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

To: Mary Cluney who wrote (9188)	9/8/2009 6:12:00 PM
From: skinowski	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

I think, Mary, that our government is becoming too big and too powerful. I think our political classes have degenerated into becoming a ruling political aristocracy of sorts. True - some advance on merit. Must say, Obama is a good example - the man was obviously talented and was groomed to have a big future. But - tell me, how many Senator's daughters work in emergency rooms of the nation's hospitals as nurses all night long? This is something which would be even strange to imagine. Question -- Why? I seriously think that we have no business handing over healthcare to Washington. It is simply not necessary. We do need a Federal government - I'm not anti-government - let them run the defence, maintain a lawful society... -- but, imho, we need them in the medical examining rooms no more than we need them in our bedrooms. More power corrupts more, and they are long overdue to get a lesson in humility, rather than get another couple of trillion dollars a year to play with. Interesting that often those are the very same people who are concerned about corporatism who push the hardest for a dramatic increase in government. As if more power will not lead to more corporatist corruption. I see several ways how to improve our healthcare, make it less expensive - and give relief to those who can't afford insurance. What we need is DEREGULATION, rather than more and tighter controls - which are always expensive [edit - we pay thousands upon thousands of salaries to people whose job is to help comply with government regulations. Do those regulations add much of any real value? My answer is, unequivocally, NO]. We need tort reform, which would be the first step in fighting the expensive culture of defensive medicine. We need portability. All this and many other things can be accomplished. What we do NOT need is government dictatorship in healthcare. We have way too much of it as it is.

To: Mary Cluney who wrote (9188)	9/8/2009 7:12:08 PM
From: TimF	1 Recommendation Respond to of 42652

It is not a case of having government involvement or not having government involvement. It is about compromise. Sometimes it is about compromise, which sound nice, except that its often taking away what where personal choices and having some sort of compromise about what to do with what used to be your individual decisions or money. Other times its not even about compromise but the raw application of political power by those in the current majority.

To: Mary Cluney who wrote (9188)	9/8/2009 11:01:47 PM
From: i-node	Respond to of 42652

I grant you, I don't want government to have anything to do with a lot more than I want government involved in but there are essential services where we need government to step in - like in national defense and keeping us safe on a day in and day out basis, providing large scale disaster relief, health care for all citizens, There is not one shred of evidence to suggest that our government can do a better job of providing health care for "all our citizens" than the current system does. And there is plenty of evidence to suggest it can't (most notably, a $36.4 Trillion unfunded liability in Medicare after only 40 years, a system in which Part A -- the big hospital plan -- will be flat broke within a few years; but I would not exclude Medicaid, either, which has broken practically every state's budget). Very few of our citizens today aren't able to get the health care they need, if only they'll exert themselves a bit. If you want to do something about that small number, there are far better options than turning it over to the government.