Because healthcare is the *only* variable in life expectancy. @@

Linky 1
Linky 2Linky 3 (pdf)It's a fact that the government is inefficient. The examples of the DMV and Amtrak *are* incredibly good examples of why we shouldn't let the government handle these things. The Post Office is only a quasi-governmental agency.

Amtrak is the best example. Amtrak used to be the Penn Central Transportation Company. PCTC had some issues financially and the government bailed them out, took over the company and split it into two. The first was Amtrak, the second was Conrail. Conrail is a privately owned company and posts a profit. Amtrak, however, is government owned and run. Guess what? Amtrak doesn't post a profit. In fact, it eats up our tax dollars. Efficiency at its best.

This is a perfect reason the government should not be running healthcare. We have too many freeloaders that would take advantage of the system, as well. UHC is a bad idea.

EDIT: Please tag your posts better.

The agencies opposed to changes in health care are playing both ends against the middle.

"Oooh, it's socialism" - bringing in the fear of misunderstood political ideologies. But then THEIR OWN beaurocracies are NOT there to provide health care to people, they are only there to MAKE MONEY!

Yet this same "socialistic" health care is provided, albeit in a SERIOUSLY underfunded and haphazard fashion to veterans, the poor and the elderly.

The AMA is opposed to this plan, we are told. Yet do we ALL understand that the AMA only represents 19% of all doctors in America? That is hardly a mandate!

If we had everyone in America paying $100 a month (pretty close to what medicare recipients are paying), in THE FIRST YEAR, we would COLLECT nearly $365 TRILLION!!!!!! Yet some programs are being faulted because they will COST $10 Trillion over a dozen years? I know quite a few people paying TEN TIMES that much EVERY month for COBRA coverage!

How about we pay the doctors to heal people, instead of paying companies to withhold treatment and preventive services?

This still being America, someone who CAN afford private health insurance can buy it if they want no matter what. But EVERYONE will have access to medical treatments. That sounds like the country I love, not "who cares about the poor and disenfranchised"!

It is getting to the point that BEING BORN is a preexisting condition! Oh, you had chicken pox as a little tiny child? Then you have a preexisting risk for shingles. Uninsurable. You've taken antibiotics more than 6 times? You're a risk for MRSA! Uninsurable. You have a tattoo or ANY piercing? You have a risk of hepatitis! Uninsurable!

"The government" may not be "running" health care under a public plan. And even if they do, so what? They do a LOT of stuff REALLY well, like collecting taxes, delivering mail, maintaining this HUGE country on a gradually diminishing tax base... They could set it up, (meaning fund it and name someone like the Surgeon General to head it and staff it), then defer to more knowledgeable people to run it FOR THE PEOPLE, like Lincoln said.

A fully funded public health care system is not as scary as getting ill and having NOWHERE to turn for treatment!

I'm going to disagree with you for the most part in your post.

The large healthcare prices in this country are due mostly because of the government involving itself in the first place. A smaller portion of the blame goes to the healthcare industry itself.

Soaring healthcare (separate from health insurance) costs started because the government started requiring licenses to practice medicine. These licenses (and the training to get them) cost a huge amount of money and at least 4 years of training. This is also in part due to the medical lobbies paying off Congress to make these laws in order to force many years of training and many years of schooling.

Is this bad? Well it requires that all doctors have the necessary training. But it also means that they're going to have higher health costs, because schooling is incredibly expensive (blame the schools, too!) Additionally, with the extraordinarily high malpractice insurance costs (tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands per year..thank you trial lawyers like John Edwards the ambulance chaser), we can't expect cheap healthcare.

If we removed these two things, healthcare prices would fall steeply, and we could still get some incredibly well trained physicians.

Thank your government for the high healthcare costs, not the healthcare industry (for the most part). Oh, and John Edwards.

The same institution that caused high healthcare costs is now trying to lower them. I call a farce.

A visit to the GP costs me about 22€, the doctor gives me a receipt, which I then turn over to the 'Mutualiteit' (something like health insurance).

They in turn refund me about 21€. Total cost for me: 1€.

Having this insurance costs me about 60€ per year, the rest of the money comes from the government.

Clearly this is a socialist system and it works.

It seems to me that people in America have a kneejerk reaction that everything 'socialist' is bad. Perhaps a remainder of the McCarthy era of communist witch hunts?

