"The idea that because one aspect of society is socialized, like health care does not automatically lead to the notion that we will be come a socialist country."

Federal, state, and local government spending will be 42 percent of U.S. gross domestic product in 2009, according to data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. More than 4 out of every 10 dollars of everything produced in America now gets channeled through governments. If we put Obama’s proposed healthcare government run program into the game, the USA government spending could radically change our country as we know it.

Ideologists and economists who created former Soviet economic system believed that the problem with capitalism is that produces for profit instead of for people's needs- Does it sound familiar?
Soviet Politburo started to build a system that produced directly for people's needs and not at all for profit. Sometimes there were periods when it was argued that the Soviet worker and manager would work because of their enthusiasm for the revolution and their ideological commitment- “Paying taxes is patriotic” Does it sound familiar?

The Soviets realized that markets principles violated Marxist ideology; and there was only one system of organization possible, and a system of central planning was born-a system in which all decisions about what people needed were decided from the top.

And finally why would an American pick a Government of central planning and one that practices the redistribution of wealth over a Government that facilitates a free market economy and personal liberty? It’s kind of fascinating when you think about it.

From New York Conservative: http://www.newyorkconservative.com/?p=502

1. No real world experience. If you are young, for the most part as there are exceptions to every rule, you vote on untested ideology, you have no real world experience that age naturally brings in which to make a sound or valid judgment. At the University age you are perhaps heavily influenced by Professors who also do not have the real world experience of competing in the private sector and yet are full of theoretical ideas. The intentions of the young are pure enough but without the experience that life can bring can be heavily misguided.

2. Do as I say not as I do. If you know how to hide your wealth or avoid paying your just deserts you will also have no problem with Government central planning, a perfect and very unethical example is someone like Charles Rangel. He knows what is best for everyone yet refuses to abide by his own standards of paying his fair share.

3. Not able to compete. If you’re a failure and cannot break into the system and compete you would be more inclined for Government control. If you have nothing and aren’t going to work to get anything why not?

4. Throwing away history and its lessons for the sake of ideology. If you read American history you will see that we have gone through many turbulent times and the economy has time and again risen to be greater and stronger than it was before. Misguided interference by the Government may have prolonged some of the crises but none have ever yet brought the Republic to her knees. We will see how this one goes.

5. Culture of Entitlements. Americans and the newer immigrants to this Nation have been overly spoiled with entitlements and just have come to expect that the Government will take care of them.

I share a belief of many, that liberalism is rather a result than a cause. People have been taught for a long time not to see what is in front of their eyes. The most shocking example is ACORN. All people see what arise but they are told that it is the illusion. And they eagerly agree and trying to find the answer, not the obvious one, but what they thought was "correct." That's how political correctness works.

Has been mentioned on the FOX this morning as well

Let’s learn what is true or what is not/ and coming from democrat’s corner: Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- The pro-life Democrat who says he had 40 Democrats who will vote against the health care bill in the House because it funds abortions can't get a meeting with President Barack Obama. Rep. Bart Stupak, in a new interview, talks more about how the pro-life Democrats can hold up the pro-abortion bill, HR 3200.

Responding to the speech President Obama gave last week promoting the bills, Stupak told the Weekly Standard that "there certainly is public funding for abortion" in the House measure.

He says the legislation would allow both the public health insurance plan, known as the public option, and federally subsidized private plans to pay for abortions using taxpayer funds.

Stupak, a Michigan congressman, told the conservative magazine that he has repeatedly asked for a meeting, or even a few minutes on the phone, with Obama but has been consistently refused.

I support final Obama's idea to get rid of the "Public Option" on health care and go with customer protection plan

Ron, you are going to be one busy agent selling a lot of new policies...

Len,

Your question includes two, and for the health care industry (my opinion), hardly reconcilable positions - the free market economy versus government planning.

There is no other planning for freedom and general welfare than to let the market system work. —“Planning for Freedom/Ludwig von Mises”

The alternative is not plan or no plan. The question is: whose planning? Should each member of society plan for himself or should the paternal government alone plan for all? —“Laissez Faire or Dictatorship”

Let me examine briefly (I do no like “big stories”): Many people perceive a term planning as a synonym for socialism, or communism, or government running system. Planning in this sense means full government control of business. It is the direct opposite of free enterprise, private initiative, and market economy. Planning and capitalism are entirely incompatible. Government planning is conducted according to the government’s instructions, not according to the strategy of capitalists and entrepreneurs ready to profit by best filling the wants of the consumers.

But the term planning is also used in a second sense. Lord John Maynard Keynes and many other distinguished economists and politicians recommend a third system, which, as they say, is as far from socialism as it is from capitalism, which, as a third solution of the problem of society’s economic organization, stands midway between the two other systems, and while retaining the advantages of both, avoids the disadvantages inherent in each.

