An article about America

[TheSongsofDistantEarth]

Where's the best cutting edge technology? Here. When the shit hits the fan, where do you get the fastest and best treatment? Here. Provided your insurance will cover it, of course. I wasnt talking cheapest, I wasnt talking easiest, because dealing with insurance companies is a real pain in the ass. Exclude the huge amount of factors that the WHO includes in its statistics to make the US's numbers look relatively shitty and there's quite a different picture painted on quality and expertise.

 

But let's not muddle the point, Consequentialist thinking is part of what created this debacle

 

 

Weak, Joeblast, very weak. I expected some argument with some substance from you. And which "W.H.O. factors" are you referring to? You usually pile on loads of stats and data in your posts, can you provide some? Here's some stats for you. Hey, I know it's not fair because we're out of your zone of comfort of the climate change debate. Or you could start here.

[Seth Ananda]

Are you sure? I can't really find anything.

 

http://www.dsm5.org/ProposedRevisions/Pages/proposedrevision.aspx?rid=149

Hi Mickaelz, I am not saying that they are putting symptoms of Psychosis out side the pathology basket, not at all. Its just that If you go to a psychiatrist and tell him you are having mystical experiences, He/she will not automaticly assume that that means you are having a psychotic episode.

Currently any weird experience you might have is considered a sign of mental health Issues.

I am not sure on exact details, I heard most in the Counselling course I was doing, and some from a Gestalt therapist friend (both sources are excited about the coming changes...)

'Apparently' the compilers for DSM-5 have been extensively researching Mystical experience and its observable effects on Mental health, and Interviewing the various people who work in this Field...

There is Definitely plenty of research showing positive changes in the psyche after Mystical experience...

[TheSongsofDistantEarth]

Weak, Joeblast, very weak. I expected some argument with some substance from you. And which "W.H.O. factors" are you referring to? You usually pile on loads of stats and data in your posts, can you provide some? Here's some stats for you. Hey, I know it's not fair because we're out of your zone of comfort of the climate change debate. Or you could start here.

 

 

No answer, Joeblast? OK, I win this argument, then. USA does not have the best healthcare, not by a loong shot. There is also the very real and large problem of over-treatment, and iatrogenic disease. I have seen many an emergency medicine doc order CT scans like it's a magic window to make a diagnosis in every case, because they want to 'CYA", are lazy, are not really trained in good medical diagnostics or are overwhelmed. It's easier just to get a CT scan on most everyone. They are not benign. In adition to creating logjams, clogging the system and adding immense cost, they also cause cancer...even more so than previously thought. So just because we have fancy machines and tests, does not equal better healthcare!!!

Edited June 11, 2010 by TheSongsofDistantEarth

[Ryan T.]

No answer, Joeblast? OK, I win this argument, then. USA does not have the best healthcare, not by a loong shot. There is also the very real and large problem of over-treatment, and iatrogenic disease. I have seen many an emergency medicine doc order CT scans like it's a magic window to make a diagnosis in every case, because they want to 'CYA", are lazy, are not really trained in good medical diagnostics or are overwhelmed. It's easier just to get a CT scan on most everyone. They are not benign. In adition to creating logjams, clogging the system and adding immense cost, they also cause cancer...even more so than previously thought. So just because we have fancy machines and tests, does not equal better healthcare!!!

 

Now my experiences are strictly anecdotal but...

 

It has been my experience with every ER doc that I have seen or known that they only do tests that they feel is necessary to rule out any/everything that cannot be be gathered from history, incident or talking with the patient. It should also be understood that anyone accepted into an ER is accepted under the assumption that they are having an actual emergency. Bringing up ERs in the context of quality healthcare is strictly belt-lining.

 

And your characterization of ER doctors as being lazy or not having good diagnostic skills is ridiculous! Overwhelmed perhaps. Our doctors are still in the top tier for training in all the world. Period. Systemically things in healthcare are not nearly as good as they could be and in some cases things are downright terrible. I see it more as a failing of the insurance side of things than of the medicine itself.

 

But again, to bring up anything regarding ERs in the healthcare debate misses the forest for the trees!

[TheSongsofDistantEarth]

Now my experiences are strictly anecdotal but...

 

It has been my experience with every ER doc that I have seen or known that they only do tests that they feel is necessary to rule out any/everything that cannot be be gathered from history, incident or talking with the patient. It should also be understood that anyone accepted into an ER is accepted under the assumption that they are having an actual emergency. Bringing up ERs in the context of quality healthcare is strictly belt-lining.

