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Maurus: You're giving credit to the ill-informed.

KJ:
- Obama HAS increased taxes and spending ... massively, and it hurts. He did so mostly in his first term while armed with a fully-leftist Congress.
- He has not ended the drug war. But this is not a left/right polarized issue. Neither side wants to end it.
- As you say, he did not break up the 'too big to fail' banks. But this is pure politics. Money talks to both sides of the aisle.
- He did not end involvement in Afghanistan, despite promises. But to end it would have been a mistake, regardless of his party. Afghanistan (and the small wars before it) are all about exerting power and influence in the world. That's what a powerful nation does. Many bemoan this ... but tough nuts to them. You can be on top, or you can sink.
- You say a lefist-Obama would have provided Medicare for all. That's true. But he was 40 years too late. Johnson already did that long ago.

You say he has ...
- Extended Bush's warrantless wire-tapping programme. This is not a left/right issue at all.
- Given up on domestic environmental and climate-change legislation. I've not paid this much heed lately. But it makes sense politically. In tough times, people care about their economic position, and snail-darters be damned. In times like these, the environment doesn't get votes.

Despite all of his harmful positions, Obama is a smart politician. There's no denying that.

As for the rest of the agenda, there's one massively leftist item you've not mentioned: Obama-care (aka Pelosi-care). Many see this as brilliant. I see this as a colossal mistake. You have a problem: health-care costs too much. The proper solution is to identify the root-causes of the problem and solve them.

But the left ignores the real problem, and inserts an artificial one: many people cannot afford health care. While this is a true statement, it is NOT the problem. It is the symptom and the outcome ... and you don't solve a problem by addressing the symptom.

America did not have this problem 50 years ago. No one had health-care coverage. You might have had hospitalization coverage, which is a true insurance covering the high-cost but less-common cases requiring hospital care.

But a doctor's visit? No coverage. Medicines? No coverage. Was there a problem? NO!!! And why is that? Because medical costs were low.
Examples from the 1950's:
Doctor visit: $2
House call: $6
In-hospital baby delivery: $140

Adjusting for inflation (using labor department figures), today those prices become:
Doctor visit: $16
House call: $48
Baby delivery: $1120

But wait! The doctor visit today is $85 to $100. And the baby delivery costs nearly $10,000. But why? When people have insurance, they don't care about the prices. Under these conditions, what happens to the price?

And that, friends, is the problem in America. The costs have been out of control. The left addresses it by inventing insurance for all. It makes no sense.

This country is descending into socialist losership. Meanwhile, China is taking the opposite tack. It has embraced capitalism. It is today very much like America was a century ago: capitalism in ascendancy. Smart move.

(I'm surprised that so far no one has declared Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize winning economist at Princeton, to be a socialist nutcase.):

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/25/why-markets-cant-cure-healthcare/

The bigger the pool of insured, the lower the administrative costs can be, and the more clout the pool has to rein in big pharma, for-profit hospitals, and other medical leeches. Throw everyone into the pool, and if it is done even halfway competently, costs will actually go down. Right now the US government (not even talking about what citizens pay on top of) spends much more per person on healthcare than any other nation in the world - and yet we still have many uninsured and rank way below the other industrialized nations with every single benchmark. This is a huge, huge scandal, and one we can't afford to bicker about / ignore / pay for any longer.

Why aren't fiscal conservatives screaming about the huge chunks of $ removed from their pay and forked over to inefficient-by-design markets, middlemen, and other assorted grifters and drains on the system? I thought they were the serious guys with all the answers, but the only answer they seem to know is "markets" even when the result is unending fail for as far as the eye can see.

Confused, what does the last page of posts have to do with the article?

I really get tired of educating my fellow Americans on universal health care. (All of Western Europe, Scandinavia, Australia, Canada, and Japan have universal health care, everyone is covered, everyone pays less than what Americans pay, and we all have a lower infant mortality rates and greater longevity rates. If anyone is interested I can provide links ... I've done this many times.)

raikkU, you're correct, many posts in this thread are off topic.

Quite so......the 'gimme-gimme immigrants' are requesting what exactly? A job I should imagine. Much like most other generations of newcomers to America, wouldn't it be?

