The issue here is that people cannot afford healthcare!nIf your poor and sick in the states you will be left to die on the street,nIreland is rapidly heading the same direction??nLand of the free home of the brave??

Nial, your comment is untrue. There is Medicare & Medicaid and all emergency hospitals must accept emergency cases irrespective of the wealth of person. Many if not most people in work have health insurance packages and Obama has brought in plans to extend medical insurance to everyone. In Europe medical costs have risen through the roof. France is nearly bankrupted by it’s health costs as are we. “Free” health care is a disaster and the introduction of “free” doctor visits will cost a fortune and result in many more unnecessary visits. If it costs “nothing” why not go along?

@William, The medical facilities for the poor in the US are appalling! Not only are the medicare and medicaid systems inadequate, it also means the quality of life for these people is non existing.
Private health insurance in the US is great, until they have to pay out. The following year they just double, or more, your premiums.
Although nations as the UK, Ireland and FRance overspend on the health, there are plenty of examples in Europe where this isn’t the case.

But above that, I am so happy to live in a society where it is normal to look after the weakest, rather then the selfish, petty, “I look after number one” mentality of the states!

Mark, I don’t accept it’s appalling. What evidence have you for that? Isn’t our own and the UK systems also appalling, or so we are told in the papers every day?

How come so many people, especially the poorest, want to live in the US? The US mentality is that you work and you pay for what you need. That’s their decision. It’s a democracy. They don’t like our socialist system where now the government is spending, or should I say wasting, more money than the people who earn it.

It’s the opposite to here where a sizeable chunk of all workeing peoples income is given to a small percentage of people who never work, who commit most of the crime, take most of the drugs, smoke most of the fags which gives them the health problems in the first place, don’t pay to raise their own kids, don’t pay for their housing and pay for nothing else. The so called poor in Ireland have no problem buying drink but they can’t pay €15/week for health insurance?

William, you’re almost funny, if you weren’t serious!

Perhaps you are the one who should do so catching up on the US healthcare system, rather then just what you know from TV or Republican press. But perhaps you’re one of those who’s not afraid to discard facts in other to make a political statement?

So why don’t you move to the US? As it seems you think they are doing so much better?

Mark, speaking of facts, you didn’t answer this, “What evidence have you for that?”

The people of the US value their personal freedoms more than we do. That’s why most people probably went there.

There you go, you can look for it yourself, but I took the liberty of copying a vital passage from the text:

“The six reports created by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) found that the principal consequences of uninsurance were the following: Children and Adults without health insurance did not receive needed medical care; they typically live in poorer health and die earlier than children or adults who have insurance. The financial stability of a whole family can be put at risk if only one person is uninsured and needs treatment for unexpected health care costs. The overall health status of a community can be adversely affected by a higher percentage of uninsured people within the community. The coverage gap between the insured and the uninsured has not decreased even after the recent federal initiatives to extend health insurance coverage.[87]”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_the_United_States#Public

Yeah, really great system…

But as long as you don’t suffer, who cares right?

Mark, you could say exactly the same about Ireland word for word. Why would anyone in the US pay for insurance if that was NOT the case?

Mark, here’s another stat ” The United States had the fourth highest level of government health care spending per capita ($3,426), behind three countries with higher levels of GDP per capita: Monaco, Luxembourg, and Norway”

That’s the ball-kicking irony, William. Under the health system the US has had for years, the federal and state governments are paying more yet giving less (or getting less if you look at it that way). I believe the teenagers call that a “fail”.

All Health Systems seem to be a black hole for money. My wife works in a hospital and tells me there is very silly waste. Her operating theatre doesn’t open Wednesdays. Have you heard of any business today that doesn’t open Wednesdays? (I might add that it doesn’t open Sat or Sun either).

5-10% of patients who get treatment “free” don’t turn up. Recently it has been suggested by the HSE that anyone missing an appointment/operation without due cause and notice should have to pay €20. €20!!!! to cover a surgeon, anesthetist and half a dozen nurses sitting on their asses for a couple of hours….

So one man out of 300,000,000 Americans does this and it’s a “sad reflection on the US private healthcare system”?

so one black woman stands up on a bus and its a sad reflection on civil rights…oh wait.

Alan, millions of black stood up. PS I was on a replica of that bus in Memphis.

Fair play, you were on a bus, great boast. PS Im wearing socks.

Shaun, you’re wearing a replica of a women civil right’s activists socks? Good for you. Are they not a bit tight? :)

PS The bus has a robot driver and you are told before you get on that you are to pretend you are black. When you step on you are told by the driver to sit at the back. You don’t and he starts abusing you and inisisting you sit at the back with the other “coloureds”. It’s to give white people a feeling of what it was like to live in a segrated southern state. The museum in Memphis is called The Civil Rights Museum and is in the ex-hotel that Martin Luther King was murdered in.

you can say that again…

John, my old man was a cop. I’ve worked since I was 16 and every week since, even in College. My Daddy died 4 years ago and I’m 57. I left college in the last century. I won’t be able to work on a building site, I’m a programmer and we don’t do hardware. The only possible phrase in your nonsensical rant, which contained no useful argument on the topic, is that I MAY be pretentious. However while I may be pretentious, you certainly are.