Political: Moderate, Centrist, and Progressive Thread

[ChristopherHall]

WHO's data isn't the only study out there bro.

Are you meaning to tell me that Americans wouldn't benefit from seeing their doctor more often?

[ChristopherHall]

Originally Posted by bishopnl

Tell you what, Chris. Link me to the particular study you are referring too, and we'll discuss it from there.

The particular study I'm referring to is the WHO study. This may not be the most recent version of it, but this is essentially the same one.

http://www.who.int/whosis/database/c...nguage=english

Listed on the site:

Rationale for use
Life expectancy at birth reflects the overall mortality level of a population. It summarizes the mortality pattern that prevails across all age groups - children and adolescents, adults and the elderly.

Definition
Average number of years that a newborn is expected to live if current mortality rates continue to apply.

As it is, I'm sick of arguing with you. I don't think you have any particular study in mind, and I have my doubts that you've even studied the WHO data. It might be amusing if it weren't so sad.

What I offered you was an example as to how a scientific study in this area is done. Please look at the finer details of the WHO's study.

[bishopnl]

Originally Posted by ChristopherHall

WHO's data isn't the only study out there bro.

Are you meaning to tell me that Americans wouldn't benefit from seeing their doctor more often?

It's this kind of post that makes me scratch my head and wonder why I wasted any time with this asinine debate.

I've stated repeatedly that WHO's study is the one in question. It was the one first referenced. It's been the only one cited. And yet, for some odd reasons, now it's vague allusions to "other" studies.

I give, Chris. When I cited the hallmark SC case Roe v. Wade, you state that there are "other" abortion cases out there. After you had a good laugh at people pointing out other factors that affect life expectancy studies (hint hint the WHO study, which is the one referenced) now there are "other" studies. If you have another study that compares a certain demographic and excludes deaths that are not natural (i.e. disease or old age), then feel free to show it. The one I'm talking about is the WHO study which combines demographics and studies the overall life expectancy rate for a population...and I haven't seen anything on their site that leads me to believe they exclude car accidents and homicides, although I do believe those studies are weighted for things like natural disasters and war, because those things can obviously skew mortality rates. If it's on there, show it to me and I apologize in advance for my stupidity, because I've looked at the WHO site several times today and in the past and just didn't see it. To me, a study that looked at a demographic and didn't include things like accidents can't be valued for showing life-expectancy rates for an entire demographic....especially when you are comparing demographics from different countries. It might be valuable for some reasons, but overall life expectancy, IMO, would not truly be one of them. Maybe "life-expectancy for people who only die of natural causes"...even then, it wouldn't be proof that nationalized health care is the difference maker in societies.

And no one has said Americans wouldn't benefit from seeing a doctor more. They also would benefit from dieting and exercise, and probably working a tad less too. I don't deny that there are problems with health care that need to be fixed. You act like we think the current system is great...no one is maintaining that. I even posted an article by Ron Paul, a licensed medical physician and politician, regarding ways to change the current system WITHOUT involvement from the federal government. And individual states can certaintly decide for themselves whether they want to help citizens with the cost of healthcare. But I see no reason, practically or constitutionally, why nationalizing health care and allowing the federal government to take control of it, would be a good thing.

[TRFrance]

And to think... this is only January... elections are in November..

...so we get to argue over this stuff for 10 more months.

HURRAY!!! (not)

[bishopnl]

Originally Posted by ChristopherHall

What I offered you was an example as to how a scientific study in this area is done. Please look at the finer details of the WHO's study.

Chris, I have. Nowhere do I see that they are excluding people in any demographic who died of causes that weren't natural. Perhaps you can help me out. You point out to me in the fine print where only disease or old age is considered in mortality rates, and other forms of death are not. As I said in my previous post, I do see that it's weighted for natural disasters or war...but why would they even need to reference that fact if they are excluding ANY cause of death that wasn't by natural causes?

I guess I'm missing the point. How does one arrive a life expectancy rate for a population if the only causes of death that can be considered are those that are natural? Do people who drown not count? People who are electrocuted shouldn't have any affect on overall life expectancy?

If you have another study, show me. If the WHO study factors out anyone who dies by anything other than natural causes, show me. Because I'm a bit lost. So far I've only seen your derisive commentary and your speculation on "other" studies. The WHO site is freely available, and judging by the comments I posted from it, the life expectancy rate factors in mortality rates from every demographic, not just mortality rates of people who died by natural causes. I'm not afraid to admit I'm wrong, or be corrected. I just am not seeing it.

[TRFrance]

Originally Posted by ChristopherHall

Please explain how the fairness doctrine restricts free speech. I’ve not really looked at the issue.

Here's an article that deals with the topic fairly well...

'The Un-Fairness Doctrine': Unevening the playing field

Posted: January 19, 2007
1:00 a.m. Eastern


By David Limbaugh

© 2007 Beware of liberals using such words as "fairness." In resurrecting the "Fairness Doctrine," liberals are trying to kill conservative talk radio and restore their media monopoly. Period. The doctrine would selectively stifle free political discourse, which is essential for our representative government.
The Fairness Doctrine, an FCC regulation in force from 1949 to 1987, required broadcasters to present "both sides" of controversial issues. During that time, liberals had a virtual monopoly on the media.

