The FYM Democratic Primary

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Which Democratic Presidential candidate are you voting for?

  • U.S. Sen. Joseph R. "Joe" Biden, Jr. (D-DE)

    Votes: 6 5.8%
  • U.S. Sen. Hillary R. Clinton (D-NY)

    Votes: 27 26.0%
  • U.S. Sen. Christopher J. "Chris" Dodd (D-CT)

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • 'VP 04 nominee / ex-U.S. Sen. John R. Edwards (D-NC)

    Votes: 9 8.7%
  • ex-U.S. Sen. Maurice "Mike" Gravel (D-AK)

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • '04 candidate / U.S. Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich (D-OH)

    Votes: 22 21.2%
  • U.S. Sen. Barack H. Obama (D-IL)

    Votes: 33 31.7%
  • Gov. William B. "Bill" Richardson (D-NM)

    Votes: 2 1.9%
  • Other - Write In

    Votes: 5 4.8%

  • Total voters
    104
  • Poll closed .
Anu said:


The media is acting like Hillary is a done deal.

Then, there's the people that say Bush won't step down.

Yeah, the press is acting like Hillary's already won the nomination. And people are saying that Bush won't step down?
 
Kucinich and Obama are by far the two best candidates, in my opinion. Hilary is third there.

The thing about Hilary is, no matter how much worse she is than your favorite Democratic candidate, she's ten times better than any republican candidate this year.
 
phillyfan26 said:
The thing about Hilary is, no matter how much worse she is than your favorite Democratic candidate, she's ten times better than any republican candidate this year.

In light of the latest national Zogby polls, interesting.

What major issues are Mrs. Clinton ten times better on than the slight Republican favorite, Rudy G ? A bigger healthcare plan, maybe taxing a few more rich people? Surely not the war...they are both clear hawks. The abortion issue? Shades of grey at best. Immigration and driver's licenses for illegals? Let's not go there.

Since when is the status quo ten times better than anything?
 
Ever since I've read Guiliani's outline of his foreign politics I'm scared of him being President. This man has no clue what is going on outside the US at all.
 
LyricalDrug said:
Hillary Clinton will provide universal health coverage for every American when she's president.

Has anyone even researched this? I'm pretty sure nowhere in the Constitution does it say that healthcare is one of the powers appointed to the federal government, which means national healthcare is unconstitutional.
 
LyricalDrug said:
Hillary Clinton will provide universal health coverage for every American when she's president.

Barack Obama's health care plan would leave 15 million Americans uninsured.

I was reading something about this this morning. Both Hillary's and Edward's plans are better.
 
2861U2 said:


Has anyone even researched this? I'm pretty sure nowhere in the Constitution does it say that healthcare is one of the powers appointed to the federal government, which means national healthcare is unconstitutional.

Unconstitutional? I want it. Every industrialized country except the United States has it.
 
A single payer, socialized healthcare system has zero chance of happening in this country anytime soon. Does anybody actually think that the health care companies are just going to go along with this?
 
verte76 said:


Unconstitutional? I want it.

Yeah, who cares about the Constitution as long as somebody wants something.

verte76 said:
Every industrialized country except the United States has it.

Those countries also have many major problems with their healthcare.
 
2861U2 said:
Has anyone even researched this? I'm pretty sure nowhere in the Constitution does it say that healthcare is one of the powers appointed to the federal government, which means national healthcare is unconstitutional.

It would be unconstitutional if it said health care had to be privatized ... which it doesn't.
 
phillyfan26 said:


And we don't?

I never said that. However, I certainly would not want the U.S. to develop the incredible waiting lists that Canada and others have, among other problems. What many Americans do not understand is there is a big difference between universal coverage and actual access to care.
 
2861U2 said:


Has anyone even researched this? I'm pretty sure nowhere in the Constitution does it say that healthcare is one of the powers appointed to the federal government, which means national healthcare is unconstitutional.

:huh: Did Rush tell you this? This is the most ridiculous thing I've heard...

If this was even close to true, do you know how easy it would be for Republicans to dismiss her plan? Yet they don't, they actually try and attack the plan.
 
2861U2 said:


However, I certainly would not want the U.S. to develop the incredible waiting lists that Canada and others have, among other problems. What many Americans do not understand is there is a big difference between universal coverage and actual access to care.

Do you have any first hand knowledge of this? What are you basing this on? Because this "argument" has been squashed left and right.
 
BonoVoxSupastar said:


:huh: Did Rush tell you this? This is the most ridiculous thing I've heard...

If this was even close to true, do you know how easy it would be for Republicans to dismiss her plan? Yet they don't, they actually try and attack the plan.

No, Rush didn't tell me that. The 10th amendment told me that. Perhaps you should read it. And just wait- if Hillary is the nominee, her "plan" will get slaughtered.
 
BonoVoxSupastar said:


Do you have any first hand knowledge of this? What are you basing this on? Because this "argument" has been squashed left and right.

Then by all means, squash it again. Go ahead.

According to Britain's Department of Health, at any given time 900,000 are waiting for admission to hospitals. 50,000 operations are cancelled each year. The wait for heart surgery in Sweden can be 5-6 months. Do you really want our system to become like this?
 
2861U2 said:


No, Rush didn't tell me that. The 10th amendment told me that. Perhaps you should read it. And just wait- if Hillary is the nominee, her "plan" will get slaughtered.

