OBAMA warns country will be Bankrupt soon

[Kansas1960]

I went to the doctor with a small concern. He gave me a EKG, 2 chest x-rays, did several tests and all was fine. He now wants me to have a nuclear stress test and some kind of EKG thing. I called and asked the cost and they could not tell me. I called the insurance company and they could not tell me. I complained and complained and finally they told me 1,800 for one test and 600 for the other. No thanks. Eventhough I would only have to pay 10% I think the test was not needed and the Dr. was only doing this to cover his a**. If I really needed this test with government run health care I bet the wait would be weeks. I am so sick of these cry babies wanting "free health care". If you get it I am going to love to see you cry about how much it is costing you in taxes. Now the college kids are not wanting this because they will be forced to buy this "free health care". If you want health care then work and buy it. Get off your a** and work 2 jobs if you have to. I hire dozens of Mexicans that come over here to work and have 2 jobs paying 10-15 per hour and they work 80 hours a week and pay cash for $40,000 cars, 2,000 in wheels and save money. If they can do it and not even speak english then anybody who is not mentally or physically disabled can do it, and PAY for the health care. These people who have these bleeding hearts are like the parents that never disciplin their kids and listened to Dr. Spock and not spank them. Mentally retarded, crippled yes give them free health care. Cheap a**es and lazy people sorry.

[momisery]

Banca.. When has anything govt ever done work?? Okay, how about our police, our military, our roads, our librarys, I could go on an on. Business has ruined healthcare by making it for profit and insurance companies are included. The job of government in our country has been to protect the people. A long time ago selling snake oil became illegal simply because a civil nation does not allow people to be ripped off or sold a bill of goods. Business has changed that and I will admit that our politicians for decades have had their hands out instead of taking care of our country, but business is the one buying them, so why should I truth them either?

[momisery]

Hiring illegals that can buy cars on 10-15 per hour makes sense. living 3-5 familes to a home is still better than mexico's life style. Do we want our kids all living together so they can afford healthcare and to work for low wages?

[momisery]

am thankful for the good and the bad, because eventually something better will come about. Maybe not in the timeframe some want it, but let's be realistic and positive.

Positive thinking brings about postive outcomes. Negative thinking brings nothing but pain. I will continue to support our President in the time we need him most to bring about hope and change for all.

I do believe he thought he could get this done and suddenly big insuarance came running in to lace the palms of the crooks in congress, and partisan politics arrived too. 52% of the people in this country want the public option, and right now the plan coming our of congress does not have it, in fact they can hardly get anything done because our congress is on the dole. They are so busy telling people lies and filling them with BS about how horrible it is in Canada that people dont stop and think, but that is canada, America does it better when they try it. We can't continue to have the costs go up or no one will be able to afford it no matter how many jobs you work.

[momisery]

The people that file bk are from all over the place, some work long and hard and take risks, some do not. Some really deserve a fresh start, and maybe some do not. But, we have one thing in common, we are human and we make mistakes. We end up here (taking advantage of our right to do so), all together. We are the same, but looking out of different windows of life, families, hardships, sicknesses. I'm sorry, but it would be much easier to try to see good for all, instead of good for some. Like the bk laws are there for all of us, if needed. It is your choice to walk or ride with your chaffeur too.
Some get off and walk because it is easier to walk. And, while you are walking, we will pick you up if you change your mind, or get thirsty or hungry out there all alone after our country gets back on it's feet. And, even then I would not turn away from you. We can't have a harden heart and stir anger while the President is attempting to fix this (and not overnight). I don't think the common people like us really know the extent of what the President and the staff closest to him shelter from us because we couldn't handle it. We only get bits and pieces for a reason. I bet if people that were face to face with President Obama would be speechless. He is a very kind and honest man that is due respect. Even at the end of his 4 yr. term our country's problems will not be corrected. This didn't happen overnight, and I think it is unfair to come down on someone that you don't beleive is doing a good job.
It is your right, yes. Mine, as well, to trust, pray, and stay calm. I appreciate your views as they are excellent. but, I'd like to hear you say the same to me (others that feel the same way). Think how strong our country would be to actually come together as one, and trust each other. Support each other like we do here as we go through the bk process. Nobody knows each other, but we are the same in many ways. Pray for our President Obama to succeed for our good, not just a few. All of us.

