New Animation!
It's here: a new Animated Editorial Cartoon with David Essman sending up the stupidest aspect of Obama's lame-ass healthcare fiasco: fining people who don't buy private insurance. Enjoy!
posted by Ted Rall at
10:56 AM
20 Comments:
Ouch!
Ah, using Malia Obama as LBJ's "Daisy Girl" campaign tv ad did in 1964! For shame!
You could have kept children out of the issue by having Michelle Obama lose her head in a White House weight-room accident, or the door of Air Force One decapitating her as she disembarked on a very windy day in Washington, D.C. from her Hawaii Holiday Vacation. Or Oprah decapitated on a very windy day in Chicago by the door on her STRETCH LIMO as she EXITS WHILE TEXTING to her fans that THEY should not DRIVE WHILE DISTRACTED. Not that the proposed ObamaCare would have helped Jayne Mansfield or Vic Morrow had they survived, or the decapitated men in Joe Pesci's career best, "Eight Heads in a Duffel Bag."
Comrade Zero, you obviously don't know much about this issue, or, I suspect, anything else.
Yes, taxes could pay for this. And single payer will save so much money that we would be paying less in taxes than we do to the private insurers. The whole point of single payer is to SAVE MONEY and insure EVERYONE.
No one wants the government to "manage" health care. Just pay for it and mandate that everyone gets treatment. Individual doctors should manage individual's health care (like in Canada, the UK, France, Denmark, etc.). It actually wouldn't take too much bureaucracy to implement singe payer--THAT'S THE WHOLE POINT. Certainly much less than the current private system that has a giant, expensive apparatus designed to DENY coverage. NEWS FLASH: the current private system is a HUGE BUREAUCRACY that bloats costs.
Sure, the population of the US is larger than the individual European countries with single payer, but, using their examples, certainly not so much so that it couldn't be managed. Actually, the size of the US population is a good argument FOR single payer--with more people, the relative administrative costs should be even LOWER, and our health care should be CHEAPER than the smaller countries!
What the fuck does the physical size of the country have to do with anything? Do you think this is the 19th century and we're relying on the Pony Express? (Need I point out that Canada stretches further than 3,000 miles and still manages to pull off single payer and a whole host of other government services?)
And, finally, I have a question for you: where did the extra 100 million people come from? The last time I checked, the population of the US was only a little more than 300 million.
May I remind you that there are 535 other men and women voting on this, not just Obama. Referring to this as "Obamacare" is somewhat misleading.
Dear anonymous idiot (4:41 PM):
I in no way support the Democrat's shitty health care "reform" scheme. They are trying really hard to give their buddies in the insurance companies everything they could ever dream of.
Read what the fuck I wrote. We need SINGLE PAYER (or some other pragmatic form of socialized medicine), not shitty "Obamacare."
Canada! Do you have any idea of the population density up there? Okay, knock of 100 mil - since we all know population never increases - and say 300 million. That still leaves a whole lot of people to take care of.
Now let's say 100,000 people a year require a particular procedure. Looking at that chart Anon linked to can you give me a rough guess as to how many people would be needed (in jobs with gold-plated government perks and plenty of unneeded auxiliaries) to keep that 100k straight? Remember they're spread across the country! Name any number you like it will still be too few. So how is UC supposed to cost less?
*Sigh.*
I don't support the Democrat's stupid plan. It is neither single payer or universal coverage. It's not even going to include a "public option," which would have been a small step in the right direction.
Currently, on a per cap. basis, the US spends more on health care than any other country. A lot more. One reason is that the bureaucratic costs of private, rationed, for-profit insurance add 30% to the cost of care. You read that right: 30 FUCKING PERCENT. And much of that cost is being spent to DENY people's claims. COUNTRIES WITH SINGLE PAYER ALREADY PROVE THEY CAN DO IT CHEAPER THAN THE USA'S EVIL, SHITTY, RATIONED, FOR-PROFIT SYSTEM.
The current plan ("Obamacare") wouldn't really help anything--it would probably make matters worse. Stop trying to attack advocates of single payer by referencing the Democrats' stupid, corrupt schemes.
And go educate yourself about how much better other industrialized countries manage their health care. Truly socialized health insurance is the ONLY way to go.
All the political cartoons of 'little' George W. Bush the past eight years-plus must now take a back seat to an actual, real-life video of George W. Bush sitting next to Bill Clinton in their side-by-side request for OUR CASH: "ClintonBushHaitiFund.Org.
Hard to describe, from the fraction of a second one is able to barely tolerate the face and voice of America's Primo War Criminal and Mass Murderer, the total contempt for the smirking, lying face that lives off the taxpayers' backs in his palatial home somewhere in Texas. Perhaps the secret service personnel whose lifetime duty it is to guard the former peeResident feel it's like keeping watch on a landfill.
Grouchy whines: the US spends more on health care than any other country And we have the best healthcare system in the world. Don't like HMO's? Blame your fat pal Ted Kennedy. Shortly after he killed MAry Jo, he burned us with the HMO system.
