Dear Anonymous Troll

"Anonymous (troll) December 3, 2013 at 7:56 AM

I have a question: if subsidized health care is so bad (it is), how come it works so well in other countries?(It doesn't.) Take the Scandinavian peninsula countries for example, Sweden, Denmark, and especially Norway (who by the way have about the highest standard of living in the world)(actually, they don't), have all subsidized health care - and education btw. How come it's good for them but so abysmal for us? (It's abysmal for both; they just have a better track record of rolling over for nanny-state government.) Does it have to do with the "anti-socialism" brainwashing of Americans (they call that comparative government here) and failure to understand how this type of health care has to be organized in order to be made efficient?"(No, it's a success at understanding how this has to be organized, and recognition that it's contrary to our founding principles, our Constitution, and pretty much everything in American life and culture prior to about 1934.)

 

But out of fairness, Anny, let's check the videotape on your assertions:

 

Sweden    

Pop. 9.5M   15,765 immigrants annually

GDP 399B  35th world/26th per capita

AIDS deaths <100/yr

Denmark

Pop 5.5M    13,600 immigrants annually

GDP 213B   55th world/32d per capita

AIDS deaths < 100/yr

Norway

Pop. 5M        8,400 immigrants annually

GDP 281B    46th world/9th per capita

AIDS deaths  <100/yr

United States

Pop 317M    1,153,880 immigrants annually

GDP 15,940B   2d world/14th per capita

AIDS deaths  >17,000/yr

{So as not fry your delicate grey cells, I left out the number of Nobel prizes in chemistry, biology, and medicine respective to Scandinavia vs. the U.S., the number of patents for medical devices for Scandinavia vs. the U.S., and the fact that the total amount spent on healthcare in the U.S. annually is more than the entire federal budget for any year prior to 2004, because clearly things like medical innovation are unimportant trivia, and I'm sure you think the federal government is doing such a great job on running itself in every other way already that the best choice in healthcare is to just hand it over to them too, right?}
 

Wow, this is quite a poser.

If I understand you correctly, you're asking how we, a country that takes in more immigrants annually than Sweden, Denmark, and Norway and 150 other countries combined might have different health care needs?

 

How our nation's needs could possibly differ from the needs of three countries whose combined population is surpassed merely by the number of folks living in the greater NYC area??

 

And why a country whose non-socialist output exceeds them in total by a mere 16 times  might not be so enamored of socialism as they (and apparently you) are? (And BTW, Norway doesn't have "about the highest living in the world", they're eclipsed by Qatar, Liechtenstein, Bermuda, Macau, Luxembourg, Monaco, Singapore, and Jersey, just for your rather sparse fund of information.)

 

Or why we, caring for an AIDS population almost 60 times larger than all three Scandinavian states combined, might just maybe have some different healthcare priorities than a miniscule, mainly white protestant homogenous bunch of countries with essentially zero population growth?

 

You realize, right, that more people live in Los Angeles County than in Norway and Denmark combined?

That Norway's largest city isn't even the equivalent size of merely San Jose?
That Copenhagen and Stockholm, their largest cities, are eclipsed by Dallas and San Diego, and that our top 6 cities have more people than all three of those countries?

Or that the number of 0-14 year olds in the United States is three times larger than the combined population of the three countries you mentioned, combined??

And that none of those nations would even make the Top Ten if they were U.S. states, ranking behind California, Texas, New York, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Georgia, Michigan, and North Carolina. That'd be Sweden; Norway and Denmark would actually be down around 22nd, just ahead of Alabama. In more ways than one.

And when you touted that sort of system, of course you knew that the average Swede pays >50% of their annual income to the government for that "free" subsidized healthcare, right? And that a Swedish-style single-payer health insurance system would cost the median income household in the U.S. $17,200 per year in new health care taxes. Please, extoll the virtues of doubling income taxes on the 46% of Americans who are actually paying any, because that'll really play well in Peoria. That'll be great news to the 91 million American unemployed at the moment, because it means folks like you, Anny, are going to get three new Mcjobs to help pony up all that cash. All for someone else's kids! Thanks, dude!

Gosh, sign me up, I can't wait to give Uncle Sam another 20% or more of my annual take-home, because I'm not eating enough PB&J and bologna sandwiches now, I can look forward to adding ketchup sandwiches to the menu! Thanks for the suggestion, Anny!
And then to contain costs, we'll cut staff and facililties, so that in a few years, procedures will be shoved down to lower and less-qualified staff, if they're performed at all, and in un-updated facilities with more antiquated equipment and technology. Welcome to U.S. Medicine 2015 1935.

If your message is that we should first helpfully eject all non-whites, and enforce a level of ethnic and social diversity - like you find in Sweden, Denmark, and Norway - that would do a Klan rally proud, you'll have to get your own blog. Good luck with that. I think they tried it in Western Europe starting around 1933.

 

We experimented with socialism in this country. But adhering to it almost caused the Pilgrims to starve to death, until they threw it out entirely, switched over to unrestrained capitalism, and were so inundated with bounty as a result that they paid off all their debts to their English sponsors, and had enough left over to hold a huge feast, and even invite their neighbors over. We call the remembrance of that "Thanksgiving". As Casey Stengel used to say, you could look it up.

The only subsidizing that's going on is at gunpoint, as healthy people are coerced under threat of growing fines to buy healthcare they don't need for exorbitant prices, in order to help cover the cost for those who get it for nothing. Try that at the interpersonal level, and see what the local District Attorney calls it.

I would have been all for government just letting anyone who wanted it sign-up for Medicare. But then, when they saw the exorbitant price they'd be asked for, and the substandard care they'd receive, if they could find a doctor worthy of the name who'd actually take that card, they'd run from government care like scalded cats. The idea would have been crib-strangled by everyone who experienced it firsthand in weeks. Pretty much the exact same response you're seeing now for HopeyDopeyCare, even from media talking heads who usually can't get their lips off his buttcheeks long enough to cover actual news.

But don't worry, I understand how socialism-philes love to chirp about "organizing things to be more efficient", because they're sooooooo good at making the trains run on time. Perhaps you could Google "Soviet health care" and get back to us. Unfortunately for your ilk, some of us also studied history, and we remember where the train tracks in your Worker's Paradise always lead: glorious barbed wire enclaves sitting beyond signs that promise all who enter, "Work Makes You Free". Right after a helpful post-train ride shower, eh? Last I looked, overt Socialism only killed - as in personally murdered, we're not even including the wartime casualty lists - about 65,000,000 people worldwide in just the last century alone, courtesy of Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Fidel, and Pol Pot. It would actually be less harmful to disseminate bubonic plague in grade schools.

So pretty much all your assumptions are wrong, the lack of familiarity with the basic differences is breathtaking in its totality, and the conclusions you draw, from the dearth of information about...well, anything you brought up, are almost totally wrong. Other than the fact there there are three Scandanavian countries named Sweden, Denmark, and Norway. Which probably puts you barely ahead of most current 12th graders in geography.
Sorry if reality stings when it smacks you where you sit. Maybe try an ice pack?

 

So seriously Sparky, as Bill Murray said to the innkeeper in Groundhog Day, "Did you really want to discuss the weather, or just make chit-chat?"