Many (but not all) of these are programs I would support as well. However, many are simply laws passed which leave compliance up to individual enterprise upon pain of legal penalty otherwise…and they all fall short of the kind of huge, personal, complex and ongoing type of government activity in, and control over, one’s personal life and well being that a government administered health care program would comprise. I haven’t seen anyone (anyone without a political motive, that is) sing the praises of housing projects, welfare, and other types of ongoing government attempts to ‘take care of us’ that have been attempted since Johnson’s Great Society days. While they all accomplish some minimal good, they are by and large wasteful, ineffective, cause more problems than they solve, and require huge amounts of each tax dollar simply to fund the beaurocracies that administer them.
And once again, you are mistaken still in thinking that the government will have all that administrative power.
Ignorance is still coming out from you.
Oh, please! Do you seriously think the government is gonna take on the gigantic task of overseeing health care for everyone in the nation but adopt a largely hands-off policy in administering it? Not on your life! Hell, my own 82-year-old aunt has to jump through all sorts of hoops as it is now, and wade through voice mail after voice mail and confusion over what one person tells her vs. what someone else tells her about what she’s covered for, and she can’t see certain doctors because they won’t take Medicare. She’s even paid for certain things out of her own pocket just so she won’t have to deal with the rigamarole the government puts her through. And no, she not rich, either. Her husband died last year of Alzheimer’s and she’s living on the pension provided by his job working for the phone company. And I’m sorry, but her experience jives perfectly with what I would expect of government involvement in our personal affairs, and I have no doubt whatsoever that these types of problems pale in comparison to the state we would find ourselves in trying to get adequate health care from the government.
Unless, of course, you can show me just how I’m mistaken still in thinking that the government will have all that administrative power…which I’m confidant you can’t because no such health plan is on the table. You have no idea whatsoever what a government health plan would entail either in the beginning or what it would eventually become, and yet you issue one sentence declarations that I’m ignorant on the subject. As good ol’ Dr. Phil says, the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior, and the record of the federal government in administering social programs is dismal at best, and that’s what I’m going by. I’d like to know just how is it that you’re so positive that the government will not have all that administrative power, given that no such program is even in the works at this point in time.
Are you saying that the Government should create a system that, instead of using guidelines that some will take advantage of, requires the government to hire enough caseworkers to spend an untold number of hours evaluating each and every claim? And you think such a system will reduce the amount of “large wasteful, ineffective, cause more problems than they solve, and require huge amounts of each tax dollar simply to fund the beaurocracies that administer them” funds than are currently being spent?
I work for a State Agency in Arkansas, and I know that there is probably some waste in each and every program within the Department. And just like every large Organization, there’s those that will do their best to waste resources. However, I’ve never seen a program that spends more on adminstrative costs that on program cost.
If you don’t mind, I’d like to see an Audit Report, issued by either an Independant Auditor or GAO type auditor, that shows a program spends more on Administrative Costs than on Program Costs. And, while you’re at it, I’d like to see enough reports that detail other programs that “…while they accomplish some minimal good, they are by and large wasteful, ineffective, cause more problems than they solve, and require huge amounts of each tax dollar simply to fund the beaurocracies that administer them.”
I’d especially be interested in any such reports concerning the Arkansas government you can provide.
I look forward to receiving your information. And, Thanks in advance.
Remind me: who was in charge of the government these last 6 years?
The ignored clue for the day was MA, as in Massachusetts:
We have confirmed that several times here already.
You showed to be so ignorant of what is going in MA and you tried to pretend that a sweeping generalization on what the government can do was a valid one.
IMO a good government program always depends on the implementation by a capable administration in the first place and then we need a government that contains less elements that have as a rule that “government never works” and then get elected to prove it. (curiously enough, extreme conservatives follow that rule)
No, I haven’t said any such thing. Where have you gotten an idea such as this?
