National Healthcare.Follow

Yes

So Gbaji, et all, how would you fix things, so I can go back to working even parttime and paying income taxes again?

Then right now I can't work due to my health. It's certainly not what I planned, as I was working towards going back to school and getting a better job, when I suddenly found myself living in constant pain.

For 4 months after getting ill, I was still cover by my ex's health insurance through his federal job. The HMO doctors we went with due to costs, couldn't figure out what was wrong with me.

It took me losing health insurance and getting Medicaid, for me to see a doctor who knew what was wrong with me, but not able to get me the treatment needed that would let me work again, also under medicaid.

So here I am today with SSI and Medicaid, knowing that if I could work and get health insurance I might be cover for the care that would keep me from missing days and be able to keep a job.

I can't get married, because my medical costs would be far more then any legal benefit I would gain, just on the cost of my medications alone, with my boyfriends health insurance.

I think of becoming self employed, but then once again, I have to worry about my medical bills being far more then what I can expect to make as a fine artist. My being talented doesn't mean I would be good as a graphic artist since I failed or barely passed all my design classes in college. Also any job that requires strong language skills are out due to language processing disorder, or more commonly known as dyslexia. ie. I can read better then 99% of the nation, but only write with 10 grade grammer and 4 grade spelling skills on a good day. Anyone crazy enough to give me a job and pay for my health insurance? You'll never know if I show up or need to go home early due to pain. On plus side I'm female and was disable even before I became ill with Fibromyalgia, so you get tax benefits.

My one worry about a National Healthcare plan is if we let a few doctors with financial interests, control treatment for a illness based on disproven science. I've been following care for ME/CFS in the UK and see how bad it's been there for years now, because of a few doctors. More recent research here in the USA disproves their treatment works and the pain experience "isn't in our heads" like they want to claim.

Elne



Edited, Tue Jun 22 21:08:59 2004 by ElneClare

The level of Capitalism that I advocate has little if nothing to do with what you're talking about when you use the term, which is whacko insane Robber-Baron Capitalism.

How's that? Just putting things in perspective here.



And didn't you advocate placing a flat, no-exemption, 50% tax to cover all this? Just asking...

Sure. We could do that. And we could even put "equal opportunity to succeed" in there as well. But "equal" in this case would still be "less" then what people have right now. You'd be equally lowering opportunity across the board for everyone Smash.

We'd all have the equal opportunity to almost never make anymore then the subsistence that the government allots us. I guess that's equality, but it's not a system that I want to live in. The money has to come from somewhere Smash.


And that's my biggest problem with your arguments on this. You seem to just be aiming a big shotgun at industry in general, really want to pull the trigger, but don't really have any idea how you're going to make sure just the stuff you want to hit takes the damage. In your haste to make "the rich" suffer for their sins, you've forgotten that it's their businesses that employ us and their products that make our lives better. There is no way to take money from that part of the economy without also taking away the things that we get in return. You will reduce jobs. You will reduce the range of products on shelves. There's no way around it.


It's really a matter of whether you think we are better off in total allowing that industry to provide us with a livelyhood and goods to live on, or whether we should take that job away from them and give it to the government. Even removing the totalitarian aspects from the equation, so far, I've yet to see any sign that government can provide those things more efficiently then private industry. So while we may indeed be able to make sure everyone has those things, the cost will be *very* high. Instead of having a very efficient and robust economy where only 95% of the popuation has those things, we'll have a crappy sluggish economy, but 100% of the people will have those things. I'm not really sure it's worth it.


But then I'm a real advocate for the idea that you work for and earn what you get. I think that chucking that idea out is more damaging to us in the long run. I've lived on the street. I've survived at minimum wage jobs. It's not great, but it's not that hard either. If you can't earn enough to have food and shelter in the US, you really aren't trying hard enough. I personally, do not feel that I should be made to suffer because other people can't be bothered to work as hard as I have.





How much though? Again. This is the shotgun. You tax colas. What do they do? They raise prices on the resulting product. Maybe they move their factories from the US to a third world company so that they can still afford to produce the product at a competitive price. Sure. You'll reduce their profits, and collect some tax revenue, but at the same time, you've now increased the number of people who need the "free" services that you're going to provide with that tax money. I really don't see that as an improvement...