Colin, you are talking out of straight fear, and nothing else. Fear of being super taxed, fear of this effecting your money, fear of making less money.

People like you have turned this country into trash.

It would cost less if the Gov just paid your kind to leave so us people with a heart could actually take this country to a great level.

I look at the US Federal Budget every year. The "information" can neither be correct nor incorrect by itself. It depends on how much you pay in taxes.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget...9/pdf/hist.pdf

Let's say you net $10 million per year and that 56% of the budget goes toward the military expenses. Then you paid $5.6 million per year for war. That sounds a little too expensive to me.

:upsidedow:2 cents:

You should try reading a bit more than the budget report, since it has little to nothing to do with this, since it's paid for by the people, for the people. When you deregulate the industry, the costs drop back to normal.

Remember, we pay $100+ for pills that really only cost $2

You are absolutely correct. I've already said that the US should pay less for military. We sure don't need a dozen aircraft carriers in 2008, DF.

BTW. Where did you get 56% from?

I am really quite fine with the way things are. I would prefer to pay less in taxes and to have a smaller government but it's not like it's bothering me. I'm just stating my preferences for the way I'd like things to be. You can tax me more and increase the size of the government. I'll live. It's just not my preference. I don't have any control or influence over it. I'm just a regular guy running a few companies and going about my daily life.

I don't know about people like me "turning this country into trash". I just sell porn, Doc. I'm not a politician. I don't work for the government. Now maybe you feel you are a better person than me and you "have a heart". Maybe you really are a better person. Maybe you work for your city government to make the world a better place and just work in porn as a side job. Good for you, Doc. Good for you. Our country needs GREAT AMERICANS like you.

That looks like it just discretionary spending. Yeah?

I support a small Gov, but that has nothing to do with heath care provided by the Gov. You can small/large Gov and still have Gov provided health care.

The comment on turning the country into trash, isn't about politicians. It's about the people with more money than they need not wanting to share a little to help all americans/humans.. Even more so when chances are it would never effect your money, but just the thought it, is enough to make you bark.

Of the top of my head .... as an example...

It seems to be in fact between 45 and 50%, but this not including the funding of Iraq and Afghanistan ... Many articles address this issue...

http://www.borgenproject.org/images/DiscFY2004Pie.gif

http://www.oldamericancentury.org/images/budget_pie.gif

Not to point out the obvious but the "poor" in the US already get free healthcare. Hell, you can be illegally here and get free healthcare. Most states offer VERY inexpensive health insurance for children of working families and the top incomes to qualify (I think here in GA it's $42K) are quite generous.

The problem right now is that the costs aren't spread amongst those who are using the services. I pay for my healthcare with my $$$ and my insurance AND I pay for the healthcare of those who can't/won't pay for their own.

How to fix that? I don't know. One idea is to have mandated health insurance like there's mandated car and homeowner's insurance. Of course, that doesn't help us with the illegals we spend billions to treat each year.

BTW folks, national defense doesn't just cover wars. There are 10's of thousands of military personal, buildings, vehicles, training facilities, etc. which have nothing to do with Iraq and Afghanistan.

Good stuff, even more reasons why we should have universal health care. If we already kind of have it, and we are all eating the tax on it anyway, we should standardize it.

That's just discretionary spending, DF.

I don't want universal healthcare. I don't want the US government to run the healthcare system. They haven't done anything right yet, why would I want to entrust my health to them??!! :helpme

When you look at the total budget including off-budget items the numbers should look like something like this for these items.

Social Security 22%
Medicare 14%
Income Security 13%
Health 10%

These are from the 2008 "estimate" but are reasonably close.

I've gotta go home but if anyone is looking at a budget for the US and it doesn't have a huge chunk for social security then you know you are looking at just the discretionary budget. Laterz ...

Neither democratic candidates plans (dont know if the republicans have plans they've put out), require you to drop your private insurance or change anything at all. Of course any tax money it needs you wont be able to opt out of, but thats how it is now with so many things. Paying school tax if you have no kids would be similar imho. Or if you have kids and send them to private schools, you're kinda paying twice.