Perhaps you read my post in haste. I haven’t said anything about government programs that cost more to administer than they pay out in benefits (though there may be some…I don’t know). What I said was that many of them require huge amounts of tax dollars (and by that I mean administrative costs as a percentage out of each dollar spent) to fund the beaurocracies that administer them.
As for the reports, audits, etc. you request, I’m afraid that you are asking me to perform something of a librarian’s duties and I simply don’t have the time (or frankly the knowledge of where to find them) to indulge your request.
Translation: ‘once again, I’m only guessing and that is good enough for me.’ 
I have the theory that SA is in reality Stephen Colbert.
Okay, one more round then I’m off to bed. Bush’s admistration did not create the beaurocracies that she (my aunt) is having to deal with, nor did it establish the way they go about conducting business. The practices of these agencies far predates the Bush administration, and you know that as well as I.
I’m sorry, I was of the impression that I was talking about a national (i.e., federal) health care program. You know, the kind that Hillary, for example, might try to implement.
IMO a good government program always depends on the implementation by a capable administration in the first place and then we need a government that contains less elements that have as a rule that “government never works” and then get elected to prove it. (curiously enough, extreme conservatives follow that rule)
[/QUOTE]
“Government programs” of the type we are discussing are rarely implemented by this or that administration. They are created and funded by acts of Congress, and largely take on a life of their own.
And on preview…no, not guessing but rather making statements of belief based on a lifetime of experience and observation.
And with that, I must bid you goodnight. 
The solution is to vote Democratic. Which party do you think it is that eagerly passes laws to put all those hoops between beneficiaries and benefits?
Under the guise of preventing “waste, fraud, and abuse,” of course, but the rain falls on the just and the unjust.
What **RTF ** said.
Clearly you were ignoring what I posted before, I even said that I don’t think Hillary will be able to pass her old plan at all. One then should concentrate on what is possible.
When I said 6 years, I was indeed including congress.
Like if I have not one also, my parents found the health care in the old country to be better than the one in the US, and it was the highway robbery medicine plan set by the republicans that convinced them of that. In the private health front, my family already has several tales of woe that showed me that the private bureaucracy in HMO’s can be worse than any government. In my case, I can’t tell what is better since I have no health care right now nor money to go the old country yet. :rolleyes:
Well, I hope that the generic cold medicine from the dollar store works as well as Nyquil for me now.
Strange. My husband is on Medicare and our problems with getting answers, getting bills paid, etc. have virtually vanished. No longer are we being hounded by doctors’ offices because they aren’t getting a reply to their claims. No longer do the offices need to submit things more than once. And no longer do we end up playing the, “Gee, I wonder what they’ll cover?” game.
Part D was hard to figure out, though. That has certainly been true. But considering that I think the Republicans were hoping it would fail and so built in problems to cause it to fail, that shouldn’t surprise anyone.
When the people in charge have a vested interest in making sure government solutions fail so that they can then point to them and crow about how government solutions fail, color me skeptical that it’s a fair test.
Why do you hate our soldiers?
As folks have pointed out, there are plenty of well-administered programs run by the government. Folks haven’t pointed this out because it’s so bleedin’ obvious, but there are plenty of crappily-administered programs run by the private sector (Ticketmaster, anyone? Customer service for your phone line?) There’s no Invisible Hand that magically makes the government perform poorly while the private sector performs well.
Daniel
OK, so…
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Candidate known to favor publicly-funded social programs
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Large-scale government programs have histories of propensity to bureaucratic bloatware issues
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…?
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*Socialist Dictatorship! *
No, but seriously, and that smart-aleck remark aside, by now it seems we have cleared the issue as to that HRC would NOT be a “socialist dictator” and we are in the much more sensible discussion of “whether HRC’s domestic policies would get us bogged down with ill-conceived Big Government tax-and-spend wealth-redistribution-but-protecting-certain-favored-groups programs”. Hey, that’s a valid policy argument, but the commentators and RW media sources really should have no need to bring up scare-scenarios of “socialist dictatorship” and arrests and jail for those who’d rather not play along in order to make the point.
