You're smart enough to know that this flap is not really as much about health care as insurance.
That's why the biggest players of the private sector are divided. Pharma and the AMA are pro, and the insurance industry is con. Follow the ad money.

The smartest one-liner I heard has been "We have the best health care in the world and the worst possible way to pay for it." There is a yawning gap between those who provide care and those who manage them. Look closely and you will see that "managing" = "rationing." It may be anyone from an insurance clerk in the ER to the hospital administrator to an insurance committee that never sees anything but paper but is quite good at interpreting actuarial tables and writing policies.

Fact is for most of the world health care is some blend of private sector and single-payer schemes, with the marketplace trafficking in private insurance and the state furnishing a safety net for those who either cannot or will not use the market.

I'm not an all-or-nothing kind of guy, but I'm open-minded enough to look at some alternatives. I came across a site that advances some pretty good arguments for us in America to spend less and get better care for more people.

Of course we can point to the wait times in the Canadian system, and that looks bad for single-payer systems. But that’s Canada and not the United States. Canada’s problem is that they spend only 10% of GDP compared to our 16.5%. If they increased their health care spending by just 10%, to 11% of GDP, they’d not have wait times either.

Even still, they feel that if they removed one person out every six from their system, as we do in the US, they’d not have wait times either. They are right, but they nonetheless are under treating their people. Shame on them.

Most Canadians want more of their taxes spent on health care, but the insurance interests in Canada are lobbying parliament to reduce spending even further to force patients into their more profitable privatized system. Still, over 80% of Canadians prefer their system to ours, which should send a strong message to American politicians.

Just saying.

The first thing the Marxist will do is pollute the language so that, using the same common words, they are talking about opposite things. The next step is inevitable and diabolical--we are speaking their language.
So it is they simply speak of health care destruction as health care reform; it is impossible to use the familiar old words again without it being controlled by their meaning. That is the Marxist dialectic.

As a supreme if unintended compliment, the enemies of the system of private enterprise have thought it wise to appropriate its very label--Joseph Shumpeter

I conclude from the increasing pace, frequency and tenor of your posts that you agree with the recent Waterloo meme tossing around the blogosphere.

Me too. Nice work, and keep pressing.

At the risk of repeating myself (naaah,) here's someting I posted on BigHollywood yesterday:

Even though modern "liberalism" is strikingly without solutions to its perceived problems, I think you're missing the point that Leftism has been nothing more than grievance-mongering since the days of Diderot (rich) and Voltaire (aussi.) The Great Unwashed have never been anything but cannon fodder for the battles of the privileged, which would otherwise be only vicious hair-pulling conducted in faculty lounges.

The current "We gotta fix it or we all gone die" crowd gained its everlasting mantra when Karl Marx (upper-middle-class child of privilege) penned the immortal Das Kapital (which may as well have been titled Eat the Rich - Kill Your Parents,) wherein he posited "In the Brave New World of Socialism, the Little People will take over the means of production, and then....and then....and, uh.....a miracle will occur! Or something."

The contemporary crop of imbeciles is the inevitable result of 40 years of public "education" in leftist platitudes at the expense of basics like reading, spelling and history. I agree that the ultimate solution for "liberalism" is exposure of its true nature, and the necessary ridicule that would hopefully ensue. What worries me is that there may not be enough of an audience left.

Well said, Gerard. Very succinct. Pithy, as they say.

Now, to quote Lenin again: "What is to be done?"

My two cents:

Waterloo is inappropriate in regards to politics or health care.

Waterloo is blood, and the end of dictators.

Afghanistan is a muddy Belgian field waiting to bleed. Can you tell me what the Marines are doing there right now? Can you tell me the strategic objective? Can anyone go to a media outlet and find these answers?

Is there a single Obama administration member out there making the case, delivering the scoop? Does the commander in chief of our armed forces have a defined victory condition that he is working toward?

No, hell no, and fuck no.

The Marines are doing a fabulous job in a brutal environment. If they are losing four a day, they must be killing scores if not hundreds of the enemy. But if the leadership is truly "uncomfortable with victory" it's very likely that Chesty's kids are indeed being kept in reserve as political pawns, as our host has so elegantly explained.

