It's practically cargo cult mentality to imagine that collectivism is going to somehow improve the economic plight of a nation.
If people can't afford healthcare when they are free to find the best possible deal, they certainly won't be able to afford it when there is a big government bureaucracy to pay along with the medical system. Taking money out of everyone's salary doesn't "provide" healthcare. It just forces people to accept whatever the government wants to dish out.
When the health system is private, government doesn't get involved.
But when the government controls the healthcare system, suddenly it is in the governments economic interest to give less healthcare for more money.
Your words are golden my friend. The more private and local things are, the better they work. The more centralized and controlled things are, the worse they work.
In case anybody thinks European countries have wonderful socialized medicine, let me tell you about my experiences here in France.
I lived in many countries before coming to France.
I was amazed to find out that healthcare in poorer nations is remarkably good and low cost. That's because there is neither socialized medicine nor health insurance. People pay from their own pockets and competition acts to keep the price low and the quality high.
Health insurance drives up the price because healthcare costs include not only doctors but also the entire insurance industry and its thousands of employees and the shareholders of the companies and their big bonuses.
Private health insurance inevitably doubles the cost to patients.
But even worse is socialized medicine such as here in France.
As with private insurance, workers are taxed whether they go to the doctor or not. What's more, nothing is "free". Patients pay for every visit. The cost for an MD visit (out of the patients pocket) is now about 30 dollars, and that's above and beyond the 20% of their salary that is taken out every month. What's more many treatments are not reimbursed, and there are special tax charges to fund past over-runs adding another 5 or 6% of one's salary to the total cost.
And what's more, so many things are not reimbursed that most people end up buying a "mutuelle" insurance that costs about 50 dollars per month just to pay for all the things the government doesn't reimburse. And woe be unto the patient who ends up in the hospital without a mutuelle insurance. He will be targeted for over-pricing in every way.
Since the government likes to hold onto as much money as possible, hospitals are given draconian budgets to operate on. Public hospitals are old and in bad repair. They are not air-conditioned and are poorly heated. In order to even stay in business they routinely practice abusive billing practices.
For instance, I went into a hospital emergency room at 1 AM on Sunday and left at 9 AM on Tuesday. The hospital billed the government and my mutuelle insurance as if I had been in the hospital for 4 entire days. (counting Saturday when I wasn't there at all and Tuesday for which I left as soon as the office opened). When I pointed this out the hospital admissions lady admitted it was incorrect but she explained that it was the only way the hospital could make ends meet. She said it wouldn't cost me anything because the government and insurance company would pay. But I hope people are intelligent enough to realize that it all comes out of our pockets.
This same sort of thing happens to private doctors. They are pressured to limit diagnostics and treatment.
In my personal experience I suffered with a serious and worsening brain condition for 15 years because an MD was too afraid to prescribe a badly needed brain scan even when I specifically requested one.
This was not an isolated case. In fact, people have to really fight to get any sort of serious treatment. If one doesn't fight they end up just getting a lot of useless pills to take and no serious diagnostics nor treatment.
Social medical systems are under-diagnosed, under-treated, but over-dosed.
That's telling me that Canadians are being highly taxed to pay for such expensive procedures whether they need them or not.
It's telling me that their social system is probably running up a big deficit that will later be slammed upon the taxpayers as a debt that has to be repaid by a surcharge over and above the normal health insurance charges.
It's telling me that opticians will automatically prescribe the more expensive procedure rather than glasses because it means more profits for themselves, thus ensuring that costs will go up and up.
What baffles me is how people can say things like "the universal health care provided to every citizen".
The government never "provides" anything. It takes from the people and it gives some portion of what it takes back in the form of entitlements and services. Generally far less than half of what it takes in.
There has never ever been a case of the government giving back more than it takes.
If people paid for their own eye surgery and healthcare instead of running it all through the government's leaky pipeline they'd be much better off.
In a free economy, when people need medical care they pay the doctor. Competition works to keep quality high and costs low.
In a socialized economy there is a huge bureaucracy to pay as well as the doctors. And since the government controls the money, there is also massive corruption and waste. So costs are twice as high.
