Why isn't that front page news?

There should be a constitutional amendment that says people in government must live under the same laws they pass. I GUARANTEE we'd get offered a different plan.

Forget “Conservative v Liberal”, “Right v Left”, “Democrat v Republican”. It's “them v. us” and your God given rights are slipping away with every law that gets passed.

Even given THAT, 'flint-hearted' Conservatives STILL give WAY more to charity than 'compassionate' Liberals, who will not be happy until they tax 100% of income, and put us all on the government dole.

You're right that the middle class is struggling, which is why conservatives–and an increasing number of liberals–are thinking twice about saddling them with yet another ill-conceived public burden. If that's ideology, I'm fine with it.

Conservatives believe that government programs are about the worst, most inefficient means possible of delivering aid to the needy. Liberals believe the opposite, which is why Conservatives, across ALL income levels, give significantly more to charity than Liberals, and Liberals support higher taxes and higher government spending.

The funny thing is, overall I am way more liberal in my social views than my fiscal views, but it is the certainty of the fiscal unwiseness of nationalized health care, which make no mistake is the end-game of the current efforts, in conjunction with the associated reduction in the quality of medical care that will accompany it, that flat out prevents me from supporting it in any form.

I hear you, Duopoly. It's a logical fallacy only when the slope isn't actually slippery, though, and this one may very well be. People don't perceive much of a gap between “federal entitlement program” and “civil right,” so plenty of people will enumerate education, welfare, jobs, unemployment insurance, school lunches, and pensions among their civil rights.

It's certainly no surprise that health care is creeping onto the list, but did you know good parking spots for the handicapped are now a civil right? I had thought they were a courtesy cast in law until a few years ago, when I discovered their recipients have come to regard them as something closer to an owed tribute.

And perhaps you're unaware, but phone service has been a civil right for decades. The FCC set its sights on providing universal access back in the '30s. Their lifeline program is already catching up with cell phones.

I would rather start a Democratic PAC so I can stop paying my taxes, get VIP home loans, and have Murtha and Dodd funnel unnecessary federal funds into my coffers.

No, of course not. But you make a false assumption. I do not believe health care OR education are a 'right', either.

Of course anyone using such an illogical argument would be bounced out of any serious debate but then the right wing never engages in serious debate.

Every other nation in the world considers healthcare and education to be human rights guaranteed by government. If we were to use tax dollars to provide universal single-payer health care we would pay about half as much in taxes as we are paying to the insurance companies to provide us with a health care system that is ranked 37th in the world in terms of quality!

These goofballs on the right have turned the slimy authors of the United States Constitution — the landed aristocracy of the 18th century — into some kind of saints. These numb skulls can be heard saying things like “there is nothing in the Bill of Rights that says a citizen has a right to be alive, let alone be healthy, and since the first ten amendments to the Constitution were written by God, anyone who wants to propose a bill that changes any rights hates Jesus.”

It's really amusing to hear them call Obama a socialist when he has been opposed to universal single-payer healthcare. Obama, in fact, is following the same economic, foreign and domestic policies as George Bush! Well I guess that's why they're called ditto heads!

Not when the taxes are deliberately distorted and engineered in fact to the contrary, by liberal politicians!

* * *

“Do you really believe so many people are uninsured in the US because they don't want or deserve it? Besides, this is giving people the OPPORTUNITY to take advantage of it, where beforehand they had none.”

Many are foregoing insurance because they are young and don't want to pay for it, often because they don't believe they need it, or they'd rather spend the money on other things. In fact, the honest kind of stereotypical uninsured person that intelligent critics of ridiculously-rushed stuff like the Dems tried this time (outdoing themselves and failing in the process so far) can provide is a college sophomore with no cares about health care whatsoever.

In any case, intelligent critics rolled their eyes at the screeching about the number of uninsured during the Clinton health care fiasco and they and so much of the rest of the public really doesn't care what number is being used now. (The issue currently on most minds is what kind of incrementalist moves the federal government is going to make toward provision of health care to how much more of the public, and how it will be paid for. Nobody grown-up is swayed now by ridiculous howling about the number of uninsured. We've all encountered people by now who are uninsured for all kinds of different reasons. [sigh] Not only that, but that alone is not the only reason to seek government health care — the safety net — because the current system is begging for this or that reform in addition to any new public health care provision.)

The “public option” is the current form of incrementalism of federal health care provision chosen by the Democrats all along. It's like being blatantly liberal (as many Dems are this year) while still avoiding the use of the word “liberal” (which has been so very discredited, and so, avoided, and why is that, again?), but in the case of health care (or anything else Austin Roth correctly can note, someday afterward) lends itself to incrementalism as an alternative to avoiding “government” nomenclature _and_ action altogether.

As for abortion, I've warned people for ages that this subject would be introduced (and promptly and militantly politicized by the anarchic and amoral militant extremists on the far Left, who will be surrounding this like fruit flies at a fruit and vegetable market area, or like fleas or ticks) once federal health care were extended en masse to child-bearing-age females. Abortion, particularly with its extremist baggage, is guaranteed to materialize with government health care incrementalism. If the Dems were actually to take the initiative, though, and to promote abortion explicitly (and encourage the scummy militants), that would be especially bad, though this health care effort has been especially bad among the Dem efforts this year so far that it wouldn't be surprising at all (and obviously shouldn't be).

This is not a “deserving” vs. “undeserving” issue. Do you really believe so many people are uninsured in the US because they don't want or deserve it? Besides, this is giving people the OPPORTUNITY to take advantage of it, where beforehand they had none. This is about fair shakes, nothing more. It'll still be up to people to haul their ass to the doctor when needed.

What's funny is we already have Medicare, and many many people would give that up after you pried it from their cold, dead hands. But I bet they're all socialist commies as well, and freeloaders, because they don't work. They should die.

Healthcare is like justice. Everyone should get a chance at it. And it's not something you can do by “living right,” unless you expect to go through life without injuries or accidents or illness. We ALREADY provide government healthcare to elderly and poor people, the ones that use it the most and are costing us the most money.

I mean, honestly…you don't expect a free market military, or a free market justice system, do you? And taxes pay for these and more. You get BENEFITS for your money. Or are you against state owned anything, including your local university? Do you hate that as well?

In fact, raising taxes is the easiest way to weed out the freeloaders that are scaring you. It's just that your health, your life, and that of your family, should not be tied to your employment status, which is fluid. Or would you prefer that when the cops arrested you, you were only provided a lawyer if you were employed? Or that firefighters checked your employment status before turning the water on? Or that the military and national guard was dispatched only to highly employed areas that were hit by disasters and hurricanes?