[Brenda]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

Back to Brenda: Your notion that 'taxes' pay for health care and that this is somehow 'fair' flies in the face of the reality that less than half of the wage earners in the USA actually pay net taxes. That means less than 49% of the people in the country subsidize the rest. And you want this minority to add everyone else's health care bills to their tax burdens?

Sorry, no.

And by 'no' I mean HELL NO!

100% of the taxes spent on education do not go to YOU (or anyone else who does not have kids). Are you bitching about that too?

Also, not everyone rakes up massive health care bills. Some do, some don't. My father in law has been in the hospital once, for a prostate surgery. He died on the tennis court 11 months later of a heart attack. He paid plenty taxes all his life, didn't bitch ONCE. Why? Because his daughter in law had a VERY complicated pregnancy with twins, which left her in a wheel chair for life. She (who does not pay taxes) volunteers for the hospital now. You give a little, you take a little. That's how society works.

[BartSimpson]

Brenda Brenda:

100% of the taxes spent on education do not go to YOU (or anyone else who does not have kids). Are you bitching about that too?

Yep. Because of all the billions that go to the US Department of Education and then the billions that go to the various state Departments of Education not one red cent goes to the classroom.

Then of the money that does go to the classroom most of that goes to teacher salaries, benefits, union dues and union political funds, and gold plated pensions. Meanwhile literacy in the USA has dropped to what? 37th?

So, yes, I'm bitching about that, too.

[Brenda]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

Brenda Brenda:

100% of the taxes spent on education do not go to YOU (or anyone else who does not have kids). Are you bitching about that too?

Yep. Because of all the billions that go to the US Department of Education and then the billions that go to the various state Departments of Education not one red cent goes to the classroom.

Then of the money that does go to the classroom most of that goes to teacher salaries, benefits, union dues and union political funds, and gold plated pensions. Meanwhile literacy in the USA has dropped to what? 37th?

So, yes, I'm bitching about that, too.

So you rather have the people with children pay for their children's "education" out of pocket? And that would change the situation you describe now, how?

[BartSimpson]

Brenda Brenda:

So you rather have the people with children pay for their children's "education" out of pocket? And that would change the situation you describe now, how?

Did I say that? No, I did not.

But one could conclude that eradicating the education bureacracies certainly could not hurt because in around fifty years of centralized education it's only gotten worse.

I'd take the hundreds of billions that are currently sucked up by the elites and put them into the classrooms. I'd also eradicate the teacher's unions and go back to hiring and firing teachers based on performance and merit just the same as private schools do.

[andyt]

I think Bart is a plant by Health Canada. His espousal of a "Healthy for the Wealthy" system gets us pushing back so much against that that we forget that we should be bitching about the deterioration of our own healthcare system, and that it needs to be overhauled. Wonder how much Harper pays him for that, tho I guess zealotry has its own rewards.

[Brenda]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

Brenda Brenda:

So you rather have the people with children pay for their children's "education" out of pocket? And that would change the situation you describe now, how?

Did I say that? No, I did not.

You say it when it comes to health care, so why not for education?

$1:

But one could conclude that eradicating the education bureacracies certainly could not hurt because in around fifty years of centralized education it's only gotten worse.

And is that in every country with elementary and high school education paid for by taxes, or only in the US?

$1:

I'd take the hundreds of billions that are currently sucked up by the elites and put them into the classrooms.

So you have a problem with the "elite" when it comes to education, because they suck up millions. The same elites that can afford health care insurance. So THEIR health care is paid for by taxes (the millions they suck up), but the people who need it most and can not afford it, can suck it.

$1:

I'd also eradicate the teacher's unions and go back to hiring and firing teachers based on performance and merit just the same as private schools do.

THAT I agree with.

[BartSimpson]

andyt andyt:

I think Bart is a plant by Health Canada. His espousal of a "Healthy for the Wealthy" system gets us pushing back so much against that that we forget that we should be bitching about the deterioration of our own healthcare system, and that it needs to be overhauled. Wonder how much Harper pays him for that, tho I guess zealotry has its own rewards.

If you want to address the deterioration of your system then I suppose you'll have to raise taxes to pay for it, won't you?

Have fun!

[Lemmy]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

I'd also eradicate the teacher's unions and go back to hiring and firing teachers based on performance and merit just the same as private schools do.

Hiring and firing isn't done by merit in the USA? It is up here. Unions don't hire teachers and they don't protect the bad ones in Canada.

The only teachers that work at private schools here are the ones that aren't good enough to get jobs in the public system. The the pay and working conditions at our private schools are shit.

[Bodah]

I waited a year and a couple of months for a colonoscopy, If I had colon cancer festering in there that sure would of given it a good head start to spread I'm sure. First thing the doctor asked, "you losing weight" no. "good" Instead they found two polyps, still waiting to hear back if they're pre-cancerous or not. EIther way I have to go every five years for one.

