221 votes
I disagreeRank68
Idea#562
Take a look at Paul Krugman's article on healthcare reform at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/22/opinion/22krugman.html
We need government run healthcare now. Mr. Obama, please do not be fearful of standing up to private interests on this issue. They are refusing to cooperate. We will stand behind you on this important issue.
Health is one of the twelve core policies areas that is "out of control" in America, and deliberately so.
I have immediately voted for your idea, but want to make the observation that Health as a nation is a four-part solutions:
Healthy Lifestyle
Healthy Environment (toxin free which most public buildings and transportations means are not)
Alternative or natural cures (e.g. banana oil for breast cancer, the AMA does NOT want you to know this)
LAST RESORT: honest medicine as a public service co-equal to fire, safety, and education, but with standards that elevate education as well as health across the nation. Pharmaceuticals can be cut in price by 99% (not making this up)--the trick is knowing which country (Thailand, South Africa, etc) to buy the generic from for each of the top 75 prescriptions.
The Open Source Agency is intended to create public intelligence in the public interest across the ten threats and twelve policies so that citizens can self-govern and keep their elected representatives honest from day to day, vote to vote, issue to issue.
Our health care system is already 45% publicly funded. The market hasn't failed us but the government has. Do you want the same group that can't run a restaurant, train service, retirement fund, or mortgage insurance company to run the entire health care system?
Nobody ever looks at Singapore's health care model. It's rated in the top 10 by the WHO, it's privately funded, and they spend only 3% of GDP on health care. That even lower than France's wonderful system.
Just ask the primary health care providers (who are dwindling in numbers) and they'll tell you they're being strangled by red tape. Cut the tape, free the system.
It's true that physician and other medical services are fed up with the red tape of dealing with those financing health care. What isn't stated is that roughly twice as many offices and clinics have difficulty dealing with the multiple private insurers vs. dealing with Medicare. We need Medicare for all now.
Private coverage may work for Singapore, but it will not work for us. Continued coverage by private insurance companies will bankrupt us.
Ronald Lapp, M.D.
Single Payer Health Care is government financed, not government run. The health care is delivered by doctors, hospitals, and clinics working for themselves or in the public sector, just as they are now.
I support the private delivery of health care and the public financing of it.
Single Payer Health Care!
We have a uniquely American government-funded healthcare system that has worked since it was introduced in the 1960s, when it was considered incipient socialism: Medicare. As Dr. Lapp's comment suggests, the red tape of private insurance companies that do everything possible to deny claims steals time from healthcare provider staff who could be educating patients on prevention of illness, doing lab work if qualified, maintaining personal contact with patients, and, in general, doing what they were trained to do, not spend the majority of time filing, refiling, and negotiating claims.
We can't afford NOT to have single-payer health care: privately delivered, publicly funded. It's the only way the cost of an individual's lifetime health care can be amortized by one agency over his or her whole life (the only pre-existing condition would be a congenital defect), so that payments "on behalf of" a single citizen average out, rather than the public system being left with only the elderly, disabled, and those too ill to work, as Medicare is now.
Please note that the "public option" being pushed by President Obama - no details of which are yet available - is at best a cynical attempt to extend the profiteering of insurance companies and at worst a stealth attempt to torpedo the very notion of national health insurance.
There is simply no way that a private insurer would be able to compete against MediCare, which is what a proper public option would look like. Therefore, we should expect that any "public option" will include some fatal flaw. What's more having a public option which competes against private insurance would leave in place the vast bureaucracy - aimed primarily at denying claims - which wastes about 30% of our healthcare dollars and countless physician and patient hours.
All the nonsense about single payer being "too disruptive", "politically infeasible" or "socialized medicine" was also raised when MediCare was proposed. MediCare has been an unqualified success and it is long past time for it to be extended to all residents.
Americans who want basic, cost effective health care for all need to loudly and unambiguously lobby for MediCare For All, HR 676, and clearly state that a watered down "public option" is not good enough.
