Omnibus GOP Primary ThreadFollow

I think that looks more like a weapons cache you'd find in Afghanistan, not America. Except more AKs instead of all the Colts.

Don't you have family or friends employed in the public sector at all? I mean like military, school bus driver, fireman, or anything like that? Surely there's no perfect system, and you'll probably catch me complaining about an 'east coast' bias or something at some point, but still it's more "us" than you're going to get many other places.

Killing someone means the dead individual doesn't need health care anymore, which means we pay less overall.

When we're talking about the availability of something which has a dollar value attached, then yeah.



That I understand that things that cost more money than you have earned, thus haven't been "earned" by you? Somewhat axiomatic, right?

Everyone dies Samira. Lay off the vague touchy-feely crap. Do they all "deserve" to die? It's a stupid and meaningless word to use in this context. I'm not talking about what people deserve. I think it's irrelevant to this discussion. People don't get sick because they "deserve it". That's a moronic idea that imposes some kind of moral choice into random events.



And did that acquaintance have health insurance? Do you think it would have helped? Most people who develop conditions like that don't fail to go to the doctor because they can't afford it, but because they don't want to go to the doctor. I realize that this is a side issue here, but if we're going to talk about people who don't go to see a doctor until their conditions worsen to a life threatening level, it's fair to point out that this doesn't have nearly as much to do with availability of health insurance as some suggest.


And I'll point out as I have many times before, that if we had the kind of direct payer system we had prior to the rise of comprehensive insurance, anyone who felt sick could easily and cheaply walk into their local doctors office and talk to their doctor and get an opinion/examination/whatever as needed. Because we've created this monolithic system, with massive costs and paperwork most people avoid going to see a doctor at all, even when they do have insurance, until they're in extreme pain. People don't just call their doctor up and describe their symptoms and get some advice right then like they used to. It's all so regimented and regulated and mandated that most people try to avoid involving themselves until and unless they have to.


Your acquaintance would probably be alive today if we had the kind of health care in this country that I'm advocating for. He probably would not have done any better under even the most socialized of systems.

Yes, Gbaji, making preventative care more obnoxious to obtain, we would save more people with preventative care.

Ok, you go with that

Everyone dies? Really? No Shit. Well, thank you for telling me that. I honestly thought it was just coincidence that old people tend to disappear.

I don't know whether she had insurance. I don't think she probably did, as she wasn't working full time. But I'm not going to make up "facts" to support my political leanings.

Um.... Which makes preventative care more obnoxious to obtain:

1. A system where there are small private practitioner doctors working out of offices physically located in or near where people live, where the doctors have minimal overhead and can charge whatever the market will bear and are in competition with the doctor's office down the street, keeping prices low. In this system you can call your doctor describe symptoms and get medical advice free most of the time. Walking or driving there is as simple as going to the store. Waits are short, and prices are low.

2. A system where there are nearly no small private doctors offices. All medicine is doled out in large health care centers where you must file a stack of paperwork just to get a bump looked at, and it can easily take several hours of waiting for anything but an extreme emergency. Most of the centers require health insurance which costs thousands of dollars a year. If you don't have it, you *might* be able to see a doctor, but they're going to charge you many times more than what it would cost in the first system.


Even ignoring the cost issue, the first system makes it vastly easier to obtain that preventative care. And that's the system we had in this country until the liberals decided that we needed to move towards socialized medicine and screwed the whole thing up. So yes, your sarcastic comment is accurate, but I suspect you're aiming it in the wrong direction. Back in the day, general and preventative care was cheap and affordable. And Doctors even made house calls.

Great "progress" we've made there.

It's relevant, and I'm sure that most of that is stuff the GOP will do (or is already doing). The problem is that the media is so far in the tank for the Dems that their operatives will just repeat "The GOP has no alternative health care plan" over and over in as many venues and ways possible and "win" that argument no matter what the GOP comes up with. Just like they did when Obamacare was first being fought over, and when we debated what to do about the deficit, and how to deal with the economic crisis, and on and on and on.

It's hard to have watched politics over the last few years and not noticed just how often the Dems have gone to the "At least we have a plan, the GOP has none" well. You'd think eventually people would start to catch on, but it hasn't quite happened yet. Expect to see the same thing.

Mind if I ask what fairy land did you grow up in? My doctor when I was a kid was a small, private owned business (cheapest around also) and he still charged as much as a doctor visit would cost me 20 years down the road.



Oh that's right, the Gbaji-train makes frequent stops in Ye Olde Days in between stops of Up Gbaji's ***** where he gets most of his facts, and the very rare stop at Sanity Station.

Right. If you think the free market is a good mechanism to ration health care, it's hard to see how you could disagree. I'm kind of proud of gbaji, if anything, for having realised the logical implications of a position he holds. Didn't know he could do that anymore.