Tuesday, April 29, 2008

McCain flips, joins Mitt

.. in supporting Nanny State Lite health care. Who is gonna laugh, and who is gonna cry?
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24 comments:

Pepe le Pew said...

ai - how can you be against that ?

4/29/2008 7:23 PM
Mr roT said...

Pepe, it's good sense to be against the govt in health. Just live in Canada or Europe for a while.

4/29/2008 8:07 PM
Pepe le Pew said...

I have ai. It really sucks here I am afraid.

4/29/2008 8:48 PM
Tecumseh said...

Pepe: I don't really know what McCain proposes in terms of insurance schemes, and I don't particularly care. I'm just noting the irony of it all. Like someone said, we have 3 choices right now: a liberal, a socialist, and a marxist. Yipee.

4/29/2008 9:29 PM
Pepe le Pew said...

From the patient's perspective, these are the three best options.

4/29/2008 9:57 PM
Tecumseh said...

That's a good one, Pepe. Care to back up your assertion by facts, or is this simply the pinko "audacity of hope"?

4/29/2008 11:23 PM
My Frontier Thesis said...

I agree with full-blown Liberalism, Socialism, Marxism, Capitalism, and Conservatism in theory...

4/30/2008 12:51 AM
Pepe le Pew said...

ai - when it comes to economics i am not a pinko. Or rather i can't afford to be. But when it comes to healthcare, the difference between here and there is astounding. How do I know ? I have a dozen people on payroll bouncing from one shitty ass plan to the next, benefits denied for flimsy reasons, mountains of worthless paperwork, plans that cost more & more each year while offering less & less, huge deductibles, you name it, it sucks. It used to be that you couldn't get healthcare if you were poor, now it's you can't get a decent plan unless you are well-off and in good health.

I realize life is different in academia or large corporations which have more leverage over health care plans than my small firm does.

In Europe ? pre-existing condition isn't even in the dictionary. The entire community pitches in and you see nothing. You can get doctors visits at home, for people with no coverage (like me in France), healthcare is affordable.

Naturally, it costs quite a bit to the community (but so does the US system) but my point was that it is far better for the patient. This isn't a political statement: it's what I see from experience. Care to argue otherwise ?

4/30/2008 3:10 PM
Mr roT said...

Where were the drugs developed?
Where was the PET-CAT scan machine designed and made?
Where did the researchers involved in developing all the treatments get training and lab experience?
Why is the answer to all these questions the same?

4/30/2008 3:24 PM
Pepe le Pew said...

If the healthcare system in the US were more egalitarian, we'd have no pet-scans ? What drugs are you on ?

4/30/2008 3:41 PM
Mr roT said...

I think the profit motive is where the pet-scans came from, ultimately. Where did the Radon transforms come from, Marx? Maybe from computer firms and math types and programmers wanting to make an honest buck.

Why not go big-picture and answer my last question first?

4/30/2008 3:44 PM
Pepe le Pew said...

If the big picture is that the community as a whole has to suffer so that a few can make an "honest" buck, that buck isn't honest any longer.

4/30/2008 3:50 PM
Mr roT said...

Not just so a few can make an honest buck, but also so everyone in France and Norway and South Africa and so on can use the damned imported CAT scanner.

4/30/2008 3:52 PM
Pepe le Pew said...

That's interesting. I like the idea that americans are suffering so that south africans can get better healthcare. This somehow seems to tip the scale in the right direction.

4/30/2008 3:59 PM
Mr roT said...

Been that way forever...

4/30/2008 4:01 PM
Pepe le Pew said...

Seriously though, how much abuse can you justify with the need for scientific progress ?

4/30/2008 4:11 PM
Pepe le Pew said...

I am afraid you people in academia are totally shielded from what is going on outside. On my end, there is so much anecdotal evidence for abuse that it is hard to not infer a generalized problem.

4/30/2008 5:03 PM
Tecumseh said...

I'm with JJ on the need to keep inventing new stuff -- this is what drives most of medical progress, the doctors just cut you up and sow you back, the real stuff is done elsewhere. And, I sort of sympathize with Pepe's red tape woes -- up to a point. But the solution is not to bureaucratize even further the system (as the pinkos want); rather to streamline it, and try to rein in the out-of-control spiraling costs.

One important difference: shysters. We have gazillion ambulance chasers in the US, and they prey like vultures (or leeches, take your pick) on the system. That's a big reason for the cost differential. Eg, in France, doctors can cut the wrong leg, or give the wrong treatment to hundreds of patients, or let thousands of elderly die of heat in hospitals with no AC, and they are not liable at all. Here, they get sued their pants off for the smallest thing -- which perhaps keeps them honest a bit more, but also leads to all sorts of tests and stuff, and everything costing 3 times as much.

So, if you want to attack some of the root causes, one needs to take a long, hard look at tort reform, and how to balance all those legal protections against ever rising costs. But of course, the trial lawyers are one of the pillars of the Pinko Machine (and their sugar daddies), so they (the lefty politicos) won't touch the golden goose. In fact, they are mostly all lawyers themselves. So there you go.

4/30/2008 5:31 PM
Mr roT said...

And that's why you're a big Obama supporter, AI. Right?

4/30/2008 7:47 PM
Mr roT said...

Be careful what you rip, for thou shalt sow it back?

4/30/2008 8:30 PM
Tecumseh said...

Hey, man, I'm my own guy. I just diss all these politicos, pretty evenly -- it's juts the primaries, after all. A warmup, if you wish. What's wrong with a brawl? You want a stuffy English club chat, Mr. Marquess of Queensenberry?

4/30/2008 9:43 PM
Mr roT said...

I was mocking your spelling!

4/30/2008 11:07 PM
Tecumseh said...

What's wrong with my spelling?

5/01/2008 7:18 AM
Mr roT said...

sew, not sow

5/01/2008 9:46 PM

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