NEWS: Lunatic, Socialist, Hippie Senator Wants Universal Health Care

POLITICS: Lunatic, Socialist, Hippie Senator Wants Universal Health Care

Twelve years ago America said no to a Clinton plan to create a massive bureaucracy and lower the standard of medical care by giving every American health care. The plan was slapped down by a prudent and economically sound Republican congress. But now the ugly monster of universal health care has reared it's ugly head again.



Oregon Birkenstock wearing Senator Ron Wyden is offering a plan to provide health care for everyone, whether they are stockbrokers or employed hobos living under the docks. The only people who would not be covered by his "private coverage" plan are people who get Medicare or are in the military.

Okay. Now back to reality. Wyden is a member of the Senate Finance health care subcommittee, so he thinks he has the power to introduce bills that will ruin America. He has called the plan the "Healthy Americans Act" and believes it will not cost more money than what the country currently spends.



The plan has drawn support from different sides of the business community. The Service Employees International Union and Safeway, Inc. both believe the health care plan is a smart move. When everyone agrees on something it is communism. We are in deep shit here.



Currently 46 million Americans are happily uninsured. They go about their lives, some working full time jobs, joyfully understanding they are not living under the oppression of socialism.



Wyden's plan allows workers to transfer their health insurance from job to job. Employers would terminate their existing plans and pay the amount saved directly to workers. Workers would then have to buy health insurance from a pool of private plans. After two years, employers would no longer pay their employees the insurance money and would instead pay it directly into the insurance pool. Then America would collapse.

I'm sorry, when did Fox News start writing SG News Reports?

Don't you just love how the right rolls out the whole fear of communism thing for anything they don't like?

NEWSFLASH! America could not survive without socialist programs like social security or welfare. So please give up the red scare bullshit, McCarthy.

"Come on now, lemme hear that dirty word...SOCIALISM!"

sigh...man do i wish i had had health care...and dental...being able to afford school would be nice to...sigh

health care for everybody, and healthcare now!

He's being very very sarcastic; you're not the first person to miss it

This plan sounds like exactly what we need; I misunderstood it at first. Preventative medicine is the way to go!

I agree with FTR, the govt should not have to provide health care. I hate taxes and I don't want to pay for someone else's healthcare. As a matter of fact, I'd rather pay some Iraqi's healthcare (or at least compensate their surviving family) then some lazy fat-ass American's. Corps shouldn't have to pay healthcare, either! That's true capitalism. As a matter of fact, I'm trying to get a job at Walmart, so I can not have healthcare. If we can eliminate Medicare, too, we can finally get back to good ole' Darwinism. Survival of the fittest. At least that has a long track record and won't cost us a dime!

Seriously, I don't think I was ever happy living without healthcare

The article definitely seems to leave out a lot of the details. I'm trying to figure out how a government mandated program is going to provide benefits for 46 million (from the posting) additional customers without raising overall costs.

The two-year direct payments to employees also smells a bit suspicious. Trying to lock-in votes before the next election perchance?

The Senators have a pretty good and comprehensive health plan. Sounds like a good base to expand from.

If only American car companies and airline companies could not have to worry about the high cost of health care keeping their bottom lines crappy. Hmmmmm If only corporations wouldn't have to shoulder such burdens.

I agree that it seems unfeasible that it's as glorious and perfect as it's being painted in the article, but I believe in the general idea is that with preventative medicine we can reduce the overall cost healthcare. In other words if we can keep people healthier on average we can reduce the number of high cost procedures. Another idea is that many health problems are more easily dealt with if they're discovered early; so if people are recieving regular check-ups and have an incentive to talk to a doctor if they notice something wrong with themselves we might be able to stop illnesses from getting to late, expensive states.

That said, I'm too cynical to believe that universal health care will actually lower our overall cost; but I don't think it will raise it by as much as some people seem to think. I also think that universal health care would be a much better reason to have a deficit than ridiculous wars of conquest. (Not that I think this country should ever have a budget deficit; it's not nice for our economy ).

You can be as cynical about that as you like, but the problem is that it isn't generally the rich people who suffer when corporations have poor profit margins. If you want to devise a strategy that changes that feel free, future generations would thank you.

It's great that he wants health care for everyone. I want that too! The real question is whether his plan will actually *provide* that.

The fundamental problem with the current system is that most of our health care spending is being routed through third parties and the amount we pay into this system has little to do with how much we use it, because even though we call it "insurance" most plans have no deductible whatsoever due to the fact that deductibles on non-HSA plans are not tax deductible and in California even HSA deductibles aren't tax deductible.

The other problems we have are that we let doctors decide how many doctors we can have, trial lawyers making laws, and the FDA being required to determine if drugs are both safe *and* effective rather than just safe, resulting in drug companies' having to pay the FDA extra "grease money" to get their applications processed in a reasonable amount of time.

