2008 Presidential Election

[Bandit]

Conservatives don't feel that way. In fact Conservatives give more in charity than the liberals based on several studies.

when refering to conservatives as right wing politics...

yes they do, in fact they have said it to my face...I AINT PAYING FOR SOMEONE ELSES HELATH CARE then go on to explain they will vote for those who do not want national health care....of course this rule will change when they dont have health care.

just because they give more to charity of their choice (& get more for doing so) does not mean it changes how they feel about health care for ther poor. when some of them are so conservative, they feel that sick people, gay people, poor people, non religious people get what they deserve & they should lay down & die.

of course the neutrality of this will be disputed, & one is only a conservative or liberal when they want votes for an office & when it comes time to vote.

[WhatMoney]

If you add in the National Health Care system you will reach the same spending level in 1/4 the time and that's a conservative estimate on the spending. The only way to avoid that is to have a draconian process like most European as well as Canada has were it can take months to years to get necessary service, and much like France we'll all still need supplemental private insurance.

This is the same tired old arguments conservatives make to avoid having their taxes raised to help someone less able to pay for their healthcare. It is basic human greed to keep it all for me and to hell with you. There are many different models for a national health insurance program around the world.

JRScott - watch this Frontline program online ("Sick Around The World"), and tell me why you still think that the USA should be the ONLY advanced country in the world that does NOT have a national health system that protects all of it's citizens?

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontl...roundtheworld/

(And simply saying because we can't afford it is not a safisfactory answer: obviously every other country has found ways to afford it.)

I think you get all your opinions by listening to conservative AM talk radio and those wacko FOX TV political commentators. How often do you watch PBS Frontline and Bill Moyers Journal?

[WhatMoney]

Some graphs to consider:





An excerpt from correspondent T.R. Reid's upcoming book on international health care, titled We're Number 37!, referring to the U.S.'s ranking in the World Health Organization 2000 World Health Report. The book is scheduled to be published by Penguin Press in early 2009.

There are about 200 countries on our planet, and each country devises its own set of arrangements for meeting the three basic goals of a health care system: keeping people healthy, treating the sick, and protecting families against financial ruin from medical bills.

But we don't have to study 200 different systems to get a picture of how other countries manage health care. For all the local variations, health care systems tend to follow general patterns. There are four basic systems:

The Beveridge Model
Named after William Beveridge, the daring social reformer who designed Britain's National Health Service. In this system, health care is provided and financed by the government through tax payments, just like the police force or the public library.

Many, but not all, hospitals and clinics are owned by the government; some doctors are government employees, but there are also private doctors who collect their fees from the government. In Britain, you never get a doctor bill. These systems tend to have low costs per capita, because the government, as the sole payer, controls what doctors can do and what they can charge.

Countries using the Beveridge plan or variations on it include its birthplace Great Britain, Spain, most of Scandinavia and New Zealand. Hong Kong still has its own Beveridge-style health care, because the populace simply refused to give it up when the Chinese took over that former British colony in 1997. Cuba represents the extreme application of the Beveridge approach; it is probably the world's purest example of total government control.


The Bismarck Model
Named for the Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, who invented the welfare state as part of the unification of Germany in the 19th century. Despite its European heritage, this system of providing health care would look fairly familiar to Americans. It uses an insurance system -- the insurers are called "sickness funds" -- usually financed jointly by employers and employees through payroll deduction.

Unlike the U.S. insurance industry, though, Bismarck-type health insurance plans have to cover everybody, and they don't make a profit. Doctors and hospitals tend to be private in Bismarck countries; Japan has more private hospitals than the U.S. Although this is a multi-payer model -- Germany has about 240 different funds -- tight regulation gives government much of the cost-control clout that the single-payer Beveridge Model provides.

The Bismarck model is found in Germany, of course, and France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Japan, Switzerland, and, to a degree, in Latin America.

The National Health Insurance Model
This system has elements of both Beveridge and Bismarck. It uses private-sector providers, but payment comes from a government-run insurance program that every citizen pays into. Since there's no need for marketing, no financial motive to deny claims and no profit, these universal insurance programs tend to be cheaper and much simpler administratively than American-style for-profit insurance.

