So the Congressional Budget office comes out today and says the gov't proving health care is unaffordable. It will add to much to the national debt. The figure that's been floating around is 1 trillion over a decade to pay for health care reform. Yet at the same time, Congress is negotiating the military budget for 2010. It's something in the ball park of 580 Billion dollars for one year. Extrapolate that out over ten years, our gov't will spend almost 6 Trillion dollars on our bloated military. Why has the CBO never came out and said our military budget is unaffordable? If it has, I've never seen it in the newspapers like they did with the health care projections. Gee if spending a trillion dollar on health care is unaffordable, isn't our more expensive military budget unaffordable as well? Maybe if we didn't spend 6 trillion a decade on our military, we could afford 1 trillion to provide health care for all our citizens. Shows you how misplaced our priorities are as a country.

Half the country can't afford to get sick or it will wipe out their savings. Your side has offered NO SOLUTION to this problem. That is the reality. Obviously your precious "market" isn't fixing it. Profit is a human construct, health is universal. Your genes don't care how much money you make. Until your side takes this concern seriously and comes up with a better solution, or for that matter, ANY solution, then your complaining about the evils of government will fall on deaf ears. When a current system fails the people, the people will demand another one. Right now, the current system is failing too many people. Maintaining it doesn't work for society. Profit means nothing to those who are nearly dead.

THAT is an excellent point.

Defense, even though we spend more than the rest of the world combined, is not, apparently, unsupportable.

But health care, something we need and use far more often than F-22s, is supposed to be a back-breaker for the budget.

I am disappointed that Texas Senators and Representatives - which are almost totally Republican - have nothing better to do with their time, and my money, than to fall lock-step into promotion of lies and half-truths. If they would spend ANY time with their constituents - they would be inundated with any number of people who are without healthcare, have had their benefits cut, suffer increased premiums, and have been denied service by health insurance companies. These companies care more about profits and healing the sick, whose money they are more than willing to line their pockets with when they have not filed a claim.

I understand as a stockholder I would like to see the company make a profit. However, as a person who needs healthcare – I do not want a company’s CEO, or some other employee, denying me healthcare because the company’s business is really about making a profit.

Basically – insurance companies are running a huge Ponzi scheme. They need my premiums to keep their company in business, pay bonuses, and profits. But, should I file a claim for healthcare they are more than willing to deny me service because it cuts into their profits.

Good post.

The profit motive means nothing to the 18,000 people who die each year because they can't afford health care coverage.

It just strikes me as bizarre that people have so internalized this idea that huge multi-nationals are somehow necessary for innovation and the development of important drugs and treatments.

They aren't.

We actually could do without them entirely. That's not what I particularly want. But I do wish we had a large public sector devoted entirely to quality of life improvements, using non-profit models. It would be excellent for something like that to compete with the private sector and spur innovation even more . . .

If the private sector remains obstinate in the face of reform, however, we may need to take another look at their dominance.

It's in their best interest to accept reform. If not, the American people may wake up one day and realize the government could fund and create health care treatments and innovations that would help far more people, at far less cost, than our current system. I think America is imbalanced in favor of private profit over people. We need to reserve that course . . .

Do you really want the government to tell you what to do? Do you want the treatment that they decide you will get and not the one you want? Will you like to hear the doctor tell you that your parents, sorry, are too old for this procedure to be "cost effective" and that you're just going to have to make some "hard choices"? Easy to say in the abstract but when you face it in reality, what will you do? This issue of a government run health care system is not a partisan issue. It's a control issue. My sister in laws husband is Japanese and his father developed lung cancer at age 70; he was told, basically, sorry, but you've lived the productive side of your life and this is just the way it is. He lasted a year and a half. Is this what you want to hear when it's yourself or a relative in this position? Read the bill before you throw yourself into believing that this is the answer.

Congress's chief budget analyst delivered a devastating assessment yesterday of the health-care proposals drafted by congressional Democrats, fueling an insurrection among fiscal conservatives in the House and pushing negotiators in the Senate to redouble efforts to draw up a new plan that more effectively restrains federal spending.

Under questioning by members of the Senate Budget Committee, Douglas Elmendorf, director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, said bills crafted by House leaders and the Senate health committee do not propose "the sort of fundamental changes" necessary to rein in the skyrocketing cost of government health programs, particularly Medicare. On the contrary, Elmendorf said, the measures would pile on an expensive new program to cover the uninsured.

Though President Obama and Democratic leaders have repeatedly pledged to alter the soaring trajectory -- or cost curve -- of federal health spending, the proposals so far would not meet that goal, Elmendorf said, noting, "The curve is being raised." His remarks suggested that rather than averting a looming fiscal crisis, the measures could make the nation's bleak budget outlook even worse.

Elmendorf's blunt language startled lawmakers racing to meet Obama's deadline for approving a bill by the August break. The CBO is the official arbiter of the cost of legislation. Fiscal conservatives in the House said Elmendorf's testimony would galvanize the growing number of Democrats agitating for changes in the more than $1.2 trillion House bill, which aims to cover 97 percent of Americans by 2015.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/16/AR2009071602242.html?hpid=topnews