Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[redwallzyl]

Not that i like the system but Obama is the only president i have really known not counting bush when i was in grade school. he is the standard of what the new generation expects and what we want. what we got was the total opposite fully supported by the GOP how has been determined to undermine literally everything i see as good personally and professionally. i don't like the system but it is what we have and i expect more of it because i know it can deliver more and the democrats are to only ones standing up for what i care about, sensible republican politicians are a rarity and don't dare deviate from the party line.

[EnigmaticHat]

http://edition.cnn.com/2015/08/31/asia/india-child-deaths/index.html

Headline: "Why are so many children dying in India?"

Well, let me start with the fact that there's no universal healthcare in India. it's all for-profit, and it has a child mortality rate far exceeding other similar nations. It's has a mortality rate about 50/1000 live births, compared to 12/1000 for China, despite being about equal to China on this in the 1950s - 1960s.

Rural India has very little infrastructure and its population isn't as connected to technology and globalism as much as the urban areas.  One consequence of this is that in many villages people are still in a faith healer mindset where seeing a doctor is more of a desperation move.  Kind of like Europe before surgical hygenie and science based medicine were adopted, except that India *has* those advancements some of the population just doesn't understand that yet.  Doctors don't want to go to rural India because its thankless and frustrating work, while there's a dense urban population that still has a deficit of doctors and would appreciate their services more.  There are also problems in all of India where poor people don't always get proper nutrition, sanitation, and safe drinking water.

None of this is disagreement mind you.  India puts *way* less of its budget into health than most other nations.  They apparently have a 25 year plan in the works that involves giving healthcare a much bigger part of the budget... they want to raise it to half of what the average country allots.  The plan is supposed to create a universal healthcare system for all citizens but there's disagreement as to whether the money should go to the private or public sectors.  It looks like no one is arguing against universal healthcare or even socialized medicine in principle the way that Republicans are, its more of an apathy/not wanting to spend money kind of deal.

[alway]

I think what conservatives want is a free-market type of healthcare, with lots of specialist offices competing for customers which would result in better (and possibly cheaper) care. The obvious problems with this is the people who can't afford anything.

That *is* Obamacare is the problem.

This is fundamentally the problem which precludes any reasonable healthcare bill from ever coming out of the Republican party for the next decade. Obamacare essentially was the Republican plan. In their breathless rush to make Obama a one term president, they gave up on all scruples and values they held to oppose it with all their might. Republicans and their rightwing propaganda networks pumped out endless lies about Obamacare to stir up hatred against it. The whole 'tea party' thing and deficit fearmongering about it. Never offering a serious alternative or anything more than talking points about how terrible Obamacare was.

And now it's too late for them to go back. They can't take back all those things they said about Obamacare. To do so would be admitting they lied repeatedly to the American people for nearly a decade. That they took their voters for fools, and fools they were. They're now on a quest to do something, anything, that will save them face by achieving some sort of goal they know they must have had at some point in the past. After all, saying they would do something about this thing they said was terrible for a decade, long enough that some have now made a career out of it, is what gave them power. The only possible result is self-serving destruction.

[Baffler]

Draining the swamp?

I wonder if anything will come of this. A year ago I'd say probably not, but we live in interesting times here in the current year. In any case, it's caused a pretty big stir.

[Reelya]

http://edition.cnn.com/2015/08/31/asia/india-child-deaths/index.html

Headline: "Why are so many children dying in India?"

Well, let me start with the fact that there's no universal healthcare in India. it's all for-profit, and it has a child mortality rate far exceeding other similar nations. It's has a mortality rate about 50/1000 live births, compared to 12/1000 for China, despite being about equal to China on this in the 1950s - 1960s.

You speak as if the all for-profit healthcare is the sole reason India has problems with child and infant mortality when the article makes no such claims on that. BTW, the article states some deaths that happened at a state run hospital, and the wiki page for India health says that the system is state run. So, it doesn't look like it's a fully for-profit type of healthcare. The US system we had before Obamacare is a much better example of for-profit healthcare and how it doesn't work.

I'm not basing what I said on that article.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_India

India does not have a National health insurance or universal health care system for all its citizens which has allowed the private sector to become the dominant healthcare provider in the country.

It goes on to point out that there is some public healthcare only for the poorest of the poor, but it's staffed almost entirely by "interns" because it's so underfunded. So if your baby is really sick and you're really poor - below India's offical poverty line, We'll let some medical students poke at it. Rural areas, where 68% of the population live, have 2% of the qualified doctors, and you can basically put money on the fact that those guys work in rural for-profit hospitals, not the state clinics, while the "free market" insurace manages to cover only 17% of the nation, yet accounts for 70% of the actual healthcare in the nation. So, public health is almost entirely limited to some med students forced to poke at some sick peasant kids, before they go on to work in for-profit hospitals which serve the top 17% of wealthiest people of the nation. It's not hard to do the maths here. If you're not in the top 17% of the nation who have private insurance, and you're not below the poverty line and can get treated by med. students, then you're ... in India's medical grey zone of people who have no access to medical treatment. Thank you very much, free market.

