Majority of 'Americans' Support MANDATED Purchase of Health Coverage

financing medical services, with all the ramifications and interconnections with other institutions is not financially feasible going forward. Also, most Americans sense a change is needed and are willing to share the burden. This is where this supposedly democratic nation is, where the debate begins.

The place to be in the debate is not digging in your ideological heels and hoping you can ram thru another 30% president.(Although that works, doesn't it) It is to vigorously debate the issue with people where they are, openly and respectfully...unless 5% of the republican party vote is good enough for you. Or we can still have our public discourse dominated by propagandists that know how to tap into the power of defining complex issues in single words.

We like to tout Americans as pragmatic problem solvers, can we do it anymore without an actual or ideological gun in our hands? Just standing back and folding the arms is only perpetuating the problem. "Mind-forged manacles" are not exclusively a problem of the "liberal" masses.

Pie in the Sky and Sugar Plums growing on Trees! They will all be sorely disappointed if they don't get it and especially if they do get it. All this country needs is another entitlement program.

Government is not going to be able to make everyone get healthcare.
They can't even secure or protect America, without borrowing money from our grand kids.

Nice pipe dream some politicians/people have, but will never work.

let alone health care. Ron Paul supporters should be for smaller government if they truly understand what the United States was meant to be...A free land.

http://www.worldnetdaily....

Thursday, March 06, 2008

No health insurance? Face fines
Failure to subscribe can cost residents up to $912 a year

Massachusetts has begun imposing stiff fines on residents who, for whatever reason, fail to purchase health insurance.

The program is the enforcement end of the state's universal health-insurance plan – and the fees reach up to $912 a year.

The state health-insurance initiative, signed into law by former Gov. Mitt Romney, has been compared to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's national universal health-care plan – especially on the enforcement side.

The penalties apply to anyone deemed able to afford health insurance by the Commonwealth Health Insurance Connector Authority, the state agency that oversees the entire program.

Fines accrue every month to individuals not insured and are due as part of the tax-filing process for the year. The assessments began this year for the first time.

"The hefty fines are an indication of the failure of the program to provide the affordable health insurance that was promised," Arnold King of the Cato Institute told Health Care News.

The highest penalty for lacking insurance last year was the loss of the personal exemption, worth $219, on the individual's state tax return. This year the fine increased to half the total cost of the cheapest health insurance plan available through the state health insurance agency.

Through the plan, the state makes subsidized insurance available to individuals earning up to $30,636 per year and to families of four earning up to $61,956.

"The Massachusetts universal coverage plan is overregulated and largely unworkable," said Devon Herrick,, senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis. "The least expensive plan would cost a 37-year-old male resident of Massachusetts $196 a month, and a fine for not having insurance could run half of that, or $98 a month. The same 37-year-old living in Dallas could buy coverage for $98 per month."

Herrick said deregulation of the insurance market in Massachusetts would bring the costs way down.

The 2-year-old program is already $147 million in the red, and the four carriers that provide the subsidized insurance estimate costs rising by 14 percent in the next year.

To deal with the crisis, state officials have ordered carriers to "cut payments to doctors and hospitals, reduce choices for patients, and possibly increase how much patients will have to pay," according to a report in the Boston Globe.

Canadian doctors rush to the USA every chance they get.
As long as American citizens get used to waiting in line for everything except live threatening emergencies.

But notice the detail, as long as employer's are paying, they would support it.

I find these polls funny though. Smells like PR to get everyone ready.

Where is the gene that humans have that makes everyone follow a crowd?

2 cures for cancer barely register in the media:

Laetrile aka B17
DCA

look them up

neither can be patented, are very cheap, and appear to be highly effective

the insurance and drug companies have a lot to lose if these became mainstream

stop CODEX alimentarius!!!

have reported the government health care system to be very poorly administered and managed.

When I visited Italy, Greece and Turkey, I found that much of what I had known about those countries was hog-wash. People from the U.S. are not generally regarded as "Bad". Instead, we are rude, large and loud. The Italians pay close to 60% in income taxes and the average income is in the range of $26,000. Laws are restrictive, including those to operate a vehicle. A person must be 21 y.o. to drive a car and not until 26 y.o. to operate a car at rate of speed greater than 55 kph. In Turkey, the PKK Kurds have been at war with numerous tribes, forever. My prior knowledge of the Kurds, according to U.S. sources, was the Kurds were greatly abused by the government of Iraq. The EU is becoming more suspect by member countries as the EU's structure becomes more developed.

