"Ahh well... I guess its a good sign my thinking has limits to how far it can warp like a pretzel, even for brief periods."
My brother calls this pretzel logic..
"Well, this is one of those rather awkward moments where your source may not fully follow your line of thinking... erm..."
Actually they prove my point perfectly. The paragraph you quoted from the article failed to mention American Association for the Study and Prevention of Infant Mortality was a group of doctors that got together was one of the first organizations to begin investigating infant mortality rates in terms of eugenics. Not a very admirable way to solve the early deaths of children but never the less a non government entity. source is wiki
"Secondly the House Conferences went all the way until the Nixon administration. source is wiki
• 1909 - Entitled the "White House Conference on the Care of Dependent Children," the theme was opposition to the institutionalization of dependent and neglected children.
• 1919 - The "White House Conference on Standards of Child Welfare" created the most comprehensive report on the needs of children ever written.
• 1929 - The most comprehensive report on the needs of children ever written was created at the "Conference on the Standards of Child Welfare."
• 1939 - The "Conference on Children in a Democracy" highlighted the democratic values, services, and environment necessary for the welfare of children.
• 1950 - This conference focused on the healthy personality development of children and youth and was historic for several reasons including: for the first time youth themselves were invited to attend (and nearly 400 attended representing every state in the union); recommendations emerging from the conference acknowledged the unique health and development needs of youth - shifting the federal dialogue of adolescent health for the first time beyond teen pregnancy and juvenile delinquency, and called for an ecological and strength based approach to improving their health and wellbeing.[3][4]
• 1960 - The "Golden Anniversary White House Conference on Children and Youth" expanded ways for children to explore their potential in order to discover creative freedom.
• 1971 - The "White House Conference on Children and Youth was split into two conferences, one on children, the other on youth. The children's conference focused on the individuality of children through the support of healthy personality development. It took place in Washington, D.C. The youth conference focused on a number of issues affecting people ages 14–24, including values, ethics, and culture, foreign affairs, race relations, and legal rights and justice. It was held from April 18 to April 21, 1971 at the YMCA of the Rockies in Estes Park, Colorado. Over one thousand delegates representing every state and U.S. territory were nominated by their respective governors and appointed by the President. This late April meeting was marred by a snowstorm that required the mobilization of nearby U.S. Army personnel to distribute winter gear to delegates unprepared for severe winter weather. Held at the height of the Vietnam War and amid growing youth dissatisfaction with the Nixon administration, many of the recommendations issued by the conference opposed existing U.S. policies. "
So they did as governments typically do, pay it lip service for pretty much 70 years and do nothing.
"That strikes me as sounding like Government intervention, slow but sure by the standards of those times, but definitely at the center of the aggressive move to bring down infant mortality? "
That's the point isn't it? There wasn't any government intervention it was doctors that brought it down. The government can be credited with lip service only.
"As far as the Chinese, there just isn't any comparison to any minorities in America today. 'Chinamen' were disposable because they were simply shot, sealed IN the mines they helped play out in some instances, and generally encouraged to vanish with urgency between times America found the need for large pools of unskilled, non-political labor. I think you may have mistaken my meaning by disposable. "
I wasn't sure what the Chinese disposable labor had to do with health care but, if people think the Hispanics are anything other than cheap labor and a vote, they need to come to a reality that will smack them in the face soon. They will be used to yet again achieve an increasing balance in the global economy and our changing position in it. I would love to see a link for the Chinese miners that were killed and their numbers. That is just incredible it could happen to some of the hardest workers ever hired to build this country.
"Its fine to look at numbers, and I have to note in a serious way here, I feel society has a duty to a very limited degree. Very limited indeed. Anything beyond that is charity, and really best left that way ...if charity can fully recover from the damage done in tax law changes under Obama, anyway. That has been brutal to changing personal and business habits that were the lifeblood of charity.