But obamacare is not universal health care. There's no debate about whether to have universal healthcare in the US (in the sense that the government pays for it all). No one has seriously proposed it. Obamacare just imposes extra restrictions on people and forces them to rely yet more heavily on overpriced health insurance. Health insurance is super bad and expensive in the US primarily because we don't choose it, like we do our other types of insurance. Instead because of the government's intervention, it's provided by our companies. Since we don't get to choose whether to have insurance or which company to use, the insurance company has no incentive to treat us well.

In addition to forcing us into bad health insurance, the government also makes healthcare more expensive because it restricts the number of doctors we can have (via the AMA) so there's a massive shortage. It also decides what procedures cost by committee. That committee is made up of doctors and some specialties have lobbied it to death. For example, dermatologists make many times more than other doctors--they are super-millionares. Another example: the guy who puts in a pacemaker in 15 minutes in his office gets paid the same for those 15 minutes as the surgeon who performs a quadruple bypass gets paid for however long that operation takes---it's a lot more than 15 minutes. Prices are all messed up and the fault is the government's, primarily.

I can see an argument for universal health care, but it in no way resembles Obamacare. Rather Obamacare makes our woes with insurance companies worse. The only way to interpret Obamacare as pushing us toward universal health care is that it breaks the system even worse so eventually maybe we'll get sick enough of it and just let the government take over health care for real.

BTW we do have universal health care in the sense that if you go to a hospital they are obligated by law to treat you. They then bill you later and if you don't have insurance you are likely to just never pay and they write it off for tax purposes. So they jack up the prices for individuals relative to what they charge insurance companies to maximize this writeoff. This means if you actually intend to pay out of pocket you will pay many, many times more than is reasonable. Which means fewer people choose to do so. With uninsured people not paying their bills, rates for insurance companies go up. Then more people can't afford health insurance. Viscous cycle.

Read the Krugman link above, you can't have a market for insurance like you do for bread, it just doesn't work. Children and old people generally can't afford it, those in the middle don't want to pay for it until they are old / sick, and insurance companies are basically in the business of not signing up the risky in the first place and denying claims after the fact.

Insurance companies run this country, that's the short answer as to why we don't have universal coverage. Lots of serious people proposed single payer as the only real and best solution, but their voices continue to be marginalized by our corporate press due to the Overton window being so far right.

So we have Obamacare as a bandaid on a bad bleed out, which the R's are doing their best to kill. From what I've read it seems like much of what we already have in NJ - no pre-existing conditions clauses or refusals, no dropping the sick just because they are sick, etc. IOW basic consumer protections anyone should expect in this or any rational country.

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Well, if anything, this thread clearly shows this forum needs an off-topic section. Oh, wait, it has one...

Johann Strauss?
You gotta be kiddin'
Gimme a break!
If there is anything that should be off topic on the Digital Piano forum (or the Pianist Corner for that matter) then it is J. Strauss!

Sounds like a dysfunctional, basket case, banana republic to me...it certainly has nothing to do with universal health care, but rather with universal profiteering off of others' pain, death and suffering.

And, the 45.000 yearly deaths of American men, women and children from this fiasco of having no meaningful access to health care is the equivalent to one 911 terrorist attack every 3 1/2 weeks, year in, year out.

Who is the enemy here?

dewster: The problem isn't finding affordable health insurance. The problem is health insurance. I think it should be PROHIBITED. Eliminated. Banned.

After all, you don't have piano insurance to pay for your piano. Nor beer insurance to cover your tab at the pub. So why do you need health insurance? (Only because medicine costs too damn much. It didn't used to be that way. Health insurance CREATED the high-cost problem.)

As for the braggarts who gush over socialist health care in Canada, the UK, and elsewhere ... you can keep it. And keep every government program, too. Bar none.

I don't need government to dictate to me.
I don't need government to provide for me.
I don't need government to guide me.
I don't need government to provide a retirement income.
All of that is for losers. (So let them have it.)

I only need government to defend the nation. That's how this nation started. But that's not how it is anymore. It's a sad testament to ever-growing American losership.

I disegree, protest. I particularly never liked the Wiener Saloon-style music (from the Monarchie, which was on parellel to Victiorian time) in particular and never listen to it. The music of the Strauss's was banned here in Hungary in musical education of my childhood. (We are not talking about Richard Strauss - he was only halfway banned and only for his alleged NS collaboration).

Today's popular genres as musicals or even some of Soul/Soft Jazz are functionally or regarding taste, cultural depth the same thing in many-many aspects as operette was in the past. They all were for entertaining broad consuming masses, the big difference is that operett music came from Vienna, todays musicals from the Broadway. As memes both similarly successfully penetrate the rest of the world.

