Oh Bachmann, you just give and give

[raptor3x]

It's a shame that the irony of this will most certainly be lost on her under the weight of all that crazy.

TPM

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), who is a a staunch champion of the religious right and an opponent of President Obama on all things under the sun, has a new line against the Democrats on health care: Keep the government off my body!

Bachmann appeared on Sean Hannity's radio show on Tuesday, and check out what she said, at the 5:35 mark.

"That's why people need to continue to go to the town halls, continue to melt the phone lines of their liberal members of Congress," said Bachmann, "and let them know, under no certain circumstances will I give the government control over my body and my health care decisions."

The irony here is that this same message is often used in American politics to mean something completely different -- as a slogan of the pro-choice movement, to which Bachmann most certainly does not belong.

[rhoenix]

Or that whole Terri Schaivo thing.

[Patrick Degan]

Transparently cynical. Also very hamfisted and unsubtle. In other words, GOP SOP.

[Pelranius]

Doesn't she use the Congressional health care plan?

[Dillon]

I am actually in the midst of a heated debate with an anti-UHC advocate and he used this exact same argument.

What these people don't seem to realize is that, while private health care might give the well off further control of their body, it actually gives the middle and lower class less control of their body.

After all, under UHC, they will have access to all manner of medical treatments which they might be unable to afford under a privatized system and are therefore are more to able to control what happens to their bodies. Since the lower and middle class vastly outnumber the upper class, this means that UHC gives greater control of their own bodies to far more people.

[salm]

What actually is their argument against a mixed model? A model in which all people are insured by the government but if they want to they can drop out and get a private insurance? I mean that way you could shut up this "control over body" argument and insure everybody at the same time. That´s what we´ve got in Germany. Everybody has a decent standard of insurance. Rich people or people who are willing to invest more in health can get private insurance and have a couple of advantages.
(Sorry if this question has come up a lot. I don´t really follow this whole US healthcare debate)

[Dillon]

What actually is their argument against a mixed model? A model in which all people are insured by the government but if they want to they can drop out and get a private insurance? I mean that way you could shut up this "control over body" argument and insure everybody at the same time. That´s what we´ve got in Germany. Everybody has a decent standard of insurance. Rich people or people who are willing to invest more in health can get private insurance and have a couple of advantages.
(Sorry if this question has come up a lot. I don´t really follow this whole US healthcare debate)

Interesting. Has it led to a decline in public health care facilities? I believe that is the primary concern regarding two-tier systems.

Regardless, I imagine such a system would undoubtedly still be labeled as "socialist" and decried as evil and commie like as a result.

[salm]

Interesting. Has it led to a decline in public health care facilities? I believe that is the primary concern regarding two-tier systems.

Not that i know of. It has lead to publicly insured people being jealous of privatly insured people but all in all i think it´s fine.

[Patrick Degan]

What actually is their argument against a mixed model? A model in which all people are insured by the government but if they want to they can drop out and get a private insurance? I mean that way you could shut up this "control over body" argument and insure everybody at the same time. That´s what we´ve got in Germany. Everybody has a decent standard of insurance. Rich people or people who are willing to invest more in health can get private insurance and have a couple of advantages.
(Sorry if this question has come up a lot. I don´t really follow this whole US healthcare debate)

The argument is a very hamfisted attempt to co-opt the language of the pro-choice movement and twist it into anti-UHC sentiment amongst women. That's the entire idea behind this. I'm sure Bachman didn't come up with this one on her own but is reading from a script. If that is indeed the case, expect it to be repeated far and wide within the next 48 hours by every GOP talking head and shill; to pass into teabagger scripts within 72 hours.

[Skgoa]

Interesting. Has it led to a decline in public health care facilities? I believe that is the primary concern regarding two-tier systems.

Not that i know of. It has lead to publicly insured people being jealous of privatly insured people but all in all i think it´s fine.

The main problem of our two-tier system is that its a TWO-TIER system. Its not reasonable (or fair, since you brought up jealousy) that those who the gouvernment deems arian valuable enough... to have a high enough income and public servants can opt out and pay substantially LESS then they would under a "public" plan and get a higher standard of health care for it.
Let me explain for those here who don't know the german system: Everyone who earns less than what our glorious overlords have arbitrarily (is that the correct spelling?) choosen as qualifying for 1st class citizenship have to pay 14% of their monthly income (before taxes) into the "public" healthcare system, while those with entirely private plans pay fixed premiums that DON'T scale with income, thus spending a much lower percentage of their income.
But there is another part to it: that money never gets into the "public" health care pool(at least the way I understand it the recently introduced "health fund" is basicly the gouvernment forcing the "public" insurers to pool their ressources), thus all those that are to young, poor, old etc. to pay are cared for out of "everage Joe's" income while those with the highest ability to give - and who owe everything they have to the state and society, even though they like to forget that when discussing taxes - DON'T contribute. But less and less people will be working - and thus paying - in the future, while the baby boomers are just now starting to retire. Thus health insurance cost/"tax" will go up even more until those "public" insurers go broke(the number of health insurance companies in Germany is falling allready), IF we don't switch to a "non Opt-Out" fully (income) tax financed system in the near future. Both Taiwan and Japan have such a system and they have a higher live expectancy and better everage health than we (that is: germans) do.

