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Utopia Talk / Politics / UK state healthcare is so nice
Sam Adams
Member
Mon Dec 09 22:55:32
http://apnews.com/a6742889e9f1c0b8652d06ba94563864

Boy on hospital floor dominates Britain’s election campaign
Hrothgar
Member
Tue Dec 10 05:48:41
In America his parents would have just kept him home to hopefully recover since taking him to the hospital was too expensive.
Seb
Member
Tue Dec 10 09:51:48
Sam takes an incident that is a national scandal so bad is driving the news cycle in an election and it's still not as bad as the US system.
Rugian
Member
Tue Dec 10 10:49:48
"a national scandal so bad is driving the news cycle"

You can tell how desperate the opposition is by how much they've been trying to push this story. The fact that this is what passes for an October surprise makes me feel so much better for Boris' chances.
patom
Member
Tue Dec 10 11:59:27
So basically the story isn't about the child. It is about Boris Johnson threatening the sale of Britain's Health Care system to the US.

Brits are lucky they have Johnson. The phone and the picture would never have made it to Trump.
Seb
Member
Tue Dec 10 13:01:14
Rugian:

You can see how desperate the Tories are:
1. Lied and briefed to BBC journalists that their advisors were attacked by a huge mob of bussed in activists at Leeds general.

2. Have armies of sock puppet social media accounts all repeating the same text about having a friend who is a nurse who says it's 100% fake @ journalists.



Seb
Member
Tue Dec 10 13:05:02
Patrom:

He's not had enough time to establish himself.

He's threatening to ammend the constitution to limit the role of courts, stymie public broadcasters, attempts to gerrymander the voting system and "crack down on tactical voting".

He's possibly more dangerous than trump of he gets a majority.
Sam Adams
Member
Tue Dec 10 13:55:22
Seb is a government functionary.

All you need to know to oppose government healthcare for all time.
Seb
Member
Tue Dec 10 15:27:00
Sam:

No, I joined the private sector 18 months ago.

And the NHS, though public sector, isn't a government body.
Sam Adams
Member
Tue Dec 10 16:11:09
You seem to change careers a lot. Suck too much?
Seb
Member
Tue Dec 10 16:31:00
Sam:

Some of us have a broad portfolio of skills and can move industries while progressing their career.

Others of us have narrow skill sets that are niche to a single role in a single industry.

Don't feel too bad about yourself Sam.
Seb
Member
Tue Dec 10 16:33:00
Tl;Dr don't confuse profession, career, and sector. Unless you have a very boring and limited job, those are three different things.
patom
Member
Wed Dec 11 04:56:25
Seb, how many Brits have filed for bankruptcy over medical bills?
Seb
Member
Wed Dec 11 13:56:23
None that I know of.

I'm not sure what you are getting at. I'm saying Boris - who wants to privatise the NHS and is gearing up to make our harder for the NHS to negotiate good prices on drugs - is not better than trump in this respect.

Hell, he's argued for an insurance based system in the past.
patom
Member
Wed Dec 11 17:57:03
We in the US have around 50,000 people who go bankrupt over medical expenses annually. You might want to spread that info to your fellow countrymen.
Seb
Member
Wed Dec 11 18:17:26
Patom:

Nobody here looks at the US system and thinks "that's a great idea".

His supporters that need the NHS don't believe he will do that; and those that don't need the NHS don't care and just want to cut the cost of it from the tax bill. They go private anyway.

Of course one of the hilarious things about the US system is the effect of having socialised healthcare is that you get better coverage for lower premiums when you go private here. The firm I work for, which does high end consultancy work in the US amongst others, offers private health coverage so I can see the direct comparison. Opposition to socialised single payer health care is actually bad for those wishing to go private. It's whatever the inverse of the politics of envy is... The politics of spite against the poor.

Anyway, with Boris, it's very sad really - there are hoards of people taken in by him. The polls are narrowing, maybe we will get a hung parliament again. But if labour hadn't put up a knackered, dim, 1970s trot with a penchant for indulging anti-semites - say they'd picked Kier Starmer instead - they'd be looking at a landslide of the kind Blair got in 1997.
patom
Member
Thu Dec 12 04:54:06
The US insurance industry does all in it's power to undermine Canada's health system. They even have a lot of Canadians bitching about their system.
Ironically I have a few of my in-laws joining in with the complaining. Yet not a one of them has come to the US for any medical services. In fact last year my niece's husband was at our house and came down with, what turned out to be shingles. They were on their way to Quebec but turned around and beat feet back to New Brunswick to have him checked out.
jergul
large member
Thu Dec 12 05:03:47
Seb
What is sad is that you do not have a writtne constitution with the safe guard that constitutional changes like leaving the EU need a 2/3rds majority.
Seb
Member
Thu Dec 12 10:30:14
We do have a written constitution. It's just not written down in one place.