This is a Pro Single Payer Healthcare comment
- President Obama keeps saying this on town hall meetings:
"If you like the health plan that you are currently provided by your employer, you keep it, if you don't, then you would switch to one that's provided by the government."
What is wrong with this picture?
One of the major driving forces behind the healthcare reform are the employers:
The employers and companies are heavily in a disadvantages market position because they are unable to compete on the world market because the healthcare cost drives up the final price of their product.
Employers, companies want to (and should) reduce the cost of healthcare for their employees ideally to zero as a result of the healthcare reform otherwise the whole thing won't make any sense.
Referring back to President Obama's statement my question is this:
What healthcare insurance should or could the employees be "happy with" in order to decide not to switch to the government provided health insurance? The ones that their own employers are unhappy with?
Per President Obama employers would keep the health insurance services for their employees from the private sector which cost more than the one provided by the US government.
So, why would any employer would keep the health insurance from the private sector if the they can get better deal from the government? Are they against their own pocket?
If anyone will think the whole idea of this hybrid private/government health insurance system through can see that something is wrong with it.
In my humble opinion if the government will get involved in health insurance business, the only logical result can be the single payer health care system provided for the whole country by the government.
REQUIRED READING FOR MEMBERS OF SENATE FINANCE AND HELP COMMITTEES
There is a very good article in the New Yorker today titled "The Cost Conundrum." http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/06/01/090601fa_fact_gawande?currentPage=all Here's an excerpt, which doesn't exempt you from reading all 8 pages of the original:
...We would do well to form a national institute institute for health-care delivery, bringing together clinicians, hospitals, insurers, employers, and citizens to assess, regularly, the quality and the cost of our care, review the strategies that produce good results, and make clear recommendations for local systems.
Dramatic improvements and savings will take at least a decade. But a choice must be made. Whom do we want in charge of managing the full complexity of medical care? We can turn to insurers (whether public or private), which have proved repeatedly that they can’t do it. Or we can turn to the local medical communities, which have proved that they can. But we have to choose someone—because, in much of the country, no one is in charge. And the result is the most wasteful and the least sustainable health-care system in the world."
MORE REQUIRED READING (thanks hamptonsally for posting this)
"The SUPPOSED Difficulties of Converting to Single-Payer"
By Joel A. Harrison
http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=144312962&blogID=491626677
Have you people EVER been to a VA hospital? If the government is put in charge our healthcare the whole lot of us will die early. The government can't run the post office, medicare, SSI, nothing basically. What's wrong with you people that you would think a social medicine program is the ticket? Haven't you seen what the UK is doing? They are DENYING care to women in advanced stages of breast cancer. They are discussing the possibility of rationing healthcare to make up for some of their budget shortfalls. We are talking about the lives of human beings here. Not sheep or cattle. Our government will end up doing the same thing to us. The UK healthcare program is the 2nd largest expense in the WORLD only behind China's army and they don't even offer everyone care. Our government will steal from this program just as they do any other AT THE EXPENSE OF YOUR LIFE.
Well, let's see. The government educates our children. The government is in charge of making the laws and enforcing them. The government is in charge of defending our borders and fighting our wars overseas. The government protects us from crime and fire. No one else stops and punishes murderers, rapists, and thieves, or white collar criminals. The government cleans the streets and collects our garbage. The government builds our roads and bridges. The government runs our buses and trains. The government protects us from consumer fraud, dangerous foods and drugs, and disease epidemics. The government funds nearly every major medical advance other than drugs that are developed to make profits. The government put a man on the moon, developed nuclear power, cleaned up our filthy air and water. The government (ours and others) stopped Hitler from taking over the world. SSI and Medicare in one act eliminated the poverty that faced nearly all of us when we retired before they were enacted.
The government does some things well and some things poorly, and we all suffer or benefit as a consequence. But if we give up on making the government do things well the world will be a nasty place. In every other developed country in the world, the government provides national health care to everyone, they pay less for it than we do, they get better care, they have lower rates of preventable diseases, no one gets rich by denying people care the way they do in the United States, and everyone has free health care. In many poor communities in the United States rates of disease and death are as bad as those in the poorest nations in African or Asia-—in the United States, but not in Europe, Canada, or Australia. If they can all do it, why can’t we? It’s not because of too much government. They all have more than we do.