So, is the german system better than the american one? HELL YES! Is it the final solution to all our healthcare woes? No. It IS good enough and so I guess your point - that it might be a good first step for the US to adapt it - stands, but its not indefinitly sustainable in a world of rising health care cost and falling employment numbers. Especially in a country with such a high income disparity. I don't think the US workforce could pay for all those that are uninsured at the moment without a MASSIVE tax increase, should the rich be allowed to opt out.

Oh and before anybody claims that you can't choose in a tax financed "public" system: our current basic "public" health care plan covers only what is neccessary from a medical point of view. If you want to spend that kind of money you can allready buy additional insurance so that you get a single room with a big TV, routine(spelling?) Botox injections or whatever you want.

[Thanas]

^ However, private health insureance in germany can also have very high co-pays for some procedures which would be free otherwise.

[Dillon]

Thank you for all the information Skoga. It indeed corrupt and unjust to allow the wealthier to buy better health care as it is basing the value of a person's life upon their wealth, I just didn't want to look like I was intentionally trying to change the subject of the thread, but it looks it's going in that direction anyway, so what the hell.

Germany has a lower IMR than Canada, but it also has a lower life expectancy, so it is difficult to compare the efficacy of the two, although there of course other factors that influence those numbers. It seems absurd to allow the wealthy to "opt out" of the system and not pay into it since a significant, if not the majority of capital for any social program comes from the wealthy members of that society. Do Taiwan and Japan allow private health care facilities to duplicate public services while still fully taxing the upper class for the UHC program?

That is illegal in some parts of Canada, it varies by province. I know that it is illegal in Ontario, but Quebec allows certain duplication, like private clinics that offer MRI scans and Quebec's wait times are significantly longer than Ontario's. I'm not sure what the policy on this is in the rest of the rest of the provinces however, so this is hardly conclusive evidence.

[Thanas]

Before anyone makes further judgement on the different healthcare systems, I would advise everyone to read this study.

[The Yosemite Bear]

Why is it that I have the feeling that the entire conservative movement has now degraded into projectionism and dissasociative psychotic disorders.

[Patrick Degan]

Why is it that I have the feeling that the entire conservative movement has now degraded into projectionism and dissasociative psychotic disorders.

Because it has, for all intents and purposes, become, as I've been saying, a mind-control cult.

They have essentially cut themselves off from all sources of objective real-world information in favour of the cult gospel preached by FoxNoise and the rest of the "conservative media".

They listen only to what they want to hear or what they've been drilled into believing.

They only process "goodfact" as opposed to real fact.

This has created a disinformation loop of massive proportions, since the leadership end up eventually receiving only feedback which results from this disconnected, fantasy-based worldview. Essentially, the leaders have fallen into the same trap they ensnared their followers in.

The result is that the cult is becoming ever more disconnected from the real world.

Having totally rejected any and all objective standards to judge what is or isn't "normal" or what is or isn't "real", it's inevitable that the only resources they have left to fall back upon for judging anything is projection and the constructs of a warped fantasy.

Given these mechanisms in operation, group psychosis is the inevitable consequence of this ideological movement.

[The Yosemite Bear]

well what I mean by projectionism, is that they blame the "Enemy" for every thing that they already do. They preach government/church should control the bodies of women, but stay out of my choice to not go to a doctor. They talk about death panals while supporting insurance companies that deny claims if you get really sick, and dump people when they are a net loss. They say that any thing that they get caught doing is loony ville, and then go out and accuse the other side of doing the most out ragous shit....

[Patrick Degan]

well what I mean by projectionism, is that they blame the "Enemy" for every thing that they already do. They preach government/church should control the bodies of women, but stay out of my choice to not go to a doctor. They talk about death panals while supporting insurance companies that deny claims if you get really sick, and dump people when they are a net loss. They say that any thing that they get caught doing is loony ville, and then go out and accuse the other side of doing the most outrageous shit....

Precisely. Completely unable to view the world in anything other than black/white opposites, having embraced totally the bipolar Good Us v. Evil Them dynamic, and completely unable to accept the idea that anything their side does is "wrong", there is no other place for them to put their own defects except upon the perceived "enemy", who of course must be Wrong At All Times. This being the inevitable result of no longer having the capacity to judge reality by any objective standard.

[The Yosemite Bear]

So in other words they have now become the unable to percieve the difference from reality and fantasy sociopaths that they said Dungeons and Dragons and Video games would turn me into?

[Patrick Degan]

So in other words they have now become the unable to percieve the difference from reality and fantasy sociopaths that they said Dungeons and Dragons and Video games would turn me into?

Would certainly seem so, given the logical consequences of the policies they support and the Brownshirt tactics they're increasingly embracing to shut down opposition.

[The Yosemite Bear]

Which given the obsession of American Fundamentalists with the old testament, sociopathy and Fascism would be a natual outlet....