Batman can't defeat this joker

[Goodwill]

Its a very simple example you gave RidgeDad and unfortunately our liberal comrades still won't get the true meaning of what is happening to our country.

I am so sick and tired of everyone making criminals out of CEO's, sure there are crooks among them. Funny how some us do not see our most understanding, forgiving, giving, loving etc... leaders (choke) raping the taxpayer for unseen profits in the name of helping the "poor"---said in a John Edwards southern drawl.

Oh yeah they are going to save the planet through taxation as well.

[once a runner]

That's a nice little story RidgeDad....and that's just what it is....a story. There is absolutely no proof that ever happened. I'm sure I could come up with a nice little story that supports socialism as well. In case you forgot, I do not support socialism for economics. I was merely pointing out how much of our society is based on socialism. Perhaps you prefer to build your own roads, educate your own kids and investigate your own crimes?

Your sympathy for the super rich is indeed touching. I don't know where the right line is for how much someone should be taxed, but here is a story that is actually true. We've all heard about the good old days of the 1950's, right? Ike was president, there was low inflation, low unemployment and most households had a single wage earner. Wouldn't we love to return that kind of economy? The tax rate on the richest Americans was over 90%! Did people quit trying to be rich back then? Did the industrial age come to a grinding halt? Did technological innovation cease to exist? Somehow jobs were created and the country thrived. By the way, Clinton also raised taxes (albeit slightly) and the economy did not suffer in the 90's. There was a actually a yearly surplus when he left office. Of course with Bush and his tax cuts, it didn't take long to get that back into red numbers.

Goodwill, how did I make a criminal out of a CEO? I merely pointed out that their income has increased at a far, far greater rate than that of the average worker. I just have no sympathy for millionaires whose tax rate goes up.

[Goodwill]

That's a nice little story RidgeDad....and that's just what it is....a story. There is absolutely no proof that ever happened. I'm sure I could come up with a nice little story that supports socialism as well. In case you forgot, I do not support socialism for economics. I was merely pointing out how much of our society is based on socialism. Perhaps you prefer to build your own roads, educate your own kids and investigate your own crimes?




Goodwill, how did I make a criminal out of a CEO? I merely pointed out that their income has increased at a far, far greater rate than that of the average worker. I just have no sympathy for millionaires whose tax rate goes up.

I would love to hear a story that does support socialism. Well guess what our leaders plan is to socialize everything including the economy. Do your homework on you last comment.

I don't think I did oar.

[Goodwill]

OAR--you must be still looking for a socialism success story. Please take your time.

[vman]

“The problem with socialism is that you eventually,
run out of other people’s money.” – Margaret Thatcher

I was always impressed by that Maggie.....some more pearls:

"I think we've been through a period where too many people have been given to understand that if they have a problem, it's the government's job to cope with it. 'I have a problem, I'll get a grant.' 'I'm homeless, the government must house me.' They're casting their problem on society. And you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It's our duty to look after ourselves and then, also, to look after our neighbour......."There's no such thing as entitlement, unless someone has first met an obligation."

"Many of our troubles are due to the fact that our people turn to politicians for everything."

"Marxists get up early to further their cause. We must get up even earlier to defend our freedom."

"When all the objectives of government include the achievement of equality - other than equality before the law - that government poses a threat to liberty."

"Let me give you my vision: A man's right to work as he will, to spend what he earns, to own property, to have the state as servant and not as master. These are the British inheritance. They are the essence of a free country, and on that freedom all of our other freedoms depend."

[once a runner]

Goodwill, sorry my online activity doesn't coincide with yours. Did you not read my original post? I thought it gave numerous examples of how parts of our society are socialized. I don't have to resort to "stories" that may or may not be true.

Now, I will say for the 3rd time that I don't believe a socialized economic system would work. However, I do think some aspects of socialism are good and see no reason why those principles could not be applied to health care. After all, we already have two forms of socialized medicine in this country....medicare and the V.A. It's government run and all those who take part basically are entitled to the same benefits. Like any program of that magnitude, it is not perfect, but then again neither is private insurance.

