I'm not going to take pointers on 'morality' from people who want to tax health care, especially at the sky high 23% (inclusive rate / 34% exclusive) 'fair'tax rate.

Medical costs are the leading cause of bankrupcty in the US (and 75% of those who go bankrupt die to medical bills had insurance at the onset of their illness).
The very thought of applying this sky high tax rate to doctor visits, medicine, and operations is immoral in itself.

Of course, since 18% of the GDP is healthcare, the 'fair'tax depends on taxing health care...one of the many reasons it will never pass.

There is NO such thing as settled law. If there were there would be no need for half of the judicial structure we have, including the Appeals Courts and the Supreme Court

You think it is moral to force me to join you in taking care of people I don't even know? If you want to take of them go right ahead! But don't go sticking your hands in my pockets to do it, that is immoral, it is stealing!

If I want to help people I will, ON MY OWN! I don't need anyone else telling me to give, give, give!

And it is just as immoral for me to allow you to steal from me.

So. GET YOUR DAMN HANDS OUT OF MY POCKET!

Because you support Ocrap care, that's why.
So IF you actually support it, then you should be able to come up with a moral justification for it.

IF you can't then maybe you shouldn't support it.

Of course he says that because he's here.

Go to pajamatv and watch the video where they follow two Canadians trying to get some simple treatments.

Stop skewing facts to make your point.

Who is this person? Prove they lived in Canada. What do they do now? And which system do they prefer?

The video shows REAL CANADIANS. None of them seem to be enjoying the health care they receive.

What do we do to stop the COUNTDOWN? I've written emails and letters, placed calls, protested, etc. and STILL NO RESULTS...What do we do?!!

Everyone says to fight this before it's too late...Um, how do we do this exactly? I've done everything I know to do possible EXCEPT take up arms, and we're STILL marching towards Obamacare...WHAT DO WE DO???

i meant jack not frank.

According to Heritage, Obama made a conference call to legislators ADMITTING he is not familar with this bill. So what the %&%&%& is going on up there? He's pushing a bill he doesn't even understand?

$mooth Operator,
Would you, and did you call Gunga-Din Bush as Arse-Clown?
Jack Smythe,
The vast majority of the listners on this site get their news from the Talkmaster, Rush, Hannity and Beck etc and tilt in whatever direction they push them, on any particular day!!

But I have spoken to a real Canadian. He would exchange systems. You can find yays and nays everywhere.

Doesn't matter, we don't have the money to pay for this system.

Here's a challenge for you listeners. Don't take what the talk show hosts say about the horrors of Canadian health care. Go out and ask a real Canadian about what they think about their system. I don't think you'll find too many who'd be willing to trade with the American system we currently have in place. Here are some facts from a Montrealer (Montrealais in French) who lives in the U.S.

- No Canadian has ever been denied coverage.
- The words "pre-existing condition" are never used against you.
- No Canadian has ever lost a home or their life savings because of a medical condition or emergency
- If a Canadian has to come to the States for treatment, the government (taxpayers) reimburses the expense. U.S.
talk show hosts usually omit this fact.
- No Canadian has private insurance.
- No Canadian loses coverage if they lose their jobs.
- Canadians do have to wait for non-essential surgery (eg hip replacement). Essential surgery is usually done next day (eg clogged artery or bypass operations).
- Yes there are often long waits in a Canadian emergency room. There are long waits in American emergency rooms as well
- Dental care is not part of the Canadian medicare system. For dental services, Canadians like Americans need to pay for dental insurance, or pay a-la-carte at the dental office.
- Canadians do pay for their healthcare through taxes. But they don't need private insurance (so they save there).
- Canadian doctors, hospitals, services, and prescription drugs are equal in quality to the American system.
- And Canadians do have the option of going to "out of network" doctors or hospitals and paying privately.
- Drugs are a lot cheaper in Canada, but are not subsided through Medicare (except for the elderly).

However, Canadians do not have the $4 subsidized drug system they have here in the states. Elderly Canadians are entitled to free prescription drugs.

Speak to a real Canadian and ask them what they think about their health care system. I think you'll be surprised.

Madison himself explains Section 8 in #41 of The Federalist, Neutron could stand to read it. It doesn’t look like he’ll try to justify it morally.

If I had only one book to understand the US Constitution, that would be it. It's one of those read some, think a while books.

