Socialized Medicine is the only worthwhile answer.

The WaPo trying to get Dems out of the running tomorrow = as usual.

see http://cabdrollery.blogspot.com

c. atrox @ 1:

Sociali[s]ed Medicine is the only worthwhile answer.

Oh don't let anyone hear you say that!! It's not american to not make profit from peoples suffering and poorness ....... ask a politician.

Then again I've lived in some of the countries of the world that have the best medical systems going and you couldn't pay me to be a "typical" citizen in the US; phoning across the country to beg someone for an insurance claim or having $1000's of drugs stuffed into me because I was suffering from the side effects of the social style.

One day people might figure out that having a system run by drug companies for profit might not be the best way .......... though it's all about $$ and no one is going to give that up without a fight, just make sure you are wearing your flag pins and eating freedom fries when you do it.

Wow, someone stands to really gain from "Comprehensive" health care. It's worth a $40 million lobbying campaign.

It reminds me of the $300 million recently spent on global warming advertising.

mcBush will do nothing for changing the healthcare system.the only thing he will do is continue to use the social healthcare system he has been part of his entire life.
i figure if it's good enough for him it's good enough for us.
tax payers pay for that system we also pay extra for people who use the private healthcare system but can't afford to pay their dr/hospital bill(s)....so that cost is absorb by the paying members of the insured pool. essentially it's a tax. this for-profit healthcare model is broken....u.s. GDP portion for healthcare is 16% ridiculous......there is going to be a lot of propaganda to call it SOCIAL medicine
i would put hillary and elizabeth edwards on this project.

Why is it that no one in favor of a single payer system EVER focuses on the SAVINGS such a system would mean. The argument is always how fucking expensive such a system would be. All indications are that it would save upwards of 30 percent of medical costs. Why is that? That, it seems to me, is the big HUGE selling point. Just change how the fucking bills are paid, eliminate the insurance and Pharmaceutical giants, and we save tons of money.

At last .. issue-driven politics seem to be eclipsing the politics of personality.

That IS what "politics" really means - how we run our society.

eliminate the insurance and Pharmaceutical giants

Yeah. Good luck with that.

I think the solution to this problem is to just cancel your insurance policy and quit paying your medical bills.

As long as the healthcare and insurance industries are making money they will never fix the system.

get everybody on a plan and have competition for pharma. contracts not no-bid like they did for medicare.
corporations are now asking for universal healthcare
people covered are being penalized for the ones who receive and don't pay......many can't afford coverage.
although i understand the difference but auto ins. is a mandate in many states.......in the state i live in many drivers do not have auto ins...so the same thing occurs people that have ins....get penalized by paying higher premiums.

c. atrox @ 1:

Socialized Medicine is the only worthwhile answer.

I agree 100%.

Obama was for single payer in 2003.

Too bad Obama isn't now.

"Choice" in healthcare is code for HMO, Insurance company immunity.

We should all help them and wish them well.

$40 million dollar campaign = insurance companies writing the policy.

No thank you, just pass HR 676.

[Deleted. Woefully off topic-Sitemonitor]

Fuck ALL the Blue Dogs, and the republican horses the rode in on!

Democrats, Social Security and Our Health Care System.

Democrats always point to Social Security as a great accomplishment, but it is always on the verge of total collapse. Every couple of years congress is forced to “fix it” by adding more tax money, decreasing benefits or raising the age of eligibility for benefits or some combination.

The problem is, when the program was started the average lifespan of an American Citizen was around 65 years, and the age you needed to reach to collect Social Security was around 65 years. Meaning the “average person” would not live to collect Social Security, the average citizen was expected to work all his life pay into the system, then around the age of 65 they die. At the time Social Security was enacted there were around 20 to 25 people paying into the system for every 1 collecting benefits from it. Since the average lifespan was 65, even those who lived to collect Social Security would not be collecting it for long.

Enter modern Health Care, the main reason for the average lifespan increasing from 65 sixty years ago to about 77 today, is the tremendous increase in our medical knowledge and technology. We can detect and cure things today that would have been a death sentence just twenty years ago.

That means that the “average person” now is expected to collect Social Security benefits for about 12 years, that is about 12 years longer than the average person was expected to collect benefits when the program was invented. Now 2 to 5 workers are paying into the system for every 1 person collecting benefits and the average person is collecting for 12 more years than the initial program expected.

