Death Panels for All! The health care thread

[MixedMyth]

As for Protestantism, I don't think that I would say that it is any better or any worse than any other flavor of Christianity. Again, you mostly see the bad side of it on the news because that is what attracts attention. I mean, it's not like Catholicism doesn't have a checkered past either.

I guess it depends on a particular church, most of them were founded to try to fix Catholicism's mistakes in the past by returning to Christian principles from before Catholicism messed up all the doctrines... but while for some that means returning to more immaterial and judgemental church, for others that means sticking stubbornly to the most backward teachings you can find in Bible.

There are fundamentalists in all religions. Ours just seem to be extremely vocal right now and have disproportional sway on some of our politicians.

But it's a circular process, government that is swayed by church uses institutions of education and media to probuce more mind-numbed people who will listen to their local priest no matter what he says.

True enough. But you have to realize is that there are 1001 different Protestant churches. Seriously, there are a bajillion of different denominations scattered across the whole gambit of fundamentalism and laxity... anywhere from "GOD HATES YOU ALL BECAUSE EVERYONE BUT ME IS A SINNER!" to "Hey...this is some good coffee. Religious beliefs? Um...I have some, but I don't think they're the same as yours. Does it matter?"

[McDuffies]

Yeah, the Catholics at that point had come up with the brilliant doctrine of getting into heaven by giving piles of money to the Catholic Church, so some people got pissed off and went off to start their own church. Without blackjack. Or hookers.

That's simplification, that was just one of many reasons. Protestant church is not just one branch founded by one group of people, rather it's a multitude of branches were founded by various people, in various places, for various reasons. Some of them because they believed that Vatican was being too liberal.

What of contraception, then? It's not medically "necessary", but it would make a marked improvement on a lot of social problems.

I have zero problems with my taxes going towards these things, personally, but I get that that's a personal choice.

My problem is women who use abortion effectively as contraception, having over 30-50 abortions in their lifetime. I was pretty shocked when I heard of those cases.

[VeryCuddlyCornpone]

I have zero problems with my taxes going towards these things, personally, but I get that that's a personal choice.

My problem is women who use abortion effectively as contraception, having over 30-50 abortions in their lifetime. I was pretty shocked when I heard of those cases.[/quote]

That's a real thing? Wouldn't the doctor at some point say "No, take this pill instead"? I mean, I guess if you go doctor-hopping... but... wait where is this happening?

[Killbert-Robby]

My problem is women who use abortion effectively as contraception, having over 30-50 abortions in their lifetime. I was pretty shocked when I heard of those cases.

That's a real thing? Wouldn't the doctor at some point say "No, take this pill instead"? I mean, I guess if you go doctor-hopping... but... wait where is this happening?

I'm not surprised this happens, because humanity is boundlessly stupid. But its far from the standard case. I don't see why a vassssssssssssssssssssst minority in people having that many abortions should be a reason to dick it up for everyone else.

[Komiyan]

My problem is women who use abortion effectively as contraception, having over 30-50 abortions in their lifetime. I was pretty shocked when I heard of those cases.

That's a real thing? Wouldn't the doctor at some point say "No, take this pill instead"? I mean, I guess if you go doctor-hopping... but... wait where is this happening?

I'm not surprised this happens, because humanity is boundlessly stupid. But its far from the standard case. I don't see why a vassssssssssssssssssssst minority in people having that many abortions should be a reason to dick it up for everyone else.

this, these cases have to be pretty goddamn rare. An abortion is not an easy thing to go through, I believe.

[VeryCuddlyCornpone]

this, these cases have to be pretty goddamn rare. An abortion is not an easy thing to go through, I believe.

That's what I was thinking.

[Killbert-Robby]

this, these cases have to be pretty goddamn rare. An abortion is not an easy thing to go through, I believe.

That's what I was thinking.

I'd also like to, since Komi is in England, use an English statistic :
The overwhelming majority of abortions (95% in 2004 for England and Wales) were certified under the statutory ground of risk of injury to the mental or physical health of the pregnant woman
Of course all the reasons involve risk to the pregnant woman or child, by law as to what is grounds for abortion. What I find interesting is you can also abort if it looks like the child is going to be born handicapped.
Basically, England kinda tiptoes between "No, abortion is evil" and "oh you had an oopsie? Ok we'll fix that", in a way that, well, works, when coupled with their family planning initiative.

page 4 for the statistics I was talking about
http://www.dh.gov.uk/prod_consum_dh/gro ... 117574.pdf

Page one also answers people's questions about NHS coverage of abortions.

[McDuffies]

That's a real thing? Wouldn't the doctor at some point say "No, take this pill instead"? I mean, I guess if you go doctor-hopping... but... wait where is this happening?

I've met a few such cases here, one of them was a nurse. I guess after a first few times, it's not as stressful experience any more. More troubling is that this is not done in some shady half-legal clinic, but in major country's institutions, by esteemed doctors. As for doctors, I guess they get detached from caring about patients more than their contract states.

