Posted on 09/26/2007 6:34:43 AM PDT by mft112345
Healthcare has been the single biggest domestic crisis facing America for at least the last decade, and yet time and again Congress has applied Band-Aids to cover a gaping wound. Every other American, not including members of Congress, is one accident, illness or diagnosis away from financial ruin in the richest nation on Earth. If that isn’t an embarrassment as well as a call to action, then Congress has truly become indifferent to the American people.
Every time we apply a Band-Aid, more Americans get hurt or die because of our lack of vision and political will. A Health Savings Account (HSA) is a recent Band-Aid that provides the wealthy with a tax shelter, but does nothing for the uninsured and the millions of middle-class Americans who don’t earn enough to derive any benefit. The HSA is a major step toward segregating America into two classes: one where the very rich tax-shelter their way to healthcare coverage, and the other where the overwhelming majority of Americans gamble their health and lives every day. The leading cause of personal bankruptcy for an American family today is unpaid medical expenses.
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
Barf
I don't believe anything Baghdad Jim says. I especially do not appreciate his class warfare characterization of HSAs as "tax shelters."
Idiot McDermott, rights don’t cost cash.
Governemtn interference is the sinlge biggest cause of health care rising costs and problems, and so they want MORE GOVERNEMNT CONTROL????
Look how good thats worked out with welfare and other government programs..
Interesting - if health care is a “right” then it is the only constitutional right which requires other people to give you money.
Right after food and housing and water...oh wait those are necessities. his bad.
That's quite a stretch since high quality healthcare is not a problem for the vast majority of Americans.
And so begins the Healthcare Propoganda Barrage....
By Election Day, the Sheeple will be clamoring for “Free” Healthcare...
I do see this though, ‘The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved for the States respectively, or to the people.’
Besides with service comes a fee. If that service is too much either finance that service or get catastrophic insurance.
Of course the American people can pressure to amend but thankfully the US still has enough sensible voters (For how long, I don't know).
A better piece on The “Free Healthcare Blowup”
http://freenj.blogspot.com/2007/08/free-healthcare-blowup.html
There'll be no waiting for a year to have *their* gallbladders removed and there'll be no waiting for two years to have *their* hips replaced and there *certainly* won't be any six month wait for *their* first appointment with a cancer specialist.
Rep. Jim McDermott: You can’t cure stupid.
Healthcare as a right wouldn't cost money either.. just pass a law that doctors have to treat people for free. Stroke of the pen, Law of the land.. pretty cool. </liberal "thought">
Liberals never let reality get in the way of "feelings".
I’m sure Jim McDermott can show us the entries in his check book where he personally pays for some strangers’ health insurance, since it’s such a good idea and all.
"Liberalism" is the application of childish emotions to real problems.
"Workable" and "Constitutional" never enter the picture. "Mean" and "Nice" are the only way they look at policy.
All that “rights and privileges” hoo-ha aside, America can’t compete for much longer in the Global Economy without nationalized healthcare.
To make something a right that others must provide, is to bring back slavery, is it not?
I think it should be a right to own a new car and a new house but just like healthcare I can’t find anyone who wants to pay for it./sarc.
It’s not just the rationing that should send people running for the hills,
it’s the regulation of “behavior that affects the health care system” that is the underlying goal.
Already we have examples - England, a man is living in excruciating pain because the system will not provide health care to him until he quits smoking.
Where is the barf alert?
People are “entitled” to all the healthcare they can pay for.
Is this like the necessity of having France along for any military endeavor, or like carrying an accordian while deer hunting?
That will change to unpaid income taxes if they try to nationalize health care in the US. Further, I don't believe health care is a right. It's something you earn by being a productive member of society. That way, either your job subsidizes your health care or you have the means to buy it yourself. If this bozo wants to talk about catastrophic health insurance to prevent bankruptcies, let the private sector handle it.
Hey, if someone paid for your food, shelter, healthcare, etc -
you could buy your OWN cadillac.
I want my Constitutionally-guaranteed pony.
Hey, if someone paid for your food, shelter, healthcare, etc -
you could buy your OWN cadillac.
Good point. Where do I sign up?
Indeed. After World War II, the Brits set up the National Health Service assuming that if everyone got free medical care that there would be no unhealthy people and this would rive health costs down. Of course, they did not. The flaw in the argument is that there is no natural limit to the demand for health care. Fix my leg ends up as fix my pimples. As medical science had grown more and more capable, the ultimate demand on it is the cure of all ailments, even death. Since there is a limit on knowledge but more particulary, people to apply that knowledge and an unwillingness to pay them for their singular skills, the end result in England and elsewhere is rationing.
By Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.)