On tax increases, lets also bear in mind that there is so much "pork" that can be cut, it wont be as if we're starting from 0. We'll need to cut the crap first. Requiring congress members to attach their names to their 11th hour pork will help us weed out the idiots in time.

Besides all that, I'll personally never forget watching my neighbor get her new shiny car, tell me she's moving into a house she bought, and having her *welfare* check accidently delivered to my mailbox :( fuck, I mean come on. There's enough built-in error to be trimmed to get this all done with barely any monetary pain at all. And thats really the bottom line isn't it?

If you dont HAVE TO switch from your current health care status, and it doesnt cost you MORE money when all the negatives are deducted and positives added.. then surely there is no remaining issue to fight over?

and how do the insurance companies with their lobby within the congress run it?

- refuse a treatment if you are too expensive to cure?
- refuse an insurance to those who are pre-destined to be expensive?
- willing you to co-pay for every other treatment?
- charging a fortune for medicaments?

Is that what they do?

You're entrusting your health to the doctors that treat you, not the organization that pays the bill. Do you trust insurance companies with your health? Also, as mentioned previously, you could potentially choose to opt out of the universal coverage and provide your own.

As for the info you provided on the programs in the US for low income families, these families get much better coverage through the goverment for little to no cost as compared to what I get through my wonderful, caring insurance company. That's seriously uncool.

I have had BCBS for the last 12 years and haven't had any of those experiences. I pay EXACTLY what I agreed to pay in my contract with them. I recently had almost $200K worth of medical bills and several bills were paid by BCBS before I even got home. Meanwhile my personal doctor no longer accepts Medicare or Medicaid patients because the government always took MONTHS to pay him back for services rendered.

Ask anyone in an area that has a local government hospital if they are willing to be treated there and most people will tell you "No, HELL NO!".

That's totally true.

I bought me some really small first aid bandage crap in the States.

It's something I use to buy in Europe, of course without any prescription or coverage.

HELL it costed me 10 USD !

Exactly the same crap that's all over the world the same I am buying here for something like 50 cents...

Why do you need to make 20 times more expensive something that people use when they get hurt?

That's the ratio between healthy / supportive vs. unhealthy / crippled

You are on the right side of the weights yet, and there will hardly be enough of those who are on the other side - so it's a very clever plan how to cash in mad coin, you will always persuade enough people that you give them the best care till the ratio between happy vs. fucked is in place

Do you really don't know ANYONE who would get fucked by his insurance company?

Might someone as well have an interest in this?

Might someone as well have an interest in this?

You already kinda entrust the Gov with your health already, they tell you what foods you can eat (or allowed to import), the canning/preserve process, every drug illegal or not, meat, all of it really. They don't provide any of these directly, they regulate it.

By having universal health by the Gov will force the insurance companies to play by the rules rather than setting the rules and forcing us to play their game. Since it's an option, why not have it?

You are all arguing how to spend money we do not have.. I think its rather funny. How about we stop BORROWING money first, then decide how we can spend what we have left.

Crazy what 8 years and one nut case can do.

Speaking of differences. I was just in Amsterdam and had a cold. They told me I needed to have a prescription just to get a decongestant. Really it is not a big deal but it is funny the little differences that can really annoy you when you are used to doing things one way.

On paying $100 for $2 pills. I'm sure there are SOME like that but as a Pfizer shareholder I can only WISH they were all like that. There's DEFINITELY no 98% profit margin (again, on average).

Pfizer made $48 billion revenue last year and the cost of the goods sold was $11 billion. That may sound obscene to some of you but then out of that $37 billion in gross profit there is another $29 billion in expenses. A HUGE R&D budget for example. No pharmaceutical company can survive for long without a new drug pipeline. Old drugs come off patent all the time introducing generic competition. After that there is over $1 billion in taxes. In the end there is a 14.5% profit margin. The $100 pill, on average, costs about $85 for the company to produce when you count all the overhead. Maybe they could sell it for $95 instead.

Trust me, some of the placebos they sell are about 800 - 2000 pct. in profit..

Basically you re - pack the same stuff that was invented by Luis Pasteur and give it a new name and a nice TV commercial, and you sell that instead of for 10 USD for 200 USD.

