Conservapedia: The funniest site in the world
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Germany is extorted by pharmaceuticals, not the other way aroud - our pcies are 50% above the next european country. And we are still better and cheaper than the US system.
Wonderful (‽), that means you're country isn't a complete freeloader/charity case. But still, that's why our pharma costs are so high we're subsidizing you, 50% less than every one else—but you're still passing the costs on to us (It's OK, we're stealing from you less than everyone else is, see we ain't so bad...)
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Yeah but things like X-rays and MRI machines aren't free.
Maybe they engage in daring raids to neighboring countries. And let me tell you: steaming an MRI machine ain't too easy, those fill-up a semi trailer.
But wait, now you have to pay your mercenaries...
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Damn you, laws of physics!
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So you don't pay taxes?
Of course we do. Because it's gone to the government like any other tax, that means we don't perceive it as a direct cost to us. It's merely factored into the cost of living in the country.
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@another_sam said:
Walked out in the morning, cost to me: Nothing.
So you don't pay taxes?
Round these parts, he'd be broadly correct.
State health insurance (9% of gross income) is mandated by statute. Of that 7.75% is deductible from income tax. Your payment of these contributions is absolutely divorced from whether you use medical services - meaning it's a cost regardless of whether you ever go to the doctor. It is, in fact, a cost of having a job, owning a business etc.
State medical services, on the other hand, are mostly provided at no charge to the patient.
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Of course we do. Because it's gone to the government like any other tax, that means we don't perceive it as a direct cost to us. It's merely factored into the cost of living in the country.
Fine; but don't come back and say "oh my healthcare was free" because regardless of your perception, that's a blatant lie and clouds the issue for everybody. Nothing's free.
Especially a problem here in the US where we have hordes of stupid people who think the Government can provide healthcare for 400 million people for free without raising any additional revenue. That's not to say I disagree with socialized medicine, but I want the debate to be honest, not full of misinformation.
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So we must always outright state in future that we are fully aware of the lie we are engaged in, rather than taking the shorter, more colloquially accepted if technically inaccurate form. Good to know.
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So we must always outright state in future that we are fully aware of the lie we are engaged in, rather than taking the shorter, more colloquially accepted if technically inaccurate form.
Yes. Thank you.
But also remember what's "colloquially accepted" in the UK or whatever dystopian nightmare you live in is not in the US. When you say "free healthcare" in the US people genuinely do not know the implications of that.
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Granted, I do sometimes forget that - but if you try to convince people here in the UK that they don't have free healthcare, they will generally not believe you. Even when you explain it to them. Sometimes even when you explain it to them multiple times.
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Maybe that's just because British people are fucking stupid.
If you explain to an American that road maintenance isn't free, it would take like ... 0.6 attempts. (They'd interrupt you and go, "duh, of course I know that!" before you finished the first attempt.)
That is why you're using a computer with an American OS. U S A! U S A!
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I have no disagreement with that in general. I am often amazed at the attitudes and lack of thought displayed by my countrymen, I try not to emulate them, but I find I'm TRWTF all too often.
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BTW if we did implement a single-payer healthcare system, you Euro-weenies would have to start pulling your weight on the pharmaceutical research.
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Also, defense, 'cause we couldn't afford to cover that for y'all.
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So I've heard. I haven't done the figures but on the other hand, it's not like they routinely start out giving out drugs.
I went to my doctor about depression (and other stuff), and drugs was immediately ruled off the table to start with. Figuring out the root cause was considered much more important. Less pharma funding is naturally going to come out when they don't hand out pharma at every opportunity.
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Well and so many Euro-people love homeopathy and other useless bullshit, they probably use fewer genuine drugs.
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That's precisely my point.
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But you did not use the word "bullshit", which I believe is mandatory when talking about homeopathic and other "alternative" medicines.
Old joke: "alternative to what?" "medicines."
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That's just it, though. Sometimes a placebo is actually enough to let peoples' own bodies do what's needed. Someone believes hard enough, and things start to happen anyway.
Then again I found my own tension headaches significantly decreased after going to see a chiropractor... so what the hell would I know?
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Then again I found my own tension headaches significantly decreased after going to see a chiropractor... so what the hell would I know?
Chiropractor claims about headaches and other stuff that actually relates to having bones out of alignment are super. If the guy claims all that other shit...well...it's shit.
