Anne Wortham wrote the following article ten days after the election of Barack Obama. Her brief bio is at the end.

“No, He Can’t”By Anne Wortham | Published 11/14/2008

Fellow Americans,

Please know: I am black; I grew up in the segregated South. I did not vote for Barack Obama; I wrote in Ron Paul’s name as my choice for president. Most importantly, I am not race conscious. I do not require a black president to know that I am a person of worth, and that life is worth living. I do not require a black president to love the ideal of America.

I cannot join you in your celebration. I feel no elation. There is no smile on my face. I am not jumping with joy. There are no tears of triumph in my eyes. For such emotions and behavior to come from me, I would have to deny all that I know about the requirements of human flourishing and survival–all that I know about the history of the United States of America, all that I know about American race relations, and all that I know about Barack Obama as a politician.

I would have to deny the nature of the “change” that Obama asserts has come to America. Most importantly, I would have to abnegate my certain understanding that you have chosen to sprint down the road to serfdom that we have been on for over a century. I would have to pretend that individual liberty has no value for the success of a human life. I would have to evade your rejection of the slender reed of capitalism on which your success and mine depend.

I would have to think it somehow rational that 94 percent of the 12 million blacks in this country voted for a man because he looks like them (that blacks are permitted to play the race card), and that they were joined by self-declared “progressive” whites who voted for him because he doesn’t look like them. I would have to wipe my mind clean of all that I know about the kind of people who have advised and taught Barack Obama and will fill posts in his administration–political intellectuals like my former colleagues at the Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.

I would have to believe that “fairness” is equivalent of justice. I would have to believe that man who asks me to “go forward in a new spirit of service, in a new service of sacrifice” is speaking in my interest. I would have to accept the premise of a man that economic prosperity comes from the “bottom up,” and who arrogantly believes that he can will it into existence by the use of government force. I would have to admire a man who thinks the standard of living of the masses can be improved by destroying the most productive and the generators of wealth.

Finally, Americans, I would have to erase from my consciousness the scene of 125,000 screaming, crying, cheering people in Grant Park, Chicago, irrationally chanting “Yes We Can!” Finally, I would have to wipe all memory of all the times I have heard politicians, pundits, journalists, editorialists, bloggers, and intellectuals declare that capitalism is dead–and no one, including especially Alan Greenspan, objected to their assumption that the particular version of the anti-capitalistic mentality that they want to replace with their own version of anti-capitalism is anything remotely equivalent to capitalism.

So you have made history, Americans. You and your children have elected a black man to the office of the president of the United States, the wounded giant of the world. The battle between John Wayne and Jane Fonda is over–and that Fonda won. Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern must be very happy men. Jimmie Carter, too. And the Kennedys have at last gotten their Kennedy look-a-like.

The self-righteous welfare statists in the suburbs can feel warm moments of satisfaction for having elected a black person. So, toast yourselves: 60s countercultural radicals, 80s yuppies and 90s bourgeois bohemians. Toast yourselves, Black America. Shout your glee, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Duke, Stanford, and Berkeley. You have elected not an individual who is qualified to be president, but a black man who, like the pragmatist Franklin Roosevelt, promises to–”Do Something!” You now have someone who has picked up the baton of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. But you have also foolishly traded your freedom and mine–what little there is left–for the chance to feel good. There is nothing in me that can share your happy obliviousness

Anne Wortham bio;

Anne Wortham is Black, an Associate Professor of Sociology at Illinois State University and continuing Visiting Scholar at Stanford University ’s Hoover Institution. She is a member of the American Sociological Association and the American Philosophical Association. She has been a John M. Olin Foundation Faculty Fellow, and honored as a Distinguished Alumni of the Year by the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education. In fall 1988 she was one of a select group of intellectuals who were featured in Bill Moyer’s television series, “A World of Ideas.” The transcript of her conversation with Moyers has been published in his book, A World of Ideas. Dr. Wortham is author of The Other Side of Racism: A Philosophical Study of Black Race Consciousness which analyzes how race consciousness is transformed into political strategies and policy issues. She has published numerous articles on the implications of individual rights for civil rights policy, and is currently writing a book on theories of social and cultural marginality. Recently, she has published articles on the significance of multiculturalism and Afrocentrism in education, the politics of victimization and the social and political impact of political correctness.

It all depends on many factors, but I wouldn't be surprised if we would. But in any case, you won't have to worry about it will you?

Uh, I guess not.