My solution? First, either stop making health care spending tax deductible or figure out how to make *all* of it tax deductible without people's having to get no-deductible "insurance." Given that tax deductions don't help the poorest anyway, this is a subsidy for the rich to begin with. Second, change the FDA's mandate to what it was to begin with: keep people safe. Let the doctors prescribing the drugs and the patients taking them decide if they're effective. Third, Congress needs to enact reasonable limits on the liability that a doctor or drug company can face per death. The aviation industry already has these and couldn't exist without them, so why not medicine? Last but not least, let's revamp the entire system of medical school accreditation and training standards to include the community in the process instead of just doctors.

Few people won't acknowledge that health care has been better in the US in the past, and all of these "reforms" have existed in the US in the past except for the liability limits. Given that the direction we've always been going with health care has been *towards* socialism and health care has only been getting worse, I am not sure at all why people think going all the way to socialism will be any better. Especially when you consider that while there are reasonably effective socialist health care systems out there, there is no reason to believe that the particular brand of socialism Wyden is proposing will work like it and not like one of the bad systems.

One thing Ron doesn't have to do in Oregon is "lock-in votes". He's always appeared to be an advocate for people. I believe his intent is genuine. But, as you mentioned, the devil will be in the details.

Every time I read a news article from SG, it's some conservative, narrow-minded view, always flinging mud in the opposite direction. I think we have a mini-O'Riely on our hands.

This guy is going to go nowhere in journalism.

They are not 46 million "additional" customers, they are 46 million people who are working and paying taxes. They are people who provide a significant benifit to their employers and the economy and who, in return, are treated as if they have no worth whatsoever.

The issue here is not what we can "afford" to provide, given the staggering cost of not taking care of our citizens. The issue is how will we stop wasting billions and billions of dollars and begin to spend that money on what one of the greatest resources in this country - its human and social capital.

I'm always amazed at the people who don't get it... been around since July and only now is realizing FTR is sacastic? must have been looking at boobs or something.

It is fairly obvious everyone needs health care however I think government mandated programs are a bad idea. I think a better idea would be to issue a health care voucher which can be spent on what ever health care company you want. If you want better service you or your company can pay more money on top of what the voucher covers.

whoooooosh

My contention is *NOT* that those 46 million people don't deserve coverage. My contention is that I don't see how those 46 million people can be provided health care coverage without increasing the current costs paid for healthcare.

Assuming the US population at 300M and 46M people without health care coverage, that means the current amount paid is covering 254M people. I don't see how we bring that number up to the whole 300M people without increasing the overall cost or reducing the level of service.

WOOOSH!

Oh, "employed hobos living under the docks" seems to be any oxymoron.

Unless of course you meant to say "employed homos living under docks." Is this a gay rights issue?

Again, I believe the concept is that by providing regular health care for those additional people as well as the people at the bottom of the insured ranks we can mitigate the more extreme costs they generate when they get really sick or visit the ER for something that could have been cheaply dealt with if found sooner. I'm not suggesting that this will magically cause the plan to work, but it's not entirely unfeasible, and providing regular health care for those people won't necessarily add a masive burden.

I've finally learned to skip the articles written by "fear the reaper" and go straight to the comment page. Now I can use the headline to search for the story on yahoo.

It's not just that. We'll also have a pretty incredible savings if we reduce the crazy amount of paper work that is currently demanded by our system. Right now we've got trails of paperwork and accounting and auditing and so forth between all of these groups:



Each of those lines costs money and it's mostly a cost that gets past down to the insurance consumer.

With a single payer system it looks more like this:



Of course that's pretty idealized, there is always room for corruption, incompetence and petty politicking to ruin an otherwise good idea.


Here's a random article that explains in a little more depth

Hi everybody! My name is Michael and I live in a wacky country called Canada. Yes it is a cold country from November to March. We dont put people in jail for smoking marijuana or for commiting homosexual acts of pleasure. Here in Canada we also have free health care! If you are curious how it works you should come up here, (or down here if you live in Alaska) smoke a joint, get a blow job from a gay man and walk into a free hospital!

Sincerly,
Your 'Crazy Canuk 'Friend,
Michael

I'm a Brit, our National Heath Service is a giant lumbering beast of a bureaucratic mess. It has issues. Plenty of issues. It costs a fortune (we're talking £96 billion ($187 billion) a year here people). But I'm damn happy and proud that my taxes pay for it. Because I know it's there if and when I should need it, and in the mean time that money is helping other people. From my point of view, I'd rather my money is being used to help other people or even being wasted completely due to incompetence / bureaucracy in the massive NHS system, than paying out monthly to an insurance company. By it's nature a company's primary goal is to earn profit for it's shareholders. Not help people. Who knows what your money is being invested in whilst your paying up, waiting to get ill? Now I know, some of that money is paying other peoples medical bills, but that is not it's primary function now, is it? Or perhaps I've misunderstood how these companies work?

On another British note: Brits love sarcasm. More news should be reported this way.