Hey, is there a section just for latest news

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[bbartlog]
Your post: “As for the infant mortality and life expectancy – they are interesting stats, but I don’t see why the government should be greatly concerned with them. Given a choice between a free society with 77yr average life expectancy and a more socialist one (let’s say 15% higher overall tax burden) with 80yr average life expectancy, I would choose the former.”

You would feel right at home in this country:

[O’Brien]: ‘Nonsense. You are under the impression that hatred is more exhausting than love. Why should it be? And if it were, what difference would that make? Suppose that we choose to wear ourselves out faster. Suppose that we quicken the tempo of human life till men are senile at thirty. Still what difference would it make? Can you not understand that the death of the individual is not death? The party [state] is immortal.’

1984
George Orwell
Part 3, Chapter 3. (Winston Smith is insider the Ministry of Love, being tortured by The Party, O’Brien, his torturer, is explaining the purpose of The Party and its goals)

Re;read the book. You will feel right at home with Big Brother and the state he has built in this story. It sounds exactly like the kind of America you would build for the rest of u.

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[...] The Democrats Poster Senior – Problem is she is a tax evading grandma who resides in two states – Whoops! [...]

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I do not like those proposals because I believe they will do nthing to reduce costs increases

Increasing supply (by expanding available options) will reduce costs. But it’s true that there are other systemic problems which neither these proposals nor the universal health care proposals of the Democrats will solve.

strangelhold our Insurance companies have over who can and who cannot have health care

What ‘strangelhold’? Pay the money and buy your health insurance; there are many providers. Oh, I forgot – this is lefty rhetoric, where someone who refuses to offer a service for free is exercising a stranglehold. I hate it when I don’t have any spare change in my pocket and can’t release the candy bars at the convenience store from the awesome ‘strangelhold’ the clerk is holding them in! Damn him!
And yes, I know that preexisting conditions may make it impossible to get insurance. That’s why they’re called ‘insurance companies’, not ‘charities’. But you can still buy the health care.

You would sacrifice American lives to serve your ideology

All public policy choices involve costs, and in some cases those costs are lives. But as always, you portray a refusal to help someone who has made bad choices as an act of aggression (I’m trying to sacrifice their life!).

I would not.

You would; you merely refuse to acknowledge the human costs associated with things like FDA delays in drug approval. Of course these would be different lives than would be lost under the policies I would support.

I would opt for a system that serves the American people best.

So you claim, but obviously the heart of our disagreement is that we don’t see eye to eye on what ‘serving the American people best’ even means.

I do not believe in sacrificing others lives for my personal fanaticism.

Yes, you do (at least by the loose definition you employ for ‘sacrifice other’s lives’); you just aren’t honest enough to admit it.

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Re: “So, Philly Steve, you don’t like numbers issued by this admin, but you trust stuff issued by other countries?! They all play games with numbers/statistics, all to try to look good to the world, and to fool their own people. If you look at the issued numbers only, you are comparing apples to oranges. You have to look at the actual data, to get real numbers to compare, and even then, there is always a chance that bogus info was input be accident or purpose.”

I asked this before. So where are the REAL numbers?

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True.

However it does not negate the 30% administrative burden that American insurance companies add to the cost of medical care (see above links).

It also does not negate the fact that some radicals in the US are perfectly willing to watch American life expectandcy go down and infant mortality rise, as long as it serves their ideology. (see above posts).

I, on the other hand, set my ideology to what serves the best interest of the american people, whether or not political extremists call me “Conservative”, “Liberal”, or even “Communist”. I do not care what labels are applied to me and will not set my opinions based on what political group I need to placate.

Others have much less of a concern for the American people. The proper term for them is “fanatics”. And we should ask ourselves if those are the ones we want to run our country.

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So, Philly Steve, you don’t like numbers issued by this admin, but you trust stuff issued by other countries?! They all play games with numbers/statistics, all to try to look good to the world, and to fool their own people. If you look at the issued numbers only, you are comparing apples to oranges. You have to look at the actual data, to get real numbers to compare, and even then, there is always a chance that bogus info was input be accident or purpose.
Remember: there are lies, damn lies, and statistics. Just because you like the numbers because they fit your political view doesn’t make them accurate. People who use false numbers, whether through ignorance or duplicity, are fools. If it only affects your own life, so what. But, when it affects others in important ways, with various types of costs incurred by lots and lots of people, perhaps generations worth, that’s when some of us get a wee bit hot. So try not to be a fool.

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Newsflash: The Government already sets the prices of medical procedures, albeit indirectly. How, you ask? Medicare.
Medicare has standard payouts for any given procedure, and hospitals bill procedures at those prices, no matter how much the procedure actually costs. This remove any incentive to try to do things at a cheaper cost, since the bill will always be paid at a certain level. Why not always charge that amount regardless of actual cost? This applies not for just the actual procedures themselves, but the supplies that are used to perform the procedures.

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Re: “You may not *like* some of those proposals, but you can’t pretend there is no attempt to improve the situation.”

You are correct. I do not like those proposals because I believe they will do nthing to reduce costs increases, nor will they break the strangelhold our Insurance companies have over who can and who cannot have health care: Both for those they cover and for those they influence the government to cover ornot cover.

Re: “As for the infant mortality and life expectancy – they are interesting stats, but I don’t see why the government should be greatly concerned with them. Given a choice between a free society with 77yr average life expectancy and a more socialist one (let’s say 15% higher overall tax burden) with 80yr average life expectancy, I would choose the former.”

You would sacrifice American lives to serve your ideology. I would not. I would opt for a system that serves the American people best. I do not believe in sacrificing others lives for my personal fanaticism.

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Conservatives have no suggestions that actually address the problem

Ron Paul has, among other things
– introduced the Health Freedom Act, which would improve the availability of information on herbs and supplements
– introduced the Access to Medical Treatment Act, which would improve access to alternative medicine and reduce the pricing power of the AMA cartel
– advocated the abolition of the FDA, which would speed the availability of new drugs and treatments
– supported the legal reimportation of FDA-approved drugs from other countries

You may not *like* some of those proposals, but you can’t pretend there is no attempt to improve the situation.
As for the infant mortality and life expectancy – they are interesting stats, but I don’t see why the government should be greatly concerned with them. Given a choice between a free society with 77yr average life expectancy and a more socialist one (let’s say 15% higher overall tax burden) with 80yr average life expectancy, I would choose the former.

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