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It was a tough battle to get universal healthcare in Saskatchewan and I think Americans have to take that in mind.The doctors propagandized the public into thinking that the sky was falling-that it was the end of civilization as we know it.Thousands of people were shouting at supporters in the streets, "Murderers!". Tommy Douglas passed universal healthcare in Saskatchewan which was also the dream of another great Cdn hero Dr Norman Bethune, who fought with the Communists in the Spanish civil war and with Mao in the Long March. To this day there are many hospitals in China where you will see a bust of Bethune out front. Tommy Douglas has gone down in history as the most admired Cdn in survey after survey. The previous Great depression bought universal healthcare to Canada, may this Great Depression bring it to the US. I think that to be bankrupted by medical expenses for being uninsured is like being kicked when you're down.
The ER only need to use life threatening procerures to stabilize. No further treatment is required. It ALL depends on where you live as how many clinics are "available", and in many cases, qualifying is impossible, and there is always a waiting list.
i sometimes wonder if the people who click on YES are hired, along with those that end up in our infotainment seen trying to rile up people over the wrong things, and things that they certainly must not fully understand.
I predicted something like this would happen! I hate to be negetive but its only going to get worse! I dont know why people think protesting will work, do you honestly think these people will have a change of heart? Take Ireland for example Irish Republicans and Irish Republican Army members have tried to find a peaceful way to get the UK out of Ireland! They have been involved in peaceful protests, they have tried reaching out to them, and time and time again the British/English refuse! And like seen in peaceful protests they even get violent twards the Irish like say Bloody Sunday, or what Colonial Smyth said in 1920! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPKPlwR7_6k&NR=1 watch this to see what he said!
What gives everyone the idea that surgery and medical care in prison is the same as in a county hospital? Talk to someone who has had dental work in prison.
Go to the County Hospital system. They will calculate payments on a sliding scale. They call it "hospital insurance" amongst themselves. Try to think about the other people in the waiting rooms with you.
You can't let Bureaucrats stand in the way of your goals!
We just have to face the fact that home ownership, like everything else, isn't what it used to be.
XXXXX
American societal implosion is here with our citizens. There is truly no hope for our Anti-Christ nation.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/1/Heed-the-Warning-Signs-Am-by-michael-payne-110620-479.html
What I find unusual is the apathy in this country compared to the rest of the developed nations. Health care is a basic right in some developed countrys but here in the supposedly richest nation on earth, it is not. I have seen this situation coming for decades now. The people in power have planned and executed it this way on purpose, but by the time enough people get fed up enough to do anything about it, it will be too late. Our giant military industrial complex will be turned against us right here, and it will be a slaughter. There is no hope ! You can't change anything by popular vote because the elections can be bought and are corrupt. An example of that was Florida where they did not count the votes. I suggest everyone except the rich get used to pain because there will not be any care for you. The people in power expect you to die quietly. This is no longer the land of opportunity, but the land of screw everyone as much and as bad as you can. If you think this is not correct then just hang around a while, if you can that is. Dave
Another option could be converting to Christian Science.
No matter what everyone else is doing, we are each still responsible for knowing right from wrong. Robbing a bank for $1 to get medical care until retiring to Florida is WRONG.
There are always options, and to be HEALTHY we need to consider ALL our options in order to be more flexible. That is something I learned in a health class taught at my county hospital for free.
XXXXX
Don't think I haven't been around. Hey, I signed myself into the State Mental Hospital one Easter weekend to see what goes on in there, got a BIG shot of Thorazine and shuffled around for three days in my nightgown with a tall black man who said he was Moses, and another fellow who said he was an Angel and a member of AA, and they were my body guards.
I have long been an advocate against elder abuse and saved one lady's grand-nephew from being ripped off by the bookkeeper for his $250,000 inheritance.
I volunteered reading to children with leukemia, none of whom were paying for their bone marrow transplants.
