dmagicglock

Lets say you see a homeless guy on the street and I give him 5 dollars to help him out, is that okay? Now what if I put a gun to your head and tell you to give him 5 dollars too, is that still okay? The governments healthcare option isn't much different.

You still don't get it... its not an option if i'm paying for both. My treatment may be an option on which one i want to use, but i'm still paying for two insurances. If you want to let people pay into a public option that requires ZERO tax dollars from people who use a private option, then go for it! And providing insurance to people that contribute nothing to our economy hardly equates to your something is better than nothing policy. And also from that article is this statement " Vets still gripe about wading through red tape for treatment. Some 11,000 have been waiting 30 days or more for their first appointment." So not quite check mate there buddy

I’d like to break the argument down even further. On basic economic principles… Prices are typically driven by two basic things. 1. Supply 2. Demand Nationalizing healthcare is essentially putting at least a 20% increase on the demand for healthcare, because it’s now provided to essentially everyone. However to be provided it has to be supplied. Yet we’re not going to increase our medical professionals by 20%. So when you have an increase in demand but lack in supply, you get shortages. You also get an increase in price when demand is greater than supply. Look at gas shortages, or opec cuts that drove gas to over 4 dollars a gallon last year. Quality: Quality of healthcare will decrease because you will have fewer doctors doing more work. If you think a doctor doesn’t spend enough time with you now, increase their patient load and lower the amount of time they can spend on diagnosing and treatment and see how the quality is affected. I know some people think less is more, but not in the case with doctors. At the end of the Day, you’re going to have lower quality healthcare, longer waits, and an increase in the cost of healthcare.

You're comparing apples to oranges... A government system doesn't need to operate to make a profit. And if it's just another option, just like the private sector, why do we need it? why should we spend a trillion dollars to replace or imitate something that is provided by 1300 different companies or options. And why should we allow government officials decide which healthcare procedures are covered? And what treatment we should get? Just as you think there shouldn't be limit on tort reform, why should there be limits on healthcare procedures? Even obama didn't answer that question... You failed to quote this question from a neurosurgeon from obama's infomercial: A neurosurgeon asked Obama: "Okay, you've got the healthcare plan that you're going to prescribe for everybody else. Your wife or your daughter comes down with a major illness. Your plan goes through the diagnosis. And then you find out that there's some other doctor out there somewhere with another procedure and another form of treatment, another opinion, but your plan doesn't cover it. Are you going to stick with the plan you forced on everybody else, or are you going to use your wealth and go outside the plan to get the treatment for your wife and daughter that other people are not going to be able to do because they don't have the money?'' That's the question. He did not answer it. Obama: "You're absolutely right. That if it's my family member, uh, if it's my wife, if it's my children, if it's my grandmother, I always want them to get the very best care." I don't need to explain his reply I think it speaks for itself... Is V.A. care good? I hope so... these men and women devoted their lives to our country and in their case, I'm okay with them receiving healthcare, because in exchange for our sovereignty they offered up their lives and limbs, and families to make sure we're safe. So yes they should have quality care and money well spent on healthcare. The problem is those satisfaction rates don't mention the amount of time it takes for these veterans to receive care because of the influx of patients. "Private hospitals, which make their money treating people who come to them sick, don't profit from heavy investments in preventive care... But the VA, which is funded by tax dollars, "has its patients for life," notes Kizer... So to keep government spending down, "it makes economic sense to keep them healthy and out of the hospital." Kizer eliminated more than half the system's 52,000 hospital beds and plowed the money saved into opening 300 new community clinics so vets could have easier access to family-practice-style doctors. He set strict performance standards that graded physicians on health promotion. As the reforms produced results, veterans began "voting with their feet," says Dr. Jonathan Perlin... Hundreds of thousands abandoned private physicians and enrolled in the lower-cost and higher-quality VA care. But that created a new problem. The VA's budget from Congress (currently about $30 billion annually) couldn't cover the influx. By January 2003, with hundreds of thousands waiting six months or more for their first appointment, the VA began limiting access to only vets with service-related injuries or illness or those with low income. " - Mark Thoma Economists View

