****Re: ot: Fourth Amendment... gone forever?

[Craig White]

On Wed, 2008-02-13 at 11:00 -0700, Joshua Zeidner wrote:
> On 2/13/08, Craig White <craigwhite at azapple.com> wrote:
> 
> > But you only needed to see the moment where John Erlichtman and Richard
> > Nixon are discussing the crook in California (Kaiser) discussing his new
> > health care delivery system called HMO's and the next day, President
> > Nixon advocating Congressional changes (which they did and he signed) in
> > the movie Sicko to realize how they have continually played us for
> > chumps.
> 
>   That part of the movie was by far the most convincing.  I don't
> doubt that HMOs conspire to shaft the consumers, and that Kaiser
> Permanente is perhaps one of the worst of the bunch.  Kaiser perhaps
> lies at the very heart of Everything That Is Wrong With
> California(tm).  Their company propaganda includes all this garbage
> about helping miners with their health problems at the turn of the
> century.  But HMOs are in a sense a small 'socialized medical system'.
>  What the socialized healthcare plan suggests is creating ONE HMO that
> we are forced to opt into through tax base.  Secondly the entire
> concept of HMO means no personal accountability for health, which
> ultimately creates monstrous costs.
----
considering that my only reason for bringing Michael Moore into the
conversation was simply to repeat his extremely pointed question...
"Who are we?"  - I would say that we've gotten really far afield of the
issue of the Fourth Amendment intrusions by the FISA legislation.

But to the above comments...

Kaiser may or may not represent everything that is wrong with California
but that is another thread entirely. Kaiser is but one of many companies
providing health care coverage at great profit and using tactics such as
cherry picking, excluding coverage via all sorts of contemptible
rationale including pre-existing conditions, experimental
drugs/procedures, etc.

As for what constitutes a socialized health care delivery system and how
they behave or are funded, there are many different concepts in place
throughout the world and they do differ.

A simple question for those who assert that the health care system as
practiced in the United States is the best, why are infant mortality
rates so much higher here than elsewhere?

Craig