I used to take a homeless guy named Frank to Subway every Sunday. I could not get him to go to a hospital when he was sick.
I have also personally witnessed that my County Emergency Room Doctors and Nurses are very forthcoming with treatment of the highest quality, whether you are insured, poor, an illegal immigrant, or a drug dealer with your chest blown open. They are experts in identifying people who are not getting care they need, as well as in identifying malingerers and Percoset seekers. Patients are released with follow up treatment recommendations and referrals. They are told if they have a problem, they can always come back to the emergency room. Help is there. These are people who care- forget the Republicans.
Medicine is medicine. People who have gone to the trouble to become ER doctors and nurses did so because they are healers, with a lot of courage.
And actually, insurance and money does not necessarily buy health. My Voice Teacher, BTW, lived about 90 years, riddled with pain head to toe, from arthritis. She had Blue Cross Blue Shield and Medicare, but it didn't matter. I almost broke my back putting her wheelchair, Ol' Ironside, in and out of my car. She took a lot of Darvocet and taught sometimes 10 private lessons a day up to the age of 92. I guess we could have gone on Dateline with it.
Oh, well.
XXXXX
A short summary:
Infrared technology is quick and dirty, and generally very limited, but it does show the hand of the controllers. The corporations want to maintain control of the consumers and their access to data. Forget about stopping people from recording a rock concert; that's trivial.
The implications for use of electronic devices are clear to me. Data may be sent to wireless devices. Data may be taken from devices. Programs may be executed on devices. The reason I am vague is that those data come in as many forms as can me imagined: pictures, sounds, movies, temperatures, locations, text, executables, and on and on.
The ability of people to control their personal lives is affected by the access that they give up at every stage of their adoption of electronic conveniences. Anybody who thinks they can fight this usurpation of power with his little pop-gun is stupid. The only tool that has been shown to work is an educated, informed, and involved populace.
Orlando, Florida has a law. You cannot share food with the hungry more than twice a year and only 25 hungry persons can receive food. More than twice a year and over 25 hungry persons is considered a criminal act. But, it is perfectly legal to spend fifty cents on every dollar on the military to kill God's children. There is something wrong with this picture. God's patience will not last forever with our country breaking the fifth, seventh, eighth, tenth, and the eleventh commandments.
How do I think America is exceptional. Oh boy, let me count the ways. Let's see now:
1. God loves us.
2. God hates everyone else.
3. God wants us to take over the entire world, preferably by force.
4. No one has the right to health care unless he or she is rich.
5. Everyone else has to be like us. Or else god won't love them. But I guess since God hates them all regardless, it doesn't make any difference but we'll still invade them if they're not like us.
6. We are always right, and so it stands to reason that everyone else is always wrong.
7. God blesses our troops, and wants them to kill everyone else's troops.
8. God wants everyone else's troops to become Christians, but even if they do, it's not like they're as good as us.
9. We can lie whenever we want to.
10. When anyone else lies, they should be invaded.
11. We can do anything we want, to our own citizens, and if our citizens disagree, they can deal with our Supreme Court, which says that we can do anything we want to our own citizens.
12. When the rulers of other countries do whatever they want to their citizens, we need to invade them. Unless what they are doing to their citizens is forcing them to work in prisons to make cheap toxic plastic crap for patriotic Americans to buy.
13. God wants us to insist that everyone displays the ten commandments all over the place. However, God does not want us to obey the ten commandments. In fact, God wants us to disobey the ten commandments. But this exception applies only to republicans. Democrats have to obey the ten commandments or God will hate them.
14. Whoever God hates, we hate. (And God hates whoever we tell Him to hate, so you can see how democrats are in a bit of a conundrum here).
