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Dem Post Mortem

Ok. But your government site also mentions some funding problems.
No shit. It's almost as though governments were made up of people who have been subjected to the same relentless propaganda as the people.
Is there anyone in these "under funded" universal health care nations that want to change to their system to what we have here in the US?
 
I've read that in Canada, the UK and Australia wait times for elective surgery are very long. Is that true?
That depends on how you define the weasel word "elective". If surgery is needed, IMO it's not elective, and if it's not needed, IMO it shouldn't be funded by government at all. But lots of needed surgeries are claimed to be "elective", so wtf does the word even mean?

Regardless, nobody will be allowed to die because their surgery is postponed. Critically or dangerously ill patients are operated on without delay.

Cutting "wait times", by simply denying a big chunk of uninsured people access to the waiting lists, is not an improvement.
Elective surgery usually refers to surgery that isn't life threatening, which may include anything from knee replacements to vasectomies etc. There are common surgeries that are important to the patient for a variety of reasons. They may relieve suffering, but you won't die if you don't have it done. The wait time the US is usually very short for such surgeries. That is one positive of our messed up system. Of course, if you are poor and have no insurance, you're usually not able to get elective surgery, although there are exceptions. Life saving surgeries are given to those who can't pay. At least that has always been what I've seen when working as a nurse. I have a friend who had a life saving surgery despite having no money and no insurance at the time. She eventually qualified for a program that helped her pay for almost the entire cost of the surgery and hospitalization.

The end of life care thing is often pushed by doctors. I've never seen it related to religious beliefs although I'm sure that is sometimes the case. One of my very dear patients was dying and asked to have hospice care without any further treatment other than for comfort. His provider had a fit. She wanted to have him hospitalized until we convinced her to let him just be comfortable. My husband's late aunt asked to be put on a respirator when in her 90s, but once she realized how awful the experience was, she opted to have it removed and died shortly after. Those few days were very costly for Medicare. I've had patients with no quality of life who opted for respirators and very aggressive care. It usually had more to do with the family's inability to accept reality, then anything else, or the doctor's inability to accept reality. Imo, it would be better to help people understand that prolonging suffering when there is no hope of recovery is not a good option.

Thanks for the information regarding how you see your healthcare system. I don't think we disagree as much as you might think. My entire point is that medical care has become very expensive over the past few decades for a variety of reasons and it doesn't seem as if many if any counties are coming up with good funding solutions as how to pay for it. This hurts older adults the most as we usually require the most care. I personally refuse a lot of things that I see as unnecessary, partly because I know enough to understand what I need and partly because I don't want to be a burden on our Medicare system. I plan to refuse most types of aggressive care at this point in my life. I'm not sure if I'd opt for chemo or radiation if diagnosed with cancer. It would have to be diagnosed in an early enough stage that the treatment would likely be successful. That reminds me that I do need to update my Advanced Directives. Ok. We're off topic. I apologize for that, but it seems lately that we all have a problem staying on the topic of the OP. I guess this belongs in the discussion regarding UHC, which I fully support.
 
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Let me preface this post with a gentle reminder:
Let us please cut down on the hyperbole. It just adds confusion.

I get enough of it from what passes as "journalism". I see headlines like
A snapshot from the James Webb Telescope Changes Everything!!!​
Everything? Oh, goody! It changed the 2024 Election!

- - - - - - - - -

Jarhyn screamed at me, whined and whinged and accused me of being a liar when I quoted his mention of Nader. The Search facility shows me that Politesse mentioned Nader before either Jarhyn or I did.

No problem. But I did see this:

No, Jimmy. W won Florida with 2,912,790 votes. Not a thousand.
Bad reading comprehension on your part.
Bushes margin was a small fraction of the amount of votes for Nader. That's what "by less a thousand".
Tom
I know what he was arguing, I just thought it was stupid as hell, and still do. Just because Nader voters gave Bush a very slight advantage, does not mean Bush voters had nothing to do with his winning.

:confused2: :confused2: Did somebody actually say "Bush voters had nothing to do with [Bush] winning" ? That seems unlikely.
I'm guessing it amused you to be Hyperbolic. Does "Suzie is pretty" mean that every other girl in the world is ugly? No?
Am I wrong? WHO is it that said "Bush voters had nothing to do with [Bush] winning"?

