Your article is great as usual, but I take exception to the idea that "progressives" are "loons".

I believe they are dedicated to destroying the free enterprise system, and replacing it with a "collective" system that puts all control in the government, including free speech and the rights that GOD gave us. They are all about power and it is not "to the people" but over the people!

. . . a Loon by any other name

It seems to me that the liberal, or progressive, political belief; is just that. a belief. A relegion, in other words.

They strike me as being rather like a cult, like the Branch Davidian One. It bothers me people don't take them more seriously. They are our greatest threat to our national security, worse than the terrorists. It seems to me their agenda is to make this great nation of ours into a Russian Gulag. How long b/4 We The People wake up, smell what they been shoveling, and take our country back?

Burt,

Excellent arguments all around. Progressives were also big in the early 1900s when a 'small minded' man named Theodore Roosevelt tried to get elected president for a 3rd term. This was the first time that a 3rd party candidate actually had the potential to win the presidential election.

Enough of history for one Saturday. Pre-existing conditions, as they relate to health insurance, are just that. Illness, injuries or diagnoses that the insured received treatment for prior to joining the current insurance plan. If the insured party changes employers, that is no big deal; the person is not refused coverage. If the person leaves a employer sponsored group plan and tries to pick up insurance on his/her own; said pre-existing condition could prevent the issuance of coverage or a very, very high premium. It is similar to the casualty insurance industry's practice of rating customers based on past experience. An auto insurance company is not going to offer the best rates to someone who receives speeding tickets or who has an accident every year or two.

My biggest complaint with the insurance companies is the fact that the insurance companies practice medicine when they insist on a different medication be prescribed. A different course of treatment used. A different diagnostic test be performed. The insurance companies cloak this poor behavior behind their internal physicians' assessment of the necessary benefit(s) to the patient. Everyone knows that the real reason is to reduce the cost the company has to pay out. The internal physician is very much like the old court eunuchs. They have no power to object.

After all, when was the last time an insurance company's internal doctor(s) actually examined the patient in question. NEVER. The approval or the rejection is based entirely on Dollars and not the best of the patient.

Even then, this practice is still 1000% better than socialized medicine; be it Canadian, British or, the ever popular, Cuban. My family doctor is from Canada. He told me that he left because of the limitations placed on him by the government. Not on did the Canadian system reduce his wages; it also reduced the level of care his patients received.

The only reason that the lefties want control of my medical coverage is to maintain control of me. To keep me beholding to the government. I DO NOT WANT THAT.

Duke

G. Wegmann: I don't think we disagree. You simply went to the trouble of defining what makes progressives loony.

As for G Dub, Ike and the Duke...all I can say is amen.

Burt

How about no pre-existing conditions exclusion for auto policies? You would not carry collision insurance until after an accident. Makes sense to me! Excuse me while I go put water in the gas tank, that should work also.

Let's check out the--- liberal/progressive/democrat/leftist/communist/socialist/Looney Tunes Non-Mentality shall we??? So we are going to insure 31 million more people and also pre-extisting illnesses and premiums will all not cost more. This only an idiot could believe...

BTW have you ever noticed how these liberal, progressive, democrat, leftist's allways use words, descriptions and names for their lunatic ideas and programs that have definitions that are completly opposite of what they stand for???

"...in fact, they are merely out to destroy America’s industry and ruin our economy."

All liberals are out to destroy America? To what end? I'm an American liberal/progressive, and I don't want to see either of those things happen. Even if you disagree with my policy prescriptions, do you really think it's my goal to destroy the country I was born and raised in?

I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall for your health care discussion with your British friend. In particular, I'd be interested to know if the phrase "per capita" ever came up...

The health care debate was never about "31 million uninsured people who would have died in the streets." It was about finding the best way to pay for those 31 million precisely because we won't let them die in the streets. And you're making an awfully funny argument about the pre-existing conditions piece; part of the point of an individual mandate is to prevent people from only seeking insurance after they've developed a health problem. Did you really not understand this, or did you willfully twist the terms of the debate?

I am a retired twenty year veteran of the US Army and I live near an Army installation.

I get my health care through the clinic on Post but go to specialists as needed.

