Ping Larkin

Hear, hear!

Who exactly shoveled those couple hundred pounds of excess fat into their mouths?

Well, when you rob Peter to pay Paul, you can always count on Paul's vote.

The solution is to simply make people pay their own damn bills!

Why bother to eat right, get some exercise, and learn how to operate a first aid kit when you can just go to the local ER for every little complaint and get a free ride on the backs of the taxpayers?

Thanks, Rich

Yes, that is a 'public' health system I could get behind. You get sick, you go to the local health clinic. They triag you, and if you have something serious, it goes up the ladder to an urgent care facility, unless it is REALLY serious, when they call an ambulance and take you to the ER!

I had Kaiser for a while, but was not really satisfied with them. If you got assigned to someone that didn't know what they were doing, it was a hassle to get re-assigned to someone that did. My wife had nothing but problems with them...

Charlie

The thing about Kaiser is that you have to complain if you're not happy. If you don't like your doctor, demand another one.

A FAX works magic on Kaiser for some reason.

Kaiser is miles ahead of insurance plans like Blue Cross.

John

Into the guy who was born with a heart condition? Or epilepsy? Or the guys who was T-boned by an uninsured driver?

There's the ticket. Small stuff should always be out of pocket, like it used to be.

I think JT likes to see himself as a Goldwater Republican. Problem is, when you vote Red you don't get any Goldwateresque candidates

--any more than Blue voters get Trumanesque candidates.

Yea, the choice is pretty much "nutcase" vs. "nutcase".

Usually I try to vote for one flavor of nutcase for prez and the other for congress, because gridlock is better than either side getting its way unobstructed.

That didn't work out this time, alas. At least the swing-state Democrats are kinda sorta dragging their feet, sometimes.

...

=A0 =A0 =A0...Jim Thompson

=A0 =A0 =A0...Jim Thompson

A rather ordinary pro. and you have asked circuit questions - one of which I answered for you.

But only from the tiny right-wing minority that you haven't got around to putting in your kill file.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

Start a thread and post your question, or go away.

The standard righttard response of kill the poor and sieze their assets.

What about genetic defects like haemophilia or glaucoma? (ISTR even the US is enlightened enough to give free eye tests to likely suffers).

There are injuries at birth like cerebral palsy which in the US are paid for by insanely high medical insurance that pays both the malpractice lawyers fat salary and the unfortunate victims costs of living.

I agree that in the USA there is about 30% of the population determined to stuff themselves silly until they get type II diabetes, their knees and hips disintegrate. But that is fundamentally a problem of too much junk food and not enough exercise. A national health system encouraging better diet might actually decrease these costs. The existing private one doesn't care so long as the punters are insured and profitable.

Most systems have a minimum prescription fee for precisely this reason. To avoid doctors wasting time on hypocondriacs and worried well.

Abuse of antibiotics for colds largely ceased in the 1980's at least in the UK.

So you would condemn those unfit to work through no fault of their own to penury?

Even in socialised medicine it doesn't work like that. If anything that seems to be what happens in the USA with the uninsured at present.

And again a threshold minimum payment per visit is simple enough to discourage time wasters with trivial ailments.

Regards, Martin Brown

Britain and even France are seeing increasing levels of obesity. Look it up. In the US, we have a large minority population that, I think, is poorly adapted to the european-type diet full of wheat, meat, sugar, and dairy products. Pacific Islanders and native Americans seem most affected - rampant overweight and diabetes - and Africans too.

The US policy of keeping up sugar prices hurts too, since corn syrup is probably worse for health than real sugar.

John

True enough. Wherever the US junk food diet is exported (even Japan) obesity rapidly increases. McDonalds and Kentucky Fried Chicken being the worst offenders. Highly processed unhealthy food is far too common.

And it tends to be the poorer members of society that eat the most junk food - it is after all the cheapest mass produced food.

But in the USA it is also the enormous portions of food at the popular restaurants that plays a part in supersizing the population.

High fructose corn syrup is a pretty nasty concoction. It would not surprise me at all if it were implicated in causing diabetes.

Regards, Martin Brown

It's not a conspiracy; the restaurants offer what people want.

I take the leftovers to go. I get two or three meals from one restaurant serving. Two or three meals from a $7 entree is a pretty good deal, and it avoids cooking some week-nights.

I do recall a prix-fixe meal at Paul Bocuse' place that was overwhelming, and I couldn't take it home. And not $9.

Last time I was in the UK, a couple of years ago, I met a lot of fat engineers.

John

That ought not be allowed. The government should only allow people to eat at certain approved restaurants, and dictate and carefully control what those restaurants serve, the portion sizes that will be allowed-- according to each person's needs vis-a-vis calories, obesity, health factors, etc.--the prices that can be charged, adjusted for each person's ability to pay, and so forth. Violators should be fined and jailed.

Oh, wait, that's the healthcare bill that just passed the Senate finance committee. Never mind.

-- Cheers, James Arthur

Sounds like the ration books in Cuba. They keep everybody trim.

John

What do you think is the next year census for?

The resemblance of the recent events in USA and the downfall of the USSR is just plain scarry.

Vladimir Vassilevsky DSP and Mixed Signal Design Consultant

and healthy. People who eat less, live longer, so long as nutritional requirements are met.

What amazes me and others in europe about the current debate in the US on health care is the primitive responses and rabble rousing that bears no relation to the truth. It's also amazing that any modern civilisation worthy of the name can have no universal healthcare system, It's nothing to do with socialism either - it actually costs the state less if health problem are fixed before they get serious and healthier people are more likely to have healthy minds and work, again reducing the cost the the nation in terms of family breakdown, crime and disorder. That's quite apart from the humanitarian issues, which i'm sure no one could argue with, because the US is such a civilised nation, right ?.

I guess this is where europe and the us differ. In europe, there is universal health care free at the point of delivery, but there's no reason why you can't go private if you wish and many do. Anything else would be inconceivable, even though, yes, it has to be paid for from taxes, just as the arts, science and other civilised value type stuff gets funded from the state with common consent.

I could weep for the US at times, but the 'ascent of man' takes longer in some places than others, I guess and there will always be setbacks along the way.

/asbestos suit on. (You can only take so much bullshit)...

Chris

And there, folks, you have the Europeon socialist platitudes all lumped together into one place.

Rejoice all you want... all my current clients are off-shore... I'll just take my corporation off-shore and deprive all you "gimme" people of a share of my income ;-) ...Jim Thompson

Sounds like they are going to be even healthier soon...

Raoul is a little more realistic than Fidel.

Their literacy rate is 99%, too.

John

But you don't understand our situation.

A. The government-run healthcare we already have costs as much for a few citizens as does universal care in Europe, and B. It's $36 trillion dollars in the hole. Really.(1) So let's expand it!

Not much of a recommendation that, is it?

The proposed "fixes" fix nothing, and expand the worst parts of the current government system. And it's full of pork & patronage.

Yuck.

-- Cheers, James Arthur (1)