Socialism

[Professor S]

Originally Posted by TheGame

To Prof:

I'm not sure how it transitioned from being about bureaucracy to being about a raw amount of people who are covered.. But lets go to the poll you posted in the other thread.

You transitioned it in your past post when you started American healthcare is broken, but thats neither her nor there.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/publ..._recent_months

48% of people say their healthcare is good or excelent.. meaning 52% of people wouldn't even call their insurance "good" And lets say 20% of those 52% don't have coverage... that's still pretty pathetic.

I think this classifies as more then a broken arm.

You're also conveniently ignoring the information that I posted in the same report that only 19% consider it poor. There is a large middle ground in there of "ok". To me "ok" is perfectly fine especially when considering this is based on subjective opinion and what is good to one person might be just be ok to another.

So if you want to look at the numbers comprehensively, 81% of people rate their healthcare as "ok/acceptable to excellent" and 19% consider it poor.

It's a broken arm.

[TheGame]

Originally Posted by Professor S

So if you want to look at the numbers comprehensively, 81% of people rate their healthcare as "ok/acceptable to excellent" and 19% consider it poor.

It's a broken arm.

I guess that would depend on what standard you hold the country to. To imply that people who voted as "Fair" are satisfied with their health care insurance is misleading. But I guess its one of those glass half full, glass half empty things.

The way I see it, since the poll only had 4 options.. "Fair" would be a negative responce since there's two options better, and only one option worse. People who think their healthcare is satisfactory, but don't want to imply its perfect picked "good".. people who think their healcare is not satisfactory, but don't want to call it horrible picked "fair".

Hell I would have voted for fair.

That's just my opinion though.

[Professor S]

Well thats certainly one way of looking at it, but if that were the case I would have hoped the pollsters would have rephrased the question to include two above average and two below average.

Here is the entire question and answer list, with percentages:

1* How do you rate the healthcare you receive….excellent, good, fair or poor?


35% Excellent
39% Good
17% Fair
7% Poor
1% Not sure


2* How do you rate the U.S. health care system? Excellent, good, fair, or poor?


17% Excellent
31% Good
30% Fair
19% Poor
4% Not sure


3* Do you have health insurance?


85% Yes
14% No
2% Not sure


4* (answered only by those who have health insurance) How do you rate your own health insurance coverage?


35% Excellent
45% Good
15% Fair
4% Poor
0% Not sure


5* Are you willing to pay higher taxes so all Americans can be provided with health insurance?


28% Yes
60% No
12% Not sure

NOTE: Margin of Sampling Error, +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/publ...ugust_1_2_2009

I highlighted what I thought wre two telling areas. One of the biggest things that pops out at me is that while 19% of the respondents believe the quality of US healthcare is poor, only 7% think their level orcare is poor, and only 4% of the insured rate their healthcare as poor (keep in mind the poll itself has a +/- 3% margin for error).

Even more telling, 74% of the respondents rated their own care as good to excellent, and 91% rated their own care as fair to excellent. Meanwhile, the same respondents rated US healthcare overall as only 48% good to excellent and 78% fair to excellent.

It seems this issue may be as much a product of perception as it is reality.

[TheGame]

I could see how it could be taken that way prof, but you have to consider the fact that private insurance companies take mostly people who don't have health conditions to start, and if you get too sick you're likely to lose coverage. So most of the people who voted on their opinion of their own insurance probably hardly get sick to begin with.

Just because someone doesn't currently have health insurance doesn't mean that they havent had bad experiences with it. And people who voted for the other part objectively could have voted based off of other people's experiences with it who actually got sick or who actually have health conditions to begin with.

[Professor S]

Originally Posted by TheGame

I could see how it could be taken that way prof, but you have to consider the fact that private insurance companies take mostly people who don't have health conditions to start, and if you get too sick you're likely to lose coverage.

This is currently against the law and insurance companies can and have been sued in these extremely rare cases (and thats always the case that makes the news, isn't it?). To say that insurance companies drop people as soon as they get seriously ill is not an accurate or fair comment considering the 10's of millions who are covered and never have a problem like you are describing.

So most of the people who voted on their opinion of their own insurance probably hardly get sick to begin with.

If you want to believe that you can, but the poll concentrated on everyone regardless of whether or not they are insured (only one questions was aimed at the insured) and there is nothing hre to support your claim.

Just because someone doesn't currently have health insurance doesn't mean that they havent had bad experiences with it.

I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to say here and I don't think any of my arguments claimed they didn't have experiences with it.

And people who voted for the other part objectively could have voted based off of other people's experiences with it who actually got sick or who actually have health conditions to begin with.

