[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqMKK8AoLCw 450 300]
(Alternate Title: Jake Takes “Insert the Name of Well Meaning if Confused Obamacare Supporter Here”) …
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In case you were wondering about the cast:
Jake = Smirky Yuppy
D’Peez = Confused Hippy
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Oh yeah right…right out of the neocon playbook Jake…When you can’t have an intelligent conversation with facts, use fear tactics. Typical right-wing nut job.
: /
p.s. that’s just how i imagine dpz, though a tad shorter and a couple of mustard stains on his tee.
Double-standard alert!
Please note, your video compares nationalized healthcare to the DMV (a service provided by the government) and a restaurant that only serves 1 kind of food (like a soup kitchen, I suppose?).
Yet I was lambasted for drawing a parallel to police/fire, both of which are socialized services.
Obviously, both of the comparisons were exaggerated for the sake of making a point.
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Since we live in a country where the rule of law reigns supreme, effectively everything we do in life is in one way or another governed by politicians. You’re already under “government rule”. You may write your checks to your HMO/PPO nowadays (and/or funnel your pre-tax deductions to your HSA/FSA)…but that’s still what the government, in all it’s wiseness, decided for you. So crying about how they’re “interfering” in your private decision to choose your own health care is a wee bit ludicrous.
But taking out these ‘middle-men’ just might save you, your doctors, and your government millions in overhead, unnecessary paperwork, and time wasted following esoteric insurance claim procedures.
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DMG, stop brown-nosing Jake. You don’t have to keep on fetching that stick and wagging your tail in his direction. Go get your own treats.
I don’t particularly wish to get drawn into a fight, especially one that is not my own. However, I would suggest prudence before attacking middlemen of any variety. Government, most notably centralised government, rarely has any care for efficiency while middlemen, on fixed budgets, give it meticulous care.
We are not just talking about some purportedly greedy businessman here looking to cut off a chemo’ child for quick profit. Such generalizations are foolish.
The ranks of middlemen include the likes of actuaries and mathematicians who spend their lives attempting to streamline the system. Do you propose that any government worker, even one not driven by political expediency, could do better?
Mark my words, national healthcare will lead to broad(er) deficits and further shortages of men and women looking to enter the general medicine practices. Besides, we don’t need these programs here, for they exist everywhere else in the world. If Americans truly desire free healthcare, then let my countrymen emigrate to Canada, Europe, Asia, or South America. We remain one of the only places on Earth that is unique in this respect.
Strike a nerve, mustard-teezy?
Listen, Peez, you’re from a communist country, so I don’t mind being a little more patient with the tutorial.
But let me start by saying that it strikes me that you do not yet have a firm grasp on the American state, it’s founding documents, and who actually “governs” as the sovereign. It’s really quite unique in the world.
Second, let me explain, in clearer detail, why your “police analogy” makes no sense, especially in comparison to a more typical bureaucracy like your local DMV. You see, here in America, and in most of the free world prior to the advent of WWII, the role of the government is/was much more traditionally defined along classical precepts — that is the government was a protector of rights, but not a usurper of them. In the case of police and fire forces, these were necessary municipal agencies (and national in the case of the defense forces) that protected the people, and maintained the rule of law so that free people could transact freely without the imposition of outside authoritarian (read criminal) forces to sully that natural intercourse.
In the case of the US, the sovereign rights of the individual — that’s right it’s the person who is the sovereign in this country, not a king or President, or other government authority– were even more clearly defined, hence our long standing reluctance to impose more than the necessary (ie, DMV) civilian bureaucracies onto the populace.
I know it’s far more regimented in Eastern Europe, which had a tradition not only of the Soviet collective archetype, but before that the Prussian authoritarianism and civil service traditions. Much of Europe NEVER had true freedom in the sense that we enjoy it here in the US. That’s what I mean when I say you would not understand the difference. It’s not that I don’t know you didn’t break free of Soviet-ear communism, it’s just that I also know the roots of civilian control go far deeper than that brief post war history.