The single payer tends to have considerable market power to negotiate for lower prices; Canada's system, for example, has negotiated such low prices from pharmaceutical companies that Americans have spurned their own drug stores to buy pills north of the border. National Health Insurance plans also control costs by limiting the medical services they will pay for, or by making patients wait to be treated.

The classic NHI system is found in Canada, but some newly industrialized countries -- Taiwan and South Korea, for example -- have also adopted the NHI model.

The Out-of-Pocket Model
Only the developed, industrialized countries -- perhaps 40 of the world's 200 countries -- have established health care systems. Most of the nations on the planet are too poor and too disorganized to provide any kind of mass medical care. The basic rule in such countries is that the rich get medical care; the poor stay sick or die.

In rural regions of Africa, India, China and South America, hundreds of millions of people go their whole lives without ever seeing a doctor. They may have access, though, to a village healer using home-brewed remedies that may or not be effective against disease.

In the poor world, patients can sometimes scratch together enough money to pay a doctor bill; otherwise, they pay in potatoes or goat's milk or child care or whatever else they may have to give. If they have nothing, they don't get medical care.

These four models should be fairly easy for Americans to understand because we have elements of all of them in our fragmented national health care apparatus. When it comes to treating veterans, we're Britain or Cuba. For Americans over the age of 65 on Medicare, we're Canada. For working Americans who get insurance on the job, we're Germany.

For the 15 percent of the population who have no health insurance, the United States is Cambodia or Burkina Faso or rural India, with access to a doctor available if you can pay the bill out-of-pocket at the time of treatment or if you're sick enough to be admitted to the emergency ward at the public hospital.

The United States is unlike every other country because it maintains so many separate systems for separate classes of people. All the other countries have settled on one model for everybody. This is much simpler than the U.S. system; it's fairer and cheaper, too.

[JRScott]

How do you plan to afford it WhatMoney?

Are you willing to pay 2 to 3 times the taxes you do today? Are you willing to have your children's taxes that high, or your grandchildren's being even 5 to 6 times what you pay today (yes that's pretty much 100% taxes).

Most of the countries with socialized medicine have taxes that are much higher than ours. I don't know about you but I really can't afford for them to take more taxes out of my check. Almost invariably every one of them also has long waits for health care, such long waits in some cases you can die from the illness before being treated in many countries.

Because that's where we are headed. It isn't that I don't feel that it isn't a worthwhile cause. It's that I just simply see no way for the government to pay for it. It is the most inefficient utilizer of capital there is. Almost every one of the entitlement programs could be run more cheaply, more effectively and more efficiently if they were private entities and not government run institutes.

If our government had run Social Security efficiently, that is if they had taken the premiums paid in over the last 50 years and put them into mutual funds then we would not be facing the crisis we will face in the next decade.

Before we consider any new government programs we must pay off the national debt and we must revamp the various entitlement programs we have to levels we can afford. Adding more spending will only cause the economic situation to worsen.

[JRScott]

when refering to conservatives as right wing politics...

yes they do, in fact they have said it to my face...I AINT PAYING FOR SOMEONE ELSES HELATH CARE then go on to explain they will vote for those who do not want national health care....of course this rule will change when they dont have health care.

just because they give more to charity of their choice (& get more for doing so) does not mean it changes how they feel about health care for ther poor. when some of them are so conservative, they feel that sick people, gay people, poor people, non religious people get what they deserve & they should lay down & die.

of course the neutrality of this will be disputed, & one is only a conservative or liberal when they want votes for an office & when it comes time to vote.

The poor often turn to charities to help them whether it is for food, medicine, shelter or whatsoever the need. Thus by donating to the charities they are indeed assisting the poor. Not all charities are equal. The better ones more money goes to the poor than to themselves, the worst ones eat up to much in administration fees.

The government is among the worst. It has huge administration costs and is very inefficient.

Most conservatives do not believe that a strong central government is in the best interest of the people. It breeds corruption and waste.

As for religious viewpoints. You've railed against so many here but seem not to know what many of them believe. For example the LDS church one of your favorite punching bags helps people of all faiths. They routinely ship out supplies to disaster stricken areas and volunteer their members efforts to such disasters. They never announce such publicly but it is reported in the church magazines so that members know where the money is going.