Looking at numbers can only go so far though. If we are talking about life saving care, the basics of preventative care (like screening the kids in school for what always has been in vision, hearing and the like, or cancer screenings when appropriate) as well as palliative care to some degree? It's as much about enlightened self interest as it is about compassion and empathy for our fellow human beings. "
The CBO estimates as reported by the senate has the 10 year cost of Obama Care at 2.6 Trillion dollars, or 260 billion a year, another far cry from Obama's promise of 900 billion over ten years. So I thought I would look a the Market Capitalization of a Health Care organization like Anthem Blue Cross which happens to be my health care provider. Market Capitalization of Anthem Blue Cross is 40 Billion, a hefty sum indeed. With the cost of Obama Care over the next ten years means the citizens could buy 6 Anthem Blue Crosses every year for what they are taxed to pay for health care. Source is is either yahoo or google finance. Source for CBO
For those folks that don't follow any stocks or dabble in the market . Market Capitalization is the number of outstanding shares times the cost per share. Or the total value of the corporation.
During their recent cyber attack 80 million past and current customers credit cards were at risk. Since this number includes both past and present we will call the customer base 40 million multiply that times 6 and all of a sudden we can insure 240 million people with the cost of Obama Care to US taxpayers every year.
If we don't supply what will maintain basic public health (if it stops 100% there...fine by me) then we will learn, again, what it is like to see public health fail. That'll have more zeros on the end this time, and no 1st world nation has any excuse to see it reach that point.
Will that include some freeloaders and gold brickers among a minimal support / sustenance net? Yup.. It sure will. Unfortunately. Do we shoot them? Inprison them? They will become a headache far beyond their value or cost if there is nothing for support at all, while America comes to know true desperation with hunger thrown in for real.
I think the concept of "freeloaders" could be solved quite easily with 1. Using the same algorithms that government and banks use to identify trends and conditions in the market place to find and stop people from taking advantage of the system. 2. Create an agency that finds and punishes these people. Doesn't it strike anyone odd that taking our money has the largest and most evil agency in the world called the IRS that strikes fear into every US citizen? Yet no one fears cheating an already overburdened entitlement program on mass scale because it has become a vote buying apparatus? When was the last time you heard about a "freeloader" being prosecuted and/or forced to pay back what they took? Reality is, it just doesn't happen. 3. Stop incentivizing forgiven nationals to come here illegally and joining the entitlement system.
Seriously if you are going hungry in America, it seems to me you don't want to eat. There are so many church and government food programs it is incredible.
"No one needs Uncle Sam to supply a chicken for every pot, and a kitchen for every pot to cook in. They just need to stop doing things that inflate the chicken price to back breaking levels before they even make it to market. The free market absolutely could work, as it has for most of our nations history, if it were given a chance to again. "
Agreed and we don't need to buy a chicken farm at taxpayer expense so large we can't even afford to feed the chickens
Last Edit: Apr 13, 2015 11:04:23 GMT -6 by Deleted
We all saw this coming...and I would bet they did as well. It's always about the money... kl5222a5cb
Medicaid—which was expanded by Obamacare—was a major force driving increased federal spending.
“Outlays for Medicaid rose by $31 billion (or 22 percent), largely because most of the provisions of the Affordable Care Act that led to increased enrollment in Medicaid went into effect in January 2014 and therefore did not affect the program’s spending in the first few months of fiscal year 2014 [which began in October 2013],” said the CBO.
Medicare spending (up $23 billion or 9 percent) and Social Security spending (up $19 billion or 4 percent) also saw large increases.
Beware the man who has one gun, he probably knows how to use it.
It is a tough one for me, the one good aspect that I can argue for would seem to be so heavily outweighed by all of the negatives. At least, until the uninsured person who couldn't get coverage because they were raped as a child has some catastrophic incident or diagnosis and then that one single good thing becomes the most important thing about the ACA.
Take care, Cindi
That last bit is one part in particular that has always made it tough for me deciding positions on this. It HAS helped people, and for those it has helped, it has helped them in profound ways. Like you have benefited. So, it isn't intellectually honest for anyone to say the PPACA hasn't resulted in positive outcomes and good result.