That certainly could be the case, but I haven't seen anything that would support such a claim. What we can take from these numbers is that people's perception of other people's healthcare is far different for what the group as a whole is actually receiving (based on personal feedback). In essence, John thinks his healthcare is good, but thinks Jane's is not, and Jane thinks her healthcare is just fine but thinks John's stinks. According to this poll, this negativity is not warrented.

This is much more likely a result of political efforts and media messages/sensationalism than word of mouth from all the people with poor healthcare who were disproportionally excluded from the polling process. To achieve the kind of inaccrurate reporting you claim is to assume the poll is intentionally biased and thats simply dismissing parts you don't like (the majority of the poll it turns out) because it's inconvenient to your point of view. In that case you would have been better off not referencing it.

[TheGame]

I suppose it'd depend on someone's interpretation of the results. You'll see it in a way that supports your own arguement, and I'll see it in a way that supports mine. So there's really no point argueing anymore. However I would like to point out one thing:

This is currently against the law and insurance companies can and have been sued in these extremely rare cases (and thats always the case that makes the news, isn't it?). To say that insurance companies drop people as soon as they get seriously ill is not an accurate or fair comment considering the 10's of millions who are covered and never have a problem like you are describing.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/hea...es_encour.html

[BreakABone]

So we went from socialism to healthcare reform.

Weep.

I think the funniest/most telling thing about Prof's polls are the people who respond they don't know if they have health insurance. How exactly does that work.

[Professor S]

Originally Posted by TheGame

I suppose it'd depend on someone's interpretation of the results. You'll see it in a way that supports your own arguement, and I'll see it in a way that supports mine. So there's really no point argueing anymore.

I see it in the way that is supported by the information in the polls themselves, you have literally created "what if" scenarios that imagine conversations that the respondents may or may not have had with people who may or may not have had bad expriences with healthcare.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/hea...es_encour.html

1)Consdier the source: HealthReform.gov. Something tells me this government owned group has an interest in pushing a public option seeing how this administration believes reform = transformation. I wouldn't call it an objective source.

2) If these numbers are accurate and not simply taken out of context to illustrate a point of view, it shows that some people have gotten the shaft, but even with those numbers please don't make that the mistake of considering it the norm. It's a fair estimate that 80% of Americans have coverage, and that's well over 200 million people.

There are plenty of people with private insurance who are being treated for life threatening/expensive ailments right now. In fact, over 1.5 million people are diagnosed with cancer each year alone. If the 20,000 mentioned were only dropped fro cancer, that would still be about 1.3% that are dropped or if you take 80% of those patients (to reflect the insured) that makes 1.2 million insured cancer patients, and that makes it 1.6% that are dropped (that looked low to me but the math supports it).

http://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/all.html

These drops are not acceptable in my view, but I never said it was. These companies ned to be sued when appropriate and the system needs some reform... not transformation.

3) At no point does that article mention whether or not the companies were sued, what the legal options were for those that were dropped, or what happened to the insured after they were dropped. It is against contract law to re-write the terms after it's signed and there are respources available for anyone who experiences this.

Speaking of recourse, this is also one of the biggest problems with a public option. What happens if someone receives negligent care and wants to sue for damages? Right now, the US government can only be sued if the US government says you can sue it. In fact, the first drafts of the house bill included a provision that the federal government couldn't be sued because of healthcare issues (that was removed, thankfully) and from what I've seen the current bills don't expressly give citizens a right to legal recourse.


Once again, no one here is saying the current system doesn't need reform. But it needs reform, not transformation.

[Professor S]

Originally Posted by BreakABone

So we went from socialism to healthcare reform.

Weep.

I think the funniest/most telling thing about Prof's polls are the people who respond they don't know if they have health insurance. How exactly does that work.

Don't blame me, I didn't change it, but I went with it. But to be honest, who didn't see this happening to this thread all things considered?

Rasmussen is a pretty reliable source for poll information, and only 2% of respondents don't know. I'm not sure how thats very telling in any way. I imagine 2% of them may have learning disabilities if the polls are representative of our citizenship.

[TheGame]

I'm not going to go over things we've discussed before. Your interpretation of the polls are no more valid then mine are. And I'll leave it at that, others can judge it for how they'd like to judge it.

[Professor S]

And I'll leave it at that, others can judge it for how they'd like to judge it.

Agreed!

[p.obsburn]

Health care is a burden to any of government, not matter in democratic countries or the socialist countries. Some may have insurance companies come in to sell you plan A, Plan B etc but why we shall care? At the end of the day, aren;t we just going to one place when we die? R.I.P

[KillerGremlin]

Originally Posted by p.obsburn

Health care is a burden to any of government, not matter in democratic countries or the socialist countries. Some may have insurance companies come in to sell you plan A, Plan B etc but why we shall care? At the end of the day, aren;t we just going to one place when we die? R.I.P

Holy shit. Skynet, is that you? That or these forum robots keep getting smarter.