Universal health care seems to work pretty well in many other western countries, I don't understand why US conservatives think Americans on average suck so much that they couldn't pull it off too.

Maybe your comment is just a statement about conservatives and not a real question.

If it's a question, then the answer is in what conservatism is about, which has nothing to do with thinking that Americans suck.
At least, that's one Americans opinion who happens to have family and friends that are Conservative and Liberal and has never heard either of the side say they think Americans suck.

Interesting article, though I feel the essay the author discusses should have been linked instead of this short "recap."

I love having a government-funded health care system. My province used to have a monthly fee for it, I'm not sure how much it was but it wasn't much (I was a student then).

Are there freeloaders and people who abuse the system? You bet. Some people demand multiple MRI's because they think the first or second was inadequate, and some people go to the ER with rhinovirus instead of a local clinic, but these are a tiny minority of all people. I will happily tolerate a few system users if it means I never have to worry about a doctor seeing me as a paycheck instead of a patient, or being refused because I can't afford a procedure or consultation.

With recent provincial budget cuts, there have been several high-level officials in the health care system who have been fired or received substantial pay cuts - I think the government system can be fairly efficient when the right people are in charge. After all - I can't imagine an industry run by insurance people looking for a profit can be more beneficial to the people in need than a bit of government bureaucracy. Bureaucrats can be held accountable if the system is failing people. Insurance companies will just gloat with profits.

You didn't read the essay that the author of this article references, eh?

It was written by a conservative in favour of some UHC, with the argument being that without any provided, the majority of people who are suffering from an absolute lack of health care will overwhelmingly support UHC.

I agree with this, though in my opinion UHC is superior to partial HC. Still, I think the author makes a great point that without some provisions, people are going to be more inclined to support a socialist health care system because right now they have nothing.

Money should be the only real issue here and it's the only really credible issue.

Comparing Gov't run healthcare to the DMV or Amtrack is merely self serving. The DMV is essentially a state run department and like Amtrack suffers because it requires instant service, a while-you-wait problem that annoys some people no matter who runs it.

The true comparisons should be Social Security and Medicare. Medicaid is also state administered.

I have dealt with both of these programs for quite a few years as have most of my friends. They are run very well. I have never had a problem of any kind with either department. Unfortunately, there will be waste as there is in any buisness public or private.

The fraud issue is totally on the shoulders of the criminal types that perpertrate it.

There certainly is a Sky Is Falling approach by many of the plans critics.

Do you know who this man is?



He's Tommy Douglas. The man who brought universal health care to Canada. He's our national hero, and in 2004 he was voted the greatest Canadian of all time. Above Frederick Banting, David Suzuki, Terry Fox, even above Wayne Gretzky and Don Cherry.

It's pretty clear that in countries that have universal health care, opinions are not divided on it. If the government ever switched to a fully privatized system, Canadians would overthrow the government.

Socialized health care is a wonderful idea...wouldn't work in the United States unless someone added more doctors, and subtracted people who will "milk" the system. I was in Canada for the last federal election, and one of the major issues was the lack of doctors. When I lived in the US I would shock my Canadian family members by mentioning that I would be going in for a medical procedure shortly after mentioning I needed it...instead of waiting for six months as they had to do in Ontario.
Its not that I think Americans "suck" and can't pull it off, its a matter of logistics.

And that's one of the biggest problems, I think.

If we flood the system with free healthcare, then people are going to visit the doctor much more often than they need to. It will keep the people who really need treatment from actually getting it.

I'm all for the Universal Health Care idea if we can do it without raising any taxes and if we can guarantee that those who need it most get it first. Oh, and if it's a government-paid health care plan, not a government-run health care system.

That's not a widespread problem in our healthcare system. Even when I lived in the city, I never waited more than a month for a medical procedure - and that wait was long because I had to be healthy enough for surgery. This shocked none of my Canadian family members.

Why do so many people expect magical things like free health care and such to happen without taxes being raised?

If taxes aren't raised then where are they supposed to get the funding for such a program?

The best thing would be for the pointless things that tax dollars are spent on to be cut and funneled into a health care program for everyone.

Either way at the end of the day I think it's bull#$@% and disgusting that a few weeks ago my mom was literally two thirds away from dialing 9-1-1 because she felt like she was dying after being given the wrong prescription, but then stopped because she remembered how EXPENSIVE a trip to the ER was.
Something's gotta give, quickly.