 

And your characterization of ER doctors as being lazy or not having good diagnostic skills is ridiculous! Overwhelmed perhaps. Our doctors are still in the top tier for training in all the world. Period. Systemically things in healthcare are not nearly as good as they could be and in some cases things are downright terrible. I see it more as a failing of the insurance side of things than of the medicine itself.

 

But again, to bring up anything regarding ERs in the healthcare debate misses the forest for the trees!

 

My experiences are not anecdotal, I have extensive experience in the medical field.

 

I think that if I were in a serious emergency situation, I would want to have an excellent tertiary care hospital e.r. to go to, sure. And not some rinky dink suburban or rural e.r. But I can also tell you stories of wasteful and expensive over treatment in academic hospitals, and really shitty, uncaring medicine at places like Mayo.

 

Trust me, I know what I'm talking about on this.

Edited June 11, 2010 by TheSongsofDistantEarth

[Ryan T.]

Trust me, I know what I'm talking about on this.

 

And it definitely sounds like you do.

 

But generalizations about "excessive, unneeded scans in ERs" take the problems of the overall healthcare system out of focus and fail to recognize the merits of our system.

 

Again, I don't say there aren't issues like you mention.

 

I just think the larger issues have to do with insurance companies and ,more importantly, the general public's lack of understanding of health and how behavior affects health. They also have no concept of cost either.

 

Why does a 24 healthy young man who "hurt his neck while weightlifting" on a Saturday think that it is appropriate to be at the ER a second time the following Wednesday? Does he not have insurance? Does he not understand what EMERGENCY ROOM means? Does he not have a regular doctor because his insurance switches every two years? By entering that environment with those types of complaints he is going to receive thousands of dollars in tests and services. We have a tremendously high level to the quality of our care in the United States. Some just get more than they need and others get none.

[Encephalon]

And it definitely sounds like you do.

 

But generalizations about "excessive, unneeded scans in ERs" take the problems of the overall healthcare system out of focus and fail to recognize the merits of our system.

 

Again, I don't say there aren't issues like you mention.

 

I just think the larger issues have to do with insurance companies and ,more importantly, the general public's lack of understanding of health and how behavior affects health. They also have no concept of cost either.

 

Why does a 24 healthy young man who "hurt his neck while weightlifting" on a Saturday think that it is appropriate to be at the ER a second time the following Wednesday? Does he not have insurance? Does he not understand what EMERGENCY ROOM means? Does he not have a regular doctor because his insurance switches every two years? By entering that environment with those types of complaints he is going to receive thousands of dollars in tests and services. We have a tremendously high level to the quality of our care in the United States. Some just get more than they need and others get none.

 

This has been the main argument for years; the finest health care technology in the world, and one of the worst healthcare delivery systems in the world.

But where would we be without a thriving insurance company making choices about delivery?

[joeblast]

Weak, Joeblast, very weak. I expected some argument with some substance from you. And which "W.H.O. factors" are you referring to? You usually pile on loads of stats and data in your posts, can you provide some? Here's some stats for you. Hey, I know it's not fair because we're out of your zone of comfort of the climate change debate. Or you could start here.

yeah, that first like is essentially reflective of biases not indicative of any issue with healthcare quality but with the finance model and lesser extent delivery (but by virtue of the finance model,) one size fits all issues, outlying circumstances that have little to do with healthcare delivery. and no stats? I'd rather not wind up turning this into a homework review with citations when the homework's already been done and handed in, if I must then I will, but as necessary.

 

the % of GDP simply means that we're a richer nation and we have more discretionary funds to spend on...hm, "keeping ourselves healthier." if you had extra money and spending some to keep yourself healthier, make yourself live longer, enjoy more of a quality of life...that's somehow bad?

and the mortality ratios - of course you know that's simply damn statistics - cull back the data a bit to exclude things "healthcare" has little to no effect on (murders, for one example) and the numbers will change. to tout that around as some justification for a single payer system is just disingenuous - just come out and say that you want a socialist revolution so that the government can take over this that and the other thing all in the name of doing good for all and making the market run well (aka f*kn over business owners of all sizes. for a more extreme example, look at how dismal venezuela is doing, nationalizing just about everything in its borders...its growth engine is so stalled if it werent for the oil money, chavez would have been publicly hung long ago.)

