Health care discussion

People have brought up the issue of illegal immigrants using the universal health care. I guess I have a hard time understanding how this sort of thing could happen in Canada.

Every province issues you a health card. You have to show that health card every time you go to the doctor's, go to a walk in clinic, recieve a flu shot, or go to the emergency room. I haven't applied for a health card personally, as my parents got me one as a child, and I'm too lazy to get the new ones, which expire lol, but I imagine it is much like getting a social security number.

I also don't really know how applying for a social security number works, but I imagine you must show proof of residence and status as a Canadian. I imagine illegal immigrants cannot get social security numbers. Ergo, someone who is illegally in Canada cannot get a health card.

So make people get health cards that show they're tax paying legit members of the U.S.A and no one has to worry about their tax dollars paying for illegal people to have access to universal health care.
 
Zephayra said:
People have brought up the issue of illegal immigrants using the universal health care. I guess I have a hard time understanding how this sort of thing could happen in Canada.

Every province issues you a health card. You have to show that health card every time you go to the doctor's, go to a walk in clinic, recieve a flu shot, or go to the emergency room. I haven't applied for a health card personally, as my parents got me one as a child, and I'm too lazy to get the new ones, which expire lol, but I imagine it is much like getting a social security number.

I also don't really know how applying for a social security number works, but I imagine you must show proof of residence and status as a Canadian. I imagine illegal immigrants cannot get social security numbers. Ergo, someone who is illegally in Canada cannot get a health card.

So make people get health cards that show they're tax paying legit members of the U.S.A and no one has to worry about their tax dollars paying for illegal people to have access to universal health care.
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Yes yes yes and Yes.

Good job Zeph!

Just an FYI, when you lose your card & apply for one, you need 3 official government issued pieces of ID (license, SIN, Birth Certificate) etc plus proof of residence like a piece of mail or they won't even waste their time on you.

Do you KNOW how hard it is to get any piece of ID if your wallet gets stolen!

Pray that never happens.


OH and forgot to mention how secure Health Cards are. They're not even accepted as legit forms of ID for alcohol or tobacco purchases because you run a risk of showing someone your #.. imo it's silly because most couldn't memorize it within seconds but meh.
 
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The selling of fraudlent SSNs and birth certificates, as well as state driver's licenses, is a HUGE black market in the U.S. It's not that hard for illegal immigrants to get the documents they need to appear to be legal. It's all about knowing who to contact and if you have the money to pay for the services.
 
Morcheeba said:
Keryan, this post is not specifically directed at you, I have addressed some of your points. This is my opinion towards this kind of mentality in general.



It would be quite foolish to think any system you decide to stick with will not have its problems.

So my question is this... why concern yourself with what your neighbours choose to do with their money if you are satisfied that you and your family will be taken care of? That all of your loved ones regardless of their status can get the help they need when they need it? Why not remind yourself that you are not only helping families that are in unfortunate situations, or that have been dealt a bad hand, but that you are also helping your cousin, aunt or uncle if anything terrible were to happen, like they lose their job and no longer have coverage under their employers benefits umbrella.

There will always be people who rape the system and take advantage no matter what you do to bring it to light. Welfare will always be hit or miss with honest individuals and lazy fucks who refuse to contribute.

So why assume majority of the population does not deserve access to decent health care? You cannot, you are not in the position to say too many can afford proper health care.

Then of course there is the matter of no matter what plan you choose or how much you're willing to sink into the pockets of these insurance companies, they will never 'want' to ensure your health and they will never provide all aspects of health care.

E- To add, I know our population differs significantly to yours, but we have all kinds of freeloaders.

Ask me how I feel about the immigrants not only gaining access in massive numbers to our country, but getting hand outs like NEW homes that many hard working Canadians born and bred cannot afford. Or how they get jobs handed to them when they gain entry while many committed Canadians walk their asses to Labour Ready (temp agency) for 4 am to line up to possibly get an $8p/hr paying job for the day so they can get some grub at a food bank. Not to mention that because they cram a number in one house hold they are happy to work for ridiculous rates because there are so many working in one house.

They get access to our health care through immigration and they are often the morons clogging up emerge. What I DO enjoy is knowing that if they want to freak over every cough their kids have they can enjoy sitting in emerge for 8 hours while actual priority cases are taken in.

