smittyoneeach's Journal: ...but that would mean the administration had sense.

Think about this for a moment. Medicare is a huge, single-payer, government-run program. It ought to provide the perfect environment for experimentation. If more-efficient government management can slash health-care costs by addressing all these problems, why not start with Medicare? Let's see what "better management" looks like applied to Medicare before we roll it out to the rest of the country.
This is not a completely cynical suggestion. Medicare is, for instance, a logical place to start to design better electronic records systems and the incentives to use them. But you do have to wonder why a report that claims that Medicare is wasting 30 percent of its spending thinks it's making a case for making the rest of the health care system more like Medicare.--http://www.dynamist.com/weblog/archives/003001.html

When they say it's about fairness and avoiding cost, it's not about fairness and avoiding cost.
The country stands rooked, rooked, and rooked.
The fact that I didn't vote for the good POTUS (may he die old and full of knowledge of the wrongheadedness of his policy) is scant comfort.
Go, Tea Party!
Oh, and read this comment on Volokh: http://volokh.com/posts/1244990946.shtml#601734

I hope they get this sorted out....

[zogger]

...before they result in the great cull option, now with new and improved plausible deniability (plagues).

But, being of a practical nature and having a default cynical viewpoint as regards "government" and the leet folks who run government, I think they will go for the Great Cull, and have thought so since around 13 years old or so (junior high, don't' remember 7th or 8th grade I did a report on this, demographics and the baby boom generation, and economics etc) when I realized that the nation would go bank

Volokh comment(s)

[Qzukk]

Why let doctors decide health issues when you can sue for your equal protection health care benefits and let a judge decide?

Why wait for government healthcare for the government to interfere in your healthcare? Try pulling your child out of chemo or refusing a c-section now and see how far you get before uninvited guests show up on your doorstep.

type I Diabetes is likely not preventable at least by current technology.

Not exactly true, but I doubt most of the posters at Volokh would think of or admit to the

Here's what I'd like to see

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Seems to me, the health care reform I'd most like to see could be done in two steps:

1. Remove legislation requiring everybody over age 65 to be on Medicare, and open up competition in the market for those who can afford other plans.

2. Open up Medicare enrollment to any citizen who has no other health insurance available.

Re:

[smittyoneeach]

I'm not viscerally opposed to the federal government establishing and enforcing social program standards, and then letting states implement them.
Taking that route, there is likely to be a reasonably effective, affordable (near- and long-term), transparent, and accountable system in place for any requirement you might identify.
Where we are/seem to be headed amounts to a pile of bollocks.

Re:

[Marxist Hacker 42]

My ONLY requirement is that *everybody* be covered with *something*- and that the health care system have a low cost public option.

The public option shouldn't be able to deny anybody for anything. Private options should- as much as is necessary to be "cost competitive" given the extra benefits they offer.

Re:

[smittyoneeach]

Covered with the freedom to succeed or fail on their own is insufficient?

Re:

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Yes it is- especially the "fail" part. We are called, as Christians under the Pope, by Leo XIII in Rerum Novarum to care for the poor at the expense of the rich- and that we should certainly do.

Independence is a freemason value that I reject. Interdependence is what you need for civilization.

Re:

[smittyoneeach]

Yes, but are we not to

Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's.--Matt22:21b

My challenge is the mental gymnastics involved in seeing how rendering unto God by proxy through the federal Caesar meets the requirement, in spirit.
After Satan has perverted the federal Caesar, we lose both spirit and fact.
Unless government-managed social programs are seen as a fig leaf for hard-heartedness, in which case it all comes into focus.
Note that I'm speaking verily generally here, and in no way setting myself up in judgment of you or any of your actions.
I'm less inimica

Re:

[Marxist Hacker 42]

My challenge is the mental gymnastics involved in seeing how rendering unto God by proxy through the federal Caesar meets the requirement, in spirit.

The problem is that misinterpretation of the First Amendment. It's freedom OF religion, not freedom FROM religion (maybe that should be my next sig line, been a few years since I used it).

After Satan has perverted the federal Caesar, we lose both spirit and fact.

Wrong god (small g definition)- it's Mammon that has perverted th

Re:

[smittyoneeach]

Government has been an extension of God since the conversion of Constantine

Sorry, boss: I can't track you on this assertion. I'd argue that the people who migrated to this continent starting around ~400 years ago came here largely did so to escape this assertion.

Re:

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Sorry, boss: I can't track you on this assertion. I'd argue that the people who migrated to this continent starting around ~400 years ago came here largely did so to escape this assertion.
 
And look how well they did at it- they merely replaced the creator of the universe with Mammon and ended up with exactly the same tyranny.

Re:

[smittyoneeach]

Mammon, Satan: differences making little difference. The government is completely incapable of being God, and attempts to have it act as such are suspect.

Re:

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Mammon, Satan: differences making little difference. The government is completely incapable of being God, and attempts to have it act as such are suspect.

Not being God. Following God. The government was perfectly capable of following God for quite a number of years in there. Other governments have been perfectly capable of following God. The problem comes when the people aren't satisfied with what God has given them, and start pursuing happiness instead, not realizing that the road to happiness

Re:

[smittyoneeach]

The key to happiness is being satisfied with your lot in life, whatever that may be. A slave can be as happy as the richest person on earth.

The key to happiness is carrying out God's will for your life. This is completely orthogonal to secular government.

Re:

[Marxist Hacker 42]

The key to happiness is carrying out God's will for your life. This is completely orthogonal to secular government.
 
And yet, secular government can be a part of God's will for your life.

Re:

[smittyoneeach]

Sure, but I think that the interaction between Matthew and Pilate hints at the desirable overlap.

Re:

[smittyoneeach]

read: Interaction between Jesus and Pilate in Matthew. Late here on the right coast.

Re:

[Marxist Hacker 42]

I've always thought that the world would have been a much different place- if Pilate had only listened to his own nightmares.

Thanks for the reminder...

[cmacb]

I haven't read Virginia Postrel (early editor of Reason magazine) since she got off on that fashion and glamor kick (subjects which just don't happen to interest me) but she is a genius when it comes to tearing down complex issues to their essential components. Now that she has re-broadened her blog I've added it to my feeds again.

From the Volokh comments this one pretty much sums it up for me:

One thing we have learned from the NHS in Britain is ...
the ability to control what someone does in the name of "p

Re:

[smittyoneeach]

Totalitarianism always starts out with a few things that almost everyone thinks are sensible.

Yep.