As one of the major causes of increased lifespan democrats must look at our Health Care system as a direct threat to their great program of Social Security.

Enter the “New” Democratic party, every single Democrat who ran for president this election cycle has run with a plan for government run “Universal” Health Care. Their plan must be to take over Health Care system and destroy it, in order to decrease the average lifespan and therefore make Social Security solvent again.

The truth is every government that has Socialized Medicine does and must ration that medicine. In essence the government decides who gets the heart bypass procedure and who does no, who gets the new cancer drug and who does not. The way they do it is to put everyone on a waiting list for care and if the list is two years long and they happen to die before their number is called well that is just too bad.

The reason Health Care is expensive is the same reason behind the price of everything, supply and demand. If there were more doctors it would be easier to get an appointment, more competition between the doctors for patients would lower prices. Look at the price of plastic surgery, more doctors going into that field over the last twenty years has lowered the cost. It takes a large commitment in both time and money to become a doctor.

In addition to the years of education, it also takes a person who is very intelligent, with a specific aptitude, personality type and disposition, to become a doctor. Not everyone is cut out to be a doctor, therefore there is a limited amount people who can even become one, how many of them would choose that career path for a civil servants salary. It takes allot of hard work and sacrifice to become a doctor and part of the motivation to go threw all of that is the large amount of money a doctor can make and the lifestyle doctors can have. There will never be enough doctors to go around, limited supply and high demand increases the price.

With socialized medicine the government makes the choice who gets it. Who will they chose to get the open slot for the expensive heart surgery, the forty year old worker with a minor heart defect who still has 15 years of work life left or the sixty five year old who is retired not paying taxes and plans to collect Social Security for the next 15 years.

What if the the retired 65 year old guy has been a smoker with a poor diet, at one point will the government say he is to blame for his own health problems and deny him coverage. At one point does the government ban tobacco, alcohol, cheese burgers and fries, since they are paying the bills for the health effects. Don’t get me wrong I don’t smoke and I think its stupid to do so but that’s “freedom.” Freedom means being able to make bad choices as well as good ones.

Back to Social Security, do I really think the Democrats want to take over the Health Care system to destroy it, so that people won’t live as long and therefore save Social Security, no of course not. They are not bad, evil people they are just misguided, they want to do good they want to help people but they won’t realize the unintended consequences of their action until its too late.

The truth is most of the innovation in medical care over the last 100 years has come out of the U.S.A.. Lifespan will probably still increases under a “Universal” Health Care plan but that rate of increase will most likely be slowed because of it. An unintended consequence of their plan is that the innovation that our current system has produced for a hundred years will stagnate, as more people with the aptitude to become doctors and medical researchers decide to forgo the rigors of a medical education and choose a more lucrative return on their education investment. Since the Government will pay the bills they will decide what a doctor can make, and as the only major employer of doctors in the U.S. there will be limited or no competition, no reason to pay higher salary. In countries that now have Socialized medicine programs doctors don’t make much more than the average Civil Servant.

The problem with these Socialized programs is once enacted they are almost impossible to get rid of. We are currently stuck with a budget where %65 of federal spending is locked up in entitlement programs, promises the government made but cannot keep without taking more and more from us the tax payers. If those who are collecting Social Security now had been allowed to invest their money in the stock market they would have had a much greater return on investment. According to the CATO Institute:

“A person retiring at age 65 will only benefit more from Social Security relative to a private investment in the S&P 500 if he is a low earner and lives to be at least 96 years old. For those retiring at age 70, the only individuals that benefit more from Social Security are low earners who live to be at least 94 years old and average earners who live to be at least 108 years old.”

The “average” income earner will have to live to 108!!!! to do better “investing” in Social Security over a private investment. With this level of efficiency do we really want government bureaucrats controlling our entire Health Care system.

The additional intended consequence of the Social Security system for Democrats is in votes, every election cycle they claim that the other side will cut their benefits, this scares many seniors into voting for them. They vote out of fear, since Social Security is their sole source of income in many cases they become beholden to the government and that gives the government more control over their lives.

By healthcare, I hope they mean just that, and not health insurance. Health insurance is just going to be another massive corporate welfare fraud that benefits only those who have already proven that they deserve no right to participate at all in the process. I can't see paying tax dollars to profiteers who are going to continue in their grand tradition of trying to screw their customers every way they possibly can, only this time, with government sanction.

HR 676.