About $9 grand...

[Miles]

Steven,

I am saying it shouldn't be my problem to solve. I would think conservative pro growth types would agree that saddling small businesses with the task of finding suitable health care for it's employees is not helping the company make money. I am leery of a govt. run system but who better to do it?

This is not necessary a liberal idea to me, anymore than the govt. providing the national defense or building the highways. Is govt. run road building or war fighting a liberal idea? What if it were up to you the businessman to come up with a plan to safeguard your workers? Or to build the roads to get them to work. But somewhere somehow it became a business's responsiblity to figure out the healthcare of it's workers.

I know that businesses don't have to do it, but then what? Personal responsibility and leaving it up to the free market has given us the world's most expensive system that won't cover everyone and doesn't produce the results to justify the cost.

Steven, it's funny. We really aren't that different you and I. Now me and Tank...

[Dan R.]

Norway has socialized medicine, yet the King of Norway travels to the USA for treatment, I wonder if that is an option for every Norwegian?

Every person is not covered under the old system, were 30,000,000 without insurance coverage, all of them had medical care available to them. After all these new taxes, reforms and BILLIONS of dollars spent 20,000,000 will still be it hour insurance coverage, everyone will have higher health care costs and we will have less of of our freedom to decide and pay for what we want for ourselves. More government control and less wrongly freedoms. I wold think that the 30,000,000 uninsured could have real life health insurance policies a lot cheaper than the Trillion + dollars that ObamaCare is going to cost, maybe it would have made more sense to buy them each a policy that working people have (mies' policy is less that $3k a year. That is only $90,000,000,000, far less than one tenth of 1,000,000,000,000.

Why wouldn't that be a better way to go for all of America? Plus, we could keep more of our freedoms. If you think health care reform is about health care, you have zero understanding of the world around you! it is about government control, it s about funneling money to the uber rich, not $20M schmuck, it is about power o decide, it is about freedom,furthermore the republicans are as guilty as the democrats. They need each other and continually sell the American public down the road, all the while splitting p the gains of honest, hard working Americans. They will continue to do so until the public fires them.

Healthcare is a convenient diversion while the politicians blind side the public. WAKE UP!!!!

[Ken Lago]

Dan, you say the king of Norway comes here for treatment, could it be that the particular treatment he needed was ONLY available at the place he vent to? I have heard of Americans traveling to other places in the world to seek treatment because it was not here yet. ( I'm 99.9% sure that if the king of Norway can get it so can every one of his people too, over there nobody is getting special treatment through the system due to their status )
My sister is a doctor in Denmark and she tells me America is far advanced in trauma injuries ( probably due to dealing with wars and lots of crime ) so a lot of doctors around the world comes here for training in emergency stuff. Everything is not nessesarily related to healthcare systems being good or bad.

[Dan R.]

He didn't seem to be suffering from any trauma caused by war or crime. I have spent a lot of time in medical facilities over the years, and I never seen one other citizen of Norway. Most Americans go outside the country to seek treatment that are not allowed here by the FDA and other government agencies. I have extensive first hand experience with that phenomenon also.

If our health care is so good, why change it? Obama care isn't about health care, it is about less rights, more taxes and a more intrusive, omnipresent government, taes and all.

I was at a Christmas party last night talking to a friend of mine about the insurance issue. He has 43 employees some union, some not. His annual insurance expenditure is $20,000 per employee, very good insurance. I know some will question this amount, but trust me it is legit.Under the new law, the non union employees have to pay income tax on their insurance benefit, the union employees are exempt.

Government employees are exempt from this tax also. So is any one who is Muslim. Talk about bringing the country together...by about dividing country, by color, by class, by anything they can find. The strategy of divide and conquer is as old as time itself. Sun Tzu wrote of it in his 6th Century BC book The Art of War. These 13 chapters are required reading by every US Military leader. They must still be relevant.

FWIW, the union employees have a total compensation package of $125,000 annually (with no overtime).

[Ken Lago]

The trauma comment I made was just an example of where the US have more experience.
I have no knowledge of why he came to the US for treatment, but why not? he visit here twice every year and is a very good friend of America. He did have bladder cancer in 2003.
As you probably know Norway is certainly not a poor country and neither are the citizens (plenty of money to travel) so if their healthcare is so bad and the American so good don't you think you would have run into at least a few Norvigians the times you were in healthcare facilities....just sayin

[Dan R.]

I never made any determination of Norway's health care, just a statement of fact that he traveled to the USA for treatment. And that fact alone does say something about the level of care and proficiency of our system. As for USA being good at trauma because we fight so many wars, seems a bit of a socialist reach. I can not recall the last war that was fought on US soil that produced a significant number of trauma victims to lead to such proficiency. Maybe this is an opportunity to learn something about American history from a Norwegian doctor. Sounds no more incredulous than learning about USA values from a self avowed slacker, know it all, drug abuser that refuses American customs left and right (Obama).