The question, as you also note, is one of whether the negative impacts are worth the benefit to those who see one. Even that is far from a clear % either way in this nation. Talk about a mess.....
I think that there were so much better ways that one issue could have been rectified without creating the whole fiasco that the ACA has become. It is an argument that is made when repealing the ACA is talked about and it shouldn't even be an issue, it should have been addressed as a one off issue by itself and I think that people would have been less troubled than they are now because it was made something that would also go away if the ACA is repealed.
On the first part there, by pretzel logic, I'd originally meant playing devil's advocate from the side that supported the PPACA when it was made, through it's implementation and still see it as a decent thing to have done. That is what seems to go beyond where I can mentally keep up, beyond a certain point. I hope that hadn't been misunderstood to have been toward our discussion.
---
On your source? I honestly don't see where the numbers your citing come from, actually, and now having read the entire long report there? It goes in some interesting directions for conclusions with everything from medical causes to actual physical racial traits to explain it, and in ways I'll say are different. In the one chart looking at cases, without race being a segregating factor, the drop is clear enough, but not suggestive of cause. (no pun intended...)
They offer that one chart on its own page and then as a download (which is too large to post here).
Moving a bit away from the statistical explosion of subgrouping that kinda became for a report, the CDC's info is a bit more inline to what my history courses covered in a lot more detail.
At the beginning of the 20th century, for every 1000 live births, six to nine women in the United States died of pregnancy-related complications, and approximately 100 infants died before age 1 year (1,2).
From 1915 through 1997, the infant mortality rate declined greater than 90% to 7.2 per 1000 live births, and from 1900 through 1997, the maternal mortality rate declined almost 99% to less than 0.1 reported death per 1000 live births (7.7 deaths per 100,000 live births in 1997) (3)
That gives the basic numbers as they carry the records, and a little further down, they go into their analysis for how it all came about in our nation.
Although improvements in medical care were the main force for declines in infant mortality during the second half of the century, public health actions played a role.
During the 1990s, a greater than 50% decline in SIDS rates (attributed to the recommendation that infants be placed to sleep on their backs) has helped to reduce the overall infant mortality rate (8).
The reduction in vaccine-preventable diseases (e.g., diphtheria, tetanus, measles, poliomyelitis, and Haemophilus influenzae type b meningitis) has reduced infant morbidity and has had a modest effect on infant mortality (9).
Advances in prenatal diagnosis of severe central nervous system defects, selective termination of affected pregnancies, and improved surgical treatment and management of other structural anomalies have helped reduce infant mortality attributed to these birth defects (10,11).
National efforts to encourage reproductive-aged women to consume foods or supplements containing folic acid could reduce the incidence of neural tube defects by half (12)
The last part here is the end of the opening section of the CDC page, and quite a bit more sits between. I think the combined result, to be really thorough about it is, Government was ...and was not instrumental. It depends, and private couldn't have done it without public, or visa versa.
I did quite a bit of hunting to present something more than just my notes from a couple history courses that covered the turn of the century from different angles, and found a site which does an outstanding job of nothing things like the Settlement Houses and Progressive Woman's Movement for the credit they are also due in the dramatic improvements in public health, as well as things like the Children's Bureau in 1912.
A couple bits from it....
Lemual Shattuck (1793-1859)
In 1850 in Boston, Shattuck released what was to be another seminal public health report. This report outlined the public health needs in the state of Massachusetts and included recommendations to create the first state board of health.
(Under Public Health Milestones)
Government was in public health from very early on, indeed.
In 1863, New York City conducted the first sanitary survey. New York's Association for the Improvement of the Condition of the Poor (est. 1844) finds "dark, contracted, ill constructed, badly ventilated and disgustingly filthy" housing. Some 18,000 people live in cellar apartments whose floors are putrid mud.
They were starting to realize the problem well before the turn of the century, as well. The next quote heads and opens the 1900-1920 period being covered.
