Our president, not many threads about him.

[PGG]

One P, two G's. Everyone seems to screw that up...

And I'm glad you finally admitted that you don't understand what I'm saying...

[Mighty Mouse]

The problem is that capitalism relies on the fact that the citizens have equal intelligence and equal tolerance for failure. The "intelligent" money will go to the most efficient provider of goods and services while the less efficient will fail. However, as people with mortgages and children to care for, the cost of failure is simply too great for there ever to be a tolerance for pure capitalism. That being said, certain services need socialist tendencies. Otherwise, those without would be held hostage by those with. For example, water and electricity come to mind.
There is nothing bad about socialism. However, it becomes bad when it reaches fascist socialism. I have yet to see that in the Obama programs, but it definitely has been tilling the soil making such a result more probable than not. Insurance has always been regulated to a point by government, but the game has changed when it forces us to have insurance or be fined by IRS. Yes, there are subsidized cheap alternatives, but isn't a right not to participate in insurance important? You are willing to give that up and leave it up to the government to decide what you should and should not do. How is that not a game changer? What does the Treasury department have to do with medical care btw?
Where the citizenry begins to open its hands and begs for Washington to take care of us, rather than being responsible citizens and looking to be independently accountable for ones actions, we are asking for trouble. We were drunk with the artificial wealth that Washington provided with some of the programs like the Macs,but now that the party is over, we are all begging Washington to continue to turn on the spigot in the tune of bailouts. Do we need it for "soft" landing? Perhaps. But it just seems like there are just as many dangers with the bailouts than there are without bailouts. I'd just like for some economist to suggest an alternative to bailouts. There were healthy banks that didn't require bailouts. Couldn't they have been used as conduits for more fiscally responsible fixes?
@Hoplite . . . If we don't do something because our enemy approves, then should Iran not get rid of nukes because US wants them to? Food for thought.

[get some]

i agree with you to an extent MM. being fined for not carrying insurance crosses the line. i would suggest that this particular solution is far to simplistic to deal with the complex problem of healthcare, which includes the insurance industry, the drug companies, the relationship health care providers have with their patients, environmental laws, our practices of producing food, and even the legal system where malpractice suits are out of control. demanding participation in a broken system definitely seems misguided and i am not so naive that i think this is the cure all for our healthcare problems.

i have a friend who once argued for medical insurance being a legal requirement for all, drawing comparisons to laws requiring everyone have auto insurance. the flaw in that argument as i saw it was that we have a choice as to whether we want the luxury of driving our own vehicle whereas no one has the choice to be born. as soon as you are born, a certain degree of healthcare is a requisite. if you choose to participate in something with inherent dangers ( such as driving ) then insurance should be a requirement. if you choose to own a home where the investment of others capital needs to be protected then insurance should be required. i cannot see any reasonable argument to require insurance for health. we should all have an affordable choice available to us...but we should also still have the right to opt out if we choose to without penalty as none of us had the choice of life. it just happened.

if i allowed myself an idealistic moment, i would suggest insurance should be severed from healthcare altogether. all necessary life sustaining procedures should be made affordable on a family income. i know...im dreaming, but entertain the thought for a moment. non life sustaining procedures could carry a premium and cosmetic procedures could be cost prohibitive. furthermore, malpractice suits should be highly regulated and malpractice insurance should be more fairly dispersed throughout medical practitioners. currently, in Philadelphia (notorious for its record breaking judgments in malpractice suits) a doctor with no suits brought against him/her will pay the same insurance rates as a doctor with several suits against him/her. i have heard directly from people in the medical field in Philadelphia that malpractice insurance costs a doctor roughly a million dollars a year regardless of his/her record. this cost has to be worked into the billing process driving medical costs way up. its outrageous and completely out of hand. i am not sure if the current bill addresses this at all but i havent heard a peep from anyone anywhere that it does.

the above mentioned industries all have contributing factors in our decline of overall health, need for more and more treatment, and rising costs to the public. until all are addressed with thoughtful and reasonable approaches i believe the healthcare in this country is going to continue to be an outright mess.

[44]

Stimulus? Check.
Job losses? Check.
Iraq? Check.
Afghanistan? Check.
Healthcare? Check.
Financial reform? Check.
Energy....

[Mighty Mouse]

^ What are you saying by those "checks"? They are all in doubt at this point,so I'm sure there's wealth of information behind those "check"'s.

[Baba]

DRILL, BABY DRILL!!!!