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As for your comments about PPO’s etc — you make my argument. Do you think that MORE goverrnment control is going to make those quasi-gov’t bodies better? They were just the first step down the pathway to serfdom… we certainly should not compound that error that started with Medicare and Medicaid.
This is what I don’t understand. You of all people should understand the horrors of choiceless, uncaring, authoritarian government control, and yet you support it in this case.
Baffling, frankly.
“This is what I don’t understand. You of all people should understand the horrors of choiceless, uncaring, authoritarian government control, and yet you support it in this case.”
You are indeed right. I do have personal experience with socialism, and I do hate communism/socialism as practiced in the Soviet Bloc. HOWEVER, that doesn’t make me blind to one of its few good aspects, namely universal health care. I’ve have SEEN it in action, I have SEEN it work, and I can tell you FIRST HAND that it worked much better than the HMO/PPO HSA/FSA bullshit I have to go through here.
I think we agree that the PPO’s/etc. medicare/aid are a half-assed solution. They need to go away…but unlike you, I think we need to take the full step towards socialized healthcare, rather than completely private healthcare.
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I do have a firm grasp of the founding principles of my adopted country…but as you’ve noticed yourself we’ve been slowly moving away from them. Bigger government/more control/taking power away from states/etc/etc. You look at this as a bad thing…and it may be so. However, you and yours and all your fellow citizens (and generations back) ELECTED the people who have slowly instituted these changes.
And perhaps the principles of 200+ years ago need some updating…
And I’m not arguing that ‘big(ger)’ government is what we should strive for…get the damn politicians out of my economy, but let them make sure that I can always go to the doctor, whether it’s for a routine appointment, a walk-in (with an expected/associated wait), or an emergency…regardless of my social and economic status.
Afterall, isn’t the most basic aim of medical care also to “protect” (the life of) the people?
The question is — what is the best way to “protect” the people.
First, recognize that the whole PPO/HMO construct was a government invention, and in fact our very method of paying for health insurance today resulted from GOVERNMENT wage and price controls instituted during WWII, which cause great problems in our labour (sic) markets because no one could offer competitive wage increases to obtain employees. The “benefits package” including rudimentary health insurance, was just another “unintended consequence” of poor thinking.
You see Peez, we’ve found that here in the US, things work a lot better when people are allowed to make millions of individual choices per day. Each of these choices is another piece of information for the market to absorb and therefore help tailor a better solution.
When a governmental body interferes with the workings of a market, much like when a rock is placed in the middle of the stream, the stream changes course, oftentimes to a less efficient pathway. So you see, when the market has to respond to a government edict, as in Medicare’s takeover of pricing policies, those prices that are not directly impacted by Medicare (ie, the private system) get further and further out of wack trying to accomodate the artificial structure impeding the flow.
You do not “protect” people in a healthcare environment by delaying care, and that is the SINGLE unifying result across all socialized medicine experiments since WWII. Supply diminishes as demand overwhelms, and you have long lines for simple procedures, and dangerous delays for more serious ones.
That’s not “protecting” anyone, that’s “harming.”
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I already said that about PPO/HMO. It being a government invention. Not a fan. It’s a shitty system as it’s just a half-ass solution to the problem.
The best way to protect people is to take the profit factor out their protection.
It’s tough to step away from the “market controls everything/the market is the only thing that matters” thinking (this is a systemic problem across iBC and yes, I realize this is stock market website and that we’re a ‘market economy’), but our citizens’ health is not something that should be openly traded based on profit/loss.
Instead, it is the government’s duty to ensure that all of its citizens get the necessary protections and social benefits that they require (not just the ones that can afford it). And this includes medicine (along with police/fire protection, education, etc.).
Even a multi-payer system, as in Germany (with all of its inherent problems), is better than this “health-care is a privilege not a right” nonsense that we have here…
Another important question – which is better, delayed care or DENIED care?! (Note, both are exceptions to the rule in their respective systems.) Sob stories can be found on both sides, but it certainly seems that stories about delays in (non-emergency) care are not as bad as stories about being denied treatment (and/or insurance/reimbursement) for all manner of ailments.