Overall, most locals I conversed with had a high regard for the U.S., primarily as a result of WW2, and a large percentage would love to emmigrate to the U.S.

In response to "Say What You Want, by hdaddy, my point is that opinion is not factual.

The above referenced Canadiens were with me in Italy, Greece and Turkey.

Go Dr. Paul.

I don't support anything that's mandated. The whole premise sucks.
Besides, as Ron Paul asked, when's the last time the government got involved and made something better? Free market health care, driven by competition, not insurance companies, is the answer. Take some of the power away from the insurance and drug companies. Let people pick thier own doctor, and pay for it with their own money that they now have because they aren't being taxed to death. Doctors will treat you the way they want, not the way the insurance company directs them.

Hand-outs are for petting zoos.
Real animals work for what they need to survive. Anything else and you are a house cat.

Maybe some of the (femminist lobbies) that pushed for mandated HCI supported this health care BS.
It is now manditory for all NON-custodial parent to purchase, pay for and then requires them to pay a % of the services "not covered" by the policy. They are required to carry health, dental, and an optical plan......... It is a big mess and what ever the "custodial parent" claims is never questioned..........

created by a stacked poll from a liberal thinktank. How gullible do you think Ron Paul supporters are?

The MSM loves to put this stuff together for the corrupt political elite to help them further their agenda of total control over the wealth of the American people.

If we think about our own experience and poll the people we know personally, we find some semblance of the truth. Yes, there is a small minority of foolish or misguided people who favor your plan, but it is neither wanted nor accepted by the majority of Americans and no amount of publishing lies will chane that fact.

Who wouldn't, if offered the spectre of FREE healthcare or healthcare paid for by someone else, wouldn't want it.

The myth is, of course, that it's not free. It does come at someone else's expense.

If you think healthcare is expensive now, wait 'til you see what it costs when it's FREE.

This is the road to perdition, "my friends".

They poll things because they have plans.. Big plans. Never even consider a poll unless it includes ever question asked including wording. this is data analysis 101. We should just perfectly copy Canada's system where everyone is equal. Watch Sicko.. they genuinely love their health care system. You know your health care sucks and your state of well being is hyped when the country you are embargoing (cuba) is only right behind you on the list of best care in the world. We're like 37 by the way and everyone of the countries ahead of us have socialized medicine and have taken the Corporation out of pharmaceuticals.

Ok, first of all most people only THINK that they want mandated healthcare. AND, I could be wrong, but I doubt they call it mandated health care. They usually call it Universal Health Care. And how great does that sound!? I used to be all for Universal Health Care until I learned.
Every time I explain to someone that you're still paying for it in your taxes but yet you have to use a monopolized provider alloted to you by your government, people wake up fast. In any free market, every body knows that competition benefits the consumer.
Not to mention, when you don't get the mandated health care, there's crazy penalty fines. And most people that don't have the healthcare, dont have it because they dont want it, rather they don't have it because they cannot afford it. So you're only setting the financially weak back further, and the people who had health insurance in the first place, still have it. So it doesn't seem quite effective, does it? Just look at Mass.

The government isnt' here for hand outs, or to help low income people get health care. A free market, with healthy competition would help out lower income people much more than the government EVER could.

Also explain to the people who already have healthcare, and have done the time to plan it for themselves, that they will be paying for the planning of the rest of the lazy America. Even if magic doctors came in and worked on and treated people every day, the government still would have to plan for it, thus costing you even more money. But Alas, no magic doctors, just hidden taxes we pay so they can get paid....

The American way of saving money isn't walking to the grocery store, it's ordering the medium pizza instead of the large.

The only reason Ron Paul doesn't poll higher is;
No I will make a post and title it **polls** then you can read my input.

By the foxes in the hen house.

"Walls are stronger than the men that defend them."