What some people may not know is that if they have served in the US armed forces and got an honorable discharge they are eligible for VA health services. They do not have to have a service connected disability... although if they do then they could rank higher on their rating scale and it would cost them much less....or even free....or no cost. Even if you are employed and earn lots of money you can still get VA...only it costs you more....the medicines...etc. They go by any income you are receiving and how much assets...like how much you have in the bank...to determine where you rank on the scale. I have to say that my experience with VA has been really fantastic. I wish the civilian health clinics and hospitals were run with such great efficiency. And they don't have CEOs and top execs raking in all the money so maximizing profit at the expense of good health care is not an issue either.
What a great idea.....what if hundreds of thousands of people went into the banks and "robbed" them of $1.00...or even just 1 cent...as a means to show civil disobedience. I suppose if one had a serious disease or ailment....and no job or insurance...then, why not? It would really bog down our legal and courts system....and would probably result in a very definite change for the good in our criminally run health scare system.
And that is an easy out to use to make sure we leave it with the Corporatist in charge of profiting from it instead of having a health care system that is about health care.
Getting treated in an ER is triage, not health care. That comparison is somewhere between weak and bogus.
I think to suggest we can't do better in America is unAmerican and Pro-Corporatist. I'm all for people who work in health care getting paid well for what they do, but all the other parts of health care need to be non-profit. Otherwise the focus is not health care, it's profit. It's that simple.
A few suggestions:
1) Almost every ER is required by law or individual Hospital policies.... to treat ER patients.
2) The NEW Obama Care proposal does not guarantee this gentleman would get treatment.
3) There are MANY Community health clinics that take care of these issues and more.
There is no PERFECT system - Ours will never be perfect either...
Try jumping through all those hoops to get health care when you have no health or help and you've been in pain 24/7/365 as you have been living each day losing hope for a long time. After all this time He probably didn't have a car, maybe he was homeless. I guarantee you, you're looking at this as though he got hurt last week. He was going down the road that got him here for a while. Being in real pain 24/7 and not getting relief, day in and day out,losing hope, probably has damaged him so that he does need a Psych eval.
While those programs sound nice, they are there to make you feel better, not the people that actually need health care. When Health Care providers can focus on providing health care to the people that need it with out needing to worry about having to have an authorization number for treatment., then and only then, our Health Care system will no longer be broken.
Btw, those 50 Million folks who can't get health care, about 49,999,000 don;t have access to the internet to tell you their story. They are shut out of politics by poverty. I'd say there will be more national headline grabbing extremes to come. Buckle your seat belt Dorthy, the Matrix has you.
I was injured on the job in 2002 with a herniated disk and torn tissue in my Sacro Iliac Joint that was over looked for three years. Jeb Bush changed work comp laws in 2003 so money benefits only had to be paid by the insurance company/employer for two years, so that gave them no real incentive to treat me because it wasn't costing them anything to ignore me or administratively abuse me, which they had been doing all along anyway.
I couldn't qualify for Medicaid because I was a Single Male Home Owner with no dependents. They wanted me to be homeless before I could qualify for health care. I never got the health care I needed in work comp and in 2006 I developed Ulnar neuropathy in both my arms.
My reason for saying all that, is I actually/strongly considered committing a crime to see if I could get health care, so I can appreciate exactly why this guy did what he did.
Fortunately for me, I found out in 2010 that I qualify for health care through the VA because of a service related disability I have. I've yet to get the surgeries I need, but theoretically my right arm will get operated on next month. I try not to have hope about it because that only leads to disappointment that was always twice as bad as the amount of hope I had for every time I was told I was going to get help along the way.
I have some real mind blowing stories of all the administrative abuses I have been through or had/tried to endure.
I still have some hope, but I'm emotionally damaged from all the administrative abuses I've though. It's bad enough that I can't bring myself to reapply for SSDI even though I should have been receiving it since work comp money stopped.
The last ten years of my life have been needlessly ruined as I've been put through these abuses that happened because controls were put in place in the name of preventing abuses and insurance companies/the State of Florida have used them to prevent paying for helping people they should be helping.
