Quote Originally Posted by Dreadnaught View Post
I've made suggestions clear in the past in threads that you posted in. But my larger point is we should abandon universal health care and stop thinking that it works in budget terms. We should strive for policy solutions make health care affordable in most circumstances to most people without nationalizing the whole damn thing.
#1 - This is not nationalizing anything, unfortunately. #2. It can and will work if we decide to make it work. Priorities.

But more importantly, didn't you notice in the opening post that Germany also got a debt warning? Pretty much all of the major industrialized nations except Japan and Australia are overleveraged. I was reading a copy of Institutional Investor on the subway yesterday and saw a full page ad for French debt. Seriously, our budgets have been blown out of whack.
Have you considered the reason those nations are having debt problems has more to do with the on-going Mega-Recession than with their health care systems? You take a snapshot of their fiscal situation in the most desperate of times and conclude they can't have universal health care? Wow. Lets start with a conclusion and make the evidence fit!

The amazing thing is people don't seem to be able to accept this. We don't have the income, and we don't have the capacity for another trillion dollars of debt.
The amazing thing is how you've swallowed the conservative propaganda hook line and sinker, trying and hoping to be defeated before you start. Why don't you start with the conclusion that YES, universal health care is the humane and compassion thing to do, YES it is a basic human right, YES we must make it work and we are starting HERE and NOW. Then move on to yeah, America's health care system is spending TONS of money it doesn't need to spend and the next step in making it all work for all our citizens is to find ways to stop doing that. Then that money that was wasted on things that didn't need to be done, and all the people who did that unnecessary work, can now be re-position for making the universal part of our new and improved health care system work for everybody. Yay!

If you start with - oh nos, we can'ts afford to change this, it costs too much, taking away peoples money is wrong, the market will fix it so we just need to sit back and do nothing, lets stop before we start and keep on the wrong path forever! Then you lose. The first step is to take a step.


Quote Originally Posted by Dreadnaught View Post
(again in an arguably unconstitutional or at least unethical way, we'll have to see) .
Bills have been passed this way time and again. To claim this is extraordinary is to again parrot conservative talking points.