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(V): So I'm calling ya out. Let's get these "witnesses" so that you can feel better about yourself. lol Also, some proof would be nice. Or am I to take the word of one such as you?
It's clear from the evidence that there were rapes that occured in the occupy camps and that the leaders TRIED TO COVER THEM UP! Of course you don't like this inconvienent fact do you? It rather destroys your narrative. Looks like you're the one who made a false statement based on one certain fraction of an equation (not to mention your endless twisting of the facts!!!)
Artful Dodger: Nope. I'd swear about this on a stack of Bibles. Many others who saw this would also be able to truthfully swear to such. I remember you thought all LDS were really, really hell bound. Or was that just you using religion?
"that rapes occured in the Occupy Wall Street camps."
Rapes happen in Texas. By your logic.. it is fair to say the rapists were Texans... Nothing about them being men, or unstable, drunk, on drugs, abused.
.. Just that they were Texans.
"And the leadership of the Occupy camps tried to cover up the crimes by "handling them internally.""
Some people after being attacked don't want the police involved. This is a fact.
"that they had to have a woman's only section (as well as a gay and lesbian sections) for the safety of others."
So they choose to protect the women, and the gay and lesbians from gay and lesbian haters... you are complaining about this?
"Only liberal thinkers like you would try to soft pedal the rapes."
I'm not. To say so is just petty fogging. You made a false statement based on one certain fraction of an equation, there were rapists and abusers and anti gay folk who 'blended' in and raped/attacked people at the OWS camps.
Just as their have been cases of rapes, sodomy, incest and abuse in Christian Churches by Christians... but that they were Christians is insignificant except to maybe explain how they may have gotten away with such activities. Especially as many within the Christian church covered up such matters and dealt with them internally..
.. some targeted groups even slept in separate areas to others as a matter of safety!!
(V): You love to change the subject don't you. Plus you are making this all up. Besides, the point you were disputing was the FACT that rapes occured in the Occupy Wall Street camps. Not only did they happen, the perpatrators were Occupiers (as were the victims). And the leadership of the Occupy camps tried to cover up the crimes by "handling them internally." It got so bad with the Occupy group that they had to have a woman's only section (as well as a gay and lesbian sections) for the safety of others. There are several hundred examples of serious law violations including rapes. Only liberal thinkers like you would try to soft pedal the rapes.
Artful Dodger: Why? Because you can't remember being the "perfect christian"? Blasting everyone with your perceived new born christible God given wrath?
"some were rapists duh" .... some people that went along were rapists. Like some Christians and Conservatives are rapists but just use the label of being Conservatives and Christians as a pretence of being trustful.
Point being is about thinking.... Like you use to swear that you believed 100% that anyone who was not a Christian, and in particular one who believes in an ultimate literal 'Heaven' and 'Hell' as you did, were the only the Christians who were saved and going on to heaven.... all other Christians were damned, and all non Christians were damned.
You now seem to say you don't believe that any more, but you do now say anyone who diasgrees with your views on the economy, and all liberal points (as you call them) are 100% wrong?
... Of course.. no-one here would say or imply that the OWS protesters were rapists, or feel that Andrew Breitbart is a hero for pointing out that the OWS protesters are rapists.
I mean isn't that changing the subject via a big lie?
Then to delete all such statements once pressed on the validity of such a big lie.
But hey such is the way of the politician.
.. or, as in the UK. The PPI industry. Billions to pay back to insurance plans deliberately mis-sold.
(V): And you LOVE to change the subject when you've lost an argument (which is often - especially when you face-off against me). What else would ya like me to school ya on?
(V): When you're losing an argument (which is often) you will stoop to anything to muddy the waters. Of course no one make that claim about the 99%. YOU made it up out of desperation.
"All this was inspired by the principle - which is quite true in itself - that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.
Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying. These people know only too well how to use falsehood for the basest purposes.
From time immemorial, however, the liberals have known better than any others how falsehood and calumny can be exploited. Is not their very existence founded on one great lie, namely, that they are a elite community, where as in reality they are bad thinking? And what an elite! One of the greatest thinkers that mankind has produced has branded the liberals for all time with a statement which is profoundly and exactly true. He (McCarthy) called the liberal "The Great Master of Lies". Those who do not realize the truth of that statement, or do not wish to believe it, will never be able to lend a hand in helping Truth to prevail."