I recently had a bond spur removed from my foot and the podiatrist was going to put me on an anti-biotic to prevent post op infection. I asked if they had the medicine on Post and she told me they have what is cheap, not what is best. I had known this for years, but it was the first time it was put into words by a physician.

That's what you've got to look forward to with Universal Health Insurance, not what is best but what is cheap. Enjoy!

If you want to know what receiving care is like, just remember your last trip to the DMV.

Should have been "bone spur" instead of "bond spur".

Sorry

Progressives, liberals, leftists, Democrats, socialists, whatever they want to call themselves.... The name keeps changing but they keep promoting the same old failured programs of the past. They definitely do not promote progress.

You can't argue with a liberal because they just don't listen.

Dan Weber: You may be a progressive, but you are not in Washington and you have no more power than any other voter. However, the people you help elect have the power and if they are not intentionally ruining the economy, they are certainly doing a hell of a job without even trying.

As for the 31 million, I can't help noticing that the Democrats have never identified who they are. It's my hunch that most of them are illegal aliens and twentysomethings who don't care to blow their discretionary income on something as boting as healt insurance. In Massachusetts, as you may or may not know, after Romney brought in his own version of Obamacare, visits to emergency rooms went up, not down, so the good folks of the state were still paying through the nose for the uninsured.

Burt

Re: your article in the patriot post. What if you HAD insurance when you got leukemia and you were in a group policy. Then as new cheaper policies came out, the younger, healthier members cancel, choosing them to save money. You are left with a declining number of members who generaly have high claims. So, your costs continue to go up and up and up. What to do? You can't get a cheaper policy because they will exclude your "pre-existing" conditions. BTW short of bone marrow transplant (less than 50% survival rate and HUGELY expensive) there is no known cure for leukemia. So you spend your retirement and begin selling assets, eventually your house, to have enough insurance to cover costs to keep you alive. That's totally fair, right!

Bruce Felder

Re: your article in the patriot post. What if you HAD insurance when you got leukemia and you were in a group policy. Then as new cheaper policies came out, the younger, healthier members cancel, choosing them to save money. You are left with a declining number of members who generaly have high claims. So, your costs continue to go up and up and up. What to do? You can't get a cheaper policy because they will exclude your "pre-existing" conditions. BTW short of bone marrow transplant (less than 50% survival rate and HUGELY expensive) there is no known cure for leukemia. So you spend your retirement and begin selling assets, eventually your house, to have enough insurance to cover costs to keep you alive. That's totally fair, right!

Mr. Felder - Let me give you the perspective of someone who has actually been in the particular boat your post described. I had cancer at age 18. I was under my parents insurance at that time. From that time on, I have always known that in order for me to get insurance, I have to either 1)go through an employer, or 2)find a sugar daddy. I didn't hold out a lot of hope for option 2 so I obtained my college degree and have held jobs that provide insurance at a reasonable price. If I have to, due to increases in insurances prices, I'll find a different job with better benefits. Or at least I COULD have done that until ObamaPelosiReedCare came into the mix. Since we have now taken the 1st step toward socialized medicine, the appropriate care probably won't be available and there certainly won't be any development to try to improve the treatment.

Another issue that I have not seen pointed out in many articles is that of the treatment of illegal aliens within Obamacare. It has been made clear that they will not benefit from whatever credits or breaks are given to those of us who pay our taxes and purchase insurance (even if we are young and healthy and would rather not) like the law says.

However, I have also not read anything about reversing the rule that says hospitals have to treat anyone and everyone who comes into the ER. I believe, at least in border states, that treating illegal aliens in ERs is a major unsustainable cost. Yet the Obamacare solution to the high costs of medical care is to force healthy, law abiding citizens to purchase a product they do not need and/or want and all the while allow those people whose very presence here makes them lawbreakers retain the completely free healthcare that must be provided in ERs.

Burt,

Right on! As you so correctly pointed out, most of our kids are not as concerned with health insurance, not only to have some extra party money, but for other reasons as well.

Most kids are generally healthy and feel no need to contribute their hard earned dollars for something they will not likely use.

Something you left out in your article; the only reason for Obama’s and the liberal’s push for “universal” health care, wasn't just to insure those “poor” 30 million uninsured (if those numbers are even correct), but it was mainly to have a larger pool of monies for everyone else in the system to siphon from. As Obama so casually mentioned on his campaign trail to a justly distrustful plumber, it is to “spread the wealth around.”

