That’s because your irrational fear overtakes your ability to see that this country is fundamentally different in the way that it is set up. The Founding fFathers knew what they were doing.

Now, we’re getting somewhere…you are quite thicked-headed aren’t you Frank?

Clearly.

Especially since I am not in the “It can’t happen here” camp.

I mean, whodathunk that the Supreme Court would allow the use eminent domain to transfer land from one private owner to another to further economic development?

I can not see the justification for the “it can’t happen here” mindset.

No one is talking about ceding control for life and death to the govt….which is why your “postulates” are strawman arguments, period. This isn’t a rhetoric class BTW.

“So what am I to make of this statement?”

Whatever you would like to…BTW, this isn’t Holland…so screw the Groningen Protocol.

“Am I to imply that you think that the Government of the Netherlands has betrayed the trust of their people and that could never happen here?”

Now, we’re getting somewhere…you are quite thicked-headed aren’t you Frank?

“We can not afford the demand to try to keep everyone alive forever.”

I don’t remember anyone claiming that…strawman argument.

It is not a strawman argument it is a postulate.

Are you opposed to death with dignity laws too?

Um, no. Why do you assume I am

What happened to the “freedom to choose” and all that jazz?

Love it. Jazz too.

“We can not afford the demand to try to keep everyone alive forever.”

See above

Again, not an argument but a postulate.

The idea is that given these two are self-evident truths, to whom do you want to give the power of determining life and death with regards to access to health care.

You have revealed yourself to be another right-wing “conservative” that fears his own govt

I see. So what am I to make of this statement. Are you defending the Groningen Protocol or not?

Am I to imply that you think that the Government of the Netherlands has betrayed the trust of their people and that could never happen here?

Or am I to imply that you think the Netherlands is on track with the Groningen Protocol and this type of thinking would be OK so long as the government authorized it?

“We can not afford the demand to try to keep everyone alive forever.”

I don’t remember anyone claiming that…strawman argument. Are you opposed to death with dignity laws too? What happened to the “freedom to choose” and all that jazz?

“We can not afford the demand to try to keep everyone alive forever.”

See above…also, we spend about twice what everyone else in the world spends on health care now…there’s plenty of money in the system right now. We are one of the richest countries in the world…we really *can* afford health care together. This isn’t Holland or the UK or Germany.

You have revealed yourself to be another right-wing “conservative” that fears his own govt….I feel sorry for you.

A true single payer system is the only way to get a lot of the costs (read that as profit) out of health care.

A single-payer, government run health care system is an awful solution to people (like me) who are not very interested in trusting government.

I, for one, simply do not understand why anyone would think allowing even the hint of a political agenda to be part of the the health care rationing calculus.

Didn’t work out well for people deemed non-Aryans in Nazi Germany.

Here are a few facts that I deem indisputable: We can not keep everyone alive forever.

We can not afford the demand to try to keep everyone alive forever.

Now when these facts are accepted, AND we decide that the Government should make policies on who gets how much health care when, I think we set ourselves on a very dangerous course.

For example, there is a branch of medical ethics known as Utilitarian Bioethics. It is not a fringe branch. It’s principles are stated thus:

[It] espouses directing medical resources where they will contribute most to the sum of the number of happy people in the world….

As with much of utilitarianism, Utilitarian Bioethics is internally coherent only if one takes as proven the concept that the economic distribution of resources is a zero-sum game. Then, it makes sense to evaluate society as the aggregate of each person’s total future economic value, their chance of survival from the present, and the cost of keeping them alive indefinitely. If we end up with too many people whose cost of medical maintenance outweighs their total future economic value (because they are terminally ill, are no longer productive, and have no reasonable chance of becoming productive in the foreseeable future), then it may be economically efficient to encourage them to voluntarily self-terminate in order to end their own suffering and to free up scarce medical resources. That is, there are only so many healthy people who can take care of the sick (and do all the other things that keep civilization running), and if there are simply too many unproductive sick people, then providing care for them will inevitably be detrimental to the healthy. To put this more bluntly, every nurse who spends their days caring for a terminally ill Alzheimer’s or cancer patient, a comatose individual, or for an individual in a vegetative state, is one more nurse who will not be taking care of a sick baby or a 12-year-old gunshot victim.

