Originally posted by WajomaI've been even busier than usual lately so I've had no time to pay a visit, but I must say, your position - it isn't an argument since you refuse to engage with concrete statistics, as you've overtly conceded many times - hasn't improved with the passing of the seasons.
A final note on a side issue to a non-issue in the NHC debate.
The state need play no more role in the transfer of an estate (a matter of contract) than it does in a billion billion other transactions that take place daily between voluntary parties, you'd have done as well to mention; buying a loaf of bread, tipping the waiter, engaging the services of a d in the attached post) then it has been an abject failure, a tremendous backfire, even.
To begin with your inadvertently ironic moral lecture in your last paragraph, I'll simply note that your hypocrisy is breathtaking: you were the one who began by throwing silly names, as a cursory look at the thread will demonstrate. As I've said, I have no problem with you deliberately choosing that level of debate, but your inability to take the kind of criticism you offer speaks volumes for you.
"The state need play no more role"...begging the question in the very first line: it does play a role, so your aspiration is nonsensical. It also shows very little understanding of the nature of power, which does not always need to show itself to make itself felt. Since your supposedly analogous examples are entirely distinct from the role of the state in inheritance - to give just one example, tipping a waiter is not enforced by statutory law created by the state in most countries - the irrelevance of your argument is complete.
"When a person owns something, this means they may dispose of it as they see fit." That's Capital Gains Tax, Entail and VAT knocked into a cocked hat, then. In any case, quite apart from arguing that the dead should have property rights equivalent to the living (if you ever stand for election I'm sure you'll win the Pharoah vote), the point of contention here is not whether this is right or wrong (that's another thread), but whether your view that the random compulsion of inheritance is freedom while the democratic compulsion of a parliament or congress is dictatorship. I have no problem accepting that both are dictatorial or both are free, but your attempt to pretend that one is freedom (presumably because primogeniture seems natural to you - as natural as ultimogeniture seemed a thousand years ago) while the other is not is very unconvincing.
As far as random hereditary ownership not threatening anyone or compelling anyone, no-one with an iota of understanding of social mobility or the effect of class on individual destiny can take your statement seriously. You can wriggle the taxonomy however you choose, but class and economic inheritance effect everyone's life chances. If you want stats, they are of course legion - and of course you do not want them, nor will you respond to them.
I wasn't expecting you to respond seriously to the survey criteria, and clearly I haven't waited for you at all. Since you raise no issue with the criteria and your only other objection is that surveys are a "snapshot" - which, since the WHO is a regular event, is about as accurate as saying that a machine-gun is useless because it fires only a series of isolated bullets.
I must say I'm interested in this call for yours for context - if the US was uniquely discriminated against because of its economic destitution I'm sure we'd all be interested to see your evidence. As it stands, the surveys are of how health services perform, not societies - which seems reasonable.
I'm not interested in your conveniently faith-based arguments. I only want the stats. I'll be checking back in a few months, so no worries, you have plenty of time to continue with your fact-free moralizing.
Originally posted by CartanYep, it's another world-beater from the man who brought us the Great al Qaeda Foot-and-Mouth Conspiracy of 2007. Not that he ever implied there was one, of course. Oh no.
As to the 'working class, it no longer exists in the UK: everyone is now either middle class and working (or retired), or underclass and living on 'benefits' paid for by the former.
Filmmaker Michael Moore praises the UK's National Health Service as a model for the U.S. in his latest film, "Sicko," but record numbers of British citizens have apparently not seen the movie and are going abroad and paying out of their own pockets to obtain better health care.
More than 70,000 Britons will have treatment abroad this year, the London Sunday Telegraph reported, a number that is forecast to rise to 200,000 by 2010.
In the first survey of its kind in the UK, Britons said long waits for treatment by the NHS and fears of the growing hospital-infection crisis were the primary reasons they chose to seek medical care elsewhere.
India is the most popular destination for surgery, followed by Hungary, Turkey, Germany, Malaysia, Poland and Spain. According to the survey conducted by Treatment Abroad, "health tourists" from the UK travel to 48 countries.
The NHS is coming under increased criticism for its failure to provide health care. Cases of the superbug Clostridium difficile have increased 500 percent in the last 10 years and are expected to climb above the 55,000 cases reported in 2006.
Long waiting periods for surgery have imposed a de facto rationing system on medical treatment.
Costs for the NHS have risen due to increased bureaucracy that prevents nurses from seeing patients and increased compensation to general practitioners that have seen their earnings rise over 50 percent in the last three years.
Health tourists are courted on the Internet by foreign doctors and hospitals that offer consultations online or with agents in the UK. Cost of a heart-bypass operation in India, including the flight and hotel, are less than half what the same would cost at a private British hospital.
The shortage of dentists in Britain is being met by dentists in Hungary.
"The confidence that the public has in NHS hospitals has been shattered by the growth of hospital infections and this government's failure to make a real commitment to tackling it," said Katherine Murphy, of the Patients' Association. "People are simply frightened of going to NHS hospitals, so I am not surprised the numbers going abroad are increasing so rapidly. My fear is that most people can't afford to have private treatment - whether in this country or abroad."
In the survey, almost all of those who obtained treatment abroad said they would do it again.
Originally posted by AmauroteI concede that tipping the waiter was not analogous.
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"The state need play no more role"...begging the question in the very first line: it does play a role, so your aspiration is nonsensical. It also shows very little understanding of the nature of power, which does not always need to show itself to make itself felt. Since your supposedly analogous examples are entirely distinct from the role of the state ...[text shortened]... w created by the state in most countries - the irrelevance of your argument is complete.
i.
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/90242.php
It's not only a die while you wait system, but when you eventually do get in the odds don't look that...ahem...healthy.