[Miles]

Interestingly enough, here's a chart of life expectancy by country. Norway is 14th. The US is 34th. Canada is 12th.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_co ... expectancy

[Miles]

World healthcare rankings. The US ranks 37th. BTW, Norway is 11th. Canada 31st.

http://thepatientfactor.com/canadian-he ... h-systems/

[Dan R.]

So what does that prove? Evidently the best care for his ailment was better here than there. What is broken about our system and what is best way to fix it? No doubt it is not perfect, but ObamaCare is not the answer, in any fashion. We will all be worse off when it is fully implemented. Then what?

[Dan R.]

My dog is 12 years old and in excellent health, he eats people food.

[Ken Lago]

See ya

[Tank]

Yes Miles....personal responsibility and a free market unrestrained by government over regulation, that is absolutely the answer, not only to fixing healthcare, but healing our economy and getting people back to work.

Government regulation is what caused the whole healthcare mess in the first place because government regulates who can sell insurance where - after a little research it looks like Georgia has 6 or 7 different companies who are allowed to sell health insurance, so you have options, options create competition and drive prices down, some states only have 1 or 2 providers allowed to sell in their state, so, because there's very little competition for that business, options are limited and prices are higher.

One of the things that Republicans have suggested, many times, is to allow people to buy healthcare across state lines - now using Georgia as an example, and the rates you currently pay because you have 6 or 7 options, can you imagine what insurance rates you would be paying if a couple hundred insurance companies were competing for your business?

A perfect example of this is car insurance, they do not have the same restrictions on them that healthcare insurers do, you can buy car insurance from anywhere, there's lots of car insurance companies competing for your business and, as long as you don't have a lead foot like I do, your rates are low....tell me why this isn't a better solution than what we're having rammed down our throats now.

[dsyverson]

Miles: "I am leery of a govt. run system but who better to do it?"

The Post office lost $5 billion this last quarter, while Fed Ex made $360 million & UPS made $470 million.

When you look at things like what Government pays a position + benes and how they determine how many people to hire vs. how the private sector operates you can't tell me our Health Care will climb either of those lists you posted when we end up at single payer Govt. managed.

[Tank]

Government dependency does not create prosperity, government dependency creates physical and economic slavery – we cannot keep spending money we don’t have, borrowing money we cannot possibly pay back or raising taxes over and over again to spend our way our of this mess.

I don’t know how many of you have children or grandchildren, but my 2 kids are already in debt up to their eyeballs because of this insanity, according to the CBO, each of my children will have to pay $319,000 in taxes over the span of their life, just to pay what their portion of our national debt is today, as it grows, which it surely will, that number will go up – they have never taken a handout, never received a government benefit, hell, neither one of them has even had their first date, but they are already saddled with a debt they had no part in creating – if we don’t stop this out of control spending we will be the first generation not to pass the American Dream onto our children, unless you define the American Dream as working your whole life to pay off the debt someone else created.

Since the lib's won’t debate positions or policy with me, I will simply ask you, can you name me one government run program that actually works the way it's supposed to, or ever comes in at anything close to the dollar amount it was originally budgeted at...you will be hard pressed to find a single one - Obamacare will be no different because, whether it's Democrats or Republicans, the mindset in Washington has not, and will not change until we, as American’s finally say NO, ENOUGH !!

How many of you wouldn’t jump in front of a bus, a car or a bullet to save your child, or any child for that matter? If you would do that to protect them, why in the name of God would we be willing to destroy their futures, saddle them with debt they cannot possibly repay simply to avoid the pain of doing the right thing now?

People complain about the cost of the Bush wars, fine, I’ll give you that, but the difference between wars and government entitlement programs is, wars eventually end…government entitlement programs live forever.

[Miles]

War's eventually end? Usually they end when the next one starts. We usually don't have two going at the same time, until recently.

[Miles]

Can govt. run healthcare work? Yes, it's been proven in almost every other country. These countries spend less, live longer, and get better healthcare than we do.

We like to believe we have the best healthcare. But what do we base it on? How long we live? No, we're only 37th best. The quality of the care? No, we're only 37th best there? The cost? No, we have by far the most expensive healthcare in the world. The easy access to healthcare? No, 1 in 10 don't have coverage and we all pay for those people anyway.

So what exactly do we have to lose?

[Tank]

I don't know, our Freedom?? And you might want to check your insurance, if it contains spending caps on coverage, in a little over a year it will be banned under Obamacare, insurers' abilities to enforce annual spending caps will be restricted, and completely prohibited by 2014, this will make the price of non-government health insurance skyrocket, putting the final nail into the coffin of private healthcare providers, unemployment will balloon as the workers employed by private healthcare companies are laid off and Obama will have achieved in 6 years what the lib's have been working towards for the last 50 years, defacto-single payer, government controlled healthcare system, at that point, you can kiss your personal freedom good-bye.

