Texas Judge Strikes Down Obama’s Affordable Care Act as Unconstitutional

Tough that. Take the cap off income in SS and that will take care permanently for SS and encourage for-all Medicare reform.

 

There other ways to fix healthcare, but someone has to have enough cojones to jerk the snouts out of the healthcare trough: doctors, insurers, drug companies, lawyers, etc. Then there are our idiot values--you want to keep braindead grandma on life support in the ICU, then you pay.

 

I'm 119% for universal health care. Do I pay for other folks? Yep.

 

We want our people to live, longer healthier lives for less money like westernized health care systems.

 

You are welcome to move to those countries that have it, just hope you don't need it.

https://theconversation.com/waiting...-hospitals-and-health-care-are-failing-104862

https://www.theguardian.com/austral...g-for-elective-surgery-hospitals-data-reveals

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/03/world/europe/uk-national-health-service.html

https://www.theguardian.com/society...uffering-direct-result-nhs-wait-time-failures

 

So? I live in Southeast Michigan, where between the Metro Detroit area, and Ann Arbor, I have five different hospital chains to deal with. In 2014 I was diagnosed with spinal stenosis, the result of osteoarthritis. The recommendation from two different neurologists and one orthopedic surgeon was surgery to clean out two bone spurs, a synovial cyst, and fuse L4 & L5 together.

First of, AFTER waiting at least a month to see any of the surgeons, scheduling what is classified as elective surgery is: No surgeries scheduled after November 7, of any year. Thanksgiving and Christmas vacations mean only low seniority surgeons available for more urgent surgeries only. After that period of time, minimum wait time to schedule it, January through end of October is 40 to 45 days, after the three days it takes the surgeons office to get all the clearances from the insurance companies.

I consulted two of the remaining five hospital chains, in person and by phone - no improvement in wait times. Elective surgeries are scheduled only one day a week. I called hospitals in Lansing, MI and Grand Rapids, MI - no improvement there either.

I can't speak for the rest of the country, but that's my experience here.

 

I feel for ya, I have spinal stenosis too. Before getting an epidural, the surgeon gave me pain pills that didn't touch it. Once just getting out of bed the pain hit me so hard I had to crawl to the bathroom to pull myself up. In desperation I had my 11 YO grandson walk on my lower back and wa la most of the pain went away. It came back the next day but not as bad. I had a 2nd epidural in July that did no good. Just trying to avoid things that make the pain worse for now.

 

I find that a 35 to 45 minutes session every day on my elliptical trainer helps. Also, 20 minutes a day, three times a week, bodyweight suspension training with TRX helps. I need to lose at least 35 lb, to both lower my blood pressure, which is now a complication for surgery, and to take the strain off my lower back. The problem is, as you well know, with spinal stenosis you can't exercise as hard as you want. Nor as often. Getting old is a pain in the butt.

 

Does not matter that the citizens of other countries with westernized nationalized health care live longer, healther lives for cheaper the cost, Tim15856

 

I believe much of that is due to so much obesity and diabetes and other unhealthy life style choices in the US.

 

Believe all you want, Tim, but the answers are better standards of care for all of the citizens of those countries than what we get here for all Americans.

 

as long as healthcare is capitalist, it will never be universal in the usa... a 'specialist' looks at your chart for all of two minutes while never seeing you in person, bills the insurance company several thousand dollars... yet, the 'best' prescribed treatment gets axed due to cost, meds gets axed due to cost... all bs for profit

 

I have family in Europe and Canada, and they pretty much verify that.

 

I couldn't agree with you more.

 

Free market is what we had BEFORE Obamacare. That's when we had insurance companies refusing to treat pre-existing conditions, and charging premiums so high that over 32 million Americans couldn't afford healthcare for themselves or their families. You promote that as something we should go back to? Trump would be fine with that since the only person he cares anything about is himself. But it's shocking to see millions of Americans agreeing with Trump and disclosing to the rest of us how little they care about their fellow Americans. That's not the kind of American I choose to be. I have health insurance, but I know people who don't, and I care about them too. No American should have to live without healthcare access. And no parent should have to live knowing they can't take their children to doctors or afford medicines when their children need it. Healthcare should be a right of citizenry. The "Free Market" had its turn & failed to deliver. Screw the free market.

 

National healthcare isn't "free." It's paid for thru a different system than used by the capitalist "free market." But many other advanced countries who already have national healthcare systems in place, affirm it works, and works BETTER than our old capitalist free market system did. Why should we settle for a system that already proved it was not capable of success? We shouldn't. We need to move forward into a new national healthcare system for every citizen. We can still offer additional or special coverage for those who can and wish to pay for it--above that offered by national health care. But we need to provide a good system that covers every American's need for healthcare, automatically, thru governmental decree--even if private insurance companies help with that coverage. The "free market" system was in effect in America for decades before Obamacare. It failed to cover the needs of our nation or its citizens. Obamacare was created to correct for the free market failures. We need to fix it all right now, and the answer is NOT free market again.

