Obama for Prime Minister?

[Rupert_Baehr]

One other thing I forgot to mention in the new plan is that HMOs will no longer be able to refuse a person because of a pre-exisiting medical condition nor will they be able to refuse treatment or terminate a person's membership because of a particular illness. Both very positive improvements. I'm sure that the new plan will not be perfect and there will have to be some changes and adjustments made but it's a step in the right direction.

 

Nothing more sad than a working man or a working woman with kids who loses his/her job and health coverage with it but it happens all the time

 

I'm not familiar with the Tri-Care or Champus you mention. I was self employed during all my working years here and had coverage through an HMO which I paid for out of my own pocket. My wife had coverage through her employer's plan

 

I thought you were a Gyrene? - 'CHAMPUS' was the Civilian Health and Medical Program of the US government. - Healthcare for soldiers. (replaced by Tricare, which is the same ... but not free.)

 

I take your point about 'pre-existing illnesses'. When we are in the US, we use 'Tricare Prime' (the premium version of our policy. (It covers most healthcare with a $15 co-pay for many things. - That, in turn, is covered through a 'top up' policy.)

 

We're overseas (at the behest of the US govt) at the moment and we revert to 'Tricare Basic'. - Not a problem for me, because I use their language. - If I don't understand something, then I know I don't understand it. If we were speaking English and they didn't understand something, how the hell would I know? When My wife goes to the Doctor, I go too (and I sit in the waiting room) I gather that our Doctor (we both see the same one) speaks pretty good English, but I'm not sure whether the nurses and staff are quite as good. - I'm there as my wife's interpreter. (And I do get used.)

 

Health care here is absolutely fantastic. It's not that bad in the US. We were Military for many years and we became GS (but tended to use Military healthcare) after that, so we made mistakes - which you would probably not make!

 

I do as I'm told (It works out cheaper that way!) But eventually I managed to persuade my wife (military) that a civilian ER is not quite like a military ER and you should only go there if it's a real emergency.

 

Military ERs are over-staffed (thank god!) 'you go there, you get seen. - Within a half hour, max.'

 

In the US (in the States with which I'm familiar, anyway,) ERs are places where if you have a real emergency you get seen in a hurry, but for anything else you might wait 5 hours to see a doctor. If you have an emergency, go to the ER. If you don't have (can't afford) a Doctor, go to the ER.

 

(In the UK, they call that 'NHS')

 

The 'loss of coverage' scam (as operated by companies at the moment) really ****** me off!

 

The company which works our 'top up' policy won't cover us oversaes. So we either had to pay for nothing, or quit and lose coverage. - But then, when we return to the US, they wanted 2 years premiums to 'catch up' and even then they might have declined to cover us.

 

That annoyed me, but it didn't worry me ... it would've been fun taking them through the courts.

 

I'll probably still have to do that (well, it will still be fun, too ... )(Young lawyers nowadays know a great deal. Unfortunately [for them] some of them have a less-than-adequate command of the English language.)

 

Whereabouts do you live, BTW?

[poppins]

Why on earth would you want Obama , don't you have enough lying politicians over there

[JFKvsNixon]

I dont think Obama is a socialist in the European sense of the word. The Democrat party compared to the UK Labour party is still pretty right wing from the latter.

 

Obama is not a socialist by any sense of the word, also this Labour government is probably the most right wing Labour government we've had in the UK.

 

Obama has been labeled a Socialist by those who oppose his health plan which I see as just the usual Republican way of labeling FDR the same for the Social Security Act and Lyndon Johnson for the Medicare plan.

 

I remember reading somewhere that some of the impetus for the Obama's health plan comes from big business as they want to be freed from the responsibility and the cost of providing health care for their employees. They say that they struggle to compete with European businesses that doesn't have to worry about their employees health care.

 

As for Obama for PM, it would probably be a more transparent way of doing things as he's probably got more power over us than our PM.

[callippo]

had he been born in Sheffield (but with a US parent) would that have made him (somehow) 'un-natural'?

 

good question. I don't think anybody is really sure. Had Obama been born outside the United States, the law at the time of his birth said that if only one parent was a US citizen, they had to have lived in the US for at least a total of ten years, and five years of that had to be after the age of 16.[/i]

 

Obama's mother was only 18 when she gave birth to him, so its conceivable he might have been barred from standing for President.

