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No. if health care is a right, then I have a right to not exercise that right.-Should health care reform include requiring most Americans to buy health insurance?
This is no different than requiring people to vote, and fining them if they do not.
This is a requirement necessary to exercise an optional privilege so that people do not financially suffer from the damage you mightr cause.We have mandatory car insurance and that seems to work out fine.
In that, you are comparing Apples and tuna.
Do the exact opposite -- get rid of it and make everyone pay for their health care out-of-pocket. This will drive competition, raise quality and reduce costs.How would you make health care reform work if you didn't require everyone to buy insurance?
Forcing coverage for people with pre-existing conditions raises costs.-Insurance companies would face new federal regulations, such as no denying people for preexisting conditions, but why is that a bad thing?
If they cannot raise the premiums for the peopel wit the PEC, they will raise someone elses.Would it be such a bad thing that they can't raise an entire state's premiums 30% overnight?
Cutting funding doesnt force anone to be more efficient -- creatng competition does.-Medicare is full of waste and fraud, so you would think people would be happy to hear that there are going to be cuts that would force hospitals to be efficient, but I'm hearing complaints.
Medicade is already for low-income people, exclusively.-Medicaid would be expanded to include low income people.
before this can be discussed, the soundness of the premise of the current 'reform' must be established. This has not been done.-There will be new taxes on the health care industry among others. But we have to get the money to pay for health care reform from somewhere no matter how we go about it. What other options are available? Why not tax the health care industry?
"Could"?-There are a lot of benefits to this bill. It could reduce the federal deficit. It could eliminate the prescription coverage gap. Ect.
Ok... it "could" raise deficts and it "could" increase the prescription coverage gap.
There. Point countered.
BTDT.nstead of playing the "government takeover" and "socialism" cards, which have become virtually meaningless given how most people in this thread have used them, why not talk about the specifics and what alternative options are available.