Nope. I know Americans traveling in Britain and elsewhere in Europe who were treated there at no charge. Besides, residency =/= citizenship.

Caveat: The foregoing should not be construed to suggest any agreement with madmax/bigignorant.

I think he was referring to non-emergency medical treatments. I highly doubt as a non citizen I can walk into a hospital in London or Paris and get chemo or a root canal.

What does this have to do with the inherent stupidity of a system based on employers paying for health care?

I mean, a huge number of those illegals HAVE JOBS . . .

Why do you even bother?

Don't forget that a huge number of EMPLOYED people are UNINSURED as well.

It's hard to resist.. I get it. It's not just because of this clown though. It's because you hear this said in reality too and it's so incredibly frustrating to know that there are so many ignorant people in this world. I mean, there are elected officials who spout off this crap and everybody just believes them. They are so out of touch with reality that it's almost impossible to NOT give them a reality check.

The saddest case of "uninsured" I know is my old neighbor. She worked for a company for 29 years, got breast cancer while insured and employed full time. She was off work through her surgeries and chemo and survived (yay!). However, she was off work for longer than the 12 weeks allowed by FMLA. As a result, they cut her to part time which meant.. no health insurance. So, she has had to pay for all her follow up cancer treatments out of pocket. 29 years of loyalty to one company and that's what happened.

People do NOT stop to think that if they get really really sick, they lose their job and, therefore, they lose their health insurance right when they need it the most. This system is so messed up.

Still not necessarily true, though. Spain is currently having quite a problem with "medical tourism" -- people who come from elsewhere in the European Union (like Scandinavia) who'd rather have their surgeries in Spain and their recouperation on the Mediteranian.

It's just amazing how simplistic your thought process is -- no matter what username you use.

The funny thing is that he/she is apparently a supporter of unions (judging from previous posts), and doesn't seem to get how that union support doesn't square with his/her other positions.

Are you saying that the Spanish are looking at the medical care of non citizens as a "problem"? ;)

There's a few countries in South/Central America that promote "medical tourism" as well as here in U.S. for those individuals who are fortunate enough to pay out of pocket for their treatment. It is NOT FREE. Canada sends their citizens to hospitals in the U.S. for certain surgeries, but the Canadian government PAYS the U.S. hospital directly. I'd like to see something that states that these Spanish hospitals receive absolutely nothing from the Scandinavian Government or the individuals that they treat.

The health system I work for has a contract with the Canadian national insurance for bariatric surgery. Of course, we're just across the bridge from Canada.

So glad to see this thread. I worked for Brown via the RNC up in MA, and despite having worked on dozens of other elections this was by far the most exciting one to date.

5 days out I kept saying, "I think we have it. Of course it's MA and I could be completely wrong, but omigosh, I think we have it."

Proudest political moment to date thus far.

Haha, interesting counterpoint, although there are a LOT of Republicans in New England. Even in the Democrat-heavy areas, there are a lot of fiscally-conservative Dems (i.e. for low taxes).

That's awesome that you worked on the campaign. I'll shoot you a PM, I know a couple of people who've worked on his state and US Senate campaigns.

I'm sorry, but where do you get that impression?

Don't just blame the Democrats for not fixing the cost issue. That is a problem that both the Republicans and Democrats can share completely. Neither have given any hint of tackling that issue. Neither will take on the insurance companies. If you really want to take on cost, you actually do have to ration. You can't let people with no medical education come in and demand that they get a CT just because they want one and actually get it. You have to actually look at the cost/benefit analysis and decide should we really be dialyzing the alzheimer patient who hasn't spoken in 5 years and doesn't recognize anyone in her family at a cost of $999 a week. (Yes, I actually took care of this patient.) No one wants to look at these issues because they are difficult issues that don't make for pretty sound bites and don't get votes come election time. And you can't leave it at "it should be the physicians decision" because MANY physicians will order anything their patient asks for or anything they think will keep them from getting sued by their patient, neither of which decreases the cost of medicine. In the end, no one REALLY wants to decrease the cost of medicine, they REALLY want everything done without question without really having to pay for it.

Yep.

NPR: Spain Bears Brunt Of "Health Tourism"

Excerpt:

Like many Swedish snowbirds who flock to Marbella every winter, Hinman and his wife have paid into the Swedish health-care system all their lives. And in theory, Spain should be able to claim the cost of their care from an EU health fund. But the bureaucracy often doesn't work. Health authorities in the Valencia region - another popular destination for Europeans - say they spent $66 million to treat foreigners last year, but only got $10 million in compensation.

So interesting that I can come on this site and find what's basically a very good discussion that reveals a spectrum of thought and opinion - and glad to find it, by the way.

I think that the angry poster - nasty? - has some positions that hold merit. It's just that it's conveyed in a manner that's not conducive to getting folks to agree. Seems to lead to just shouting noise past the other's ear.

Health care provided by the employer was one of the ways a company could gain the loyalty of an experienced work force, back when jobs were plentiful and there was real competition for you and I to join one company over the other.

How many of us are old enough to have heard our parents or even our peers (if we're of a certain age) say that they would leave XYZ but that they couldn't get a job anywhere else that matched the benefits of their current employer?

Can you imagine an auto worker leaving their job to go into another field with an HMO that the rest of the industrialized world is familiar with? I lived in the Detroit 'burbs for a few years and sat in waiting rooms, watched patients check out at the window and pay next to nothing for their care, while I paid a co-pay that was more in line with what everyone else outside of the UAW universe paid.
If you saw that on a regular basis, you'd understand what a "cadillac" plan is.

Now I have private insurance, for which I pay about $8500 a year. I have a $2500 deductible, yet the proposed plan determined that I had a "cadillac" plan for which I'd have to pay taxes. I can assure you, at my age, with private insurance, many of those in my age bracket pay that much for insurance. (My employer gives me about half of that to help with the premiums, and if I raised my deductible to $5000 it would drop my premium by about $1800 a year)

One of the things that always seem to be absent in these comparisons to European plans is that their governments have much higher tax rates than the US, and they don't have the tort situation we have, and moreover, they don't spend the billions and billions we've obligated ourselves to militarily to defend....the Europeans. Sure frees up dollars to spend on other things, like health services.

Now, as to illegals being in the US and some - gasp - having jobs, I have two things -
number one, that's changed a good bit. Otherwise, they have jobs that Americans should have to reduce our 10% unemployment rate. Secondly, if they do have jobs, it doesn't matter. The conversation should stop at the word illegal. Otherwise eliminate the world illegal. Either it means something, or it doesn't. Change the law or observe it.

That's my two cents. Carry on.