Wounded vs. injured

Chuckles used the work injured several times when referring to the wounded Congresswoman from Arizona. I always thought injured would apply to people hurt in an accident of some sort. Wounded would be a better word for someone who has been hurt intentionally.

Reply to
Dean Hoffman
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Words are important. We have a fried who started, ran and eventually pass a large architectural and landscape stone business to his sons. He is a multi-millionaire and a character.

A couple of years ago he said to me, "Ron, do you know the difference between a rock and a stone?"

I said "No, but I'll bet I am going to find out."

Without cracking a smile he said "I used to sell rocks and did OK. When I started selling stone, I became rich."

RonB

Reply to
RonB

You are so very right. Words have power. On another thread, the dread words "socialized medicine" cropped up. It's like throwing a switch in the minds of people who, in their abysmal ignorance, have allowed the Usual Suspects to frame the terms of the debate. ("Abysmal ignorance" does NOT refer to most of our sharp, well-informed NG members; I mean the general populace.)

The Usual Suspects -- Big Insurance, Big Pharma, Big Medicine, Big Politicians, Big Oil (yes, they are players) --have to do is utter the dread words "single payor" and hoi polloi obediently gives the Pavlovian response they have been conditioned to utter: SOCIALIZED MEDICINE! Horrors!

Never mind that they are shooting themselves in their own feet; never mind that we are WAY down the list of "developed countries" in almost every index of health, from prenatal to geriatric and every stage in between. They are paying out good money to support a system that

****s them up the *** -- and bending over for more.

Truly incomprehensible -- until you go back to that irrefutable truth: Words have power!

HB

Reply to
Higgs Boson

Words are important. We have a fried who started, ran and eventually pass a large architectural and landscape stone business to his sons. He is a multi-millionaire and a character.

===============

Now, that's hilarious, and I'll bet you don't know why.

Reply to
JoeSpareBedroom

On 2/10/2011 4:05 PM Higgs Boson spake thus:

Yes, and it's no help that our side (my side, anyhow) kind of shot themselves in the feet by trying to sell the apparently incomprehensible concept of "single payer", which was also given ominous overtones by the usual suspects you enumerated above. (Which has largely been dropped; the current terminology is "Medicare for all" or something much more understandable.)

Since we're now discussing the U.S. health care system again, this seems as good a place as any to throw this into the discussion:

It irritates me how the organized opposition to "SOCIALIZED MEDICINE" in the U.S. has used the specter of "gigantic bureaucracies" to help kill it. It's the usual objection to anything having to do with "gubmint", the right-wing talk-show host talking on and on about "byoo-OCK-crasy".

Well, the fact of the matter is that we now have a health care system with not ONE gigantic bureaucracy, but hundreds, if not thousands of 'em. I'm talking about the administrative apparatuses of all the insurance companies, each with their redundant billing, administrative and actuarial departments. But imagine if by some miracle we somehow did achieve what most other industrialized nations in the world have ("SOCIALIZED MEDICINE"). Instead of all these reduplicative bureaucracies, we'd have one, centralized bureaucracy. This by itself would probably allow a saving of $ millions, if not billions.

But it'll never happen in the U.S. We've been too well innoculated against "SOCIALIZED MEDICINE".

Reply to
David Nebenzahl

No, unless it has something to do with the horrible spelling errors.

Hell. I'm old. I type well with a keyboard, but this typing with thumbs crap is drivin' me nuts!

RonB :o)

Reply to
RonB

Intention does not matter. A wound is typically the breaking or laceration of the skin. You can be injured (broken bone) and not be wounded. Injured is typical as you point out, in an accident. You can injure someone intentionally by hitting them with a stick and not wound them.

Reply to
Ed Pawlowski

Does that mean open wound is a redundant phrase? Medicos use that term frequently.

R
Reply to
RicodJour

No, it would mean it was still open and bleeding as opposed to stitched or bandaged and closed. Even closed it is still a wound.

Reply to
Ed Pawlowski

I agree that words have consequences. The word "liberal", for instance, has become a synonym for "spit." The new word, meaning the same thing, is "progressive."

Another recent example: "Weather" became "Global Warming." When that got discredited, the phenomenon became "Climate change."

And, of course, we recall the metamorphosis of "abortion" into "choice" and then "reproductive rights."

It seems to me that the right has been more successful in coining words and phrases that resonate than has the left. That is, conservatives haven't done as much legerdemain on the phraseology as have their cohorts on the other side of the aisle. "Death panels," "socialized medicine," "Obama-care," and the like just seem to stick.

As to your suggestion of replacing many bureaucracies with one, your goal seems to be saving money. This is a non-starter. I suspect, in their heart-of-hearts that few proponents of socialized medicine actually care much about the cost, but instead, are using cost as a rational argument. This assertion is a whopping big failure since cost is not in the top five reasons that resonate with the opponents.

Oh, sure, everybody would like their health care costs to go down, but not at the expense of several other factors. For the proponents of socialized medicine to keep harping on the savings of their plan is to rail against the tide. Nobody, virtually nobody, on the anti-Obamacare side is moved an inch by the cost argument.

Nor are those in the middle.

Reply to
HeyBub

No one who has dealt with Medicare/Medicaid thinks it is a solution. They can't even manage their own program, so they contract it out to private insurers for claim processing, then they drown you in paperwork. And though some deny it, Medicare and Medicaid do control your treatment by placing limits on what they will cover.

At least with private insurance (granted some private insurers are as inept as the government) you can shop around and buy just what you want, and the insurers have an incentive to provide that or lose your business. If you want no copays, you can buy that; if you want high copays, you can buy that. If you want no paperwork, you can join an HMO.

Certainly there are improvements that can be made, such a outlawing termination of coverage if you become ill, or denying coverage of preexisting conditions if they were covered by your prior policy, but at the same time I don't think you should be able to get coverage for preexisting conditions if you choose to go uninsured until one crops up; that is like buying auto insurance after you have an accident.

Reply to
Notat Home

Reply to
Higgs Boson
[...] [...]

You have reduced me to sputtering silence, which is not easy. To quote Mary McCarthy on Lillian Hellman: "Every word she wrote is a lie, including 'and' and "the'."

Someone with more energy can refute NotatHome's Jeremiad point by point even before you have your first cup of coffee.

HB

Reply to
Higgs Boson

Surely you can find a NG that natters on about semantics and etymology and leave this bandwidth for home repair topics. Boring....

Joe

Reply to
Joe

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