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Really (Anonymous) says…

Obviously, you and your family have the kind of employment that provides insurance. Ask someone with no insurance or with medicare/medicaid how timely their treatment is. This IS about being sure every American has access to the same level of care.

TrueFreedom (Anonymous) says…

Here is the real story. The bottom line is that universal health care coverage is going to cost the taxpayers less money than the current system. If we do not fix this problem it is going to bankrupt the county. This is pretty obvious when you think of a simple example. If someone has a chronic illness and is denied health insurance due to a pre-existing condition where do they ultimately get care? The emergency room. This costs the taxpayer exponentially more money for obvious reasons. Now the counter argument to this is that those people should not receive care in the emergency room if they do not have coverage. Really? Is that the kind of world and society we want to live in? Are you going to be the cop that says no you have to die because I want to save Joe the taxpayer a couple bucks spread out over a year?

We already have universal health care in this county for several large groups (medicade, medicare, veterans, government employees). Why should those of us not in those groups not also get health insurance? We pay our taxes? The politicians (left and right) are in the pockets of the insurance companies. They sit at cocktail parties and laugh at the success of the talking points presented in the above post? They are not on your side. Universal Health Care will save money in the long run. The vast majority of people in the medical profession will tell you this. Whose side do you want to be on? The insurance companies or sick people that just want to be healthy?

Just because universal health care does not work well in another county does not mean it will not work here. This is America after all and we can do better.

STANHATHHORN (Anonymous) says…

Good health care in the private sector currently costs at least $18,000 per year for an employee, spouse and dependents. Or put another way an $8.65 per hour perc for that employee. Are you all ready to pony-up your share for the 47million uninsured? Do you really think anything conceived by the government will be competetive?

dentedfender (Anonymous) says…

Rainbow writes: “Obviously, you and your family have the kind of employment that provides insurance”
Why yes Rainbow he does have employment that provides him with Health Care. It is provided by the negotiations between his union and the company through a contract. The one kicker in this argument is that he chooses not to be a member of this union because he doesn't agree with the principles put forth in their bylaws.

Ironic isn't it?

TrueFreedom (Anonymous) says…

Stanhathhorn
I don't know if I agree with your figures or not but the reason private health care is so expensive now is that we are subsidizing the 47 million people that don't have it. Those people are still going to the hospital. It just costs exponentially more money because they are not getting preventative care. Insurance companies are making money by denying sick people coverage and sticking it to the people that are lucky enough to have insurance. If you take the huge profits and kickbacks out of the health care system you will dramatically lower the costs for everyone involved. If you increase funding to science, education, and research then I believe we can have the greatest health care system in the world. We currently do not.

What do you mean by the “government”? The government is the people. It is our responsibility to elect competent people to run the government. We have nobody to blame but ourselves if the government is not working properly.

mustang (Anonymous) says…

One of the things that True mentioned is that getting preventative care would help save health care dollars, and that people are not able to get this care due to preextisting conditions. I agree with all of this and yes as the old saying goes prevention is the best medicine. I don't think that we can blame only the insurance companies for the lack of prevention that is costing us millions of dollars, we as people need to do our part of prevention. Having worked in healthcare it amazed me when people would come in and say that they are sick now because they couldn't afford their medication, meanwhile they have a pack of cigarettes in their pocket. How much do cigarettes cost these days? If we want to be able to provide health care for everyone, whether by insurance or socialized medicine, then we as individuals need to do everything we can to prevent health issues. So many of the medical problems that are breaking our healthcare system financially are preventable. COPD/Emphysema, lung cancer, liver failure, diabetes, STD's, hiv/aids, many of these are preventable if people restrain from dong the things that have been found to cause them. While many people have type 1 diabetes, the increase in type 2 has been found to be caused by the increasing number of people with obesity. Smoking, drinking, and not taking precautions in relations with other people cause a lot of the other problems listed above and that is what is costing each of us a lot of money. Anyway I could go on and on. Again the only way to save healthcare (either insurance or socialized) is the individual doing everything they can to prevent their own illness.