Ron Paul: Healthcare, Military Spending And The Debt Crisis

[Darth Crater]

Under the system we have now, not voting for one of the two major parties' candidates is not voting at all. The only exception would be if the candidate has incredibly universal appeal, which Ron Paul obviously does not. Yes, it's not supposed to work this way; good luck fixing that.

[Mandalore]

Ron Paul would make a great adviser. As the guy running the show he is far too in love with his ideology. The US needs a true moderate to run, unfortunately America loves its two party system for some reason.

Ron Paul is a nice little idea in theory, but so is Communism. The way he would get rid of the debt so quickly would be by cutting federal agencies that are pretty much essential to any well functioning post-industrial nation. I believe he's said that if he's elected he will dismantle the DEA. If there is not another agency converted to do the DEA's job then organized crime will have a heyday the likes of which has never been seen. Again, I assume when he says he'd dismantle the DEA he'd also do away with similar organizations. I'd guess he think he could do without the Post Office too, but then there'd have to be a new means of keeping track of addresses. I would assume he'd leave the departments of Education and Defense in. But in general anyone who has an erection for ideology over the reality of the situation should not be elected. Where's our Bismark? Although that Prussian Prick had quite a few little quirks of his own.

That being said, I'd sooner vote for Paul than any other of the jokes in the Republican running right now.

Also at Minas, "shutting down" China? HAAHAHAHAAH. The westerners are lucky China is only now beginning to throw around its weight. Learn Mandarin.

And pajama pants, Soylent Green isn't too far off actually, although the movie's projected dates are a tad bit off. I would venture we'd reach that point by about 2040. At which point population pressure will probably cause a three way war between the EU+US vs Russia vs China type deal

[WGO-Jango]

Just wait. I'll get even and die one day and then how are they gonna take my money?

Death Tax, look it up.

I don't think its just for people to die simply because they can't afford health insurance. Man kind has spent thousands of years progressing his life expectancy. It would be a waste that someone should die an early death from something that can be treated or cured. The key isn't making healthcare free, as someone mentioned before its about making it affordable.

It's not your insurance company's fault that you pay so much to be covered. It's their job to balance coverage with overall spending; by ensuring that they don't go bankrupt, by covering every treatment and every procedure, they're able to provide healthcare to everyone who enrolls. If you want cheaper healthcare start asking why medical equipment and medical supplies cost so much to hospitals and doctor offices. All of it is made in Asia anyway, it made cheap and sold with huge mark ups because it's "medical grade". Healthcare isn't expensive, the tools to provide it are.

[(SWGO)Kren]

Examine why health care is going wrong (Adminstative goals, no constistant approach, variance in terms of quality, admissions process etc). These are some of the common issues that impact upon expenditure and drive costs higher. Obviously drug companies will make huge mark-up's but again the government would need to investigate them and that could take a massive amount of time, cost and effort and if you are looking to reduce costs that would be not be advised. Start with what you can influence and work from there rather than going into areas where the return might be small.

Get the process right, streamline it and have commonality in terms of the approach across the US and it would assist in reducing costs associated with health care.

Should you let people die with no health care, well I would say 'no' as where does this then end? Look at why the costs are so high and tackle this rather than making the average person suffer because the process is broken.

[(SWGO)Minas_Thirith]

Also at Minas, "shutting down" China? HAAHAHAHAAH. The westerners are lucky China is only now beginning to throw around its weight.

I'm just going to state here the main reason why there are more and more people with no jobs, wich starts in history.
If anyone here took some recent history you will have leared about the economic revolution.

Now back then this revolution started in England, and due to England being the first to produce and export they where able to produce any good at cheaper prices then the rest of Europa.
Now due to the fact that the other countries wanted to boost their own production they made a tax for importacions so high that even the cheap goods of England came to be more expensive then the good produced by their own economy thus increasing both their production AKA factories with people from their own countries with jobs in those factories...
Even tough the jobs started out poorly with human/civil rights it ended up in being a great economy for both the owner and the employer....
In those times they needed MORE workers...but why not today?

Even tough official companies make products because they want more PROFITS AKA, the rich people being richer they ensure the quality of their products not at lower prices, but at better profits for the people who own the factories, so how?
Well quite simple, where i was born the money you earn as a man is normally minimum 10Euros an hour, counting that the your boss if he does it legally has to pay around 16-18Euros per hour per person who works for him....
Now why the heck would someone produce goods where his workers have to be payed 18Euros an hour while he can go to China and get his factory to have workers who work at 1Euro a DAY...