 

in a serious emergency medical issue, you're going to get help. a chronic one you may not, but that is not reflective of quality of care - its reflective of a horridly structured payment model where costs have been too far removed from the end user, setting the stage for costs to explode because people arent paying for what they're using! they're just tossing a big lump of money at an amorphous set of 'services' - look at places that have it set up that a provider *has* to provide an inordinately large swath of services, regardless of if they're used or not - like massachusetts - and combined with requirement and another factor or two, costs just explode because you cant have your cake and eat it too...or, you cant have your capitalism and regulate the flying shit out of it to try and make a market behave like you want it to. a similar thing is going on with college costs and the federal parachute on loans for it - that's the very reason that people have been sitting in the background clicking the + button on tuition repeatedly with nobody really taking much notice - and now we're at the point where a college education is costing as much as a home!

 

 

as to the CYA medicine, you can thank trial lawyers and the degeneration of the concept of insurance for that. I know all about CYA as well, its ridiculous, but really, when a patient knnows he can sue for a crapload of money for the slightest little screwup, that is also in and of itself a distortion of the marketplace.

 

its laughable seeing people try to say "the free market has failed" - anyone who says that doesnt understand what a free market is or how overregulation and coercion can distort the market to enough of an extent that it seems like the free market has a problem. so yeah, the fix for busted capitalism is...more capitalism, capitalism proper, really - or the fix is no capitalism, government owns it all. but we all know that's not what this country was founded on, it was founded on the former even though some parties are hellbent on making it the latter, i.e. fundamentally transforming the country away from its roots and making it into a place based on political structures that pretty much everyone sought to get away from in coming here in the first place!!!

 

there's certainly appropriate amounts of regulation for certain things - but when you keep screwing with people's bottom lines - wait for the second dip in the recession come 2011 when all of the extra taxes kick in and you'll see that the recovery of 2010 was merely everyone trying to get their business in before the government's grab gets bigger.

[Ya Mu]

yeah, that first like is essentially reflective of biases not indicative of any issue with healthcare quality but with the finance model and lesser extent delivery (but by virtue of the finance model,) one size fits all issues, outlying circumstances that have little to do with healthcare delivery. and no stats? I'd rather not wind up turning this into a homework review with citations when the homework's already been done and handed in, if I must then I will, but as necessary.

 

the % of GDP simply means that we're a richer nation and we have more discretionary funds to spend on...hm, "keeping ourselves healthier." if you had extra money and spending some to keep yourself healthier, make yourself live longer, enjoy more of a quality of life...that's somehow bad?

and the mortality ratios - of course you know that's simply damn statistics - cull back the data a bit to exclude things "healthcare" has little to no effect on (murders, for one example) and the numbers will change. to tout that around as some justification for a single payer system is just disingenuous - just come out and say that you want a socialist revolution so that the government can take over this that and the other thing all in the name of doing good for all and making the market run well (aka f*kn over business owners of all sizes. for a more extreme example, look at how dismal venezuela is doing, nationalizing just about everything in its borders...its growth engine is so stalled if it werent for the oil money, chavez would have been publicly hung long ago.)

 

in a serious emergency medical issue, you're going to get help. a chronic one you may not, but that is not reflective of quality of care - its reflective of a horridly structured payment model where costs have been too far removed from the end user, setting the stage for costs to explode because people arent paying for what they're using! they're just tossing a big lump of money at an amorphous set of 'services' - look at places that have it set up that a provider *has* to provide an inordinately large swath of services, regardless of if they're used or not - like massachusetts - and combined with requirement and another factor or two, costs just explode because you cant have your cake and eat it too...or, you cant have your capitalism and regulate the flying shit out of it to try and make a market behave like you want it to. a similar thing is going on with college costs and the federal parachute on loans for it - that's the very reason that people have been sitting in the background clicking the + button on tuition repeatedly with nobody really taking much notice - and now we're at the point where a college education is costing as much as a home!

 

 

as to the CYA medicine, you can thank trial lawyers and the degeneration of the concept of insurance for that. I know all about CYA as well, its ridiculous, but really, when a patient knnows he can sue for a crapload of money for the slightest little screwup, that is also in and of itself a distortion of the marketplace.

