Unionised medical workers hold banners reading, 'No financial cuts' and 'Public health care system' as they shout slogans during a demonstration against budget cuts and plans to part-privatise bits of their 'cherished' national health service in Madrid, Spain, 9 December 2012.
From The Weekly Standard:
'It’s embarrassing to me to go to places like France and Spain ... and their workers all manage to have health insurance that can’t be taken away.'
- Senator Mary Landrieu
Mary
'South Dakota is a border state' Landrieu is an idiot and, evidently, she
hasn’t been to Spain lately...
Like
‘JustTheFacts,’ Senator
Landrieu seems to believe that health insurance = healthcare. It doesn’t. It
never has. It never will.
Period.
Story.
End of.
Ask
the Spanish. They might have health insurance, but, with the cuts made because
they lived on borrowed money for years and outspent their earnings, that
insurance only covers that which the State allows...and such has been
diminishing.
It’s
like having a gift certificate at an old Soviet Universam store. One could only use it to acquire the
meager items available…when, and if, the shelves weren’t bare.
Fatima Branas, a
spokeswoman for organizers, said privatization
plans were short-sighted because they did not take into account
that savings could be made without selling off services.
"What their
plans really mean is a total change of our health care model and a dismantling
of the system used," she said.
Madrid's government,
under regional president Ignacio Gonzalez, maintains cuts are needed to secure health services during a deep
recession.
Health
care and education are administered by Spain's 17 semi-autonomous regions,
rather than the central government, and each sets its own budgets and spending
plans. Regions account for almost 40 percent of public spending. The Madrid region is
governed by the Popular Party, the center-right alignment also in power
centrally under Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy.
Many regions are
struggling as Spain's economy contracts into a double-dip recession triggered
by a real estate crash in 2008.
Some,
having overspent and being unable to borrow on financial markets to repay their
huge debts, are cutting budgets.
Co-pays
had already been introduced and the protests did not stop regions from
beginning to privatise part of their healthcare systems.
Furthermore,
she obviously doesn't know the state of the French system either...
When Laure Cuccarolo
went into early labor on a recent Sunday night in a village in southern France,
her only choice was to ask the local fire brigade to whisk her to a hospital 30
miles away. A closer one had been shuttered by cost cuts in France’s universal
health system.
Ms. Cuccarolo’s little
girl was born in a firetruck.
France claims it long
ago achieved much of what today’s U.S. health-care overhaul is seeking: It
covers everyone, and provides what supporters say is high-quality care. But
soaring costs are pushing the system into crisis. The result: As Congress
fights over whether America should be more like France, the French government
is trying to borrow U.S. tactics.
In
recent months, France imposed American-style “co-pays” on patients to try to
throttle back prescription-drug costs and forced state hospitals to crack down
on expenses.…
And service cuts —
such as the closure of a maternity ward near Ms. Cuccarolo’s home — are
prompting complaints from patients, doctors and nurses that care is being
rationed. That concern echos worries among some Americans that the U.S. changes
could lead to rationing.
The French system’s
fragile solvency shows how tough it is to provide universal coverage while
controlling costs, the professed twin goals of President Barack Obama’s
[overhaul].
French taxpayers fund
a state health insurer, Assurance Maladie, proportionally to their income, and
patients get treatment even if they can’t pay for it. France spends 11% of
national output on health services, compared with 17% in the U.S., and routinely
outranks the U.S. in infant mortality and some other health measures.
The
problem is that Assurance Maladie has been in the red since 1989. This year the annual
shortfall is expected to reach €9.4 billion ($13.5 billion), and €15 billion in
2010, or roughly 10% of its budget.
Landrieu has voted
for Obamacare, stimulus, and gun control, among other items on the Obama
agenda. She seems remarkably out of step with her constituents.
Maybe,
she should be embarrassed to go to Spain because it has a 25% unemployment rate
(youth unemployment is at 57%). In France, unemployment is 11% and predicted to
continue to rise (youth unemployment in 37%). Louisiana’s unemployment
rate was 6.8% in May.
http://tinyurl.com/m7q48bq
3 comments:
Had to look up Landrieu's quote myself. You might want to include it in the post.
Thanks! I thought that I had posted it.
I'm still unable to wrap my head around the fact that democrats continue to defend 5 years of unnecessary suffering, that the fool in the WH has been inflicting on Americans...apparently, just because he can.
But Landreau is a democrat, so idiocy isn't just expected, it's demanded.
Post a Comment