Sunday, February 17, 2008

That About Sums It Up

In explaining class warfare, comparing the top 20% in income with the bottom 20% in income, these guys make a compelling argument that the 15x difference is closer to 2x difference.

It's not how much you make, it's how much you consume.

So eloquently explained here


Why I should pay for someone's health insurance so they can afford their iPod is beyond me.
Print Friendly and PDF
Blog Widget by LinkWithin

2 Outbursts:

  1. Although....
    The average American CEO makes anywhere from 600-1500 times what their unionised workers make. That is not the case in Canada and pretty much any other Western power. That is in line with places like Zimbobwai and Columbia. Also, i am always pretty leary of anything by the Cato institute..
    Although I do agree that too many people that are poor spend what money they have inappropriately. Unfortunately we can't legislate what people decide to spend their money on.

    ReplyDelete

  2. I think it's absolutely hysterical how much you generalize. If I believed everything you said I would think all poor people actually owned Denali's with rims,LCD tv's, Ipods, cell phones with exorbitant contracts,smoked cigarettes, had their nails done apparently daily and hell I can't even list the rest. Come on, I get that hyperbole can help make a point but you are getting silly.
    Truly poor people don't have any of these things and you know this.
    The working poor only come to the ER when they have been hit/run over raped/beaten or involved in a work accident and their boss drove them in.

    I did have to laugh when you stated you had no health insurance. You are no different than those that you bitch about.
    You have lots of pretty things you are unwilling to give up to pay for health care and I can hear you already saying but I pay my bills. Yeah, right. You can pay up to a few thousand. What happens if you get hurt and your bill tops out at a hundred grand?
    And you with no insurance because you thought having that pretty shiny thing was more important.
    What happens is you will try to pay that bill but because of the injuries you sustained in your accident you can't work . Your rehab bills are very high and because you need that rehab to get back to full time you have to pay them first. So you start missing a few payments and the interest starts piling up. The phone starts ringing because you got sent to collections. Your prescriptions are costing a fortune so you start picking and choosing your drugs and dosages, then you start failing rehab and then your employer decides they really can't keep your position open any longer.
    So, now you have no job and you apply for disability but you get turned down as everyone always does on the first go round.
    You have to hire a lawyer and appeal . Your student loan now goes into collections along with all your medical bills and finally you get disability and discover it pays eight hundred a month and your mortgage is twelve hundred. You default and declare bankruptcy.

    Now you go to the ER because you can't find a primary care doc willing to take your Medicaid and you have chronic pain because you couldn't afford to finish rehab and you couldn't afford to get that last revision surgery and your doctor is YOU.
    This is the majority of our patients. People who never got the treatment they needed when they needed it and instead are sick from something that should have been prevented.
    And keep up the whining about poor rich people having to pay other peoples bills. Just like those poor rich people pay for all that free elementary and high school education..who do those poor people think we are? when will they cut the strings!! Get your own schools! And the roads! Those damn poor people shouldn't be using the roads the rich people paid for. Those poor old people have no right making rich people pay for their doctors either. And those soldiers...why should rich people have to pay for their housing and medical care for their families and why should veterans who are poor get any help from rich taxpayers? How dare they be poor!
    And why should any American get universal health care, hell it will be just like the VA..crappy service that is only good enough for poor veterans...real Americans should never have to put up with that.
    Honest to God you should listen to yourself. You are incapable of making a coherent rational argument other than poor people are bad bad bad, dirty, evil, bad..did I say bad? Bad poor people.
    I get your frustration, we all feel it in a system that is stretched to it's very limits but let's stop blaming poor people and lets put the blame where it belongs.
    It belongs with us, health care providers.
    We have for years and years now spent all our time talking about how we can make people better. We have bestowed upon ourselves almost mythical powers and the public bought into it. We have taught everyone that there is never any reason for sickness of any kind.
    We have medicalized the common cold.We have a drug for everything and with every drug we have the instruction to see your doctor.
    Because your doctor holds the key to feeling better.
    No one is allowed to feel grief or disappointment. We have medicalized emotions.
    You have an itch we have an ointment.
    Why are we blaming people for coming to us for what we consider trivial problems when we tell them we have the solution for incredibly trivial problems?. No one can decide what an emergency is anymore because television has taught that everything and anything can be an emergency. Watch Sanjay Gupta on a sunday morning and report to the doc on monday if you can wait better yet get to the ER..
    The only way to truly stop the madness is to stop telling the public we have all the answers. Maybe we can start telling them they have some of the answers too.

    We made people feel helpless because it made us feel powerful. A whole generation or two of doctors have destroyed what the previous docs knew. That most conditions don't need a doctor. Most conditions run their course without any bad side effects.
    Doctors used to be for sick people...it's time to start telling people they aren't sick enough for a doctor.
    But no one has the guts.It's easier to make up some scape goat and blame them.
    And don't go on and on about resusing old people..you don't have to, everyone knows there is no legal requirement to if the effort is futile. But no one has the guts to go to the family and tell them it's futile do they? Because doctors can't say futile out loud...nothing a doc does can be futile can it?
    It's the fault of doctors that ICU's are filled to overflowing with elderly train wrecks. Docs that couldn't say no. Surgeons that couldn't say no.
    Do you really think people would choose that end for themselves if they were told the truth about what would happen to them in that ICU?
    But we are incapable of telling that truth. In fact some of us can no longer see the horror in the ICU anymore.
    We are the culprits in this crime.

    ReplyDelete

By Posting Here I Promise To Do Something Nice For Someone Today

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)