The Socialist Nightmare

[PAlexC]

Posted on Fark...was worth re-posting here.

This morning I was awoken by my alarm clock powered by electricity generated by the public power monopoly regulated by the U.S. Department of Energy.

I then took a shower in the clean water provided by a municipal water utility.

After that, I turned on the TV to one of the FCC-regulated channels to see what the National Weather Service of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration determined the weather was going to be like, using satellites designed, built, and launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

I watched this while eating my breakfast of U.S. Department of Agriculture-inspected food and taking the drugs which have been determined as safe by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

At the appropriate time, as regulated by the U.S. Congress and kept accurate by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the U.S. Naval Observatory, I get into my National Highway Traffic Safety Administration-approved automobile and set out to work on the roads build by the local, state, and federal Departments of Transportation, possibly stopping to purchase additional fuel of a quality level determined by the Environmental Protection Agency, using legal tender issued by the Federal Reserve Bank.

On the way out the door I deposit any mail I have to be sent out via the U.S. Postal Service and drop the kids off at the public school.

After spending another day not being maimed or killed at work thanks to the workplace regulations imposed by the Department of Labor and the Occupational Safety and Health administration, enjoying another two meals which again do not kill me because of the USDA, I drive my NHTSA car back home on the DOT roads, to my house which has not burned down in my absence because of the state and local building codes and Fire Marshal's inspection, and which has not been plundered of all its valuables thanks to the local police department.

And then I log on to the internet -- which was developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration -- and post on Freerepublic.com and Fox News forums about how SOCIALISM in medicine is BAD because the government can't do anything right.

[asheep_uk]

Nice. If only you could fit that in a tweet...

[asheep_uk]

Where's the original, I want to send it to a friend?

[gerbick]

People still want something to complain about.

[cancerinform]

What a garbage unless it's sarcasm. The countries with the highest living standard in the world for ordinary people, not Wall Street bankers, are Denmark and Sweden, which have a fair amount of government control and high taxes. Some people here would call it communism. Of course it's not. I hear this kind of garbage now during the health care discussion.

[gerbick]

You know... I've always wondered what your personal take on the healthcare debate would be due to your background, CI. Originally from Germany, a doctor... and in the US healthcare system with exposure to other healthcare systems.

[cancerinform]

I am not a MD. I have a PhD. The problem in US is that healthcare is good for the people who are healthy. It is outrageous that when you are really sick and need some expensive treatment Insurance companies can refuse it and throw you out. The idea of insurance is that the young who are less likely to be sick pay for the old who are more likely to be sick. One day they will be old too. This will be guaranteed by a government type insurance. Since there are other systems in Europe as examples the US can learn from their mistakes and have a better government-supported system. Whoever calls that socialism is in my opinion stupid. Also it is time the Ins companies get competition. Health care is not something which should result in enormous profits. That is the european idea and so far it worked quite well.

[FlashLackey]

Lets keep in mind that socialism is the public ownership or administration of the means of production. Not simply government involvement or regulation.

This morning I was awoken by my alarm clock powered by electricity generated by the public power monopoly regulated by the U.S. Department of Energy.

GE is a public institution?

I then took a shower in the clean water provided by a municipal water utility.

I guess this person lives in one of the areas where the water actually is clean. Either that or them drinking a lot of it explains their post on Fark.

After that, I turned on the TV to one of the FCC-regulated channels to see what the National Weather Service of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration determined the weather was going to be like, using satellites designed, built, and launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Satellites aren't designed and built by private companies?

I watched this while eating my breakfast of U.S. Department of Agriculture-inspected food and taking the drugs which have been determined as safe by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Food raised and grown, drugs developed and manufactured by private companies.

At the appropriate time, as regulated by the U.S. Congress and kept accurate by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the U.S. Naval Observatory, I get into my National Highway Traffic Safety Administration-approved automobile and set out to work on the roads build by the local, state, and federal Departments of Transportation, possibly stopping to purchase additional fuel of a quality level determined by the Environmental Protection Agency, using legal tender issued by the Federal Reserve Bank.

Cars and roads built by private companies and contractors.

On the way out the door I deposit any mail I have to be sent out via the U.S. Postal Service and drop the kids off at the public school.

A US Postal Service costing us billions of dollars in red ink and offering an inferior product compared to private alternatives.

A public school system that costs us more per student than most if not all countries in the world with mediocre outcomes at best.

After spending another day not being maimed or killed at work thanks to the workplace regulations imposed by the Department of Labor and the Occupational Safety and Health administration, enjoying another two meals which again do not kill me because of the USDA, I drive my NHTSA car back home on the DOT roads, to my house which has not burned down in my absence because of the state and local building codes and Fire Marshal's inspection, and which has not been plundered of all its valuables thanks to the local police department.

