Monday, August 10, 2009

Thoughts On the Town Hall Disruptions

By Louis Proyect
August 09, 2009

On August sixth, a Marxmail subscriber posed the question of “proletarian defense guards for Democrats, specifically Democratic congress members attempting to hold town hall meeting.” He, as the rest of us, must have realized how anachronistic such a term was but added:

It sounds weird, true, but I was contacted today as part of a mobilization to confront the hysterical collection of Ron Paulites, birthers, and other associated storm troopers who will be attempting to shut down a discussion of health care tonight by our aging congressman. In other parts of the country liberal representatives have had to flee of be escorted out by the police. The UAW is also supposed to lend some rank and file militants to this so we shall see how things turn out.

Does a proletarian defense guard for an aging Democratic hack make any sense to anyone here? It is true that the local right wing is particularly virulent and I noticed several “Death to communists” at the “tea party” tax protest. It brought to mind the fact that all the Obama signs/ stickers I saw on campus were defaced with a Soviet flag stickers. Given how incensed these people are one wonders what they would do if a real socialist were in any elected office.

I am not going to agonize now over the popular front overtones about all this but I really hate these creeps and I can be as loud as these assholes any day of the week. The larger question remains is that what is the correct path in this era of political polarization and the increasing virulence of the neo-Nazi faction of the Republican Party. I would appreciate other comrades’ experience and thoughts on this issue.

A Huffington Post article fleshed out the Marxmail subscriber’s report on trade union involvement, as well as the frenzy that this had driven the rightwing into:

Union officials continued to receive a barrage of threats on Friday evening and into Saturday punctuated by warnings that if organizers were sent to counter-demonstrate at health care town halls they would be met with violence.

An official with the AFL-CIO, a federation of labor organizations, passed on what he described as a “pretty direct threat” to those union hands who were showing up to balance out anti-Obama demonstrations being waged at local Democratic forums.

“I will be going to a local town hall this weekend, all you union members BEWARE!” an emailer wrote at 9:40 Saturday morning. “We will be waiting for you. better make sure you have arrangements with your local ER. today is the day when the goon meets the gun. see you there
.”

The rightwing has been posting Youtube clips about these confrontations. The one below shows the trade union defense guard clearing them out of a town hall meeting organized by Kathy Castor, a Democratic Congresswoman from Florida. It reminded me of some of the assignments I had defending meetings in the 1960s but I was about half the size of these guys.

So far most of the violence at these meetings has consisted of pushing and shoving from the rightwingers, but we cannot rule out an escalation at some point especially in light of the recent murder of an abortion provider in Kansas. For the last several months, talk radio, Fox TV, Lou Dobbs on CNN, the “birthers”, and the far right wing of the Republican Party in Washington has worked itself into a lather around a number of seemingly unrelated issues: whether Obama was born in the US or not; the supposed possibility that health care reform will lead to old people being thrown to the wolves; and a general sense of economic vulnerability.



When the evening newscast the other night was showing footage of the chaos at another one of these town meetings, I told my wife that it reflected the basic difference between the Democrats and the Republicans. The Democrats do everything they can to demobilize their base, who are seen as inconvenient and extraneous to their main way of getting things done, namely through closed door meetings with corporate executives and nonprofit honchos over how to screw the American people while giving the opposite impression. Meanwhile, the Republicans are much more reliant on an activist base because their social support is much narrower. As a party that rules directly and openly in the interests of the moneyed elite, it requires all sorts of grass roots organization to push its filthy agenda forward.

But in practice, this means that the grass roots is almost always reliant on seed money from deep-pocketed foundations and corporate benefactors. Conservatives for Patients’ Rights takes credit for interventions at these town meetings. A character named Rick Scott, who is a millionaire investor and formerly head of the Columbia/HCA health-care company, leads CPR. A fraud investigation in the 1990s resulted in the Columbia/HCA pleading guilty to charges that it overbilled state and federal health plans. It ended up paying a record $1.7 billion in fines. According to Politico, CPR has raised $20 million to fight health care reform. You can bet that this is more than enough to pay for transporting mobs from one town hall meeting to another, including the one that just got the heave-ho from trade unionists in Florida.

It is impossible to predict what the next four years have in store but you cannot rule out such confrontations being repeated with some regularity given the sharpening of class tensions in the U.S. over what looks like a protracted L shaped recession. Even though the Dow-Jones index is heading toward the 10,000 level, the job and housing situation remain bleak.

Obama will do everything in his power to convince those who voted for him to remain patient while he carries out what amounts to a third Bush term, but there will be more and more defensive measures by the poor and the working class in defense of its own class interests. One can be reasonably assured that the level of discontent in the US will rise despite the African-American President’s clear gift for demagogy and deception.

And as the workers and the poor begin to fight for their rights, the retrograde social forces churned up from a capitalism in decay will become more and more violent and inclined to direct action. While this does not pose any immediate threat of fascism, largely a function of the unlikelihood of a revolutionary socialist movement gaining the necessary numbers and influence any time soon, there will be a need to study the 1930s just as the Marxism list subscriber alluded to when he referred to proletarian defense guards—the sort of thing that hasn’t been seen since then.

For one of the best introductions to the period, I can recommend Leon Trotsky’s Whither France, a sharp polemic against a Popular Front Government that like Obama’s tried to keep its social base demobilized while the fascists were taking over the streets. Trotsky wrote:

It is not the spirit of combination among parliamentarians and journalists, but the legitimate and creative hatred of the oppressed for the oppressors which is today the single most progressive factor in history. It is necessary to turn to the masses, toward their deepest layers. It is necessary to appeal to their passions and to their reason. It is necessary to reject the false “prudence” which is a synonym for cowardice and which, at great historical turning points, amounts to treason. The united front must take for its motto the formula of Danton: “De l’audace, encore de l’audace, toujours de l’audace.” To understand the situation fully and to draw from it all the practical conclusions, boldly and without fear and to the end, is to assure the victory of socialism.

I imagine that everybody will have no trouble understanding Danton’s French, but it turns out that he was saying: “Audacity, again audacity, and always audacity.” Given our weakened state, most leftists have difficulty thinking in terms of audaciousness. But if the period we are entering is marked by open conflict between workers and their class enemies, we have to dust off our weapons and march off to the class war once again.

RENEGADE EYE

277 comments:

1 – 200 of 277   Newer›   Newest»
SecondComingOfBast said...

At least he sees the damned Democrats for what they are. I don't entirely disagree with what he says about Republicans either. If only they really practiced the small government philosophy they preached when they had the chance to practice it, we might not be in this mess now.

Anonymous said...

Ours is an envionment where evil is perceived to be rewarded while good is punished. As with everything the Gods have a reason for creating this perception::::
People who fall on the good side of the good/evil scale have more favor, and when they do something wrong the Gods punish them BECAUSE THEY WANT THEM TO LEARN. The Gods want them to receive this feedback in hope they make corrections and begin to behave appropriately. The Gods DON'T like evil and refuse to grant this feedback.
EVERYBODY pays for what they do wrong, only evil people must wait until their next life before they will experience the wrath of the Gods, manifested in their reincarnation as a lower form of life into environments with increased/enhanced temptations.
Sadly, this allows the Gods to position this perception of evil rewarded as temptation, one which they use as an EXTREMELY effective corruptor.

Both Africa and the Medittereanean are regions which have sexual issues. This is a sign of morbid disfavor once you understand that females are the God's favored gender. Muhammad's (Mohammed's) polygamy halfway through his life as a prophet was preditory. Now a huge percentage of Muslims believes in male superiority and that the abuse of women is God's will. Female genital mutilation is still practiced in Africa. Black misogyny is the most eggregious example in the recent past.
The patriarchal cancer spread throughout Europe because of Christianity, of which the majority of policy makers were Italian men.

Militancy in Africa is consistant with the Iraqi example, as was slavery and the KKK here in America:::Fear enforces proper behavior. Without it we see what happens as a result of gross/morbid disfavor:::::AIDS, crack babies, dead young men in gangland retaliation killings.
The same principle was true in Europe and throughout the world for centuries:::People whom lived under iron fists were conditioned to think the right way. As a result they experienced higher numbers of children accend into heaven because they were taught to think and behave appropriately. Our preditory envionment of "freedom" was the primary purpose the Gods had when implimenting this strategy that is the United States, one which they used to spred the cancer of democracy and westernization throughout the world. And the Gods use this tool that is America to prey on the disfavored both at home and abroad.


Even the Old Testiment is not to be taken literally, but the Gods do offer clues throughout to help the disfavored:::The apple is a tool of temptation used to corrupt Adam and Eve and cast them out of the Garden of Eden.
There is another lesson to be learned from this passage, and it is quite similar to the vailing issue and the discourse over women's attire which ultimately died in the 70s:::Women are responsible for and control the fate of mankind.
The masculinization of women experienced in the last few decades should cause despondancy and desperation:::It illustrates the deterioration of mankind's collective favor and is a clue the Gods are preparing for some event.

Think about what I say. Consider what I teach. Society is going to become disturbingly ugly as we approach the Apocalypse due to spiralling, runaway disfavor.
I do not know when this will occurr, but it is the God's way to grant some time before they end on Planet Earth.
Make the decision to always be good and never look back. Until you do this technology will employ tactics to test your resolve:::Ridicule, beligerance, doubt and refusal to abandon what people perceive to be their "investment".
Pray daily. Think appropriately. Too many are confident, unaware of the God's awesome powers or their status as antients. Others may fall prey to their positioning.
Be humbled, God-fearing and beware of the God's temptations, for everyone is tested to evaluate their worthiness.

Search for the remainder of this document. Blogster/spot only allows 4000 charecters.

Frank Partisan said...

Pagan: Republicans and Democrats differ in style. They share goals.

Anonymous: You are off topic.

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

It's surprising just how much ignorance is out there and why people are protesting against healthcare.

They have been done a disservice by their media and by their politicians, who have failed to inform them correctly as to what the reform means.

K. said...

The anger is grossly disproportionate to the goals of health care reform, so I think it comes comes from a darker place that has more to do with race than class.

As for demobilizing the base, I'm not sure what he's getting at. I get emails from the White House every week urging me to attend meetings, write letters, and so forth.

To me, the big difference between the two bases is that the Rpublican base is the Republican party, whereas the Democratic base is a subset of the party.

Finally, I have little patience for the argument from the left that the two parties are the same, that Obama plans a Bush third term, etc. That's the kind of narrow Naderite logic that got us Bush in the first place.

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

Well said K!

tony said...

Yes, as The Depression bites more & more ugly right-wingedness will be seen............Witness This Lot in the UK at the moment.
."The Democrats do everything they can to demobilize their base, who are seen as inconvenient and extraneous to their main way of getting things done, ..........................." DITTO the Labour Party in the UK!
I am amazed at the reaction to Health Reforms in The States.When the National Health Service was first introduced in Britain in the late 1940's many people were against it .The majority of doctors fought it tooth + nail.Yet today, Everyone (left & right) Treasure it.
(I cant help thinking that if it wasn't Health ,the right would find some other rallying point....................)
I wish Obama well on this one .You could do with a Yankie Aneurin Bevan to Help you!

Anonymous said...

Proletarian Defense Guard...


BWAH-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!


Kinda makes you feel like a military recruiter on the campus of SFSU, doesn't it?

...gravy for the gander. ;-)

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

Does that mean we can laugh at the Minutemen now and the 2nd Amendment?

jams o donnell said...

Found this on a favourite blog of mine. Yellow Doggerel Democrat:

"There was a telling incident at a town hall held by Representative Gene Green, D-Tex. An activist turned to his fellow attendees and asked if they “oppose any form of socialized or government-run health care.” Nearly all did. Then Representative Green asked how many of those present were on Medicare. Almost half raised their hands."

.... err???????

Frank Partisan said...

Citizen K: I plan to reply about differences between parties, with a whole post. The subject deserves full discussion.

The Democrats don't mobilize their base, like the GOP does. They don't want people to go to the streets. The Democratic Party is the graveyard, for social movements. Look at the Civil Rights, Women's etc.

Tony: Even with Labour sabotaged by New Labour, it is a different type party than Democrats. Labour was formed by the union movement, and it's the party of the working class. The Democratic Party is a bourgeoise party. The unions in the US, supporting the Democrats, goes back to the Stalinist popular front strategy of WWII. The US needs, what you take for granted, a labor party.

Don't let Sentinel see your link about Casuals.

Daniel H-G: Did you see SICKO? Easily Michael Moore's best movie. He explained the issue well.

FJ: You don't seem interested in the activist aspects, compared to Nanc?

Jams: The protesters will fight to the death, to keep their Medicare.

The "death panels" amendment, was written by a Republican. Death panels are what private insurers have.

SecondComingOfBast said...

Ren-

"I plan to reply about differences between parties, with a whole post. The subject deserves full discussion."

Does this mean you are going to actually write a post, in your own words and thoughts. That would be cool.

"The "death panels" amendment, was written by a Republican. Death panels are what private insurers have."

Interesting. Good point about insurance. Never mind death panels, they will refuse to insure you if you have certain conditions period, regardless of age. The whole system is fucked up in a bunch of different ways.

Anonymous said...

You don't seem interested in the activist aspects...

Plato, "Republic" - And will you have a work better done when the workman has many occupations, or when he has only one?

When he has only one.

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

So FJ you're not interested in activist aspects because you only have one job? And that job is not to be interested in activist aspects?

Gert said...

I've gotta say that from where I stand (Europe) this whole spectacle is bewildering, to say the least. That universal health care is a divisive issue in the US we knew. But just quite how divisive can a fairly clear-cut issue become, to the point where it's starting to sound like a possible trigger for civil war?

I don't understand Conservative attitudes on this issue. Some deeply Conservative American friends of mine struggle really hard to pay their medical bills (and freely admit it), yet are hell-bent on blocking this idea: talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face. Another American I know in my hometown came here because he couldn't afford the $80,000 heart transplant in the US.

The idea of relying on for-profit insurance companies to cover oneself against medical misfortunes and the associated costs seem totally absurd to me: insurances inevitably do anything to minimise payout and thus maximise profits: that's the profit principle. Hell, car insurance companies even very slightly reward drivers with a considerable length of no-claims history!

The American right wing (not generally among the most affluent of Americans, I'm guessing) seems determined to wage a fight to the death to try and prevent legislation that would actually make their own lives better. And the practice of negative campaigning, already so destructive in US politicking IMHO, is being taken to new heights. Ding dong!

Ducky's here said...

It's a good time, Ren, to remind folks that there is very little difference between the Obama administration and what went before.

Education, foreign policy, economics, health insurance ... nothing much has changed.

He has Rahm Emmanuel forge a sweetheart deal with big pharma and all we have is some idiot wind about "death councils". Insurers are simply being reinforced as the decision makers in health care and we get some idiot wind about "socialism".

Well, employment is not going to pick up for years or if it does it would have to be with a growth rate so high that we get serious inflation.
There is a commercial real estate crisis coming.
Larry Summers is busy taking care of his buddies on Wall St, making sure they have plenty of free chips for the tables ...

And the media is interviewing some gun loon outside the Portsmouth town meeting on health insurance.

The saddest part of all is an American public so deluded that they call Obama a leftist.

Ducky's here said...

K, the parties aren't quite the same. Obama is no Bush third term, he is Clinton redux and that's no prize.

my enemies enemy is my friend said...

Hey FJ ‘n’ Sentinel, Thought you guys would like to know what your buddies D-H-G and Ren have bin saying about y’all behind yr backs, and with cmnt mod on, of course.



D-H-G:

Ren:

I don't accept the premise of your statement, so no piint debating it.

Having said that, the infernal cretins you have at yours Ren in the shape of FJ and Sentinel are not the sort to respond well to people not accepting their premises, they just carry on regardless.


RENEGADE EYE

Ren: I could only imagine, saying to FJ, you reject his premise. That would trigger 20 Wikipedia quoted comments from him.


D-H-G:

Ha, yes, and don't forget a few Nietzsche quotes thrown in for good measure.


https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=11185137&postID=7713215534757483257&isPopup=true

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

Oh dear.

That's very, very sad indeed.

My Mum's Enemy Is My Dad said...

My ma told me i shouldn't be a snitch but i'm to dumb to care about what my ma so i'll snitch.

renegade eye loves the jews

Anonymous said...

Yes, the right-wing's acceptance of for-profit enterprises is utterly incomprehensible. All profit motivations need to be forever eliminated and profiteers villified!

LOL!

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

Who said that?

Anonymous said...

The idea of relying on for-profit insurance companies to cover oneself against medical misfortunes and the associated costs seem totally absurd to me: insurances inevitably do anything to minimise payout and thus maximise profits: that's the profit principle. Hell, car insurance companies even very slightly reward drivers with a considerable length of no-claims history!

I guess Gert is unfamiliar with the origins of insurance companies likes Lloyds of London.

ps - Now why don't we all have government car insurance? That's a brilliant idea, Gert! The De mocrats ought to run on it in 2012.

Anonymous said...

btw - Ben Franklin should be hung for a rogue, profiteer that HE was!

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

Jeez, we are nowed under with strawmen here aren't we.

Car insurance is a long way from the health of a nation and what has Franklin got to do with owt?

Ducky's here said...

Come on Farmer, you're regressing into hyperbole.

Of course, you are going to ave to move in pretty mysterious ways to explain how skimming the healthiest for fat premiums improves health care in America.

Ducky's here said...

I guess Gert is unfamiliar with the origins of insurance companies likes Lloyds of London.

-------------------------

There's a great passage in Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit I believe, with this degenerate crooked insurance agent bragging about this really profitable policy he took out on the cart horse outside his window.

I think it has colored m perception of insurance agents ever since.

