[blackhole]

The author of Bunny, a nonsensical comic, lives in the UK, and has the following to say about the U.S. healthcare debate:

Anyone following me on twitter might be aware that I have become a touch enraged about the US Healthcare debate recently, especially the diversion tactic where my countries healthcare system has been held up as a nightmare scenario of Comrade Obama's Master Plan to Destroy America's Healthtm.

In fact, I suspect we would have been happy to ignore this were it not for the little "Public Healthcare Will Kill Your Granny" spiel.

I'm sorry, I'll just adjust my soapbox a little here.

The problem with this is our health care system is actually generally pretty good (could be improved, could be better funded, lots of things could happen that would make it better, but the fundamental principle is serving us well).

As is the system in Canada. And France. And Germany. And Australia. And Israel. I mean, I could go on.

Each one of those countries appears to have a functioning, responsible, well-run health care system. And they're either wholly or partially publicly funded. Which apparently is some sort of contradiction in terms to some people.

Here's a list to compare. via the Wiki. Will do a better job of describing the pros and cons.

Any combination of those solutions for bridging the gap between people with access to healthcare and people without is viable.

There are social, economic and ethical reasons why healthcare reform needs to happen. You owe it to yourselves, to your neighbour and people who will probably never meet.

But that's really not what's at stake here.

People are out there wilfully lying to get you on board. Mostly because I figure they think you're morons.

For example, the UK Government doesn't runs the NHS any more than it is involved in the day-to-day running of public schools, hospitals, police forces or the fire brigade.

Why would an American Universal System suddenly place have a dollar value on your life and will withhold care if you're too expensive to treat when, US Insurance Companies do this already? If anything, that sort of practice needs to be examined and regulated.

Stephen Hawking is not American and has not been killed by the NHS no matter how much they treat him for life-threatening conditions.

The NHS being a "terrorist breeding ground"? I know it's Fox News, but that's a pretty determined attempt at reconfiguring reality.

Finally some figures to round this off from the World Health Organisation. They're easy enough to find.

UK
Total expenditure on health per capita (Intl $, 2006): 2,784
Total expenditure on health as % of GDP (2006): 8.4

USA
Total expenditure on health per capita (Intl $, 2006): 6,714
Total expenditure on health as % of GDP (2006): 15.3

What does the US currently get for that extra outlay per capita at present?
Lower average life expectancy, lower average healthy life expectancy, higher average infant mortality rate. Surely something is wrong? Surely that needs fixing?

Our way is by no means the best way, and it probably wouldn't work in the US for a variety of reasons, but ideology (and probably a fair amount of cash) is overriding serious, reasoned debate about public funded healthcare options and what should be made available.

And I'm done.

I keep trying to be reasonable with Republicans, but they are starting to make it difficult for me to think they have IQ's above the 30 mark. We just pissed off another country because our politicians are so f*cking stupid they say "LOOK AT ALL THE HORRIBLE THINGS TAHT HAPPEN IN THE UK!" and the UK is like "What?" Wow, awesome job with the international relations here.

U.S. political debates are now so stupid, we piss other people off just by talking about ourselves.

[NGTM-1R]

The Brits are getting a skewed view of things, however, because stuff that gets major play on BBC isn't showing up on CNN or in newspapers here.

Crossposting from my reply to aldo's comments on SG.

I don't think anyone actually takes Sarah Palin seriously and is allowed to vote.

If they do, they shouldn't be. To be honest the Republican Party is on a path totally retrograde. They grow ever shriller, ever more right-wing, and have ever fewer constituents. They seem to want to "get back to their roots" or something, not realizing that this is losing strategy. I've said it before, but it bears repeating: when Obama got elected, they straight up lost their ****, and they've just gotten worse. Even at the end of their rope in the Clinton years, pegging all their hopes on Kenneth Starr, they had never degenerated like this.