BUT.. these are just some of our problems. And although many of us know they exist (including the government) we are not in the position to do anything about it, but most of us are very pleased with our Health Care.
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This is not being done for the whole population. Just 1/14 of it. It is being done without any regard to what is needed. Illigals raise the cost of it astronomically. The governement is spending over 30k in taxes per household, but collecting only 17k per houe. Small math issue. I could better spend the money they want to take on my family. You know college education and so forth. They actually did the math showing that if they removed the illegals from Obamas math, and the people who CAN afford medical but choose not to have it, they wind up with somewhere around 5 million people who fall in the gap. There has to be a line where people MUST be responsible for their choices. If I choose to cross on a red light and get ran over it is my own fault. If I choose to not have medical and get a serious illness then that too was my choice. I would only have myself to blame.

How they plan to cover this is tax for 2 years, cut off reimbursments to medicade, which would cause many elderly to lose medical care. I am not ok with this plan. The GOVERNMENT is telling the doctors they have to work for free in regards to care and treatment of elderly. Many doctors will just stop accepting medicade. If you knew someone was breaking the law you would let them do it just because you are "happy" with what you got? If Illegals were denied all GOVERNEMENT RAN medical and welfare there would be a lot more money to put to the people who are legal. Many of these illegals will work 2 jobs and by the math beable to afford medical. They choose not to so they can send home as much money as they can back home. So the money is not even staying here in the US. Look at the medical costs of california. They wound up spending well over ONE BILLION USD careing for these illegals. Shit there are 2 groups near where I live that sell SSI so illegals can get a job. They actually go out and hunt for them to help them cheat the government. They teach them how to get on all these programs that are made to help. Guess what???? Those people DO NOT PAY TAXES. So they are not even contributing to the system, just rippping it off. For every illegal that is cared for, that is 1 legal who is denied.

FOR MYSELF it is HOW the governement wants to do this that makes me say no. We are in tough economic times, so rather than decree no pay raises for governemt employees he only knocks off .4% How much would be saved and could go into this debt creating monster if they just said no to the 2.4%. You have people getting paid 100k~300k+ in the governemnt. By not giving the raise they would raise MIllions to even possibly Billions. You seem to fail to understand that this IS NOT universal medical. This is selcetive medical that will be brought into creation through the denial of care to elderly. Before people go oh no thats not true....If you were told that you would not get paid for working, would you stay at that job? Many states have issues where doctors will refuse the state ran insurance due to the state not paying or only giving partial payments. When the governemnt can go in with a mixed group and come out with something people can understand that is responisble, I am sure people will support it. But until then the answer given by multiple polls is 2-1 no.
 
So basically, your country is fucked.

With the issues you guys are outlining, it says your country will never get any better only worse.

Unfortunate really. But your Government needs to provide Health Care eventually. So if they do not have provisions in place that catch false identification that's supposedly Government issued, well, you have a serious problem on your hands, much worse than cutting off provisions to Medicare etc.

It is not an easy task to forge Government ID here. Incredibly difficult actually, and the security features keep getting more updated. That is a huge help for us. Not that we have many illegal’s lol, not even close to what the states have. Our Country boarders yours but that boarder is not an easy one to trick your way through.


And yea a half-ass attempt at providing Health Care is not the answer. It needs to be done and it needs to be done properly. Otherwise you are quite right, and it will just cause more bad than good.
 
Valandil said:
The selling of fraudlent SSNs and birth certificates, as well as state driver's licenses, is a HUGE black market in the U.S. It's not that hard for illegal immigrants to get the documents they need to appear to be legal. It's all about knowing who to contact and if you have the money to pay for the services.
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Well, it kind of seems to me if your country actually cracked down on people selling these black market items, as well as the companies hiring illegal immigrants to work, you guys wouldn't have such a huge problem with illegal immigrants lol.

I mean.. Americans complain all the time about the illegals sneaking their ways in, but it seems like your country really helps to perpetuate the problem. If someone came into the country, couldn't get the documents, couldn't get a job, and couldn't survive..then I don't think they'd be there for long, or even attempt to get in in the first place.

Adding on to the idea of a health card.. I mean wow. The new security measures they put on our driving licenses and health cards are pretty advanced. Health cards have an expirary date and a photo on them.

How can people get away with using fake I.D.s anyways? Don't people check? Every bartender knows how to check for a fake I.D. so you'd think it would be even harder to actually get a fake SSN and what not. I mean, it is a government document with a NUMBER on it, which means it has to be in a government registry. Don't the police pop in the number of a driver's license when they pull them over? Shouldn't it say "Hey, this number does not exist?" Same with SSNs - wouldn't an employer need to verify that number?

Maybe you guys are too laxed with your documents, and that's the real problem.
 
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This is borderline off topic, but people seem to forget all the undocumented money that comes in from illegal immigrants.
 
I'll post my views on this later. I've stayed away from the topic thus far, but in the good old fashion of free speech, I'll say what I gotta say but later on.

I just want to say this now: let's keep the personal insults and self-righteous attitudes out, everyone. k?
 
