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Most Americans Want Universal Health Care

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Can anyone explain why the USA needs to spend more on "defense" than the next 14 countries combined?



-we are at war
-we war every 10 years
-our interests are spread out over the globe more than most countries.
-protecting other countries' borders/seaways gives us secondary (and sometimes primary) economic maintenance.
-we are a lot bigger



We are in a war of aggression, not defense.

We are "a lot bigger" than China, Canada or Russia? Where did you learn geography?

I guess it didn't sink in. We spend more of "defense" than THE NEXT 14 NATIONS PUT TOGETHER.

That money could buy a whole lot of healthcare without changing our taxes one little bit.
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Even when Pearl Harbor got attacked we didn't have to start a pacific theatre. We could have said, "Sorry for disrupting your country, We'll leave you alone now."

France allowed Germany to waltz right through.

Nowadays, wars of "defense" are not the only type of war out there. Defending the Borders isn't the only way to protect a country. Economic stability is extremely important to a country. It's the foundation that allows it to exist. I don't think a "Blood for Oil" campaign is any less honorable than an old-fashioned yesteryear Nation Building war. You are still up-keeping the Country and keeping it in existance. Maybe ol' Jorge is doing things the wrong way. Maybe the conclusion will be one of the most important wars to have to happen.
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> Even when Pearl Harbor got attacked we didn't have to start a pacific
> theatre. We could have said, "Sorry for disrupting your country, We'll
>leave you alone now."

When you are attacked, fighting those who attacked you is pretty much the definition of a defensive war. Defending a country is necessary if you wish to continue to _have_ a country.

>Nowadays, wars of "defense" are not the only type of war out there.

I agree! Nowadays you can have all sorts of optional wars, of any degree of violence or with any justification.

>I don't think a "Blood for Oil" campaign is any less honorable than
>an old-fashioned yesteryear Nation Building war.

Such a war is no better than what Saddam Hussein was doing to his people. After all, he needed to use WMD's on his own people to stay in power and support his own economy. Once you start down a "killing civilians is OK if it makes me money" path there is no limit to the atrocities that can be justified in the pursuit of a buck. And since we will someday not be the most powerful country on the planet, I think we better start down a better moral highway very soon.

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That's why other countries can provide decent medical care for all their citizens for less cost. They use fewer people to do the same job, and far more of them are actual doctors.



IMHO it also heavily depends on doctor salaries.
Does anybody know a country with socialized medicine, where the doctors are paid top salaries, making much more money than for example teachers? And I'm not talking about top doctors, but about most doctors.
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We are in a war of aggression, not defense.



Pre-emptive strikes can be considered defensive. What difference does it make, really? Defense vs. Aggressive stance can be assigned by both sides. It depends on how far back you want to take the chicken or the Egg-esque who-started-who argument.

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We are "a lot bigger" than China, Canada or Russia? Where did you learn geography?



Whoops, Okay, you got me there. Huge mistake.

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I guess it didn't sink in. We spend more of "defense" than THE NEXT 14 NATIONS PUT TOGETHER.



It did "sink in". I think you may be hung up on words. Defense is just a word for Military. Just because something has a label on it doesn't make it any sort of mission. I seriously doubt that any realistic subdivision can be made for "Defense" and "Offense" This is not a Football Game. There is not offensive coordinator or defensive coordinator.

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That money could buy a whole lot of healthcare without changing our taxes one little bit.



No doubt about that. But health care is not an entitlement. More than likely, that money will go to education or land management/reclaimation, veteran Affairs, Raises, ect. ect.. .
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"The trouble with quotes on the internet is that you can never know if they are genuine" - Abraham Lincoln

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Such a war is no better than what Saddam Hussein was doing to his people. After all, he needed to use WMD's on his own people to stay in power and support his own economy. Once you start down a "killing civilians is OK if it makes me money" path there is no limit to the atrocities that can be justified in the pursuit of a buck.



I cannot agree to a slippery-slope of heading down the path to evilness as written here. In the 200 plus years of constant warring, we have always found a way to prevent this preversion. I am pretty sure one guy in office will not have the ability to convince a group of Generals formed by a couple hundreds years of tradition and service to walk that way. Don't forget that the Buck (economic impact) was one of the main-brace in previous wars. Namely WWI and II and Civil War.

