Whatever happened to providing for yourself?

Whence come these dreams of governmental entitlements?

Our healthcare system, lucrative as it is for some, is the greatest system in the world. We make the greatest contributions to the funding of research. We achieve the majority of the innovations and breakthroughs. What we have is an excellent endorsement of the government promoting the General Welfare via profit incentive in the free market. The only downside to that is that some corporations turn a profit.

Bad, I guess, if you’ve got a thing against corporate profit.

WRT Oregon’s healthcare legislation, it’s rumored that, in February, the legislature will be entertaining a proposal to amend the state constitution to legislate that every Oregonian has a constitutional right to healthcare. The only problem is, they haven’t really considered yet how they’re going to fund it. =:[]
(I have no idea what those guys are smoking, but it smells like skunkweed to me.)

I would be more concerned about what’s going on in your home state as it relates to health care reform. I heard a long while back that OR came up with a long list of health care procedures and then mandated which ones should be covered by plans in the state…or something like that. I think you also have a “death with dignity” law that we in VT have been trying to get passed here.

I don’t think that we’ll get a Democrat in the White House that won’t want to reduce the tax burden on the middle and lower classes.

Not all “flaws” can be fixed. You can’t legislate that some people pay less without somebody else picking up the cost, unless you legislate maximums on premiums, which translates to capping profits. The problem is, when businesses don’t return enough profit, they’re forced to reduce services. If you pass more laws, saying they can’t do that, they’ll eventually shut down and switch to a more profitable line of business. (They’re in business to make a profit, after all. Thay’s why they’re called businesses and not charities.) The end result is fewer options for the consumer.

The rates for the average healthy person will probably go up under this plan. Her “fix” for that flaw is to provide people with tax credits so, if they pay more than a certain percentage of their income, they get reimbursed by the government (e.g., the taxpayers). Of course, the “rich” will not be eligible because even expensive health insurance will amount to a smaller percentage of their income. At the same time, they lose the tax credits that everybody else gets. So we get to stick it to the rich twice with one plan! Pretty nifty, huh? (Capitalists must be punished!)

WRT tax cuts, it isn’t fear-mongering. This comes straight from the donkey’s mouth. All of Bush’s tax cuts expire in 2010. The Republicans want to renew them and the Democrats are opposed. That’s a fact. Another fact is that these tax cuts affect all Americans, not just the rich.