Like others said, those are rare and extreme cases, but to me they're a that government institutions should not be ambivalent towards abortion.
I mean, there's a huge difference between banning and discouraging - making abortion illegal or letting rightist mobs picket abortion clinics and throw stones is definitely out of questions, but I do think that institutions and media should make it aware how damaging the procedure is and do stuff to incourage women to keep their babies, work on helping teenage and single mothers, promoting contraception more - I mean you still have a lot of of people who think that looking at the calendar is reliable... Otherwise you just know that some people are gonna start thinking that it's not a big deal. And if you have the government that is fonding abortions, that's gonna make more women decide to abort, not because they can afford it but because they're gonna believe that government is supporting abortion.

[Killbert-Robby]

I just can't agree with you on that. We shouldn't just go "sure abortion" because people are going to start taking advantage of it since its on the government's tab? I mean, should Obama also dump health care because there's hypochondriacs? Some people make the very surprising move of using contraceptives because they believe in their use and not because they just don't want to pay for an abortion. There's plenty of education in contraceptives, out in the west more than anywhere else. Everyone knows about condoms and such. Except for those extraordinary exceptions, nobody thinks of abortion as a contraceptive.
I mean, women who can't afford to abort in a clinic have coat hangers. If a person doesn't want a baby, they're not going to have it. I'd rather provide a sterile, safe environment for them rather than have them try do it for free themselves.
People who don't think abortion is a big deal make this on moral judgment, not price tags.

[VeryCuddlyCornpone]

I'd rather provide a sterile, safe environment for them rather than have them try do it for free themselves.
People who don't think abortion is a big deal make this on moral judgment, not price tags.

Agreed.

The way I see it, in an ideal and perfect world, women would only get pregnant if they absolutely and 100% wanted that baby. And vice versa, all women who wanted to get pregant could do so. Neither of these is true and I feel like a lot of groups that are fervently anti-choice or, if you want to look at a broader perspective, anti-sex education (meaning places where Abstinence Only is what constitutes sex education) are just really in denial about real issues that exist.

This isn't directed at you personally, McDuffies. Abortions aren't nice- they really are an awful procedure (and I mean both in terms of the procedure itself- a life being taken- and in terms of the fact that women are put in situations where they will have to deal with the outcome either of the procedure or an unwanted birth to begin with). So I can understand the feelings behind not wanting them to be paid for by the government. Unfortunately, every situation is different and no one can fairly make one blanket statement or law that will cover every individual.



Sorry for run on parentheses sentences and generally not making coherent sense

[Killbert-Robby]

eh, don't worry about making sense, I could make heads or tails of it

[Killbert-Robby]

So I learned something cool today, that I was totally unaware of. See, I went to the capital to pick up my mother and brother's European Insurance cards. That's right. Not only does every European country I can think of offer national health care, but now there's CONTINENTAL insurance. Go to France for a day, get hit by a car, end up spending couple hundred grand? No sir. Because now the EU is offering continent wide insurance!
Because we weren't Maltese, we had to use third party which NEVER payed out. Honestly, with their clauses, it might as well just have been life insurance because they wouldn't pay unless you were one foot in the grave. Now Malta's in the EU, making us EU taxpayers, boom boom wham, we qualify for universal health care anywhere in the continent. Fear our socialist continent! I find the idea of "national" insurance that allows you to not just use the health care in your own country, but anywhere in the continent to be, well, FASCINATING.
Heavens, just imagine if this was raised in America? "Not only do I want to give universal healthcare to our own citizens, but also taxpayers from Canada and Mexico!"

[McDuffies]

I should note, I am pro choice, I just think that in those cases where you have a healthy, mature woman who is considering abortion out of convenience and teethering on that decision, she should be incouraged (hopefully with actions and not just words) to keep the baby.
I mean it's not a clear cut case like health care, it's a complicated issue that includes not only financial but also moral and sociological concerns. I just don't like the possibility of creating atmosphere where people will think that it's no big deal because, well, it is a big deal.

[Ti-Phil]

There's a continental healthcare in europe? Now that's something I hadn't heard of before! But it's a good thing.
Already that they use a single currency and doesn't need ten thousand paperworks and passport to go between their territories.
Ah, if a certain country to the south could learn a few lessons.

[Komiyan]

I should note, I am pro choice, I just think that in those cases where you have a healthy, mature woman who is considering abortion out of convenience and teethering on that decision, she should be incouraged (hopefully with actions and not just words) to keep the baby.

Define 'convenience.' You can be healthy and mature and still in entirely the wrong place to be having kids. It's a HUGE thing to consider, especially if you don't have one already- she'd have to halt her career/education, save a lot of cash, basically dedicate a lot of years to the child.

I honestly believe it should be 100% that person's decision whether they have it or not, without pressure from either side, since it's going to be HER that's going to be living with it. It's none of OUR business, why should my opinion impact so strongly on her life?

[Killbert-Robby]

What she said, plus a little something-something, which is I believe if a person is unsure about keeping the baby, its a little deeper than sayyyyyy "I don't know if I should get this sweater, but oh God its FREE so I might as well!"

[Phact0rri]

a child needs love, and not to even start on over population. I think that someone should be sure they want to do it before they have a child. Of course I also don't buy into the "life starts at conception" ideology.

