[b]Arius_Ex wrote:[/b] [quote][b]TheMessenger wrote:[/b] [quote] Medicare isn\'t a program that leads to millions upon millions of people having government run their lives.[/quote] [quote]Where in the current health care bill is this nefarious goal stated? The bill creates a public option health care plan which competes with private insurers. If you don\'t want public health care you can stay as far away from it as you want.[/quote] Do you seriously expect the bill to spell out the words \"And by this we will control your lives\". Come now. It\'s all about what will come in the future as a result of this bill. 50 million people (with plenty of illegal immigrants mixed in there, and people who could have employer based coverage, but haven\'t applied) on the public option, with millions more that will go with the public option. It won\'t be a private thing between you and the doctor anymore. It will be you, the doctor, and the government panel deciding what\'s best for you. [quote]It hasn\'t led to heavy rationing...[/quote] [quote]Exactly, and that\'s why it\'s better than private insurance. Private insurers ration care every day by declaring procedures recommended by doctors to be unnecessary, too expensive, or not covered because of pre-existing conditions. CEOs of insurance corporations have testified BEFORE CONGRESS that they had whole bureaucracies dedicated to pouring through peoples\' insurance applications to find small errors and void their entire policy AFTER treatment had already been completed. Insurers don\'t make money without denying care to some, which is the very definition of rationing. As for lack of doctors, much of this is due to the fact that there is more money to be made in specialized medicine than general care, an issue which has nothing to do with any health care proposal. It takes almost a decade of specialized schooling to become a doctor, and not many people want to take up the challenge. In fact, it\'s my understanding that we have a greater shortage of nurses, who actually do much of the heavy lifting in medicine. I\'d love to have a discussion about how to encourage more people to enter medicine.[/quote] Don\'t kid yourself. There isn\'t \"heavy rationing\" within the United States. More money to be made in specialized medicine, eh? Probably. It\'s to bad that nothing you said there solves the problem of the heavy rationing that this plan will, without a doubt, force upon us. You simply stated a reason why there aren\'t enough doctors. What\'s your point? [quote]...doesn\'t give government power over everyone...[/quote] [quote]I\'d rather deal with a not-for-profit government plan that works for me than a for-profit corporate that works for shareholders. [/quote] [quote]...doesn\'t crush the US economy...[/quote] [quote]Inclusion of a public option would mean millions of Americans would be able to afford standard care, meaning they would have more free income to make purchases. Rather than paying $2,000 to go to the emergency room for something simple they can actually see a doctor, pay next to nothing and have the other $1949 to spend elsewhere.[/quote] No, they will not have more free income to make purchases. How do you expect this massive program will be paid for? Democrats often try to pass things under We the People\'s noses by simply saying, \"Oh, but at least they have health insurance, right? It\'s just such a noble cause! Woo-hoo! But then they fail to point out the fact that if this plan passes there will be even more taxes to be paid by us taxpayers. I don\'t know about you, but I\'m NOT willing to pay for someone else\'s health care, especially if I\'m not even using the public option. [quote]...doesn\'t lead to small business failures.[/quote] [quote]Small businesses are the worst hit by private insurance. Health care premiums have increased across the board way faster than income, and even as the economy has begun to tank. Since a government plan would not have the tremendous overhead that private insurers do, and would not have to satisfy shareholders with tremendous mark-ups, their prices would be much more stable and affordable (as is seen with Medicare).[/quote] True, the small businesses have been hit hard by private insurance. But this bill forces small businesses to provide health care for there employees. Do it, or pay a fine. Totally small business friendly :P . And all of this in the middle of a terrible economy? Really? What a stupid idea. Once the businesses can\'t pay for health care, their employees will have to go on the public option. Just more burden on the already overloaded United States taxpayers, more rationing, and a lower quality of care. By the way, all of the sudden the public option isn\'t as big of a deal to Obama and Sebielus (did I spell that right). She now says that\'s not the essential element of the bill. Then what\'s the bill for? Like she says, it\'s all about choice and competition (note the conservative lingo, there. They must have noticed that 40-some percent of Americans identify themselves as conservatives). But it\'s hard to imagine any fair competition between the private market and the government option when the government is trying to be the regulator of prices and the competitor. That\'s not competition. I would also like to take a moment to point out one crucial element to people that try to use statistics to prove that the socialistic health care systems are the best: Remember that there are over 300 million Americans, with races varying. We have Caucasians, African-Americans, Latinos, Japanese Americans, etc. So it is good to point out that while one country may have a longer life expectancy, the US also has far more variables affecting it\'s overall life expectancy. For example, the Japanese, I hear, are a very healthy people, genetically. More healthy then, say, Africans. So, if you had a solidly Japanese country and a solidly African country, both with the exact same quality of health care and the same health care system, it would not be surprising if the Japanese life expectancy was at least a couple of years longer. It doesn\'t always mean they have better health care or a better system. So now I think it\'s worth quoting Canadian doctor David Gratzer: [i]\"One often-heard argument, voiced by the New York Times\' Paul Krugman and others, is that America lags behind other countries in crude health outcomes. But such outcomes reflect a mosaic of factors, such as diet, lifestyle, drug use and cultural values. It pains me as a doctor to say this, but health care is just one factor in health. Americans live 75.3 years on average, fewer than Canadians (77.3) or the French (76.6) or the citizens of any Western European nation save Portugal. Health care influences life expectancy, of course. But a life can end because of a murder, a fall or a car accident. Such factors aren\'t academic — homicide rates in the U.S. are much higher than in other countries. In The Business of Health, Robert Ohsfeldt and John Schneider factor out intentional and unintentional injuries from life-expectancy statistics and find that Americans who don\'t die in car crashes or homicides outlive people in any other Western country. And if we measure a health care system by how well it serves its sick citizens, American medicine excels. Five-year cancer survival rates bear this out. For leukemia, the American survival rate is almost 50%; the European rate is just 35%. Esophageal carcinoma: 12% in the U.S., 6% in Europe. The survival rate for prostate cancer is 81.2% here, yet 61.7% in France and down to 44.3% in England — a striking variation. Like many critics of American health care, though, Krugman argues that the costs are just too high: health care spending in Canada and Britain, he notes, is a small fraction of what Americans pay. Again, the picture isn\'t quite as clear as he suggests. Because the U.S. is so much wealthier than other countries, it isn\'t unreasonable for it to spend more on health care. Take America\'s high spending on research and development. M.D. Anderson in Texas, a prominent cancer center, spends more on research than Canada does.\"[/i] :)