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I don't know what Obama has in store for y'all. All I can say is that here in Israel, we have Socialism. The way health care works here: When I need regular, routine things done, I go to the local, usual doctors.
When I actually have a problem or suspect something serious, I pay and go to a private doctor!
The last major thing was when I was expecting. One of the kids broke out with the chicken pox and I was not sure if I had it already as a child. I called my mom and she (God bless her) proudly says I didn't have it. Oh man, that was not the news I wanted to hear, but I didn't say anything. I thanked her and reported this to the doctor.
He advises that I have a test and a shot but these things can't be done until some weeks later. By then the baby would have been already born with whatever potential damage that would happen. I asked the doctor can't they speed up the check to see if I had the chicken pox or not? Then I can have the shot administered and whatever problem would be avoided.
Well, even though all my papers were marked urgent, everything went REALLY S L O W.
Finally, I just relaxed and just hoped I really must have gotten the chicken pox when young. Thank God everything turned out okay. But just letting you know what a gov. operated health care system can look like.
5 comments:
Every industrialized nation in the entire world, other than the United States, is "socialist" according to the standards of Republican politicians in the U.S.
Watching them follow this reductio ad absurdum is amusing to no end. I love the bromide from right-wing Jews who say "the election of Obama is the best thing that happened to the aliyah movement." Yeah, moving to Israel will really help you escape from the socialist nightmare Obama is creating here in America.
It's like that demonstrator at the townhall meeting the other day who worried that Obama was going to get the government involved in Medicare. Imagine that! Next thing you know, the government will be sticking its nose into the postal service, the public schools, and the military.
For Medicare recipients healthcare is already socialized.
Recipients get to pick any physician that will accept Medicare as payment, and many do.
It's a great model, and should be extended to all, and is known as the "single payer" plan.
With the "public option" President Obama and the congress (for now) are striking a compromise with private healthcare plans, giving those who wish the option to stay in their own private healthcare plan or opt for the public one.
Both plans allow recipients to keep their own doctor(s), and preconditioned health issues won't disqualify them.
I believe that it was a more or less compromise to get a semblance of universal healthcare without the expected opposition.
Dream on!
Republican's are attacking it, many who already receive thousands, and millions of dollar from certain healthcare providers and insurers.
As far as socialism is concerned, we've been socialist for a long time. The Free-Market supporters would have us believe that unbridled capitalism is the only way to go.
Yet, it was the reluctance of the government to regulate credit default swaps and other derivatives that's responsible for the global economic mess we're in now.
I truly question whether this country has ever had a real capitalist economy.
To Obama's credit, I don't think he ever intended or expected to silence the opposition. His compromises are meant to draw in those in the middle, including many Democrats.
The mobs we've been seeing (that's the only word I can come up with to describe it) are irrelevant. In fact, they've been acting exactly as we ought to have expected a generation raised on Rush Limbaugh and FOX News to act when rendered politically impotent by a popular black Democrat in the White House. They scare me, in about the same way a tiger in a cage does.
In this situation, the Democrats' worst enemy isn't the lunatic right, it's themselves.
I feel like a ping pong ball hearing both sides of the issue. And both sides have such good points.
I guess u just can't please them all.
"His compromises are meant to draw in those in the middle, including many Democrats."
To do what: to make it palatable to those who might oppose it?
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