You equate success with gov't programs that supposedly work. Success and draining the bank is a failure. Medicare is NOT a successful program. I'm sure recipients love getting free health care, but Medicare is slowly bankrupting America. From what i've read over the years, the health care systems in Canada and the UK are not utopias. Those systems are huge money pits and everybody who can turns to private medicine. Canadians flock across the border to avoid wait times for tests and procedures, and every Brit who can afford private insurance gets it.

People in favor of the "Public Option" tend to think there's only two alternatives: you either support Obama or you're a Rush Limbaugh Republican who thinks it's fine to screw the poor. This means that economic rationalists who try to point out that we should actually fix our incredibly broken health care system instead of turning it over to the government to make it worse get shouted down.

Yes, the right way to fix health care is hard and painful. It would require:

1) Breaking the medical establishments guild-like control of health care and insisting that outcomes metrics are actually tracked.

2) Disabusing ourselves of the fantasy that we can make health care "free" and control costs at the same.

3) Forcing ourselves to do actual cost-benefit analysis of medical care, instead of believing that every human life is deserving of the best that modern technology can offer, whatever the cost.

4) Let insurance actually work like insurance, where your behavior affects your insurance rates. If we don't let actuaries participate, it's not "insurance" it's just subsidization.

If we could do all of the above the cost of health care would come down radically. At that point if we wanted to use public money to help the poor with expenses we could do so without just creating another huge trough at which patients and doctors could gorge themselves on "free" health care. Nothing is free. Ask those in California. That far-left legislature has given away the farm and the state literally has seen a huge brain drain and business drain of people who want to get away from that liberal sh!t hole.

I was talking more about things like the Military, the CIA, FBI, Homeland Security, etc.



Well it seems to me that the current bill is more like the German system than the Canadian or British one.
And medicine is medicine, it's the Private insurance that's in demand, which enables competition beween private insurance companies contrary to some rightist's beliefs.
Private insurances can offer services the government cannot.



Much like some Americans go to Mexico in order to avoid huge debts because of medical costs.



that's a luxury thing though, not because the government option is horrible. Private insurances can give you luxuries like a single bed room in the hospital, decreased waiting times, more expensive medication, etc.
The government is only there to provide BASIC health care.



Well that's because most Americans tend to only see black or white. You're either with us, or you're against us. Quite honestly, it was the Republicans that have shown no ambition to tackle this problem whereas the Dems have tried to do this twice now.



True.



It's never about it being free. You pay into a tax free account, as does your employer, and that's how your insurance payments will get paid.



The government's job is to offer basic health care for those who can't afford it. Anybody that wants better Health Care can go to the Private Insurance companies.



I think that's part of the problem. The insurance companies come up with all kinds of excuses to jack up your premiums and that's where government intervention is necessary.



Well that's what I've been saying. Drive down the prices and then go ahead with the Health Care Plans.

We've been over this time and time again saying the same things over and over. You say that it's the government's job is to offer basic health care for those who can't afford it. No! It's not the gov'ts job to do any of this. Falls on deaf ears, i know. But you'll see in due time. This sham will be brought to the USSC if it's passed and it'll be bounced right back out of the court.

You just don't get it. I keep preaching constitution and you keep wanting to do exactly the opposite. You say you're not liberal. Liberals want to usurp our constitution over and over. FDR got slapped more times by the USSC than any other president. Bama is gong the same route.

I can't help you. You don't respect our constitution. I guess i should start saying things about yours to suit my beliefs.

If you find that my constitution is keeping the German citizens from living a healthy, free life, please go ahead and do point it out.

The only problem I see with the Constitution is that it prevent the government from actually supplying something to benefit the majority of the American people.
Of course the Constitution won't address this since von Bismarck introduced the Universal Health Care concept decades after the Constitution was written.

That's because, as i've pointed out countless times and you ignore it, that the constitution here LIMITS the federal gov't.

Why the f*ck can't you get that thru your head?? I've posted on here what congress has the authority to do and what they have the authority to NOT do. Tell me you missed that a few weeks ago. Better not have because it was in reply to this stupid @ss argument you keep making over and over.

Face it, you prefer socialism. You prefer us to sh!tcan our constitution to make it more like yours. Ain't gonna happen buddy. You'll see in 12 months when this liberal congress is out on it's @ss looking for a new line of work. You'll see when The Anointed One has to actually compromise instead of ramming sh!t down peoples throats.

Don't drag the Iraq War into this, bubbles. First of all, the Iraq War wasn't "started by Bush" as every leftist in the world keeps saying; it was started by the Senate, with a rather overwhelming 77-23 vote. Second of all, roughly 72% of the American public supported the resolution to disarm Saddam. So our political leaders were actually REPRESENTING the sentiment of the American people, as they are supposed to do. It's not their job to cram bills down our throats we don't want.

So if you think ObamaCare with its barely being able to get 60 votes in the Senate and its inability to get even half of the nation's support is even in the same ballpark as Iraq, I suggest you refresh your knowledge of history.

Come off it MDane93. Most Americans probably couldn't find Iraq on a map, many more are just jingoistic warmongers.

Look at these guys who wanted to invade Indonesia, Italy, Sri Lanka... and Australia and thought that the island of Australia was North Korea. I certainly hope these morons are a minority.

British kids think Hitler was a soccer coach. I read that on the internet and that makes it true.

Well there is a video clip there... some of those people DID say they wanted to invade Italy, Sri Lanka and Indonesia. None of them recognised that Australia had "North Korea" written on this map.

What MDane93 was saying was that the Dubya administration brought free'm'n'mocracy to Iraq because the American people were begging for it. That is a very dangerous way for a government to conduct oneself, isn't it?

Yeah, but you can sell anyone anything. The admin believed (or wanted to, whatever) that he was a problem and he was presented as a problem. If you approach average people in any country and tell them they or their families were in danger, most would vote to eliminate the threat. There's no denying the gullibility of some. If the admin had come out and said he was peace-loving hippie, that's what they would think.

The point refers to your first sentence.