Americans think of medical insurance as end-to-end coverage because that is how the medical insurance industry markets itself to consumers. Blame your private market.

The private market didn't create that dynamic. That particular brand of odiousness exists because of Ted Kennedy's abominable HMO bill in 1973. Before that point, insurance very much WAS treated more like auto insurance. But in 1973, any company with more than 25 employees was REQUIRED to offer employees a federally certified HMO. The government of course forced companies to offer HMOs that were 'like' the federal one - which was a plan that covered (ta da!) all medical expenses and not just catastrophic ones.

You may try to pretend otherwise - but the current insurance environment is not the result of a private-sector initiative. No sane actuary or statistician would in a million years try to run health care that way. The improper perception that consumers have today of health insurance is a result of a government spawned intrusion into what was previously a perfectly functional and affordable private market.

But I bet you blame the government or the consumer for both issues.

Like most of these kinds of things I have a tri-pronged 'blame' that I assign. #1 (most important) is government for creating the legislative environment. #2. Private industries for not being more restrained and sensible. #3. Citizens who stupidly, or selfishly try to game the system created by government & industry. NONE of these issues would exist if the government kept its big bazoo out of everyone's business.

It makes sense to have end to end coverage because in the long run routine checks prevent problems from exacerbating, and thus becoming more expensive.

Bull. Doctor visits are not 'preventative' care. Doctors are extremely reluctant to 'prescribe' common sense lifestyles. Believe me - I know. Doctors don't order you to stop smoking, drinking, over-eating, or being a couch potato. They don't 'prescribe' that you eat vegetables and exercise 6 hours a week. They don't do checkups to test how many push ups you can do or do blood tests to see how much junk food you eat.

What keeps people healthy is NOT visits to the doctor. Good health is a result of common sense lifestyle choices. Good eating, regular exercise, and proper ergonomics. None of those require a doctor.

I don't want an epidemic to spread because some nativist barred a coughing migrant worker from a clinic.

How about you DEPORT 'em so they can't infect you in the first place?

Americans think of medical insurance as end-to-end coverage because that is how the medical insurance industry markets itself to consumers. Blame your private market.

Illegals are here because of the private market as well, and their lobbyists. The laws aren't enforced because they would hurt the bottom line of the agri-industry, and disrupt the whole food supply chain.

But I bet you blame the government or the consumer for both issues.

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It makes sense to have end to end coverage because in the long run routine checks prevent problems from exacerbating, and thus becoming more expensive.

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The nativists in our country totally lose it if they think a chicano (citizen or not) will get any benefit, even if having such a program would ultimately help the nativist.

With swine flu and all the other recent bugs floating around, it's rather short sighted to refuse health care to mexican nationals. I don't want an epidemic to spread because some nativist barred a coughing migrant worker from a clinic.

Illegals...

This isn't a question of 'abusing migrant workers' as you seem to believe. This is simply a matter of the US enforcing its own rule of law. Illegals should be deported the second they are identified. No questions. No excuses. Let the chips fall where they may afterwards. You seem to be basing all your arguments on what 'civilized' countries do. Therefore, since all other civilized countries enforce strict border controls and have strict laws that deport illegals - then you should be in favor of the US enforcing its own border laws, should you not?

I don't have health insurance, have not for about a decade, I don't have the cash flow to pay the obscene costs, and even if I did, I don't trust that I would get anything for all that money.

You're wrong when you say you can't afford insurance. You are paying for car insurance right now. Therefore you can also buy catastrophic medical care coverage. It's cheap - less than $60 a month. Anyone can afford that. Start being part of the solution instead of part of the problem and fit that cost in your budget right now.

Your (and everyone else's) problem is you mentally treat medical insurance in a completely different way than you treat any other kind of insurance. Life insurance, car insurance - you don't expect them to pay for routine, day-to-day crap. You accept that those insurance policies kick in only for extreme emergency situations. But for some bizarre reason you don't think that way with medical insurance. You want medical insurance to cover stubbed toes, routine check ups, broken fingers, aspirin, and anything/everything even vaguely 'medical' in nature.

Well it is time you grew up and stopped treating medical insurance like it is some sort of special exception to the insurance biz. It is an emergency plan to be used only in dire need. Basic day to day medical expenses should be paid out of your own pocket. Cowboy up, pilgrim. Buy a catastrophic medical plan today, and stop thinking that medical insurance is some sort of special dispensation.

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker: There is more than enough evidence and historical precedent to lend credence to the accusation that the bill will end up covering illegals as sure as the sun rises.

It certainly appears that the bill will apply to illegals, meaning that they will be required to pay for insurance. And they will continue to pay more for more services they can't collect while propping up our economy with cheap labor. Anybody who demonizes migrant workers is either doing so to exploit them, or is completely misinformed. Stop whining about any crumbs they may get, you eat because they work the fields, say thank you.