Ohh, now we see the violence inherent in the system!
Help, help, I’m being moderated!
WHat?
Sorry about the moderation thing — I have no control over the program randomly doing that, but if you yell out, I’ll see it in the comments and pull it back.
As to my response:
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Peez — that’s ridiculous. When has taking the “profit factor” out ever helped anyone? You realize it was the Soviets hatred of the “profit factor” that gave you your childhood in slavery to their gray world?
Again, I really worry about your understanding of how the economy works. What is true about every industry is also true of the health care industry.
Without a profit motive, there is zero incentive for investment, and there is greatly reduced interest from an employment standpoint.
Without capital investment, the entire system grinds to a halt. So can we at least agree that you would be killing off the innovative engine that keeps the globe’s healthcare systems from imploding, and from healthcare worldwide from devolving to a lesser standard?
Never mind a less standard of care — I think I’ve already addressed, numerous times, that the delays — to anybody — in the US system, even those under more gov’t controls, are still shorter than those delays in full gov’t systems like in Europe and Canada.
So basically you are saying — take profits out of the equation. Do not give biotech investors seeking to make a profit that opportunity. Boom, no investment in biotech save that which is (politically) chosen by the government.
The millions of voices are narrowed to one — that of the central gov’t. And the waiting, and the bureaucracy and poltical entanglements entailed.
All medical procedural and device work — gone, save for that which is blessed by the gov’t, by some poltiically oriented group, again with all the delays above described.
All the best and the brightest willing to sacrifice ten years of their lives to become the best doctors the world provides… not all, but many of them gone.
This is all because you are offended by a profit motive that keeps the rest of the world free and interacting without violence thanks to the beauty of mutually advantageous trade?
Seriously — and I say this with all due respect — you need to really rethink what you think you are fixing, and put your mind to that which you are ruining.
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I don’t think the comment system like more than 1 or 2 sets of bold tags. Just my guess…
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Noone’s taking away biotech or any of that private industry.
I’m only talking about nationalizing the “providers” of health care..the points of contact with the customers, aka. the citizens. Backend profits by the supporting industries, such as biotech development, can and will be made.
To think that research and development by private companies will stop just because we nationalize hospitals/health care is a rather limited point-of-view, imo. Plenty of cutting edge development takes place in Europe, for example, where, due to a more relaxed set of approval requirements, one might argue that it’s even _more_ on the cutting edge. But that’s a slightly different issue…
So yes, the biotechs might have to deal with the government more often, so they may have to change their business strategies (although, aren’t they doing this with the FDA already?)…but that isn’t really any different from say, defense contractors or fire engine manufacturers who do business like that every single day, yet still managed to produce best-in-the-world-class products? The companies with quality products will make money and will have no problem attracting investment…just like today!
And again, I’m not advocating a Soviet-style communist economy. Just nationalized health-care, which really isn’t even their idea, even though it was part of their system.
Peez, let’s get real — 90% of all new drugs, and a substantially significantly higher percentage of all new medical devices come out of the United States.
That’s not because we have bigger brains than other people (although we certainly create brain drains in other countries), but because we have a free market system that will invest in and create a market driven innovative product.
When your end user becomes one customer, there is significant disincentive to invest. Why? For one thing, the actual products become politicized: Why are you buying that drug from Wisconsin when my company in Jersey needs to keep these jobs?
For another thing, the one customer gets to set the prices, and take the decisions on what avenues of research will be followed, and paid for. In a free market system millions of different negotiatiors get to take those decisions and investment capital is therefore most efficiently utilized. In the case of “well, we’re not sure if the gov’t is going to like it, talk to Senator X,” etc., investors will say — fuck it, I’m putting my capital to use in a more certain market.
Yes, US drug firms send their drugs to Europe first, thanks to “relaxed” regulatory… but think a second why it’s “relaxed?” It’s because they are trying like mad to keep their own drug companies alive over there. So they are forced by that exigency to be less diligent about approval than the gold standard FDA processes. In the event of a poor product getting passed the lower standards, guess who takes the hit for it? That’s right, it’s the patients.
