I really don't like that the government is involved in healthcare at all. Medicare and Medicaid are failing organizations and are very poorly managed. I worked in a pharmacy and most people would have both to even get what they needed covered. I don't even like HMOs, why should a company dictate what doctor I can see? Why should the government?
Insurance is bad enough we don't need the government making it even worse. And then they want to provide the healthcare? We can already go to the doctor whenever we want, get whatever procedure we want done, visit the emergency room, call and ambulance. No the government doesn't pay for it but if they did you wouldn't have the freedom to do it as you please. Look at the countries that already have socialized healthcare. It doesn't work. It won't be better.
Nice post, Pearce. I had just heard about North Korea but I didn't know Iran did anything until now.
Pearce, Great thoughtful blog post once again. Also did not know about the Iran issue. I agree that we need to start showing metal soon. Thought I think a lot of people are ignoring what I'm hoping will happen: using the Middle Eastern Arab countries + Israel on Iran. It's the most common feeling of fear Israel/Arabic countries have had in common. Alliances there would have greater effect than Obama's words or meaningless U.N. resolutions condemning Iran.
On Health Care though I disagree. It's very complicated and I'm still only 75% sure I disagree but in short I'll try to explain: It's not that I do not have the same fears conservatives do of a public plan, it's my understanding of how horrible our health care system is today. Let's be honest that the left has realized this for long (see clinton) and the right has only come on board because it has become clear how horrible our health care system is. It's unsustainable cost-wise etc...I won't go into that. It is that the republican counterpart plan is a joke IMO. The tax credit proposed by the republicans (which I think was the same McCain proposed on the campaign trail that I opposed) is definitely not enough to cover high premiums available. They do not offer great concrete stuff on how to decrease costs. One of the most useless wastes in American health care is administrative costs (27% of our health care costs). This is because it takes so many resources to deal with the different insurances + figuring out who is/not insured. I do not remember the stats for other countries besides canada (18%) but we are the highest. My biggest fear of the public plan is the favorite conservative scare word: rationiong. Way I come to terms is that is the 50 mill we have uninsured now (& climbing w/ further job loss). The left is 100% correct when they say that is a form of rationing!!! That is also killing many people (+ helping kill our economy as it increases health care costs). Learning from mistakes Britain has made in rationing with a public system and figuring out how to do it best IMO is much more advantageous.
More reason to have less faith in the private system. As I said in the previous post, rationing is happening as we speak. It's called the uninsured...
http://www.slate.com/id/2218848/?from=rss
Thanks as always for the comments. I certainly sympathize with Danalee's concerns about socialized medicine and, like her, look to other countries currently under the system to see its downfalls. Danny made a very interesting and important point when he said, "it's not that I do not have the same fears conservatives do of a public plan, it's my understanding of how horrible our health care system is today." As to this understanding, I defer to Danny as I have very little expertise on the health care system. It is very important to appropriately frame the policy choice against the status quo. If, as Danny suggest, the current system is worse than conservatives' worst fears about a socialized system, then the lesser of two evils becomes the best policy. I am not ready to concede that to be the case because I don't have a full understanding of the problems with the current system but am convinced of the major problems with socialized medicine.
What I've come to realize with the health care debate is that where you stand depends on where you sit, sort of. More accurately than where you sit, it is where your focus and chief concern is. My point is this, if you have or most care about people who have satisfactory health care then you vigorously oppose socialized medicine for all of the reasons Danalee and the Wall Street Journal have articulated. If you can't afford or most care about people who can't afford health care under the current system then you may support any means to extend coverage universally, even through a single payer system, despite and regardless of what aggregate cost such a plan would have on the system as a whole, especially those who can now afford care. As with so many policy problems, where you stand depends on where you sit.
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