US, France, Britain launch strikes on Syria

It's definitely a poor piece of work on the whole. I mean, penalizing us on tax day for not buying private insurance at exorbitant rates? Really? SO stupid.

 

We shouldn't be forced to buy anything if we don't want it...period!

 

Especially not when it's a huge ripoff. I hate the system of 10x overpriced healthcare services and products and private "insurance" that then gouges us just to make that affordable. Of course, I'm also looking at this as someone who doesn't have a nice cushy employer insurance scheme, and that's the kind of people this 0-care crap is supposed to help, if I'm not mistaken. Those of us in need. It's an example of how idiots in Washington come up with half-baked "solutions" to major problems instead of coming up with something sensible that actually works and *egads!* possibly costs the wealthy more than it does the poor. It doesn't help when Congress is so damned gridlocked and the nation at large so politically polarized as to be unable to agree on anything at all.

 

Essentially, a RINO is defined as a "Republican" who behaves like a Democrat. For example:



FYI, there are social libertarians in the GOP, Durandal. As for what the Republican party is for, it supposed to be for limited government and fiscal responsibility which is why it's having so many problems with the grassroots conservatives and libertarians who actually stand for those things. The libertarian wing also believes the Republican Party should stand for individual freedom but the GOP, like the Democratic Party, has been maddeningly inconsistent on this.

McCain broke his pledge to repeal FullRetardCare. Being a politician, he has probably broken other promises but that was the most notable (and criticized) one.

 

I've got nothing against 'gridlock' per se...I see it as a period of time when government is momentarily halted in its march to subject us to an ever growing barrage of new laws and prohibitions!

 

OK, but "limited government" has left healthcare in a crisis. What do we do about the cost/affordability situation?

 

Too much of a good thing, though. We're too often paralyzed and left with poor solutions or no solution.

 

And yet being paralyzed for a short time gives us an opportunity to reflect, gather ourselves and consider consequences!

 

That wasn't stupid. It was deliberate, authoritarian, unconstitutional and soon it will be illegal, but that was the Democrats' way of forcing Americans one step further down the road towards obtaining the "progressive" holy grail of socialized/government-run healthcare. FullRetardCare's opponents knew this all along, and later former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid admitted it himself.

 

I look at single payer healthcare the same way as Social Security, Medicare and other such benefit schemes. It is increasingly sensible and necessary as a means to get care to everyone in need. We have had no good alternative offered, nor is there an example somewhere around the world of a "limited government" solution that works.

 

Is 9 years and counting long enough?

 

Not only that but it was a sneaky way to accomplish wealth transfer....an old communist goal. You know what they say, "a government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul"!

 

I would imagine that for some that's an incredible amount of time....but for me, I have no problem with that. A government that governs the least is the government the governs the best!

 

Or as P.J. O'Rourke put it: The mystery of government is not how Washington works but how to make it stop.

But I digress...

 

In the words of that great American, Arthur Herbert Fonzarelli (Fonzi)....'exactamundo'!

 

Yes, there's accomplishing that and granting the government more power at the expense of the individual.

I think Justice Kennedy hit the nail on the head when he stated that the individual mandate fundamentally altered the relationship between the individual and the government.

 

Obviously more government isn't the answer.

I'm not an HC expert and I don't want to derail this thread, but there are ways to get costs down. Unfortunately, FullRetardCare was never about that - it was always about power and control.

 

I think "more government" certainly can be a good answer, as exemplified in Europe and the Commonwealth. No solution is "perfect," but what they have is a damn sight better than what we have, at least as far as ensuring essential care without a personal or national crisis surrounding it.

 

The previous system worked fine for me and judging from the polls going into the enactment of FullRetardCare most Americans were satisfied with it, too. The problem was that it didn't work for everyone and some people entertained utopian fantasies about creating a perfect HC system which would have to be run by Washington, of course.

When I look at single payer I see the single payer system that has so spectacularly and scandalously failed our nation's veterans. Wishing that on everyone is insanity, in my opinion.

 

Expanding Medicaid seems to be the compromise solution, but having lived in Washington a good deal of my life I know that the last people I want running my healthcare are the self-serving politicians and bureaucrats who are running the federal government. There's not just the cost and quality I worry about, but Washington's never-ending encroachment on our privacy. Plus, there's the bankruptcy of our existing HC programs and the national debt to think about.

 

With the word 'mandate' being the troublesome key....as it allows government to force us to do something of which we have no choice in the matter.....and Kennedy is right as the "representative" part of that relationship is disgarded!

 

Apologies to "a better world"....for it seems I too have wandered off topic after having complained about you doing so!

 

God no....the hair on the back of my neck started crawling when I read those words, and my hand automatically reached for my weapon. I propose less government at all levels, not more!

 

There are so many problems with the mandate it's hard to know where to start, but for me it always has been how it usurps the power the Founders invested in the Individual over our government. The mandate transformed us from the masters of our government to the subjects of our government. In the USA power, rights and responsibilities are derived from the Individual, not the State/Collective. It's in authoritarian shitholes like the USSR where power, rights and responsibilities are derived from the State/Collective and dictated to the Individual.

 

That's not reasonable or practical. You're just reacting emotionally, like a Pavlovian reaction. This is why the GOP is in trouble today, why you have "RINO" Republicans not being so quick to toss out 0-care. The "I hate government!" position does not deliver practical, working results.