Your Figures: I addressed them extensively… and debunked them and the basis of their statistical analysis on how their studies only encompass lifespan and how that doesn’t necessarily correlate to good medicine. Liars figure and figures lie. Solution: Tort reform... it lowers malpractice insurance costs, it lowers defensive medicine costs, and lowers the bottom line of costs to consumers. This is the same answer I’ve given previously, so maybe you’re the one not reading my posts? Public Health Option: it’s not an option if you still have to pay for it, yeah I can still pay for private insurance if my job allows it, or I can pay for insurance through a private insurance corporation out of my own pocket… But I’m still paying for other people’s “public option” through my tax dollars. And why would my company want to subsidize a health insurance option if the government is going to offer it? I’m supposing many small businesses will no longer do that and drop employee coverage, increasing the amount of people insured on the government option. Don’t believe me… believe the Hawaiian children’s healthcare plan that went bankrupt. So many people dropped their kids off their employer based healthcare coverage, because they could get it for “free” through the state. Why should I have to pay for something twice over method, led to bankrupting the system in less than a few years. Or look at Medicare and Medicaid... they’re the only FICA tax deduction that isn’t capped. Yet with uncapped tax deductions on payroll earnings, those systems are set to be bankrupt or taking in less than they dole out by 2017? Everyone that works pays into that system and it only supports the elderly. Referencing terrorism and the bush administration: Typical liberal dialogue, when the going gets tough and the argument isn’t making sense, reference the bush administration and get them off track. But since we’re there... maybe you should check out this website… http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/ and see if you can youtube the videos of the airplanes crashing into the twin towers on 9/11 and people jumping out of windows hundreds of feet so they wouldn’t be burned alive, ask their daughters, brothers, parents… if “water boarding or wiretapping suspected al qaeda members phone calls” is “okay” But I digress…

the difference between my argument and yours, is that I provide figures and references, where as you provide empty rhetoric with baseless arguments. And your WHO study that you quoted, if the United States removed accidental deaths (i.e. car accidents, motorcycle accidents, etc) and homicides we would be ranked far ahead of any country based on "WHO's statistical formula. I guess we can just agree to disagree, I'm clearly not going to change your mind on this. Even if I got miss f'ing cleo out of jail and brought her and her magic crystal ball to you and she said "eh man, this public althcar plan is bogus, i'd ratha po' jerk sauce on mah wounds dan go wit dis system man" you still wouldn't believe me. So you can keep your unions, your government bailouts, your Government Motors, and nationalized healthcare and I'll continue to write my congressman and fight for little things like capitalism and free enterprise and less government constraint. By the way you haven't started a thread yet on the Cap and Trade bill thats probably going to pass through the house today? I suppose imposing fuel and energy restrictions on us is something you support too, because it only adds to more government control... lets see what Obama and his cronies now control: Car Industry Housing Industry Bank Industry and possibly... Energy & Healthcare.... And the worst part is he has appointed "Czars" to oversee all these pet projects. These Czars report directly to him... So that means the executive branch is overstepping it's boundaries and has direct control over many things, that when the legislation was enacted, should've have stopped with senate or house committees...

Increasing costs is a logical argument, when you add to the price of something, and the president says its a government funded incentive that means "tax dollars". The government is funded by tax money. Also... If people don't have insurance, it doesn't mean they go to the doctor and we still cover it for free, yes we can't refuse them healthcare services but it doesn't mean we give it for free. Some people will not go to the doctor for a "common cold" that they might otherwise go for if they had a government insurance. I'm not asking that we keep things the same, we can make changes to the current system without replacing it. Creating nationalized healthcare is like taking that car and driving it off the edge of the cliff. Ask the people in Canada who come to the United States for cancer treatments how good their health care system is? Or the people there who have higher rates of colon cancer, because their system doesn't afford the frequent colonoscopies that our system allows. Listen, on paper communism is a great idea... Thats why its called a utopian society. I would love for everybody to live in peace and have free healthcare, but the fact of the matter is when actually put into action, its a terrible idea and doesn't work.

