I think it is very important to get majority of the people covered by some form of mandatory insurance, and properly subsidized to ensure that the system does not break down due to abuse. We need to take charge of the situation to stop the people from overpaying, or paying due to the lack of coverage of other people, or we will never break out of the vicious cycle.

when discussing the health care debate I always think back to an old song by Loretta Lynn called ” Everybody wants to go to heaven , BUT nobody wants to die”.

Everybody wants American citizens to have health care , But most people don’t want to pay for it. This may be sad but nevertheless it’s a fact. Maybe it’s a libertarian streak in me but I think you / me or any other American should be forced to pay for health care by the government in the form of taxes.

SIMPLETONS

JM: And as for all of our competitors as EJ calls them - they are all broke too. just look at Greece Ireland, Spain and on and on and on

They are broke, are they? On and on and on? Whoa, horsey!

If the truth of the matter must be known, yes they are in a bad fiscal position. They went broke offering a Public Option National Health System that took care of its people amongst other things, such as generally profligate spending. There is no doubt about the fact that this crisis has been a wake-up call against Helter-skelter Government Spending for the countries you mention.

However, I put to you the following question. Which would you rather be:
A) Nationally “broke” because you have low personal-cost Public Option Health Care or
B) Either “dead” or “debilitated” because you haven’t one?

Simple choice for simpletons. Yes, people get sick sooner or later, mostly later as the incidence of sickness shows up earlier in the life-span, when you do not have Medicare coverage, due to obesity. Of which the US is rife.

POST SCRIPTUM

Aside from these three countries you mention, you will be pleased to know that Europe is doing well-enough. Because unlike Uncle Sam, we have here a Safety Net that helps break the fall rather than breaking your back.

SAD READING

The American Health Care Saga since the early 1900s is reviewed concisely here.

Over a hundred years of being screwed by Business Vested Interests, of the kind that inspired Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby.

Great Rip-off, rather - all in the name of Free Markets and the profit-system, which was supposed to reward us by means of equity share-outs.

Where dividend payouts were diminished by Board of Directors Compensation Committees that assured first-cut off the top went to Management in Salaries and bonuses and perquisites. The stock-options did not diminish profits, but they milked prices when sold on the equity market - because we the dorks bought them.

There were two ways of offering HC during all those years:
* Unions negotiated fat HC-insurance that priced them out of the industry, like automotive. (At one time, each each car produced cost about $1200 more expensive just because of GMs Health Care Insurance.)
* America adopts a Public Option where prices are constrained by Federal mandate, meaning the cost-risk is spread across a larger national base. (This makes the cost more competitive, but not inescapable - which is why it must be bridled.) And which is what Social Democrats brought about in Europe upon its reconstruction from WW2.

MY POINT

But, no, we’ve seen where the first option inevitably gets us ... unemployed. And the second-option, adopted by most of the developed world (meaning Western Europe), which we cannot have either. Because it’s pinko-Commie Socialism and therefore the Devil’s Handiwork.

What a bunch of poor fools we, the sheeple, have been.

“In defending the Affordable Care Act before the 4th
U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond on Tuesday,
Neal Katyal, the acting solicitor general, offered a
defense whose breathtaking simplicity cut through all
the nonsense being peddled by the mandate’s
opponents. “Everyone is going to seek health care,”
he said. “Nobody can know precisely when.” That’s why
it’s important to establish a fairer and more
rational way of covering the costs in advance.”

Everyone? I know everyone breathes but is “everyone
going to seek healthcare?

And as for all of our competitors as EJ calls them -
they are all broke too. just look at Greece Ireland,
Spain and on and on and on

Wasn’t the individual mandate included to appease Republicans who feared that requiring health insurance companies to cover anyone, would not be profitable to the companies? If that one part of the law is struck down, doesn’t it end up hurting the insurance companies? How is this in Republicans’ best interest?

A WORLD-CLASS HEALTH CARE SERVICE

db: That fact is that Obama has granted over 1000 waivers to the health care law and that a large number of those are to Obama / democrat supporters.