It is without doubt Socialism at its best, and calling it by any other name, is just elusive bullshit!

Great article!

@Burt, yes, that's exactly what I said: that it's fine to criticize elected officials for what you see as wrong-headed policy, but it's disingenuous to claim that they're intentionally ruining the country. I'm glad we agree. Any chance you'll run a retraction?

What do you mean "identified" the 31 million? Do you want a roster? I don't see how that could possibly square with privacy rights, but ok. I happen to live in Massachusetts, and after I got laid off in 2008, I was forced to find insurance on the private market for individuals. My experience may not be universal, but it is true: I kept the same Harvard-Pilgrim HMO plan, but my monthly premium went from $340/month under my employer-based plan down to $170/month for my individual plan. The reason? My guess is that I'm 26 and in good shape, and on the individual market, I'm not in the same risk pool as, say, an obese 50-something member of my former employer's C-suite. And no, we're not paying through the nose for the uninsured; Mass. has something like 98% insurance coverage, so we're getting a relative bargain on emergency room visits regardless of who's on the operating table.

It's interesting that despite incredible access to data, you seem satisfied with "a hunch" guiding your policy prescriptions. Why not go look for some data to see if your hunch is correct? Statistics are generally more persuasive than hunches...

No, Dan, I don't want a roster, although a roster with 31 million names would be only slightly longer than the bills that Obama, Pelosi and Reid, are shoving through these days. Inasmuch as the administration has not identified who these people are, I believe I was within my rights to assume that they were illegal aliens and people your age who assume that because they are young and healthy, they'd be foolish to waste their money on health insurance, figuring it made as little sense as obtaining automobile insurance if they didn't drive.

Regards, Burt

@Burt

So...hang on...the government hasn't "identified" who these people are to your satisfaction, which means it's ok for you to assume they're who you think they are?

Here's what a quick Google search turned up for me: http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=628

As a caveat, this study is from 2006. Let's say for the sake of discussion that the CBPP got it wrong, and that the total number is indeed 31 million rather than the 46.6 million they cite. The CBPP finds that Hispanics are disproportionately unlikely to have health insurance, but they also say that the number of kids without health insurance has gone up. Non-citizen immigrants are found to be more likely than citizens to not have health insurance, but those numbers haven't grown. Rather, the numbers of native-born citizens without health insurance have grown since 2005.

So, in sum, I think it's far too complex a picture to rely on one man's hunch. Wouldn't you agree?

No, Dan, I don't. I think placing a sixth of America's crashing economy in the hands of a left-wing demagogue and his corrupt cronies is the real danger, not whether my hunches agree with yours. Wouldn't you agree?

Burt

@Burt, lucky for you, you'll have the opportunity to replace that "left-wing demagogue" and all of his "corrupt cronies" (this refers to the democratically elected representatives of the American people, right?) in less than 730 days. But I have to wonder whether you're intentionally missing my point or if I've just argued it that poorly.

My point was that making policy decisions based on hunches when scads of data are available is dumb. It's not about our hunches agreeing, it's about the superfluity of hunches when there's so much free data to be had. Our hunches don't really need to come into this discussion...wouldn't you agree?

Dan--You're the one who brought "hunches" into the discussion. I have not come across any "data" that identified who the 31 million uninsured were, and you have not introduced any evidence that contradicts my conclusion (ie, hunch).

Your friends in the Obama administration haven't even told us how they decided that there were 31 million people going without health insurance. But, then, Washington keeps telling us that there are about 10 million illegal aliens in the U.S., which is the same number that's been tossed around for several years now!

Burt

@Burt, no I wasn't, you were, in your post on May 3, 2010 at 12:28:11 AM. Your hunch, you said, was that most of the uninsured were illegal aliens or twenty-somethings. Here's just one piece from the 2006 study I cited that should give pause: "The percentage of native-born citizens who were uninsured rose in 2005, while the percentage of non-citizen immigrants who lacked coverage was unchanged." That means that even if illegals make up the majority of the uninsured, that majority is being threatened by the growth of citizens who don't have health insurance.

What do you mean they haven't told us how they decided? The numbers I cited came from the Census Bureau, and I'd imagine the sitting president has access to the Census Bureau's publicly available data.

