Health Care Bill Passes

[Guest arm]

Isn't the health care crisis really about the challenge of getting more healthcare to more people at lower costs, without sacrificing quality or incentives to innovate medical devices, therapies, treatment and beneficial drugs? It's a terribly challenging problem, finding the most efficient way to increase quantity and quality while reducing cost. Can quality and quantity go up while costs go down? History teaches powerful lessons in the way different societies (including our own) have addressed this fundamental challenge, whether regarding healthcare or anything else (food, housing, technology, etc.). There really is no rational debate about how this can happen or what's involved in retarding the process in service of other goals.

The most fascinating aspect of this public policy debate to me is the question that's never asked - - "what is the value of freedom?" Individual and social freedom had been this country's defining principle for at least its first 175 years or so. Interestingly, as we've gotten wealthier and more secure (due entirely to the forces unleashed by individual and social freedoms), persons of all stripes have found it incredibly easy to put little value on freedom or to ignore it altogether for immediate and seemingly practical reasons. Taking recent events as an example, so-called conservatives have rallied to restrict freedoms to enhance security from violence. It would certainly work. If we relaxed our right to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures or permitted ethnic and religious "profiling", we'd be demonstrably safer from terrorism. Some conservatives rally to police the sexual conduct of other people. It would certainly work. If we regulated abstinence and outlawed sexual contact between same sexes, we'd quickly reduce unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases, both terrible social ills. So-called liberals rally to expand the power of the state over the economy in essentially every respect. It works, too. Central economic planning can distribute wealth and services to the poor, the unlucky or the unproductive very quickly.

In terms of healthcare, mandating lower prices and the broadest possible distribution of services will provide "coverage" and "care" to more people than will occur without central planning. The companion results are escalating costs, rationing, severely reduced innovation, and significantly lower quality of care. It seems to me that rational people could readily choose the collectivist model to provide as much as possible to as many as possible, regardless of the costs to productivity, innovation and quality. (I believe where this choice has been made, societies have lived to regret it, sometimes deeply, but history is not without examples of people apple-slicing their way into servitude in order for the trains run on time.) But If freedom is assigned any substantial value in the discussion of trade offs, then that choice makes no sense at all.

[arm]

Sorry, meant to post ^ as me.

[chuckvegas]

Blue state or red, young or old or just young or old at heart, home schooled or 12 years riding the bus, I think most of us can get behind this:

[Guest deadheadmike]

Blue state or red, young or old or just young or old at heart, home schooled or 12 years riding the bus, I think most of us can get behind this:

So true ... the chunky lunch lady with the hair net thing , we all had em ...

EDIT: Sandler used to put out some real funny stuff too ...

[bs69]

public education {or lack thereof}? i mean, high school even when i was in high school taught way more than it does today...tho my point is more along the lines of: my 7th grader would have to be in what? 1st, 2nd grade {maybe}? were we move to most any other country...

i know this topic has kinda headed towards public education, but certainly parallels may be drawn between the status of public education and health "care" in the U.S. vs. most any other country {developed countries, that is}....

Seems to me they are real focused on pushing Math and Reading because of the new testing standards. My kids (1st, 3rd, 6th & 7th grades) are all doing stuff in Math well beyond what I did at those age levels. Gone, however, are the gym, music and field trips we went on to broaden our education. BTW, did anyone see the Jamie Oliver school lunch thing in Huntington WVA? Scary shit!

[Guest njjohn]

beep

[Guest njjohn]

beep

[Guest njjohn]

beep

[New York Steve]

Alright, I'll play your little game, the house may change, but the senate won't and please tell me who is going to defeat Obama in 2012?

Romney?

Huckabee??

Palin????????

Please, what parts of the bill will they "defund"??? and explain to me what legislative process they will use?

[NJJohn]

Alright, I'll play your little game, the house may change, but the senate won't and please tell me who is going to defeat Obama in 2012?

Romney?

Huckabee??

Palin????????

Please, what parts of the bill will they "defund"??? and explain to me what legislative process they will use?

After Conservative Republicans win in November, and gain a majority in the House (where appropriations have to originateand) or Senate, the Bill which was passed needs to be funded by appropriations which can be defeated by a simple majority in the House or Senate. The Healthcare Reform Act will just wither on the vine, so to speak, with no funding. After Obama realizes his dream of being a one term president, the repeal of this messy Bill will come soon after. A real Heathcare Reform Bill will be composed by Conservative Replblican Senators and Congressman who are fiscally responsible, and cover most Americans who want healthcare insurance without shreadding the Constitution, and without sleazy backroom deals.

[New York Steve]

After Conservative Republicans win in November, and gain a majority in the House (where appropriations have to originateand) or Senate, the Bill which was passed needs to be funded by appropriations which can be defeated by a simple majority in the House or Senate. The Healthcare Reform Act will just wither on the vine, so to speak, with no funding. After Obama realizes his dream of being a one term president, the repeal of this messy Bill will come soon after. A real Heathcare Reform Bill will be composed by Conservative Replblican Senators and Congressman who are fiscally responsible, and cover most Americans who want healthcare insurance without shreadding the Constitution, and without sleazy backroom deals.

I love conservative republican senators, republicans had 8 years to do something about healthcare, and they did nothing. What makes you think that all of a sudden republicans will care about the welfare of the masses?

still waiting for your candidate, whatever happened to Jindal; or Steele for that matter?

Hope you paid your taxes, I know I did.

(spell check)

[bs69]

After Conservative Republicans win in November, and gain a majority in the House (where appropriations have to originateand) or Senate, the Bill which was passed needs to be funded by appropriations which can be defeated by a simple majority in the House or Senate. The Healthcare Reform Act will just wither on the vine, so to speak, with no funding. After Obama realizes his dream of being a one term president, the repeal of this messy Bill will come soon after. A real Heathcare Reform Bill will be composed by Conservative Replblican Senators and Congressman who are fiscally responsible, and cover most Americans who want healthcare insurance without shreadding the Constitution, and without sleazy backroom deals.

I hope you are right, but I have little faith that the Republicans will spend more wisely. People are always careless when they are spending other people's money, that is why we need to limit what they have to spend and what they need to spend it on.

[arm]

I love conservative republican senators, republicans had 8 years to do something about healthcare, and they did nothing. What makes you think that all of a sudden republicans will care about the welfare of the masses?

Did you really say "the masses"? Is that a Freudian slip?

The conceit that our circumstances cannot improve without coercive central planning is the great tragedy of modernity.

Oh, well. I'm paying out the ying yang for dental insurance. I certainly hope I can score some free teeth cleanings before this handbasket gets to where it's going!

[New York Steve]

Did you really say "the masses"? Is that a Freudian slip?

The Masses was a graphically innovative magazine of socialist politics published monthly in the U.S. from 1911 until 1917, when Federal prosecutors brought charges against its editors for conspiring to obstruct conscription. It was succeeded by The Liberator and then later The New Masses. ...

The conceit that our circumstances cannot improve without coercive central planning is the great tragedy of modernity.

Oh, well. I'm paying out the ying yang for dental insurance. I certainly hope I can score some free teeth cleanings before this handbasket gets to where it's going!

[arm]

^^^^ I love the fact that you know that!

What a great American tradition - prosecuting people for writing, thinking or gyrating. I'm thinking of crypto-communists, polygamists, pole dancers.... Part of being a shining city on a hill is our endless ability to embarrass ourselves.