In case you’re still on the fence as to whether the Iraqi war–which between the efforts of ourselves and the insurgents has resulted in the deaths of sixty thousand Iraqis–is worth it, consider this tidbit from the book “The 3 Trillion Dollar War”:
The billions spent thus far by the United States in Bush’s war, if spent instead upon domestic concerns, would have been enough to fix Social Security for seventy-five years or provide health insurance for every child in the United States.
PAD
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Pat Nolan,
Wow. Just read the rest of your post. Wow. I don’t know how to respond.
Posted by Bill Myers` at May 15, 2008 10:17 PM
@Pat Nolan: “We do not have a LACK of healthcare or affortable healthcare problem, its more a problem in how that healthcare is handled or managed.”
@Bill Myers: That’s false. Medical bills are the leading cause of bankruptcy in the U.S.
Bill, that may be correct but the issue here is affordable or unattainable healthcare. These are usually people who do not work (notice I didnt say are unemployed). Folks who do not have health insurance to begin with, some are incarcerated.
@Pat Nolan: “Oh and lets not forget that these fine upstanding folks dont have insurance, do they worry about how they will pay? No…They know all they have to do is show up and they will get their needs met at the cost of your health insurance premiums going through the roof, to make up the difference.”
@Bill Myers: Also false. The ER cannot satisfy all of your medical needs. An ER does not administer chemo or radiation therapy for cancer, nor can it provide a liver transplant.
Another example would be an Oncologist sending his patient in after the chemo because sometimes, when your immune system is destroyed it leaves you wide open for a nasty secondary infection. These folks get the full work-up top to bottom and finally get sent home with an antibiotic. Their Dr. could just as well have called in an antibiotic for them to pick-up, he’s their Oncologist
he sure as hëll knows what can happen during chemo treatments, yet these folks are put through another ER visit and billed another ER visit because of a lazy Dr.
@Pat Nolan: “When you have clinics and urgent cares doing absolutly everything in their power to discourage patients from coming to them.”
@Bill Myers:Can you cite statistics, or is this merely anecdotal? If it’s the latter, then it’s not worth discussing because there’s no basis for measuring it other than one’s biases and imagination.
No bias or imagination Bill, Just my word on the matter. Its where I work and hear it daily but Im not completly sure if Im able to give out that info without violating Patient rights, so for now you have my word.
@Pat Nolan: “We have all the healthcare you could want and need or think you need just for the asking. Nobody is turned away.”
@Bill Myers: Again, false. No one is turned away from the *ER*. On the other hand, there are many documented instances of people who are unable to obtain necessary medical procedures because they lack health insurance, or because their insurance company against all logic denied the claim, or because they were dropped from their insurance as a result of needing to utilize the services for which they’ve been paying premiums over the years. Some of these people die as a result.
I agree Bill, like I stated:
You can get turned away at the clinic
Your Internal Medicine Dr. can turn you away.
The Urgent care can wave you away or turf you to us.
I should have started with something along the lines of:
From an ER perspective. We have now become many patients primary care physician.
Posted by Alan Coil at May 15, 2008 11:05 PM
Sorry to have offended you, Pat Nolan, but the reports that the wait times are relatively equal is not something I made up. It’s been reported several times over the last 2-3 years.
No offense taken at all. I certainly dont think you made it up. I just wanted to know where you got that info.
Im sorry… I get a little passionate over the issue.
I bring up all those examples and I have many, many more (but I’ll leave the endless pontificating to Mike……….)
but the real kicker is, thats the way it should be. An ER should never ever turn a patient away if we started doing that, I would start looking for a new career. I just wish ALL of healthcare had the same standards.
“We do not have a LACK of healthcare or affortable healthcare problem, its more a problem in how that healthcare is handled or managed.”
I’d really like to know where the affordable healthcare is then.
Pat Nolan, the problems you see and describe aren’t problems with the system…they’re problems with the people in the system. Lazy Doctors, you call them. What’s the fix for that? Accountability. Auditing. Self-regulation, or if that fails, enforced outside regulation. But because there are people that abuse the system doesn’t mean that the system itself is broken.
It’s magical thinking to believe that just because it’s not constitutionally mandated, that the government can only perform a service poorly.
You accept socialized law enforcement. Waive your right to it if you want to fight socialized healthcare. Make the formal declaration you don’t accept any law enforcement paid by public funds. That’s your logical option. Otherwise, you’re simply sheltering an industry whose profits increase from the denial of service. It’s that simple.