I like a system that if a person loses their job they will not lose their health insurance to boot. I like a system that will cover all people and not just the ones that insurance companies feel are qualified. Try to to get private insurance if you have a "pre-existing" condition. If you cost too much for the private insurance companies, they will drastically raise your rates or drop you. Who am I kidding, they will drastically raise your rates no matter who you are.

[RidgeDad]

Goodwill, sorry my online activity doesn't coincide with yours. Did you not read my original post? I thought it gave numerous examples of how parts of our society are socialized. I don't have to resort to "stories" that may or may not be true.

Now, I will say for the 3rd time that I don't believe a socialized economic system would work. However, I do think some aspects of socialism are good and see no reason why those principles could not be applied to health care. After all, we already have two forms of socialized medicine in this country....medicare and the V.A. It's government run and all those who take part basically are entitled to the same benefits. Like any program of that magnitude, it is not perfect, but then again neither is private insurance.

I like a system that if a person loses their job they will not lose their health insurance to boot. I like a system that will cover all people and not just the ones that insurance companies feel are qualified. Try to to get private insurance if you have a "pre-existing" condition. If you cost too much for the private insurance companies, they will drastically raise your rates or drop you. Who am I kidding, they will drastically raise your rates no matter who you are.

I told you up front that I didn't know if the story was true, but the message of the story says a lot. I should have figured that you would grasp on to whether it was true or not instead of looking at the message.

Anyway - let me ask you a question.

Should your version of government run health care cover illegal aliens?

[once a runner]

Ridgedad, I didn't say your story was untrue and I didn't grasp only to that fact. If you'll notice I only wrote one line about your little story and talked about some other things regarding health care, none of which you cared to address.

I understand your example of socialism just fine. Just because an example can be applied to the classroom doesn't mean it can be applied everywhere. I certainly don't believe any self respecting teacher would ever try such an experiment with his or her class and I don't believe those would be the results, but I do understand the point of the story just fine.

Once again, there are aspects of socialism that work just fine is this society. Do you believe we should do away with public libraries? When it comes to building infrastructure, protecting the public, educating the public, etc. then socialist principles work well. I also believe it would work well with health care.

As I pointed out earlier, we already have government run health care with medicare an the VA. Would you prefer we did away with medicare? Can you imagine senior citizens trying to get health care from a private insurance carrier after they retire? It would be next to impossible for them to get affordable health care at that time in their life.

The illegal alien issue is not an easy one. Do they have health care now? I don't think so. Do they receive health care when they need it? I think most of them do. I don't see what would change with government run health care. No, they shouldn't receive it on taxpayer money, but at the same time, I don't believe it is ethically or morally right to turn them away if they require immediate medical attention. If you were an ER doctor would you turn someone away who required immediate medical attention if they could not prove they were a citizen?

One of the dirty little secrets in Washington is that neither side wants to resolve the illegal alien issue. Both sides have had the majority in recent history and neither has acted when they had the opportunity. The truth is illegal aliens are good for business. Businesses can hire them cheap and increase profits. They do not want to see that come to an end. After all, it's big business that has run Washington for years.

[vman]

you make some salient points oar...this was emailed to me while on vaca, read last week:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said that “illegal immigrants are not covered” in the health care reform legislation that is now working its way through House committees. But when asked about illegal immigrants who go to public hospitals for care, Pelosi told CNN’s State of the Nation on Sunday the law requires that they be treated.

The cost of treating illegal aliens amounts to nearly $11 billion a year, according to calculations done by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), a non-profit group that opposes illegal immigration. And that cost is not expected to go away if a health insurance reform bill becomes law.

“If you’re in this country illegally, should you be able to get health care?” CNN’s John King asked Pelosi. “No, illegal immigrants are not covered by this plan,” she replied.

“And so what happens to a public hospital then, if they walk into the emergency room? The hospital I was at this week, they said, you know, they do 6,000 births a year there and 70 percent of them are for undocumented [patients],” said King.

“I don’t know about that,” said Pelosi. “But I do know that the law requires that if somebody comes in off the street and needs care, that is extended. What we see in this legislation is that people will have access to affordable health care, and it will diminish the number of people going into those private, public hospitals in the manner in which you described.”

According to FAIR’s Director of Special Projects Jack Martin, illegal immigrants cost federal and state governments an estimated $10.7 billion a year in health care spending. The numbers are contained in a report that FAIR plans to publish in the near future.

