Healthcare town hall battles

[Raziaar]

Are you guys actually talking about healthcare anymore? I have to trust you to tell me the truth rather than looking myself because your posts are inpenetrable as well as unpalatable.

I was wondering the same thing myself.

Last I realized they were talking about taxes, which I interjected myself into.

But really this is about the health care town hall debates and fighting going on.

 

[CptStern]

Hmm, the sanctinmonious type huh? Well, I did try to be civil. Sarcasm generally only works against people with low levels of intelligence.

For a moment there I thought we were going to have an intellectually stimulating debate on whether the concept of individual liberty and the pursuit of the common good can be coterminous. Perhaps even the economic foundations for private healthcare. But no, you had to come up with a simplistic non-sequitur didn't you. Yawn.


I don't much want to walk around in my daily life ready for battle. Perhaps you do. Perhaps that's why people consider you strange. Perhaps you just played too much BG2 as a kid. Who knows?

I thought you brought some good points to the table. dont be discouraged

But really this is about the health care town hall debates and fighting going on.

I'd like to add that this thread wasnt about me until repiv made it about me

 

[Raziaar]

I'd like to add that this thread wasnt about me until repiv made it about me

Noone ever said you have to always continue to let it be about you.

 

[Sulkdodds]

For a moment there I thought we were going to have an intellectually stimulating debate on whether the concept of individual liberty and the pursuit of the common good can be coterminous.

Which is an interesting debate, but personally I think they can only ever be synonymous. Any conception of the 'common good' that doesn't boil down at bottom to the greatest liberty for the greatest number of people is fundamentally empty. Any conception of individual liberty that in the end actually and quantifiably creates a great inequality of liberties is fundamentally corrupt. Personally I don't have any sympathy to those who wouldn't want to lose a small amount of financial liberty to finance for great numbers of people the freedom from sickness and untimely death. Nor can I really object to the idea of tax on principle, to the idea of tax by any government - merely of this government, which I don't think is sufficiently democratic or transparent or just for the 'theft' to be justified. Even ignoring Trident missiles and the War on Terror and abuses of civil liberties, the NHS itself is forced to accept PFI deals which squander the public's money and squander more of it than full public ownership would have.

 

[repiV]

I'm not picking through all of that lot...

the thread is about the craziness at townhall meetings. what the hell did you expect me to post about? something completely unrelated?

Maybe about the underlying issue? Is this a politics thread, or a comedy thread? Are you not interested in any replies other than "hahahaha, look at that moron"?

I gave examples of their lunacy. again what did you expect me to post in a thread about the crazies at townhall meetings? you didnt even bother to remain on topic. instead you went into your usual diatribe about big brother yadda yadda and ignored the topic at hand. you were trolling

Trolling?

You posted a thread in the politics section concerning socialised healthcare. If you wanted the discussion to remain on purely face value you should have posted it somewhere else.

again that's your opinion. doesnt make it true. and I'm sorry if I wont accept the pov of lunatics. the simple fact that they have an opiinion doesnt in any way shape or form automatically validate their opinion

Who asked you to accept the point of view of lunatics? You're doing it again. Everyone who opposes nationalised healthcare is a lunatic. Apparently.

the US and canada are joined by land. the US is not "overseas" geography ftl

Who cares?

where?

Immediately after.

I said you/he/they/anyone and everyone in particular can call them hypocrites. see how you twist my words?

Why would I twist your words, and why does nobody else ever accuse me of twisting their words? I never have this problem talking to anyone else.

when have we ever agreed on socialised healthcare. if I remember correctly you were lamenting the fact that a private system would serve you better. that's not agreeing

You remember incorrectly. I have epilepsy, which noone would insure me for, so why would I think that?

and what does that prove? most of the things nemesis said were stupid. so agreeing that they're stupid means nothing because it's self evident; they are stupid

It proves that I don't have an "agenda", as you put it.

along with the population, along with society, along with the world around them. they had no need to make legislation against targeted spamming or illegally downloading copyrighted material. etc because it didnt exist yearts ago. no matter what you do government will always expand, even if it's just numbers; to better serve the people

How unbelievably trusting...and naive.

you called taxation theft. how can you respect something you deem to be theft?

Handling something with respect is different to having respect for it. You respect a firearm when you handle it, or an aircraft, or motorcycle. It doesn't mean you look up to it.

yes thoise healthcare workers are elected officials who write legislation. come on, even for you that's an extreme stretch of the imagination. perhaps it would be better run by a privately run, for profit system. hell so long as there arent as many bureaucrats i lab coats writing legilation who cares if a good chunk of the population isnt served. too bad they should get proper jerbs

and antional healthcare system would mean ...bg government? are the doctors in your neck of the woods elected because our doctors only involvement with the government is when they cash in their bloody cheques

So the government and its instruments only includes elected officials now? I must have missed that one. Because when people talk about the days of small government, they yearned for the time when there were 400 MPs instead of 600...

you really are out to lunch. healthcare is the number one reason for personal bankruptcy in the US. inability to pay bills is the number one reason because they have ZERO insurance.

Well they should have got insurance then, shouldn't they?

That "fact" alone means nothing in isolation, it could mean that millions of people are just too stupid to plan for their future.

a US friend of mine who's a freakin lawyer and works at a prestigious lawfirms pays on average $15,000 out of pocket costs every year for himself, his wife and two kids, and he has what he says is "above average healthcare plan". how the hell would someone living on 30K a year pay that?the average household in the US makes just over $50k, factor in the cost of living, rent food etc and there's not that much left over. certainly not $14k

Sounds like bull to me. Maybe your friend does pay $15,000 a year, that's obviously not the case for the majority of the population. In this country, he would probably be paying more than that in taxes to fund healthcare anyway - which in all likelihood would be of lower quality than what he gets for his money now.

you'd be joining the ranks of 45 million americans who are in the same boat. 45 million that's bigger than the population of canada

Again, meaningless in isolation. How many of those could get insurance but choose not to?

again only because you frame it that way. nothing stops anyone from going to a country that has paid clinics. however dont expect socialised healthcare to provide two tiers based on what people earn. this is contrary to the entire idea behind socialised medicine. if you have the money you'll get to pick and choose what services you get. and I disagree that more money = better service. the US spends more on healthcare per capita than any country in the world yet their results are below most first world countries. something is clearly wrong here

Nobody said anything about socialised healthcare providing "two tiers", but if you want to pay for private healthcare (and we do have a large private healthcare industry in the UK) then why should anyone try and stop you?

