Obamacare sign up ... Where are the Latino's? - Page 4

I just hope our idiot leaders don't talk to US ones cos yr system is shit and ours has been great but is teetering and on the brink cos we should be more like the US because they are the best so we keep getting told.

Interesting reading vk4, since you brought it up, from the MJA, about the challenges facing the Australian Healthcare system:
 

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Abstract

• The next Australian Government will confront major challenges in the funding and delivery of health care.

• These challenges derive from:

  • Changes in demography and disease patterns as the population ages, and the burden of chronic illness grows;

  • Increasing costs of medical advances and the need to ensure that there are comprehensive, efficient and transparent processes for assessing health technologies;

  • Problems with health workforce supply and distribution;

  • Persistent concerns about the quality and safety of health services;

  • Uncertainty about how best to balance public and private sectors in the provision and funding of health services;

  • Recognition that we must invest more in the health of our children;

  • The role of urban planning in creating healthy and sustainable communities; and

  • Understanding that achieving equity in health, especially for Indigenous Australians, requires more than just providing health care services.

• The search for effective and lasting solutions will require a consultative approach to deciding the nation’s priority health problems and to designing the health system that will best address them; issues of bureaucratic and fiscal responsibility can then follow.
  
  https://www.mja.com.au/journal/2007/187/9/challenges-health-and-health-care-australia

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I have highlighted what I think are similarities in concerns that are already existing between our countries' programs. I think it is plain to see where some of the highlighted concerns and the one's I have already stated, are in concert, as well.
 

No one should have to choose whether to pay for necessary medications or rent, no one should have to panic over how they are going to pay bills when their child gets sick. Something needs to be done. So many working poor are an ER visit away from being wiped out.

I agree. How we've gotten here is extremely complicated, involving much more than just the healthcare system. As such, the solutions aren't simple either, certainly not as simple as to say that because we feel that something "should be", we can therefore make it so by whatever means necessary. The consequences of that kind of thought process may be as irresponsible as they are far reaching. For all of its liabilities, free market remains the most viable model. What we are really talking about isn't healthcare, it is the ability of the average person to work a job and pay their bills, as you say.  Although the socialist/liberal faction does an excellent job of identifying the symptoms of the problem, their solution is terrible, both ideologically, and in terms of fiscal responsibility. On the flip side, the conservatives will continue to rally around the "trickle down" effect, while neglecting to mention that outsourcing and globalization has betrayed the working class of a large portion of the US work force who would otherwise benefit. The health and strength of a nation relies upon (has always relied upon) both economically and politically. Ours is shrinking, and it correlates with the two indicators I just mentioned. Despite the amount of demagoguery pervading the landscape, the key to success in a free market society within our republic relies upon equity of opportunity, never upon equity of result. The former is not only a practical impossibility in perpetuity, but is inconstent with our chosen form of government. For those who believe it is the way to go, I'm sure there are vacancies elsewhere. For now, for here, I'll choose to focus on why it is I do not believe we currently have equity of opportunity. Unfortunately, I don't see those changes coming to pass anytime soon, because they directly undermine the aspirations of those who run the show and pull strings, regarless of the color of the tie (or bow tie) they sport.

We have to start someplace or we could sit on our hands and watch people suffer and not get the help they need. What I have seen in real life and not just fancy words on a computer screen is people who have suffered because they don't have insurance or can't even get covered because of a pre-existing condition. Then you have others who are forced to use emergency rooms like Dr offices and then can't afford to pay those bills and all that happens is those bills are passed on to others by higher costs.

I will give an example I have a relative who has had a lot of stomach issues and when this person gets sick they just go to the hospital and get treatment, this treatment may last days or in some cases weeks. When the bills come they are tossed in the garbage. This person has accrued probably close to a million dollars in bills over a lifetime. Who is paying?

Another example my wife has a pre-existing condition and has suffered for years because she could not get health coverage, period. I suppose the free market system really helped her a lot.

It is all fine to sit here and back seat drive the people making the decisions and changing lives and do nothing but type words on a screen all the while people suffer and can't get the help they so desperately need.
 

I will give an example I have a relative who has had a lot of stomach issues and when this person gets sick they just go to the hospital and get treatment, this treatment may last days or in some cases weeks. When the bills come they are tossed in the garbage. This person has accrued probably close to a million dollars in bills over a lifetime. Who is paying?

That is precisely the point. An inordinate amount of the burden falls on the middle class when some are unable to pay. If you percieve the system as a whole, you recognize what is not really changing. Obamacare does nothing to address where the cost actually comes from, it only asserts unauthorized power over the individual as opposed to indirectly charging for non-payer through higher costs. In either case, the real issue remains largely unaddressed. Instead of having a decent paying job with health insurance, mr. non-payer is now reliant, indebted, and ultimately controlled by bureaucracy, while the income gap continues to grow and the number of people who can afford insurance shrinks.
 

It is all fine to sit here and back seat drive the people making the decisions and changing lives and do nothing but type words on a screen all the while people suffer and can't get the help they so desperately need.
 

I get that the issue is important to you, but this statement is an extremely ignorant one, considering how little you know about me, my life, my circle of influence, or my activities. (Or the same for any other member for that matter).

Carlin, 

I am a bit confused as to what you mean for the conclusion for America, regarding what you said that sounded like, "equity of opportunity in a free market, being unsustainable in perpetuity." Did you always believe this was the case? Or, that the globalization and betrayal of the working class has changed the outcome from what it was at the start?

Yes, please share more on what you said, "For now, for here, I'll choose to focus on why it is I do not believe we currently have equity of opportunity."

I hope you understand my question! In case I am not making it clear... LOL

Bee- should have read "the latter".

 

I don't believe we have equity of opportunity in the sense that what we have been witnessing over the decades is the way in which an inordinate amount of the spoils go to the "owners of production", much as it pains me to quote Marx. We're told that in order to be profitable, we simply must exploit utilize the cheap labor available overseas, at best devaluing and decreasing US wages, at worst, eliminating them. In capitalism, the theory goes that wages will naturally settle in "fair" range, because corporation "X" must compete with corporation "Y" for the labor or worker "A".  What happens though when these corporations leave shore and pay worker "B" a fraction of "A" used to make. In this way, the deck is stacked against Mr. US worker "A". This doesn't even account for the way in which the exponential increase in technology is affecting the labor market. Traditionally, there have been periods of adjustment which came along with tech advances, and this from the very beginnning of the Industrial Revolution when the owners of production brought about the "enclosure" of agricultural land. We are just now begining to understand how this new tech is changing the landscape. A report out of MIT suggests that for the first time since WWII, there are observable changes in the balance.

http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/515926/how-technology-is-destroying-jobs/

Thanks, Carlin!   . That does make more sense, to me.

Who was pointing that statement at you? You sure think everything is all about YOU, now don't you? It was a general statement. I give up.

Love the on topic nature of your last post. SMH.