Anyway, I hate to jump in with a real life horror story, but one of my brothers-in-law had to go to the hospital because he tried to keep going on two jobs to make ends meet while having a lung infection.

What did it net him?
After 15 days at Harborview, he’s netted a $500,000 bill from them. Another equally large missive is headed his way after his exended stay at a rehabilitation clinic that has no in-house doctors, a staff of 30, and 200 patients, but charges, well, uh, guess what?

$800 / day?

Nope.

$2000 / day?

Nope. Giss again…

$4000 / day?

Da winner and new champeen! You win the, uh, er, prize! Yup, you too can go broke here. But hey, guess what?

On $15 / hour, no insurance, guess what? Medicaid wouldn’t pick it all up, and neither would charity. I guess, yes, in other countries, you might have to wait for some treatment, but, um, in this case, it’s either pay or die, or, if you are close enough to a designated trauma center where you can’t be turned away, it live and face ruination.

Ahyuh! Ahyuh! We dones gots the danged best red-white-and-blue-All-American-keep-you-choices health system in teh world!

@uglyblackjohn – I agree 100%. I just find it funny that they can put the effort in to develop a missile with pint point accuracy. But not find a better solution to schools, roads etc. You know what one of the reasons are? The military gets funded to a level that is stupid over here but the others not. Because of “security”. The rest have to try and do patch work with the change they get. The money doesn’t work because they can’t do a decent job with the funding they get. Teachers getting underpaid results in… People not wanting to be teachers. Roads are easy. We know the problem and we know the solution. But they will not fund that adequately.

@thatdudeyouknow – Man, man, man. I wish more Americans will open their eyes on this. They throw the words socialism and liberalism at anything and hope it will stick. I have argued with so many people over here about the meaning of both. They just don’t get it. Sweden is a perfect example. Small little country, not perfect at all, but punches way above it’s weight because of equality. I find it odd that China and America are at the extremes of political philosophy, but the inequalities across the board is in the extremes for both. Yes, it is better to be in the US. But boy, if you are at the bottom of the pile in the US… No way out.

One day when I have time I will investigate what happened in the US. You know, back in the 1890′s when the european workers started marching on the street on the 1st of May demanding equal rights, and an 8-hour day of work. Which led to worker’s rights, equal rights to vote, etc, etc.

I still think that super-socialistic Sweden (which has a conservative government now, by the way) is exagerrating. There’s no country where people doing nothing get so much, and where people studying and working hard get so little.

Still, Sweden is a welfare paradise. There’s 13 months maternity/paternity leave (At least one month each, the rest is up to the parents to decide), there’s free university education plus good term loans from the state to keep you from working while you study (with the obvious disadvantage that more and more college students study greek flower arrangements and turkish oud playing). Sweden has made this possible mostly due to staying away from war since 1817. Very economic and very clever…

There are good and there are bad things about socialism. In easy words the more socialistic a country is, the more equally divided is the economic cake, and the smaller it is. The more capitalistic a country is, the larger the cake is and the more unequally it is divided. Exagerration to either part is never good. The ultimate capitalism is “work or die”. That’s where the big corporate owners earn everything by doing nothing, sitting on the workers’ backs, letting them work for starvation wage, and they have to, otherwise they’ll starve. The ultimate socialism would be the idealistic communistic idea. State takes everyone’s money and divide it equally. No one would invest, because the state would tax the begeesus out of him and no one would work because he could make a living by just sitting at home.

The key when it comes to run a country, economically, is to balance these two correctly. To make it worth to work and to invest, but still to avoid above mentioned capitalistic legal robbery. The ultimate capitalistic countries are countries without economic regulations. basically any country without government would be capitallistic. When you let the free market do its thing. The laissez-nous principle. We can see this in countries where people starve and government do nothing. Mostly 3rd world countries. And the United States. The ultimate socialistic are the control countries like China, where big brother is watching. In these countries the unequalness still exist, simply because the communistic idea put into practice doesn’t work.
The socialistic Sweden has actually made it. People don’t starve there. There are no beggars on the street – because they can make more money begging from the government. The government has an obligation to its citizens that they have the right to live. The right to survive. The difference between the highest paid salary and the lowest paid salary is one of the smallest in the world.
I personally think that the ideal policy would be that of a capitalistic government – work and survive, don’t work and starve. But then add the commitment to the citizens. Make it possible to survive – but just barely – on staying at home doing nothing. No one wants to barely survive. Make sure the quality of life given that way is the same as that of a prisoner. Give them better pay if they actively look for job at the government owned work finding place. Give the work seekers one day off a week to go to interviews (besides the weekend of course) and have them pick oranges, dig dirt or whatever on the other days. Make basic health insurance part of taxes – must at least be the same as prisoners get. Give everyone the possibility to pay to get better insurance. Free education including university is a must in order to avoid rich people getting educated and poor people don’t. But demand money back if they drop out, and make it dependent on the grades. Give a year maternity/paternity leave and let the parents decide who takes out how much.

Yeah, that’s the society I’d want. Push people to work, make it worth it to work. But still have a basic commitment that no free person should get worse conditions than a prisoner. And 5 weeks paid vacation a year.

In the end, what I do now has little benefit to anyone but my customers. I’d certainly like to find something that cures my apathy.

I see the bulk of PILs to be nothing more than Highwaymen who hide behind the fear of litigation. They’re extortionists that know very well that a majority of people will settle strictly out of fear of protracted litigation ($$$$).
This is most true in Medical Malpractice.

His malpractice went up and he decided he’d had enough.