Well, let's see. The government educates our children. The government is in charge of making the laws and enforcing them. The government is in charge of defending our borders and fighting our wars overseas. The government protects us from crime and fire. No one else stops and punishes murderers, rapists, and thieves, or white collar criminals. The government cleans the streets and collects our garbage. The government builds our roads and bridges. The government runs our buses and trains. The government protects us from consumer fraud, dangerous foods and drugs, and disease epidemics. The government funds nearly every major medical advance other than drugs that are developed to make profits. The government put a human on the moon, developed nuclear power, cleaned up our filthy air and water. The government (ours and others) stopped Hitler from taking over the world. SSI and Medicare in one act eliminated the poverty that faced nearly all of us when we retired before they were enacted.
The government does some things well and some things poorly, and we all suffer or benefit as a consequence. But if we give up on making the government do things well the world will be a nasty place. In every other developed country in the world, the government provides national health care to everyone, they pay less for it than we do, they get better care, they have lower rates of preventable diseases, no one gets rich by denying people care the way they do in the United States, and everyone has free health care. In many poor communities in the United States rates of disease and death are as bad as those in the poorest nations in African or Asia-—in the United States, but not in Europe, Canada, or Australia. If they can all do it, why can’t we? It’s not because of too much government. They all have more than we do.
Yeah, let's see. Our children are some of the worst educated in the world, we have illegals flocking over the border by the millions raping our social and healthcare systems and committing crimes. We are spread way too thin militarily and our veterans receive substandard medical care while their families lose their homes. Our justice system has racist judges and no consistency.
Who ever you are: I homeschool my kids in order to give them a good education so I don't have time to sit here and address these issues but if you think that this obamanation government protects us and keeps us safe, you've got another thing coming.
The governments social healthcare system WILL NOT BE BETTER. THEY WILL STEAL FROM ITS COFFERS JUST AS THEY DO EVERYTHING ELSE. I'm astounded that you or others like you are pushing this. I think that you and others that believe as you do will have a rude awakening some day. This government and no government since Woodrow Wilson has our best interests at heart. They are criminals and they are looking at you and me and everybody else. Please don't push your crap down my throat. You need to start reading some history. Every government, and I mean every one, has in some way enslaved its people. This government is doing the same with its over taxation and spending. Its electronic medical database is nothing more than a mechanism to keep track of "medical pedigree." If you think the government is your friend, I feel very sorry for you. You'll see.
Get rid of private gain from the human need for health care!! We have no need for middle men gaining profit at the expense of others in need. Instead support conscious, public control of health care with good local input that helps shape resources used in the local community.
Does your library work? Does the postal system work? Governments around the world have shown that public agencies can be monitored and can administer resources effectively for the public good.
Yet, we have are special interests and fear-based ideologies causing unrealistic fears about 'government' / socialist intervention... some with honest concern, yet ignorant of the facts and manipulated by those invested special interests.... including 37,000 insurance companies who are at risk of losing their golden goose if health care is managed publicly.
Fear blocks creative thinking and we get stuck in small wedge issues that have little to do with what is going on... despite how well intended.
kburrows -- here here!
to curt and rachel -- so, if our children are some of the worst educated in the world, is that because they're educated privately in other countries? i don't think so. maybe it's because they invest more in their public education systems than we do in ours. if our judges are racist, is that because of too much government intervention or too little? or are you saying there shouldn't be judges in the first place? if you think the government will be bad at providing healthcare, who do you think will be better? megacorporations? insurance companies? do you put your trust in prudential? met life? exxon? enron? who will keep the megacorporations and insurance companies from ripping us off?
BOOOOO
Martin nailed it in this thread's second post.
