U.S. Politics

That was my initinal point. :grinning:

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To the citizen? Nothing. To the state? Far far less than what you’re charged.

I’ve used the US and British, as my eldest daughter was born in ATL, GA. From what I saw of the American system there was a culture of profiteering in the hospital alone that went against the patients best. Firstly they push for a C-section if the child isn’t delivered within 24 hours, even though this isn’t necessary. The operation and ran to 20k or 30k back in 2009, I forget which, but the british would run at a fraction of this.

Secondandly they push for babies to be put on formula if the milk doesn’t come in quickly. This isn’t the best for the child who misses out on key antibodies and nutrients from the mother. It also increases the chances that a baby will develop allergies. They do this because they’re in cahoots with the baby formula companies. The British system is the complete opposite encouraging mothers to percevere with breast feeding.

Then there’s the fact my ex was encouraged (in an unrelated case) to use all kind of medications and treatments that she didn’t need, that cost her insurance company money and probably weren’t the best for.

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That’s what I thought but wasn’t completely sure. It’s not as simple as it’s made to sound, that the US can just switch over to free healthcare with the snap of the finger since the rest of the world has figured it out. There are big companies, big pharma, and insurance scammers standing in the way. And all of our politicians are bought and paid for by these lobbyists. Even if Trump isn’t on their payroll, the senate is. To your point my wife stayed in the hospital for 2 nights after our second child was born, our insurance was charged $5000 per night for the room, lol. I have excellent insurance and they covered 90% of the bill, which was around $40,000 for everything. I really doubt that’s in line with the cost anywhere else in the world.

So you’re spending nearly 3 times per person compared to the UK while not covering everyone.

You’re right, any change will be difficult. Lobbying aside healthcare makes up a large percent of your GDP. Your hospital bosses, doctors, nurses and the shareholders all are reliant stakeholders of a highly inefficent industry. any changes will affect all these people and potentially harm your economy.

The solution is possibly for the state to fund some essential care efficiently and implement it over a period of time. This can’t happen under a Republican party because it’s against their policy and if it’s a slow implementation by the Dems it’ll be retracted when GOP retake office.

The other solution is to reduce barriers to trade for insurers and health providers while maintaining industry standards. I did a quick google anyway and stole this from 1 article: ‘According to the Department of Health, a hospital bed costs £400 a day - plus £500 for the operation and £250 for the consultation’. Ofcourse that doesn’t factor in things like lawsuits/overheads into the costing, which you’d have to do as a business but it compares to $5000 per night. You can only conclude there isn’t enough competition because of barriers to trade.

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Well the Labour Party is like that too, with hard left guys like Jeremy Corbyn/Dennis Skinner/Diane Abbott etc and basically red tories like Liz Kendall, Simon Danczuk, with soft left people like Ed Miliband, Yvette Cooper, Andy Burnham in between.

Ok, but they are still a party, not a container like the Democratic Party. You get a tougher time in the former.

We debated this before, and that’s f*cking awful! We had our third child 3 weeks ago and it cost us $10 per night. No wonder USA have the death rate for mothers and babies like a third world country. But reshaping it will take time, the whole system would have to be rebuilt.

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Congrats on the new baby!!

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It’s often said that you can judge a country on how it treats its sick and poor.

We don’t even get bills like that here. Those kind of things are dealt with between care providers and the health insurance companies behind closed doors. As ‘consumers’ we deal with the health insurance companies. It isn’t ‘free’ either. We have to pay monthly premiums here. That’s why I find it a bit ironic when people laugh at the USA, we just carry those cost together as a society.

Thank you :slight_smile:

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Congrats Ocke.

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You look at what is happening to Keith Ellison right now, and you see why the Democrats are a fucking joke.

So a literal white supremacist, who changed his daughters schools because Jews were also going there is now Donald Trump’s chief of staff, and Israel is okay with it. But Keith Ellison, now being smeared by Israeli and their lobbyists for being an anti-Semite.

But instead of backing Ellison up against these cunts and calling out this rank hypocrisy, they are doing all they can to cast doubt on him and suck up to Israel even further.

They don’t fight their corner. If they dont stand for anyone, stand up for anyone, how can they ask anyone to stand up for them? Poor stuff

The thing about Ellison he never said any thing that was false or bad about Jews as a religious people. What he said was actually factual and true, but the establishment democrats don’t want to run the party

Alot of the flak he’s caught has come from his past associations with Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam. Despite denouncing Farrakhan and his past views that isn’t enough for MSM and the leaders of the party.

In this country, A Donald Trump isn’t as heavily scrutinized as a man like Keith Ellison is because he’s a famous white billionaire who happens to be a WASP. There’s a double standard for whites and blacks in this country unfortunately.

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Well the democrips need to realise a black man gave them 8 years in power in the executive branch, and uninspiring white candidates have failed them this millenium.

(Not making a race point but thats state of things.)

Democrats won’t learn it seems, they will nominate yet more uninspiring candidates in bed with big pharma, big oil, wall street, big money interests and blackmail people into voting for them because they are ‘not as bad as the republican!!!’

And when they called out on these many bad things about rheor picks, they start their ‘purity test’ shite, when, like you said, it takes almost nothing to strike a leftist out the running.

Hypocrites. I pray at least they will have learnt from this, and will make Ellison DNC chair.

So do you think Obama was a good prez?

I’d say he did fairly well considering he faced unpresidented (:smile:) levels of obstruction and opposition from hostile Republicans. What did they call it, shutting down the government or some such shit?

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How about his role in Syria? Not saying he’s any worse than any other president in regards to destabilizing the rest of the planet for whatever or whoever’s interest. Just not all that different from anyone else who came before him despite all the hype.

Agreed. They gave him a fucking Nobel peace prize for fuck all reason and he went on to bomb more countries than any other US president (or so I’ve heard), seven in total I believe.

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