frazzledgear
Senior Member
- Mar 17, 2008
- 1,479
- 544
- 48
You should pay better attention then, huh? NO ONE is arguing there isn't a need for reform. THAT isn't where the disagreement lies. There are a whole slew of possible reforms that have been proposed, some of which have already been successfully done on the state level. Republicans in both the House and Senate proposed more than 50 ways of achieving real reform in specific problem areas. ALL of which have been rejected by this Democrat Congress. Every single one of them. Democrats don't have the votes even in their own party to pass their bills -so I always find it curious when critics start yammering about the "critics" when the critics are in the controlling party even!
The people you refer to as "deniers, denigrators, etc." that also include a lot of Democrats are a whole lot of people who do NOT believe the way to effectively reform the system is with a government takeover. Let's not pretend calling it "public option" changes what it is. This bs that a healthcare bill that no one has even seen and Democrats voted to NOT allow the public to even see before it is voted upon by Congress - will be entirely funded by weeding out fraud and waste in Medicare along with cutting 50 billion from the elderly just BEGS the question WHY that fraud and waste hasn't already been weeded out. What are they waiting on? LOL But in fact a Democrat Congress killed a program under Bush specifically designed to force competitive bidding by medical supply companies for all sorts of basic medical supplies that Medicare pays for -after investigation showed Medicare was being charged 2-3 times what they sell to everyone else. If Congress refuses to fix what is wrong with Medicare right now -then who in their right mind would expand the role of government further into healthcare?
A government takeover, "public option" or "government sponsored co-ops" all mean the same thing and the wordplay only fools the truly dense. But NONE of that is "reform". It is just a government takeover of a huge chunk of our entire economy that would permanently institutionalize the problems we do have along with guaranteeing a huge spike in corruption, waste and fraud that accompanies all government programs. France and the UK are considering privatizing more of their systems even while the left insists we need to imitate those failing systems! And reality be damned. It isn't as if there aren't plenty of examples in the world of why having a government-run healthcare system would be a really, really bad idea. In fact it makes me wonder about the intelligence of those who still push for it when the outcome of such a system is already known and significantly worse than what we have right now!
Government is already an insurance provider in the form of Medicare -but it is in deep financial trouble and scheduled for bankruptcy in less than a decade. Heard Congress talk about the need to fix THAT system first before expanding government's role even further into healthcare? They can't even do that one right but I'm supposed to pretend they can do the whole thing right for everyone? Get real. Obama wants to cut BILLIONS from Medicare -which can only happen by cutting SERVICES to the elderly. Gee, why aren't the elderly on board with that when the reason Medicare was started in the first place is because the elderly couldn't get decent insurance coverage in the private sector without it costing them everything they owned. As we age we NEED more medical care -so I have a problem with any notion that "reform" means denying services to the very people who need it the most in order to cover younger, wealthier and healthier people who don't. But hey its all part of Obama's great plan to fundamentally change our healthcare system from one that takes care of the ill to one of preventative medicine instead. Except for the fact that preventative medicine doesn't work, it is extremely expensive and a huge waste of scarce resources - and doctors aren't educated and trained to treat HEALTHY PEOPLE!
I heard someone on TV say Denmark's system isn't too bad. But government in Denmark looks the other way while doctors take it upon themselves to whack patients THEY have decided just don't have the "right" quality of life and the estimates of how many they kill every year keeps rising with a government that doesn't consider it to be murder if a doctor is the one murdering people. To the point that people who need to go to the hospital take a written directive with them FORBIDDING doctors from whacking them! Any system where people have to forbid their doctors from murdering them when they come to them for medical care, where the system assumes a person WANTS to be killed by his doctor unless he specifically states otherwise in writing - is one with far worse problems than we have! And not something we should even consider imitating.
There are two areas in particular that would go a long way to lowering healthcare costs and make healthcare insurance more competitive in both price and coverage offered. Democrats hate them both because both involve ending two of their strongest supporters making a real killing off us all -and neither involve government takeover of the entire industry. One is tort reform -states that have already done this have seen healthcare costs sharply drop after years of nonstop rises. There is something wrong when doctors must pay tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars in insurance costs every year just to practice -which means they must charge patients enough to first cover their insurance costs in addition to paying for their salaries and that of their staffs as well as all their other overhead costs. Those insurance costs have driven doctors to early retirement and into other careers -in addition to contributing to the 51% drop in applications to medical schools. But Democrats would rather allow trial lawyers to continue raping the system for their own personal benefit -and to the detriment of all the rest of us rather than allow ANY reform there. If a person receives their full economic losses in a medical malpractice, there should be a cap on the amount in punitive damages they can collect -say 3 times their economic losses in addition to their economic losses. Another would be to allow people to buy their healthcare insurance from any insurance company in any state that offered them the best price for the package they thought suited their needs best. But healthcare insurance is THE only product in the entire country that is NOT allowed to be bought and sold across state lines -and it was Congress that decided to forbid it. Why? It isn't because it would benefit individuals in ANY way -because it does not and adds an estimated 10-15% to everyone's insurance premiums due to lack of competition. Congress did it because the insurance companies lobbied them to pass that restriction so THEY would benefit. Interestingly Congress is claiming an authority to control the healthcare industy by means of the commerce clause -which allows Congressional regulation of interstate commerce of goods. But there is no interstate commerce in healthcare insurance or in healthcare. Healthcare insurance is an intrastate commerce only and therefore technically only falls under the state's control And your medical care isn't traveling from state to state to come to you. So the commerce clause actually doesn't allow Congress ANY authority whatsoever -and it appears that some constitutional issues are already in play here and that whatever Congress passes could likely end up being challenged in court as an unconstitutional overreaching by Congress.
So why does a Democrat Congress still refuse to allow any REAL reform in healthcare while pretending what they are drawing up in their 1200+ pages of utter CRAP intended only to expand the power of government but will do NOTHING to reform healthcare whatsoever -and insist it amounts to "reform"? No bill under consideration in Congress has a damn thing to do with YOUR "health" and sure doesn't have a thing to do with YOUR "care". What it DOES have to do with is expanding government power and control and that is why it takes more than a thousand pages to try and hide the real intent of their bills. How did the founders manage to write an enduring Constitution that is still in effect 240+ years later in just 16 pages -but Congress needs more than a thousand for a single bill? And the fact this Congress REFUSES to post these bills online at least 72 hours before voting on them -should tell you everything you need to know about this Congress. This Congress is CORRUPT to the max and intent on deceiving and hiding from the people what they are REALLY doing. And it is NOT healthcare reform!
It is why a recent poll showed that people believed the most pressing problem in the country was NOT our economy -in spite of an unemployment rate that is pushing double digits now. And did not believe it was healthcare. But the most pressing problem was the level of CORRUPTION and ethical problems that exist in our government. If I believe my government is being run by corrupt, unethical people (and like most people I do think so) -why on earth would I EVER want to expand their power and control over me?