One of the 13 articles of faith of the LDS church states that Men are free to worship who they want, what they want and where they want. Indeed in their doctrine it is possible that many Hindu, Buddhist, Muslims etc will make it into heaven yet while their own members may fail. The tenant of their belief is that God holds people accountable for only what they are taught. Thus someone who never had the opportunity to hear the Gospel will be judged by a much lower standard than those who did hear the Gospel, were baptized and yet chose not to follow its teachings.

The LDS church does excommunicate homosexuals. This does not keep the homosexual from living the lifestyle they choose to live. In fact it is meant to help the homosexual, because excommunication removes from the individual the covenants and pacts they have made with God such that they are held to a lower standard than they would be on judgment day. The churches viewpoint is that the family is ordained of God to be one man and one woman even as it was in the Garden of Eden. That these two should join as one and raise up offspring. The homosexual lifestyle is the opposite of this. They oppose gay marriage in hopes of keeping their brothers and sisters from committing any offense to God that might keep them from eternal happiness. It is not done out of anger or hate, it is done out of love.

[WhatMoney]

How do you plan to afford it WhatMoney?

Did you watch the Frontline show I listed? That should give you some ideas.

Why does US healthcare consume so much more of our GDP than all the other countries? If the government ran a National Health Insurance program the costs would go down, and it would not increase taxes as much as you think. But then the insurance and corporate medical interests that are now creating these out of control costs would have to give up their obscene profits. Why should health care be all about making large sums of money for corporations?

Get the profit out of Health Insurance companies. The insurance companies contribute nothing but paper shuffling, and want 30% of the health care costs so they can keep their shareholders happy. Take the obscene profits out of medical equipment and supplies. The $1000 toilet seat is nothing compared to what the equipment suppliers suck out of the system. Get the profits out of the drug companies - force them to compete for government contracts. Most drug research is already paid for by government grants to Universities, not at the drug companies. Stop the drug companies from marketing new drugs as their largest expense. Provide free medical education for students who qualify - more Doctors means better service, and the Drs would not end up with $250,000 student loans they must payback with inflated office fees. Inflated fees that the insurance companies approve thanks to the Bush administration policy. The private insurance companies are at the root of the US's uncontrolled health costs. Get rid of them or regulate them as non-profits.

Again, there are many ideas on how reduce the costs. And then remember that much of our health care goes to critical care and emergency care - which is a direct result of have so many under-insured or with no insurance. Preventive care for all would save Billions. Preventive care is cheap, and much of the care could be done by assistants. This is one reason other countries have both longer life expectancies, and lower costs.

As the Swiss official said: "It would be considered a national disgrace for a single citizen to declare bankruptcy from medical costs. It has never happened here."

You need to watch the program, since the question is what kind of system would be best for the USA? It's not an easy problem, but this out-of-pocket model for the uninsured we have today is an unfair and cruel model for a rich and civilized country.

These four models should be fairly easy for Americans to understand because we have elements of all of them in our fragmented national health care apparatus. When it comes to treating veterans, we're Britain or Cuba. For Americans over the age of 65 on Medicare, we're Canada. For working Americans who get insurance on the job, we're Germany.

For the 15 percent of the population who have no health insurance, the United States is Cambodia or Burkina Faso or rural India, with access to a doctor available if you can pay the bill out-of-pocket at the time of treatment or if you're sick enough to be admitted to the emergency ward at the public hospital.
The United States is unlike every other country because it maintains so many separate systems for separate classes of people. All the other countries have settled on one model for everybody. This is much simpler than the U.S. system; it's fairer and cheaper, too.

[JRScott]

Do you really think costs would go down if the Government took over?

When was the last government program that ran at or below expected costs?

If you remove profit from the Health Insurance Companies why would they operate? Isn't that the goal of every business. We've tried windfall tax profits on other industries in the past, it didn't work. It led to higher costs, less competition, and fewer jobs.

As for the Frontline show I'm at work and can't watch videos here and at home only have dial up so not likely I'll get to see it. However the media we have today is no where near unbiased as it should be. They all seem to have their own agendas.

You do realize that in Canada for example you have to wait a year for some sorts of care, I have Canadian friends, they come to the US to get health care. The same goes for many Europeans that can afford to do so. If their systems are so great why do they come here for health care?

