This is the Presidential Campaign Thread.

Barack Obama Vs. John McCain.

Edited November 6, 200817 yr by Toups

I can't wait to hear the response to that one!! I think some people don't know how to take smart-ass-ness, Wales.

Look yesterday I learned that there is definitely nothing new under that sun.

I should probably stick to the people who aren't so tightly wound.

Scoot over Wales, it's me today? Poor ol Casey.

I think we'll be sharing the bench today so I'll be glad to make room for you.

And no GGL....you won't be the one today or the next day or the day after that.

Is Casey gone again?

Is Casey gone again?

No. He can't leave because he's the most entertaining person in this thread.

Is someone able to explain the Health Care system in the US to me.

My head just spins when McCain/Palin and Obama/Biden talk about it.

Especially this $5,000.00 thing. I just don't get it.

Here in Australia I have 2 different types of Health cover.

The first one is Medicare, which as an Australian citizen is my right to have. It covers me for visit's to my regular GP and also pay's for part of a hospital stay in conjunction with my private health cover.

My private health cover is a provider of my chosing and the level of my cover is also what I want it to be.

I do pay for both and of course the more cover I get with my private cover the more I pay, but when I do my taxe's I can claim a 30% rebate of the total amount that I have paid to them over the year.

With Medicare I pay 1.5% of what my taxable annual income is after I have taken all taxable deductions away.

But then I think that it may be good here others will think HUH.

Just saw this on Yahoo.

Onus on McCain to turn race around

Here's an excerpt. Sounds like SSDD to me. He's been doing this since Day One.

McCain's advisers say the Arizona senator will ramp up his attacks in the coming days with a tougher, more focused message describing "who Obama is," including questioning his character, "liberal" record and "too risky" proposals in advertising and appearances.

Doesn't that sound interesting. Not.

Is someone able to explain the Health Care system in the US to me.

My head just spins when McCain/Palin and Obama/Biden talk about it.

Especially this $5,000.00 thing. I just don't get it.

Here in Australia I have 2 different types of Health cover.

The first one is Medicare, which as an Australian citizen is my right to have. It covers me for visit's to my regular GP and also pay's for part of a hospital stay in conjunction with my private health cover.

My private health cover is a provider of my chosing and the level of my cover is also what I want it to be.

I do pay for both and of course the more cover I get with my private cover the more I pay, but when I do my taxe's I can claim a 30% rebate of the total amount that I have paid to them over the year.

With Medicare I pay 1.5% of what my taxable annual income is after I have taken all taxable deductions away.

But then I think that it may be good here others will think HUH.

I will do the best I can to explain how health care works in the US today.

Medicare is usually only available to retired persons. And even then, it doesn't cover all of their expenses. Most retirees have to have a "secondary insurance" (private provider) to pay all their health care expenses.

For the poor, there is a Medicare health insurance system that will cover the basics. However, like with Medicare, most people will need secondary insurance to cover all expenses.

Most people in the US get their health insurance through their employer. For instance, the employer will pay X dollars/month for an employee and individual employees will pay X dollars per pay period (usually every 2 weeks) for their insurance. These plans vary depending on your employer. If you decide to take advantage of this "benefit" through your employer, you are limited to the options you have for coverage. For instance, in my company, you can pay a higher monthly fee for increased services and lower GP visits. Or you could pay less per month and have lower coverage and higher co-payments for GP visits. All of these plans have a deductible that must be met per year and a yearly limit on out-of-pocket costs (mine is currently at $4000). So, I will have to meet my deductible ($2000) before the insurance will contribute any money toward my medical expenses. Once that deductible is met, the insurance will pay something like 50% of costs, up to my yearly out of pocket maximum.

This is highly dependent on an individual's employer. Some have better benefits, others less.

If someone chooses not to take health insurance coverage from their employer and decide to get coverage on their own, they will pay upwards of $300/month for their individual plan or $1000 for a family plan - on the open market, without the "benefit" of a group health care program through the employer.

Hope this helps.

Edited October 4, 200817 yr by Greg's GL

Is someone able to explain the Health Care system in the US to me.

My head just spins when McCain/Palin and Obama/Biden talk about it.

Especially this $5,000.00 thing. I just don't get it.

I honestly haven't taken much notice of the health care positions except that I have seen a few ads.

What came up in the debate(s) is that McCain wants to give everyone a $5,000.00 tax credit which would be used to pay for the plan they choose. Their employer would no longer pay anything toward the employees plan. Biden had the estimate of the employer's portion at $12,000.00 which would mean the employee would have to kick in the $7,000.00 difference plus play taxes on the plan. This is what I got from it but I may be wrong on this and I don't recall seeing this in the fact checking that I skimmed through yesterday but I will go back and check that article when I go through the papers tomorrow.

