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Post by weebitty on May 17, 2010 1:53:48 GMT -5
www.naturalnews.com/028663_health_care_technology.htmlExplained the way he explains it I don't like this idea at all. And I think it isn't beneath the government to do exactly what he says!! I would love to hear comments from all of you on this subject!! I won't have anything inserted in my blood stream or anywhere else they want to put it!!
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Post by pmbhuntress on May 17, 2010 7:55:40 GMT -5
Its time to move to Mexico or Canada or some other country when they start doing this type of stuff. I run a small forum where we discuss some of these types of things, but this one is new. They will never put anything like that in me. It just isn't right at all.
Hilda
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txflip
Hero in training
Posts: 11
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Post by txflip on May 17, 2010 8:15:58 GMT -5
I come with a different point of view. Now I don't think this should be imposed on everyone and I doubt it would even pass for everyone. (but i won't hold my breath). When I worked as a store manager, this was two years ago and was only 20, I remember there was an older guy causing a scene. (Flipping people off while listening to his music, yelling curse words, etc..) I called the police and they informed me he had schizophrenia and was getting demented and admitted to forgetting his pills. This would ensure that people who ABSOLUTELY need to take their pills, take them for the safety of others. This guy lived near the store and openly admitted to officers that he carried a small gun.
So I think this can be a good thing IF used responsibly and the fine line is not crossed. Also, this could help with the eldery age group as well.
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Post by crimsulent on May 17, 2010 11:03:11 GMT -5
you know, this article is so full of BS it is barely worth responding to
these sorts of articles prey on people's fears and expolit their ignorance.
i want to be clear here, i'm not suggesting any of us here on this board are ignorant, but the article is designed to inflame the prejudices of an ignorant public.
let me address just one aspect of this bogus article
millions and millions of people take medication for a wide range of conditions that the public refers to as mental illness. these conditions may range from mild depression to full blown schizophrenia. they are often treated with medication by psychiatrists. these patients take their medication voluntarily. unless they are institutionalized, or under a specific court order, there is no law that requires them to take medication.
there has been a debate in the healthcare field for generations about whether the mentally ill should be forced to take medication. one one side of the issue is the safety of the general public, on the other side is an individual's right to decide for themselve what goes in their body.
medical ethicists, mental health professionals, along with the patients and families affected by mental illness wrestle with these issues on an ongoing, and case by case basis
other than cases where parents have been specifically ordered by courts to provide medical treatment for children, the government has no authority to compell anyone (outside the military) to take any medication
if a person has cancer they can choose any treatment, or no treatment at all. the government can't do squat if you choose not to undergo chemotherapy. if someone has the kind of diabetes that requires insulin and chooses not to take it, it's their business. the government has no authority to make them take a shot. same with high blood pressure, etc. etc. etc.
the healthcare bill didn't change anything in this regard. the government has no new authority to compell anyone to take any medication. to suggest otherwise, as this article does, is disingenous to the point of being a blatant lie.
there may be some good uses for the new technology, but to try to paint it as a tool for the government to further intrude on our personal freedoms is rediculously inflammatory and a thinly disguised attempt to sabotage the small gains we have realized in the healthcare reform process
in the rare cases where courts have ruled that medication must be administered, i see no harm whatsoever in having a technology that monitors compliance.
consider, for example, a sex offender that has been legally ordered to take medication to chemically castrate them, or to prevent them from reoffending. wouldn't we want the government to make sure they took their meds? or the example txflip mentions where a psychotic person needs medication to function in general society. in extreme cases, where medication has been legally mandated, it's in our best intertest to monitor and enforce compliance.
courts don't go around willy nilly ordering citizens to take medication. when it's done, it's done for a legally valid reason, and is subject to review.
the technology may have applications that benefit us all. as individuals, we each metabolize medications differently. wouldn't you want your personal MD or health care provider to be able to accurately monitor your meds to make sure you are getting the exact amount you need for whatever condition you are being treated for? i know i would. it would probably cut down a lot on misuse of drugs, too.
to link this new technology to people's general mistrust of the government is deceitful.
in my opinion, the author of this article is dispicable. unless he is a moron, and i doubt that very much, he knows full well what he is doing.