Collectivist garbage from an elitist. Their rights arise from their ability to FORCE (tax) us into submission.
Then Doctors and Nurses will have to work for free. You know...Slaves. So, which idiot wants to go through college, med school and internship at great self expense for no reward?
I have a lib (pro-abort, take care of me statist) relative who says that taxpayer money doesn’t pay for abortions at planned parenthood.
I ask her if she were to pay for my utilities, food, and house payment, and I went out and bought a porche, would she feel like she had bought the porche?
Every time we apply a Band-Aid, more Americans lose valuable leisure time because of our lack of vision and political will. A Hi-Def Savings Account (HSA) is a recent Band-Aid that provides the wealthy with a tax shelter, but does nothing for the un-entertained and the millions of middle-class Americans who don’t earn enough to derive any benefit. The HSA is a major step toward segregating America into two classes: one where the very rich tax-shelter their way to hi-definition TV coverage, and the other where the overwhelming majority of Americans gamble their leisure time every day. The leading cause of personal bankruptcy for an American family today is unpaid broadband expenses.
Yep, that seems about as legitimate as Federal Health Care.
McDermott is a moron. If healthcare is a right, why doesn’t the moron pass a bill making it illegal for the doctors and hospitals to charge for it. Who the hell are these idiots who continually elect morons like this guy McDermott? Come on people! THINK before you vote! Geeesh!
If healthcare is a “right,” then I say every child has a “right” to a free pony.
Outside of family relationships, no person should have a “right” to anything another person has to pay for.
If a person has cable TV and no health insurance, the tax payers of this country owes them nothing. And that goes for non-citizens as well.
Very profound my friend. Don’t know if it’s your original thought, but it is an excellent one. Thanks for sharing.
It is only a crisis in the minds of politicians attempting to make it appear as such for personal political gain. The public has been sucked in the sewer by the likes of hitlery and bubba.
Having read the Constitution many times I don’t see where health care is listed as a right, either expressly or implied.
Barf indeed. Barf cubed - projectile vomiting gallons of chunder barf. Healthcare is NOT A RIGHT. It is a commodity and if you can't afford it, then spend less money on other things. Screw the socialist who wrote this and screw the morons who voted for him.
I must have missed this in my civics class... is the Right to Health Care in the Bill Of Rights ?
(Those ALWAYS work out well in the end!)
Free ponies like the free education provided by the public schools. The irony is that public education works in some places and not in others. The places where it works are those where the children come from well-to-do families. But efforts to equalize funding by increased state and federal mandates has only widened the gap between the good and poor school districts.
You can be sure that, if health care should become nationalized, these factors will be eliminated in a screeching halt. The politicians in Washington are not about to let those billions of dollars slip through their greedy little fingers. They will quickly find a...let's say more suitable...use for all that cash!
You posted: Outside of family relationships, no person should have a “right” to anything another person has to pay for.
***
You are absolutely right, of course. Further, there can be no “right” to another person’s labor and skills— I think they call that involuntary servitude. The left has bastardized another word (like they did with “gay”), but when the term is “right” the problem is much more dangerous.
Health care cannot be a right in the constitutional sense, except that everyone has the right to procure it without interference from the government. Unfortunately this country does not have the stomach to require personal responbility in the area of health care (or education, employment, social morality, etc. etc.) and seems all too willing to forgive people their past indiscretions and stupidity (all the while refusing to call these people indiscrete or stupid). Health care is no longer—and hasn’t been for quite some time— subject to normal market and capitalistic forces. While it may not technically be a right, it HAS become an entitlement, and Americans are not willing to let anyone suffer the consequences of failing to procure health care insurance. The insurance companies and health care providers know this and that is pretty much the end of the story. Socialized health care is on the way, and a diminished level of care will come with it, just as it has in other countries. It will be adequate, but not bold and inventive, and the US and the rest of the world (who have received the benefit of capitalistically-motivated health care and pharmaceutical advances in this country) will suffer.
What commodity will we become “entitled” to next? Food, shelter (already in place somewhat through section 8 housing), transportation? When all of our needs are provided through entitlement programs, who will be motivated to provide these things? If taxes are high, perhaps no one, which will result in mandated labor and skills assessment.
Communism through the back door (in more ways than one).
Having experienced socialized medicine while in the Navy, I can say with no hesitation this is the worst idea ‘out there’ today...excluding cutting and running from terrorists in the Middle East.
In the Utopia, people will be tested at an early age and slotted into their career path. They must stay in this career path and meet certain minimal requirements, or be punished.
Then, they must practice their career and accept what the state deems as fair recompense, or be punished.
This is the way to have the best society possible - to have the elites direct every aspect.
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