In my opinion, you join the forces knowing what they do...they fight in wars if there are wars. It's like saying, sure, I want to be a fireman, but...if there's fire, i am not going to fight it, unless i get a significant raise. Military personal get higher wages because it can be a dangerous profession, which is entirely fair, however don't go and complain when it gets dangerous.

Also, the american idea of a veteran is absurd. How are you a veteran if all you did in your time in the army is play wargames in a forest in Illinois. In my opinion you are only a veteran if you have actually faced danger (aka fought in a war).

You clearly have no idea how dutch healthcare works.

and my point was that they signed a contract, and you can't sign a contract and then later demand to change the terms. (although i am not quite sure what the contract says, i must admit that)

also, earlier in the thread someone stated they should get more benefits because they have a dangerous profession, i think.

it's not the government that provides the healthcare, it's private companies.
If you want a bigger coverage, you pay a higher fee. The private companies can not reject anyone.

However, that's not the topic of this thread, let's stay on topic.

Yes our health care sucks. Listen to Ron Paul.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWLwJyc0ZqI

If you want real coverage, you pay a higher fee. So if your life is worth anything to you, you need to cough up more money than you already are supporting universal care for everyone who does not contribute to the system? What happens when having to provide care for everyone limits your ability to purchase this "extra" care which will include the care you need? As you said, "if you want bigger coverage, you pay a higher fee." You don't see the irony of supporting "universal care" limiting the financial means with which one has to purchase the "bigger coverage" one often requires to recieve the best care available? I owe you money for your care because that's your right as a human being, even when my funding your right to care inhibits my financial resources with which I want to exercise the right to purchase whatever care I need?

Companies don't decide what treatment anyone gets in the USA, ARFeh. You are free to purchase whatever care you desire and tax incentives are given to encourage people and companies to purchase such care. Government-funded healthcare is already in existence for vast numbers of poor and disabled, without vast and integrated government meddling resulting in government determination of what pay-grade people fall into determining which treatments they are eligible for.

Any discussion of healthcare here results in poorly constructed rhetoric without addressing anything. Good job kids. Swing and a miss! Try again. This thread isn't about healthcare; I merely replied to an ignorant statement concerning "everyone" having healthcare in NL. To treat healthcare as something one has or doesn't have without regard for level of quality is as ignorant as the resulting comments defending socialized medical care, which is not a relevant cry-fest (it's certainly neither a discussion nor debate on this forum) to this thread. Everyone in your country, socialized medical care or not, does NOT have access to the same level of care. Many people are NOT afforded the latest and most advanced care on account of their condition under your universal care that "everyone" receives. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying. You're young and have no experience personally or with the responsibility of care for your family to be aware of what is available to you under your "everyone has healthcare" healthcare and what is not going to be provided for little old you, the common man. This is mostly irrelevant here, as your perception of the issue is merely "he attacked socialized medical care!" to which you respond with defense of socialized medical care with the rhetoric you've been told and attacking the injustice of freedom in ensuring social and economic (and medical?) justice. When you hit this familiar issue you respond with this socialized vs freedom response with NO memory of what context the issue was brought up in and what of it matters. Good job. You're either dumb or in your early teens and your brain isn't even developed enough to remember what you were responding to--which effectively pretty much means dumb. Hopefully only temporarily.

Many soldiers face enemy fire without being in "wars" you'll ever know about, Firewing. To try to classify soldiers by the level of threat random bureaucrats or civilians figure them to have faced would be a little awkward and unjust.

The empirical evidence suggests that since the 1970s, when the US instituted government controlled health care reform, the cost has gone up and the quality of service has gone down.

Case closed.

Now why did we pass these reforms? I have a theory on this. It was about control and power, and the HMOs and such became extremely profitable.

Edit: Ron Paul addresses the poor question in one of his interviews. When he was working before the 1970 reforms, the poor still got health care. The costs were down (that's what the free market does), and for those who couldn't afford typical care there were options such as church hospitals.

