Comments on: In a Word Senator Kennedy, NO!

By: Big Dog

Big Dog — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 23:21:19 +0000

Robert, I certainly appreciate you writing here. The fact is, Canada has poor health care and poor waits. They can call it bad paperwork but it is not. Some of the elective surgeries are heart bypasses and other time critical items. Some of those folks died waiting to be seen and they died of the ailment.

The only country that has a social medicine plan that works is France. It is costly but combines public with private.

As for the uninsured. It is important to remember there are a number of people who can afford health care or to whom it is offered and they refuse it. That number has been reported at near 20 million. Health care in America costs a lot because of law suits. and a few other things.

It is important to also remember that it is not the job of Congress or the taxpayer to provide health care coverage. This Public money you talk about is taxpayer money. I believe that if we are to have health care for everyone then everyone needs to pay for it. Let the uninsured be lumped together in groups so they can get a better rate. Stop requiring all kinds of BS in the packages and make them minimal. I refuse to pay for health care for the people who supposedly can not afford it. I guess when you have two cars and three cell phones it is tough to pay for health care. People are offered it and if they do not take it I should not have to pay for it.

If the government requires this people who pay for their own will drop the insurance and sponge of the taxpayer. And, like I said before, it will cost way more than they are saying or can predict. Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security. How much more freaking money should they be able to take for me to pay for everyone else? I pay damn near 50% of my money in some form of taxes.

What did people do before insurance. How about they take out a loan and pay it back. How about if they get health insurance I pay for I get to make them quit smoking and drinking and eating fatty foods. If I pay for it I should dictate the terms.

Regardless of what you think or have been told, social medicine does not work. Why do so many Canadians try to come here for their health care?

By: Robert P.

Robert P. — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 20:31:40 +0000

Hi,
I’m not going to fight with you about this, but wanted to present a few facts.
1. About the wait. It ends up that Canadian medicine is really bad at something, updating their lists. There was a publication recently that looked at these “long waits” in Canada – which is only for elective surgery by the way, never urgent or emergency surgery. Anyway, they found that the long waiting lists had many people that decided not to do the surgery, had it elsewhere, died from other causes, etc. The wait for these people is averaged into the “long waits” you hear so much about. When they figured out the average wait for those who WANTED the surgery, it was about the same as in the US.
2. Two-thirds of american health care costs are paid for by taxes and public subsidies.
3. We leave 47 million Americans uninsured and 17 million underinsured.
4. For two-thirds of what we pay per capita, many countries have a national health care plan that covers everyone. That means we are already paying for a national health care plan using public money (see #2), but that we are not getting it (see #3).

You can disagree with government running things, but the fact is we could already have universal health care with no new taxes, just a redistribution of the PUBLIC money we already spend.

Thanks.

By: Webloggin

Webloggin — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 14:22:09 +0000

Is This What a Centrist Looks Like?…

This is not centrist, it is socialism pure and simple and in my book that always means hard left. If they are going to propose it they at least need to call it by its real name.

……