lord jesus.....

[wesw]

....just a few short years ago I was pushed to the edge of ruin by a supposed 2500.oo dollar deductible that ended up leaving me with 5000.oo

of medical debt....

what the heck would have happened to us with an 18,000.oo deductible....

med insurance is a govt mandated extortion racket.

I hope the doctors grow some sets and revolt against the current system and the past system....

we need a new system.

doctor, heal thyself, I pray for you all....

[oldr_n_wsr]

med insurance is a govt mandated extortion racket.

I concur.
Still waiting for my premiums to be $2500 less as promised.
But on the bright side, I was able to keep my doctors.

[Jarlaxle]

My wife wasn't. She got pretty much nuked. Her insurance plan became insane: the premium doubled, deductible tripled...and she lost her GP, her ob-gyn, and her orthopedist. Fortunately, I was able to add her to my insurance for only a bit more than she'd been paying.

[Burning Petard]

Medical Insurance has always been a scam. Medical Insurance is a for-profit industry, not a charity. They make money only when their product is purchased by customers who do not use it.

So what is your life worth, put a monetary value on it. When your total medical costs exceed that, quietly go somewhere that will not disturb others, and die.

Or, you could actually accept 'socialized' medicine that takes the profit out of the picture. Sometimes this is called a government run single payer system. Which do you prefer?

snailgate

[wesw]

I prefer socialized medicine, as I have said since I joined this board...

I would really like, as I have said before, a system where the insurance companies were shut out almost completely...

I would prefer that we use a system similar to the wage garnish ment system we have now...

a percentage,..., whatever the consensus judges to be fair..., say, 15% of whatever income you get..., payroll, welfare, social security, disability, interest, capitol gains, etc. ...

should be garnished as you incur medical debt.

this payment would continue until your death...

the doctors would not get all of their money at once, but they would have a dependable income stream long after retirement until their death.

upon death all debts and payments are null and void for medical care , not much point in beating a dead horse....

...the insurance companies will be gone, except for the very wealthy, and doctors would compete, their fees would drop but they would still be very comfortable...

cutting out the middleman would save both doctors and patients huge amounts of money.

you seem to be willing to except a broken system and just shrug your shoulders and say whatever....

if there is a leech sucking you dry, you pull it off and step on it....

[Gob]

Or, you could actually accept 'socialized' medicine that takes the profit out of the picture. Sometimes this is called a government run single payer system. Which do you prefer?

snailgate

In my recent bereavement I was so overwhelmingly impressed to see the service offered by the NHS to my mother in her final weeks.

When she was discharged home from the hospital to die, she had twice daily nurse visits for palliative care, every other day doctor visits for medication monitoring, and four times daily care assistant visits for personal care. She also had a wheelchair, a hospital bed, and other aids and adaptations fitted to enable her to be comfortable. She was on morphine from a syringe driver, and four other drugs, for pain relief and symptom relief. My sister also got counselling and emotional support supplied.

Total cost to the family? £0.00

[datsunaholic]

I prefer socialized medicine, as I have said since I joined this board...

Well, that's quite progressive for an avowed Right-winger.

Most obamacare detractors said they'd rather go back to what we had BEFORE the ACA.

Never mind the fact that insurance premiums had been steadily increasing before the ACA.

Never mind that many employers were dropping their health plan subsidies (which in reality came out of the employees "compensation" anyway) but not increasing the employees' salary to match the "savings" the employers gained from dropping health coverage- BEFORE the ACA.

They blame the ACA for those. Even though the problems existed already.

Never mind that many Americans had no access to any kind of health insurance, due to pre-existing conditions that made them too "risky" to cover, because insurance companies basically equate a run-down human being with a run-down building- except the building is probably worth more in their eyes. Before the ACA.

Never mind that many Americans had no access to any kind of health insurance because they lived in rural areas where the insurance companies felt it wasn't worth covering, due to the small number of applicants

instead, they don't want any sort of "socialized" medicine- they don't want the Government dictating what procedures they can have... they'd rather let a for-profit corporation, one that spends more money advertising than actually HELPING people, make those decisions.

