Happy Holidays Jersey. Now get away from the keyboard and go do something nice for yourself, or somebody.

JMJ

I don’t mean to sound cold or cruel, but it’s the facts. Why not set up a system where people like you can voluntarily give into a pool to be used for subsidizing health care for others? If you feel so charitable, then you can give, but why force the rest of us to do it to? Maybe I would be more receptive if I wasn’t being forced to do it, but when you force charity upon people, you lose a lot of support from those people. You breed contempt and bitterness. Why even try to go down that path? People don’t want that sort of thing. Just look at Wisconsin. They haven’t passed their JULY budget bill yet because the dems refused to take their universal health care provision out of it, and the people as a whole didn’t want it. Despite the fact that the people didn’t want it, the dems refused to take it out until just the other day. But why? Was it because they were doing what the people wanted and the evil conservatives were blocking it? Hell no, they were doing the bidding of people like you at the expense of the majority. Is that what this country is coming to? screw the majority, it’s all about who bitches the loudest?

Heres some real stats.
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZGI3NjVlYWRlOGEyOTU2MjNlMWFmNTVjMzZlNDQ0ZTg=

In fact, “about 60 percent of the children who were eligible for [SCHIP] were covered by private insurance in the year before the program was enacted.” The CBO also estimated that for every 100 new SCHIP enrollees, between 25 and 50 children lost private coverage.

Besides crowd out, legislators also ignore the fact that public insurance often makes it harder for poor patients to stay healthy because of an onerous bureaucracy and pervasive cost controls.

A 2003 study in The Journal of Health Economics found that HIV+ patients fared better in private insurance, in part because “many anti-retroviral drugs [required] prior authorization from Medicaid that restricted use to advanced illness.” Privately insured patients started effective drug treatment sooner and stayed healthier. Another study in Health Affairs (2005) found that Medicaid patients had nearly as much trouble getting prescription drugs as the uninsured (22 percent v. 26 percent).

Despite these problems, the political temptation to expand Medicaid and SCHIP into middle class entitlements is nearly irresistible. Today, according to the Government Accounting Office, over 40 states enroll children from families at 200% or higher of the federal poverty level, around $40,000 for a family of four. Seven states cover children in families at 300 percent or higher, about $60,000. (New Jersey tips the scales at 350 percent.)

This week, Congress is set to massively expand SCHIP without doing anything to help make private health insurance more affordable. Last Thursday, the Senate Finance Committee approved a bill that increases federal SCHIP funding by $35 billion over five years; a family of four making over $80,000 would even be eligible for coverage. The House is expected to endorse even more spending.

The president has announced that he will veto any bill that includes over $5 billion in new funding as an unwarranted government takeover of health care. He’s right, and Congress can do much more to help the uninsured without breaking the bank.

The president has a better plan: creating an individual tax deduction up to $15,000, or an equivalent tax credit. Any individual could take advantage of the deduction, provided they purchased at least catastrophic health insurance. While expanding SCHIP funding would cover a few million uninsured at enormous cost to taxpayers, the administration predicts that fixing the tax code could lead up to 20 million uninsured to purchase private coverage without substantial new outlays.

If this was combined with an interstate market for health insurance, where consumers could shop for low-cost policies across state lines, Congress could add modest new SCHIP funding and fundamentally improve health care access for the uninsured.

Past experience has shown that expanding public programs is not a sustainable alternative to private insurance. Helping low-income uninsured children get access to public health insurance is a noble cause; but making good, private health insurance more affordable for all working families is a better one.

— Paul Howard is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute’s Center for Medical Progress and is editor of the daily blog http://www.medicalprogresstoday.com.

Its amazing , I brought the same thing up with Greg yesterday.
The government cant be trusted on the war, but I’ll let them cut me open if its free.

Medicare has an overhead of around 3%. Our private systems average about 30%. That’s ten times less efficient with overhead. You can’t realistically say that the private system is an overall full third better than Medicare. And you certainly can’t realistically say that overall American care is 50% better than the rest of the First World and is therefore worth 50% more expenditure, as we have now.

Get real. Even Romney and Hillary, et al, get this! They want mandatory coverage for all. I want coverage for all without the pseudo-”mandatory.” The point is simple - those who think they don’t need health coverage need it, those who need health coverage need it, those who have health coverage need it - WE ALL NEED HEALTHCARE. We DO NOT NEED pretty much everything else. We don’t need IPods, or Mercedes’, or swimming pools, or cocaine, or cheap sex, or whatever. But we ALL NEED HEALTHCARE. It is a most basic utility, a most necessary infrastructure for a healthy and sucessful society.

JMJ

I have to give you some advice hear dude. Look at it as a Christmas gift.
Stop telling people to face reality. When they dont see things your way. Its weak.
Stop telling people they are unrealistic when they are happy with what works for them.
Its an incredibly ignorant thing to expect others to see your world as a reality when they dont live in it.

And sincerely, Merry Christmas.

Peace, JMJ

The bill is not supposed to or was it ever intended to insure complete families.
If you study the intention of the bill it was laid out by the finacial perimiters of parents who made enough to buy insurance for themselves but not there kidsI t was a bill intended to help those who were on a borderline income. Being well off enough to not be included as poverty but still could not afford insurance. By having the government insure the children it enabled the parents to purshase a policy for themselves.

I’m not going to get into the quality of private health care as opposed to government cheese.
We cant even treat our vets right and you want the same system covering the whole country ?????
That my friend is not only maddening it is a collosal mistake to think nationwide universal health care is a good idea.
I’ll take my chances with the private sector thank you very much

What’s truly maddening is a healthcare system that is no better or worse than the rest of the free world but costs 50% more. That’s not just maddening - it’s stupid.

JMJ