http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5hLmnk2nJW1GlWETxZ5EknjKJCYgg
now, if you listened to the debate last week you heard obama say there would not be a fine for companies that drop their healthcare coverage. LOL dream on barry. hell, my union just signed an agreement and it included provisions for if the government provided health care…I.E. my company wouldn’t be offering it anymore!! no crap people/companies aren’t going to keep paying for their own health care when they can get it for “free”. like all liberal policy its completely short-sited and has all kinds of unintended consequences.
as for the article, Hawaii offered the first state run child healthcare and dropped it after 7 months because everyone who had healthcare was cancelling it to get on the state plan. and of course the state couldn’t afford it after that. way to go idiots…and this is what Barak wants to do nationally? sorry obamanation but you and i both know you would have to raise taxes a crapload to afford this because no one is keeping their current plans. ludicrous assumption.
heres what needs to happen, yes i have the answer.
employer provided health care needs to end. instead, the employer should give us the money they spend on health care (it reaches upwards of $5000 per employee per year) and we can take it(tax free) and go wherever we want. this will create a true marketplace for health insurance and will drive down costs. hell, i’d go another step and just go straight to doctors and make doctors compete for me. this system is broken because for the longest time health providers can charge what they want because stupid employers will just pay it (well that and Americans dont take care of themselves very well). then, after costs are down so much amazingly tons of people who couldn’t afford it can afford it. and if you are 18-40 and in good health i think $50 a month for disaster care is nothing…shoot you’ll come out way ahead if your employer gave you the full amount they spent on you. then as you age you can pay more, but probably a lot cheaper than $300-$400 month that you’ll see for “full coverage” today. privatization of health care in a nutshell. so easy. yet so hard for quick-fixers and socialists to understand.
what about the industries without health care coverage? Like myself whose sole source of incomes is from gratuity. Do you want people to tip me more to cover health care?
Comment by Tana — Monday, October 20, 2008 @ 9:34 am
read closely
“then, after costs are down so much amazingly tons of people who couldn’t afford it can afford it.”
Comment by Andy — Monday, October 20, 2008 @ 2:15 pm
First off ease up on the insults and slander. You will attract to your point of view exactly no one who doesn’t already hold it. Just ask John McCain.
I agree the Hawaii plan was shortsighted, but you never explicitly state why: greed. Exactly the same reason unregulated anything has great potential for disaster. Just read the news of the past, what, month or two now?
Pure free market sounds great in theory. So does universal government provided free healthcare. Obviously, to me, both have big downsides. But just like the liberals you rant and rave against here, I would posit that you vastly underestimate the human capacity for greed. Do what you will in providing me my morning cereal, PS3, house, and contact lenses, but may I humbly suggest that leaving one’s health up to those in the business of making money and not necessarily keeping one healthy is less than what one might call “prudent”.
This is my problem with politics overall these days. Everything is black and white (but please let’s not go there), right and wrong, correct or incorrect, pure or impure. What happened to gray areas? We just pretend they don’t exist? No “pure” or “ideological” system will ever work the way it is intended, and for that matter is rarely if ever put into practice in it’s true form. And yet everyone insists on talking in these terms. Well, some a lot more than others. Give up the dream, it’ll never happen. And if it does? Ain’t gonna work forever. Eventually it must come down to compromise, NOT ideology and party lines. That among myriad other reasons makes this election, for me (and right now the majority of Americans as best anyone can tell) an easy choice between one man and one party.
Comment by Pshaw — Tuesday, October 21, 2008 @ 9:35 am
For what it’s worth, here is a graph of my respect and admiration for John McCain as I read and learn more about him and his past as he campaigns for presidency:
/
(note the continuous positive slope)
And here is my likelihood of voting for him as I watch him conduct his campaign:
\
(note the continuous negative slope)
Just to reference my frame of mind here.
Comment by Pshaw — Tuesday, October 21, 2008 @ 9:45 am
Oh, and for Obama (not that anyone cares about either of these graphs, mainly for my entertainment):
—
(note the steady ambivalence, with small ups and downs)
Comment by Pshaw — Tuesday, October 21, 2008 @ 9:51 am
funny graphs, mccain was not my choice fred thompson was but thats neither here nor there now. i have not stated my overwhelming support for him specifically. however i truely believe barak and his policies would be disasterous for this country…carter-esq. thats what i’m trying to hammer home here.
can you still vote?
totally agree greed is the problem with free markets. so punish them and put them in jail ala enron/worldcom. the rule of law is enough, we dont need to interfere in the markets otherwise. interference does more harm than a few greedy jerkoffs. just look at govt run freddie mae who gave out these horrible loans to unqualified people–barney frank, chris dodd, franklin raines, these guys should be in jail for the fraud and collapse of the banking system they caused. but they wont cause their party controls congress. this financial collapse is all govt related and it pisses me off because its completely the cause of stupid liberal policy.
