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Do you agree with Ron Paul's POV, that the uninsured should be denied life-saving medical care?
Do you agree with Ron Paul's POV, that the uninsured should be denied life-saving medical care?
In the days before Medicare and Medicaid, the poor and elderly were admitted to hospitals at the same rate they are now, and received good care. Before those programs came into existence, every physician understood that he or she had a responsibility towards the less fortunate and free medical care was the norm. Hardly anyone is aware of this today, since it doesn’t fit into the typical, by the script story of government rescuing us from a predatory private sector.
Funny how all this would be solved if we just adopted the obvious solution: universal healthcare.
Ron Paul is living in a fantasy world. When people don't have health insurance and cannot afford their health treatment, they either get lucky and have someone else help them out or they die. Thousands of Americans die each year because they can't afford healthcare. This study found that uninsured Americans are 1.8 times as likely to die as insured ones:
http://www.pnhp.org/excessdeaths/health-insurance-and-mortality-in-US-adults.pdf
The government can't even run a licensing program efficiently. I do not want them controlling healthcare.
No one else could do it. Even if private corporations had any interest in helping those who can't make them rich, they don't have the massive amount of infrastructure to make it happen. But seriously, if you want government to be more effective at running the programs it takes on, stop handcuffing it. Get the private interests away from government. Get out the lobby money, get out the corporate campaign donations. Those massive 2000 page bills will shrink pretty quickly if they only need to tackle one issue. And then stop funneling money into the upper classes, where it does no one any good. Government is ineffective because we make it that way. Give it the means to accomplish the tasks we set it to, and it will be able to do them.
But it already does most things better than the private sector.
I agree with tessaesque, Ron Paul did not say this, I believe that if your going to start a debate, start it with a true question like....Do you agree with Ron Paul's POV, that the uninsured should be denied life-saving medical care?
Nice rant. Completely unrelated to my analogy, though.
How long to do wait at the DPS? After filling out a form the size of a postcard and gathering your birth certificate and SS card, how long are you made to wait until you get your license? How about the tax office? The DMV? Ever had to deal with the Fish and Wildlife department? What about the IRS? These are all programs and departments devised entirely by the government to regulate and control actions legislated by the government. And they're all bound up in red tape, lines, waiting lists, untrained, unprofessional, incapable staff, and tons upon tons of misinformation.
So you can blame everybody but the government for government inefficiency....but it's just more party-line nonsense designed to villify the people you like the least. Even if you consider the parties you mentioned above...guess what? The government decided whether or not those parties had any influence. So they're still the ones with their pants down here.
We can't even bid on a government job without jumping through a ridiculous number of hoops, and all we do is clean carpets. So I'm sorry if I don't fall into lock-step with the "government is our savior" bullhockey spewed as a justification for handing them the reigns and ability to train, regulate, monitor, and select the guy who measures out my anesthesia before surgery.
Do you agree with Ron Paul's POV, that the uninsured should be denied life-saving medical care?
The government can't even run a licensing program efficiently. I do not want them controlling healthcare.
But the government does control some healthcare already. Medicare. All the retirees in my family have few if any complaints. They get the services they need with nary a mention to me, including new hips, in and out of town emergent care, back surgery and follow up care. Medicare also has the benefit of running on 3% overhead costs.
I was on Medicaid for years and would fight tooth and nail to avoid ever being on it again. I'm glad you have people who are happy with their government health care. I wasn't. And I don't trust it. And I will fight to avoid it ever being mandated upon the entire population of this country. I got better care when I didn't have insurance at all (and I paid my bills) than I ever did when I was on the government dole. Can't even tell you how many times I was denied a medical test or procedure because some government-assembled group of "professionals" decided that particular test or procedure wasn't "necesssary" on the basis of some arbitrary qualification system.
Thanks to that nonsense I went through 8 years of daily pain because of gallstones the size of ping pong balls. Because some quantitative/qualitative measure devised by compiling data instead of talking to patients and doctors decided that a sonogram would cost more than any possible benefit of performing the procedure.
well, did you live in texas? i hear medicaid funds there are horribly misspent. ;-)
well, did you live in texas? i hear medicaid funds there are horribly misspent. ;-)
aside from that, do you have a problem with mandating insurance?
I was on Medicaid for years and would fight tooth and nail to avoid ever being on it again. I'm glad you have people who are happy with their government health care. I wasn't. And I don't trust it. And I will fight to avoid it ever being mandated upon the entire population of this country. I got better care when I didn't have insurance at all (and I paid my bills) than I ever did when I was on the government dole. Can't even tell you how many times I was denied a medical test or procedure because some government-assembled group of "professionals" decided that particular test or procedure wasn't "necesssary" on the basis of some arbitrary qualification system.
Thanks to that nonsense I went through 8 years of daily pain because of gallstones the size of ping pong balls. Because some quantitative/qualitative measure devised by compiling data instead of talking to patients and doctors decided that a sonogram would cost more than any possible benefit of performing the procedure.
We have the highest cost of care and the most bloated medical system in the western world. Clearly what we have is not working efficiently or providing quality care.
People object to universal health care for philosophical reasons. It could have the potential to actually save us money.
But ultimately I must agree with some opponents who say that we can't afford it right now. Our economy is too fragile to implement such a huge system, and the health care bill we currently have is a complete piece of corporate crap.
I don't want to be argumentative Tessa and I'm very sorry your experience has been so terrible, but Medicaid is administered through each state, yes? I know they must conform to federal guide lines, but maybe that is the difference in how benefits and care are approved and administered?
Do you agree with Ron Paul's POV, that the uninsured should be denied life-saving medical care?[/QUOT
Ive always said Paul is nuts and the more he talks the more nuts I believe he is
I don't see anything here that says he wants to deny health care to the uninsured.
From his book:
As for last night, his exact words were:
Ron Paul: That's what freedom is all about: taking your own risks. This whole idea that you need a single payer to take care of everybody....
Blitzer: So are you saying society should let him die?
Ron Paul: No. I practiced medicine, uh....before we had Medicaid. In the early 1960s when I got out of medical school. I practiced at Santa Rosa Hospital in San Antonio and churches took care of them. We never turned anybody away from the hospitals. And we've given up on this whole concept of...that we might take care of ourselves or assume responsibility for ourselves...our neighbors, our communities, our churches would do it. This whole idea...that's the reason the cost is so high. The cost is so high because we dump it on the government, it becomes a beaurocracy, it becomes special interests, it cow-tows to the insurance companies and the drug companies. Then on top of that you have the inflation. The inflation devalues the dollar. We have lack of competition. There's no competition in medicine. Everybody is protected by licensing. We should actually legalize alternative healthcare; allow people to practice what they want.