Socialized Health Care in the USA

[Jester]

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

Yes, that's right.

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.

Nobody wants it, or at least, nobody in power, nor most Americans. The Republicans didn't even try when they were in power, and instead pushed through the most bloated, painful "reform" imaginable, driving up costs while providing scarcely any benefit. The Democrats won the last election, and ideologically prefer egalitarian programs to market ones.

I think a market solution would serve you better than what you have, but substantially worse than even a mediocre single-payer system. But as is obvious from the current wrangling, the politics of this decision are tied in knots. "Courageous" folk like Max Baucus, who speak their own minds, and also happen to take more money than anyone else from Insurance and HMOs are making sure that reform dies on the floor, and the rents from the current system still flow into corporate coffers.

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.

The evidence of international health care costs is out there to look at. Nobody in the OECD enjoys less health care for more money than the US currently does, but pretty much every other country has either some kind of single payer or socialized medicine. Unless you think that Americans are just fundamentally less efficient than every other developed country, I think it's safe to say it's your system at fault. Maybe moving in completely the opposite direction from more successful models will work, but it certainly doesn't sound like the safe way to go.

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..."

ACORN is grassroots, although I suppose that doesn't include their reputed "shadow wing" that controls the Kremlin, the Black Helicopters, the Faked Moon Landings, and whatever else the right blogosphere is laying at their doorstep today. AARP sounds like it was grassroots, at least at its inception, but I don't know enough about it to really say.

AFSCME and SEIU are unions. Different kettle of fish, really. But certainly much closer to a grassroots organization than, say, an HMO lobbyist.

HCAN and Families USA are pro lobbyists. So you're right there.

Moveon.org is just a website. It's netroots, rather than grassroots per se.

And George Soros is just a guy with a lot of money and some opinions that don't wash well with the right. So he gets to be the shadowy puppetmaster.

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.

This may shock you, but some people actually think some form of single-payer or socialized medicine is a good idea. They aren't making money off of it. I don't stand to see a single dime, nor any change in my life whatsoever from health care reform in the US, but it looks to me to be the pretty obvious choice for bringing down costs while improving coverage.

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.

Who is John Galt?

-Jester