Stuart says:
We'll gradually lose private insurance until we have no other option but government health coverage. Once the profit is gone from the industry do you really think innovation will continue? Do you honestly think health care will be just as available to those that already have it once everything is fully implemented when medical personnel pursue other more lucrative less opressed fields? We'll be paying more and getting far, far less.
Stuart, based on the work that you have done on Empegs, I long ago concluded that you are way smarter than me, but I don't get this. We have a bunch of Canadians on this BBS, just a short hop away via Boeing 737 or Airbus 320, who seem to be surviving the oppression of "federally"-funded single-payor health care without any serious Orwellian side effects so far as I can tell. OK, there are issues raised about waiting lists for brain transplants and such, but aren't Canadians' life expectancies and health outcomes the same if not better?
I planned a vacation in February/March in a *Socialist* republic (Vietnam) in part just to avoid watching news coverage of this mess, but I came back and it hasn't stopped!
It just kills me that discussion of such a basic issue should turn in to a debate about the merits of Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum's objectivist philosophy or Marx's spin on the fruits of labor. I often don't think of myself as an exceptionally nice guy, but the grim grumbling about "property" makes me feel like a pretty cheery dude. Bitt, I admire your patience. TigerJimmy, I have concluded that you must be a robot.
OK, I jest, I exaggerate, but I just don't get it. I feel like the American body politic is essentially antisocial. There is no sense of the commonwealth. Republicans aren't *for* anything, just against. Democrats pretend to be *for* something and talk about putting insurance companies in their place while taking exceptional care to please special interests (like insurance companies and pharma).
I won't ever vote for a Democrat or Republican again, but I have to say that it concerns me to no end when Republican demagogues spout bullshit about how they have the will of the American people behind them. Goddamn proto-fascists and a bunch of freaking maladjusted children. They lost a few elections but seem to have conveniently forgotten their lessons in Democracy 101. If I wasn't going to be dead within 15-20 years I would be hugely concerned.
And it is a total riot. The teabaggers and wingnuts with whom I would expect TigertJimmy to make common cause are railing about the "Socialist!" Obama and his evil designs when, in fact, Obama has turned out to be the most miserable, ineffectual, middle-of-the-road-to-nowhere, Harvard-trained tool of special interests that I can recollect.
But he's a socialist
Stuart, was the Canadian single-payor initiative just a pathetic excuse for the (Canadian) libs to get their clutches into their every day lives and tax (Canadians) into oblivion? Or was there maybe something more to it?
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