So I take it you're still sticking with your hunch?

Actually, Mr Weber, several different groups have done studies more recently than 2006 that showed some interesting if unsurprising facts about the 46 million figure floated by the Democrats all through the healthcare fiasco.

Before we get into that, I'd like to point out that when folks like myself began citing those reports in blogs and letters to the editor, the Democrats began quietly revising their "guesstimate" downward from the 46 million (or was it 47? It kept changing so quickly, it was hard to keep track) to 38 million to 31 million, to all over the 20 millions depending entirely upon who happened to be yapping that particular minute. Roughly mid-way into the Obamacare boondoggle, however, most pundits and pols began using the 31 million figure. I have no idea why they settled that on that particular set of digits, since it was no more honest or accurate than any of their other figures.

Nevertheless, the reports are still available online. A quick Google search will turn them up for you, if you're really interested in looking at them. In a nutshell, they revealed the following:

Of the 46 million claimed "uninsured" by the Democrats, roughly 10 million were young people to whom health insurance was both available and affordable, but who chose not to carry it because they preferred to spend their money on other things, just as Burt stated. Another 15-20 million were illegal aliens not entitled to health insurance regardless of who happens to be sitting in the White House today. Several more million are children or others actually eligible or even receiving health care under some other government program, usually at the state. They were apparently included in the number for purely inflationary purposes. Depending on which study you want to cite, that leaves between 8 and 12 million adult citizens actually uninsured.

My god, Mr Weber, we could have given them free health care for a very microscopic fraction of what this monstrous Obamacare boondoggle is going to cost us. The whole scam was never about health care anyway; it was always about controlling how people live.

As for your assertion that Progressives don't want to destroy the country, you can call yourself anything you like. But let me ask you a simple question. If I raised a big rock over my head and let it fall, and it just happened to crush the skull of a man lying on the ground at my feet, would any jury care one whit for my assertion that the man's death was never my intention? Intentions seldom count for much; results matter.

OTOH, when a group of people repeatedly pursue policies with a long, horrific, murderous, historic record of failure on the most epic scales in human history, what should we assume their intentions to be when they arrogantly insist we try those policies one more time? Good grief, the 20th century saw more than 100 million innocent people systematically slaughtered on an industrial scale in the name of Progressive-Socialist-Liberal policies (call it whatever makes you feel better, call it chocolate pudding for all I care, it doesn't matter) -- so why would any sane, rational person who sincerely wants to ensure prosperity for generations to come want to emulate the policies that brought about the greatest misery and destruction in human history?

@MichaelSSEC

Hi Michael, nice to talk to you again. For the sake of this discussion, we'll settle on the 31 million number, sound good?

Ok, so those young people---who are usually more healthy than the average person---are now required to jump into the insurance pool, which is a good thing for everyone. We agree on that, right? Healthy young people who aren't waiting until they're hurt to buy insurance...good, right? So that's a GOOD thing that we all have an individual mandate now, right? By your numbers, that's about a quarter of the uninsured, so I'd count that as progress. As for the illegals in this equation, the question was never whether they deserved coverage, but how we were going to pay for them. If we decided that you couldn't get E.R. care without presenting a card or something, then it's pretty easy to pull the costs created by illegals out of the system. The unfortunate downside of such an arrangement would be telling the Mexican day laborer who just got mangled by a skid-steer that he needs to go outside to bleed to death. We're on the same page with that, right? That if we're not ok with watching other humans die of preventable injuries, then we're going to have to find a way to pay for everyone...right?

I'm willing to hear you out about how health care "was always about controlling how people live." I'm pretty sure that it was really about changing the way we provide health care in this country, but please, do tell me how this "was always about controlling how people live." And please also explain how "controlling how people live" benefits a man whose career as an elected official is basically over no later than 2016, or how this grand conspiracy helps the members of Congress who voted for it. Seriously, I'm all ears. Tell me how this whole thing is actually an attempt to control us.

