National Health Care Coverage

So, you are saying that if a person can not find a job for a year and they become sick during that time, that they should not be able to receive any kind of healthcare? I hope that is NOT what you mean because that philosophy will come back to bite you!

Just because you want to help your neighbour does not mean everybody does.
If everyone paid the same amount of tax and those who didn’t pay were not covered I wouldn’t mind.

Oops, I meant to say the top CEO of the largest healthcare insurance company makes $20,000 A DAY on the backs of the dying!

All Republicans in the House and Senate do call a the people at Gitmo terrorists. Pay your taxes and think of it as health insurance and open your heart to say that your tax dollars are helping someone in need. The “individualism” of America is very sad! What ever happened to caring for our neighbor? Cracks me up that the GOP people are more likely to be religious, but they certainly do not act like it. If you don’t have a job, your un-worthy to have healthcare! Shame on the Republicans!

Not all Republicans call unconvicted people at Guantanamo Bay terrorists.
As I explained earlier I live in England, we don’t have health insurance, but I wish we did, ours is paid for by the government. Even people who don’t get sick are forced to pay through taxes, its unfair.

The Republicans call everyone at Gitmo a “Terrorist” when they haven’t been tried yet. After fighting and threatening a lawsuit with my father’s insurance company they finally approved his chemo, and the insurance company denyed a brain test for my brother, he died, socialized healthcare is music to my ears. The “Free Market” approach to heathcare is NOT working. If you have health insurance and you like it, you have submitted a major claim yet. That I guarantee you!

No, they don’t believe you’re guilty until proven innocent. They believe in fiscal conservatism yes, what do you want socialism, a far more coercive ideology?

Republicans want the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer! They believe the “trickle down” affect actually works. They would rather see the wealthy health insurance companies get richer while people die! They believe in illegal & immoral wars that so far have killed 4,500 of our troops and close to 100,000 innocent Iraqis. They believe in torture and illegal detention centers. They believe that you are guilty until proven innocent, on and on and on!

Why? Republicans just want low tax, low spending and individual freedom, how can you view those as bad things?

Sorry about calling you a Republican. That would be the worst thing someone could say to me. I wouldn’t want to wish that on my worst enemy.

Absolutely, the private insurers whose service is inferior to their competitors will go out of business, in that sense the market is self-regulating.
What does the Republican party have to do with me?

You just state the EXACT reason why we need to have a public option. If the private insurance sector can’t play, let them go the fuck out of business. You are actually saying that it does not bother you that a person should have to pay more because they were born with a genetic condition? Wow, unbelievably cold. That does not surprise me though, the GOP is as cold as ice and they don’t give a fuck if people are dying because of greed.

Not a matter of your fault, its just that you will inevitably cost more to cover if you have a pre-existing condition and your insurance premiums need to reflect this.

The private health insurers have had PLENTY of time to get competitive to lower costs. All they have done is to compete raising costs. It is WAY past time for our government to step in with a public option. Our federal government is here to do what the states can not. And the states have NOT done it right. Call your Congressman and support the publiic option. We are getting totally ripped off by private insurance companies. The top CEO makes $200,000 while 50 million people are not covered.

So, if you have a pre-existing condition it is your own damn fault and you should either not be covered or pay more? What if that condition makes it so you can not work? Your analogy is seriously flawed dude!

Asking a HMO to cover everyone who applies is like asking a car insurance company to cover everyone who applies.
If you have had 10 car accidents in the last year no-one will cover you, if you have pre-existing conditions they shouldn’t have to cover you or they if they do cover you they will have to set a very high premium.

If we retain private insurance, it will have to follow the German scheme where they operate non-profit for much of the care provided. Nonetheless, the administrative costs are staggering and unless the White House can find a way to slash it 40-50%, Obama’s not going to be able to offer some quasi-private, jury-rigged system to cover all Americans.

Yikes! I just saw some of my spelling errors: their instead of there, and weight instead of wait. There should be a way to go back and edit your own comments.

If we don’t learn from them and we implement a sub-par program, then we risk loosing public support and may never have the single payer system we need.

Anyway, I think we’ve agreed all along. I was just saying these better public systems are not perfect and that we can learn from their various strengths and weaknesses. It sucks that we have had poor health care coverage for so long, maybe something good can come from our weight- maybe we can avoid some of the pitfalls that the countries that came to national health care before us.

It only makes sense that a public system would do better, because private systems make money by denying care. You would think they would want to take care of problems when they were small or even prevent them and there is some move towards that, but they have a better plan- its to say you’ve exceeded your limit or to drop you for some other reason. Whether the government’s intentions are pure is another question, but at least their is greater room for accountability.

England, Canada, Australia, Switzerland, etc., all built their national systems from a pre-existing private system. The outcome has always been superior to the private system it replaced.

I would agree that Australia’s health care system is better than the leaving it to HMO’s. However, since we are getting a national health care program so late in the game, we should take advantage of looking at the many experiments that have gone on before us to see what works best. I am not saying that there is a one size fits all or a perfect program, just that we can learn from others.

Joseph I wouldn’t be so quick to write off Australia’s health care system, which is much better than the U.S. health care “market”. No country is perfect, but at least they have good resources and a single payer option.

Wrong