I'm GUESSING that you were trying to make the point that Bush voters were more to blame than Nader voters. Duh.
The point YOU are missing is that many or most Republican voters are Deplorables. Only patient gentle souls can hope to enlighten them, and most of us here at IIDB are running out of patience. 8-)

BUT the Nader voters were NOT Deplorables! They were NOT beyond Salvation. Just the opposite; many were intelligent! It would have been sweet if they had voted intelligently in their own interest. THAT is why some of us vent disgust against Nader voters. THEY should have known better, unlike many ignorant GOP voters.

I'm not saying your perspective is wrong, Politesse. I'm just explaining why intelligent good-thinking people voting against Gore inspires sadness and anger in a way that stupid right-wingers voting for a stupid right-wing candidate does not.
 
I'm GUESSING that you were trying to make the point that Bush voters were more to blame than Nader voters. Duh.
That is exactly what was being argued, and what I objected to, that Nader voters were "more to blame" for the win than Bush voters. I still think it was stupid, and so do you apparently unless you mean something very different by "duh" than one usually does, so what's your tiff?

I'm just explaining why intelligent good-thinking people voting against Gore inspires sadness and anger in a way that stupid right-wingers voting for a stupid right-wing candidate does not.
Well, it should. And I also do not buy the argument that in a swing state every single person who voted for Bush is an irredeemably evil Deplorable Republican who never ever would have considered voting for someone else. Less than half of the US electorate describes themselves as belonging to a Party, and only 35% of those are Republicans. If only Republicans voted for Republicans, they would lose every single election, even in red states.

The ire at Nader isn't really about the election. It's about disloyalty. Democrats feel they were owed those votes, and they are furious at the "betrayal". Even more furious because the reason why people voted for Nader makes them feel uncomfortable. There was really only one issue what election that drove a wedge down the middle of the DNC. Shall we start posting dead baby pictures as a reminder of what we did to the rest of the world that decade? Do you truly believe that the bloodshed Nader opposed was such a good thing that anyone whose conscience did not allow them to directly support the Clintons is a bad person?

We just went through this again with Israel, of course, and will continue to in upcoming elections, so that's part of why people are freshly upset. They want to believe their pro-genocide vote was morally justifiable, and the cheapest way to do that is to argue that any anti-war vote is somehow morally unjustifiable.
 
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Elective surgery usually refers to surgery that isn't life threatening, which may include anything from knee replacements to vasectomies etc. There are common surgeries that are important to the patient for a variety of reasons. They may relieve suffering, but you won't die if you don't have it done. The wait time the US is usually very short for such surgeries. That is one positive of our messed up system. Of course, if you are poor and have no insurance, you're usually not able to get elective surgery, although there are exceptions.
Wait times for operations like knee and hip surgery are short in Australia's private health system, which is only accessible to people who can pay for it, but are much longer in the free public healthcare system.

Wait times for operations like knee and hip surgery are short in the USA's private health system, which is only accessible to people who can pay for it, but are infinitely long in the free public healthcare system because it doesn't fucking exist.
Thanks for the information regarding how you see your healthcare system. I don't think we disagree as much as you might think. My entire point is that medical care has become very expensive over the past few decades for a variety of reasons and it doesn't seem as if many if any counties are coming up with good funding solutions as how to pay for it.
The funding solution is higher taxes. The problem is politics and lies.

Australia's conservatives (LNP) have been undermining UHC ever since it was introduced. This is what conservatives do in countries all over the world: they want to structure society to make the rich richer, and fuck everyone else, and universal healthcare is antithetical to their worldview.

BTW Sky News Australia is - in a very direct way - the Australian Fox News. It's the same company, and Sky gets all of it's strategies and talking points straight from Fox.
 
Wait times for operations like knee and hip surgery are short in the USA's private health system, which is only accessible to people who can pay for it, but are infinitely long in the free public healthcare system because it doesn't fucking exist.
Wait times are very short in our public health program, aka Medicare, but unfortunately only older adults and disabled people are eligible for Medicare, unless that changes. Sadly, there isn't enough support for it at the present time. I'm not sure about wait times for those who only have Medicaid, our public health system for the poor. I only waited a week to schedule my knee surgery and my cataract surgery and I have Medicare because I'm old.

Sure raising taxes is a way to fund public health for all, but I still think adding premiums based on income would help countries support their health care systems. There is more than one way to establish affordable healthcare for all.
 