BTW Grouchy, you can purchase a healthcare plan from Blue Cross or Blue Shield for less then you pay for your xbox games. Your problem is you don't make any money, so you want someone else to pay your freight. Well as one who actually studied for, and received a relevant degree, and pursued starting a business instead of whining like a baby about corporations, I can afford health care for my family, and I don't particularly feel like paying for healthcare for a bunch of crying petulant 60's retreads. You want something for free? Move to Cuba or Venezuela.
11:51 PM Anonymous:
Your semi-literate post is certainly today's best example of vapid, unoriginal trolling.
Good job!
(Or should I say, "Billy Jack is back!")
And we have the best healthcare system in the world.
How's that? I know we're supposed to reflexive accept that America is the best a everything, but I fail to understand how even a chauvinist like yourself can make such a stunning statement.
And why is it that all you trolls want me to move to Cuba or some other poor Latin American country. Why not Canada, France, Denmark or England?
How's that? I know we're supposed to reflexive accept that America is the best a everything, but I fail to understand how even a chauvinist like yourself can make such a stunning statement.
I know that because people come here from all over the world for our healthcare.
And I recommended Cuba to you because you would be right at home in your worker's paradise with Michael Moore, Sean Penn and Danny Glover.
All the political cartoons of 'little' George W. Bush the past eight years-plus must now take a back seat to an actual, real-life video of George W. Bush sitting next to Bill Clinton in their side-by-side request for OUR CASH:
As stupid as you think Bush is, he was president, beating out possible the stupidest person to ever work in the White House, Al Gore, and the John Kerry who lives off of rich widows (and served in Vietnam). He out smarted you, you're just an anonymous poster living with Mom.
I know that because people come here from all over the world for our health care.
There's a problem with your logic here.
Every year thousands of Americans go to India and Mexico to have medical procedures done. The media is chock full of stories about this phenomenon.
Does this mean India and Mexico have better health care systems than America?
Grouchy,
Nobody goes to Mexico because the healthcare is better. Some freeloading American's move there because, for $250 they can get mostly "unlimited" healthcare. How long do you think that will last? India's healthcare is not better either, but it is cheaper. Like to take a guess as to why it's cheaper? Yes, that's right, competition. People pay for their procedures. They price around for the best price.
I look forward to hearing about your next medical procedure in TJ.
I never said health care was better in either Mexico or India.
Re-read what I wrote.
...to the point:
Are there expensive private clinics in the US that are world-class? Yes.
Does the average American get to use these clinics? No. The average American has their health care rationed by for-profit insurance companies that have every incentive to deny payment of medical procedures.
There's two different issues here that you morons don't seem to understand: health insurance and health care.
If you have shitty, rationed, for-profit health insurance (or no health insurance at all), it doesn't matter how good the hospitals and doctors are because the insurance companies' bottom line will be a factor in determining what kind of care you receive. Doctors should be the only ones deciding how a patient is treated. And an incredibly rich country like the US has a moral imperative to provide everyone with care--I know you don't agree with that, but I'd even say a selfish, heartless asshole like yourself should receive care if you lost your job or suffered some sort of personal calamity.
And the whole kicker is that the rest of the industrialized world has near universal coverage, and they DO IT CHEAPER than the US. And all the metrics show their populations are healthier. Not that that's any surprise.
Grouch,
This might surprise you, but 85% of people with health insurance are happy with their health insurance. Now these people are known as "people having a job" which is obviously something you object to, explaining your impoverished situation, and living with mom in your 50's.
What poll are you citing? You're not leaving anything out, are you? Because, funny, I was looking for your poll, and I found this NYT poll (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/21/health/policy/21poll.html) stating that 85% of the population said that "the health care system needed to be fundamentally changed or completely rebuilt."
Not that I put much stock in opinion polls, even if they're above-board. Partisan idiots like to cherry-pick their points to build their case. And, anyway, who cares about the capricious, uninformed opinion of the "average Joe?"
I never use opinion polls to argue a case. I prefer hard data. I only turn my attention to them when disingenuous fools like yourself bring them up. If you had cited a source, I'd have more to say. But even without a source, taking your number at face value, I'd like to point out that that number is only 85% of people with insurance, and of that population, 48 million have medicare,* the type of single-payer, socialized insurance that I support. So, discounting the 46+ million people without insurance, plus the satisfied people with medicare, you're not going to be able to squeeze out a large majority to support the current system.
But even if you do get a tiny majority who say they're pleased with their private insurance, why do huge majorities consistently say we need the system rebuilt? Does the average American recognize health care to be a fundamental human right? That would be one way of looking at it. Or maybe they're just frightened of losing their "good insurance," or having something happen to an uninsured friend or family member. My guess would be a mixture of fear and altruism.
Don't play with polls if you don't know what you're doing, moron. You might run into someone with enough patience to pick your shoddy logic apart.
------------------------
*most of these people don't have jobs, so their goes another bit of your idiotic post.
ps: I have a job. I am not impoverished, and I've been living on my own since the age of 19.
So there.
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