Heathcare in the USA is terrible!

Why is public health care in the USA extremely limited/non-existent?It seems that in every westernized/developed country (and quite a few others, I believe) public health care is free. For example, here in the UK if you get ill you can go to an NHS hospital. You might have to wait months for treatment, but it will be done at the expense of the state.If you get ill in the USA and don't have enough money or insurance, the state leaves you to die. How can the USA call itself the greatest country in the world with this going on?

I think you probably meant that health care coverage in the USA is terrible. The healthcare is great...it is just that 43 million Americans (a number that is growing and includes millions of children) cannot afford it.Politically, it is popular to claim that the poor are poor because they are lazy or deserve it. Thus, one can "save" money by not insuring them via national healthcare and demonize the poor at the same time. Children are not a particularly strong lobby, especially poor ones, so fiscal conservatives can get their lobbies to only push for their interests in profit to the exclusion of anything that might sound like "welfare" or "tax increase" that might aid those who cannot afford healthcare. The insurance industry does not make a profit insuring poor people either and they are a very strong lobby in the US. And if you think the religious would come to their defence, you would be wrong. They (the hard right at least) take the hypocritical view that women should be forced to carry a fetus to term regardless of the circumstances but once that kid is born, if it is poor, who gives a crap if it stays healthy?

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If you get ill in the USA and don't have enough money or insurance, the state leaves you to die. How can the USA call itself the greatest country in the world with this going on?

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The US can call itself whatever it wants. That does not mean anyone has to believe it.

As of Jan 1 that won't be true in the netherlands. Not only will it be for profit, but if you don't pay into the for profit system you'll actually be fined!

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

WHAT?!? I know the Netherlands is getting more right wing (hard to see how it can get any more left wing with its legalised prositution and dope) but that sounds evil. Why has this not been heard of outside NL until now?

Actually, there is a trend (though slight so far) for people to go uninsured in Germany because of the high cost for the working poorUninsured in Germany: A Growing Trend | News and current affairs from Germany and around the world | DW | 06.10.2004Of course, they are opting more out of choice than those in the US and it is only 180,000 people out of 80 million or so as opposed to the 43 million uninsured in the US. But it has the government worried in Germany.

Well it used to have child porn and supported squatters (the people that take over abandoned buildings).As it stands you should know that dope is only technically tolerated, not really legal. You can be busted for having it and growing it. It all depends on what they want to do that day.They are cracking down on prostitution more and more and are engaged in shoving just about all sex industry stuff into the "official" red light district. I lived here 7 years ago, visited before that. They have cut the sexual oriented area in that time to about a third of its original size and have recently begun trying to shut down a popular Hooters style restaurant because that is to scandalous (its been here the whole time, the scandal is over... idiots).Then again if you are gay its gay oriented businesses have grown bigger bigger BIGGER. If I was gay I would come here. That I am straight, I'd say there is no longer a reason.Oh I could go on and on. You just would not believe the changes which have gone on here and without much fuss by the dutch.The reason you haven't heard about it is likely because no one really cares, and the media outlets may not want to question it.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

You know right now I don't think there is one trend goin on in the world today which I enjoy.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

Oh, I don't know. Despite the best efforts of the religious right, the trends in science are towards better understanding of nature by scientific progress. This is true in a lot of fields. I certainly don't stay in science for the pay and if I thought science was in a rut, I would do something else.I hope that through science, new disruptive technologies in energy and health will break the strangle hold the current lobbies have and maybe improve the lives of people. I hope that some of my research contributes to these new technologies..but I doubt it In terms of other trends, the unbelievable rise of pseudo moralism coupled with extreme hypocrisy is really bad. Unfortunately, it is not confined to the US.

I can't agree with this assessment. In some cases this could be true but not all and definitely not in important areas.Evo Psych is the evolutionary version of ID, forcing science back into deductive reasoning. Sexual research has just been given the galileo treatment and we will now be hampered in understanding human sexuality and so how to create worthwhile legislation for quite some time. In environmental sciences, panic has become a good thing also pushing a deductive agenda.Thus Moralism and deductive logic have re-entered mainstream science. Depressing. Actually it is true that the tech sector does have some cool trends. Unfortunately social and legal trends are having impact on those tech sectors, curtialing their achievements and sometimes twisting them into bad things. Then again that is nothing new I suppose.Wait, why am I trying to bum you out? Being a sad sack isn't a cool trend either. Gotta work on that.AbE: Wait I got it! I do like some of the recent things going on in Israel. Sure its not perfect, but its been better than in the past. Once Sharon's personal enemy died, its like he can actually halfway bring himself to do some okay things. At least its been positive.This message has been edited by holmes, 11-22-2005 12:03 PM

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

When you say "evo psych", are you talking about what I know as sociobiology? I've never been entirely clear on what you mean when you decry "evo psych."And do you really think that it's inappropriate to deduce from tentatively-held general principles? Isn't that how we make predictions from theory? Via deduction?I don't see the application of evolutionary principles to human behavior to be any less valid than any other approach of psychology, and it makes a lot more sense than some. And the fact that people do stuff that evolution predicts that they will, even when that behavior doesn't make any social or cognitive sense - even to them - seems to be a pretty powerful indicator of the robustness of sociobiology/evo psych. The model has explanitory power, it seems to me; and deductive logic doesn't seem to be totally out of place in science - that's how we generate predictions to be tested.

Sorry, I have already accidentally hijacked this thread and don't need to take it any further. If you want to debate Evo Psych, that is fine, but there are a couple of threads on this already (where I am still waiting for someone to defend it), or you may open a new one. Remember if you do, I may not be able to answer till next week, so I am not ignoring you if I don't get to it till then.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

Would you happen to have a link to those threads? I'd like to take a look.

The fact is children at, near, or below the poverty line can receive free health insurance. If they don't have it, their parents just haven't applied for it.I know of several families making between 50-120K a year that don't have it because health insurance is very expensive. That doesn't mean they don't get treatment.This message has been edited by randman, 11-22-2005 01:53 PM

Not off the top of my head. I believe they were in one of the sci threads (misc topics or is it science). They have evopsych in the title so they should be obvious to find.I will perhaps look and bump them tomorrow. But you can probably find them first.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

I'll look around, thanks.