Wednesday, November 15, 2017

Tell me again of the wonders of government-controlled health care



Ah yes, one of those accomplishments of Hillary that we're supposed to be in awe of.
European Islamist scion Tariq Ramadan was banned from the U.S. by the Bush administration in February 2004 for his financial support of a charity that funded terrorist groups. In January 2010, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton overturned that ban. Clinton personally approved a visa for the controversial grandson of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Now, Tariq Ramadan is facing multiple accusations of rape and sexual assault of minors.


So what else is out there, moving around in the depths, that we don't know about?

11 comments:

Rob said...

It was really hard (for me) to find the number of Americans who died every year because they could not afford the product our health care industry sells (the number I did find was 40,000 that year).

Affording basic health care for Canadians is not a problem.

Anonymous said...

Rob, you have it backwards or wrong or....I can't seem to find the proper word. You are mixing two completely different, yet intertwined industries in your analogy.
Health insurance is one beast and Health care is another.
Health care is when a person/ patient interacts with a person from the medical environment.
Health insurance is when said person/patient pays for that interaction.
Everyone states that our "health care industry is too expensive". What they are really saying is that the INSURANCE is too expensive.
Let the insurance industry work unfettered in the market place and then you will see prices fall.
In the health care side of the equation, the cost has risen; but it's due to people not paying their fair share. There are folks out in the real world that don't pay their bills. Unbelievable, right!?!?! So those unpaid bills equate to lost revenue for the doctors and nurses in the health CARE industry. That lost stream of revenue has to be made up somehow (how else does the clinic pay for the lights, water/sewer, testing materials, etc). So that lost stream is passed on to other folks, thereby causing THEIR health care costs to rise.
Simple economics. And it won't be cured by a socialistic answer.

Steve

Rob said...

I we have a health care industry that costs 17+% of the GDP (the last time I looked). A good sized industry at that.

Firehand said...

And I'd bet that, were the .gov much less involved in it, it'd be a lot less expensive than that.

Anonymous said...

Health care in the US is expensive because the government starting with the FDA is working assiduously to insure it is so. Drugs that cost 4 times what the rest of the world pays to start with. A medical education establishment that limits the number of students deliberately and licensing that ignores skill and deifies documentation. Health care is a government created problem their best solution is to get out of the way.

Marja said...

European migrants: a couple of months ago I personally witnessed one end result - and it turned out to be also one example of the inability to even check if the persons coming here as "refugees" are actual refugees, or the age they claim to be, this man had come to my country as a "17 years old Syrian refugee", and turned out, when his probable real identify was finally found out, a 23 years old Moroccan.

But yes, I was on the local market square. The buses leave from around it, and I was on my way to mine. I saw this young dark guy acting in a worrying way, he walked back and forth for a moment where I could see him and yelled something incoherent. I assumed there was about to be a fight between a couple of guys or something else relatively normal, although possibly dangerous. So I figured I'd better find another route to my bus stop as he was where I had planned to walk and turned to walk away from him. Then I heard the yell "Allah Akbar!" behind me and stopped to look back. Didn't see him or anything else for a while, but there were some sounds which sounded like rather agitated group of people.

Then I saw him, running from behind some small structures which were between me and where the noises had come from. He started to run where I was standing, but I stayed. I'm not quite sure why, although one reason probably is that due to somewhat bad knees I am no longer much of a runner and don't like turning my back to a possible threat since I can not successfully run from anybody.

He ran towards me and I saw he had a knife in his right hand. I started thinking that this might be something like a terrorist attack, but by that time he was very close so I was definitely not going to turn my back to him at that point.

He did ran past me. I turned to look after him. Some distance from me was a woman pushing a baby pram. She didn't seem to notice anything around her, just kept walking at a normal pace.

At first he seemed to run past her, but then he stopped and turned back and knifed her. Several times.

I kept walking around there for a few moments but there didn't seem to be anything I could do, the wounded woman had several helpers already by the time I got to her, including one who was said to be a doctor. So in the end I just walked to my bus stop and took the next bus home. I saw another victim on my way there, at that place the first noises had come from, a woman getting CPR.

Later I found out from news that that first victim - the second one I saw - had died, as well as one other woman. The woman whose knifing I saw lived. Five other people, two men who had tried to help the women he had attacked and three women, were wounded. He got shot by the police at a moment when he was trying to cut a woman's throat, some ten minutes after I had lost sight of him, but survived.

I did contact the police as an eyewitness and was interrogated. I will probably not need to testify in his trial as I never looked at his face well enough to be able to recognize him.

In some way that last was the most upsetting thing to me personally. This shit happens. I had pretty much expected it to happen where I live sooner or later, although of course I hadn't exactly expected to be an eyewitness. But... You read about the unreliability of eyewitnesses, but you'd think you'd remember what somebody looks like after seeing something like that. But if he had walked past me half an hour later, at a normal pace and acting normal, I would not have recognized him.

Firehand said...

Marja, that's bloody awful; glad you weren't attacked.

I once had a teacher, an assistant DA, who said he'd trade ten eye-witnesses for one solid piece of physical evidence; at the time it seemed a bit strange, but after what I've seen & heard of since, I tend to agree in many cases.

Marja said...

Among the bloody awful facts about him: as he had been registered as a 17 year old when he had come here, while his asylum application papers were being processed he had been put in school. He had spend several months last spring in a normal Finnish school class, with 16 to 17 year old kids.

What if he had decided to do his knifing run then? In a class room or a crowded corridor? Now the police got there pretty fast (although yes, minutes when things were happening in seconds...) but it was right in the middle of the city and pretty close to the main police station, and there happened to be a patrol car nearby when the calls started, the school he had been in is in an area where it, even in the best case, would have taken several minutes more before anybody would have gotten there.

There would probably have been lots more victims, and they would have been school kids.

Marja said...

BTW, while I had a few actual therapy sessions after that (considering I can get a few as a part of my occupational health package I figured I should use it) I also started with Krav Maga lessons. The first times we have now practiced dealing with knife attacks have actually been a bit stressful, but I'd say it definitely also works as therapy.

Although I would prefer a gun. Unfortunately it's not a legal option here.

Anonymous said...

I waited nine months to see an orthopaedic surgeon in 1999 and I was in the fast lane as it was a work injury. In that time I lost the full use of my right shoulder. After a car accident I waited nineteen months to see an orthopaedic surgeon to look at my left shoulder and the surgery was performed almost 3 years after the accident. Everyone I know has a similar tale of waiting for a specialist to see them. My doctor told me once that she has a waiting list of 3,000 people who want her to be their family GP.
Trust me on this, no one who truly understands it wants government health care.

http://toronto.ctvnews.ca/i-actually-thought-i-misread-it-doctor-stunned-over-years-long-wait-for-specialist-appointment-1.3662822

Al_in_Ottawa

Anonymous said...

As a Canadian there are a few points that Rob above is missing.

1) 30,000 Canadians die each year because of long wait times. Remember we have about 10% of the US population.

2) Our taxes are much higher. I'm considered as middle class and my tax rate is 48%. Nearly half of my taxes go to health. How much health care could you afford if your tax rate doubled?

3) Gov't health care means rationing. I waited 6 months for a minor surgery because the gov't decided they would do only 6 of them a week.

4) Lots of things still cost. Ambulance rides, hospital rooms etc.

5) If it's so great why do the politicians most opposed to allowing private clinics keep going to the US for treatment faster.

Exile1981