[Bandit]

wow. it feels like i am at church being told we all go to hell unless we do what the pope says.

nothing better than reading a bunch of religious judging of others into some heaven or hell amazing how humans think they have some kind of power to judge others & do this.

what was that religion where they chop off peoples heads & burn people at the stake? unless you do & believe the same stuff? sounds like love to me

[squeaks]

I'm a person of extreme faith and know its not for me to make the final judgement but I can judge for myself whether or not a person is making a mistake or not.

Bandit, it seems you spend each moment just waiting to be offended and you think life is about doing what you want and not being "judged".

Society must judge its own, we got afraid of judging each other for fear of offending people and now we have a society where young girls film themselves beating each other up, teachers lust after their students and claim its their right to do so, a president guilty of adultry is celebrated and kids are expelled from school for wearing shirts with a simple cross and verse printed on them.

What a wonderful world we have created by not judging bad behavior to be just that......bad.

[MomIcantFindmy]

Do you really think costs would go down if the Government took over?

When was the last government program that ran at or below expected costs?

Just to name a few...............
FBI $4 billion
Drug Enforcement Agency $1.5 billion
Center for Disease Control $4.4 billion
Federal Prisons $4.6 billion
Highway Administration $31 billion
Border and Transportation Security$12 billion
And just for comparison, however usually runs over budget.....
National Defense $358 billion

So where would you like to cut? The government program that runs above costs?

Quote by David M. Fine
Next time you are thinking. "I pay to much in taxes, what do I get for it?" "Remember.....you get Iraq"

[JRScott]

Just to name a few...............
FBI $4 billion
Drug Enforcement Agency $1.5 billion
Center for Disease Control $4.4 billion
Federal Prisons $4.6 billion
Highway Administration $31 billion
Border and Transportation Security$12 billion
And just for comparison, however usually runs over budget.....
National Defense $358 billion

So where would you like to cut? The government program that runs above costs?

Quote by David M. Fine
Next time you are thinking. "I pay to much in taxes, what do I get for it?" "Remember.....you get Iraq"

You've left off a lot of different spending categories.

To just balance the budget you'd need a 20% across the board cut in everything. (this includes Social Security and Military spending).

Iraq is all deficit spending as is Afghanistan. Congress in order to avoid their own budgetary rules did not include it in their normal budgets, instead using emergency appropriations to fund them. All of the money that has gone to Iraq and Afghanistan were added to the national debt. This is wrong and I was against the wars as well. For the money we've spent on it we could have developed our own resources here and been in far better shape.

So even if we pulled out of Iraq and Afghanistan that would not lower the Defense Departments expenditures. To reduce the Defense Dept. budget you have to end our overseas commitments. This includes but is not limited to pulling out of Iraq and Afghanistan. We would need to pull out of Cuba, Japan, Germany, etc. Close all bases not within the United States or her territories.

Pull back our army, navy, marines and air force to the United States. We would need to adopt a largely nonintervention policy, keeping a strong defense to be used only when we are provoked. This would save about 15-20% off the Defense Budget, slightly more if you mothballed a carrier group or two.

In order to balance the budget you'd need to cut all other programs by 20%.

Once you've balanced the budget you've still got 2 major problems, Social Security which already has a larger budget than the defense department and the the National Debt. This is subsuming you'd want to roll Medicaid and Medicare into a National Health Care system.

Social Security would need major reforms. Anyone born after 1960 should have the age that they receive benefits set to the life expectancy determined by the average at the time of their birth. This would save money long term but not offer much relief short term. It is necessary to save the program though. This for example would raise the age of receipt on an average by ten years. That is a lot of savings over the life of the program.

Next you need a plan to completely pay off the national debt within a reasonable (5-10 year) plan. Only by freeing us from the debt can we make man of the changes or programs many want. This would probably necessitate another 10-15% cut across the board of all government spending. Freeing us from the interest payments reduces government projected spending past 2020 by as much as 20%.

Once you have those changes in place you could then rather than lowering taxes use the funds saved for the age increase in Social Security and what we currently spend on the interest on the National Debt as well as Medicare and Medicaid to form a National Health Care program that would be affordable by the government.

We cannot sustain the current national debt, entitlement programs, defense, education, etc and add national health care system without tanking the dollar in 30 years without drastic reforms in how we spend every dollar.