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Post by weebitty on May 17, 2010 12:47:45 GMT -5
I see your point but I have also seen where people have had their child taken because they refused chemo or radiation and were seeking other more natural ways to treat their diesease. That is intrustion by the government as well. It should be on a case by case basis only not mandated by any government if you want to be injected then you have that right to do that. I don't however. And if the government would start mandating that then they would have one or more unhappy groups of people I am sure.
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Post by crimsulent on May 17, 2010 14:55:13 GMT -5
I get your point, weebitty. But remember, those cases where people's children have been taken away, without exception, have been ones in which the state has presented a case in court and a judge has ruled on the particular circumstances of that individual case. It IS on a case by case basis.
The government has ABSOLUTELY no power to mandate all people with any given condition must have any particular treatment. Other than requiring people to have health insurance, they can't mandate ANYTHING when it comes to your specific individual health care decisions. They can't make you get a flu shot. They can't mandate you excercise or quit smoking. They can't mandate SQUAT. The healthcare bill didn't give them any new power to mandate you have any sort of medical proceedure. No one at any level of government can force you do take any injection, pill or vitamin without a court order.
In the rare cases where the government is forced to intervene in a individual's healthcare, it is almost always in a case of life and death where denying a child medical care jeopardizes his life. You don't see it very often, but when it does happen it's sensational news and the media typically blows it out of porportion, again, preying on people's sense of powerlessness and general distrust of government.
My point here is the government can not arbitrarily mandate ANYTHING. Everything they do must be based in laws and policies that are crafted by, or under the supervision of, our elected officials. Generally speaking, and with few exceptions I can think of (e.g., some Presidential directives), our laws and policies are subject to review and challenge in our court systems.
Lots of people, maybe even the majority these days, don't have a clue how the government works. They seem to perceive the government as possessing dictatorial powers. They seem to think that if a President gets elected they don't like he or she might suddenly decide on their own to make a new law or abolish an old one.
Consider, if you will, gun control. It's not as if the President could one day say, "OK, I decided there should be no private gun ownership" and order guns to be confiscated. A President simply has no such powers.
The job of the President is executive. He certainly can use his office as a "bully pulpit" (if you aren't familiar with the term, let me point out that the term doesn't imply the person is a bully), and he can advocate for laws, but he cannot simply decree laws like a dictator. He has a lot of influence within his party, but in reality he can't even boss them around very much. Our system of checks and balances are still in place, even if our process as a whole has been compromised by corporate influence.
It's important to understand we have a constitutionally limited government. Congress and the President only have the powers we have given them through the Constitution and laws passed by our elected representatives.
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Post by weebitty on May 17, 2010 18:05:04 GMT -5
I understand how government is suppose to work but often doesn't. Most of us were against the bail out but they did it anyway. Most of us have been against taxes but they keep putting them on us and often without our consent. There are alot of things we arn't getting to vote on and even though we object to them as shown in the polls it seems the government knows what is "best for us" . You say the government can't mandate but try to get your child in school without vacinations. That is one hard fight. You can stand on religious beliefs but that is becoming an out for those that don't have any other way of getting around it. There are several instances but you get the idea. And I don't have any qualms about telling anyone I don't trust our government. As the bumper sticket that is becoming popular says I love my country but it is the government I am afraid of. As you stated our system of checks and balances have been compromised by corporate influence. In other words follow the money. Is that a government we want??
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Post by weebitty on May 17, 2010 18:08:33 GMT -5
and just as an after thought remember the H1N1 flu shot. That almost became mandatory!! If you want the general public to get behind something create a situation so that the government has to come in and be the hero. It creates the panic that they want. Turned out to be a hoax.