Depends how you define "results", doesn't it. If you want the best treatment, and you can afford it, the US is the place to go. They have some of the best hospitals in the world.

this is alarmist; where do you think money for nnationaised healthcare comes from? tax payer money. so if you make a lot of money your personal share of income tax will be higher than someone who works minimum wage. I sound like a broken record but is this really a revelation? you frame it much like the conservatives do: "you're going to have to pay more money if you're rich!!!" well, no shit sherlock

So maybe they don't want to pay a higher share for something they get for less at the moment?

yes, they're called "sick people" :O

I was more referring to people with chronic conditions.

yet they have no problem when they're the ones being susidized. look even the weathiest people cannot afford medical treatment. my dad was in ICU for over 2 weeks. total costs incduing a brain operation and being hooked to all kinds of machines that go beep beep beep would have cost well over 3 million dollars. who the **** can afford that? maybe 100-200 in th eworld tops

The NHS probably wouldn't have funded it either. There are a lot of things you can't get on it, including life-saving treatments as they're not deemed "cost-effective". It's not a cure-all and it is a fact that the system leaves you vulnerable to bureaucrats and balance sheets.

I lost the best part of my teenage years to an awful 1960s medication with horrendous side effects, which is still in wide use today purely because of cost. It took many years of trial and error which different drugs before they finally put me on the modern, effective but expensive stuff I'm on today.

I worked at the Department of Health for a while, and it's amazing the amount of letters we used to get about why they wouldn't fund X or Y, including treatments for Alzheimers, cancer, a drug that essentially stops blindness from macular degeneration, amongst many others, and the fob-off replies we used to have to send back.

lol you really do think I'm stupid because that's NOT what you said:

you're saying that it's fact. the "maybe" is in relation to not understanding what you said, but the stupid, the prejudice, the poor grasp of english you stated as fact

No, I didn't state any of it "as fact". If you want to take it that way then go ahead, but it's not what I said.

again you think too highly of yourself. like I said earlier you're transparent and I have no problem understanding your meaning. HOWEVER since I constantly saying that you've twisted my words or that you've made my statement into a black and white issue then it MUST mean that you're the one who's not understanding what I'm saying ...Maybe it's because you're stupid ....

Evidently you do have a problem, because your reply often has nothing to do with what I said.

because you constantly change the subject or frame it in such a way that it's off topic. I have no problems discussing things with other members

Neither do I. Funny that.

 

[repiV]

Hmm, the sanctinmonious type huh? Well, I did try to be civil. Sarcasm generally only works against people with low levels of intelligence.

You miss one important point. I wasn't being sarcastic.

For a moment there I thought we were going to have an intellectually stimulating debate on whether the concept of individual liberty and the pursuit of the common good can be coterminous. Perhaps even the economic foundations for private healthcare. But no, you had to come up with a simplistic non-sequitur didn't you. Yawn.

Ok whatever. I wasn't being sarcastic in the first place so you can stop now.

I don't much want to walk around in my daily life ready for battle. Perhaps you do.

Not really, I prefer getting on with people. If you stick around you'll also notice that I rarely bother with the politics forum and that I don't hold any grudges. Ever.

Perhaps that's why people consider you strange. Perhaps you just played too much BG2 as a kid. Who knows?

People don't consider me strange. Who are you?

Which is an interesting debate, but personally I think they can only ever be synonymous. Any conception of the 'common good' that doesn't boil down at bottom to the greatest liberty for the greatest number of people is fundamentally empty. Any conception of individual liberty that in the end actually and quantifiably creates a great inequality of liberties is fundamentally corrupt.

That's a collectivist viewpoint in itself, which is inexorably at odds with individual liberty. But let's not confuse liberties with "entitlements". Liberty is about opportunity, not outcome.

Personally I don't have any sympathy to those who wouldn't want to lose a small amount of financial liberty to finance for great numbers of people the freedom from sickness and untimely death.

Neither do I, but it's evidently at odds with individual liberty to force them to do so (and I would suggest that it's a much larger amount of money than you might think).

The tax burden in this country makes it virtually impossible for anyone to become financially independent, or to gain freedom from work. That's no small thing. You have to ask yourself how we manage to be so rich, and yet so poor.

Nor can I really object to the idea of tax on principle, to the idea of tax by any government - merely of this government, which I don't think is sufficiently democratic or transparent or just for the 'theft' to be justified. Even ignoring Trident missiles and the War on Terror and abuses of civil liberties, the NHS itself is forced to accept PFI deals which squander the public's money and squander more of it than full public ownership would have.

But you don't get to opt out of the tax system if you don't like the government.

Noting your comments, it's interesting how, quite uniquely, this government has managed to alienate everyone from all corners...

I seem to recall the Tories won a local election in Cumbria recently. Who would have thought.

 

[Vegeta897]

Holy triple wall batman.

 

[jverne]

won't go into stern's or repi's post in detail but i'll say this. people who resort to such extreme and generally aggressive and non-constructive methods of bringing their point on the table are normally extremist or lunatics.

but i like the idea of tax being the same as war...it should be constantly re-visioned and consequently canceled if it doesn't serve a good purpose.
i'm sure alot of you could agree that there are many needless taxes. let's say tax on land ownership. if the land is uncultivated, why should it be taxed? you paid for it and it doesn't interfere with the gov. where's the point?

taxation should be kept at a rational minimum used mainly for: health, social security only for the ones unable to work, essential infrastructure, military, public schools, police...

using taxpayers for educational advertisements is still a catch for me. i'm not sure how effective they are.
but taxes that go to let's say for UKs video surveillance program that was shown not to work (on roads especially) is really just wasteful. but still if we eliminated corruption i bet tax usage efficiency would dramatically increase.

talking about the US healthcare...wouldn't be as effective if they put forward laws that prevent insurance companies to use such unfair practices like cherry picking individuals and a law that required insurance companies to provide a insurance package that would give basic health care for persons with minimum wage? ok it sound easier than it looks but if we think about it.