But that doesn’t mean that the big Euro pharms will not submit to our FDA gold standard… and why do you think that is? Because here is where the market is — where they can actually PAY for increased diligence in testing and regulation. Again, who benefits from that superior policing? The patients.
Again, this is just basic economics. I know you are not looking for a Soviet style anything. What I’m trying to get you to see is that you will be limiting — severely — the scope of health care available. We are not talking about the five company defense industry, or the ten companies that make fire trucks but the thousands upon thousands of innovators at work every day trying to make lives better through superior healthcare.
If we were just talking about blowing shit up, I’d be okay with an oligopolist grouping like we’ve got in the defense industry today. But that’s not what healthcare is about — and in the fight for superior innovation, I don’t want to underfund any possible inventor’s genius.
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Let’s not forget that our patients also get stuck with the majority of the bills (despite the fact that 5 out of the top 6 pharm. companies are European: NVS, GSK, SNY, AZN, Roche).
I find it ironic that you oppose supporting the health of your fellow citizens through tax deductions, yet you’re perfectly ok with footing the bill for the development/marketing/lobbying costs of all the drug companies who sell their products for peanuts in the rest of the world.
This is also the industry that spends more than any other on lobbying and twice as much on marketing than R&D. Well, color me sad that they will no longer be able to drain our populace of their hard earned money via disease-mongering ads that play on my TV set every 10 minutes.
That’s not saying that I don’t see your point. But I certainly don’t believe the effect of u.h.c. would be as extreme as your prognosticate.
Demand will still be there. People will need treatment & drugs and somebody will need to provide them. A properly devised system will care about new drugs that would help the population, thus in turn enabling and encouraging companies to go out and innovate. (Also, wouldn’t a government contract be more “certain” and thus bring in _more_ investors?) It would make sure that research is concentrated not on frivolous drugs like Viagra or Cialis but on treating cancers and other critical diseases.
I just don’t think the drug companies “care” about making lives better. They care about the bottom line. I don’t want my health to be a byproduct of somebody’s profit. I don’t want to pay for the privilege to have access to doctors and treatment, I want to pay for the right.
/soapbox
I think we can agree that ‘Obamacare’, in its current form is not the answer, although it’s a decent first step. It has gotten people talking, which we definitely need.
Whether the final solution will be socialized medicine or a single-payer system or a combination of both is up for debate. But I think we can all agree that change is needed.
The smug arrogance evident in this (JG’s) commentary is breath-taking.
If you have a comment in response to my commentary, you are welcome to lodge it.
Otherwise, be sure to choose a goat to fondle on the way out the door.
What’s “astounding” good sir, is the arrogance of bureaucrats who think they can make better choices about healthcare dispensation — across a populace of 310 million people — than can the doctors trained in providing that care.
Until you’ve got anything but ad-hom response, I’ll continue assuming you share that arrogance — and lack of logical argument.
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Bravo, Jake,
Astounding, indeed! While I don’t love this vid, I do think it is effective at illustrating how screwed we are if Obamacare goes through. The only people who think it’s a good idea is those who will benefit from it and those ignorant as to what it really would mean for this country to implement such a plan. Of course, in my experience, Obama-lovers are ignorant to most facts about Obamacare and their hero, Uhbama.
Welcome, Nora!
Truthfully, this video is a bit of an inside joke, because the Fly is always talking about (metaphorically) kicking old men down open manholes/elevator shafts, etc… and there’s a part in this where they boot an old lady off the line that was remniscent of same…
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ROFLMFAO! Touche’ good sir (American).
LOL! I didn’t know Ronald Reagan was still making the movies! I call Flummery!
What a complete load of bollocks. Jake, you owe me 4 minutes…
Anyone who would call that slice of tripe evidence against the case for UHC, know this: you truly are the utterly duped. Or unretrievably stupid. My sympathies to your family, either way.
Thank you, 72 IQ.
