Can a Government Run Health Care Work?

So sad that you have no facts. Hint: just because you copied it out of an email does not mean any of it is true.

The answer is, yes. It works in every other developed country in the world. In the US we have the worst outcomes in the developed world, and we pay twice as much per capita. ∠°)

Government health care works in countries where the government actually runs the hospitals and employs the doctors, as well as in countries where the government is just the insurer.

The Postal Service works fine. It's a recession. FedEx is losing money too, and they were able to stop matching their employees 401K contributions and they were not restricted by law on raising the prices like the Postal Service is. So I guess we should get rid of FedEx too, right?

And the Postal Service is a model of efficiency. They've reduced their employment by about a quarter in the last decade because they've automated nearly everything that could be automated. Heck, the machines even read and sort handwritten letters.

Social Security is not broke. Its goal is not to make a profit either. All that is needed is to make a small adjustment at some point and suddenly the projections would show that it will never run out of money and that actually there is too much money. We're talking about perhaps a 2% raise in the payroll tax sometime in the future when we are making 50% more in our real incomes (assuming historical income growth levels) to fix the entire "problem".

It's a similar situation for Medicare, except that is largely driven by the rising health care costs that are forcing private businesses to have increased costs, reduced competitiveness, less available for their employees as income, and in many cases, drop their health coverage for their employees completely.

Fannie Mae had the same problems with mortgages that the rest of the mortgage industry had. Despite popular belief, Fannie Mae never took the kinds of bad mortgages that led to the mortgage crisis (except for the AAA rated packaged mortgage securities that everyone thought were safe). But those bad mortgages and their effect to cause the credit crisis and housing prices to crash led many healthy mortgages to go underwater (owe more than the house was worth) and default, which affected banks that didn't even have high risk mortgages.

The TARP did work already. It already stopped a liquidity crisis from destroying perfectly good banks whose only fault was that the temporary contraction of credit would force them to sell assets at firesale prices because they couldn't get a simple line of credit to cover short term liabilities. If the TARP didn't work, you would KNOW about it.

I do admire and applaud your well written statement, you could never become a politician though because its clear you actually think. But isnt it a better job to be designated as a taxpayer? Think of the pride you feel when your government spends away the foundation and future of the greatest most powerful nation the world has ever seen. 20 years from now we can sit down with our grandchildren and tell them the stories about the old days, long ago when the USA was the beacon for the world. But don't worry!!!! The New World Order government knows whats best for you!!!

There's also the "War on Drugs." An entire agency (DEA) devoted to the purpose, forty years, and even those who are caught, tried, convicted, and incarcerated can still obtain drugs.

I'm not sure how much more complete a failure could be than that.

The VA is a government run health care system. It's not perfect, but it works. I've had two relatives who benefited from government run health care. As someone who has no insurance, I'm hoping that something will work. No one has said it would be free. I'd rather have an affordable public plan rather than always give check stubs to a patient advocate and be a charity case.

Call me an idiot if you so desire. I have the audacity to hope.

Yes, I can't for the life of me understand with 12 years of Congressional power and 8 years of Bush how you were not able to "fix" anything. And yet you insist that Republicans are the answer and not the problem.

Hell no! Ask anyone who works in aspects of government healthcare now, with medicaid, medicare and the billing involved.

It's a mess in itself.