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Great post... the only thing I can add is people seem to think no one but them try. That is simply not true. If we were all capable of the same things we would all be quarterbacks or golf pros. We are not all cut out to be great, and many people who were on the top once have fallen to never climb back again.

Life is not fair, we are not all equal and we do not all get the same breaks. I do not personally know of one person that does not try, that does not work hard. I know of some who have been successful and some who have not. I will say my Dad did very well in a different era. But one of my brothers did so much better, and he is a the biggest liar and thief there ever was. I mean he really use to steal, and has cheated people out of things. Growing up he use to cheat at monopoly when he play against me and I am 9.5 years younger..geesh.. What I am saying is this guy took cash money and never paid taxes, he stole property from people and stripped it down to resell it, he burned up his own RV so he could claim insurance on it instead of pay for it. It was a 37 foot diesel pusher. Working hard is not what gets you to the top always. many of those who HAVE it do not deserve it as much as those who were honest, never hurt anyone, and just worked hard.

[momisery]

Unfortunately the Root Cause of the healthcare costs, is tort liability! While the actual malpractice insurance to Doctors costs $205Bn a year, the problem is with how the doctors now behave. They order too many tests. They don't prescribe medications that would help because the Doctor knows or has reason to believe that the medication would be involved or is involved in litigation.

What you have is a great medical system, that's afraid of doing anything. This is why Tort Reform would drive the costs down significantly. I know a neurosurgeon that has malpractice insurance in the $200K/year range. She only earns $750K/year.


I know what you are saying, but I have to disagree. While some tort reform makes sense, common sense in our courts would make better sense. With that said, I would like to mention that doctors make money off of tests. They have proven cases where the NEED for MRI's go up significantly when the doctors clinic buys it own machine. Before that they outsourced. I went to a doctor last winter because I have a history of sinus problems. He had my chart and still HAD to send me for a CAT SCAN even though all I had was a headache, pain in my ears. he told me I HAD to have the CAT SCAN instead of an XRAY because he would have to refer me to an ENT dr and they would REQUIRE it anyway. So, I skipped the xray and went on to the Scan. I went back and of course he thought this and that ,but I would need an ENT specialist and I NEEDED and xray now too. I told him NO and HECK NO. I reminded him of our conversation before and he gave me a prescription to clear up my SINUS infection... geesh finally. The story goes on from here into how he wanted me to come back every three months to monitor my Blood pressure meds. My whole skinny, healthy family has high blood pressure and I am the only one that lives in MO and has a doctor that wants me to come back every 3 months. Was I DANGEROUSLY high?? Well, 145/92 no... Geesh... I walked out and never went back. Doctors drive up the costs. I use to do staffing and I could tell you some stories. You might have a friend that is a DR, but I could tell you stories about doctors that bill medicare and never visit the patients in nursing homes, doctors that walk out of surgery because they want to do it their way even when it has failed in the past. I once heard a doctor to tell a nurse to stop the PT treatment the guy would be better off dead. We have bad in all professions and greed in all professions I am sure. But doctors order more tests when they own the equipment and that is a proven fact. So is the fact that we pay twice as much for our MRI machines than any nation does and it is because we don't bargain or don't care because we will just pass on the cost ... we will pass it on until the whole things falls apart and it is now... we can not keep paying more and more. Just 5 short years ago medical took up 16% now it is 22% of our debt meaning there is less money left from everyones paycheck at the end of the year to buy other items. Eventully it will be 30% and we will have no need for malls because no one will be able to shop for underwear.