[MomIcantFindmy]

You've left off a lot of different spending categories.

Yep...because you said (and I didn't feel like listing the entire federal budget )
"When was the last government program that ran at or below expected costs?" Just doing what you asked

Again...please site your sources as they do not agree with the facts and really do sound like right wing media.

I am confused by your statement, "To just balance the budget you'd need a 20% across the board cut in everything. (this includes Social Security and Military spending)." You do understand that Social Security is not part of the Federal Budget general fund. Really! It has it's own funding. It is not part of the federal budget (the one that congress and the President sometimes agree on). Two separate entities.

Source:http://www.ssa.gov/history/BudgetTreatment.html

I agree with you... "For the money we've spent on it (war) we could have developed our own resources here and been in far better shape."

[fltoo]

What Money
I am responding to you here so as to not hijack another thread where you responded, "Give me a break."

Firstly, I am not political and the only "wings" I like come with bleu cheese.

Secondly, I am not religious since I cannot cite one religion that accepts people "as is."

Thirdly, I love PBS but can't stand Bill Moyers and I watch Fox but I can't stand Hannity, the Rush Limbaugh wannabe.

Finally, I hate with a passion, the politics of Vietnam and Iraq, simply because thousands and thousands of our young men an women have died in vain.

So, when I say the NY Times is a rag, it is because I have read it daily for over 25 years and not because Bush or the right wing hate it.
It has become biased and reports the news with a slant. It should remain a-political.

As for this thread and for whom I am voting, I am still vacillating. I lean towards Obama due to his wonderful speeches. We need a president whom people love and can motivate our citizens to be proud of their nation again.
His big government spending scares the hell out of me.

I lean towards McCain because he is so old, that we might get a chance to elect a new president in two years and have a do over.

We have a nation filled with intelligent people with leadership ability from both parties, and THESE are our choices???

What Money, you can cite your side and back it up with facts until blue in the face and someone will always do the same for the other side of the argument. Sophomoric and futile.

Politics and Religion, utopia is a world without them. Common sense is a thing of the past.

[Scott50]

Which ever candidate wins is going to inherit a ton of problems (National Debt, Economy, Healthcare, Social Security,Environment, Crumbling Infrastructure, etc) that our country is facing. I don't believe either party or candidate has the will power to make any drastic changes in the status quo. I hate saying this but the US is in the decline, kind of like the fall of the Roman Empire 1800 years ago...

[JRScott]

fltoo you do realize that if McCain was to die while President his Vice President would become President and the Speaker of the House would become Vice President right?

Also I do agree with you the NY Times, as well as almost all papers/publications are heavily biased. It is not something limited to the NY Times. The news programs on TV are generally biased one way or another as well. We do not see good journalism these days. There is no present the facts as they are and let the person reading/listening decide anymore, every program/strip is set to make you agree with the speaker/writers point of view these days when they generally present a one sided argument and ignore facts that do not support their idea.

They keep citing wanting facts but anyone can pull and download the budget of the United States and there are more than ample tools to do a budget simulation. In 2008 we overspent by 20%, and we'll do that much or more this year. I suspect more since tax revenues are not likely to reach the predicted levels again.

Sadly the media influences the choices and due to ballot laws in all 50 states it is hard for other choices to get on. Take Bill Richardson for example. He has no ethic violations, he has delivered on his promises to NM, served well previously in the Clinton Adminstration, no real major foul ups. John Edwards also had no ethic violations, his problem I think was the angry face he put out, anger can get you only so far Howard Dean found that out. On the Republican side as far as men go Duncan Hunter, Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson were the most clean. Some had issue with Mitt's religion but in all the man has had no ethics violations, he did attempt to control spending in MA through vetoes (all of which were overturned by the MA legislature), he has been a successful businessman. His one weakness really was something common in the campaign on both sides, no military experience. Duncan Hunter is a former green beret. Has served our nation admirably in politics. Has no ethics problems. Same for Fred Thompson. The media for Edwards played up his anger, for Richardson and Hunter they ignored them, for Romney they attacked his religion, and for Thompson they mostly talked about his acting career. That's why we have Obama and McCain. The media wants candidates with problems because it gives them something to talk about and write about.