A Serious US Health Care Question
 

What makes health care more important than the following?...

Your local police dept.

Your local firefighters.

National Defense (army, navy, etc).

Taxes cover the cost for all of the above. Will universal health care raise your taxes? Of course it will, but so what? It is the right thing to do. Will health care raise your taxes MORE than the greedy insurance policy rates we are currently facing? No fucking way!

In other words, why should large corporate interests have the right to profit off of this basic human necessity?

When your house is on fire you call your tax funded fire department, and they rush right over to help you. They don't send you a bill, or negotiate the value of your property.

Why is health care so different?

Is it because the health insurance companies contribute shitloads of money towards political campaigns? Is it because the health insurance CEOs make MILLIONS per year, and are fighting like hell to keep our money?

Is there some sort of biased value system in place that allows us to believe a heart specialist is worth 1000 times more cost to society than a cop responding to a dangerous local shootout?

Universal health care makes so much sense it is insane to me that this is even a debate! This is where the Dems should have started their argument, and then MAYBE met halfway with a single payer or public option compromise. They are already too far out in the middle to find a decent halfway point... but I guess that's what happens when both sides are paid off, and we allow our country to be TOTALLY controlled by big corporations.

US healthcare is based on "for profit businesses" ... the insurance companies, paying doctors and hospitals for their services. Sounds simple.

In practice however these insurance companies only motivation is profit NOT health care. As a result they only insure those they know they can make a profit from ... those less likely to need medical care.

Insurance companies are allowed to discriminate based on age, health, even the health of those related to you.

So what happens to those that were never insurable or those that are now not profitable enough to insure?

You young guys ..... I know the feeling of thinking you will never get sick or die. Well right now you probably won't, that's why they are taking your money. When they stop taking your money, what then? Or if you can't pay for some reason?

Well, my local police department and fire department isn't paid for out of my federal taxes.

I'm paying for my benefits one way or another, and I have zero choices in the matter. My insurance company wasn't picked by me; It was picked by my wife's employer. We also had no say in what options we get, or how much we pay.

This is a really crappy system.

As for taxes, raise my taxes. There are so many legal loop holes in our tax system that only the stupid people pay taxes.

You would be shocked to find out how much of your local police and fire department is subsidized by federal money. I have a few good friends that are cops and they tell me that as much as 30% of their budget comes from federal money. Their day to day activities are paid for with local and state funds, but pretty much all of their training and many other things they do are paid for by federal grants.

A good example: Where my buddy is a cop they have a big river that goes way up into the hills and woods outside of the town. There is a road that follows it up through this corridor for about 20 miles and it is a place that a lot of people go to chill out, swim and party in the summer. This entire summer they ran patrols up their on the weekends. They were voluntary shifts and were 100% overtime pay and every cent of it was paid for with federal money.