One person goes to work everyday, pays his taxes, mortgage, energy bills, car payment etc. The government takes X-amount of money for government run health care and this amount will cover this person, his 2.3 kids and his wife. But wait, we have to provide health care for the guy living downtown who spent most of his life selling drugs, paying little or no taxes, collected welfare for years, fathered 9.6 kids with 6.4 women. Sorry first person we are going to have to raise your taxes to cover this poor unfortunate individual. Does this sound like a plan to you?

You are simply wrong. Perhaps that's how Fox Newspeak has "explained" it for you; however, all of the proposed "public options" are INSURANCE programs. As in any INSURANCE program, the money paid out for claims comes from money paid in for premium payments -- and from returns on investments of that money. This is how your car insurance works, and your homeowners insurance, and your existing for-profit healthcare insurance. And it is how all proposed public option health insurance would work.

The ONLY proposed bill that provides for tax subsidies to Americans for healthcare is the Baucus plan -- which excludes public options. The Baucus bill would assure private, for-profit insurers that they can charge whatever they'd like to charge, and poorer Americans would be given tax dollars to pay it. That's why Michael Moore characterized the Baucus bill as "a big wet kiss to the insurance industry."

However, the Baucus bill, at least as it now stands, is not likely to even be voted on. Now, if you feel INSURANCE is inherently unfair, you should tell that to your various other insurance providers.

Not exactly. With insurance, you join with other people to spread the costs of an unlikely event over many people with similar risk structures, or you pay proportional to your risk (i.e. charging 18 year old males more for auto insurance than 50 year old women). Additionally, you obviously would only be covered for incidents that had not happened yet, as otherwise it would defeat the purpose of insurance. Now, looking at the healthcare bills, are there any that refuse coverage for pre-existing conditions? Do they make much of an attempt to determine your risk level and charge you accordingly? Not that I can see... which means they deviate from being pure insurance programs. They're still certainly more than a stones throw from full-on socialized medicine though, unless you agree with the camel's nose argument.

The ONLY proposed bill that provides for tax subsidies to Americans for healthcare is the Baucus plan -- which excludes public options.

Then riddle me this. Why are the supporters of this plan contemplating either raising taxes on the rich, taxing optional medical services and devices, or taxing "gold plated" policies to pay for health care reform?

Oh yeah, I know why. Because the claim that the public option will pay for itself is a BIG FAT LIE.

At best you could call it a massive distortion since the only way it pays for itself is by raising taxes on the moderately well to do to subsidize others.

And the nation in which we live has NO responsiblity at any level for that person's predicament? The national, state and local governments we ourselves set up, they are not responsible for any of that, eh? The economy we choose is not responsible?

How do the drugs get into this country? How does a mother working 2 or 3 jobs just to live protect her children from the drug dealers on the corner? How can she supervise her children when she is WORKING and Bush, the idiot, praised someone who had to work 3 jobs! THis is how BRAIN DEAD you people are.

How does the almighty individual stop the drug traffic on the corner? Who is behind it? How come a freaking computer part cannot get out of this country but drugs flow in like wine?

But even if no one were responsible but the sick, unfortunate soul you describe, that is supposedly what decent people do, they help those who cannot help themselves.

How did we become such a selfish, greedy bunch of people that we cannot show even the slightest bit of what used to be called Christian charity?

But you think you are better; you think you are so powerful and strong, that could never ever happen to SUPERIOR you.

I think you are wrong; I think there but for the grace of God go I! I think it is HUMAN to want to help others.

Everyone is missing the "Elephant" in the room...WE CAN'T AFFORD IT!!! Our nation is too heavily in debt to afford "Universal Healthcare". I have a proposal:

1. Fix MEDECARE and Social Security so these programs are solvent and not projected to go bankrupt.

2. Balance the budget by eleminating wasteful spending, e.g. ACORN, Endowment for the Arts, Foriegn Aid to countries that hate us. etc.

3. Pay down our debt to 1.5% to 2.0% of GDP.

When we have these measure met then we can consider "Universal Healthcare" or what ever name congress is calling Government Run Healthcare Insurance. We can try incremental changes to healthcare by Tort Reform, purchasing healthcare insurance across statelines, reduce defensive medical practices and 1 for 1 tax credit for heathcare insurance purchase.

It is amazing that the Declaration of Independence is 1 page, Constitution 4 pages, The Right to Vote 1 page, what possessed congress to write a 1900+ page nightmare. Regulations increase costs because businesses need to hire people/companies to ensure compliance with the new regulation. If you think regulations are necessary look at the costs for HIPAA.

Balance the budget by eleminating wasteful spending, e.g. ACORN, Endowment for the Arts, Foriegn Aid to countries that hate us. etc.

Ha, would you recommend losing weight by eliminating a grain of rice here and a grain there? To really make a dent in the federal budget, we'd need to target military spending in addition to things you mention (medicare, SS, debt)

Ha, would you recommend losing weight by eliminating a grain of rice here and a grain there? To really make a dent in the federal budget, we'd need to target military spending in addition to things you mention (medicare, SS, debt)

Your information is out of date. <link> The bulk of spending, and certainly the vast bulk of projected increase in spending, is in the social programs. Even completely eliminating the defense department wouldn't deal our long term fiscal problems. <link>

No, my information is not out of date. Happy was suggesting we should balance the budget by cutting things like Acorn (which has already been cut off anyway) and the national endowment of the arts. These things are peanuts. Cancel them and you won't notice the improvement in the budget, they're just too small. I was saying to make a real improvement in budget deficits, you need to focus on the big ticket items like SS, Medicare, and defense.

The defense department comprises a fifth of all federal spending, that's no small potatoes. Add to that that in my opinion defense spending could be drastically slashed with little increase in danger to the US. We'd just need to renegotiate treaties so that wealthy countries like S. Korea and Japan defend themselves. I'd also be for stopping expensive military adventurism, but I don't want to turn this thread into an Iraq war debate...

These things are peanuts. Cancel them and you won't notice the improvement in the budget, they're just too small. I was saying to make a real improvement in budget deficits, you need to focus on the big ticket items like SS, Medicare, and defense.

Agreed and my bad.

The defense department comprises a fifth of all federal spending, that's no small potatoes.

True... although the vast bulk of the growth in federal spending is in entitlements, and ditto the vast bulk of the projected growth.

Add to that that in my opinion defense spending could be drastically slashed with little increase in danger to the US. We'd just need to renegotiate treaties so that wealthy countries like S. Korea and Japan defend themselves.

Maybe. Maybe not. *IF* this is something we want to do, then we really should do this over a period of a decade or two, so this doesn't really move us away from needing to get a grip on entitlements.

And I'm seriously not sure that it is something we want to do. There are a lot of benefits to the world having a global cop. Moving back to a pre-WWI or pre-WWII type world might have problems.

I favor a military drawdown, but a gradual one. Maybe start small, like give S. Korea 10-15 years to fully staff the DMZ so we can pull out. I mean, if they can't defend themselves against a less populous, poorer, less technologically advanced, less developed country with fewer powerful allies then maybe they deserve to be taken over. But whatever, disagree if you so wish.

I fully agree entitlements need to be adjusted immediately. How can median life expectancy go up 18 years but retirement age only go up 2 years over the course of the program? It's ridiculous. So you and I really aren't so far apart other than perhaps our ideal vision of the role of the US military in the world.