You should, I guess, it’s brought you this far, Jake. Good luck with that.
Goin’Fawr – Would you like my dad’s email address? He’s a specialist in the business methods of Health Care… Or possibly my brother, his best friend, or my Godfather’s emails? They’re all doctors opposed to this fuckery.
ZMoose12 – I guess they’ll be repeating the infamous doctor’s strike if this passes?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saskatchewan_Doctors%27_Strike
They won’t strike, this is not Europe.
More likely, they’ll go into a more lucrative line of work while they are still young.
Please lefties, study economics, before you destroy the last best hope.
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I agree with Jake, but to an extent – PA Docs had a strike over state budgets with Medical Supplies and such a couple of years ago, but it all got resolved and they all went back to work.
A strike, however, only fixes short term issues.
A strike, in that it’s a limitation of services, is merely foreshadowing of what will eventually become mundane reality.
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ZMoose. No, thank you. But interesting.
It seems natural that somewhere it is possible to find a body of entrenched PHD’s , funded by the entrenched companies, who both have an interest in how this unfolds. Is the implication of this that you believe that there is no bureaucracy in their organisations?
Which is the most expensive system to run, anyway
I would, however, consider the possibility that a decent portion of them are the ones who finally ‘finished’ MJ’s face. (Too soon?)
MB it was one of these Dr’s, When you’re this big, they call you DR?
I’m sorry, but I don’t blame doctor’s for Michael Jackson’s death – I blame United States greed and scum who have that ominous Ph.D out of a Wheaties box.
But that’s beside the point. So premiums increase, and the insurance companies make more profit – since when was it a CRIME to make profit in this country? ObamaCare feels that insurance companies make too much over the Health Care debacle… So let’s say ObamaCare gets passed. Health Care providers virtually get wiped clean off the slate, and we Americans are told to feel okay about this government intervention.
“It’s for the better! It’s a team effort now, and we’ll help EVERYONE get covered.”
If you are one of them, my friend, I believe they would have called you a Loyalist during the U.S. Revolution in the late 1700’s.
I’m not here to argue, but simply present the side of the equation that makes the most sense – Laissez Faire, anyone?
If you are one of them, my friend, I believe they would have called you a Loyalist during the U.S. Revolution in the late 1700’s.
Kid, I understand you haven’t finished your schooling so I’ll be kind with my response.
British Loyalism had NOTHING to do with any kind of debate regarding the healthcare provisions that the current administration is proposing.
The American Rebellion was, simply put, an organised attack by the wealthiest of the land owners (and tea smugglers by the way) against Britain.
The Tea Party? Well, if you examine history close enough you’ll find that EVEN WITH the added taxes, the tea that was tossed into the Boston harbour would have been CHEAPER than what the smugglers were selling it for.
Recent scholarship has discerned that the average colonist was only 25% likely to have supported the revolution.
LOL.
Sour grapes after 235 years Ceurvo?
Don’t tell me you’re still loyal to the country that got poor Canuckistan down this path of Fabian socialism?
“Stockholm Syndrome Canadians.”
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No sour grapes here Jake.
I’m glad that my taxes go into the healthcare system.
Just as I’m glad that they don’t go into some bailout for a bunch of bankers that forgot their place in society, which is what happened down there.
“Forgot their place in society?”
WTF kind of wacked out thinking is that? Bankers tried to maximize profits in an environment that was constructed — over an 80 year period (yes it actually started in the 20’s) — in order to put Americans in houses, because — guess why?
Because that’s what made the most hay in political terms.
Since the 20’s, when I think it was Hoover, or maybe even Coolidge (Republicans!) who signed a Fair Housing bill, Congress has endeavoured to make it as easy as possible, via the bending of the tax code, coddling of banks and other means, to get people in houses, whether they really belonged in them or not.
Housing was at the bottom of the First Great Depression… did you know that? The same free credit policies doomed the banks back then just as they have today.
There is nothing new under the sun. But to take an odd Marxian “forgot their place in society” tone is ridiculous. The problem is structural, not personal. You set the trap, people — from all walks of life — are going to step into it.