This thread is a perfect example of why I try to avoid political discussions on the internet.

pussy

 

[Sulkdodds]

In the case of health you can't honestly separate opportunity and outcome. If the outcome is that Citizen John has to pay out a great deal of his life savings to get treatment for cancer, then he has less opportunities. If the outcome is that he dies of cancer, he has none at all. If the outcome of EU trading policies is that a Senegal fisher cannot make a living, his opportunities and the opportunities of his children are severely diminished. You cannot give me a platform from which the liberty of one person is worth more than another. This is my 'collectivism'. I believe that in practicality a narrow conception of freedom ends up restricting more than it unchains.

In this case the question of whether it's a greater violation to demand tax hinges on what the practical effects of a voluntary scheme would be. Someone made a very good post here a long time ago on this exact subject and I haven't forgotten the gist of it. With a voluntary system, nobody pays. A woman without much money says "I'm young. I have my health. I'm not going to have any children any time soon. I can't really afford health insurance and I don't need it." So they don't pay. The system now has less money going into it, and since rich people are generally on private healthcare anyway, this is a big problem because the system gets most of its money from people who may at any given point decide they don't need to spend their money on healthcare. You may say that's their right, that's their liberty. But as the system loses money it becomes inoperable even for those who do opt in, so the right of those people to have healthcare is violated by all the others. The system gets worse, and its care lowers in standard, so less and less people sign up. This is what's happened in America and it's a vicious cycle. I haven't even gone into all the other problems with their system - all the stuff Shootan mentioned.

Even so, I suspect the NHS could actually do quite well out of donations if it wasn't being so infernally mismanaged. I've argued before and don't need to argue again how disasterously PFI combines the greatest evils of corporations and governments. It would be a mistake to claim that public services are causing an undue financial burden on the country. Firstly it would be a mistake because it would be missing the point; secondly it would be a mistake to call them 'public services'. Nowadays the real service is to the private operators who derive so much profit from them, permitted at the same time to ensure the raw costs are much higher in the first place. This is true of a lot of government policy. I think it's true of the nation-state itself (but that's another debate for another time...). It's not run for the people. It's not run on a calculation of necessity. It's run for a different and higher audience in the same way that the real customers of newspapers are the advertisers. Any argument that takes the 'public services' at face value, without stopping to consider how they actually serve, is flawed from the beginning.

You can't opt out of tax. But right now it's very difficult to even try and ensure that your taxes are spent on what you want them to be. The blow of tax really wouldn't be so bad if government worked for its voters or if it ever actually bothered to quantify the 'necessity' which is so often an unspoken backbone of its justifications.

Of course, I think I might actually support a benevolent dictatorship if I thought such a thing was possible. My objection to it, however strong, is on practical and even mathematical grounds.

 

[repiV]

won't go into stern's or repi's post in detail but i'll say this. people who resort to such extreme and generally aggressive and non-creative methods of bringing their point on the table are normally extremist or lunatics.

but i like the idea of tax being the same as war...it should be constantly re-visioned and consequently canceled if it doesn't serve a good purpose.
i'm sure alot of you could agree that there are many needless taxes. let's say tax on land ownership. if the land is uncultivated, why should it be taxed? you paid for it and it doesn't interfere with the gov. where's the point?

taxation should be kept at a rational minimum used mainly for: health, social security only for the ones unable to work, essential infrastructure, military, public schools, police...

using taxpayers for educational advertisements is still a catch for me. i'm not sure how effective they are.
but taxes that go to let's say for UKs video surveillance program that was shown not to work (on roads especially) is really just wasteful. but still if we eliminated corruption i bet tax usage efficiency would dramatically increase.

Well, quite. If my money wasn't being pissed up the wall, whether it be through colossal levels of inefficiency and incompetence you would never, ever find in the private sector, or funding quangos and special interest groups then it wouldn't really be so objectionable. When I buy beer, and then the government uses the punitive tax revenue from that beer in order to put adverts out telling me to stop drinking beer, you have to think "now wait a minute...".

Employees of government departments are, by and large, retards. About half the people at the Department of Health were off sick at any one time, some people off for six months at a time on full pay for "depression" or "stress" or "back pain" or some bullshit. The bosses of my department spent half their time throwing a tennis ball around the office, and hardly anyone there actually did any work. Many of them are employed at great expense to do completely pointless jobs.

I could also bore you senseless with many, MANY stories about other government departments and their colossal ****ups...like how the driver licensing agency routinely "lose" documents in the post and then fine you for not sending them off.

They take us for mugs.

talking about the US healthcare...wouldn't be as effective if they put forward laws that prevent insurance companies to use such unfair practices like cherry picking individuals and a law that required insurance companies to provide a insurance package that would give basic health care for persons with minimum wage? ok it sound easier than it looks but if we think about it.

You would have thought so.


------

In the case of health you can't honestly separate opportunity and outcome. If the outcome is that Citizen John has to pay out a great deal of his life savings to get treatment for cancer, then he has less opportunities. If the outcome is that he dies of cancer, he has none at all. If the outcome of EU trading policies is that a Senegal fisher cannot make a living, his opportunities and the opportunities of his children are severely diminished. You cannot give me a platform from which the liberty of one person is worth more than another. This is my 'collectivism'. I believe that in practicality a narrow conception of freedom ends up restricting more than it unchains.

In this case the question of whether it's a greater violation to demand tax hinges on what the practical effects of a voluntary scheme would be. Someone made a very good post here a long time ago on this exact subject and I haven't forgotten the gist of it. With a voluntary system, nobody pays. A woman without much money says "I'm young. I have my health. I'm not going to have any children any time soon. I can't really afford health insurance and I don't need it." So they don't pay. The system now has less money going into it, and since rich people are generally on private healthcare anyway, this is a big problem because the system gets most of its money from people who may at any given point decide they don't need to spend their money on healthcare. You may say that's their right, that's their liberty. But as the system loses money it becomes inoperable even for those who do opt in, so the right of those people to have healthcare is violated by all the others. The system gets worse, and its care lowers in standard, so less and less people sign up. This is what's happened in America and it's a vicious cycle. I haven't even gone into all the other problems with their system - all the stuff Shootan mentioned.

Even so, I suspect the NHS could actually do quite well out of donations if it wasn't being so infernally mismanaged. I've argued before and don't need to argue again how disasterously PFI combines the greatest evils of corporations and governments. It would be a mistake to claim that public services are causing an undue financial burden on the country. Firstly it would be a mistake because it would be missing the point; secondly it would be a mistake to call them 'public services'. Nowadays the real service is to the private operators who derive so much profit from them, permitted at the same time to ensure the raw costs are much higher in the first place. This is true of a lot of government policy. I think it's true of the nation-state itself (but that's another debate for another time...). It's not run for the people. It's not run on a calculation of necessity. It's run for a different and higher audience in the same way that the real customers of newspapers are the advertisers. Any argument that takes the 'public services' at face value, without stopping to consider how they actually serve, is flawed from the beginning.

