Tag on to Healthcare Question.

Without looking it up I am going to make a bet that Germany has a higher labor participation rate than the US and a lower unemployment rate as well.

And yes, that makes a huge difference.

Off to have dinner with my husband. :)
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Interesting answers except, so you have these doctors that accept Obamacare, but you can't compel all doctors to take Obamacare, who do you think will be seeing the no wait doctors that you have to pay out of pocket for? I would think the rich, so what has changed except that now the middle class will have the same shitty care as those on Medicaid.

So to recap, the rich have the same level of care. The poor have the same level of care. The middle class has a lesser level of care. How is that better?

From someone who has lived in Germany as well? Sorry - their health care system is FLAWED. In some cases, you have to wait WEEKS for an appointment.

I don't think and will NEVER think it is YOUR responsibility to pay for MY health care. Nor is it the governments responsibility to pay for, provide OR take care of my health.

It appears you are sooo stuck in your views that you can't see the forest through the trees. If you like other countries ability to provide for you like that - go live there. Nothing is stopping you. Go. Go get what it is you so vehemently believe a government is to provide for/to you.

Germany and Belgium - no matter how much I loved living in their countries. I always would prefer to be an American.

Here's another one. If you live in Germany (or Canada, GB, etc.)and you feel a lump in your breast and are afraid-are you ok with waiting a year for a mammogram? Because you may. And then you might not even get one if your case workers don't deem it necessary-esp if you are "too young" for breast cancer (no such thing BTW) I see it all over the cancer boards where women ARE in this situation. You basically have to take a ticket and stand in line to get screened. And then, God forbid if you DO have cancer. Your treatment is not your doctor's decision...it is the decision of a panel at a breast center. And you do not get to 'google' who is the best doctor/hospital/etc. You get what you get.
So yes I absolutely believe in private sector insuranc OVER government run insurance. The alternative is not something that I am willing to deal with.

Oh-and if your friends are happy I bet they never needed your 'system' to save their lives or those of their children.

My sister who grew up here and moved to Canada when she was 28 has experienced both sides of the coin. She did not have health coverage here and has a condition that causes the need for routine and emergency health care and had to pay out of pocket, and go into debt.

She now lives in Canada which has national healthcare and she prefers our system over theirs. She has said it is awful to try and get into to see someone and when you finally do get in, who knows who you will get and if they are good or not. Her and her family have suffered way more up there than they did here because of the system, and even though she had to go into debt the care was much better here even when she couldn't pay the care was better here.

A. J, you are so pro-Obama that it is clouding your other wise good judgement.

There are lots of people in the "wrong kind of jobs." And by your inference, that means a job with little or no healthcare coverage. But I've noticed that people in the "wrong kind of jobs" volunteered to work there. In some cases they took one of "those" jobs on purpose. People usually want more. More money, more benefits, more house, more servants, more car, more freedom, etc The problem is they want someone else to provide those mores.

You want everyone to provide and pay for your more. If the country goes broke providing the mores for you, "So What". That is not your problem. You are willling for all of the nation to suffer so you can have more. If you think Germany and it's system is that much better than ours, they welcome all talented and skilled people. I'll send you a farewell gift if its a one way trip.

I have some friends that were born and raised in Canada. They hate their healthcare system and the taxes that pay for it. Germans hate the taxes that pay for their programs. The entire European union is going bankrupt paying for all the social services everybody wants, but no one wants to pay for. I've read several articles about people that died in the hospitals in England, and Canadathat died because health care was rationed. If they were in the USA they would have been cured and lived.

The French get 5 or 6 weeks of vacation each year. And now the french congress (I don't know its actual name) is going to pass or has passed a law that moves the top tax bracket to about 75%. What is happening? The people that are going to have to pay the outrageous, incentive-killing tax are selling their homes and leaving France. I know of no one that is a billionaire that would live in America if the top tax bracket was 75%. Chief Justice John Marshall said, "The power to tax is the power to destroy".

Frankly, I'll never be rich, but I have no problem with others becoming rich if they can do it honestly. And if we had our top tax bracket move to 75% the rich would get rich in some other country. I know workers in our own country that turn down overtime because it puts them in our top bracket as it is now. They say the government takes all their money in taxes so why work overtime? If the top tax bracket was 75% people would really not work overtime.

Good luck to you and yours.

Can we just give it a rest? Please!

My husbands Father came here from Germany and so did his parents (my husbands grand parents. The health care in Germany was one of the reasons they moved here, it sucks (their words).