Obama, and his handlers, are as incompetent in execution of their agenda as they are unconscious of the reality in which they have arrived.

It's not slogans, stolen elections, and a narrative any more. Words matter a LOT, and deeds really, really bring consequences. They see dead Marines as currency. Nothing more.

They are in the bigs, but want to act like they are still in the coffee houses. Americans love a winner. They'll even tolerate a crook, if he's a winner. But a cheat, a liar, and a coward... they won't take that, especially if said maggot is a direct threat.

Little Honduras may turn out to be a huge factor in our political landscape.

I hope they shoot that bastard Zelaya, then force PNG'd Venezuelan diplomats to carry his dead ass across the border.

Ortega in Nicaragua is working hard on that "win one election and done" strategy. Ortega, Chavez, Castro... and Obama. All behind "deploring violence" and urging that Honduras "be reasonable".

Those thugs are not alone. ACORN waits for 2010.

Pray for Honduras. Pray for us.

"WHO -- WHOM" = "I WON"

Is not Peter Orszag the most bottomy little dude you've ever seen? Oh, with his soft, soft little hands and long effeminate fingers--don't you just want to spank his ass raw and hug the little guy?

These people are deciding our future?

Greetings:

In his "The Road to Serfdom", F.A. Hayek has a chapter entitled "Who...Whom" after V.I. Lenin's quote.

Don't know if you are familiar with the blog "Caption This", http://kurlander.blogspot.com/
but it has a funny photo that goes along with the Lenin theme, it's a life-sized cake of the commie in his coffin:

http://kurlander.blogspot.com/2009/07/cake-or-death.html

Dear Vanderleun, I generally adore you like a dog worshipping a God, but...

Are you completely retarded? You must be. Your ramblings represent a first-grader's interpretation of something that is obviously too complex for you to understand. If you'll stop listening to Glenn Beck's fact-lacking bullshit for five minutes and examine some actual statistics, perhaps a number of things will come to light.

1) We already dish out free health care. That's one of the things that is costing us so much in the first place and contributing to the deficit. Putting all Americans on at least some form of insurance dilutes the risk to manageable levels.

2) Medical costs are at 18% of our GDP and rising. If you would take your head out of Rush Limbaugh's asshole for ten seconds and wipe the shit off of your eyeballs you'll see that this is a serious problem.

3) Did you really call 17% of Americans crack-whores?

4) Obama won the election. Therefore, the aptly named "base" you referred to is a majority of Americans. And before you pull out the race card, which I know you want to, consider the fact that black voter turnout was only up 2% from previous elections. White voter turnout was at a record high.

5) The legislation that was passed is pretty much an exact replica of the health care reform proposed in Massachusetts under (pay attention, now) REPUBLICANS Mitt Romney and Scott Brown. Furthermore, the legislation included over a hundred suggestions made by the Republicans, and was void of the Democrat's public option, which was the only real socialist element to begin with, and the only thing they really wanted. Yet not one Republican voted for it because they didn't want to look weak. It was never about right and wrong for them. It was about getting re-elected by a constituency of rednecks like you who believe anything Fox News tells them.

6) Can you explain what's in the bill? Or do you just like to claim that nobody is talking about it because you haven't even been listening. You have no idea what you're talking about. By the way, the bill specifically bans federal funding for abortions, dipshit.

7) You are just so stupid it's hard to even begin. Nice job with the thesaurus, hot shot, but it's going to take more than "tendentious" to cover up your lack of literacy. You're right, we shouldn't have to pay any taxes at all. Then we won't have a military, or highways, or schools, or police officers. Hell, we can just invite China over for a good old fashioned invasion. Is that what you want? Sure you do. You're completely retarded.

8) Whom is not a subject. It is a prepositional object. "To whom." "For whom." Not "Whom shall receive."

9) By this point you probably think I support the legislation. The fact is I don't. But at least I understand why I don't support it. It is a corporate restructuring that will allow the government to subsidize insurance profits. It has nothing to do with helping poor people. But you're making everyone who opposes the bill look bad when you open your ignorant mouth and speak for the rest of us.