I thought this video was very interesting!

http://www.wimp.com/thegovernment/

President John Adams said, “All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise, not from defects in the Constitution or confederation, not from want of honor or virtue, so much as from downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit and circulation.”

Money is a science that very few people have investigated. If we use “Gods money”, all sorts of seemingly unrelated problems will simply vanish! That’s why Judge Roger Sherman insisted on Article 1 section 10 of the Constitution, which says, “No State shall… make any thing but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts…”

I find the “I won’t support a plan that won’t work” excuse very dishonest

I disagree. I’m not against reform. I’m against many aspects of these particular bills. First, I don’t think these plans will actually help AT ALL in the long run overall. So to me, it would be immoral to support them. You obviously disagree. But it’s not dishonest.

Second, this is a democratic process. There are good parts of these bills and there are bad parts. This uproar against the current bills (of which pluralities, if not majorities in this country are now against) is probably going to help make the bill better in the end when they finally settle on something. I hope. Then once we’ve worked out a lot of the garbage, then maybe we’ll have something we say..”hey, it’s better than doing nothing and it’s the best we can do now, so let’s support it.” As it currently is, I don’t believe it is better than doing nothing.

Third, we can’t afford it. It is immoral to promise things you can’t afford even if they have a good intention. We are robbing our kids and grandkids. We have to do better than that.

And no, I don’t consider myself a libertarian. I consider myself a “constitutional republican” in the original sense of the words. I believe that what has made America unique is that its founders recognized that real liberty is protected not by having the right people running a powerful government, but by having as limited government as possible and leaving the rest to the localities and people. They knew that no matter what technologies were available, or how globally connected we were, that people are people. And that throughout history all governments have ended in some kind of tyranny.

All of the things Pinko listed can be attained without a federally run “public option.” It can help regulate electronic records, but without controlling them. It can set compliance standards that globalize and make efforts more efficient, but it can do so without being the one enacting the efforts. It can make laws that enable competition across state lines and drives down costs for everyone, but without being one of the competitors. It can enact tort reform to reduce medical expenses without being the one suing or being sued.

There is just no need to give the fed government that kind of power on these issues. They all have us convinced that it’s either THIS plan where they get all the power or NOTHING and more people suffer. It’s a lie. It wont’ help. And we also can’t afford it. Even the CBO says these bills will not accomplish the goals we want.

And there is no country in the world with “good” nationalized health care that is as big or even half as big as the US. They are all much closer in size to many of our states. If we can’t get it to work even on a State level here, then why would we do it at a national level? It makes no sense. You can say it’s because the state don’t have funding for it. Neither does the fed gov!!! The states can tax just like the fed gov can. The point is that it doesn’t work.

The government is the worst “giant corporation” in the world in terms of corruption, efficiency, and bureaucracy. This is a proven fact. And anyone who thinks they aren’t driven by profits is in another fantasy world. The level that special interest groups are affecting these bills is atrocious! And they stand to make or lose billions of dollars depending on what happens. This is why we don’t give this power to the government in the first place. This is why the country was set up so that health care and any other such issues were left to the state and local governments. Roads, education, police, fire depts, etc. are all handled on lower levels because there is no need or place for the federal gov to be involved. And they each require unique solutions depending on the local culture and needs. And having the decisions and special interest lobbying occurring on as local of a level as possible reduces waste and corruption.

Nobody has made the case for needing a public option. Obama and crew can’t explain these 1000+ page plans to anyone. People are confused. That doesn’t bode well when the proposal is asking to put us into record debts and deficits.

Defense of our nation is slightly different. It is constitutional. And I’m not sure it can be practically accomplished without the federal government having at least most of the control. So, in my view, that’s something we give up to them. Not great, but necessary. We can debate all day long on whether certain efforts are good or bad, but the point is that it is constitutionally proper that it is handled by the fed government.

Have you ever heard of Charlie Samuel?

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lily-burk28-2009jul28,0,123041.story

Why would you want to pay for the health care of someone who would rather do drugs than work, as Charlie Samuel did? Why would you want to pay for the health care of a paroled rapist? The fact is, not every poor person deserves charity. If a man who raped a girl is paroled out of prison and gets cancer, let him die of cancer!

By the way, Jesus healed people by declaring them to be healed, not by drugging them or hospitalizing them.

I find the “I won’t support a plan that won’t work” excuse very dishonest: even if the plan isn’t perfect, it would surely help to mitigate suffering. That should be reason enough to do it in a society that cares.

And Michael, I really don’t get the “Money didn’t kill the Jews” thing. What is your point? Your fellow man doesn’t care enough? That would be exactly my point. If you rely on people’s charity and voluntary generosity it will get you exactly nowhere in the issue of a functioning health care system that covers every citizen – we need some legislation here. People are selfish. Unless you make them pay, they won’t. I guess if all people who call themselves Christians in this country would actually follow Jesus’ example, it might work. But it seems praying is easier than actually doing something. I’d rather go with a less than perfect system than what we have now.

And still, you’re not describing ‘taxation without representation.’ That’s when someone (The British) takes your money, but doesn’t let anyone come and state your case that you don’t want them to use the money that way. What you are describing is “being in the minority.” It sucks, I know, I had to do it for the last 8 years.

I don’t know any of the states that you’re saying have universal health care, I’ve never lived in one. I assume it probably does work. And if it’s really great, the states are more than welcome to keep their state plan when the national plan goes into effect. If it’s not working, it’s almost assuredly because it’s not well funded- a lot of states have trouble even keeping their school systems running well. I just don’t get what you think is gonna happen when a person gets sick in, like Dallas – you think they’re gonna have to call someone in Washington D.C. to ask if there’s coverage? It will work because: the US will be able to say, hey there all you drug companies and private hospitals and private practices- you can go ahead and do this procedure or cover this drug because you know exactly what we cover and what we don’t. It’s right there on your wall because half of your patients use the same policy. Also, you don’t need to order that MRI in Dallas anymore because we have the results from the one he got in Houston last month. (I can tell you with certainty doctors spend a whole lot of their time trying to coax medical history from their patients). Also the government plan won’t be trying to turn a profit, for example Aetna was the first one that popped in my head, googled it, they’re making in the hundreds of millions of dollars in profit every quarter. Now they have to do that by moving the bottom line, and that leads to all these claims of dropped coverage or denying pre-existing conditions, which is why people hate health insurance companies in the first place. If YOUR provider is awesome, then fine, you can keep it. In fact, if a poor person hears from you the coverage is awesome, they can take their subsidy and maybe spend a little extra, which they can now afford, to buy into your provider. What’s wrong with that?

So then, what about it won’t work? I’m starting to think you’re afraid that the government sucks just because they botched nearly everything in the last 8 years. Well, that was YOUR guy. He’s gone now.

“Each of our states are about the size of many of these other countries”
Where are you pulling your facts? I’ve got some bad news for you….

“We hereby decree you healed. If you die, you just did not have enough faith.”

I know it’s not common for Catholics to read the Bible, but Matt, you may want to double-check on Jesus’ attitude towards the poor and less fortunate in our society.
If the Oregon Health Plan administered the kind of health care that Jesus administered, it would go like this:

“We hereby decree you healed. If you die, you just did not have enough faith.”

It was run by the Los Angeles County government .

That is an example of public health care.

How does Canada’s health care plan work with a population less than California’s population?

As a matter of fact, Massachussetts already has universal health care. How is this possible, if universal health care is impossible for states to do?