 

The free marketeer health systemists in the US are running around yelling with their hands in the air:

"We are number 23."

 

Either you have no idea what a free market is, or you are a cloud of disingenuous progressiveness blowing smoke up the asses of the masses.

Free Market: Free men trading freely that which is theirs for that which they want. In America, we have a mixed economy: Trade regulated at the end of a gun barrel.

Ayn Rand: "The ideal political-economic system is laissez-faire capitalism. It is a system where men deal with one another, not as victims and executioners, nor as masters and slaves, but as traders, by free, voluntary exchange to mutual benefit. It is a system where no man may obtain any values from others by resorting to physical force, and no man may initiate the use of physical force against others. The government acts only as a policeman that protects man’s rights; it uses physical force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use, such as criminals or foreign invaders. In a system of full capitalism, there should be (but, historically, has not yet been) a complete separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church." --http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/objectivism.html

And more:

"A mixed economy is a mixture of freedom and controls—with no principles, rules, or theories to define either. Since the introduction of controls necessitates and leads to further controls, it is an unstable, explosive mixture which, ultimately, has to repeal the controls or collapse into dictatorship."--http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/mixed_economy.html

And her conclusion:
"We are not a capitalist system any longer: we are a mixed economy, i.e., a mixture of capitalism and statism, of freedom and controls. A mixed economy is a country in the process of disintegration, a civil war of pressure-groups looting and devouring one another."--http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/mixed_economy.html

As to a parent's child dying, how will sacrificing mine make yours come alive?

Reality: You can't care for your child, the child dies--the enslavement of others won't bring your child back.

 

You have extremist views that I DO NOT SHARE. If you want an Ayn Rand world to live in, that's your business, but I don't. Ayn Rand & Trump & evidently you share a fondness & commitment to American capitalism, which demonstrates levels of human cruelty with its greed & selfishness, that I cannot support. I seek a better, more humane system. I am a Democratic Socialist. You & I may live in the same country, but we live in very different worlds. I've had your capitalist system around me, afflicting me, for decades. I'm sick of it. I dream of a Democratic Socialist America, and will support & vote for any politician who seeks it too.

 

No sensible person wants an Ayn Rand world.

 

Hell, I just don't want to slave for my neighbors nor their brats. Go figure. Pretty freaking extreme, yes? Freedom is like that, you know, like life and death--either you're alive or you're dead; either you're free or you're enslaved. That's reality. It's extreme. Its real.

Ayn Rand: "Only on the basis of individual rights can any good—private or public—be defined and achieved. Only when each man is free to exist for his own sake—neither sacrificing others to himself nor being sacrificed to others—only then is every man free to work for the greatest good he can achieve for himself by his own choice and by his own effort. And the sum total of such individual efforts is the only kind of general, social good possible."--http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/common_good.html

You see, here's the difference between the world I want and the one you live in: I don't a gun to create what I want; you do, the government's.

 

Well, I don't believe you've been asked, or for that matter, will ever be.

 

Like you buying your policy from the gov and paying the same as me?

 

My world isn't the all black or all white world you (and Ayn Rand) describe. In my world there's lots of gray. In my world all choices aren't either-or. They're more variable--more creative.

There are many "guns" in life telling you what to do. Government isn't the only limit to personal freedoms. Jobs, bosses, some spouses, financial limitations, health issues, well-meaning friends, even darker sides of oneself can and do often become "guns" that limit personal freedoms. Blaming government alone is shortsighted & inaccurate.

 

Yes, possibly. Whether you pay an insurance company that exists to make a profit from you, or pay premiums thru the government--so long as you get good healthcare--makes little difference who you pay. But if government gives you better care for a cheaper rate, you win. And that's what's happening in most advanced nations on the planet--except for the U.S.--which has been too absorbed in avoiding anything connected with "Socialism" to care about the lack of healthcare for millions of its citizens. If the "free market" system had provided good healthcare for everyone when it reigned supreme in the land, Obamacare would have never been considered. But those who profited from the old system have essentially emasculated Obamacare since it started, leaving us in nearly as bad a situation as we had before under free market. We need to have a national healthcare system that works for everyone--a guaranteed access to healthcare for all Americans system. And we need it NOW. The "free market" system had its chance & blew it. It can be a part of the solution, but it can't be allowed to control it. It's focus on profits betrays the goal of healthcare, which is good health. We need another system whose focus is healthcare, not profits.