Ghegis Khan

The government keeps the border open, providing medical care to millions of illegal immigrants, then threatens to garnish our wages to pay for it. Get ready for the North American Union.

we have been taught how to be unhealthy. It's all about the drug/medical culture. Teach people how to be really healthy, stop prescribing drugs that prop up bad lifestyle choices and Health Care becomes a whole new animal. It would be occasional "Emergency" Care and it would be cheap.

all american shoul watch Sick in america by john stossel.he really investigates what is causing the high prices of health care

http://youtube.com/watch?...
John Stossel - Sick in America - Part 1 (of 6)

John stossel takes on mythes about Heatlh care system and Michael Moores new movie Sicko

Government would have to ease the tax burdens we have now, and they would have to cut federal spending drastically, before it could even be thought possible to do.

Nice utopian dream though, I'll admit.

since I'm against anything mandated by the government.

http://jewishworldreview....

Feb. 29, 2008

Dying for Universal Healthcare —
British Patients Starved and Left in Ambulances
By Drs. Michael A. Glueck & Robert J. Cihak

The Democratic candidates tell us they can provide health care for all ‹ either mandated or not. It sounds utopian ‹ except they don't say how we will pay for it or that the quality and quantity of care will go down as costs go up.

If we think we want universal health care first we need to make a few reality checks. It hasn't worked in Britain, Canada, France, Germany, and Russia.

There are some alarming health abuses going on in the United Kingdom recently noted by the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons and others.

To meet U.K. government targets, which require emergency department patients to be treated within four hours, thousands of patients are kept in ambulances outside the department for hours. Last year, more than 43,000 patients waited for more than an hour before being allowed into the emergency room.

Ambulances that are being used as "mobile waiting rooms" are unavailable to take fresh calls. The Labour government brought in the four-hour standard in an effort to end the scandal of patients waiting in casualty for days (Daily Mail 2/20/08).

British patients are being denied certain operations because of lack of worthiness, based on smoking, obesity, heavy drinking, or age. Officials are urging patients to turn to "self care" instead of physician visits.

Statistics from the Conservative Party show that the number of patients released from British National Health Service (NHS) hospitals with malnutrition has doubled in the decade since Labour came to power, increasing from 74,431 in 1997 to 139,127. While most of the patients had nutritional deficiencies on admission, the nutritional condition of at least 8,500 actually worsened during their hospital stay.

Last year, Health Minister Ivan Lewis admitted that patients were being starved on the wards, with some elderly patients given little more than a scoop of mashed potatoes for lunch. Often, elderly patients are given non-pureed food that they cannot chew or swallow. Food trays may be placed out of reach and simply taken away when patients are too weak to get to them (Telegraph 1/1/08). "The threat to cut benefits to the old and the unhealthy in Britain is a clear confirmation that health care can never be free," he says. "The threat also shows that health care can't be truly universal, at least not for the long term, because it becomes too costly to maintain as such" ("Health Freezes Over," Investors Business Daily 1/29/08).

One way to relieve strains on the system is to allow patients to pay privately for portions of their care while still receiving "basic" care from the NHS. For example, patient Debbie Hirst, who has metastatic breast cancer, attempted to raise $120,000 to pay for Avastin, a drug widely used in the U.S. and Europe but not available to NHS patients until the cancer is so widespread that treatment may be hopeless.

Such arrangements have tacitly been allowed before, but in this case the doctor delivered the news that he was getting his wrists slapped by the higher-ups. If the patient paid for Avastin, so goes the logic, she'd have to pay for all of her treatment ‹ far more than she could afford.

Patients "hopscotch" all the time, for example paying for a timely private consultation or MRI, then getting their surgery from the NHS. But "that way lies the end of the founding principles of the NHS," said health secretary Alan Johnson to parliament.

The rules for private co-payments are contradictory and confusing. The idea of the NHS may be to assure rich and poor get equal treatment, but the system is riddled with inequities. Drug availability, waiting lists, and per capita spending for cancer care vary wildly from region to region.

As patient Hirst explained: "I'm a person who left school at 15 and I've worked all my life and paid into the system, and I'm not going to live long enough to get my old-age pension from this government" (New York Times 2/21/08). There is no need to die while seeking universal care.