Gert said...

FJ:

Could you stoop any lower?

You can't see the difference between (the brilliant idea of) car insurance and health insurance?

See, FJ, that's where the most fanatic proponents of the free market will always get it wrong: in their blind admiration for this very effective wealth generation system they'll always believe it's a panacea for ALL problems. It isn't.

A system that maximises profits by maximising premiums and minimising payouts at the detriment of individual people's health can never be in the interest of the individual, at least not in a large number of cases.

How about pre-existing conditions for instance? Can anybody really blame a profit-driven insurance company for not wanting to insure someone with a considerably higher--than-average chance of making future claims?

We're told the competition principle will sort that out: for every jam jar there's a fitting lid, right?

How come then about 50 million Americans can't afford insurance? How come among those that have insurance, many don't receive the care needed because their policy doesn't provide the cover?

It just doesn't work, FJ, get over it.

To those who want to pay through the nose for completely private health care (insured or not) that option will always exist (it exists also in Europe), for all others something more communal is the ticket. The US is now virtually the only country in the free world without universal health care. Well done...

Since as you're so shit hot on the private sector, why not privatise the US military?

american left history said...

On The Question Of Worker Defense Guards In Defense of Bourgeois Democracy

I am linking this to my blog-

Click on title to link to blog enty that discusses the question of defending various democratic fora against the onslaught of right-wing harassment or threats.

Markin comment:

Hey, what are you guys, revisionists or something? We want to keep worker defense guards solely to defend our own working class institutions like union meetings and picket lines against cops and right-wing thugs. Let the bourgeoisie take care of defending their own institutions. Right?

Wrong! This was just a ‘got ya’ moment sponsored by Markin. Hell, of course we want defend town meetings and other forms of democratic debate against military, police and civilian right-wing threats and harassment. We just do it in our own way and with the proviso that we give no political support to left-wing, centrist or right wing bourgeois parliamentary cretins. Needless to say, under normal circumstances no bourgeois politician, except in extremis, would seek or accept workers defense guards to defend their meetings or other events. They will seek their cops, military etc. to guard them. That does not mean that we cannot make great propaganda for our side out of this, and be prepared to actually do some defending. Moreover, as history so graphically shows, when the deal goes down, all the pretensions and protestations of liberals aside, we leftist working class militants are the most consistent and devoted defenders of democratic rights, including our right to assemble. And that, my friends, ain’t no lie.

Anonymous said...

A system that maximises profits by maximising premiums and minimising payouts at the detriment of individual people's health can never be in the interest of the individual, at least not in a large number of cases.

Makes you wonder how we all managed to survive this long w/o government universal health care, doesn't it? So much so, that a smarter person would likely examine the premises upon which such an obviously faulty and erroneous conclusion has been drawn and search for their mistake.

Anonymous said...

How come then about 50 million Americans can't afford insurance?

Again, examine your premises.

If you are poor, you are already likely covered by Medicaid, and/ or all you need do is apply. If you aren't covered by Medicaid, chances are you CAN afford the insurance, but are too greedy to spend your own personal money for it.

So what makes you think they can't afford it? Just because they don't have it? It's MUCH more likely they don't feel they need it. For what is "health care insurance" but a mechanism for protecting one's individual wealth from being "wasted" on medical care.

Today, w/o a single change to our current system ANY American can walk into any Emergency Room in the country and he will receive the most sophisticated medical care in the world and receive every treatment they need. They are not means tested and cannot be turned away.

If the treatments are uber -expensive, the government will subsidize them once the person can no longer afford them. The person may not leave the hospital with the same wealth they had when they entered it, but they will almost certainly leave it in a much "healthier" condition than when they entered it.

Pre-existing conditions are no obstacle to health care in this country, for the only REAL obstacle is the amount of one's personal wealth preventing one for qualifying for Medicaid.

Get rid of the individual's personal wealth, and he IMMEDIATELY qualifies for government health care.

We already have universal health care in this country. What we don't have is a government wealth protection plan. And I think most Americans recognize the fact that we don't need one.

Anonymous said...

Since as you're so shit hot on the private sector, why not privatise the US military?

You have heard of Blackwater Security, haven't you? What about Haliburton? What about the militia? Letters of mark? LOL!

Anonymous said...

So, all you've got to do in America to qualify for government health care is spend all your wealth, drive into any Emergency Room in NY State, and show them where it hurts. That's it. You're covered.

Anonymous said...

Why I'm not an activist.

Socrates had principles and a 1st principle that ruled them all, one that "activists" almost universally ignore.

In 406 he (Socrates) was a member of the Boule, and his tribe Antiochis held the Prytany on the day the Generals of Battle of Arginusae, who abandoned the slain and the survivors of foundered ships to pursue the defeated Spartan navy, were discussed. Socrates was the Epistates and resisted the unconstitutional demand for a collective trial to establish the guilt of all eight Generals, proposed by Callixeinus. Eventually, Socrates refused to be cowed by threats of impeachment and imprisonment and blocked the vote until his Prytany ended the next day, whereupon the six Generals were condemned to death.

In 404 the Thirty Tyrants sought to ensure the loyalty of those opposed to them by making them complicit in their activities. Socrates and four others were ordered to bring a certain Leon of Salamis from his home for unjust execution. Socrates quietly refused, his death averted only by the overthrow of the Tyrants soon afterwards.

Frank Partisan said...

Last night I listened to rightist talk radio. All the shows, had the same talking points. The Nazi references come up often.

Pagan: I have in mind, what I'd say aboout Dems and Republicans, it's a matter of timing.

Private insurers have death penals. Why is the right silent?

my enemies enemy is my friend: If your name was true, every sect leader would be a genius. Politics is more complicated. You should Google Trotsky's essay called Learn To Think.

I never said anything at DHG's blog about FJ, that I didn't say at his blog. Even FJ would agree with me.

I agree with DHG, your post is sad.

Ducky: I would compare Obama to Bush 41 for the most part, only Bush was to the left.

Obama sends Hillary to Congo and Kenya, not Russia and North Korea. Not a Clinton coup.

FJ: I'm not an activist. An activist mentality is different than a socialist revolutionary's mentality. I'm not good at explaining this.

Nanc is activist oriented.

A privatized army is a sign of a declining empire. When its wars, aren't supported with the full state power, it shows a decline in belief.

The insurance debate isn't about the richest and the poorest. It's about those caught in the middle.

The insurance industry values cars more than people, particularly with pre-existing conditions.

Markin: If the healthcare debate is any measure, than defense guards can be something needed atleast in the future.

The depression started 1929, and the working class became militant around 1934.

Daniel H-G: Most of the tea party people, wouldn't want to hear about Plato from FJ.

My Mum's Enemy: You remind me of the writer of the blog The Beak Speaks.

Gert: Like I told FJ, the healthcare issue is not about the richest and the poorest in the US.

The right uses terms like "your own doctor." They don't mention your private insurer in their propaganda.

Obama took UHC off the table to start. That's why he deserves heat.

Coldtype said...

“Makes you wonder how we all managed to survive this long w/o government universal health care, doesn't it? So much so, that a smarter person would likely examine the premises upon which such an obviously faulty and erroneous conclusion has been drawn and search for their mistake”
-FJ

You call 50 million people without access to health care and medical bills as the leading factor in personal bankruptcies... managing to “survive”? That’s pretty funny FJ but not quite as funny as the account from this British fellow on how the NHS “ate my hamster”. You really are amusing.

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

I've found some interesting healthcare data:

In terms of per capita spending the US is the leading nation but unlike other top spenders, like Canada, Germany and France it doesn't get much bang for it's buck.

In terms of Doctors per 10,000 people Cuba is of course in the lead, followed by Russia, Italy, Germany and France.

Nurses and midwives per 10,000 is led by the UK, followed by Canada, Japan, the US, Russia-Germany and France tied.

Hospital beds per 10,000 is led by Japan, Russia, Germany, France, Cuba and UK.

Finally, life expectancy is led by Japan, then Italy, France, Canada and Germany.

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

Ren:

Just realised that I didn't answer your query about Sicko, I saw it when it came out, whenever that was.

Anonymous said...

In Ren's own words...

If the healthcare debate is any measure, than defense guards can be something needed atleast in the future.

A privatized army is a sign of a declining empire. When its wars, aren't supported with the full state power, it shows a decline in belief.

Thanks, Ren. I knew you'd come round to seeing the wealth care debate our way.

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

Again, that doesn't make any sense what you've just said, I'm not being rude but you use a quote and then make up a meaning?

Anonymous said...

Private insurers have death penals. Why is the right silent?

Because when there is a PRIVATE health care system, people with money can BYPASS the death panel and PURCHASE the services they need. When there is a PUBLIC health care system, the wealthy need to leave that country and fly to the USA to receive the health services their country's death panels deny them.

Just ask why the Candians and Brits all fly here for advanced treatments.

Gert said...

FJ:

"If you aren't covered by Medicaid, chances are you CAN afford the insurance, but are too greedy to spend your own personal money for it."

You're right (silly me): the buggers just don't want to spend their personal money on it! Parasites, the lot of'em! Unamerican too!

You're too funny...

"We already have universal health care in this country. What we don't have is a government wealth protection plan. And I think most Americans recognize the fact that we don't need one."

What I hear from most Americans that are opposed to the proposals is a lot of undigested hysterical twaddle about 'co-ho-hommunism', 'socialism' (they wouldn't recognise it if it came creeping out their nose), ad hominem attacks involving 'Nazis' and 'fascism' and of course that other conservative factotum; 'FREEDOM' (funny how there isn't a word in the English language more capable of leading the Right Wing by the nose, like lambs to the slaughter).

The health care industry in the US spends millions (at least) on DC lobbying and these numpties get recruited by Big Health for free...

"You have heard of Blackwater Security, haven't you? What about Haliburton? What about the militia? Letters of mark? LOL!"

Thanks for falling into my little trap. My point is much deeper. Most countries are willing to spend trillions on their military in the name of National Security. This is really the ultimate collectivist form of thinking: as our security is collectively considered of the highest paramount order, we don't mind our collective tax dollars (pounds, euros or whatever) being spent by the billion on this idea.

Yet when it comes to the internal threat that affects us all (and on a day to day basis far more than external threats) the idea of a collective response gets booed (well, in the US). That's a highly irrational dichotomy, if I've ever seen one.

Blackwater is a small private outfit, providing private security; it's a drop on a hot plate. Halliburton is a private service company, somewhat monopolistic, and main supplier to the US military. Neither have anything to do with my argument.

Ren:

"Last night I listened to rightist talk radio. All the shows, had the same talking points. The Nazi references come up often."

Like I said...

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

"Just ask why the Candians and Brits all fly here for advanced treatments."

That's not true, also, provide evidence of such movements.

Nevin said...

Ren: I was just able to read your last post and the comments due to not having enough time lately..... There are some really good points people touched on, so I will not dwell on them further...

There is one point I would like to make.

In my opinion, since B. Clinton's presidency, political difference on the ground is less and less visible. The reason for that is, for the most part, he introduced "big money" into his campaign, which in return meant he had to bow down to their wishes. Obama is following in Bill's steps. In fact so much so that, his cabinet is almost all Bill's guys!

So the difference between Dems and Cons are not very visible to the guy on the street. Their interests are not met! In the for front are the interests of big money.

I think a really good book to read is "What's the Matter with Kansas?"

In this book, it talks about how consistently, the poor and disenfranchise always vote against their interests.... How they consistently vote for the interests of the powerful and rich!

Since the difference between two parties are less and less visible, what should we do? Who do we vote for?

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

"What's the Matter With Kansas" is indeed a very, very good book.

Gert said...

FJ:

"Because when there is a PRIVATE health care system, people with money can BYPASS the death panel and PURCHASE the services they need. When there is a PUBLIC health care system, the wealthy need to leave that country and fly to the USA to receive the health services their country's death panels deny them."

You are talking here about the minutest number of cases: it never ceases to amaze me how the moderately impoverished (undoubtedly you fall into that category) are willing to uphold the rights of a few already over-privileged.

Most countries that have universal health care do have a smaller, private sector (I'm not opposed to that) where the rich and famous can enjoy the treatment their undoubtedly more worthy and more finely tuned bodies deserve.

As regards the 'death panels' (which jingoistic bobo came up with that one?), please note that some treatments are in the experimental phase and it can take a lot of time to get fully tested and approved. And so we do get complaints here from people who claim they deserve any rumoured 'miracle treatment', forgetting that the normal testing and approval procedures cannot just be cast aside to humour them.

Anonymous said...

You're right, Gert. Death Panels is a bit extreme. Maybe they should simply call them Cripple Panels... After all, some people are simply too fat, too ugly, and/or not sexually promiscuos enough (as in- willing to bend over and catch AIDS) and thereby deserve to suffer and be denied treatment until they "shape up" and conform to social "norms".

Gert said...

Here's another smear merchant: Right Wing News: Obamacare Will Take Away Your Children.

It'd be funny if it wasn't a sad fact that so many Joe Sixpacks will fall for it.

Next the 'Jack-booted' Obama administration will undoubtedly abolish Christmas (and institute state-sanctioned Ramadan?) Get yer guns and run to the hills!

Gert said...

FJ:

"After all, some people are simply too fat, too ugly, and/or not sexually promiscuos enough (as in- willing to bend over and catch AIDS) and thereby deserve to suffer and be denied treatment until they "shape up" and conform to social "norms"."

The abominations pointed out in the video exist and are being hotly debated here. We're talking about a small minority of NHS Trusts applying these rules.

Watch Sicko to see plenty examples of people being excluded from taking out policies or being denied treatment on very similar grounds. Pot and kettle, FJ.

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

"not sexually promiscuos enough (as in- willing to bend over and catch AIDS)"

Inappropriate?

Anonymous said...

How so? AIDS is a behaviorially curable disease, just like smoking and eating. All you've got to do, is stop dropping your soap in the shower. The NHS isn't enforcing the no-drop rule yet, are they?

Anonymous said...

They should deny prenatal care for women who refuse their birth control, too.

Anonymous said...

...and sex changes for transexuals who refuse to get at least 36DD imnplants.

Anonymous said...

btw - When you getting your facelift, Danny? You'll never get any decent acting work with that mug... ;-)

...or won't the NHS pay for it?

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

3 comments instead of one I see?

Defining AIDS/HIV as a behaviorially curable disease is not accurate and also could be a title used to label most disease, if you avoid certain situations then you avoid disease, a useless truism.

Your statement: "not sexually promiscuos enough (as in- willing to bend over and catch AIDS)" is also loaded with homophobia in that you suggest, as you have done often, that AIDS/HIV is a homosexual man's disease, when in reality it is a disease that is destroying vast swaths of heterosexual Africa.

This homophobia is repeated with the statement: "All you've got to do, is stop dropping your soap in the shower."

To be clear:

* Over 22 million people have died from AIDS.
* Over 42 million people are living with HIV/AIDS, and 74 percent of these infected people live in sub-Saharan Africa.
* Over 19 million women are living with HIV/AIDS.
* By the year 2010, five countries (Ethiopia, Nigeria, China, India, and Russia) with 40 percent of the world's population will add 50 to 75 million infected people to the worldwide pool of HIV disease.

"They should deny prenatal care for women who refuse their birth control, too."

This doesn't make any sense and is hyperbole.

"...and sex changes for transexuals who refuse to get at least 36DD imnplants."

And again, what is this to do with the debate?

Anonymous said...

I hear NHS recommends kids have an orgasm a day. Talk about your "rationing"...

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

"btw - When you getting your facelift, Danny? You'll never get any decent acting work with that mug... ;-)

...or won't the NHS pay for it?"

The wink doesn't cover the fact that was a personal attack, off topic and once again nothing to do with the issue.

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

"I hear NHS recommends kids have an orgasm a day. Talk about your "rationing"..."

Wrong and off topic.

Anonymous said...

ps - I'm glad the NHS now offers "Hymen Restoration Surgury" to Muslim chicks about to wed. It's so very "compassionate" of the British people to adopt the quaint less-enlightened social customs of their immigrants masses.

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

Let's have some real debate shall we and some real facts:

Obama's plan intends to:

1. End Discrimination for Pre-Existing Conditions: Insurance companies will be prohibited from refusing you coverage because of your medical history.
2. End Exorbitant Out-of-Pocket Expenses, Deductibles or Co-Pays: Insurance companies will have to abide by yearly caps on how much they can charge for out-of-pocket expenses.
3. End Cost-Sharing for Preventive Care: Insurance companies must fully cover, without charge, regular checkups and tests that help you prevent illness, such as mammograms or eye and foot exams for diabetics.
4. End Dropping of Coverage for Seriously Ill: Insurance companies will be prohibited from dropping or watering down insurance coverage for those who become seriously ill.
5. End Gender Discrimination: Insurance companies will be prohibited from charging you more because of your gender.
6. End Annual or Lifetime Caps on Coverage: Insurance companies will be prevented from placing annual or lifetime caps on the coverage you receive.
7. Extend Coverage for Young Adults: Children would continue to be eligible for family coverage through the age of 26.
8. Guaranteed Insurance Renewal: Insurance companies will be required to renew any policy as long as the policyholder pays their premium in full. Insurance companies won't be allowed to refuse renewal because someone became sick.

Seems good to me considering how badly the US suffers from issues relating to healthcare?

Anonymous said...

Nothing to do with the issue?

Who pays for healthcare in the UK... and who decides what is and isn't covered? It has EVERYTHING to do with the issue.

Ducky's here said...

Please ignore Farmer. He's a follower of Lyndon LaRouche and he was expelled from the party several years ago.

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

"Who pays for healthcare in the UK... and who decides what is and isn't covered? It has EVERYTHING to do with the issue."

