I fear Social Welfare majors.

When will naive people like this learn. By the way, I find it frightening that my tax dollars are going to someone majoring in social welfare? Socialized healthcare would be a disaster for this county. Healthcare costs are high, but a Government takeover is not the answer. You need to get out in the real world Danielle, and realize that Government is not the answer but the problem

ZOMG think of the children!!1

Yes, think of them. Think of how expensive regulating medicine through the FDA and medical licensing makes health care. Think of how doctors who take patients on Medicaid get paid less than forty cents on the dollar and have to eat the extra costs somehow. How would they do this? Well, they pass it on to paying customers, making their medicine more expensive, making their insurance more expensive, making more people unable to afford insurance. Then when more people are uninsured, it is used as a justification to expand programs like Medicaid. Good idea. Really good idea. I hope people with ideas like yours succeed (and you are, congratulations) so the United States collapses under the weight of its own elitist paternalistic bullshit and we can just start over.

We do not have a free market economy. The government regulates everything. Absolutely every product or service in the economy. Think about that. You know what happens when things are regulated by any authority? Resources must be used to comply with those regulations. This means that everything in the United States’ economy, indeed the world economy, is artificially and unnecessarily expensive. How much poverty and misery does that cause?

“The working people of America will all contribute some of their assets, namely taxes, for the common good of every American having comprehensive health care. This all sounds wonderful”

No, it does not sound wonderful. Our government, as any government inherently is, is bumbling and inefficient. Bureaucratic costs are estimated to be around 20%. How much health care could that buy for teh children? Think of the children! (Hey by the way, what’s the point of growing up if all we ever care about is children? Oh, right. To make more children and live vicariously through them because our own lives are meaningless.)

And anyway, don’t you respect individual rights? What if someone, for whatever reason, didn’t want to work for the “greater good of the community?” Should the heretic be enslaved?

Plus, the United States does most of the world’s medical research. In doing so, it props up other countries’ government health care because in countries with government health care, health care is straining their budget due to people who demand it not having any reason, such as cost, to abridge the amount of health care they seek. Thus, these countries cannot afford to do much medical research. Wouldn’t it be great if the US was like that?

“The degree of social welfare in a country can dictate the economic growth of said country.”

Brilliant. For proof of this, see Latin America, the former Soviet Union, and most of western Europe. The jobs flow a-freely in those places, eh? Lands of opportunity! I’m totally moving there.

“Our current government is willing to deprive millions of American children of health care simply to preserve an ideal.”

Whoever heard of ruling according to principles? That’s for the birds. (Not that our government does; this is just a political ploy.)

By the way, depriving isn’t the same as not providing. If anything, the irresponsible parents of these children are depriving them health care because they went ahead and had children, flagrantly and selfishly using other human beings to provide them with happiness without their consent, without adequately planning for the welfare of said children. What assholes. They are to blame, not a government who doesn’t want to expand handouts.

If you don’t buy lunch for someone, is it the same as taking their lunch? Of course not. That is why not expanding a government handout program is not the same as depriving. I know, I know, it’s complicated. Try, though; I dare you.

And it’s not ‘simply to preserve an ideal.’ Think about the future. How long could government health care be sustained? Are you planning a revolution or something?

The stigma that surrounds economic socialism is there for a reason.

Your superficial analysis needs work. Yes, it’s very cute and fuzzy-wuzzy and will probably make you feel morally superior and get you laid, but it’s not something you should advocate imposing on others. If you want to be stupid, it shouldn’t have to be anyone else’s problem.

Does anyone know where the additional tax revinue is supposed to come from? I heard it was from a cigarette tax, so does that mean if people quit smoking, the children have no health care? Isn’t givernment (or is it takernment) logic grand?!

ZOMG I read Ayn Rand and if we all acted in our own self-interest the world would be beautiful and free!!!

“Our government, as any government inherently is, is bumbling and inefficient. “

And yet, relative to the private healthcare industry, our government is ridiculously efficient. That’s why private healthcare in the EU, which does exist, is a boutique industry that only makes sense for the top percentile of society who can afford it! It’s a well known fact that the shittiest countries in the world (in terms of wealth) are also the ones lacking good public health systems. Percentage of citizens covered by state-run care is the number one predictor of GDP-per capita. Now maybe that’s a huge correlation but not causation exception, but you would have to base your conter-argument on a few outlying exceptions, like North Korea maybe?

Dick Morris has a few questions for Hillary over at RealClearPolitics, including:

You base your healthcare proposal on the need to cover 47 million “uninsured Americans.” Since about a third of them are illegal immigrants and another third are eligible for Medicaid right now and just don’t apply for it, aren’t you overstating the problem?

Econoblogger Greg Mankiw takes exception to the much repeated 47 million figure as well: A serious estimate would take out both illegal immigrants and those who are eligible for Medicaid but have not applied. Those eligible for Medicaid can always enroll once they need significant medical care.

In addition, I would exclude those who were offered employer-provided health insurance but declined coverage, and those that are healthy and making more than, say, $50,000 a year. These two groups are choosing to roll the dice. According to estimates I have seen, they make up more than a quarter of the uninsured.

http://www.reason.com/blog/show/122737.html

Hey, not everyone who has read Ayn Rand is a randroid, just as not everyone who has read the Bible is a Christian.

Like all upper-middle class white males, I went through the Ayn Rand phase too which curiously always seems to correspond to taking your first econ class. The difference is I took AP Macro/Micro during my junior year of high school and was back to normal, older and wiser, by the time I received my diploma. All these randroids need to take a psych class or two and realize how little they know about human nature.

Our health care system in the US needs to be socialized now!!

I cannot afford health care as a 24 year old student. My parents, who are upper middle class cannot afford to pay it for me either.

If it is this hard for me, imagine how difficult it must be for someone living paycheck to paycheck. I’ve been there, but was still covered by the P’s at the time.

-Stephen Tuite