The Trouble With Healthcare Reform, In Numbers

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Can someone please tell me why it's so very incumbent upon taxpayers that they should pay for 50 million uninsured? Why will I get fined thousands of dollars if I prefer to be uninsured? Why is it when my present health insurance plan readjusts, I will be forced by law to join a government approved plan? Who bestows rights, God or the government? If it's the government then why in the Bill oF Rights is there several times the phrase, "Government shall pass no laws prohibiting...?" Here's a hint: Governments don't bestow or give or authorize or provide us with rights. Governments can ONLY take rights away so NONE f us have a "right" to health care if it is the government who is going to provide us with it.

Ken Russell of MO 8:05PM July 22, 2009

Interesting. Thanks for presenting these without editorializing.
Funny, I look at all these numbers, and I'll bet that no matter what I believed and didn't believe in regarding national healthcare, I could pick and choose from among them -- mixing and remixing my choices -- and somehow find some striking interpretation that supported precisely whatever claim I wanted to make.
Which gets to the real point: We will decide for or against doing something with healthcare not using financial facts but rather based on each of our own emotions and moralities. If we as a nation come to view heakthcare as a right, we will do it. If we do not, we won't.

Ronald Pires of FL 4:12PM July 22, 2009

for one thing: A list of on-point statistics is far more enlightening than a few more paragraphs. More authors ought to do this whenever they can.
As for costs, here is the crux of a problem. We used to reasonably expect primary care physicians to be the "gatekeepers", discouraging people (including hypochondriacs) from unneeded higher-priced care. Now, after a few decades of suing doctors at the drop of a hat, we find our PCPs referring people up to specialists far too often.
Universal care ought to include medical tort reform. But, no (dear conservatives), we cannot suffice on tort reform alone. Do strong health care reform now. Then, do tort reform right behind it.

Muser of NM 12:30PM July 22, 2009