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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: sylvester80 who wrote (480220)	10/22/2003 9:13:57 PM
From: MSI	Respond to of 769667

The unpublished part of that equation is that no higher taxes are needed. With single-payer healthcare total costs drop by 1/3rd by clearing out the predators in the middle driving up costs. None of the forces in Washington want that, because that extra 1/3 of $1.4 trillion is skimmed into their pockets. Example: Lipitor in Hong Kong costs $130 for a year's prescription, and $150 per month here in the US. Pharma cos get free the $25 billion in gov't research on drugs that they then sell back to Americans at 100X their cost. If you take a pie chart of healthcare 30 years ago, the healthcare provder cost is over half. Now, the doc gets 11%, the rest to drugs and other corp. interests, all of which are negotiated downward in a single-payer negotiation in nearly every other industrialized country in the world. The single-payer structure provides the only representative of a patient. In the current predatory system, American citizens have no representation whatever. Another example - I got a minor benign growth looked at a couple weeks ago. The doc says she'll take it out. I get home and Google research shows there's a cream that makes the body reject growths like that in 30 days. I call the doc, who tells me "yes, but that's not the Gold Standard, I just want the best for you". "Well since you said it's benign why not try the cream first before surgery?" "Oh, that's not something that's a Gold Standard. If you want, try the Moh's Treatment, call this specialist". This is where it gets interesting -- the specialist has to be coaxed into the description of a 4 to 8 hr treatment, costing, get this, $5,000 to $15,000... So here's what happens in our medical world -- the only difference between $150 treatment and a $15,000 treatment is the person you talk to, YOUR LEVEL OF FEAR AND LACK OF KNOWLEDGE, and its in their interest to jack the price to the max, like an auto mechanic, since you have no one to trust but them, unless you do your own homework. Luckily, I have a brother who's a doc, who tells me he uses the cream all the time, it works great. The medical-industrial complex is like any other lawless gang, such as the military-industrial complex, or the Hell's Angels. If you don't run with your own gang, you'll get mugged, whether it's $5,000 coffeepots, $15,000 unnecessary surgeries, or robbing your wallet. When the gov't abrogates its oversight responsibilities it's a jungle. The cost of DOD is similarly too high by 50% or more, judging by any audits you want to name. Rummie disclosed that $2 TRILLION was "missing" earlier this year. It's a joke. If we clear out the predators and parasites in Washington we won't need to raise taxes, and we'll have the same experience Dean had in Vermont, increased services, balanced budget, and healthier populace.

To: sylvester80 who wrote (480220)	10/22/2003 9:22:20 PM
From: jlallen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

LOL!! Yeah...I hope whoever the demolib nominee IS runs on the "we need higher taxes" platform..... HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

To: sylvester80 who wrote (480220)	10/22/2003 11:54:17 PM
From: Victor Lazlo	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769667

<<Americans understand that higher taxes are needed to both remove the deficit and provide health care. >> That is what ruined california. Ever-higher taxes to give the govt more and more power. Try again, genius!

To: sylvester80 who wrote (480220)	10/23/2003 12:56:13 AM
From: American Spirit	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

Higher taxes have never won a single election in the history of this country. Dont fool yourself. Take away all the Bush tax cuts and you're letting GW waltz right back into power, no matter what the logic behind it. Mondale told the people he would raise their taxes and reagan creamed him on that. Not much has changed.

To: sylvester80 who wrote (480220)	10/23/2003 1:30:08 AM
From: Selectric II	Respond to of 769667

The same skewed poll showed that once you start factoring in the realities, e.g. what the coverage will actually be, and what the costs are, and lack of choice of doctors, support fell dramatically. They didn't ask the most relevant questions at all, e.g. the real tax costs vs. the real benefits received. In other words, that question is worthless, unless people think a 100% tax rate would be worthwhile in return for a "free" annual checkup for everybody. Think again. If asked that question, support would be 0.000005% (just you lefties on this thread. LOL). The questions in this "poll" were asked in a calculated order to elicit an overall response, then follow-ups added caveats, conditions, and alternatives, so the media could highlight the results of any particular question totally out of context, thereby producing the headline results for any story they wanted. If the questions had been asked in reverse order, the results would have been dramatically different. But, unlike a test you take in school, they didn't ask at the end whether those polled would like to go back and change any answers in light of the later questions. It was the same skewed poll that you numbnuts were pointing to last week regarding the war and Bush's popularity. The media only saw fit to play up the health care questions this week, once the headlines from the earlier numbers faded. And you think there's no media conspiracy? Ha. I predict that a new firestorm of stories highlighting "an ABC/Washington Post news poll" about the Pope, his handling of the Catholic Church's sex scandal, and his overall effectiveness will be in the headlines soon, because that was another area where multiple questions, with calculated followups of a general and specific nature were asked. The media will have several angles to choose from in concocting their stories. As an aside, the accuracy of this intentionally skewed "poll" should be called into question by the illiteracy of the pollsters, if for no other reason. The questioner could hardly speak English, and had to repeat some questions several times, phrasing them differently each time they were read. I also have to wonder how many of the answers were even recorded properly.