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Post by jow32 on May 17, 2010 21:45:23 GMT -5
The big problem I have with these types of Black Helicopter conspiricies is that there is no way the Big Bad Government could pull this off. Lets say that 100 million Americans are on some type of meds-its probably more. How many Government employees would it take to monitor all these people? The case loads for Probation Officers across the U.S. are over whelming-and they are trying to keep track of really bad people. There must be tens of thousands of P.O.s trying to watch millions of offenders-and they just can't do it. Multiply this by a factor of ten or twenty to make sure Mrs. Jones on Elm Street is taking her heart meds-ridiculous! Really, no one in D.C. cares if Mrs. Jones is taking the right amount of vitamin C. Crap-they can't find the guys who really matter, like Osama or the next nut who wants to blow up Times Square. Trust me, I have no love for the Government or politicians, but I try to keep my fears in reality. There are no Black Helicopters following you and no one is listening to your cell phone calls! Face it, most of us are very boring and really don't matter in the grand scheme of what the Government is concerned with-just pay your dang taxes and you will be fine.
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Post by crimsulent on May 18, 2010 1:01:39 GMT -5
couldn't have said it better, jow. good job.
and, weebitty, i have to admit you are right about vaccinations and the H1N1 thing almost being mandatory
plus i share your distrust of the government and i agree we are not getting the government we want. as you say, the way it is supposed to work, and what's actually happening, are two different things.
and although i agree that taxes are widely viewed as unpopular, and they're possibly excessive on people like you and me, they are levied on us by our elected representatives, and we give them the authority to tax us. super rich people and corporations can get special exemptions and deals that lessen their tax burden. but someone has to pay, and we get stuck making up what they dodge.
i'm just about as disgusted with the fools in washington as you are, but i know governing the (probably) most advanced nation in the historyof the world, especially one with such a diverse population and unique challenges as we have, it impossibly complicated. add corporate money in to the picture and it just gets all the more complicated, and less responsive to the needs of average folks like us
but the government isn't an alien force parasitically living off the taxpaying public. the government is us, representatives of you and me, , its authority is granted by We The People.
in cases of Public Health (Childhood vaccinations, H1N1) sometimes the government has to make what seem like heavy-handed decisions to protect the general population. but those polices aren't decided on in a vucumn. they are developed by elected government officials in tandem with the scientific community. those policies reflect the best science we have, sometimes they can be wrong or too far-reaching, in those cases they are always challengeable in a court of law.
in our Constitutional Republic, we have a reprentative democracy. democracy doesn't guarantee anyone will ever be totally happy with what government does. in fact, it sort of guarantees that they usually will be very unhappy with whatever the government does. you can't please all the people all the time. the problem i see is that Washington doesn't seem much worried about pleasing us at all. they're too busy giving away the store to the corporate lobbyists.
i'm not of a mind to throw the baby out with the bathwater. i say we need to organize and force the government to be more responsive to your needs. i'm interested in ideas that can help make that happen.
distrusting the govermment is a start, but not much more. that's just a natural reaction to the dysfuncton and obvious corruptive influence of corporations. we need to move past distrust and getting even by voting out incumbants. we need to pressure our elected represetatives to do OUR busineess, not that of corporate lobbyings.
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Post by havingfunnow on May 18, 2010 9:28:47 GMT -5
Oh, the members of Congress want to stay in it. Besides all the perks and donations they get from the lobbyists, they strive for the 20 year mark. Why? Because they will then get the Congressional retirement package, which is 80% of their salaries for their top three earning years, and the average Congressional salary is now $174,000/yr. Then they take that and go to work for the companies that lobbied them, and they in turn lobbied for. Corruption? Maybe, just a little bit. However, why don't they get voted out of office - because money talks and buys airtime. The masses tend to vote for names they are familiar with, which has been proven time and time again. As far as being spied upon. I feel that there are those who need to be, and those who don't shouldn't worry.