Thus the producion and industry in richer counties come to a halt and the Chineese economy is increased thus giving less jobs for us.
But imagen that the taxes on imported goods would be so extremely high that they don't have a choice to make the stuff local, or if they say no more importacions of good we can produce ourselfs..

Please share your toughts on this point, ill be glad to hear what y'all think after reading this.

MT

[ProfessorDreadNaught]

To address MT: why not try importing cheap labor instead of cheap products and taxing them? Do you think a Chinese citizen would want to remain a Chinese citizen working for 1 Euro a day in China when he could work for 1 Euro a day in the U.S or Europe? For unskilled labor, immigrants are the best source for employees. They don't take things for given like home born citizens mostly do. They do hard work for cheap and are less prone to problems. U.S. citizens enjoy a HUGE advantage over these workers for skilled and salaried jobs because language skills and education and shouldn't fear low waged immigrants stealing jobs. They are an opportunity to create NEW employment opportunities.

Health Care: I pay almost $20,000 a year for health insurance for me, my wife and my two kids. There is NO WAY I use that much in health services. But this is how things work. I pay for those who DO use that and more. A friend of mine had a triple bypass for a heart condition. The procedure was $68,000. He pays LESS for health insurance because he works for a large company that pays half. There is NO WAY he could afford to be living without me and others footing the bill. Ok, that is reality. What are the moral abstracts of the situation?

Is it moral for one person to consume more than they put in? All said and done, with meds and follow up visits, my buddy's overweight lifestyle will consume nearly $80,000 in medical services. In the 10 years he has worked for his company, he has not put that much into insurance. If there were any complications during surgery or post-op his bills could have easily reached into the hundreds of thousands. Who should pay then? Should the doctors and nurses and technicians all work for free? Should he be allowed to die? Would it be better to give his survivors $200,000 in death benefits than spend it on treatment and care?

(got to leave work, of course more to follow)...

[(SWGO)Minas_Thirith]

See dread that's the problem in the USA, the health insurance costs money, anywhere in Europe if you have a job it's free, if your 65+ it's free.
Only if you don't have a job and you aren't listed as "workless" you would have to pay 120Euros a month....

And dread i wasn't talking about inmigrant living in our country, i'm talking about foreigners making goods we consume instead making it ourselfs to use it ourselfs wich would increase our own economy.

As for health care the USA has a lot of problems with it, if you don't have an insurance it's your problem, in Europe there are funds for this, and i haven't met people who don't have an insurance, since it's very afordable however....
Even tough it does bring it's own problem, people abuse the sistem and go to the doctors or hospitals for no good reason...i know people who just go to the hospital if their children cough a little, or have a simple flu....
This takes money however, i'd rather have an abused sistem that has to be worked on then people who can't afford a insurance die when they need help....

MT

[(SWGO)Kren]

Look at things in another light, should everyone have cable tv, vehicles which consume far 2 much petrol, over indulge in fast foods? Start taxing these areas more as they contribute to society woe's and from the revenue collected push it back into the area's that are lacking or need addressing more. Reduction in junk food and the 'fat' society and you would not have as much to pay on sorting out heart conditions, tummy tucks and gastric bands. There's demand out there that impact upon the health care where it could be avoided if the other areas which contribute to the issue were examined and tackled.

It's a vicious circle: eat junk, get overweight, pay and join a gym, don't get the benefit, eat more food, get the health service to give you meds to assist you, put u on weight loss program and so on and so forth. End result unless is that more money is put into reacting to the problems after the event rather preventing it from happening in the first place. You need more nurses and doctors to treat the ever growing influx of issues.

There are 2 many medical tests, mistakes in operations (leading to claims), lack of clean facilities, processing of claims, attending the hospital when all you need was a visit to the local pharmacy, discharging patients 2 soon which makes them return to spend more time and cost the health service more.

You don't have to be a genius to figure out where the waste is and what is causing it, the difficulty is implementing change. People don't like change as it bursts their comfort bubble and most ways to rectify an issue are common sense but as we all know people don't like being sensible.

In the UK we don't have the issue with what you guys have in the USA however it's far from perfect and a lot of the points above apply but what we have seems a heck of a lot better than the current system you guys have in place over there.

[ӺȁȿŧƔ]

My other main goal in this topic was to talk about why Ron Paul should be our president. I see we have mixed feelings with healthcare. That is understandable.
There's also the fact that we are occupying all these countries with our military. Can we talk about the wars for a while? Do you guys support the wars? Are you against them?
Ron wants to end the wars in 2007

Ron wants to end the wars in 2011

And the other candidates obviously have different views...

[haasd0gg]

You realize the threads title references health care, right? You were the author...