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So premiums increase, and the insurance companies make more profit – since when was it a CRIME to make profit in this country?
As opposed to businesses who are squeezed into offering less coverage because of the rising costs from the insurance providers?
Late last century, I was working for a company that’s North American head office was in the States and I remember well an infamous email that the regional manager sent regarding health care practices.
To wit, he stated that the insurance premiums had gone up even after switching companies and he warned the American employees away from “frivolous doctor visits” and that they should spend extra time getting fit so as to keep the insurance premiums low from the private healthcare provider.
You’re a champion of laissez-faire but, what sense does it make, for a regional manager to have to plead with his employees to keep their visits to their physician to a “minimum”?
To me, that’s nuts.
How do you think that diktat would change under a government health plan?
“Preventative care” is the lead smoke screen in Obamacare, if you’ve been paying attention. It’s all about the limitation of supply leading to rationing. That’s the ONLY answer the government has.
Let me know how that’s worked out for Canuckistan.
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Your arrogance in besmirching a programme that you have never had one iota of life experience with me continually takes my breath away.
Frankly it won’t change my life one iota if it passes or fails.
Are you the same asshat who had his “breath taken away” by my arrogance below? Or are you just copying that coward’s stupidity?
Again, what “takes my breath away” is the arrogance of gov’t bureaucrats — with no training — lording it over the providers of our health care in taking decisions on their patients.
Don’t ever speak to me of arrogance when you claim you know better than the millions — no billions of decisions that are taken every day between consumers and providers of healthcare, even in this quasi-beknighted government system.
There is no dearth of horror stories about Canadian health care. Where are the happy stories? Why has Canada been forced to move to private provision after years of embarassing and costly failiure?
How many examples do I need to provide a relatively generic picture? You only have 29 million people and your system is a shambles. What do you think it will look like in a country of 310 million with widely divergent populations and varying health issues?
It will be a fucking disaster. Don’t EVER speak to me of arrogance when you seek to take away my freedoms.
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“Are you the same asshat who had his “breath taken away” by my arrogance below?”
[touches nose with index finger]
No that wasn’t me Jake.
I argue as myself not with a whack of sock puppets.
Cuervos:
In the above section, I simply used the American Revolution as an analogy – nothing meant to be factual, just a statement to exemplify the ignorance some people have to the health care situation who just agree to it for shits and giggles and because, “Our President said it would be better for us.”
I speak not of shitty businesses, I speak of substantial health insurance and coverage providers. I’m not against coverage for everyone, I’m against taking a whole business out of the picture. In context with the video above, what if someone told you that you were ONLY allowed to buy GS and nothing else – You’d be limited to your profit making and high on risk, correct?
Same thing. They give you ONE option and that’s that – nothing more, nothing less. Stand in line and wait your turn.
I am not denigrating the ‘American Spirit’ here! I am egging it on. I am not a hater. Amercians Will Always Do Things Big. If they were to all decide unanimously to adopt the UHC model, they would do it in such a way that would truly put everyone else to shame (For only $995/yr/capita, over ten years, and somehow end up selling it to some foreign creditor). There would exist hospitals the size of theme parks. Hell, I would imagine they would actually be like theme parks….And don’t worry about your VIP club members’ jackets JakeyJackets, I am sure they would manage to their way in front of someone else, at least with the right connections and/or ‘donations’, if they still really feel they needed to be first. Just like it essentially operates now where you are; but cheaper, effective for a much larger slice of the population, and backed by at least the pretense of political ethics. You would rather continue allowing your health care providers to focus on ‘keeping it in the black’? Now that doesn’t sound like what I would call “Charming Bedside Manner’.
Rather than that, you’d put everyone into the same gulag system you “enjoy,” right?
Because in Canuckistan, at least, “misery loves company.”
What you are forgetting is that as miserable as your present health care is, and as much as you spitefully wish for us to share it — your’s will worsen as the artificial respite of US subsidy dissipates.
