You are more than welcome to spend your personal funds as you personally wish.

Public spending accounts for between 45% and 56.1% of U.S. health care spending… so the Government already spends something over a trillion a year. So you are wanting to reduce it by 90%? or raise the ante?

Why not just means-test Medicare and you can add coverage for those ‘in need’ without raising Govt overall spending at all?

ROFL … That’s the critique that should be lobbed at OBAMA.

The President has yet to honestly and directly address the concrete and real issues relating to government-run healthcare. All he offers is pablum, platitudes and patronizing feelgoodism.

Your sophistry is noted and does not surprise.

Government malfeasance can and will in a number of ways lead to the situations you describe. Socialism has historically caused poverty and misery. Whether its a US version of NHS denying life-saving care to kids (as has happened in UK) via ‘care by postal code’ or whether Obama’s economic malfeasance/mistakes will lead to hard luck cases for people, the fact that you are unwilling to acknowledge the downside and limits to Government action suggests you are incapable of an honest discussion on this matter.

It is sophistry, and you know it, to assume that opposition to ObamaCare and other dreadful socialist schemes is solely motivated by insufficient concern for those in need.

I show my own concern by supporting private charity, and I suspect I may give more than you to charity. My concern is not lessened simply because I dont agree with wrecking the economy and the federal budget with over-reaching socialist schemes. These schemes hurt more than they help. It’s interesting, yet not surprising, that liberals want to play the moral superiority game with other people’s money, but not put their own money where their mouth is (surveys have shown that conservatives give more to charity than liberals).

Mr Reynolds, do you find it acceptable that conservatives give more to charity than liberals, and that liberals are less charitable than other Americans?

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/03/conservatives_more_liberal_giv.html

“People who reject the idea that “government has a responsibility to reduce income inequality” give an average of four times more than people who accept that proposition. “

You can argue that we’re not losing anything by having government eventually taking over 1/6 of the American economy…

Doesn’t the government control nearly half of the medical expenditures via medicare/medicaid/VA/ADA/SSI/mirad levels of regulation anyway? Will taking over another quarter of that figure really change much? The fact is, we’ve reached the point of no return in government involvement in healthcare long ago, so we may as well own up to ourselves to make it work properly and fairly for all Americans and legal immigrants.

Because:

1) This does nothing to widen the pool of insured which is necessary if we’re to avoid the young and healthy staying out of the pool and then jumping in at the last minute. When people do that — acting in their own short-term economic interests — they avoid contributing to a system they later exploit.

2) Also, most “working class stiffs” don’t pay enough in tax to pay for health insurance with a tax break. So it would have to be an earned income tax credit — a handout. Welfare. Which Republicans would of course demagogue.

You don’t understand this issue, Rick. Which is why you talk in vague abstractions and offer ideological pabulum.

How about giving the working class stiff a nice fat tax break so that he can purchase the insurance himself - make his own choices instead of bowing to your obviously superior judgment - and make him responsible for his own life?

True, you wouldn’t be able to control him so I see the downside for liberals. But if insuring the uninsured is really your goal, then it is cheaper to encourage people to buy health insurance than punish them for not purchasing government run plans.

ed.

Your evasion is noted and does not surprise.

Sota:

I posed those as threshold questions. I didn’t say or imply that the House bill was the only way forward. I wanted Republicans to take this out of abstract theorizing and talk about actual human consequences. Rick’s post was devoid of human consequence, so I re-introduced it.

Is the House bill the best thing going? Of course not. It’s the kind of stupid, half-assed thing we end up with when the bulk of the polity is lost in delusion and fantasy and resentment, playing politics rather than solving problems.

Does the right to something imply that the federal government should provide it for you? Or does the right to something only imply that the federal government cannot prevent you from pursuing it?

Your argument works as well against Medicare or VA benefits or Social Security as against insurance/health reform.

Does the right of old people to eat something other than dog food imply that the federal government should provide? Are you prepared to make the argument that we should do away with SS, Medicare and VA benefits? You’re trying to move back to the abstract, back to the theoretical.

But people aren’t theoretical, they’re real.

In every single country in the developed world — except ours — people have a right to medical care.

In none of those countries to people have a right to taxi fare to the doctor’s office.

Why is it that every other developed nation can do what we cannot?

1) Is it okay with you that working people, people who put in their 40 hours plus every week, can end up living in a box under a freeway when one of their kids get sick. Is that okay, yes or no?

2) Is it okay with you that Americans have to choose between feeding their kids and getting their kids inoculated, or choose between one of their kids getting insulin and another getting asthma medication? Is that okay with you, yes or no?

You must know that there aren’t just two options to move forward given our current situation, right? We don’t have to select between your questions above and the reform being discussed. I know you have more nuance than that.

To answer your questions directly, no, neither of those situations are “okay” with me personally. But that is largely irrelevant to the topic at hand. Whether or not a situation is “okay” with someone is nearly meaningless when it comes to what the federal government can (or should) do.

Is it “okay” with you that Saddam had men and women raped, mutilated and tortured? If it isn’t, then clearly going to war in Iraq was the right thing to do? You see, there are usually many, many options to solve a particular problem. Boiling the situation down to Option A: “letting kids die in the street”, or Option B: “passing health care reform” is just silly.

If we have a right to something (life, healthcare, etc.), someone/something must presumably be responsible to see to it that we get that something we have a right to. Who/what has that responsibility?

Does the right to something imply that the federal government should provide it for you? Or does the right to something only imply that the federal government cannot prevent you from pursuing it?

If people have the right to health care, then certainly they have the right to a method of transportation to the nearest health care facility in non-emergency situations. After all, how can one pursue the right to life without the right to health care? And how can one pursue the right to health care without the right to access it?

Based on this theory, America has needed a shrink since 1776. If only we could have made peace with those Loyalists…

Here’s an idea: sometimes the people are right. Not to subscribe to populism, but it is a thought.