Talk to any doctor to confirm that.. (I don't mean specifically Pfizer but in general)

Nailed it. :thumbsup

Noooooo. you guys are OHHHHHH so wrong it is not funny. That is what will amuse you.

I can't get insurance. they drug test. I smoke Weeeeed. :pimp :pimp :pimp
And my daughter was denied health insurance by Blue Cross because she was born with a heart murmur.

I pay for all our expenses out of pocket.

This topic goes multiple pages every time it's raised on the board. One example I'm always fond of posting is that of my mother who had a bad reaction to the discontinuation of a prescription med she had been on for many years. Back in 2002 she had to be hospitalized for 2 months. Tell me now, for someone in the USA who can't qualify for health care insurance (many elderly don't) how much would a 2 month stay in hospital cost? I'm talking many tests and all the trimmings.

From what I know of it it would have been over $100K.

But being that she is Canadian living in Canada, the day she was released after recieving excellent care that is equal to the level of care offered anywhere, there was NO bill, the balance owing was $0.00.

I'm sorry to you naysayers but there is simply nothing better than that. I as a Canadian don't have $300, $500 or even up to $1000 a month payments for health insurance coverage. And contrary to what a lot of people think, mostly none of whom actually live here, I am not "taxed to death" either. That is a flat-out misnomer. We Canadians pay very close to the same percentages on our income tax as people in the US do. The difference is we don't have an extra payment in the form of health insurance.

Argue with me all you want but I would not trade our system for yours for all the tea in China. Those of you saying you don't want a similar system are, quite frankly, nuts in my view. No offense, but you really shouldn't knock it until you try it.

I'm not saying ours or any universal system out there is perfect. Far from it. But I do know that if something were to happen to me tomorrow and I needed to go to emergency, that no matter what happens, surgery, CT scan, MRI, whatever... my bill at the end of it would be NOTHING.

I have no idea why anyone would want to argue against that.

Hmmm. They look pretty high to me when you combine the province + federal rate. Income over about $125k is taxed at 39-47% depending on province . Guess that's how they keep the population down in New Brunswick.

But then again, I think Californians are taxed to death. I intentionally moved to a state with no state income tax.

I don't understand what all those Canadian taxes are for. According to the Canadian Budgetary Office - and I looked this up- here are the top budgetary items.

1. Universal Healthcare
2. Molson Billboards on all roads from America (The "country" you call USA)
3. Canadian Mounties
4. Frozen Ice in Summer For Hockey Games
5. Canadian Military (Ooops, I mean "peacekeepers")
6. Standing Army in Case Quebec Secedes
7. Celsius to Fahrenheit Conversion Charts for Stupid Visiting Americans
8. Official "I hate the American Government, not the people" bumper stickers.
9 Texbooks that claim that Canadians burned DC when it was really the British
10. Free Rush concerts (well, we wish!)

Thats the gist of it right there. I'm not convinced its such a good idea to start handing more of our money to the people who have made careers out of money mismanagement. Call me crazy....

I'll consider UHC if/when the US Gov can prove they can spend money responsibly. As in never.

Main scope of what Pfizer does is not pills or other medicaments, what's more they are buying licenses for cheap meds and they are not overpricing them that much as far as I am aware. I assume they do the most of the money on medical accessories.

Hehe, you can get insurance if you smoke pot, my dad, wife, me, and all my friends would be boned many years ago if that was the case.

And just think, if you had UHC you would have only paid $100's instead of $1000's for your kids medical issues. What are you going to do if you can't afford his meds?

As I said my wifes pills are still $100's a month, without insurance it would be $1600 or so each month in pills. The same pills that we can drive to Mexico and buy for $20.

Having UHC would deregulate the medical industry, something that is very much needed.

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

You forgot a very important item:

- Feed for the moose

:)

When saying that the Canadian system has long wait times and crap like that, you need to consider that we've gone thru about 16-20 years of a really tight belt in order to take control of our deficit and national debt... It's taken a long time but as can be seen by our strong economy and dollar, the lowering of GST etc., it has really begun to pay off.. Take into account that we're pumping oil out into the world at an really high rate these days and we're doing pretty damn well up here and things will only get better.. and all of that with "free" healthcare for the masses...