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And since we will someday not be the most powerful country on the planet, I think we better start down a better moral highway very soon.



May happen way sooner than most think. The rest of the world does not need us too much anymore. That's actually may be good news for me. Once the other powers contribute more warships out there to keep the peace, I can be home more often.
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"The trouble with quotes on the internet is that you can never know if they are genuine" - Abraham Lincoln

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I guess it didn't sink in. We spend more of "defense" than THE NEXT 14 NATIONS PUT TOGETHER.

That money could buy a whole lot of healthcare without changing our taxes one little bit.



You should keep in mind the money spent on defense isn't ceremoniously loaded into a volcano which then errupts bombs and bullets. It pays a lot of salaries (from which SS and medicare are then deducted, again) and many companies that provide a great deal of civilian goods live and die by their military contracts. Also, while probably not a huge portion of it, it wouldn't surprise me if "defense spending" included programs to pay for soldiers' educations.

The Pentagon could stand to do some house cleaning, but your argument against the people in that building seems a bit clouded by anger at folks in a different building on the other side of the Potomac.

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IMHO it also heavily depends on doctor salaries.
Does anybody know a country with socialized medicine, where the doctors are paid top salaries, making much more money than for example teachers? And I'm not talking about top doctors, but about most doctors.



My home country (Italy) surely fits the bill.
I have yet to see a lower-income-bracket doctor.
Yes, those that can move to private practice are definitely better off, but even your average GP who gets 100% of his income from socialized health care has no problem making ends meet.
Teachers on the other hand are paid a pittance...
Cheers,

Valentino

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...That's why it could work. The healthy and young pay, but use the services very little. Then when they are old, they benefit from the young and healthy people paying, who also need little health care.

And yes, I realize the actual math is probably very different. The point is, people are willing to pay more taxes to cover themselves and their neighbors.



I don't want to EVER hear you argue against Social Security..EVER.

Oh, BTW, the SS system is working just fine, isn't it?
:D:D
My reality and yours are quite different.
I think we're all Bozos on this bus.
Falcon5232, SCS8170, SCSA353, POPS9398, DS239

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Hmmm...interesting graph. Now how about a graph of projected medicare and medicaid costs over the next few years under the current health care system to go along with it? CBO projections are readily available for you to produce such a graph...
:)




You want such a graph? CBO projections are readily available for you to produce such a graph...

Can anyone explain why the USA needs to spend more on "defense" than the next 14 countries combined?



While it's obvious that the money being spent by our military could be put to better use, the sum total of everything spent on the "War on Terror", so far (that's over 5 years), would only cover three or fours months of Universal healthcare for all Americans.

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Teachers on the other hand are paid a pittance...



it's a real shame, 8 years of school, 4 years of residency, long hours, year round work, holding living organs in their hands - teachers have it rough

yup, a real crime that teachers don't make the same as doctors

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Hmmm...interesting graph. Now how about a graph of projected medicare and medicaid costs over the next few years under the current health care system to go along with it? CBO projections are readily available for you to produce such a graph...
:)




You want such a graph? CBO projections are readily available for you to produce such a graph...

Can anyone explain why the USA needs to spend more on "defense" than the next 14 countries combined?



While it's obvious that the money being spent by our military could be put to better use, the sum total of everything spent on the "War on Terror", so far (that's over 5 years), would only cover three or fours months of Universal healthcare for all Americans.



That still didn't answer his question.

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Can anyone explain why the USA needs to spend more on "defense" than the next 14 countries combined?



While it's obvious that the money being spent by our military could be put to better use, the sum total of everything spent on the "War on Terror", so far (that's over 5 years), would only cover three or fours months of Universal healthcare for all Americans.



That still didn't answer his question.



A question that has nothing to do the issues of universal healthcare in the US. ;)

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Teachers on the other hand are paid a pittance...



it's a real shame, 8 years of school, 4 years of residency, long hours, year round work, holding living organs in their hands - teachers have it rough

yup, a real crime that teachers don't make the same as doctors



Actually, as one of their former "victims", I'm of the opinion that teachers are actually overpaid for the (on average very poor) service they provide to the public ;)ù
Their constant requests for more recognition of their work (i.e. money) sounds like little more than baseless whining.
I used that comparison simply because the question I was replying to was expressed in those terms.
Cheers,

Vale

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Fix the extreme imbalance in the attached chart and you could pay for a whole lot of healthcare.



