The only Health Insurance I can get (despite being able to easily afford full coverage at the normal rates) is a “high risk” policy through my state. You want to know how affordable it is? Sure, I’ll tell you. The monthly premiums start at $600 per month, with a $10,000 a year deductable, after which the policy pays 50%. Wow. So yeah, everyone who says that “every American can buy insurance by going without internet” can give me their policy and take the ONLY option I am given for healthcare themselves. That’s what I call fair play.

Health Care Reform is not about the very poor, it’s about the middle class. It’s not about public health care (though there is a public option to keep insurance companies honest), it’s about making new rules so insurance companies can’t take Americans’ lunch money and shove us down the staircase. Is it so wrong for me to want the ability to choose my own health insurance company or *gasp* not want to live on a handout? Gee, I know, us sick people should just keel over and stop breathing everyone else’s air, right? Forgive me if I lack simpathy for those who support the insurance companies extortion of the American people, especially the middle class.

but since I’m not….

I don’t know who brought up life expectancy, but oftentimes the 2 statistics used to evaluate a country’s overall healthcare and culture are: 1) infant mortality; and, 2) maternal mortality.

These have been used for many years …. I first encountered them in a college sociology class more than 20 years ago. They are very good measures of how a culture takes care of its most vulnerable.

Access to healthcare by ALL, including the most vulnerable–young, powerless, poor–is a measure of how well that country’s system is working. Period. There is no equivocation. You can’t wiggle out of that one. It is fact.

That’s not the debate here. The debate is over life expectancy. If we have twice the amount of car accidents, there’s still going to be more deaths. Which, in turn, will bring down our life expectancy. But, that doesn’t have anything at all to do with health care. And, that’s just one of the factors.

You will still not believe it ever happened. It’s amazing how you free thinking “progressives” are so closed minded.

Oh and I think you’ll find that better post-stabilisation treatment (like actually getting some) improves outcomes for trauma from auto shunts and attempted homicides, just like it does for everything else.

I’ll let you think for a minute why taxes are necessary.

Hint. The roads don’t make themselves.

One video is about some of the sucesses and failures of the current american system. The other is about the sucesses and failures of other national healthcare plans.

(-ly)

you just PRETEND to be otherwise.

Wait, what? He pretends to be unbiased? When did this happen, Igor?

I’ve never seen Igor pretend to be unbiased. Fair, certainly. But he has opinions that fall on a particularly side of the political spectrum . . . we ALL do, or we wouldn’t be here, arguing about cr@p, would we?

If there IS a God, (s)he’d be disgusted by those BUTT-holes. I imagine s(he)’d be shaking her head, “I gave you a BRAIN, and free will; I expected you to USE it!”

Igor… please do be flaming me nao for the lolspeak.

And, yes, my main argument is that it’s my money. It’s kind of funny that I think you people are the selfish pricks because you want to take what’s not yours because either you don’t want to get a job that has insurance, you wasted your life on drugs/alcohol, you were too cool for school, or any one of a million other decisions that YOU made, not me. And, if you’re a small business owner, that’s great. However, the only way to get ahead is by good planning and budgeting. I would seriously hope that this would be one thing that you budgeted for. If not, again, it wasn’t my decision and it wasn’t my lack of planning.