Yes. The alternative to socialism is being killed at work and your house burning down.

And then I log on to the internet -- which was developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration -- and post on Freerepublic.com and Fox News forums about how SOCIALISM in medicine is BAD because the government can't do anything right.

Indeed. The internet developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration is so similar to the internet we know and use today that includes content and advancements provided by private parties.

---

It must be a cozy place that author lives in to think that socialism gets credit for things produced by private enterprise simply because there is a government agency that plays some role, even if it is possibly more burdensome than helpful, in that industry.

[FlashLackey]

I am not a MD. I have a PhD. The problem in US is that healthcare is good for the people who are healthy. It is outrageous that when you are really sick and need some expensive treatment Insurance companies can refuse it and throw you out. The idea of insurance is that the young who are less likely to be sick pay for the old who are more likely to be sick. One day they will be old too. This will be guaranteed by a government type insurance. Since there are other systems in Europe as examples the US can learn from their mistakes and have a better government-supported system. Whoever calls that socialism is in my opinion stupid. Also it is time the Ins companies get competition. Health care is not something which should result in enormous profits. That is the european idea and so far it worked quite well.

The cancer survival rate in the United States is higher than any European nation (or Canada).

[david petley]

The cancer survival rate in the United States is higher than any European nation (or Canada).

pluck a duck...

http://allcountries.org/health/usa_h..._2008_nyt.html

The report, the second national scorecard from this influential health policy research group, shows that the United States spends more than twice as much on each person for health care as most other industrialized countries. But it has fallen to last place among those countries in preventing deaths through use of timely and effective medical care, according to the report by the Commonwealth Fund, a nonprofit research group in New York.

The United States, for example, has reduced the number of preventable deaths for people under the age of 75 to 110 deaths for every 100,000 people, compared with 115 deaths five years earlier, but other countries have made greater strides. As a result, the United States now ranks last in preventable mortality, just below Ireland and Portugal, according to the Commonwealth Fund’s analysis of World Health Organization data. The leader by that measure is France, followed by Japan and Australia.

dp

[TallGuyLittleCar]

<

This morning I was awoken by my alarm clock powered by electricity generated by the public power monopoly regulated by the U.S. Department of Energy.

the public power monopoly that pays the politicians to pollute the air.

I then took a shower in the clean water provided by a municipal water utility.

the municipal water utility that puts fluoride int he water to destroy your purity of essence and make you susceptible to socialism!

After that, I turned on the TV to one of the FCC-regulated channels to see what the National Weather Service of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration determined the weather was going to be like, using satellites designed, built, and launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Spent millions on building weather satellites to report weather instead of changing weather!

I watched this while eating my breakfast of U.S. Department of Agriculture-inspected food and taking the drugs which have been determined as safe by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

You are monsanto's *****.

At the appropriate time, as regulated by the U.S. Congress and kept accurate by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the U.S. Naval Observatory, I get into my National Highway Traffic Safety Administration-approved automobile and set out to work on the roads build by the local, state, and federal Departments of Transportation, possibly stopping to purchase additional fuel of a quality level determined by the Environmental Protection Agency, using legal tender issued by the Federal Reserve Bank.

atomic clock or simple cheap quarts watch.. you decide. Automobiles are grossly overweight and waste fuel. They are overweight because the NHTSA is the ***** of the insurance industry.. and so are you. Federal Reserve Bank.. really deserves its own thread, but with inflation being what it is.. listing the Fed as a good thing shows near total ignorance of pretty much everything.

On the way out the door I deposit any mail I have to be sent out via the U.S. Postal Service and drop the kids off at the public school.

anything important can either be conducted wirelessly or through fedex. How old is the codger that wrote this. Public schools.. i'm sure the little commie will grow up to be just like mom and dad.. subservient.

After spending another day not being maimed or killed at work thanks to the workplace regulations imposed by the Department of Labor and the Occupational Safety and Health administration,

Blue collar job i guess.. public schools win again!

enjoying another two meals which again do not kill me because of the USDA,

meh.. your diet is screwy and your still monsanto's *****.

I drive my NHTSA car back home on the DOT roads,

you NHTSA car is a bloated pile of crap.. you are still the insurance agencies *****. Most safety features are a result of mercedes benz and volvo pioneering and the lesser automobile agencies desire to catch up. Pure capitalism. DOT roads... where the **** do you live. I commute to norfolk, va and it is by far one of rthe greatest cluster ****s i have every encountered.

to my house which has not burned down in my absence because of the state and local building codes and Fire Marshal's inspection, and which has not been plundered of all its valuables thanks to the local police department.