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Fix the extreme imbalance in the attached chart and you could pay for a whole lot of healthcare.



Well, let us look at "balance" in another way by finding the "balance" or military spending versus health care spending. While United States military spending exceeds the military spending of the next 14 countries combined, the United States Health and Human Services 2007 Budget exceeds the entire Gross Domestic Product of all but 15 countries in the world.

The US Military Budget for 2007 is almost $505 billion, down by over $5 billion from the 2006 Budget of a little over $512 billion.
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy07/pdf/budget/defense.pdf

The US Health and Human Services Budget for 2007 is $697.95 billion, up from $639.66 billion in 2006. Of this, $627,315 billion is for mandatory outlays (Medicare $389.5 billion and Medicaid $204.69 billion). http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy07/pdf/budget/hhs.pdf

So, in weighing the amount of money the government spends on the military versus healthcare, we see that health care spending gets 136% of the money that the military gets.

I did not include VA spending, since it is both military AND health care spending. Oh, and we've seen in the last week or so some of the negative aspects of governmentally managed health care. I can't think of any examples of moldy and vermin-infested hospitals in the private sector. Yet, you find it in the government sector, eh?




Another interesting thing to note is this question: How does the United States Government Health Care Spending as a percentage of total spending rank with regard to other countries? The results may shock you...

The WHO published a report in 2006 that analyzed statistically the spending of governments, etc for health care. http://www.who.int/whr/2006/whr06_en.pdf (this is a big file). I will refer to the 2003 numbers, since those were th emost recent on the report.

In 2003, the health care spending was 18.5% of government expenditures, ranking it below Switzerland (19.4%).

But, the US government's percentage of health care expenditures on total expenditures is HIGHER than the UK (15.8%), Monaco (17.5%), Netherlands (12.4%), Norway (17.6%), Spain (13.7%), Sweden (13.6%), Finladn (11.2%), France, (14.2%), Germany (17.6%), Iceland (18.3%), Ireland (17.2%), Italy (12.8%), Japan (16.8%), Luxembourg (13.7%), Australia (17.7%), Austria (10%), Belgium (12.4%), Canada (16.7%), Cuba (11.2%), and Denmark (13.5%).


Per capita govt. expendidures look like this: US $2548, ranking it below Norway ($3189), Monaco ($3408), Luxembourg ($3341) and Iceland ($2598). But ranking it ahead of: Australia (1939), Austria (1560), Belgium (1902), Canada (2090), Denmark (2292), Finladn (1613), France (2213), Germany (2348), Ireland (1968), Italy (1703), Netherlands (1863), New Zealand (1483)Portugal (1249), SPain (1321), Sweden (2305), Switzerland (2209) and the UK (2047).

My guess is that you could put the real dollar spending of the next ten to twenty countries on per capita health care government expenditures and the US would exceed it. The US government - BY FAR - spends the most dollars on healthcare. With the exception of Switzerland, the percentage of health-care spending as government expenditures exceeds that of the other Western European/Socialist medicine countries.

Chew on that, and then say, "If we are spending more on healthcare than the next ten countries combined, then we must do something to reign in the spending."

And yet, it sounds as if you are saying that we are not doing nearly enough. How much of the government expenditures do you think should be devoted to government spending? 75 percent? 50 percent?


My wife is hotter than your wife.

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Why would anybody pay an insurance company if they weren't getting something valuable in return? Insurance is a financial product just like stocks, bonds, annuities, options etc.



Insurance = mitigation of risk. Few have the cash on hand to pay for even a simple procedure like an appendectomy (ran 5-10k in the early 90s), so the preferred measure has been to pay out in a subscription method. And in the US, it's been most preferred to let the company provide access as a group plan to protect the less insurable, and to pay for it. Do these insurers compete for you, or for your employers?

Not all companies provide choice of plans or companies (may be Blue Shield PPO versus Blue Shield HMO). So not, it's not like choosing between Dell, HP, and Lenovo. And esp if you're on an individual plan, by the time you realize you don't like your insurer, you may be stuck with them.

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>I cannot agree to a slippery-slope of heading down the path to evilness as written here.