[TooMuchCredit]

I am so sick of these cry babies wanting "free health care".

Few people refer to it as "free" healthcare. The aim is universal healthcare where everyone has access to it.

If you get it I am going to love to see you cry about how much it is costing you in taxes. Now the college kids are not wanting this because they will be forced to buy this "free health care". If you want health care then work and buy it.

If you spread the cost over everyone, the tab is lower. Right now it's unequitable. Those college kids dont think anything bad will happen to them so they don't bother with insurance. (I should say recent grads...most college kids are still covered under their parent insurance).
Without these "healthy" folks putting $ into the pool, it makes insurance cost more for those that do buy it. Those "healthy" folks could be in a car accident and need coverage, but they just don't think they;ll need it. So they go to the ER who doesn't turn anyone away and they get socked with a huge bill they cant pay so we pay for it via our property taxes and local sales taxes that support the county/city hospital.
And because a policy costs the same whether you make $15K or $250K, it's a bigger burden for those that can least afford it so many opt out (i.e. recent college grads). Then there are those that are sick, lost their job, but because they have a pre-existing condition, can't get insurance.

The lazy people that dont work are a small percentage of who don't have insurance. Many are people who work hard, but still can't afford coverage.

If everyone paid the same % of whatever they earn - be it salary, unemployment, welfare it would be more equitable.

Get off your a** and work 2 jobs if you have to. I hire dozens of Mexicans that come over here to work and have 2 jobs paying 10-15 per hour and they work 80 hours a week and pay cash for $40,000 cars, 2,000 in wheels and save money. If they can do it and not even speak english then anybody who is not mentally or physically disabled can do it, and PAY for the health care.

I hope these are legal immigrants and that they have taxes withheld from that pay. :-)

These people who have these bleeding hearts are like the parents that never disciplin their kids and listened to Dr. Spock and not spank them. Mentally retarded, crippled yes give them free health care. Cheap a**es and lazy people sorry.

I agree here with the lack of discipline kids have these days.

Now what if you came upon one of these cheap a** lazy persons and they had some horrible ailment that without treatment and not necessarily emergency treatment, would you really just let them die?

Do we start evaluating people as to their contribution to society as to whether we let them live of die? Who does that evaluating? Do we euthenize those that are deemed won't contribute enough to society to justify trying to extend their life?

[banca rotta]

This sums it up very nicely

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt

If every American read this and understood it you would see about 1/4 billion people knocking on the White House door asking the man to stop the insanity.

[TooMuchCredit]

This sums it up very nicely

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt

If every American read this and understood it you would see about 1/4 billion people knocking on the White House door asking the man to stop the insanity.

But why only target healthcare? If things are that bad, we just all need to fend for ourselves. Immediately stop Social security, medicare, public education, police, fire, and the military.

The whole "I won't pay for anyone else's" crowd is kind of hypocritical.
I have no kids, yet I pay property taxes to support someone elses kids education. But wait, public education is for the betterment of society. Can't the same be said of healthcare? Otherwise, when you have a kid you better save up for your own tuition. (And yes, you can get a good education in the public system. It's when parents aren't involved and don't teach their kids to respect others it's a problem. It's easy to blame the school. Granted there ARE som bad schools but not all of them.) I dont mind paying for public education and I don't mind paying for healthcare.

One big problem is people are just saying NO to any change in healthcare and not offering any better alternative eventhough better alternatives exist. Leaving it the way it is is not the answer.

Since we are paying 50% more than the next most expensive country and that country covers all it's citizens, we should be able to make changes that cover more people without increasing costs.