Most housing and building codes are the result of private home insurance industries lobbying to avoid paying to rebuild houses. The lack of plundering has more to do with morality than the local police department.. who are meth abusing steriod using fascists.


Oddly many of the good things listed are results of state government not federal government. These cute jingoistic bytes really don't help the debate. They are funny sometimes, but this one is largely crap. It is a pit of ideological porn for mental masturbation and nothing more.

[PAlexC]

The reason we have superior healthcare treatments is because we have better schools, research institutions and oh yeah, NIH, which is one government agency that actually lives up to it's mission quite well.

If the private health insurance companies were also research centers, or funneled the majority of their profits into research, I could see the "people come from all over the world" argument holding some water. But it doesn't otherwise.

The BIG issue, as CI hinted at, is that because of the nature of our insurance system, people typically don't use their benefits for preventative care, and benefits don't often cover preventative measures. We wait until we are sick and seek treatment. Ounce of prevention, pound of cure.

It gets REALLY expensive when you have the uninsured just show up to the emergency room. I worked at NYP, the biggest hospital in NYC. The emergency rooms at both hospitals in the system were awful, despite the top notch care available, because they are constantly over capacity with the uninsured or people who avoided care until there was a serious problem.

We're not even talking about single payer right now anyway. The current plan addresses shady insurance practices and offers a public option. How is that "socialist"? If the private market can't compete, they'll have to change. Is that a bad thing?

Personally, I'd like to see all health insurance plans, public or private, require an annual physical and doctor's consultation about health status. A lot of conditions could be caught early and treated with lifestyle changes instead of drugs.

[TallGuyLittleCar]

The reason we have superior healthcare treatments is because we have better schools, research institutions and oh yeah, NIH, which is one government agency that actually lives up to it's mission quite well.

I would argue that we have superior healthcare because we have superior salaries for medical professionals.

The BIG issue, as CI hinted at, is that because of the nature of our insurance system, people typically don't use their benefits for preventative care, and benefits don't often cover preventative measures. We wait until we are sick and seek treatment. Ounce of prevention, pound of cure.

That doesn't make sense to me (doesn't mean anything though) but fitness checkups have a 20 dollar co-pay under my plan. I have been through a couple different plans and all had low co-pays for regular check ups and all pushed the idea of living as healthy as possible. My current plan will cut you rate if you don't smoke.
Personally I think our diet and lack of exercise contributes greatly to our national expedientures on healthcare.

It gets REALLY expensive when you have the uninsured just show up to the emergency room. I worked at NYP, the biggest hospital in NYC. The emergency rooms at both hospitals in the system were awful, despite the top notch care available, because they are constantly over capacity with the uninsured or people who avoided care until there was a serious problem.

that is a very good point. Does the current congressional plan address that? how are they going to implement care and physicals? Wouldn't it have been wiser to just expand medicaid (or is it medicare) to include free clinics and offer healthcare. Even perhaps offer med school loans to those that agree to work at government clinics for a few years after residency? sort of a doctor bill version of hte g.i. bill?

We're not even talking about single payer right now anyway. The current plan addresses shady insurance practices and offers a public option. How is that "socialist"? If the private market can't compete, they'll have to change. Is that a bad thing?

what will happen is a few shady large insurance practices will get the government contracts to offer the "public" option.

Personally, I'd like to see all health insurance plans, public or private, require an annual physical and doctor's consultation about health status. A lot of conditions could be caught early and treated with lifestyle changes instead of drugs.

True.. but the benefits of healthy eating and exercise are self apperent but many people chose not to. You will half to punish people through taxes most likely. The agribusiness industry will not allow heavy taxes on fast and heavily processed foods.

[gerbick]

So... when will we see FL and TGLC screaming at their local senators? Perhaps either of you can be the next Katy Abram.

I think what's really funny is the word socialism being pushed around like it's disastrous. Works in Switzerland - who's doing rather damn well (I bet Subway is giggling his ass off somewhere since I'm publicly recognizing it).

Anyway, let's put it out there. Name your alternatives. Having competition is that bad?

[FlashLackey]

pluck a duck...

http://allcountries.org/health/usa_h..._2008_nyt.html

Both the Commonwealth Fund and WHO are socialized health care advocates. So, you have a lobbyist groups analysis of the biased findings of the WHO.

If you get cancer in the US, you have a better chance of surviving it than in Europe, Canada, Australia, etc. Cancer is the second leading cause of death for all humans in the world. The US would have to be the absolute last in every other health category in order to fall out of the top 5, considering their performance with cancer. That is, of course, assuming an analysis with any semblance of objectivity.

