the stairway to health reform

[kixie]

Oh God, if you could see my eyes rolling you'd probably think that I'm having some kind of fit, but really all that's happened is an unfortunate channel-flipping session on US telly.

First of all, can anyone get on telly these days? Like, in privately funded 'commercials' that puke propaganda at people? "Hey Ma, I'm on television" suddenly

Comments

[ivory_goddess]

What I really don't get about all the fuss is that the 'socialist' government-owned healthcare option is just that - an option. Even if it gets voted in, it wil be one of several choices people can have, so those who love their current insurance can keep it. He's not advocating a wholesale switch to an NHS-style system. The insurance cos will remain. They'll just have some more competiton - and isn't competition the bedrock of capitalism?

I swear, if it wasn't for The Daily Show* I'd think the entire US had gone mad... probably 'cos their insurance wouldn't pay for the meds...

* and sensible people like you, of course...

[kixie]

There's also Bill Maher's show, which is quite funny (using random dolls to imitate Sarah Palin and someone else as if they were sharing a house, with Sarah Palin saying "Ooh, don't go in the bedroom, my kids are having sex in there!" nearly made me wee from laughter. That and "I say any stupid shit that pops into my head!") and a few others.

People here just hear the words "socialism" or anything variation thereof and grab their rifles and head down the town hall shrieking. It's mental. Well, the idiots at least. Spending so long in Princeton - the bastion of economists, including John Nash and Paul Krugman and Uwe Reinhardt and whatnot - is different. The people here never SHUT UP about health care reform, but talk about it in ways that fly right over my head and into the ether.
But on the news - who are these people? What the heck? It's mass hysteria, it really is.

[zenithed]

Surely there's such a thing as advertising standards though, without being in contradiction of free speech? Perhaps there could be some kind of fact-checking process before these messages are broadcast.

Of course that would probably be shouted down as government interference...

[zenithed]

Presumably there must be limits to advertising scams or get-rich-quick schemes or what have you, even if they're not medical in nature? I'd say this issue should fit either criteria, given that it's both killing people and ripping them off in the process.

The sad thing is that groups with vested interests in either direction are precisely the last people you should be getting your information from.

[zenithed]

making her wait six months for a brain tumour treatment

What she neglects to mention is that this wasn't a cancerous tumour, and she was on the waiting list because it was benign and not life threatening. Ah well, I'm sure the money she's been paid by the insurance lobby has paid for her jumping the queue.

[kixie]

Is that true?? I wondered if it were something like that! I thought, surely, for something like a glioma or other astrocytoma, they'd do things IMMEDIATELY. But if you have a benign tumour in a region of the brain that won't cause things like sight or hearing loss or convulsions or whatnot, then leaving it for six months is actually no biggie. When I saw the commercial I wondered about that - they didn't say anything other than BRAIN TUMOUR ('cos it's a pretty scary phrase, although some people can live with certain brain tumours for upwards of 25 years) and then totally neglected to say how much the treatment here cost her.

In fact, I kind of wondered if her treatment was being paid for by the idiots who are funding that commercial... *cough* Republican Party *cough*

[thepaintedone]

ISTR hearing recently that 25% of the American population has appeared on TV.

Ok, half of that was probably Jerry Springer, but even so.

[kixie]

*LAUGHS*

And they were all somehow related...

[mjl]

"Seriously? I'm kind of relieved that when I go back to England I won't have to hear the phrase 'health care reform' at least fifty times daily."

Er... yeah. Might have died down a bit by when you're back, but you might find you still hear about it maybe ten times instead of fifty...

[mjl]

Actually, thinking about it, you probably wouldn't, cause you don't watch TV much, do you?

[kixie]

Nope. Been seeing more telly here than ever 'cos my parents always have it on when they're downstairs, so if I join, then it's on. Hence catching these idiotic commercials. Was watching something with dad.

BIG reminder why I don't watch telly, tbh.

[moral_vacuum]

But...but...that would involve avoiding Jon Stewart, Steven Colbert and the Huffington Post!