Posted by detroitpistons on March 1, 2009, at 15:48:03
In reply to Re: Doctors in England-detroitpistons, posted by West on March 1, 2009, at 14:33:00
The good news is that Obama is planning to downsize the size and cost of the military to something like 3% of GDP. Of course, there are some here who see this as a bad thing. The philosophical and ideological rifts have become unbearable here, at least for me.
The size of this country is definitely a challenge to the healthcare situation. Hopefully, we can come up with some sort of solution. I just think that, perhaps, we have our priorities screwed up in this country. Let me rephrase that...I KNOW that we have our priorities screwed up in this country.
Money rules everything here. If you have money, you have power. If you are a large institution (for example, the military-industrial complex) and you have a lot of money, you do everything you can to safeguard your interests, and you don't think about who's affected. "We have to think about the shareholders!" Lobby, lobby, lobby, and then lobby again. We have the drug and healthcare lobby, the energy lobby, the tobacco lobby, the fill-in-the-blank lobby....you get the idea. Money buys influence here much too easily. It's sick and depraved.
While our extremist, warp speed, capitalistic style may create innovation, efficiency, and wealth (for some), it comes at the expense of other important things, like, ummm, sanity. Most Americans get around 2 weeks of vacation per year. That's just insane. The pace of life is sickening. Stores are open 24 hours. We've been entrenched in this rampant consumerism for quite some time now, but I think that's beginning to change with the recent economic downturn. People aren't as concerned with material things anymore. Hopefully, it will stay that way. There's no point in maintaining a "high standard of living" if you throw everything else away in the process.
Ultimately, I think it all boils down to morality and ethics. Fortunately, we still have a few good people here, but the "masses" are too busy going to work to notice that they are being fleeced...
I don't normally write this much, but these are subjects that deserve all the time in the world, as far as I'm concerned...Thanks for the compliment regarding my writing. Sometimes I surprise myself. Adderall has really helped me in that regard.
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> A nation that has at its bedrock the acquisition of private wealth through trade might be hypothesized to lead inevitably to the status quo you describe. It's true no conservative here would be in favour of abolishing national healthcare, on the contrary, tory and labour governments have consistenly built establishments for the express puropose of caring for the poor and needy. The victorians were a civilised lot and when not building bridges, civic buildings and half of britain they pondered morality extensively
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> The problem it seems is in size. Organising something like the nhs from a centralised government on the scale of nation like the US is simply too great a prospect for anybody, however good their intent.
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> Perhaps creating separate interstate healthcare organizations with central funding brought about by a mandatory tax, might be thought a realistic option. Since most gnvt revenue in the US goes to the military and safeguarding its global superiority i doubt if there'd be much left for muggins and his unshakable melancholy.
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> Another idea might be to include lowering the mandatory requirements for healthcare or recognizing specific 'hotspots' where an individual is especially vulnerable: a depressed or otherise mentally ill individual who cannot earn a living and who cannot gain an already undesirable insurance plan because of his own undesirability in the eyes of the insurer would i think pass for one.
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> Ok. Sorry for the brevity, but to summarise ( yes with an 's' at the end - where i notice spellcheck will only settle for a z. silly yanks, you must learn to spell properly :0 )... i am variously: shocked at the cost of your effexor, which is entirely proposturous, appalled that someone with an affliction which fulfills so totally the criteria for 'terrible' and 'death' should have to suffer further at the hands of such a corrupt and indifferent healthcare system, impressed at your writing; its balance and coherence (which can only reflect a working mind, which is good), hopeful that change will happen for you, for america, for everyone.
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> Get you doc to keep those free pill samples coming. I don't care what they are, just as long as you don't let your brain go through the awful all round cell-death and hippocampus shrinking that depression brings about. 3 months ago i wouldn't have been able to string a sentence together whereas you just wrote 8 or 9 paragraphs all of which sounded like good sense to me. Keep it up.
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> West
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poster:detroitpistons
thread:881041
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20090223/msgs/883246.html