Don't forget taht if you DO get seriously sick down in the US, that insurance everyone would prefer over UHC will get cancelled on you and then your fucked.

It can't be just discretionary spending. If it was then defense would be the biggest slice of the pie, and the interest on the debt wouldn't be in there. That's not "discretionary"

Something that's important to note though is that the 41% on "social services" and 19% on health care are medicare and social security combined. Those are paid for with dedicated taxes (SS actually runs a surplus currently) so that's now how your income tax dollars are apportioned.

Those items aren't "welfare" they are things that people have paid for their whole lives through dedicated payroll taxes.

Peaches is right.
Poor people have insurance, it's called medicaid.

The problem is the people in the middle, who don't work for an employer who offers health insurance, or who have a pre-existing condition and are denied coverage for that reason, etc.

Right now what happens is those people use hospital emergency rooms as their primary care vehicle.
They don't pay the bill and we're stuck with it through state and local taxes that go to hospitals.

So we're already paying for the healthcare of people who don't have insurance, we're just paying through the backdoor.
At least if we had a universal system everyone would have to contribute in some form or fashion. This way the people in the middle don't get a free ride and it's much cheaper for us to have these people visit a doctor's office regularly to get their blood pressure checked than it is to have them show up in the ER with a stroke.

The benefits of a federal system are ENORMOUS, this is why every industrialized nation in the world except the U.S. has one.
The arguments against are really nothing more than PROPAGANDA, drilled into you by right wing radio nuts and idiots like Ann Coulter.

As always I find it amusing when someone who has never lived here and isn't Canadian presumes to tell me how it is with *my* taxes. :D

Figure out what YOU pay in income tax, then add in all the money you fork over for health care insurance (include the extra you pay for your family if you have any such dependants) and then tell me who pays more. PLUS... doesn't your health care coverage only cover costs up to a certain point? I hear from certain American friends of mine that most plans only cover you up to 80%. If that's your case as well then on a $50K hospital stay you'd still be on the hook for $10K.

Please, don't even try to argue which system is better. I'm sure the USA has people in place who are smart enough to take the best of the Canadian/UK/Swedish etc systems and develop an even better system than any of them. Right?

:D

One thing we could learn from Canada.

You can have universal health care and a low overall tax burden if you don't feel the need to be the world's police officer.

If we could keep our noses out of other countries' business and not have to measure our dicks by the size and strength of our military we would be alot better off.

You could probably pay for UHC by just stopping all the pork barrel ear mark bridges to no where spending...

I'm definitely all for getting rid of earmarks, no question. I don't think that politicians should be allowed to use federal tax dollars for no reason other than to secure their own re-election.

However, that's a small fraction of our overall budget and wouldn't even put a dent in health care. :(

why people think you should have to trust your employer to purchase your health insurance is beyond me. They will never have your best intrests in mind.

Over a 25 year period that I owned my own business I paid not only for good insurance on each employee but I also paid for workers comp. Basically double insuring each worker. Now retired after paying insurance for 25 years and NEVER having a claim except cold medicine, I have a hard time finding anyone wanting to insure a guy that's 50 years old.

Why, well I'm now in a high risk age catagory. Well no shit! But what about the 25 years I paid when I wasn't? That is the sad thing about "old" people and health coverage. Most HAVE paid for it their entire lives, just never used it.

To get NO credit for the years/decades you have paid is the real crux of the problem for many.

it is a shitty situation .. But unless UHC is in place, you need to manage to keep your insurance valid from a young age till later.

But from what I understand, in the USA, the insurrer can increase the premium as he wishes, or simply cancel the coverage.

That is very scary .... I, as a canadian, and over 50, don't have to worry about this ... My healtcare is covered by my taxes.

My dad , still alive, had 2 major heart attacks ... It cost him ... nothing and he is VERY wealthy .... He is under very regular checkups, tests, ans so on ...

Yes, he paid for it thru his taxes (and still is paying taxes on his high income ) but it is worth way more then he pays ... as well as for us.

The USA spends all its money on Military it has none left to take care of its health care system. And to provide the health care system of other countries I do believe it would need to raise taxes. Hell right now its in deficit $200 billion a year just cause of wars and such, let along trying to pay for its citizens own health care.