Health care reform is not possible. There is no part of the socalled health care system that is not irredeemably broken.

You want health care?

Simple, drop the names of all people who filed IRS returns last year in a gigantic box.

Draw 29 peoples names totally at random.

Then send them to the 10 countries that have the longest life expectancy.

Then they vote on which one is best and we copy what that country does exactly.

Health care reform is a waste of paper.

Don't forget Monkey Medicaid, Earl. It may not be the most important issue -- until tragedy strikes your family.

I like the fact that we're making those earning over $250K pay for it through increased taxes and limits on deductibility on charitable donations.

Oops! I guess that means that Mercy Corp, United Way, Salvation Army, etc are actually paying for quite a bit of this.

In a comprehensive 2006 study on charitable giving shows that higher income individuals respond to changes in tax benefits of giving by giving less:

See: http://www.philanthropy.iupui.edu/Research/portraits-donors-report-dec-2007.pdf

This is disturbing since the top 4% of the income earners account for 66% of ALL charitable giving.

Why in HELL would you vote for this Earl?

@self exile:

It has already been done. See the PBS Frontline show: "Sick around the world:can the US learn anything from the rest of the world about how to run a healthcare system?"

It aired early last year and was fantastic. The web page for the show is here

Hmmmm, so we have an extra $600 Billion to put away right now? Really? Is that from the $787 Bil. Stimulus? no. From the $18 Bil. to stupid Car salesman? (who want another $40 Bil. now)no. From the $350 Bil. for the Banks? no. The $75 Bil. to pay home loans for Illegal's? no. This must be in the New $400 Bil. Omnibus bill with $8 Bil. in pork and 8,000 ear marks that Pres. O said would stop happening??? Maybe this is in the new $3.5 Trillion budget idea, an increase of over $1 Trillion in one year, that Pres. O just announced. It's hard to keep track of all this spending, whew.

Or does that involve even more borrowing from Communist China? ohhyaa great idea.

Wow! Pres. O and our Democrats in Congress sure think we are all rich and are spending our money years before they get it and boy we will fix the economy by spending our way out of it, won't we boys? Doesn't seem to work at home though huh.

In Debt another tens of $Trillions in just 5 weeks! Good job D's.

Self Exile - Answer? Japan! All pay a 30% co-pay for health care and live a long long time.

I laugh at your collective inferior intellect and cheer at the day to come soon when Americans have had it (Gun sales have gone waaay up, hmmm) and the D's are tossed out. Could be 2010 or 2011, but people are getting mad and finally waking up.

Socialism has never worked (ask the millions of Immigrants who come here who fled from it) and will not work here either, nice try but you'll see.

by all means, let's set aside more than half a trillion dollars for a program that doesn't even exist yet, and further, hasn't even had 10 seconds of public debate yet.

So long as you have the for-profit motive in US healthcare where MD graduates expect to make $300,000+ per year and health insurance preys on the sick and slightly overweight through a jungle of paperwork, deductibles, and insane, ever increasing monthly premiums, then meaningful healthcare reform is nothing more than pointless pandering.

Massachusetts is the perfect example of trying to enact comprehensive healthcare reform without castrating managed care first. Let me direct you to:

http://i1.democracynow.org/2009/2/27/can_us_achieve_meaningful_health_care

The profit motive in healthcare must go, otherwise there will always be someone without healthcare coverage.

Earl you might want to look at the McCarran-Ferguson Act. I think it was passed in 1948 and ask how that act impacts our ability to purchase insurance. Does it reduce competition in the health insurance business and thus drive up costs?

Secondly you might look at what nurses are allowed to do in Europe, where I understand they account for 60% of healthcare spending, as opposed to the U.S. where doctors are the big cost. Not to mention midwives who deliver about 10% of infants in the U.S. and in parts of Europe midwives deliver 70% with higher survival rates and at lower costs than the doctors. How do we get more midwives in the U.S. medical system?

Then there are the 20, or so states that have certificates of need for new medical facilities. Do such certificates reduce costs, or add to them?

And how do we get all medical facilities to post their costs so that patients have an opportunity to see what the costs are? As I recall there was an article in the New York Times last year that pointed out that the $80,000 heart bypass was not any better than the $20,000 one.

self exile is right, and first up! I have resigned myself to die rather than access the system. Life in this country is worthless. Only the neurotic blanks are interested in preserving and passing on their precious, failed genes.

That's the plan. We're supposed to self-select out. Why the torture though? Instead of just "death with dignity", how about real "assisted suicide"? What kind of people will legislate for death with dignity and, accept as impracticable, life with dignity?

Incentives are the key; you're right, Earl.

I commend to anyone interested the New Yorker article from a couple weeks ago about how each industrialized nation achieved universal coverage in its own unique way, based on the traditions and circumstances it faced at the time.

As much as we may want to trash the old system and jump straight to single-payer, the cost in lives and health of such a wrenching change would be incalculable. What we need, and still don't have, is a road map from where we are to where we need to go. Some roads pass through the Valley of Death, others traverse the Mountain of Discomfort (preferable). We need to pack some emergency rations and spare wheels, because none will be smooth.

Dr. Don McCanne of PNHP on the Himmelstein(single payer)-Nichols (pay-or-die) debate noted by Moonbat above (can_us_achieve_meaningful_health_care):

"Primarily because of political perceptions, Len Nichols continues to support what he believes to be the pragmatic approach of covering everyone with regulated private plans. However, when experts like David Himmelstein continue to confront him with the facts about our flawed financing system, Nichols' support for private insurance seems to be shifting from knowing that it would work, to wishing that it could, even though "our system is a mess." He needs to take the next step of acknowledging that private insurance can't work so that we can move forward and fix the "mess" by enacting a single payer national health program."

"Pragmatism" will kill the movement for true universal coverage by bankrupting the system. As we see here, there is an elite consensus around drowning the baby (socially desired and desirable programs) in the bath water by increasing social costs and risks until programs must be abandoned altogether. As Physicians for A National Health Program argues effectively, the "middle ground" of competition between corporate health care and public programs is a disaster for those of us who are required to bear those costs and risks.