RateItAll: The Opinion Network

The problem with Free-Market Healthcare is why it's an issue now....It's a free market goods and service that not everyone can afford. There are millions who do not have health insurance because they cant afford it or just dont want to pay for it. When they get sick or injured, their misfortune is our misery as Govt. inevitably picks up the tab or pays the price for their illness or injury. Allowing Free Market Capitalism to assume responsibility for Healthcare is asinine as well. The bottom line in Capitalsim is money. There's no incentive to have people healthy when they wont be paying for Healthcare products and services. There's nothing particularly positive about Free Market Healthcare providers who have a monopoly on Healthcare goods and services that can maintain and save lives. It's admirable that Liberals are trying to address this by first getting some sort of health insurance to as many people as they can. Competition among Healthcare providers for goods and services to those who need it should be a good thing. That's a positive about Capitalism in that competition will motivate business people to produce the best quality product for the individual.

A Marxist fantasy. There are no free lunches ... basic Economics 101. Remove substantial government involvement/interference with health care and the free market will undoubtedly provide supply to meet the demand. There is nothing special about medical-related services that exempts them from this basic capitalist equation. And the great thing about providers created by the free market, they're going to charge what people can afford. Why? Pay close attention Clintonites, because if they charge more they won't be getting the consumers' money. There is absolutely no reason to look with envy at what the Canadians and some of our Western European friends have. It ain't that great (especially the disintegrating medical system north of our border) and it is costing them out the gazoo. We are the Americans and we don't need to settle for the mediocrity offered by those who are economically chasing our heels.

Genghis makes an excellent point, as usual. But, the argument that the US is the only industrialized nation without universal health care is very weak. We're also the only industrialized nation with an unemployment rate in single digits. With a GDP shown without brackets. France reduced its workweek to 32 hours/week for the sole purpose of LOWERING THEIR UNEMPLOYMENT RATE!! More hours aren't being worked, the work is being spread over more workers, to the detriment of those working previously. Now, that's smoke and mirrors. (Go ahead, look it up) The vast majority of Americans enjoy excellent health care and enough options to ask for an umbrella when our screechy friends assure us that the sky is falling. I can assure you this: Americans will not be frightened or "guilted" into supporting this proposal because not enough people are being failed by the present system, in spite of the gargantuan efforts of our liberal media and left-leaning mouthpieces (as if there were a difference) purporting otherwise by pointing out how many are "uninsured. " And the reason we won't is because we all know that the guy on the stretcher might just be me. And if universal health care has just been nationalized the week before, I might be SOL. Being uninsured doesn't mean a health care facility can turn you away. 100% of poor people in the US have health care. They're all covered, look it up. Americans, en masse, don't usually agree with the attitude, "look, the Europeans do it this way, therefore, so should we. "

We are the only industrialized country without universal healthcare. It's time to enter the 20th century, and maybe in another 50 years we can talk about the 21st century. Medicare is much more efficient than the best of the insurance companies with 97 cents on the dollar going to medical care itself. It's about 70 cents to the dollar for the average private insurance company.

I know it's a bad idea, but the war is lost. Medicare and Medicaid drove a stake into the heart of private medicine. We will have national health within ten years. The mistake that was made was to allow the recipient to chose his own doctor. The sky was the limit and it was incredibly costly. Free medical care demands rationing, and that means the provider choses the supplier. We did just the opposite. This has driven the cost of medicine trough the roof. I am old enough that I don't have to live with the consequences. I will enjoy the old system until I croak. It is you, my young members of the RIA, who shall have to pay the consequences! I feel for you.

. . .it only terrifies the drug companies that are squeezing you dry. And so many of you have swallowed the bait hook-line-and-sinker: "Waah! We can't have socialized medicine. Waah!" Like it's not already here. . .Medicare, anyone? HMO, anyone? One more time- it's already here and it could work if this gov't wasn't so hell-bent on making it tough for middle-class Americans to afford health-care. If working people can't go to the doctor, the plan isn't working. . .