[Laemkral]

a child needs love, and not to even start on over population. I think that someone should be sure they want to do it before they have a child. Of course I also don't buy into the "life starts at conception" ideology.

They only stop at conception because in truth, sperm are as "alive" as a recently fertilized egg. But it would be very bad for their agenda to try to outlaw male masturbation as "murder" given that 100s of millions of lives die each time AND its a completely retarded idea. Though, for the record, the Bible says its murder, and that's the only authoritative text on the subject for some of these people.

The cells are alive in a strictly scientific sense, but they're basically entirely dependent upon the mother for everything and fail to be self sustaining. It's really not until the third trimester (and my knowledge in this area is a little fuzzy, so I may be slightly off) that the baby is actually...a baby. Capable of theoretically surviving in an outside world without direct dependence upon the mother for oxygen and nutrition. I mean, yes it takes modern medicine to incubate the poor little thing for several months, but its now quite a bit more an example of "life" than some cell clusters. Hence why US law allows for regulation in the third trimester, and generally its harder to outlaw in the second, and impossible to outlaw in the first trimester. It's a shifting definition, based upon the cases that go up and who's sitting on the court.

Personally, I'm pro-choice.

[Alias Pseudonym]

a child needs love, and not to even start on over population. I think that someone should be sure they want to do it before they have a child. Of course I also don't buy into the "life starts at conception" ideology.

They only stop at conception because in truth, sperm are as "alive" as a recently fertilized egg. But it would be very bad for their agenda to try to outlaw male masturbation as "murder" given that 100s of millions of lives die each time AND its a completely retarded idea. Though, for the record, the Bible says its murder, and that's the only authoritative text on the subject for some of these people.

The cells are alive in a strictly scientific sense, but they're basically entirely dependent upon the mother for everything and fail to be self sustaining. It's really not until the third trimester (and my knowledge in this area is a little fuzzy, so I may be slightly off) that the baby is actually...a baby. Capable of theoretically surviving in an outside world without direct dependence upon the mother for oxygen and nutrition. I mean, yes it takes modern medicine to incubate the poor little thing for several months, but its now quite a bit more an example of "life" than some cell clusters. Hence why US law allows for regulation in the third trimester, and generally its harder to outlaw in the second, and impossible to outlaw in the first trimester. It's a shifting definition, based upon the cases that go up and who's sitting on the court.

Personally, I'm pro-choice.

>.<

The cells are alive in a strictly, 'duh, they're cells, of course they're alive' sense. All kinds of other things are alive, like your blood, and lettuce, and certain kinds of dirt. It's in a strictly scientific sense that they're human. They're more like the possibility of a human being (which is, in it's own way, something that deserves to live, but destroying it isn't really the same as killing someone.)

Also, the Bible does not say masturbation is murder. It says it's bad, but it's bad about on the level of eating ham. And sperm die all the time anyway. Guys make billions of the little things in a day. And approximately the same number die when you have sex.

The trouble with the 'able to survive in the outside world' criterion is that it's really only a matter of time before we can raise babies from zygotes in tubes, at which point we're back to the pill being murder, since it fails to actually prevent fertilization. In fact, the trouble with virtually all of the post-conception pre-birth 'life' criteria is that they are utterly arbitrary and hinge on things like 'how much like a baby does it look' and 'is its heart beating?'

[Tellurider]

I may be wrong on this, but I'm pretty sure that the difference between "the pill" and "the morning after pill" (plan B as it's commonly called now) is that with the one you take every single day regularly, it stops you from ovulating (i.e. there is no egg there for the sperm to fertilize) while the plan B morning-after pill forces you to menstruate, thus preventing a fertilized egg from implanting.

The thing is, unborn babies die ALL THE TIME. This is why people who want babies will try for a few months before getting fertility testing or fertility drugs. Women can miscarry before they even know they're pregnant, basically. I personally think that, if nothing else, that justifies the plan B pill. Sometimes condoms break. Sometimes people get raped, and if they can get that plan B pill within 72 hours, then abortion isn't even an issue. But as stated before, for those who believe that life begins when the egg gets fertilized, they're going to be just as pissed off if the government covers plan B.

The other problem with universal health care is the funding, though. You have, for example, Spain, which has a lot of old people and not many young people, and their health care system is having major funding issues. In the US, what about all those people who didn't have insurance suddenly having it and deciding that now they are going to go to the doctor and get that lump checked out? Now they're going to go get antibiotics instead of staying home and drinking a lot of orange juice? Plus we have the baby boomers about to start retiring en masse, so they're going to be demanding a whole lot of money (this will happen with universal health care or not, though, because of medicare). I'm concerned that even if we manage to get some sort of thing passed that certain things are going to fall by the wayside. Like, I have hypothyroidism, so I have to get periodic blood tests. They're annoyingly expensive, but since it's not life threatening or anything, is the government going to cover it or just say "well it's not gonna kill you so deal with it"?

Kind of leads me to my next question for those with universal health care - do you guys have annual physicals or regular blood tests, STD tests, etc covered? I'm assuming that stuff like mammograms, pelvic exams, and prostate exams are covered... am I right about that?