Re: dropping a rock on a guy and negligence, are you serious? THAT's your analogy? If an idiot stands with a rock over a sleeping man's head and really doesn't think anything bad will happen, then we usually don't punish that idiot the same way we do when the person knows what they're doing. So the prosecutor in this case would be making a major misstep to try this person as a fully functional adult. In real court---not the court you're making up in this example, but real, honest-to-goodness-gavels-and-robes court---intentions matter a LOT: intentions are the difference between first and second degree murder, between poor money management and fraud, between a bunch of businessmen competing as best they can and collusion. Do I seriously need to explain this??? Yes, results matter, and if Mr. Prelutsky had wanted to say "Democratic policies are the dumbest ideas I've ever heard in my life," that would be perfectly fine. But---to return to your truly awful analogy---to say that the idiot with the rock is TRYING to crush the skull of the guy on the ground is both factually incorrect and disingenuous. To answer your question directly, yes, a jury should care an awful lot whether the man's death was your intention. That care for intent is the difference between you serving out a manslaughter charge or possibly going to death row. Honestly, did I really need to go through all of that for you?

I'm really not looking forward to the inevitable "progressivism = Leninism = Nazism = Maoism = Stalinism = bra-burning in the 70s" screed, but I have a feeling it's coming. So, if you're up for it, feel free: unleash a broadside, and we'll have it out. If we're being honest about the historical record, I can point to American progressive efforts that have helped improve working conditions, given women the right to vote, guaranteed a minimum wage, etc. For your examples, I have a feeling you'll be turning to 20th-century communist regimes, and if you can tell me how the U.S.S.R. and the United States were so much alike that I should take your comparison seriously, then I will allow you to choose any hat in the world, which I will then buy and eat.

No, Mr Weber we do not agree on that. Can you name another product we are compelled by the government to buy whether we want it or not? Don't talk about auto insurance. You are not required to buy it unless you want to own and drive a car. Plenty of people out there do neither. OTOH, every smoking Joe Youngblood out there is now required to buy health insurance whether he wants it or not.

Healthy people who aren't waiting until they're sick to buy insurance? You see, Mr Weber, I live in Massachusetts which uses a system that was the model for Obamacare. Here, every citizen is required to carry health insurance; anyone who fails to do so is fined. But the fines are quite low, so it's actually a lot cheaper to just pay the fines.

Then again, MA has that totally dishonest "pre-existing condition" rule much touted by Obama. Except the rule actually has nothing to do with pre-existing conditions. A pre-existing condition is something chronic or long-term, like cancer or Crohn's disease or diabetes. It would have taken a one-page law to handle that problem. When the Democrats talked about pre-existing conditions that was NOT what they were talking about. Under MA law and Obamacare both, you can go without insurance (paying the fines), fall down and break your leg, and then call up the insurers and demand coverage for the already-broken leg -- and they are required by law to accept you! As Burt explained correctly, that's like ordering up home owner's insurance while your house is already on fire! That's not insurance and frankly anyone should be insulted that the Democrats try to call it insurance.

I've already written extensively about how Socialized medicine will be used to control how people live. Whenever I do, it's usually in answer to some Democrat who insists that this is all quite altruistic stuff, not some Orwellian plot to control people. Then when I explain that this control is already in the bill, the same Democrats suddenly start talking about how important it is for the government to prevent people from doing harmful things to themselves.

Look, when Socialized medicine goes into full swing the metric will suddenly be about how expensive the programs are, so every Leftist news outlet will be talking about how responsible it is to live healthy and save those precious health care dollars. Don't take my word for it. Obamacare wasn't 10 minutes old and both the NY Times and WaPo were running editorials calling for curbs on "irresponsible" behaviors affecting health care. It will become a matter of national policy to regulate salt, fat, exercise and everything else related to health. Dangerous activities like skiing, rock climbing, sky diving, etc will be deemed "irresponsible." I know this hasn't happened in some of the other Socialized medicine countries but frankly they're a fraction the size of the US and we've been subsidizing their health care for decades; who's going to subsidize ours?

As for the skull crushing rock, you talked about Progressives' intentions. I simply drew an analogy to illustrate why intentions do not outweigh results. I know intentions count for more among Leftists, but no matter what Mao's intentions were he still slaughtered 60 million people. What difference does it make if he was TRYING to invent the perfect ice cream sundae -- or the perfect Communist Utopia?

