Death Panels for All! The health care thread

[Jim North]

What exactly are the chances of there being a meningitis outbreak around there?

[Killbert-Robby]

What exactly are the chances of there being a meningitis outbreak around there?

Well there has been a couple cases going round, and, you know, world getting smaller and all that *shrug*

[Jim North]

Dammit, I'm a hypochondriac that actually has a number of real health issues . . . I don't need to be hearing about things like this!

*starts barricading the doors and windows*

[McDuffies]

Dammit, I'm a hypochondriac that actually has a number of real health issues . . .

Aren't they all

[Jim North]

These blood pressure pills are probably just placebos! Damn that doctor man!

[McDuffies]

They're M&M's.

[Jim North]

Maria and Michelle had something to do with this?!

I kinda thought I was starting to feel the manlove after the first few pills.

[Killbert-Robby]

Dammit, I'm a hypochondriac that actually has a number of real health issues . . . I don't need to be hearing about things like this!

*starts barricading the doors and windows*

Just dont google "Meningitis Florida"

[Mvmarcz]

What exactly are the chances of there being a meningitis outbreak around there?

The outbreak that caused the scare is in a town only an hour drive away from me....
When Lafayette got Swine Flu cases people here were pulling their kids from school.

[Komiyan]

Meningitis, Florida

Man, that would be the worst town to live in.

[Jim North]

The outbreak that caused the scare is in a town only an hour drive away from me....

[Killbert-Robby]

Meningitis, Florida

Man, that would be the worst town to live in.

I'm sure the locals would probably find that an inflammatory statement
Hee, meningitis humor

[Kevin R Brown]

Socialism is an economic system in which the government or other ruling body funds and runs many if not all of the means of production in order to distribute that production and its end products evenly amongst the population.

A totalitarian police state is a political system in which the government is run by a single individual or a handful of people in an oppressive regime with complete power over its citizenry through threats and application of brute force.

They are not in the same class, nor or they mutually exclusive. They have, in fact, existed in the same place at the same time before . . . for example, in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, more commonly known as the USSR.

Well, let's talk terms here for a moment. Communism would be a state where the public owns the means of production and there is no longer a class stratification; obviously, this was not the case in the USSR. Socialism would not be where the government 'runs' the means of production (Well, not according to Trotsky, anyway, and he essentially coined the contemporary term), given that the communist state he envisioned has the general public owning those means - rather, it would be where the government supports the public in this endeavor by creating a balanced (or relatively balanced) playing field. Again, this is not what happened in the USSR.

Neither Stalin nor Kruschev had any interest in Marx or Trotsky's ideas aside from the political capital they were able to squeeze from them (and this should be rather obvious. Trotsky and his family were not chased from the country without reason), and certainly weren't interested in a society without a Burgeoise dominion. I posit that both Moscow's economic and political models were based strictly around information control (policing the state), and that there was no time during either Kruschev or Stalin's rule where socialist reforms were of interest to the leadership. I mean, if we're talking economics, where did the Soviet Union's money go, and where did it come from? Well, it went into information control and military power, and it came from... likely nowhere. Moscow told the public that all was well while it spent money on Hind helicopters and KGB espionage and bread line-ups began to stretch around city blocks. The financial situation was hidden & denied, and anyone who went digging tended to disappear.

How is that socialist? Moreover, how is that not a clear example where the economy was solely founded on one's dictatorship?

North Korea can be looked at under a very similar light in today's terms. There is almost no way that the country does not rest on a colossal mountain of debt, but demonstrating such a fact would be impossible because of how closed-off the country is. They can just tell everyone that all is well while they starve to death and their Dear Leader swims laps in his enormous pool. And yet people today consider North Korea a 'last stronghold' of communism! It's ridiculous.

[Killbert-Robby]

Socialism is NOT a system where the government does NOT control the distribution of resources. Its widely accepted, in socialist circles, that socialism requires some sort of referee, removing what would otherwise be total anarchy in distribution. They want to achieve the whole from each according to his ability, to each according to his need thing, but left to themselves, everyone would claim they worked 2 billions hours and deserve mansions. As such, the government is seen as a regulating body, distributing the resources to each according to his need.
Of course governments are corrupt bla bla bla

Maybe its not what Trotsky envisioned, but come on, these things are not written in stone. It would be like arguing that democracy is no longer the elders of the town dropping clay pieces into pots.

[Jim North]

As I said before, this is purely political/economic theory and practice talk, and I won't be continuing with it since it's off-topic from the socialization of US medical care. I'll just let Wikipedia do a little talking and then back on task.

"Some socialists advocate complete nationalization of the means of production, distribution, and exchange; others advocate state control of capital within the framework of a market economy. Socialists inspired by the Soviet model of economic development have advocated the creation of centrally planned economies directed by a state that owns all the means of production. Others, including Yugoslavian, Hungarian, German and Chinese Communists in the 1970s and 1980s, instituted various forms of market socialism, combining co-operative and state ownership models with the free market exchange and free price system (but not free prices for the means of production)."
-Socialism article on Wikipedia

Oh, and once again, Communism does not equal Socialism, so Communism can't be used as a measuring stick as to whether or not the USSR was or was not Socialist.

And I'm out!

[Killbert-Robby]

Dammit Jim, you used a communist encyclopedia, so those facts and established definitions are clearly biased...

[VinnieD]

Nothing.

[Killbert-Robby]

So its more reasonable to close up abstract holes in policies and have the government putting their fingers into every insurance claim filed than it is to get over your semi-illuminati fear of the government?

[VinnieD]

Nothing.

[Komiyan]

What exactly do you fear the government will do with their control over healthcare? Under an NHS-like system, they can't turn down your request for care nor would they want to.