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    DolemiteHamilton Nolan
    5/06/13 3:45pm

    Where I work, if you want insurance for your family, it will run you about $950 a month with a $3,000 yearly deductible (per person), with about a $300 prescription deductible (per person). Around 90% of the people here make less than $10 an hour. Which means if their entire paycheck went towards insurance, they wouldn't be able to afford to go to the doctor due to the deductibles.

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      Missy PantsDolemite
      5/06/13 4:16pm

      You should read Cockeyed's article What I could Buy instead of health insurance.

      http://www.cockeyed.com/citizen/health…

      Short answer, some very fancy cars!

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      DolemiteMissy Pants
      5/06/13 4:26pm

      That was entertaining, and depressing!

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    MorticaiHamilton Nolan
    5/06/13 3:40pm

    'Murica! I really don't understand it. We should be adopting a socialized healthcare system. What we should be doing is studying places like Canada and the UK, seeing where their successes and pitfalls are, then improving on those and adopting a system where no one has to live with the stress of an illness completely uprooting their lives and throwing them into poverty. I have always believed healthcare should be a humanitarian effort, not an investment tool.

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      enematicMorticai
      5/06/13 4:10pm

      As a Canadian, I'd love that! I'm proud of our system, but it's far from perfect; if y'all (with your 277,000,000 extra people, $$$, and academic / research bodies) were committed to creating your own new & improved version, I have no doubt that we (and the rest of the world) could learn a lot from it!

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      cheerful_exgirlfriendenematic
      5/06/13 4:19pm

      Your system may be far from perfect but our system is so imperfect that literally almost any slight change in favor of a more socialized system would be better. Of course that's why we "won" a watered down new health act.

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    ratchedHamilton Nolan
    5/06/13 4:01pm

    I have MS, Crohn's disease, several strokes, Factor V Leiden mutation (clotting disorder), major neuropathies and various other illnesses. My husband is healthy but aged 62 and we still have a 14 y/o kid at home and a 21 year old daughter that needs insurance. Until 2006, we were quite successful (home building). We hung on as long as we were able, but about 2 years ago, we had to drop our $1800 mo. insurance, which was a high deductible policy and disallowed half of what the Drs./hospitals charged. I'be been having some alarming symptoms for a while now and my child REALLY needs some medical care. We still earn more than allowed for any sliding scale clinic and certainly more than Medicaid. (The assets of our struggling business is included in any financial statements.) We could run through our limited assets and then be chronically non-employed (at my husband's age and my disabilities) and lose our home, but then we would surely be on the government tit, forEVER. This is not anything like the America I grew up with. We feel trapped like rats and it causes constant terror and anxiety. The only consolation is that business is starting to pick up...if we can make it.

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      GrigoritheOctoHamilton Nolan
      5/06/13 3:47pm

      This is obviously the result of a lack of bootstraps. We need to make sure that all Americans have bootstraps with which they can pull themselves up.

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        adsfsadfasdfadsfadffsdGrigoritheOcto
        5/06/13 3:55pm

        What are you saying!? If we just handout bootstraps like candy, how will all those unpleasant poors ever learn to stop sucking on the government teat?

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        GrigoritheOctoadsfsadfasdfadsfadffsd
        5/06/13 4:01pm

        If we hand out bootstraps, we will be helping them help themselves. Didn't Jesus or somebody say something about that one time or something? Or President Reagan? Or G. Gordon Liddy?

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      CovertPetersenHamilton Nolan
      5/06/13 3:39pm

      The American Healthcare system looks hilariously awful to pretty much every civilized country in the world, but they're all wrong because 'merica.

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        ohmyclarenceCovertPetersen
        5/06/13 5:45pm

        Isn't strange how conservatives often claim that we have the best healthcare system in the world, even though literary no one else has chosen to adopt our system. In fact our system is so bad it is used as a scare tactic in other countries, where politicians will accuse their opponents of trying to adopt an American style healthcare system.

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        UKStory135CovertPetersen
        5/06/13 8:10pm

        The American system runs into two problems that few other systems have. One is that America is multicultural, and many people have issues with people that look different than them getting government benefits. The other is that we had already started a precedent of employer based health care. A transition to socialized medicine would eliminate an entire industry. I'm for socialized medicine, but we have significant obstacles

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      MisterHippityHamilton Nolan
      5/06/13 4:43pm

      I'm not sure if this post is intended as a criticism of the Affordable Care Act (a k a Obamacare) ...? If so, it bears mentioning that most provisions of Obamacare weren't even in effect last year. Many are being implemented this year, and it won't be completely implemented until next year.

      What will be more meaningful — if a follow-up to this study is performed — is to see if any of the shortcomings highlighted actually improve after Obamacare is fully implemented.

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        kingdom2000Hamilton Nolan
        5/06/13 5:04pm

        How much want to bet that a majority of that half are Republicans who think Obamacare is an evil and needs to be stopped while paying what little money they have to politicians and others GOP based flim flan artists who claim they will put a stop to it while at the same time complaining they can't get the care they need but others* that don't deserve it get it.

        * others = anyone that isn't white

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