The Western world in the early 20th Century was faced with the same public health challenges as the previous century. Life expectancy was 50 years old. Many public health advances grew out of social reforms. Thirty eight states created health departments.
(emphasis added)
There were only 45 states total in 1900. Government was making its impact, and we saw by the chart linked above from your source, the combined impact of private efforts out of the Settlement Houses, Progressive Reforms and Government policy from (some) federal to much more through state down to local made a dramatic difference. Results improved across causes.
Wald's most innovative experiment was a Public School Nursing Service designed to increase school attendance by having Henry Street nurses provide care at public schools. This was so successful that the New York City Board of Health soon organized a public school nursing program, the first such service offered anywhere in the world.
That last one refers to Lillian Wald, and one of the top progressive women of the era for major reform and public services becoming a reality. I actually did my class paper on Florence Kelly, who was a contemporary of Wald and instrumental in the creation of the Child's Bureau. They both had an impact on overall health, tho Wald made public health policy and creation of agencies for it, her life's mission. An effective one, too.
----
It might be interesting to add, Teddy Roosevelt was one of the early U.S. Presidents to support the idea of health insurance as a standard part of life. I'd also note, how that was presented varies between sources, including his own words and the plank positions of the party when he was elected.
Although the early push for mandatory insurance was a private effort....
Early in the 20th century, industrial America faced the “problem of sickness”: when working people missed work owing to ill health, they also lost their wages. This loss of income, even more than the cost of medical care, made sickness a major cause of poverty. In 1915, progressive reformers proposed a system of compulsory health insurance to protect workers against both wage loss and medical costs during sickness. The American Association for Labor Legislation’s (AALL) proposal, modeled on existing programs in Germany and England, was debated throughout the country and introduced as legislation in several states.
This early campaign for compulsory health insurance set a precedent for a continuing distance and lack of cooperation between reform leaders and popular movements. The AALL was a group of academic reformers who drafted their proposal without input from the working people it would cover. Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), thought workers should win their own benefits through union organizing rather than government action; he denounced the AALL for neglecting labor’s opinion and directed his membership to oppose the plan as elite paternalism.
It's almost amusing to see how the powers jockeying for position in everything haven't changed that much, while much of the debate itself is also rehash of 100 years ago. (Hey, almost exactly, for trivia value)
---
Now I can also see you're very passionate about the issue, as are we all. Please, keep in mind my position and the limits to it.
As you mention the total costs of Obamacare, I'd repeat what I've said earlier. Basic care is what the overall society should, IMO, be giving, and that is a LONG way short of the Obamacare nightmare. Still Obamacare, for what its worth to call it that, IS the system now. It wasn't so much last year, and less so before that. However, by the designed timeline, they are about done implementing it now.
---
So...Repealing the very structure of U.S. Public Health (which is what they made SURE this overlapped onto and merged to BECOME) would be a catastrophic move for a good % of our population....and quickly for the weakest, once the impacts became apparent.
Reforming (and dramatically) what is now the reality we live with, is all there is left to do ... because time to do more was come and past quite some time ago.
I hope we can find a balance, as should have been done in 2009 in the first place, between the Government monster to both fund one half, while regulating down to price fixing the private side vs. 'every man for himself and hope your community has good doctors!' at the other extreme.
Last Edit: Apr 13, 2015 14:29:19 GMT -6 by Deleted
BTW thanks wrabbit, you force me to increase my education regularly here at HH. It is a welcome experience to be challenged without malice. So few people can do it as you can. In fact at both TOS & HH there were but a hand full.
I think the issue here as is with all social issues is do you approach the answer from the heart or from the head. The left only appeals to the heart because of their ability to manipulate the conversation through media and apply guilt to a society for not taking care of it's poor and indigent while they reach deep into your wallet. Where as the right appeals to your head in an attempt to satisfy some sort of twisted social bandage while they reach into your wallet and redistribute the money to everything other than the social issue that needs help.
Government is incapable of understanding it is striking the balance of who and how much. Not just throwing money at it until we find the next thing they can take our money for and showing little result for the expenditure.
