Fight for your health!!

We're all going to get sick at one point in our lives. Don't you guys think we deserve the best healthcare for what we're paying nowadays? Sadly, the current healthcare system doesn't leave many options for those on a low income. All of us are looking for a solution, a reform that can serve all. AARP is an organization fighting to make Medicare better by setting up a site for all of us to sign a petition and get our voices heard. The site is interactive with video clips, articles, various ways to contact your congressman, and providing some interesting statistics. I'm working to support AARP on getting all of our voices heard, you should too before it's too late! Check out the site and sign the petition.

 

AARP is more about filling their own coffers than insisting on the health industry providing reasonable care. AARP sells insurance...you follow the dots, who's interest do you think they have at heart?

It's not about a health industry. It's all about protecting the interests of the insurance companies. Doctors cite insurance when stating why they raise their prices or deny services. Hospitals limit stays of patients because of insurance reimbursement. Kleenex is charged to the patient at 10.00 a box, for a box the comsumer can buy three for a dollar. No one talks about actual costs. Why not for just a few minutes remove all elements of the insurance industry as related to health care, and look at actual costs? Anyone doing that?

Why is it hotels can provide free soap and Kleenex, but hospitals charge exorbitant fees for the same items. Think the insurance industry has anything to do with it?

 

The hospitals are worried about being sued by the family of some disoriented sick person who dies after eating the soap and suffocating in the Kleenex. They have to jack up the prices to recoup possible future lawsuit expenses.

 

Seriously though, I don't know anything about AARP, but I do agree that we have huge problems in the U.S. with healthcare.

This actually reminds me of something that happened just a few days ago... I was on the Metro; after I sat down, I noticed a man sitting near me, who was hunched over and covering his head with a bath towel. He was shivering and his feet were swollen up to at least five times their "normal" size. It was so cold outside, and all he had for warmth was a sweatshirt and the towel over his head.

It made me think about just how incredibly fucked up it is that some people, our society, and our government spend billions of dollars each year on things like expensive clothes and shoes, sports stadiums, and weapons that kill people, when there are people in poverty who can barely (or not even) afford to LIVE. Why are we spending so much money on such incredibly unnecessary items, when there are people like the man on the Metro who still lack basic necessities such as food, shelter, warm clothes, and medical care?

"Healthcare, not warfare!"

 

Well what have you done to help? It is easy to question others and the government, but what happens when you look in the mirror and ask?

 

I don't know what I've done to help with poverty. I volunteer and am involved in activism and give money to people who need it... but I don't even know how much good any of that does. What happens when I look in the mirror? I see a pathetic, priviledged white girl who doesn't have the answers to the world's problems.

What about you?

 

I see people suffering all over the place, and it makes me nervous. I never want myself or anyone I love to ever be put in that bad of a situation, but with the way things are going, who knows?

Something you CAN do to help is to check out the videos and sign the petition at http://www.thisissoridiculous.com. We really need to reform Medicare, and you can help simply by doing this!

 

Free healthcare is a form of welfare.

 

What exactly is inately bad about welfare? Is showing concerning and taking a resposibility for the well being of those less fortunate not the humanly right thing to do?

 

Well it was not really a question to be answered, but to make you think since some people like to complain but take no action. Not that I was judging you in such a way. It is just that, while your little part may not seem like much, when combined with what I do, and the next person does, and so on it adds up and does make a difference.

 

N (employment) is a negative function of Z (a catch-all for welfare benefits). As benefits go up, employment goes down; its one of the fundamental relationships of macroeconomics.

So it isn't just a question of the moral onus to take care of the "unfortunate". If you take too good of care of them, they multiply. And you have less productive members of society to support the truly desperate. Its the same reason that giving to charity is good, but giving so much that you yourself starve to death is stupid.

And I tend to resent much of universal healthcare. While I have no qualms about helping pay for an 8 year-old girl's leukemia treatment, the majority of the bill for universal healthcare in Canada goes towards the treatment of the elderly. People who haven't paid into the system - who instead for nearly the whole of their tax-paying career (ie: the 60s, 70s, and 80s) paid off their welfare state by burdening me with their debt. I sure as hell feel no obligation to help finance their hipsurgeries and diabetes treatments. They made their bed, now they can lie in it.

The same reasons so many Americans resent illegal aliens coming over the border and using social services. Old people in Canada are my dirty mexicans.

 

Human behavior and society should not be based on economic conditions and formulas alone. Economics should not be the sole priority of civilization.

When it's your parents or grandparents needing medical attention, I think you will rethink your position.

It seems timely to quote from Dickens, A Christmas Carol:

 

No, but providing public services is economics. When you don't have the money to train and retain the doctors, upkeep and upgrade the equipment, and administer the program - well, all the idealism in the world won't keep universal healthcare afloat.

But if you are so hopelessly naive that you can't tell the difference between basing your own behaviour and lifestyle on money versus taking it into account when setting public policy - well, this argument isn't worth having because you fall under the category of helpless.

 

If you're concerned about the state of medicare in the US, please head to the AARP's site www.thisissoridiculous.com to find out more about the issue and what you can do! It's good to educate yourselves about both sides of the issue, and this is a good place to begin your research.

 

I'm not. I'm Canadian.

 

there's nothing wrong with welfare........there is something wrong with the welfare entitlement system, where perfectly capable people craftily avoid the burden of actually assuming responsibility for themselves and their children and live off of the government permanently. If you think this doesnt go on then come check out some of the people in my community. Many of which given the opportunity to excel (and they are given it, through free or very low cost college education) choose to follow the path of their parents onto the gravy train, by having ten kids and eating away at the social sercurity I helped pay into.

 

On a brighter note, I do believe that everyone has a right to free or affordable healthcare in a society like ours, it will take a revolution of the minds and a change in the degree to which we allow large corporations to dictate what we do and who we are to move this ideal closer to achieving.

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."
Dwight Eisenhower

How tragically applicable this quote is for our times.

 

I'd like to know what your macroeconomics course said about the continuing trade deficit with China, is that good for the US economy or only for the corporations producing goods there?

 

I did double-major BA in political science and economics as my pre-law degree. So its a bit more than Econ 101.

But anyway, it has its ups and its downs. Its good for your average Joe because goods made in China are cheaper, which increases real wages. Everybody gets more to consume more.

Its bad for some specific people like those whose jobs got displaced. But American labour is expensive, and even if they cancelled all trade with China those capital-light labour-intensive jobs wouldn't return to America.\

In some aspects its bad the world over because China has less stringent health and environmental regulations, and the increased transportation of goods pollutes more as well.

But as a whole, the trade deficit is too high right now. That will solve itself soon enough; the RMB isn't free-floating, its pegged artificially low. China won't be able to afford to keep this up forever (its already struggling). When it stops, and the dollar jumps their manufacturing secotr will take a huge hit and they'll export much less to the US.

 

Until then gas prices and commodities remain high while the dollar sinks. Who benefits?

Hard to buy into the cheap price of goods when many of them have been found to be detrimental to the health of the consumer. In this age of security interests why isn't this high on the list?

Not a little curious as to why environmental issues are not considered tantamount by corporations over there, while we here in the states are sold mass hysteria about global warming? The goods are manufactured for US companies sold to US citizens but we are not supposed to be concerned? Much like Bird Flu, it originated over in Asia, but we spent millions on Rumsfields vaccine, not addressing the Asian aspect. Shit it's outlined in the SPP. They have a guarranteed market.