 

Unlike Obama, John McCain really was born outside the US, and nobody knows for sure whether he's a 'natural-born' citizen or not. The case would have to be tested in a court.

 

more here:

http://www.snopes.com/politics/mccain/citizen.asp

[Harleyman]

Obama is not a socialist by any sense of the word, also this Labour government is probably the most right wing Labour government we've had in the UK.

 

 

 

I remember reading somewhere that some of the impetus for the Obama's health plan comes from big business as they want to be freed from the responsibility and the cost of providing health care for their employees. They say that they struggle to compete with European businesses that doesn't have to worry about their employees health care.

 

As for Obama for PM, it would probably be a more transparent way of doing things as he's probably got more power over us than our PM.

 

 

That and perhaps the fact that it was estimated that around 30 million Americans had no health coverage at all

[Harleyman]

I thought you were a Gyrene? - 'CHAMPUS' was the Civilian Health and Medical Program of the US government. - Healthcare for soldiers. (replaced by Tricare, which is the same ... but not free.)

 

I take your point about 'pre-existing illnesses'. When we are in the US, we use 'Tricare Prime' (the premium version of our policy. (It covers most healthcare with a $15 co-pay for many things. - That, in turn, is covered through a 'top up' policy.)

 

We're overseas (at the behest of the US govt) at the moment and we revert to 'Tricare Basic'. - Not a problem for me, because I use their language. - If I don't understand something, then I know I don't understand it. If we were speaking English and they didn't understand something, how the hell would I know? When My wife goes to the Doctor, I go too (and I sit in the waiting room) I gather that our Doctor (we both see the same one) speaks pretty good English, but I'm not sure whether the nurses and staff are quite as good. - I'm there as my wife's interpreter. (And I do get used.)

 

Health care here is absolutely fantastic. It's not that bad in the US. We were Military for many years and we became GS (but tended to use Military healthcare) after that, so we made mistakes - which you would probably not make!

 

I do as I'm told (It works out cheaper that way!) But eventually I managed to persuade my wife (military) that a civilian ER is not quite like a military ER and you should only go there if it's a real emergency.

 

Military ERs are over-staffed (thank god!) 'you go there, you get seen. - Within a half hour, max.'

 

In the US (in the States with which I'm familiar, anyway,) ERs are places where if you have a real emergency you get seen in a hurry, but for anything else you might wait 5 hours to see a doctor. If you have an emergency, go to the ER. If you don't have (can't afford) a Doctor, go to the ER.

 

(In the UK, they call that 'NHS')

 

The 'loss of coverage' scam (as operated by companies at the moment) really ****** me off!

 

The company which works our 'top up' policy won't cover us oversaes. So we either had to pay for nothing, or quit and lose coverage. - But then, when we return to the US, they wanted 2 years premiums to 'catch up' and even then they might have declined to cover us.

 

That annoyed me, but it didn't worry me ... it would've been fun taking them through the courts.

 

I'll probably still have to do that (well, it will still be fun, too ... )(Young lawyers nowadays know a great deal. Unfortunately [for them] some of them have a less-than-adequate command of the English language.)

 

Whereabouts do you live, BTW?

 

I have no idea what health coverage I had during my time in the service 1966-69. If it was Champus I dont recall. I had a few thousand dollars insurance policy with my mom as beneficiary

 

Any medical treatment I needed or got was while in the Nam. Jungle foot sores and fungus. heat rash, dehydration, occasional dental inspections and a bite from a spider that got really badly infected and a mild ringing in the ears caused by noise. All these were treated by Corpsmen in field stations

 

My home is in California. Where is your location IOB ?

[poppins]

Well Daniel Hannan dosen't think much about the NHS does he ?

Edited April 17, 2010 by poppins

[superblade1!]

i'd rather have katie price as prime minister than that idiot....he wouldn't touch this country with a barge pole anyway....hates us

[[Matt]]

i'd rather have katie price as prime minister than that idiot....he wouldn't touch this country with a barge pole anyway....hates us

I wouldnt say he hates us. Its just he's made it a little more transparent for us to realise that the so called 'special relationship' has only ever been a one way affair...

[Harleyman]

i'd rather have katie price as prime minister than that idiot....he wouldn't touch this country with a barge pole anyway....hates us

 

Why is he an idiot?

 

Also he might treat his staff a bit better than the drunken ranting Scotsman you people have as a PM