I will do the best I can to explain how health care works in the US today.

Medicare is usually only available to retired persons. And even then, it doesn't cover all of their expenses. Most retirees have to have a "secondary insurance" (private provider) to pay all their health care expenses.

For the poor, there is a Medicare health insurance system that will cover the basics. However, like with Medicare, most people will need secondary insurance to cover all expenses.

Most people in the US get their health insurance through their employer. For instance, the employer will pay X dollars/month for an employee and individual employees will pay X dollars per pay period (usually every 2 weeks) for their insurance. These plans vary depending on your employer. If you decide to take advantage of this "benefit" through your employer, you are limited to the options you have for coverage. For instance, in my company, you can pay a higher monthly fee for increased services and lower GP visits. Or you could pay less per month and have lower coverage and higher co-payments for GP visits. All of these plans have a deductible that must be met per year and a yearly limit on out-of-pocket costs (mine is currently at $4000). So, I will have to meet my deductible ($2000) before the insurance will contribute any money toward my medical expenses. Once that deductible is met, the insurance will pay something like 50% of costs, up to my yearly out of pocket maximum.

This is highly dependent on an individual's employer. Some have better benefits, others less.

If someone chooses not to take health insurance coverage from their employer and decide to get coverage on their own, they will pay upwards of $300/month for their individual plan or $1000 for a family plan - on the open market, without the "benefit" of a group health care program through the employer.

Hope this helps.

Thanks for that Greg, I get it a bit more now.

With my insurance I have out of pocket expense's as well ie I have to pay the first x amount of dollars, but my one also had a reward system against it where for every year you don't use it for anything major you get points and these points can be used towards your out of pocket expenses. I have been with this provider since 1990 and have not had anything major until last year and my out of pocket expense was only $60.00 as the hospital billed both my provider and Medicare for the balance.

Op-Ed Contributor

Everything You Heard Is Wrong

By STEVEN PINKER

Published: October 3, 2008

Boston

SINCE the vice presidential debate on Thursday night, two opposing myths have quickly taken hold about Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska. The first, advanced by her supporters, is that she made it through a gantlet of fire; the second, embraced by her detractors, is that her speaking style betrays her naïveté. Both are wrong.

Let's take the first myth: Governor Palin subjected herself to the most demanding test possible — a televised debate. By surviving, she won. As the front page of The Daily News of New York screamed this morning, "No Baked Alaska."

But as a test of clear thinking, the debate format was far less demanding than a face-to-face interview — the kind Ms. Palin had with Katie Couric of CBS.

Why? Because in a one-on-one conversation, you can't launch into a prepared speech on a topic unrelated to the question. Imagine this exchange — based on the first question that the moderator, Gwen Ifill, gave Ms. Palin and Senator Joe Biden — if it took place in casual conversation over coffee:

LISA How about that bailout? Was this Washington at its best or at its worst?

MICHAEL You know, I think a good barometer here, as we try to figure out has this been a good time or a bad time in America's economy, is go to a kid's soccer game on Saturday, and turn to any parent there on the sideline and ask them, "How are you feeling about the economy?"

Lisa would flee. (This was, in fact, Ms. Palin's response.) In a conversation, you have to build your sentence phrase by phrase, monitoring the reaction of your listener, while aiming for relevance to the question. That's what led Ms. Palin into word salad with Ms. Couric. But when the questioner is 30 feet away on the floor and you're on a stage talking to a camera, which can't interrupt or make faces, you can reel off a script without embarrassment. The concerns raised by the Couric interviews — that Ms. Palin memorizes talking points rather than grasping issues — should not be allayed by her performance in the forgiving format of a debate.

The second myth about Ms. Palin is that her accent is contrived, or that it reveals laziness or ignorance on her part. Certainly, Ms. Palin cranked the folksiness dial to 11 during the debate: she dropped more g's, reverted to "nucular" after being teleprompted during the Republican National Convention to pronounce it "new-clear," and salted her speech with cutesy near profanities like "darn," "heck" and "doggone."

But it would be unfair to question the authenticity of her accent or to use it as a measure of her intellect or sophistication. The dialect is certainly for real. Listeners who hear the Minnewegian sounds of the characters from "Fargo" when they listen to Ms. Palin are on to something: the Matanuska-Susitna Valley in Alaska, where she grew up, was settled by farmers from Minnesota during the Depression.

And no, "nucular" is not a sign of ignorance. This reversal of vowel-like consonants (nuk-l'-yer —> nuk-y'-ler) is common in the world's languages, and is no more illiterate than pronouncing "iron" the way most Americans do, as "eye-yern" instead of "eye-ren."