You misunderstand. I wasn't talking about medical school or who's accepted. I was talking about doctors and who's practicing specialties in this country, by and large. Now in Texarkana, Texas I have no idea what the ratio is. But in larger cities where I have lived, there are many more foreign doctors practicing specialties than American ones. It doesn't have to do with race. It has to do with country of origin. My beef is with language difficulties, customs, etc.

You do realize that, for the most part, country of origin = race, right? BTW, you support all immigrants coming to this country being forced to learn and speak English? Again, did not expect that from you.

There are plenty of foreign doctors here. They are mostly from India / Pakistan. Yes, sometimes they are hard to understand. It's frustrating. But still, why do you think there are so many foreign doctors in America these days? It's because they buckle down and study while American kids are partying.

We're not getting a better product for all our money, we aren't attracting a better quality of doctors, and our hospitals are a colossal mess. What part of this so-called "competition" is benefitting Americans who need health care?

There is so much wrong with this statement, I almost don't know where to begin. How will single-payer attract a better quality of doctors?

plain, medicine and health care are not just like any other business. They have to do with life and death.

The product that hospitals sell is EXTREMELY important, but it's still a business. People pay for a service. Without money, it all comes crashing down quickly, like any other business. If the hospital does well, it expands service, like any other business.

We have to find some way for Americans to be able to get the very best medical care in the world. Right now we do not have that and it is not getting better.

Who has better medical care than us? Cuba?

Years ago people paid for their office visits out of their pockets. They didn't have insurance to pay for routine tests or medicines or office visits.

But back then the care was very basic. Most doctor's offices didn't even have xRay machines. Now, you'd be hard pressed to find a single hospital that doesn't have a CAT scan machine. Most podunk backwoods hospitals even have a MRI. To compare medical care today with medical care in the past is comparing apples and oranges.

And it doesn't matter if you live in a large metropolis or Texarkana, Texas (or Arkansas). If you can't afford insurance and sometimes even if you can, and you need medical care, it will probably be a friggin' battle to get it.

But I still don't think the solution is to abolish private insurance. I think there's a lot that could be done, regulation wise, within the current system.

Oops I just thought I was finished for the night.

Not being able to understand your doctor has nothing to do with discrimination. And the reason we have so many foreign doctors is not necessarily because our students are out partying. Medicine does is not as lucrative for doctors as it used to be. Therefore it does not attract the best and brightest of American students. I didn't make this up. I'm not sure that it is even attracting the best and brightest of foreign doctors. We're getting what the insurance companies are willing to pay for.

Lots of Americans go to Switzerland for medical procedures and care. Some even go to very fabulous hospitals in Mexcio. But that is not a very definitive answer. I will get back to you. You know as well as I that there are countries with better medical care than we have. And no, I wouldn't count Cuba as one of them. You weren't serious, eh?

The things that come crashing down in the business of medical care is dead bodies. In that way, it is certainly very different from most businesses. That is why you can't treat it as just any other business. There is much more at stake than just money.

I don't know what single-payer will attract or what it will do to improve or degrade our current system. I do know that we must make some changes and they're going to have to be fairly serious changes. I do not think that single-payer will do much to improve the relationships between people, doctors, hospitals and insurance companies.

And it seems that we do agree on something, there's a lot that could be done within the current system. Unfortunately no one is coming up with viable ideas. You know so much about it, why don't you petition Congress with a plan?

.

From her bio:

and honored as a Distinguished Alumni of the Year by the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education.

Sounds like she is a walking contradiction! Perhaps she has selective race consciousness...

I have to say this has been an interesting thread to read with the back and forth banter over who or what is better for America. As a healthcare provider, a Registered Nurse, I can tell you that I know of not 1 doctor or nurse I've ever worked with want the government to take over our healthcare system. I worked in critical care for my entire nursing career, and half of the nurses I worked with in the 90's were Canadian, because they couldn't get a job in Canada after they graduated from nursing school. Not only did they have to come to the US to work, they shared their knowledge of the Canadian healthcare system with all of us. I can tell you, if the government takes over our healthcare, services WILL be rationed. It happens in Canada everyday. People die waiting to have heart bypass surgery. They don't just go to the ER and end up having emergency surgery like we have here. They only do heart bypass surgery at a few selected hospitals there, and many times the hospital that provides the service will be a 2 to 3 drive from where they live. They also have age limits on procedures. For example, a 70 year old person is considered to old to have bypass surgery, so they just have to live the way they are until they die. They don't take into consideration how the persons' general health is either. There are a lot of people who are 70 that look and feel like they are 50. It's not just heart bypass surgery, it's any kind of surgery. If you need to have your gallbladder out, you may have to wait a year to have it done, and hope you don't die from what we call a "hot gallbladder" before the surgery date finally comes. A hot gallbladder is extremely painful, plus has an infection that will spread throughout your entire body. So, no, I don't want the government taking over our healthcare. Procedures we perform here on a daily basis during emergency situations a lot of the time are not done to the patients who need it there.