We all pay for healthcare and as for what is covered, medical ailments are covered, you know, when people get sick.

There has been blatant lies told in the right-wing US media about the NHS to scare people, it is nonsense but hopefully, bright people will see that.

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

Ducky:

I have got better at ignoring him but he spouts so much hateful nonsense, I was hoping with the comment guidelines he would control his language but clearly not.

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

Now let us deal with the right-wing myths around this healthcare reform:

1. Reform will stop "rationing" - not increase it: It’s a myth that reform will mean a "government takeover" of health care or lead to "rationing." To the contrary, reform will forbid many forms of rationing that are currently being used by insurance companies.
2. We can’t afford reform: It's the status quo we can't afford. It’s a myth that reform will bust the budget. To the contrary, the President has identified ways to pay for the vast majority of the up-front costs by cutting waste, fraud, and abuse within existing government health programs; ending big subsidies to insurance companies; and increasing efficiency with such steps as coordinating care and streamlining paperwork. In the long term, reform can help bring down costs that will otherwise lead to a fiscal crisis.
3. Reform would encourage "euthanasia": It does not. It’s a malicious myth that reform would encourage or even require euthanasia for seniors. For seniors who want to consult with their family and physicians about end-of life decisions, reform will help to cover these voluntary, private consultations for those who want help with these personal and difficult family decisions.
4. Vets' health care is safe and sound: It’s a myth that health insurance reform will affect veterans' access to the care they get now. To the contrary, the President's budget significantly expands coverage under the VA, extending care to 500,000 more veterans who were previously excluded. The VA Healthcare system will continue to be available for all eligible veterans.
5. Reform will benefit small business - not burden it: It’s a myth that health insurance reform will hurt small businesses. To the contrary, reform will ease the burdens on small businesses, provide tax credits to help them pay for employee coverage and help level the playing field with big firms who pay much less to cover their employees on average.
6. Your Medicare is safe, and stronger with reform: It’s myth that Health Insurance Reform would be financed by cutting Medicare benefits. To the contrary, reform will improve the long-term financial health of Medicare, ensure better coordination, eliminate waste and unnecessary subsidies to insurance companies, and help to close the Medicare "doughnut" hole to make prescription drugs more affordable for seniors.
7. You can keep your own insurance: It’s myth that reform will force you out of your current insurance plan or force you to change doctors. To the contrary, reform will expand your choices, not eliminate them.
8. No, government will not do anything with your bank account: It is an absurd myth that government will be in charge of your bank accounts. Health insurance reform will simplify administration, making it easier and more convenient for you to pay bills in a method that you choose. Just like paying a phone bill or a utility bill, you can pay by traditional check, or by a direct electronic payment. And forms will be standardized so they will be easier to understand. The choice is up to you – and the same rules of privacy will apply as they do for all other electronic payments that people make.

Thanks to David Axelrod for those.

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

Finally, why does America need healthcare reform?

1. Coverage Denied to Millions: A recent national survey estimated that 12.6 million non-elderly adults – 36 percent of those who tried to purchase health insurance directly from an insurance company in the individual insurance market – were in fact discriminated against because of a pre-existing condition in the previous three years or dropped from coverage when they became seriously ill. 2. Less Care for More Costs: With each passing year, Americans are paying more for health care coverage. Employer-sponsored health insurance premiums have nearly doubled since 2000, a rate three times faster than wages. In 2008, the average premium for a family plan purchased through an employer was $12,680, nearly the annual earnings of a full-time minimum wage job. Americans pay more than ever for health insurance, but get less coverage. 3. Roadblocks to Care for Women: Women’s reproductive health requires more regular contact with health care providers, including yearly pap smears, mammograms, and obstetric care. Women are also more likely to report fair or poor health than men (9.5% versus 9.0%). While rates of chronic conditions such as diabetes and high blood pressure are similar to men, women are twice as likely to suffer from headaches and are more likely to experience joint, back or neck pain. These chronic conditions often require regular and frequent treatment and follow-up care.
4. Hard Times in the Heartland: Throughout rural America, there are nearly 50 million people who face challenges in accessing health care. The past several decades have consistently shown higher rates of poverty, mortality, uninsurance, and limited access to a primary health care provider in rural areas. With the recent economic downturn, there is potential for an increase in many of the health disparities and access concerns that are already elevated in rural communities.
5. Small Businesses Struggle to Provide Health Coverage: Nearly one-third of the uninsured – 13 million people – are employees of firms with less than 100 workers. From 2000 to 2007, the proportion of non-elderly Americans covered by employer-based health insurance fell from 66% to 61%. Much of this decline stems from small business. The percentage of small businesses offering coverage dropped from 68% to 59%, while large firms held stable at 99%. About a third of such workers in firms with fewer than 50 employees obtain insurance through a spouse.
6. The Tragedies are Personal: Half of all personal bankruptcies are at least partly the result of medical expenses. The typical elderly couple may have to save nearly $300,000 to pay for health costs not covered by Medicare alone.
7. Diminishing Access to Care: From 2000 to 2007, the proportion of non-elderly Americans covered by employer-based health insurance fell from 66% to 61%. An estimated 87 million people - one in every three Americans under the age of 65 - were uninsured at some point in 2007 and 2008. More than 80% of the uninsured are in working families.
8. The Trends are Troubling: Without reform, health care costs will continue to skyrocket unabated, putting unbearable strain on families, businesses, and state and federal government budgets. Perhaps the most visible sign of the need for health care reform is the 46 million Americans currently without health insurance - projections suggest that this number will rise to about 72 million in 2040 in the absence of reform.

So the case for reform is clear.

Anonymous said...

Wow... I can't wait till the White House reads about all these outrageous Left Wing false promises (aka lies) about healthcare. I'd better report this site RIGHT now!

Expect a VERY nasty letter from Barack Obama very soon, Danny.

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

"Wow... I can't wait till the White House reads about all these outrageous Left Wing false promises (aka lies) about healthcare. I'd better report this site RIGHT now!"

Show me a lie in the sections on why healthcare needs reform, myths perpetuated by the right and the actual content of the reform please?

Anonymous said...

Oh, get a labiaplasty, Danny. I'd never report YOU! You're my "bud"!

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

So no evidence then, just more odd attempts at insults?

To be clear you have failed to substantiate a number of comments you have made and have resorted to ad hominem attacks based on odd and incorrect ideas of what you can have done on the NHS.

Gert said...

FJ:

You've now gone completely off the rails and are sounding precisely like the people I (and Ren) was referring to.

As if deeply Conservative American folk really needed a caricature, they've now got one in the shape of Farmer. Except he reads Plato and Nietzsche...

Try and debate the points, Farmer.

"I hear NHS recommends kids have an orgasm a day."

Please substantiate that. I wouldn't be in the slightest surprised that that sort of canards does the rounds in the Conservative open Tinkerweb sewers that pass for blogosphere. The US, for all its bravado, is ruled by fear.

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

I've asked repeatedly for evidence and there has been none Gert.

Anonymous said...

UGLY is a very severe "pre-existing medical condition". I'm glad that no one in the UK is discriminated against by NHS in effecting the cure.

btw - Will NHS pay for the amniosentisys prior to a sex-selection abortion? I've just GOT to know.

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

Evidence FJ, you're just blustering!

Anonymous said...

I mean, if they're going to pay for fertility treatments for Lesbians, the least the NHS could do is allow Indian immigrants the ability to identify and abort female babies.

Of course, all these new medical "rights" aren't going to cost the American people a penny. Universal health care is going to save us TRILLIONS!

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

Oh dear.

First off, that article is actually referring to a report by the British Fertility Society, not connected to the NHS and it is not policy; it was, the best way I can out it, an agency making a request in it's own best interest.

So you'll have to try harder FJ, although your disturbing hatred of Lesbians, as well as using the word "Indian" in a bizarre context seems to once again reflect your bigotry leaking out of you.

To repeat, the article you link to is not actual policy and never has been, although my own opinion is opposite to yours, if it was policy I would see no problem with it, not sure why you have a problme with it or why your moral compass should effect other people's abilities to have children?

To repeat:

Evidence please.

Anonymous said...

I hear NHS recommends kids have an orgasm a day."

Please substantiate that


Okay, but just this once.

SOMEBODY is getting cranky. What's the problem, NHS not delivering on their orgasms?

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

Again FJ, you're wide of the mark and your own moral compass is obscuring your judgement.

You may not believe in good sex education but the NHS does, your value judgement on the sex education program is just that, your opinion.

Also to fully flesh out the leaflet:

"A National Health Service leaflet is advising school pupils that they have a “right” to an enjoyable sex life and that regular intercourse can be good for their cardiovascular health.

The advice appears in guidance circulated to parents, teachers and youth workers, and is intended to update sex education by telling pupils about the benefits of sexual pleasure. For too long, say its authors, experts have concentrated on the need for “safe sex” and loving relationships while ignoring the main reason that many people have sex, that is, for enjoyment.

The document, called Pleasure, has been drawn up by NHS Sheffield, although it is also being circulated outside the city.

Alongside the slogan “an orgasm a day keeps the doctor away”, it says: “Health promotion experts advocate five portions of fruit and veg a day and 30 minutes’ physical activity three times a week. What about sex or masturbation twice a week?

Steve Slack, director of the Centre for HIV and Sexual Health at NHS Sheffield, who is one of the authors, argues that, far from promoting teenage sex, it could encourage young people to delay losing their virginity until they are sure they will enjoy the experience.

Slack believes that as long as teenagers are fully informed about sex and are making their decisions free of peer pressure and as part of a caring relationship, they have as much right as an adult to a good sex life."

Nothing wrong with this at all, forward thinking sex education and to clarify it only went out in the urban connurbation of Sheffield and environs, it is not a national program.

Now FJ, are you going to apologies for getting the IVF treatment story wrong?

Anonymous said...

What part of THAT story did I get wrong?

I showed you mine. Now you show me yours.

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

Now we all now the state of sex education in the US but some facts will come in useful here:

1. one-third of teens have not received any formal instruction about contraception.
2. More than one in five adolescents (21% of females and 24% of males) received abstinence education without receiving instruction about birth control
3. In 2002, only 62% of sexually experienced female teens had received instruction about contraception before they first had sex, compared with 72% in 1995.
4. Only one out of three sexually experienced black males and fewer than half of sexually experienced black females had received instruction about contraception before the first time they had sex.

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

"What part of THAT story did I get wrong?

I showed you mine. Now you show me yours."

Sorry, you're not making sense, the IVF story is false and is not NHS policy as I pointed out, you have not withdrawn the statement, which you made in error and as for the sex education story, I have already dealth with that at length.

Your failure to accept your error does not reflect well.

Anonymous said...

LOL! I didn't think so.

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

Sex Education Policy in America...

1. Currently, 35 states mandate either sex education or education about HIV/AIDS and other STIs, but their laws tend to be very general. Policies specifying the content of sex education are typically set at the local level.
2. More than two out of three public school districts have a policy to teach sex education. The remaining one-third of districts leave policy decisions up to individual schools or teachers.
3. Eighty-six percent of the public school districts that have a policy to teach sex education require that abstinence be promoted. Some 35% require abstinence to be taught as the only option for unmarried people and either prohibit the discussion of contraception altogether or limit discussion to its ineffectiveness. The other 51% have a policy to teach abstinence as the preferred option for teens and permit discussion of contraception as an effective means of preventing pregnancy and STIs.
4. More than half of the districts in the South with a policy to teach sex education have an abstinence-only policy, compared with one in five of such districts in the Northeast.

So in reference to Abstinance only sex education it is well documented that it doesn't work, COngress carried out two great reports that highlighted as such.

I mention this because, in your odd outburst about what one NHS trust is doing and how that doesn't match with your vlaue judgements, it would be easy to point out the failures of US sex education programs that do match with your values.

Anonymous said...

The topic is health care, Danny. Forgotten already?

Gert said...

Heaven forbid you mention 'sex education' in certain circles of Conservative America. That's a frying offence...

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

"LOL! I didn't think so."

FJ, you're ducking the issue at hand, your piece on IVF treatment was wrong as I have pointed out, you have not withdrawn that because you are stubborn and you do not like to be wrong, which you are.

I asked you to substantiate your claims that the points I outlined re: healthcare were lies and you have not.

I asked you to provide evidence for people from UK and Canada coming, en masse, for treatment to the US and you have not.

I have asked for evidence for all of the other smears and you have not ASIDE FROM evidence provided evidence for your issue with the sex education of one urban area that numbers 530,000, which is great and start but what I have said to you is, you are passing a moral value judgement on that sex education policy and you have not taken that issue on.

Please argue the points, you're just ducking FJ.

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

"The topic is health care, Danny. Forgotten already?"

All my points have been about that FJ.

On a serious note it is no surprise this has now gone up to 86 comments, I don't know what it is about me but it brings out the worst in you with this tit-for-tat business but if you don't want to argue the points FJ fine but then don't comment.

Anonymous said...

btw - Where are all those health care savings going to come from with all these new "medical rights" (including my daily orgasm).

ps - And on a more personal note, does NHS pay the full cost for viagra?

Gert said...

"The topic is health care, Danny. Forgotten already?"

The topic is American Health Care, not the NHS. Forgotten already?

Gert said...

All you is criticise the NHS. How does criticising the NHS equate to criticising Obama's plans?

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

"Where are all those health care savings going to come from with all these new "medical rights" (including my daily orgasm)."

I've already pointed out how the Obama adminsitration plans to fund the new healthcare programme.

I detect that you are trying to find 'bad things' about the NHS (not that you have and not that the NHS is perfect) when Obama has no intention of making the American healthcare system like the NHS, at all. I have no idea why you think that by trying to drag up tales about the NHS you will somehow make the Obama healthcare plan look bad?

have you not read what I published about what the plan actually is? The 8 points?

Another FJ strawman, stick to the facts and debate the issues at hand.

Gert said...

The reason why you don't get any further than to criticise the universal health care system of another country is that your approach isn't rational, its merely "anti-". You're a contrarian, nothing more. And behind the opposition to universal health care in the US lie a whole panoply of related issues and kulture kampfen. These are the death throes of deeply antiquated thinking... You're a dinosaur now and a fossil next..

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

As for Viagra, did you actually read the article or did you just see the headline and then link to it.

First off that story is 10 years old, if you'd read it you'd see that Viagra is availible on the NHS for the standard perscription charge for the following men only:

1. people with diabetes, multiple sclerosis or other single gene neurological diseases that cause impotence, spinal cord injuries, those who have undergone radical pelvic surgery and those had had their prostate gland removed.
2. Men who were in severe distress because of impotence
3. Men treated for prostate cancer
4. Men treated for kidney failure, by transplantation and dialysis
5. Men who have had polio
6. Men with spina bifida
7. Men with Parkinson's disease
8. Men with severe pelvic injury

If you have any of these ailments FJ then you could have it (on a rationed basis of 1 pill a week) and no one in their right mind would care or think it any of their business.

So why do you?

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

Gert:

FJ is a nay-sayer but he gets more deeply entrenched the more his line is resisited and the more he is challenged, take the IVF piece that is untrue, not the piece but the inferrence that it is NHS policy when it is not. He has not retracted it or apologised, he just dug out a decade old Viagra story that he didn't read otherwise he would've seen the tight regulations on Viagra and the people who are allowed to take it on the NHS and that it is rationed.

Again, he will not accept he was wrong he will just attack again. How pointless is that?

He is not thinking anything through and I do not want this to become like those other 300 comment threads of old where he merely keeps going to just have the last word, as if that means anything.

Fingers crossed.

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

I will also challenge the offensive labiaplasty nonsense FJ was spouting.

To be clear: any labiaplasty that occurs on the NHS will only have occured due to a referal from a doctor because the labia is of a large size and is causing extreme discomfort, it will not be carried out for solely cosmetic purposes, the article itself says that most labiaplasty is carried out privately in the UK, any labiaplasty done on the NHS is for medical reasons only.

So wrong again FJ but why you're persuing this odd vendetta on the NHS I've no idea but I'm glad I'm here to rebut your nonsense.

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

Finally to deal with FJ's link to the SkyNews piece about some NHS trusts refusing treatment.

This is another odd one in that clearly, it is only a handful of trusts some 16 by all accounts out of 180+ but more importantly, the idea that a NHS trust will refuse treatment in some circumstances again, seems fine to me.

What makes this odder is that refusal by private insurers in the US far outstrips that of refusal by NHS in the UK, so why highlight an issue that is one the reaspns the US healthcare system is failing?

And why use the NHS as a comparison when Obama's healthcare lan has nothing to do with the NHS?

Weird.

Ducky's here said...

You compare Obama's program to NHS in order to invoke the specter of "socialism". That keeps the right wingers frothing at the mouth.

Meanwhile the liberals are busy responding to frothing at the mouth right wingers screaming about "death councils".

Meanwhile Rahm Emmanuel has his little toadie President Barack Empty Suit fellate Billy Tauzin and the pharma industry and deliver a whole new bumper crop of Americans to private ensurers to be skimmed. Medicare loses funding to pay the premiums on the healthy that the insurance companies have skimmed and the suckers in America don't even know their pockets were picked.

It's a truely beautiful scam and the mark is so stupid and willing you almost have to cry when you understand the perfection of the plan.

Ducky's here said...

For ren's British readers who may not get all the nuances of the "debate" in America:

The Attack on ObamaCare: Gay Conspiracy Edition

Reader JP just alerted me to an email blast from a group called "The Pray In Jesus Name Project." It suggests that ObamaCare will not only pull the plug on grandma, but also result in a gay and transgendered takeover of the entire health care system. Among the bogus claims in the group's petition:

Your tax-dollars will pay for preferential hiring of homosexual hospital administrators, who distribute $50,000 grants to gender-confused activists for unneeded elective surgery to mutilate their own genitals, (and force Christian doctors to perform it.)