You can't opt out of tax. But right now it's very difficult to even try and ensure that your taxes are spent on what you want them to be. The blow of tax really wouldn't be so bad if government worked for its voters or if it ever actually bothered to quantify the 'necessity' which is so often an unspoken backbone of its justifications.

Of course, I think I might actually support a benevolent dictatorship if I thought such a thing was possible. My objection to it, however strong, is on practical and even mathematical grounds.

Good points, well made. Curiously I can't really find anything to disagree with there, besides the whole benevolent dictatorship thing.

I've got a hospital appointment in London next Wednesday. I thought I was going to Australia this Christmas (I'm going next Christmas instead now) so I had to save my holiday, thought I'd take the train up in the morning and back in the evening - as there's no way in hell I would ride there and back in one day.

Booked a month in advance, the standard returns were £60. Pisstake. The petrol only costs me 45, and it takes me door to door, I can go whenever I want at as short notice as I please, and then I have a bike to get around on at the other end. I managed to get tickets for 30 quid, after an hour of searching, two specific singles at very specific times. Really the very maximum I'd be willing to pay. If you get the ticket on the day, a return from Exeter St. Davids to London Paddington is £197!

And then I tried to cancel, when I decided not to go to Oz this year and took some holiday so I could go for a few days. No refunds on advance tickets. At all. Might as well have chucked the cash down the drain.

That's the first and the last time I will ever try and use the train. And they wonder why people don't use public transport...

 

[Sulkdodds]

'Public'?

I sympathise. I've been able to find good deals before: Brighton to Sheffield, return, for 15 quid. But it really depends on the routes, which didn't do too well out of the Beeching Axe even before they were divided into individual fiefdoms. Some are murder.

EDIT: I should note I'm half-joking about the dictator thing. I'm saying I have no, I dunno, no sacred or fundamental objection. My objection would be entirely practical. I don't think I could ever be convinced to accept such a thing because denying people the right of political participation is a huge oppression and my god it would have to be a great place to live to balance those scales. For this reason I think that even in the realm of pure theory a 'benevolent dictator' may well be an oxymoron, even if the only right he stamps on is the right to vote.

 

[Farrowlesparrow]

When I was back in England this July, I noticed that the price of a ticket to Manchester from my town had risen 40p! That's up from £2.20, so quite a considerable amount. Apparently there's another rise planned in the time I'm away.


Travelling to London, I usually just opt for the return which lets you come back any time within a month. It's generally less hassle. Although one or two services have been adopting the French tactic of Reservations Only. :arms:


Now in my day

 

[repiV]

I see that you can supposedly get returns from London to Manchester (a bit further than London to Exeter) for 9 quid, and from London to Edinburgh for 11 quid. What gives with that? Do they assume everyone travelling to the South West is landed gentry visiting the country estate?

You really notice how lacking the transport infrastructure is in this country when you live in "the provinces". I think down here suffered the Beeching Axe worst of all. The village I lived in until the weekend used to have a train station. Nowadays, no car and you're basically stuck there.

Or how there's only one motorway in the whole South West and it stops at Exeter. To get from North Devon to Bristol or anywhere upcountry, you first have to come practically all the way back down to Exeter and then pick up the M5 and go back north again. Until they built the link road quite recently, the only way to get to North Devon at all was on a very twisty road from Exeter.

It's pathetic really. Although if these places were easier to get to, I suppose it might ruin their appeal in the end as everyone would want to move here.

 

[Sulkdodds]

I remember reading an interesting article about how in the remoter parts of Britain, the road and rail networks are very bad because they were not built for the public good but built essentially to extract resources from those regions. Isn't that the case with Devon and Cornwall, which used to have big mining industries?

EDIT: Found it, reprinted.

Spoiler

By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian, 30th December 2008.

A strange thing has happened to me over the two years since I moved to Wales. I have become susceptible to a novel and disturbing sensation: pride in my adopted country. England, the land of my birth, means nothing to me. The same goes for Britain. I despise nationalism. But I have been overtaken by an irrational impulse. I find myself supporting Wales in rugby, football (someone’s got to do it, and we did beat Liechtenstein) and all its competing claims against other nations.

This impulse arises from a number of observations, viz:

1. In two years of walking through the valleys and over the hills here, I have never been shouted at.

2. The café in the local leisure centre serves smoothies in measures labelled “small” (about a pint) and “regular” (about two pints).

3. When I wrote to a very active councillor, asking his permission to recommend him for a gong, he replied, “I would prefer not to seek such an honour.”

Through such observations, I have begun to form the impression that Wales is less socially stratified, less grasping, more liberal than the rest of Britain. Though I am an outsider, from the colonial power, with an unerring ability to wind people up, I have never been made to feel unwelcome here. And it seldom rains here, and then only at night. (That’s not strictly true, but this is what nationalism does).

In this spirit I have to record that something is missing. Its absence offends my new-found national pride. It mocks our attempt to become a coherent country. It means that the Gogs (of North Wales) and the Hwntws (of South Wales) will forever be at each other’s throats. It means that the greenest nation in the UK is locked into unsustainability. It is also bleeding ridiculous. As far as I can discover, this is the only country in Europe which you cannot traverse by rail without spending most of the journey passing through another. The only rail link which allows you to travel from north to south crosses the border near Llangollen and doesn’t re-enter Wales until it approaches Abergavenny, 100 miles away.

The railway map of Wales is a classic indicator of an extractive economy. The lines extend either towards London or towards the ports. As Eduardo Galeano established in The Open Veins of Latin America, the infrastructure of a country is a guide to the purpose of its development(1). If the main roads and railways form a network, linking the regions and the settlements within the regions, they are likely to have been developed to enhance internal commerce and mobility. If they resemble a series of drainage basins, flowing towards the ports and borders, they are likely to have been built to empty the nation of its wealth for the benefit of another. Like Latin America, Wales is poor because it was so rich. Its abundant natural resources gave rise to an extractive system, designed to leave as little wealth behind as possible.