It's not a slippery slope. Killing people for money is evil. No need to "slide" further.

But that's getting somewhat far from the original topic.

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Just because its posted in the NYT you believe it?!

Call me cynical, but I'd like to know (1) who did they poll? employed workers? unemployed workers? people (i.e. very wealthy or young adults) who may not need or want health insurance? were they all US citizens? (2) at what time of the day did they contact people? (3) what were the questions asked? how were the questions worded? (many times polsters word questions to suppport a preconceived outcome) (4) were they mutliple choice answers or open-ended? (5) what was the sampling size? (7) what is the margin of error?

There are way too many unknowns to believe this one!

leslieann :)

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My home country (Italy) surely fits the bill.
I have yet to see a lower-income-bracket doctor.



Are the doctors in Italy are paid top salaries (by this I mean they belong to one of the best paid occupation)? Would it be possible to get average of all the doctors, not top neirologists from private sector?
* Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

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Not all companies provide choice of plans or companies



If you don't have an option you like, your gripe is then with either
1- your employer for squeezing you into a plan you don't want
2- the federal system of tax breaks for health insurance which basically pays companies to obtain and distribute group health insurance as income, instead of paying you the same amount of cash and letting you decide.

Your gripe is not with the insurance providers--they operate rather benignly within the confines of our contorted regulatory environment. They're doing what any competitive business would do. We should instead appreciate that they are able to provide any valuable service, and do our best not to ruin their industry because it is in fact valuable to us as consumers--that's why we put up with employer-provided group insurance. Would you prefer that there was no insurance available at all?

Historically other countries have destroyed or nearly destroyed their insurance markets with bad regulations. We are currently causing such destructive cycles in various states. Our federal systems are not far behind.

Already we are seeing the beginning of outsourcing of healthcare to less (and better) regulated countries, as many other western nations currently outsource to the US. Should federally subsidized healthcare dollars be allowed to flow to places like Vietnam, India, and the Philippines?
My advice is to do what your parents did; get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me, Lebowski?

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My home country (Italy) surely fits the bill.
I have yet to see a lower-income-bracket doctor.



Are the doctors in Italy are paid top salaries (by this I mean they belong to one of the best paid occupation)? Would it be possible to get average of all the doctors, not top neirologists from private sector?



Well, of course not ALL doctors are paid top salaries, that would be too much of a generalization.
A GP surely does not earn as much as a top heart surgeon, even though they are both employed by the national health service (thus excluding any form of private practice).
I don't have the exact figures, but I can assure you that none of the doctors I am aquainted with lead a modest life style, and only one of them is actually a heart surgeon :)
Cheers,

Vale

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The US Military Budget for 2007 is almost $505 billion

The US Health and Human Services Budget for 2007 is $697.95 billion



I am bad at math...Kallend, 697 is more than 505 right? ;)

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But, the US government's percentage of health care expenditures on total expenditures is HIGHER than the UK (15.8%), Monaco (17.5%), Netherlands (12.4%), Norway (17.6%), Spain (13.7%), Sweden (13.6%), Finladn (11.2%), France, (14.2%), Germany (17.6%), Iceland (18.3%), Ireland (17.2%), Italy (12.8%), Japan (16.8%), Luxembourg (13.7%), Australia (17.7%), Austria (10%), Belgium (12.4%), Canada (16.7%), Cuba (11.2%), and Denmark (13.5%).


Per capita govt. expendidures look like this: US $2548, ranking it below Norway ($3189), Monaco ($3408), Luxembourg ($3341) and Iceland ($2598). But ranking it ahead of: Australia (1939), Austria (1560), Belgium (1902), Canada (2090), Denmark (2292), Finladn (1613), France (2213), Germany (2348), Ireland (1968), Italy (1703), Netherlands (1863), New Zealand (1483)Portugal (1249), SPain (1321), Sweden (2305), Switzerland (2209) and the UK (2047).



Those facts have to sting some.

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Oh, and we've seen in the last week or so some of the negative aspects of governmentally managed health care. I can't think of any examples of moldy and vermin-infested hospitals in the private sector. Yet, you find it in the government sector, eh?



True again.....Damn, that was the knock out punch.
Remind me not to argue with you.

Anyone FOR public health care wanna go for round 2 against LR?

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