The 2/3rds rule is a lovely idea, and MPs were free to stipulate it, as had been the case in others. But given the whole referendum was not binding anyway, in not sure what that would serve.

The US has a written constitution and all it has done is divert conversations that ought to be about the acceptable behaviour and restraint the governing party should show and consequently how legitimate and acceptable it is, into utterly sterile arguments about whether they are procedurally valid.

I would argue even in these trying times the UK approach has been better in that respect.

However the key point here is that no amount of rules will save you. What matters is the culture; and you can't really codify that.
Rugian
Member
Thu Dec 12 11:20:57
The amount of intellectual dishonesty in this thread is downright astounding.

-The fact that one particularly busy hospital didnt have room for a kid for a couple hours is not a valid argument for overthrowing the entire government. Especially when the alternative is an out-and-out fucking Trotskyist who wants to return Britain to the 1970s.

-Hancocks crew was undoubtedly harassed by a mob of Labour protestors. The fact that the Tories may have slightly inflated the details still reeks way less of desperation than the original pushing of the Leeds "scandal."

-If by "limiting the role of the courts," you mean reining in out of control judicial activism, then sure. As if there was any doubt that the prorogation ruling was completely politically-charged, Spider Womans "girly swot" comments after the fact should have sealed the deal. That ruling was hot garbage and an unconstitutional restriction of hitherto-umchallenged executive prerogatives, no getting around it.

-The Conservatives have long had a problem with the BBC's bias. Nothing new there.

-patoms loaded questions which are designed to point out anecdotal examples of how the NHS > US healthcare, rather than offer any rational analysis of the systems compare to each other on an overall basis, are not exactly helpful.

-But most ridiculously of all, jergul's implication that Brexit should require a 2/3rds majority, when Maastrict and Lisbon did not, and Seb allowing that assertion to go unchallenged, shows just how fundamentally insane the line of thinking on that side of the political spectrum has become. Jesus fucking Christ.
jergul
large member
Thu Dec 12 11:37:13
Ruggy
That is because Seb understood I was inferring retroactive force. That the UK should also have had to change its constitution with a 2/3rds majority to enter the EEC in the first place.
Rugian
Member
Thu Dec 12 11:46:01
Yeah, you'll forgive me if I'm more than skeptical of that excuse, not least because asking two-thirds of either Parliament or the electorate to retroactively approve EEC/EU treaties would virtually guarantee crash-out.
jergul
large member
Thu Dec 12 13:15:23
Ruggy
I was pointing at a flaw inherent to lacking a written constitution with the usual constitutional protections.

This flaw has existed always.

Joining treaties are not done retroactively. Treaties are negotiated, then ratified.
Seb
Member
Thu Dec 12 13:35:32
Ruggy:

The conservatives reaction, and particularly its leaders reaction demonstrates why he is not fit to lead and why his party is a danger to democracy.

You can't just lie to the public because you don't think you should be judged on that criteria. Democracy requires truth.

The alternative to Boris is a hung parliament. The conservatives need to learn how to compromise.

Conservatives can't complain about civil protest when they hired people to dress up as a chicken and heckle and obstruct Corbyn. The fact is the Labour protestors did nothing against the law. We are still allowed to shout and heckle politicians. This is what we call freedom.

There's no out of control judicial activism. Parliament makes the law, the courts uphold it and have done so sparingly. As for prorogation, are you seriously arguing that say, PM Corbyn might legally gain the position of PM with a minority propped up with not even a coalition but simple confidence and supply; then prorogue parliament for five years? Does that sound remotely sensible?

It's also not unchallenged - no govt has prorogued in peacetime for that length of time, when that time didn't involve an election.

You talk of BBC bias, but this is the same BBC that has packed political shows audiences wity conservatives, whose senior news producer was formerly the conservatives press spokesman, whose three leading political correspondents have repeatedly and unquestioningly broadcast conservative talking points that have later been shown to be actual outright lies?

As for unchallenged, firstly I rejected Jerguls requirement; and secondly neitger Maastricht nor Lisbon were subject to referendums.

However, one way of ensuring we don't get stuck in these situations would be to require that big changes require supermajorities. Should we leave, that would require any future remain movement to achieve it. Surely you wouldn't want the next labour govt that gets in to be able to just rejoin on the basis of 45% of the popular vote and a parliamentary majority of ten?
Seb
Member
Thu Dec 12 13:37:24
Sorry, re prorogation, I meant to add, we actually had a civil war over the crown proroguing parliament. That's a funny definition of unchallenged.
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