Why is no one talking about this? US pushing Russia/middle east towards war

paul1598419 said:

We already have national health care. it's called Medicare and if you ask anyone who's on it, you won't hear many complaints. If we could do that for everyone, it would cost much less than privatized insurance. Most people get that and would love to see it happen. It would put health insurance companies out of business, though, and their lobby fights tooth and nail against it.

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Just look at what the Tories are trying to do to the NHS in the UK - and guess why? Oh that's right, them and their friends have an interest in privatized healthcare.

People complain about Medicare all the time, it pays for less and less, just go to a drugstore and listen, you will hear them.

RedCowboy said:

People complain about Medicare all the time, it pays for less and less, just go to a drugstore and listen, you will hear them.

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It pays the same 80% it's always paid. And it is heavily leveraged in favor of the government, so the bill is less than a person would pay who has the same deductible in private health insurance. Sure people complain, but not about Medicare. They complain about the higher costs of everything else associated with it, like the high cost of prescription medications. That is why you hear them complaining in drugstores.

Edit: The NHS in Great Britain has actually tried to privatize some of their responsibilities, to the detriment of the program. Their problem is the GDP there went down in the 2008 and 2009 like it did here and they didn't fund it properly. There is little chance the program will be discarded, but they need to fund it better as it has become a problem there. It's funny you would pick the one European system that has been having funding problems to highlight the so-called disadvantages to a government health system. Last I checked, Benm still loves the system they have in The Netherlands.

Latest Plan to Cut Medicare Drug Payments Leaves Senators Skeptical - The New York Times

RedCowboy said:

Latest Plan to Cut Medicare Drug Payments Leaves Senators Skeptical - The New York Times

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This story only affects the Medicare part B program that always covered prescription drugs at the 80% level, even before there was a part D program. Since there is no way for the government to negotiate prices for medicines in the U.S., unlike every other country in the world, we end up paying much higher prices for the same medications available in Canada and Mexico for far less. This is a breakdown in the same vein as Mylan's overpricing of Epipens. We need to break through the deadlock of prescription drug prices in this country. It is an outrage what the U.S. pays for these drugs.

paul1598419 said:

Last I checked, Benm still loves the system they have in The Netherlands.

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Compared to any system where you could be denied essential care or put deeply into debt because you needed it, it think it's far superior.

There are problems with the system, but we've also seen great benefits. One thing is in the price of medication that is also available generically. The insurance companies put in place a system where they would only reimburse the cheaopest generic of a medcation. This has driven down the price of widely used medications (such as those for high cloresterol or blood pressure) by >99% in a few years.

Generic medication in europe is of excellent quality and monitored to contain the exact same amount of active ingredient compared to brand named medication. Something like a $500 epi pen is not possible here, their list price is 47 euros, about $52.

One aspect of medicine that is problematic here is care for the elderly and chronically ill. Costs are very high and not due to inflated drug prices or anything like that, we just have an agein population that needs to be taken care off.

The US will face this problem too though. Birth rates here are lower than in the US, but all below replacement level. If you are wondering why, a months worth of birth control pills cost under $1 here

Stop press. Fears that Russia may want to hack top government bods Apple watches prompts them to be banned.

Apple Watch banned from UK cabinet meetings over Russian hacking fears

What next, plutonium in our tea? Oh wait we've already blamed the Russians for that over Litvinenko.

/s

I think that was polonium, not plutionium, and he did show signs of radiological poisoning so i'm not sure about that one at all. Not that plutonium would not kill you, but it's so poisonous you might die well before the radiological effects kill you

As for things like phones, watches and such spying on you: There is no need to panic over that. It certainly is possible to do that, but it's also detectable. You can monitor their network traffic and see if they are sending data somewhere when they should not. If they are used as live listening deviced you would expect a stream of a certain bitrate to go somewhere unusual.

A smarter approach would save the audio data and transmit it at some random point later, possibly coinciding with something like opening the browser, facebook, or something else that generates a shitload of data traffic. It could still be analysed though.

When connected via wifi it's very easy to analyse these signals, you need nothing more than some free software and possibly a wifi dongle to set up a wifi network to connect to and monitor.

Something similar can be done for 2G/3G/4G networks though the equipment is more expensive. If it involves UK politicians this stuff is easily available though, just test what is sent using an imsi chatcher or get cooperation from the telco.

trencheel303 said:

Stop press. Fears that Russia may want to hack top government bods Apple watches prompts them to be banned.

Apple Watch banned from UK cabinet meetings over Russian hacking fears

What next, plutonium in our tea? Oh wait we've already blamed the Russians for that over Litvinenko.

/s

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Don't forget, RUSSIA BAD!

And if you're in the UK, SNP BAD!

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