Wait times for operations like knee and hip surgery are short in the USA's private health system, which is only accessible to people who can pay for it, but are infinitely long in the free public healthcare system because it doesn't fucking exist.
Wait times are very short in our public health program, aka Medicare, but unfortunately only older adults and disabled people are eligible for Medicare, unless that changes. Sadly, there isn't enough support for it at the present time. I'm not sure about wait times for those who only have Medicaid, our public health system for the poor. I only waited a week to schedule my knee surgery and my cataract surgery and I have Medicare because I'm old.

Sure raising taxes is a way to fund public health for all, but I still think adding premiums based on income would help countries support their health care systems. There is more than one way to establish affordable healthcare for all.
That's still a tax.
 
Jarhyn screamed at me, whined and whinged and accused me of being a liar when I quoted his mention of Nader.
Because you failed to heed any portion of the immediately following post: that I didn't see what Nader had to do with anything and I was not the one who brought him up.

Politesse is far more deeply into the anti-war sentiment than I am; I think the wars of my lifetime are stupid and unnecessary that the people who accept these sacrifices on the altar of maintaining the US defense industry are fucking evil stains, sure, but I also think they have enough detachment that I can't really expect politicians at large to be so self aware.

I think the wars were stupid and wasteful and that we need to wage aid with the same vigor and force as we wage war today. The ability and desire to internationally challenge countries in this "counting coup" sort of way is intensely appealing to me. It makes a much more effective statement to deny someone's ability to cruelly oppress people.

But the actual election losses, each and every time, came from the fact that enough people believed, quite often correctly and intelligently, that Democrats wouldn't do the things the people they did vote for promised.

The things that lose elections for Democrats: the Legal Marijuana Now party; the Green Party; Anti-war independents; anti-corporate candidates.

If those spoil elections for Democrats, and if Democrats don't support those policies, then whose fault is it that tactic worked?

It is ultimately the rejection of the platform planks of third parties that allows third parties succeed in the spoiling of elections, and the threat of that is the only power the Democrat party has extended to people in seeking such things.

Their failure to listen to progressives over conservatives is what sits at the heart of that.
 
Elective surgery usually refers to surgery that isn't life threatening, which may include anything from knee replacements to vasectomies etc.
For sure. But what it actually means in any given instance seems to have more to do with the user's political agenda than it does with anything medical or patient focussed.
There are common surgeries that are important to the patient for a variety of reasons. They may relieve suffering, but you won't die if you don't have it done. The wait time the US is usually very short for such surgeries.
The wait time in the UK and Australia is usually very short for such surgeries, too. But of course, "usually" doesn't imply "always", and reporters can generally find extreme cases to fit their agendas, or can tweak their definition of "elective" to make things appear better or worse than they really are.
That is one positive of our messed up system.
Well, it might be, if it were not also a characteristic of our, not-so-messed-up system.
 
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Politesse is far more deeply into the anti-war sentiment than I am; I think the wars of my lifetime are stupid and unnecessary that the people who accept these sacrifices on the altar of maintaining the US defense industry are fucking evil stains, sure, but I also think they have enough detachment that I can't really expect politicians at large to be so self aware.
I am aware. And I didn't vote for Ralph Nader in the general election, either. But I do remember quite clearly why the Nader vote was as significant as it was, and who was in his contingent. It had little to do with Party and everything to do with our "foreign policies".
 
Wait times for operations like knee and hip surgery are short in the USA's private health system, which is only accessible to people who can pay for it, but are infinitely long in the free public healthcare system because it doesn't fucking exist.
Wait times are very short in our public health program, aka Medicare, but unfortunately only older adults and disabled people are eligible for Medicare, unless that changes. Sadly, there isn't enough support for it at the present time. I'm not sure about wait times for those who only have Medicaid, our public health system for the poor. I only waited a week to schedule my knee surgery and my cataract surgery and I have Medicare because I'm old.

Sure raising taxes is a way to fund public health for all, but I still think adding premiums based on income would help countries support their health care systems. There is more than one way to establish affordable healthcare for all.
That's still a tax.
I'm not saying it's not a tax. It would just be a more obvious tax that everyone would understand is going to be used to pay for their health insurance. All working Americans pay into SS and M'care throughout their working careers with the understanding they will be entitled to these programs once they reach a certain age or become eligible for disability. it's a tax, but a tax which serves a specific purpose.
 