The pretzel logic wasn't meant as an insult, I knew you were playing devils advocate. It just reminded me of my brother, because of the way things have to be twisted to understanding or explanation. I never heard the phrase before him, I don't know it is coined by that knot head or not, he wears a tee shirt that says doesn't play nice with others and he is serious. He supervises a large group of people for an indian casino in california, losing his patience regularly. It's usually a short trip to loss and sometimes it goes days before it is found again.
No problems, and I enjoy the debate as much as you. :)
Usually I find this stuff by researching during a debate and learn as I go. Its what makes debate really rewarding beyond the immediate give and take for me. This just happened to cross over a period and topic I've been drilled pretty hard on learning a couple times now. That is one thing about College course work on almost any topic. You may not like it, but you won't forget it by the time they're done. (How much detail is a whole different matter at times...but I digress...heh)
Its nothing more than legalised extortion .. Health insurance is NOT healthcare ..
Burn it to the ground and rebuild from the start with the focus on actual healthcare NOT on making extortionis rich ..
While it's burning to the ground...millions like my wife will die hard from lack of care options to a system in almost violent transition. This system has created millions dependent upon regular, perishible and controlled supplies of life giving meds.
..so it may be a little selfish, but then, not entirely that either. After all, my wife's death in a chaotic medical collapse would be just one of legion across our nation.
Reform..and radical, no doubt, is needed and really, just required here. Destruction? Well...Bring a lot of body bags. Your fellow Americans will be needing them to keep outbreaks of disease down, while the weakest don't make the transition period.
The system has made it's own problems, but also, its own self sustaining needs for stability. Whatever form that comes in.
For which you can thank the greed of insurance companies .. corrupt politicians who'd sell their own mother given half a chance .. big pharma .. along with lawyers and the lets sue everyone for anything crowd .. all of whom jacked up prices and legally extort the public with overpriced insurance ... none of which has anything to do with providing actual healthcare for people who need it .. funny can run a clinic and actually treat patients for far less per month over here than what a months extortion cost is over there .. and give my patients more attention and better treatment than the glorified pill pushers give over there .. though it wouldnt fly over there because the extortionists erm .. insurance companies .. politicians and ambulance chasers would lose their cut .. biggest problem there would be getting real doctors instead of glorified pill pushers to operate clinics and hospitals .. at least theres good nursing staff and emergency services people there to build on .. as it stands it wont change only get worse ... no way Id open a clinic there with all the red tape from the extortionists .. politicians .. ambulance chasers and big pharma .. too many headaches and cant give patients the time or treatment they deserve .. even though semi retired will stick to where can actually take care of my patients ..
Sorry to hear about your wife hope that she is doing ok ...
Post by AboveBoard on Apr 29, 2015 21:17:30 GMT -6
Um... Hi.
I don't know if the ACA can be effectively repealed or not, only that it would totally mess up my life if it did and what replaced it looked like "the old way." I hear your argument, Wrabbit, that it is too complex and entrenched to be repealed. I doubt that will stop folks from trying, but even if they do, I have yet to hear of any viable solutions - assuming people care whether or not people can obtain health care. If they don't, then they won't care to figure out what would replace the ACA once it was repealed, if anything can.
I'm just curious. Has anyone here except me been denied insurance due to a pre-existing condition? I was denied for 10 years due to having had cancer. When I did get insurance for a while through an employer (briefly), the insurance did not cover anything possibly related to my pre-existing condition. Also, I have a son who, under the old system, would be denied health insurance due to a congenital heart defect, once he was old enough to be on his own.
I just don't see people talking about this reality. The "old way" was full of death-panels. I'm lucky to be posting here, frankly.
I'm curious as to how you all would handle the idea of pre-existing conditions, and how much us "sick people" cost to insure. Do you have a compassionate answer? I sincerely would love to hear it. The ACA is far from perfect, and needs some improvements and greater fairness, but that's not going to happen with the current Congress, in my opinion.