Frank discussion about healthcare costs

The federal assault is not just on medicare/medicaid.

 

Productivity - how is that defined ??

The second link confirms that the US leads.

 

What pieces ?? Consumers purchase policies which meet their needs. Let the market decide what consumers of health insurance want and will pay for.

 

The federal assault began when someone decided to dictate that women in a $75K household gets free **** while a woman working as a waitress got nothing. Fixing stupidity isn't an assault. Pretending that the PPACA made a lick of sense, however, is an assault on the American intelligence.

 

Ridiculous. The payments are bail outs for failure of policy. Read the law.

 

More hilarity. Popper is rolling over in his grave.

 

Trump/Ryan/Pence/Price are working to fix the ObamaCare assault on American health insurance. The criminal irresponsibility lies with the D's who were told that ObamaCare would fail in the very way it is failing 7 years ago and did nothing to stop it.

 

Sure. What it doesn't confirm is the statement you made. i.e. "And other nations do not have pharma industries which invest in breakthrough drugs."

 

duplicate

 

Hilarity was the intention. How pathetic that you didn't get that you were the butt of the joke.

 

The statement resulted in your understanding that nations of the EU have lost their position as developers in NME's due to price and profits controls by the EU and the economic and health damage resulting from those policies.

 

Actually it just resulted in my confirming how you haphazardly make up statements that you later can't support with facts. Hoping to not be called out. Well... now you know that you will...

And what you have learned is that Europe, despite price and profits controls, is regaining their position. That we need to do the same. And that we don't need to be big pharma's profits sanctuary at the expense of the health and life of our people.

 

And that position has gone from leading to following with results damaging to the health and well being of European citizens.

 

I would ask you to show any sort of support for that statement, but I know it's a PIDOOMA fallacy. Your favorite argument because it allows you to say whatever you want, right?

 

The references are above.

 

What keeps you from placing them here?

 

What kept you from investigating them in the first place ?? Do your homework.

 

First of all, I am not a socialist, in fact in the last election I voted Conservative and prior to that UKIP.

I have stated clearly what I think should be in the hands of the state in the third paragraph - utilities (gas electricity and water), railways, healthcare.

As for more efficient, sorry, but they are and the evidence is first in the UK. We had all of these in state controlled companies. We then sold utilities and rail off. Since then, the rail network has come close to the point of collapse, prices have sky rocketed - the price of a season ticket for London commuters is on the thousands, delays are the normal with services often very late or cancelled completely. With regard utilities, I worked at British gas both prior to it going private and post. Since it was put in private hands, it is incredibly inefficient. But, at the same time, bills have increased very fast - they announced a 12.5% increase last week.

Compare say the USA rail network with France. In the former, it is crap. In the later, state owned, the trains are high speed, reliable, cheap and highly efficient.

Let me give an even more startling comparison. I used to live in West Australia which runs state owned trains. My train to work was about 35 miles. The trains run every 5 minutes at peak times. There clean, modern and in the years I was there only had one breakdown that I was aware of. The cost was about $7 return. Last year I was living near London and the trains were old, I never, in six months had one on time, it wasn't unusual for it not to turn up at all. The cost was about £25 return for a journey of 20 miles. Oh, and the ones in WA make a profit for the state!

 

Well there’s your reason right there as to why it will never happen in the States. Until you get a hold of the proper reigns of government that works for the whole nation and not the two percent you don’t stand a hope.

Many Americans work two or three jobs a week in order to meet the expenses of every day living and the right tells them to work harder. While Trump takes two weeks off to improve his golf swing, Americans don’t even have the right to take a week’s holiday.

Any hope you have of radical change will come from the young, there was a glimmer of hope there during the election.

 

This is mostly ignorant bunk when it comes to the US rail system. It is actually one of the most efficient rail systems in the world, especially for freight. Trains were never efficient for distributing freight to every small town along the route. Moving to freight hubs connected by rail and using trucks to distribute from there has provided a very efficient system.

