Well the confusion comes from the way the issue was framed in the general public; the big element against obama's hc reform from the public was to protect our more "free market" system from evil socialism. It wasn't framed on the right as protecting our already crappy full on government intrusive healthcare from reforms from worse full on intrusive government healthcare(that would have been reasonable if not respectable)... no, the hysteric yokels thought they were protecting "amurican values" and our more "free market" aka our status quo healthcare system. Which is a total joke.

As a whole.

Fairly certain that a health insurance market will be established outside of Obamacare. How could anyone choose that and pay the penalty though.

Holy ****ing ****! I thought it was just a rumor that liberals would be stupid enough to use Greece as a model.

I'm not sure what you mean by "doen't go by the SGR?" I'm not actually a doctor, so you may be teaching me something here. What u mean? Are you talking about the regular patches?

Um, the country went bankrupt - does that count? I’ll refrain from comparing Greece to the US (I was actually more interested in Greece to Europe) if you don’t pretend that shifting individual costs to a state that goes under is an accomplishment.

See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediterranean_diet

You seem to have trouble reading, m2 used greece as an example, i then responded to that.

They went bankrupt for reasons mostly unrelated to spending less than half of what we spend per capita on healthcare. What does their diet have to do with their healthcare costs and life expectancy being in line with most of western europe? (very slightly worse than average if anything).

Survey Finds Greece Has EU’s Highest Smoking Rates

Wow, this is the biggest getting the point fail ever.

Greece did not go bankrupt by providing shelter for the homeless, food for the hungry, and health care for the indigent. They went bankrupt by growing government beyond the bounds of what the private sector could pay for. When you tell people who can afford to pay for things that the “state” will pay for it, this tends to happen. To say they spent less – in the face of a shortage of health care – is pretty ironic.

The irony how is the people the worst off there now are the ones they could have afforded to help before (particularly the unemployed) if they hadn’t marched into fiscal oblivion.

You mentioned “preventative care” and I don’t think that’s all that explains outcomes vs. the US, where we eat like crap and the government guidelines put a seal of approval on calorie dense, nutritionally absent foods that lowly poison people.

You still made an argument that the Greek system is better than what we have.

It's quite possible for Greeks to have a health care system that's better than ours, even if another part of their system is broken.

m2,

You're either deliberately missing the point or are, uh, obtuse. Either way, not good posting.

No i didn't, i just pointed out that they spend half of what we spend per citizen and cover everybody and seem to have normal healthcare outcomes for the developed world. I would assume in most cases that paying half and achieving similar results is better in most cases, but who is "better" is a subjective evaluation.

True, however if I was making the argument I would find another country to use that has a similar health care system to Greece.

I'll do better next time.

http://middleclasspoliticaleconomist...ed-states.html

The high rate of medical bankruptcy seems to only occur in the U.S.

Right.

The WTO says the needs of poor 3rd world countries
should supersede the profits of healthcare corporations.
Maybe drug companies shouldn't be able to charge
patients $100+/mth for each drug for life. Maybe drug
companies execs shouldn't be entitled to $100m pensions.
The U.S. should be lowering the cost of healthcare, not
looking for ways to fund it.

How does shifting costs from individuals to the state, and reducing "medical bankruptcy," prove anything?

If you shifted the responsibility for mortgage and car payments to the state there would be far fewer personal bankruptcies as well.

Ever hear of protease inhibitors? Can you guess why they have them in Africa now? Because of evil corporations, not benevolent governments.

Well for one the government doesn't just get the bill and go "****, that is a large multiple of my savings/income/net worth...**** that!" They go "those charges are absurd and we will be paying about 20 percent of your nonsense bill."

Also, and this concept isn't ****ing hard, when you take out a car or home loan you know the monthly payment and as long as you make that payment there is no additional cost.

Good god. You equate mortgage and car payments to medical payments(guess which one isn't a luxury item)?

Not to mention, do you realize the discrepancy between the percent of people declaring bankruptcy of car/home payments compared to medical?

Wow...

Here, this has big pretty pictures to help spell it out...

http://www.clearbankruptcy.com/finan...ankruptcy.aspx

b

That doesn't really change the fact that you could alter personal bankruptcy stats by shifting costs to the state, which is what universal HC coverage does.