Frankly, I find the notion that the US is #1 in cancer but horrible in everything else to lack plausibility.

[gerbick]

How about for once we don't snub or look down our noses at who's say what. Nobody did it to your source, now did they?

[FlashLackey]

The reason we have superior healthcare treatments is because we ...

... spend way more than everyone else on them. This isn't to say that there isn't room for improving efficiency. I believe there is. But, the poor quality argument is garbage.

We're not even talking about single payer right now anyway. The current plan addresses shady insurance practices and offers a public option. How is that "socialist"? If the private market can't compete, they'll have to change. Is that a bad thing?

I keep hearing this "competition" argument and can't believe my ears. I understand that you have your reasons for liking Obama's health plan. But, seriously? How can any product compete with another that has a sale price of $0.00? That is not competition. That is subsidizing and yes, it is a bad thing. That this "competition" angle has floated at all is on the selling-Brooklyn-Bridge level of absurd. In reality, it will move to create the same relationship between public and private education. The $0.00, inferior public option will go to the masses and only the wealthy will be able to afford the better private alternative. Hooray for class warfare!

Personally, I'd like to see all health insurance plans, public or private, require an annual physical and doctor's consultation about health status. A lot of conditions could be caught early and treated with lifestyle changes instead of drugs.

Do people not know that smoking, drinking, excessive eating and lack of exercise are bad for them?

[FlashLackey]

So... when will we see FL and TGLC screaming at their local senators? Perhaps either of you can be the next Katy Abram.

I think what's really funny is the word socialism being pushed around like it's disastrous. Works in Switzerland - who's doing rather damn well (I bet Subway is giggling his ass off somewhere since I'm publicly recognizing it).

Anyway, let's put it out there. Name your alternatives. Having competition is that bad?

Katy Abram was on the right track. But, she obviously didn't know enough to effectively defend positions she never took. She should have said "Yes! Repeal the failing monstrosity that medicare is as well! There are better alternatives!"

I'm not pushing the word socialism like it's disastrous. It's simply a label to applied. Perhaps the reason it seems like it's being put that way is that it has had disastrous consequences for many people in the world.

The competition argument is garbage. Paying for something vs. not having to pay for something is not a competition.

I have posted the alternative before. It's not that complex.

Offer a medical care account, including a yearly voucher that goes up each year based on the rate of inflation. Pay for that by removing all incentives for businesses to provide health care.

Result: more competition, lower cost, everyone in the US has a policy. No government needed.

How about for once we don't snub or look down our noses at who's say what. Nobody did it to your source, now did they?

Maybe I don't know the US translation of "pluck a duck."

[hanratty21]

...socialism...Works in Switzerland

Yep. Funded by a wildly corrupt banking system that still allows levels of anonymity not seen since Nazis started fleeing to South America.

[gerbick]

Katy Abram was on the right track. But, she obviously didn't know enough to effectively defend positions she never took. She should have said "Yes! Repeal the failing monstrosity that medicare is as well! There are better alternatives!"

What are the alternatives? I mean, Medicare/Medicaid are both going to bottom out with the current world projections of 7 billion people by 2011.

Of that, most are getting elderly and going to tax any current system in place. So... I'm being honest here... what are the alternatives? To hear that a government system that you can pay into is an option, not solution, option is met with this much resistance, then the alternatives should be as clear.

But they're not.

I'm not pushing the word socialism like it's disastrous. It's simply a label to applied. Perhaps the reason it seems like it's being put that way is that it has had disastrous consequences for many people in the world.

I didn't mean you, per se. It's just that socialism is not as evil as people put it. Nor are we any closer to a socialist situation.

The competition argument is garbage. Paying for something vs. not having to pay for something is not a competition.

Who said it'll be free? Everything I've read was it'll be competition. Don't like it, stick with your current coverage. Nobody's forcing you.

I have posted the alternative before. It's not that complex.

You very well might have. Care to link to it? Some of your better posts get buried or I (honestly) get disinterested in the conversation because I have to switch to "moderator mode" and fan down flames from all directions.

Offer a medical care account, including a yearly voucher that goes up each year based on the rate of inflation. Pay for that by removing all incentives for businesses to provide health care.

Result: more competition, lower cost, everyone in the US has a policy. No government needed.

But there's some limitations to this, no?

Yep. Funded by a wildly corrupt banking system that still allows levels of anonymity not seen since Nazis started fleeing to South America.

And this is different from a former booze running family (Kennedy) or former criminal family (Rockefeller) being celebrated in the US now? Wildly corrupt banking system... ahem, AIG and those bonuses among other things we do not know yet.

Yeah. Different.