Now, your question is a part of third solution. The idea of this third solution is very old indeed, and the French have long since baptized it with a pertinent name; they call it interventionism. Through history many countries tried it. Most recently European and Asian countries including China, and not long time ago similar experiment was performed in former Yugoslavia through self-manage concept that requires the management company itself, without external coercion.

The rhetoric of "competition" of “working together” or “cost containment solution” that single payer or government planning fans are using to trim up the "government or centralized planning option" is deeply misleading. Many private sector plans will face extinction as they are pushed into a race with government solution. As a result, the government plan would likely capture a large percentage of the insurance market, marginalizing and undermining private insurance. For example, the Lewin Group estimates that the America's Affordable Health Choices Act, the health reform bill currently under consideration in the House of Representatives, would reduce the number of Americans with private insurance by 83.4 million and that the new public plan would cover 103.4 million people. Coupled with the federal regulatory system that the legislation would impose on the remaining private plans, this would clearly by itself constitute a government takeover of health care. Think about "competing" with Amtrak for passenger rail service and you get the picture of the future of the health care system.

“You said …So if Medicare coverage was extended to all citizens while private insurers handled supplemental coverage, the system would remain mixed. All that would change is the mix between single payer, government funded healthcare and private insurers.”

I would like to cite what Dr. Robert Ouellet, the current president of the CMA said: there's a critical need to make Canada's health-care system patient-centred. His thoughts on the issue are already clear, and he has been saying that "a health-care revolution has passed us by,” that it's possible to make wait lists disappear while maintaining universal coverage and "that competition should be welcomed, not feared."

In other words, Ouellet believes there could be a role for private health-care delivery within the public system. He has also said the Canadian system could be restructured to focus on patients if hospitals and other health-care institutions received funding based on the patients they treat, instead of an annual, lump-sum budget. This "activity-based funding" would be an incentive to provide more efficient care, he has said.

We do not need that kind of hybrid solutions (III Solution above) for the health care reform, were ultimately public option will not be sustainable because it will set in motion a downward spiral in which the more it grows, the more it will raise the costs of private plans. This will drive patients out of these plans and into the public plan, which, in turn, will grow more and eventually drive the private plans out of business. And who is going to suffer…regular Americans.

Is there such thing as right to health care?

Let’s check out Canada’s experience, where the right to health care is controversial topic. The government commission which was charged by the Parliament with investigating and developing recommendations about this "right" denies the existence of such a legal right in Canada. The Canada Health Act stipulates only that Canadians should have "reasonable access" to insured health services. However, they admit that such a right is widely supposed throughout their nation and that indeed most Canadians believe they have such a right.

However, that is not issue: “right or no right”. The real issue is that USA can solve the problem of insuring Americans who do not qualify for current government programs and have no financial means to buy their own health insurance very quickly, and with huge support of all Americans. Finally, Americans do not like government takeovers of any kind, including healthcare industry, and…we have to live with this political reality

The WTO conducted an exhaustive study of health care and concluded U.S. health care ranks 37 out of 190 nations. France topped the list. Italy was second. For comparison, Cuba was 39. The U.S. is the only developed country worldwide which does not have universal health care.

Take a look France's system: French taxpayers fund a state health insurer, Assurance Maladie, proportionally to their income, and patients get treatment even if they can’t pay for it. France spends 11% of national output on health services, compared with 17% in the U.S., and routinely outranks the U.S. in infant mortality and some other health measures.

The problem is that Assurance Maladie has been in the red since 1989. This year the annual shortfall is expected to reach €9.4 billion ($13.5 billion), and €15 billion in 2010, or roughly 10% of its budget.

It’s a near-monopoly, where the low amounts paid to doctors per visit ($32 at the office, $38 for house calls) essentially guarantee a permanent shortage of general practitioners.

France enjoys a reputation of “excellent government-provided healthcare”. However, last January 14 French Minister for Health Roselyne Bachelot confirmed that 10,000 people die every year of “medical accidents”, and there are an estimated 300,000 to 500,000 “serious undesirable events” i.e., errors per year.

France’s system is plagued with long-term problems. During a heat wave six years ago 15,000 elderly and frail people died, since the country’s poorly-prepared hospitals meant those patients never stood a chance. Many of them died of dehydration in the emergency rooms waiting for an IV.

If France, healthcare government run leader experiencing these problems, haw’s Cuba (39) doing…

The last two presidents of the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) have both been staunch advocates of increased private care.

The incoming president, Anne Doig of Saskatoon, who will be installed this week, says our health-care system is "imploding." While not as committed to private options as her predecessors, Dr. Doig acknowledges our current universal public system is "unsustainable." She also argues we should not fear private options, but rather should implement whatever models from around the world -- be they public or private -- that produce the best results for patients. On the other hand, the physician who will replace Dr. Doig next summer, Ottawa's Dr. Jeff Turnbull, promises to be a passionate defender of the government health monopoly during his one-year term.

