Should America adopt universal health care?

Nothing has brought as much mail - electronic and snail - than the proposals discussed in these columns for universal health care coverage.

[whatever]

Keep up the fight! We desperately need UHC.

[SuzieQ]

Universal Health Care is Socialist Medicine and not all that high-quality. From what I have been hearing from folks who are in countries with this system, they do not like it and if they can afford it, come to the U.S. for their procedures. There is a waiting list and the care is inferior.

It makes sense, if the doctors do not have an incentive to try to beat the competition and hone their skills, the quality of the service will suffer.

Right now we have a mess in that illegal aliens are receiving services for free and we, the taxpayers are footing the bill.

There should only be free clinics for children up until the age of 12 and everyone else should just be able to go to a doctor when they are sick and pay a nominal fee. There should only be insurance available for catastrophic illnesses.

[www]

ten, twenty years from now, and we will still be argueing over what is best, which system is the better one, and on, and on, and on. and some people, the fortunate ones, will have health care coverage, and too many others will not have any health care coverage. but, at the same time, exxon, and the other major oil companies will still be raking in record amounts of profits, while our politicians will still be outraged by those profits. what i am trying to say is, nothing will change!

[Saul Friedman]

SuzieQ wrote:

Universal Health Care is Socialist Medicine and not all that high-quality. From what I have been hearing from folks who are in countries with this system, they do not like it and if they can afford it, come to the U.S. for their procedures. There is a waiting list and the care is inferior.
It makes sense, if the doctors do not have an incentive to try to beat the competition and hone their skills, the quality of the service will suffer.
Right now we have a mess in that illegal aliens are receiving services for free and we, the taxpayers are footing the bill.
There should only be free clinics for children up until the age of 12 and everyone else should just be able to go to a doctor when they are sick and pay a nominal fee. There should only be insurance available for catastrophic illnesses.

For the information of readers, a new CNN poll says nearly 65 percent of people surveyed say they favor universal health care EVEN if it means a tax increase.

[mary]

NO-NO-NO - We do not need a socialistic form of Insurance. It has been proven in other countries it does NOT work. Why do people come here for medical care from these countries? We will lose good doctors and hospitals if we go that route. Let's quit catering to illegals and giving them all the benefits which costs each of us a lot of money each year. One of the newscasts said $19,000 each. Again we do not need socialism, marxism or communism which this all leads to.

[David]

universal care in my lifetime???Please what a pipe dream. You and I both know it will never happen. To much money in it for the dems and rep's Why do you people even start giving the 40 millions plus hope about this.? Why cant you just put up the names and faces of the people who are stopping americans from getting care!! Bet you can't find them!! If you told everyone who was stopping all this universal care from happening, the congress is so spineless it would never see the light of day on tv or print. Please give us all a break and stop with the universal care joke.

[David]

whatever wrote:

Keep up the fight! We desperately need UHC.

Keep wishing-I'm 66 years old and since I was born I was hearing about universal care. It will never happen in our lifetimes. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

[Gaurav Goel]

The system we have now works very well, but only for the better off, with good jobs and benefits. The problem is how to make the system more inclusive, because the excluded do not just disappear and stop consuming health care, they shift to very expensive consumption channels, like emergency rooms. Over the years, employers have contributed to the problem by excluding more and more workers from benefits. So in the end, we have public sector involvement one way or the other. Right now, we have the worst kind of public policy, disenfranchisement and exclusion, and the cost/benefit is poor. Such results speak of our incompetent public policy, which is a consensus of our democratic views. I respectfully submit that a managed approach, that also includes everyone in this basic human need, is something we should see as a common interest in our society, and thus we should entrust government to manage it.

[Lost Rights James Bovard]

God help us!!! Another wasteful entitlement program. Sure why not Universal Health Care for all, after all the US is not going bankrupt fast enough!!!!

Implement Universal Health Care and we will be bankrupt in 20 years, by 2030 we'll all be speaking Chinese.

[too many morons]

yes, we absolutely need universal health care.
Hundreds of Millions of people in this country have no insurance at all, and many of those lucky enough to have insurance have spotty coverage and difficulty getting doctors and specialists to take what they have. Businesses are scaling back the benefits in the plans they offer and making workers pay more for less.
Its a broken system.