Now consider the Netherlands, which, of course, has Government run health care. And consider their so-called Groningen Protocol, whereby it is written that:

if doctors at the hospital think a child is suffering unbearably from a terminal condition, they have the authority to end the child’s life. The protocol is likely to be used primarily for newborns, but it covers any child up to age 12….

A parent’s role is limited under the protocol. While experts and critics familiar with the policy said a parent’s wishes to let a child live or die naturally most likely would be considered, they note that the decision must be professional, so rests with doctors.

Now you may trust Democrats, or may trust Republicans, at at some point, someone you don’t trust will be in charge of this mechanism.

Is this idea really appealing to you?

The Groningen Protocol is frightening in and of itself just by the fact that the Parent’s essentially have no say and no options. They can’t go somewhere else even if they had money. At least not in the Netherlands. If the doctors (i.e. the government) decide that the cost of medical maintenance outweighs their total future economic value that’s it, the kids a goner. And there is no appeal.

Now let’s say for the sake of argument (and I don’t think this is at all far-fetched) that part of government provided health care is comprehensive mental-health care.

And let’s further speculate a nefarious administration taking advantage of this to remove political miscreants.

Presto! You have a mechanism for re-education camps

There is something downright evil about a government making life and death choices that result in a dispassionate board deciding the terminal fate of an infant, or 12 year-old while the child’s parents cry and wail in frustration.

I suppose not everyone will see the difference, perhaps, but it is quite clear in my mind.

From what I understand, Hillary merely wants to give access to the FEHBP to every American, if they would like to participate in it. It’s the same extensive set of relatively-affordable, private health insurance plans that Congress and federal employees get access to now. It’s merely a first step towards universal coverge IMO. A true single payer system is the only way to get a lot of the costs (read that as profit) out of health care.

Walter Reed was the DOD at it’s “best”…a lot of the VA facilities aren’t very good, and the way that we’ve treated our veterans in this country is a shame. Cutting their combat pay, shitty rooms when they come home maimed from Iraq, then asking for their signing bonuses back because they can’t serve anymore without all their legs and arms. It makes me sick…

You mean like the Democrats in the California legislature that just “terminated” Arnold Schwarzenegger’s “universal” health-care plan

The idea was that Mr. Schwarzenegger would set a national precedent, leading to a groundswell for reform in Washington. Not to mention that the Schwarzenegger plan was a near-copy of the one Mitt Romney pioneered in Massachusetts, and the one Hillary Clinton now favors. A leading author of the California plan was Laurie Rubiner, who directed health policy at the New America Foundation before becoming Senator Clinton’s legislative director in 2005.

And I like this bit

The California legislature is probably the most liberal this side of Vermont, and even Democrats refused to become shock troops for this latest liberal experiment.

Why you may ask was it terminated?

An independent analysis confirmed the plan would be far more expensive than proponents admitted. Even under the most favorable assumptions, spending would outpace revenue by $354 million after two years, and likely $3.9 billion or more. “A situation that I thought was bad,” Mr. Perata noted, “in fact was worse.”

This reveals that liberal health-care politics is increasingly the art of the impossible: You can’t make coverage “universal” while at the same time keeping costs in check — at least without prohibitive tax increases. Lowering cost and increasing access, in other words, are separate and irreconcilable issues.

And when you stry into thinking that Government would be more efficient than the private sector, force you self to remember the Walter Reed debacle…

Health care is expensive because not everyone in this country is insured and there’s a cost shift that’s made because those that can’t pay for health care and those that can. Health care is expensive because there’s a massive amount of money that’s wasted in overhead costs trying to figure out who’s going to pay for what and why. Health care is expensive because people wait and don’t get the care that they need when they need it because there are afraid to pay a big health care bill…this part is a huge merry-go-round.