Just as the railway network was developed largely for the benefit of another economy, it was dismantled for the same purpose. Wales was hit very hard by the Beeching cuts of the 1960s. Before that, one of the lines which could have been used as part of a North-South railway was flooded by Llyn Celyn, a reservoir which drowned the village of Capel Celyn in order to supply water to Liverpool. It was this act of enclosure which inspired RS Thomas’s famous poem Reservoirs, in which he mourned “… the smashed faces/Of the farms with the stone trickle/Of their tears down the hills’ side.” The dam wall was built across the Bala to Ffestiniog line.

Before Beeching, a handful of minor routes existed, which could have enabled a determined passenger who was prepared to make a few changes to travel from north to south, but there was no line either conceived or used as a long distance railway connecting the nation. Could such a railway be built? Thanks to the efforts of a remarkable man, the idea is beginning to seep into the national consciousness.

Archimandrite Deiniol is the only Orthodox priest serving in North Wales. Bull-headed, magnificently bearded, he is the spokesman for Yn Ein Blaenau, a group set up to lobby for the regeneration of Blaenau Ffestiniog, one of the country’s poorest communities. Unlike many other depressed Welsh towns, Blaenau has a way out: but it is blocked. It is surrounded - hideously - by the waste from its slate workings. The British government has a policy of replacing virgin building stone with mining spoil and rubble. The slate waste around Blaenau would supply Britain with roadstone for years, but it’s stuck there until the Conwy Valley railway line is upgraded. Father Deiniol has been negotiating with the byzantine network of railway companies, authorities and regulators, and has so far been frustrated.

But in doing so, he has learnt a good deal about how the railways of the United Kingdom work - or don’t. He has also discovered that a railway can be critical to a region’s regeneration, and that the north-south roads in Wales are close to gridlock.

There are plenty of lobbyists calling for new roads, but Father Deiniol’s plan is likely to be cheaper and more sustainable. His survey of the disused railway lines of Wales shows that there is one route - from Rhyl through Denbigh, Rhuthun, Corwen, Newtown, Llanidloes, Rhaeadr and Builth Road to Dowlais - which would require only two miles of new formation to link Holyhead to Cardiff(2). The rest of the way makes use of current and former railways. He proposes that short feeder lines also be built connecting this trunk route to Mold, Llangollen, Oswestry, Bala, Hay-on-Wye and Brecon(3).

The One-Wales Line could not only offer a much faster journey than the current long detour through England, it would also knit the other railways of Wales into a coherent network, as it uses the north coast railway and crosses the Cambrian line and the Shrewsbury to Swansea line. It would help to regenerate a desperately poor region in the south called the Heads of the Valleys. The project would look rather like the Western Railway Corridor in Ireland, which is reopening 184km of disused lines between Limerick and Sligo(4).

The least the Welsh Assembly Government should do is to commission a feasibility study and cost-benefit analysis of Father Deiniol’s plan. His railway would help Wales looks like a country again, rather than a depot for someone else’s empire.

www.monbiot.com

References:

1. Eduardo Galeano, 1971. Originally published as Las Venas Abiertas de América Latina. Siglo XXI Editores.

2. Tad Deiniol, 3rd February 2008. Proposal for a Direct, All-Wales, Holyhead to Cardiff Fast Rail Link. Yn Ein Blaenau. If you would like a copy of this document, I can send it to you.

3. Tad Deiniol, 2008. Map of Proposed North South Rail Link and Feeder Lines. Yn Ein Blaenau. If you would like a copy of this document, I can send it to you.

4. See http://www.westontrack.com/

 

[Eejit]

And suddenly the thread was about transport in the UK. Every time repiV, every bloody time!!

 

[Sulkdodds]

Damnit.

Raziaar! Cannot you find some summary of the healthcare plans to which these mad Americans so object, and then I can rave because it's not nearly commie enough?

 

[repiV]

I remember reading an interesting article about how in the remoter parts of Britain, the road and rail networks are very bad because they were not built for the public good but built essentially to extract resources from those regions. Isn't that the case with Devon and Cornwall, which used to have big mining industries?

I know that the M5 was built purely to carry holiday traffic from the south east and the midlands to Devon and Cornwall. The unfortunate side-effect of this is that Torquay is now populated mainly by unemployed Scousers.

If you look at a map, you can certainly see how all the motorways and major roads radiate out from London and Manchester. Exeter for example isn't far from Bournemouth at all, but it takes hours to get to.

Cornwall is a horrible place. Go there out of season, or go inland, and it's poor, run down, devoid of opportunities or a functioning economy, and the newest car you'll see down there is about 20 years old. Lots of drug addict kids in the remoter parts of the West Country.

It's no surprise really, as once you get south of Bristol the job situation isn't great, you've only really got Exeter as a significant place of employment otherwise and south Cornwall is 100 miles away. Plymouth is a pretty big city but there's nothing there, it's a delapidated navy town.

Better transport links would do a lot for the region, I'm sure. We just get kind of forgotten about. I don't think most people have even heard of Exeter but down here it's like the centre of the universe.

Cumbria I found was even worse. Get away from the touristy bits and there are a lot of old mining towns, very strange places with very strange people. And no prospects. Generations of unemployed. Very remote. I still can't get over how odd the locals are up there either.

And suddenly the thread was about transport in the UK. Every time repiV, every bloody time!!

 

[Farrowlesparrow]

Well this is relevant

 

[VirusType2]

Get ur guns!! Kick Some ass!! [images]

I think this could be considered inciting to riot, which is a crime. He used his real name and everything. Surprisingly, it's only a misdemeanor, despite that the effects of it can be deadly.

As every state in the United States has its own laws (subject to the Supremacy Clause), each has its own definition of 'riot.' In New York State, for example, the term 'riot' is not defined explicitly, but under § 240.08 of the N.Y. Penal Law, A person is guilty of inciting to riot when he urges ten or more persons to engage in tumultuous and violent conduct of a kind likely to create public alarm.

Doing so via Twitter would probably be a first time a charge of inciting to riot could be brought from a communication over the internet.

 

[CptStern]

Damnit.

Raziaar! Cannot you find some summary of the healthcare plans to which these mad Americans so object, and then I can rave because it's not nearly commie enough?