If I had the option paying a premium on an insurace policy to have it done at a private clinic and cough up 500 bucks I would of done so in a second to get it done in a week instead of waiting fourteen fucking months, and I'd actually be helping alleviate the back log on the public system.

But ohhhh no, that's too American. Fuck that I want a system that Sweden has both public and private.

[Brenda]

Bodah Bodah:

I waited a year and a couple of months for a colonoscopy, If I had colon cancer festering in there that sure would of given it a good head start to spread I'm sure. First thing the doctor asked, "you losing weight" no. "good" Instead they found two polyps, still waiting to hear back if they're pre-cancerous or not. EIther way I have to go every five years for one.

If I had the option paying a premium on an insurace policy to have it done at a private clinic and cough up 500 bucks I would of done so in a second to get it done in a week instead of waiting fourteen fucking months, and I'd actually be helping alleviate the back log on the public system.

But ohhhh no, that's too American. Fuck that I want a system that Sweden has both public and private.

Tell us how you really feel, Bodah!

(I'm glad you had it done tho. Here's to hoping the results will be good news!)

[Bodah]

If they are pre-cancerous. It just means my polyps could develop cancer if left there. If that's the case that means a colonoscopy every two and a half years instead of five.

[Brenda]

Well, considering the fact that colonoscopies suck ass (pun intended), we don't want that.

[fifeboy]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

Brenda Brenda:

That says enough. If you can afford to pay for a screening YOU won't die. If you can't YOU WILL.
Regardless if they eliminate it. AS LONG AS YOU PAY, you get your screening. How many "wives" will die because they can't? Because their bosses do not offer a health care plan? Do not offer benefits? But hey, NOT YOUR PROBLEM.

Only interested if it is free? Fuck that. You are yelling "my wife would have died". Guess what. PEOPLE ARE DYING because they CAN'T AFFORD IT.

Health care is not free for the people who provide it so it can't be free for the people who receive it. Someone has to pay for it.

The problem with this argument is that leftists and socialists eventually overreach with it and apply it to too many things.

Health care has to be free? Then what about food? What about housing?

Pretty soon you have the Soviet Union where everyone has a right to all sorts of free things the only problem is that there's never an adequate supply of those things because no one is paying for them because everyone expects to get them for free.

Andy and I once engaged in this topic and he brought up the disparity in what Canadians pay for health care and what Americans pay and that made me do some homework. I discovered that the USA far and away outstrips Canada in what we invest in medical technology and that accounts for a large part of that gap.

We discovered some interesting things like the fact that the state of Hawaii with about 1.4 million people has far more medical air transport capability than does all of Canada combined.

The city of Philadelphia alone has more MRI and CT scanners than does all of Canada combined.

Montana has more PICU beds than does all of Canada combined.

Canada has some 4,000 total medical transports (ambulances and etc.) while California with about the same population has over 30,000.

All of this is not free and almost all of that American medical technology is not provided by any government.

That you get all indignant because some poor people are net getting the same care as people who pay for their care is nice of you and I'd invite you to start your own charity to provide such screenings to the poor. Do something about it. Yourself.

But asking us to adopt your system which isn't working so well for you in order that we can address the needs of a minority at the cost of reducing care to the majority is a fool's errand and, fortunately, we have a Supreme Court that this month is expected to stop that notion from taking root here.

Meanwhile, if you get sick enough you'll be damned glad that Health Canada now pays for you to receive treatment in the nasty old United States when they have no means to care for you in Canada.

Heard all this before. If this is true (and I have no reason to doubt it) than Americans should have the best health care in the world. And that should translate into the best health stats in the world. For some reason it doesn't. The town of Podunk having more MRI's than all of Ontario means little if the good citizens of Podunk don't get any true benefits from them. If Podunk has more air ambulances than Alberta but it's citizens die from accidents at a higher rate than in Alberta who cares. One set of stats is impressive but the one that really counts (what is happening to people) is less so.

[BartSimpson]

Lemmy Lemmy:

Hiring and firing isn't done by merit in the USA?

Nope. And anyone who tries to implement merit recognition in the US public schools is met with temper tantrums from the unions.

Here's the most notable example:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelle_R ... ic_schools

[Lemmy]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

Nope. And anyone who tries to implement merit recognition in the US public schools is met with temper tantrums from the unions.

Merit recognition is a difficult thing to implement because it's very difficult to measure how well a teacher is teaching. In Ontario, teacher unions' activities are severely limited by the Education Act. Discipline is handled by the government through its watchdog (The Ontario College of Teachers) and the union plays virtually no role in those cases. Good teachers don't want bad teachers in the system any more than anyone else does.