

Is this not totally unrealistic? That we are going to go through this enormous bill item by item and decide each one?

God forbid a Supreme Court Justice should examine a law to determine what parts may or may not be Constitutional...especially since that decision can't be appealed and that it's an incredibly cushy job with nearly perfect job security.

That's not the job of a Supreme Court Justice. They're not farking legislators. They don't get to rewrite bills. This should be eighth-grade civics material. It's called separation of powers.

So, no, it's not the job of the Supreme Court to become the revisor of statutes and decide what parts of a bill work and what do not. If Congress didn't add a severability clause, that's their own damn fault.

Yeah, they shouldn't be able to invalidate laws made by the legislatures that I like, only the ones that I don't like.

WombatControl: Pincy: The system we have right now also rations health care you dolt. And nobody said it would be "free". And there are plenty of ways to encourage more people to become doctors and nurses and what not. We can build up the infrastructure as needed.

You don't understand what "rationing" means. Under your silly definition of "rationing" then everything is rationed.

OK, you convinced me, there is no health care rationing in the US. Everyone has access to all the health care they need. Why are we even arguing about this?

And no, you can't just "encourage" people to become doctors and nurses. There's only a given number of people at any given time that 1) have the academic aptitude to become a doctor; 2) actually want to do it; and 3) can make it through the rigorous process.

Yes, you can "encourage" more people to become doctors and nurses. And by encourage I mean help. And by help I mean financial assistance.

That's the thing, tenpoundsofcheese. People are so turned off by the democrat boondoggle (see: November 2010) because they were lied to. This thing is supposedly obama's greatest achievement. But he had to LIE and democrats had to play parlimentary tricks in order to force this thing on an unwilling populace.

There wasn't going to be a mandate, this 'isn't a tax', costs will go down, it will 'only' be 900 billion over ten years, you can keep your insurance, churches will have exemptions, etc... all of which were lies. Americans don't like things being forced on them. Now the states are suing, costs are rising, churches are under attack, the bill for this fiasco has already doubled and they're bringing in thousands of new gestapo troops (IRS agents) to do the spying and persecution that it will take in order to force this mandate on an angry public.

The whole damned thing needs to be torn out be the roots and the earth salted so it will never grow back.

qorkfiend: That must be why the US spends more per capita on health care than other developed nations with universal coverage.

Yes, we do. But that doesn't tell you the full story. If we use more health care on a per-capita basis, then we're naturally going to spend much more.

Trying to say that Americans pay more for health care is like saying that fat people pay more for food, therefore we should lower food prices for fat people. Yes, they pay more, but that's because they consume more than the rest.

WombatControl: Advocates of "universal" health care think that it's some magic system where everyone gets great care and doesn't have to pay for it.

No we don't. We don't think Obama's the Messiah, either. Nor are we waiting for unicorns.

Wombatcontrol

Which is a bit like saying "perpetual motion machines are a concept that's just a bit too adavanced for American society at this point. Let's revisit it again in 25 years."

Except that one is a device impossible under the known laws of physics, while the other is a system already in operation in all of the other OECD countries. But other than that, yeah, totally the same.


The way supposedly "universal" health care systems operate is that they ration care, either overtly or tacitly
Does Medicare or the VA ration care?

Or to put it another way, are you saying insurance companies don't ration care? My orthopedic surgeon wants me to get an MRI on my injured knee. The nurse reviewer at the insurance company thinks I should try six weeks of PT first - that would be the reviewer who is not a doctor, has never seen me or talked to me, and has nothing to go on other than x-rays which won't show torn ligaments.


You can run a relatively efficient "universal" system (at great cost) if you live in a homogenous country of 30 million people. Trying to apply that same system to a heterogenous country of 300 million people would make the inherent flaws in the system so big that it would collapse within months.


First, why is it somehow far more expensive per person to provide health care for 300 million versus 30 million? If anything, economies of scale should make it cheaper.

Second, WTF is this "homogeneous" vs "hererogeneous". Exactly what is so very different about America's population compared to, oh, Germany, or Japan, or the UK, or Australia. Racial makeup? Doesn't really matter to health care cost. Age? Japan's population is older, and thus more expensive. Tell me specifically what makes the US population "heterogenous" in comparison, and how that difference makes health care costs so very much higher.

Funny, we can provide public education at similar costs to other industrialized nations. Police and fire protection. Water, sewer, food inspection, and a hundred other things, despite our "heterogenous" population. But health care, somehow we can't? Why do I suspect you're just finding a rather dumb way to blame minorities.

heinekenftw: propasaurus: Says someone who thinks you "catch" cancer.

Well, I suppose a surgeon could take the tumor, once he cuts it out, and tosses it.

If that is the case, then sure, it is theoretically possible to catch it.

I have a piece of my cancerous tumor. I'm going to totally play "catch" with my friends with it.

WombatControl: farkityfarker: Universal health care is a concept that's just a bit too advanced for American society at this point. Let's revisit it again in 25 years.

Which is a bit like saying "perpetual motion machines are a concept that's just a bit too adavanced for American society at this point. Let's revisit it again in 25 years."