Private health insurance is really just a privatized version of social medicine. It makes costs higher so its effect is negative.
It is a big myth to imagine that insurance, whether private or public, somehow makes health costs more affordable. It has the opposite effect. It doubles the cost of healthcare.
It it gets warmer, blame global warming. If it gets colder, blame global warming. If the glaciers recede, blame global warming. If the glaciers advance and calve, call it "ice loss" and blame global warming No matter what the weather does, blame global warming.
The AIDS epidemic in Africa was directly linked to a WHO smallpox inoculation program.
The greatest spread of HIV infection coincided precisely with the most intense immunization programs, with the number of people immunised being as follows: Zaire 36,878,000; Zambia 19,060,000; Tanzania 14,972,000; Uganda 11,616,000; Malawai 8,118,000; Ruanda 3,382,000 and Burundi 3,274,000. Brazil, the only South American country covered in the smallpox eradication campaign, had by far the highest incidence of Aids in that region.
And at the very same time AIDS also appeared in the US and was directly linked to a Hepatitis B vaccination trial that specifically targeted only gay men from New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.
Perhaps the money spent on vaccination programs is actually money spent on selective depopulation.
Do you really ???????? Can you explain why you believe that????
Mitt Romney has publicly been a longtime member of the CFR (although his name has recently disappeared from CFR websites and he has denied being a member when asked at a press conference).
The CFR certainly doesn't allow its members to "champion smaller government or individual rights". On the contrary, the CFR is a globalist organization and champions collectivism and global government.
Romney supports: - Guantanamo Bay torture center, - indefinite detention and denial of human rights to prisoners (including American citizens) without trial, - interventionist foreign policy, - collective world governance - etc etc etc
And on these points his policy is identical to both Bush and Obama.
Romney is no more a champion of individual rights than was Bush or Obama.
First on the issue of the parties being "polar opposites".
Part of that stems from a sort of deliberate disorientation as to where the poles are.
We have been conditioned to consider reactionary fascism to be on the extreme right and radical socialism to be on the extreme left of the political spectrum.
However, fascism is actually a form of socialism, and the more extreme the two poles become, the more they resemble each other. A totalitarian regime is the same whether it calls itself radical or reactionary. Once again only the rhetoric changes.
The real poles of the political spectrum are not what we have been taught to consider as right and left.
Instead the real poles deal with the question of individual rights versus collective control.
The extremes are total individual liberty (anarchy) on the right, and total collective control (totalitarianism) on the left.
The ideal balance between the two will of course be somewhere in the middle...enough collectivism to assure protection and organization but not so much that the individual is crushed under the weight of the collective.
In US politics today, both parties are near the totalitarian pole. Neither champions individual rights. Instead they bicker about what is the best way for the government to steamroll over the individuals under their control.
Nobody is championing smaller government, more personal rights, less international intervention, decentralization of power etc etc etc etc.
Instead we are given the choice of bombing and invading countries in the name of world peace or in the name of US might. And we are told that the entirely semantic difference between the two choices somehow represents the two poles of political thought.
The facts are that both parties represent exactly the same power structure and exactly the same agenda.
Examples:
Bush began setting up the framework for an executive dictatorship. Obama not only continued the trend, he is already acting as if such a dictatorship exists.
Bush started all the wars (that channel so much tax money to his cronies in the war industry). Obama keeps it all rolling (in total disrespect of his own promises).
The rhetoric is somewhat different. Bush claimed the wars were about punishing enemies and extending US influence. Obama claims they are about establishing peace. But other than the rhetoric the policy is exactly the same.
Bush claimed that the needed enhanced powers (police powers etc) in order to protect the nation from outside attack. Obama justifies overstepping his authority by claiming it's necessary to cut through partisan bickering and bureaucratic red tape for the sake of the economy or people's need or whatever. But the result is the same. The presidency becomes more and more powerful and the rest of government becomes just a rubber stamp.
THERE IS NO REAL DIFFERENCE.
The CFR chooses the candidates for both parties and funds them into getting the nomination. And they are perfectly able to rig the election if need be.
