I’ve paid tens of thousands into Social Security, over several decades.
I’ve never want the government providing my pension and it’ll be broke long before I see a dime of it anyway.
I’ve paid thousands into Medicare.
I don’t want government running my medical care and it’ll be broke soon too.

So glad this “works” for you. Those you should be “grateful” to include *me* — your “successful programs” have been on my dime.

Given their imminently bankrupt future you can perhaps appreciate why I might “attack” these “successes”. I’m part of “We the People” too — and this is what *I* insist on!

Quoted from the WSJ article:

“However, there are no provisions to substantively control the growth of costs or raise the quality of care. So the overall effort will fail to qualify as reform.”

You’re either in denial or not being honest with Dr. Flier’s clear and distinct statement.

The eonomists do not rate the current plan(s) on the table but simply name four items they believe are part of healthcare plan. Some of those items in fact are not part of the current plans.

Second, I don’t claim to know anything about the Aussie system. But I do know that the U.S. creates something like 80% of the pharmaceutical innovations worldwide and the majority of med tech innovations, too. If Aussies or anyone else pay less for drugs discovered in the U.S., whether in component form, generic imitations or whatever, the discoveries were still a product of the enormous investments in research in the U.S. In that sense, if these discoveries are available for cheaper anywhere else, then the U.S. is “subsidizing” that cheaper availability. That’s bad enough in my opinion, but when beneficiaries of U.S. innovation gloat about how they are able to exploit it at lower cost than we can, it seems childish to me. When Australia or any other country starts coming up with medical innovations at anything like our pace and manages to do it significantly cheaper, I will bow in respect. Until then, get real.

Sorry for the snark in the prior post, but I get pretty sick of people in other countries who benefit in various ways from America’s medical, technological and scientific discoveries, or live in some measure under our defense umbrella, copping an attitude about how much superior thay are. I detect that a whole lot less in Aussies than Europeans and Canadians. But there you are.

Times have changed and the number of our social program recipients has increased to a point that can keep them in power. Power being the key word in any of these new bills.

If people were dying in the streets, 80% were dissatisfied with their healthcare, etc. I might tend to agree that drastic action was needed immediately, but that is not the situation. In any event, I would still be leary of the proposed legislation, in that its (unintended?) consequence is the creation and yet another government leviathan to suck the public teet in perpetuity.

The skimulus doesn’t do what the nation was told it would do, it doesn’t address what the nation was told it would address, it doesn’t have the impact the nation was told would be the impact and it never will have the impact that the nation was told would be the impact.

Similarly, the NannyCare Program doesn’t do what the entrenched media propaganda machine is outlining as its mission, it doesn’t address the issues that need addressing, it will not have the impact that the distortionists are painting and it is not INTENDED to do any of those things.

Legislation in this land of ours at the moment…is a sword and a shield for leftist ideologues. Nothing more, nothing less.

NannyCare, NannyPork, NannyMedia, NannyDefense, …are all culled from the same playbook. And keeping the masses dazed, confused and uninformed is just the way they like it.

This “Health Care Reform” is not about health, it is not about care and it is not about reform. It is about redistribution of wealth, increasing state control and putting leftism in such a commanding political position as to never be challenged again. Period. End of report.

I am quite sure that Harvard’s endowment makes a lot of money for drug company stocks and other health-care related companies that would not be able to continue to rape all of us for their massive profits when Obama ensures good health care for everyone.

No private company has the legal power to use physical force to compel you to do anything. So the notion that “health-care related companies” are “raping” you for “massive profits” is utterly preposterous — it’s vicious nonsense.

What’s more, to call the voluntary transactions that occur in the healthcare market “rape” is to egregiously insult all of the individual physicians, researchers, technicians, administrators and investors that work at “health related companies”– for you are equating the work they do with the violent crime of attacking the body of another person.

Even worse, your use of the term “rape” in this context is a slap in the face to every actual rape victim on the planet — for it asserts that what happened to them is no worse than what happens to you when you pay a doctor‘s bill you consider too high. One could forgive any actual rape victim if they expressed a desire to have you experience first hand what a real rape is like.

You should retract your accusation that healthcare companies are “raping” anyone and apologize for your offensive remark to both groups of individuals.

In 1900, the average life span in America was 47 years. By the year 2000, that had been extended to 77 years. It takes an especially sick and twisted individual to experience hatred and hostility toward an industry that has added three decades to the average American’s life. How discouraging it is to know that so many of these haters are among us here in America.