Politesse is far more deeply into the anti-war sentiment than I am; I think the wars of my lifetime are stupid and unnecessary that the people who accept these sacrifices on the altar of maintaining the US defense industry are fucking evil stains, sure, but I also think they have enough detachment that I can't really expect politicians at large to be so self aware.
I am aware. And I didn't vote for Ralph Nader in the general election, either. But I do remember quite clearly why the Nader vote was as significant as it was, and who was in his contingent. It had little to do with Party and everything to do with our "foreign policies".
Which is my point: unless the Democrats take the policy positions of those who challenge them for their own voters, they will lose.
 
Which is my point: unless the Democrats take the policy positions of those who challenge them for their own voters, they will lose.
And,
As long as the Lefty voters are too good to vote Dem, the Teaparty Republicans will win.

Hail Trump!
Tom
 
Which is my point: unless the Democrats take the policy positions of those who challenge them for their own voters, they will lose.
And,
As long as the Lefty voters are too good to vote Dem, the Teaparty Republicans will win.

Hail Trump!
Tom
So, don't be not good enough.
 
Which is my point: unless the Democrats take the policy positions of those who challenge them for their own voters, they will lose.
And,
As long as the Lefty voters are too good to vote Dem, the Teaparty Republicans will win.

Hail Trump!
Tom
So, don't be not good enough.
I'm not the one explaining why progressives keep getting Teaparty candidates elected.
Tom
 
Which is my point: unless the Democrats take the policy positions of those who challenge them for their own voters, they will lose.
And,
As long as the Lefty voters are too good to vote Dem, the Teaparty Republicans will win.

Hail Trump!
Tom
So, don't be not good enough.
I'm not the one explaining why progressives keep getting Teaparty candidates elected.
Tom
No, you're one of the folks satisfying the explanation as to why: disregarding the concerns of your supposed "allies".
 
No, you're one of the folks satisfying the explanation as to why: disregarding the concerns of your supposed "allies".
Say wut?
What do you mean by "your supposed 'allies"?
What does "satisfying the explanation" mean.

I think that this is just you being you.
Tom
 
Polls in the news this morning while some may disagree with Trump's methods around 70% supportt a crackdown on illegal immigration.

Biden was tone deaf on immigration and how people feel about the economy.

You can look at the democratic responses to riots in La over immigration crackdowns, apologetic for the rioters. The same as what happened in Settle during the riots. As violence, chaos, and damage grew the mayor and city council made excuses. The mayor compared it to the 60s 'summer of love' in SF.

Democrats are not living in reality.
A lot of people have a very big problem with how it's being done even if they agree with what's being done.

ICE is being used to terrorize, not to enforce the law. Not that there really is law anymore--that reporter got shot for simply reporting and the country didn't react with outrage.
 
The party can't "count" on certain others because certain voters have been told unequivocally that their concerns will not be addressed.
This is the point that these "centrists" just can't seem to understand. They seem to think that they are owed minority votes, that blacks and browns and gays and the rest all owe them fealty because they aren't Nazis. They make no effort to convince people that their lives will actually be better under Democrat rule, only that they won't get worse. Whereas Trump is, at the very least, willing to promise people things. He's lying, but he talks big. Democrats talk small and expect unswerving loyalty for it. It makes no sense, their strategy, and it obviously isn't working.
Not making things worse is the biggest thing politicians usually can do. There's simply not a lot of room for improvement and you normally need a gentle hand at the ship of state. I consider not being notable to be a good thing in a politician.
 
That's the thing though... Leaning into what Nazis want, to lay groundwork for building Gilead, is not a good way to actually convince anyone they aren't Nazis.

The fact is, they have not paid attention to history and the Weimar Republic, and how indifference and decorum and "keeping the trains running on time" turned them down that path.

We can see exactly where that strategy leads, because it has happened previously, and it has been visibly stymied by actions such as Germany takes to disempower whatever label their Nazis rebrand themselves behind.
I don't see people on here asking for leaning into what the Nazis want. Rather, we are for a candidate that captures the center.

And do you realize the not voting by many of those farther left was deliberately engineered by the Republicans? They kept pushing the both are as bad bit on social media.
 
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