Although, since they own both candidates, it really doesn't usually matter too much to them which one gets the office. The biggest problem being lost time as a new government gets formed and organized. So they generally try to keep their puppets in place for eight years before switching parties. And as the change approaches they load as much blame as possible onto the incumbent. That way the new puppet starts office with more support.
Maybe when the US pulls out of Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, and Central Asia, and gives the southwest states back to Mexico. Until then, I wouldn't count on it.
Well, to be fair, let's not forget Bush's voter fraud that included misleading ballots, early poll closings, lost absentee ballots, lies used to deprive voters of the right to vote, etc etc.
Both parties cheat.
But this time around I don't even think voter fraud will be the problem.
Obama can't win, nor even pretend to win. Nobody would believe it.
His only hope, and what has been the plan all along, is to create a crisis and use it as an excuse to set up martial law.
Both parties had a hand in preparing for it. Both parties are in on it.
Sometimes the dots are so close together you don't even have to connect them in order to see the pattern that's emerging.
This year alone, in preparation for seizing dictatorial power, Obama has already done the following.
1. On March 22, by Executive Order , Obama prepared to seize control of all industry in the US in the event of a national emergency.
2. On June 25, Obama declared a national emergency, claiming that the Russian Republic may be selling plutonium to terrorists.
I, BARACK OBAMA, ... find that the risk of nuclear proliferation... continues to constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States, and hereby declare a national emergency to deal with that threat.
3. On July 6, Obama decreed himself the right to seize all communications in the country in the event of a national emergency.
Other Obamaniac Executive Orders leading towards dictatorship.
EO 10990 Allows FEMA to seize all modes of transportation and control of highways and seaports.
EO 10997 Allows FEMA to take over all electrical power, gas, petroleum, fuels, and minerals.
EO 11000 Allows FEMA to mobilize civilians into work brigades under government supervision.
EO 11002 Authorizes the Postmaster General to conduct forced registration of all persons.
EO 11003 Allows FEMA to take over all airports and aircraft, including civilian and commercial aircraft.
EO 11004 Allows the Housing and Finance Authority to seize all housing and relocate entire populations.
EO 11005 Allows the government to seize railroads, boats, inland waterways, and public storage facilities.
And let's not forget Bush's contributions toward dictatorship.
The Patriot Act allows law enforcement to ignore constitutional rights.
The Homeland Security act places all law enforcement under the direct control of the president.
The Military Commissions Act allows for denying all civil rights to anyone considered to be an "enemy" by the president. The person can be arrested, held indefinitely, tortured, and even executed, without a trial, without access to a lawyer, without any notification to kin, etc.
Bush Executive Order 51 allows the President to dissolve Congress and the Supreme Court and to assume their powers in the event of a National Emergency.
There is no "right" choice. But Obama is certainly the greater "wrong" choice. It's a very sad state of affairs. But we have to choose the lesser of two weevils.
More recently it's the land of Nixon, Kissinger, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, and Obama. And the constitution has been exchanged for a federal dictatorship.
It's not like there is any freedom left to preserve. If the US wants freedom it's going to have to fight to get it back. And frankly I don't think they're up to the challenge.
Take the Wiemar Republic for example. Due to the government's policy of printing more and more money in order to pay off heavy war reparations, the value of the mark went into a tailspin. Soon everybody in the country was a millionaire. They had a lot more money than they had ever had before but, at the same time they were poorer than they had ever been before because the money had lost its buying power.
In the US a million dollars today buys only what a hundred thousand dollars would have bought in 1980.
So even though there were a lot of new millionaires in the last 30 years or so, it doesn't really mean that the country was all that much wealthier. Just that the dollar was losing value.
The total wealth in any economy is 100%. If somebody loses relative wealth, somebody else gains relative wealth.
If a vast majority loses wealth, a tiny minority gains that wealth.
Any claims to the contrary are just disinformation.
And there's plenty of that.
Those who control society don't like to have their devices exposed;
RayfromUSA Forum Posts (6,611)
RE: Why are NZ Navy ships banned from Pearl Harbour?
Love us, love our WMDs.