There's trouble in paradise

[TE999]

Canada's' cradle to grave public health system is beginning to falter. A victim of an aging population, rising costs and budget deficits. Cuts have to be made somewhere and it's not going to be pretty.

Full story here.

Obamacare anyone?

 

[voluptuary_manque]

So what's your solution?

 

[3113]

So what's your solution?

Obviously to maintain the paradise of insurance companies that won't pay out and can't be afforded that we have here.

I'm still in for Obama care, since you're asking TE. It doesn't need to be perfect or paradise, is just needs to be less fucked up hell. And that's what we've got. Fucked up hell. So yeah, Damn right.

Oh, and TE999....

http://i432.photobucket.com/albums/qq46/Carissa00031/Funny_finger_justforyou.gif

 

[amicus]

Thank you for the link, TE, well worth the read and perchance a few may begin to question the nature of socialized medicine, whatever one chooses to call it.

The answer, in short, VM, is the free market place. I like to make a comparison between the fast food industry in America and the upper range of restaurant offerings. In as much as free enterprise can deliver food according to the taste and pocketbook of the consumer, so too can the market place deliver health care at any and all levels if set free from government controls.

Before you dismiss the idea, consider a variety of medical clinics with as much diversity of the fast food or restaurant market and imagine as many sources of care, if not more, than the food market.

But I suppose, as usual, most will let ideology rule their common sense and practical experience.

Such a pity.

Amicus

 

[TE999]

Thank you for the link, TE, well worth the read and perchance a few may begin to question the nature of socialized medicine, whatever one chooses to call it.

The answer, in short, VM, is the free market place. I like to make a comparison between the fast food industry in America and the upper range of restaurant offerings. In as much as free enterprise can deliver food according to the taste and pocketbook of the consumer, so too can the market place deliver health care at any and all levels if set free from government controls.

Before you dismiss the idea, consider a variety of medical clinics with as much diversity of the fast food or restaurant market and imagine as many sources of care, if not more, than the food market.

But I suppose, as usual, most will let ideology rule their common sense and practical experience.

Such a pity.

Amicus

I expected more abuse than I've received so far, but it's late.

Government controlled health care is like Communism...every time it's tried and it fails proponents claim the users didn't try hard enough...it'll work next time.

We're going to be in Canada's mukluks a lot sooner if we adopt a similar system. We have a much larger deficit and considerably more elderly to take care of, not to mention all the illegal aliens that will become citizens by default.

I can't figure if people who believe in this government controlled health care boondoggle are incurable optimists, blinded by ideology, afflicted with 'get even with 'em' -isim or just ignoring the obvious implications in a quest for something for nothing.

This health care 'crisis' has been blown ridiculously out of proportion in terms of need anyway. You can't make policy that affects everyone by pointing to a few poor souls who have fallen through the cracks of the current system and tailoring it to fit them.

But, like all other social experiments that promise a better life for everyone, I suppose this idiocy will prevail in some fashion and the end result will be nothing like what was envisioned. Then it will be too late.

 

[DeeZire]

The Canadian system you're referring to has nothing to do with Obamacare. Obamacare will exist in the private sector, the Canadian system doesn't.

FYI - most countries in the world are facing the same ballooning healthcare costs we are because of the older demographic using up more resources. That's a demographic problem, not a problem specific to either socialism or the free market. It is common knowledge that the free market healthcare solution we have in the USA is less cost-effective than the public options offered by all other industrialized nations - at least it's common knowledge in circles where people put common sense above rigid ideology. But since you're so fervent in your belief system, perhaps you should try convincing the countries that do have socialized medicine to privatize their systems. Good luck with that.

Anything else you're afraid of that you need explained for you?

 

[amicus]

Browsing through the threads for a few days before dipping my wick again, I noticed Cloudy proclaiming her intelligence, education and culture, none of which I challenge but rather explore a thought her diatribe brought to mind.

One can understand idealistic youthful intellects looking upon a no doubt confused world scene and having the audacity to believe that their youth and idealism can fix any problem in the world if only they had the power to control the events that trouble them.

Many, through the educational process, are seduced by camouflaged Marxist teachers and professors who teach the continuing class struggle between rich and poor and instill a hatred of the rich, the successful businessman, the corporate structure, which, as idealistic students they swallow whole, without chewing.

Some find their way into professions, like teaching and silicon valley, high end electronics, as consultants and programmers and never face real world reality where people actually work for a living.

Some become the jaded and worldly old hippies evident on this forum, who remain bitter that their early dreams were corroded away by the lack of a moral and ethical foundation and of course the drugs and profligat life they chose. Forget about them, they will never grow and mature into adulthood.