It was mentioned that Medicaid and Medicare were very expensive to run, which they are. However, a lot of the problem is abuse of the system and fraud. I am disabled now, and when I lost my job due to an infection I caught in my lungs from a patient I was caring for, I had nothing coming in at all. I had a house, car, utilities, groceries, and all other necessities I had no money to pay them with. I had to be off work a year and a half before I was even eligible for disability, much less any other kind of help. Savings doesn't last long when you have to pay for everything with it, I can assure you. However, I was told at the social services office that they had people in their 40's that had been in their system their entire lives. I wasn't eligible for Medicaid, because I didn't have any small children. I wasn't eligible for Medicare, because I wasn't considered disabled until the year and a half was up. So, don't even try to tell me that Medicare and Medicaid work right. They sure do let a lot of hard working people who have either fallen on hard times, or gotten sick fall through the cracks, like me.

Here is a subject we all know about, and that's the food we eat. Mr Obama has decided we shouldn't be able to eat fast food, or drink cokes, so he's going to tax them heavily. I'm surprised he let the taxes go up on cigarettes, since he's a chain smoker himself. I guess when you're the president, it doesn't matter how much things cost. I don't think we should all have to pay these outrageous taxes on food and soft drinks just because Obama has decided we don't need them. Who is he to tell anyone what they should or shouldn't eat or drink. Alcohol is already heavily taxed, but Cokes? This is going tooooooooooooo far people!

Also, if you think back to when all of these financial companies and other businesses started to fail, it was Freddie Mac and Fannie May that started the whole thing. Those were government run programs that the democrats were in charge of. But, the responsible people, such as Barney Frank, don't take any responsibility for what happened. They told everyone that those 2 entities were stable right before they failed. What a joke!

As far as the government taking over the car industry, that's a scary thought to. The reason the American auto industry got into the financial ruins they are in now was caused by the unions. It's rediculious for a person working in a auto plant to make $40 per hour. Nurses sure don't make that much money. I would think a nurse would be worth more money per hour than someone who helps build a car. Give me a break! I used to work for a company that had the same union the auto workers have, and they didn't do anything to protect our jobs when the home office decided to take our government contracts because they couldn't get their own.

I am a conserative and proud of it. Do I accept my momthly Social Security check? You bet I do. I paid into it my entire life from the age of 16 until I became disabled. I don't feel at all guilty about the money I recieve every month, after all, I earned it.

I will get down off of my soap box now, I just had to put my 2 cents in. I guess I'm just tired of hearing about how great Obama is when he is going against everything this country has ever stood for. He's definitely not the kind of change I was looking for. His race has absolutely nothing to do with it at all. Before long, he's gonna have us as socialistic as the European countries. What a sad day that will be for America.

Joan

Edited June 17, 200917 yr by wootsie73
grammer

Not being able to understand your doctor has nothing to do with discrimination. And the reason we have so many foreign doctors is not necessarily because our students are out partying. Medicine does is not as lucrative for doctors as it used to be. Therefore it does not attract the best and brightest of American students.

Now think how it will be if single payer goes through. The government will effectively be capping the reimbursement that doctors get (salary control). Now, take that concept and apply it to hospitals and you've got why single-payer is a horrible idea.

I'm not sure that it is even attracting the best and brightest of foreign doctors. We're getting what the insurance companies are willing to pay for.

I don't get it. How is big insurance affecting the quality of medical students?

You know as well as I that there are countries with better medical care than we have.

I call bullcrap! There is no country with better medical care. Even if you attempt to argue Sweden (which doesn't have as good technology as America has), it's such a small country that it can't really be compared with large nations.

And no, I wouldn't count Cuba as one of them. You weren't serious, eh?

nope.

The things that come crashing down in the business of medical care is dead bodies. In that way, it is certainly very different from most businesses. That is why you can't treat it as just any other business. There is much more at stake than just money.