I agree with what you say in general terms. There are, however, certain considerations on both sides (private and government) that tend to hinder what they both do. For example, while it is true that a profit motive can encourage private companies to cut corners, the lack of a profit motive can encourage government bureaucracies to take on unnecessary bloat. And in theory, were it not for the political and military power behind a government agency, both would be susceptible to identical problems. But when government is the only legal monopoly, certain considerations arise for government that do not arise for private businesses. The ability to threaten a consumer with loss of liberty if he does not pay whatever the purveyor demands for a service effectively removes all incentive to do a good job except for goodwill. Even a voter response that changes the management of government does not have the same effect that a market response has on a private business. The government service will not shut down or lose to a competitor. It will go on, and those who actually did the grunt level work, functioning as the consumer’s POS, won’t necessarily change at all.
I don’t understand why a voter response won’t have an effect. Look at what’s happening at Walter Reed right now. Because of a perceived threat of voter backlash, the upper levels of management are changing, and we can expect to see changes ripple down through the system.
Or look at teaching. NCLB is removing a lot of grunt workers from the schools, in the form of non-highly-qualified teachers. I think a lot of the law is a load of shit, but the business about requiring high qualifications from teachers is a good idea.
I’m in no way saying that a governmental system is perfect; campaigners have discovered a lot of tricks to muddy up the process by which government is accountable to citizens. But I do think that for vital services, services that every person needs, a government is a better provider than a for-profit, which is accountable only to its shareholders.
Daniel
I honestly haven’t been paying much attention lately but have other Western industrialized countries with socialized medicine fallen into totalitarian regimes or otherwise been held hostage by their nanny governments?
Our water is provided by government, and it does a pretty good job. Our electricity is provided by a private co-op (in which we are shareholders), and it does a pretty good job, too.
I dunno, but – Hey! Let’s ask our Canadian members what life is like under the jackboot of socialized medicine.
If your electricity is like mine, there’s a service by which poor people can receive discounted electricity. What I’m having trouble finding out is whether this is a government-mandated service or something that Progress Energy set up on their own. I suspect the former, but that’s only because I tend to think that businesses today are run with the profit motive foremost, a la Milton Friedman, and not with the community’s interests foremost. Sure, the two sometimes intersect, but when they do not (e.g., in the case of providing free services to the indigent), it seems that not many businesses err on the side of community interest.
Daniel
One thing I think most people who love to point to socialized medicine in other countries seem to overlook is that these programs are not administered by the U.S. government! Saying that such a system would work here because it works somewhere else is like saying that you know you’d survive a plane crash because your neighbor did. Other countries have completely different sets of governmental dynamics than exists in this country, which is fickle by design and lumberingly monolithic and beaurocratic in practice.
As I’ve said, I would have no objection to the government funding health insurance for everyone, I just don’t want it in charge of health care itself. In other words, pay for everyone to have coverage similar to what individuals have through employer-provided health plans, finance it with whatever taxes may be necessary, and then stay the hell out of the way. But of course that’s not the way government operates here because without financial control there is no way to use it to influence votes and no way to juke around with the money coming in to to create more programs designed to buy more votes…you know, similar to what has been going on with the Social Security program lo these many decades and which has brought it to the brink of bankruptcy.
The government of the U.S., by virtue of its very nature, cannot and will not be content to function altruistically and for the genuine good of its people. It will always seek to grow and expand, and to create more and more ineffective and wasteful programs and create more and more complex and uncaring beaurocracies to run them, all in an attempt to gain the votes of whomever would gain from them at the expense of everyone else, and the ultimate result would be a huge, unaccountable and largely unresponsive nanny-state where your very health and well-being lies in the hands of anonymous beaurocrats for whom you’re nothing but a number. Speaking for myself, I’d rather take my chances on the caprice of happenstance than to turn my health and well being over to governmental control.