aerius

If it can be broken, UPS will find a way to break it. There's a reason they're called United Parcel Smashers.

That doesn't help when one is born with a medical condition, such as the ones I mentioned.

Assuming everyone is healthy with no pre-existing conditions. If someone has asthma, certain allergies, diabetes, hemophilia or any one of a large number of conditions, the premium will be a lot closer to $4000 a month than $400. That is if the insurance company doesn't outright deny them coverage.

I suggest looking at the Medicaid eligibility requirements. You're covered if you're on welfare, SSI, under 6 years of age or pregnant and making 133% or less of the poverty level, and a couple other conditions. Otherwise, you're shit out of luck. Single parent making $35k a year? Shit out of luck. He or she will have to quit their job and work minimum wage at Mickey D's to qualify.

I think a large problem in the US is the mindless worship of Capitalism and the Free Market, American believe that it's inherently right and trust that invisible magic hand of the Free Market will automatically fix all that is wrong and make everything better. Regulation is equated with communism and evil, and therefore lack of regulation is good. They do not understand that Capitalism is just one end of the spectrum in socio-economic policies, instead, it's worshipped as if it's part of the fucking Constitution. Raw unfettered Capitalism does not fix society's problems, rather, it results in the vast majority of the population being bent over and sodomized without lube. See industrial revolution Britain for an example. You had your nice rich factory owners, aristocrats, and merchants, while the majority of the population was worked to death in mines & factories. That's what raw Capitalism leads to, the dicking over of everyone by the rich.

Couldn't agree more. The funniest part is his stance on torture. McCain claims to be against torture, then he turns around and votes FOR waterboarding and all the other shit that's going down in Gitmo. What a great guy.

I'm not psychic, I can't read your mind. When discussing current events and healthcare plans, how the fuck am I supposed to know you're talking about something from a decade ago? In any case, Hitlery's plan back then was just as fucked as her current one. I hear this stated over & over with no proof at all. I guess the industrial revolution period is better than today since governments had practically no regulation over private enterprise, and employees could be worked to death in mines & factories for a penny a day. I suppose the lack of health & safety regulations were a good thing for everyone back then. Or in slightly more modern times, I suppose letting Standard Oil & the railroad commissions use their monopoly power to run roughshod over all their competitors was a good thing. I mean afterall there's nothing wrong with anti-competitive practices such as taking kickbacks from the railway commission, and furthermore, colluding with the railway commission to tax the shipments of competitors and funneling the money thus collected straight into Rockefeller's pockets. Not to mention putting countless people out of work and bankrupting entire towns. And as the most recent examples, I guess handing out no-bid open-ended contracts to Halliburton in Iraq is a great thing. So is allowing banks and other financial institutions to package & trade CDO's & other debt based derivatives & investment vehicles without requiring them to put them on the balance sheets. And you wonder why the banks are fucking tanking right now and taking the rest of the market & economy down with them. Lack of government regulation is clearly a benefit to society.

If you're going to argue against Hitlery's system, at least you can fucking understand it. Hitlery doesn't outlaw private insurance, rather, her plan forces you to buy healthcare coverage from existing private insurance companies, and if you don't, you get the the shit fined out of you. Her bullshit proposal would give you the worst of all possible systems.

It's a long-term historical trend. Link Excerpt: The 2:1 marketing to R&D spending ratio has held for at least the last 15-20 years, and I wouldn't be surprised if the trend goes a lot further back. I don't have the time to dig up SEC filings for pharmaceutical companies going back 50 years, but someone else has probably done the research already. We do know for a fact that over the last couple decades at least, drug companies have spent around twice as much on marketing as they have on R&D.

A lot of R&D costs are tax write-offs anyway, so the actual cost to the company will be significantly lower than the dollar value, how much depends on how good their accountants are. But guess what the fun part is. Drug companies spend twice as much on marketing as they do on R&D. Because pimping Viagra on every fucking media outlet will improve the health of Americans.

Suck it down, suck it down hard Administrative costs of the Canadian government run healthcare system is less than 1/3 that of the privatized US system. Our government run system is over 3 times as efficient as your private enterprise insurance system.