The bills under consideration do not provide health care to anybody, it's not single payer universal plan, like civilized nations have, it's simply a mandate to pay for insurance while creating a public option which people will also have to pay for.

I don't have health insurance, have not for about a decade, I don't have the cash flow to pay the obscene costs, and even if I did, I don't trust that I would get anything for all that money. The only reason the health insurance industry has a market at all is that they sell to businesses. If they sold to people directly, the customers would look at most policies and realize they have a better than even chance of not paying when it was needed, no sane person would bite.

I have car insurance, it's legally mandated, the coverage is meaningful, and the cost is reasonable, and it's not the free market that made any of those things happen.

Call it what it is: an invasion.

The Mexican invaders of today are not the same as those of 30 years ago.

The illegals of yesteryear were mostly migrant workers who shuttled back and forth over the border depending on growing seasons. Assimilation wasn't a big deal because they weren't staying long. Also back then, government actually enforced the parts of the Constitution that addressed national borders.

The modern invader is here to stay, attracted by inexplicable "anchor baby" laws and a large welfare state.

The new invader has a chip on his shoulder, as "certain elements" in our society constantly push "multiculturalism": anti-White, anti-American programming that encourages hatred of assimilation and Western values while celebrating victimhood. Mexican land was 'stolen', you see. California is really Aztlan, etc.

Learning English for the illegal has been made equivalent to shaming Blacks who speak correct English and try to make something of themselves as "acting White."

Companies hiring illegals should be burned to the ground. I'm 100% with choggie. Both sides of the aisle benefit from pandering and the price of their treason will likely be war. All it will take is a single border state telling the feds to go frack themselves, building a real wall, shooting to kill and deportation.

Who stands to profit from using people to react in a hind-brained fashion against others.....migrants vs.poor, black on black, not their fault, really....
Not the whites fault for colonization, it is the fault of anyone who accepts the current world currency model, the centralization of power through economic, political, and thought manipulation, to achieve the goal of one planet, one government.
Food, education, economy.....all used as tools to herd and create more fools...Look to the so-called 1st world countries for your useful fucking idiots....

This sickens me to no end, their grandfathers fought the Nazi ideals that so many have now picked up again.

By the way this is not a exportation of US values, its a indication of the problems inherent of capitalism and the global economy. Cheap migrant labor is a reality of our world now, blaming the loss of jobs and a reduction of standard of living is the easiest scapegoat to acquire political power.

This is the same reason Hitler used it.

Excellent post.

Anybody who has a "deport them" position needs to cop to the fact that "being hard" on migrants is not about keeping them out, it's about forcing them to work for less, and under worse conditions.

Nobody who expects to eat can afford to kick im/migrants out of the US.

Any citizen want to work for $5 a day?.. What no takers? Okay..Who wants to pay 5 times as much for food?...Strange, nobody seems to want that either.

Some people from south of the boarder come here to live permanently, but most do not, they are supporting families in their home country. We benefit substantially from the exchange rate every time we go to the supermarket.

Since nobody here is boycotting non-us goods (got a computer?) it seems that nobody really thinks that paying people shit and taking advantage of the exchange rate is fundamentally evil. So what's the deal with the "immigration" issue? Just don't like to SEE the brown people that you oppress? Don't want to accept the fact that our society fails to display basic human decency, even on it's own soil, while you simultaneously reap the benefit?

Im/migrants will not stop, any laws to "dissuade" them will simply be used as tools to oppress them, at times even going as far as enslavement (that's not rhetoric, google "Florida tomato slavery").

choggie:

These immigrants assimilate just as well as our ancestors did. My great-grandparents spoke German till the day they died. Most immigrants speak primarily their mother tongue, and act according to their childhood cultural norms, that's what humans do. Racism in the US has always used this argument. "They won't assimilate" was used against the Irish and Germans, before it was decided that they are "white", it's simply revisionist history, and has no resemblance to reality.

I used to do plumbing in San Diego, and I hired migrant workers several times as laborers and helpers for big jobs. Always busted ass, and always knew what they were doing. With all the coverage that Home Depot got (in Cali?) by trying to ban migrant workers from the fronts of their stores a few years back, I can see how easy it would be to immediately associate "workers from in front Home Depot" with a particular nationality, although you certainly didn't mean to do that. Still, funny-ass video.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Marinara makes a good point as well:

The video lets the migrant leaders do all the talking (shocking) and gets the point across in a moderate manner.

I'm left with no doubt that the makers of the video are trying to incite racism - but is it racism if the actual content comes from activists themselves? Maybe.

Although the video seems racist, it's smart enough not to be.

The video lets the migrant leaders do all the talking (shocking) and gets the point across in a moderate manner.

When is enforcing laws called racism?
For instance the world bank, who enforces debt on the poorest countries of the world. Do their policies of austerity affect Africans only "as a race?"