BTW, don't break your arm patting your Progressive forebears on the back over things like minimum wage, and female suffrage. In the first place, minimum wage was usually introduced to screw somebody, as it was in California where it was used to discriminate against the Chinese immigrant. The mantra was "the Chinaman cannot outwork the white man, but he can under-live him." In other words, the thinking held that since Chinese labor was willing to accept a lower standard of living, he could undercut the white worker with a lower wage. By forcing a minimum wage, the Chinese laborer lost his bargaining advantage, employers figured they might as well hire whites since they had to pay minimum wages anyway, and the minimum wage so highly touted as a worker's victory was in fact a racist tool to preserve a white workforce.

Meanwhile, Progressives who had fought suffrage discovered that if they embraced it they could draw a large number of voters into their party and thereby tip the balance of elections. The exact same opportunistic thinking goes into the Democrats' sleazy embrace of Amnesty for illegals today. They can't beat us at the voting booth because their ideas always fail, so they figure they can just stack the deck with millions of instant voters all casting Democratic ballots. That was the driving impetus behind the push for Suffrage as well. Read the literature of the day and you'll see the only people talking spiritedly and piously about Suffrage were women and a few die-hard supporters. Sure, the pols of the day all made the same hollow speeches they make today, about rights and modernity, but what they said when the crowds went home was that Suffrage would bolster the rolls.

I will grant you that improved working conditions were a major victory during the early 20th century, and that the Progressive movement played a role -- perhaps even a pivotal one -- in making that happen, but while the average guy was out picketing and getting his head cracked for the union, the Progressive elites were simply trying to move us toward Socialism. I suppose you're one of those Democrats who doesn't realize the Communist Manifesto was published in the mid-19th century, that Socialism wasn't a new idea even then, and that all the ideas put forth by the con man Marx had already been tried -- and had failed miserably every time. Look up the Bible Communists from the 60s.

That would be the 1860s. They were merely the latest in a long line of faddish groups who tried to live life by some Utopian system of shared enterprise. Can you find a single example of one of these knuckleheads who succeeded? Don't feel bad, nobody else can either.

@MichaelSSEC, Why, exactly, can't I bring up auto insurance? You're fine with auto insurance being required for people who own and drive a car, yes? You carve that out as the exception that makes it ok for the government to requires some people to own auto insurance, so I assume that if a person agrees to a particular service---hell, let's even say a particular privately run service---then the government can require him to own insurance. Within the rules of law and all that, and let's pretend we totally agree on the Constitution and everything, and we're still just working within the limits you've carved out for auto insurance...still with me?

Ok. Now, let's say that "smoking Joe Youngblood" walks off a curb and gets hit by a bus. Someone calls an ambulance, the ambulance arrives, and "smoking Joe Youngblood" is taken to a hospital, a privately run hospital, where when he's unconscious, procedures are performed on him that save his life. Goes right out and goes right back to "smoking," in fact. Now: how does "smoking Joe Youngblood"'s visit get paid for?

This is the fundamental question I've been trying to hammer home to Tea Party-folk. If we lived in a world where, if smokin' Joe gets hit by that bus and he's not insured then we let him bleed to death, then I can see the point of saying, "You can't make us buy this!"

Because then, smokin' Joe---who has been foolish and hasn't bought health insurance---doesn't create any costs. He just lies there, in the street, and bleeds to death, as people pass him by. He cannot be brought to a hospital, because none will take him. He decided not to participate in a market---the market for emergency medical care---and sorry, smokin' Joe, ya snooze ya lose.

I don't think we live in that world, and I don't think you do either. I don't think doctors live in that world, and I don't think modern medicine lives in that world. And I don't think it's acceptable to base this debate in anything but the real world, where smokin' Joe goes to the hospital.

So! Since we're living in a world in which smokin' Joe would be brought to a hospital and would be given care and just might have his life saved, we have to account for those costs, at least. Are we at least agreed on that?

And since, like it or not, you DO participate in the market for private health care---even if you're receiving it through Medicare or Medicaid, because your doctor and your hospital are in the private sector---since you do participate in that private market, then the government can regulate it and require you to hold insurance. Are you still with me? Have I missed something?

If you want to lead a campaign that yes, smokin' Joe should be left to die, and make the math work that way, be my guest. And no, this isn't hippy-liberal crap: I'm talking about dollars and sense, because some hippy-liberal crap---like rushing a guy who just got hit by a bus to a hospital, no matter who he is---is just the way the world works. If you want to tilt at that windmill, be my guest. The rest of us are trying to make this thing work, in the real world.