The group attempts to back this up by citing drafts of the House and Senate bills that make fleeting references to gender and sexual orientation, but which have nothing to do with mandated free sex-change operations. (PolitiFact, The St. Petersberg Times fact-checking service, does a great job debunking these allegations, many of which were put forth by Liberty Counsel--a group affiliated with Jerry Falwell's Liberty University.)

As for the gay takeover of hospitals? The section of the Senate bill that's cited--requiring the "participation in the institutions' programs of individuals and groups from ...different genders and sexual orientations"--actually refers to government grants awarded to students doing research in mental and behavioral health. I suppose that such a dangerously diverse group of students could decide that they, the gay mafia, should run the nation's hospitals,whose names will be "changed from 'St. Luke's Memorial' to the 'Obama Government' hospital" when atheists strip all Christian icons from the buildings, as the email predicts. But, then again, that's absolutely crazy.

Anonymous said...

You Brits should listen to mr. ducky. He knows of what he speaks.

The Left and their "Trial Lawyer" buddies can't WAIT to sink their teeth in the new and ever-expandable legal field of "medical rights".

Is sex assignment a "curable" pre-existing medical condition? Ugliness? Only time will tell.

Anonymous said...

...and once you've established a "right" to medical care in America, does ANYONE expect that costs can be contained?

Obamacare isn't going to contain medical costs. It's going to make them EXPLODE! The Trial Lawyers will make sure of THAT!

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

Ducky:

In ref to your comment at 15:48, I do agree that the fiction of socialism has been dragged up in an attempt to sabotage the healthcare reform and that does then in turn draw fire as false premises are attacked with the sole aim of disproving something that was already false to begin with.

But I do not buy the second half of your comment about what this is really about, you may call it realism but I call it destructive cynicism based on personal theories and scant evidence.

You can't be for the status quo, no doubt you'd have a larger scale reform that would be impossible to push through.

Your comment at 16:04 is an amusing insight into the mental health of some on the right and the devices by which they get their knickers in a twist. It all seems so divisive though?

The Sentinel said...

This issue has clearly ignited many passions in the US and has rapidly become a very emotive and polarised side taking exercise rather then a rational debate; I think clearly some of the polarisation and the oh-so-predicable first resort to smearing opponents as "Nazis" has had the desired effect of scaring some opposition away, but also radicalising some others.

As always the truth is a bit murkier then the simple us-and-them spin given to it and I have seen a few cases of likely agent provocateurs perpetuating the polarisation including this one of posters and leaflets of Obama with a Hitler moustache that has done the rounds as the work of 'Nazis' this report seems to bear that out at around 1:37.

I wouldn't even began to assume to know what is best for another countries health system, especially one that I don't live or have any stake in and I find it highly amusing that non-US people seem to feel so strongly that they have some say or stake in the proposals.

The Sentinel said...

The NHS has worked well for quite some time in the UK but has starting to prove woefully inadequate to the task in recent years due to a combination of factors including the massively increased pressure on it from the vast numbers of additional people it now has to treat, including health tourists as well carrying out resource consuming PC and alien cultural procedures all the way through to inadequate funding and sheer incompetence.

A couple of my family members have been let down badly by the NHS, one died of a simple infection and another is paralysed and awaiting a £1.5 compensation package, but on the other hand I was immensely impressed and grateful at the NHS attempts to save the life of another family member in very difficult and emergent circumstances.

Personally I have privately health insured much of my family, but I still have the comfort of knowing that I get knocked down or the like that the NHS is still going to be my first port of call and that I am all paid up for it.

But all in all, it is up the people of America to get down to the business of making up their mind - I think a national referendum would be the best and safest way to deal with this issue.

On other points here, I think it is quite well known that AIDS is primarily an ailment that effects homosexuals and I think pointing that out is far from any such ridiculous "homophobic" charge; I looked at the source of the AIDS figures given and this was left out:


- 70 percent of these new infections occur in men and 30 percent occur in women
- 75 percent of the new infections in women are heterosexually transmitted


Wonder why? And I wonder why they identify the sexuality of the woman who were diagnosed with new infections but not the men?

Could it be that one official report from the CDC found these facts:


'Homosexual males, who make up less than 2% of the US population, account for 56% of the adult AIDS cases. As of January 1, 1997, 324,728 men who have sex with men have been diagnosed with AIDS.'


Report: HIV/AIDS Surveillance Report (1997) , US HIV and AIDS cases reported through December 1996. 8, 2.


But don't let facts get in the way of good smear and predicated attempt at invoking the 'rules' with little spatterings of "Inappropriate?" / "homophobia" / "he spouts so much hateful nonsense" / " I was hoping with the comment guidelines he would control his language but clearly not" / "hatred of Lesbians" etc

And then my favourite, the wonderful hypocritically indignant "The wink doesn't cover the fact that was a personal attack, off topic and once again nothing to do with the issue" - from someone who clearly carries out completely gratuitous personal attacks on other people, behind their backs and behind locked doors!!!! Inappropriate? I think so.

(And I got one of those posts from the above "my enemies..." as I do still get a quite few bits sent to me in that vein; I checked the IP address out of interest and it was Swiss. An amazing achievement really, managing to antagonising someone from a country known for its neutrality!!)

Cool.

Peace out.

Gert said...

Ducky:

Thanks all the same for the info but we get it alright: the Wingers have very little arguments, if any at all.

Just watched the topical news show Newsnight (Beeb) and its disconcerting to see the Repugs slandering the NHS for political gain. Shows again the paucity of ideas on the sclerotic Right Wing.

They're gonna have to do better if they want to stand a chance in 2016...

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

Sentinel:

Regarding your efforts to place the blame for the 'Hitler' jibes onto the Democrats, I'm not sure FOX News is the best source for such debunking, you must be more than aware of the nonsense thrown around to paint Obama as some odd idea of a Nazi/socialist/whatever. If you are seriously suggesting that such is move has origins within the Democractic movement, that is stretching the bounderies of reasoning a little too far but if that's your opinion based on scant evidence, fair enough.

As for non-US people, well we've been drawn in somewhat with terrible and silly smearing of the NHS. And the fact that we can talk about it here all we want, or are we not allowed to do that?

Speaking of which, you suggest reasons for the recent failings of the NHS but such 'failings' are not backed up by data from WHO that I quoted earlier as a comparison to other healthcare systems around the world, the NHS isn't perfect but it is not by any means poor.

Can you be clearer on why you think the NHS is slipping? What are the root causes in your opinion?

And uptake of private healthcare in the UK is at 8%, half of that is NHS connected so if the NHS was as bad as all that, there would be a greater increase of private healthcare uptake and there is not.

And then we come to AIDS.

I'm not sure how you can persist with the myth that AIDS is a disease that effects homosexuals more than hetrosexuals, when the major level of AIDS infection is in the hetrosexual communities in Africa, the continent blighted with the greatest number of AIDS/HIV sufferers.

I mention the word homophobia because you may or may not be familiar with the homophobic slur: "The Gay Plague" which stems from the ridiculed idea that has no basis in science or fact that AIDS/HIV is a homosexual demographic disease, when it is not at all, as we can see in Africa.

Your quote regarding homosexuals in the US seems to forget that AIDS/HIV is far more prevelent in Africa, where it is a 'hetrosexual plague' to re-coin a terrible, terrible term.

I was hoping with could exhange comments without you attacking me for no reason, I have carried out no attacks here to you or FJ but tried to debate the points, I am confident in that and will not be dranw by your efforts at baiting.

Anonymous said...

Perhaps someone here could point out where I slandered the NHS? Not a single fact that I cited was refuted. Contextualized, explained, and rationalized perhaps, but not one fact refuted.

And fyi - Sexual transmission of AIDS is almost entirely spread via the practice of anal sodomy. Yes, some heterosexuals/bisexuals engage in the practice. But you won't find the medical community identifying THAT specific fact to the public. They'd prefer to "not to label so as to morally condemn" the practice, as it might put the blame for the diseases continued spread squarely on the community responsible for it... homosexual and bisexual men.

Anonymous said...

Look everybody... there really was a death panel in the Obamacare proposal. It's a shame they won't ever be able to eliminate the "cripple panel" though.

I guess Sarah Palin wasn't crazy after all.

Anonymous said...

btw - An honest Brit would come clean on the inferiority of NHS to private American health care. But then again, some people can't handle the truth.

Coldtype said...

“Meanwhile Rahm Emmanuel has his little toadie President Barack Empty Suit fellate Billy Tauzin and the pharma industry and deliver a whole new bumper crop of Americans to private ensurers to be skimmed. Medicare loses funding to pay the premiums on the healthy that the insurance companies have skimmed and the suckers in America don't even know their pockets were picked”
-Ducky

Beautifully stated Ducky and the unfettered truth.

“But I do not buy the second half of your comment about what this is really about, you may call it realism but I call it destructive cynicism based on personal theories and scant evidence”
-DHG

Need evidence DHG? Let’s start here with Dave Lindorff and debate the issues he raises.

A few more questions. How can the issue of single payer be “politically unfeasible” when it has the support of two thirds of the American public and some 60% of American physicians? Given your characterization of Ducky’s observations, wouldn’t it have been logical for the Barockstar to utilize his enormous political capital coming into the White House to push for true reform (single payer) of the decrepit US medical system as opposed to the load of crap that drives a captive audience of some 300 million Americans into the very clutches of the rapacious insurance industry that currently victimizes them? But let’s not get sidetracked, remember Dave Lindorff above.

jams o donnell said...

Hnest Brits and inferiority of the NHS?

I can;t beleive that so much bullshit is being heaped on teh NHS by ingorant americans. Oh hold on it's all true, Stephen Hawking, that all american boy is with us because he was raised in the US! Jesus

I have had my fair share of exposure to NHS treatment in recent years and it is good. I have a serious eye condition and need frequent contact lens changes. This is done free and promptly

Recently I ryuptured a tendon. I saw a specialist promptly and was admitted to hospital immediately. My operation was the next day.

My father had a heart attack some years go. He was in his late 70s at the time and contrary to teh bullshit eing spouted in the US, he was not denied the necessary treatment on account of his age.

I do have one beef about the NHS - Hospital food is pretty dreadful and that's it

Frank Partisan said...

Daniel H-G: You came prepared today.

Having the numbers, beat your I question the premise of your question. You had the numbers, and FJ didn't.

Single payer was sabotaged by Obama, with no regard to public opinion. Obama is a big time enemy of single payer. His advisors are economists from Milton Friedman's school.

FJ: There are death panels in private insurance companies.

Guess what? Rightist Democrats gave in, and dropped the end of life counseling decision mechanism. They caved in.

Ducky: The insurance companies smartened up, and stopped giving $$ ro Republicans. They do their bidding free. Tons of $$ is going to centrist Democrats.

Colleges do the basic research for Pharma.

Gert: A socialist healthcare system would abolish HMOs, and nationalize the pharmaceuticals.

Coldtype: I don't agree with Lindorff tactically. I read that article a few days ago. One point he makes, is since Obama screwed it up to start with, we should unite with the right. I have problems on many levels with that. The final outcome, will be one we don't like. It would make more sense, to demand more, rather than destroy everything, with a fruitless coalition with rightist yahoos.

Sentinel: I listened all evening to right talk radio. They use Nazi analogies like it is going out of business. I believe if you describe your enemy imprecisely, it leads to your own downfall.

You sound like someone from the days of Dr. Lister (who Listerine is named after). Bacterias and viruses are the blame for diseases. Fighting AIDS is a job for science, not the church.

Nevin: I'm going to have to soon have a post about the two parties.

Coldtype said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Coldtype said...

I didn't get from Lindorff that the Left should embrace the right at all but that we should in no way attempt to salvage this garbage the Barockstar is peddling. These "town hall" meetings should be trashed by both the Left and the deluded yokels sent in by the Right with an attempt (I'll make no prediction on its success) to educate the reactionaries on what exactly single payer entails.

On a related note, Richard Seymour calls for humanitarian intervention in the US and it’s awfully hard not to agree with him.

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

FJ:

"The Left and their "Trial Lawyer" buddies can't WAIT to sink their teeth in the new and ever-expandable legal field of "medical rights". Is sex assignment a "curable" pre-existing medical condition? Ugliness? Only time will tell."

This is a strawman and does't even exist as a situation over here or in the US.

"...and once you've established a "right" to medical care in America, does ANYONE expect that costs can be contained?"

This doesn't make any sense, clearly the propoganda has effected you that you are trotting out lies verbatim and you haven't read what the reform actually is but thankfully I have included in the comments.

"Obamacare isn't going to contain medical costs. It's going to make them EXPLODE! The Trial Lawyers will make sure of THAT!"

No they won't, we've already dealth with the costs element, you seem confused as to what the reform is, again, I urge you to read the 8 point plan.

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

FJ:

I still see that after you had your points refuted you still refuse to retract them? Your stubborness to conceade that is a poor reflection on your character.

"Not a single fact that I cited was refuted."

Yes it was, the NHS does not pay for IVF in the way you claimed, Viagra is not availiable to all who ask, labiaplasty is only availiable to those who are in pain with medical conditions relating to the labia, with regrads to the sex education I provided a clear context and your moral judgement is up to you but that your opinion does not an argument win. Finally, with regards to the refusal of treatment, again I provided full context of the scale and the right to do so with a comparison to the fact that the US system refuses far more treatment so that if the US healthcare system was to become like the NHS (it isn't at all by the way) it would be better than it is now in that field.

Also, you still refuse to provide evidence for the assertion of UK and Canadian citizens coming en masse to the US for treatment, you still have no evidence for where that are any lies in the three Obama 8 point rebuttals I have put up here.

Regarding AIDS, your statement: "Sexual transmission of AIDS is almost entirely spread via the practice of anal sodomy."

Is utterly untrue, a fiction that makes you look ignorant and a litle bit stupid. AIDS/HIV is spread by sexual intercourse and exchanging of substances containing lymphocytes: blood, semen, vaginal and cervical secretions, mother's milk, saliva, tears, urine, and feces.

I will repeat the fact that some 27 million people live with AIDS/HIV in the continent of Africa, the majority have got the disease have done so via hetreosexual non-anal intercourse.

Your obsession with the need to perpetuate myths is dangerous and reflective of your moral character.

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

FJ:

Re: Death Panel Lie. The piece you link to is funny because it doesn't say they were any death panel's AT ALL and at the top of the article is has a link to a fact check fully refuting crazy Palin's silly and stupid statement. So you're wrong, again, there are no death panels, as I've pointed out elsewhere.

Then to rebut the article you link to in the Daily Mail, first off, one columnist does not make a winning argument FJ, do you really want me to link to the same paper writing an article that defends the NHS?

OK then I will...

The point is that linking to that article does not win the argument, many people here in the UK love the NHS, it is not perfect but see the outpouring of support for it via Twitter.

More pro NHS articles in paper you link to here and here.

These prove nothing, other than it is a complicated story with many sides. You're going to have to do better than that, considering that the UK health service is better than America's as the stats I put up here earlier pointed out.

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

Renegade:

I did come prepared yes but quite frankly it is pointless because FJ never once accepts his errors or mistakes, he quietly drops them and goes on...or utterly ignores the fact he has been proven wrong. His stubborness amounts to delusion at times, which is tiresome to argue against.

He just sets up strawmen, with no substance that need knocking down, not really a best use of time and as you can see, it becomes a comment free for all.

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

Some ore reflections on why the current healthcare system in the US is failing and to maintaint eh status quo is damaging America's health.

I've already pointed out that life expectency in the US is not as high as other Western nations, a key measure of levels of health.

But infant mortality in the US is very high, only Brazil, China, Turkey, Mexico and Russia are ahead of the US, which has 8 deaths per 1,000 live births, the UK is currently 5 with Russia on 10.

Anonymous said...

Methinks the lady doth protest too much!

"Just the place for a Snark!" the Bellman cried,
As he landed his crew with care;
Supporting each man on the top of the tide
By a finger entwined in his hair.

"Just the place for a Snark! I have said it twice:
That alone should encourage the crew.
Just the place for a Snark! I have said it thrice:
What I tell you three times is true."


You can hunt the Snark by stating things 3x if you like, but chances are the Boojum will get you fail to address the underlying argument.

Ta-ta!

They sought it (Obamacare) with thimbles, they sought it with care;
They pursued it with forks and hope;
They threatened its life with a railway-share;
They charmed it with smiles and soap.

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

So, once again you have nothing?

And to be clear, it is YOU that is doing all the protesting, I'm just fisking your lies.

Anonymous said...

This is a strawman and does't even exist as a situation over here or in the US....

BOOJUM! Lol!

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

Again, you're not offering any arguments, just noise.

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

More facts regarding the efficency of the NHS in comparison to the current US healthcare model:

Of the c.15% of GDP the US spends on healthcare annually (that’s about $2.2 trillion), around 50% is spent by the government (around $1.1 trillion). By contrast, the UK spends around 8% of its GDP on healthcare, with the Department of Health’s budget for the NHS (England) in 2008/9 around £94 billion (about $155 billion).

The English NHS cares for 49 million people (100% of the population of England); US public healthcare currently covers about 83 million (around 28% of the US population).

For a direct comparison, that means that in England the government spends around $3,200 per capita on healthcare and covers the entire population whereas in the US the federal government spends around $3,700 per capita and yet covers less than a third of the population.

Take away those 80 million covered by the US’s state healthcare (which doesn’t cover all uninsured Americans, so this is being generous) from the States’ 300 million population, we’re left with 220 million Americans to account for the other $1.1 trillion spent in the US each year on private healthcare.