Never said Lou Dobbs is my "one source" of information, Farhad, I have mutliple sources of information including everyday life experience. Truth be known--I just found out about Lou Dobbs yesterday as me and my lady friend were watching 60 minutes. Needless to say, I was inspired to know that someone in the public eye is speaking out. This is a man of integrity. His wife and in laws are Mexican. He actually worked in the fields with legal migrant workers when he was younger and he and his mexican wife and in laws find the illegal immigrants demands to be abhorrent and wrong. LEGAL MEXICAN CITIZENS SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF THEIR ILLEGAL MEXICAN BRETHREN. These illegal assholes are going to ruin it for all of us. Stop asking for hand outs!
I do recommend that everyone reading this please check out CNN.COM for Lou Dobbs--he is a great source of truthfull information unlike other journalists on the major networks who have no spine or courage to speak about illegal immigration and it's destructive affects.
Tell me about your sources of information, Farhad. Is it the Congressional Mexican Caucus?--- who are so imbecilic that they judge anyone to be "racist towards Mexicans" if they do not eat mexican food! It might give me a glimmer as to why your so dense. Why can'y you admit that illegal immigration is wrong? Let's find out the truth, are you an illegal immigrant? Do you live in America? Where do you live? Read Lou Dobbs.

Dirty Dirt, Lou Dobbs can teach you much. You must read everthing by Lou Dobbs at CNN.COM. You are lost. Maybe you can straighten your crooked ass out before it's too late! Don't talk to me until you have read everything by Lou Dobbs at CNN. You are dangerously racist. You used the term "half breed" before towards me in a derogatory way. Do you hate those of us who are who have genetics from other ethnic groups other than pure bred Mexican's as you apparently are?
Do you live in America? What do you do for a living? I'm curious. Why did you become a racist? There is professional help that I can direct you to.

Ahem.

Let me break it down for you in ways you can understand. This goverment and this administration supports free market economies that support the free movement of labor. This is the administrations stance and it's the stance of both the Federal Reserve and Wall Street. This means that NO deportation of illegal immigrants will occur any time soon. Sorry, but American business interests outweigh the dissent voices of xenophobic people like you. Conservatives have noticed that new citizens even those who were previously considered illegal usually have conservative views in politics. So they are not willing to attack the issue vehemently. Bush fought to capture the immigrant vote.

Professor of Law Francine Lipman writes in a 2006 paper in the peer-reviewed journal Tax Lawyer of the American Bar Association Section of Taxation that the belief that undocumented migrants are exploiting the US economy and that they cost more in services than they contribute to the economy is "undeniably false". Lipman asserts that "undocumented immigrants actually contribute more to public coffers in taxes than they cost in social services" and "contribute to the U.S. economy through their investments and consumption of goods and services; filling of millions of essential worker positions resulting in subsidiary job creation, increased productivity and lower costs of goods and services; and unrequited contributions to Social Security, Medicare and unemployment insurance programs."

Furthermore regarding your issue with zee evil terrorists invading our shores via Mexico, it's best to know that:

Vice Chair Lee Hamilton and Commissioner Slade Gorton of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States has stated that of the nineteen hijackers of the September 11, 2001 attacks, "Two hijackers could have been denied admission at the port on entry based on violations of immigration rules governing terms of admission. Three hijackers violated the immigration laws after entry, one by failing to enroll in school as declared, and two by overstays of their terms of admission." Six months after the attack, their flight schools received posthumous visa approval letters from the INS for two of the hijackers, which made it clear that actual approval of the visas took place before the September 11 attacks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_immigration_to_the_United_States#Impact

But don't delude yourself thinking that is something its not.

BlueGW, I'm curious, what do you think will happen to the price of food in this land if all illegal immigrants in this country are deported? Do you have any concept of just how dependent the produce industry is upon cheap, seasonal migrant labor? Salinas, Bakersfield, Oxnard, Fresno...these are all huge places in terms of production, and are all filled with illegal immigrants working jobs that few Americans will work for pay that few Americans will accept.

Prices are already higher due to the harsh, late-season freezes. If we were to suddenly gut the produce industry of its cheap labor, what do you think happens to the price of your food? Your juice? Your lawn. We haven't even mentioned the problems such a clear-out would have on the supply chain. All kinds of jobs are filled by people in this country illegally who are working for sub-par wages because the American public would rather have Every Day Low Prices and gripe about immigration than acknowledge they are dependent upon illegal labor and actually do something about it.

If you want to fix this, go after the corporations who make it attractive to come here by employing illegals. Remove the incentive. When you're done with that, reform the immigration policies that make legal immigration a tortuously long process. Your prices will rise, but without a reason to hop the fence, you'll have fewer illegals takin yer jorbs.

The name of this 'theme park ride'? Migrant Mountain.
It's as if this clip was produced specifically to go in the WTF Collective.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/6390297.stm

http://travel.nytimes.com/2007/02/04/travel/04HeadsUp.html?8dpc