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Politics : The Obama - Clinton Disaster -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TideGlider who wrote (46533)	3/12/2011 8:13:09 PM
From: tonto	1 Recommendation Respond to of 103300

That is great news.

To: TideGlider who wrote (46533)	3/12/2011 11:14:00 PM
From: Wayners	2 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 103300

Excellent another liberal caught in the act and on his or her way to an execution center.

To: TideGlider who wrote (46533)	3/15/2011 11:13:37 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	1 Recommendation Respond to of 103300

What Doesn't Work Posted 06:55 PM ET Health Care: Vermont has plans to cover everyone. But why does a state need universal care when there's already a national program? And haven't lawmakers there learned from their neighbors to the north and south? The Vermont House Health Care and Senate Health and Welfare committees held a hearing Monday night on a single-payer health care bill brought by Gov. Peter Shumlin. For the record, he's a Democrat who believes the old leftist adage that health care "is a right and not a privilege" and rode the issue all the way to the governor's suite. A majority of Vermont voters — 117,561 — put Shumlin in office. But all deserve better, even those who supported him. Setting up a government-run system in the state will be a mistake, no matter how many promises about cost containment and wider coverage are made. Attempts by government to cover and treat everyone are not the glowing successes the political left makes them out to be. To the north of Vermont, the Canadian health care system is plagued by waiting lists that are often miserable and sometimes deadly. Costs are out of control, and the only thing universal about health care for our northern neighbors is its rationing. Conditions in Canada have become so poor that Claude Castonguay, the man known as the father of its national health care system, has publicly supported "a greater role to the private sector" in health care "so that people can exercise freedom of choice." To the south, an experiment in ensuring "every uninsured citizen in Massachusetts will soon have affordable health insurance" has failed. The system, a creation of former Gov. Mitt Romney, has been on line since 2006 but has yet to cover everyone. Costs have been so much higher than projected that the program had to dump 30,000 people from its rolls in 2009. Last year, columnist Robert Samuelson, no conservative, succinctly summed up RomneyCare's problem when he wrote it "evaded the hard part: controlling costs and ensuring that spending improves people's health." Of course, RomneyCare became the model for Obama-Care, the problems of which will be magnified by its national scope. The tribulations of government health care continue beyond Vermont's immediate neighbors. Two states away, there's a government-run, taxpayer-funded program that's brought change but little hope. Known as Dirigo, it was sold as a means to insure all of Maine's 140,000 uninsured by 2009. But it fell far short of its goal: Only about 3,500 had been added to the rolls of the insured by that time. Worse, instead of creating no additional burden for Maine's taxpayers, as was promised, Dirigo cost $150 million by 2009. Despite these bitter experiences, there's always some politician on the left who believes the laws of economics can be suspended because he or she is more clever than those who've tried before. Shumlin is one of those politicians. He even thinks he can do better than the Democrats in Washington who've already hatched their national health care scheme. But he'll fail where others have failed before him. To think otherwise is delusional. Rather than miss the mark so spectacularly, policymakers should simply go with what works. Rather than force a plan on an ostensibly free people, let individuals and families make health care decisions for themselves. Stop trying to create a right from the ether and move government out of the way. Stepping back and letting the market — the peaceful, voluntary exchange between people — work freely won't yield universal coverage. Some will always make poor decisions and forgo health insurance. But the market solution will expand coverage and bring down costs. Neither an army of bureaucrats nor thousands of pages of dehumanizing legislation are necessary. All that's required is for government to promote and protect liberty.