You say you have a government plan with Cadillac benefits.

I’m curious, do you object to everyone having a government plan with Cadillac benefits?

And if you do object to others having the same coverage that you have, on what do you base your opposition? More and more people are coming to realize the absurdity of having one’s health care tied to one’s job. It made more sense when people weren’t changing jobs so often.

In general, do you think it is hypocritical for people who have excellent government plans to oppose others having the same? For example, should every senator or representative who wants the government out of health care drop the insurance they have and get a policy from a private insurance company?

is completely normal and most people who live that long will face a similar situation.

And it has absolutely nothing to do with the problems that I referred to.

And she doesn’t have health insurance only because your father was career military — since she is almost certainly eligible for Medicare. I don’t know whether her coverage is the same, better, or inferior to Medicare, it’s irrelevant, she would have one or the other.

“We aren?t looking to the government to handle what we view as OUR responsibility.”

Funny, you ARE looking to the government to provide her health insurance. I never cease to be amazed by all the people (essentially everyone) who benefit from the government and rant and rave about how terrible it is. For heaven’s sake, man, get her off that government run health insurance and onto a market-based private policy. After all, she must be receiving inferior care, and at this point — she’s 83 — it seems like it is YOUR responsibility to protect her from the government.

And I don’t want to sound insensitive, but it sounds like you’re saying your mother has health insurance because of whom she married, not because she worked hard all her life and made money. (As I said, that’s irrelevant because she is eligible for Medicare, so she wouldn’t be without health insurance even if she’d remained single or married a barber.)

What about if your mother needed a nursing home and it was impossible to find one to admit her at any cost?

Or how about if you signed up for a nursing home for an agreed upon price and then the home hit you with charges that you can’t afford to pay and your mother faced eviction?

All you are doing is carefully selecting your arguments to cover the inadequacies of your thinking.

“As for a sheltered life? Ha! I have supported myself and my family for over 50 years without any help from liberals or the government, thank you very much. You have no clue dipstick.”

I have no doubt that like all rugged individualists your independence is infinite in your mind and hugely overstated in reality. If nothing else, since your mother is the wife (widow now I assume) of a career military individual, she has probably received many years of pension and health care benefits, which if they hadn’t been provided would have fallen to you (and your brother) to supply.

I’m also assuming that you’ve never driven on government built roads or used any other facilities provided by the government. That’s the same government that employed your father and provided the money he used to raise you. And of course it hasn’t been just liberals, because both parties have contributed to the government benefits that exist.

As I said, your mother’s situation, while real and serious, has no relevance whatsoever to the health care crisis in this country. I’m just curious, but what would happen to your mother if neither you nor your brother could help her? If your mother is 83, you’re old enough that the mortality charts are started to run against you. What if you had a stroke or heart attack? Would your brother be able to manage alone? Lots of people don’t have anyone else to provide support for them. It’s sad that you think you’re so special and so many of us are just big whiners, but my guess is you probably whine about the government more than I and my friends and family whine about everything combined.

You’ve complained a lot, but you haven’t offered a single suggestion that would help any of the uninsured or underinsured people in this country. As I said, you don’t know what your talking about, so how could you have a solution.

Get a job is not a solution. It’s a substitute for honestly confronting a real problem — a problem that is catastrophic for millions of Americans. (They didn’t go away or get health insurance just because your mother needs a nursing home.)

…although it won’t well-received.

I’m in a hurry, so this may not be perfectly organized. Sorry.

First, as for my party affiliation. I’m now an Independent. I was a Republican, but I don’t believe the current Republican Party offers many meaningful solutions to our problems — especially health care. I think many of the most prominent voices in the RP are irresponsible. For example, the recent dust up over “death panels” was embarrassing and completely dishonest. I have a living will and I believe everyone over the age of 18 should.

I have nothing good to say about the Democratic Party (and no, I won’t use the childish and grammatically incorrect Democrat Party — that’s one of my complaints about the Republican Party — it’s degenerated into a non-serious entity that engages in such silliness.)

