Frank M is by comparison refreshing: while he does torture the facts a little, no more than customary on the Primetime News, he makes no bones about being a reactionary dinosaur.

The articles on this site continue to enhance DV’s reputation for excellence — but the appended comments only get worse. Guess the solution is “read the articles, ignore the Trolls”.

Dan

If something is free, a lot of it is used. Medical care, affordable housing, higher education all must have an access cost.

The medical industry doesn’t care about your prostate or anything else you might have. Its purpose in life is profit!

P.S. Hugo should be the next U.S. President. Details on my blog.

Have you studied the stats on “foreign single payer universal health care systems” where for instance the 5 year survival rate of breast cancer in UK is 64% compared to 85% in the US - a difference simply b/c of the “free” treatment provided?

The quality of care for Joe Blow will be similar to the VA system - and we see how well that works.

Single payer will be Medicare for all. Medicare has more problems than just Subtitle D. Ask the hundreds of thousands of old folks having needless tests simply b/c the procedures are Medicare covered. Mammograms for 95 y/o semi comatose nursing home patients, etc.

Government control/payer, like everything else the government does, will raise cost and degrade quality, and you will sit down and shut up b/c it was, after all, what you wanted.

Who are the lobbyists for single payer healthcare?

This is definitely the way to go - as Gravel has been promoting/arguing for some time, and for those who have forgotten he was involved in getting those Pentagon Papers from Ellsberg released.

However, as someone posted above, the entire medical ‘industry’ is fundamentally corrupt, both institutionally and methodologically. No amendment is going to change that, in fact it could make it worse since once something is mandated, it becomes ipso facto monopolistic and therefore more or less untouchable. So I don’t think universal healthcare should be a ‘right’ rather a policy decision. With checks and balances.

Clearly it is the way to go and clearly Obama/Clinton plans are just a more creative way of pandering to the medical industry whilst seemingly delivering on what most of us agree: that healthcare should indeed by universal.

The old Chinese had a good model. In the pre-modern days, I have been told, a patient would pay his doctor about $30.00 a month to keep him/her well. Then, if they got sick, they would stop paying until they were better. ‘Coverage’ featured quarterly check-ups, usually around season-change time when weakness crop up, at which point the doctor would give treatments - mainly herbal concoctions - to keep their patient balanced and healthy.

That is probably an overly simplistic description in terms of what happened in practice, but as a model it is the correct one. However, we have no preventative (”wellness”) tradition in our current medical methodology and therefore we are stuck with a deeply flawed allopathic model. That is the root problem and that is not addressed with the above suggestion - except that an Article V sponsored government initiative could mandate such a shift in emphasis which would take many decades to effect.

Big business is already coming on board for “universal health care,” for they know Big Daddy as major payor and enforcer equals more dollars in their pocket. We have Medicaid and Medicare millionaires - and coming soon will be Affordable Healthcare Millionaires.

Call it a “different kind of government action” if you will but it’s the same game and same players.

Years ago employers, large and small, provided healthcare benefits. It was affordable. Imagine that.

Of course, that was before the nation had eaten and drugged itself into epidemics of obesity, diabetes, bad backs, and ADHD, ADD, OCD, SAD, PMDD, and a hundred other acronyms for which - lo and behold - there’s a prescription.

Until and unless (for starters) we are completely rid of lobbyists and big business buying access to politicians and legislators, and pass congressional term limits - it will always be the big boys orgy - bending you over, while you yell you want it b/c it’s your “right”. Keep clamoring about it. The government is going to give you your “right” - good and hard.

The Constitution? You mean white house toilet paper? That’s a letter to Santa Claus and you know that.

“The process of pursuing such an amendment, moreover, would help keep pressure on Congress to do the right thing.”

Congress doing the “right thing?” When is that going to happen? Right after Christmas or just before The Conversion of the Jews?

Obviously, the writer did not take the time, otherwise he wouldn’t be mindlessly repeating the mantras, but presenting hard facts. Yes, we all should have universal health care. Yes, the insurance part of it is a scam. But the root cause are the astronomical costs, and it’s not just the insurance (tip of iceberg) or pharma industries, it’s the whole med establishments, suppliers, etc. There’s no competition, and this is ensured by the monopolistic power of AMA and resulting collusion of arm-wrestled state licencing boards. Those of us who’re uninsured live this every day, and it’s really laughable how ignorant bullshit is being repeated over and over. The health care — routine care included, is unaffordable, and since I don’t have insurance, they are not the cause of this, except indirectly (by abdicating responsibililty — the big players like Medicaid, Medicare, etc. to hold the med establishment to account for outrageous charges which bear no relationship to cost). Actually, the uninsured, when visiting a doctor or being in a hospital, pay FAR MORE than the insured — how is private insurance to blame for this?

Next time look at your med bill — and notice all those double charges which slip under the radar, and then question why the most simple things cost so much. Please no bullshit about malpractice and such, bad doctors should pay for their misdeeds, not their patients — what about individual responsibility?

Next time do a little research be4 writing on something you know nothing about — except if you want to vent, like you did here, about the lack of this basic right, in which I support you. But the single payer silver bullet is bullshit. Yes, constitutional convention to take back our country — theoretically a good idea, but even if it did happen, it would be dominated by the powerful, just like congress, and those paid for, so again, bullshit would come out of it.