So by your own logic, clearly you will now switch to supporting universal health care, because the alternative is to “keep printing more money”?

I won’t hold my breath.

Compassion is a fine thing, and I’m all in favor of it, which is why, though I’m opposed to a “public option” as proponents lay out, I’m for a government fund that would pay the medical bills for people who are hit with catastrophic medical bills. A similar situation actually happened to my parents and it was very difficult for them. And I don’t believe that medical care in countries with government-run systems is terrible. And I think that many liberals and conservatives are compassionate people.

The problem we have isn’t as much compassion as arithmetic. In the U.S., social security and medicare are going broke. We’ve tripled the deficit this year alone. Unemployment, which is under-calculated, is creeping toward 10%.

How compassionate is it to make young people pay into these bankrupt systems, that basically transfer money from poorer young people to older, more well-off people?

How compassionate is it to force the children of today to pay for another entitlement program by paying off gynormous loans to the Chinese?

How compassionate is it to tax small businesses out of business at a time when so many people are looking for work?

How compassionate is it to reduce charitable deductions to help pay for this (which Obama has repeatedly proposed), which will undoubtedly hurt the work of charities and the people they serve?

How many other worthwhile government programs could we fund with the money we’ll put into a government healthcare system that will be more expensive and less effective than instituting market based reforms?

Or should we just keep printing more money?

It’s tragic that politicians use an issue such as this to further their own agenda, when in fact, it would be immeasurably helpful to so many people. I fail to grasp why a) the mind is not included in health care in many respects (our heads are attached to our bodies, last time I checked) and b) it is more socially acceptable to discuss the process of deciding to euthanize an animal than end-of-life care of a family member.

I also think your “Intended Consequences” statement should go on a t-shirt that I can wear everyday, because that’s what I want to say to anyone and everyone.

My thoughts and best wishes to the whole Machine collective.

MamaD I suspect if we were trying to create a government run public plan entirely from scratch I’d have a lot of the same concerns as people offering actual thoughtful criticism, as you are. And I have rather serious concerns about privacy issues, especially with electronic records (there’s too much recent history of government stealing our information and invading our lives for no reason other than it could get away with it for me not to be alarmed).

That said, we have an existing model, Medicare and Medicaid, to build off of. Rather than having to invent the entire bureaucracy from scratch, it can be patterned after them. Which of course does not mean there will be no problems with it, but at least we have an idea of what will be involved.

One of the most important things that’s gotten lost in the shuffle here is that no matter what passes, it’s not going to be perfect right out of the gate. Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid weren’t either. The thing progressives should (and seem to be) focus on here is getting the public option passed. That’s the hurdle. Refining it will take more rounds of reform, but we have to get that on the books to start with before we can make it work well.

All this conversation about Christians who seem to not really follow some of the most basic instructions of Jesus reminds me of this whole C Street/The Family thing that Rachel Maddow was talking about. It sounded like some seriously skewed reinterpretation of the New Testament in particular that completely undermined what I was taught and believed the message of the Gospels was. It’s like a mutant version of Christianity warped to serve the interests of very rich, very powerful white guys and assure them their religion doesn’t actually really contradict with their unbridled avarice. Scary shit.

DRST

And also, I think it’s eminently possible our government would fuck up health care horribly. (Witness MassCare, where everyone was required to buy health insurance before they made sure they had enough primary care providers to go around. Not something you want to repeat on a national scale, that’s for sure, especially with all the people who have let health problems go for years because they couldn’t afford to get treatment.) I just reject the idea that it’s inevitable that they would fuck it up because Government Bad, Private Money Good. Private money is already the de facto ruler of our government.