At this point I am for a single-payer universal system. I’ve lived in Europe and now live a few miles from Canada. I’ve seen their systems compared with ours and despite flaws, single payer systems are much better than what we have in this country. For me, it’s not a matter of ideology; I simply don’t believe our private approach has any chance of doing the job that needs to be done.

I think the current proposals by Democrats will be either worthless or a disaster. They are taking two of the worst aspects of our system (private for-profit insurance and employer-based insurance) and creating a monster around them. I expect insurance companies’ profits to soar (if there is a mandate) and employers will continue to have to drop insurance benefits for competitive reasons, but I don’t see anything that will help contain costs or make our system generally better.

In a way, my feelings about health care are similar to what my father experienced when he visited China decades ago. He was a very conservative, free market oriented businessman. But after visiting China several times he said he didn’t see how (at that time), given the population and magnitude of China’s problems they could even hope to have a democratic system like ours. He was convinced by what he saw, not by what he had always thought.

Concerning health care, I’ve experienced government health care systems and private, and I don’t believe private insurance can or will do the job. Health care is not a commodity and it doesn’t respond to market forces the way most things do. I am convinced that we will have a single payer system eventually — because I believe it’s the only thing that has any hope of working — so I don’t see any reason to put off the inevitable while countless people die, suffer, and face financial ruin. And you can deny it if you want to, but it is happening. And it’s preventable.

As a moral issue, I don’t believe a country as wealthy as ours should tolerate having uninsured people. Those who think that being able to go to an emergency room constitutes health care really haven’t thought it through.

It’s crazy to saddle employers with the added costs of providing insurance (it makes them uncompetitive) and it’s ridiculous to lose your health insurance every time you change jobs. It’s not only inefficient, it’s dangerous. If someone has an accident or illness while between jobs, they may never get insurance again (until they reach age 65).

Having a healthy population is vital to our own economic well-being and right now — regardless of why they are uninsured — having tens of millions of citizens without insurance and underinsured makes no sense to me. The idea that someone who works and has insurance could face bankruptcy and financial ruin because they lack (adequate) health insurance is both crazy and despicable.

Right now we already have a significant percentage of our population receiving “government” health insurance when you include Medicare, the military, and VA. Since the cost of health care is a critical issue, it simply makes more sense to me to remove private insurers — and their need for profit and advertising — from the equation. No matter what the cost of private overhead, profit, and advertising is, I think it is wasted, since much of it could go for care, which should be the only point of a health care system.

My next door neighbor, a 75-year-old Republican is on Medicare and with her supplemental insurance is perfectly happy with it. However, she is from the UK and prefers their system to what she has now. For my part, I absolutely don’t want socialized medicine — i.e., the National Health Service of the UK. I don’t see any need for the government to own everything. Other single payer systems demonstrate that that isn’t necessary and I oppose it.

The vast majority of what opponents of single payer systems say about them in the media consists of lies, distortions, and exaggerations. People in other countries look at us and shake their heads at our gullibility and I agree.

There is a more that I could write about why I favor a single payer system, but I didn’t make my original comment because I wanted to argue about what system we end with. I just wanted to point out that no one benefits when anyone in the discussion uses terms like pro- and anti-rationing.

As for why I haven’t posted. I have little time to post and from following threads here, I knew that it would be difficult for me to be honest and not spark a lot of insults and pointless name calling. I have no interest in disrupting this site and in the future, I don’t intend to engage in the kind of extended commenting that I’ve done today.

I’d much rather have a government employee deciding what care I get, than a private insurance company employee who’s concerned with profit. I’ve seen enough nightmarish examples of this to want to end it forever. After all, how much we spend on health insurance is simply a matter of priorities. Every health expert I’ve heard or read agrees we have the most inefficient system of any highly developed country.

I hope that answers most of your questions. I have to go out, so I’ll have to end this now.