So, in sum: you DO participate in a private market for a private good---emergency medical care---whether you like it or not. And so yeah, I do think the federal government has jurisdiction to require health insurance.

Moving on. I too live in Massachusetts, and when I lost my employer-based coverage, I went out and got private insurance. Maybe I was a little scared: I broke my hand playing basketball a year before, and I didn't want to be stuck with costs like that if something happened. The reason I went willingly to the individual market was because my premium dropped by half. I'm in my mid-20s, in decent shape, and with no genetic history of anything hitting me for a while. My monthly premium went from $340 to $170. I can only explain this by guessing that I was no longer in the same risk pool as some co-workers with a worse actuarial profile. So honestly, I don't see much wrong with the Massachusetts system. Really, I don't.

And yes, that insurer is required to give you insurance...insurance with costs that reflect that you've had a broken leg. Probably insurance with a pretty high deductible. We call it insurance because it's insurance: the guy is now paying the rates of a person with a recently broken leg who just signed up for insurance. And yes, that guy's a jerk. But there really aren't overwhelming numbers of those guys. An individual mandate minimizes the numbers of those guys, which is better for everyone. There are limits to which we let government deal with people acting like jerks, and I think we both agree that's a good thing.

I see, you've already written "extensively" on how "Socialized medicine" will control us all. Surely, I've heard of it before. And you're not going to trot it out now, because you're tired about how liberals always seem to bring up that "smoking Joe Youngblood" is going to be brought to that hospital whether he has health insurance or not, and doctors and nurses are going to spend time and resources trying to save smokin' Joe's life. God that's inconvenient. I totally understand why you don't want to rehash an early-60s spoken-word album.

What on earth does "fraction of the size" have to do with any of this??? Socialized medicine hasn't led to a totalitarian take-over of the government in ANY NATO country. It hasn't happened in ANY democracy. Tell me why this time will be different.

No, you weren't just drawing an analogy, you asked me a very specific question, the only one in that paragraph. And I answered it. If you'd like to rephrase in a more cogent manner, be my guest. I'm getting tired of this "I just meant to say..." stuff. Poorly drawn analogies advanced as arguments are not my problem. I didn't make you ask me answer whether any jury would "care one whit" about your intentions, you did. As a wise man once said, "If you don't like us dancing, you shouldn't let us in your end zone."

You bring up Mao, and I'll go a little easier for you this time---I know analogies can be hard. Tell me what about the Chinese Civil War and the last 83 years of American history look alike. Tell me how President Obama and the other elected officials of the United States rose to power the same way Mao did, and how they're all after the same thing, and how it's going to happen here the same way it happened there, Cultural Revolution and everything. Honestly, if you can tell me how that's going to happen, you'll be doing me a great service. You brought up Mao: tell me how we get from here to there. Better yet tell me how *it's already here*! And do it in a conspiratorial whisper, I like conspiratorial whispers.

They can't beat "us" at the polls? Who's the "us" in that sentence? Find me a woman who's upset with the results of female suffrage---go ahead, I'll wait. I'm not even going to fight this battle, just go find a woman who thinks her gender should bar her from the voting booth, and I will completely agree with everything you've said. Find me anyone who disagrees with a minimum wage now. More importantly: show me how health care is going to applied in such a racist fashion as minimum-wage laws...and then how it's still going to turn out that something that more than 50% of the population thinks is a great idea. Do you get where I'm coming from??? This country has had these debates already.

I'm not even going to talk to you about unions, because I want you to get your stereotypes straight. In a different thread, you said that teachers unions were a major obstacle in education reform; here, "the average was out picketing and getting his head cracked for the union," and is the foot soldier who created the only redeeming quality of progressivism...is that about right? If you're going to paint in such broad strokes, I wish you'd keep your colors consistent.

One single example? Sure, the Israeli kibbutzes. I think that's the largest scale at which shared enterprise works; basically, hippy-commune size. Not really any way to run a large country. That's why I'm fundamentally a capitlist, which I don't think I should need to point out, but here we are.

You're amazing, MichaelSSEC, absolutely amazing.