“The numbers that I’ve been running come up to a total of $10.7 billion a year,” Martin told CNSNews.com. Those costs include the cost of so-called “anchor babies” – babies born to illegal immigrant parents in U.S. hospitals, almost always at taxpayers’ expense.

Martin said that he included this cost in his estimate because while the newborns are technically U.S. citizens, taxpayers would never have had to pay their mothers’ medical bills had they not illegally entered the country.

“If the illegal immigrants were prevented from coming into the country or were encouraged to leave the country, that cost would disappear,” said Martin. “Emergency medical care for the delivery of children is the biggest [cost].”

Each anchor baby costs taxpayers an estimated $10,000 each on average, Martin said. These costs are usually paid through Medicaid, the federal program designed to aid America’s poor.

“It’s the same [cost] as any other Medicaid birth, it’s the delivery expenses that average in the neighborhood of about $10,000 per delivery,” he said.

Emergency room care for adults is another “significant” part of illegals’ overall burden, Martin said, one that is primarily borne by states, which subsidize the hospitals whose emergency rooms must treat illegal immigrants, no matter how minor their illness might be.

“It’s a fairly significant contribution,” Martin said, “it comes out of the pocket of the states for the most part because of the fact that it is not covered by Medicaid. The federal government has had a program of partial reimbursement of those expenses but that hasn’t been renewed [by this Congress]. It didn’t begin to cover those expenses [anyway].”

That $10.7 billion is not spread evenly throughout the country, Martin explained, but is borne primarily by states with high populations of illegal aliens -- states such as California, Texas, and Florida.

“In terms of locations, it basically flows with where the largest concentration of illegal immigrants are,” said Martin. “For example, California is the largest and just within the state – not including federal monies – I get that [cost] at $1.6 billion per year.”

In fact, state governments bear the heaviest burden for subsidizing the health care of illegal immigrants. Martin said he calculated that, all told, states pay $6.9 billion per year to care for their illegal immigrant populations.

“The estimates of the costs that are paid by the states in total run to about $6.9 billion,” he said. “The difference between that and the over $10 billion figure is the amount that is paid out of federal funds.”

Martin’s figures are similar to those reported in a 2004 study published by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), which showed that illegals accounted for $6.4 billion of federal health care spending – the CIS study did not examine states expenditures.

The CIS study did include federal programs for which illegal immigrants are legally barred, such as Medicaid. However, federal funds still flowed their way due to the fact that illegal immigrant parents gain access to federal welfare and health care benefits through their U.S.-born children.

According to the CIS study, illegals accounted for 13.1 percent of all federal costs of covering the uninsured in 2004, an estimated $2.2 billion per year. Seventeen percent of households headed by an illegal immigrant were using Medicaid, accounting for 1.7 percent of all Medicaid recipients.

These trends look to continue if President Obama gets his way on health care reform, Martin said, because the legislation currently making its way through Congress would leave “very large” loopholes, loopholes that are not likely to be closed.

“There’s one provision that says they won’t be eligible, but the current legislation as it’s being written does not establish any system of verification as to whether or not a person is legal or illegal.”

[southpaw]

I'm not going to get into an ideological debate about socialism. It serves as a distraction to the main issue of socialized medicine, "Obamacare".

A few points to ponder...under Obamcare.

1. Obamacare WILL lead to wholesale euthanasia in America.

2. Obamacare WILL lead to federally funded abortion on demand.

3. Obamacare WILL lead to rationed medical services. "Your too old to waste a hip replacement on you".

4. Obamacare WILL lead to health care for illegal aliens.

5. Obamacare WILL be JUST like the VA...remember "Walter Reed" and those scenes from "Born on the 4th of July? Oh that's the Change I can believe in baby!

6. Obamacare WILL lead to massive increases in the national debt and WILL lead to massive tax increases on the middle class to pay for it. There aren't enough rich $250,000 wage earners to pay for Obamacare.

7. Obamacare WILL NOT be for Barry and Nancy and the rest of Congress. They are all happy with their "private" health insurance and have no intentions of being part of Obamacare.

That last point should make all of you madder than hell. Its not good enough for them then its not good enough for us.