"Universal health care" is a myth, and unless you can clone doctors and replicate medical equipment for free, it will always be a myth. The way supposedly "universal" health care systems operate is that they ration care, either overtly or tacitly. And the bigger the universal health care system gets, the bigger the problems get. You can run a relatively efficient "universal" system (at great cost) if you live in a homogenous country of 30 million people. Trying to apply that same system to a heterogenous country of 300 million people would make the inherent flaws in the system so big that it would collapse within months.

Health care is expensive. It will always be expensive, and anyone who tries to convince you otherwise is selling you a load of bullshiat.

Many countries manage to provide health care to all their citizens while America can't.

What are they doing right that we're doing wrong?

Pincy: OK, you convinced me, there is no health care rationing in the US. Everyone has access to all the health care they need. Why are we even arguing about this?

Your definiton of "rationing" is wrong. That doesn't mean that there's no rationing in the U.S.

(As an aside, I love how liberals assume that because I'm dead-set against universal health care, I'm for the status quo. If I were designing the U.S. health care system from scratch it wouldn't look much like the current system we have at all.)

Yes, you can "encourage" more people to become doctors and nurses. And by encourage I mean help. And by help I mean financial assistance.

Financial assistance isn't the problem. Very few doctors who make in through med school and end up in practice have trouble paying their bills when they're done.

Giving someone a pot of money to become a doctor doesn't magically give them the aptitude to do it. Only a certain, and pretty small percentage of the population have the combination of work ethic, intelligence, and desire to spend their lives in medicine. Throwing more money at people doesn't change that equation one bit.

If you want more orderlies to empty bedpans, yes, giving people money to do that would work. But that's not really a problem with our current system.

Doc Lee: So, basically, as is fairly typical, the far-right wing Republican comments are all lies and short enough that their low-information base can easily repeat while the centrist Democratic responses are well articulated (with the exception of Biden's) and based in reality.

Based in, sure.

A good portion of our healthcare problems and falling longevity are directly related to obesity and obesity-related conditions brought on by processed foods, ubiquity of fast/junk food, lack of exercise, and dearth of fresh fruits vegetables.

To start:
1) Overhaul student lunch program
2) Tax processed/junk foods more
3) Provide subsidies for non-animal feed fruit and vegetable growers
4) Single payer healthcare system

In 25-40 years we'll look back on the fight against single-payer the same way we look back on slavery, women's suffrage, and integration.

impaler: Note how all the "anti" quotes are one sentence sound bites, but the "pro" quotes are paragraphs that explain.

Yeah the author isn't biased at all!

WombatControl: Giving someone a pot of money to become a doctor doesn't magically give them the aptitude to do it. Only a certain, and pretty small percentage of the population have the combination of work ethic, intelligence, and desire to spend their lives in medicine. Throwing more money at people doesn't change that equation one bit.

Right, because poor people don't have the work ethic, intelligence, or desire to spend their lives in medicine. It's a fact. Poor people are lazy, stupid, and don't have any motivation; that's why they're poor.

Karac: WombatControl: Advocates of "universal" health care think that it's some magic system where everyone gets great care and doesn't have to pay for it. They never actually understand how those systems work and can't see the flaws in them.

Here's why it doesn't work. To have a "universal" health care system you have to have a system that removes the normal signals of a market (namely prices).

Advocates of repealing Obamacare think that the previous status quo was some magic system where even people without insurance can just go to the local ER to get care for cancer and HIV. They never actually understand how that system causes vast cases of bankruptcy and restricts people from going out and creating jobs because they can't take the risk of quitting their current job and losing the benefits.

Here's another reason why that system doesn't work. In that system, the 'normal' signals of a market are insurance companies continually raising premiums. Costs to the insurance company fromt the docs go up, they raise rates. Costs go down, they raise rates. Butterfly farts in Anartica, they raise rates.

Insurance companies are publicly traded companies in which shareholders expect ever increasing profits. If money can be squeezed out, they'll do it. If they can deny your uncle's heart surgery, they'll do it. If they can cancel coverage for your medication, they'll do it. If they can double your premium and triple your deductible, they'll do it. Insurance companies have turned into unnecessary middlemen that provide no benefit but create massive cost increases.

JusticeandIndependence: BillCo: They missed my favorite:

"we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it" - Nancy Pelosi

It's weird how you've brought this up at least 4 times in the past two days and still keep getting the quote incorrect. Even though it's been pointed out to you each time. Weird.

It's almost like he's too stupid to learn. Either that, or he's just a liar. Which is it, BillDo?

INeedAName: Government's lawyer "You can't throw this out because it's a tax.'


Except, the government didn't make that argument.

The SCOTUS wanted the issue briefed, so they had to appoint a special attorney to make that argument.

Dusk-You-n-Me: WombatControl: Take any counry of similar size and demographics to the United States and it wouldn't work.

Because you say so?

Dude, let it go. He just barely cited universal economic law as the authority on which he is basing his conclusions. And then he proceeded to misuse at least three economic terms in one of his vague, rambling posts.

