[quote="Zoe";p="408482"But health care insurers who collect health care dollars and pass them on to investors should not exist.[/quote]

They will likely always exist. Didn't you know that Capitalism was one of our founding fathers??

You know I have to agree with you. But young people who are born with serious permanent conditions don't have that choice - that's where the system breaks down. People who have conditions that they couldn't avoid are not able to afford health care because the insurance carriers don't want the risk. They'll either decline them, or offer them a premium that's through the roof. There has to be something in place to help those who need it, not just want it. After all, health and wellbeing are largely a personal responsibility. I believe the government's place in all of this is to provide for those who fall through the cracks of capitalism.

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Blind acceptance is a dangerous practice.

The market made those decisions and it worked fine for decades. It isn't working as well now, but there are still ways to make it work using insurance. Self-employed and others can still buy insurance on their own. Did Jefferson ask the government to provide those self-starters with medical insurance? And yes, many who work for McDonald's etc as adults, it is their fault. If you did nothing to better yourself via education or learning a trade then it isn't anyone else's fault. You failed to explain why government needs to handle medical care to avoid this. You automatically leap to it, making it sound like the ideological prejudice is on your end. Mass covered its population with insurance. Not government care.

They wouldn't know any more than I do. Why? Because my Dad (who has been self-employed for 25 years) bought insurance on his own. He averages $50K a year, he can do it, others can. There is far less fraud and waste in private care than the waste inherent in government systems like Medicare. That link was already provided by Merlin. And many insurance companies the job is not to maxmize wealth, that is false. Many insurance companies are non-profits or mutual companies. Very few are publicly traded companies where profit maximization is the goal. And CEO's are necessary whether private or government run. To call that waste is false. To hand it over to government bureaucracy and red tape gets us Crap Care (aka the Canadian system).

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All you need to know about the energy crisis:
ANWR Exploration Republicans: 91% Supported. Democrats: 86% Opposed.
Coal-to-liquid R's: 90% YES. D's: 78% NO.
Oil Shale Exploration R's: 90% YES. D's: 86% NO.
Outer Continental Shelf Exploration R's: 81% YES. D's: 83% NO.
Increased Refinery Capacity R's: 97% YES. D's: 96% NO

SUMMARY: 91% of House Republicans have historically voted to increase the production of America’s own oil and gas. 86% of House Democrats have historically voted against.

The whole point of this thing, is to keep costs down, right?

So, why would I want to involve the freakin' government, which is the least efficient institution on this planet?

I mean, that's only gonna mean..... more cost, right?

So, if I eliminate that possibility, then I'm left with two choices: either a) go with the status quo, and try to make it more efficient, or b) change the status quo in an effort to reduce costs -

And if I decide on the latter, than "where" do I cut costs? Well, the place to start looking, would be in the places where the "biggest" costs are, right?

So, where are those? Well, diabetes, cancer, yadda yadda....

You see where this leads, right?

Where this leads, is exactly to the medical triage equation that's going on in Oregon right now.

Are you guys hip to that? This has been going on for a long time - here, f'r instance:

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/m...v9/ai_10640565

You know - I mean, could you imagine the gigantic freakin' crock-up that would happen if the federal government tried to get involved in this stuff?

I mean, as it stands right now, every State has a different law around this stuff, and now suddenly they'd want to change it? You know, reorganize all those bureaucracies, at a cost of, fifty times "what"?

So it seems to me, that the Romney idea is much better than the Hillary idea "to begin with".

I don't exactly love ( ) the Romney idea, 'cause those (*)(*)(*)(*) insurance companies are clowns too, but at least they're more efficient than the government, generally speaking.

All that may be changing "even as we speak" though, 'cause now the pharmas are getting into bed with the gov (Medicare Part D), and that whole thing is very likely to become a "pharmaceutical-industrial complex" kinda like the MIC. Which "in and of itself" is not such a bad thing, but you kinda gotta watch out when like, "a lot" of your major industries suddenly start becoming dependent on the government.

but it's the best one I've seen so far. The only side benefit to Hillary-care is that the impending disaster of government run healthcare would cause a meltdown among the majority of voters. And we wouldn't see a democrat in office again until the next millenium. The exception being the few dem centrists against the plan to begin with.

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All you need to know about the energy crisis:
ANWR Exploration Republicans: 91% Supported. Democrats: 86% Opposed.
Coal-to-liquid R's: 90% YES. D's: 78% NO.
Oil Shale Exploration R's: 90% YES. D's: 86% NO.
Outer Continental Shelf Exploration R's: 81% YES. D's: 83% NO.
Increased Refinery Capacity R's: 97% YES. D's: 96% NO

SUMMARY: 91% of House Republicans have historically voted to increase the production of America’s own oil and gas. 86% of House Democrats have historically voted against.

That's pretty funny. I mean, you're implying that the voters could somehow make this new entitlement "go away" at some later date.....