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Post by jow32 on May 18, 2010 13:34:27 GMT -5
I'm at the point now where I will give a politician 12 years in office-2 terms for senate, 6 for the House and the Pres only gets 8. 12 years is long enough to stick your snout into the tax-payers trough and start licking up the money (not to mention setting your family and friends up with sweet jobs!) If a politician says they need more time to get the job done, they are obviously ineffective and need to leave. My congressman is a pretty good guy and I agree with most of what he has done over the years, but he has been in office for about 20 years. I will vote for a bi-sexua1, coke addicted monkey before I vote for him again this year. Thats just how I am rolling this year ;D
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Post by weebitty on May 18, 2010 14:00:30 GMT -5
Yes part of the solution is voting them all out and cleaning house. Unfortunately I think Louise is right familiar usually gets voted back in. But we can't keep doing that. They are running the country not us. I don't know how to solve the problem of corruption in the government which has become rampant. Do I believe in conspiracy theorys yes some of them I do. Do you know who is the major stock holder in Tamaflu??? Rumsfield. These politicians that are using our money for their mistresses and the politicans who are taking vacations and gifts even though they aren't suppose to be are finding ways to get around it. Yes vote them all out. Lets see if it happens though. Tea parties are getting stronger thank goodness I just hope they don;t go off on tangents that do no good.
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txflip
Hero in training
Posts: 11
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Post by txflip on May 18, 2010 14:11:47 GMT -5
I agree weebitty, especially with the H1N1 vaccine and the sickness all together. They created a mass hysteria over something that wasn't THAT bad and tried recently over the winter to scare everyone into getting the vaccine. It's still new and I don't like jumping into things that I have no clue what's in there nor do I like things being injected into me w/out knowing the lasting effects.
I may get attacked for this, but I voted for Obama. In my honest opinion, I thought he was the better candidate out of the two. Frankly, from what I've seen, Obama needs to stop inviting celebrities, going on talk shows, and stop paying attention to the Hollywood scene and do his job a lot better. Yet, I do not regret my vote as I do not ever want to see Palin near the White House.
Also, during the Bush administration Bush and McCain's family profited heavily from us declaring war on Iraq.
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Post by crimsulent on May 18, 2010 15:58:51 GMT -5
As i said above, I'm as disgusted as the next person with the job Congress is doing on a number of issues. Even so, I'm not sure changing every single one would necessarily make a difference. In a way, it's like changing actors in the middle of making a bad movie. Even with better actors, it's still a bad movie. I have mixed feelings about term limits and the vote them all out approach. I'm sure the job is a lot more difficult than it looks. Once elected to office, it takes a new Congressperson or Senator time to get up to speed on their particular committee assignments. I'm guessing, like most jobs, it takes a fair amount of time after you learn the basics of the job to get good at it. Then just four or five years later we fire them? And this is because we assume the next person after that will be better? What if they're a lot worse? We'd be saying, dang!, we fired that other guy just because he had the job 8 years. He was good, but man, he had the dang job for 8 years! <--- wink! One thing that bugs me about term limits is we have always had them. They're called elections. Every term has a limit. People only return to office because the people in their area voted for them. Isn't that the system? You get to vote for who you want to represent you. How can someone else tell you who you can or can not vote for? I must be missing something here. If we are a free people and have fair elections, then shouldn't people be able to vote for the candidate of their choosing as many times as they want? People that study this issue report that people are generally happy with their own representatives, but think other people's representatives stink. But what right do I have to tell you that you can't vote for your guy? I just don't get that. Then there is the point that lobbyists don't have term limits. Often they are paid way more than politicians and it's possible they'd have a much easier time influencing a newly arrived politician than one that's been in office a few terms. Now, on the other hand, there are plenty of arguments for term limits. Like jow said, maybe it's a sign you are incompetent if you've been there 3 or 4 terms and still not getting the job done. And maybe some of them really have no intention of doing much of anything, preferring to spin their wheels, waiting to qualify for a fat pension, sort of as louis commented. I think it's entirely possible we are massively overpaying these people. I know that pension deal louis mentioned is rediculous! How in the world can we justify that? (But on the other hand, if we pay them less they're even more susceptible to bribes and kickbacks from lobbyists and other crooks) I know some people hate politicians, all politicians. Some people denigrate public service. I don't. I respect the government although I don't fully trust it. It's not going away anything soon, so we need to find a way to make government work. I don't think firing everyone is a way to make it work better. You still have the same problems, but with less experienced people to figure out how to solve them.
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