IOW — they’ll be less supply here, so the tiny supply allowed in Canada will be all that you can obtain. What’s more, the “excellent pricing” you receive on American drugs because of the subsidy our private system provides you?
Kiss that goodbye, along with better priced medical devices. If those companies are going to stay alive, and our prices come down, yours will go up.
No, our medical system will suck under Obamacare, but yours…. whew, yours will really suck.
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You just said “affordable drug prices”.
I hope that is some of the Ginster’s irony muscle flexing because the phrase “affordable American drugs” is a serious misnomer.
Case in point, the Brazilians started manufacturing pharmaceuticals so their citizens would have a better quality of life rather than being gouged by the American companies.
The Brazilians, unfortunately for everyone, cannot produce NEW drugs. They can only manufacture drugs that have gone off-patent — and more power to them, that’s the way the system is SUPPOSED to work.
That said, if Brazilians spend the same amount of money developing blockbuster lifesaving drugs, and have to jump through the same hoops that our FDA enforces (remember our FDA approval is the de facto barrier to entry for almost every country, another American subsidy, I might add), then Brazilians will have (in your words) “gouge” at the same prices in order to make a return on their investment.
Their is no free lunch, Cuervo, there is no free lunch.
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Their is no free lunch, Cuervo, there is no free lunch.
You mean “there” obviously.
And I agree. I’m just glad my taxes come back to me in the form of health care.
If you consider the crap healthcare you are getting up there a fair exchange for the taxes you are paying, then you are one cowed citizen of the nanny state.
Down here, we’re a little less servile.
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‘Miserable’? ‘Spitefully’? You talk so loud of things of which you know nothing Jake, don’t you find it embarrassing at some point? I mean, what a shock, you can find a litany of anecdotal evidence that alledges ‘Canadian Health Care Sucks, Just ‘Cuz I say so.’ in a country where a monstrous bloated private system reigns. But when you continue to blithely ignore facts Jake, you just end up looking really really duped. But then, if the mould fits…
63 IQ
(Sorry.)
And I quote, “Until you’ve got anything but ad-hom response, I’ll continue assuming you share that arrogance — and lack of logical argument.” Although in this case the arrogance is based in the religion of neoclassical economics autism, Jake’s oh so obvious bias. Mankiw’s text is Jake’s ‘magical land of fairies’ ie it doesn’t exist. How is that working out for the US, anyway?
?????????
42 IQ.
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My interest level is dropping faster than your self labelling IQ scores Jake. But in case you blinked and missed it, this guy probably wrote your Econ101 text, you know: the neoclassical ‘hocus-pocus’ you so desperately cling to with whitened fingertips (mb nose too, to judge by your vehemence). Mankiw
Please leave forever, dumbass.
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I cannot even come up with an answer to the above statements – I’m not a fan of pointing the finger.
Goin’Fawr, just know I wasn’t bashing on your American Spirit – purely an analogy.
hahaha! wait, what’s going on here?
Health Care debate – Join the party 😉
Fuck Obama and his bullshit healthcare agenda..I will have all important surgeries done in Hong Kong at a small take out place I like…
Michele Cabrera Curucau will be your nurse.
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Some good stuff on the history of the Fabian Society… perhaps as much to blame for the ruin of the Commonwealth countries as good olde Englisman himself, Karl Marx.
Man, if I was an Indian? I’d sure be pissed:
The first Fabian Society pamphlets advocating tenets of Social justice coincided with the zeitgeist of Liberal reforms during the early 1900s. The Fabian proposals however were considerably more progressive than those that were enacted in the Liberal reform legislation. The Fabians lobbied for the introduction of a minimum wage in 1906, for the creation of a Universal healthcare system in 1911, and for the abolition of hereditary peerages in 1917[3].