If I’ve got my maths right, that works out as $5000 for every American in the private system – almost $2,000 a year more than the NHS costs.

Yep, that’s right capitalism fans – the US free market system for healthcare provision is significantly less efficient than a “socialised” one.

This no doubt explains the Republican fear of universal US healthcare – if providing government healthcare funding for less than a third of the population costs $1.1 trillion, they no doubt imagine it would involve a bit more than a threefold increase in public healthcare spending to cover the entire population. (If they’re being really cynical, they’d no doubt point out that the US government’s $1.1 trillion healthcare spend divided by 83 million works out as a cost of $13,250 per person per annum – and therefore the annual cost to cover all Americans at that rate could be as high as $4 trillion a year.)

Of course, what they’re failing to do is take into account the ability a public healthcare system would have to drive down costs, and in their attacks on the NHS are choosing to ignore the simple fact that the NHS (even with all its problems and wastage) works out as far, far better value for money than even the current US system.

Were you to be more of a lefty than me, you might be tempted at this point to suggest that it is precisely this ability of a national health service to drive down costs that the Republicans are opposed to, as it’d leave the rich pharmaceutical companies out of pocket.

But this in turn would ignore the fact that the US’s over-spending on medicine thanks to its piss-poor health system helps to subsidise the cheaper medicine available in other parts of the world by offsetting pharmaceutical R&D costs, etc. – in other words, a US version of the NHS would almost certainly decrease the cost of US healthcare, but may well end up raising it elsewhere…

Anonymous said...

The last of the crew needs especial remark,
Though he looked an incredible dunce:
He had just one idea—but, that one being "Snark,"
The good Bellman engaged him at once.


*Snark Snark*

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

Is that all you've got? No data? No rebuttals, no evidence, no arguments, no rational and reasoned debate?

You are just resorting to silly comments because you've lost this particular argument?

That's a shame.

Anonymous said...

No, just refusing to go on until you get yourself "unsnarked".

He was thoughtful and grave—but the orders he gave
Were enough to bewilder a crew.
When he cried "Steer to starboard, but keep her head larboard!"
What on earth was the helmsman to do?

Then the bowsprit got mixed with the rudder sometimes:
A thing, as the Bellman remarked,
That frequently happens in tropical climes,
When a vessel is, so to speak, "snarked."

But the principal failing occurred in the sailing,
And the Bellman, perplexed and distressed,
Said he had hoped, at least, when the wind blew due East,
That the ship would not travel due West!

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

I have no idea what you mean, a snark is a snide and sarcastic comment, I have made no such thing but you have on numerous occasions:

"The NHS isn't enforcing the no-drop rule yet, are they?"

"SOMEBODY is getting cranky. What's the problem, NHS not delivering on their orgasms?"

"When you getting your facelift, Danny? You'll never get any decent acting work with that mug... ;-)"

But I did not retreat from the debate and post gibberish as you have?

This is going off topic now, just argue the points FJ or don't bother commenting.

SecondComingOfBast said...

Sentinel-It would be useless to have a referendum in the US for health care reform, or anything else. Regardless of the results of the referendum, the debate would rage on, and if the referendum were to be decided in favor of reform, it would still be up to the Congress to write the precise language of the law, which when they did would get bogged down in the same shit we have going on today. In other words, a referendum here would have about the same meaning as a Gallup poll.

The only thing that can solve this problem long term is a constitutional amendment. There will probably be a move in that direction, eventually, but probably not for another twenty or thirty years at least.

There will in the meantime probably be some reforms, some of it will be good, some of it will be bad, and most of it will just be meaningless drivel that will add more layers of bureaucracy, ironically one of the main things it's supposed to reduce.

Yeah, let's see now, what America needs is a government agency designed to reduce bureaucracy in the health care field.

Okey doke. We'll see how well that works.

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

Pagan, I've already pointed out that the current healthcare system in the US is very unefficient indeed and compares very badly with government run healthcare schemes elsewhere.

I see no evidence for the idea that it will get worse, rather than better, mainly becuase it is already so bad.

Anonymous said...

For the last time, you've already dismissed my argument out of hand as a "strawman". I won't join you on your Snark hunt. This Snark is a Boojum and you refuse to accept that possibility.

And if you don't understand me, then perhaps you should seek Mr. Carroll's guidance on the subject. If not, have a nice day.

Ducky's here said...

Number one Farmer, you mention tort reform. Now when the right starts in with the "tort reform" crap I know they are on the canvas.

1. Awards have been capped at the state level in about 30 states. Malpractice premiums have not declined. Big surprise right? The noncompetitive malpractice insurance industry is raking it in hand over fist and because regulation INCREASES their profit they are going to lower premiums.
Right.

2. Claims processing to minimize payouts to the insured costs more than tort awards and would be lowered with a single payer plan. So let's lower costs --- go single payer.

Daniel - My sarcasm can hide my intent. I in no way advocate the current American system. It has been rigged and is being rigged by Obama to extract the maximum from Americans and pump up the "for profit" insurers and drug companies.
Note that in the American system only "for profit" hospitals, a concept that gained rapidly under Bill "Right Wing Reactionary" Clinton and is causing the fall of many of our finest teaching hospitals.

Anonymous said...

The threat of torts is what keeps "quality" in our medical system and the doctors honest. Take away that threat, and "the system" get's shabbier.

Under single payer, would the government allow individuals to sue doctors who would pass the costs on to them? I doubt it.

Screw single payer. Let's keep the devil we've got instead of trading him in for a bigger one.

Gert said...

Farmer:

"And fyi - Sexual transmission of AIDS is almost entirely spread via the practice of anal sodomy. Yes, some heterosexuals/bisexuals engage in the practice. But you won't find the medical community identifying THAT specific fact to the public."

That's pure and 100 % conjecture on your part. You just like the idea that they're being punished for an 'unnatural' practice. You've no proof of this whatsoever. No one has...

Anonymous said...

Not true Gert. You should read Michael Fumento's "Myth of Heterosexual AIDS".

It's not conjecture at all. It's FACT.

Now attack Fumento... everyone else has... but he's NOT wrong. This is where the politics of health care has SNARKED the facts.

nanc said...

it's really too bad for the left they cannot take a broad brush and paint every patriot crazy and deranged. the majority - sleeping lion is awakening and this government SHOULD be afraid - not due to violence, but because people are FINALLY educating themselves on how THEY work for U.S. and we surround them.

Gert said...

Fresh from Google Blog Search:

The Attack on ObamaCare: Gay Conspiracy Edition:

(quote)
Reader JP just alerted me to an email blast from a group called "The Pray In Jesus Name Project." It suggests that ObamaCare will not only pull the plug on grandma, but also result in a gay and transgendered takeover of the entire health care system. Among the bogus claims in the group's petition:

"Your tax-dollars will pay for preferential hiring of homosexual hospital administrators, who distribute $50,000 grants to gender-confused activists for unneeded elective surgery to mutilate their own genitals, (and force Christian doctors to perform it.)"

The group attempts to back this up by citing drafts of the House and Senate bills that make fleeting references to gender and sexual orientation, but which have nothing to do with mandated free sex-change operations. (PolitiFact, The St. Petersberg Times fact-checking service, does a great job debunking these allegations, many of which were put forth by Liberty Counsel--a group affiliated with Jerry Falwell's Liberty University.)

As for the gay takeover of hospitals? The section of the Senate bill that's cited--requiring the "participation in the institutions' programs of individuals and groups from ...different genders and sexual orientations"--actually refers to government grants awarded to students doing research in mental and behavioral health. I suppose that such a dangerously diverse group of students could decide that they, the gay mafia, should run the nation's hospitals,whose names will be "changed from ‘St. Luke's Memorial' to the ‘Obama Government' hospital" when atheists strip all Christian icons from the buildings, as the email predicts. But, then again, that's absolutely crazy.

(Seen any other loopy ads trying to demonize ObamaCare--ones that no one's talking about yet? Email them to me: skhimm at tnr dot com.)
(unquote)

Frank Partisan said...

Late in the night, I'm going on to a new topic. Best to sum up.

Ducky's here said...

No sir nanc, we can't paint the far right with a broad brush.

We can't find one large enough to cover the people who the right wing has whipped into a froth the past couple of decades.
Yes sir, a conservative Republican rep from GEORGIA includes a clause for end of life counseling and sure as hell we have Sarah Palin screaming death panels.
But then again, they also think a small increase in the top marginal rate is socialism, that Sarah Palin would make a great president, that you can make people ungay with therapy, that the earth is ten thousand years old, that Obama was born in Kenya and doesn’t say the pledge of allegiance and was sworn in on a Quran, that the Clinton death list is real and that Hillary murdered Vince Foster, and on and on and on

Ain't no way you are going to find a large enough brush.

The Sentinel said...

hoffman gill,


"Regarding your efforts to place the blame for the 'Hitler' jibes onto the Democrats..."

Again, you just read what you want read, not what has actually been written.


"I'm not sure FOX News is the best source for such debunking..."

Actually it was witness being interviewed on Fox news, not an editorial from Fox news. But just to make it a bit clearer to you, blow is a photo to back up this witness. Notice something odd about one of the 'Nazis' holding the sign?

photo


"As for non-US people, well we've been drawn in somewhat with terrible and silly smearing of the NHS..."

Why people smearing a British institution should really bother you when you confess to despising my national flag - the British union flag - and all the contempt that conveys for Britain and the British is a bit of mystery really.


"And the fact that we can talk about it here all we want, or are we not allowed to do that?"

Absolutely; and its good to see you have an opinion for a change, even if it is just mainly cut-and-pasted.

What I actually said was that non-US people have no say or stake on the actual proposals at hand. Do you think you do?

The Sentinel said...

"Speaking of which, you suggest reasons for the recent failings of the NHS but such 'failings' are not backed up by data from WHO...."

No, I didn't cut-and-paste long reams of text, I backed it up with a couple of first hand experiences.

But if you want some cut-and-paste examples, no problem, there is hardly a shortage:


"Appalling standards of care that may have contributed to the deaths of at least 400 patients at a hospital trust were missed repeatedly by managers and regulators, it was disclosed yesterday...A report by the Healthcare Commission into death rates at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust found that receptionists were given responsibility for carrying out medical checks and patients were left screaming in pain for hours...Families have described Third World conditions at the trust, with some patients drinking water from vases and others left on trolleys for hours without medication...."
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article5928256.ece



"Since 1997, 2,311 hospital patients have died from malnutrition and the effects of hunger...The appalling statistics reveal that the number of men and women starving to death in hospitals has risen by 16 per cent since Labour came to power...'There can be no excuses, the least that patients should be able to expect is to be fed properly when they go into hospital for treatment...'But unfortunately NHS frontline staff are often overburdened by red tape and paperwork and are consistently being spread too thin and too wide across the service..."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1168377/Starved-NHS-242-patients-die-malnutrition-single-year.html



"A 78-year-old heart patient spent an unbelievable 42 hours on a casualty unit trolley, it was revealed yesterday...World War II veteran John Pullen was given hardly anything to eat or drink...Doctors and nurses told a string of horror stories, including that of a hospital which had to treat patients in ambulances in a car park."


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-68340/Patient-spent-42-hours-trolley.html


"The crisis of care in Britain's casualty units has now reached the point where male and female patients on trolleys are allocated male and female "wards" in separate, crowded corridors...the practice is so normal that staff have painted letters on the corridor walls to mark where trolleys should be parked..."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1338551/Revealed-the-NHS-scandal-of-his-and-hers-trolley-corridors.html


"Tuberculosis is making a "worrying comeback" in London with a four-fold increase in some areas over the last decade, a report warns...A six-month study by the committee found that strains of the disease which were resistant to drugs were more common in London than anywhere else...They said that the cost of treating these cases was sometimes 10 times more expensive, with increasing pressure on NHS budgets

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-202677/Tuberculosis-makes-comeback.html


"A confidential internal report on health tourism estimates that the bill for treating foreign patients amounts to at least £62 million a year, The Times has learnt...The figure is “bound to be an underestimate” since new rules intended to prevent the abuse of the NHS by foreign patients are being ignored, according to the report."
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/health/article2374072.ece


"It's crunch time for the NHS: despite record investment in recent years, debts of between £600m and 700m are predicted for the past financial year, and there is little sign of the financial crisis abating..."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2006/apr/24/publicservices.health


"Can you be clearer on why you think the NHS is slipping? What are the root causes in your opinion?"

I couldn't be any clearer. I gave you five reasons that are borne out by the facts.

The Sentinel said...

"And uptake of private healthcare in the UK is at 8%, half of that is NHS connected so if the NHS was as bad as all that, there would be a greater increase of private healthcare uptake and there is not."

Around about 12.5% of people in the UK have health insurance, a considerable sum really.

But I think aside from the fact that is expensive and a lot more people cannot afford it, there is also the element as to why should they? People already pay a lot of money for NI - why should they have to pay again?


"I'm not sure how you can persist with the myth that AIDS is a disease that effects homosexuals more than hetrosexuals, when the major level of AIDS infection is in the hetrosexual communities in Africa"

And I'm really not sure why you persist with the PC myth that it is not primarily a homosexual aliment.

The source you gave certainly made no mention of your absurd contention, but as I have already said, gives a lot illumination in the figures you choose to leave out and they choose to redact.

- 70 percent of these new infections occur in men and 30 percent occur in women
- 75 percent of the new infections in women are heterosexually transmitted

Can you see any problem with the above figures and your contention?



"when the major level of AIDS infection is in the hetrosexual communities in Africa"

Yes, and I can just imagine your average African proudly flying a rainbow flag and shouting from the rooftops that he is a homosexual.

Really, where are your figures for this - it is abusrd!


"I mention the word homophobia becasue..."

I know why you mentioned it along with some of these others:

"Inappropriate?" / "he spouts so much hateful nonsense" / " I was hoping with the comment guidelines he would control his language but clearly not" / "hatred of Lesbians"

I had already predicted posts ago that you will use these "guidelines to constantly challenge every man and his dog" who disagrees with you and at the moment its just FJ (and now me.)


"Your quote regarding homosexuals in the US seems to forget that AIDS/HIV is far more prevelent in Africa"

And what an amazing trend reverse it would be if your absurd contention were true - perhaps the greatest trend reversal in history.


"I was hoping with could exhange comments without you attacking me for no reason"

There hasn't been any "attack" on you whatsoever, just some facts that you don't seem to like. But really, you just love trying to play the poor old victim don't you? Despite the fact that it is you that like to dish out gratuitous personal attacks.


"I have carried out no attacks here to you or FJ"

No, you didn't do it here out in the open, instead you choose to do it behind peoples backs and in a place where no defence is allowed. And it is hardly the first time you have done it.

So stop your pathetic, hypocritical see-through crying about others "attacking" you.


"I am confident in that and will not be dranw by your efforts at baiting."

What a bizarre statement, akin to an addict proclaiming his strength of will to forgo his addiction.


Renegade Eye,


"I listened all evening to right talk radio. They use Nazi analogies like it is going out of business"

Precisely.

It is an extreme and dangerous way to colour a debate.

This word and its true meaning will have lost all value and deterrent before long.


"You sound like someone from the days of Dr. Lister (who Listerine is named after). Bacterias and viruses are the blame for diseases. Fighting AIDS is a job for science, not the church."

Once again, you seem to burden me with the connotation of a hell of a lot more then I have actually said. Did you think I was speaking in 'code' again?!

I couldn't care less what people do behind closed doors, nor did I mention any "church", but I do care about accuracy and countering stupid, irresponsible and idiotic PC fantasies. Fantasies that will not help scientists beat this disease in any case.

The Sentinel said...

Pagan Temple,


"Sentinel-It would be useless to have a referendum in the US for health care reform, or anything else. Regardless of the results of the referendum, the debate would rage on..."


No doubt.

I didn't really mean it would end debate I meant that the will of the majority of the people needs to be the decider - not politics and money - and that anyone who really believes in democracy should at least be satisfied that the decision was democracy in action.

Essentially, no one could realistically say that a decision was imposed upon them by a few politicians.

Ducky's here said...

"Tuberculosis is making a "worrying comeback" in London with a four-fold increase in some areas over the last decade, a report warns...A six-month study by the committee found that strains of the disease which were resistant to drugs were more common in London than anywhere else...They said that the cost of treating these cases was sometimes 10 times more expensive, with increasing pressure on NHS budgets

-----------------

So what? Are you aware that drug resistant TB is becoming more common all over the world or do you just spend your time reading the British tabloids (your equivalent of FAUX News)?

Ducky's here said...

"Your quote regarding homosexuals in the US seems to forget that AIDS/HIV is far more prevelent in Africa"

And what an amazing trend reverse it would be if your absurd contention were true - perhaps the greatest trend reversal in history.

--------------------------------

Do you deny that AIDS has decreased in America (and Europe) and that Africa is the center of the disease?
You sound like one of those "abstinence only" medicine show barkers who try to convince people that the human will fails less often than condoms.
Meanwhile the disease is being transmitted in utero and you want to go on some gay bashing rampage.

Anonymous said...

In sum...

Twas brillig and the slithy toves
did gyre and gimble in the wabe
all mimsy were the boragoves
and the mome wraiths outgrabe

Gert said...

FJ:

Fumento doesn't argue against the fact that heterosexuals are just as prone to contract AIDS:

"Although he would be accused of claiming heterosexuals have no AIDS risk,[17] the back cover of his AIDS book[18] states, “The ‘myth’ of heterosexual AIDS consists of a series of myths, one of which is not that heterosexuals get AIDS. They certainly do get it . . .” Rather, he argued[19] that while white middle-class heterosexuals were the target of AIDS propaganda, “. . . the profile of the typical victim of heterosexually transmitted AIDS is a lower-class black woman who is the regular sex partner of an IV drug user.”"

