Actually, I didn’t vote for anybody in the last election round because I’m a radical leftist and none of the candidates were acceptable to me, but now I’ve come to feel it was a mistake. Healthcare legislation, as flawed as it may be (you can see my arguments why I think it’s bullshit in the last thread I made), absolutely must pass, and it’s because the following argument convinced me.
If healthcare legislation passes, it will create an extremely valuable precedent in the law: the principle (and really at this point nothing more than that) that everybody deserves healthcare as a right, not simply a choice. These types of precedents have two effects: first, they tend to move public opinion rapidly and strongly in favor of them and thus secondly become nearly impossible to reverse. History has plenty of examples. Social security passed with little public support but almost immediately after passage became widely popular and remains so today. Just look at Bush’s latest attempt to dismantle it. Civil rights legislation is another example. Prior to passage, there was little public support, even in the “North” - but it quickly became part of the national consciousness after passage. Vietnam is another interesting example. Support for the Vietnam war remained somewhat middling at the beginning - following the authorization to bomb North Vietnam though public opinion surged to record highs - following the subsequent decision to halt bombing and withdraw from the North - public opinion sunk. Basically, lots of these major types of decisions are often made against the will of public opinion, but in most cases public opinion tends to follow closely behind. I can’t really explain the psychology behind this. Maybe it’s just that most people are followers - they want to be with the winners. But that’s just a completely uneducated ignorant guess.
So my point is, we need to do more good things like pass healthcare. Once the precedent is set I think it will be much easier to make things better in the future. If Coakley loses this election, which perhaps she deserves for her hubris, I think the result will really be catastrophic. Healthcare legislation will never be passed in our lifetimes. I’ll have to step up my efforts to marry into citizenship in another country from an internet joke into an actual life goal.
Also, just as an aside, fuck all you haters on these forums complaining that things suck. Why don’t you try making an interesting thread with words in them instead of another “HEY LOOK AT THIS” thread. I think everyone’s goal for this month should be to put at least one step above minimal effort into creating one interesting thread. I promise not to troll your thread and do everything I can to post more interesting stuff.
Well, this reminds me of when I was a fifteen-year-old punk kid full of piss, vinegar, and misplaced hopes. I recommend saving yourself time, sorrow, and the expense of long drinking binges, cut out the middleman of fighting for a lost cause, and skip right to the marrying into citizenship somewhere else. This country was bought and sold a long time ago; however full the ballot boxes get, money has more pull, and gravity’s going to pull people right back to it. Have the grace to lower yourself before the world beats you down.
Voting may not be worth a lot, especially in first-past-the-post systems, but I don’t see why you’d drop out, essentially making people with politics you don’t like the only ones to be catered to. Can you stand more bullshit about values voters on tv, every election year? Marrying into citizenship is a nice idea (btw how is China’s healthcare?), but there’s no place where things magically happen and money has power everywhere. Vote for the least worse candidate; voting doesn’t take that much time. Healthcare in the US was considered a dead issue iirc after Hillary’s botched attempt, but as it turned out to have popular support, along with the momentum of Ted Kennedy’s death, Obama decided to make it his “change” issue. Past elections have shown that grassroots movements can also raise money. The Anarcho-leftist States of America may not be won that way, but when people can influence decisions that affect your country (e.g. Mormon support to Prop 8), dropping out altogether doesn’t seem the best response.
I feel it’s worth noting that despite what Obama hasn’t done, he’s more sane than McCain/Palin. Nice double take on Copenhagen though.
Chinese healthcare is terrible. Let’s say you go to the hospital for an emergency. You practically have to pay for what you’ll need done upfront. I also don’t think you can marry into chinese citizenship. The Chinese have a few restrictions regarding how it can work. Also, Prop 8 was California only.
Those charts don’t mean anything. For most of those countries, those taxes cover very expensive things like health insurance and college eduation that are not included in the figure for the US. So in order to get a comparable standard of living with quality health insurance and a college education for two kids, the figure for the US would probably be near the absolute bottom after taking into account all of those things.
I wouldn’t say Chinese healthcare is “terrible” per se. In the major cities the quality of care is quite good, and it is much cheaper than what you’d get in other places. what Sin said is right though, you generally have to pay upfront for most things, which is why you always see in the news that Chinese people save much more than in most other places, cause they have to save for those kinds of catastrophic events out of their own pockets. It is pretty damn cheap though. If you remember the thread where I got the shit knocked out of me in a bar by a bunch of guys and a cocktail glass…it only cost me $400 for the entire treatment, including some minor plastic surgery and over 20 stitches. And that was the very good expensive hospital. Could have been a lot cheaper that. It was a pain in the ass having to pay up front, while I’m bleeding all over the place and my friend’s wife is running to find an ATM at 5AM…but today I don’t have even a slight scar left from the incident. So I don’t have any qualms with the quality of the care. In terms of getting Chinese citizenship yeah that will never happen and I wouldn’t do it for a million dollars even if I could. The Chinese passport is about the worst thing a guy like me could have. Anyway, I don’t have any plans on marrying a Chinese girl…too much hassle with family concerns and shit, and plus I don’t want to buy a house and have a family or any of that. I was thinking more like one of the Utopian Northern European countries.
Health care in most places is awesome provided you have the money, so its relative. Would you say that the care you received was representative of how what people normally have access to?
It’s funny that you guys pay more tax, but we have free 3rd level education. (And a heap of problems but whatever.)
Also, just because we don’t live in an ideal world doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to make things better. I fully agree we should go out and vote, we should try to see the world as more than just something there to take care of ourselves. Of course, that’s not gonna happen, but after going through the phase Arac is in now, I decided it’s better to just get on with it and try my best.
Also, yes, people are capricious. What did you expect?
To be honest, I didn’t exactly have a complex procedure. Just some stitches and very basic plastic surgery. To balance out the equation, another friend of mine had an eye problem that he caught while swimming in some dirty water in Vietnam. They gave him the wrong medication at what was supposedly the best eye hospital in China…it fucked his eye up and ended up leaving a scar on his eye that will fuck his vision up forever. When we went back to the States to see an eye doctor, he was absolutely aghast that they give him the medication they did. He said if he had originally saw him he would have immediately known what to do and his eye would have suffered no permanent problems. So yeah…for more basic care I’d say it’s perfectly fine here. When you start to deal with complex things or life-or-death issues I might think twice.
In Beijing, it wouldn’t be much money to most people. Then again, no Chinese person would have paid as much as I did for the same procedure. Having to pay a “foreigner fee” is simply part of living here. I don’t really complain, because I also get “foreigner salary” - which is pretty monstrously higher than the average Chinese salary. So a Chinese person might have only paid about 2000 RMB (300 dollars) for the same procedure. Almost everyone in Beijing has social insurance as well, so they would get about 70 or 80% of that money back, so it would ultimately cost them about $100 at most. In Beijing that is pocket change to pretty much everyone. I can’t really comment on what goes on way out in the countryside. As far as I’m concerned, it’s practically a different country out there.
BEHOLD! THE GOP HAS TAKEN TED KENNEDY’S SEAT and with it, Ted Kennedy’s dreams and efforts that he went to the grave thinking would finally be fulfilled have fallen apart. Let us stand before this result in fucking AWE at how the democrats have spectacularly dropped the ball. This is without a doubt the biggest, most epic fail I have seen on part of any political party ever.
The irony of this result is nothing short of spectacular. Wow. Fucking wow.
