Obama (Hitler) Youth

[Pa(b)st Prime]

I'll get #2 out of the way, lol. McCain or Obama's TRUE intentions via foreign policy are an unknown. McCain merely seized on an issue that he felt would play to hawks worried about Obama's perceived softness. In my view a bad strat. I'm worried about both candidates being war mongers but I worry MORE about Obama. IMO he over plays the "I'll show 'em I'm a military leader" card just like LBJ did and we get into a real humdinger in Pakistan.

I agree that insurance is profit motivated and as such adversarial to universal, zero sum coverage. For guys like you and me-a good portion of America-legislation that insures our continued insurability is all that we need. We'll continue to pay a relative arm and a leg but compared to higher taxes ect. for most us it's a wash. I don't bemoan my coverage or it's cost. I only worry like you about it's continued dependability. Middle America needs to accept premiums as perma high expense. It is what it is. There's no cheap care provider in the sky.

For the rest of America the question is less about insurance but rather about actual health services. The ghetto mom doesn't need an insurance policy for her daughter she needs a free place for her daughter to get well. The Federal government should dismantle the war machine for a few weeks and POUR money into public County hospitals. We need to get services out to the needy, let's remove the pretense-it's a give-away-I'm fine with that. Jeez I'm a free market guy but when I start chintzing about helping a poor person get a life saving operation is the day I should check out this world. This is one of the few times I'll say pay our fair share to help our brother men.

We need to know the cost and deal with it. As I'm trying to ramble/say it need not be utter reinvention of the wheel.

Quote from Mike805:

I guess this comes down to what one's priorities are. In the case of health care, whether it be government managed or privatized, we will always pay in some form or another via taxes or through higher private premiums.

The real question is how much do you want to overtly help the other guy. Private companies are about efficient profits and the government is about helping (albeit inefficiently) everyone. Which comes first if you're a private corporation - the individual's well being or the company's stock price? Every time the company decides to include another form of coverage, they may be potentially exposing themselves to higher costs. Do you see the conflict of interest there?

Let me explain that last point. In my view, and, I could be wrong about this, insurance, in any form, is essentially everyone paying a premium into one large pool. Individual participants, as they need surgeries or if their house burns down, draw from that communal pool. The concept of insurance, whether it be private or government controlled, is a form of socialized risk management. The question now becomes whether or not the government should run this type of communal asset - at the very least regulate the shit out of it. What's to stop the insurance provider from misuse of that communal pool, or, not using that pool money towards the intended purpose... In general, it seems inconsistent to me that health insurers can operate as a for-profit entities while still providing the best possible care for the individual.

My concern is that McCain doesn't want to admit that private health insurance companies have a conflict of interest even when that's an inherent aspect of "free market" health care... how exactly should these insurers profit is a scary topic IMO. The less deregulation of the community pool money, the more apt these companies will be in abusing those funds, which will cost us substantially in the long run.

In my second point I'm referring to the "no preconditions" debate, i.e. the US, under Bush/McCain will not talk to "dangerous" nations without preconditions.