Thread: The imitaors!

Actually the train service runs pretty well, with > 90% of all trains arriving with less than 5 min delay, and good connecting schedules between different lines.

But yeah, some others are a pain. Our army's -speciality divisions like e.g. para and navy excepted- is a joke.
The paras have actual mission experience, and the navy is lauded for its minesweepers but other than that it would make you weep.
Physical fitness of most troops is nothing to speak of (not my words. I was told by a training instructor), some of our equipment dates back to the 50s, the army top used to be as corrupt as anything, and atm we have so few bullets that each soldier can fire exactly 4 shots between now and the end of the year
At one point they had a field excercise, and they had to yell 'BANG' because there simply were no actual bullets or blanks...

Well perhaps the state of affairs speaks to the needs of Belgium. Truthfully there isn't much need for a strong army in Belgium - through the first world war Belgium's independence was guaranteed by Great Britain. And frankly there isn't much a country like Belgium could do if menaced militarily by it's surrounding much much larger neighbours.

Spend it where it's needed.

-Though yelling "BANG" is pretty hilarious - I'd like to see video footage of that engagement.

That is indeed part of why we don't have a large DoD budget.
If either the UK, France, or Germany (we could hold off the Netherlands probably ) would pounce, there would be nothing we could do anyway.

Originally Posted by Bruno

The government needs money to run the country, so through some means, they have to get it.
A proportional income tax is probably the fairest solution, because everyone has to pay a given % of their income.

Quite possibly true. If we actually had a flat tax where people did pay a percentage of their income instead of a graduated tax where the lower tier pays a lower percent ~15% up to the highest tier which pays >35% I'd consider the system fair. To be fair you would also have to do away with the estate tax though. I'd also be interested in seeing how the math on a graduated consumption tax would work out could be an interesting exercise.

Originally Posted by Bruno

I don't mind the government running our medical system and welfare. For one thing, they're good at it.

And this is why we don't want the government in our health care. They have proven themselves to be monumentally incredibly totally completely bad at running the welfare system. We really don't want them to have a shot at another area of society.

Originally Posted by Bruno

Depends on how you enter the hospital.
If you come through ER and it IS an emergency, you get an MRI as soon as they can move you to the MRI room. same for Xray and other tests. When my wife twisted her ankle in a sports accident, we went to the ER (on a sunday afternoon) and they did the Xrays within the hour.

A couple of years ago she had a pain in her lower abdomen, which the doctor thought needed attention, so he sent her to a specialist. He saw her the next week, did some tests, and ordered a scheduled (i.e. non emergency) MRI which took 10 days. It could have been done sooner, but the appointment would have been at a less convenient timeslot.

If you need emergency surgery, you get it as soon as they can get the right surgeon scrubbed and ready. If he is on site it's a matter of 1 to 2 hours max. If they have to page one (e.g. sunday night) it can take a couple of hours, but for life threatening emergencies there is always an ER surgeon on site.

Now, if you need non-critical surgery, it gets scheduled by the specialist, and you get surgery somewhere within 1-3 weeks.

The medical experiences here sound just like the ones I have always had. It's interesting that the people you hear complaining the most are most often the ones who use the emergency room as their family doctor. I think the medical horror stories you hear are also most often limited to the inner city emergency rooms here the average patient is not there for an emergency reason.

My wife also injured her ankle a couple of weeks ago we were in and out of the ER in less than two hours with half that spent getting IV antibiotics into her. The whole time we were there not a single patient was left in the waiting room longer than five minutes.

Originally Posted by Wildtim

...

My wife also injured her ankle a couple of weeks ago we were in and out of the ER in less than two hours with half that spent getting IV antibiotics into her. The whole time we were there not a single patient was left in the waiting room longer than five minutes.

That's a good point, but it is only half the story. The other half involves millions of Americans who can't afford any kind of health care or health insurance. Belgium's health care is universal - so there is a trade off.

Originally Posted by Pudu

That's a good point, but it is only half the story. The other half involves millions of Americans who can't afford any kind of health care or health insurance. Belgium's health care is universal - so there is a trade off.

it's universal at the expense of the successful. I'm reminded of a movie, here, called Sabrina. apart from the romance crap, it's about 2 brothers... one is very good at his job and makes a lot of money for the family (linus). the other is a freeloading idiot(david). at one point in the movie, they have a conversation:

linus: I pay for your life, David. My life makes your life possible.
david: [offended by this] I resent that!
linus: [infuriated] SO DO I!

that pretty much says it all. I know it's not a perfect analogy, but I think you get the picture. I don't think it's ever ok to involuntarily be forced to support people that are not your responsibility. in every single other animal on the planet, when a creature sucks at life, it gets EATEN, and nourishes the better animals. this leads to a strengthening of the species by removing crappy genes from the pool. I've never understood why the human animal thinks he's above all that.