And the common music language is undeniably other - but better?

I was in Philadelphia two years ago for my 60th birthday. My brother is a retired Philadelphia fireman and while we were sightseeing in downtown Philadelphia we saw historic fire insurance markers on buildings.

You see, back in the beginning of our country individuals would subscribe to individual fire companies and a metal or wooden marker would be prominently displayed on the outside of their house to indicate which company they subscribed to. If your house were on fire and not insured, your house would burn down.

Now, because of societal maturity, if your house is on fire, your local fire department is tasked to put it out.

What is so f***ing difficult to understand about shared responsibility and shared risk?

Some folks call this socialism. Everyone 'chips in' and pays a local sales\real estate\property\school\whatever-you-want-to-call-it tax and whether you need it or not, your local police department, your local fire department, ... your local library is there ... just for you, when you need it, whether you want it or not.

Get over it, we are in this T O G E T H E R.

This is a great thread!

It's a great thread about a great country, you should visit sometime! But please respect our customs, which might seem a tad odd to a deviant socialist demon worshiper like yourself.

The people here are super helpful and friendly. Just be careful you don't stand in their way when they're going Galt - liable to get you run over.

And please don't help my dying grandma lying in the ditch - we don't bail out individuals for engaging in irresponsible behavior like aging at the expense of those like us (and by "us" I mean "me" and not "you") who prosper through hard work and personal responsibility.

Everyone here is so self-reliant they can and do perform brain surgery on themselves. No weaklings here, no sir.

Can I play

I was born and bought up and lived all my life in England.

I have numerous real life US friends and have been there 5 times.

I love a lot about the US, I love a lot about England.

I hate a lot about the US, I also hate a lot about England.

I live in Norfolk in the UK and am both glad and proud to be part of the EU. The EU does have problems, a lot of them stemming from different countries wanting different things out of Europe. But get 1000 UK citizens that say they want to vote to get out of the EU, you will be lucky if 2 of them have the slightest clue what they are talking about, most basing their opinions on what the fat bloke said down the pub or the scare stories the Daily Mail prints.

That is the danger of having a free vote. A free vote is fine when the majority take the time to get well informed, but when the majority haven't got a clue what they are talking about (I'm not meaning they disagree with me, I'm happy for people to have different opinions from me providing they are proper opinions based on fact), there's a real danger of people voting for something they don't understand (both for staying in the EU or for getting out of it)

Many many many small businesses would go bankrupt if we left the EU

Many of the stories in the press are pure fabrication such as bananas having to be a certain shape etc.

The US, I both love and hate it. I've worked for a US company (me based in England) and have met many US people over here. Those that travel around the world tend to be more aware of the reality of the world than those that have never ever left the US in their entire lives. A lot of people in the US are very insular in their thinking. Sort of set in the past, think that everything about the US is better than every where else in the world and believe a lot of the propaganda that is fed to them by their government and media.

I even had a comment from a couple of US people I was having dinner with about how they were shocked when they first started travelling as to how censored many books are in the US compared to the same book elsewhere.

The US is sadly looked on as a bully by most of the rest of the world, it's seen to cause more problems than it solves (the UK is far from innocent in this I should add). Often foreign police by the US (and the UK) has done more long term to cause terrorism to arise than anything else. Its easy for us to witness a terrorist attack and want our governments to fight back, but too often it's our governments past actions that caused these attacks in the first place and it's something we all should think hard about.

The US is probably the richest country on the planet (maybe one of the Arab small countries might be richer), it dictates to other countries how they should run their governments, cries out for other countries to be democratic etc. yet at the same time, it has more than the entire population of England living below the poverty line, families with kids etc sleeping in cars, without a proper roof over their heads and unable to get basic health care. The vast majority of the rest of the world simply cant fathom this.

I play a game called Lord of the Rings Online, I've been on the internet since it first became available, way before most people even had heard of it, in all that time I have never ever got any forum infractions etc until the past few months. I had to witness US politicians slag of the UKs NHS service, then on Lord of the rings Forum, the moderators started up a charity in order to pay for operations for US children who couldn't afford them, and awarding those that donated with unique in game items.

I've nothing against people doing things for charity, but I object to a company based in the richest country in the world, reaching out around the globe to its international players trying to get us to pay for their own children's operations and bribing us with items that we cant get in any other way, and I was escpecially annoyed as it was a couple of weeks after they slagged off my NHS.

