Comments (14) Jump to Comments Form

1. 

   Machado said, 5 months ago

   The Community Organizer in chief is already hinting of raising taxes….FOR EVERYONE!!

   Who was that around here that said the label of ”Tax and Spend Liberal” didn’t apply any longer?

2. 

   Dale Hopson said, 5 months ago

   After 8 years of “Spend, but tax breaks for the wealth” now is when you are complaining?

3. 

   gerirxer said, 5 months ago

   With spending on universal health care, we keep a lot of people out the ER departments and SAVE MONEY overall, not to mention getting them better health.

   With GOP spending, we ensure the wealth, not the health, of the upper crust, bleeep the little guys, and pour our monies into cesspools in the middle east.

   It’s a no brainer. Really.

4. 

   Ronda Lancaster said, 5 months ago

   Many covered lives make smaller health care costs for everyone. Let’s do it. When we reduce health care expenses for everyone that includes USA companies & they become more competitive globally.

5. 

   GNWachs said, 5 months ago

   It is interesting at the economic ignorance displayed here. Bush in 2008 had $400B in deficits and Obama in May 2009 has $1.8T. To Dale that is the same.

   gerirxer, if dollars are your bottom line you should let everyone die young. If you save them in the ER than they will die a few years later from some lingering disease. Everybody dies and the longer you live the more it costs society.

   There are many many other reasons for health care and insurance but saving money is not one of them.

6. 

   dtroutma said, 5 months ago

   Buying cars in fleets is cheaper. Insuring folks en mass is cheaper. Pay less for cars, pay and pay LESS in taxes for health care- that is the basis of supposed “Capitalism”. Single payer IS “market driven” savings.

7. 

   motivemagus said, 5 months ago

   GNWachs, you’ve oversimplified. It costs plenty of money when people die younger if we have to take care of them while they do so. Also, many diseases and conditions are cheap to treat if caught early, but very expensive if not – e.g., many cancers. But people without good healthcare can’t afford regular doctors’ visits. (The single most important survival factor in cardiac care units is the experience of the nurses, because they are the ones who monitor the patients regularly. Similarly, more time spent with a doctor, and he may spot patterns sooner.)
   Also, dtroutma is right, but there are specific examples. European countries have negotiated with drug companies to get lower prices because they are negotiating en masse, as he noted. The cost of drugs is generally lower there than here, where it is spread out amongst many individuals and individual insurance plans. But Bush explicitly enacted legislation to forbid Medicare and Medicaid from doing just such negotiations. Why? To protect their friends in the pharmaceutical industry perhaps?

8. 

   GNWachs said, 5 months ago

   motivemagus: You are missing my point. Dollars spent cannot be the operating criteria. Look at the country over the next 100 years. Man goes to ER with treatable disease and we save him instead of letting him die. 40 years later same man gets long drawn out cancer (or Alzheimers) and costs society hundreds of thousands of $$. We would have been economically far better off letting him die in the ER.

   One of the prime motivations behind the push for gay marriage is health care coverage. I am not totally familiar with current costs but when I was treating AIDS it cost society $500/day to treat one patient. Getting back to your economic argument, which I reject, society would be far better off economically letting them die and save $500/day forever.

   BTW, if you want to be serious in debate medication charges for the US are under 10% of total health costs. Defensive medicine because of Obama and the trial lawyers is over 20%. I read you unhappy about 8% but ignore 20%. Each president has its own constituency.

   You and the others here seem very intelligent. Where do you imagine the next generation of antibiotics, AIDs treatment, swine flu vaccine is going to come from? It costs $1B to develop a new FDA approved medication. So your solution is starve Big Pharma and the new meds will just magically appear?

9. 

   oldlegodad said, 5 months ago

   Libs think that because if the gubment say so ,it will happen

10. 

    David said, 5 months ago

    Yeah, this toon is SO spot-on. This is the same government that said that Medicare would cost 3 billion dollars to start in 1966 and then estimated that in 1990 it would be 12 billion dollars. The real numbers 24 years later were 107 billion dollars. Eighteen years later, it was $470 billion. The plan that Obama is proposing will likely do no different…it will cost way more than they project. No matter how good the idea is if the money isn’t there it simply isn’t there. So if this plan behaves like Medicare did will we even have the line of credit to support it?

    People lie, evidence does not. The CBO brought up concerns about the Stimulus that are panning out to be true and now they are warning us about this proposed healthcare plan now. The real question is are we going to stay focused on the vision in the sky for so long that we fail to see when we step off the cliff in front of us?

11. 

    nomad2112 said, 5 months ago

    So Hopson, two wrongs make it right?

12. 

    dtroutma said, 5 months ago

    Uh, that 1.6 trillion IS to cover a 10 year health program- the same amount would last Defense about 14 months.

13. 

    motivemagus said, 5 months ago

    GNWachs, I guess I was hoping you weren’t actually suggesting that we just let people die to save on healthcare costs.

    No, money isn’t the only criterion for universal healthcare, but since one of the most frequently stated falsehoods about it is that it will be more expensive, it is only right to challenge that. Previously you have implied that you are against this, I think. What are your reasons? I’ve listed several in various posts.

    As for taking away money from the poor lil’ pharma industry, there are many other approaches to deal with that. For one thing, you could extend the patent time so they could get more exclusivity longer. I’m not overly worried about Big Pharma going broke.

    In any case the largest wastage in our healthcare system is insurance, not pharmaceuticals. I only cited that as an example of the power of a different approach.

14. 

    Jimathai said, 5 months ago

    LOL… work it out Obama!!