So Bruno, are you a leech or are you being taken advantage of, and how do you feel about it?


Edit: Sorry, that came out sounding more smart-assy than I intended.

Originally Posted by Pudu

That's a good point, but it is only half the story. The other half involves millions of Americans who can't afford any kind of health care or health insurance. Belgium's health care is universal - so there is a trade off.

A hospital ER can not turn away a patient for any reason. Thats the law, ability to pay doesn't enter into your ability to get care. You may decide to forgo some care at some point in order to hang onto some of your money, but that is a personal decision, and for those that had no money to begin with, its an easy one. Who it really becomes hard on is the hospitals who never get paid for the services rendered. This is why the cost of hospitalization is so high, because they spread out their costs over, not the number of patients they treat, but the number of patients who pay.

I think many people are under the assumption that American health care is pay or die, and thats not the case. This is why we have so many people from third world nations knocking down the fences to get here.

You are absolutely correct.

But the people who are abusing emergency care are the most often the ones who are ill educated and/or cannot afford to go to a doctor's office. A doctor will refuse to see you if you don't pay him/her. As it should be.

So we are still left the question, how do these people get health care? Or should they.

I realize my previous comment came off sounding rather facetious. In truth I didn't mean it to sound so much so. I'm actually interested in Bruno's take since he lives with a universal health care system. Sorry for that.

Originally Posted by Pudu

So Bruno, are you a leech or are you being taken advantage of, and how do you feel about it?

I am taken advantage of, my brother is a leech.

Honestly, I don't know why people always have to put it in those terms.
The thing about the health care is: everybody pays a good chuck, and everybody gets treatment. Even the lower incomes pay a substantial amount called 'social burden'

It would be unfair if only the rich payed, but they don't. taxes are based on % of you income. social burden only to a lesser degree (it's more like a flat tax, with a couple of brackets). So yes, being a healthy person, I probably don't get my money out of it, but neither does an American if he has decent medical insurance.

I don't see is as 'paying for someone else' because I am paying for me. Everyone does. It's like having a mandatory national medical insurance. Everybody has to pay, everybody is insured.
Yes, in nature, anthing that doesn't cut it dies. However, we are not animals, we have progressed.

Take my brother. He has a number of chronical ilnesses that would have long bankrupted my parents if it hadn't been for our socialized healthcare. Now he has a life and my parents still have money. I don't see how it would have been better if my brother had died by now, leaving my parents bankrupt.
Additonally, my brother managed to get a phd by writing an exceptional thesis. He solved a 30 year old problem in computer science (mathematically proving exception handling correctness of a program), wrote a compiler frontend for this, and showed great results. And this is just one of the 3 topics in his thesis.

You are insured too (i hope) so do hate someone for being ill and actually using medical insurance what it is for? That situation is really no different then ours. The only difference is that WE don't get to choose whether we want to be insured or not. We are, and as far as medicare goes, we have no worries, no lawsuits to get someone to pay for an MRI, no schools banning 'tag' because a kid might fall...

I believe that every man has a right to live his life the way he wants, but I also believe medical care is something that anyone needs and deserves.

@Wildtim: Patients in the US are indeed not turned away from the ER if they are on the brink of dying. But don't forget that they get the bill afterwards, driving them into bankruptcy.
2 or 3 years ago there was newspaper article about a US construction worker who accidentally shot himself in the head with a nailgun. He was saved, but a bit depressed because he'd have to work for the rest of his life to pay off the 100K$ bill.

I feel that everyone deserves treatment, because everybody has a value to society (like my brother).
Even most religions set great store by charity, only a lot of people seem to feel that if they pay for it, the receiving party should properly grovel a bit, mumbling undying gratefulness.
But you don't expect to do that when you claim money from your insurance company, do you?
Our health care system is no different than your insurance company. Except there is far less paperwork, and you don't get a choice whether you want to join or not.

And if people are sick, and end up costing more than they contribute.. so what? that's what insurances are for, or otherwise we wouldn't even have them. My brother is definitaly not in the lower income bracket, and he pays his taxes like everyone else. And still he gets more out of it then he puts in. It's the same as having car insurance or any other insurance. You pay a small amount in the hope that you never need to file a laim, but if you do, you expect to get paid.