1. A fundamental right must be a right that can be available to all people throughout all time. I agree that this excludes modern medicine. It also excludes a “right” to health insurance.

2. The debate seems to be around health care or health insurance. Shouldn’t the debate be around how we get the country healthier? Isn’t health the ultimate desire, even more so than medical care? Healthy people don’t generally need as much medical care after all. Yet we subsidize corn, which is used to produce high fructose corn syrup…which makes people unhealthy. How about shifting the primary objective to health?

3. Rather than access to modern medical care, the fundamental right is to be cared for when sick. Let’s look at Mother Teresa for an example here. She often lacked the means to cure her patients, but instead “merely” cared for them as they died. For this she will be a saint. It is in the compassion (i.e. Christian love) that makes caring of the sick noble. And a sick person needs at least someone to give them basic care – perhaps a warm blanket or a glass of water. If a medical cure is available, all the better.

4. Universal access to health care certainly is a noble goal. But this does not immediately imply socialized medicine. It can also be achieved through charitable medicine – providing discounted or free care from healthcare workers and other benefactors to those who cannot afford it themselves – and totally without government intervention.

5. A socialized healthcare system that runs up large debts to be paid for by future generations is patently unjust. It is stealing from our children. It is also taxation without representation.

6. If healthcare is to be truly about being between the doctor and the patient, then the patient must control the funding. Otherwise, the doctor is financially accountable to someone who is not the patient. And that someone (whether private insurance or the govt.) might not have the same interests in mind as the patient. And that can be unjust too. If it is my money and my health, then I can spend MY money to achieve the desired health I want for myself.

7. Our current system where insurance covers very predictable expenses like annual checkups, braces, and birth control, simply puts the insurance companies in the middle of every normal transaction – and they get their cut. Insurance is normally only used for catastrophic events that we cannot afford – such as fire insurance for our house or life insurance. We typically insure against the unlikely event. Could you imagine if we paid for our groceries through insurance? Sounds silly doesn’t it. Yet that is what we do with our medical insurance – paying for everyday, predictable bills, with the insurance company getting their cut. The proposals for expanding coverage all seem to take this absurdity a step further!

The Aussie model sounds much closer to sane to me. Control costs, give control to the individual for his or her own health and healthcare. And then put a safety net in place for those few who need it, funded largely through charitible giving of individuals and companies within and outside of the healthcare industry.

To others it means the government will undersell the private insurer that they currently have (And WOW!!! They’ll still receive the SAME coverage, I guess the government knows how to stretch a buck!)

Others have no clue, they’re just “for it” because Obama knows what he’s doing. Okay…..

The issues have been poorly defined, therefore, the solutions are also scattered and ill conceived. I have no clue what is trying to be “solved” by this mega bill. I know one thing though, it looks like a giant, expensive power grab.

Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. (wish I had said it first.)

As far as Sean’s “free” baby. I’m glad his wife got the care she needed, but somebody paid for it. My last baby cost me $5000 and my husband DOES have a job and DOES pay 12 grand a year for health insurance. Why should we have to pay for our baby and somebody else’s baby? I’m going into debt in other places just to pay my health care costs, while somebody eles gets it for “free”.

Another thing about people who receive gov’t assistance during short term personal economic “down turns”. I think they should have to repay the gov’t the money when their situation improves. I guess the gov’t would become a lender of sorts. But nothing is “free” and nobody “deserves” another money. I just think that wages should be garnished, in a small way, until the welfare is repaid. If for no other reason than the for the dignity of the former welfare recipient.

Well, we at CE have discussed this longer than Congress wanted to debate 1/5 of our nations GDP! And, golly-gee-whiz we STILL don’t have a solution.

Maybe Obama and his cronies shouldn’t have tried to ram this down the throats of the American people. We might, just MIGHT, have trusted him and the process more.

And before I sign on to the “public option”, Sean, when you and your wife are delivering baby #9 I want to know if “Daddy Deep Pockets” is still forking up the dough! (Up here, I’ve no doubt that in a matter of years, she’d be sterilized after #2 or #3) Blessings. Glad you’re doing well. Kisses to Little Bloke!

Learn it, love it, live it!

The sad truth is that none of our elected officials today–Democrat, Republican or Independent–will touch any of them with a ten-foot pole.

You need to look at the reasons this became the case. My understanding is that a company can provide medical insurance for employees out of pre-tax earnings, but if you want to arrange your own medical cover then you need to pay for it out of after tax dollars. This effectively means that for every $1000 of insurance policy you want to take out, you need to earn $2000 whereas your employer could provide it for you at a cost to them of closer to $1000. This produces distortions in the market because of the tax structures that you have. As well as that, my understanding is that very few insurance companies market products direct to the consumer leaving the consumer with very little choice and expensive ones at that.

A lot of this was caused by high marginal tax rates in the USA leading to medical insurance as a fringe benefit for executives, as well as wage freezes by FDR leading to unions pushing for medical insurance as they could not increase the cash wages / salary paid to workers. Government interference created the mess that the USA has in this regard.

By contrast, here in Australia, there is a large market for direct to consumer health insurance. You see advertisements for it on TV all the time. You can also get major tax breaks if you have health insurance as if you earn over AU$150,000 per year, you are penalised an additional 2.5% of gross earnings (on top of a 45% marginal tax rate) if you do not take out private medical insurance. Cover is available from as little as AU$500 per annum for an individual in good health. And it means that you can bypass the public system rather than waiting on a waiting list till you either die or your condition gets worse before getting the treatment required.

There are a multitude of causes behind the problems in the American Health System. I would argue that a public system is a good thing in general (my wife had a baby AFTER I lost my job and our out of pocket expenses was $0.00 and we are uninsured), but you need a system that respects human life. This is NOT what you are going to get with Obama.

Perhaps what we could say is that we all have a right to “pursue” health care, like we pursue happiness. We all the right to engage in the open market in order to try to aquire those heaalth care things we need, and we should not be discriminated against based on age, skin color, creed, nationality, etc.

Currently, there are a lot of disruptions in the market: like not knowing what a doctor’s visit or test will cost you, or the various states limiting the number of insurance policies a person can buy within state boundaries–thereby creating a monopoly within the state. There are mandates on insurance (like paying for abortions and sterilzation procedures, etc) and drug coverage (contraception, viagra) that cause the cost of policies to go up.