Health care reform

Preventative medicine prevents (delays) your death. If you were near death...

Anyway, the success of your life style in preserving your health will become apparent starting in your late '50's. It's success in preserving your life will be known 20 or so years later.

 

Hi Necro
I agree (to a point) that Pot should be legal (for medical uses in particular), however Ranth is quite correct that a junk food tax is the way to go. If we were to put a 10% tax on junk food, we would get an estimated 2.7 Billion dollars per year just from McDonalds customers alone ! If you look here you will find that McDonalds had 22,744.7 MILLION dollars in revenues last year. Granted, the report doesn't break down the revenues by region (USA, Canada, etc....) or what was purchased, but they made a lot of money (and no I am not the slightest bit upset about that, they sell what the customer wants, at a reasonable price, with decent to very good service). My SWAG was based on one fact, and a couple of assumptions. FACT: McDonalds reported that they served 60 Million customers a day last year. Now my assumptions:
1.) I assume (seeing as they don't break down the number of customers by country) that 30 Million of those daily customers are in the USA
2.) I assume that each customer spends on average $3.00 per visit on what would be considered "junk food" (basically anything but their salads and water)
3.) Just to be conservative, when calculating the revenue generated by a 10% "Junk Food Tax", I used a 300 day year (this could cover things like stores being closed due to power outages, bad weather, remodeling, etc...)
As you can see, a "Junk Food Tax" would generate a lot of revenue, without seriously impacting any company. Let's face it, the reason why junk food is so cheap is that a lot of it is subsidized in one way or another. How else do you explain a 2 Liter bottle of Pepsi selling for less than a 20 Ounce bottle of water ?
The Royal Canadian

 

Has everyone thought this through? :cartman:

Health care reform is essentially oriented towards saving people from the consequences of their foolish decisions. Then we will overwhelmed by hordes of imbeciles, idiots, morons, people from Hollywood, people who listen to people from Hollywood...

 

I thought health care reform was to help the people who can't afford health insurance, to relieve the burden on industry having to pay soaring insurance premiums on their employees, and to break the strangle hold the insurance companys have on your health system.

 

That is the popular consensus but what "health care reform" really is is really nothing more than a platform buzzword to get elected to president of the united states in order to try to break the country in two over your knee and destroy it forever so that your terrorist friends can come over and do whatever they want, as well as your crazy preacher friends.

Better start learning arabic PDQ, people.

 

:twitch: I think the only hope for you at this point is when you become a hermit in the Canadian wilderness you'll no longer be indoctrinated by Fox News.

 

Did my father choose to have a genetic heart defect that his father had, and I probably have? How about someone with cancer? Smoking can increase cancer, but what about the 10 yr old kid that has it but his family is poor and does not have insurance. Or how about my friend that got hit by a car, broke his back, and the driver didn't have car insurance. Now he has over 100k in bills from doctors and had to declare bankruptcy and he is 21 and cant get a car or a mortgage at a decent rate.

I agree, people's decisions should have consequences. That is why I suggested the junk food tax. But not every health care problem is due to decisions.

Sadly, the issue is not cut and dry.

 

JUST KIDDING! (sigh) :no:

(Except for the part about people who listen to people from Hollywood. )

 

Hi Folks
I've been thinking about this on and off for the past couple of weeks, and one thing that has occurred to me is that we all pay for our lousy American health care system one way or another. For example if you get into a serious car accident near the city of Albion, Michigan and you need to be on the operating table in 15 minutes or else, you're dead because the Albion Hospital closed several years ago because of financial issues, in other words they treated way to many people who couldn't pay for the services they needed. Before you ask, it is the law that a doctor or hospital must treat any patient who shows up no matter what. The largest hospital in Michigan had to be bailed out by the state for the same reason. I heard that medical bills are now the number one cause of bankruptcy in the USA (something like 700,000 people every year). If you think you don't pay for their inability to pay, you are a FIdiot (Foolish Idiot). When those 700,000 people file chapter 7 (or 11 or whatever it is) to get out from under their expensive medical bills, the doctors and hospitals simply raise the amount they charge those who are covered or can pay to make up for the lost revenue.
I have also come to the conclusion that some form of National Health Care is good for National Security. There was a report released a week ago that states that Al Queda will launch a WMD attack within the next three years. The most likely weapon they will use is a Biological Weapon, and their most likely target is the USA (the country most vulnerable to such an attack). You handle a bio-weapon attack the same way you handle a major pandemic (which makes sense if you think about it: a Bio-weapon attack is a Man-made pandemic). Unfortunately the recent H1N1 pandemic shows just how unready we are for such an attack. There was one hospital in Austin, Texas that had to set up tents in the parking lot to deal with all the H1N1 patients (400 in a single day). Keep in mind, this was a mild flu that is not fatal (unless you have an underlying respiratory ailment) and we had 6 months to prepare for it. When Al Queda launches their attack, they won't give us 6 seconds of warning, let alone 6 months. The first sign of the attack will be when people start dropping dead. The only way to prevent the spread of a bio-weapon "bug" is to find the people who are sick and treat and isolate them so they don't spread it to other people. The problem is that the uninsured are going to wait until they are to sick too work before seeking health care, all the while spreading the "bug" to everyone they meet. If everyone has health insurance, you have a greater chance of finding the "bug" earlier, isolating the sick, and thereby slowing the spread of the "bug"
The Royal Canadian

 

Hi Necro
I've got a little "Health Care Reform" trivia question for you: Name the first US president to propose a National Health Insurance plan ??
The Royal Canadian

 

I'm going to have to say Wild Bill. Yeehaw! One of my favorite presidents. He was all about legalizing dope and prostitution, just like our very own Minnesotan, Jesse The Bod Ventura!

"Hey Al! Victoria's Secret is no secret. They got cameras everywhere, ya dink! *laugh, cough, laugh, cough, laugh, cough, choking on smoke* Yeehaw!" Best thing ever on KQRS. Lol.

 

Hi Necro
Believe it or not Bill Clinton was not the first president to propose National Health Care, not even close !! I'll give you a hint think of a genuine (not movie star) cowboy.
The Royal Canadian

 

Theodore Roosevelt, no lie!

 

God bless that flavor-savor having crazy man.

 

Ahh, i think you should discuss what "insurance" is and what "healthcare" is.

Short concept of "insurance".

Imagine a man in danger of something.
Imagine that probability (P) of that something happening (in this year, for example) to the man is small, but damage in case of happening (D dollars) is significant.
How can the man protect himself if he does not know when or how that something will strike?
No way except saving money for damage repair; he will need to save D dollars.
But if there is a lot of such men (N), they could collect money together, and in case someone is struck, give them to that unlucky one. They will need to collect N*P*D dollars (N*P men will be struck) and it is P*D dollars per man to donate. Since P is much less than 1 each individual needs to "save" less, but will have the same D to repair damage.
P*D<<D.
This, ideally, is insurance.
Those not affected by danger pay for those affected, and since many men pay and little men are affected, it works (and insurance companies have good profits).
This applies for something like meteor strikes, robbery, floodind from upper residence, etc.


Now, "healthcare".

In case of healtcare everyone WILL be affected and WILL need help (even if when being born).

So, people inebvitably have to pay for training doctors, maintaining hospitals etc. And they all will have to pay for healing at some moment.

So you see, in this case P=1 (at least for some years of man's life). And no matter what, you have to pay D dollars (1*D), or someone has to pay for you.

So I think insurance system should not be used in healtcare.

That is my view, but it suffers from short-mindedness and bad English.