Homophobes like you (and the Conservative American blogosphere positively teems with them) are still stuck in 'Gay Plague' mode.

You guys would be barred from the Flat Earth Society on the grounds of not being rational enough.

Gert said...

And for the American readers: Sentinel's denouement of the NHS comes from a very simple perspective: as a Far Right Nationalist he perceives anything to the left of the BNP as 'Marxist'.

The NHS was a Labour creation, ergo Marxist (twaddle but there you go), ergo bad. Never mind the fact that the NHS has been embraced by the Tories for yonks now...

The rest of his discourse is page filler.

Gert said...

Ducky:

"We can't find one large enough to cover the people who the right wing has whipped into a froth the past couple of decades.
Yes sir, a conservative Republican rep from GEORGIA includes a clause for end of life counseling and sure as hell we have Sarah Palin screaming death panels.
But then again, they also think a small increase in the top marginal rate is socialism, that Sarah Palin would make a great president, that you can make people ungay with therapy, that the earth is ten thousand years old, that Obama was born in Kenya and doesn’t say the pledge of allegiance and was sworn in on a Quran, that the Clinton death list is real and that Hillary murdered Vince Foster, and on and on and on

Ain't no way you are going to find a large enough brush."


No brush, indeed. That's just the shortlist but at least now I know where the term 'death panels' comes from.

'End of life counseling': Mengele, don't forget yer syringes, mmwwwhahahahaaa...

Like I said: the Right Wing rules by fear and it works (but the mark remains oblivious). Orwell would be pleased.

The Sentinel said...

Duckys here,


"So what? Are you aware that drug resistant TB is becoming more common all over the world"

And why is that do you think?

A disease that was eradicated in the UK many years ago?

But that wasn't the point in any case, as you would know if you had bothered to read the comment flow for context.


"do you just spend your time reading the British tabloids (your equivalent of FAUX News)?"

Actually I just did a goggle search because I am fully aware of the general slide of the NHS to Third World standards; but I note that you cannot refute the factual basis of the reports so instead resort to smearing the messangers.


"Do you deny that AIDS has decreased in America (and Europe) and that Africa is the center of the disease?"

Again, you haven't a clue what you are replying to, not having bothered to read the context. Just a stupid little baseless hysterical argumentum ad honimen smear of "gay bashing" when I clearly said I couldn't care less what people do in their own homes.


Gert,

"And for the American readers:.."

That's right Gert, you are an expert on pretty much everything to do with other peoples countries and problems are you not?

Israel, Palestine, UK...


"Sentinel's denouement of the NHS"

Again, pure argumentum ad hominem - I haven't denounced anything; I have been paying into the NHS long before you fella, and so have my family for as long as it has existed, so I have a fair stake in it.

I posted a few reports to demonstrate the recent decline of the NHS under the strain of the PC demand of being an organisation that is all things to all people including that those that haven't paid into it; it was never meant to be that.

I actually think the NHS is a good idea and needs to be saved from the idiotic, traitorous incompetents that currently govern my country.


"as a Far Right Nationalist he perceives anything to the left of the BNP as 'Marxist'."

Again pure argumentum ad honimen - smears; you are the only to mention the BNP here, I never have, here on my blog. As for far right, a little test I took recently that has the results in the margin of my blog have me pegged to the left.

But tehn you are quite well known for your hysteria as Cookie and a few others can testify to and you are also regarded by many in blogsphere as rabidly anti- Israeli, and maybe even an anti-semite given the obsession of your blog; so people in glass houses...


"The NHS was a Labour creation"

That might have been what they taught you in your school in Belguim, but in England we were taught the truth that the NHS was based on the proposals of the 1942 Beveridge Report that was produced under a coalition government.


"The rest of his discourse is page filler."

i.e you are have trouble smearing right now.

Anonymous said...

I love the way Gert will stigmatize IV drug users and needles and agree that they contribute to the spread of AIDS, but won't stigmatize anal sodomy, even though the active male's risk of AIDS infection in anal sex is 100x greater than in vaginal sex (and 1,000x if the passive partner).

I can only conclude that he suffers from a "personal" bias.

Ducky's here said...

I still want to know why the most active reform movement is in America. Purportedly the best system in the world (LMFAO) it is driving us to bankruptcy and none of the poor benighted nations with an NHS or single payer seem to interested in being saddled with Americas ridiculous system.

Then we have the National Front checking in and talking about TB and AIDS as his contribution.

Anonymous said...

Studies have proven that AIDS would NEVER have been an epidemic if left to heterosexual transmission.

It is noted by the authors that the probability of HIV transmission from male to female in a large observational study in Rakai, Uganda, was 0.0005-0.0026 or 1/2000-1/384 coital acts. Such probabilities would result in relatively low rates of lifetime transmission. Specifically, this would be 0.2-0.4 infected partner/man and 0.09-0.18 infected partner/woman, which would be too low to sustain the epidemic. Their observations in this study suggest that viral dynamics are not constant and that the early stage of infection is a period in which there is acute hyperinfectiousness which is "brief but efficient."

The Sentinel said...

Duckys here,

None of that comment made any sense at all.

Except of course more of your baseless and hysterical argumentum ad honimen, this time invoking the "national front" - do you have any evidence whatsoever to back up your charge that I am a supporter, let alone a member or activist of the NF, or its it just more hysterical lying bullshit from someone who hasn't a clue about what he is commenting on?

This is the way you deal with any dissent from your views is it? Hysterical smears? And you place me on the far right!!!

And by the way I didn't bring AIDS up, but I did use evidence to refute the utter absurd PC rubbish that it is not a primarily homosexual ailment, but a heterosexual one and I am not the one "talking about TB" - the London Assembly's Health Committee are!!

And it is far from my only contribution; I also linked to factual reports of over 2300 people starving to death in NHS hospitals since 1997; 78 year olds being left on NHS hospital trolleys in a corridor with virtually no food and water for nearly 2 days; health tourists taking at least £62m of NHS money and the £600m - £700m NHS deficit ...

Not to mention the fact that I educated at least one of you as to the real origin of the NHS, stated that I agree with the principle of the NHS but not the current state of it and suggested my humble opinion on what I personally think may be the best approach to solve the proposals in the US: Democracy...

Keep up, and grow up.

Gert said...

Sentinel:

I hope you're not going to deny you're Far Right. If you've had a change of heart on that. please let me know.

'Multiculturalism' is a Marxist construct in your book. Only a Far Rightist would believe that.

Anti-Semitism? Oh man, you're the one who up to recently thought I was Jewish! (proof provided if needed).You didn't even believe me when I emphatically told you I wasn't. When you finally told me you did believe me, you called me a Jewish sycophant. Deeply anti-Semitic statements, including Holocaust revisionism were your hallmark, at least up to then (I hear you less about that now) and can be found over at mine.

I'm anti-Zionist, not anti-Israel. Against what Israel does in the OTs, not against its existence.

As regards Cookie, please speak of what you know. In the case of Cookie that's nothing at all. He broke of the relationship unilaterally after I called him an ignoramus on I-P. Which he is (he also called himself that, quite literally). But he'll still send me a Xmas card, of that I'm sure.

The NHS is largely seen as a Labour construct. Your criticism is denouement by another term, please don't resort to literalism. You're point that it's sliding to third world standards is absurd and worse than just denunciation.

Calm down.

Gert said...

FJ:

"I love the way Gert will stigmatize IV drug users and needles and agree that they contribute to the spread of AIDS, but won't stigmatize anal sodomy,[...]"

I did nothing of the sort. It's much simpler: AIDS is not a homosexual disease anymore. Even your man Fumento doesn't denies that.

As regards stigmatising, I'll leave the stigmata to you. AIDS is a terrible disease, no matter how one contracts it or who.

The Sentinel said...

“I hope you're not going to deny you're Far Right. If you've had a change of heart on that. please let me know.”


Oh I love how you think I have to go into a defensive mode and “deny” things that you have decided to label me with! How beautifully twisted – how beautifully PC.

I won’t “deny” that you perceive all nationally minded people as rabid Nazis, that no matter what opinion they express and with however much evidence they present it all boils to a one word caveat; that truth and reality is your real enemy. PC doesn’t stand up to that.

So where is your evidence about the BNP? In the same place as Ducky’s Here’s evidence about the National Front?

Do you seriously deny that you have had the charge of anti-Semitism leveled at you?

No smoke without fire? Isn’t that your contention?


“'Multiculturalism' is a Marxist construct in your book. Only a Far Rightist would believe that.”

Hardly; and as you well know I have presented well documented articles on it.

Marxism = internationalism and all that goes with it.


“Anti-Semitism? Oh man, you're the one who up to recently thought I was Jewish!”

Really? Or are you confusing me for someone else on this blog? Because I haven’t crossed paths with you for some time, and the last few exchanges were more then cordial.


“Deeply anti-Semitic statements, including Holocaust revisionism were your hallmark, at least up to then (I hear you less about that now) and can be found over at mine.”


Really? I think not fella. I think your reaching; all of the posts I have ever made are still up on the blog for all to see.


“I'm anti-Zionist, not anti-Israel. Against what Israel does in the OTs, not against its existence.”

Then why the anti-Semitism charges then?


“As regards Cookie, please speak of what you know.”

I know first hand; he was outraged that you insulted him for merely expressing his opinion and told you that you had lost a friend and he wanted nothing further to do with you. Ever.


“But he'll still send me a Xmas card, of that I'm sure.”

I really wouldn’t bet on that. He was very clear about his feelings towards you and your treatment of him personally over merely expressing his opinion.


“The NHS is largely seen as a Labour construct.”

And that would be wrong, as I educated you earlier..


“Your criticism is denouement by another term, please don't resort to literalism.”

Literalism!! Otherwise known as the truth!! History!!

I love the Orwellian style. It suits you.


“You're point that it's sliding to third world standards is absurd and worse than just denunciation.”

You are delusional. I have provided ample proof just here, go ahead and prove these factual reports wrong – don’t just say its “absurd” and expect that to be in the same league as real evidence.


“and worse than just denunciation.”

A very strange term to use. Very odd indeed – reminiscent of a totalitarian mindset.


“Calm down.”

I’m perfectly calm mate; I presented my opinion with calm reason, rationale and evidence as always.

It is you and Ducky’s Here that decided to go on the argumentum ad honimen offensive rather then produce any calm, rational and evidenced response.

But that’s the problem with these PC beliefs really, they don’t stand up to reality; and so more and more one word labels have to be applied to try and discredit an opinion and moreover the person giving the opinion, rather then real, adult debate.

Do you deny that if you had used calm reason, rationale and evidenced debate rather then hysterical argumentum ad honimen we would actually be debating the matter in hand rather then this pish?

Anonymous said...

AIDS is not a homosexual disease anymore.

No sh*t. Once male gays infected the world's blood supplies in the 80s which devastated the African continent, the straights had no alternative but to try and find a cure and save innocent lives.

Of course, if one were to roll back the radical polyamorous changes (post 1960's) to heterosexual practices, you take gays out of the sexual equation and AIDS would literally disappear from the face of the earth within a century or two w/o any vaccine/cure. As the studies show, lifetime heterosexual transmission rates are too low to sustain the epidemic. It's literally a "gay" plague.

The Sentinel said...

"You're point that it's sliding to third world standards is absurd and worse than just denunciation."


Really?

Here it is from the head of the BMA himself:

"A third of the NHS was verging on "Third World medicine" and all the extra money promised by the Government might not appear, the new president of the British Medical Association warned.

Sir Anthony Grabham made his inaugural address as president of the BMA at the association's Annual Representatives Meeting in Harrogate last night.

He told the audience that one third of the NHS is of high quality, the second third is reasonably good but the lowest third was of great concern and was verging on "Third World medicine."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-126257/NHS-verging-Third-World-medicine.html

Frank Partisan said...

Nader was on Democracy Now today. Obama has only met with insurance executives, not UHC advocates.

Obama's plan spells the insurance companies will take care of the young and healthy, while the government will pay for the sick.

Coldplay: Let me quote from the article tou recommended: US residents are much less healthy than their English counterparts and these differences exist at all points of the SES distribution ... The US population in late middle age is less healthy than the equivalent British population for diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, myocardial infarction, stroke, lung disease, and cancer ... These differences are not solely driven by the bottom of the SES distribution. In many diseases, the top of the SES distribution is less healthy in the United States as well. [Emphasis added by Next Left]

I wouldn't recommend tactics like Lindorff's, unless something like the SEIU led it. Another approach is to demand more, once the sellout plan is in power.

Nanc: Most important is you have no program. The right has no alternative to the status quo.

FJ: This from a HIV researcher Dr. Cantwell: There are two important reasons why HIV/AIDS is still prevalent among gay men (but not lesbians).

First, HIV and the Kaposi' sarcoma virus were initially "introduced" into gay men via the experimental hepatitis B vaccine programs that took place first in Manhattan in 1978, and continued in other cities until 1981- the same year the "gay plague" became official. For details on the connection between government-sponsored gay vaccine experiments and the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, Google: AIDS + gay experiment.

Second, the "strain" of HIV in the U.S. is different from the strains of HIV found in Africa, where the disease is epidemic among heterosexual black (but not white) Africans. Again, there is evidence tying the African outbreak to vaccine programs sponsored by the World Health Organization. (Google: WHO murdered Africa). It is important to note that the AIDS epidemic first broke out in Manhattan in 1979, not in Africa, where the epidemic did not begin until the autumn of 1982 (see Luc Montagnier's book, VIRUS, page 122). The American strain of HIV has an affinity for anal tissue, whereas the African strains are more easily transmitted via vaginal sex. According to virologist Max Essex, who co-discovered HIV with Gallo, certain subtypes of HIV are associated with specific modes of transmission. Essex claims that the common subtype B in America is spread mostly by homosexual contact and intravenous drug use, while the HIV subtypes in Africa "tend to fuel heterosexual epidemics (via a mucosal route)." (http://www.avert.org/hivtypes.htm)

Because HIV and the KS virus were initially "introduced" exclusively into the gay male population, the disease has been spread largely by gay and bisexual males. Theoretically, if a new virus was deliberately seeded into the male heterosexual community, it would most likely spread amongst heterosexuals, not homosexuals.


Ducky: Obama will make it, so that the insurance companies get young healthy clients, and the government the rest.

Gert: The discussion with FJ, is like before they realized bacterias and viruses, caused disease.

Sentinel: People as a whole, are healthier in the UK, than here.

This is from The Labor Party's website:
The NHS is the Labour Party’s greatest achievement. We created it, we saved it, we value it and we will always support it.


If the NHS is third world medicine, than let it be like Cuba's.

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

FJ:

"The threat of torts is what keeps "quality" in our medical system and the doctors honest."

Evidence please for this, you confuse your opinion with fact.

The NHS has no intense legal pressure on it and it is a better system than yours, so clearly torts do not keep a healhcare service effective.

"Let's keep the devil we've got instead of trading him in for a bigger one."

Well considering how ineffecive the current devil is, your failure to embrace another option that will make it a lesser devil shows a lack of forward thinking and fear of change.

Thankfully Gert and Ducky have pointed out the flaws in your AIDS/HIV thinking, I keep noticing that you confuse your opinion with fact on a regular basis, that and the fact that you've ducked all my rebuttals.

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

Sentinel:

You're ducking, like FJ and even resorting to personal attacks on Gert.

The evidence is overwhelming that some idiots on the right have been labelling, based on their total ignorance, Obama and the healthcare place Fascist and Nazi.

"Why people smearing a British institution should really bother you when you confess to despising my national flag - the British union flag - and all the contempt that conveys for Britain and the British is a bit of mystery really."

That's a duck, you avoid the issue, as always and then bring something personal into it.

Then you retreat on the idea that UK citizens can discuss US matters but in doing so then have a cheap personal attack, as always. As for whether non-US national have a say or a stake, we have no say in the matter but we do have a right to rebut lies about the NHS; as for a stake I believe we do, in the sense that a healthy America is a better America and a better America is of great value to the world.

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

Sentinel:

Re: your placing of personal anecdotal evidence above data from the WHO is weak at best, I can reply with a whole raft of anecdotal postive stories. The point is anecdotal is no good.

Then for what you call evidence, no one ever said the NHS is perfect but data that I've already oput up here about life expectency, infant mortality, number of doctors and nurses per patient, number of beds, value for money and a whole other raft of hard data, not stories from newspapers, points to the fact that the NHS is a good service, not perfect, not 'finished' but still good.

If it was failing as badly as you think it is, then all the indicators for failure would be there and we'd be showing results like Brazil or the US but we're not.

And in the context of this debate, better than the American system, which is why it was dragged in by FJ in the first place.

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

Sentinel:

Regarding your health insurance statisitc, you're forgetting that many employers offer a healthcare service as apart of their employment package, esp. in the public sector so the figure is not surprising at all and as I said, only around 4% of Britains use private services.

Your argument for why their is no uptake of private healthcare seems to be that it is too dear and why should they pay, which is very circular. You seem desperate to prove the NHS is failing but have no evidence. Again, outcome based data shows that it is not failing, data based on uptake of private care shows it is not.

It is a problem for you isn't it?

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

Sentinel:

Regarding AIDS/HIV, I think that Gert and Ducky have done a sound job on this but it is clear that inspite of their being no evidence for your offensive opinions, you persist in using them but that is your right.

But like FJ, you confuse your own mangled and partizan narrative of AIDS/HIV as the truth. It is not.

The majority of people with AIDS/HIV are heterosexual.

Not that it matters but you and FJ are obsessed with the homophobic reading of AIDS/HIV as the gay plague, an obsession with sodomy and gay sexual acts.