Try to answer the question, Neutron

The majority of doctors don't even belong to the AMA so that doesn't mean much. Nine representatives who are themselves doctors wrote a letter to the AMA blasting them for their endorsement.

By the way, anyone hear that the health bill has been pulled? Obama has called a "meeting" at the White House to discuss. Probably to threaten!

Keep your ears tuned.

:-)

When it comes to getting the Dem’s political agenda passed, things like the Stimulous II plan, saving the banks, overhauling the Big 3 Auto companies, Obamacare, or “Cap and Tax”, all serve to keep the public in a constant state of concern, alarm and in some Liberal corridors, outright panic.

H.L. Mencken, noted American journalist and satirist in the mid 20th century summed it up best with this great line. "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."

Obama, Pelosi et al have honed this strategy to very great effect. The key question is will the public wake up and realize most of these so called “crises” are just made up “excuses” for the pols in government to exert ever more control over us. The now widespread Liberal notion of man-made CO2 causing so called “Global Warming”, and which now requires a dubious global “cap and tax” solution, has got to be the biggest and phoniest “bogey-man” ever concocted.

Fortunately for the Liberal Dem pols they can take heart in the lessons of one of the greatest propagandists that has ever existed, one Joseph Goebbels who during the fascist Hitler era once remarked, “The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly - it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over”.
Does Obama’s current incessant mantra about the need to pass “Obamacare”, “NOW”, come to mind here even though the plan doesn’t take effect until 2013, AFTER the next election?

That line is bested by Goebbels’ most well know homily, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

Neal claims "The only people who are really pushing this government takeover of health care are "activists" or politicians."

Uh gee Neal, I guess you don't read the news much? The American Medical Association endorsed the House democrats' healthcare bill last Thursday. Try to keep up, Ace.

Just because Congress pulled a fast one in 2003 doesn't mean we should let Congress get away with doing so again.

DOES IT?????

Fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me twice, shame on me.

Kevin, the current Medicare regulations prevent the kind of things you have suggested. Healthcare reform should start with the 132,000 pages of Medicare regulations. These regs dwarf even the ridiculous tax code we have.

The key to recovery is NOT getting the banks to lending again & the people to spending again. Lending & spending are how we got into this mess to begin with.

The key to real recovery is the accumulation of capital -- not squandering it on flat screen TVs made in China.

Neal, stop telling us to "wake up" We're awake dammit (except for copyleftist). We know what kind of sham this is. However, it's these career politicans who are slowly killing us that need to "wake up." Some of us may be government edcucated but many of us are well aware of this fascist "reform" movement in Washington. Get more of the New England and West Coast progressives on your program and let the callers have at them. Maybe then they will wake up.

for all you Boortz myrmidons who can't read, the HuffPo article was reporting on a NBC/Wall Street Journal poll. I thought I would be nice and not link to the pdf, but since you all lack reading comprehension, here you go:

http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/sections/news/090617_NBC-WSJ_poll_Full.pdf

And Joyce, if the numbers are going down, that just means your pals in the healthcare lobby who only want to help and protect you are doing a good job in distorting the issue.

ROFLMAO!
Maybe we shouldn't make too much fun of Copy, she might stop posting here.....
Ohh wait, that's a good thing, never mind.

I sure hope that the Democrats follow the blueprint used by the Republicans in 2003 to ram through the "Medicare Prescripition Drug,Improvement,and Moderization Act of 2003"
Here's how the right rammed it through:
Introduced to the House - 6-25-2003
Passed the House 216-215-1 6-27-2003
Passed the Senate (Unanimous Consent)
7-07-2003
Agreed to by the House on 11-22-2003 by a 220-215 vote
And by the Senate (54-44) 11-25-2003
Signed into law on Dec 8,2003
Anyone have any problems with the Democrats using the blueprint put out by the Republicans in 2003? From the day the bill was introduced,till it was rammed down the throats of the American taxpayers by both the House and Senate 42 days went by!
All info above found at Wiki: "Medicare Prescription,Drug,Improvement and Modernization Act"
Read the first 5 paragraphs and see how honest the Repubs were with this law!

So I guess the question is..."is the health care industry doing anything to avoid this catastrophe...like working towards lower costs..better coverage?" It seems like it would be in their best interest to keep it free market vice controlled. I would figure they would see the issue and adjust as the free market tends to do. Sale on appendicectomies or something..
Thoughts anyone?

