Wide scale civil unrest coming to America before long?

[Talon]

On the health care front, if the stimulus plan was any indication, the Republicans will bleat and scream about its passage, while simultaneously praising and taking credit for its results in their home districts.

[Fryk]

I don't understand what the fuss is with wide-scale civil unrest. Can't we just switch to a norrower scale?

[KellyHabersham]

Because in order to get Medicare and Medicaid to do what needs to be done we'd have to revamp them to the point where we might as well be making a whole new system anyway. Better to keep the new stuff separate.

and by-the-by, both Medicare and Mediaid were and are quite effective.

I don't know as that I'd say Medicaid is quite effective.....not sure how it works in other states, but with the version Arizona has, eligibility is judged by pre-tax income. Which in my viewpoint, makes it very difficult to qualify if you're making anything even remotely resembling a living wage. And if you're a single parent, they pretty much force you into providing info on the other parent and getting them involved in the picture......let's just say that is one of the reasons I got kicked off Medicaid back in the day.

[daleduke17]

I'm not a fan of this bullshit Government ran healthcare. Especially for the first two words "Government Ran". The government fucks up more things that they touch than what they don't. How about setting some reform for the medical and insurance companies instead of throwing the government in charge of it.

Plus making it illegal to not have health insurance and charging people out the ass? That is very bullshit.

[kiwi]

"Government Ran"

Government Run

[smileyeagle1021]

I'm not a fan of this bullshit Government ran healthcare. Especially for the first two words "Government Ran". The government fucks up more things that they touch than what they don't.

Not that I disagree with your point that we need more reform on the insurance side... but I will take issue with the assumption that everything the government touches it fucks up.
People like to bash the postal service, but lets face it, they have one of the most efficient systems on the planet. Fed-Ex and UPS have so much as admitted that their is no way they could come close to doing what the USPS does (daily service to every address in the nation for both pick up and delivery at a low cost and maximum ship time of 3 or 4 days).
Public education is always bashed for its inefficiency. I know Utah really under-funds it's schools, but we still meet federal standards on less than $5,000 per year... the cheapest private school I've seen for k-12 is $10,000 a year (per child). Higher education also is rather effective... at least in Utah.
I'd personally like to see a private enterprise that could build and maintain the interstate system, or the local road systems, or even run a decent mass transit system.
That doesn't mean that healthcare would be better under government control... but it does mean that it won't inherently be worse just because it is government run.


On the topic of widescale unrest, it now seems everything that has been ignored because of healthcare reform is going to cause more unrest. Lt. Cho chained himself to the White House fence and equal rights advocates staged mass sit-ins in both of Nancy Pelosi's offices demanding she move forward on her promise to push ENDA (bout time we hold those lying pig democrats to their word... we paid for their victory, it's time to get something out of it.).

[Gravekeeper]

I'm not a fan of this bullshit Government ran healthcare.

I'm always amazed at this sort of attitude, frankly. How do you think your country operates? As dysfunctional as it appears on the surface, it is successfully running an entire country from a local to federal level managing millions of people. Its an amazingly complex system and it is functioning. Because if it wasn't you'd be wandered around a lawless wasteland, avoiding landmines, roving gangs and trying to trade bottle caps for ammo and iguana-on-a-stick.

Who do you think runs Medicare? >.>

[Wingates_Hellsing]

Medicaid and Medicare both suffer from a lack of scope. They're often constrained to effect only the absolute lowest rung in an area/state because of a lack of resources and funds, so it's pretty hard to qualify. That doesn't undo to incredible amount of good both programs do for those that qualify, it just means we need something for the next step up. That is what this is, provision of health-care to those not able to afford private insurance without excluding those with basic wages/wealth.

Every day I see evidence to suggest that people are rarely desensitized to negative things. In fact, the opposite is often true in that people get used to and then take for granted all the positive things and bleat endlessly about the flaws. Not to say that the flaws shouldn't be fixed, but give credit where credit's due.

P.S. Gravekeeper, in that situation hopefully the two of us would be able to find the Nuka-Cola truck and become rich. I say we should shack up in the NCR 'cuz the Hub's screwed

[elsporko]

I don't know as that I'd say Medicaid is quite effective.....not sure how it works in other states, but with the version Arizona has, eligibility is judged by pre-tax income. Which in my viewpoint, makes it very difficult to qualify if you're making anything even remotely resembling a living wage. And if you're a single parent, they pretty much force you into providing info on the other parent and getting them involved in the picture......let's just say that is one of the reasons I got kicked off Medicaid back in the day.

Medicaid is suppose to be accessible only to people without a livable wage.

[Fryk]

I don't know about maintaining the roads, Smiley. Around here I would say the government fails. Miserably. Some of the city maintained roads look liked they've been bombed, and I-75 is just plain pitiful. You're right about the other ones, though.

[MaseMan]

I don't know about maintaining the roads, Smiley. Around here I would say the government fails. Miserably. Some of the city maintained roads look liked they've been bombed, and I-75 is just plain pitiful. You're right about the other ones, though.

That's more your state government failing than the federal one, though.

[Fryk]

True, but that still makes it the government. And largely, the only difference between US State governments and the federal government is scope and funding.

[smileyeagle1021]

I don't know about maintaining the roads, Smiley. Around here I would say the government fails. Miserably. Some of the city maintained roads look liked they've been bombed, and I-75 is just plain pitiful. You're right about the other ones, though.

How much of that though is because they have their hands tied by the people who feel "the government screws everything up" and continually votes down any proposition or candidate that proposes any means of the government raising funds. In Utah we have very well maintained roads and decent transit (the foundation for the system is great, now we just need route planners who can make routes that make sense for the buses) because Utahns have repeatedly voted in favor to have a tax that is specifically for transportation costs to go into a fund for nothing but transportation costs. If your state has a populace that isn't willing to do something like that, then it's no wonder the roads suck.

[protege]

If your state has a populace that isn't willing to do something like that, then it's no wonder the roads suck.

Of course, some states...simply chose to cut corners when they built the roads in the first place. Drive around Pennsylvania sometime--our roads suck! From what I've heard, the reason for the potholes (other than PennDOT's ineptness and stupidity) was simply because the state farmed-out most of the work to independent contractors, some of which have spotty reputations. Not helping matters...is that when things have to be repaired or replaced, corners are cut *again,* until the object is finally falling apart. Think about it--would you rather spend a million to do the job right once, or 8 million to do it 4 times, and fix someone's fuck-up? Unfortunately, many of our elected officials choose to think only in the short-term.

Also, whenever our state needs to raise money for a pet project, it's usually done in the form of some sort of gas tax or toll road fees. That's why most of these measures get voted down--very little of the money raised actually goes into transportation costs. The rest goes into things like pay raises, and other unrelated crap.

As for the USPS, I've had mail get to *Australia* faster than it gets across town. Seriously, what's up with that?

[smileyeagle1021]

As for the USPS, I've had mail get to *Australia* faster than it gets across town. Seriously, what's up with that?

that may have a lot to do with your distance from your nearest distribution center. I know that people who live in rural areas have problems where their mail has to be sent to the nearest major city for processing before being sent to the final address (example, if you live in Yerington Nevada and you want to mail to your neighbor the mail has to first be sent to Reno and then sent back).