If I were a Canadian I would be dead right now as the diagnostic tool that found my cancer has a 6 month waiting list in Canada. As it was I was diagnosed within 48 hours and fairly minor surgery took care of the problem. My oncology has told me that because of the type of cancer 3-4 months down the road it would have been inoperable and terminal.
Besides all that, please quote the section of the United States Constitution that allows the federal government to take over our health care system. I mean, obviously, Obama and the rest of the left in this nation have no use for the constitution unless it allows them to kill children or have sex with goats in public in downtown San Francisco, but hey, there are a whole bunch of other parts in that document that were written down to LIMIT the FEDERAL government.
When the federal government doesn't own the means of production but rather controls industry and production what is that called? It is called fascism. It has been tried before.
The US is bankrupt. Shall we print more money to tax people who are getting laid off more money?
I want a single payer system.
ME!!!
I want take care of my own health and pay for my own health care. How do I opt out of this insanity?
I hope you are either extremely rich or never get sick.
It’s pretty discouraging reading the above comments – some of them with valid points, but many which represent misinformation. Our focus should be to look at the availability of good quality HEALTH CARE AS A HUMAN RIGHT that we are all entitled to as human beings. Once we get to that point, it is very clear that there is no place for market-driven health care for profit that cuts out those who need care because they can’t afford it. Eliminate profit and you eliminate private health insurance companies that not only must make hefty profits for their shareholders, but run up huge administrative costs selling their services, accepting and REJECTING APPLICANTS, approving and DENYING CARE, and paying huge salaries to their CEOs.
Public systems: Medicare, Medicaid can do it for less because they don’t have these huge administrative costs and need for profit. It costs less than 5% of health care dollars or premiums to run Medicare vs. 30% for private insurance companies. Saving the better part of that 30% by going to a public pay system provides enough dollars to cover all the uninsured and without waits. People have to wait in Canada because as a nation they spend half what we do per person.
Single payer represents an excellent public system. With a single payer system we would have more choice than we have now. You could go to any doctor, clinic, or hospital, most of which would continue to be private just as they are now and our nation could afford it. This is Single Payer for all, or Medicare for all. It is not the “public option” that is being proposed. We can’t afford the public option because it preserves the private for-profit option which will cost huge amounts and is unaffordable, especially with our current economic crisis. Single payer has the potential of actually helping and improving the economic mess we’re in now.
For those interested in learning more about the real facts concerning single payer, please refer to www.pnhp.org.
Ronald Lapp, M.D.
If any bill is too complicated for the average citizen to understand without trying very hard - it will be defeated - just as the complicated Clinton bill was.
Make it easy. Expand and Improve Medicare and open it to everyone via payroll taxes. The more you make, the more you pay. Keep a very low copay.
Add complete prescription drug coverage and negotiate the prices - no need for the failed private insurance plans and the complications of them. Our elderly and very ill especially should not have to fight with that.
Our economy cannot recover without this.
"We need government run healthcare (sic) now"
That is one of the last things we need.
The United States Government can not even run itself effectively and efficiently. Why do you think we are in such deep national debt!
The government just passed another over budgeted annual budget for 2010.
Want to see total incompetentcy?
Look at the earmarks and pork spending in the Economic Recover and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Along with the fact, most of our supposed representatives did not even bother to read the Act.
Even though we are deep in debt, our government is sending billions of dollars to foreign countries. Stupid is as Stupid does.
The Country is already going broke from entitlements. Government healthcare will bankrupt the nation. Look at Social Security/Medicare/Medicaid, and you think the Government is going to run Healthcare any better.
There is NOT ONE SINGLE PROGRAM THE GOV. RUNS SUCCESSFULLY. Socialized medicine is a failure everywhere in the world that has tried it. It will advances in medicine and ultimately kill more people in the end. The Government will determine who and what treatments you will or will not recieve.
ONE WORD : DISASTER
Concerning the comment above "There is NOT ONE SINGLE PROGRAM THE GOV. RUNS SUCCESSFULLY".
