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Senior health care solution -
So you're a sick senior citizen and the government says there is no nursing home available for you - what do you do?
Our plan gives anyone 65 years or older a gun and 4 bullets. You are allowed to shoot 2 MP’s and 2 Ministers – not necessarily dead!
Of course, this means you will be sent to prison where you will get 3 meals a day, a roof over your head, central heating, and all the health care you need! New teeth - no problem. Need glasses, great. New hip, knees, kidney, lungs, heart? All covered. (And your kids can come and visit you as often as they do now).
And who will be paying for all of this? The same government that just told you that they cannot afford for you to go into a home.
Plus, because you are a prisoner, you don't have to pay any income taxes anymore.
IS THIS A GREAT COUNTRY OR WHAT?
Pass the word.
Tony....:>))
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I never do understand these things.
What are we supposed to do with people convicted of serious crimes? Throw them into the moat? Let them rot from bedsores when they're not able to walk?
A society has a responsibility to people who are unable to meet their own needs because we have locked them up.
A society also has a responsibility to people who are unable to meet their own needs because they are old or ill or disabled.
It isn't an either/or, it's both. And neither one has anything to do with the other.
Seniors aren't going without *because* inmates are getting.
Seniors are going without because of low tax rates on high incomes, offshore tax shelters, and a whole lot of other things that mean a relatively few people have more than they can ever use, while some people have less than they need.
Why don't we see chain mails about them?
The top 1% of the people in the wealth/income pyramid in any country could personally pay for every senior in need to be housed and not notice anything missing from their bank accounts.
I guess it's just not funny, even though it's true.
I'm curious about how "true" this tale is. How many sick senior citizens in Australia are told there are no nursing home spaces for them?
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But Allan ... all of that is completely unrelated to provisions for inmates.
The hue and cry and whining and moaning about how well prisoners are treated vs. how well [name your favourite interest group] are treated is a tiresome right-wing meme, beloved of the sort of people in the US who go to Tea Parties.
I don't believe that right-wing memes doing the rounds mean anything other than that there are people who find right-wing memes very useful.
If someone is concerned about inadequate services to the elderly, I think there are a lot of much better ways of speaking to that issue and calling for change.
By the way, I had no doubt at all that the two-tier health insurance system there played a role in this. I'm one who will fight tooth and nail against allowing private insurers to get a fingernail in the door of our system here, and this is one of the exact reasons why. It looks nice when it starts, but this is precisely what I expect to happen (among other things), and oh look, there it is.
The plain fact is that when people are paying privately for insurance, they're *ed if they're going to support the public system to the extent that it needs it, for the benefit of all the people who can't afford private insurance.
So the public system is underfunded because its tax funding declines, and it's back to those as can pay, gets, and those as can't, become the subject of memes composed by the very people responsible for the state of things: the right wing.
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Our government also takes a 1.5% medicare levy of gross income to pay for medical treatment, then they want you to join a private health insurance at exorbitant cost that the average person just cannot afford. If you are in private health, you then have gap payments that come out of your own pocket. I have had extra charges put on eg, dental just because we were at the time in private insurance. The difference in cost was exactly what the private health paid me back for the treatment. This gap is across all medical treatment, and horrifying to say the least. Dammed if you do and dammed if you don't.
You fight Janey, and fight hard as you will only become like us if you do not. Our health system is worse than any third world country.
Gail
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Grrrr. ;)
Messing with a Canadian's health care system is like crawling into the den of a hybernating mother grizzly!
The mere thought of it causes the fangs to bare and the claws to unsheath.
You want to read about a really bad health care system? I posted this once before, but for anybody who missed it.
This isn't a short story, and it might be better read after a couple of glasses of wine. It will be difficult for someone not at least a little familiar with the US "health care system" to even begin to fathom. It's one of the saddest and most depressing things you'll ever read, told in an amusing way by a rather amazing person.
"How I lost my health insurance at the hairstylist"
http://www.progressivefox.com/?p=721
“I look at people’s skin tones all day long and try to decide the best coloring for their hair, and I can tell you this: gray is not a normal human skin tone. Get out of here right now and go see your doctor.”
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