What we may end up with is

[Foxfyre]

Yet another useful idiot.

When the fee/tax/fine is well below the costs for the insurance --and the Stalinist goombahs designing this scam damn well know it will be-- then all that will be in the real risk pool will be the highest risks.

The whole thing is designed to fail on purpose.

The point you are making is intriguing. Could you elaborate?

For me, it means the socialist crowd plans on health care reform failing, so they can move to universal health care. They will point to too many people opting to pay the fine instead of getting coverage.

Why would someone choose not to have coverage? A young male with no known health problems may find paying a $750 fine preferable to paying $2,000/year for a policy. He is probably a pretty low risk. A 55 year old obese male smoker with high blood pressure and borderline blood sugar issues might see a policy as attractive at $2,500/yr, since he would have had to pay $750 anyways.

Obama is on the record as wanting a single payer system which would effectively put all the private insurors out of business. And I believe that is the goal, and, if the Democrats remain in power after November, I believe we will see that in 2011.

Here's one example when Candidate Clinton was addressing union bosses:
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpAyan1fXCE]YouTube - Obama on single payer health insurance[/ame]

 

[Diuretic]

Government runs everything else pretty well? Just what are your standards? You might want to consider how the following agencies are run:

USPS
Amtrak
VA
Medicare (annual fraud totals)
FEMA
Immigration
Dept. of Education

As opposed to:

Enron
Worldcom
Lehman Brothers
Arthur Andersen

...................

Need I go on?

The GFC wasn't started by governments.

And have you seen anyone run a war as well as the Defense Department?

Blackwater or XYZ or whatever they call themselves nowadays wouldn't hold a bloody candle to DD.

Horses for courses.

Enron et al was a signal that there needed to be stricter regulation of how companies treated and secured their employees' retirement funds. That falls under the banner of government securing our rights. The best solution for that situation, however, is for the employee and only the employee having possession and control of his own retirement account. Freedom. Liberty. If that had been the case, then there would have been no problem, other than temporary unemployment, for the employees when a company folded.

There will always be bad people however and there are already laws in place applying serious consequences to those who use their business to cheat or deceive people. The answer to that is strict enforcement of the law and not the government taking over the business.

Our government has Constitutional authority and responsibility to provide for the common defense so that is a legitimate function of government. And also in the interest of promoting the general welfare and common defense, it is also a Constitutional obligation of the federal government to keep communications open to all the people, so government operation of the post office is also a valid function even though private mail and package delivery services are generally far more efficient and less costly.

The bottom line is that a big, intrusive, all powerful, unwieldly, bloated, and inefficent bureaucratic government is not going to run much of anything as economically or effectively as can be done by he private sector, and there are very few programs run by the federal government that do not erode the freedoms, opportunities, options, and choices available to the people not even mentioning their pocketbooks.

That is why conservatives don't want the government doing much of anything that can be done more efficiently and effectively in the private sector. And that would include healthcare.

But the point is that the private sector can’t be trusted to be above board either. Sometimes government has to be the one to do certain things, that’s my point. Many things can’t be done more efficiently and effectively in the private sector and where that happens government must step in. For other things the private sector is fine ; particularly where there are no monopolies.

 

[Diuretic]

Government runs everything else pretty well? Just what are your standards? You might want to consider how the following agencies are run:

USPS
Amtrak
VA
Medicare (annual fraud totals)
FEMA
Immigration
Dept. of Education

As opposed to:

Enron
Worldcom
Lehman Brothers
Arthur Andersen

...................

Need I go on?

The GFC wasn't started by governments.

And have you seen anyone run a war as well as the Defense Department?

Blackwater or XYZ or whatever they call themselves nowadays wouldn't hold a bloody candle to DD.

Horses for courses.

I claim the debate point as you totally abandoned your defense of government agencies.

Aw you're not going to claim and then leave the thread are you?

 

[Diuretic]

I claim the debate point as you totally abandoned your defense of government agencies.

And the judge would give you the point too, as throwing in a list of corporations within that context was at best non sequitur; at worst blatant red herring AND straw man.

Not all Fox

As I said, some things are best done by government, some are best done by the private sector and there are governance issues in both.

Somewhere in this thread the topic veered off into the usual anti-government stuff that is plainly not proveable either way. It's all opinion. Hence my chucking in the fact that criminality in the private sector can destroy companies which then can't deliver the goods
or services they may be contracted to deliver, which leaves people without them. So my point is that the payment for health care is best made through a government agency rather than the private sector. The running off into government bad/inefficient/ineffective - private sector good/inefficient/ineffective is simply a display of prejudices.

 

[germanguy]

Hi,

reading this, one or two thoughts crossed my mind:

1. There are free markets with competition and there are fields of business, where there is a kind of "natural monopole".
Good example might be electricity and water supply.
We all need it - period.
And we can not really choose, in what quantity or quality we would like to have it. And we are rather restricted to change the supplier (at least compared to other goods we buy in supermarkets).

2. Healthcare is something inbetween. We can live without seeing and paying for a doctor, but at least once in our lifetime, we will need one.
We are nearly unable to decide to save the money for the heart - pills and buy a nice car. Would be unwise.
So, as it is like that, we can buy ourself an insurance or have a kind of nationalized healthcare.
As it is like that, we do not really have a choice to live without a certain kind of healthcare, if it is state-controlled or not.

3. In case of water and electricity US citizens already accept state overview.
This simply because without proper drinking water or electricity, we would be in deep shit.
To fully privatize these sectors might prove unclever. Or you have to live with the fact, that the local water company decides to lower the quality of water to raise the shareholder value.
Unthinkable ? I doubt so.

With any healthcare system it is the same, but the picture here is mixed:
Totally nationalized systems mean to pay the whole system out of tax-payers money.
Advantage: At least everybody get´s a certain kind of access to a medical system.
Disadvantage: Totally state controlled.

Totally private system:
Only those who pay for it are able to get themselves a certain medical system.
Advantage: What money can buy you get.
Disadvantage: No money no medication.

So, to me this means, that something in-between should be there.
What and to what extend can be debated, but then without ideological heat and with more common sense.

To have an expensive postal service is rather a nuisance, but when healthcare comes into play, we are talking about life and death.

kind regads
ze germanguy
Totally private means

 

[Mac-7]

Something that is not unlike what is evolving in Australia.
The person in need of care will have to pay out of pocket and have to file for reimbursement from the government.
Many Doctors in Australia will no longer treat patients under government care programs due to low and slow payments.

How is that for a health care solution?

I’m surprised to hear that doctors down under are allowed to decline patients

The People‘s Dictatorship there will probably close that loophole soon

 

[Mac-7]

Good example might be electricity and water supply.
We all need it - period.

Does that mean germans are entitled to free electricity paid for by other germans?