>>The basic, reasonably affordable, plan, includes all basic healthcare, and won't let you die because something is not in your deal.<<

So everyone with late-stage cancer is still given the latest, most expensive treatments regardless of cost and extremely slim chance of remission?

Yeah ARFeh the US has poor healthcare. We don't have any advanced treatment.

BG, you have to have the basic plan, so you are insured for that before you get the cancer.

So every treatment is available to everyone in your nation regardless of their plan and at what stage of development their ailment is diagnosed Primo? That's what I'm gathering you're saying, which is weird because it's obviously not true. No government can finance all care for all people with no regard for cost and not go bankrupt and fail to provide anything to anyone. Headlines read things like:

---Great Britain---
Kidney cancer patients denied life-saving drugs by NHS rationing body NICE
Girl, 3, has heart operation cancelled three times because of bed shortage
Number of children going to hospital to have teeth pulled soars by 66% since 1997
Cancer survivor confronts the health secretary on 62-day wait
Our cancer shame: Survival rates still lag behind EU despite spending billions
Failing hospital 'caused deaths'
Disabled children wait up to two years for wheelchairs
NHS under fire over waiting times
Government procrastination blamed for HIV-contaminated blood tragedy
Specialist nurses 'vastly overworked'
Hundreds of operations cancelled at Lothian hospitals
Stop asking for antibiotics to cure coughs and colds, Government tells patients
Hospitals curb caesarean births
Only five out of 51 hospital trusts pass hygiene test, say inspectors
Top doctors slam NHS drug rationing
Heart patients dying due to poor hospital care, says report
Cancer patients

> Dirty Iluvatar wrote:
Even if you do, 99% cant even pay for basic healthcare, let alone advanced treatment.

But its obvious your the kind of person that doesnt give a flying[moo] about anybody but yourself. Hell, always the patriot, untill it hurts you in the wallet, then its every american for themselfs right?>

The US has a messy, middle of the road health care system. If we got rid of HMOs, the costs would go down and people would be able to afford health care because of the free market.

Its useless arguing with him primo.
I once explained perfectlly how most european systems work..
that most of the healthcare facilities are private...
that only the mandatory insurance is the difference..
but he wont understand...
instead he will tell u that he once was so ill that he only could be cured in the Us... he cant tell us what illness it was though.. if u ask him how he knows that it can only be cured in the US he will tell u a different reply every time.

they dont want to know how things work.. they want to criticize.
Its just useless spending time in trying to tell them how it really works...

? I'm confused. You just keep repeating yourself and claiming I'm denying the basic facts of your care. The point is the bigger picture: what your care does to doctors and your health system as a whole. I gave you a few titles of articles that give some picture of problems all countries with mandatory care have. There are literally thousands of articles avalable to anyone who cares to learn about the reality of the situation. You cannot demand that care be available to all for a low cost and magically create a humane level of care when too few doctors and medical professionals will work for what you offer them. It's creating a host of problems that you're ignoring in favor of repeatedly claiming that I'm claiming your health care is "done by the government." Your government meddles in your healthcare and has a large role in the actuarial process in determining who gets what care (they necessarily have to when dictating that everyone be insured <== somehow this kind of stupid and obvious statement has to be made here on a forum dedicated to politics populated by people who want to speak their mind but dread actually putting anything in it)... and when, considering the problem with massive waits and waiting lists across the globe.

>>only the mandatory insurance is the difference<<

And _I_ won't understand? You don't think the effect of "mandatory insurance" on the availability and training of doctors and medical professionals is significant? The tens of thousands of people on waiting lists and waiting more than a year for needed surgery (many children included) probably think there is more to mention than "only the mandatory insurance" as a difference.

I suppose this is the type of simplistic garbage response I should expect on this forum by now. Nobody has had any idea what the relevance of this topic was to this thread since it started but that hasn't stopped anyone from posting garbage stastics, missing the points (missing the points while not remembering why those points were brought up to begin with--double fail!), and attacking straw man positions which I do not hold.