“Some things simply should not be handled by the federal government. It simply does them horribly. I think providing health insurance and funding retirement (along with micromanaging education) are among them.”
As opposed to whom? States/provinces? Municipalities? The latter can hardly manage to keep potholes filled, never mind afford to handle really expensive services such as health care or pensions. States? Given the wildly differing resources, not to mention differences in cost of living and tax bases, it makes for an unwieldy patchwork system which could well see people moving out to get better service in other states.
>From an ER perspective. We have now become many patients primary care physician.
In Canada we can blame provincially-run (ie equivalent of state-run) health care screwups when Ontario – to name but one, decided health care was very expensive and the main reason was … are you sitting down? … too many doctors.
I’m NOT making this up, you know.
The then-reigning-Conservatives’ brilliant ‘solution’? Limit admissions to medical schools.
Even a lobotomized gerbil could see what a horrendously bad idea that was, so of course they put it into effect. Predictable – too all but those Republican-clones – end result? A bad shortage of family doctors which has led to … well, see above. ER becoming the prime health care physician for many people.
As for having people take entire responsibility for their health insurance, pension funds and education, sounds great … until one factors in the frightening number of people out there who are literally one paycheque (sometimes two) away from being out on the street and … who comes up with these unrealistic ideas?
In regards to the earlier comment re: two families in the executive office. We cannot go back to Reagan or Carter because Rosalynn and Amy Carter have not run for President nor has Nancy Reagan or any on Ronnie’s kids run for chief executive either.
That Hillary Clinton has been a leading candidate in this year’s election speaks volumes to how we are choosing leaders in this country.
I particularly like the selling point that because someone shares a bed with their spouse, it conveys their spouses’ abilities upon them. Good luck picking your next surgeon or mechanic in such a manner.
I specifically like the ad about the middle of the night call to Hillary – however, I picture it as her handing the phone over to Bill because he’s getting a booty call.
(Now, if that doesn’t cause a few people to go apoplectic, I don’t know what will.)
As far as the medical system in this country…
Speaking as someone who is self-insured and suffered under ever-rising premiums, my understanding from the doctors I do speak to is that they feel pressure from HMO’s and are limited on what they can charge. Simultaneously, they complain about being crushed under the weight of increasing malpractice insurance costs.
Good luck with tort reform though since many of the elected officials are lawyers themselves.
Also, I point you in the direction of this cover article from March:
http://nymag.com/nymag/toc/20080303/
After years of emphatic silence, the erstwhile First Daughter emerges—and demonstrates that, not only is she a natural, but the Clinton dynasty could span generations if she’s up for it.
Nice to see the beginnings of a Tudor/Stuart rivalry.
Pat Nolan isn’t entirely off-base. People abusing ERs is a problem. It is not, however, simply the result of lazy primary care physicians.
When people are too poor to afford preventive medical care, they are at greater risk for catastrophic illnesses that bring them to the ER where they cannot be turned away. You and I thus bear the cost for treating these people, whether we like it or not.
It therefore seems more sensible to me that we should provide universal and affordable access to medical care. If the costs for those of us who cannot pay will be spread around to those of us who can, we should manage those costs intelligently. We can do so by providing affordable health care to all.
Women who are able to afford regular mammograms, for example, are far less likely to need radical mastectomies than those who can’t afford periodic mammograms. Mastectomies are far more expensive than mammograms, and reducing the need for the former saves money.
There are other components to the health care problem which must be addressed, of course. People need to take personal responsibility for their own health. Smoking, drinking, overeating, and lack of exercise are all contributing to a populace that is far less healthy than it should be, and that drives up costs. The sky-high cost of malpractice insurance is another problem. Greedy insurance companies are another. And then to top it all off, you have fraud on the part of providers to contend with.
The government, the insurance industry, the medical profession, the legal profession, and individual health care consumers like you and I are all part of the problem. That complexity will make it difficult to solve, but solve it we must. Government-sponsored universal health care isn’t the total solution, but increasingly I’m becoming convinced it would be a good and necessary start.
I saw that in Newsweek a while back. Impressive, huh? I don’t really mind working until I’m 80, but some people shouldn’t have to do that.
Wars can end – new entitlements are forever.
Ideally the money wasted wouldn’t have been borrowed in the first place.
Americas debt binge has made my comics relatively cheaper but that is small comfort given the damage it has done to my business.
mister_pj: “In regards to the earlier comment re: two families in the executive office. We cannot go back to Reagan or Carter because Rosalynn and Amy Carter have not run for President nor has Nancy Reagan or any on Ronnie’s kids run for chief executive either.”