Let's explore the five freedoms that Americans would lose under Obamacare:

1. Freedom to choose what's in your plan

2. Freedom to be rewarded for healthy living, or pay your real costs

3. Freedom to choose high-deductible coverage

4. Freedom to keep your existing plan

5. Freedom to choose your doctors

6. Freedom to choose your end of life at Obama's Retirement deathcamp

7. Freedom from nazism

the full details:

http://cnnmoney.printthis.clickabil...lth_care_reform_obama.fortune/&partnerID=2200



#6 and #6 may not appear on the original top 5 list

 

[Tyguy]

The tactics being used by both sides are getting progressively more ridiculous. It starts with the claim that this bill will lead to socialism and is currently at the "Obama is a nazi and wants to create internment camps" part...can't wait to see what happens next.

To be honest, I never thought such claims could be made...let alone agreed upon. We've come along way from "Nappy-headed hoes". Apparently calling somebody a whore is taboo but labeling a large percentage of people "nazis" is perfectly fine. I feel like I'm playing in a soccer game and the parents of both teams are screaming at each other. Most of the dads are beating each other up while the moms are in the parking lot letting air out of all the tires.

I have as much to gain/lose from this bill as anyone but as it stands, the way in which everyone is conducting themselves makes me want to throw up...

aww ****, my tires are flat!

 

[CptStern]

Maybe about the underlying issue? Is this a politics thread, or a comedy thread? Are you not interested in any replies other than "hahahaha, look at that moron"?

your very first post in this thread was directed at me

http://halflife2.net/forums/showpost.php?p=3008350&postcount=45

Trolling?

yes:

http://halflife2.net/forums/showpost.php?p=3008350&postcount=45

You posted a thread in the politics section concerning socialised healthcare. If you wanted the discussion to remain on purely face value you should have posted it somewhere else.

I hate to point out that you put your foot in your mouth but ...you put your foot in your mouth; I didnt start this thread

Who asked you to accept the point of view of lunatics? You're doing it again. Everyone who opposes nationalised healthcare is a lunatic. Apparently.

ok you're either being purposefully obtuse or you're not as bright as you claim. for the last ****ing time when I'm referring to the lunatics in this threads it means specifically the idiots who carried swastikas and uttered death threats in thie townhall meetings posted in this thread. it's painfully obvious that a. you didnt read the linked article in the OP. b you have NO interest in reading the article in the OP. c. you couldnt care less what the article in the OP is or what it says and finally d. your main reason for entrering this debate is to put forth your views on big brother government and troll my post.

Who cares?

I would think you would care that your grasp of geography is so shockingly poor. I know canada isnt a big player in the grand scheme of things but to not know canada and the US are joined by land is pretty D: if you ask me. I mean look at that giant chunk of land:

how can you miss it? it takes up a big chunk of the globe

Immediately after.

after what? btw Who's on first!

Why would I twist your words, and why does nobody else ever accuse me of twisting their words? I never have this problem talking to anyone else.

probably because they have no desire to get into a multi page debate with you :E WALLS OF TXT!!!

You remember incorrectly. I have epilepsy, which noone would insure me for, so why would I think that?

please elaborate further. in socialised healthcare there is no need to be "insured"

It proves that I don't have an "agenda", as you put it.

because you often dont agree with Nemesis? how does that prove anything?

How unbelievably trusting...and naive.

hey dont mistake my trustiness with naivete. I have a tin foil hat and routinely check the skies for black helicopters just like you do

:upstare: you're not supposed to be this paranoid till you're senile or on medication.

Handling something with respect is different to having respect for it. You respect a firearm when you handle it, or an aircraft, or motorcycle. It doesn't mean you look up to it.

you're splitting hairs here

So the government and its instruments only includes elected officials now? I must have missed that one. Because when people talk about the days of small government, they yearned for the time when there were 400 MPs instead of 600...

MPs are elected (at least in canada)

I work for a medical supply company. not a single clinician, doctor, nurse or healthcare worker that I've run into over the years is sitting member of the government. they're not hired by the government they're not trained by the government they're no beholden in any way to the government. the clinic/hospital's name is on their paycheques not the government of canada. your point holds no water

Well they should have got insurance then, shouldn't they?

this is what I mean about you going off half cocked. you shoot your mouth off without knowing the facts and end up looking like a fool. even insured, healthcare costs drive people to banruptcy

A recent study by Harvard University researchers found that the average out-of-pocket medical debt for those who filed for bankruptcy was $12,000. The study noted that 68 percent of those who filed for bankruptcy had health insurance.

http://www.nchc.org/facts/cost.shtml

That "fact" alone means nothing in isolation, it could mean that millions of people are just too stupid to plan for their future.

foot meet mouth, mouth meet foot:

# A new survey shows that more than 25 percent said that housing problems resulted from medical debt, including the inability to make rent or mortgage payments and the development of bad credit ratings.10

# About 1.5 million families lose their homes to foreclosure every year due to unaffordable medical costs. 11

# A survey of Iowa consumers found that in order to cope with rising health insurance costs, 86 percent said they had cut back on how much they could save, and 44 percent said that they have cut back on food and heating expenses.12

# Retiring elderly couples will need $250,000 in savings just to pay for the most basic medical coverage.13 Many experts believe that this figure is conservative and that $300,000 may be a more realistic number.

I guess these people are just "stupid" . you're an angry little leprechaun

Sounds like bull to me.

I really dont care if you think it's bull. he has no reason to lie

Maybe your friend does pay $15,000 a year, that's obviously not the case for the majority of the population. In this country, he would probably be paying more than that in taxes to fund healthcare anyway - which in all likelihood would be of lower quality than what he gets for his money now.

man, why do you put your foot in your mouth without bothering to check whether what you say is true or just a lot of hot air?

According to the study, the cost of medical services, including premiums, will increase by $1,109, from $14,500 in 2007 to $15,609 in 2008 for an average family of four enrolled in an employer-sponsored PPO

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/107699.php

Again, meaningless in isolation. How many of those could get insurance but choose not to?

because they're rather buy drugs, alcohol or porn? or is it because they like to eat, heat their homes and save some money?

A survey of Iowa consumers found that in order to cope with rising health insurance costs, 86 percent said they had cut back on how much they could save, and 44 percent said that they have cut back on food and heating expenses.

Nobody said anything about socialised healthcare providing "two tiers", but if you want to pay for private healthcare (and we do have a large private healthcare industry in the UK) then why should anyone try and stop you?