Fabian socialists were in favour of an imperialist foreign policy as a conduit for internationalist reform and a welfare state modelled on the Bismarckian German model; [DPeez — see what I’m sayin’ bud? -ed.] they criticised Gladstonian liberalism both for its individualism at home and its internationalism abroad. They favoured a national minimum wage in order to stop British industries compensating for their inefficiency by lowering wages instead of investing in capital equipment; slum clearances and a health service in order for “the breeding of even a moderately Imperial race” which would be more productive and better militarily than the “stunted, anaemic, demoralised denizens…of our great cities”; and a national education system because “it is in the class-rooms that the future battles of the Empire for commercial prosperity are already being lost”[4].
The Fabians also favored the nationalization of land, believing that rents collected by landowners were unearned, an idea which drew heavily from the work of American economist Henry George.
Many Fabians participated in the formation of the Labour Party in 1900, and the group’s constitution, written by Sidney Webb, borrowed heavily from the founding documents of the Fabian Society. At the Labour Party Foundation Conference in 1900, the Fabian Society claimed 861 members and sent one delegate.
In the period between the two World Wars, the “Second Generation” Fabians, including the writers R. H. Tawney, G. D. H. Cole, and Harold Laski, continued to be a major influence on social-democratic thought.
It was at this time that many of the future leaders of the Third World were exposed to Fabian thought, most notably India’s Jawaharlal Nehru, who subsequently framed economic policy for India on Fabian social-democratic lines. Obafemi Awolowo who later became the premier of Nigeria’s defunct Western Region was also a Fabian member in the late 1940s. It was the Fabian ideology that Awolowo used to run the Western Region but was prevented from using it on a national level in Nigeria. It is a little-known fact that the founder of Pakistan, Barrister Muhammad Ali Jinnah, was an avid member of the Fabian Society in the early 1930s. Lee Kuan Yew, the first Prime Minister of Singapore, stated in his memoirs that his initial political philosophy was strongly influenced by the Fabian Society. However, he later altered his views, believing the Fabian ideal of socialism to be impractical.
Not hard to see whose economy did better in the years after WWII, is it? And India was not even devestated by the Japanese like Singapore was.
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This is pretty amazing. Freaking hippies in San Fran have some balls, I’ll tell you.
How is it that aren’t more stories about hippy assault on these self righteous criminals?
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Only in San Francisco…
I have a short list of some items that were either invented or manufactured in Israel:
voice mail, most of Windows NT, pentium chip, AOL instant messaging, cell phone (at Motorola in Israel), firewall software, video camera technology to examine internal organs, heart muscle from embryonic stem cells, hundreds of pharma stuff related to AIDS, cancer, diabetes, etc, drip irrigation (as seen in Land of the Seas at Disney), water desalination technology, technology related to development of hydrogen as a fuel source, clear light acne treatment, computerized prescription systems, Mirabel breast cancer detection, Tsunami detection system, pilotless drones, Givan cam, etc. etc. etc.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcHwyW9xOyI
I have come up with another list their friends in Gaza and the West Bank have created to better mankind:
suicide vest, kassem rockets that don’t shoot straight , square wheels?, still working on others.
The next time one of those useless freaks or their family members end up in a hospital for life saving treatment I hope they refuse the treatment because it was created by those Jews in Israel.
Agreud. Why is it hippies can never find something sensible to support? It always has to be something wrong or ineffably stupid.
Two for two in this case.
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TC — Don’t forget to add Bar Raefeli to that list.
A little bit better than the Bhurka of the Month club.
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I’ll see your Bar Rafaeli and raise you an Esti Ginzburg.
mmm…kosher!
No shiksas there!
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And so ends Jake’s love affair with everything oily in Alberta
“Sheesh! To hear the extremist rhetoric floating around south of the border, you’d think Canada’s public health-care system was the socialist demon incarnate, hatched directly from the fevered imaginations of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels themselves…” Too right, that.
No, it’s just bad health care and a bad deal for the people of Canada.
Which is why you are switching back to private provision after years of government only HC.
What you haven’t grasped is that without our subsidy in innovation, it’s going to get a lot worse for you.
Even if you have been brainwashed enough to like your bureaucratic gov’t supplied healthcare, you shouldn’t want it for us. For when we go socialist, so do your “freebies.”
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