but in this situation, we’re talking about implementing a plan to give more people coverage. That will, in all likelihood lead to longer lines, and people are resisting *that* in particular.

I could be wrong, maybe the lines we forsee wouldnt exist, or maybe they would be caused by a red tape bottleneck, but many just don’t want too many more people to have coverage because it would detract from the quality of thier own.
People wouldnt say so in as many words, but that’s what it boils down to, right?

And I know it’s sarcasm, but it’s still pushing around the idea that a lot of people take literally.

But I was saying that the whole fear of long lines is nonsense. If there are long lines that means that whoever is new to those lines was not there before, which means that they fell through the cracks. People who have never been insured before will begin to pour out of the woodworks towards hospitals when they need care. It might lower the quality of care, but would you have it any other way?
If these lines didnt exist (barring a massive boost in efficiency of our hospitals), as they dont now, that means that people aren’t able to get the health care they need.
do you get what I’m saying?
I’m just trying to refute the argument that long lines due to more people is a bad thing. I think long lines are bad, but that they should be avoided through more efficient health care (like you’re saying about cutting the bureaucracy) rather than having fewer patients.

Seems like a few laws that allow individuals to purchase HCI at big business rates and protects them from being cut off if they get sick is all we need. Setting up a huge government run HC system is over kill, crazy costly and likely less efficient than what we have now.

You would rather have the people not be there, because it might lead to lower care for you. if you follow that logic to the extreme, the entire health care system in the united states should revolve around you.
You’re saying you’d prefer that the people who are crowding up your hospital would go piss off and die in a corner somewhere. essentially.

You’ve either seriously misread the post, or you didn’t read it at all.

East coast tends to be more civically and socially aware. That doesn’t mean people agree, just that by dint of living so close to one another, there isn’t room – physically or metaphorically – to ignore what your neighbors are doing or to realize what they do impacts you directly. How they act on that does vary.

Out in the Pac NW, we largely have enough room to be left alone if that’s what we so desire. People across the political spectrum prefer to be left to their own devices as much as possible. We tend to disagree on what govt should be involved in rather than the extent of involvement.

So given that, reasonable people can disagree about where to draw up the social safety net. I agree that responsibility is not the biggest factor in who has health ins, but it is a factor for reasons no one has brought up yet.

Anyone 25, single and male, could easily make the responsible, selfish-as-in-free-markets decision not to buy health insurance, especially if it goes toward other investments in themselves. While they are completely rational in that action, society as a whole suffers because risks become greater to everyone, including the 25 year.

Why? For everyone else, costs go up because the ins pool is riskier if those least at risk opt out. For the 25 year old, he is betting a great deal that he won’t spend more on health care than he spends on health insurance.

I’m typically conservative, but I think that healthcare is one of the few issues that have to be all or nothing – everyone is covered or it doesn’t work efficiently (in the sense that it creates imbalances and arbitrage issues). This is also an area that, like it or not, requires rationing. I’d prefer those decisions NOT be made by a bean-counter (as is currently the case).

I’m also a small business owner, and one of the reasons I prefer to work with other independent contractors rather than hiring up is that I can’t compete for employees with larger companies on the basis of benefits. MS and Amazon are big software companies out here, and I can’t match there benefits. I would LOVE to be able to not compete against MS in particular. However, they spread their risk across 80,000, keeping their rates low.

I’d much rather say “We pay x dollars. Where you spend it is up to you”. But I also know that individuals (and individual families) can’t touch health insurance for the amount a company can. So I feel squeezed – have to offer it, but it isn’t as good as larger employers can offer.

My wife’s boss told me that her company (also small) had their insurance premiums go up 75% the first year they hired a female – because she was of child-bearing age, and they ins co expected to pay out on her.

Anything they can do to get health insurance off the books of employers is a good thing.

I did not have any employees when Romney was the Gov. Just picked up two employees in the last year when a competitor went out of business and I bought up their client list, equipment, and hired two of there people. So I can not compare the Romney plan to the new plan. My company is not mandated to get HCI for my employees because we have less than 10 or 20 employees (or whatever the number is).

Sales tax just went up in MA from 5 percent to 6.25 percent but we sell a service so we are exempt from that. I do not think personnel income tax or corporate taxes have gone up.