You Statists should really stop causally throwing around the 'idiot' term considering who you voted support.
Does anybody with half a brain (that excludes the Statists) believe that a poll or survey CAN'T be manipulated by the type of question asked or the sampling?
Let's be blunt about it: Polls and surveys aren't FACTS. Polls and surveys are statistical analysis of data. Bias towards a particular result can be easily built into the raw data, as well as the analysis of that data.
You trolls make it perfectly clear who the idiots are when you try to palm off these biased polls as 'facts'.

Once you start something like this, it is extremely hard to undo. Kinda like social security.

We haven't had decent representation in Washington on either side for decades.

But then again, health care is not a right. Maybe we should just work with the insurance companies to have them reduce costs and open up accessibility and keep government interference out of it.

only that the vast majority of folks don't like the COST of healthcare and would like somebody else (such as the taxpayers) to pay for it for them.

The "universal health care" mantra is an attempt to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Sounds great, but in practice ... check out the reality of CanadaCare or Britain's NHS - or any other national healthcare plan and you find: inefficiency, waste, demoralized staff (who don't give a hoot about you as a patient), rationed care, quality of care issues, etc. The emergency room at the local hospital here resembles the queue at the Department of Motor Vehicles, except that the staff behind the counter is wearing hospital scrubs (the law sayeth the ER can't turn anyone away for any reason).

Read the questions in the poll and use the literal meaning ... the folks that quote the poll results only prove Disraeli's assertion "there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics"

Oh dang, got halfway through that question and realized that wasn't what I originally meant to ask.
Here's what original question: Why don't the Demonrats fix the existing programs first, and then when they've learned from that miracle, they can tackle a new program?

I can explain those polls.

CBS NEWS

HUFFINGTON POST

Nuff said. LOL

By the way....did you just say the Canadian GOVERNMENT is paying for their healthcare?

Wow, I wonder where that GOVERNMENT gets its money? From discarded Monopoly games? Bake sales? The Prime Minister's Annual Car Wash And Hockey Puck Raffle?

Try again, because that was weak even for you.

No surprise, of course... this IS talk radio, where half-truths are a specialty.

But the vast majority of Americans ARE clamoring for healthcare reform.

From the Kaiser Foundation's 2009 Healthcare Survey in America:

"An overwhelming 80 percent of the public is dissatisfied with the total cost of care in the nation, including six in ten (58 percent) who are very dissatisfied with costs.
"Slightly more than half --54 percent --are dissatisfied with the quality of care in the nation."
"...Even larger majorities of Americans say they would back a variety of other government efforts to expand health coverage: 86 percent say government should offer tax breaks to businesses that offer health insurance to their employees, eight in ten would offer tax credits for poorer Americans to buy health insurance, and just as many would expand programs for the poor like Medicaid or support government efforts to require business to cover all full-time employees."

http://www.kff.org/kaiserpolls/upload/7572.pdf

But I'm sure Neal just overlooked that in claiming that there was no public interest in reforming our broken healthcare system. (chuckle)

You say: "There is absolutely no public pressure to get this done."

Then explain polls that show over 70% of Americans back a public option?

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/06/19/opinion/polls/main5098517.shtml

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/17/obama-boost-new-poll-show_n_217175.html

You know, Neal-there's not any opposition to universal healthcare in any country that has it. Even Thatcher knew not to mess with British National Health (which, IMHO, is not a system to emulate-single payer is much more efficient). And every time you blabber on about some Canadian coming south of the border for some elective surgery, remember who is paying that Canuck's bill-that's right, the Canadian government. You won't find any Canadians looking to give that up, bubba.

For all you freedom/capitalism loving Americans out there, you may want to start searching for Medical Tourism sites on the web like Planet Hospital. We are going to be like the Canadians that were coming to the US for health care when they were made to wait or were refused in Canada.

There are too many government educated Obama lovers out there who don't care about freedom and the responsibility that comes with it.

Again the question was: Explain the MORALITY – meaning explain your Statist parties MORAL justification, not Legal justification.
The best you could do was a line from the Constitution from section 8, on the powers of Congress:

“The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defense and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States; “

At best that is a vague LEGAL rationale, but to point out the obvious to you, that ISN”T a MORAL Justification.
Maybe it's your contention that the government can 'do as they please with other men, and the product of other men's labor'.

Is that your MORAL Justification?

That the citizens of this nation are simply tools to be 'used' by the government as they please?

That if you need money to buy votes, you simply Take from some to hand out to many?

That people are simply a resource to be exploited?