Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Full-Screen
Click on "Full" at the bottom of the presentation screen to go to full-screen. Comments can be made here or on the Facebook group of "Healthcare Reform: Give your feedback"
Monday, August 3, 2009
Healthcare Reform
For the past two years, I have researched over and over again in an attempt to figure out some solution to our current healthcare system, whose cost has been spinning out of control at an incredible rate over the past ten or fifteen years.
It comes down to one question: is healthcare a privilege, or an unalienable right? Is it part of that right to life and liberty, or is it part of the pursuit of happiness that we control ourselves? In my opinion, it is both. We have a responsibility to keep ourselves healthy, and we have the responsibility to help each other do the same. It is much like police protection, or fire departments: we have the right to that protection, but we should all do our best to lock our own doors and prevent our own house fires. When it doesn’t go right, we provide for a universal protection force that will help us out of a jam. We pay for those services according to what we earn, and the system works fairly well. I wish healthcare had never gotten so far as a business, because now it is almost impossible to find a solution that does not involve an overwhelming power-grab of education and business by our corrupt federal government.
I have reviewed the following slides, making a few changes of my own and eliminating information that I considered biased and/or incorrect. There are notes at the bottom of each slide that explain the content, and cannot be viewed during a “slideshow” of them but only when viewing the presentation as a whole.
After discussing some of the problems with our federal government, I have adopted the opinion that this plan would only be feasible if adopted by state governments, one at a time, as desired by the people. The checks and balances would be in place to put the control of healthcare back into the hands of the PEOPLE per the ability of the people to control the government (which we haven’t seen in a long time in our federal government). By instituting this on a more municipal or state level, we could compensate gradually for the loss/transition of jobs that are involved in the myriad of businesses catering to healthcare.
It is socialized medicine. Stop with the evil word; the word is not evil. What is evil is when we use socialization to take control of the people. Right now, we fear the government instead of the government fearing the people, meaning that if we gave the federal government this power it would end up being abused. How can the government fix a problem that was caused by the government in the first place? By putting the power back into the hands of the people, through the states!
Imagine the implications for a state that begins this type of program; they would have to jump through a million hoops in the federal government, get exemptions from laws in order to provide their services, and get the vote and wishes of the people. However, can you also imagine the businesses that would flock to the state at the prospect of not paying nearly as much for healthcare benefits? The full-time positions that would open up, instead of simply offering part-time positions to avoid benefits? The discounts of car insurance for living in that state, the loans that would be offered at the prospect of not having bankruptcies due to medical bills, the savings of workman’s compensation costs and litigations, the ability to provide preventative medicine instead of treating everyone only in the case of a life-threatening condition (which is what happens to underinsured or uninsured people)?
Of course there would be “inequalities” based on the state’s populations and normal incomes, just as there is in the school systems! But is that a good enough reason to federalize it, to run the risk of causing a massive change in our capitalist system? I do not think so. State governments, or municipalities, are (in my opinion) the answer. Can we do it? Not without changing a lot of the federal regulations. Must we do something? Yes, and it has to be uniquely American in that we should not simply run to imitate “industrialized nations” before considering a similar, but more creative and controllable approach.
Please give me your feedback…..I expect a lot of you to disagree with me, and that is fine. I need to hear other solutions, get the big picture. However, please be specific about alternative solutions! Saying that it won’t work is not helpful; tell me why it won’t work, use real statistics and evidence. If any of the information I’ve provided is incorrect, then please correct me and provide a reference (not Wikipedia)! This is my “watchdog” point of interest, and it’s something that I might be able to make a difference in through contact with healthcare itself.
Thanks for reading! Give me your feedback!
It comes down to one question: is healthcare a privilege, or an unalienable right? Is it part of that right to life and liberty, or is it part of the pursuit of happiness that we control ourselves? In my opinion, it is both. We have a responsibility to keep ourselves healthy, and we have the responsibility to help each other do the same. It is much like police protection, or fire departments: we have the right to that protection, but we should all do our best to lock our own doors and prevent our own house fires. When it doesn’t go right, we provide for a universal protection force that will help us out of a jam. We pay for those services according to what we earn, and the system works fairly well. I wish healthcare had never gotten so far as a business, because now it is almost impossible to find a solution that does not involve an overwhelming power-grab of education and business by our corrupt federal government.
I have reviewed the following slides, making a few changes of my own and eliminating information that I considered biased and/or incorrect. There are notes at the bottom of each slide that explain the content, and cannot be viewed during a “slideshow” of them but only when viewing the presentation as a whole.
After discussing some of the problems with our federal government, I have adopted the opinion that this plan would only be feasible if adopted by state governments, one at a time, as desired by the people. The checks and balances would be in place to put the control of healthcare back into the hands of the PEOPLE per the ability of the people to control the government (which we haven’t seen in a long time in our federal government). By instituting this on a more municipal or state level, we could compensate gradually for the loss/transition of jobs that are involved in the myriad of businesses catering to healthcare.
It is socialized medicine. Stop with the evil word; the word is not evil. What is evil is when we use socialization to take control of the people. Right now, we fear the government instead of the government fearing the people, meaning that if we gave the federal government this power it would end up being abused. How can the government fix a problem that was caused by the government in the first place? By putting the power back into the hands of the people, through the states!
Imagine the implications for a state that begins this type of program; they would have to jump through a million hoops in the federal government, get exemptions from laws in order to provide their services, and get the vote and wishes of the people. However, can you also imagine the businesses that would flock to the state at the prospect of not paying nearly as much for healthcare benefits? The full-time positions that would open up, instead of simply offering part-time positions to avoid benefits? The discounts of car insurance for living in that state, the loans that would be offered at the prospect of not having bankruptcies due to medical bills, the savings of workman’s compensation costs and litigations, the ability to provide preventative medicine instead of treating everyone only in the case of a life-threatening condition (which is what happens to underinsured or uninsured people)?
Of course there would be “inequalities” based on the state’s populations and normal incomes, just as there is in the school systems! But is that a good enough reason to federalize it, to run the risk of causing a massive change in our capitalist system? I do not think so. State governments, or municipalities, are (in my opinion) the answer. Can we do it? Not without changing a lot of the federal regulations. Must we do something? Yes, and it has to be uniquely American in that we should not simply run to imitate “industrialized nations” before considering a similar, but more creative and controllable approach.
Please give me your feedback…..I expect a lot of you to disagree with me, and that is fine. I need to hear other solutions, get the big picture. However, please be specific about alternative solutions! Saying that it won’t work is not helpful; tell me why it won’t work, use real statistics and evidence. If any of the information I’ve provided is incorrect, then please correct me and provide a reference (not Wikipedia)! This is my “watchdog” point of interest, and it’s something that I might be able to make a difference in through contact with healthcare itself.
Thanks for reading! Give me your feedback!
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