My son regularly rides a passenger train from St. Louis to Kansas City, about 350 miles. It is clean, modern, and on-time unless natural causes, e.g. flooding or blizzards, cause a delay. It is far cheaper than driving but it *is* slower than driving because it serves so many small towns in between. it is *still* faster than flying when you add in security delays and driving time to and from the airports!

England is about the size of Illinois based on area, about 50K square miles. Trying to compare a rail system dedicated to serving a country the size of Illinois to one serving the size of the US, over 3M square miles is truly comparing apples and oranges.

 

When you start your "frank discussion" with a bunch of name calling and right wing buzzwords, no one really expects anything you're going to post here to be "frank".

 

Your response is absurd.

Care to tell us how many communities in Illinois have regular passenger train service.

You can get to just about every small town and hamlet in the UK on a train. You can't cross the river from Peoria on one.

You are right, it is an apples to oranges comparison. The UK, and many Western European nations, have well developed comprehensive rail transport systems that are affordable, effecient and clean.

They also have had high speed rail. In the US, the fastest trains are hardly any faster than they were in the late 1930's.

If St Louis and Kansas City were in Europe, your soon would make the trip in about an hour and a half, in smooth near silence, and in a level of comfort you won't see on any airliner (at least not the ones that fly between Lambert Field and KC). I have ridden these trains. Americans has no idea what they are missing. They would make a very viable alternative for travel between lessor cities like the KC to St Louis route, for exactly the reasons you mention.

BTW, what do railroads have to do with health care??????

 

Yup!

It's the sort of "reform" that conservatives applied to the credit card industry in the 1980's.

So, the banks ran to the states with the weakest usary laws. And now your rate goes to 29% of you make one payment late.

 

So, I suppose it's up to you right now to prove that countries with single-payer healthcare in general have lower life expectancy.

Prove it.

Prove it.

"No silver bullet"? So you're the one throwing around nonsense clichés? I thought you didn't like those.

 

Don't know about Illinois but I can tell you about St Louis to Kansas City. The train starts in St. Louis, and has stops in Kirkwood, Washington, Hermann, Jefferson City, Sedalia, Warrensburg, Lee's Summit, Independence, and Kansas City.

If you *really* want to know about Illinois, AMTRAK info *is* available on the internet. Start here: www.amtrak.com/midwest-train-routes

But the US is not England! We *used* to have train service like this. It started to die out beginning in the 40's as truck delivery from rail hubs became more efficient due to our highway system advancements. Bus service picked up much of the personal traffic touching all the "small towns and hamlets". That bus service *still* exists.

And we have our advanced highway system and a well developed bus system as well as Amtrak.

When you are stopping at every hamlet and town just how fast can a train be? In Japan it takes their 300mph trains as long as 20 miles to get up to speed. Some take even longer. Your story seems to be at odds with itself.

No, he wouldn't. Not if the train stops at every town and hamlet. My son has actually traveled all over Europe (Germany, France, Italy, England, and Switzerland) by train. There is no doubt that Europe has a lot of trains that go a lot of places but they are not ubiquitous. Nor are that all that fast.

I fear you have no idea of the dynamics associated with demographic changes in associated with geography in the US. In just the past 45 years both St. Louis and Kansas City have seem their main population center of gravity move a long distance to the southwest from where it used to be. The railroad hubs no longer serve the population centers of either city. You have to find alternative transportation in both locations to reach major business centers. Car rental business are not near either major hub leaving taxi cab or limousine (or today Uber and Lyft) as the main transportation to a car rental business. Trying to find right-of-way for new tracks to lay in new destination hubs is almost impossible. It's one reason Kansas City has never been able to implement light rail to tie in population centers. The St Louis light rail has existed for a long time but it too is losing riders as the population moves away from its hubs.

You simply do not see this kind of population migration in England or even in Europe. Train hubs don't become obsolete.

tell it verystormy, he's the one that brought up the subject!