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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (7756)	7/24/2009 10:14:27 PM
From: i-node	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

It's exhausting to watch this stupid shit on both sides. The only "stupid shit" is coming from the extreme side of the Democrat party right now. The Blue Dogs and most Rs are being pretty reasonable. It is the Obama extremism causing the problem.

To: Road Walker who wrote (7756)	7/24/2009 10:25:55 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

I don't think anyone is arguing that we don't need change... the cost of our current system is proof. Not by itself, but it could reasonably be the biggest part of any argument. At most it would be a sign that our system is sub-optimal, but not that any realalistically possible change would reduce the cost significantly without adding other problems. But the point I added, rather than the one I quoted, I'm concerned about the specifics of any proposed change, not the idea of change. It might seem like the later when I push for justification of any change that doesn't seem overwhelmingly obviously a good change, and when I criticize specifics of one proposed change after the other, but while I do think the burden of proof is on any major proposed change, I'm not necessarily hostile to change, and I do think that our system is sub-optimal in a number of ways. I agree, at least to an extent, about the legislative, and more generally the political process in this country. Not that our country is so much horribly worse than anywhere else, its just that politics tends to be messy. It can be messy in its complexity and the fights and the partisanship and the horse-trading, and the special interests etc., or it can be messy in a different way with one individual, small group, class, or interest, gaining the power to run roughshod over everyone else. Well maybe "messy" isn't the right term for the later. It might be "cleaner", in that it might be quicker, simpler, and possibly even more up front and less duplicitous, but despite all of that its not IMO more likely to produce better outcomes.

To: Road Walker who wrote (7756)	7/25/2009 1:35:54 PM
From: skinowski	2 Recommendations Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 42652

the cost of our current system is proof. Been thinking about this..... Everyone is comparing our healthcare to those of Britain, Canada, etc, keeps pointing out how they are more cost effective. Has anyone ever compared costs of malpractice systems? I'd venture a guess that no nation on earth supports such a super-expensive and super-elaborate medicolegal system as we do. We feed two huge legal industries - one on litigation side, and another one on the defence side. Both depend on each other, and both can be replaced - in the vast majority of cases - by arbitration. And yet, the very first thing that our "pro-reform" President announced is that he intends to leave the current system the way it is. Recall that the current malpractice system's costs go far beyond the costs of litigations and awards. The atmosphere of having to practice so called "defensive medicine" ends up being incredibly costly. Pass tort reform.... abolish ineffective and expensive regulators, like JCAH.... and, before long, maybe we'll be talking about a truly meaningful reform, not just another power grab by politicians.