We can keep insurance, just insist they are not-for profit organizations. Charge people a % of ones salary or their benefits (welfare, unemployment). I think Australia charges everyone 1.5% regardless of income and covers 70% of the cost with additional private insurance policies avaialbe to cover the remaining 30%. Germany is split between employee and employer and is 15% but that's mainly due to them capping the max amount like we do for social security. All plans would have to cover a set list of treatments. You could "top up" out of your own pocket for any additional benefits you want. I.E. private rooms, elective surgeries. These "top-up" policies could potentially be offered by for-profit divisions of the same insurers.
One could then elect whatever provider they wanted. (I don't think employers should pay an part of the expense unless it's a common rate across the board, i.e. if employer pays half an employee pays half. Otherwise it makes it difficult when changing jobs and people get tied to a job soley because of the benefit...i.e. we have that issue today with COBRA)

I think such a change would simplify the doctors duties as they would know exactly what is covered and what isn't regardless of provider - except for the "top-up" items but they'd know what a top up item is.

And if we had electronic records and benefits cards they could scan the card to know what top-up items are covered in the plan and at what rate.

Single payer is the most equitable way, but maybe something like the above is a fair compromise.

[justbroke]

Single payer is the most equitable way, but maybe something like the above is a fair compromise.

I am for single payer. If you want to fix the system, single payer must be one of the items on the table. It's not. I want it all fixed, from Xanax to Billing!

[Kansas1960]

Well, you just may get your health care bill

Looks like something is brewing on Capital Hill and something may get moving on this bill. I just need to make a few points from the several comments since my last post.

Private companies are contracted to build roads. Most services (fire, police, libraries) are done on the local level ie county, state and city. This is the way it should be. People are free to move away from a local community and pick and choose where to live. On the national level this is not pracitcal. Federal government is good for defense and those things allowed in the constitution. Why not just build homes for the common good and put people there? Oh we tired that PUBLIC HOUSING, see how nice that worked. Lets even out the pay scale and give everyone 30,000 a year and fix all prices? The reason we don't is because incentives are gone when you socialize things. "But people are hurting and they need help'', fine then that is what charity is for! Get the government off the peoples back and they will give. It is easy to vote to give other peoples money away.

The reason our standard of living is going down is because of spreading the wealth. It is not from Bush or Obama. As the rest of the world moved from straw huts to buildings and from mules to tractors the money was flowing to them from the more wealthy nations. And it is going to continue to go down as we socialize more and more. More and more people with talent will not take the risk for little reward. This is why communism and socialism always fail.

Don't take social security to make a wonderful example. We have been living on credit cards issued from the bank of China to pay for this. It is insolvent, it drove up health care costs and the big depression is following. I doubt I will convince the socialist on this mesage board but I will enjoy seeing the people complain once this gets passed and the problems begin.

And one more thing, I support 7 dependents and have never made over $50,000 a year. I would probably qualify for all the services given to poor people and paid for by the majority of folk here making 60-100K. You and your spouse continue to go to work and make all that money because I am going to laugh at you paying for my services which I don't want to have paid for. All I want are defense, basic services etc. Cut out all social services especially social security. I don't want anyone else having to pay for me or my mom. That is why people should save money. And when you are down and out private charities and churches should take over.

[TooMuchCredit]

People are free to move away from a local community and pick and choose where to live.

That's part of the problem in a lot of cities. There are too many little governments and no one works together. That's one reason the subway in Atlanta is only goes to 2 of the 23 counties in the metro area. It should at a minimum go to 5 to 7 of the core urban counties. People abandon the core cities instead of sticking around to help fix things that are broken. It's easier to run from a problem.

Why not just build homes for the common good and put people there? Oh we tired that PUBLIC HOUSING, see how nice that worked.

Yeah, it's been replaced by programs that spread folk to apartment complexes around town instead of concentrated all in one place. Healthcare is a bit different. You can be provided a small studio and that's a roof over your head. You don't need a large house. When you get sick, you need the same treatment, rich or poor.
As mentioned before we don't want hypocondriacs (sp) filling the doctors offices and ER's so there would have to be triage and those that abuse the system would have to go to special clinics where they wait. That goes for returning drug addicts, etc.