It is a very important end product (people's lives). But in the end, healthcare has to be run like a business. Either that, or we'll be continuously "bailing out" healthcare forever

And it seems that we do agree on something, there's a lot that could be done within the current system. Unfortunately no one is coming up with viable ideas. You know so much about it, why don't you petition Congress with a plan?

I'm going to ignore what might be sarcasm, because I'm clearly an awesome mind. For Medicare / Medicaid, I would crack down on fraud, beef up whistleblower protection for those that expose it, and......well, I don't know what else. For private insurance, I'd tighten up on their abuse of the "pre-existing condition" clause and make it easier for appeals and grievances to be settled in a court. It's not a comprehensive overhaul, but it's a start. Maybe I'll run for congress. May I count on your vote, BJean?

Joan, I bow at your feet! You nailed it right on the head, m'dear. And I'm sorry that you, who needs the help, are being treated so badly.

Canadian medicine DOES NOT WORK. Socialized medicine DOES NOT WORK. Hell, I heard about a week ago that somebody pretty high up in Canada (government, I believe) came HERE to get medical care. Now why is that? If their service is sooooooooo good, why come here?

The government is about incompetence and stupidity. I wouldn't hand over a taco stand for them to run, yet they think they can do real estate (wrong, already failed), medicine (fails wherever they are involved), cars, etc.

The government is also about greed and theft. There are those who say that the big, bad businessman is the devil, that he's greedy, that because he flourishes off of what he built, he's somehow evil. YET, the government, who had NO involvement in the flourishing of that company, thereby having nothing to do with the accrued wealth of the businessman, decides that it has the right to tax the businessman MORE for his reward for a job well done and STEALS his money from him. Yet the government isn't greedy. The government isn't the devil. The government is treated like Robin Hood because the government steals from one to give to another. There are people who believe that is right, people that are JUST. THAT. STUPID.

And the biggest greedmeister of all is Obama. Wasn't one of his campaign promises that he wasn't going to raise taxes on those who made below "X" amount of money? Seems to me that cigarettes, food, sodas, etc., hit the very people he swore he was going to protect. The very people who drank his kool-aid, who chanted after him like he was a god, who are being screwed royally while looking on adoringly on this idiot.

Yes, let's have socialized medicine. :wink2: You tell it like it is, like those of us who have RESEARCHED it KNOW it is all about. People dying because they can't get a gall bladder removed? That's just the tip of the iceburg. But I guess SOME think that's okay.

What I want to know is, if medicine will only take care of those who "deserve" it -- those who aren't too young or too old, and who have "worth" because they can be viable members of society -- then what the hell is different between THIS and what Hitler did in trying to create a perfect race by eliminating those who were "less than"? Nothing, from where I'm sitting, except that the government will use government medicine to do it rather than one squirrelly little man with a funky moustache.

plain: "It is a very important end product (people's lives). But in the end, healthcare has to be run like a business. Either that, or we'll be continuously "bailing out" healthcare forever"

What part of it's not working don't you understand?

plain: "I call bullcrap! There is no country with better medical care. Even if you attempt to argue Sweden (which doesn't have as good technology as America has), it's such a small country that it can't really be compared with large nations."

That language offends my senses. There ARE countries with better medical care. Pull your head out. Sweden and Switzerland count. Just because we are bigger doesn't mean we are better at everything. Would that it were true.

plain: "For private insurance, I'd tighten up on their abuse of the "pre-existing condition" clause and make it easier for appeals and grievances to be settled in a court. It's not a comprehensive overhaul, but it's a start."

So when you said: "it's a matter of me thinking that, with a lot of insurance companies competing with each other, pricing and decisions are kept in check."

Sounds like you're all for some intervention and controls of insurance companies based on your tightening up statement though. So maybe what you're really saying is that all this competition between insurance companies is not keeping pricing and decisions in check, eh?

Thanks. I feel so much better.

As I said earlier I am not at all sure that the single-payer plan is the answer. But I can tell you for sure that expecting competition in the marketplace to fix our health care system is folly.

Wootsie everytime I make statements like your post, above, where I am stating things as fact when in actuality, they are my opinion based on my experiences, people raise cain with me. They demand that I cite references and proof that what I am saying is factual.

Well, I'd like for you to produce some facts to back up all your claims about healthcare in Canada. In my experience, I have found that some of what you say is true but it is not as grim a picture as you paint it.

People in the U.S. are so scared of change, so fearful of the unknown, they exaggerate every negative thing they've ever heard about healthcare in England and Canada. Yes, they do have problems. But if you ask people who use the system everyday, there are a lot of happily well-attended citizens.