read this in its entirety, it explains that bold question with multiple points. ..."the first is it's unnecessary. Advocates say a government-run insurance program is needed to provide competition for private health insurance. But 1,300 companies sell health insurance plans. That's competition enough. The results of robust private competition to provide the Medicare drug benefit underscore this. When it was approved, the Congressional Budget Office estimated it would cost $74 billion a year by 2008. Nearly 100 providers deliver the drug benefit, competing on better benefits, more choices, and lower prices. So the actual cost was $44 billion in 2008 -- nearly 41% less than predicted. No government plan was needed to guarantee competition's benefits. Second, a public option will undercut private insurers and pass the tab to taxpayers and health providers just as it does in existing government-run programs. For example, Medicare pays hospitals 71% and doctors 81% of what private insurers pay. Who covers the rest? Government passes the bill for the outstanding balance to providers and families not covered by government programs. This cost-shifting amounts to a forced subsidy. Families pay about $1,800 more a year for someone else's health care as a result, according to a recent study by Milliman Inc. It's also why many doctors limit how many Medicare patients they take: They can afford only so much charity care. Fixing prices at less than market rates will continue under any public option. Sen. Edward Kennedy's proposal, for example, has Washington paying providers what Medicare does plus 10%. That will lead to health providers offering less care. Third, government-run health insurance would crater the private insurance market, forcing most Americans onto the government plan. The Lewin Group estimates 70% of people with private insurance -- 120 million Americans -- will quickly lose what they now get from private companies and be forced onto the government-run rolls as businesses decide it is more cost-effective for them to drop coverage. They'd be happy to shift some of the expense -- and all of the administration headaches -- to Washington. And once the private insurance market has been dismantled it will be gone. Fourth, the public option is far too expensive. The cost of Medicare -- the purest form of a government-run "public choice" for seniors -- will start exceeding its payroll-tax "trust fund" in 2017. The Obama administration estimates its health reforms will cost as much as $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years. It is no coincidence the Obama budget nearly triples the national debt over that same period. Medicare and Medicaid cost much more than estimated when they were adopted. One reason is there's no competition for these government-run insurance programs. In the same way, Americans can expect a public option to cost far more than the Obama administration's rosy estimates. Fifth, the public option puts government firmly in the middle of the relationship between patients and their doctors. If you think insurance companies are bad, imagine what happens when government is the insurance carrier, with little or no competition and no concern you'll change to another company. In other words, the public option is just phony. It's a bait-and-switch tactic meant to reassure people that the president's goals are less radical than they are. Mr. Obama's real aim, as some candid Democrats admit, is a single-payer, government-run health-care system. Health care desperately needs far-reaching reforms that put patients and their doctors in charge, bring the benefits of competition and market forces to bear, and ensure access to affordable and portable health care for every American. Republicans have plans to achieve this, and they must make their case for reform in every available forum. Defeating the public option should be a top priority for the GOP this year. Otherwise, our nation will be changed in damaging ways almost impossible to reverse." - WSJ

Ingenix is the devil, when I got in a motorcycle accident, they tried to subrogate my hospital bills claim to my autopolicy (no other parties were involved in the accident), needless to say with my clear documentation and persistence, they were unsuccessful in their attempt to screw me. That being said, I don't think the government can run healthcare better than private industry, because they don't have to run with a business model that requires a profit. So if they continually lose money, its just going to cost us more in tax dollars than the private option costs me on my weekly paycheck. Not too mention adding 46 plus million people to medical care without increasing the amount of medical staff. Even if you give incentives for medical jobs, college loan forgiveness for family practice doctors as obama mentioned on his infomercial, you still have a good 15 year turn around before you make even a dent, in the patient to doctor ratio. Then you also have tax payers footing the bill for doctors medical schooling... which ... yep drives up taxes.

I grew up in fairborn, the cops there (sorry to generalize but never had a good experience with their police) are usually on power trips. They abuse their authority and pull people over for stupid stuff all the time. I remember being a teenager growing up there, and having cops pull friends over for window tint violations, or being pulled over because I didn't use a turn signal (I did, i saw the cop tailing me for a few miles...) I mean just any excuse they can pull you over for to write you a ticket or make sure you're not doing something you shouldn't be... they will. I remember when I was a teenager and they raided the ol' foys breakfast bar and grill before it was owned by mike foy (can't remember the name). Anyways, it was basically a bunch of old timers playing poker in the back. Long story short the police show up in swat gear and semi automatic rifles and about give all these old guys heart attacks. Needless to say the community wasn't happy about the excessive force used to bust a so called "gambling ring". So don't take it personally, be glad he gave you a warning, and just smile on the inside because that city has gone to hell in a handbag and they just don't get enough revenue from all the WT that now lives/breeds there so they target innocent motorists like yourself to increase revenue.

good lookin' out

eh got through a few pages of this thread and got bored... is there nudes or is this thread worthless?

