FwdAss said:
So what is your solution? I hear all the complaints about government provide medicine, and how it does not work. Much of it is true though some of it is clearly overblown by people who are loyal to the us system. Yet I fail to hear how we can fix it.
First get out of the mindset that your owed or entitled to ANY of it. The common starting point of 'if X won't GIVE it to me then Y should because it's HARD to do myself.' is symptomatic of the fundamental problem. People genuinely feel ENTITLED.
One specific solution to this particular issue is to start by recognizing being fat, or entertain yourself with drugs or alcohol are personal choices. The vast majority of American do NOT have these problems outside of their free will decisions. You absolutly free to put yourself at risk but NOT to expect a free pass from the consquences. Your not a 'victim' of those consequences your a VOLUNTEER to them.
After coming to grips with urge control there is an additional approach to handle the unforeseeables and I have mentioned it before. First PAY YOUR OWN DOCTOR BILLS AND PRESCRIPTIONS. Too many people think office visits and the resulting prescription ought to be free. NOPE. The office visit where I reside for a Family Practitioner is $55. A prescription for Amoxacillion (a common wide spectrum antibiotic) is another $70. A Specialist I went to charged me $85 for an office visit. Another one my son had to see cost me $129. A pediatrician costs $90. Full coverage health insurance however cost over $1000 per month to cover an entire family in participation with an employers group plan. Some employers simply pay it for you and reduce offered pay to compensate. The costs are much higher for full coverage for an entire family on a self pay consumer plan.
It should be becoming clear it is a great savings to NOT participate. But of course to worry sold to us is 'what if something MAJOR happens' right. Well there ARE critical care coverage policies available. They do NOT cover ANYTHING except CRITICAL care. You pay for your visits, your sprained ankle, etc. but you are covered for injuries requiring hospitalization, cancers, heart attacks, blindness, etc. Genuine critical needs. The cost for for me is about $700 a YEAR. Yes a YEAR. less then ONE MONTH of the cost to contribute to an HMO where the restrictions and choices are narrow and for less then 2 months self pay for the family my ENTIRE family has this coverage.
A bit of self reliance and willingness to pay for things MYSELF and the bases are covered. Go to the Doctor when you need to not just because Jr. coughed twice today.
Enough people get on this track and the rampant taking advantage of people because the sell has been made that your inevitably doomed if someone doesn't get you some full coverage health care will end. The insurance companies have sold the public on the idea they MUST have full coverage health insurance then priced it out of their reach when employers starting offering it to attract the more desirable employees and now the pubic at large BELIEVES they can not do without it and have even come to the point that NOT buying it and paying their OWN bills isn't even part of the thinking.
Remember.......you are entitled to NOTHING you haven't EARNED. Us fortunate enough to be Americans have rights and liberties
others earned for our benefit, but outside of the best right off the bat chance in the world to achieve we are not owed ANYTHING not earned.
I heard once in my youth during the bicentennial (1976) a speech and a piece of it stuck with me to this day and has formed alot of my perspective. Liberty is too often defined as 'freedom'. Ask someone what liberty is and 'freedom' is almost always the answer. Well liberty is NOT freedom. Freedom is unto it's self. Liberty is the OWNERSHIP of one's OWN life. YOU own YOUR life. As owner your responsible for it not anyone else. And that life is finite. It will end at that will be all you get. During your life the amount of finite time you spend working of the behalf of another is compensated What you purchase or barter with that compensation is YOUR property. You have exchanged a portion of your finite life to acquire it and for any person or entity to force or compel it from you without compensation or benefit to give it to another finds your life less valuable then theirs and has made you slave to the beneficiary.
The speaker was more articulate but he brought an understanding of what being an American was and how very very different it was then any other country.
We are somehow now in a condition where not only is that not relayed as public knowledge but where we are actually buying into the 'equal result' mentality. There was a reason socialism and communism and monarchies and dictatorships, et al were seen as so despotic by past, and many many current Americans. Those mindsets are exactly counter to what America MEANS at what the state of being an American is about and what makes America so very different then any other country. It's not arrogance or haughtiness, it's the understanding of what liberty really is.
The socializing of anything is to make the populace subjects of the high government. There are other countries where being a subject is part of the culture and has been for so long that a sense of national pride is taken from thinking of ones self as such. But America is NOT like Europe or Asia or ANY OTHER place. To surrender that for free stuff because getting the things you need for yourself and your children is HARD should be to EXPECT to have a sense of being out of the mainstream and one should expect that sense of embarrassment that has turned to bitterness to hostility.
The saying that a Democracy will fall soon after the people learn that they can use their ballot to put money into their pocket from the Treasury filled from the pockets of others should be remembered. Those of this Republic see it far too much like a Democracy and have now learned that free stuff is a vote away.
We actually have people running for President on the PROMISE of getting people free stuff!!!. AND having demonstrated by dead and word that thet believe America needs to become MORE like the rest of the world!
) said. However, I still want to open up the discussion about this (at the OP's blessing, of course).
mile is around the same 
). I realize of course that is is very unhealthy to be extremely skinny, but much more-so to be extremely obese. 