Please read this article from the Prime Minister in Canada who came to US for surgery:

"I did not sign away my right to get the best possible health care for myself when I entered politics."

The 60-year-old Williams said doctors detected a heart murmur last spring and told him that one of his heart valves wasn’t closing properly, creating a leakage.

He said he was told at the time that the problem was "moderate" and that he should come back for a checkup in six months.

Eight months later, in December, his doctors told him the problem had become severe and urged him to get his valve repaired immediately or risk heart failure, he said.

His doctors in Canada presented him with two options – a full or partial sternotomy, both of which would’ve required breaking bones, he said.

He said he spoke with and provided his medical information to a leading cardiac surgeon in New Jersey who is also from Newfoundland and Labrador. He advised him to seek treatment at the Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami.

That’s where he was treated by Dr. Joseph Lamelas, a cardiac surgeon who has performed more than 8,000 open-heart surgeries.

Williams said Lamelas made an incision under his arm that didn’t require any bone breakage.

"I wanted to get in, get out fast, get back to work in a short period of time," the premier said.

Williams said he didn’t announce his departure south of the border because he didn’t want to create "a media gong show," but added that criticism would’ve followed him had he chose to have surgery in Canada.

"I would’ve been criticized if I had stayed in Canada and had been perceived as jumping a line or a wait list. … I accept that. That’s public life," he said.

"(But) this is not a unique phenomenon to me. This is something that happens with lots of families throughout this country, so I make no apologies for that."

Williams said his decision to go to the U.S. did not reflect any lack of faith in his own province’s health care system.

"I have the utmost confidence in our own health care system in Newfoundland and Labrador, but we are just over half a million people," he said.

"We do whatever we can to provide the best possible health care that we can in Newfoundland and Labrador. The Canadian health care system has a great reputation, but this is a very specialized piece of surgery that had to be done and I went to somebody who’s doing this three or four times a day, five, six days a week."

He quipped that he had "a heart of a 40-year-old, so that gives me 20 years new life," and said he intends to run in the next provincial election in 2011.

"I’m probably going to be around for a long time, hopefully, if God willing," he said.

"God forbid for the Canadian public I won’t be around longer than ever."

Williams also said he paid for the treatment, but added he would seek any refunds he would be eligible for in Canada.

"If I’m entitled to any reimbursement from any Canadian health care system or any provincial health care system, then obviously I will apply for that as anybody else would," he said.

"But I wrote out the cheque myself and paid for it myself and to this point, I haven’t even looked into the possibility of any reimbursement. I don’t know what I’m entitled to, if anything, and if it’s nothing, then so be it."

He is expected back at work in early March.

This is from a couple of days ago, but in view of the healthcare soap opera that will be on view today it seems very timely."

here is the link to the article:
http://sweetness-light.com/archive/cn-prime-minister-my-h...

This P.M. explained it so well, if you don't get it now, you never will.

I just responded to you in my last post but to put here again - for one, Germany has survived much better than other european countries bc of their austerity. Now they're footing the bill for the other countries... Also, maybe your friends see things differently. My mother is from Germany. Her entire family is still there. They say health care SUCKS. She dropped her nephew at the dr once and asked when she should pick him up. She said he responded he had no idea. So many people just go to the dr all the time bc it's free. Her BIL died in the hospital bc of poor nursing attendence and he was not poor at all. She is more fearful of nationalized healthcare than I am bc she's the one talking to her family... If you were hospitalized at 18, that was quite awhile ago. Things may have changed.

A.,
When you put a frog into a pot of boiling water, he will try to hop out.
When you put him in a pot of col water & heat it up--he gets "used" to it and stays put.
That's what has happened to Americans with regard to health care.
See-it's NOT an issue for those that have access to it.
But it's a HUGE issue for those that don't--those that are underemployed, etc. That's not anyone "believing" that the government's JOB is to CARE for me. Or you. Or anyone. OURS is a flawed system. Hopefully not for long.
The people WITHOUT any care would be happy to have ANY coverage.
Implying that "they" have purposefully taken the "wrong" type of job is malarkey! Do you know how many families feed and shelter their families with 2, 3 or 4 PART TIME jobs?

I have health care and always have. I know I'm lucky. I had to make an appointment with an orthopedic doc a few months back & the soonest they could see me was 3 weeks out. So waiting "weeks" for an appointment is not all that unusual here with private insurance.

"Obamacare is not nationalized healthcare. It is rationalized healthcare. What I mean by that is it is not a government takeover. it is creating a set of standardized rules procedures etc. that apply to insurance provided in the private market."

