American Socialism

[Beirut]

The problem is that neither can be trusted to take care of your health. The only person that can be trusted to take care of your health - is yourself.

Fine and dandy. I'll eat lots of fish and avoid trans-fats. But if I need stiches for my next saw wound, I'm apt to seek assistance, though I'm sure with enough bourbon and a sewing kit I could find my inner Rambo and do the job myself.

You might want to look into this statement with a bit more detailed. Elected officals manage very little of the successful institutions.

Oversite yes - management no.

Indeed, you are probably correct.

Military
Law enforcement

These instutions are successful because of the professionals in those organizations - not the elected officials.

immigration is a governmental failure
nuclear regulations is a medicore success
environmental protection - not something you want to claim as successfully managed by the government in the United States.

Agreed, the government might not have the best people for all jobs, but I prefer someone I can vote out of office in charge as opposed to leaving the devilish details of my national social programs to the likes Kenneth Lay and his corporate Enronish ilk. (For example.)

Again I see you have ignored the basic principle of my arguement.

I would never debase myself or you by ignoring your opnions and principles, sir. I either failed to notice or was distracted before a proper response could hit the page.

So while I understand the arguement about socialized medicine - why would I want to exchange the insurance company for a governmental agency with its bueraracy added to the process? Both are a big pain in the rear end - at least with the insurance company - I have the threat of taking my business elsewhere.

If you have the choice of taking your health concerns along multiple avenues, I am sincerely happy for you. Nothing is more important than your health. My concerns rest with the tens of millions of those who have little or no choice.

As for the government being a pain in the rear end, of course they are. But unless we are to dissolve either our electoral systems and/or stage a revolution, we have to work with what we have.

Logic dear Beruit - not emotional appeal will convince me to go with socialized medicine.

You called me dear. I knew you had squishy Canadian blood in you.

I understand the appeal to logic. I trully do. But cold logic alone does not create true effciency in social programs. There must be a, shall we say, human element involved. As I have repeated, ad nauseum, your own Declaration of Independence talks of Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. Happiness is an extremelly subjective, even ethereal word, anethema to the understood tasks and responsibilities of government, but there it is. If the documents your nation are founded upon use such words, then it is, IMHO, up to the nation to include those ideals in its functioning. Meaning, programs that deal specifically with the public good must have an emotional content involved in their structure.

So until one can adequate answer the above question the principle of socialized medicine does not compute with me.

If it's a question of money, we have lots of money. Gobs of it. Our two countries are filthy stincking rich. We're so rich we can afford to waste food, gas, and money itself with reckless abandon and we still enjoy a higher standard of living then most countries. It's not a question of money, it's a question of will and intellect. If we had those two qualities working properly, every single person in both of our countries could enjoy Star Trek level health care.

Now, given that neither of us are using our health resources as best we can, I at least prefer to have those resources managed by people (stupid as they are) who can be affected by public pressure, forced into action, and booted out of office every four years if required, as opposed to untouchable corporations answerable to no one but the bottom line.

But then again as a tax payer who's income is alreadly taxed above 20% when one counts all the taxes I pay - convince me that socialized medicine wont increase the total taxes I pay by more then the current amount on medicial insurance and out of pocket expense for me - with my bi-polar wife my expense is about 9% of my income. Remember our discussions of the past - most counties in the United States have a county hospital that treats the uninsured at the taxpayer expense or free health care clinics.

If the increased financial burden of paying higher taxes for socialized medicine is the same or close to what you pay for "extra" care for your family, I see it as a plus that you would then be guaranteed not to be cut off if your family requires even more care (God forbid), and that those payments would also gurantee that other Americans would not be cut off either.

As for the free community hospitals, I'm sure they do the best they can. But I doubt they can adequately care for the tens of millions who have no health insurance and the millions more who are underinsured.

Also, and please correct me if I'm wrong (it will be your pleasure), I read that Canada spends roughly 11% of its GDP on health care to cover everyone and the US spends over 15% of its GDP to care for some of the people. If true, that shows that private health care is not helping with the economics of health care very much.

...and here is the crux of the arguement as presented by the candidates - no candidate has a plan that explains the cost of the program to the average taxpayer....

Get better candidates.