27 million Africans have AIDS/HIV, are you suggesting that they are all gay men?

Let's take some 2006 data:

AIDS is increasingly a disease of young women. 59 percent of all HIV infected persons in Africa are women and young women aged 15 to 25 are at least three times (and in some places four or five times) more likely to become infected than men in the same age group, mostly due to inequality in gender, education, and low socio-economic status3. More than ever, a targeted multi-sectoral approach is required to address the underlying root causes of gender inequality that fuel the spread of the epidemic.

And some 2007 data for Sub-Saharan Africa:
Number infected: 22.5 million (62 percent of global burden)
Percent of infected adults who are women: 61 percent
Adult prevalence rate: 5.0 percent
Adults and children newly infected, 2006: 1.7 million
Adult and child deaths due to AIDS, 2006: 1.6 million (72 percent of global AIDS deaths)
Access to ARV: 28 percent*
Main mode of transmission: Heterosexual contact

Link to the full date is here.

"Yes, and I can just imagine your average African proudly flying a rainbow flag and shouting from the rooftops that he is a homosexual."

So you are seriously suggesting that AIDS in Africa is spread by homosexuals, even though no qualified and intelligent medical opinion is there to back that up and realising that the sheer volume of infection in Africa would mean that Africa would have to have such a high volume of homosexuality, that it would squew all known figures on levels of homosexuality in society?

In other words, for your and FJ's scenario to be true, not only would all medical data have to be wrong but so would a whole raft of sociological data?

Occam's razor slices through such nonsense quickly.

Do you deny that ADIS/HIV is more prevelent in Africa?

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

Sentinel:

I see you ducked this question so I'll ask it again:

"Do you deny that AIDS has decreased in America (and Europe) and that Africa is the center of the disease?"

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

Sentinel:

It was FJ that bought AIDS up, just so you know.

And to repeat, none of your negative assertion about the NHS are at all backed up with hard data, ie: life expectency, infant mortality, number of beds, number of nurses, number of doctors and value for money.

All of these stats point to a good but not perfect service.

Anonymous said...

while the HIV subtypes in Africa "tend to fuel heterosexual epidemics (via a mucosal route)." (http://www.avert.org/hivtypes.htm)

LOL! The long term study I quoted and linked to WAS PERFORMED IN AFRICA... and restating their conclusion -

It is noted by the authors that the probability of HIV transmission from male to female in a large observational study in Rakai, Uganda, was 0.0005-0.0026 or 1/2000-1/384 coital acts. Such probabilities would result in relatively low rates of lifetime transmission. Specifically, this would be 0.2-0.4 infected partner/man and 0.09-0.18 infected partner/woman, which would be too low to sustain the epidemic.

The only thing keeping the AIDS threat hovering over the world's blood supplies are the promiscuous practicioners of anal sodomy and needle sharing IV drug users.

...and for your phony Hep-B vaccination argument and timeline, perhaps you need to get a REAL one.

Alan Cantwell is the only one who believes THAT theory, and even he has stated, "Scientists also discount any connection between the official outbreak of AIDS in 1981 and the experimental hepatitis B vaccine program (1978-1981) at the New York Blood Center in Manhattan that used gays as guinea pigs shortly before the epidemic."

In other words, the Cantwell Theory on the origin of AIDS would only appeal to a homosexual who wanted to pretend he's an innocent victim and not the typhoon Mary who could PREVENT the entire epidemic if he simply donned a condoms.

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

I repeat, AIDS/HIV is a majority heterosexual disease spread by sexual intercourse.

Coldtype said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

Evidence please for this, you confuse your opinion with fact

The relationship between tort threat and medical quality is well established, it isn't some "wild theory of mine". A thinking person who didn't understand this elementary fact should cease commenting on issues of health care reform in the USA (as ours is a market-based system).

The NHS has no intense legal pressure on it and it is a better system than yours, so clearly torts do not keep a healhcare service effective.

LOL! That's not what your fellow Brit said in the article I cited.

Cuba has oodles of doctors. Their competence is questionable, as there are no "checks" upon it. If I were a Brit, I'd be worried about my doctors competence.

Coldtype said...

"I wouldn't recommend tactics like Lindorff's, unless something like the SEIU led it. Another approach is to demand more, once the sellout plan is in power"
-Ren Eye



I wouldn't trust anything the SEIU "leads" Ren for if there is one thing you can be certain of Stern and the Gang don't support single-payer any more than that bullshit organization supports so-called card check legislation to streamline union certification. The SEIU is a US Chamber of Commerce Trojan Horse and will only lead workers to slaughter.

Anonymous said...

So you are seriously suggesting that AIDS in Africa was spread by homosexuals.

Nope. They were a threat only to themselves UNTIL re-used needles entered into the equation. Not brand new clean HEP-B needles used in a 1978 Manhattan study. But re-used IV drug user needles. Needles re-used to inoculate millions of poor African people by well-intended westerners who could afford serum but NOT the delivery system associated with it. Needles used to stock and deplete the nation's blood supply.

They didn't initially call HIV GRIDS for nothing.

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

FJ:

That's not evidence, that is one paper, a paer by the way which doesn't even prove your point adn I quote:

"Tort litigation and error reduction initiatives both aim to
improve patient safety, but operate in ways that are counterproductive."

Also, here is another piece that has a contrary view,right here.

We can all Google stuff FJ, what I'm talking about is evidence that comparing the quality of medical care in the US that has a high usage of legal action and to other nations that do not resort to suing each other to death and seeing which is better?

As we see the US healthcare system suffers because of the invasion of legal action, the case could be made the entire US suffers due to its high levels of legal intervention and buck chasing in every strand of life.

I can understand you trumpeting legal intervention if it actually worked but considering the poor state of US healthcare and that the market-place system is failing, horribly, it is a we bit odd.

I have already dealt with the Daily Mail article you utilised and your use of LOL is terribly fake, you're not laughing, your struggling FJ, you have still not taken back any of the lies you peddled or explained the false claim about UK and Canadian citizens using US healhtcare enmasse OR pointed out the lies in the three 8 point plans I outlined.

LOL that.

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

FJ:

Nonsense man, AIDS is spread in Africa by heterosexuals and by sexual intercourse.

"They didn't initially call HIV GRIDS for nothing."

A title they took back because it was not accurate based on what the illness was or the demographic it effected, goodness me, you're desperate.

The point is FJ, this 'discussion' is pointless, you hold a view not based on science or evidence but personal prejudice, that is your right but thankfully, we have proven it is only opinion and not fact.

Anonymous said...

I repeat, AIDS/HIV is a majority heterosexual disease spread by sexual intercourse.

And twice refuted. Care to go for three?

"Just the place for a Snark!" the Bellman cried,
As he landed his crew with care;
Supporting each man on the top of the tide
By a finger entwined in his hair.

"Just the place for a Snark! I have said it twice:
That alone should encourage the crew.
Just the place for a Snark! I have said it thrice:
What I tell you three times is true."

Anonymous said...

you hold a view not based on science or evidence but personal prejudice, that is your right but thankfully, we have proven it is only opinion and not fact.

While I link to and cite scientific studies, you mumble long discounted theories produced by homosexuals.

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

"And twice refuted. Care to go for three?"

You have not refuted it FJ, show me where you have done that?

You realise that your view of AIDS/HIV is a fringe view, a veiw not supported by any major medical research or resource, not supported by any major government or expert on AIDS/HIV.

You constantly confuse your own prejudiced opinions with reality, I suppose that it the only way you can get through the night?

"While I link to and cite scientific studies, you mumble long discounted theories produced by homosexuals."

You do no such thing! Delusional fiction! No government in the world believes that AIDS/HIV is a gay only disease, or a disease spread only by anal sex.

No large scale medical organisation believes it either.

Madness, delusional madness to fit your own preudice.

Carry on writing your silly poems FJ, they represent a man who has not only lost the argument but confuses personal opinion with fact.

Speaking of which, here is some more accurate AIDS data.

Here.

Here.

Here.

Anonymous said...

The American health care system is the best in the world, bar none.

It COSTS a ton. That's what keeps it so good. Our system is paradoxical to outsiders, but it's what make our system "dynamic" and self-correcting.

Enjoy your "third world" care, Daniel. I've had and been cured of life threatening diseases (colon cancer). I wouldn't trade my current medical options for ANY system in the world.

I had the chance to get a surgery performed in a private Japanese hospital once after an industrial accident I suffered on a merchant ship. I chose to fly back home and get treated in an American Public Health Service hospital instead. Not that the Japanese weren't good. it's just that the Americans were so much better.

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

Quite frankly FJ it is pointless debating you, you are a poor debater.

When you are proven wrong you either deny it or don't mention it.

This is not the behaviour of an intelligent person, surely you can see that in all the wasted time here you have NEVER, NEVER accepted that you are wrong, even when presented with evidence.

Does that not strike you as strange and odd?

Of course not but in moments of self-reflection, if you have such moments, I wonder if it ever occurs to you why you delude yourself so, or what has made you so arrogantly proud that you feel able to behave in such a way?

Anonymous said...

You do no such thing! Delusional fiction! No government in the world believes that AIDS/HIV is a gay only disease, or a disease spread only by anal sex.

I don't believe any of those things either, and never asserted them. You should stop arguing with strawmen, Danny, and start arguing with me.

Anonymous said...

But then again, you'd have to admit your own error... and you prefer your delusions to truth.

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

FJ:

"The American health care system is the best in the world, bar none."

All evidence is to the contrary, how do you explain this?

"It COSTS a ton. That's what keeps it so good."

It does cost far too much and it's outcomes are no wehere near as good as those that spend less. The only paradox is your delusion that it is the best.

"Our system is paradoxical to outsiders, but it's what make our system "dynamic" and self-correcting."

It is not dynamic, it is slow moving to change and very, very ineffiecent and not much value for money at all. If it was self-correcting then it would be getting better but is in fact getting worse, as all evidence points to.

"Enjoy your "third world" care, Daniel. I've had and been cured of life threatening diseases (colon cancer). I wouldn't trade my current medical options for ANY system in the world."

The NHS, in all measures, has been proven to be better than the US healthcare system, so if we are thrid world then the US is 8th or 10th world.

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

"I don't believe any of those things either, and never asserted them."

Yes you have and I quote:

"Sexual transmission of AIDS is almost entirely spread via the practice of anal sodomy."

This is a falsehood and to quote again:

"No sh*t. Once male gays infected the world's blood supplies in the 80s which devastated the African continent, the straights had no alternative but to try and find a cure and save innocent lives."

Fiction, again and also let us through in the "they didn't call it CRIPS for nothing" slight.

This is how it always goes with us FJ, I challenge you and you get upset.

To repeat:

Show me evidence about Brits and Canadians using US healtcare enmasse.

Show me lies in the three 8 point plans that you said were full of lies.

Retract the false claims about the NHS that I disproved.

Anonymous said...

Danny, if you ever get sick, promise me you'll never come to America for treatment. I promise I won't go to Britain UNLESS the Obamacare plan goes through.

Daniel Hoffmann-Gill said...

The Obama plan is in no way like the NHS, something already said here.

I have already pointed out with hard data that the NHS is superiour to the US system.

Which isn't saying much.

Anonymous said...

almost entirely is NOT "AIDS/HIV is a gay only disease, or a disease spread only by anal sex.

The "per sex act" rates of HIV transmission are 100x to 1,000x HIGHER for anal sex than vaginal sex.

PERIOD. Case closed.

Anonymous said...

As for your "Hard Data" you ignore mine and you ignore your fellow Brit's warning from the article I quoted...

But whatever the failings and excesses of the American system, the statistics suggest that it delivers better outcomes than the NHS when dealing with serious illnesses. I say 'suggest' because we should always be wary of comparing figures compiled in different ways in different countries.

In treating almost every cancer, America apparently does better than Britain, sometimes appreciably so. According to a study in Lancet Oncology last year, 91.9 per cent of American men with prostate cancer were still alive after five years, compared with only 51.1per cent in Britain.

The same publication suggests that 90.1 per cent of women in the U.S. diagnosed with breast cancer between 2000 and 2002 survived for at least five years, as against 77.8 per cent in Britain.

So it goes on. Overall the outcome for cancer patients is better in America than in this country. So, too, it is for victims of heart attacks, though the difference is less marked.

If you are suspicious of comparative statistics, consult any American who has encountered the NHS. Often they cannot believe what has happened to them - the squalor, and looming threat of MRSA; the long waiting lists, and especially the official target that patients in 'accident and emergency' should be expected to wait for no more than four - four! - hours; the sense exuded by some medical staff that they are doing you a favour by taking down your personal details.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1206149/STEPHEN-GLOVER-I-deeply-resent-Americans-sneering-health-service---thats-truth-hurts.html#ixzz0OGHchfVZ


Enjoy your snark hunt. You may not have realized this yet, but the Boojum's already got you by the balls.

Gert said...

Sent:

"I won’t “deny” that you perceive all nationally minded people as rabid Nazis, [...]"

This is seriously dishonest of you: I never call anyone a nazi, not you either. You should know that from earlier exchanges (and also why). But I can see the serious drawbacks of nationalism. Each day and everyday, everywhere.

"Do you seriously deny that you have had the charge of anti-Semitism leveled at you?"

No, not at all. Does the allegation make it true? Anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are routinely conflated. I'm not an anti-Semite. I don't understand why you want to go down this route.

"Really? Or are you confusing me for someone else on this blog? Because I haven’t crossed paths with you for some time, and the last few exchanges were more then cordial."

Do you deny believing I was Jewish? You even claimed I must have many Jewish clients (I didn't have a single one). Later you claimed I was a Jew sycophant. What's it to be Sent? Anti-Semite or Jew sycophant.

"Really? I think not fella. I think your reaching; all of the posts I have ever made are still up on the blog for all to see."

C'mon Sent, you know damn well what was your past opinion on the Holocaust, the denial of the existence of gas chambers, e.g.? I don't wnat to bring this up because it appeared to me you reformed on that. But you did very clearly state these things. Perhaps you've already forgotten the angry exchanges with BEAJ for instance?

Regards Cookie, I've known him PERSONALLY for quite a while. What went on behind closed doors you know nothing of whatsoever.

"A very strange term to use. Very odd indeed – reminiscent of a totalitarian mindset."

You've just made me piss myself with laughter. Next you'll be using Lombroso's craniology.

Gert said...

Farmer:

It's your attitude to homosexuality that makes you choose sources that appear to confirm gayness and AIDS are God's punishment. Only in Conservative circles of the US and in large parts of the Third World do such negative stereotypes vis-a-vis homosexuality still prevail.

Like your compadre Sentinel, you'll blame political correctness, perfidious libruls, 'Cultural Marxism' and general godlessness (but Sent is an atheist) as the cause of more modern attitudes on homosexuality and sexuality tout court.

In the developed world, only in the US does such a high number of ridiculous canards regarding the 'curability of gayness', the idea that it's a 'life style choice', associating Evolutionary Biology with Evil, Creationism etc etc still circulate.

Despite the large differences of opinion we have, I'd have thought you would be largely above the fray. It appears I was completely wrong on that...

Your obsession with 'anal sodomy' is pretty amusing.

Gert said...

FJ:

You don't know The Daily Mail, do you? Or as many call it, The Daily Hate Mail. There's a saying here that goes like this: 'Just because it's in The Daily Hate Mail doesn't mean it's NOT true', meaning of course that even the most jingoistic, treacherous, lying piece of chip wrapper may occasionally get it right (but not on this occasion).

The Daily Hate Mail, as far as tabloids go, must be about the worst newspaper in the free world: it sells copy purely on the basis of extreme scare- and fear mongering and resorts to extreme lies and contortionist-style distortions.

Not long ago they published an article that implied strongly that Brits would have to have their dead budgies cremated. The article was based on a European rule on the cremation of... carcasses of livestock that had been infected by foot-and-mouth or mad cow disease!

The following is but one interesting example of such lies, there are hundreds of examples, Google for 'Daily Mail lies'.

And the paper's Brownshirt Interbellum credentials are well documented:
"In early 1934, Rothermere and the Mail were editorially sympathetic to Oswald Mosley and the radical National Socialist British Union of Fascists.[14] Rothermere wrote an article entitled "Hurrah for the Blackshirts", in January 1934, praising Mosley for his "sound, commonsense, Conservative doctrine".[15] However, pressure from advertisers in the Daily Mail grew significant when Rothermere proposed to set up a cigarette company and so Rothermere backed off and ceased to support them.[16]
During the great abdication crisis of 1936, the Daily Mail supported the King, but was only joined by the Daily Express, Evening Standard and Evening News.[17]
Rothermere was a friend and supporter of both Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler, which influenced the Mail's political stance towards them up to 1939.[18][19] Rothermere visited and corresponded with Hitler. On 1 October 1938, Rothermere sent Hitler a telegram in support of Germany's invasion of the Sudetenland, and expressing the hope that 'Adolf the Great' would become a popular figure in Britain. However, this was tempered by an awareness of the military threat from the resurgent Germany, of which he warned J.C. Davidson. Rothermere had an executive plane built by the Bristol Aeroplane Company which, with a speed of 307 mph, was faster than any fighter. In 1935, this plane was presented to the RAF on behalf of the Daily Mail where it became the Bristol Blenheim bomber.[20]"


Don't believe a printed word by these liars is the safest strategy...

The Sentinel said...

Renegade Eye,


"This is from The Labor Party's website:
The NHS is the Labour Party’s greatest achievement. We created it, we saved it, we value it and we will always support it."

I'm not sure what that proves.