Even not my favorite economist, but John Maynard Keynes was right: “Education: the inculcation of the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent.”

If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand-Milton Friedman

Rob, you are right. As famous economist and Nobel laureate Friedrich August von Hayek said: “Even the striving for equality by means of a directed economy can result only in an officially enforced inequality - an authoritarian determination of the status of each individual in the new hierarchical order.

A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers.”

The president of the Canadian Medical Association, Dr. Anne Doig, has described the health system as in crisis. "Canadians have to understand that the system that we have right now if it keeps on going without change is not sustainable," she said. "We all agree that the system is imploding. We all agree that things are more precarious than perhaps Canadians realize."

Canadians, researcher John R. Lott reports "In most comparisons, Canadians were more satisfied than uninsured Americans, but just barely, and they were nowhere near as satisfied as insured Americans."

Seventy-seven percent of insured Americans were happy with their ability to access timely non-emergency care. Only 60 percent of Canadians were.

And while large majorities of Canadians say they prefer their system to ours, far more Canadians than Americans (26 percentage points difference) express frustration at not being able to "see top-quality medical specialists."

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=111978617

To point is: we can solve the problem of insuring those Americans who do not qualify for current government programs and make less than $50,000 a year between 13.9 million and 8.2 million without big government takeover. And, we can do it very quickly.

Michael Moore was the first, than media and politicians used inflated numbers/47 mill of those without health insurance to promote universal coverage

The fact is The Census Bureau report “Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2005,” puts the initial number of uninsured people living in the country at 46.577 million.

A closer look at that report reveals the Census data include 9.487 million people who are “not a citizen.” Subtracting the 10 million non-Americans, the number of uninsured Americans falls to roughly 37 million.

Also, Dr. Grace-Marie Turner, a BMI adviser and president of the Galen Institute, agreed that “the number [on uninsured] is inflated and affects the debate.” She also pointed out that “45 percent of the uninsured are going to have insurance within four months [according to the Congressional Budget Office],” because many are transitioning between jobs and most people get health insurance through their employers.

So what is the true extent of the uninsured “crisis?” The Kaiser Family Foundation, a liberal non-profit frequently quoted by the media, puts the number of uninsured Americans who do not qualify for current government programs and make less than $50,000 a year between 13.9 million and 8.2 million. That is a much smaller figure than the media report. Kaiser’s 8.2 million figure for the chronically uninsured only includes those uninsured for two years or more. It is also worth noting, that, 45 percent of uninsured people will be uninsured for less than four months according to the Congressional Budget Office.

A provision in President Obama's health care reform plan that requires businesses to offer health insurance to their workers or face a federal tax would cost employers at least $49 billion dollars a year, putting 5.2 million employees at risk of unemployment or underemployment, according to a new study.

"Health care reform is not going to be free," said economist Mark Wilson, who authored the study, which was commissioned by the conservative Heritage Foundation.

Under the provision, known as the play-or-pay mandate, another 10.2 million employees will face stunted wages and the loss of their benefits as employers try to find ways to fund the mandates.

Len, I just cited a source from 2004 for the sake of the argument…

That is great. Let bring Canadian Government on the board to instruct USA Government how to improve public policy in just 5 years! Obama Administration should pay for it - of course.

Just to add a small balance to debate...

From http://www.neusysinc.com/index.html

...."According to a September 14, 2004 Reuters report, the shortage of health care services has reached crisis proportions in Canada. Paul Martin, the Canadian Prime Minister, is quoted as saying, "Few would dispute the prevailing reality of our time: people in this country are increasingly anxious about their ability to get in to see the right health professional at the right time."

What Martin is talking about is the long wait to see a doctor, and even longer wait to get diagnostic or surgical procedures done. The Fraser Institute in Canada reports that there is now a wait of over three weeks for someone with chest pain to see a cardiologist. If bypass surgery is urgently needed, add another two weeks. "Elective" bypass surgery (as if there were such a thing!) adds almost eleven weeks. Try never to have chest pains in British Columbia, where people are waiting six months to schedule bypass surgery. The Canadian health care system is killing patients who can’t get treatment in time.

The delays for non-life threatening problems are much longer. According to the Reuters article, "Patients in Ontario who require major knee surgery can wait six months to see a specialist and then another 18 months for surgery."

The fact that Canadian health care is "free" doesn't mean that everyone can get a family doctor. Since the medical profession is limited to government employment, naturally there are fewer people making that career choice. Reuters reports that 15% of Canadians don’t have a family doctor. As a consequence, Canadian emergency rooms are even more flooded with people seeking routine medical care than in our US hospitals.

What do desperate Canadians do? More and more now travel across the border to get treatment in American hospitals, and are glad to pay for the privilege. They get in and out in a fraction of the time, and know that they are getting the best care available from the best doctors, using the best diagnostic and surgical technology.".....