And the fact that they've experienced problems with the system that they have is one reason why we could do it better. We could learn from their mistakes - if only we would. I do wonder how the heck we can ever come up with a decent healthcare system in this country with so many people so scared to death to make any kind of change. Consider all that and add the millions of dollars spent on lobbying in Washington by the insurance companies, and you mix that in with all the law-making Congress people with their pocketbooks wide open waiting for their share and it sure looks hopeless.

You do know that since the economy is so messed up, people are in the United States of America are being turned away from our hospitals, right?

I have to say this has been an interesting thread to read with the back and forth banter over who or what is better for America. As a healthcare provider, a Registered Nurse, I can tell you that I know of not 1 doctor or nurse I've ever worked with want the government to take over our healthcare system. I worked in critical care for my entire nursing career, and half of the nurses I worked with in the 90's were Canadian, because they couldn't get a job in Canada after they graduated from nursing school. Not only did they have to come to the US to work, they shared their knowledge of the Canadian healthcare system with all of us. I can tell you, if the government takes over our healthcare, services WILL be rationed. It happens in Canada everyday. People die waiting to have heart bypass surgery. They don't just go to the ER and end up having emergency surgery like we have here. They only do heart bypass surgery at a few selected hospitals there, and many times the hospital that provides the service will be a 2 to 3 drive from where they live. They also have age limits on procedures. For example, a 70 year old person is considered to old to have bypass surgery, so they just have to live the way they are until they die. They don't take into consideration how the persons' general health is either. There are a lot of people who are 70 that look and feel like they are 50. It's not just heart bypass surgery, it's any kind of surgery. If you need to have your gallbladder out, you may have to wait a year to have it done, and hope you don't die from what we call a "hot gallbladder" before the surgery date finally comes. A hot gallbladder is extremely painful, plus has an infection that will spread throughout your entire body. So, no, I don't want the government taking over our healthcare. Procedures we perform here on a daily basis during emergency situations a lot of the time are not done to the patients who need it there.

Since you perpetuated just about all the myths about Canadian health care and in the interest of space, I offer the following more accurate portrayal of Canada's healthcare system:

10 Myths About Canadian Health Care, Busted | Physicians for a National Health Program

The US spends more on health care than 23 other industrialized capitalistic countries yet has the worst infant mortality rates and nearly the lowest life expectancy.

It was mentioned that Medicaid and Medicare were very expensive to run, which they are. However, a lot of the problem is abuse of the system and fraud. I am disabled now, and when I lost my job due to an infection I caught in my lungs from a patient I was caring for, I had nothing coming in at all.It is up to each of us to make sure we have adequate disability insurance if your employer doesn't provide it (mine didn't) and to pay into it yourself (I did) for just such a situation. But it appears that you wanted the government-run health care (Medicare/Medicaid) to somehow come to your aid even though you didn't qualify. I had a house, car, utilities, groceries, and all other necessities I had no money to pay them with. I had to be off work a year and a half before I was even eligible for disability, much less any other kind of help. Savings doesn't last long when you have to pay for everything with it, I can assure you. However, I was told at the social services office that they had people in their 40's that had been in their system their entire lives. Then they must have qualified. It is very hard to get Medicaid. Many of the working poor don't qualify. Most Medicaid goes to nursing homes. I wasn't eligible for Medicaid, because I didn't have any small children. I wasn't eligible for Medicare, because I wasn't considered disabled until the year and a half was up. So, don't even try to tell me that Medicare and Medicaid work right. They sure do let a lot of hard working people who have either fallen on hard times, or gotten sick fall through the cracks, like me. Again, it was up to you to plan ahead for just such a situation. It's not the government's job to provide you with income when you can't work. That's what disability insurance is for. Ever hear of Aflac? Anyway, if your disability was caused by being on the job, you should have worked hard to get workman's comp. Did you pursue this or get a good lawyer to help you?

Here is a subject we all know about, and that's the food we eat. Mr Obama has decided we shouldn't be able to eat fast food, or drink cokes, so he's going to tax them heavily. I'm surprised he let the taxes go up on cigarettes, since he's a chain smoker himself. I guess when you're the president, it doesn't matter how much things cost. I don't think we should all have to pay these outrageous taxes on food and soft drinks just because Obama has decided we don't need them. Who is he to tell anyone what they should or shouldn't eat or drink. Alcohol is already heavily taxed, but Cokes? This is going tooooooooooooo far people!These are called sin taxes and I have no problem with them. I wish they would put a $10/pack tax on cigarettes. Our country's health would improve. What is going too far is those conservatives that want to legislate what goes on in our bedrooms and with a woman's uterus.