[Mr USA]

As SuzieQ said, "Right now we have a mess in that illegal aliens are receiving services for free and we, the taxpayers are footing the bill." I am not heartless; I say that when an illegal alien goes to a medical facility for free healthcare, we give it to them one time. Then we finger print them just before we deport them. We also tell them if they come back and try and do the same thing. The second visit to a medical facility will be for aided suicide. If the USA does not make the punishment harder for illegal aliens, they will never stop.

[joe]

health care sysem in the usa is broken. But it could be fixed if not for all the polititions in washinton who only care about the payoffs the get from the health care companys. to keep it just the way it is . there was a time when it was we the poeple and they did what we wanted. and it seems to me most of the poeple want universal health care.

[Adrisa]

ug, they cant even handle social secerity and public school and now people want government to control health care. Thats a true insane idea. America is the last place people there is no where to go after America. I do not want the govenrment anywhere near my body or health or any of you tax payers telling me what I can eat and do because your paying for my health care.

[gizmo]

we do need universal health care. how many of the bankruptcies are caused because of health care costs? and now that our government has made it next to impossible to claim bankruptcy, what are the options for those in need? watch michael moore's sicko when it comes out. it should open your eyes, if you're not already too biased to see the problem.

[Lost Rights James Bovard]

gizmo wrote:

we do need universal health care.

No we don't. We need a health care insurance restructuring, but not UHC.

gizmo wrote:

how many of the bankruptcies are caused because of health care costs?

I don't know, how many? I doubt there's a very large percentage. Let's see the #'s

gizmo wrote:

and now that our government has made it next to impossible to claim bankruptcy, what are the options for those in need?

Honestly, what does bankruptcy have to do with UHC? these issues are unrelated.

gizmo wrote:

watch michael moore's sicko when it comes out. it should open your eyes, if you're not already too biased to see the problem.

Why would anyone want to watch any film made by a hypocritical toe tag Liberal who likes to blame everything that is wrong with the world on The Republicans but offers NOTHING substantial as an alternative?

[Ex-Mississippian]

The politicians aren't outraged by the profits. The are playing to the ignorance of the American people. The oil companies do make what seems to be huge profits. They are huge to me as I will never se that kind of money. However, their profit margins are at about 7%. That means that for every dollar they spend, they only make about 7 cents. Not that much. What should change? Should we tax them heavily and bring their margins down to 2 or 3% That doesn't make a lot of sense, it would hurt investors, which are not all mega rich people. Investors are the people with 401k's and mutual funds, and retirement plans. Cut the company's margins and you cut the amount of money that goes nack to these people.
It would also kill any re-investment that these companies would do with the money, which would kill jobs as the money that they re-invest keeps people employed and creates new jobs every year.

www wrote:

ten, twenty years from now, and we will still be argueing over what is best, which system is the better one, and on, and on, and on. and some people, the fortunate ones, will have health care coverage, and too many others will not have any health care coverage. but, at the same time, exxon, and the other major oil companies will still be raking in record amounts of profits, while our politicians will still be outraged by those profits. what i am trying to say is, nothing will change!

[pat]

I am sorry but just because someone is wealthy doesn't mean you should have the right to go play robinhood and redistribute wealth and make them pay your health care.

Lets be totally frank, UHC is just stealing money from wealthier people and giving it to people who can't afford it/ don't want to pay for it.

I am by no means wealthy, but I hope to someday be. I don't feel like I have the right to take someone else's money, nor should anyone else have the right to take mine.

Not only that but I lead a healthy lifestyle, I exercise, and eat reasonably. I don't do drugs and I don't smoke. With UHC why should the smoker and glut bog down the system at my expense?

And we shouldn't forget that every one of those countries systems suck. And the reason why the US's care is good is because there is incentive to improve medicine.

