Single Payer Too Exspensive, No Way?

And you're OK with that rationale as long as it serves your purpose?

You've already admitted your position is independent of any facts that might be presented.

What sort of of reply do you feel you deserve?

You are so full of horse shit. "The constitution is sacred except for the parts I don't like."

His stance that single payer would make things worse is well supported historically and by pretty much every field of government endeavor. At first you get increased costs and reduced services, and then you start seeing the good people leave the field and young people reluctant to enter it because it won't pay well. It won't pay well because the most obvious way to control costs is to cut pay or cut services, and as a federal program such decisions will be made by bureaucrats being ordered around by lawyers. We already had that problem, so why raise it to the next level? Since it's all being codified into law, and laws are hard to change (just try getting some changes through the current House and Senate), the ACA cannot response to any innovations, changes, or problems. It's an unmovable monolith that would make Kafka weep. Even its implementers can't figure it out.

The direct answer to that is in the second sentence of my post, which you deleted.

Such as?

You dumb ass. You said emergency room visits were down and it WAS mostly the poor using the emergency room instead of primary care not the middle class.

Claims are not facts.

True. But just because you haven't got any facts doesn't mean you can just assume everyone else doesn't, either.

Not from the folks I know.

Being a vet, I'm sure you're aware of the law that Obama passed to clear the nearly two (!) year backlog they've had on claims. I'm fairly skeptical that an organization that far behind can't possibly have high satisfaction rates. Sorry, I just don't.

I have two good friends who are huge fans of the VA. One's a Vietnam vet, the other from Desert Storm. But I also hear lots of horror stories.

Pay attention. Garamet was talking about non-emer visits being down. Non means something like not.

To be fair though, we partially subsidize their systems. Those countries pay lower prices for American made drugs as a result of their single payer bargaining power. We end up paying more as a result as drug companies charge Americans more to make up the difference.

First off, I think I figured out the problem, most of what you just spouted is opinion, not fact.

Second, We The People already made this decision, we elected representatives, who passed legislation that has since failed to be overturned by a court decision or new legislation. The fact is, this is exactly how our Republic is supposed to work.

The term is "non-emergent." IOW, people who show up with ingrown toenails because "Ah, I can't be bothered going to the doctor" or parents who've let the kid's AOM go because they "don't have time" to go to the pediatrician, and now it's 4:00 a.m. and the kid is screaming in agony.

Only someone as stupid as you would believe you go to the ER to have a CABG or TAVR.

Non-emergent. Look it up. And wipe the drool off your chin; it's getting on your keyboard.

VA treatment varies from state to state and seems to be entirely dependent on whether administrators are paying attention.

Funny how the dick-sucking about the righteousness of the political process didn't seem to extend to liberal approval when the SCOTUS said Bush won reelection. What's not as funny is the preposterous hypocrisy so commonplace among US libs.

No thoughts at all about the topic? Single-payer? The PPACA? Anything but rote venom-spitting? Why are you even here?

"Principle" is more than just the word used to indicate a fundamental doctrine or tenet, though you'd never guess to read the gloating regarding the process that got us the recent healthcare reform.

But don't sweat it libs, you got what you wanted (for now), whatever the means, lies or trickery the politicos inveigled to achieve obamacare.

Progress. You've actually expressed an opinion on the topic. Now say more about how wanting Americans to catch up to the rest of the industrialized world in terms of healthcare and the expenditures around it is "gloating."

Or just float off on another substance-induced haze until the venom sacs refill.

It's easy to inveigle lies, as they have no eyes; and as for inveigling means, they positively seem to be meant for inveiglement! It's the trickery you have to keep an eye on, lest it inveigle you right back midst-inveigle.

The problem with being inveigled by your dictionary is that once blinded, you might fail to read a fancy new word's full definition.

Then make it 'used to inveigle obamacare.'

Pedantic to the end. At least garamet made a joke about being interested in discussion; why can't you be original like that? It's not legal treatises I write here.

Nah, that doesn't work either.

Of course I'm pedantic. But you've got to admit that this exemplifies and epitomizes your posting style perfectly: You've already proved you have little to no knowledge of the issue, nor of any of our positions on it; now you're making a point of demonstrating that you don't even understand the words you're using. Why argue the ACA if you don't know what it is, why argue against us if you don't know what we think, and why use a word if you haven't got the slightest idea what it means?

