Are you entitled?

[editec]

Is the overal health of the nations people a national security issue?


I think it is.

Ergo the question of a health delivery system that serves the citizens of this nation IS something that our governments need to monitor and regulate, too.

Now how they do that is the REAL question.


I am of the opinion that as long as we have a third party payment system (much of which is funded by taxes) feeding into the health care providers who are part of the PRIVATE SECTOR, the cost of HC is going to continue to rise much much faster than the overall inflation this nation faces.


So until the government takes over complete responsibility for paying for health care, and with that responsibility is the right to set pricing, too?


No system we can devise is going to serve us particularly well given the money we're investing in it.

In my lifetime the aggregate money spend on HC has gone from 4% of the GDP to over 17%.

That pehnomena is unsustainable and everybody who looks at this problem from a MACRO ECONOMIC point of view knows that to be the case.

There is no perfect solution to this problem.

There are only solutions that each come with probems associated with the manner in which we address this issue.

Single Payer universal health care insurance (SPUHCI) , for example, inevitably must control prices. And we ALL know that government mandated controlled prices leads to shortages of, or decines in the quality of the services or products whose prices are controlled.

Frankly I think SPUHCI is the LEAST WORST solution to this macro-economic problem.

It is flawed, yes, but flawed slightly less than what we've got (or are going to get) when the Obaman (formerly the Repubican) plan is implemented.

But please do note that I definitely do think that SPUHCI will create problems that will not EVER go away, either.

 

[kwc57]

Entitlement programs began in this country almost as soon as the ink dried on the Constitution. We have always had entitlement programs.
The problem today, seems to be that it is getting hard to pay for both our wars and some of our people programs. We may have to stop the practice of killing people in foreign lands and start medically caring for our own people. For some that's seems to be a hard decision.

Sounds totally reasonable to me. But would you mind asking those foreigners not to hijack planes full of innocent people and fly them into skyscrapers full of innocent people so we don't HAVE to go kill them where they live? Thanks!

 

[kwc57]

some people exist to get what ever they can for free.... becasue the world owes them.

You're talking about the omnipresent ten percent who are always with us and always will be -- unless we choose to adopt an extermination policy. But we cannot allow this socially dysfunctional fringe to harden us against the needs of those who are genuinely deserving.

The ten percent are goldbrickers, slackers, malingerers, and freeloaders. They are psychologically defective and in a real sense are analogous to those who are born incredibly ugly, or with obnoxious personalities, or with grossly offensive body odors, etc.

You left out Democrat.

 

[regent]

America has always had government programs for the poor. Before the Great Depression the poor was the responsiblity of the state governments. The county poor house, county hospital might bring some recall. In the Great Depression the states could no longer handle the problem and the national government assumed the task. Today both governments are involved. In any program there are the fringe groups, the ones that don't deserve, yet receive, and the group that deserves but doesn't receive. The cost of really ferreting out all the freeloaders would probably cost more than allowing a few to freeload. The stories of the free loaders are much more prevalant during bad economic periods than periods of prosperity. If there was a job for everyone that was able to work the number of free loaders might become more accurate.

 

[MikeK]

Nope. Its to promote the GW not PROVIDE the GW.

The primary definition of promote is to bring something into being. Which, in your semantic two-step, does not depart in meaning from providing. To bring something into being is to provide it or to ensure its provision.

Kinda funny how no one in Govt before Welfare came into effect saw it that way.

I can't speak for the rest of the Country but back in the 1940s, before there was a Department of Welfare in New York City, there was a Department of Home Relief. As I recall that agency didn't mail out monthly checks. Instead it maintained store-front centers in depressed neighborhoods where people in need would go to apply for assistance.

If assistance with rent was needed an investigator was assigned and payments were made directly to landlords. If food was needed the centers handed out boxes of groceries and vouchers to purchase meat from local butchers (forerunner of food stamps).

My aunt worked for that agency as a Home Economics Aide. She went around to various centers and taught groups of aid recipients how to cook economical but nourishing meals using the food items the centers made available.

I don't recall when the change from the Department of Home Relief to the Department of Welfare took place, but I'm told it was prompted by increased population owing to a massive migration of impoverished Southern Blacks in the early 1960s. I believe it was then the federal government began to subsidize municipal welfare agencies which took the place of local government assistance agencies.

 

[Old Rocks]

Watch The Full Program | Sick Around The World | FRONTLINE | PBS