 

its laughable seeing people try to say "the free market has failed" - anyone who says that doesnt understand what a free market is or how overregulation and coercion can distort the market to enough of an extent that it seems like the free market has a problem. so yeah, the fix for busted capitalism is...more capitalism, capitalism proper, really - or the fix is no capitalism, government owns it all. but we all know that's not what this country was founded on, it was founded on the former even though some parties are hellbent on making it the latter, i.e. fundamentally transforming the country away from its roots and making it into a place based on political structures that pretty much everyone sought to get away from in coming here in the first place!!!

 

there's certainly appropriate amounts of regulation for certain things - but when you keep screwing with people's bottom lines - wait for the second dip in the recession come 2011 when all of the extra taxes kick in and you'll see that the recovery of 2010 was merely everyone trying to get their business in before the government's grab gets bigger.

 

I agree with you about the CYA. Lawsuits have physicians scared to not do every test in the book. And "standard of care" has it so everyone gets antibiotics when they are not needed - just think if little Suzie doesn't get the antibiotic, gets a littel better but then develops a severe problem, Mom doesn't take her back to see the doctor, she gets worse and winds up in the hospital or dies. BAM - LAWSUIT. I am not fond of the words "standard of care".

 

I am not so sure of your other statements. I have seen plenty of real screw-ups and general incompetency in the hospital. I think I have posted these before. Also, I used to teach a 4th med student survey class on Chinese Medicine. Also a nurse practitioner program. WOW - if people only knew how unprepared those poor souls are to be thrown into real medicine. It is only after they have been practicing for a year or so that they even have a clue. The human body doesn't present just like the textbooks. So at teaching hospitals what do you have? A fresh resident slave laborer who has not slept in 40 hours working the ER or doing just about everything. Very scary. So MUCH room for improvement.

 

I do not really know how this compares with other countries other than China. What was so impressive about the hospitals in China was that you had a western style department with the equivalent (and not unlikely actual) of Harvard trained physicians but alongside there would be an acupuncture department, a tui na department, and a medical qigong department. This, IMO, is SO SO SO much better a system.

 

Our health care system in the USA IS broken, I see it everyday. Working with a stroke patient right now who can't get rehabilitation services because he has no insurance. Are you saying this person does not deserve care? He is incapacitated and unable to work. Perhaps we should just get a large meat grinder for those folks? That would solve the problem - serve it at luncheons for special interest lobbyists. They can then go home fat and happy. And we could add all the middle income people who are now bankrupt because someone in the family got sick and the exorbitant medical bills can't be paid. Yes, our healthcare system does need a complete overhaul. Is it really better than other countries? I really doubt it.

[nac]

The American healthcare system is fucked up, true, but the overall standard of living can't be that bad since the US ranks 13th (and falling) in the HDI list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Development_Index

 

There's no point trying to run away IMO. You'll probably find the rest of the world just as lame and idiotic, only in different ways. As Genkaku used to say "wherever you go, there you are."

[joeblast]

Definitely plenty of docs that have the paper but not troubleshooting skills. Its just like any other industry, whether you're looking for a general contractor, a computer tech...some people excel where others struggle, though they may have identical "credentials" between them. The situation you describe with rubes having to get in there and do a lot is simple reflective of there not being enough well trained docs available - and with what's in the new healthcare bill that's only going to exacerbate this particular issue, since they are making it less and less profitable to get a medical degree and practice. (Kinda like when I looked into some acupuncture schools...what I saw was 60k-160k in expenses...f that)

 

The thing about subsidies is that they are so vastly overused that its a big overall burden. If the payment structure jived well with the the delivery model, if people saw more of the costs upfront so that they're paying for what they're using, many of the financial issues wouldnt be there. I know there's plenty of dissimilarities between healthcare and car care, but there is where catastrophic is used (relatively) properly and the maintenance is up front costs. (Of course with the up front costs I'd support them being tax free for medical stuff.)

 

Of course there's always that "poor johnny over here, does he not deserve to receive care" that can be used as an example - but if this is to be fixed the entire paradigm needs to be fixed - and here's where people disagree on how to move forward. The governmental takeover option will ram widespread change through more quickly, but at a cost in robustness, quality - and when all of these expenses are heaped on to the deficit or whomever's ass the money is going to get pulled from - sooner or later its just going to be a matter of rationing, because the government is only quasi "accountable" in the amorphous land of the ballot box and nowhere else, their bottom line is only the dollar. At least private companies can far more easily have their feet held to the fire on delivering what they say they're going to deliver - you can take your money elsewhere, when the competition is there. Thus everyone wins when there is proper choice & competition.