They don't want socialized medicine, but are the first ones in line for Medicare because "they earned it". BTW, that's the reason given by one of my staunch, Republican (retired) friends. Apparently you need to live long enough to retire before you can get government-assisted health care. If you get sick before you retire, well, that's up to you to pay for it I guess. Get cancer when you're 30? Better put in some major overtime to pay for it before starting treatment.

No, they use the strawman argument of "illegal aliens" using up all the free health care. They argue that it just will mean government sponsored abortions. They argue about "death panels", the government determining who lives and who dies.

Is the ACA perfect? No. In fact, it's very, very flawed, but the way to fix it is not to repeal it first. Going back to how it was is not the answer, but that's what the Republicans want. They don't want to fix it, they want to scrap it. Because fixing it would require basically killing off a highly profitible, but useless, industry. No way those million-dollar lobbyists would ever let their pet congressmen do that. They let the ACA happen because they saw $$$ signs.

[wesw]

I am not and never have been a right winger or a republican, I registered independent in high school and have remained unaffiliated.

I have NO love for the republican establishment. the only thing worse than a repub is a Dem..., I once believed the opposite.

I am a supporter of saving what remains of nature, radically so in some ways, I support Maryjane too...

I am a strong supporter of alternative energy including sheathing our roofs with solar panels, personal windmills and in line river flow hydro-generators.

I do not support hdro electric dams, they devastate fisheries and flood critical habitat for wildlife.

I cry when forests are cut.

john Boehner and crew? I found them abhorrent.

I find harry reid and nancy Pelosi even more abhorrent.

I support trump , not the GOP, unless it is remade into something better.

I believe in the founding principles and documents of this nation and am willing to die for them. period.

I will vote a straight GOP ticket this year. I have voted for many more dems than I have repubs in my life...., not this year.

socialism leads to communism and dictatorship..., statism.

then ukranians end up eating their poor dead frozen mothers.

no thanks . I do not believe in an aristocratic elite either.

citizen statesmen. period. end of rant.

[wesw]

...and pssst. (trump voiced support for socialized medicine early in the campaign)

(don t tell anyone....)

I think that there is a better way, without govt control and without corporate control.

cut out the middlemen

[datsunaholic]

Obviously I've not read enough of your posts to gain a good picture.

If you support those ideals you state above- many, not all of which I agree with, I cannot see how you could possibly support Trump, who is the exact opposite of many of those things. I can see how you wouldn't support Hillary, believe me. For me this election is like trying to pick the best garbage out of the dumpster to make a meal out of, knowing that in the end you're still gonna get sick.

But Trump?

"I do not believe in an aristocratic elite either."

He is the DEFINITION of aristocratic elite. A man so rich that he doesn't feel he needs to pay for anything- because it's cheaper to hire lawyers to avoid bills than to actually pay them. He uses his supposed wealth to bully people into not contesting him, a scare tactic that has done everything to make his sociopathic behavior even more evident to those who care to look. A man who is so self-absorbed that he doesn't feel the need for any common decency, another sociopathic trait. A man who's only reason for his "popularity" is his celebrity status. Celebrities rarely make good politicians. Most are narcissists, but they're not usually so far gone as to think they could actually lead this country. Trump is serious, all right. Seriously deranged.

Socialism has never led to communism nor totalitarianism. The perversion of it, into a single-party system has. I do not equate Socialism with Marxism. The problem with our political system is the de facto 2-party system. It's one failed party away from a single party system. It doesn't matter how good the intentions of that single party is, it's a recipe for forced ideals from the leadership, who always, unquestionably end up trying to hold onto power by brute force when another tries to step in. Once you lose a proper representative government, which we already have in many ways, you've lost the principles of a democratic republic.

[wesw]

well I agree with most , but not all of what you said...

I feel the same way about lord jim..., I can see why he wouldn t vote for trump but I don t understand how he can vote for Hillary.

I agree about partisan politics . George Washington didn t believe in them either, and anyman who would turn down a kingship is a real prince in my book.

trump is like the cockney who made it rich and is looked down upon by the City.

trump would fit in and be comfortable anywhere.

he really is the blue collar billionaire

he doesn t think that other people are his lessers...

when he finds a good smart person, he promotes them.

there are caddies who have gone very far...

he is full of shit, but still basically honest.