Halifirien said:
We didn't have any problems laying out that kind of money we couldn't afford when it came to invading Afghanistan and Iraq. Deficit spending only seems to be a worry when we're trying to heal people instead of kill them.

I didn't really have a problem with Afghanistan, mind you. Iraq was a fucktard mistake. If we hadn't followed the cowboy's fantasies of glory into Iraq, we'd have already saved enough to pay for this.
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When I read your posts, I usually find myself disagreeing with most of what you say, but not this time!

This post and your previous one sum it up for me.
 
One of the big things the people forget when they want to compare how things work in Canada with how things could work in the U.S. is that Canada has roughly 1/10th or even 1/11th of the population of the United States. Therefore, ANY program that is run by the government is going to be massively more complicated and difficult to implement/maintain/oversee in the U.S. just from a logistical standpoint.

Also, with regards to the crackdown on fraudulent documentation for illegal immigrants, it's simply a numbers game. No one wants to commit the time and resources needed to truly crackdown on such a black market. Look at the billions of dollars the U.S. puts into the "war on drugs" and look at how futile that effort is in reality. Plus, another thing to consider is that most elected officials in the U.S. only want to appear to be tough on illegal immigration to please their constituents, when in reality they know that the U.S. economy depends on those illegal immigrants to fill menial and labor-intensive jobs which service and support larger and more vital industries (i.e. construction, food service, manufacturing, et al).

Personally, I don't think government-run healthcare would work in the U.S. for many reasons, none of which I care to detail here but all you really have to do is look at how mismanaged Social Security has been for the last 50 years. Most politicians can't think or look beyond their next campaign season so they love to sacrifice viable, long-term solutions for short-term political capital. To state my view in a very brief and watered-down way, I think the only way you can ever "fix" healthcare in the U.S. is to leave it mostly privatized so that consumers can have choices, but place minimum standards on the things covered by insurance, clear regulations protecting consumers against claim denials for necessary care, etc etc. While at the same time either placing limits on the profits that are derived in the healthcare industry. Yeah I know people will cry the hated "S-word" but not all socialism is evil. The fact of the matter is all of the "important" entities in the healthcare industry are making a killing off the current state of affairs and they know it and they don't want to lose their cash-cow. So much of the Oath of Hippocrates.
 
As a Brit can I just say that the propaganda that the republicans are spreading about the NHS is all bollocks. Myself and 99.9% of Brits would not give up the NHS for anything. Hell there's no political party in Britain that would get rid of it and even if one wanted to and tried there'd be a revolution. Instead of America spending all it's money on "protecting itself from terrorists" and invading other countries maybe they should take that money and use it to make sure everyone in the US has access to health care?
 
Sharpe said:
As a Brit can I just say that the propaganda that the republicans are spreading about the NHS is all bollocks. Myself and 99.9% of Brits would not give up the NHS for anything. Hell there's no political party in Britain that would get rid of it and even if one wanted to and tried there'd be a revolution. Instead of America spending all it's money on "protecting itself from terrorists" and invading other countries maybe they should take that money and use it to make sure everyone in the US has access to health care?
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How would Britain have a revolution without weapons? :wink:

Serious mode, On topic:
I haven't read the thread, but I'll speak my mind anyway.

The United States is #1 or #2 in GDP spent on health-care. But we're far behind the rest of the world in healthiness. We're far behind in infant mortality rate, life expectancy, and over-all "healthiness." We're behind CUBA in health-care rankings. CUBA! What!?

45-87 million people are without health insurance. Those of us without are unable to get preventive care, and instead must wait until our health problems get bad enough to visit the emergency room.

Medical Costs where cited as the reason for roughly half of all bankruptcy filings in 2001.

It's obvious what is wrong with our health-care system. It is capitalism gone terribly wrong, exchanging the well-being of our citizens for wealth.

Now, I'm not against capitalism - I am an American after all. I am against hurting people in the process of making money.

:2cents:
 
Zephayra said:
People have brought up the issue of illegal immigrants using the universal health care. I guess I have a hard time understanding how this sort of thing could happen in Canada.

Every province issues you a health card. You have to show that health card every time you go to the doctor's, go to a walk in clinic, recieve a flu shot, or go to the emergency room. I haven't applied for a health card personally, as my parents got me one as a child, and I'm too lazy to get the new ones, which expire lol, but I imagine it is much like getting a social security number.

I also don't really know how applying for a social security number works, but I imagine you must show proof of residence and status as a Canadian. I imagine illegal immigrants cannot get social security numbers. Ergo, someone who is illegally in Canada cannot get a health card.

