If anyone knows of anywhere that is taking applications for a pundit, would you please point me there? Because I have decided that I would make an awesome pundit
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I know a lot of people who are in the middle ground, not poor enough to get government health insurance, but not wealthy enough to pay for their own. Most of these people are students, or working retail. (Or both.) They're paying their rent and buying food okay, but they couldn't afford an extra $200/month, or whatever they'd be forced to pay. You -can- get a modicum of health insurance pretty cheap, but it's not going to cover more than the basics. If you need medication for something, for example, the co-pay is usually pretty high, and a lot of things aren't covered.
I can't attest to the quality of care/availability of doctors. That's something we'd have to look to England and Canada to see. Again, it's likely that you'd have private hospitals and specialists not covered under the government care, so the wealthy would still be getting better care than those who couldn't afford insurance -- I think that's the situation in England and Canada. But it's possible that what's keeping the pay down where you're living is that they're taking a lot of people who can't pay for their care, and they're losing money that way. If that's the case, than universal health care could actually bring doctor pay up.
There are fewer specialists because fewer people can pay for them, and it's probably always going to be that way, no matter the state of our health care system. Specialists will gravitate towards wealthier areas, where people can afford to pay what they feel they're worth.
When people choose not to have health insurance (or can't get it), it's not just their problem. As I mentioned in my original post, they don't go to doctors, wait 'till they're really, really sick, and then go to the emergency room -- which clogs up emergency rooms and lowers the quality of care. In addition, they generally can't pay the hospital bills, which means the hospital loses money, isn't able to pay doctors as much, and again loses quality of care.
Not going to physicals and checkups means that they don't practice any form of preventative medicine. Which, again, means more emergencies (for example -- someone who isn't tested for heart problems, isn't prescribed heart medication, isn't advised about lifestyle changes, has multiple heart attacks) and thus more hospital time for people who can't pay.
But regardless of the above, it's still important to bear in mind that if McCain gets to be president, Roe vs. Wade gets overturned. The woman he's chosen as his VP is pro-life, and takes the extreme stance that abortion should be illegal, with no exception for rape or incest.
I don't know why people keep saying that about abortion. Right now, there is a one justice advantage in terms of overturning it. McCain and Palin have both stated that their goal is to get it overturned, and while I think McCain is probably neutral on the issue, Palin is all for it. And McCain, who probably doesn't feel very strongly either way, is sure to see the benefit to his political career in doing something that will make him a living legend and forever hero in the eyes of the religious right.
Most of the Supreme Court justices are pretty old, including Ginsburg, who is one of the pro-choice supporters. There are theories that the next President might get as many as three appointments. If true, and the ones who retire are replaced with right wing cronies -- not entirely improbable -- then they're certain to revisit the issue. They will be under intense political pressure to do so (and indeed, some of the appointments might be back-room conditional on their willingness to push for a revisitation) and if revisited, it will be overturned, and it will be very hard to reinstate, since a democrat would have to wait until enough of the right justices retired to give them an advantage again. You'll notice how young Bush's appointees are.
Roe vs. Wade hasn't been around all that long. I've heard a lot of the old school feminists talk about how girls who grew up with the rights that they fought for take them for granted, and don't understand that the people who were so reluctant to relinquish them are, in some cases, still in power. If we don't keep on fighting for ourselves, they will take back what they were forced to give.
I can't attest to the quality of care/availability of doctors. That's something we'd have to look to England and Canada to see. Again, it's likely that you'd have private hospitals and specialists not covered under the government care, so the wealthy would still be getting better care than those who couldn't afford insurance -- I think that's the situation in England and Canada. But it's possible that what's keeping the pay down where you're living is that they're taking a lot of people who can't pay for their care, and they're losing money that way. If that's the case, than universal health care could actually bring doctor pay up.
There are fewer specialists because fewer people can pay for them, and it's probably always going to be that way, no matter the state of our health care system. Specialists will gravitate towards wealthier areas, where people can afford to pay what they feel they're worth.
When people choose not to have health insurance (or can't get it), it's not just their problem. As I mentioned in my original post, they don't go to doctors, wait 'till they're really, really sick, and then go to the emergency room -- which clogs up emergency rooms and lowers the quality of care. In addition, they generally can't pay the hospital bills, which means the hospital loses money, isn't able to pay doctors as much, and again loses quality of care.
Not going to physicals and checkups means that they don't practice any form of preventative medicine. Which, again, means more emergencies (for example -- someone who isn't tested for heart problems, isn't prescribed heart medication, isn't advised about lifestyle changes, has multiple heart attacks) and thus more hospital time for people who can't pay.
But regardless of the above, it's still important to bear in mind that if McCain gets to be president, Roe vs. Wade gets overturned. The woman he's chosen as his VP is pro-life, and takes the extreme stance that abortion should be illegal, with no exception for rape or incest.
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We'll have to "agree to disagree" on abortion--I think it's all talk, they couldn't possibly overturn R -v- W.
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Most of the Supreme Court justices are pretty old, including Ginsburg, who is one of the pro-choice supporters. There are theories that the next President might get as many as three appointments. If true, and the ones who retire are replaced with right wing cronies -- not entirely improbable -- then they're certain to revisit the issue. They will be under intense political pressure to do so (and indeed, some of the appointments might be back-room conditional on their willingness to push for a revisitation) and if revisited, it will be overturned, and it will be very hard to reinstate, since a democrat would have to wait until enough of the right justices retired to give them an advantage again. You'll notice how young Bush's appointees are.
Roe vs. Wade hasn't been around all that long. I've heard a lot of the old school feminists talk about how girls who grew up with the rights that they fought for take them for granted, and don't understand that the people who were so reluctant to relinquish them are, in some cases, still in power. If we don't keep on fighting for ourselves, they will take back what they were forced to give.
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