A lot of legitimate media isn't covering them here I suspect because even for the right-leaning ones (the local paper is definitely right-wing at times, publishing editorials I've found infuriatingly stupid) it is simply too embaressing. They don't want to show these people off as part of their cause.

There actually isn't a counterpoint (to the attack ads or town hall insanity or ragging on the NHS) for the most part. Most people, at least as far as I can detect, are actually only peripherally aware of it, in much the same way they are peripherally aware that a few people think the Apollo landings were fake. It's simply not something anyone gives a damn about.

CNN cracked down on one of their people who was spouting off about the birth certificate. I think that neatly summarizes the issue. Yes, they're stupid. Yes, they're immature. We're not going to bother legitimizing them by giving them airtime or anything else. The Republican party exists in the minds of the sane electorate as a carciature, and it, like those who believe we never landed on the moon, isn't aware of its own insanity

[IceFire]

Based on what I've been reading in the paper, seeing on TV and web (both US, Canadian, and UK sources), and generally hearing about whats going on down there...I have to wonder. Has a somewhat significant portion of the US population lost their marbles?  Universal health care not something reasonably worth fighting for?  Fox News seems to have totally gone bonkers...they called the NHS (the UK healthcare system) a breeding ground for terrorists and compared Obama to Hitler!  They were bonkers before...now its a total disconnect from reality.

I worry... I really do.

[NGTM-1R]

Has a somewhat significant portion of the US population lost their marbles?  Universal health care not something reasonably worth fighting for?  Fox News seems to have totally gone bonkers...they called the NHS (the UK healthcare system) a breeding ground for terrorists and compared Obama to Hitler!  They were bonkers before...now its a total disconnect from reality.

I worry... I really do.

Fox was always bat**** insane. They hired Sean Hannity after all. You confuse most vocal with actual majority, a problem that usually comes up in democratic Presidencies with the influence of Jewish interests, but in this case the Republican Party is in the midst of a Failure Cascade and so acting out wildly.

[Mongoose]

It really does worry me as someone who considers himself a conservative, at least in the traditional sense of that word.  (I'll leave my views on the healthcare issue to the other big thread.)  I look at what the Republican Party is right now, at what sort of "leaders" it's attempting to embrace, and I want to curl up into the fetal position.  Palin is a ****ing idiotic *****, Limbaugh is completely off his rocker, Fox News spouts whatever bull**** comes to mind first (though to be fair, there are one or two notables on MSNBC who aren't all that much better)...and these are the sorts of people that the party establishment feels it has to tiptoe around.  This is the party that's supposed to represent "conservatism" (though hasn't in many respects for a long time).  This is the party that's nominally closest to my own belief set.  It's ****ing depressing, is what it is, and it genuinely scares me at times.  And in some small way, I think it should scare those who identify themselves as Democrats, too.  Our democracy always seemed to function best with two parties engaged in legitimate intercourse and compromise...and now that one has, at least for the time being, seemingly jumped the shark on that concept, lord knows what the future will bring.

(And just to air things out, I am registered as a Republican, but that's largely because my state has closed primaries that require one to be registered as either that or Democrat to vote in them.  Never really understood how that system came about.)

[blackhole]

We need more smart people.

[Kosh]

I don't know why we even went with the party system to begin with. George Washington didn't believe in them, so he didn't belong to any of them, and so I guess he was the only independant president we ever had.

lord knows what the future will bring.

Heard that. I'm not really a fan of the Democrats, not after they let the Republicans run roughshod over the country (and to a lesser extent the world) over the last 8 years. American politics at this point is like pro wrestling, it's staged. They may say they hate eachother and act out on camera, but many of their policies are very similair. Once in a while they will bring out a select few wedge issues (like abortion, gay rights, whatever) to divide and conquer the electorate while they continue to pass around earmarks and serve their corporate masters. Often times they will also protect eachother, such as Dennis Hastert protecting corrupt Democrats in addition to corrupt Republicans when he was speaker of the house or Obama blocking investigations into the Bush administrations shady dealings (especially Cheney's).