Again, running for President is not synonymous with being President. That was your initial charge, that the office has been HELD by members of the two families. This IS misleading. Hillary does not even seem likely to receive the nomination, let alone take the office of President.
You say this is an example of how we choose our leaders… We haven’t chosen Hillary. Doesn’t seem we will. You say this exposes a potential dynasty. How can that be when only one Clinton has been elected?
And I say again: So what? What does it matter? Whichever candidate is most qualified for the job should receive support of the populace. I don’t care who they are related to. If they’re wrong for the job, I won’t vote for them. If they’re right for the job, I will.
I did not support Bush and I do not support Hillary. But if a candidate emerges that just happens to be the cousin or uncle or daughter of a former President, AND they are the best candidate for the job, only a fool would object to their nomination.
Oh… gosh. I see now!
You’re right, right as rain.
How foolish of me, I stand corrected. It makes perfect sense to now… in a nation with over 304 million people it wouldn’t be anything other than coincidence if the best and the brightest were related through marriage or blood.
Just a quick historical review: Of the 42 men who’ve been president, only eight have been related: John Adams & John Quincey Adams (father and son); William Henry Harrison & Benjamin Harrison (grandfather and grandson); Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt (distant cousins); George Bush & George W. Bush (father & son). And in all of these cases one or more non-related people served as president in the interim.
Had George W. directly succeeded his father, then maybe you’d consider it a dynasty (though, personally, I think you’d need to have at least three consecutive members of the same family to make it that. E.G. if we’d had John F. Kennedy, 1961-1969; Robert F. Kennedy, 1969-1977; Teddy Kennedy, 1977-1985, that would have been a dynasty (In fact, my high school history teacher cited fear of such a dynasty as a possible motivation for JFK’s assassination).
Even if Hillary Clinton wins the election, it would not give us competing Bush/Clinton dynasties. It would just be an interesting historical footnote.
On the other hand, if say, Hillary were elected and subsequently succeeded by, say, Jeb Bush, who was succeeded by, say, Roger Clinton, followed by, one of the twins, followed by Chelsea, followed by the other twin, then we’d have two competing family dynasties trading the White House every four or eight years. But that’s not likely to happen, because that presupposes A) all those people would want to be president; and B) they’d all get elected. Members of the Clinton and Bush families aren’t the only ones with designs on the office, after all.
Again, we’re not dealing with any dynasties. A son elected eight year after his father is not a dynasty. Nor would would we have competing dynasties if the wife of the man who served as president between their terms is elected this year. We’d just have some interesting historical footnotes.
Yes, even if Hillary doesn’t win the election (and it seems unlikely she’ll even get the nomination), we’ll still have had members of two families in the White House for 20 years. So what? Members of two families were previously in the White House for 20 years, but no one called that a dynasty (or dynasties). The two families were the Roosevelt and Truman families. True, there was only one member of each family in the White House, but it’s still 20 years between two families (FDR 1933-1945; Truman, 1945-1953).
Another instance of two families trading the White House (though this only covered 12 years) took place between 1885 and 1897. We had Grover Cleveland (1885-1889); Benjamin Harrison (1889-1893); and Grover Cleveland (1893-1897). Again, nothing more than two historical footnotes: Cleveland was the only president elected to two non-consecutive terms (which is why Bush is the 43rd president, even though he’s only the 42nd man to hold the office); and Harrison was the grandson of a former president.
Again, even though members of the Bush and Clinton families will have been in office for 20 years when George W. leaves the White House, we’re not dealing with any dynasties.
Even so, it’s time for a change. Which is why I’m the presidential candidate for the Good For Nothing Party. Our slogan: “First there was Bush. Then there was Clinton. Then there was Bush. This time, why not the worst?”
Rick
mister_pj: “How foolish of me, I stand corrected. It makes perfect sense to now… in a nation with over 304 million people it wouldn’t be anything other than coincidence if the best and the brightest were related through marriage or blood.”
You do stand corrected. And now you’re trying to shift the argument into something that you did not say before. The criteria you advanced was very clear. That members of two families had actually attained the office of President and that multiple members of each family must be part of the equation. Otherwise, we can simply goes back to my earlier point that we’ll have had 3 families since 1981 or 4 families since 1977. And you’ve made it quite clear that this is not what you were talking about.
