Why does a person want to live in a socialist system? Why do they want more government control of their lives? Is it because they want handout's from the government? Do they wish to surrender their individual rights for a few scraps from the governments table of taxes? Open your eyes people just look at the new Healthcare Law, there are a lot of mandates in it, requirements to buy something that you may not need or want. Could it be that people are afraid of failure is that why they crave socialism?
Simply because as long as we have a government we will have a degree of socialism. Our government provides police and fire protection, schools, roads, military....all socialist programs
The question is not whether we should be socialist or not, but to what degree
Very true and a point that many conservatives here miss. There is need of a BALANCE of socialistic and capitalistic concepts.
What did you do with rightwinger? You can't be him, to calm and collected here!
Some functions are better performed by the government than the private sector. Healthcare is one of them. The US has the most expensive healthcare system in the world. We pay more and get less. One of the reasons is we have ducked our responsibility to care for our people and passed it off to employers to provide as a "benny" to their employees.
This benny used to be low cost and was widely available. With increasing healthcare costs, employers are dumping healtcare coverage in increasing numbers.
It is another example of a program that is best provided by the government...the rest of the world has already figured this out
Some functions are performed better by the government. Healthcare is NOT one of them. Where we are being led astray here is the fact that this is changing HEALTHCARE INSURANCE. The problem with healthcare today is the COST not the insurance. Insurance premiums are not high because of the 'evil' companies but because of the INSANE cost of healthcare and we have done NOTHING, I repeat NOTHING, to address that issue. Healthcare will continue to bankrupt this nation and we sit here with this stupid 'plan' that addresses previous conditions and that's it. The rest of the bill was crap.
Why is the government not the best solution here? Simple answer is that cost is NEVER driven down by government control or involvement. There are the needed regulations but we exceeded those long ago and more government is NOT the answer. When competition is removed from the equation then you end up with higher prices. That is a proven fact. I fail to understand where there is any difference here in the health industry. I could sign on to a public OPTION if there was one that operated as the insurance companies do but I have the feeling that there will not be that option.
I work for Uncle Sam and I have seen what happens when the government is involved in paying for a service. It is not pretty. We are continually gouged for millions without cause because bureaucracies do not care how much money is spent to accomplish a goal. Remember in the 80's when it was discovered doctors were charging 50 - 100 bucks for aspirin to Medicare? That is what happens when the government is in charge of the insurance side of the equation.
I will give you an example that opened my eyes to one of the largest problems we have in medical costs. My wife had no dental coverage as we never need to go to the dentist. At some point we decided it would be a good idea to get a simple cleaning done so we did what any respectable person should do, called all the local dentists to get price comparisons to help decide where we would go. The first question that they asked was what insurance company we had. No surprise there. What surprised the hell out of me was that in over the 10 places we contacted only 3 actually knew. That's right, the rest could not even tell us BECAUSE THEY DID NOT KNOW!!! Not only that, of the 3 that did answer we received a price range from 150 -700 bucks. That's one HUGE price range. I can guarantee that the 700 dollar dentist would be flat out of business if his customers actually paid for the service that he rendered. Instead, his exuberant prices were floated NOT from demand but from
IGNORANCE of what the actual pricing scheme was. If there was true competition then prices would be driven down to meet demand. Instead, we have inflated pricing on the most simplest of services because the customer is never aware of what is going on. We should actally be paying for the small stuff and insuring for the major disasters.