Medicare is run much for efficiently and effectively than private health insurance companies: 5% (Medicare) vs. 30% (private health insurance) of premiums for administrative costs. A patient is much more likely to be denied care by a private insurance company than Medicare. Doctor's offices have more difficulty and problems dealing with private insurance companies than Medicare.
Concerning "socialized medicine is a failure everywhere in the world that has tried it". How do you reconcile the fact that the United States is ranked 37th from the top in quality of care by the World Health Organization? That puts us behind many nations that have "socialized medicine", but are spending half what we spend.
A pattient will be more likely to be denied by the Government when they deem it to expensive to treat. SSI/Medcare/medicaid are all run ineffienctly, and the cumlative drain on the system will eventually cause it to fail.
The innovations in medical care is what draws people from across the world to come to the U.S. for treatment, that has either been denied or unavailable in other countries. I dont hear of to many people flocking to europe for treatment.
Can anyone show me anything run by the federal government that works well?
Seriously? If Americans are not willing to pay $1 for $1 of healthcare, why would they pay $1.60 for $1 of healthcare?
Wait, it's free if the government does it... The last time I looked the government doesn't have a job and produces nothing of economic value/products. The only money it has to spend on healthcare is stolen (I mean taxed) from hardworking Americans.
Let the rich and businesses pay for it... Again, the rich and businesses really don't pay taxes. If I sell milk for $3 per gallon and you raise my taxes and my costs go us 30 cents a gallon, I will raise my milk price to $3.50 (I have to pay more for bookkeeping to track the new taxes). Who ends up paying for healthcare? Besides, now the people who bring you highway workers are bringing you healthcare. The costs will skyrocket and productivity will fall.
Europe has a breast and prostate cancer survivability rate of around 60%. The rate in the United Sates (this includes the poor and uninsured) is over 90%. Not the direction I want to go. Pay more, get less.
eroesler. You are exactly correct. Recently, I heard a welfare mom complaining that some accupuncture she wanted wasn't covered and so what we need is socialized health care. SHE'S ALREADY ON IT! Then look at VA Health, what a crime! This is not the way to reform health care.
P.S. We are bankrupt.
The top 1% of earners already pay 40% of taxes. the bottom earners pay nothing. It's the middle class that bears the burden,and the income of the middle class is shrinking. More taxes will only make the situation worse. The VA care system is a perfect example of what would be in our future if Gov runs healthcare. It would drive Doctor's and practitioners out of the field, and lower the standard of care and Ineffect, more people would die as a result.
The idea of taxing employers and emplyees for the benefits they recieve will lower the availability and coverage of those whose have it. Taking my benefits to pay for someone else's is unfair to me and my family. I am not willing to lower my families standard of care to pay for someone else who wants a free ride. Pay your own way.
Those of you trashing government programs: who exactly is it you would like to see in charge of our health care? Profit-making corporations? Insurance companies? Exxon? Enron? AIG?? Hello? If you're happy with health insurance companies you're not paying attention (and you've obviously never dealt with them). Medicare is what has kept elderly Americans alive for the past 40 years. Social Security is what has kept them from poverty. You want to do away with those programs? Brilliant. Maybe there are problems with these systems. Try doing without them. Or better yet, go ahead, put all your petty rage and intelligence to work and design a better one. We're all waiting.
Single-payer, public health care is much more efficient and effective than private health insurance companies, for the simple reason that the objective is to keep people healthy, not to make a profit. Private health insurance pays 30% on the dollar for administrative costs. You complain about taxes but you don't notice who is actually taking your money and where it is going. Private insurance companies are much more likely to deny care than Medicare. Doctor's offices have more difficulty and problems dealing with private insurance companies than Medicare.
So socialized medicine has been a failure everywhere in the world that has tried it? I don't think so. Just exactly how many of these systems have you actually studied? Wake up. Our beloved health care system in the United States is ranked 37th in quality of care by the World Health Organization. Hello? People in this country are dying left and right of preventable diseases that on one dies of in Canada, Europe, Australia, or any other civilized nation that can afford to provide for its people. Is that because they are spending exorbitant amounts of their money on health care? Far from it. They pay a fraction of what we do.