You’re saying it can’t be coincidence? Well, certainly an individual without a degree of power, wealth and political experience is less likely to be able to get as far as Hillary. So Hillary’s connections and history stand in her favor. But since she’s not even likely to win the nomination, let alone the Presidential race, it doesn’t really matter. Whatever benefits she has aren’t enough. If there was truly something sinister about this, as you imply, I’d think she’d… I dunno… be able to win the nomination?
Rick Keating: “Yes, even if Hillary doesn’t win the election (and it seems unlikely she’ll even get the nomination), we’ll still have had members of two families in the White House for 20 years.”
Of course. But then that simply goes back to my earlier point that we’ll have had 3 families since 1981 or 4 families since 1977. And that’s not what Mister PJ was talking about. Mister PJ has made it clear that his criteria is:
A: Members of two families have HELD office.
B: Multiple members of EACH family must be involved.
Unless Hilliary actually wins the race for President, Mister PJ’s statements do not meet his own criteria.
Only sixty thousand? Seems on the extreme low end of the estimates.
I saID: 00″Yes, even if Hillary doesn’t win the election (and it seems unlikely she’ll even get the nomination), we’ll still have had members of two families in the White House for 20 years.”
L. Walker saID: 00″Of course. But then that simply goes back to my earlier point that we’ll have had 3 families since 1981 or 4 families since 1977. And that’s not what Mister PJ was talking about…”
Maybe you didn’t read everything I wrote, because immediately after the quoted sentence, I wrote this: “So what? Members of two families were previously in the White House for 20 years, but no one called that a dynasty (or dynasties).”
Note the key words “so what?”. The whole point of my post is that any talk about dynasties involving the Bush and/or Clinton families is premature.
Even if Hillary got elected.
Rick
@Rick Keating
I read your entire post. I didn’t disagree with any of it. That’s why I didn’t comment on it any part except the one. By the criteria set forth by the original poster, there will not have been two families in the White House for the last 20 years.
You’re argument is certainly 100% correct. I don’t think anything in my response to you suggested otherwise.
It isn’t the Government’s responsibility to provide ANYONE with healthcare. Healthcare is not a right. That is unfortunate, but it is True. I have to pay for my own AND my employees. My tax money should not pay for anyone else.
Democrats started SS they need to fix it. Again without MY money.
Where people heathier than us live, the government takes responsibility for healthcare, and they pay as little as a half per citizens as the US pays.
It’s unfortunate that you’re protecting a system in which the healthcare industry increases profits by denying service, but it’s True.
Gram, the idea that the government isn’t responsible for health care isn’t a fact, it’s a subjective opinion. It is, however, a documented fact when indigent people have a medical emergency, the cost of their treatment in the hospital E.D. is passed along to you, me, and everyone else who can afford to pay.
As a businessman, I’m sure you’d agree that we should not spend money unintelligently. Yet we are doing just that with our current health care system. We’ll pay for someone’s emergency care in the form of increased health care costs — but we won’t pool our money together as taxpayers in order to provide universal basic health care that could reduce the number of catastrophic illnesses.
It is unrealistic for us to believe that we can any longer be a society of “rugged individualists.” We are too interdependent today. I don’t know what kind of business you run, or how much money you have. But consider this: there are a frightening number of documented instances where successful entrpreneurs — small businessmen, not Bill Gates types — have lost EVERYTHING because of a catastrophic health event. How is THAT healthy for our overall economy? How is that situation sustainable over the long term?
Gram, I do agree with Bill’s points stated above, but there is also one more thing to point out. You are right that it is not fair that you have to bear the brunt of the costs healthcare insurance expenses for your employees and yourself. So, wouldn’t make more sense for the government to take over the responsibility? Wouldn’t it be better to get employers out of having to provide insurance as a benefit?
L. Walker said “I read your entire post. I didn’t disagree with any of it.”
Then maybe I misinterpreted your reply. I got the impression that you’d stated I’d somehow missed the underlying fact that no dynasty exists with regard to either the Bush or Clinton families. And/or that I’d agreed with Mister PJ’s position because I acknowledged that by Jan. 2009 there would have been Bushes and Clintons in the White House for 20 years.
But it seems we’re on the same page after all.
Rick
I’ve heard this argument a lot (i.e., the money spent on the war could have been spent on something else). But an awful lot of that money was borrowed, wasn’t it? Would the U.S. have borrowed money to pay for healthcare and the like? Would the U.S. put itself into debt to pay for social security?
The implication that the borrowed money could have been spent on something else doesn’t make sense to me, because otherwise we wouldn’t have borrowed the money. Am I mistaken? What non-war-related debts has the U.S. been known to accrue?