Conservatives have twisted getting help into being a maze of corporate hoops (better known as bs) that you have to survive as though you are someone trying to get a promotion on the job. You are undeserving until you unequivocally prove and reprove that you qualify for the help/health care you need. The trap conservatives complain about in the system are the very traps that their policies create. They look at it as controls that are need to prevent fraud and they don't care about or track the outcome.
I'm glad I don't have to commit a crime, but the health care I'm getting now still is about administrative abuses as isn't 100% about making me well. At the rate things are going for the surgeries I need, it will likely take another few years to get there. That's a lot of poverty, struggles, appoints and medications along the way. I've needlessly been through what I've been through and it makes me tired to think about what I have to go through to get healthy, as well there is fear lurking in side me for the administrative problems that will happen along the way. The known known's & unknowns and the unknown unknowns, to steal a phrase.
I hope to survive all of this. As Robert Frost pointed out in his poem, by the time I get where I'm going on this road less traveled by, it will have made all the difference.
What people won't do to get on the national media these days!
This is reality- North Carolina's Health Care system is equipped to treat indigent and uninsured patients and those who cannot receive Disabiliy, Medicare or Medicaid. The Mecklenberg County Emergency Room would provide him with stabilizing treatment, examination, perhaps medication, and referrals to the county outpatient services available to him according to his economic status. http://www.carolinashealthcare.org/body.cfm?id=37
The man has options, but his mug shot looks as though a Psych Evaluation may be fruitful.
Not like ol' smiley-face John Edwards who has the happiest mug shot ever. What's up with that?
No one goes to federal prison for a $1 and all the defense has to do is ask the bank to produce its actual FDIC certificate, which won't be possible, and therefore the court will have no jurisdiction. Case dismissed.
XXXXX
Maybe it was a good idea to keep my old movie cameras. Now, who sells film for them? Who develops the film?
The idea of using an infrared signal to disable recording devices is a blunt instrument that depends on line of sight and distance. When I called and suggested the GPS gambit using the always on 911 signal from cell towers, I was only on the very edge of a shore of a beach of a great ocean of possibilities. Just think - a department may be able to select a zone, then send a signal that disables all cell phones outside of a certain political class within that zone. It's possible that turning the cell phone off or even removing the battery may not disable the function as far as the consumer options are concerned. I'll search some of Bruce Schneier's files. I think this is a fascinating topic. It's also interesting that the technology is within our reach.
Who are the few boneheads who answered YES to this poll question?
I really want to know the reggae sounding song title & artist that was played as a bumper coming back from the 1hr & a half break (at 10:34am PST). Thanks!!
I am trying to ease and wean myself away from comments. Keeping a lid on comments will hopefully mean less stress in my life. I do enjoy sharing information as well as my thoughts but trying to help make our country and our world a better place is very difficult. THE MORE THINGS CHANGE, THE MORE THEY REMAIN THE SAME!!!!! Satan’s disciples in our country have a strangle hold on us and on total evil!!!
"There are many issues associated with health care reform that divide us as a nation, but one that can unite us all: health care reform is essential to the reduction of poverty in America."
- Father Larry Snyder, Catholic Charities USA (from the Catholic Standard, March 4, 2010)
Thom, I have often wondered who first came up with the idea to tie healthcare coverage to employment. This has never made sense to me. Employed people are the only ones deserving of heathcare?? It's a form of indentured servitude and it's an unneccessary drain on business. Perhaps you can discuss sometime how our current system came to be.
Also, why can't we just have the government offer affordable health insurance for those who can't find coverage on the market (without a mandate) and allow private insurance companies to cover those who want it. I like your idea of Medicare Part E for everyone. I would be thrilled with that! As a 40-something with no health coverage, I live daily knowing that if I get seriously sick or injured, I'm going to die.
Then, over time, we can "starve the beast" of for-profit health insurance companies without the ongoing debate. If the gov't offers a viable solution, then let the market decide.