And you are overlooking this “one fact”: That kluge of a Health Care legislation was passed in its present form after arduous negotiation with Congressional Replicants.

There was no other way to pass it. The law is a palliative for Remedial Health Care, not a functional solution for both Preventive and Remedial Health CAre.

A functional solution is the one that provides a Public Service that offers universal HC to the general public (like Medicare), which mandates the prices of Health Care services that HC-providors may apply. Thus restraining the vertiginous increase in Total Cost historically (see here).

Obama could not get this Public Option through Congress, not even as a trial option.

You want to change the Health Care legislation towards making it more functional? Get your backside into a voting booth and vote for people who will represent your desire for a Public Option.

Instead of bitching-in-a-blog. Which is too easy. Far too easy ...

WORSE YET

The congressional representatives who refused the Public Option to their constituents are the same ones who benefit from it whilst they are working for the government. They just go over to Walter Reed hospital and check-in.

And it costs them between $100 and $300 a month.

Can’t believe it? Neither can I - so, see here. And here.

Both are works of Investigative Journalism at their best.

Or will Health Care wreck the Courts? 

Whichever comes first.

Will the courts wreck healthcare? Healthcare as it is right now is already a wreck. A trainwreck. Letting lobbyists write the bills and then being told that we just need to pass the bill before we even know whats in it GUARANTEES disaster. We were not disappointed. Sickcare needs to be scrapped and rebuilt from the ground up. Enough of the theatrics and “historic” BS from the criminals in DC.

To judge Obamacare you only need to remember one fact that Mr.Dionne overlooks ( on purpose if you ask me ).

That fact is that Obama has granted over 1000 waivers to the health care law and that a large number of those are to Obama / democrat supporters.

If this was a good law Obama would not have a need or desire to protect his supporters from it.

A simple truth, if we had had more Democrats and fewer Republicans over the last decade, we would have a Health Care Bill that better serves the people and a Supreme Court that better serves the people.

Better Democrats would better serve the people too, but anyone who thinks Republicans would better serve the people, had better have their head examined, and those who believe there is no difference between Democrats and Republicans on these matters had better be placed at the head of the line at the head examiner’s office. I’ll gladly pitch in for the cost of the examining.

Felicity: They don’t questi9on because they get some of their bonus spending petty cash from these same insurance industries, which under Bush profits went up over 400%. In other countries they cover health care for their people, but the insurance industries are non-profit, whereas in America we are the only country with a FOR profit insurance industry and that is the problem, making these companies non-profit is a starting point and one which we will never see as long as the crooks in congress stand there with their hands out and corporations continue to pay them.

Really, no argument in defense of our present health-
care system is possible.  We are 37th in the world in
the quality of our health care and we pay twice as much
as the rest of the world for it.

One would think that Republicans with their sudden
interest in debts and deficits would at least question
why we’re paying such big bucks for such a flawed
product.

HAPLESSLY INCOMPETENT

ED: But having failed to block health care reform in our elected branches of government, conservatives now hope that they can achieve their end through judicial fiat. They were against judicial activism until they were for it.

With the connivance of the Roberts Supreme Court, which practices its legislative-prerogative from the bench, why shouldn’t the twerps not even try?

Let’s remember that the decision allowing abortion was made by the Supreme Court (Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 1973) leaning towards the Left. So, tit for tat.

Whether Americans want Health Care or Abortion or Pro-Life or Cotton Candy is a decision that should be decided at the ballot-box and not the Supreme Court bench.

The Supreme Court interprets laws according to the Constitution and each time it goes beyond a very strict interpretation, as it did in the cases I cite above, then it breaks new ground. Which I feel is rightly the preserve of Congress, since the Constitution does not speak specifically about either Health Care or Abortion.

The Constitution speaks directly of basic Human Rights, but our founding fathers never even considered Health Care or Abortion within those terms. These matters are for voters to decide.

But therein lies the failure of representative democracy. If you want progress, don’t expect your elected officials to bring it - because they are merely a reflection of the Body Politic. Whazzat?

That is, the sentiment felt at the grass-roots. For the moment, on abortion and on health care, the silent majority is split down the middle.