Artful Dodger: in Aussieland we call it "Come in Spinner"
***Same Difference?
The term 'come in spinner' refers not only to the game of two-up, marking the moment at which the coins are tossed. It also refers to the verbal art of the wind-up, marking the moment when the narrator of a shaggy dog story tells the hapless listener s/he's been conned. The stakes in this game are not just the small change of little truths (which you lose to the biggest liar), but the status of truths themselves. In order to arrive at that delicious moment when you can say 'come in spinner', you have to give away those little truths that will be recognized, picked up and followed; followed right up the garden path. In fact, in order to mislead, you must tell the truth. In order to produce difference, to put your listeners in a different place from where they think you are, you have to convince them they're in the same place.
This is also the politics of the cover up. The deceptiveness of appearance is not just a matter of overriding difference; of covering facts with fictions, or fictions with facts. The deceptiveness of appearance is also a uniquely Australian cultural norm. It deceptively appeared, for example, that Australia was constitutionally different from Britain until Remembrance Day 1975, when ocker met a Kerr, and difference was overridden. The AJCS is no exception to this cultural norm. It too has a politics of the cover-up. Like Gough Whitlam, it is dedicated to uncovering The Truth of the Matter} but like Australia it has made transgression and illegality the true symbols of a national culture.
Dr. Angell is former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine.
The Senate Finance Committee's hearings on health reform earlier this month did not include testimony from any advocate for single-payer insurance. Physicians for a National Health Program, which represents 16,000 doctors, asked the committee to invite me to testify, but it chose not to. If I had been invited, this is what I would have said:
The reason our health system is in such trouble is that it is set up to generate profits, not to provide care. We rely on hundreds of investor-owned insurance companies that profit by refusing coverage to high-risk patients and limiting services to others. They also cream off about 20 percent of the premiums for profits and overhead.
In addition, we provide much of our medical care in investor-owned health facilities that profit by providing too many services for the well-insured and too few for those who cannot pay. Most physicians are paid fee-for-service, which gives them a similar incentive, particularly specialists who receive very high fees for performing expensive tests and procedures. Nonprofits behave much like for-profits, because they must compete with them. In sum, healthcare is directed toward maximizing income, not maximizing health. In economic terms, it's a highly successful industry, but it's a massive drain on the rest of the economy.
The reform proposals advocated by President Obama are meant to increase coverage for the uninsured. That is certainly a worthwhile goal, but the problem is that they leave the present profit-driven and highly inflationary system essentially unchanged, and simply pour more money into it - an unsustainable situation.
....
A single-payer system is ignored by lawmakers because of the influence of the health industry lobbies. They raise the specter of rationing and long waits for care. There are indeed waits for some elective procedures in some countries with national health systems, such as the United Kingdom. But that's because they spend far less on healthcare than we do. For them, the problem is not the system; it's inadequate funding. For us, it's not the funding; it's the system. We spend more than enough.
I urge you to consider a nonprofit single-payer system. The economic interests of the health industry should not be permitted to hold the rest of the economy hostage and threaten the health and well-being of the public.
"The most recent available study, which also had the largest sample and controlled for the most variables, found no effect at all--a result which surprised the hell out of its author, a former Clinton advisor. Other studies say the number is in the tens of thousands. "
...
"The Atlantic Home Monday, April 9, 2012
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Megan McArdle
Megan McArdle - Megan McArdle is a senior editor for The Atlantic who writes about business and economics. She has worked at three start-ups, a consulting firm, an investment bank, a disaster recovery firm at Ground Zero, and The Economist. She is currently on leave. More
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Share Share « Previous McArdle | Next McArdle » Email Email Print Print How Many People Die From Lack of Health Insurance? By Megan McArdle
Feb 11 2010, 3:20 PM ET 132
It's a contentious question, but curiously, one that doesn't get debated nearly as fiercely as things like "how many uninsured people are there?" I find that surprising, because after all, we don't necessarily care whether people are marked by some survey as "insured" or "uninsured"; we care whether there is preventable suffering in the world.
But it turns out to be really hard to determine how many people die without insurance, which is the subject of this month's column. The most recent available study, which also had the largest sample and controlled for the most variables, found no effect at all--a result which surprised the hell out of its author, a former Clinton advisor. Other studies say the number is in the tens of thousands.
The left is predictably fond of the study which got the largest number, 45,000 a year. Unfortunately, its authors are political advocates for a single-payer system, who also helped author the notorious studies on medical bankruptcies. Those studies are very shoddily done, with parameters that somehow always conspire to produce the maximum possible number. In the first study, they set an absurdly low threshhold for what constituted a "medical bankruptcy". In the second, they chose 2006, the year after the 2005 bankruptcy reform act had driven an unprecedented spike in filings."
That the famous study by the Harvard Medical School and Cambridge Health Alliance has been a reliable Democrat talking point for months. But its estimate that 44,789 "excess deaths" are associated with lack of health insurance annually is rarely questioned by the media. They should be.
