The difference is, as it seems to appear, other taxpayers are not forced to pay for your health care. Other employees of your company can opt out, or if they can’t, they can quit the company.
This is not the same as the national plan as some would like to force on the rest of us.
This is what I don’t understand either. If someone is poor, then it is the proper role of government to help them out. Even though I’m a limited government guy, I have no problems with this. They will get food stamps, subsidized housing, medical treatment, etc. If you make a decent amount of money, you are expected to buy your own food and pay your mortgage/rent on your own. Why is health coverage any different? U.S. Census figures reveal that 37% of the 45 million uninsured people in the U.S. live in households making more than 50K/year. Almost 20 percent make more than 75K. I submit that if these people do not have health insurance, it’s because they don’t want it. They CHOSE not to buy it, obviously they have the wherewithal to do so. How is that a crisis? Why is it government’s job to force these people to buy something they don’t want, and to tap the pockets of every American to help them pay for it? I’d like a new house, can I get the feds to subsidize that for me too?
Now, none of this is to say that there aren’t things that need to be fixed. There are, but raising taxes and having the government ration care just ain’t the way to go about it.
I agree. And I don’t mind paying for it either.
But this health care scam that the Libs are pushing is pure commie crap!!:mad:
Let me bring it closer to home. My yougest (22) lives on his own. He didn’t finish college but he’s making $17+ an hour on a blue collar job.That’s not bad for 22, is it? He turned down the health plan because he wants to save up some money, possibly to get married next year. He hasn’t worked for me in the last 2 years so I can’t put him on my insurance plan from the small business I own. there are licensing issues with my business, and it’s be easy for an insurance company to check if I was scamming them.
Either way, it’d be cheaper for him to be on that other companies plan. He isn’t.
This is my son we’re talking about! But he’s an able bodied adult. He’s a man!
I’d take a bullet for him. I freaking swear to whatever God you believe in that I would! But I don’t owe him health insurance! Nor does anyone one on these boards! You just don’t! He got insurance form me until he was 20 (when he left the employee of a store I own). And a chunk of his earnings went towards his (and only his) insureance. But I no longer owe him anything. I don’t. Nor do you!! You don’t!!
Like the post office, right? Please cite for me one single article, newspaper, or journal that implies that our educational system fails to provide basic literacy. You can’t. Without public schooling where do you suppose we’d get future scientists and physicists from? Or should we just rub the golden libertarian lamp and import them from China?
Magiver, I mean this not as a slight, I assure you but I encourage you to reread the Hillary’s plan posted in the OP. Your understanding of it is tenuous at best.
If you read the plan, you’d realize that (A) Your health care isn’t changing at all and (B) You do not have to participate in the system. Your tax concern is a non issue. If a democrat gets elected your taxes are going to back to pre-Bush levels regardless of whether there Hillary’s health care plan is implemented.
So where’s the beef again?
I encourage you to reread the plan posted in the OP as your understanding of it is tenuous at best.
Do you really believe that?
C’mon!
Really?
You wouldn’t have, by chance, been a Jew in 1930’s Germany, were you?
I’ve read that quite a few of them didn’t think the few changes at that time were going to do them any harm, either.
When I left my previous job, I called my health insurance provider to ask how much it would cost to continue my coverage. Over $500 a month. Needless to say, I couldn’t afford it. There are other plans but they are so restrictive and expensive that it’s not even worth it and because I have a pre-existing conditon, I’d most likely get denied coverage. Even the “cheap” plans (which go for about $200 a month) that would offer the services I need would be too expensive. The copays are so ridiculous that I may as well pay out-of-pocket.
Let me give you an example. In Michigan, we have Health Alliance Plan which offers “HAP SOLO” which allows individuals to purchase health insurance. For the cheapest plan, I’d be 20-50% of the cost of medication and doctor visits. Do you know how much those doctors charge for just pissing in a cup? I simply cant afford to pay 20% of that.
And therefore other people should have to pay for your health care? When others go to work every day a part of their earnings should go to taking care of you?
Yes, I do believe it. Hillary’s has laid out quite succinctly how she plans to pay for it. Is there any reason why I should not believe her?
I encourage you to read the plan posted in the OP.
I’m sorry but I just can’t be convinced that providing health care for the uninsured is tantamount to the rise of the Third Reich. If you could provide some parallels between the Third Reich and Hillary’s plan, I am willing and eager to hear them.
And why did you leave a job that, according to your post, seemed to have full coverage for you?
I don’t think that’s a fair argument. I pay taxes too and, in fact, I probably work as hard or harder than most people in my age-group. I hate the fact that my tax dollars are going repair bridges and infrastructure in Iraq when those dollars could be used to erect parks, schools, and museums right in the USA. The difference between me and the opposition is that I don’t throw stomp around flailing my arms about in frustration. Inevitably, one has to accept that you cannot dictate where your tax dollars go. I wish we could.
That’s not what I was saying.
What I was saying is, you seem to buy into dangerously huge lies.