Lets even out the pay scale and give everyone 30,000 a year and fix all prices? The reason we don't is because incentives are gone when you socialize things.

We should never go that far. But there is a problem when someone at a company makes 400 times what the lowest worker does.

"But people are hurting and they need help'', fine then that is what charity is for! Get the government off the peoples back and they will give. It is easy to vote to give other peoples money away.

I don't think people are THAT charitable that they would give enough to cover what is needed.

The reason our standard of living is going down is because of spreading the wealth. It is not from Bush or Obama. As the rest of the world moved from straw huts to buildings and from mules to tractors the money was flowing to them from the more wealthy nations. And it is going to continue to go down as we socialize more and more. More and more people with talent will not take the risk for little reward. This is why communism and socialism always fail.

The spreading has been due to capitalism, not socialism. Companies want to maximize profit. They make more sending the jobs overseas which impacts our standard of living with fewer jobs or jobs that pay less to be "competitive" so the jobs don't get sent overseas.

Folks in those straw huts will work for wages FAR below what it takes to maintain our standard of living.

We should introduce a VAT to help equalize the taxation. We should also institute a standard of living fee and an environmental fee. If workers will work for $2 an hour in China whereas in an industrialized country they work on average for $20, some sort of fee should be added that brings the product in line with what a similarly produced product domestically would cost. And any company offshoring to take advantage of more lax environmental rules in another country, should have a fee tacked on as well. These fees would be dedicated as extra funds to pay down our debt and/or foreign aid.
Prices might be higher, but jobs would be here unless there were a viable reason why they shouldn't. I think it's kind of a national security issue to have all of certain important products made abroad.

Don't take social security to make a wonderful example. We have been living on credit cards issued from the bank of China to pay for this. It is insolvent, it drove up health care costs and the big depression is following. I doubt I will convince the socialist on this mesage board but I will enjoy seeing the people complain once this gets passed and the problems begin.

Congress borrowed against social security way before we started borrowing from China. That was wrong. What I don't get is we've known for years that we weren't paying in enough into social security and medicare, so why not up the % paid in?

And one more thing, I support 7 dependents and have never made over $50,000 a year. I would probably qualify for all the services given to poor people and paid for by the majority of folk here making 60-100K. You and your spouse continue to go to work and make all that money because I am going to laugh at you paying for my services which I don't want to have paid for. All I want are defense, basic services etc. Cut out all social services especially social security. I don't want anyone else having to pay for me or my mom. That is why people should save money. And when you are down and out private charities and churches should take over.

What people should do and what they actually do are different things. If people should save x%, some will but alot won't. Then winter comes and some didn't store up any food. Charities would not be able to cope.

[Kansas1960]

Toomuchcredit, you are really consistent with your socialist belief. I could not be any more opposite in my views. I will enjoy the fruit of your labor.

[liboton21]

AMERICA is the only remaining republic that is why Obama and his minions has to destroy it to pave the road to globalism/marxism. With these avenue, open the door to weaken America and the shift of power to Europe wherein the revive Roman Empire will rise again and will be dominant in the world creating a one-world religion, one-world government and no one can buy food nor drink without the mark of beast.....biblical prophecy is happening right our very eyes.

I stop looking into the politics side of things as this event tend to happened. I will just continue in living as a citizen of the republic believing in conservatism and praying for this beloved nation of mine and hopefully one day God will touch the lives of each American citizen to know the truth about Jesus.....and Jesus is our only hope....

[TooMuchCredit]

Toomuchcredit, you are really consistent with your socialist belief. I could not be any more opposite in my views. I will enjoy the fruit of your labor.

I don't think you read all that I wrote. I believe in a mixed system. Pure socialism is bad as is pure capitalism. Some things are more suited to one than the other. I believe healthcare is something along the lines of police and fire protection that isn't a for profit endeavor.