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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: epicure who wrote (102905)	2/3/2009 10:44:29 AM
From: cosmicforce	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542256

<homogeneous drudgery> Who doesn't like it when their insurance company runs them into a medical crisis like mine just did over a medication that costs a buck a day retail? I would have been bored silly yesterday had that not happened. You know, you take the same medication for 3 years and all of a sudden, the NEW insurance company doesn't want to pay for anything. There is no monotonous presumption that the LAST insurance company already made you drudge through hoops. They did, but that isn't the point. You didn't change jobs, doctor or anything, but the NEW company who bid for your company's insurance contract hasn't had a chance to interfere with the practice of medicine yet. They want their day. Who can blame them? Imagine how much monotonous drudgery they'd suffer if they JUST paid the buck a day? They wouldn't have be able to play FAX ping-pong with my doctor for a week. Oh yeah, I'm much better off in a medical insurance for profit world. What WILL I, the medical office staff, my doctor, the pharmacist, the nurse, and the several insurance company people do with our day today?

To: epicure who wrote (102905)	2/3/2009 11:22:24 AM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 542256

So the question you have to ask yourself is, do you want a country without any safety nets? If your answer is no, then you do like socialism. Cannot one say "no" to both? You can easily put another cup of water in the soup to feed both the contributors and, say, ten percent non-contributors. If it's a particularly rich and vibrant soup you can add even more water. But sooner or later you will end up with a soup too thin to support life adequately for those who are contributing to the soup, not just eating it. There is a limit to how much dead weight can be carried. A safety net is that first cup of water, maybe a second. After that you cannot maintain the richness and vitality of the soup. We can afford to provide basic sustenance to those who are unable to sustain themselves. We cannot afford to provide a middle class lifestyle to everyone we can squeeze out regardless of contribution. Incentives for contribution cannot be maintained and the resulting soup will be just too thin. What I call "socialists" are people who ignore that.