Cash-Roots, Manufactured Anger, and Hot Air over Health Care

I'd like to respond to 'Better Solution's' comments and suggestions: "Check out their track records on social security - underfunded and inefficient, medicare - same, post office -broke and inefficient, border control - are you kidding?"

Social Security ... would not be underfunded if administrations and Congress had raised the cap on income subject to the tax, or slightly increased the tax itself, which Reagan did. The first is preferable, and it should be noted that Reagan had the political capital to get away with raising the tax. The truth is:
a. Social Security is flagging because of the increase in baby boomers reaching retirement age, the lower number of workers paying in due to reduced birth rates, and currently the high rate of unemployment.
b. There's also a problem in that war spending (particularly) has meant a drain on the treasury and the need to sell more Treasury bonds, which saps the SS fund.
c. at something like 2% admin costs, Social Security can hardly be called inefficient.

The same is true of Medicare.
a. Again admin costs are tiny compared to private insurance admin loading.
b. Medicare covers only the elderly, that part of the population with the highest need for major medical treatment and long-term care.
c. If Medicare were expanded to cover the whole population, the high costs for the elderly would be offset by the lower incidence of use among the young and healthy.

The Post Office ... delivers your mail, wherever it has to go.
a. That includes the lone cabin in remote mountain canyons for the same price as a letter destined for across town.
b. Some 40 years back, the private couriers came into the market. The free market. What they could do, that the PO by law cannot, is to refuse to deliver in out-of-the-way places or else charge an arm and a leg for the privilege.
c. In short, the private couriers took the cream routes and left the PO with everything else. We subsidize PO service so that everyone can still mail a letter, but we subsidize it twice over when we pay high rates for that sexy overnight courier service.

Immigration and border control, well, there's a can of worms!
a. The best way to keep hordes of people from coming into the country would be to help them want to stay where they are. As long as there is gross income inequity, trade-driven job loss, war, famine and mayhem ... people will think they might have it better in the US.
b. The Border Fence is a great boondoggle (and threat to wildlife habitat). Flat out pandering to the shrill anti-immigrant voices.
c. There are better solutions to the border problem. As an emigrant, I've experienced a different approach, which works a lot better AND funds the host-country general revenues and social security and health programs.

In short, the argument that government programs are inefficient and ineffective is hollow. It's based on urban myth, propounded by opponents of rational change.

However, I WOULD agree that the legislation currently before us on health care reform doesn't do the job voters had hoped for last November. Failing a single-payer plan, there should be no requirement for people to buy insurance, and there should be no subsidy of such a mandate to add more money to the already bloated private insurance profits.

But, I'd be concerned about admin costs for tax rebates and other means suggested for taking the money out of public coffers and redirecting it, via low-income customers, into the insurance companies.

Why is it exactly that what works in other industrialized countries (single-payer basic health care for all, with optional private top-up for those who like 'the frills') would be a bad idea for the US?

You don't know what it means to be underfunded or ineffiecient, because your 'proposal' shows no identifiable way of overcoming either problem. Also, look at your fifth point... come on - do you not see a contradiction here? First you say your against turning it over to that wretched, incompetent government, yet you want to expand current programs?

A program which is underfunded is not a euphemism for being inefficient - it simply means the program is underfunded. The US government has A LOT to account for - nevermind healthcare - like for instance, a war that is still going on in case you've forgotten.

You'll have to enlighten me on how the government is 'one of the most inefficient organizations'. I don't see how or why the private sector is run any better (in fact big businesses use this 'inefficient organization' to lobby for policies they want - makes you think where some problems can occur).

If you've paid any attention to what has happened in the past two years, today included with the insurance industries, you can hardly blame the goverment (again, deregulation has been lobbied for by private power for the last 30 years) - in fact its the government that has to clean up every mess the private sector gets itself into (see Goldman Sachs).

I think the military and their industrial complex is far more superior than anything the private sector is capable of - the fact that you are reading this is such evidence, as we owe the creation of the internet to 'one of the most inefficient organizations'. I receive my mail everyday except for Sunday - I have no qualms about that - do you not receive it six days a week? If you do, what is so inefficient about that? How would it be even more efficient if, say, it was run by FedEx? Whether its the post office, medicare (surveys indicate those in the program like it, by the way, I doubt you are even eligible), the police department, fire department, sanitation, park districts... I don't see evidence of 'one of the most inefficient organization', rather, when I think about your claim, I see more evidence of someone who doesn't know what they're talking about, but think they do.