Hillary-care: It's baaaaack

Many people paid higher taxes so you and your family could access Medicaid and WIC. It wasn't their fault you were in that position and you didn't mind government support at that time. Can't you understand that there are many others, in worse situations than yourself, who are not getting the healthcare they need.

 

I was at the breakfast and had a converstation with the senator. Someone had clearly briefed her on my stuff with the public schools and I told her about my opposition to secular programs that are publicly financed. I really spoke up and she seemed to listen.

 

do you think we should have a system set up like canada's?

or

have a system such as the one massachusetts has recently adopted?

 

Very well said! I'm retired Air Force, have a great job, as does my wife. We have health care, but I can safely say that if one of my family members had a long term catastrophic health issue, I would most likely lose everything. Heath care should be a basic right and paid for by the government if need be. Hell, we're spending $100,000 per minute in Iraq, so don't tell me we can't afford to take care of our sick!

 

I think gutting foreign aid would be pretty short sighted, but we ought to be able to get basic services to those who can't afford it. It wouldn't crush us and it wouldn't turn the US into glynchland.

 

I didn't really have breakfast with Senator Clinton, have done nothing with the public schools outside of attending for 9 years, and have no problem with financing secular projects. I don't want to say any more at this time though.

 

Just like all that Harrison and Adams stuff we had to deal with in high school. I'm still wondering why nobody named Smith or Jones has ever been elected President.

 

I'm a libertarian, so I think that were the government to stay out of it, healthcare would fix itself. But if I were told that socialism was inevitable, and I had to choose one flavor or another, the system that Massachusetts went with isn't so bad. They have basically found a way to have indirect government involvement in everyone's life, while subsidizing as few as possible.

 

Nationalized health care is the way to go.....no doubt about it.

Every other westernized country has it.....

Kill the HMOs and the PPOs that are milking corporations dry.

DD

 

....sure, if you believe the myth that all markets are perfectly efficient and don't need regulation (which is something that I have found libertarians tend to do on the internet, rather frequently).

It's a fact of life that, due to certain structural issues - lots of markets do not in fact lead to the optimal outcome when left alone, and require some form of regulation to get there.

Our own healthcare system, which has more free market elements than most other western countries, yet somehow manages to incorporate administrative costs that are many times higher than anybody elses, is a perfect example of that phenomenon.

 

And it is those administrative costs which are keeping healthcare prices at insane levels.

All of Europe, Canada, most westernized countries have nationalized healthcare programs.

You would think that the richest nation in the world could provide healthcare for all of it's citizens......heck they could do it for a fraction of what we are wasting on that crappy war in Iraq.

DD

 

It is absurd that we have yet to establish universal coverage.

The problem, even with Clinton talking about renewing the drive, is that her first "plan" was garbage and was basically the result of brainstorming with the "Big Five" insurance companies (there was a myth that she was fighting insurance companies but that was way off). So I wouldn't trust that which would arise as "the plan".

 

If our healthcare system has government interference then how is it a 'perfect example of that phenomenon?" I'm not for zero government involvement in healthcare, but that conclusion doesn't make any sense.

I am curious what kind of tax increase we would see to pay for this kind of system. Does anyone have those kinds of figures?

 

Does anyone know how much that system is expected to cost? I seem to remember it being fairly well received and fairly revolutionary in how it really took into consideration the concerns of a lot of different parties.

 

Because it has substantially less government interference than comparably situated nations yet is subtstantially more inefficient....the opposite of what one would intuitively believe according to a simple libertarian viewpoint.
.

 

I don't think that's necessarily the case. If the proposition is 'in the absence of government interference the issue would take care of itself' as stated in the post you responded to, then saying 'there is less government interference here than elsewhere and things are still screwed up' at best begs the question.

 

I don't find it that difficult to comprehend at all. According to conventional theory - the less restrictions in a given market, the more likely to lead to an efficient/optimal outcome. According to conventional wisdom, a market with a given form of regulation, such as price floors, while not as "ideal" as a market without them, is going to more efficient than a market with a lot more regulation. Accordingly, the US labor market (with such regulations as mimimum wage, child labor laws, etc) is - according to conventional wisdom - going to be a lot more efficient than, say the old Soviet Union's Labor market (which incorporated that much regulation and more). And that example worked out in practice, I don't think anybody would argue with that. You can say the same for the US labor market vis a vis many Western European countries (France, Germany, etc). Once again, though not perfectly unregulated, we're a lot less so than them, and get a lot more efficient outcome.

That example breaks down when talking about health care, at least that is what the vast amount of empircal evidence regarding our own system compared to others shows. That indicates to me (as well as a lot of others a lot more well versed in this than I) taht there's some structural issues in the market that have to be accounted for - not an uncommmon occurence in reality, and not at all the first time where a regulated outcome > unregulated outcome.

 

Exactly,

We pay more per capita than any out country and our quality of care is not even close to the top. For those who knock national health care, actually talk to people who live in a country that actually has it. Ninety percent of the people I talk to love it. I even ask them how long it takes them to see a doctor and most will respond within a week which is the same as most of us experience in the US.

By having national health care, we save small business lots of money because they don't have to pay for it for their families and employees. I have a dentist friend who spends more than 2k a month on health insurance for his small dental practice. I have another friend that owns several curves that can barely afford to buy insurance for her own family so there is no way she can afford to provide it to her employees.

The only entity that would lose out because of national health would be the insurance companies and I couldn't give a rats ass about their success.

 

Is it Basso's JOB to post every single anti Democrat article on this message board?

I just find it very strange.

Maybe I should ask him directly?

Basso do you paid for what you do here? I'm just wondering.