So I politely (not as badly as I've quickly told them here) said what i thought and got my first and second reprimand/forum infraction ever.

There are a lot of things wrong with the NHS. I know a few people that have moved abroad to the likes of the US or Canada and their private health schemes have paid for tests etc that have found solutions to problems they've been suffering for years with in the UK. The UK being tax funded only has a finite amount of money so the latest and greatest expensive medicines and tests aren't readily available.

That brings up a whole new subject on how pharmaceutical companies can live with them selves getting rich off of peoples illnesses, but I haven't got time for that here.

But where the NHS excels is that regardless of ability to pay, anyone can see a doctor 24/7 without worrying about getting a bill, anyone can go to a hospital 24/7 without worrying about getting a bill and anyone can phone an ambulance in an emergency and receive first class treatment, again without worrying about having a bill. Our emergency care, intensive care units etc are first class and it's available to everyone at point of need. You would never see someone campaigning to pay for an operation for a child (or adult) in this country, unless it was for something that couldn't be done in this country (a new surgery that's only available abroad). Sure I've been waiting for an operation since October 2012 and I still don't have a date, but it's not a life threatening thing. Sure I'd like it quickly and my US friends cant understand why I wasn't given a date straight away, but I still have the option to take out private health over here if I choose, but part of my taxes will always go to the NHS and I am glad of that.

I was in Houston a few years ago talking to a guy with dwarfism. He has never ever been able to get medical insurance since the day he was born and has to rely totally on charity for his numerous medical problems he was suffering from.

That is the sort of thing the rest of the world sees and hears about on a daily basis and them we see people (often Christians and I say that as a Christian) arguing against a free health service for all of the US and it makes our minds explode, we simply cannot understand it.

We witness the suing culture that's sadly begun to weave its way into UK culture (but no where near as bad) in the US where it seems that anyone sues anyone else for anything and gets to be mega rich overnight by doing so, we see court cases on TV that are ludicrous, OJ Simpson for example there's no way one single member of that jury managed to follow that evidence, we see the death sentence being handed out yet crime not going down, we see prison sentences running into many times the average lifespan of a human given, we see people fined or jailed for a ludicrous amount of time for trying to feed their family or downloading a few music tracks, we see you exploit our extradition laws that were put in place for terrorism etc to try and get some idiot who as a teenager thought he was being clever by hacking into somewhere but is no real danger to anyone etc etc etc

And we look at your gun crime, we obviously were as upset by 9/11 as you are, (at the same time my home town was blown up by the IRA in the 70's and my grandmother thrown from her bed by an IRA bomb and it was all funded by people in the US) but then we look at how many people were killed by the gun in the US in the next few months and realised that more were than were killed in that fateful day, and something about your country just simply doesn't add up to the rest of the world.

And I'm pretty sure I know what it is that most gets us. I live in England, am proud to be British but I know the problems my country has, I know how imperfect my country is, I know the awful things we've done around the world over the centuries (including this one) and so do all the other Brits. 95% of US people I talk to seem totally oblivious to it and take discussions like this as me personally attacking their country and refuse to listen to anyone say anything against their country. I can imaging people at their screens wearing stars and stripes outfits screaming at me saying USA, USA, USA. OK that's an exaggeration but that is how you come across to the rest of the world.

I know how the UK comes across to most of the world, we are detested almost as much as you are (which is why we always get zero votes in the Euro-vision song contest), but the big difference is, most people in the UK know why and whether they agree or not, understand why people think this of us, where as most US people I talk to are oblivious.

Edit: just came across this

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22028316

It's easy to understand. I'll pay for that insurance if I want to, otherwise not. But socialism FORCES my choice. I don't like government to tell me what I must do.
That's exactly the problem. "Whether you want it or not." I prefer choice over dictatorship.
Not over it. Not at all. We are in everything by C H O I C E ... or should be. (How would you like it if I were to make all of your choices for you?)

It amazes me how liberals want to tell me what I want, what I need, what I must do ... and revel in government that does that bidding. But they MOAN and GROAN over government that does what I want ... which is: as little as possible.

I'd like government to defend the nation and a very few other things ... and leave EVERYTHING ELSE to the private sector. That leaves me choices. I'll buy what, when, and how I wish. I'll choose my vendor/provider. Freedom of choice.

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