And we certainly cant say there's good competition in the healthcare industry right now, fragmented as it is - I was thinking last time I did my insurance enrollment that geez - how much would this all cost if I had fifty, a hundred choices instead of two? So the "solution" put forth from the morons in charge isnt interested in saving costs or making care better or more available in the least, because that huge stack of paper wont do it in any way, shape or form. The 'solution' put forth is a spontaneous repopulation of the healthcare landscape, transforming it into another government entity (or collection of such.)

[Thunder_Gooch]

I had a reaction to antibiotics I was prescribed and was forced, as in against my will to go to the hospital by authorities who deemed it in my best interest. I still owe in excess of $10,000 USD that I'm paying $10 a month on. They can force you to have treatment, then force you to pay for it.

 

I think we have "acceptable" quality of medical care, but no one can afford it unless they are rich or upper middle class. I really don't see how the new health care reform forcing us all to carry private insurance we couldn't afford to begin with solves anything at all.

[joeblast]

the entire point of putting so much pressure on the private companies is to collapse the private market so that the government must step in to provide - "the healthcare bill" is really nothing more than a trojan horse for that. plain as day!

[Vanir Thunder Dojo Tan]

To america i say goodbye. Let the homeless revolution take place. no longer do we pay tribute to our kings, for we are our own kings. no longer do we sign over our time and lives to corporate contracts, for our time and lives belong to our selves!

 

 

Let the bum revolution take the place of the monarchs of economics, the corporate kings and queens to be beheaded, congress to be tried for treason.

 

 

WE the PEOPLE of the WORLD are SOVEREIGN IN THE EYES OF GOD and NO AUTHORITY EXISTS to deprive u of that without our prior consent.

 

 

Let us WALK this path now, and not just speak it.

I cannot make change alone, but i will continue to walk this path in example of the change that could be made.

[Ya Mu]

the entire point of putting so much pressure on the private companies is to collapse the private market so that the government must step in to provide - "the healthcare bill" is really nothing more than a trojan horse for that. plain as day!

So what is your answer to the runaway corporations - insurance companies, health organizations, which have taken profit to such an extreme that regular middle class citizens, not to mention the poor, have been kicked out of their homes because they can't pay their medical bills? You don't like government stepping in - so what is your answer? The CEO of your insurance company needs a new yacht for his wife so she can have her own. At the expense of everyone else. The CEO of your hospital NEEDS another new house on the coast, heck, three is not enough.

The bottom line is that corporate America has gone the way of intense greed and our government has been supporting this for quite some time now. Yes, joeblast BOTH parties have done this to extreme, looking out only for special interests.

[DalTheJigsaw123]

Such an awesome thread!

I say, focus solidly on yourself...

Become an Urban Monk...

That is what I'm working towards.

Balance all with nothingness...

[Thunder_Gooch]

Just a note Canadians don't pay higher income tax rates than Americans.

[Non]

where can we go? I really want to GTFO.. but I have no money and stuff. Maybe I can see about studying abroad?

 

What's a good place to go?

[Thunder_Gooch]

where can we go? I really want to GTFO.. but I have no money and stuff. Maybe I can see about studying abroad?

 

What's a good place to go?

 

Non,

 

Canada would probably be the easiest but if martial law were ever declared we'd just invade them and annex them as they couldn't really put up a fight anyway. Other than Canada you are not getting out unless you are rich, have a highly in demand skill set, and are fluent in your destination country's language. My advice is do lots of research on highly paid jobs in the medical field, learn their language, go back to school for your profession and then try after working several years and saving up a large amount of money to help you actually get there. Oh and I hear Norway is pretty nice, except they have crazy vitamin laws where you have to have Rx for even common food extracts like green tea, or cinnamon or anything in a pill lol.

Edited June 14, 2010 by More_Pie_Guy

[markern]

Non,

 

Canada would probably be the easiest but if martial law were ever declared we'd just invade them and annex them as they couldn't really put up a fight anyway. Other than Canada you are not getting out unless you are rich, have a highly in demand skill set, and are fluent in your destination country's language. My advice is do lots of research on highly paid jobs in the medical field, learn their language, go back to school for your profession and then try after working several years and saving up a large amount of money to help you actually get there. Oh and I hear Norway is pretty nice, except they have crazy vitamin laws where you have to have Rx for even common food extracts like green tea, or cinnamon or anything in a pill lol.

