Socialized Health Care in the USA

[kandrathe]

Well, just look at the metaphor: it grows from the ground up.

Ok, so like the NRA (founded in 1871)? Millions of registered gun owning hunters, who collectively fight to retain their 2nd amendment rights?

People discussing the issue in a sane way and expressing their concerns is not astroturf. But, then, in such a discussion, you'd probably hear all sorts of views, right and left, for and against.

Sanity is what I prefer anyway. If I want to watch people scream at each other I can flip to FOX, or MSNBC for whichever flavor I'm in the mood (neither usually). I don't understand why Congress is so loathe to attempt a free market solution, such as make health care portable across all 50 states. That would force the conglomerates to compete and would drive down the prices. Why not allow people to self insure, and defer taxation on the amount they socked away in a HCSA? The objective is to enable people to afford health care right? So, two things need to happen. Remove the rigid lock on an employer style health insurance plan to enable people to find low cost non-employer alternatives. And, increase the competition to help drive down prices. There is no reason the government needs to grab a trillion (or five) of our dollars to set up another inefficient administrative bureaucracy to sit between patients and health care.

What's astroturf is when beltway lobby groups and partisan front organizations get together with their media mouthpieces to channel fringe outrage in such a way that it overwhelms rational citizen participation in favour of nonsensical ranting and intimidation. Rich, powerful people need health care reform to die a death in the senate, and so they make it seem like people don't want it. But the polls don't show that at all. It's all just a low blow, a PR stunt channelling a small minority of very angry, mostly confused people.

Ok, so replace it with Acorn, HCAN, Families USA, AFSCME, SEIU, AARP, George Soros/Moveon.org, Organizing For America aka "http://healthcare.barackobama.com" which hauls in the buses of professional protesters. The fine print for OFA is "Paid for by the Democratic National Committee..."

What I don't understand is why some rich powerful people are funding an effort to implement socialist programs, or maybe its the grab for power. Why do some people think the way to solve poverty is to reach into another persons pocket for cash? Maybe if you are the one authorized to grab the cash, not all of it ends up helping the poor, eh? In our society there are dependents(those who can't work), workers, owners (who are often also workers, who take risks for a chance at the profits), and leeches (those who earn by taking from others). Every time I see that stupid Matthew Lesko commercial about free money just waiting for you to go claim it, I burn out another hundred brain cells. The leeches in our society pander to our sympathies by pointing to the suffering dependents. I'm close to needing to buy a new car, but am loathe to do so while this whole "cash for clunkers" nonsense is around. It will cost our society the same, but where possible I refuse to feed at the public trough.

In my world view, what we need to do is elevate more workers to be owners, and eliminate the leeches. In that world, everyone can take care of their own dependents whether that be father, mother, sister, brother, son or daughter.