Since the rule was repealed, conservative talk radio has exploded – Rush Limbaugh launched his syndicated radio show in 1988 – and other media outlets multiplied: the Internet, including blogs, cable and satellite TV and satellite radio, among others. The conservative viewpoint has fared quite well in the new media.


This is not to say that the government's elimination of the regulation discriminated against the liberal message. The liberal viewpoint still dominates the mainstream media, cable TV, except for Fox News, and the overwhelming number of major print media outlets. Liberals also have equal access to new media outlets, though they've had enormous difficulty competing in the marketplace of ideas.

It's instructive to remember that while conservatives grew hoarse complaining about the monolithic liberal message, they didn't advocate suppression of liberal speech. Their remedy, instituted – fittingly – in the Reagan years, was to open up, not constrict or regulate the media market.
The results have been dramatic, with conservatives finally having a significant voice in the media, albeit mostly in the new media, though a singular liberal message still prevails in the old media, not to mention public broadcasting.

Liberals can't stand the competition. Democratic Rep. Maurice Hinchey is sponsoring the "Media Ownership Reform Act," whose proposed reforms include the reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine. Hinchey denies wanting to muzzle conservative hosts. But, "This will ensure that different views … will also be heard. … People are being prevented from getting the right information." Really? Latest polls show 60 percent of Americans are opposed to the Iraq war. Will Hinchey not be satisfied until it's 90 percent?

This is nothing but abject sophistry. Different views are already heard – and not just in the mainstream media. There have never been more media choices. Nothing – except consumer resistance – precludes liberal entry into the talk-radio market. But the First Amendment doesn't require people to listen to and support your message.

Liberals had no interest in balance before the advent of conservative talk radio. They don't have any interest in balance now; indeed, we're finally approaching a balance: new media versus old media. But to them "balance" means dominance, just like "bipartisanship" means Republican capitulation.
With the Fairness Doctrine, liberals would use government to micromanage the content of talk radio, realizing that they simply can't compete on an equal playing field in that medium. Notably, they aren't advocating balancing the messages of the major print or broadcast media giants.

The reason liberals can't compete in talk radio, besides their hosts being boring, oppressively cynical and pessimistic, is that their would-be audience is already fed through the mainstream media.
Conversely, conservative talk has been successful, not just because it is more entertaining, professional and optimistic, but because conservative audiences were starved for a likeminded message.

The liberals' goal is not balance, but to destroy conservative talk radio by requiring that each nano-segment of every show contain the counterbalancing liberal viewpoint, instead of relying on other shows or other media to deliver that viewpoint. What will they demand next: that political candidates present both sides of every issue to ensure balance?

Such draconian hyper-monitoring would destroy those programs. Besides, there is no fair, sensible or practicable way to regulate content. Objectivity is impossible over such subjective matters.
What do the paternalistic proponents of the regulations mean by the representation of "all sides"? Would the terrorist viewpoint deserve equal time? Don't laugh – many believe that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter, and liberals routinely sympathize with tyrannical dictators like Fidel Castro and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

What is truly scary is liberals believe that media outlets predominately presenting their viewpoint are not biased. To them, the liberal viewpoint is objectively correct – the only proper way to view the world – and the conservative one, aberrant and reality-challenged, not even deserving of First Amendment protection. Perhaps a slight exaggeration, but not much.

This arrogant mindset is what has troubled conservatives for years. It's not just that the mainstream media have presented a monolithic liberal message; it's that they denied their bias and purported to be completely objective in their selection and reporting of the news and commentary. At least with conservative talk, the hosts admit their bias and are honest about when they are editorializing.

The Fairness Doctrine must be stopped again, dead in its tracks.




http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/printer-friendly.asp?ARTICLE_ID=53840


...

[ChristopherHall]

Bishopl, the study was about far more than your link discusses. It rated at least 191 nations and I have a .pdf copy of the report that is over 200 pages long. Do you really think your post properly addressed the issue? Go back and do your home work Bishop.

[ChristopherHall]

Interesting article:

September 28, 2007
Editorial Observer
The Socialists Are Coming! The Socialists Are Coming!
By Philip M. Boffey
The New York Times

The epithet of choice these days for Republicans who oppose any expansion of government's role in health care programs is "socialized" medicine.

Rudy Giuliani has used the "s-word" to denounce legislation that would enlarge a children's health insurance program and to besmirch Hillary Clinton's health plan. Mitt Romney has added a xenophobic twist, calling the Clinton plan "European-style socialized medicine," while ignoring its similarities to a much-touted health care reform he championed as governor of Massachusetts. Other conservative critics have wielded the "s-word" to deplore efforts to expand government health care programs or regulation over the private health care markets.

Our political discourse is so debased that the term is typically applied where it is least appropriate and never applied where it most fits the case.