Michael Moore makes me sick

[New Health Insurance]

Universal health care is assured to every one in Germany. Germany has a multipayer system and a lot of choices to choose from in coverage. We must encourage competition in price and require insurance companies to not run for extreme profit means, or charge a tax at which their profits are higher equating to a return of funds into the system. Doctors and insurance providers must work together to assure a standard set charge in health care coverage that can be adjusted accordingly to the cost of living.
I would prefer to keep the system private, partly federal governed by set of of laws specifying how much can be charged to patient, basically a patient bill of right.
Having a publicly funded healthcare system of Canada or the UK would equate to a 17% sales tax hike or an income tax hike to cover costs and delays in special treatment or wait for important care.
We need laws for spending control and laws prevent huge insurance payout for malpractice. Malpractice insurance is the major reason for increasing insurance costs.
If we were to eliminate malpractice insurance, we could reduce a lot in costs.
What might also bring down costs is a law saying that in order to hire someone in the US, proof of health insurance must be shown for which a certain requirement in treatmet is met as a terms of employment.
And lastly requiring every employer by law to offer a set means of health insurance which provides coverage for treatment of cancer and illnesses I think you would see companies fighting with one another in how to reduce health insurance costs.
I think overall keeping the health insurance system private with fair amount of government regulation on insurance companies provides a means for truely comphrehensive affordable health insurance.

[VoteVets org]

THE CONSERVATIVE NANNY STATE
How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer
By Dean Baker
http://tinyurl.com/e7gyr
This book is written in frustration and hope. People in the United States who consider themselves progressive must be frustrated over the extent to which conservative political ideologies have managed to dominate public debate about economic policy in the last quarter century. Even when progressives have won important political battles, such as the defeat of efforts to privatize Social Security, they have done so largely without a coherent ideology; rather, this success rested on the public’s recognition that it stood to lose its retirement security with this “reform.” It also helped that the public was suspicious of the motives of the proponents of Social Security privatization. However, success in the goal-line defense of the country’s most important social program is not the same thing as a forward looking agenda.

The key flaw in the stance that most progressives have taken on economic issues is that they have accepted a framing whereby conservatives are assumed to support market outcomes, while progressives want to rely on the government. This framing leads progressives to futilely lash out against markets, rather than examining the factors that lead to undesirable market outcomes. The market is just a tool, and in fact a very useful one. It makes no more sense to lash out against markets than to lash out against the wheel.

The reality is that conservatives have been quite actively using the power of the government to shape market outcomes in ways that redistribute income upward. However, conservatives have been clever enough to not own up to their role in this process, pretending all along that everything is just the natural working of the market. And, progressives have been foolish enough to go along with this view.
The frustration with this futile debate, where conservatives like markets and progressives like government, is the driving force behind this book, along with the hope that new thinking is possible. We shall see.
http://www.conservativenannystate.org/cns.htm...

[Tom]

SuzieQ wrote:

Universal Health Care is Socialist Medicine and not all that high-quality. From what I have been hearing from folks who are in countries with this system, they do not like it and if they can afford it, come to the U.S. for their procedures. There is a waiting list and the care is inferior.
It makes sense, if the doctors do not have an incentive to try to beat the competition and hone their skills, the quality of the service will suffer.
Right now we have a mess in that illegal aliens are receiving services for free and we, the taxpayers are footing the bill.
There should only be free clinics for children up until the age of 12 and everyone else should just be able to go to a doctor when they are sick and pay a nominal fee. There should only be insurance available for catastrophic illnesses.

- Look, alright. This is just frickin health insurance, it's not the end o' the world. The majority of the U.S. want and need a universal health system. According to Families USA, roughly 18.1 million Americans experience a problem with their health plan thet results in them being denied or delayed medical attention. And a lot of times it can lead to their early demise. With UHC, they would be covered. Also, 47.7 million American citizens are currently uninsured, 18000 of them die every year due to it. We would be preventing loss of life; YOU WOULDNT WANT THAT? 8 million of those are children and 2/3's are of low income families. SO YOUR AGAINST POOR FAMILIES AND MINORITY ETHNIC GROUPS. WHO ARE YOU, BUSH? If a UHC is so bad, why do the health outcome statics(from the CIA world factbook) so much better than ours. Countries with UHC like France, Canada, Great Britain, and Australia all rank higher than us. We're right next to Cuba and Slovenia. And "SOCIALIZED MEDICINE", um you got that from old, white polticians. Watch Sicko by Michael Moore. Please.