Here's the way I see it - What are they going to do, throw us all in jail for refusing to pay our fines? The jails are already overcrowded from all those they have convicted in their failed phony drug war. They don't have room for all of us, so let's give them the finger. :mrgreen:
Well come on Dana, the answer to this is easy.
They'd fine us $1,000 for refusing to pay the fines.
Ok, so just so we all understand...
Is the conservative solution to health care to allow everyone to simply choose to buy health coverage, or not as the case may be? And then, if a person shows up at an emergency room or doctor's office with no insurance or cash in hand, refuse to treat them? This is the purely free market solution, isn't it? Let them die if they don't have a way to pay?
Alright, well come on then, what IS your solution? You're partly just pointing out the some flaws to the moderate/liberal solution. The rest of your post is hyperbolic drama. Put yourself out there, let us see what you've got.
I love how you're knocking constantly on the conservatives not giving a plan, but when someone does the same thing to the liberals you start criticizing them for "just showing the flaws".
First, what is this notion that doing SOMETHING is
always better than doing nothing? Its an idiotic notion that has infested our culture it seems that it doesn't matter if what you're doing is GOOD, it just matters that you're doing SOMETHING.
Second, gotta love you complaining about other people using hyperbolic drama when you use things like "Let them die if they don't have a way to pay?" You make yourself look like nothing but a hypocrite with idiotic crap like taht.
Third, not at all. Here's a few thoughts, and mind you I am by no means an expert on this so its slightly vague ideas. Push through tort reform so that people who bring forth frivilous law suits against insurance companies and lose can potentially be liable themselves thus reducing the amount of cases brought and thus reducing the cost of insurance.
Yes, remove any mandates upon ER's to HAVE to work on someone no matter whether they can pay for it or not. I still believe you'd see a number of doctors and offices helping these people, but no it shouldn't be a mandatory requirement. Is that cruel? Perhaps, but sometimes reality is.
Give people a decent tax break if they purchase their own insurance policy and offer tax incentives or perhaps the ability to opt into looser restrictions on top end plans for insurance companies that will offer a more affordable, general preventive care insurance-lite type program that simply helps covers with routine check ups but does little for further treatement.
Now, if you want more of a compromise position in regards to health care. None of them I'm particularly fond of but all would be better than the this fine crap or the full on UHC.
1. IF you're wanting to do the fine, assess it only in years in which someone without insurance used "free" medical services.
2. IF health care is so damn important, cut money from other "less important" programs and create clinics around the country that will do basic physicals and check ups for relatively low prices on none insured people. Likely standard of care is going to be low though as thet doctors/nurse practioners there would be on government salary making less than a normal one. This will at least help with the "preventive care" which we keep being told is so important.
2a. IF you do number 2, perhaps a program that if they get "X" amount of routine check ups per year then they will be allowed coverage by the government for advanced treatment of life threatening or potentially crippling injuries for the following year, up to $20,000 at 80% gov / 20% individual. This is not culmulative (so if you don't use it one year that doesn't add on to the following).
2b. If 2a happened, perhaps a 1 to 2% payroll tax (preferably 1), could be enacted to cover it
IF and
only if the bill stated that money was not part of the general budget but was put spefically into a medical fund, with extra monies at the end of the year transfering to the following year, and is untouchable by the rest of government.
3. Again, IF health care is so important get the funding by cutting stuff less important, though again would possibly accept what's stated in 2b. Set up a baseline government insurance, able to be opted into by any citizen, that costs a 3% tax on income. This coverage would cover the cost, with small co-pay, of general checkups and physicals and up to a certain amount of additional dollars of coverage that could be used for things like perscriptions, advanced procedures, etc. This # should be very small, something like $2000-$5000. Failure to have routine checkups would result in a deduction to the amount of additional dollars you'd have the following year.
None of these am I particularly a fan of, but in general would be better...if they were not expanded....than some of the things I've heard talked about by the left. Ultimately, I think working on ways to encourage the free market to offer more competitively priced plans by reducing restrictions on that market and tort reform would be the far better option.