http://www.thenation.com/blogs/jstreet/461264/your_questions_about_health_care_reform_answered

I think you will find that we outspend every country in health care costs as it is no matter what system they are using. The fact that “free” health care in other countries costs less than the present USA system is an apples to oranges comparison. If nothing else changes except who pays for health care than we are in deep trouble. Well, I should say deeper trouble that we are in now.

I would ask you to consider: does every woman in America have to give induced birth by c-section in a factory hospital? This is just one question. Perhaps the methods of millions of years no longer work and a mid-wife would be a horror to Americans. Why do we rip the umbilical cord off and force the baby to breath air before it is ready? Convenience?

Why can I not go to a human healer for most of my needs and not a man with a doctor’s license? Why can a nurse down at the Drug store not give me the meds I need for small things?

Why can I not prescribe my own medications if I pay for them? Afraid I’ll self-medicate and do just as well? I knew for the last two years what I needed to be taking. Oh hell, lets be honest. If I could smoke a little weed each day after I got home from work I would live much longer.

I see I have begun to ramble again. I am having that trouble with my medications. I hope some of the above made some sense.

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2009/08/10/2009-08-10_in_health_care_debate_the_gop_is_pushing_fiction_as_fact.html

What if democracy does not work? What if it is the war of all upon all?

The Rethugians of this era are a sorry lot, and that is the truth. The demos ain’t a whole lot better; and they have been much worse in the past.

We have descended into name-calling by party affiliation. Others, much smarter than me, have pointed out that we are broken up into special interest tribes and rational debate is not in the cards. Science has become highly politicized, ditto for medicine, and ditto for many other things.

How can we look at the highly divided America and say that this is the way that a free people should be governed? As diggby pointed out, we are a people subject to being TASED (electrocuted) at any time for almost anything. Yet, both “sides” are arguing over minutia most of the time rather than the root causes of our distress. Your post is true; but you leave out that the other side is every bit as bad.

Take the current medical debate. It is not, or should not be, a debate simply about insurance. That is important, but so are many other things involving medical care. There is no real national debate; only a food-fight, yelling, cussing, fear mongering, and other generally unpleasant actions. As one example of these “other things” that I speak of, consider universal health care paid for by taxation much like the public school system. At the point in time when health care becomes “free”, what will happen to demand? What will that do to the total cost of care and what will that do to the total quality of care?

These things can only be discuses in America with the debater always thinking not of truth but rather how his statements will effect his own side’s chances of “victory”. You know Hag, sometimes victory comes at too high a price.

I’ll write about the crisis in health care delivery in a day or two, but for now all I can say is our system is totally snarfed up and has been since WWII at least.

Pop ‘em in the nose and they run home to mommy and daddy and gin up victimization, outrage, the red scourge, etc., anything for some line of sympathy they can use as a rope to pull themselves up again.

I guess the M$M is playing the role of the parents here, and instead of sending the bully to bed w/o dinner, immune to his canticle, they are suckers to it, cluelessly offering a lifeline as the rest of us increasingly turn away.

Over the top and beneath contempt
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0809/25991.html