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It sucks that you've lost your insurance, but why are you directing your ire at the law and not at the company that threw you on the street to save a few bucks?
You're making assumptions here. Isn't it just as likely that they threw him out on the street because they couldn't afford to keep him? That it was either toss @mott555 on his ass or go bankrupt in a year and toss everyone on their asses?
Disclaimer: My insurance coverage and premiums have pretty much stayed the same before and after passage of the PPACA, so maybe I'm biased.
You're lucky. My premiums went up 25% this year, and thanks to Obama's executive delays, my coverage hasn't changed at all.
That's necessary to prevent adverse selection in the market. It's the same principle as car insurance. And yes, while driving is a privilege, so is using the ER.
Two fucking different things. Driving is a privilege. You can get around without being able to drive, thanks to public transportation, bikes, friends who can drive, etc. But if you have a life threatening emergency, you might not be able to avoid the ER. In fact, if you are in an accident of some sort, and lose consciousness, you may not even have a say in whether you even get treated. You just get taken to the hospital. In that situation, you cannot call using the ER a privilege.
That's what, within an order of magnitude or two of our tax code? Legislation is sausage-making. Every time a big bill goes in, everyone has to cram their riders onto it. That's just the nature of the beast. Legislators are pedantic dickweeds that have to cover every possible angle while pandering to their constituencies and sponsors. I'm sure the ancient Greeks and Romans had similar problems.
The difference here is that the tax code has grown over years of legislation, it wasn't passed in a single bill. No other single bill of this size has ever been passed so quickly. No one had a chance to read the damn thing before the vote.
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Yup. First thing he did was take an X-ray (and provided certification showing he knew how to use it safely) to verify that kind of thing. And I did have some serious misalignment in my lower neck as well as lower back.
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Two fucking different things. Driving is a privilege. You can get around without being able to drive, thanks to public transportation, bikes, friends who can drive, etc.
Also, the insurance that's mandated is to insure other people against things you do. The insurance to cover your own ass is popular but not required by law.
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abysmally high
Abyss: A deep or seemingly bottomless chasm; a hole so deep or a space so great that it cannot be measured.
Poor choice of adjective to emphasize the height of something that is, or is perceived to be, actually high. Deep != high.
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Then again I found my own tension headaches significantly decreased after going to see a chiropractor... so what the hell would I know?
Most Chiropractors are on the level. A good friend of mine is a Chiropractor, and in the course of getting his degree he also had to get a full medical degree-- meaning he's qualified (education-wise) to serve as a General Practitioner.
There's a tiny minority who claim back adjustments can cure cancer. Those people are kooks and wackos and believe me, genuine Chiropractors hate them more than anybody.
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I approve of this pedantic dickweedery. But I do not approve sufficiently to flag it.
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Yup. First thing he did was take an X-ray (and provided certification showing he knew how to use it safely) to verify that kind of thing. And I did have some serious misalignment in my lower neck as well as lower back.
Oh yeah: never trust a Chiropractor who works on you before getting an X-ray done. Either one he did himself, or one requested from your GP.
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BTW if we did implement a single-payer healthcare system, you Euro-weenies would have to start pulling your weight on the pharmaceutical research.
If you want us to do that, just stop putting so much in yourselves. ;-)
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You think Americans might like...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrjN0D2pFbQ
SPEEEEEEEEEED?
(To be fair, that awful song was written in 1979. If it had been written only a few years later, they would have had to find a way to rhyme it with "COCAAAAAAAAAAINE!" which probably would have been too difficult.)
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Most Chiropractors are on the level. A good friend of mine is a Chiropractor, and in the course of getting his degree he also had to get a full medical degree-- meaning he's qualified (education-wise) to serve as a General Practitioner.
There's a tiny minority who claim back adjustments can cure cancer. Those people are kooks and wackos and believe me, genuine Chiropractors hate them more than anybody.
Man, that reminds me of my wife's aunt. She claims that the chiropractor fixed her vision, hemorrhoids, and kidney stones.
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Please try a word a day calendar, it may help:
[abysmal][1] Syllabification: a·bys·mal Pronunciation: /əˈbizməl/ ADJECTIVE
1 INFORMAL Extremely bad; appalling:
the quality of her work is abysmal2 LITERARY Very deep.
Origin
mid 17th century (sense 2): from abysm. Sense 1 dates from the early 19th century.