Some, perhaps many, are products of the subject of another thread, one I started, concerning the swallowed propaganda about over population of the world and decided to forego their opportunity to have a family until it was too late, according to the biological clock of the female. This is such a sad and useless gesture...giving up an individual right, sacrificing a family and all that is meaningful in human relationships for a false premise and ideology. How sad it truly is that a person would sacrifice the best things in life for a collective hypnotic fallacy of the worst kind; sad indeed.

I have heard and seen it from my own children as they mature and put aside the childish dreams of controlling everyone and everything around them and realize, finally, why, as people grow older, they grow wiser and understand the fundamental truth concerning individual freedom, oportunity and responsibity, and the final realization that individual freedom goes hand in glove with a free market place.

I was amused to read the many pages of the crisis in the Gulf, where most were eager to place blame on the industry, many expressed environmental concerns and no one, not a single poster, offered concerns about the loss of income from BP, the loss of crude oil to the economy, the inevitable higher prices for almost every product and service that depends on transportation and petroleum products. And the insane surety that BP 'shortcuts' were responsible for the accident, silly to the nth degree.

Ah, well, I have rambled enough....your patience is appreciated...


amicus

 

[R. Richard]

Some find their way into professions, like teaching and silicon valley, high end electronics, as consultants and programmers and never face real world reality where people actually work for a living.

amicus

Pardon me, but I worked as a computer programmer. If you don't think that programming computers is real-world work, please tell me why.

When you work as a computer programmer, you have to read manuals written by people who have never programmed a computer, have no idea how computer programming works and what the key issues are and can obfuscate the issues by writing crap that resonates with managers.

After I escaped from that world, I was still called, usually at 3AM, by people I used to work for, in order to try to obtain free computer programming consultation.

Wait! Maybe you're right. It wasn't real-world work, it was hell.

 

[TE999]

Browsing through the threads for a few days before dipping my wick again, I noticed Cloudy proclaiming her intelligence, education and culture, none of which I challenge but rather explore a thought her diatribe brought to mind.

One can understand idealistic youthful intellects looking upon a no doubt confused world scene and having the audacity to believe that their youth and idealism can fix any problem in the world if only they had the power to control the events that trouble them.

Many, through the educational process, are seduced by camouflaged Marxist teachers and professors who teach the continuing class struggle between rich and poor and instill a hatred of the rich, the successful businessman, the corporate structure, which, as idealistic students they swallow whole, without chewing.

Some find their way into professions, like teaching and silicon valley, high end electronics, as consultants and programmers and never face real world reality where people actually work for a living.

Some become the jaded and worldly old hippies evident on this forum, who remain bitter that their early dreams were corroded away by the lack of a moral and ethical foundation and of course the drugs and profligat life they chose. Forget about them, they will never grow and mature into adulthood.

Some, perhaps many, are products of the subject of another thread, one I started, concerning the swallowed propaganda about over population of the world and decided to forego their opportunity to have a family until it was too late, according to the biological clock of the female. This is such a sad and useless gesture...giving up an individual right, sacrificing a family and all that is meaningful in human relationships for a false premise and ideology. How sad it truly is that a person would sacrifice the best things in life for a collective hypnotic fallacy of the worst kind; sad indeed.

I have heard and seen it from my own children as they mature and put aside the childish dreams of controlling everyone and everything around them and realize, finally, why, as people grow older, they grow wiser and understand the fundamental truth concerning individual freedom, oportunity and responsibity, and the final realization that individual freedom goes hand in glove with a free market place.

I was amused to read the many pages of the crisis in the Gulf, where most were eager to place blame on the industry, many expressed environmental concerns and no one, not a single poster, offered concerns about the loss of income from BP, the loss of crude oil to the economy, the inevitable higher prices for almost every product and service that depends on transportation and petroleum products. And the insane surety that BP 'shortcuts' were responsible for the accident, silly to the nth degree.

Ah, well, I have rambled enough....your patience is appreciated...


amicus

Au contraire, mon ami It's refreshing to have rational discourse with someone on a controversial subject instead of the predictable barrage of insults and slander one receives when the mobs' cherished beliefs are questioned.

The old saying 'When ignorance is bliss 'tis folly to be wise' applies here as in other threads of this nature.

When people 'feel' rather than 'think' and 'believe' rather than 'know' any chance of a reasoned discussion is virtually impossible.

I would wager not one person in ten who posts an insult has actually read the referenced article and it's potential implications for our own future; rather it's a visceral reaction to any challenge to their cherished beliefs...'burn the heretic!'