it'd be really funny if an admin or mod reset their post counts to 0 muhahaha

I would get a "street fighter" or "naked street bike" if you want comfort and performance. My first bike was a kawasaki zr7s and it sat much more upright than the traditional sport bike, yet had way more pickup than my dad's 1300 cc harley. It handled great through turns, and I could ride it for hours without my back hurting and gas mileage was good. I would check out the yamaha FZ6. It's got an older version of an R6 engine, tuned for more mid range performance, so it would still have the pick up your use to with a more comfortable ride. pic of what my kawak looked like

i love how all sportbikes get judged by a few gsxr squids... jk! I suggest you turn your dial to 980 AM and listen to dan patrick, or jim rome, much more entertaining! I think you have crazies that pop up in every situation. If you've gone to jack ass flats you don't have to be a genius to see quite a few drunk harley riders getting on their bikes with no gear and riding. And I've seen a lot of sportbikes doing wheelies on 675 and 75... So it does go both ways, but no need to perpetuate sterotypes.... However I will haha But I do think sport bike riders typically are the most protected (gear wise). And many, at least the one's I ride with, know their bikes and its capabilities beyond what a typical cruiser rider does. No offense, I'm sure most cruiser riders that are on this forum who invest time to network with other bikers are probably pretty smart about their two wheels so they don't fall into this category. But I mean when was the last time you saw a harley guy with a full face helmet and leathers and gloves... riding in july? My parents both ride harleys and I give them crap for being squids and not wearing gear, my mom at least wears a half helmet? Anyways, I'm rambling, good call to the OP for sending a reply back to the radio station. I'm curious to listen tomorrow cause I'll be driving in the cincy all morning...

Also that map used an old system of measuring average life expectancy of a healthy person at birth. Well that is one dynamic trying to measure qualitative data, not quantitative data. The new WHO measures average life expectancy of person's years of healthy life. Simple measures like that do not take into account things like deaths from War (japan hasn't been to war in over 50 years), life styles... do American's drink more, have more drug use, exercise less, etc than japan? Are American's genetically predisposed to more medical conditions than Japanese? The truth is I don't know, but to measure a complex healthcare on one statistic seems... Incomplete judgement at the least. Regardless of the quality of your healthcare, if people do not choose to lead healthy lifestyles I'm sure its going to skew the stats.

sorry for the jab, in all due seriousness, check out this interview with ron paul on healthcare, he brings up a lot of good points, especially how health insurance, really isn't following the insurance model. Love him or hate him, he has an informed opinion because before he was a politician he was a doctor for many years. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foXQbmZxWYY

jrm maybe the U.S. isn't the right country for you? You're all for the GM buyout, pro union, and you want nationalized healthcare? I'd suggest finding a place to live in like cuba or Venezuela, maybe even China? healthcare is not a right plain and simple, because you can't provide someone healthcare without imposing on the rights of someone else who has to provide it for them. If you really want to reform the healthcare system and make it work, here's a couple of changes I would suggest. Tort reform: Trial lawyers drive up the costs of insurance for everyone, because if a doctor makes a mistake, trying to save some worthless schmucks life, they want to sue him for 100 million dollars... Lets say they don't make a mistake and just "misdiagnose", they still want to sue them for 100 million dollars. So doctors lose 1/3rd of their earnings for malpractice insurance, and insurance companies drive up costs due to lawsuits. Defensive medicine: I've heard figures anywhere from 100 to 200 BILLION dollars are spent on this every year. This means doctors are spending tons of your money, and insurance money ordering tests that they normally wouldn't order just to rule things out and prevent them from getting a lawsuit. The supreme leader obama recently said that defensive medicine needed to stop, but he wouldn't concede on tort reform because it wasn't fair to some people... blah Here's a nice breakdown in the case of an OBGYN because some people like figures If that OB-GYN must pay a medical liability premium of $200,000 each year (which is the rate in Florida), $2,000 of the delivery cost for each baby goes to pay the cost of the medical liability premium. Prescription drug care costs: Everyone bitches about how expensive prescriptions are... Well nobody realizes the average cost to bring a drug to market is 600 million dollars. So the drug company has to make up that opportunity cost for profit and reinvestment into other drugs. Also the FDA (government organization) has a stranglehold on the endless approval process for drugs. The average time from development to market for a drug is around 17 years I believe? By then most of the patents on the drugs are up and even when renewed, the companies have few years before generics are available and kill their profits to cover their overhead. So if you want the healthcare system fixed, reform it, don't REPLACE it... I'm tired of people wanting to have a hand out and think the government should provide them with anything more than sovereignty.

I use to work for AT&T and my best suggestion for you is to buy a pre paid phone at best buy or target, put your sim card in it and it will work with your number. U can usually get some cheapo phone for like 20 bucks. Problem solved! I know AT&T just loves the ol' pre paid fraud, so your best to buy a pre paid phone from a national retailer instead of a corporate store.

