Gorgon

Self suficiency is so deeply ingrained in the American way of thinking that it will never happen. It's both their greatest strength and the reason why they will never evolve to solve the glaring problems with health care.

Federal and local doesen't mean very much over here. I guess the Germans with their lander have some inking but for the rest of us government is government is government.

I'm a Christian and to that I'd say "I'll voluntarily help pay someone's medical bill from my own pocket. Not demand the Federal Government take money away from someone else to pay MY medical bill." But that is just me. I guess what us europeans can't get our heads around is that you don't consider medical treatmeant a basic function of society, like schools, a police force and a fire department.

Beckham is on the case, she'll be safe now !

What does that matter, if they get some chronic ailment they start costing more money than they put into the system. Hence, the incentive to limit the people who generate losses.

Yes, it is raining. What do I win ?

Captialism is the way the world works, it doesen't have any inate miraculous power to better society, all we can do is decide on a set of rules that will make it function the best it can. Cartels, pricing agreements, protectionism are sides of capitalism that work against the interest of the consumer. Unregulated we would be back in the 1900s. In China babies die because the baby milk formula has the nutritional value of sand. Private blood drives infect the donors with AIDS. In Africa fake maleria medication kills people who think they are curing themselves. Simply depending on corperations to be ethically responsible is naive in the extreme, Capitalism and government regulation go hand in hand, they must in any sane country.

And denials for treatment high. How do you figure? Without the interference of either a government or insurance entity. The same market forces that keep insurance prices low mean that the companies have an enormous incentive to renege on their part of the agreement. They all hire specialists who do nothing all day but make up plausible reasons why they should deny treatment. It's the same with propperty insurance, except the investigators usually don't wind up causing serious injury or death. With denial of treatment that is a quite plausible outcome. It's a fundamental flaw in the makeup of the system.

And denials for treatment high.

Denmark

Well, my personal experience with our system has been quite good, a couple of years ago I broke my arm, I walked into the nearest hospital and got an exray, a consult and cast the same day and was sent on my way. No charge. Later on my father got cancer and was admitted urgently several times, when it became clear that it was terminal, the hospital sent a bed, a wheelchair a physical therapist and nurse to ease the burden on us who were with him in his last months. We do have problems with waiting lists for operations, but our government has just earmarked a considerable increase on healthcare spending to adress just this problem. If something is seen to be seriously awry with our healthcare, the people blame the government and they are compelled to act

It's pretty obvious that HMOs are in business to make money, and that actual treatment for their customers is written off as loss, just as any settlement is a loss for any other type of ensurance carrrier, this is why they employ detectives and try any and all legal means to avoid it. A state sponsored system has an overall vested interest in returning people to heath, while at the same time not having an incentive to weasel out of their promises.

My hats off to the guy in the film who name dropped Moore and this documentary and got this ensurance company to pay for implants for is deaf daugher, even though Moore had never even heard of him. Briliant.

Maybe not, but they are rushing to Cuba for free medical and other degrees. For 'socialised'-if there is such a term- healthcare you need to be a rich country first. About the only place you can still find it are in the surviving welfare states of northern europe where it enjoys widespread support among the population.

Michael Moore is a superb agent provocateur. Why else would so many people waste their breath hating him. The factual errors of this documentaries, most of which have a rather heavy political slant, are nowhere near as rampant as people would have you believe, most of them are simply part and parcel of filmmaking. For instance people would rave that he uses stock footage of one meeting of the NRA a while back while the voice over is about another more recent one.

This reminds me of that Scottish resturant owned by a fellow named Mcdonald which was sued for infringing on a brand name. Nevermind that the resturant owner felt that the association with burgers was actually hurting his reputation, but that he wanted to use his family name nevertheless.

English is not a difficult language to master, all you have to do is not dub your movies like the frenchies and the krouts, if you do the kids never learn, and learning languages becomes progressively harder with age.

I wonder what the punishment would be for slapping a woman's ass. Alah himself comming out of the sky shooting lightning bolts out of his eyes ?

Or you can just keep them scared and convince them that you are protecting them by chiseling away at their rights.

Yes, but so far constitutional rights have only been suspended in times of crisis, or times of just plain hysteria. What about this war on terror deal then, is that going to go on forever ?. That would make the temporary rollback, which as you say has precedent, be in effect permanent. Actually, IIRC the supreme court ruled ex post facto that Lincoln did not have the authority to do that. You won't be seeing that happen again. Look, I realize Bush is not the best President we've ever had. In fact I would probably classify him in the lower part of the middle. But after next year he will be gone and I think it's obvious he wields little influence over congress now. In 2009 we will have a new President and although I do not know who it will be, I can tell you when their term is up everyone will be happy to see them go. Thats just how it is here. How about the imprisonment of Japanese and Japanese-American nationals during ww2, the hunt for forgein 'agitators' following the war with spain, Maccarthyism. There are certainly more examples of civil rights suspension than Lincoln. Now imagine you lot elect Guliani, the war on terror isen't going to end with Bush. It may turn out to be temporary, and people will look back at aspects of the war on terror as yet another one of these episodes of limited civil rights, but the jury is still out.

Yes, but so far constitutional rights have only been suspended in times of crisis, or times of just plain hysteria. What about this war on terror deal then, is that going to go on forever ?. That would make the temporary rollback, which as you say has precedent, be in effect permanent.

Neuclear is the best shot we have of a 'clean' energy supply providing we can find safe storage for spent neuclear fuel. Environmentalists who stage blockades at neuclear fuel transports are being unrealistic about their own aims. You can't seriously expect to power a modern society with windmills and solar cells, and if you can't, that energy is going to come from traditional 'dirty' sources like coal. Neuclear accidents are spectacular and terrifying, but they ammount to practically nothing compared to the effect of traditional energy consuption on the environment. Tree death, acid rain, smog. etc.

You can be a proud as you like but you can't threaten death and desctuction over a very general percieved insult to your religion and expect people to just brush it off as a cultural difference. Both the insult and the reaction may be breaking the rules of civil conduct, but if the reaction is a deaththreat it's a whole other ballpark.

Then I'll have crushed nut everywhere. A delicacy in the Tonga Islands I hear.

Cars that fold out into robots are moronic in any incarnation, there is no leeway for being a puritan here. Whatever they do it can't possibly get any worse.