Texarkandy
Thinks s/he gets paid by the post
- Joined
- Feb 12, 2008
- Messages
- 1,281
Gee, maybe someone should have sent this to Congress when they passed the Patriot Act.
Agreed.
Gee, maybe someone should have sent this to Congress when they passed the Patriot Act.
Texarkandy,
While I agree that in general that the individual should be responsible for their lives, there are critical services such as fire and police protection that seem to be better managed by the having a governmental entity tax the population to pay for their service in a non-profit manner.
Regardless of what we think, it seems clear that our current health care system is seriously flawed
given that US health care performance measured in life expectancy, infant mortality, etc is at or near the bottom of all developed countries
& could some of that conclusion be flawed by the apples-to-oranges effect of trying to compare costs in a more capitalistic system to those in more socialistic ones? It would be cheaper for the nation if everyone drove a Yugo - let's have the fed gov make us all buy Yugo's. On the other hand, how about Volvo's if everyone drove those we would be safer in an accident & it would thus help keep health care costs down.while our health care costs are near the top.
Conclusion - the current US health care system is inferior to systems of most other developed countries. The obvious thing to do is to review best practices and incorporate them into our system. We can't do much worse than what we are doing now.
But - to get back to the original subject of the this thread - I just read where Obama's plan does not require citizens to purchase health insurance for themselves, but does require them to purchase health care for any children they have.
(whose kids are they anyway? And whose money is it?)
(At least here in Texas, we still have enough liberty the government can't make you send your kid to school if you don't want to)
Well, there aren't many doctors in Congress, so they feel no need to pass "full employment for our profession" laws.I note we can somehow manage to provide free lawyers for the poor.
Not too sure the "history" of this - but I recall when I was a youngster (not that long ago) the poor folks went to the "county clinic" for routine health care, and if they needed something major like an operation they went to the "state hospital".
I note we can somehow manage to provide free lawyers for the poor - in the federal system lawyers are pretty much drafted from the local bar to do a certain amount of "pro-bono" work (a condition of admittance to the local federal bar) - and there's always the Federal Public Defender's Office - perhaps some of our higher paid medical specialists (Neurologists and Anesthesiologists for example) would be a little more motivated to do more pro-bono work if they got a tax deduction for their time & insulation from malpractice suit for that type work with the "state hospital"/"county clinic".
Mississippi had a system something like that with charity hospitals. The shortage of money led to substandard care.
Maybe I'm missing something here, but, in all of the plans, they seem to believe that by spending a few billion per year on Health IT (3-10b), they will generate 77 to 162 billion per year in savings. Does that pass the sniff test for you? If that were true, why hasn't that already been included in the spending/budget plans? The Federal Govt. especially has not been noted for accurately estimating, nor successful implementations of, IT projects anyway, so basing such a large portion of the yearly savings on this doesn't fit well with my acceptance of a viable plan.
IMHO - Medicaid should be overhauled and expanded to enable the working poor to buy-in. And it should be HMO style implementations using private providers such as Kaiser Permanente, Humana, etc to provide the care.
Mississippi had a system something like that with charity hospitals.
Believe it or not - this is a compromise my libertarian self could potentially go along with - just leave those of us who don't want to participate out of it. No mandates! on individual citizens.
...... and you would have exposed untold hundreds or even thousands of people to contagious tuberculosis.
No mandates work really well until the taxpayers wind up not only having to pay your bill, but get sick themselves and have to pay for healthcare for themselves as well.
The best "mandate", of course, being a system funded by our taxes.
That one either.
Last time I checked, you needed insurance on your car to drive it around.
Oh, i'm sorry. I mistook this for a legitimate debate on the issues surrounding health care.
I'll let you get back to whatever the hell it is you're outraged about.