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Xeven
It is not just medical care. What people don't get that when it comes down to who controls your life here in the US you have two choices. The unelected wealthy or usually corrupt but elected politicians. Politicians can be removed by election. We cannot remove undue influence of wealthy people on our system.
We the people have ZERO say in the board rooms of corporations. It is why most companies no longer have retirement plans for employee's. Its not they could not afford it. It is they could not afford it AND afford to pump huge sums of money into swelling billionaire accounts.
I chose elected officials all day. AT least then I can attempt to remove them by motivating other humans to help.
No reason at all to pay a third party for insurance. Just another money grab for the wealthy. Single payer government controlled insurance is the cheapest option and wont hurt healthcare one bit. It will hurt wealthy insurance billionaires though.
aLLeKs
As a German, I just don't understand why the people in the USA hat so much on Obamacare.
You always have the feeling, that they instantly feel like they witness a communist take over or invasion.
I just don't understand it, is the cold war sentiment still that much present?
Why do you instantly call people communists, when they want to improve your healthcare system?
I will nevery understand how even poor people, that probably have problems affording the medical costs, are against it.
Wrabbit2000
aLLeKs
As a German, I just don't understand why the people in the USA hat so much on Obamacare.
You always have the feeling, that they instantly feel like they witness a communist take over or invasion.
I just don't understand it, is the cold war sentiment still that much present?
Why do you instantly call people communists, when they want to improve your healthcare system?
I will nevery understand how even poor people, that probably have problems affording the medical costs, are against it.
Obamacare isn't Europe's version of care or England's NHS. Not by a LOOONG shot and perhaps that is what the ACA actually started as in 2009 before round after round of congressional "compromise" tore out whatever good it still held, to leave the crap and the pain that SHOULD have come along side that good stuff.
What we're left with now is the worst of both worlds. Government over-stepping and meddling down to the personal life of the individual....but with deductible levels of insurance that will see $5,000 to as much as $15,000 required in out of pocket spending PER YEAR...before insurance benefits are even seen or enjoyed beyond specific things Uncle Sam says we WILL have regardless. Of course, that stuff (Like vaccine shots) will be affordable to free...but anything not favored will and IS breaking people's budgets just to maintain worthless insurance for.
That is why we hate Obamacare with a passion bordering on extreme. We've lost a Medical system world leaders came HERE to have things done with, just over a decade ago....and now see out own citizens going to places like Mexico and Costa Rica for Medical Tourism because a Mexican clinic has better service than an American one. (sigh)
Obama has just about set us on a path to become like the childhood ghetto slums he grew up in, overseas.
groingrinder
aLLeKs
As a German, I just don't understand why the people in the USA hat so much on Obamacare.
You always have the feeling, that they instantly feel like they witness a communist take over or invasion.
I just don't understand it, is the cold war sentiment still that much present?
Why do you instantly call people communists, when they want to improve your healthcare system?
I will nevery understand how even poor people, that probably have problems affording the medical costs, are against it.
Obamacare does not improve the health care system. Europeans seem to be deceived by what Obamacare is. What it is is a mandate that everyone buy insurance. It was written by the insurance industry themselves. It provides no care whatsoever. It does not make health care affordable or more available.
aLLeKs
As a German, I just don't understand why the people in the USA hat so much on Obamacare.
You always have the feeling, that they instantly feel like they witness a communist take over or invasion.
I just don't understand it, is the cold war sentiment still that much present?
Why do you instantly call people communists, when they want to improve your healthcare system?
I will nevery understand how even poor people, that probably have problems affording the medical costs, are against it.
Bluesma
We can go to any hospital or doctor we choose, state or private.... so there remains competition between them to keep up quality of care and service.
Something state run could be done quite cheaply.
The failure of free market/corpratocracy is ruining the US.
European countries do have longer life expectancy rates, for certain. Even lower class people.
poet1b
I work with many Europeans these days, who currently reside in the US, and their opinion of US health care is that it stinks.
They all clearly state that medical care in Europe is much better. Even doctors agree.
What this shows is something that more and more people are starting to recognize, which is that private corporations are not always better than government, and that insurance ran medical care is horrible.
Best ranked cities.
www.usatoday.com...
Vienna, the home of Mozart and Freud, has held on to its title as the city with the highest quality of life, according to the 2014 rankings of the best places to live and work by management consultancy Mercer.
Vienna was followed by Zurich and Auckland, New Zealand. In fourth place was Munich while Vancouver, Canada, placed fifth -- the highest-ranked city in North America. Germany's Dusseldorf and Frankfurt take sixth and seventh place.
...
"Healthcare, infrastructure, and recreational facilities are generally of a very high standard. Political stability and relatively low crime levels enable expatriates to feel safe and secure in most locations."
...
The highest ranking U.S. city was San Francisco, at 27th in the poll, while New York was at number 43.
The failure of free market/corpratocracy is ruining the US.
Here is how it happened.
www.salon.com...
On August 23, 1971, Lewis Powell sent a confidential memo to his friend Eugene Sydnor, Jr., the director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The memo was both a call to arms and a battle plan for a business response to its growing legion of opponents. Powell was a corporate lawyer, a former president of the American Bar Association, and a board member of eleven corporations, including Philip Morris and the Ethyl Corporation, a company that made the lead for leaded gasoline. Powell had also represented the Tobacco Institute, the research arm of the tobacco industry, and various tobacco companies. Later that year, President Richard Nixon would nominate Powell to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court, where he served for fifteen years.
...
Powell urged new, well-funded public media campaigns to support the free enterprise system, the creation of think tanks and institutes to develop policy proposals and “direct political action” in legislative and judicial arenas. “It is time,” he argued, for “American business . . . to apply their great talents vigorously to the preservation of the system itself.” Powell’s “confidential” memo was first circulated within the Chamber of Commerce, then released in 1972 by investigative reporter Jack Anderson during the Powell Supreme Court confirmation hearings. While the document may not have been the blueprint for the rise of the Republican right that some analysts claim, its real value is as the articulation of the corporate prescription for capitalism’s ills.
This second article I have linked to is an excellent historical account of what has happened to the US since the 1970ties.