And once again Packard schools Americans in their own language.

Imagine a pedant (that's a synonym for "teacher," @Tuttle) being pedantic -! The nerve!

@Packard, have I ever asked you how many languages you have?

English as a First Language...challenging Rightforge since the time of the beginning, without change.

If you're just going to make things up, don't forget the part where Greedo fired at Han.

On this level, just the two. But I can be pedantic about words in several more. And I never realized pedantic is from paidagogos before, thanks for that! Now I have another excuse.

In all honesty, I wouldn't presume to school native speakers in their own language. But I do try to school people in looking out for their words, no matter whose language they're speaking. That use of "inveigle" was elitist in the worst possible way -- designed to sound fancy, used without understanding, and both contributing to the smoke screen that he was building around the actual issue and his lack of knowledge where it was concerned.

(I used to have a colleague who spoke close to ten languages with perfection, and knew many, many more. She had grown up in California in a Brazilian-Portuguese family and with Spanish all around her, so she started off with three native languages -- and she never stopped learning new ones, living and ancient. Once, she admitted, with a sad little shrug, that her Coptic was bit rusty, whereupon half of us had to go and look up what Coptic is. Now she would indeed correct native speakers in their own languages for simple grammatical mistakes, all the time; and that she was always, infallibly and ineffably, right in what she said was only a little less infuriating than the calm, demure, almost shy way she had about her when she did so. I loved her to bits, but that isn't me, in so many ways.)

Best description of @Tuttle ever!

I envy people with a facility for languages. Courses in three languages here - Latin (Catholic schools, dontcha know), French, and German - and none of them have ever stuck to my brain. Aside from being able to cuss in Yiddish, Ukrainian, and Sicilian (the advantage of growing up in Brooklyn), I can sight-read Chaucer's English and muddle through in modern English, but that's about all...

You two are a pretty pair.

One claims my post has bile, though that's a fiction created in her own mind.

The other boasts about how smart or clever he is, but can't be bothered to address a point of content - that Obamacare was achieved through unprincipled (lying and misleading etc.) means on a public that opposed it.

Yep, the WF liberals are a powerful force of content and argument. [Just that it's mostly FAIL on the several levels that count.] Good on you guys, heh, you should truly be proud.

Packard, did I miss you commenting on the spelling of "expensive". Or are you failing, too, at your best strength?

It's interesting to me how many different ways there are to be good with language. Many people seem to think it's just a one-dimensional scale, but it can really go in so many directions. You're obviously excellent at language in at least two ways, and here you are saying you don't have a knack to learn more languages. Aside from English, I've never learned to actually speak another language, though I can read several -- the ease and speed needed for direct conversation just doesn't come to me, even in those languages where I can quite comfortably read old or difficult texts that some natives struggle with. Other people I've known pick up conversational skills so perfectly that native speakers can't tell them apart, but never get a grip on complex reading or writing even in their own language. Some say that they know poetry because they are musical, and I have to believe them; but others understand verse perfectly and are utterly deaf to melodies.

In a way, it's a bit like some mathematicians who fit the cliché of being great musicians, to the point where the department of mathematics at my previous university had its own dedicated music room; and others are just as great at maths and don't understand music at all. There are so many different talents by which we do the same things well, but differently. I like that idea.

Anyway, I think that concludes my contribution to the single payer debate. Bottom line: Universal healthcare good, single payer bad, but not for the reasons stated by the opponents of universal healthcare.

No, the word used was venom. Not the same thing as bile, either linguistically or biochemically. The only point of conjunction is that in your need to be the victim here, you've misused both.

Why should he address yet another baseless opinion? Present your case with, yanno, facts, or go stand in the corner with Farmer and Castle.

We have consistently provided content and argument in numerous threads. If you'd show up when you weren't high you'd know that.

You want content and argument? Bring some. Or just as usual.

Was that a question? If so, revise your punctuation. Had Packard remarked on the misspelling, he'd have been being redundant, as I mentioned it waaay upthread.

You do this to yourself all the time. You jump in at the end of a thread with some nasty comments about the posters you don't like and no indication whatsoever that you know what the conversation has been about.

Another fine example of why your side is habitually bewildered by real life and has to resort to conspiracy theories and victimhood to try - inadequately - to 'splain things to themselves.

It's my opinion that we are a Republic? Huh, didn't know that.