[Miles]

Hmmm... are people in Canada still free?

[Dan R.]

If their health care works, why do they come to the US seeking treatment?

Healthcare is not the issue. Trying to insure 30,000,000 with 2 trillion in new taxes and still have 20,000,000 fall through the cracks? Any fifth grader could do that math and say it is substantially more than current costs. Maybe the rest of the world can spend a little more on health care because the USA is defending the world. How much money does the USA military pump into European economies plus provide the bulk of their country's defense.

Not only do we spend money on our friend's defense, we also fund our enemies. $1B to Egypt, who is turning around and buying German submarines. Huh, wonder what the Muslim Brotherhood (a non violent secular group, as defined by the Obama admin during the Arab Spring) is going to use submarines for?

If someone paid the bulk of my expenses, I could afford to give more to charity. Heck, I could even pay someone's tax (fine) on insurance that they didn't even buy! think about that, you get fined for not buying something that is forced upon you and is not in your best interest. Doesn't sound very American to me.

[Dan R.]

Miles, what in the past 200+ years has inspired you to believe that the federal government can actually run a program that is efficient and on budget? Can you name one example? I can not think of one.

[steven nenzel]

I'm very skeptical of these studies on who has the best health care. I've spent more time in Canada than the US and I get better health care here. How can that possibly be? If you need an MRI in Canada get on the 6 month waiting list. If I need it here they ask me if today at 3 pm or tomorrow at 10 am works best? It took 3 yrs for my Dad in Canada to get his back surgery... that is how long the waiting list is. By the time he got the surgery he could barely walk a block.

By what standard is a health care system judged? It seems waiting lists are not part of this standard.

The US system needs fixing and most of it has to do with tort reform and getting the gov't out of the way of free enterprise. We also have millions of illegals and those without insurance using emergency rooms. Some common sense needs to be introduced but instead we get bureaucrats, special interests and lobbyists taking it over.

Yeah, 2700 pages of new laws is just the ticket we need to fix this Soon it will rival the tax code. Yeah, just what we need gov't running health. They do such a good job now spending twice as much as they take in... and yet over 50% of the people voted for this. This is why I think ignorant people should not be encouraged to vote.

[GuyboR]

The US system needs fixing and most of it has to do with tort reform and getting the gov't out of the way of free enterprise. We also have millions of illegals and those without insurance using emergency rooms. Some common sense needs to be introduced but instead we get bureaucrats, special interests and lobbyists taking it over.

[Miles]

I agree with what you say Steven, but you have to agree that the only way there will be any change at all will be through government intervention. Tort reform, immigration reform, etc. will require the govt. to change the healthcare system, not step out of the way. We've had years of free market, let private enterprise do their thing. It hasn't worked.

Healthcare is too important to leave it up to private interests. That's why the rest of the world has govt run healthcare. I think, at least on the surface, Obamacare seems like a good option. It incorporates the existing private companies and the existing structure but with govt. controls. I think the individual mandate is a good thing (and so did Romney in Massachusetts).

[Dan Dauchess]

We also have millions of illegals and those without insurance using emergency rooms.

It would be more accurate to say that we have millions of people (including some illegal aliens) that 'game' the system by using the ER as their primary care physician without any intent of paying the bill. The unpaid costs are borne by insurance plans and the taxpayers.

This is the difficult question....

Do you create a system to manage these unpaid costs or refuse to treat someone who cannot demonstrate an ability to pay?

And...

Can the government do this effectively?

[Tank]

Dan - of course they can't, we have only to look at what the government has done to the other programs that we just couldn't live without, Social Security, Medicare, medicade, welfare, food stamps, the depts of education & energy, the post office to see that the government epically fails when it comes to running just about anything.

Miles forgets that the intent of our founders was to keep government out of our lives, not to have them run them for us, and he refuses to accept that government itself with its rules, regulations and restrictions is the very reason healthcare is so expensive - I provided one great example earlier on how this could have been fixed, according to the Heritage Foundation, implementing that suggestion would reduce healthcare costs by between 35% -40%.

The reason it will never happen is because it greatly reduces the governments power over us and its ability to run our lives, I do not care what the issue is, I will always side with our founders original intent and the Constitution.

As for demonstrating an ability to pay, I wonder how many liberal business men would be willing to provide their good or service to someone who wasn't going to pay them for it?

When my son was about 7 he broke his arm, I didn't have insurance and the first thing the hospital did was try to get me to sign up for welfare so you all could pay the bill, I set up payment arrangements and paid the $3,000 bill myself, I'm not sure why that isn't an acceptable alternative to Obamacare....shouldn't we all have to take some responsibility or should you all have been forced to pay for my sons broken arm?