 

 

On a system level Norway is the oposite of america in the sense that you have free healthcare, free univeristy education and you get real suport if you are disabled etc. But it is still a capitalist country with large differences in salaries and fortunes etc. However, income disparity is much less and our levels of poverty are much less and as poor you are still better of in loads of ways. On a cultural level you will notice that the same basics are there with mass consumerism, advertizement etc. We are not Buthan! However, this is counterbalanced by the government paying for tv and radio stations that broadcast stuff that does not have a market big enough to suport it but is still viewed or listenned to by many and is found valuable such as arty Spanish or French movies or documentaries about Hemmingway or Ghana. And people read A LOT more newspapers and are generally informed about international events. That does not mean that most people still aren`t idiots in that regard.

 

As a people we are quite shy and reserved. Making friends is much easier in the US but when people open up to you they really open up and it is very real and you don`t suddenly find that your firends weren`t your friends. And if someone actually gives you a compliment it is very genuine but don`t hope to get too many of them. We are very real in these regards. Emotionally we are the oposite of Italians. We like to supress emotions and not talk about them to much. We`re a bit stiff. We have more casual sex than most people and women have much more sexual freedom. The distribution of household chores is more even than most places. Men tend to take a few months of paternity leave to spend alone with the children during the first year after birth. It is said Scandinavia was the last place Christianity came and the first place it went. We are very secular. Still we have all the same religious nuts less than most others. We drink little on weekdays and get drunk in the weekends.

 

Norwergians are immanent and not transcendent. If you can`t see it, touch it and preferable measure it and use it for something mundane then it certainly is not real or relevant in any way. In a cultural more than religous sense we are VERY protestant in our mindset, kind of pious in a way. We don`t like to stick out. We are very un-californian. If you stick out we think you have a big ego and that you think you are better than us and we will try to peg you down a notch. We are VERY egalitarian. We never had a real aristocracy and it shows. In general I find a lot less of Really bad behaviour than I have found in say England or India. The type of contempt I could see some englishmen display towards each other is almost unheard of here. The way a servant or anyone of a lower cast in India is treated is unthinkable here. On the other hand I Don`t find as much of the really good behaviour I see some other places. You Don`t find the extreeme hospitallity and warmth you might find in Syria for example. We are more middle of the road.

 

Stuff generally works. Governemnt, schools, infrastructure always fairly well run. There is little corruption. We like to be in nature. Nature here is quite beutifull and there is a LOT of it. Kind of like a scaled down Alaska. It is a bit boring here. Oslo only have about 500 000 citizens and it is the largest city. To me it has just enough to offer for me not to move but not enough to make me enthusiastic. We are extreemely anti eltisit, quite anti intelectual and a bit provincial. We are very NOT French. We are not very polite but we mean well we just don`t know how to behave very well (never had an aristocracy just farmers). Our Unions, our organisation for buisnisess and the government cooperate quite smoothly. Cross country skiing is our national sport. We are very proud of having had the first men on the south and north pole. If you take up cross country skiing we will love you. We have a king. We like him, but not so much. Our prince married a single mother that partied way too much and everyone knew had done lots of coke and that had a drunked father on welfare and we are almost OK with it. She`s been good though. Our other princess the princes brother has become a new age nut and is teaching how to come into contact with your personal angel (they aparently tend to smell of roses). We are NOT too happy about that.

 

I don`t think there is any norse alchemy that is real left and although we have few laps living in the north I think what is left of their shamanism is low level and quite empty.

 

We have quite a few americans working here. I don`t think it is very difficult for you but you need to find a job first probably and for the most part have some skills we need. If you have an MBA or something it should be quite easy to get a job that can get you here but I am embarassed to say I have no idea what the rules are.

If any of you come here I will try to help you out a bit and I know a couple of good teachers of meditation, qigong, tai chi and yoga.

[joeblast]

So what is your answer to the runaway corporations - insurance companies, health organizations, which have taken profit to such an extreme that regular middle class citizens, not to mention the poor, have been kicked out of their homes because they can't pay their medical bills? You don't like government stepping in - so what is your answer? The CEO of your insurance company needs a new yacht for his wife so she can have her own. At the expense of everyone else. The CEO of your hospital NEEDS another new house on the coast, heck, three is not enough.

The bottom line is that corporate America has gone the way of intense greed and our government has been supporting this for quite some time now. Yes, joeblast BOTH parties have done this to extreme, looking out only for special interests.