I hear Hillary and the lies are so obvious, so scripted.

my god, how many people are that stupid, or crooked, to go along with her>

I am a fairly keen observer of men and I don t have my lie radar go off with trump

hyperbole, exaggeration? well sure, but it is basically honest hyperbole.

he means what he says, and that is pure gold.

I don t agree with him on everything. I don t agree with anyone on everything.

I believe him when he says that he wants to give back to this country.

Hillary just wants to take take take....

he didn t need this....

...and he is friggin' brilliant, maybe not like you, or me, but different.

I was a fairly good gambler, a keen observer of men, but I wouldn t want to play cards with him. actually I would, you gotta pay for lessons....

always play the odds and never bet against the house...

I ve never been to a casino, casinos are for people who don t mind losing their money.....

anyway, I don t believe that he is hateful and I don t believe that I am hateful

it is hard to explain, you would have to read the trump thread, from the beginning to properly understand my views. it is all there, and I did not start out as a supporter

I never watched one episode of the apprentice, and I always thought that he was a jerk, since I first heard of him in the 80 s....

I thought that he was arrogant and a rich boy...

turns out that he had much more depth than I had imagined.

[wesw]

...and he is a worker. he has worked his ass off to get here.

[Bicycle Bill]

I used to think that wesw's style of posting was a 'stream of consciousness' sort of thing but after looking at today's output I think it's more like a frog on a hotplate.... never staying in one place but constantly hopping from one random point to another.

Either way I keep telling myself that it will all be over in less than a week, and then Trump can go back to his previous career of being a lecherous bigoted slumlord.

-"BB"-

[wesw]

whatever dude....

grown folks are talking.....

[wesw]

...trump also talks about wanting clean water air and protecting the environment in almost every speech, it s part of his homegrown energy pitch....

he doesn t give details, but I believe him, he looks earnest to me....

....besides , his sons are outdoors types who believe in that stuff.

I believe him when he says that he will get new pipes for flint MI and many other cities, not just make due with the lead lined ones....

I believe that he wants to do good.

I don t believe anything Hillary says.

I recognize a worker when I see one.

anyway, she is done, her corruption has caught up with her, but if you didn t watch FOX tonight you did not hear it on any other network that I m aware of....

tomorrow comes soon enough....

[liberty]

I used to think that wesw's style of posting was a 'stream of consciousness' sort of thing but after looking at today's output I think it's more like a frog on a hotplate.... never staying in one place but constantly hopping from one random point to another.


-"BB"-

It doesn’t matter what his style of writing is as long as one can understand what he is saying. I caught his reference to Stalin’s famine. In the Ukraine the communist created one of the worst horrors in the history of mankind while leftist in the US sang the praises of Stalin and the communist party. Something I suspect Hilary wouldn’t have a problem with for some people.

But I disagree that socialism necessarily leads to communism and totalitarianism, it’s more complex than that.

[kmccune]

Wow ,think how big the sooty sky will be ,when (under trump ) we dozer off all those pesky ridgetops .Maybe we will be able to pump our sewage straight into the Aquaifer under Trumps munificent ,benign rule .( using all the Koch brothers " Drill baby ,Drill "holes .The great "Trumpkin " will create all this infrastructure money out of nothing (whoops he forgot to pay the pipe manufacturers and the immigrants who worked in the ditch ) Sorry I am not buying the rhetoric a "Nationalist" spouts . Some of my very intelligent Republican friends ,say "hold your nose and vote for Hillary "

[wesw]

we only have to look south to Venezuela....

it is a crime of omission that there is virtually nothing in the media about the horror story that is today s Venezuela....

[wesw]

we only have to look south to Venezuela....

it is a crime of omission that there is virtually nothing in the media about the horror story that is today s Venezuela....

[Burning Petard]

What is 'the media"?

Did you just return from Venezuela? Otherwise, you must have received whatever it is you know about it, from 'the media'.

The fable of the motto in the upper left corner of the print version of the front page of the NY Times (All the news that is fit to print) has never been true. Editors chose what to include and what to leave out. Same process on the internet sources. All editors work with an agenda, mostly to get more views, or sell more ads.

It is up to the consumer to pick sources that are significant for them.

snailgate.