[EnigmaticHat]

Its not purely a private sector vs public sector debate tho.  In the US we allocate a shitton of money for healthcare, the debate in our country is how that government money gets spent.  In India healthcare just isn't a big percentage of the budget.  Thus the government looks to a private system because a public healthcare system wouldn't work on that budget for such a huge and varied nation.  Not that a private one does either.  There's just not enough doctors or funding.

Universal healthcare just means everyone has access to reasonably priced medical care for most conditions.  How you get there is theoretically irrelevant, Obamacare strictly speaking could be a path to universal healthcare.  The thing is that most governments seize some level of control over how the healthcare system works, so that they can control how much everything costs.  US conservatives are ideologically opposed to this because of the free market; hence they allow prices to skyrocket and enrollment to fall simply because of the principle.  Look at the fine for the uninsured on Obamacare, it helps both the insurance agencies and their clients.  But since its forcing consumers to act in a certain way, can't let it happen.

Many of the systems less expensive than us (so, all of them AFAIK) include private insurance companies as part of their system although they may not be very independent.

[martinuzz]

Over here, in the 25ish years since healthcare and health insurance were sacrificed to the free market, in a satanic ritual involving bloated cows and dead babies, we've seen price go up (of both the costs of healthcare procedures/medicine as well as insurance fees), and quality and accessability go down, while the outrage over hospitals wasting healthcare money on top salaries for interim-managers, over the huge pay-offs to fired CEOs as a bonus for not doing a good job, and over health insurance companies wasting healthcare money on real estate speculation grows.

Meanwhile 16 year old girls kill themselves while on the waiting list for admission to suicide ward, because less staff surely means more efficiency, and old people are left in soiled diapers for more than a day in care homes, because the little staff that is left is too busy with the meticulous registration of every staff-patient interaction ("at 9:07, I washed the client's left armpit for 20 seconds,") forced down by health insurance companies that want to know what they are paying for, to keep their shareholders happy.

[Reelya]

Its not purely a private sector vs public sector debate tho.  In the US we allocate a shitton of money for healthcare, the debate in our country is how that government money gets spent.  In India healthcare just isn't a big percentage of the budget.  Thus the government looks to a private system because a public healthcare system wouldn't work on that budget for such a huge and varied nation.  Not that a private one does either.  There's just not enough doctors or funding.

Sure, though i'd argue that part of that is because of how poisonous it actually is to mix public and private money. Subsidies are well and good, and in a "free market" system the temptation is to let the recipient of the subsidy spend it wherever they like because that's "free". However ... what happens in reality is that the free market providers expand their costs to eat up as big a share of the subsidies as they possibly can, because that's what private business is about - it's about maximizing returns.

e.g. paid rent subsidies have an upwards effect on rental costs, student loans have an upward effect on tuition, and medicare etc have an upwards effect on medical "administration" costs.

For-profit colleges should perhaps be outright banned from receiving student loan money, they only spend about $2000 on education per student as compared to almost $7500 per student in public universities, yet they rely almost entirely on federal money and their degrees are basically scams - worthless paper. Except this isn't going to happen, because Betsy Devoes is pals with people who operate these so-called colleges.

[Sergarr]

For-profit colleges should perhaps be outright banned from receiving student loan money, they only spend about $2000 on education per student as compared to almost $7500 per student in public universities, yet they rely almost entirely on federal money and their degrees are basically scams - worthless paper. Except this isn't going to happen, because Betsy Devoes is pals with people who operate these so-called colleges.

I thought that most of the famous USA universities were for-profit.

[Max™]

Lord no, the difference between "University" of Phoenix and MIT/Harvard/Yale/etc is vast.

[Neonivek]

For one Yale and Harvard use less of the money they get on the students themselves!

[Frumple]

Draining the swamp?

I wonder if anything will come of this. A year ago I'd say probably not, but we live in interesting times here in the current year. In any case, it's caused a pretty big stir.

Ah... did you actually read the wapo link that guy cited and then proceeded to functionally lie about the contents of? 'Cause checking the sources (linked and, in the case of comey, direct from his testimony) and what they say versus what that guy's saying, that looks a lot more like swamp than an attempt to drain it.

[Neonivek]

Ok I have to ask...

What the heck is draining the swamp?

[Frumple]

Rooting out corruption from DC in particular and the government in general.

E: With a side of the not-strictly-governmental political establishment, too, I guess.

E2: Theoretically, anyway. Basically the premise the term was stumped on, regardless as to if the people that stumped on it are actually attempting to do it, heh.

[sluissa]

Ok I have to ask...

What the heck is draining the swamp?

It means whatever you want it to mean....

But in Trump's terms... he ran on the platform of an outsider to washington... His speeches made it seem like he wanted to get rid of all the washington insiders. Basically clear out congress and DC in general. Not that that's within his power, but that was a large part of his platform. Someone somewhere realized "Hey, D.C. was built on a swamp... we're draining the swamp!" And Trump fought that motto for a long time himself, but the crowd loved it so he picked it up too.

But again, it basically means whatever anyone wants it to mean... Because nobody (Apart from Shrek and crazy florida man) enjoys a swamp. You can thus shout "Drain the swamp!" And people are like, "Yeah, sure! That sounds good!"