I agree with you. But until we return to Constitutional government, it would be better to unite all the idiot government health programs into one.

Of course we don't have a free system now. I didn't say we did. The FDA, Medicare, Medicaid, etc. that are already in place at the Federal level are also grossly unconstitutional. Call me naive, but I have this quaint idea that the Feds ought to actually follow and be bound by the Constitution they swear to uphold. Silly me.

To those that deride socialist Canada, consider such other "backward" and "socialist" places such as Switzerland. (In case it wasn't clear, that was sarcasm...the Swiss enjoy some of the best government-provided health care in one of the freest societies in the world.)

There are a lot of considerations to be made and there should be real facts put forth. This I agree. But facts should be ranked in hierarchy of veracity. For instance, I might rank a publicly available Harvard peer-reviewed study higher than a single exchange over email in collecting the bases for factual argument.

The setting for such a debate should be one in which sober minds and cool tempers discuss the costs and benefits of a systemic overhaul.

I don't know what the best answer is, but I think I understand the preconditions necessary for arriving at one. And those conditions general don't involve public relations for interest groups or an ideologically-fuelled shouting match. We have plenty of the former in our legislatures and plenty of the latter in online forums and plenty of both in the so-called "town halls".

We are ALREADY paying for single payer, we may as well face facts and streamline the bureaucracy, because the Republicans are not even faintly interested in getting the government out of health care. The best choice would be to legalize the practice of medicine by anybody without government oversight. Costs would plummet, but the AMA and the trial lawyers and the insurance companies and the HMOs will never allow that to happen.

So PCR is right - make it a single payer system.

And I am a staunch free-market libertarian. I just realize that there is no hope for a free-market health system.

Nothing in the Constitution authorizes the Feds to do ANYTHING regarding healthcare. Period. End of discussion. If you want health care reform at the Federal level then bother to amend the Constitution or shut up. The only things that I can think of that the Feds could constitutionally do re. health care is dismantle the unconstitutional programs that are already in place and change the patent laws re. pharmaceuticals. If anyone can think of anything else then I would like to hear it.

"Isn’t it possible that insurance corporations are behind this latest push for socialized medicine, along with pharmaceutical corporations? Insurers would hardly be harmed by legislation which compelled citizens to purchase insurance. Nor would they be harmed by regulations which would require them to offer “coverage” for preexisting conditions, since that coverage would be wholly subsidized by federal funds."

I believe that you hit the nail on the head. This public option that everyone fears will still be administered by insurance companies using federal funds. Thus, if the 40 million uninsured is even remotely accurate, this means 40 million more customers for insurance companies and a situation in which it would be much easier for pharmaceutical companies to lobby for mandatory vaccinations, which has been coming for a long time.

The sanctification of bribes from lobbyists to politicians is one very large source of our trouble with government. When bribery is made legal, as it has been in our system of government, then legislation and regulation are for sale, at wholesale prices, to corporations with the funds necessary to pay for the crafting of rules and laws.

Isn't it possible that insurance corporations are behind this latest push for socialized medicine, along with pharmaceutical corporations? Insurers would hardly be harmed by legislation which compelled citizens to purchase insurance. Nor would they be harmed by regulations which would require them to offer "coverage" for preexisting conditions, since that coverage would be wholly subsidized by federal funds.

Believe me, I do not support government involvement in health care at all, but the fact that the US does not have a single payer system, does not mean that the federal government is not too involved already, or even possibly more so than other industrialized nations. I was just commenting that people posting who state that the Canadian system is a flat out failure and the US system is somehow superior because it is "private" sound just as ridiculous as Michael Moore who tries to paint the Canadian and British healthcare systems as some sort of utopia. Neither are telling the truth.

The thing I like about the US system is the fact that it is not a single payer system, because once one generation becomes "hooked" on that system, they can't imagine anything else and it is very difficult to change. The US still has a chance although that might not be the case very soon. But at the same time, I find it laughable that some people posting are concerned that insurance companies will be put out of business. To them I say not to worry, because they can be the next ones in line for a nice gov't bailout. Insurance companies are not going anywhere for a long time.

My comment about the health of Americans is not false though. I am not as concerned with the baby boomers. What scares the hell out of me is when I am treating kids. The rise in obesity and diabetes, and other degenerative illnesses (the kind we only saw in our grandparents) in young children in the US is frightening and there are plenty of statistics to back this up. Look at any pediatric medical journals.

In my opinion, and it is my opinion, if we continually have to pump obscene amouts of money into a system and people are getting more sick (this is happening in many countries), then perhaps it is not just the system that is severely flawed, perhaps it is the entire medical model that is flawed. The same model that forces kids to have an absurd amount of vaccinations right on up to highschool and pumps them with antibiotics every time they get a little ear ache. It is possible that medicine is actually making us sick, and more evidence is starting to suggest this.

It is important to remember, while these debates descend into the undebatable anecdotal, that Obama and Co are approaching this thing strictly from a "macro" point of view. He has hired advisors from McKinsey & Co who have excellent access to information from "systems" all over the world.

I have sat in on a conference call from said company to hear their take on differences between our "system" and the "systems" of other countries. As a "system", we outspend these other countries as a relationship to our GDP by $500 billion. This is the real statistic ticking off the people who want to manage our lives.

Logically, it could be that the extra expense is from increased disease rates or would result in higher health results, but neither has been found to be true, at least according to the statistics provided. That indicates there is some inefficiency somewhere.

Initial results of their analysis was that our nation has an over-abundance of nurses, mostly staffing underused rural hospitals (an artificial result of an Eisenhower-era highway bill). Another is theorized that Americans spend their healthcare money for other concerns, like "quality of life". There are no silver bullets though, there were no glaring "80%" causes.

The point is, it is difficult for anyone of us, even experts within our fields, to make arguments based on our own experiences, as we usually have no idea how accurately these experiences represent the bigger reality.

We must argue on principle, not anecdote or experience, that any plan from the federal government, regardless of the details, will approach healthcare as a *system* and will destroy yet another area of our personal lives.

It is shocking to me that anyone with a decent understanding of the long-term effects of unelected officials running important national concerns (e.g., the Fed) could argue for a deeper involvement of this same government into healthcare. I see no need for comparison with any other country other than our own throughout history.