Also, if you think back to when all of these financial companies and other businesses started to fail, it was Freddie Mac and Fannie May that started the whole thing. Those were government run programs that the democrats were in charge of.Wrong again. Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are PRIVATE programs with government backing. Much like the FDIC backs your savings in a private bank. But, the responsible people, such as Barney Frank, don't take any responsibility for what happened. They told everyone that those 2 entities were stable right before they failed. What a joke!

As far as the government taking over the car industry, that's a scary thought to. The reason the American auto industry got into the financial ruins they are in now was caused by the unions.Unions created the middle class in this country and are responsible for the 40 hour work week, worker's comp., child labor laws and workplace safety among other things. They created a level playing field with corporations, the CEO's of which negotiate their contracts, so why can't the workers? I am glad that they helped to do this. We owe them our thanks. It's rediculious for a person working in a auto plant to make $40 per hour. Nurses sure don't make that much money.Your point being that it would be okay for nurses to make that much but just not a union auto worker? I would think a nurse would be worth more money per hour than someone who helps build a car. Give me a break! I used to work for a company that had the same union the auto workers have, and they didn't do anything to protect our jobs when the home office decided to take our government contracts because they couldn't get their own. Nurses are in short supply. I would think that you could be in a union or start one and have a lot of bargaining power to get to that $40/hour rate. However, that would drive up the cost of health care. I don't disagree that nurses don't make enough. But your argument falls under one of three categories when people compare what they make to others:

1) I make more than them, but I deserve to.

2) They make more than me, but don't deserve to.

3) I deserve to make more than them just because...

I am a conserative and proud of it. Do I accept my momthly Social Security check? You bet I do. I paid into it my entire life from the age of 16 until I became disabled. I don't feel at all guilty about the money I recieve every month, after all, I earned it.Actually, you didn't. You will receive far more money in social security than you paid into it. The money that you were paying at age 16 and beyond was going to that day's current social security recipients. The money you are receiving now is coming from the current 16 year old and older workers who are contributing to your monthly payment.

I will get down off of my soap box now, I just had to put my 2 cents in. I guess I'm just tired of hearing about how great Obama is when he is going against everything this country has ever stood for.Just so much more of the sour grapes I've been hearing from the soundly defeated right wing conservatives. Obama is defending what this country stands for. Bush is the one who defiled the constitution. Obama is cleaning up after all of Bush's mess. He's definitely not the kind of change I was looking for. His race has absolutely nothing to do with it at all. Before long, he's gonna have us as socialistic as the European countries. What a sad day that will be for America.

Joan

I am an unapologetic liberal democrat and proud of it. The above was my 2 cents for what it's worth. :blushing:

What part of it's not working don't you understand?

What specifically is not working, BJean? I agree that insurance is expensive. I agree that not all people can afford insurance. Is that your only gripe with healthcare, though? The insurance?

That language offends my senses. There ARE countries with better medical care. Pull your head out. Sweden and Switzerland count. Just because we are bigger doesn't mean we are better at everything. Would that it were true.

Ok, name one country. Are you, for the record, claiming that Sweden has better health care than the United States? Or Switzerland? Mexico? Name one! I want to hear your pick.

Sounds like you're all for some intervention and controls of insurance companies based on your tightening up statement though. So maybe what you're really saying is that all this competition between insurance companies is not keeping pricing and decisions in check, eh?

Hmmmm....a more cynical person might think you asked my opinion on how to overhaul healthcare just to poke holes in my ideas. Luckily, I'm giddily optimistic! So here's the deal:

Yes, private insurance needs to be more regulated. Yes, even in a semi-rigged game like insurance, competition keeps prices lower and quality higher than they would be if there were only one giant mega company (like, say....the government). I'm not really business-minded, but I know that monopolies tend to not be so magnanimous with their pricing.

But I can tell you for sure that expecting competition in the marketplace to fix our health care system is folly.

Ok, I think either you believe in capatalism, or you don't. I personally do. Sure there needs to be some tweaks.....but competition beats the alternative.

Wootsie everytime I make statements like your post, above, where I am stating things as fact when in actuality, they are my opinion based on my experiences, people raise cain with me. They demand that I cite references and proof that what I am saying is factual.

Well, I'd like for you to produce some facts to back up all your claims about healthcare in Canada.