Because Lord knows, as long as the insurance companies are making record profits by charging $150 for 2 Tylenol (Woot-Woot!), THEY are not going to change a thing.

I have long been FOR Health Savings Accounts, because you SEE for what you are being charged and you SEE the money come out of your account. The days of "here's my card" and ((bleep)) it's out of your concern are gone. As it should be.

You're not crazy, A. J., I have yet to hear O. person NOT privy to private insurance that wouldn't be ELATED to have something available for them. It's only the people that HAVE it that maintain that it's unnecessary....

I can see where you are going with this. I have my own health insurance, that I PAY FOR. I have a part time job. My husband is self employed. We have to account for it in our monthly bills for our family. I do not agree with this public healthcare thing. It would cost me more money than I pay out right now. Waking up and fighting for the right to be uninsured is a bit over the top. This is waking up and fighting for our rights as Americans. On another note, I do think that there does have to be some sort of insurance for people that cannot afford to pay for it out of their pockets. But it does not have to include EVERYONE. I can handle it myself. And yes, I do believe in private sector insurance companies.

So your question is "would you fight tooth and nail for medical care should it go private and you want it to go public"?

I wish I could respond to this in German. My answer would make more sense if I could just respond in German...

8kidsdad: I don't even know where to start, so I won't. I believe your ignorance is showing. People not getting the "right kind of jobs" is just...ignorant.

Anyway.

No, I don't believe in the private sector. I don't believe that a company that was going to drop me because I actually got sick, is worth much of anything. We pay 400 dollars a month, we have a 7,500 dollar deductible, per person. Honestly the only thing it's good for is to make sure that we can actually see a doctor.

I guess that's another problem I have with 8kidsdad's answer. Yeah, they would have lived if they came here. Except....you know those people that have been sent home because they don't have insurance...and later died. If you don't think it's happening you've got your head in the sand.

In fact I had a friends sister nearly get fired from her nursing job because she demanded that a woman in considerable amount of pain be seen in the emergency room. The woman had been passed by several times for insured patients as she sat near deaths door. My friends sister final had it and went and talked to the ER doctor, who shrugged, and she made him come out to see this woman.

Yeah, while she waited, she appendix had ruptured. Her system was being poisoned and she was dying right there in the emergency room. My friends sister saved that womans life by going over the admissions head and it nearly cost her job.

Some great system we have here.

Germany's in dire straits right now because of Greece (and the other PIIGS countries) because of the euro. There's too much to go into here, but it isn't about the education and health system - it's about the strong economic countries having to bail out the weak ones. They never should have gone on the euro.

I don't believe that health insurance companies should be for profit. I really don't.

Dawn

Couldn't agree with you more!!!

I really have trouble understanding why people look at heathcare in countries like Germany and Canada and hear about one or two flaws and conclude that there's nothing good about them. It might be true that patients can't always get appointments right away. It may even be true that it can take awhile to get important tests (ie, mammograms). This does not mean that the most logical conclusion is that the entire healthcare system is flawed and therefore we should not have a similar system. The most logical thing to do is to learn from other countries. Learn from the good as well as the bad. Create a healthcare system that reflects the good of the other countries systems and improves on the shortfalls.

Talk about throwing out the baby with the bathwater!!!

Heathcare should be a basic human right, plain and simple.

I never had a problem with healthcare until both my husband and I were forced to be self-employed after job layoffs. Now, we're uninsured, because we have been deemed too unhealthy for insurance. My husband (the healthiest man I know) was turned down, because he took ambien...one prescription. I have a health issue that is treatable and completely out of my control, meaning it is not due to my lifestyle or weight. I'm extremely careful to be thin, fit and eat right. So, even though we have money to pay, we can't get insurance. It's so frustrating to know that we are one step away from disaster. If anything major happened to us we'd be forced to go to the ER and if the amount was too much, all tax payers would have to pay as we go bankrupt. This system isn't working for very many of us who have non-traditional jobs. And the fact that health insurance is tied to work at all is awful. You lose your job and you lose your insurance, just when you need the support the most. We don't know what we'll do if the pre-existing conditions law doesn't go into effect in 2014 as Obamacare has dictated. We'd be able to finally get insurance for our whole family and not put ourselves and tax payers at risk. I can't wait!! I'm sure the price will be high for insurance, so we'll have to see if we can afford it if they don't regulate that for those of us who are so "unhealthy". Ugh.