Labour are notorious for 'spin' They didn't create it at all, the NHS was organised exactly along the lines of the the proposals of the 1942 Beveridge Report that was produced under a coalition government; they didn't "save it" either: Their 24 hours to save the NHS campaign was just another lie; they certainly don't value it - it is over £600m in deficit and has even the head of the BMA saying that at least a third of the NHS is on par with the Third World.

These are all facts that I have proven.



hoffman-gill,

"The NHS has no intense legal pressure on it and it is a better system than yours"

Really?

"PATIENTS who cannot be treated within new, legally-binding, waiting-time guarantees in Scotland could be sent overseas for surgery, according to plans by the Scottish Government...Fears have been raised that placing a legal obligation on health boards to treat patients within a 12-week target could create a "litigation culture" in the NHS when the goal is not met."

http://news.scotsman.com/latestnews/Patients-may-be-sent-abroad.4516805.jp


And in reference to Britons travelling abroad to get better and faster treatment then the NHS can provide you say "That's not true, also, provide evidence of such movements."

The truth:

"Record numbers of Britons are flying abroad for medical treatment to escape NHS waiting lists and the rising threat of hospital superbugs...More than 70,000 Britons will have treatment abroad this year – a figure that is forecast to rise to almost 200,000 by the end of the decade. Patients needing major heart surgery, hip operations and cataracts are using the internet to book operations to be carried out thousands of miles away...India is the most popular destination for surgery, followed by Hungary, Turkey, Germany, Malaysia, Poland and Spain. But dozens more countries are attracting custom. Research by the Treatment Abroad website shows that Britons have travelled to 112 foreign hospitals, based in 48 countries, to find safe, affordable treatment."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1567584/Record-numbers-go-abroad-for-health.html



And it is not just people wanting to go abroad for better and faster treatment, the NHS themselves are sending them abroad for it!!!!



"More patients could be sent abroad for operations following the success of a Health Service pilot scheme, it emerged yesterday...Four out of five British patients who had surgery in France and Germany at NHS expense were 'very satisfied' with their treatment and some would go back for more, according to a report...At least 2,500 heart patients nationwide have been contacted with an option of travelling abroad because they have been waiting for a long time. A poll by the British Medical Association last month found four out of ten patients would travel abroad for surgery to beat long waiting lists."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-133247/More-patients-abroad-NHS.html

"The family of a woman with an inoperable brain tumour raised over £130,000 to send her for treatment in America – only to discover that the NHS could have referred her if her local trust had realised it was possible...Proton treatment is not available in the UK because of the expense. Ministers agreed last year to set up a "reference panel" in Leeds to send cancer patients abroad for treatment to Switzerland, Paris and Boston. So far, 25 patients have been assessed and 18 referred for treatment, at NHS expense."

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/brain-tumour-patient-unaware-treatment-was-available-on-nhs-1301570.html

The Sentinel said...

"You're ducking, like FJ and even resorting to personal attacks on Gert."

I haven't ducked anything at all. I have clearly stated my opinion with plenty of evidence, and of course, as much as you would like to the opportunity to try and paint me as the instigator of the blatant argumentum ad hominem here it is not even remotely true, Gert responded to an opinion that used evidence and didn't mention him at all with this pure ad hominem response:


"And for the American readers: Sentinel's denouement of the NHS comes from a very simple perspective: as a Far Right Nationalist he perceives anything to the left of the BNP as 'Marxist'....

And Ducky's Here did the same with:


"Then we have the National Front checking in and talking about TB and AIDS as his contribution."


Not even a thinly veiled attempt at answering any of the points or dressing up an argumentum ad hominem attack that way - just straight to the "argument against the man" and not the opinion.

Are you really saying that it didn't happen that way?


"The evidence is overwhelming that some idiots on the right have been labelling, based on their total ignorance, Obama and the healthcare place Fascist and Nazi."

And there is plenty of evidence that at least some of it has been done by agent provocateurs; did you see what was wrong with that picture?


"That's a duck, you avoid the issue, as always and then bring something personal into it."

Not at all; its a valid question. If you cant stand my flag and everything it stands for, why do you care about people 'smearing' the NHS?



"Then you retreat on the idea that UK citizens can discuss US matters but in doing so then have a cheap personal attack, as always"

Not at all; a valid point. An opinion is one thing, but to think that an non-US opinion does or should have any bearing in the US is another.

A cheap personal attack is more along the lines of calling FJ and I "infernal cretins" behind our back, behind comment moderation and absolutely gratuitously.

Now that's a cheap personal attack.

The Sentinel said...

"Re: your placing of personal anecdotal evidence above data from the WHO is weak at best"

Actually, only one is anecdotal; the rest is factual, including: Over 2300 people starving to death in NHS hospitals since 1997; health tourists taking at least £62m of NHS money and the £600m - £700m NHS deficit and the head of the BMA branding a third of the NHS as Third World.


"no one ever said the NHS is perfect"

I'll say! Do you really think over 2300 people starving to death, people dying from MRSA because of filthy hospitals, patients being left on trolleys in corridors for days, people so thirsty they have drank vase water in NHS hospitals, doctors having to treat people in car parks, at least £62m of tax payers money wasted on "health tourists" and over a £600m NHS deficit might be described as less then perfect?


"not stories from newspapers"

And where do they get their data from? If you are seriously saying it is made up then prove it.


"the fact that the NHS is a good service"

No, its not. Not by a long chalk.

"The most recent official statistics for the NHS in England showed that more than 550,000 people were waiting for hospital treatment last October. A total of 32,900 had to wait over 13 weeks, while a further 56 had to wait more than 26 weeks."


http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/120030/NHS-waiting-lists-There-aren-t-any-says-Burnham



With my private health insurance I would get seen by a consultant the next day and in surgery that day if needed and within 5 days if not. Now that's a good service.

My uncle was finally provisionally diagnosed with lung cancer by his GP 18 months ago after having already been a few times with chest pain, he had to wait 4 weeks over Christmas too to get an MRI and then another 3 weeks to see a consultant by which time he was told it had gone into the lymph nodes and was inoperable; he was told that if he wanted chemo to add a few weeks or a couple months to his life he would even have to wait weeks for that. He didn't want it but I got him a second opinion and we was told that if the disease had been diagnosed properly the first time it would have likely be curable, but even at the late stage it was diagnosed in this doctors opinion, it would have been treatable if nearly 2 months had not passed in mearly diagnosing it fully.

But even if you get into an NHS hospital, the risk of catching MRSA or another similar bug are very high purely because the very basics of the hospital have broken down: Cleanliness-



"One in four hospitals is so unhygienic it is putting its patients' lives at risk, it is revealed today...Ninety-nine out of 394 English NHS trusts are breaching a Hygiene Code brought in to combat an increase in hospital-acquired infections such as MRSA....More than 100,000 patients contract hospital-acquired infections every year - costing the NHS £1 billion....One in every 250 death certificates now cites the C.difficile superbug as a contributory or main factor, with one in 500 mentioning MRSA....There are fears the survey has underestimated the problems, because it relies on trusts to provide reliable information."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-462561/Shame-filthy-hospital-wards.html


"not perfect, not 'finished' but still good."

Why is it not "finished" then after 61 years of service?

The Sentinel said...

"Regarding your health insurance statisitc, you're forgetting that many employers offer a healthcare service"

Im not forgetting it all, its just you telling me I am. The figure of privately insured Britons is 12.5% -not 4%, regardless of who pays for it.



"Regarding AIDS/HIV, I think that Gert and Ducky have done a sound job on this"

In what way exactly? By using argumentum ad hominem, asking unrelated questions and ignoring facts?!



"it is clear that inspite of their being no evidence for your offensive opinions, you persist in using them but that is your right."

You see that's the problem right there. You find things you don't like offensive even if its true and you just totally ignore any evidence that is presented to you to show you why you are wrong.

There are plenty of people these days who spend their time either being permanently offended on other peoples behalf or just waiting to be. A very odd way to live.

I already presented compelling evidence from the CDC:

'Homosexual males, who make up less than 2% of the US population, account for 56% of the adult AIDS cases. As of January 1, 1997, 324,728 men who have sex with men have been diagnosed with AIDS.'

Report: HIV/AIDS Surveillance Report (1997) , US HIV and AIDS cases reported through December 1996. 8, 2.


And there is the matter of the figures in the source you used (but left out these) -

- 70 percent of these new infections occur in men and 30 percent occur in women
- 75 percent of the new infections in women are heterosexually transmitted

Do you really need me to break down these figures and explain what the problem is here?

The Sentinel said...

"The majority of people with AIDS/HIV are heterosexual."

That is you absolute contention.



"27 million Africans have AIDS/HIV, are you suggesting that they are all gay men?"

And my God, after all the cut-and-paste that is all you have as "proof"! Jesus Christ on a bike.


"that the sheer volume of infection in Africa would mean that Africa would have to have such a high volume of homosexuality, that it would squew all known figures on levels of homosexuality in society?"

There are around 955 million people in Africa and you say that 27 million are infected with AIDS/HIV and so that places the figure at round 3% of the entire population!!

The current estimation of the gay percentage of the UK popluation is around 5%, although globally I have read 10% to be the estimate.

http://www.pinknews.co.uk/news/articles/2005-408.html

So the truth is far from your contention that 3% of Africans with HIV/AIDS "would squew all known figures on levels of homosexuality in society"



"Do you deny that ADIS/HIV is more prevelent in Africa?"

I love how the PC love to throw in these random "do you deny" statements in some sort of authoritarian challenge to defend yourself from things you haven't claimed at all.



"It was FJ that bought AIDS up, just so you know."

Like I said, it wasn't me. Just so you know.


"And to repeat, none of your negative assertion about the NHS are at all backed up with hard data"

Afraid it has, all above.



"I repeat, AIDS/HIV is a majority heterosexual disease spread by sexual intercourse."

What a nasty PC lie based on absolute nothing. How truly offensive.

AIDS charities accept the reality of the situation that HIV/AIDS is primarily a homosexual ailment because denying it would harm the fight against it.

Like I said, the proponents of this PC lunacy of it being a heterosexual disease are doing the fight against it no good.

Why do you persist in this lie when you have absolutely no evidence to support it, but ever so much to counter it?



"In the USA, the UK, and a number of other European countries, HIV and AIDS have affected young gay men more than any other group of people. In the UK and USA especially, the percentage of young gay men who have been infected with HIV and the percentage with AIDS are much higher than those among other groups such as heterosexual people or children. There are also other parts of the world where men who have sex with men, many of whom do not identify themselves as gay, are affected by AIDS.

In the USA, it is estimated that nearly 220,000 men who have sex with men were living with HIV/AIDS in 2006, and nearly 5,000 had died. Around 48% of men diagnosed with HIV or AIDS in America in 2006 were probably exposed to the virus through male-to-male sexual contact.1

In the UK, by the end of June 2007, around 39,593 diagnoses of HIV had been in men who had probably become infected through sex with another man. 55% of these men were aged below 35"

http://www.avert.org/young-gay-men.htm

Gert said...

Sentinel:

Why is all this emphasis on AIDS being a 'gay plague' so important to you? Irrespective of that argument, you're a homophobe, of course.

But what do you gain by insisting it's a 'gay disease' (when all evidence shows that heterosexuals are contracting it in very large numbers)?

What's in it for you? What solutions, based on your premise, do you suggest? Or is it merely the need to point the finger and have a scapegoat?

What do you suggest we do with the 'wretched creatures' and the 'misery they've caused'? It's an open minded question because for all your laying the blame on PC, I see precious few people who feel the need to single out gays and hold them responsible. If they truly are responsible then some action needs to be taken, right?

Please elucidate... show us your cards. And that goes for farmer too.

The Sentinel said...

Gert,

"But I can see the serious drawbacks of nationalism. Each day and everyday, everywhere."

And I see the opposite. That's life. Get over it.


"No, not at all. Does the allegation make it true?"

That was precisely my point.


"I'm not an anti-Semite. I don't understand why you want to go down this route."

I never said you was.

In fact I made no personal statements about you whatsoever untill you stated making them about me. You forced the issue. I was happy doing what we are supposed to be doing: Debating the issue in hand.


"C'mon Sent, you know damn well what was your past opinion on the Holocaust, the denial of the existence of gas chambers, e.g.? I don't wnat to bring this up because it appeared to me you reformed on that"

Rubbish.

And here we come back to the PC favourite tactic of "Denial" or "Deny" - I don't have to deny anything just because you say so.

You may have chosen to perceive what has been said in that fashion, and it is hardly surprising that you choose to do so, but again in your own words "Does the allegation make it true?"

I am fully aware of the fact the Jews were murdered wholesale by the Nazis, more then most I would say having been based in Germany for years in the army (including Hohne, directly opposite Bergen-Belsen, for around 2 years) and having met some of those who were involved in it. The grandparents of a German girl I was engaged to were both in organisations directly linked with it, one was in the SS the other in the Gestapo. I know better then most first hand the events and opinion of the day.

As with all historical accounts, nothing is 100% true nor infallible and I have challenged elements such as the Nazis converting humans into soap - something even the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Simon Wiesenthal Center now acknowledge was untrue and didn't happen, calling it a mix of "cruel rumours" and a throwback to"French propaganda from the First World War."

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/soap.html

If you want to take from that anything other then what it is, that's your problem.

The Sentinel said...

"Regards Cookie, I've known him PERSONALLY for quite a while. What went on behind closed doors you know nothing of whatsoever."

Fine, so he is just an hysterical bullshiter then, publicly proclaiming outrage and finality when he doesn't really mean it. Great person to have as a friend. You should be very happy together.


You brought it to this Gert, not me. I was happy debating the matter in hand.

Rather then address and counter the evidenced comments I made with reason and evidence you chose to try and discredit me personally and my opinion consequently by making allegations about my "far-right" status - pure argumentum ad honimen - or do you really "deny" that?


"There's a saying here that goes like this: 'Just because it's in The Daily Hate Mail doesn't mean it's NOT" true'

Come on, really. That's not a saying in the UK at all, mate.


"The Daily Hate Mail, as far as tabloids go, must be about the worst newspaper in the free world"

To you obviously because it prints things that you wish wouldn't be printed or were not true.


"Don't believe a printed word by these liars is the safest strategy..."

Its the safest strategy for people like you to avoid answering the ackward questions the facts bring up.

No newspaper is without taint in this regard - and the British government has proved to be quite possibly the most fantastic liars in history so much so they even employ "spin doctors" solely for that purpose - but the fact remains that you cannot in all seriousness produce one story about a dead budgie and think that white washes everything contained within these reports.

As you well know, they are obliged to quote the politicians / scientists / doctors / experts, etc. in response to the report, as well as detailing the studies / reports / statistics that the report was built upon and every report I have protested here conforms to that.

So if you really want to discredit each story as a lie, the onus is on you to prove it is a lie in each case.

Gert said...

Sent:

"You brought it to this Gert, not me. I was happy debating the matter in hand."

You grossly over-reacted to my stated opinion that your view on the NHS is a far right 'anti-Marxist' viewpoint. To the point you even brought up anti-Semitism and nazis for whatever reason. Cookie had absolutely nothing to do with this either. That's why I asked you to calm down: you are far right, so why get so uppity about it?

Regards your opinion of the NHS, let's beg to differ.

But my question as to why and for what hitherto unstated purpose you (and farmer) want to lay the blame with gays and what you believe should be done about this remains interesting and pertinent.

You don't expect anyone to lay the blame somewhere and not expect them to have some corrective (punitive?) measures in mind.

I criticise Zionism and blame it for much of the ME mess but I have ideas on how to rectify the situation: without that one could characterise my position indeed as innately anti-Israel or even anti-Semitic.

Please oblige...

The Sentinel said...

"You grossly over-reacted to my stated opinion that your view on the NHS is a far right 'anti-Marxist' viewpoint"

No, I reacted to pure argumentum ad honimen and challenged it.


"To the point you even brought up anti-Semitism and nazis for whatever reason"

To demonstrate that you yourself have been accused of being be anti-Semitic - a feature considered by many to be part and parcel of the far right - and that mud throwing is not a one way street.

Although you are now throwing mud at me, you have had plenty thrown at you. And not by me.


"Cookie had absolutely nothing to do with this either."

Again, a demonstration of how far you are prepared to defame and insult to push your opinion, even with people that you consider as a friends.


"That's why I asked you to calm down: you are far right, so why get so uppity about it?"

And straight back to the argumentum ad honimen that started it.


"Regards your opinion of the NHS, let's beg to differ."

Considering that health care was the whole issue of this post I don't think so fella. if your not interested in it, why bother commenting at all or using argumentum ad honimen on someone who was and was merely expressing his reasoned and evidenced opinion.

All of the rest of this crap you have sidelined is just a distraction away form the actual debate here. Why don't you stop it and get back on track?


"But my question as to why and for what hitherto unstated purpose you (and farmer) want to lay the blame with gays and what you believe should be done about this remains interesting and pertinent."

And here we are back to that beautifully twisted PC device of playing the "do you deny" game.

You now want me to go on the defensive and explain myself over your lies about AIDS not being a primarily homosexual disease! You want me to go on the defensive for presenting evidence that your contention that AIDS is a heterosexual disease is a lie?

How twisted.

Why don't you explain why YOU want a lie to be presented as the truth? What do YOU have to gain out of it.

And heres another for you: Why don't you explain what a grown gentile man from Belgium, who now lives in the UK, is doing so obsessed with Israel that he had long dedicated his blog purely to criticising them daily, with so much vitriol and myopia that he has lost friends over it to the point that he is more or less alone with it on the blog, expect for his hate mail? Why do Jews and their interactions - interactions that have no possible bearing on your life or experience - arouse that level of fanatical interest for you? What is the basis for this obsession? What is its root?

Please oblige...

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