I am actually surprised by the sophomoric responses from some people who post here...I genuinely thought they were above such things, sadly I was wrong.

Wishing to 'kill the messenger' when confronted with contradictory facts is a less than stellar human trait that all too evident here.

Short version: 'Sticks and stones' can attempt to silence the truth, but it will out regardless.

 

[bronzeage]

Canada's' cradle to grave public health system is beginning to falter. A victim of an aging population, rising costs and budget deficits. Cuts have to be made somewhere and it's not going to be pretty.

Full story here.

Obamacare anyone?

It is a self correcting system. Global warming is driving polar bears south. The bears eat the old people and reduce the public health roles.

 

[Guest]

It is a self correcting system. Global warming is driving polar bears south. The bears eat the old people and reduce the public health roles.

Push 'em to the edge of the herd.

 

[Liar]

Government controlled health care is like Communism...every time it's tried and it fails proponents claim the users didn't try hard enough...it'll work next time.

Exactly the same can easily be said about free market health care. Every time the "invisible hand" fails grandly in delivering the best product for the best price and instead create situations icompatible with a humane society, the evangelicals cry "Oh come on, it will work...umm...soon. You'll see!"

 

[trysail]

A market is nothing more than a large collection of individuals casting ballots ( which happen to take the form of money ); over time— that process will be as or more rational than a collection of individuals perpetually voting with their emotions ( otherwise known as democracy ).

 

[Katyusha]

Canada's' cradle to grave public health system is beginning to falter. A victim of an aging population, rising costs and budget deficits. Cuts have to be made somewhere and it's not going to be pretty.

Full story here.

Obamacare anyone?

We don't have socialized healthcare here, even with HR 3590.

 

[Katyusha]

Pardon me, but I worked as a computer programmer. If you don't think that programming computers is real-world work, please tell me why.

When you work as a computer programmer, you have to read manuals written by people who have never programmed a computer, have no idea how computer programming works and what the key issues are and can obfuscate the issues by writing crap that resonates with managers.

After I escaped from that world, I was still called, usually at 3AM, by people I used to work for, in order to try to obtain free computer programming consultation.

Wait! Maybe you're right. It wasn't real-world work, it was hell.

You sound exactly like my father, who is also a computer programmer. Has been for thirty years. He, too, would be put off (to put it mildly) by someone telling him that programming isn't actually working for a living. He works, and he works HARD, for his living.

And everything you just said above happens to him too.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

I'm reading a book called INNOVATOR'S DILEMMA. Its about how large, successful corporations crash & burn. They fail because they resist innovations, and strive to make their wares as complicated and user-unfriendly as possible. That is, they make their business model identical to the government's.

ObozoCare is guaranteed to resist innnovation as it fosters complexity and confusion. And it wont suffer innovative competition.

 

[wildehafer]

Some find their way into professions, like teaching and silicon valley, high end electronics, as consultants and programmers and never face real world reality where people actually work for a living.

And you are a narrow minded bigot.

Take away all the computer programmers and see how far you get with your gadgets, laptops and everything else that NEEDS A FRIKKEN COMPUTER PROGRAMMER to make it work just so you can text crap to your friends, start your car and post shit on forums on subjects you have no idea about.

Who are you to judge what is an acceptable form of employment or not?

Some of us here are actually IT people and we do face real world reality, just like everyone else trying to make a buck and make ends meet. Be grateful, one of them probably programmed the system that gets your pay into the bank on time.

Maybe get off your homeboy ass and find out what really goes on outside your house before spouting off at the mouth and getting a whole lotta folks offside.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

If computer programmers are so great why is my software (for everything) such crap? Why does it take you years to untangle the messes you create.

You people are gold-bricks.

 

[wildehafer]

If computer programmers are so great why is my software (for everything) such crap? Why does it take you years to untangle the messes you create.

You people are gold-bricks.

If you think it's so damned easy do it yourself.

People want easier to use software that never breaks down and never needs maintenance.

You know what? 99.99% of all the software you use is so ubiquitous you don't even know you're using it and guess what? YES it works without a problem, but you choose to rant and rave about the 0.01% that has problems, and it's usually nothing you can't work around anyway.

Life isn't perfect bud, don't expect software to be either. We do our best to make the machines think for you.

There are bigger problems in the world with people that stupidly can't even enter the right figures into a stock market trading program and almost bring the financial world to it's knees.

Most of the problems I encounter with software is stupid users, not the product they are complaining about.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Yadda, yadda, yadda

I've been fucking with computers since 1978 when the TRASH Model 1 came out.