Depends how you define "results", doesn't it. If you want the best treatment, and you can afford it, the US is the place to go. They have some of the best hospitals in the world.

results are on average. not specifically for a handful of people. that would be biased sampling:

The U.S. spends much more on health care than Canada, both on a per-capita basis and as a percentage of GDP.[5] In 2006, per-capita spending for health care in the U.S. was US$6,714; in Canada, US$3,678

A 2007 review of all studies comparing health outcomes in Canada and the US in a Canadian peer-reviewed medical journal found that "health outcomes may be superior in patients cared for in Canada versus the United States,

the World Health Organization's ratings of "overall health service performance", published in 2000, which used a "composite measure of achievement in the level of health, the distribution of health, the level of responsiveness and fairness of financial contribution", ranked Canada 30th and the U.S. 37th among 191 member nations.

So maybe they don't want to pay a higher share for something they get for less at the moment?

you're speculating based on nothing but your own biases. Universal healthcare is not in place in the US so we cant make a comparison HOWEVER if we look to Canada as a comparison to the US then he'd be getting MORE for LESS not the other way around as you suggest.:

"health outcomes may be superior in patients cared for in Canada versus the United States,"

I was more referring to people with chronic conditions.

I dont see how that distinction makes any difference. people with chronic illnesses will make up the bulk of expenditures. do you expect healthy people to make up the bulk of medical expenditures?

The NHS probably wouldn't have funded it either. There are a lot of things you can't get on it, including life-saving treatments as they're not deemed "cost-effective".

yes and insured is the better way to go, they'd never do that!!!

In late April, Shelly Andrews-Buta was scheduled to undergo treatment for breast cancer that had spread to her brain, threatening her life.

But instead of having doctors working to remove her brain tumors on the day the surgery was scheduled, she sat in a San Francisco hotel room. Why? Because at the last minute, her insurance company, Blue Shield, decided it wasn't going to pay for the treatment her doctors at UCSF Medical Center had recommended.

now it's your turn to provide an incident where someone on socialised healthcare was denied life saving treatment. to my knowledge this has never happened in canada

It's not a cure-all and it is a fact that the system leaves you vulnerable to bureaucrats and balance sheets.

I lost the best part of my teenage years to an awful 1960s medication with horrendous side effects, which is still in wide use today purely because of cost. It took many years of trial and error which different drugs before they finally put me on the modern, effective but expensive stuff I'm on today.

and you think this would be any different when the company who gets to decide which medications you take is profit driven? I'm surprised they just dont hand out Tic Tacs instead of medication

I worked at the Department of Health for a while, and it's amazing the amount of letters we used to get about why they wouldn't fund X or Y, including treatments for Alzheimers, cancer, a drug that essentially stops blindness from macular degeneration, amongst many others, and the fob-off replies we used to have to send back.

I too work in th ehealthcare industry and have contact with medical professionals on a daily basis. the public sees a segment on 60 minutes and then lament the fact that the drug hasnt been approved in canada. what they fail to watch is the 60 minutes followup show 6 months after the first one broadcast where it reports that people taking that new drug have grown a third arm (obviously I'm exaggerating but it's close to the truth, people see something on the internet or tv and expect to have it the very next day

No, I didn't state any of it "as fact". If you want to take it that way then go ahead, but it's not what I said.

lol you accuse me of having a poor grasp of english? you said

Maybe it's because you're stupid, maybe it's because you have deep-seated prejudices, or maybe it's because your grasp of the English language isn't as good as it could be

you're basically saying I dont understand because a. I'm stupid OR b. I'm prejudiced OR c. I dont understand english

you're saying all three are true but in this specific case (the not understanding part) it might be one of three or all three

Evidently you do have a problem, because your reply often has nothing to do with what I said.

no you. I hate these back and forths. they're stupid

 

[Krynn72]

Longest post ever?

Its at the very least a contestant. Look at how many pixels it required!

 

[CptStern]

I once posted a reply that had to broken up into two posts ...I think it was in reply to repiv too

 

[nurizeko]

Its good to have an arch enemy. Nothing serious like Stalin or Mao. Just someone who you dislike and know you will never like. Someone in your daily life. Its beautiful, it makes life all the sweeter.

Stern has Repiv.


Good for him.

 

[i_liek_shootan]

methinks quote button should be removed from Politics forum. in the interests of forming coherent, persuasive arguments. or just rename it "Journalism Practice"

 

[el Chi]

"Free at the point of use" means something entirely different from "free".

Whether or not it is a good thing is presently irrelevant, if you can't grasp the underlying concepts which the issues revolve around, then your opinion is ill-founded.

CptStern clearly has no capacity to understand the point of view of anyone else. He just finds these idiots and then stereotypes everyone that opposes him as being one of them.

Telling someone that part of their argument is dodgy does not outright invalidate their whole argument (one part does not comprise the whole) and allow you to claim sweet, preening victory.


Also (and I mean this entirely seriously and without intent to flame/bait/etc.) I presume you're on a course of medication for epilepsy? I also have epilepsy and am on lamotrigine and have been for about seven years now. Working out a rough estimate, based on my dosage and the cost stated here, it works out to a cost of over £18,500. This cost was not paid by myself, nor my parents, nor any insurance company, but by the NHS. It hasn't cost me a penny, nor should it have.

Don't you think that being encumbered with such a cost for a product which keeps you conscious would be monstrously unfair? It's not as if you or I are responsible for our condition and such medication is a necessity in allowing us to carry on with our lives as normal as possible.

Now I'm not sure how it would work in the States. Presumably health insurance companies would take at least some of the cost, but what if you haven't got it? I know there's the Medicare system in place but I'm not sure whether or to what extent you or I would qualify.
The US Declaration of Independence holds "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" as "unalienable Rights" and I would consider the ability to stay conscious as pretty important to those things, which would qualify the means to stay conscious (in the unfortunate circumstances that one is not entirely in control of such a basic bodily function) as an "unalienable Right," surely?
I would have thought, therefore, that such a cost in that (or a similar) situation is the responsibility of a government which is founded on such principles, ie: the US government.

Now of course I'm using the example of epilepsy and anticonvulsants because it's one I (and you) have experience with but of course it can be applied to a wide range of conditions and illnesses.
I find it a barbaric notion to say that one's quality of life or even survival should be, at least in part if not wholly, determined by one's income, the willingness of one's employers to support its workers (ie: the monetary value it puts upon its staff's well-being) or whether one is part of the (as I'm understand it) very slim portion of the population which qualifies for Medicare.

