We have become a second world country

[gopiscrap]

How can a nation claim to be first rate when it can't even provide medical care for it's citizens..and I don't even mean the poor, under-employed and under-educated..I mean every body from the rich fat cat making 5,000,000 a year to the hbomless person begging on the street corner?

Health care is a universal ABSOLUTE right...why can't this country seem to wrap it's mind around that? Why is it that we have no problem spending trillions on harmful and deadly wars, but can vaccinate our children. Why is that the tobacco industry can recieve billions in subsidies, but the unemployed young woman can't be provided pre-natal care? Why is that we can bail out wall street, but can't afford to put a stethescope to the chest of an under-employed Wal-Mart worker and why is that we can billions and trillions of dollars for military harware but not a dime formedical for the average American? Health care is a moral, absolute right!!!

A life story that I will share..I was born in Germany in 1957...at 3 weeks old, I contracted a case of enchephalitis. A serious disease for anybody, but usually always fatal for an infant. I was lucky, I had topnotch care at the University of Franfurt hospital..spent six months in that hospital and came out with the equivilant of a 300.00 bill.

Fast forward 40 years later...I had cancer twice. First time I was insured..yes it was rough, the bills were high but my family and I were able to squeak through. I had cancer a second time, I had lost my insurance through a job switch...I almost died and the bills were enormous. They totalled almost 200,000.00 I filed for Bankruptcy and that wiped out some, but continuous treatment is very costly. SO I filed again and again in contravention to US Bankruptcy Law. What that did is stop the creditors for a time (usually 4-7 months) and because of that, I got continued treatment. The flip side..I was charged with abuse of the US Bankrutcy Code and spent 7 months in a federal prison because of it. Would I do it again..you bet your ass I would. It saved my life. Should I have had to do that? No fucking way...we're a better country than that!!! We have risen to the needs of great struggle before...we can do better and we must do better. UNIVERSAL SINGLE PAYER NOW!!!!!!!!

[madrchsod]

1. you are correct-we are argentina

[Pangolin2]

9. And we will have to cry for ourselves.

:shrug:

[closeupready]

2. Abuse of the US Bankruptcy Code? I've never heard of that.

What were the claims made against you, if you don't mind my asking.

I agree that you shouldn't have had to do that, and you undoubtedly would not have done that if you hadn't had to. I mean, Catch-22, anyone?

[gopiscrap]

14. I wound up being charged with

contempt of the United States Bankruptcy Court

[Bobbieo]

3. You have just figured this out?

[gopiscrap]

5. I KNEW IT A LONG TIME AGO

When we came to the US in 1972 my mom commented on what an ass backwards country this is sometimes..specially with Nixon in office and the Watergate affair just begiing to brew.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

4. Wow, we became a satellite of the Soviet Union while I wasn't looking?

My how times change.

[area51]

6. As Cessna mentioned upthread,

I believe second-world countries are communist countries. We're a third-world country as we aren't civilized enough to ensure the health of our citizens.

[gopiscrap]

12. OK I concede, you're right!

[Jim Sagle]

7. When did we get promoted?

:shrug:

[ipaint]

8. We are Chile

a few years after milton friedman and his chicago boys started their little experiment on it.



Milton Friedman and the Economics of Empire

The Road from Serfdom

By GREG GRANDIN

..."Setting aside the struggles surrounding religion, race, and sexuality that give American politics its unique edge, it was in Chile where the New Right first executed its agenda of defining democracy in terms of economic freedom and restoring the power of the executive branch. Under Pinochet's firm hand, the country, according to prominent Chicago graduate Cristián Larroulet, became a "pioneer in the world trend toward forms of government based on a free social order." Its privatized pension system, for example, is today held up as a model for the transformation of Social Security, with Bush having received advice from Chilean economist José Piñera, also a Chicago student, on how to do so in 1997. Pinochet "felt he was making history," said Piñera, "he wanted to be ahead of both Reagan and Thatcher."

Friedman too saw himself in the vanguard. "In every generation," he is quoted in his flattering New York Times obituary, which spares just a sentence on his role in Chile, "there's got to be somebody who goes the whole way, and that's why I believe as I do."

And trailblazer both men were, harbinger of a brave and merciless new world. But if Pinochet's revolution was to spread throughout Latin America and elsewhere, it first had to take hold in the United States. And even as the dictator was "torturing people so prices could be free," as Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano once mordantly observed, the insurgency that would come to unite behind Ronald Reagan was gathering steam.

Today, Pinochet is under house arrest for his brand of "shock therapy," and Friedman is dead. But the world they helped usher in survives, in increasingly grotesque form. What was considered extreme in Chile in 1975 has now become the norm in the US today: a society where the market defines the totality of human fulfillment, and a government that tortures in the name of freedom."

http://www.counterpunch.org/grandin11172006.html

[tblue37]

10. Third World. The world was divided into three spheres during the

Cold War. The First World: developed nations. The Second World: the Soviet Bloc and its hangers on. The Third World: underdeveloped nations not strongly aligned politically with either the US Bloc or the Soviet Bloc.

The nations with the worst economic situation for their citizens and the weakest prospects for near-future improvement were Third World countries.

We have a lot in common with them these days, and in fact, within our nation are many, many pockets of communities and populations that practically do exist in Third World economic situations.

[KillCapitalism]

15. 3rd world is right.

I'd say right now this country is just barely in better shape than Somalia or Zimbabwe.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

11. Unfortunately, we're broke because we insist on being a Military Power.

Although, being that power has brought us, and the rest of the world, nothing but grief.

[Lagomorph]

13. There should be a fourth world catagory...

FUBAR

[earth mom]

16. Universal Single Payer NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! nt