"The findings in this research are based on faulty methodology and the death risk is significantly overstated," National Center for Policy Analysis president John C. Goodman has explained. "The subjects were interviewed only once and the study tries to link their insurance status at that time to mortality a decade later. Yet over the period, the authors have no idea whether subjects were insured or uninsured, what kind of medical care they received, or even cause of death."
Researchers of the Harvard based their conclusion upon national surveys participants filled from 1986-1994. After checking how many of the adults died by the year 2000, researchers proceeded to make the unbelievable leap in assumption and faith that the uninsured stayed uninsured for all those years - and died as a result.
Subject: Everything Jules posted on this subject is all bunk. A load of crap.
“An estimated 17,000 children in the United States might have died unnecessarily over nearly two decades because they didn’t have health insurance,” said U.S. News and World Report. “The authors estimated that at least 1,000 hospitalized children died each year simply because they lacked insurance,” said The New York Times.
They’re talking about a Johns Hopkins Children’s Center study [gated, but with abstract]. But between the media hype and the actual study is an enormous chasm that separates fact from fiction. In truth, the authors of the study did not establish that anybody, anywhere, died of any cause whatsoever because of a lack of health insurance.
This is only the latest in a series of ridiculous claims that have been injected into the health insurance debate. What follows is a brief review, some of which has appeared earlier at the Health Affairs blog.
...................
Also, before you go into mourning too quickly, be aware that when former Director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) June O’Neill and her husband Dave used a similar approach they found that the involuntarily uninsured (low-income people) were only 3% more likely to die over a 14-year period than those with health insurance. There was no statistically significant effect on the “voluntarily uninsured” (higher-income people).
That’s not too surprising in light of a RAND study finding. People are receiving appropriate care a little better than half the time when they see doctors. According to RAND, the care patients receive is not affected by whether they are insured or uninsured or by the type of insurance they have. People who are uninsured, of course, may delay seeing a doctor in the first place — because of their lack of insurance. But this problem is unlikely to be solved by enrolling them in Medicaid programs that routinely ration by waiting.
Bernice: The cost of Obama Care is already double and there will be "panels" that make policy and deny people certain procedures.
There are those in the liberal party that complained that VP Cheney received a heart transplant. Too old they said. They would have let him die if they had their way. That's a death panel and it's coming our way.
Artful Dodger: horror stories are not only Britain and Canada....try Aus as well...especially the town I live in...absobloodylutely shocking reputation Qld Health has :(
Bernice: There are many horror stories from Britain and Canada where people who needed urgent care were ignored (due to the waiting period and determinations that their problems weren't "urgent") and died.
If I'm selling a product (insurance) don't I have the right to offer this, this, and this as covered but not that? Why must the government determine what a company is to carry? If someone on my policy needs hearing aids, there is NO COVERAGE for the 4500$ cost. Why no coverage? Because it's not cost effective to offer the coverage. I'd pay a few hundred dollars a year and some devices are in excess of 5 thousand dollars. It adds up when one considers that it's normal for older people to lose certain portions of their hearing. Most old farts could use hearing aids.
As for death panels, I think they will exist. There is a determination of what procedure is worth the cost and what isn't. Watch and see. If this health care bill survives, we will see some procedure where some "wanted" procedures will be denied (such as a heart transplant for people over 70). Mike Wallace just died at 93. A heart transplant extends one's life for up to 15 more years. Yeah, I want that!!!
INTERESTING: I find it interesting that so many protesters spoke about the so called death panels if the presidents healthcare bill got passed,,What I really see is that the death panels have been in place for a long time when insurance companies refuse you coverage,or in some cases drop you and even out right refuse to cover many cancer treatments that they say is to costly,,or when the hospital refuses you treatment for lack of health care insurance,,Even cases where people are constantly denied medicaid 3 or 4 times with appeals after appeals in which I see that time does not give anyone a good mental outlook of a chance at improving there lives with this illness,,For the first time, Here we have a president who is looking out for the health of this country,and I have seen nothing but hatred,anger,bitterness from the opposition,,But that same opposition will take up the cause and beat the drums of war,and in the same breath claim to be pro-life..Interesting (Hummm)
Right now, under the private health care system, we have delays in treatment, threats to our health and even worse (corporate death panels).
There has been a tremendous consolidation in the health insurance industry over the past fifteen years. A cartel of very large for-profit insurance companies dominates the industry. One out of every three Americans is enrolled in some kind of plan offered by just seven of those large companies.
America has granted insurance companies the right to create bottlenecks in the financing of health care in order to extract profits out of the suffering of ordinary people, without providing any actual health care whatsoever.
