Samuel wrote:Simon, the reason people are so pessimistic is that liberals have been trying for UHC in the USA since Truman. Seriously- it got killed on the grounds it was "socialized health care".
Actually, it goes all the way back to Teddy Roosevelt:
Business Week, 2006 wrote:HARBINGER OF CHANGE. The U.S. has flirted with some kind of national health policy six times over the past 100 years, only to see the reform impulse wither each time. For instance, a key plank in Theodore Roosevelt's losing Presidential campaign of 1912 was national health insurance. President Harry Truman tried again after World War II, but he was thwarted by a potent combination of political forces, including the vehement opposition of the American Medical Assn., which was determined to defend doctors' incomes against the threat of "socialized" medicine.
The Clinton Administration's health-care initiative of 1993 collapsed a year later, after conservatives, physicians, and insurance companies mounted a well-orchestrated attack. "Major changes in health policy, like major changes in any area, are political acts, undertaken for political purposes," Victor Fuchs, the dean of health economists, wrote in his 1993 book, The Future of Health Policy.
That's right, Bush
talked up health care reform in his second term. By the way, the article ignores Lyndon Johnson's and Richard Nixon's equally unsuccessful attempts.
It looks like we Americans have a 100-some-odd year history of NOT wanting anyone but ourselves and our families making our choices about our health and that of our families. That's why this latest round of so-called reform is drawing such heated opposition. We've been here before, and we're not changing our minds.
To the topic: I did a search of the Acrobat file of HR3200, and it does not specifically address congenital defects or Down's syndrome; further, the much-ballyhooed "end of life" provisions are sufficiently vague that you can attach any interpretation to them that you want. Probably by design. However, the bill itself contains several direct Constitutional violations, including
real-time access to your bank account if you're on the plan!! I'm guessing the wiggle on this is that, hey, you "volunteered" for coverage, therefore you "volunteered" for this total invasion of privacy. If you want to read the whole 1000+ page monster,
click here. I'm NOT going to pull a Dominus Atheos and post the whole thing!
Point of fact: there is no provision in the Constitution, the foundation of America's social contract, that allows Congress to control 1/7 of our economy. They know this. We know this. That's why "universal" health care hasn't flown in the US all the times it's been attempted.
There is one proper, legal, Constitutional way to go about this, and that's by introducing and having passed by a 2/3 majority, an amendment to the Constitution. Oddly enough,
Democrat Jesse Jackson Jr., yes that Jesse Jackson's son, has proposed the only Constitutional method of implementing national health care in the U.S. Introduced in March 2009. Funny that it's not in the papers.