Nor is Ms. Palin guilty of laziness in "dropping g's," because there is no such thing as "dropping g's." The sounds at the end of "nothing" and "nothin'" are different consonants (linguists call them "eng" and "en"), one produced with the tongue on the gum ridge, the other with the tongue on the soft palate. We just spell the second one with two letters. We all flip between "eng" and "en" in our speech, though lower-class speakers do it more, and everyone does it more when the conversation is more casual. It's the output of an informality dial that all of us, regardless of accent, twiddle as we tune our speech to the circumstances.

And twiddle it she did. Ms. Palin, for instance, pronounced her "ens" more conspicuously in the debate than in the Couric interviews, a part to emphasize that she was one with "everyday American people, Joe Six-Pack, hockey moms across the nation."

The impression fits with the overall theme that Ms. Palin and Senator John McCain have been trying to advance: that expertise is overrated, homespun sincerity is better than sophistication, conviction is more important than analysis.

Being able to see Russia from Alaska, then, means you have an understanding of foreign policy; living in an Arctic state means that you have an understanding of climate change. In Mr. McCain's case, it means, as he wrote last month, understanding technology policy because he flew airplanes in Vietnam and being concerned about the oceans' health because he served in the Navy.

Much could also be written about Senator Joe Biden's gaffes and what they reveal about him. In the meantime, voters judging Ms. Palin's performance should focus on the facile governing philosophy that is symbolized by her speech style, not the red herrings of accent or dialect.

Steven Pinker, a professor of psychology at Harvard, is the author of "The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window Into Human Nature."

Thanks for that Greg, I get it a bit more now.

With my insurance I have out of pocket expense's as well ie I have to pay the first x amount of dollars, but my one also had a reward system against it where for every year you don't use it for anything major you get points and these points can be used towards your out of pocket expenses. I have been with this provider since 1990 and have not had anything major until last year and my out of pocket expense was only $60.00 as the hospital billed both my provider and Medicare for the balance.

Cool. I tried to explain it the best I can, but like I said, our health care system is highly dependent on what your employer is offering to it's employees. I like the idea of a "point system" and being able to carry forward what you don't use one year into the next. It sounds very good to me.

The biggest problem here in the US is that if someone is not employed, they are dependent on the Medicare program which is wholly inadequate, IMHO. Unless someone is in a position to pay a little extra for secondary coverage, it doesn't work on any level.

As Wales explained, health costs as payroll deductions are not currently taxed. The costs are taken pre-tax, but McCain wants to change that wherein you are taxed for your payroll deductions, but he will give you a "tax credit" for the difference. He claims that you can then continue on with your employer's health plan, but will have the option to buy one on the open market if you so choose. I do not like the sound of it at all.

dp

Edited October 5, 200817 yr by Greg's GL

They should include dental coverage in health care plans because I think dental problems sometimes contribute to health problems as well. I don't see why dental and vision is separate from some plans.

Sure..BUT..We have not been attacked in 7 years..so who do you give that credit to? Who do feel is more responsible ..Bush or Clinton for Osama Bin Laden's attack on 9/11? IMO..its Clinton..he never went after him..even after the attack on the USS Cole and the first WTC bombing..

I don't give credit to Clinton, Bush, or any President for being responsible for Bin Laden's attack on 911, just as I give zero credit to Bush or the Democratic Congress for keeping us free of home attack since then. I hate when people pull this crap out of their a*s...

Reminds me of a joke:

Girl: What's that?

Guy: OH, that's Tiger Spray.

Girl: But there aren't any tigers here in NYC.

Guy: Works then, doesn't it?

Op-Ed Contributor

Everything You Heard Is Wrong

By STEVEN PINKER

Published: October 3, 2008

Great article, Wales. This reminds me of when I lived up north for a few years. My friends used to laugh sometimes of my use of the word "fixin" - as in "I'm fixin to go to the store". But what I realized in reading the article is that I am guilty as well of "dropping g's". Remember the movie Big Business when the "city" Bette Midler was talking to the "country" Lily Tomlin and the subject of the "meetin" came up? Hilarious. Anyway...I'm probably tripping...but the point is...everyone is probably guilty of "dropping g's", but for me, Palin came across as waaaay OTT.

They should include dental coverage in health care plans because I think dental problems sometimes contribute to health problems as well. I don't see why dental and vision is separate from some plans.

Good point. My vision and dental are not part of my healthcare plan and that adds about $20 more to my contribution every 2 weeks. Not to mention life insurance and AD&D insurance. Actually, my partner's healthcare plan has separate contributions for cancer coverage as well!