Well, perhaps the biggest reasons these 'runaway corporations' exist is because of a distorted market - aka not a really freely competitive market where prices actually reflect real value. Of course subsidies for the poor or otherwise severely disadvantaged must exist; I'm not saying we need to dissolve medicare or anything like that, but whenever sufficient competition exists then the net effect is that people get more value for what they're paying for. On the other hand, when excessive regulations inhibit the creation of new companies or cause the end user to buy things he doesnt need; when market and regulatory structure remove up front costs from the end user, you wind up with the people behind the scenes taking advantage of that "obscuring of prices" to artificially drive them up.

 

Special interests are ruining the game for everyone else - but its both private and public sector - for instance, the largest growth in the millionaires category is firemen, teachers, cops who will be pulling in their full salary until expiration thanks to union grease.

 

So in reality, most if not all of the things that could have been done to drive down healthcare costs were left off the table for the appeasement of D special interests - which include people that think simply having the government take over the whole thing is the best option. No moving towards lifting the state barriers for selling healthcare insurance, leaving tort reform off the table, expanding use of tax free HSAs and the like or simply designating healthcare products to be tax free...those and more could have been brought up but were laughably omitted as they "wouldnt save any money" - instead we're ostensibly 'left' with our "leaders" running towards the opposite end zone with respect to how the country was founded.

[gendao]

I really don't see how the new health care reform forcing us all to carry private insurance we couldn't afford to begin with solves anything at all.

Well, it will help insurance companies & Big Pharma rake in far more profits now that another 30 million people will be forced to get insurance & use their meds.

 

Remember, the AMA will do all the medical condition coding under Obamacare - which will then all have prescribed Big Pharma "solutions."

1. HCFA shall adopt and use [the AMA's] CPT-4 in connection with HCPCS, for the purpose of reporting physicians' services under Medicare and Medicaid. HCFA agrees not to use any other system of procedure nomenclature in HCPCS for reporting physicians' services.

 

Under this initial provision, the AMA thereby grabs a monopoly over the government-imposed coding standards for physicians.

 

The AMA declares on its Web site that the AMA "generates approximately two-thirds of its annual $200 million operating budget from non-dues sources." Of that $133 million in non-dues revenue, the AMA's publication revenue, including sales of those expensive CPT code books, is its most prominent source.

One of the glaring problems with the CPT coding system is that it does not offer codes for many alternative and holistic medical treatments, which means a practitioner cannot bill them through insurance companies or government health programs.

 

Additionally, the CPT system is copyrighted and controlled by the AMA, which updates the codes annually and requires practitioners to purchase updated software, books and manuals each year as well.

 

This medical coding system generates income of $70 million to $100 million annually for the AMA, according to the Wall Street Journal, which explains why they are so adamant to maintain the status quo in the health care realm.

 

They need Americans to continue to rely on health insurance, and they also need physicians to depend on billing them. Without that, the AMA would fall apart at the seams, probably rather quickly.

 

So a health care bill that mandates health insurance coverage for nearly all Americans is a dream come true for the AMA.

 

The AMA Has Long Supported Drug Companies While Denouncing Natural Medicine

Canada would probably be the easiest but if martial law were ever declared we'd just invade them and annex them as they couldn't really put up a fight anyway. Other than Canada you are not getting out unless you are rich, have a highly in demand skill set, and are fluent in your destination country's language.

Good luck trying to become a citizen there, anyways.

 

The reason why Socialism works reasonably fairly there is because they run it like a gated country club & keep out all the leeches. They have a VERY tough immigration policy that makes becoming an actual citizen there like getting accepted to grad school.

 

Aside from a few political refugees, they basically only want skilled workers, professionals & entrepreneurs.

 

Unless you can support yourself and maybe some others too - they are very careful to keep you OUT. Otherwise, their welfare system would collapse like ours.

 

For example, if you are applying as a "skilled worker" - you must already be pre-employed or extremely employable. You must also show that you have enough money to support yourself and your dependants after you arrive in Canada. Basically, you must prove that you will be a productive contributor to their system, not drain.

Edited June 14, 2010 by vortex

[Enishi]

where can we go? I really want to GTFO.. but I have no money and stuff. Maybe I can see about studying abroad?

 

What's a good place to go?

 

If you have ESL (english second language) certification there's lots of countries that you can go to.

Edited June 14, 2010 by Enishi