Do you really think that millionaires, like Hillary, of all people on this Earth, gives a rats ass about you or your health care? Or is it more logical to believe that they use people like you (and by your own posts it appears that you have some illness, or “pre-existing” condition) to push huge government programs where THEY (and not you nor I) have power?
I was a graduate student on an teaching assistantship which expires after you graduate. I currently do adjunct work at two community colleges teaching biology. It demands a lot of my time and is considered part-time contract work. I make about $800 a month and I’m ineligible for food stamps (bridge card). To top it off, I’m also $30,000 in debt which the government will start wanting in February. I have no idea how I will pay them off. 
The funny thing about this thread is that Mrs. Clinton’s plan is emphatically not universal health care. Do not worry everyone, the HMOs are pleased. The massive, inefficient bureaucracy will stay in place, for now.
That is unfortunate.
As for your son, the reason I think I should help him (and he should help me, since I’m around his age) is that any day, something really shitty could happen to one of us. Your son, it appears, would be totally fucked, unless you are personally wealthy and would wish to help him out. As for me, my insurance could easily screw me. I’m just very happy I’m healthy, with no chronic conditions, and that I have a rather boring life style.
But it happens all the time in America, people think they have good health insurance and when the day finally comes when they really need it – they find themselves lost in the wilderness. It happens because the goal of the insurance companies is to make a profit, and that means not treating the sick under many circumstances. There’s simply too much documentation, too many reports on this point, too many millions of people with horror stories – the grand experiment is over and it’s a failure. Its major success has been the siphoning away of billions (trillions?) of dollars which should have gone to treat the sick and injured. As a result, people die and suffer and families are destroyed.
You do realize “countries with universal health rationing” includes major, advanced industrial societies, right? This may come as a surprise, but they actually do medical research.
As for the United States, we’re practically communists already – we pour tens of billions of tax payer dollars into the NIH (National Institutes of Health) every year and have them perform major research in many different fields, with a bright history. Not to mention publicly funded university research which is then given to private interests.
I guess I’d ask what your criteria for judging a health system is then. Maybe I am being too bold, but I would imagine most people would evaluate a system by what you receive in return for the investment.
So if system A spent three times the amount of system B and system B had far better results, system B is better than system A. In fact, system A would be a complete failure. Yes?
Well, the U.S. has embarrassing figures in just about any health related metric one can name, figures which can at times be compared to poor developing nations. And for this we have the most expensive system in the world. What a bargain.
Well, you basically said if we want more butter we’re going to need to cut the guns. I agree, of course (the massive snark in another thread notwithstanding). The problem is I don’t see us cutting the guns. That is to say, we ain’t leaving Iraq.
No, your belief that the free market will fix anything is just like the most ardent Stalinist’s belief that Marx explains everything, no matter what the evidence is.
Romney’s Mass. plan, and some of the proposed ones, would make everyone get insurance. You son will no doubt get insurance when he’s older, and he is likely to get more than he pays. Right now he’s gaming the system, perfectly legal, but one of the problems with the US health care system.
If he does have a catastrophic illness, btw, who is going to pay for it? Has he thought of that, or does he feel immortal, like many 22 year olds?
May I ask why you don’t get a job that pays more than that? My college drop out son makes almost that much in a week.
Guess what - care is rationed today, but irrationally. People with insurance can get preventative care right away. Those who don’t can’t afford to go to the doctor until it is almost too late, and then their care, government financed, is a lot more expensive. Not to mention that lots of insurance plans ration care anyhow, by not paying for certain optional things.
Clinton’s plan would raise taxes on a small number of people, exactly those who got the big tax cuts 5 years ago. Now we might have to go back to the stagnant economy of the late '90s if this happens, I do admit.
I think some of you are mis-interpreting my comment about being a Jew in 1930’s Germany. Hopefully the Mods don’t.
That’s his problem. Not mine, and not yours.
You really believe it will stop at that, huh. Sigh.
Care to give a cite that the US has the best health care in the world? You might look at life expectancy, dollars per person, number of uninsured.
In fact, the statement that we have the best healthcare in the world is 100% bullshit. We might be ahead in botox, though.
You might want to rephrase it. I found it very offensive, and came very close to reporting it.
Well, a hospital emergency room will treat him, and try to get money out of him, and probably won’t. Everyone else’s costs go up - mine and yours - so it is our problem.
Of course he might run into a libertarian doctor who would lecture him about being stupid and kick him out into the street to die - but happily the ethics of the medical professions is a bit above that in general.
If my taxes go up and my insurance payments go down, I still win. In the Times this week, there were a few cites that the average overhead of a health insurance company is 20%, vs. 4% for Medicare. That won’t be helped by the Clinton plan, but if we move in that direction it might work. You probably have more choice in Medicare than a private insurance plan anyhow. So, I think health costs will go down, and I don’t give a crap if taxes go up if we’re better off overall.
What? Why? It wasn’t that convoluted.
There were actually some Jewish people ( and there were, research it) that believed what Hitler and his cronies were spewing wasn’t something to overly worry about.
There really were. research it! That’s nothing to be offended by.
I am not comparing Hillary to Hitler. I am making a comparison to people that don’t think her big government power grab is any big deal.
It is.