Do you agree with Ron Paul that health care is a GOOD, and not a RIGHT?

If health care is a right then why isn't food? You can't live without food, but you have to pay for it any way. What is next we all are going to ask for free food?

Ron Paul has the facts wrong. Here is the quote from Nixon who signed the law. "Under S. 14, the Government would provide financial assistance to help various groups determine the feasibility of developing an HMO in their area, as well as assistance for planning and initial development. HMO's would be required to operate competitively without Federal subsidies at the end of an initial period of Federal support." The act was meant to help HMO grow, not force people to sign up for HMO. That come in 1990s when health care costs begin spiral out of control and many signed up without government involvement. HMOs stopped the spiral for a short time. If there was no government health care like Medicare and a ban on trial lawyers, we would have more uninsured and those who pay would pay more.

No. It's a disaster that Health Care has become a Big Business. From our family and tribal beginnings health care has always been a deep part of society. It has only become a salable 'good' in economies hell bent upon providing more and more for the rich of our population.

I hear that Sarah Palin has called universal health care as 'evil'! Holy Mackerel! Remember that the #1 health care system in the world is France and #2 is Italy. An, a big WOW here! The USA is # 37!!!! Not all research will show these exact numbers but the graph does not vary much.

Interestingly the pro-life people, for the most part, believe that the right to health care is not. Invariably they have little understanding of reality.

If the stupid American government would disolve its hundreds of military bases around the world, quit financing terrorist regimes through its terrorist arm of the CIA and quit invading anywhere it pleases, and quit financing true evil dictators such as Baby Doc, Pinochet, Saddam, the Christian Democratic party of El Salvador.

Just think how this money could have been rationally spent.

"Beginning with the Carter Administration and continued by the Reagan and Bush administrations, the U.S. sent seven billion dollars of foreign and military aid to El Salvador in ten years. The silent-partner-role of the United States in the Salvadoran Civil War became public when a National Guard death squad raped and murdered four American nuns and a laywoman on December 2, 1980; Maryknoll missionary nuns Maura Clarke, Ita Ford, and Ursuline nun Dorothy Kazel, and laywoman Jean Donovan were on a Catholic relief mission providing food, shelter, transport, medical care, and burial to death squad victims. After the murders of the churchwomen, President Carter suspended all aid to El Salvador, but domestic U.S. right-wing (Republican) political pressure forced him to reinstate it."

You said "The government will be paying the bills, forcing doctors and hospitals to dance more and more to the government’s tune." Right now the insurance companies are forcing doctors and hospitals to dance more and more to help them pad their wallets."

Does making profit off someones health sound fair to you? To me making money off someone being denied health care is barbaric. Overhead costs for insurance companies is around 30%. Medicare is around 3-5%. One of the health insurance CE0s made 25 million last year. Do you know how they make that much. It's called denying people health care do to prior conditions. For example that women who was denied health care because she had a history of acne. Is that fair.

So I guess if you are driving down the street and see someone bleeding you wouldn't call 911? How about giving health care to all because it is a human thing to do. It is called COMPASSION to your fellow man.

Yes, I definitely agree with Ron Paul on this one. Once the government takes over healthcare, we can't acquire it for ourselves. The government will just be "feeding" us in a sense.

It's always much better knowing that you are in control of your life, and that you do not have to rely on others to support you. I don't mean that it's not good for others to help you out, but you should be able to personally work for your goals in life, rather than having someone tell you how you should go about the process.

Yes.

We need to get managed care out to drive down costs. Portable health savings accounts would help a lot.

If Ron Paul's premise is that health care is a free market good or service for which a fair market price is determined by supply and demand, then the premise is false. The medical establishment limits the number of doctors that are produced by the medical schools and licenses itself. It also limits the public's access to information about the number of complaints filed against doctors, under the theory that doctors can discipline themselves only if doctors are comfortable revealing their mistakes only to their brethren sworn to the same secrecy pact.

When lawyers successfully sue to recover damages in health care fiascos, the doctors lobby the state and federal legislatures to limit the payouts in such cases. So one of the checks-and-balances in the free market, paying for one's mistakes, has been compromised.

But let's get beyond Ron Paul's libertarian theology and focus instead on the cost to our economy of health care mismanagement. Each sick day cuts into the productivity of the economy. The practice of preventative medicine is, thus, likely to decrease extended sick leave to treat serious illnesses that could have been prevented or ameliorated through early detection and intervention. This is a quantifiable benefit for the economy. Most health care plans, including mine, refuse to pay for an annual physical, let alone systematic preventative care.

In addition, many of the poor use taxpayer-subsidized emergency room doctors as their primary care physicians. This is a horrible misuse of those critical care resources and a criminal waste of money.

Then there is the cost to our competitiveness in the world because every other major economy has state-subsidized health care. If we reinvested the money we are hemorrhaging to these countries in our own health care system, it would pay for itself many times over.

Finally, as should be obvious, Big Pharma has set monopolistic prices on its drugs because BigHealthCare has agreed to pay those prices, then both take their profits and lobby Congress to limit free market access to drugs from Canada, which are produced in this country, but for which the government sets a fair price, because the market cannot or will not. So much for the free market in action.

In the old days you did not have homeowners insurance, but one's neighbors helped rebuild your barn or house if it burned down or was blown away. Likewise, if you got sick, the neighbors helped out until you got back on your feet. Well, those old fashioned family values for which the Right pines was a form of socialism in the form of donated barter. Today we tithe ourselves in the form of taxes and put that money in a public pot to obtain public interest goods and services for which there is no market or which can be accomplished more efficiently by the government or for which the cost is so high that only governments can raise the required funds.

There is no question that many government programs are inefficient. That is also true of many private sector programs. How much of our health care premiums go to payouts to the sick and how much goes to lobbying and case reviews justifying a rejection of the payout? It's probably between 25% and 50% of your premium. That's criminal.

So even if I could accept Ron Paul's premise that health care should be a free market good or service, it is not. But I don't accept the premise. Governments build roads, schools, and airports because it is in the public interest to spend our collective resources that way. So it is also in the public interest to ensure that nobody dies because he or she couldn't afford to see a doctor or the treatment the doctor prescribes. That's true of an unemployed blue-collar worker, a heinously overpaid financier, and everybody in between.

Acting always and only in one's self-centered, self-interest is not a panacea for all of the world's ills. To the contrary, it is the cause of many of the world's ills. Altruism uber alles.

For healthcare to be a right that will cost money that the government doesn't have. They never come through with the payments for medicare and they're not going to do it for this. It's not fair for the ppl who spend all of they're money to get through college and medical school and not make enough afterwards to pay it all off

Nope. Disagree.

As Nixon and Kennedy structured it in the 70's.. Yes..

Remember congress gave you the HMO so that they could ration care...

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