The Ultimate Insanity: Health Groups Want to Remove Some Toxins from Cigarettes, But Want to Ban Product Which Already Removed Virtually All of Them

[edlogic]

While I support your social libertarian perspective, just want you to know that national healthcare is not like this anywhere in the world.

There are generally more strings attached to private healthcare because it's profit-driven, and therefore will try to find any reason to avoid paying for your treatment.

you mean like the conversation between ehrlichman and nixon in 1971 where nixon was convinced that hmo was the way to go ?

video

YouTube - Healthcare Project

Transcript of taped conversation between President Richard Nixon and John D. Ehrlichman (1971) that led to the HMO act of 1973 - Wikisource:

This is a transcript of the 1971 conversation between President Richard Nixon and John D. Ehrlichman that led to the HMO act of 1973:
John D. Ehrlichman: “On the … on the health business …”
President Nixon: “Yeah.”
Ehrlichman: “… we have now narrowed down the vice president’s problems on this thing to one issue and that is whether we should include these health maintenance organizations like Edgar Kaiser’s Permanente thing. The vice president just cannot see it. We tried 15 ways from Friday to explain it to him and then help him to understand it. He finally says, ‘Well, I don’t think they’ll work, but if the President thinks it’s a good idea, I’ll support him a hundred percent.’”
President Nixon: “Well, what’s … what’s the judgment?”
Ehrlichman: “Well, everybody else’s judgment very strongly is that we go with it.”
President Nixon: “All right.”
Ehrlichman: “And, uh, uh, he’s the one holdout that we have in the whole office.”
President Nixon: “Say that I … I … I’d tell him I have doubts about it, but I think that it’s, uh, now let me ask you, now you give me your judgment. You know I’m not to keen on any of these damn medical programs.”
Ehrlichman: “This, uh, let me, let me tell you how I am …”
President Nixon: [Unclear.]
Ehrlichman: “This … this is a …”
President Nixon: “I don’t [unclear] …”
Ehrlichman: “… private enterprise one.”
President Nixon: “Well, that appeals to me.”
Ehrlichman: “Edgar Kaiser is running his Permanente deal for profit. And the reason that he can … the reason he can do it … I had Edgar Kaiser come in … talk to me about this and I went into it in some depth. All the incentives are toward less medical care, because …”
President Nixon: [Unclear.]
Ehrlichman: “… the less care they give them, the more money they make.”
President Nixon: “Fine.” [Unclear.]
Ehrlichman: [Unclear] “… and the incentives run the right way.”
President Nixon: “Not bad.”
[Source: University of Virginia Check - February 17, 1971, 5:26 pm - 5:53 pm, Oval Office Conversation 450-23. Look for: tape rmn_e450c.]

 

[harmony gardens]

I'm not sure what the best solution is to solve the health care problems in the US, but it's nuts to want smokers to pay for it, while demonizing the behavior. It's even goofier to try to ban a safer alternative, by playing word games about how to classify it as an excuse to keep people paying the tax.

I worked in the golf business for 25 years, and got to see first hand how people in the health care business live large from it. Not that they aren't good and decent people, but,,,,,

I had an older friend who got lukemia in his later years. He never smoked, seldom drank, and was very careful about what he ate,,, in fact, he used to be a little hard on me for my smoking and junk food.

His first indication of his illness, was when he fell to the floor after passing a massive amount of blood. He crawled to the phone to call for help, and was taken to the hospital in an ambulance. This began his nearly two year battle with the disease.

I'll skip a lot of details,,, but, I was visiting him one night when he was laying weak in the nursing home in his final days. He told me that if he had known what he knew then, he wouldn't have called the ambulance. That made me cry,,, I think even more than the day he died.


Don't kid yourself on the burden of health care costs,,, there's an aweful lot of extra money built into that price as a reward for a lot of people who have nothing to do with caring for a sick person. In fact, from what I saw, the closer to the trenches of the actual care you are, the less money you get. The big money is made by the investment bankers and finance handlers who don't actually ever talk to a sick person if they can help it. They play golf and order fancy bottles of wine with dinner, and drive thier Lexus's home to thier 8,000 square foot starter castles,,,

My friend died penniless. I got his piano, which is my most meaningful possession because it meant so much to him. Think I'll go play it for a while...

Sorry for a sad story,,, but vaping takes my mind off stuff like this, and threads like this make me think about it...

 

[edlogic]

His first indication of his illness, was when he fell to the floor after passing a massive amount of blood. He crawled to the phone to call for help, and was taken to the hospital in an ambulance. This began his nearly two year battle with the disease.

I'll skip a lot of details,,, but, I was visiting him one night when he was laying weak in the nursing home in his final days. He told me that if he had known what he knew then, he wouldn't have called the ambulance. That made me cry,,, I think even more than the day he died.

My friend died penniless. I got his piano, which is my most meaningful possession because it meant so much to him. Think I'll go play it for a while...

Sorry for a sad story,,, but vaping takes my mind off stuff like this, and threads like this make me think about it...

that made me cry and i am still crying

i am going to try to not call for the ambulance

 

[Surf Monkey]

I'm not sure what the best solution is to solve the health care problems in the US, but it's nuts to want smokers to pay for it, while demonizing the behavior.

From a purely philosophical viewpoint, I think that everyone should pay for it. The funding for the enforcement and promotion of basic rights should be all of our responsibility, not something that any one group has to pay more for. The demonization of smoking is a sad fact we have to live with, though. Rationality was abandoned for culture war tactics long ago, and that isn't going to change any time soon.