No one has the nerve to brand this country's purest systems of "socialized medicine" — the military and veterans hospitals — for what they are. In both systems, care is not only paid for by the government but delivered in government facilities by doctors who are government employees. Even so, a parade of Washington's political dignitaries, including President Bush, has turned to the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., for checkups and treatment, without ideological complaint. Politicians who deplore government-run health care for average Americans are only too happy to use it themselves.

Nor are they eager to tar the vast array of government hospitals and clinics that serve our nation's veterans. For one thing, the veterans' hospitals, once considered a second-rate backwater, now lead their private sector competitors in adopting electronic medical records and score well for delivering high quality care at relatively low cost. Even when the veterans' hospitals were rightly criticized this year for their part in the disgraceful failure to care adequately for soldiers injured in Iraq and Afghanistan, there was no clamor to junk or privatize the system, only demands to make it better.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg startled most New Yorkers two years ago when he asserted that the city's public hospitals are "better than the great teaching hospitals" all around them. Although some deemed his praise hyperbolic, the city's billionaire, entrepreneurial, free-market-enriched mayor thought he knew quality when he saw it, even if it was socialist at its core.

The country's vast Medicare program is one step less socialized — a "single-payer" program in which the government pays for the care and sets reimbursement rates, but the actual care is delivered by private doctors and hospitals. When Medicare was launched in 1965 it was routinely denounced as socialized medicine, but it has become so popular that politicians deem it the third rail of American politics, sure to electrocute anyone who tries to cut it or privatize it. No politician is eager to brand 43 million beneficiaries as socialists at heart.

Meanwhile, the two current butts of the "s-word" are such hybrids of public and private elements that it is hard to know how to characterize them. The State Children's Health Insurance Program, or S-chip, was denigrated by one Republican congressman this week as "a government-run socialized wolf masquerading in the sheep skin of children's health." It might better be thought of as a "double-payer system" in which the states and the federal government put up the money, the states take the lead in defining the program and the actual care is typically delivered through private health plans by private doctors and hospitals.

The "s-word" seems even less appropriate for Senator Clinton's proposed universal health care plan, which seeks to bolster employer-provided health benefits and create new purchasing pools to help individuals buy private policies at low group rates.

True, her plan would expand government regulation, and she wants to make a Medicare-like option available to compete with private policies. But that would only lead to a socialized, single-payer system if everybody were to choose the Medicare-like option.

There is no special magic in government-run or government-financed health care. Medicare has serious cost-control and financing problems, and the veterans' hospitals could take a turn for the worse, as they have in the past, should federal funding shrivel. Private health care systems have strengths of their own, are favored by many patients and often provide care as good as any.

The take-home message for voters is this: Look behind the labels to judge health care proposals on their merits. Whenever you hear a candidate denounce something as a step toward socialized medicine, it probably isn't. More likely the politician is demagoguing the issue or is abysmally ignorant of the inner workings — and real, not ideological, failings — of the country's multifaceted health care system.

[ChristopherHall]

I liked the cartoon with this one.

Single-Payer National Health Insurance

Single-payer national health insurance is a system in which a single public or quasi-public agency organizes health financing, but delivery of care remains largely private.
Currently, the U.S. health care system is outrageously expensive, yet inadequate. Despite spending more than twice as much as the rest of the industrialized nations ($7,129 per capita), the United States performs poorly in comparison on major health indicators such as life expectancy, infant mortality and immunization rates. Moreover, the other advanced nations provide comprehensive coverage to their entire populations, while the U.S. leaves 46 million completely uninsured and millions more inadequately covered.

The reason we spend more and get less than the rest of the world is because we have a patchwork system of for-profit payers. Private insurers necessarily waste health dollars on things that have nothing to do with care: overhead, underwriting, billing, sales and marketing departments as well as huge profits and exorbitant executive pay. Doctors and hospitals must maintain costly administrative staffs to deal with the bureaucracy. Combined, this needless administration consumes one-third (31 percent) of Americans’ health dollars.
Single-payer financing is the only way to recapture this wasted money. The potential savings on paperwork, more than $350 billion per year, are enough to provide comprehensive coverage to everyone without paying any more than we already do.
Under a single-payer system, all Americans would be covered for all medically necessary services, including: doctor, hospital, long-term care, mental health, dental, vision, prescription drug and medical supply costs. Patients would regain free choice of doctor and hospital, and doctors would regain autonomy over patient care.
Physicians would be paid fee-for-service according to a negotiated formulary or receive salary from a hospital or nonprofit HMO / group practice. Hospitals would receive a global budget for operating expenses. Health facilities and expensive equipment purchases would be managed by regional health planning boards.
A single-payer system would be financed by eliminating private insurers and recapturing their administrative waste. Modest new taxes would replace premiums and out-of-pocket payments currently paid by individuals and business. Costs would be controlled through negotiated fees, global budgeting and bulk purchasing.
The links below will lead you to more specific information on the details of single-payer:

[ChristopherHall]

For those wishing to begin solid research on the subject:

http://www.pnhp.org/facts/single_payer_resources.php