Programmers are a clustre-fuck incapable of producing anything that works correctly until the 6th-7th revision. And Bill Gates is your king.

 

[R. Richard]

If computer programmers are so great why is my software (for everything) such crap? Why does it take you years to untangle the messes you create.

You people are gold-bricks.

The average computer user has only two interfaces with the software: the user manual; the user interface.

Most companies use a 'professional writer' to 'edit the user manual' (edit means a complete rewrite.) One of the companies I worked for hired Wilma Shakespeare to write the user manuals. Management spouted ecomiums about the work of WS. The users spouted profanity. Apparently WS wrote the user manuals in iambic pentameter unrhymed. Management loved the witty exposition. The users had no idea of what the bitch was trying to say. Neither did I and I wrote the software. Management fired the bitch after just short of a year, I think because lynch mobs can get really ugly.

Just before I left one company, my Department Manager forced me to rewrite a user interface his way. There were so many complaints that the company was forced to rewrite the user interface. Well, they didn't exactly rewrite the user interface, they just exhumed my user interface and used that. When they called me at my new job and asked about the matter, I posed a question, "You took a user interface, designed by a professional programmer and replaced it with an interface dictated by a tourist with no programming experience. Which do you think was the better user interface?" (I never got an answer.)

 

[DeeZire]

If computer programmers are so great why is my software (for everything) such crap? Why does it take you years to untangle the messes you create...

Because you're working on a Windows computer. That's your fault, not the programmer's fault.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

DEE ZIRE

90% of America uses WINDOWS.

 

[Pure]

note to ami, TE etc.

ami Thank you for the link, TE, well worth the read and perchance a few may begin to question the nature of socialized medicine, whatever one chooses to call it.

both of you are fundamentally misguided here. almost every western nation has 'socialized medicine' and yes they have aging populations. NOT ONE is considering returning to the so called 'market system'. NO political party in any of them advocates it. Costs will be contained by the obvious methods.



ami The answer, in short, VM, is the free market place. I like to make a comparison between the fast food industry in America and the upper range of restaurant offerings. In as much as free enterprise can deliver food according to the taste and pocketbook of the consumer, so too can the market place deliver health care at any and all levels if set free from government controls.

this is quite silly ami, and you know it. there is NO free market place in health care, nor would one come into being by normal processes.
US has an oligopoly system, dominated by about a half dozen big companies, such as Aetna, Cigna. etc. the top ten companies drew 287 billion in business. [and by the way, were NOT recently nationalized; they are fat and happy].

http://health-insurance.suite101.com/article.cfm/largest-us-health-insurance-companies

i LOVE your central analogy:


In as much as free enterprise can deliver food according to the taste and pocketbook of the consumer, so too can the market place deliver health care at any and all levels if set free from government controls

first of all, restaurants and food suppliers are highly regulated. the 'market place' is well overseen. it's very oligopolistic, with vertical integrations like McDonald's. oligopolies PREVENT the market from exerting such pressures as it does, for quality. hence the crap quality of the Mc D burger. (and Windows, too, incidentally; and Chevrolets of 10 years ago)

but yes, as food is delivered in the US, so was healthcare, and so would it be under your plan.

a) there's lots of malnutrition, esp. in Kids

b) there's lots obesity.

c) these are because of marketing vast amounts of salt and fat; things known to SELL, but which cause disease.


d) charities have 'soup kitchens' for those with no wallets to take advantage of MacDonalds 99 cent specials.

--

while you're foaming about taking out your gun, the US oligopoly system is trudging ahead. no big changes in sight, since the major health companies have no beef with the Dems Healthcare Plan. they stand to make billions.

 

[TE999]

ami Thank you for the link, TE, well worth the read and perchance a few may begin to question the nature of socialized medicine, whatever one chooses to call it.

both of you are fundamentally misguided here. almost every western nation has 'socialized medicine' and yes they have aging populations. NOT ONE is considering returning to the so called 'market system'. NO political party in any of them advocates it. Costs will be contained by the obvious methods.

Did you even read the article before going off on your usual anti-capitalist/ pro-government rant?

The Canadian Health System's income is less than it's outgo...cuts are going to have to be made...people will have to pay private doctors for certain surgeries...the increasing numbers of elderly persons and the sagging economy are overtaxing the system. The same thing's been happening in the UK for years, Canada's just catching up. So's France and Greece.

The US has a ginormous deficit, more elderly persons, an uncounted number of people leading dissolute or irresponsible lifestyles and an uncounted number of illegal aliens needing care. As usual, the solution is to penalize the productive through taxation that'll support a massive federal health care bureaucracy.

The current US health care system needs some modification, not a total tear down.