So make people get health cards that show they're tax paying legit members of the U.S.A and no one has to worry about their tax dollars paying for illegal people to have access to universal health care.
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Probably the same way dead people voted last election. People make fake state ID's that pass inspection, how hard could a medical card be. Also the last crack down on illegal immigrants in CA resulted in some group complaining, so the illegals were sent back to the jobs they were picked up from. This happened at the start of Obama's presidency.

Lets look at 2009... more people lost homes and savings due to the markets not health. Citing facts that are 8 years old is not very accurate for this year. Everyone feels that people should be able to get medical no matter their health, but some half baked money sink hole will not do that. Of the numbers people cite, only about 7 million fall under the category of can not get medical. They have a sweeping plan most lawmakers have not read. A plan that does not even address the key issues. When you boil it down to the basics, all they are doing is throwing money at the problem. When real business men have come forward with real ideas that would cover MORE people and provide quality. They had their businesses boycotted. Best of all is that it was a very left wing owner. Meaning his own party punished him for not agreeing with their plan.

The is not in any way a NHS. It is being created for only 1/14 the population at best. It is not defiect neutral. The price to start it comes from denying doctors reimbursment for treating medicade people. This bill does not deal with tarp. Doctors spend MILLIONS for insurance. Many doctors can not afford the coverage, so they stop practicing. This leads to fewer Doctors. Which is one reason why costs are high. The government could create something similar to the no child left behind act. Not so broken would be nice.... Still that provided a base line that each grade must teach. How much would doing these simple things cost? Intresting thing is no one knows because the powers that be refuse to look into it. Just how much cheaper would medical be if we dealt with the things that cause it to sky rocket. Lets start with the simple solutions.
 
Dagoat said:
Lets look at 2009... more people lost homes and savings due to the markets not health. Citing facts that are 8 years old is not very accurate for this year. Everyone feels that people should be able to get medical no matter their health, but some half baked money sink hole will not do that. Of the numbers people cite, only about 7 million fall under the category of can not get medical. They have a sweeping plan most lawmakers have not read. A plan that does not even address the key issues. When you boil it down to the basics, all they are doing is throwing money at the problem. When real business men have come forward with real ideas that would cover MORE people and provide quality. They had their businesses boycotted. Best of all is that it was a very left wing owner. Meaning his own party punished him for not agreeing with their plan.

The is not in any way a NHS. It is being created for only 1/14 the population at best. It is not defiect neutral. The price to start it comes from denying doctors reimbursment for treating medicade people. This bill does not deal with tarp. Doctors spend MILLIONS for insurance. Many doctors can not afford the coverage, so they stop practicing. This leads to fewer Doctors. Which is one reason why costs are high. The government could create something similar to the no child left behind act. Not so broken would be nice.... Still that provided a base line that each grade must teach. How much would doing these simple things cost? Intresting thing is no one knows because the powers that be refuse to look into it. Just how much cheaper would medical be if we dealt with the things that cause it to sky rocket. Lets start with the simple solutions.
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I'm still trying to figure out where you came up with these numbers.
 
Toatl US population. # of uninsured. - # of illegals. - # of people who can afford medical but opt to not have it. do the % things and BAM there ya go. Numbers based off the news chanels. Seems that is all they can agree on. Keep in mind with the whole medical thing...The US can not afford it. atm we are looking at our children being taxed 250k to pay for the current debt from stimulus and bank bail outs. That is enough for a house, and or medical coverage for most of their lives. That of course depends on what house the opt to buy.
 
A shack, most likely. :/
 
idk I saw some homes in VA for 50k. Rather nice too. I know around me there are new town homes for 190-250k. Something else to think about is how much things actually cost. The cash for clunkers ran close to triple the planned costs. The stimulas was 2/3 pork barrel spending. Meaning money that did not go to the purpose of stimulas. Just things senators wanted like the 50 mil habitat for sand rats in cali. So we have a 800 Billion package that if we follow current trends would in actuality cost 2.4 trillion. There was also a poll done of doctors where 40% stated if the bill passed as it is would quit. Even if they polled only 1000 doctors... 45% is a lot.
 
You know, I'm honestly at the point where I say we should, in a civil manner, divide up the country.

Those who want big government, welfare, socialized medicine, and a command economy can have one half.

Those who want small government, private charity, a deregulated health insurance industry, and a free market economy can have the other half.

This isn't a "let's have the south secede again" or a "neo civil war" bullshit thought. I honestly think we should just agree to disagree and have the country go its separate ways. We can figure out where the geographic dividing lines will be and give everyone something like 5 years to move to one side or the other.

The Conservative States of America and the Progressive States of America... I like the sound of that.

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What happens when we don't fall into either category?
 
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