NEWS: Massachusetts Attempts Universal Health Care, page 3

Look who's back. Please learn to use quote tags. your post is a nightmare on the eyes (and greviously over-quoted).

First, your question is too inspecific for a yes or no answer, but if you insist on a sweeping generalization, the answer is an emphatic no. A typical working or middle class family with children would not be able to afford adequate medical coverage even if they got back the money they were being taxed for government medical programs. With no preventitive care and no trips to the emergency room they'd be OK, but get hospitalized once and bye bye. What your question essentially proposes is that the government is taking in enough money to pay for all of everyone's medical needs, but is holding the money back just for the hell of it.

As for the constitutional question, the constitution is silent on the matter of economics, however it does empower the congress to levy taxes to provide for the general welfare. If something of benefit to the US as a whole is not being accomplished without government intervention, the government can intervene. What you must then argue for your constitutional angle is that there is no benefit to the general welfare of the United States in providing healthcare. Pandemic anyone?

Thanks for the numbers by the way, they are handy. At 2.5 kids and 45,000 income (before taxes) the "average" american family ends up paying $15,625 for kids' medical care- and that's not even covering mom and dad remember. 1/3 of your income on medical care BOOM. Do you mean to tell me that the average family will pay 15-20k less in taxes every year if the government stops trying to help? Most of them don't pay 15k in taxes total.

You speak as if you were carrying the rest of a nation of deadbeats. Ever stop to think that A. You have access to pretty much the same benefits as most people and B. You are sharing in the indirect benefit of a public good. Simple supply and demand dictates that if the poor weren't getting medical care that your costs would go up because the docs weren't doing as much business. Do you want people who can't get immunizations preparing your food when you go out to eat? Heck, if we follow your logic to its logical conclusion, we have to scrap all emergency services and have people pay for private emergency service- not just paramedics either- police and fire too.

Now let's try this question again: What is the economy for. You interjected the word free market as if it were a given, but it's just one of several means to an end that have been discovered. At the root though, why do we work instead of hunting and building our own homes? Why engage in ANY economic system, if not to better procure goods and services?
The object is not to set prices, the object is to get the things we need. You're worrying about a facilitator rather than the object. You spent all your money on gas and forgot to buy a car.

REPLY: Ahhhhh, the catch word..... "communal"; Meaning Socialist and Communist.

Care to have a point? Yes, I said the "C" word. Is god going to strike me dead for it? Again, you're so obsessed with capitalism that you aren't concerned with whether or not the economy accomplishes its purpose.

REPLY: Don't you do any research? Marxism/Socialism has never worked, and the economics (numbers) show it can't. Look at what's happening in Canada. I've studied politics and economy for over 35 years, and history shows I'm correct.

Study harder, not longer. The US Army is socialistic in nature and its the best in the world. We're not hiring mercs now are we? Ditto our socialized emergency services. Ditto out socialized streets and sidewalks- or should you have to buy a permit to walk on the sidewalks contracted by the company of your choice?

By the way, people who have studied the economy for 35 years know how to spell CAPITALISM. It's not even a difficult word for crying out loud.

REPLY: Bogus and crap-ola!

Sorry, I haven't been studying politics or the economy for as long as you, and I don't know what those words mean. I guess you learn those when you're getting your Masters.

Out of, lets say, a hundred possible drugs a year that a company works on, only one or two actually make it to market. It costs around 200 MILLION dollars per drug to develop and test, and 10 to 15 years. Do the math.

I saw that commercial too, the one with the snowflakes, right? Looks like I've learned as much as a freshman as you have in decades... if only i could learn those fancy words... bogus and crapola, right? or is the hyphen mandatory?
Yes, R and D cost money. At the end of the day it's still a fact that there is a profit margin and that margin is being made on costs. Develop them at cost through the government and prices go down. Not cheaper than dirt because you still have R/D costs, but the price goes down never the less. Now are you going to sit here and tell me that pension plans can't invest in something else that doesn't involve making medical care prohibitively expensive?
If I may quote you, "Not my problem" if you have to rearrange your portfolio so that kids can grow up healthy.

Regarding the Hillary's law, you're completely off the point. It was a price fixing law, not a profit-removing law. If it hadn't been left in the private sector it would have worked. The law is no good example. If a limb needs to be amputated, but you skip right to putting the person in a wheel chair, of course they'll get gangrene.

I defy you to show causality between capitalism and technological advancement in such a way as excludes the success of alternate systems. Has it occurred to you that maybe things have gotten so much better in the last hundred years because of the exponential growth of technology, and that any system which by any means devoted resourcesto research would have achieved it?

It has taken you over 35 years to learn how to chant "Socialism=Communism=bad bad bad". Not that I blame you, you started in the middle of the cold war. Your education was shaded and you may never be able to get out of the boxes that were built for you to think in. What you need to do is scrap everything you've been told and rely a little on your own comon sense.

Economics, at its essence, is not GDPs, medians, margins, Adam Smith or Karl stinkin' Marx. When you get right down to it, I ply my trade, you ply yours, and we end up with what we all need. I make the arrows, you shoot them at a deer, johnny skins it, jeff cooks it, george sews clothes from its hide, then we all eat and cloth ourselves etc. That's how it started and thats how it is- money is a facilitator, markets are a facilitator- you've got it backwards. You value your money more than the food it puts on your table.