Exactly. Get rid of welfare. Get rid of some of these bureaucracies, get rid of funding for: Iraq War, Bank Bailouts, Abortion Funding, Corporate Welfare, Welfare, Social Security, Department of Education, Department of Agriculture, Drug War, No Child Left Behind, etc.

You must be so lucky, to never have been challenged in life. So very very blessed.

I hope you're thankful.

And that you realize the vast majority of people who are on welfare, and want (but don't have) health care aren't doing it to "milk" the system, but because they really truly need assistance. The thing about capitalism, in your idealistic form, is that it is cruel. Mercy is not a thing to be loathed.

I hope your shining tower is always pure, and that you and those you love never need the assistance you abhor so greatly.

That's the thing that irritates me about those that disagree with me on the issue of capitalism.

I'm not merciless and I'm not cold-hearted. But I feel that I should have a say in where the money I worked for goes. I don't appreciate my tax dollars supporting the massacre of unborn humans. I don't appreciate my tax dollars supporting people who refuse to work. Check out this video to see why I don't appreciate this.

It's not that I've never gone through financial hardships. My family has. At one point, we were too poor to buy a trashcan. My aunt used to mail my mom $25 per month so that my mom could take my sister and me to a movie or to do something fun. We were eligible for food stamps but didn't take them. Why? Because we were able to cut back on the *unnecessary* spending in order to spend money on what *was* necessary. We don't buy new cars every year. We run our cars until they die. We don't waste money.

For example, we were at the grocery store. The lady in front of us had two children. She was dressed in name brand clothing, as were her children. She was buying name brand food and other objects from the store. And she pulls out her WIC card to pay for the eggs and stuff. She could afford to pay for all of those items with her own money...if she bought generic products and bought her kids clothing from the thrift store. That's what's wrong with the picture.

I grew up in thrift store clothes. I hate the thrift store, and I buy much more expensive clothing now, because I can afford it. But regardless, my parents cut back on the unnecessary things, and only bought important things like food. Sure, it's not a luxurious life, but we did not rely on the government.

Another case in point. Mortgage companies were offering lower interest rates. So my dad wanted to refinance the house we live in. But, the mortgage company was only offering the lower interest rates to people who had fallen behind on their payments. So the responsible ones, like my dad, are not given lower interest rates, because they've proven their responsibility. How lame is that?

That is why I hate these programs. It encourages irresponsibility. It encourages people to be fiscally irresponsible, because the government will bail them out. It encourages people to be lazy and haphazard with their belongings, because they can always get more money from the state.

There are some people who legitimately need help. There are some people who cannot work and need money. They're not who I'm talking about. But the vast majority of people on government assistance can fend for themselves if they don't live beyond their means.

So, lynxie, that brings me to your attack on me. Next time, before you go spouting off on how trouble free my life has been, maybe you should get to know the whole story first. There is nothing cruel about responsibility.

You may think you aren't cruel, but you come across that way.

The truth is, you are just judging those people at the store. You don't know they bought their clothes full-price. It could be a gift. It could be name-brand hand-me-downs. It's not particularly often you see someone shopping with food stamps while wearing a mink coat.

As for the mortgage problem, that is capitalism. Not evil government (though, yes, government has stepped in. It's better to have people in a house rather than hordes of homeless...)

So, keep whining. Or go found Joshville and don't have taxes pay for anything.

I'll happily stay out of your country.

Math check: I'm coming up with 365 billion using those numbers, not 365 trillion.

Could be you're using government accounting; which involves adding zeros whenever nobody's looking. (another reason to avoid the government plan)

Many people live as frugally as you described and might not get ahead in life if it weren't for government programs.

While I have been lucky enough to avoid using these safety net programs, I am glad they exist and that they have helped countless families survive during hard times. One quick glance back at this region during the Dirty Thirties makes me glad that there was assistance available for people then and now.

Without our UHC, there would be many families who would be teetering on the brink of survival due to sick kids or an ill parent/grandparent.

I think it is cruel and sheltered to assume that anyone who uses the safety net programs is irresponsible. A few are, no doubt, but is it worth destroying many good people for that few?

Are you sure you're not Canadian? You'd fit in quite well here. I'm sure the wild Canadian lynxes would welcome you with open paws.

Heh. If only Canada weren't so cold, we could consider that option.

Now I'm in California, though, and I think it's so nice I might never leave...