The lure of economic incentives to provide unnecessary or unproven care, or even that known to be ineffective, drives many physicians to make the lucrative choice. Hospitals and especially academic medical centers are also motivated to profit from many expensive procedures.
The Economist said the phrase was used as an "outrageous allegation" to confront politicians at town hall meetings during the August 2009 congressional recess.[54] The New York Times said the term became a standard slogan among many conservatives opposed to the Obama administration’s health care overhaul.[22] Former Newsweek editor Jon Meacham said it was "a lie crafted to foment opposition to the president's push for reform"[55] and Fox News analyst Juan Williams said "of course there is no such thing as any death panel."[56] The Christian Science Monitor reported that some Republicans used the term as a "jumping-off point" to discuss government rationing of health care services, while some liberal groups applied the term to private health insurance companies.[57] Journalist Paul Waldman of The American Prospect called the "death panel" charge a consequential policy lie, a falsehood about a policy that had definite effects on the policy, a type of lie that is not as condemned in the media as personal lies.[58]
The right-leaning British paper, The Daily Telegraph noted that some critics of the U.S. reform used the United Kingdom's National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE)—"as an example of [doing] the sort of drug rationing that amounted to a 'death panel'". NICE, as one of its functions, uses cost-effectiveness analysis to determine whether new treatments and drugs should be available to those covered by Britain's National Health Service [59] The Sunday Times, a British paper owned by Rupert Murdoch, wrote that Sarah Palin's use of the "death panels" term was a reference to NICE.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) stated that "death panels" were a baseless charge that unnecessarily incited fear and detracted from real problems in the proposed legislation.[67] She said the proposed legislation was "bad enough that we don't need to be making things up". Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-GA), thought there was illogical confusion over "death panels"; he said advance directives put "authority in the individual rather than the government."[68] In July 2010 Rep. Bob Inglis, (R-SC) said that he thought it was counterproductive for the conservative movement for some to promote misinformation about death panels when they do not exist.[69] Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) endorsed Rep. Charles Boustany's statement that "medical panels of people who care about what's best for their patients ... is good science and good medicine."[70] Speaking for himself, Issa said "Republicans have to step back from the words 'death panels'."[70] Michael F. Cannon, a former domestic policy analyst for the U.S. Senate Republican Policy Committee and a member of the Cato Institute, wrote that "[p]aying doctors to help seniors sort out their preferences for end-of-life care is consumer-directed rationing, not bureaucratic rationing."
The Nazis did say they learnt how to make a big lie from American politicians
Alcohol abuse kills some 75,000 Americans each year and shortens the lives of these people by an average of 30 years, a U.S. government study suggested Thursday.
How many of these loons don't have health care coverage?
Hmmmm, maybe the government should regulate who gets to drink?
(V): That report is seriously flawed. Do you know how many factors lead to death? It cannot be attributed to lack of health care. Many die with health care! Some die because of bad choices like eating unhealthy foods and getting fat.
Either way Jules (who is addressing me without addressing me, classic Middle School!) it's not up to the govt to force me to pay more just so people without can have. And seriously, what has the government ever undertaken that turned out well? Only private industry can effectively run anything! The government mucks everything up. And we're gonna trust them running a national health care system?
Some Americans do not qualify for government-provided health insurance, are not provided health insurance by an employer, and are unable to afford, cannot qualify for, or choose not to purchase, private health insurance. When charity or "uncompensated" care is not available, they sometimes simply go without needed medical treatment. This problem has become a source of considerable political controversy on a national level.
A report from the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies states: "Lack of health insurance causes roughly 18,000 unnecessary deaths every year in the United States." [27] A 2009 Harvard study published in the American Journal of Public Health found more than 44,800 excess deaths annually in the United States associated with uninsurance.[28][29] Johns Hopkins University professor Vicente Navarro stated, more broadly, in 2003, "the problem does not end here, with the uninsured. An even larger problem is the underinsured" and "The most credible estimate of the number of people in the United States who have died because of lack of medical care was provided by a study carried out by Harvard Medical School Professors David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler (New England Journal of Medicine 336, no. 11 [1997]). They concluded that almost 100,000 people died in the United States each year because of lack of needed care—three times the number of people who died of AIDS."[30]
A study published in the American Journal of Public Health in 2009 found that "[u]ninsurance is associated with mortality. The strength of that association appears similar to that from a study that evaluated data from the mid-1980s, despite changes in medical therapeutics and the demography of the uninsured since that time."[46] The study estimated that lack of insurance is associated with 45,000 deaths annually.[46] This is two and a half times higher than an estimate produced by the Institute of Medicine in 2002.[47] One of the authors characterized the results as "now one dies every 12 minutes."