This new healthcare reform is the first time in years that either party is attempting to really do something that would truly benefit tens of millions of people, and even then many democrats don't even want it and the republican propaganda machine is busy convincing people who would stand to benefit from this that it is the most diabolical scheme since the Final Solution.

[IceFire]

Has a somewhat significant portion of the US population lost their marbles?  Universal health care not something reasonably worth fighting for?  Fox News seems to have totally gone bonkers...they called the NHS (the UK healthcare system) a breeding ground for terrorists and compared Obama to Hitler!  They were bonkers before...now its a total disconnect from reality.

I worry... I really do.

Fox was always bat**** insane. They hired Sean Hannity after all. You confuse most vocal with actual majority, a problem that usually comes up in democratic Presidencies with the influence of Jewish interests, but in this case the Republican Party is in the midst of a Failure Cascade and so acting out wildly.

Don't worry...I'm not confusing Fox News with the majority but its a minority that is often most vocal and have a major and sometimes negative influence on how events play out.  I always remember the adage that "a person is smart but people are stupid".  My concern is a group of crazies influence a larger group of people who act badly... Just hoping for things to play out well and regular good people get some sort of benefit from the giant debate going on down there.

[Mongoose]

I don't know why we even went with the party system to begin with. George Washington didn't believe in them, so he didn't belong to any of them, and so I guess he was the only independant president we ever had.

There have been times I've daydreamed about the Zombie Founders rising from the grave, being horrified at what they see, kicking the **** out of most of the current political establishment, restoring some sanity to proceedings, and then going back to sleep, knowing that they'll probably have to do the same thing in two hundred more years when we've managed to **** things up again.

If only...

[WeatherOp]

Hmm, I kind of like the way things are playing out. 

[Colonol Dekker]

I'm just happy............

[Scotty]

Aww, **** politics.  I couldn't care less who ran the system, not really.  People need to just stop *****ing about it.  If you don't like the president's policies, don't vote for him.  Simple as that.

[BloodEagle]

Aww, **** politics.  I couldn't care less who ran the system, not really.  People need to just stop *****ing about it.  If you don't like the president's policies, don't vote for him.  Simple as that.

 

[Scotty]

Admittedly, I could have phrased that better.

[Kosh]

I don't know why we even went with the party system to begin with. George Washington didn't believe in them, so he didn't belong to any of them, and so I guess he was the only independant president we ever had.

There have been times I've daydreamed about the Zombie Founders rising from the grave, being horrified at what they see, kicking the **** out of most of the current political establishment, restoring some sanity to proceedings, and then going back to sleep, knowing that they'll probably have to do the same thing in two hundred more years when we've managed to **** things up again.

If only...

We need two things:

1.) To break the stranglehold that lobbying has on our political system. As of 2005 there are 34,750 lobbysts in washington, and for comparison we have 535 members of congress. WTF is wrong with this?

2.) To break the two party stranglehold. Yes there are third parties, but they are crowded out since they don't have the kind of funding the Republicrats have, part of this is definately because of the lobbying in washington.

[Turambar]

consider lobbying as bribery.

execute everyone involved for treason.

[SpardaSon21]

Do you want to reduce the number of lobbyists in Washington?  There's a simple solution to that if you want to: reduce the incentive to lobby the federal government.  If there's less incentive to lobby for changes to bills, fewer special-interests will have lobbyists.

[Turambar]

Do you want to reduce the number of lobbyists in Washington?  There's a simple solution to that if you want to: reduce the incentive to lobby the federal government.  If there's less incentive to lobby for changes to bills, fewer special-interests will have lobbyists.

how do we do that without punishment?

[iamzack]

noooo you're using your parents' parenting methods again. :[

[SpardaSon21]

You want to reduce the incentive to lobby the government?  Reduce the power of the government.  If government can interfere less, there will be less of a reason to lobby for special preferences.  Influence-peddling and big government go hand-in-hand.