So, legislation goes nowhere.

MEANING WHAT?

Meaning that until we change mindsets at the level of ordinary citizens any group movement - regardless of how conservative or progressive - will find it tough going.

Can’t agree because of the past thirty years since Reckless Ronnie took hold of the White House and convinced us that Free Markets were the answer to all our wants and needs? Do you still buy that argument - really ‘n truly, in your heart of hearts?

Yes, it is hard to understand that political sentiments advance in waves. Before Reckless Ronnie was LBJ and the Great Society - a swing Leftward that failed utterly and was easily reversed by RR. Now, after Lead-head, we are witnessing today the inability of the Right to capture Main Street’s attention with viable answers.

Negativism was never a good policy solution.

AN ELECTORAL MANDATE

So what’s next? Go figure ... but I suspect that BO & Co will get a mandate to swing Leftwards.

This recession is causing too much wreckage in human lives for that not to happen. Even if not intellectually bent towards the Left, viscerally that movement is being felt by millions upon millions of Americans.

In the midterms, we got so upset with our misfortune that we lashed out at our PotUS. Have we understood that that childish behaviour has had no real benefit, since the alternative is so haplessly incompetent at responding correctly?

I think so ... and that handwriting is all over the walls. Just look.

The PPACA is based on the singular pillar of the individual mandate which is a virtual windfall for the insurance industry, which allows them to extends benefits family members from age 23 to 26 (actually it cost the industry little to do this) and eliminate pre-existing conditions for exclusion though there are loop holes for them to still do it.  If the SCOTUS overturns the individual mandate of the PPACC, the whole act crumbles for rates would sky rocket to cover the ensuing costs mandated by the rest of the act.  However, SCOTUS knows that should it overturn the mandate, then that practically assures Obama’s defeat in 2012——this should be interesting.

Excellent comments, prisnersdilema, madisolation, and Inherit the Wind. Yes, remember how every four years the frightened liberals tells us we just HAVE to vote for the Democratic presidential candidate, because otherwise those Big Bad Republicans will pack the Supreme Court with their reactionary judges?  Well, where were these supposedly rational, progressive Democrats during the hearings for Roberts and Alito?  They rolled over and voted for them. And Obama appointed Kagan, who commentators from left and right admitted moved the court to the right.  She supports all the new presidential powers that were arrogated by Bush and have been claimed as well by Obomber, in violation of our Constitution. Pathetic.

Agreed, Pris.  My carrier has hiked rates successively in 2010 and 2011 by a compounded 50%.  At this rate, I will be forced to drop insurance—- the mandate be damned—- in the next 2 - 3 years, at the age of 60.  For all I can see, “Obamacare” is little more than a legalized and highly profitable fleecing of the public by the insurance industry.  Mr. Dionne needs to get outside the beltway, remove his head from his posterior, and talk to some real people.

How can you wreck something that’s a wreck to begin with? I’m sure the insurance
industry is quaking in it’s boots at the very idea that it’s multimillion dollar payouts to our
political class won’t come through for them.  To guarantee a revenue stream, and more
importantly guarantee the future of a system in which people have no recourse, that
profits by promoting their disease, that continues to reward murderous CEOs, with riches
beyond measure. That is the epitome of the criminal corporate class, that rules our
government with graft, then uses the political class as their tool, to insulate it from the
serfs down below.

Obama’s Health Insurance Industry Giveaway & IRS-Enforcement Mandate demands that every citizen buy a private sector product. The health insurance industry then thanks Obama by contributing to his campaign coffers. What a great deal…for Obama, that is.
We need Medicare for All.

Realize, if they succeed, they will next go after the law preventing “dumping”.  If the Paul Ryans of the world get their way, health care will only be provided for the prosperous and/or healthy.

The worst thing the Democrats in Congress EVER did was roll over to allow Bush to appoint both Roberts and Alito. With Thomas, Scalia and Kennedy, they will undo every forward decision of the USSC since Plessy vs Ferguson.

Was it Brandeis who said the Constitution was not a suicide pact?  Obviously the new Neo-Fascists are using it as one.