Jon Stewart owns Bill Cristol talking about Healthcare

Seriously, forum decorum protector fatty has got to be the funniest thing ever.

 

What he said and did was not that big a deal- Jon has made people look a lot worse than that before, this doesn't compare at all. Thats the point I was trying to make.

And Bill Kristol saying that the VA system provides first class healthcare just proves that he doesn't know what he's talking about. The VA is many things, but first class is not one of them.

 

A number of you have reported Southern Select for copying and pasting material from other websites and have asked why it is allowed.

Look, if you guys can self police by pointing out where his material came from, then JUST DO THAT. You don't need moderators to come in here and slap the guy down if you can PWN him yourselves.

 

People report posters for that?

Reporting should be saved for truly egregious behavior, don't act like t_j, people.

 

Cleverly disguised “it wasn’t me!” post.

Seriously, anyone else have the distinct feeling that Southern Select used to be another poster? The question is, which one...

 

I'm leaning towards meowgi, but the poorly plagarized rants about white people ain't exactly his style.

 

Hardly disguised at all. If I have ever used the "Report" feature of this BBS, I don't remember it. I believe the mods have far too much to do to try and police the antics of poo flingers.

I am sure that SS is a previous poster, but all I have done is narrow it to who it probably isn't. Treeman seemed much more reasonable, though to be fair, I haven't seen SS talk about Iraq and that is where I remember Treeman's bulk of posts.

 

Yeah, meowgi also seemed more centrist.

 

Not towards the end of his tenure. The last few months involved a lot of rants about hippies and liberals. A few of us thought that someone had taken over his account.

Whatever.

 

Even though i really don't care that someone feels the need to pass other material of as his own, I did think there maybe some legal issues for the site copying and pasting without mentioning sources.

 

wonder what happened to him. we argued quite a bit, but i did meet him once and he seemed like a cool cat.

 

I want to read this book now, especially since I'm going into the military.


http://www.amazon.com/Best-Care-Any...=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1248878570&sr=8-1

 

Just because its considered better than the 'regular' system doesn't make it first class. It still has a ton for shortcomings (i.e. PTSD treatment)

 

I thought his argument was that government shouldn't provide health care. However, we do pay for soldiers and the care is awesome, but that shouldn't be available for people who don't put their life on the line for this country.

 

I know someone answered these, but I want to give my take as a physician to hopefully clear up some myths.

The only one that can "pull the plug" is the next of kin (i.e. spouse, surviving family). This is true both in private and VA system. The attending physician cannot discontinue life support without instructions from the next of kin, without exposing themselves to litigation. The only work around to this is if futility is determined by an ethics board and a court order is issued. This is a very rare situation with this happening only 1 to 2 times in last couple of years at the medical center (with terrible press).
This is one of the "drains" of the medical system, as many comatose/vegetative state patients with no quality of life are kept artificially alive for months with no hope of neurologic recovery. If I was reforming the medical system, this would be one of my key issues to resolve.

This is a huge misconception in the lay community. Doctors get paid 2 ways, by seeing patients and doing procedures (for the most part). Doctors do NOT get paid for ordering xrays, blood tests, etc... Secondly, most physicians shy away from doing "procedures" that are not indicated because in the event of a bad outcome, there is increased exposure to lawsuit.

No this would open up a system to discrimination

 

I saw this live, and while I'm no fan of Bill Kristol's, I don't think he really got owned badly at all, especially considering he was on Stewart's turf. He said that government-run VA care is great, but really expensive. Both very true statements. There's no way we can afford to give everyone VA quality healthcare.

That being said, there are other major problems with VA care, not the least of which is the VA not providing care to enormous geographic sections of the country. A good family friend is a Vietnam Vet and reliant on VA care. He lived in Alpine, TX and pastored a church there. Alpine is now becoming a retirement community, so there are very good healthcare out there. Despite that, VA required him to drive 3 hours to Midland to get care. Then he got congestive heart failure. The VA didn't have a heart specialist west of San Antonio. He ended up moving back to East Texas, just so he could be within driving distance of Houston for a heart specialist.

To me, that's not exactly excellent healthcare. Sure, the quality of care is really good, but the availability is awful. It's like having a efficient post office that doesn't deliver to cities smaller than a million people.

 

I find this hard to believe. Is the VA that much more than your average private insurance plan?

A good point, but certainly something a national plan would address.

 

VA's budget is ~$9000 per veteran. That covers VA healthcare (not available to all of those veterans), VA mortgage subsidies, and GI bill costs. I don't know a breakout, but that seems like it would be very expensive if copied for everyone.

 

Is that equivalent to a premium? If so, that's cheap I think.

 

My insurance (Blue Cross) runs over $1000 per month. $9000 per year to cover insurance, mortgage subsidies, and GI Bill costs is pretty f'in good.