Contrary to the claims of liberatarians and republicans, private insurance is actually less efficient. As I pointed out earlier, private insurance companies have to make a profit, pay out dividends, and meet the income expectations of their shareholders. This all results in money being diverted away from providing healthcare services. Furthermore, a national system can realize large economy of scale savings, it's pool of customers is effectively the entire country's population, whereas private companies have a much smaller pool and can't have the same savings. Bottom line, the private enterprise model, no matter how it's run isn't as efficient as single national system.

Maybe you'd like to explain why Canada successfully runs a socialized healthcare system and furthermore, has had a budget surplus for the last decade.

Between my job and my investments, I'll likely be retired by age 40 with a fully paid off home and be set for life, so no, I don't have class envy. I believe in social responsibility, I have a debt to pay back to the society which has allowed me to get to where I am, that means the social, healthcare, education, and 1001 other things which keep our society whole and functional. However, I also recognize that people, including myself tend to be selfish pricks, and that left to own devices we sure as hell ain't give back to society nearly as much as we take from it. And that's what taxes are for, I have no problem with paying my taxes to ensure that some kid with diabetes gets the treatment he requires to lead a good life and become a contributing member to our society. We sink a few thousand bucks into him now so that he can earn & produce many times that amount during the course of his career. Instead of marginalizing his healthcare, dicking over his quality of life and turning him into a net wealth sink as his health suffers, we have him become a positive wealth contributer. Think of it as preventative maintenance and planning for the long run. We spend a few bucks to tide him over till he starts earning, then we rake in craploads of bucks when he becomes a productive citizen. By the way, with the drop in value of the greenback in recent times, the median income in Canada is now more than the US median income, and after cost of living and purchasing power is factored in it's skewed even more in our favour. I'd also note that there's a nice correlation between tax cuts for the rich, cutbacks on social spending, and the decline in health of the US economy.

I'd argue that the divide is caused by your country's dumbass social & economic policies more than anything else. The system is setup to fuck over the poor and middle class citizens while giving rich people everything they want for very little cost.

In your own words, with regards to people who can't afford healthcare coverage, In other words, tough shit for those poor people, it's my fucking money so too bad for them. So I guess someone who's born with diabetes, a heart murmur, allergies, asthma or ends up with leukemia is just shit out of luck then since their pre-existing condition will either disqualify them from healthcare coverage or result in exhorbitantly high rates? I'm sure all those kids just chose to be born that way. But in your world, it's just fine to deny them care and hoard your money for yourself. Fuck those kids, it's my goddamn money and I have no obligation to help them in any way. And you wonder why the US ranks dead last among OECD countries in infant mortality rates.

No thanks, a death rate approaching 10% is not something I want to gamble with.

So to put it bluntly, it's my goddamn money, and fuck everyone else but me.

You have Etys, I doubt screaming babies will be a problem for you.

Hitlery isn't exactly a fast learner to say the least...

As I recall the round trip ticket price for Toronto to Tokyo is around $1000 or so, $1200 is still a pretty good price for the set. I should fly there and grab the set, then sell it at a nice profit.

Of course I am, that's what taxes are for, to gather money for providing services. I view healthcare as a basic essential right for all citizens and have no problem with my tax dollars going towards providing this service. Others may disagree. As a sidenote, Hiltlery Clinton's nationalized healthcare proposal is the biggest crock of shit I've ever heard of. Her plan forces you to be insured by a private sector insurance company, and then fines your ass if you can't or refuse to get insured. Because fining people who can't afford insurance is really going to help them, stupid fucking cunt.

Think of it this way, in the American system the insurance companies and HMO's need to show a profit and pay out dividends for their shareholders as well as shelling out multi-million dollar salaries for their senior executives. All of that takes away from the money that's actually being spent on providing medical care. In a national system such as the Canadian or European model, almost every dollar that comes in can be spent on providing medical services. There's no need to show quarterly profits, no shareholders taking dividends, and no board of directors taking their golden parachutes. All you have is the the administrative system taking a slice, but that's also there in the American system. It's a more efficient system, and it's reflected in the costs and results, we pay less while enjoying better life expectancies, lower infant mortality rates and so on.

Remember, they're all fair game as long as they satisfy the "half your age plus seven" rule.

Let me spell it out for you since you obviously don't get it. You're not welcome. You annoy us. Leave and stay gone until your balls drop or you grow a brain, whichever comes first.