I'm sure it feels great to trash the government. Gets your blood going, and probably a few other organs as well. Well, wake up. For most of us ordinary people, the government is what educates our children. The government is in charge of making the laws and enforcing them. The government is in charge of defending our borders and fighting our wars overseas. The government protects us from crime and fire. Yes, those cops and fire fighters -- guess who they work for? No one else stops or punishes murderers, rapists, and thieves, or white collar criminals. The government cleans the streets and collects our garbage. The government builds our roads and bridges. The government runs our buses and trains. The government protects us from consumer fraud, dangerous foods and drugs, and disease epidemics. The government has funded nearly every major medical advance made in our country other than drugs that are developed to make profits. The government has been delivering my mail for 50 years, and, I don’t know about you, but I don’t remember the last time I didn’t get something I really wanted. The government put a person on the moon, developed nuclear power, cleaned up our filthy air and water. (You remember the filth our free enterprise system brought us, don't you?) The governments (of our country and others) stopped Hitler from taking over the world. That was a shame, wasn't it? SSI and Medicare in one act eliminated the poverty that faced nearly all of us when we retired before they were enacted.
The government does some things well and some things poorly, and we all suffer or benefit as a consequence. But it's pretty stupid and self-destructive to give up on making the government do things well. Without government the world would be a nasty place. Believe me, you'd find the people in control even nastier than you find the government today. In every other developed country in the world, the government provides national health care to everyone, they pay less for it than we do, they get better care, they have lower rates of preventable diseases, no one gets rich by denying people care the way they do in the United States, and everyone has free health care. In many poor communities in the United States rates of disease and death are as bad as those in the poorest nations in African or Asia-—in the United States, but not in Europe, Canada, or Australia. If they can all do it, why can’t we? It’s not because of too much government. They all have more than we do.
Good quality health care is a human right. We are all entitled to it as human beings. Once you understand that, it becomes very clear that market-driven health care for profit doesn't do the job. It cuts out those who need care because they can’t afford it. It simply drops those who need help and covers those who don't--it has to, to fulfill its obligations to its shareholders. Meantime it takes billions of dollars from us and pays fat salaries to wealthy executives and keeps the rest for profit. Eliminate profit and you eliminate private health insurance companies and eliminate the practice of denying health care to those of us who need it. Public systems like Medicare and Medicaid can do it for less because they don’t have these huge administrative costs and need for profit. It costs less than 5% of health care dollars or premiums to run Medicare vs. 30% for private insurance companies. Saving the better part of that 30% by going to a public pay system provides enough dollars to cover all the uninsured and without waits. People have to wait in Canada because as a nation they spend half what we do per person. How much we spend and how long we wait will be up to us. But only if we take control of our health care from private health care interests and have a public system.
Single payer represents an excellent public system. With a single payer system we would have more choice than we have now. You could go to any doctor, clinic, or hospital, most of which would continue to be private just as they are now and our nation could afford it. This is the simple truth. Guess who doesn't want you to believe it? Guess who wants you to keep railing against the government and protesting that you don't want any change from the current system? I'll give you a hint. Someone who's getting a boatload of money every day from every one of us who has health insurance.
Single Payer for all is Medicare for all. It is simple. It is the standard in the civilized world worldwide. It's time to cut loose the private interests who are making billions of dollars every day preying on our needs when we get sick. For the real facts about single payer, check out www.pnhp.org.
Or go on railing about government, paying like suckers, and dying like flies.
To mjdabrow -- You don't hear of people flocking to Europe for treatment?
You're not paying attention.
Check out http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/21/health/21patient.html. When Ben Schreiner, a 62-year-old retired Bank of America executive, found out last year he would need surgery for a double hernia, he started evaluating possible doctors and hospitals. But he didn’t look into the medical center in his hometown, Camden, S.C., or the bigger hospitals in nearby Columbia. Instead, his search led him to consider surgery in such far-flung places as Ireland, Thailand and Turkey.