WombatControl: Pincy: OK, you convinced me, there is no health care rationing in the US. Everyone has access to all the health care they need. Why are we even arguing about this?

Your definiton of "rationing" is wrong. That doesn't mean that there's no rationing in the U.S.

OK, so you admit that there is rationing but yet there isn't? You are playing semantics here. Health care in the US is rationed by ones ability to afford it. You know that is true.

Financial assistance isn't the problem. Very few doctors who make in through med school and end up in practice have trouble paying their bills when they're done.

Citation please?

jasimo: A good portion of our healthcare problems and falling longevity are directly related to obesity and obesity-related conditions brought on by processed foods, ubiquity of fast/junk food, lack of exercise, and dearth of fresh fruits vegetables.

To start:
1) Overhaul student lunch program
2) Tax processed/junk foods more
3) Provide subsidies for non-animal feed fruit and vegetable growers
4) Single payer healthcare system

In 25-40 years we'll look back on the fight against single-payer the same way we look back on slavery, women's suffrage, and integration.

[images.vizworld.com image 640x926]

Well you are right on the first part, that's why comparing costs to life expectancy is a bad comparison. Our McDonald's lifestyle won't be corrected by single payer. Also comparisons of costs are kind of poor too. It's great Canada is cheaper than us, but they also use the US to subsidize the development of new drugs, equipment, procedures, etc.. As to single payer being like suffrage, no way even remotely. Peopel don't look back on SS or Medicare like that.

Dusk-You-n-Me: WombatControl: Take any counry of similar size and demographics to the United States and it wouldn't work.

Because you say so?

Exactly - because the fact that valid critiques of universal health care systems can be made, means they "don't work".

Do you want to know why automobiles don't work? Because sometimes, their spark plugs get fouled.

Do you know why sewer systems don't work? Because, sometimes they are designed with insufficient capacities.

I could go on - don't need to.

Wombatcontrol
To have a "universal" health care system you have to have a system that removes the normal signals of a market (namely prices). But since you don't have normal market signals, you have to have central planning. And central economic planning never works in practice, because without price signals there's not enough information to centrally plan an economy. It doesn't matter how well-educated or smart your central planners are, they can never do better than an organic system based on prices.

Let's see, the government's central planners created the interstate highway system. Removed all price signals - people use it for free! The feds finance 90% of construction costs! And fund maintenance too! How'd that work out? Do you think the free market could have done better, perhaps with a series of toll roads constructed by private contractors?

What you don't grasp is that health care is not a normal market. What would you pay for a better car, a nicer house, a fancy meal? There's a limit, right? Now, what would you pay to live another 20 years instead of dying now? To avoid blindness, or paralysis?

And then we introduce insurance. Where are the price signals now? I don't even know what my insurance policy costs - the amount my employer makes me kick in is probably less than a tenth of the actual cost. If my doctor wants to order a test or procedure, once my $500 annual deductible is paid, its all free to me. Since its a PPO plan, my doctors have no incentive to hold down costs. Where's your invisible hand now?

Not a single pro-Obamacare quote was bumper sticker ready.

Well, okay, maybe Joe Biden's.

jso2897: Dusk-You-n-Me: WombatControl: Take any counry of similar size and demographics to the United States and it wouldn't work.

Because you say so?

Exactly - because the fact that valid critiques of universal health care systems can be made, means they "don't work".

Do you want to know why automobiles don't work? Because sometimes, their spark plugs get fouled.

Do you know why sewer systems don't work? Because, sometimes they are designed with insufficient capacities.

I could go on - don't need to.

Most of them are plagued with problems and they are looking for their own solutions as well.

MisterRonbo: Wombatcontrol
To have a "universal" health care system you have to have a system that removes the normal signals of a market (namely prices). But since you don't have normal market signals, you have to have central planning. And central economic planning never works in practice, because without price signals there's not enough information to centrally plan an economy. It doesn't matter how well-educated or smart your central planners are, they can never do better than an organic system based on prices.

Let's see, the government's central planners created the interstate highway system. Removed all price signals - people use it for free! The feds finance 90% of construction costs! And fund maintenance too! How'd that work out? Do you think the free market could have done better, perhaps with a series of toll roads constructed by private contractors?

What you don't grasp is that health care is not a normal market. What would you pay for a better car, a nicer house, a fancy meal? There's a limit, right? Now, what would you pay to live another 20 years instead of dying now? To avoid blindness, or paralysis?

And then we introduce insurance. Where are the price signals now? I don't even know what my insurance policy costs - the amount my employer makes me kick in is probably less than a tenth of the actual cost. If my doctor wants to order a test or procedure, once my $500 annual deductible is paid, its all free to me. Since its a PPO plan, my doctors have no incentive to hold down costs. Where's your invisible hand now?

Yep, that's about the crux of it, leaving health care to the ravages of the free market does not work because health care is not really something we can make rational decisions about. We don't choose to get sick. And when we get really sick we don't "shop" for the best value, we do what needs to be done to get better, no matter the costs.

There's a reason we don't have private police forces. It's the same reason we need UHC. You don't want to leave your personal welfare and safety up to the free market.