 

[Gargantou]

I find it a barbaric notion to say that one's quality of life or even survival should be, at least in part if not wholly, determined by one's income, the willingness of one's employers to support its workers (ie: the monetary value it puts upon its staff's well-being) or whether one is part of the (as I'm understand it) very slim portion of the population which qualifies for Medicare.

I agree wholeheartedly, but I am ofcourse severely biased since I'm handicapped, suffer from a heart condition, am only 19 years old, and have no real income.

 

[VictimOfScience]

Agreed. The only thing that should be based on your income is how much you are ****ing taxed and currently that system is bullshit. Wanna fix the defecit? TAX THE RICH MOAR!!!!

 

[nurizeko]

You know, since you pay taxes regardless, why not have them go towards something that actually makes life better for all Americans?.

Protesting against nationalised healthcare seems pointless when 1) its a good thing. Period. Its goodness is inarguable, arguing against it is stupidity. 2) your tax dollars go towards propping up multi-million or billionaire bankers and in a pointless war in the worlds shithole.

Really Pay taxes and the government gives nothing in return, or pay taxes, and make America a healthier happier society with a nationally instituted respect for human life and health.


Continue bankrupting yourselves to pay pharma companies, hospitals and health insurers extortionate sums which are the living embodiment of all that is sick, disgusting and heartless about cold hard profiteering at the expense of human beings.

Or pay your taxes as usual (I.E. change nothing in your daily life) but at the end of the day not worrying about money when you take a dodgy turn and knowing your doctor, nurses, surgeons and pharmacists are doing their job concentrating on making you better rather then how much they can charge you.

1) If American healthcare is so great why does it lag at 37th place in WHO rankings far below the developed world and even some lesser developed nations?.
2) Claiming American quality of care is a moot point if that great healthcare is beyond the financial reach of most Americans.



I hate ignorant dumb**** extreme right wing republicans, but when I see Americans protesting so strongly against a good thing, all I can do is feel pity.

Pity for the fact they are so blind, so closed off that they buy lies and disinformation so readily, show such little compassion for fellow Americans for such a pathetically small cost to themselves, and completely ignore the fact that all it takes is some bad luck, some bad timing and then they find themselves on the receiving end of what passes for mercy in the American healthcare system.

 

[Viperidae]

How can you think it's a good thing?

I mean, Obama's wants to kill your grandma.

 

[Absinthe]

Viper, you tit.

Obama wants to put your grandma through a mandatory sex change transforming her into a man, then kill her. Err... him.

You clearly haven't brushed up on your talking points. Work on that.

 

[Viperidae]

I don't need talking points when I can just appeal to emotion.

LOOK AT THIS POSTER OF 1930's GERMANY.

THEY'RE PUTTING A PRICE ON THIS MAN'S LIFE--60,000 MARKS.

DOESN'T THIS SOUND FAMILIAR? AREN'T YOU CONCERNED?

OBAMA = EUGENICS

 

[Raziaar]

Man, the complete willingness for republicans/conservatives to lie and lie and lie to be as effectively misleading as possible really infuriates me.

These people sicken me.

 

[Atomic_Piggy]

Well this is relevant

The article's author went on to assert that "people such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn't have a chance in the UK, where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless."

As the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Jay Bookman quickly pointed out, Prof Hawking was born in the UK, and has lived and worked there for his entire life.

And UK newspapers the Guardian and Daily Telegraph reported Prof Hawking as saying that he "wouldn't be here today if it were not for the NHS".

 

[CptStern]

oooh link please that's too funny

 

[Atomic_Piggy]

oooh link please that's too funny

Well this is relevant

In the quote.

 

[lord_raken]

Reasons why National Health Care is a bad idea.
1) It is not the purpose of our Federal Government to insure everyone is healthy... it is to deliver mail, protect for foreign invasion, and regulate interstate and international trade.

2) Out government is wasteful and inefficient. They cant be trusted with our money... why should we give them more to waste?
http://whereisthemoney.org/
I would GLADLY pay the same amount that would go to this new health care system as charity to a local hospital. I know they will use it better.

3) government run health care is slow. people will have to wait ridiculous amounts of time for care.

4) any legislation that give more power to the Federal Government is a bad idea.

I know that for many of you this health care system is about compassion and caring for your fellow man, and that is an honorable goal. However you should not shrug off that natural obligation to a over-bloated government who has proven in the past to be terrible stewards of public money. Find a charity you believe in and give to it.

Also, if I understand this correctly, the "Public option" wouldn't necessarily be free... so they would still have to pay. Only 20% of the U.S population are without insurance this number is not nearly significant enough to justify overturning an entire system.

We as human beings are responsible for ourselves. We rise and fall by our own merits and should not debase ourselves by allowing others to carry our burdens for us. In order to be free we must be free to fail as well as succeed. Delegating that responsibility to the government will only drain you of your freedom giving the government more control over your life.

Patric Henry said "Give me liberty or give me death." and I hold to that.

I will say that the U.S pharmaceutical/insurance industry is just as over-bloated as the Government... and do you know why? because the Rx and insurance companies made deals with the government. Get the government to make vaccinations mandatory, get favoritism bills to pass in congress, mandate that everyone needs to have insurance. We are having these issues BECAUSE of the governments involvement with the health-care industry.

I seek to serve my fellow man. I seek to free them. Some will fall but others will soar.

 

[Farrowlesparrow]

Why is it the government's duty to deliver mail?

 

[Tyguy]

Only 20% of the U.S population are without insurance this number is not nearly significant enough to justify overturning an entire system.

You don't think over 50 million people is a significant number? That is more than the entire population of Canada. With that logic Canada should stop providing health care as 50 million is not significant enough to worry about. You're basically saying that with the increase in population the need for health care decreases. Very noble.

We as human beings are responsible for ourselves. We rise and fall by our own merits and should not debase ourselves by allowing others to carry our burdens for us. In order to be free we must be free to fail as well as succeed. Delegating that responsibility to the government will only drain you of your freedom giving the government more control over your life.

Free to fail...do you just have an inherent discontent for the under privileged members of society?

Patric Henry said "Give me liberty or give me death." and I hold to that.

"I have now disposed of all my property to my family. There is one thing more I wish I could give them, and that is the Christian religion."

-Patrick Henry