Ultimately he decided on San José, Costa Rica, where just a week or so after the outpatient procedure and initial recovery, he and his wife were sightseeing throughout the country, then relaxing at a lush resort. He was home four weeks later, with no complications.
Or check out http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/10/opinion/10milstein.html. Every year, thousands of Americans undergo surgery in other countries because the allure of good care at half the price is too good to pass up.
Wake up and smell the coffee. Or, stick your head in the sand. And keep on defending the good old American system.
"People in this country are dying left and right of preventable diseases that on one dies of in Canada, Europe, Australia, or any other civilized nation that can afford to provide for its people." What diseases are you speaking of?
"They pay a fraction of what we do." The tax rates in the countries you mentioned are 75% or more. How is that paying less?
"For most of us ordinary people, the government is what educates our children." IF you are not checking everything that public schools teach your children and supplementing and correcting as needed, then your children will likely spend their lives flipping hamburgers.
"The government is in charge of making the laws and enforcing them." Have you read some of the stupid and nearly incomprehensible laws on the books?"
"The government is in charge of defending our borders and fighting our wars overseas." This works best when goverment tells the military where to go, then gets out of the way and lets them decide HOW to do the job."
"The government protects us from crime and fire. Yes, those cops and fire fighters -- guess who they work for?" Volunteer fire departments are generally more efficient then municipal or county agencies. Law enforcement tends to be better funded and trained in smaller cities than larger. State agencies have many problems. I cannot say that federal law enforcement does much good at all.
"No one else stops or punishes murderers, rapists, and thieves, or white collar criminals." You are right, and that needs to change. People need to take more responsibility for their own safety.
"The government builds our roads and bridges." ...and they are ALWAYS under construction because construction companies spend billions in campaign contributions too keep it that way.
"The government protects us from consumer fraud, dangerous foods and drugs, and disease epidemics." This too has been compromised by large campaign donations and likely other bribes.
"The governments (of our country and others) stopped Hitler from taking over the world." Citizens of the U.S. were going to other countries to enlist long before our congress declared war. I do not believe that any members of congress quit to go enlist.
"SSI and Medicare in one act eliminated the poverty that faced nearly all of us when we retired before they were enacted." No. SSI and Medicare gave money to those who failed to save for retirement by robbing others of the money they should be saving. Both systems are going bankrupt, while private pension funds survive.
"Good quality health care is a human right. We are all entitled to it as human beings." No one is ENTITLED to anything! Everything has a price that someone pays. Even the freedoms we enjoy in this country were bought, with blood.
If you don't want to deal with health insurance companies, then save up a medical fun and pay cash! Many doctors will give a discount rate to cash customers since they can avoid filling out insurance claim forms.
bre2002,
1) The people traveling outside the U.S. for medical treatment are paying cash, not participating in nationalized health care.
2) A large part of the reason our medical care has fallen to its current position in the world is the HMO. If you will recall, HMO was also a politician proposed system to provide "affordable health care to all."
bre2002,
Where in the Bill of Rights or the Constitution does it list free health care?? Stop looking for another free ride or handout at my expense. You can have your government run programs SSI,M edicare and Medicaid are all yours- by the way, maybe you and the gov can figure out just how to pay for those first before you tackle Healthcare and bankrupt the country. Talk about waking up and smelling the coffee...
The following questions must be answered and made publid before any reform is voted on.
•How much will your plan cost/person?
•How will it be paid for?
•How many people will still not be covered after spending this money?
•How will we prevent rationing of care when the bills get too high?
•How will we attract people to join the healthcare field when we cut their pay every year?
•How will we develop new medications and procedures with no potential for profits?
•Why don't we fix the current government run healthcare programs before adding the rest of the country to a new program that is likely to fail like the other federal healthcare programs?
•Why don't all government employees have to be a participant of the new program if it is so great?
•Can you name one example of the government program that came in under budget?
•Can you name one example of the government taking over an industry and the costs falling as a result?
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