Derivatives
abysmally
ADVERB
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I disapprove of your insufficient approval.
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Most Chiropractors are on the level. A good friend of mine is a Chiropractor
I'm skeptical. I, too, have (or had; I now live 800 miles away) a friend who is a Chiropractor. His treatments never really solved any problems, AFAICT, and he pushes stuff like "smart water" — bottled water with "extra oxygen."
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I'm skeptical. I, too, have (or had; I now live 800 miles away) a friend who is a Chiropractor. His treatments never really solved any problems, AFAICT, and he pushes stuff like "smart water" — bottled water with "extra oxygen."
Ask what school he went to.
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Ask what school he went to.
According to his LinkedIn profile, Life Chiropractic College West.
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Hm I can run that by my friend when I get a chance. A quick look-see, they look legit. Of course a person can graduate from a legit school and then go batshit the next week, so.
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So it's not that entry-level jobs are being outsourced or automated out of existence, or that the educational system doesn't do a very good job of producing graduates with marketable skills, or that the country was still recovering from a Great Recession?
That strawman's burning quite well.
Of course those things have an effect. Then again, if it weren't so expensive to hire people, you'd see less automation and outsourcing.
If Democrat policies weren't hampering the economy, we wouldn't be in The Summer Of Recovery Part 5. Reagan inherited a crappy economy too, and he tried not to put roadblocks in the way of letting businesses recover.
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nd yes, while driving is a privilege, so is using the ER.
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The first time I went to a chiropractor I had to fill out an enormous questionnaire. Then they X-rayed me. And when we reviewed the X-ray, he told me "You've been in a car accident that you didn't list on the questionnaire, haven't you."
I was in a car accident when I was about 7 years old and hadn't reported it because it had happened nearly 15 years prior, and I didn't think that could have anything to do with the problems I was having.
He also wasn't into the homeopathy and "Chiropractic Cures AIDS and will regrow lost limbs" nonsense.
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Walked out in the morning, cost to me: Nothing. Civilisation, folks. Try it some time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAGqKhSw5Lg Listen closely to 33 seconds in.
The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money.
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QTFMFT
You get an extra letter in there? Google couldn't figure out what you meant. I assume it's something like "triple-quoted for more truth" or something.
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If Democrat policies weren't hampering the economy, we wouldn't be in The Summer Of Recovery Part 5.
It was Republican policies that led to Parts 1 and 2, so I don't know how much better the other side would work out.
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You get an extra letter in there? Google couldn't figure out what you meant. I assume it's something like "triple-quoted for more truth" or something.
I was drunk posting, so you have to add more swearing:
quoted for mother fucking truth
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It was Republican policies that led to Parts 1 and 2, so I don't know how much better the other side would work out.
Help me out here. Who was in control of both house of Congress from 2006 through 2010?
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I was drunk posting, so you have to add more swearing:
quoted for mother fucking truth
For some reason, I was trying not to swear there. No idea why.
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Help me out here. Who was in control of both house of Congress from 2006 through 2010?
It's only Congress's fault when there's a Democratic president.
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Who was in control of both house of Congress from 2006 through 2010?
Well, lets just see...
Republicans were firmly in control from 2003 - 2007 of both House and Senate, starting off this shittastic spiral during the last Bush era just as I said. Then Democrats wrestled away both in '07 and continued the failure that has been our economy through 2011, when Republicans took the House back. So now we have Dems in Senate, Reps in the House, and a big bag of fail all around.
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Yeah, but really the bubble was a longer term phenomenon whose creation goes back decades. There was at least some interest by Republicans in reining in Fannie and Freddie.
Nevertheless, it doesn't excuse doing counterproductive things after the fact. Which is mostly what we did.
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Really though, since 1980 we've had a ~5-10year economic expansion + crash cycle going on. In '91 it crashed, then expansion til '01 when the .com bubble went splat, then expansion til '07 when the housing loans exploded, and now we're back in economic expansion mode again. Things just haven't recovered to the level they were before the implosion - except that once things do pass the previous level, we're ripe for another implosion. I very much doubt that the economy will ever just always go up for eternity.
Interestingly, the implosion years seem to happen a year after a large turnover in government. Depending on who you ask, the economic implosion is either a sign that the new party is full of fail, or that the previous party was full of fail.
LMGTFY - Let Me Google That For You
Party divisions of United States Congresses - Wikipedia