America is sucessful because for hundreds of years it didn’t rely on FEDERAL government solutions but on individuals nutting up and overcoming hardships on their own to always come out way ahead. we could argue this forever but that is an ideology i totally believe in…less govt vs more…handouts vs personal responsibility…
and bash people in the health industry who want to make money but a lot of those people paid a shitload to go to school, risk a ton of money to research medicines, and like it or not money is always a motivating factor but more often than not it provides us with a lot of wonderful things and i believe its worth paying for. if the govt gives it to people the quality will drop because there won’t be any money to be made there.
Comment by Andy — Tuesday, October 21, 2008 @ 4:35 pm
“these guys should be in jail for the fraud and collapse of the banking system they caused.”
“its completely the cause of stupid liberal policy.”
Well…? I definitely agree they should be in jail and not floating gently to earth on golden parachutes, but the danger is confusing a whole group of people and their intentions with some rogue individuals and their intentions. As hard as they make it on me, I try not to do this to republicans. Most people no matter their political persuasion have only the best intentions at heart. It’s too bad nobody believes that these days.
“and bash people in the health industry”
I’m certainly not the one bashing anyone here… I’m just saying there’s trust issues with a healthcare environment that might resemble a used car dealership environment, as a kind of poor example. That’s all.
Comment by Pshaw — Wednesday, October 22, 2008 @ 2:54 am
i tend to equate any expansion of the federal government or any federal government entitlement/program with liberalism. i’ve taken the freddie mac thing quite personally as its cost my roth ira over $4000 in a 2 week period.
anyway, i almost let something slip that you said and it was your response to the hawaii child health care being due to greed. i cannot equate greed with people taking advantage of a government program that they already pay for with their own taxes. i’m guessing if sweden offers you govt health care that you aren’t turning it down just cause you can afford it on your own esp if you pay the high taxes for it already. cmon, thats not greed, in fact really its stupid not to do it.
Comment by Andy — Wednesday, October 22, 2008 @ 7:14 am
The database is down at work, so I can’t resist : )
You sort of have a point, but at the very least you have to say it’s dishonest. Stay with me here. According to the article you link to, the system was not designed for people who could afford healthcare, one can only assume they knew this, yet they were mainly the ones taking advantage of it.
As for the tax thing. The article said 2,000 children the majority of which were not qualified. So let’s say 45% or 900 of them were qualified. If everyone in Hawaii paid $60 a year in tax (or 0.1% of the median income of a household in Hawaii) and didn’t abuse the system, then 900 children could have around $85,000 worth of healthcare system each for that year. Obviously this is a simple example, but “oh the taxes! the government is invading my life!” seems a very lame excuse for denying 900 children healthcare who can’t get it otherwise. I call it greedy in this example to not just let them have the less than half a percent of your yearly income, keep your insurance, and leave the system alone. But call it what you want.
Comment by Pshaw — Wednesday, October 22, 2008 @ 8:11 am
“and didn’t abuse the system”
thats the biggest problem with government programs PEOPLE ALWAYS ABUSE IT.
government and economics is very simple. if you tax it, you will reduce/discourage the behavior. if you subsidize it you will draw people to it.
boy i bet it will be amazing how much sicker americans get if nationalized health care comes about…as sick as swedes probably (where some companies have had to overhire by 25% just to have enough employees show up on a daily basis lol)
Comment by Andy — Wednesday, October 22, 2008 @ 9:31 am
One of the guys I ride to work with is straight up conservative kinda like you, he told me some statistic that like 10% of the country (Sweden) has been or is on disability or something, lol. It’s like if you twist your ankle you can have 10 months off or something, if you feel like it. It really pissed him off. You would have thought it was hilarious : ) I guess I can’t argue there’s a lot of moochers here, based solely on what I’ve heard.
Comment by Pshaw — Thursday, October 23, 2008 @ 4:43 am