I think that's fair, if Wootsie is trying to get into the debate. She's kinda new to the show though, so maybe she doesn't know about my fetish for facts, vs. opinion (although opinions are fine, it's hard to support a debate on them, Wootsie).

But if you ask people who use the system everyday, there are a lot of happily well-attended citizens.

You could say the same about our system.

And the fact that they've experienced problems with the system that they have is one reason why we could do it better. We could learn from their mistakes - if only we would. I do wonder how the heck we can ever come up with a decent healthcare system in this country with so many people so scared to death to make any kind of change. Consider all that and add the millions of dollars spent on lobbying in Washington by the insurance companies, and you mix that in with all the law-making Congress people with their pocketbooks wide open waiting for their share and it sure looks hopeless.

I think it's fair to ask why President Obama wants this legislation rushed through so quickly. He knows what single payer will do to the system long term, and they want to sneak the particulars by the public while his opinion ratings are still high.

You do know that since the economy is so messed up, people are in the United States of America are being turned away from our hospitals, right?

Well, that may be a little disingenuous. You make it sound like the homeless are having AMI's in the street, while the hospital just watches them die. The fact is, you'll see lots of people come to the ER because they think they can get their minor complaints treated for free.

I will say this: I don't think President Obama is trying to get single payer passed with any malicious intent. I don't think he's crooked, or wants to drive the country into the ground. I think he really believes this is the socially correct course to take. I happen to disagree. And I think the American public will disagree when they get the whole story (thus the huge rush to get this thing passed).

Edited June 18, 200917 yr by plain

I don't know which of us is the most narrow-minded on this topic, plain, but I will reiterate that if the health care system was working - by that I mean that Americans can get adequate health care when they need it - then there wouldn't be a reason for President Obama or Congress or you or me or anyone else to suggest that we need a change.

I think you're being disengenuous when you accuse Obama of pushing this bill through because he knows people wouldn't go for it if they understood it. We need change now! We've needed change since before Clinton took office. He was our first hope and the Republicans quashed it from the outset without any effort to research it or listen to his proposals.

Your approach reminds me of the Republican's behavior back then which was based on the old: No change is better than any change.

Thanks for your post Cleo's Mom. I sure didn't have the energy or time to line by line take both of them on. You made some good and valid points.

I guess we are both pretty dug in our respective positions. Only time will tell who's right. I sure hope you are!!

Your approach reminds me of the Republican's behavior back then which was based on the old: No change is better than any change.

Thanks for your post Cleo's Mom. I sure didn't have the energy or time to line by line take both of them on. You made some good and valid points.

Thank you, BJean. I always enjoy your perspectives and posts.

The conservative positions remind me of an episode of All in the Family in which Archie Bunker inadvertently joins the local KKK. At the membership meeting the grand KKK guy says he has some doubts about Archie's patriotism and Archie says: "What do you mean? I'm a true, blue American. I'm against all the right things."

Being against, yeah, that's what they and Archie are all about!

I'm dating myself big time, Cleo's mom, but I remember the Archie Bunker show quite well. It did a great job of exposing some of the hypocrisy that the Nixon era was all about. I remember seeing it for the first time and we laughed so hard we were rolling in the floor. I don't remember the episode you're referring to, but it sounds pretty typical.

Wootsie everytime I make statements like your post, above, where I am stating things as fact when in actuality, they are my opinion based on my experiences, people raise cain with me. They demand that I cite references and proof that what I am saying is factual.

Well, I'd like for you to produce some facts to back up all your claims about healthcare in Canada. In my experience, I have found that some of what you say is true but it is not as grim a picture as you paint it.

People in the U.S. are so scared of change, so fearful of the unknown, they exaggerate every negative thing they've ever heard about healthcare in England and Canada. Yes, they do have problems. But if you ask people who use the system everyday, there are a lot of happily well-attended citizens.

And the fact that they've experienced problems with the system that they have is one reason why we could do it better. We could learn from their mistakes - if only we would. I do wonder how the heck we can ever come up with a decent healthcare system in this country with so many people so scared to death to make any kind of change. Consider all that and add the millions of dollars spent on lobbying in Washington by the insurance companies, and you mix that in with all the law-making Congress people with their pocketbooks wide open waiting for their share and it sure looks hopeless.

You do know that since the economy is so messed up, people are in the United States of America are being turned away from our hospitals, right?