Wow, that's a huuuuugge stretch, but good try. Has the Supreme Court struck down Medicaid?
 
2861U2 said:


Then by all means, squash it again. Go ahead.

According to Britain's Department of Health, at any given time 900,000 are waiting for admission to hospitals. 50,000 operations are cancelled each year. The wait for heart surgery in Sweden can be 5-6 months. Do you really want our system to become like this?

Do you know what the stats are here? Do you know how many aren't insured, do you know how many can't pay their deductibles, how many don't get proper care, how many operations were cancelled here, etc?

Plus these numbers you give are fine and dandy look good to you but can you explain them? What kind of heart surgery are we talking about, transplant, bypass, what? Why were the surgeries canceled, no long deemed necessary? What?
 
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Every surgery that is acute gets treated immediately, and the reason for the waiting time is simply that there are often not enough doctors to perform the surgeries which is only in part caused by the system of public health.

Of course it's not a perfect system and it has its flaws, but no one here has to die.

It's a very srict interpretation of the 10th amendment you're using here, and in the case of public health care utterly ridiculous to call it unconstitutional.
 
I do find it interesting how conservatives use the strictest of interpretations when it suits them and then throw it out the window when they want to wage their wars.
 
Several people who are not paranoid wingnuts are predicting economic meltdown and war with Iran in 2008.

My gut feeling is that H. Clinton is very much like the Bushies in enough ways to guarantee her ascent.

A friend just predicted to me that it will be Ron Paul v h. Clinton and asked if I would vote for Ron Paul.
 
BonoVoxSupastar said:
No way would Republicans vote for someone who's been against the war since day one.

Because by the Republican/conservative mantra over the past 4 years that would *have* to mean that (a) he hates the troops, and (b) he supports terrorism.
 
2861U2 said:


I never said that. However, I certainly would not want the U.S. to develop the incredible waiting lists that Canada and others have, among other problems.

I guess if you keep repeating something enough times everyone starts to believe it.

We're all dropping dead in the street here from all the waiting around.
 
November 4, 2007

Cross-border medicine
Shorter lines, more doctors, high-flying loonie has Canadians flocking south

By CHRISTINA BLIZZARD, TORONTO SUN



American clinics have always been an option for patients in this province who want speedier access to health care than our one-tier public system can offer. What's more, this province has a doctor shortage. The U.S. does not.

Joanne Thompson knows all too well the heartache that happens when a loved one needs care in this province -- and can't get it.

Thompson, city editor at the Sault Ste. Marie Star, needed to find an MRI in May for her sister, Jennifer Abbott. A partial paraplegic, Abbott was fearful of the enclosed type of MRI machine, but the wait for a test on an open MRI in the border city was three to five months -- far too long for the neurological condition she suffers from.

So Thompson checked the ads and found a clinic across the border in Michigan that offered same day service for an open MRI -- two hours away.

"Her condition was such that we were too worried to wait any longer," Thompson said in a telephone interview.

"We were able to get an appointment the next day. To me that was unbelievable," she said. And she didn't mind paying a few hundred bucks out of pocket.

"When you can get an MRI within a day, it's worth a few bucks," she said.

Of course, Canadians have shopped for health care in the U.S. for decades. What's new is now it's 30% cheaper.

Windsor family physician Dr. Albert Schumacher is a consultant for the Detroit Medical Centre (DMC). Associated with Wayne State University, DMC is the largest group of teaching hospitals in Michigan. It has nine hospitals three miles from the border. He worries that Canadians seeking care in the U.S. may be attracted by cut-rate clinics. Schumacher's been working with DMC to provide quality care at affordable rates for cross-border health care shoppers.

"You have a lot of peripheral and suburban places not affiliated with brand name institutions that are doing a lot of stuff," he says. Prices for MRIs, colonoscopies etc., at quality institutions in the U.S., are higher than those in Canada. An MRI can cost as much as $1,800. He's working to get Canadians what he calls the "Montreal price." If patients in this province are, in effect, bulk buying from DMC, then they get a better price than a one-off patient from, say, the Middle East would.

Bariatric surgery -- stomach stapling -- is another procedure that is popular with cross-border health shoppers, since there's a shortage of service here.

It's hard to get an accurate count of just how many Ontarians are looking south for treatment, because there's a reluctance to talk about it, Schumacher says.

"There is a huge politics of resentment in this country. If somebody can get care somewhere else, many people are resentful of that, so therefore they don't talk about it," he said.

"If the airline industry was like health care, we wouldn't have first class in Air Canada, because people wouldn't want that to happen. They get very resentful about that," says Schumacher, who is a former head of the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) and the Ontario Medical Association (OMA).

This province just doesn't have the medical staff or the resources to provide the same level of care as the U.S.

Essex County, where Schumacher practises, with a population of 400,000, until recently had only two CT scanners and one MRI machine. They just got a second MRI. Across the border in Port Huron, Mich., population 12,000, they had four MRI machines 10 years ago, Schumacher says.

"The simple math is for every five of me practising here, Western Europe has six and we are only training four to replace us, so the crisis gets worse on a daily basis," he says.

The OMA estimates this province is short more than 2,000 physicians -- all just numbers and statistics for politicians, perhaps. But for Joanne Thompson and her sister, these figures add up to one thing: Prolonged suffering. And the cure? A passport -- and shopping trip.
 
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