American Hatred

[Carmine A.]

Your health care sucks in America.
You wouldn't want to get a serious illness and not have insurance. (my friend payed a visit to the ER wuth her child, it cost her $500.00 to have her temperature taken and 2 tylenol)
It's all well if you have the money to pay. At least the UK offers health service to anyone and everyone.

If you or an immediate family member work full-time, your entire family has health insurance.

If you work for yourself, you can buy health insurance.

If you have health insurance, American medical care is second to none.

[open eyed]

the egg

Look through the titles of the threads in this section.

How many threads reflect anti-Americanism and how many reflect American arrogance?

If you stop boasting, then you won't have people making comments against America.

[carmine A.]

the egg

Look through the titles of the threads in this section.

How many threads reflect anti-Americanism and how many reflect American arrogance?

If you stop boasting, then you won't have people making comments against America.

Most of the anti-American threads were started long before I ever knew FF existed.

[Guest]

http://www.epinet.org/content.cfm/bp175

[open eyed]

Boasting doesn't help. Anyway, it's bed time for me.

[Guest]

the egg

Look through the titles of the threads in this section.

How many threads reflect anti-Americanism and how many reflect American arrogance?

If you stop boasting, then you won't have people making comments against America.

Most of the anti-American threads were started long before I ever knew FF existed.

Boasting doesn't help. Anyway, it's bed time for me.

[Carmine A.]

http://www.epinet.org/content.cfm/bp175

Quote from your link:

"More Americans are uninsured because of the continued erosion in employer-provided health insurance, the most prominent form of U.S. health insurance. The number of people without health insurance grew significantly for the fifth year in a row. Nearly 46.6 million Americans were uninsured in 2005—up almost 7 million since 2000. The rate of those without insurance has grown 1.7 percentage points during this period, from 14.2% in 2000 to 15.9% in 2005."

What are the figures for 2007? The number of people employed has increased significantly between 2005 and now.

For argument's sake, let's say 15% don't have health insurance. That's nowhere near a majority of Americans -- it's about 1 out of 6.

Among those who do not have health insurance, the poor receive Medicaid, under which their medical bills are paid by the government. I personally know someone who was hospitalized for more than a month and underwent state of the art, life-saving cancer surgery and follow-up treatment at Memorial Sloan-Kettring Cancer Center in New York City, one of the top two or three cancer facilities in the world -- all paid by Medicaid.

The people who get screwed are those who work for themselves or part-time, have no immediate family members who work full-time, are just over the income level to qualify for Medicaid, but do not make enough money to pay for health insurance (which is not cheap if you have to pay 100% of the premium out of pocket). People in this category are no more than 20% of the 15% who are uninsured. That means about 3% of Americans are in your friend's situation. That's not great, but it's pretty good considering the quality of health care everyone else receives.

[Guest]

[Carmine A.]

:doh:

I guess that was over your head.

[Guest]

[Guest]

:doh:

That's what I get for trying to interact intelligently with an ignorant asshole.

Don't complain like a pussy that Americans are "arrogant" because they deserve to be arrogant when dealing with spineless dullards like you.

[Just an idea]

:doh:

That's what I get for trying to interact intelligently with an ignorant asshole.

Don't complain like a pussy that Americans are "arrogant" because they deserve to be arrogant when dealing with spineless dullards like you.

I think the point was you did interact intelligently.

[Nefarious]

I do not get the quantity of hate-filled posts aimed against Americans on here. Some are really quite offensive.

I understand that many do not agree with the current Administration's policies. Indeed, many of us Americans do not either. But painting "Americans" per se as the enemy is a bit myoptic and oversimplified a view of the global problem today. Painting all or most "Americans" as lard-filled, donut and fast-food, petro-addicted gluttons is truly a lame assesment to then conclude that most of the world's woes are due to America and its culture.

Think for a moment what real power Americans have. We are consumers but what real choice do we have? Go to a shopping mall and it is isles and isle of the same flashing things just packaged with flashier labels. There is the Gillette Ultra razor blade, then the Mach 5 blade, then the Super Glide. All promise you a superior quality, but they all due the same damn thing with negligible difference in effectively. People are inundated with a barrage of options that leave them all wondering if they made the best choice and if this guy or that person got a better product or deal or what have you. Less options is what I say we need.

At work, we work to get paid to keep working to work to simply get through another work week to live--not live to work. How many truly have exciting careers and free to do what they want. You basically live to pay an every increasing rent or home mortage and work to save what little you have left. We live our lives around the hands of time on the clock, having little time to even think or plan our next life move. Few live life so much as it lives it for them. We are of a culture that is fast paced and neurotic and if you asked the common man, he will say that he doesn't like it, but what real choice does he have to survive.

And this is a problem not only that Americans have to face now. Your own UK is now facing increase heart-attack rates, obesity, and diabetes. China, which is now gaining quickly economically has shown similar problems in its large cities. EVen in more traditional lands in Europe that resisted modernity that unquestionably has been lead by the US have this problem. The revelation of just how much modernity is to blame I find most striking in Greece. Thirty years ago, there were no such things as diabetes or stree in the main land as there is now, which today reflects the same status as the major cities of any nation. Yet just a few kilometers away on the isles, live is idyllic and people live well into their 90's (men as well as women) and so healthy that a 30 year old would envy a 60 year old in many cases. What happened? The mainland got "corporatized" and adopted the West's 9-to-5 work habit, including overtime and all the high-stess competition that goes with it. More people crowded in and rents went soring. Now men are dying often before 70 and cancers and heart disease have sky rocketed. The same thing is happening to Italy in some places now and even the French are getting a bit wider in the gut, though they have retain their more even-pace cultural lifestyle (kudos to them!).

The probelm isn't America but the corporate gobalization of the world. It enslaves us to workaholics without a choice in the matter, in which the quality of life is measuredly increase in terms of the medical and technolgical breakthroughs that such progess that modernity naturally brings, but a lowering of the quality of life in terms of the reduction in spiritual fulfillment and happiness and genuine variety.

You wait when those 1 billion plus china men start having what they already naturally want: what the rest of the west like the US has. Wait until they start mass producing a 50 million plus cars each year and those china men start lining up at the pumps. And China is not the only one. Russia, India. These are massive countries like the US in size and with larger populations. If you think that the problems we now face and which are growing are only limited to the US, then you have a poor understanding of human nature.

America might have gotten us started on this road, but it is a curious historical incident. Modernity would have come about eventually and perhaps in another system like fascism one far more regulated. Mass consumerism and the sense of entitlement without stopping to realize we all share one planet and its resources are limited and finite is the real enemy we must all collectively face. This will be the greatest challenge to humanity and one that will undoubtedly become more important in terms of increased wars and population and health effects if not addressed as a collective species--and not seen as one nation versus another or with an Them vs. US mentality.

Brilliant post!

[Big Player, USA]

That is more or less true to me.

[Nefarious]

Spiritual fulfillment and happiness are totally subjective variables, and I'm not aware of any statistics being collected on those issues. Religiosity (which has fluctuated through time) does not necessarily equate to spiritual fulfillment.

There is a sizeable body of work on happiness - google the term along with the name 'Ed Diener'. Actually, he just launched a journal on the topic of happiness. His work is in subjective wellbeing more generally.