BJean,

I'm sorry that every time you post something like what I posted you are expected to back it up with facts instead of opinion. Well, obviously someone didn't like my post, because it's not on here anymore, and that makes me very angry to say the least. There was not 1 curse word in my post, nor did I attack anyone on this forum personally. I said things about the president of this country, but lots of others have to. I can't even go back and read what I wrote to try to give you the facts. However, I will tell you that I don't have what you would call facts, I have what nurses I worked with, who were my roommates, and friends told me. They were the ones who had to move down to Texas to get a job instead of living in Canada where they were from. And, I can assure you, I'm not talking about 2 or 3 people. I'm talking about 30 to 50 nurses I worked with at different times. The information I posted was the information they told me. These incidents were what they saw in nursing school, and what their personal families had gone through, And, 1 thing I didn't say yesterday that I should have, is that having a choice on which hospital you go to for testing is not an option there. There may be 10 hospitals in a city, (just an estimate. not fact about any particular city) but only 1 of those 10 hospitals will have an MRI machine, a CAT scan machine, or any of the large expensive equipment. It saves the government money to not have the same equipment at all of the facilities. Here in the medium sized town I live in, we have 2 major hospitals, and all of the equipment is at both, plus at private doctors offices. If they have their way, meaning the governent, we might have to drive 2 to 3 hours to get a major test like that run. Of course, that's just my opinion. Just going off of what Canada does.

I don't think the people in the US are afraid of positive change in the healthcare system at all. I think most people tend to forget that we went through radical changes back in the 90's when all of the HMO's and PPO's took over our healthcare system. When they first started, everything was great and wonderful. People got to choose their doctors, and the doctors got to decide what was best for their patients, and people had low co-pays with great care. That didn't last long though. They, meaning the HMO's and PPO's, decided they weren't going to be able to make ends meet that way, so they started a type of rationed care, which is what we still have today. They started telling the doctors how long a patient could stay in the hospital when they had a specific illness or procedure. They also started setting limits on what doctors would be paid for specific treatments. That's why our kids are not becoming doctors. Doctors don't make the kind of money they used to make. When a woman has a baby in this day and time, she normally leaves the hospital in 24 hours or less. The insurance companies decided women didn't need to stay any longer, which is very dangerous, IMHO. There is still a lot that can go wrong even just having a baby. Another example was me personally. Last year I had my carotid artery operated on. In case you don't know, that's the major artery in your neck that goes up to the brain. I went into surgery at approximately 3 pm, and I went home before noon the next day. Again, very scary for me as a patient and dangerous to. What if I started bleeding? I would die before an ambulance could get to my house. Prior to the HMO's and PPO's taking over, most Americans that had insurance paid a deductible, normally $200 for my insurance, and then the insurance paid 80%. The patient had to pay the other 20%. Now people have co-pays for doctor visits, hospital stays, and prescriptions. Another thing that happened when the HMO"s and PPO's took over our healthcare, was a hiring freeze of nurses. My daughter, who is also a nurse, couldn't find a job when she graduated from nursing school, but we had thousands of Canadian nurses down here working and taking the American jobs.

As far as people being turned away from American hospitals because of the economy, that's against the law. Hospitals in this country are required to take patients rather they can afford to pay or not. Luckily, as a nurse I have never been involved in the financial aspects of a patients care. I just had to make sure I charted every tiny little thing I did to make sure they were following the time allowance for their illness.

OK, I will tell you something very positive about the Canadian healthcare system. When a patient is in ICU, they normally have 2 patients per nurse. If a patient is on a ventilator and other life support, they will have 1 nurse to that 1 patient. It definitely isn't that way in the hospitals I've worked in. The night I got sick, I had 3 patients on ventilators, plus 2 of them were in isolation. Very dangerous situation for me and the patients. Having 4-5 critical care patients is not uncommon in many American hospitals. The Canadian system has a union for the nurses, so I've been told, that prevents the unsafe practice of caring for more patients than a nurse can reasonably care for. Not all US states are like that, but Texas is.

Now about the Hitler statement, I think you are right. Who are we to decide who is to old or to young to have a procedure done? Who decides when a baby that's premature is to little to save? 20 years ago many of the preemies that are born and thrive today would not have survived. Those are decisions I would rather leave up to God, but that's a whole different thread.

As far as me personally doing without things I need, I don't have to do that so much anymore, but I also live with my parents at the age of 53. After the year and a half was up, I started getting disability. But, get this, I had to be disabled legally for 6 months before I could get Medicare. So, that was 2 years with no healthcare coverage at all.

I hope this post stays on the thread long enough for people to read it before someone pulls it.:wink:

Joan