I'm not sure how I'm sadly misinformed... here's some info from google finance. Competitive Labor Cost Comparison (UAW/Chrysler #'s) 2006 Average Labor Costs - UAW represented (per hour worked) DaimlerChrysler $75.86 Ford $70.51 General Motors $73.26 U.S. Japanese Transplants Labor Cost Comparison 2005 Average Labor Costs Honda $42.95 Nissan $41.97 I don't disagree with you when it comes to taking a job that has higher pay/benefits... You'd be an idiot not to, however I know that if I got laid off from a company, I would be applying for a similar job at a competitor company. You mention people that are 3 or 4 years away from retiring.. that sucks but life happens. I'd also like to see a statistic of how many people actually fall in that demographic. You talk about national healthcare in Japan with the other auto manufacturers but I'm referencing their plants in the U.S. They give good benefits to workers here through private U.S. health insurance, so that is still an overhead cost for them. Current employees may not recieve the benefits of the legacy costs being paid out to the older retired employees but they still pay Union dues and vote for their Union Representatives who negotiate(d) their contracts. So indirectly or collectively the members are responsible for thier own fate. I guess the moral of the story is, I respect your opinion, and I think we can agree to disagree. I genuinely feel bad for people that get laid off or are too far in their life to retrain. However on a personal note I'll never buy another GM vehicle or Chrysler for that matter. I drive a Grand Prix and my wife has a Pacfica and my next car will probably be a Subaru or a Honda. Here's a good article from business week back in 2005 that predicts GM going bankrupt due to many of the reasons I mentioned previously. http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_19/b3932001_mz001.htm

It might not be more economical for your particular town, but on a large scale... It would be more economical for the US to allow it to fail. If you let it fail those facilities could be repurposed for another manufacturer to employ the residents of your town. Our constitution doesn't guarantee job placement or availability. Being laid off is a terrible situation and I realize it has ripple effects for the surrounding community, I know I live in the Dayton area. Part of one's own responsibility is to continually make one's self a valuable asset to any company. That might require that you seek further education, retrain, or specialize in a field that is a growing area. It might also require someone to move to an area with less unemployment and job availability. People have to be proactive in their own success. That being said capitalism has a sort of "natural selection" process built in to it. A sort of "survival of the fittest". Just as species in ecosystems who fail to adapt to environmental restraints become extinct, so do businesses in a free market society. I'm sure GM would be more successful if it had followed the honda or toyota manufacturing process. These companies make similar vehicles with better fuel standards, better re sale values, less recalls AND have factories in the United States and WITHOUT union labor and greatly decrease their overhead costs allowing them to be a much more profitable venture. They pay employees less than half on average to do the same job as Union Members at GM. I really do feel sorry for anyone who has lost their job, especially people who have dedicated their lives to a company. However, concerning GM, I find it hard to have empathy for someone who made $50.00 an hour operating on a assembly line, when in all due reality, the degree of specialization for their job should pay them well under $15 an hour. You can keep pouring money down the funnel known as GM, but if you don't greatly restructure the company, i.e. Union Labor, Overhead production costs, vehicle quality, etc etc you're only delaying the inevitable and the business will fail again. The only difference this time is that we'll be out 80 billion as opposed to the 17 billion we've lost since this last fall.

I was thinking along the same lines... I wouldn't have a problem with it because I'm sure it's the standard with past administrations and essentially comes with the territory. My issue is the fact that he crucified the car and bank CEO's over their similar use of private jets, and their uses were primarily for business meetings, not date nights. Hello Kettle? This is Pot

even .0001% is too much. No business should be "too big to fail". This completely goes against free market capitalism principles. If you allowed GM to fail, I think you would see other car companies increase their market share in the auto industry, thus increasing their production, sales and hiring of employees (likely former GM employees). Instead we gave 17 billion to them last year, delayed the inevitable and the company still went bankrupt. Granted you could make a pie chart that shows a small ownership of corporation by the government but socialism embodies more than just government taking over private entities. There is also a huge push for nationalizing healthcare, increasing corporate taxes in 2010, and limiting the pay of executives in the financial industry, especially to institutions who received TARP funds. Do I think we're going to turn into China or Cuba in the next year or two? No... but a lot of these actions are steps away from capitalism towards a less successful economic model. Just my two cents.

was that todd jarret?! Good stuff, I've just started timing my shots/reloads the past couple months and doing some scoring drills... Wouldn't mind getting into some of those ipsc competitions someday if/when I get better.