- 9 million make over $75,000 a year but choose not to purchase insurance
- 14 million are illegible through another program (i.e. spouse's program). 5 million of them can get it through an employer but choose not to
- 9.7 million are illegal immigrants-according to the Kaiser Family Foundation
- 3-5 million are in-between jobs
- 6 million are young people between the ages of 21-35
- That leaves 4 million people who are over the age of 35 and legitimately need health insurance
Destroying our entire healthcare system and letting the government take over 1/6 of our economy for 4 million people does not sound like a very bright idea to me. It doesn't take a genius to figure this out, it's simple logic and common sense. Removing the barriers that prevent us from purchasing insurance in other states will increase competition between health insurance companies, thus increase the quality of insurance for people who already have it and single handedly drive down the price for the actual 4 million who don't, buy forcing these companies to compete against hundreds of other companies from around the country instead of just a few in each state. FORCE these companies to have to compete against many, many, many other companies for your business. What part of this simple logic do the corrupt politicians in Washington not understand?
My nieghboor makes over $100K a year and doesn't have health insurance for his family. Why should the rest of us have to pay with our blood sweat and tears for these people to have insurance just because they're stingy?
ReplyDeleteThis whole health care debate is the classic rope-a-dope. Keep your eyes on the bright shiny object while I sucker punch you in the gut! NOTHING changes though until we start to get healthier and make more informed decisions.
ReplyDeletehttp://opulentogre.blogspot.com/2010/03/americas-health-care-debate.html
Just discovered your blog today. It looks very good.
ReplyDeleteI took a micro-economics and a macro-economics class at Iowa State University. I enjoyed the macro class a lot. The big problem with people in this country is that they are spending beyond their means. We need much fewer safety nets and more people to figure out how to make a living on their own. We don't need cradle-to-grave slavery (socialism).
It seems like half of the people in the United States are slaves: slaves to welfare, slaves to big government, slaves to selfishness, slaves to sin. Our Founding Fathers would be appalled at what has happened to the United States. Our mega government now is worse and more oppressive than King George III in 1775.
Live free or die.
Just a little side note: I was hitchhiking through Nevada two or three years ago. I got a ride from this guy just outside of Fernley. We had a very intense conversation.
ReplyDeleteHe got his PhD in Economics from Harvard, his Masters from MIT and his BA from UConn. I asked him what he thought of Milton Friedman (I like Milton Friedman: freedom to choose, supply-side, Univ of Chicago economist). He said that Friedman was 90% right on target. I then asked him about John Maynard Keynes. He said that Friedman pretty much blew Keynes out of the water.
I asked him if he had ever met Friedman. He had never met him personally, but that he was at a conference where Friedman was speaking. I asked him if he had ever met John Kenneth Galbraith. He said that he was able to sit at the same table as Galbraith at a conference years ago. Everybody at the table kept their mouths shut as Galbraith spoke. This guy said that Galbraith had such great knowledge on economics--it was such an honor to sit at the same table with him.
Hitchhiking around the country, I get to meet some very interesting people. Sometimes I think hitchhiking is a better education than college.
Richard Nixon once said that "we are all Keynesians." I know for a fact that some hitchhikers aren't Keynesians. I am a Stick Your Thumb Out, Put God First, Free-Market Capitalist Transient.
@ Tim Shey, I admire Milton Friedman very much and I agree, Friedman is far superior to Keynes. You seem to have met a lot of interesting people while hitchhiking. Maybe hitchhiking isn't as dangerous as the mainstream media has led us to believe.
ReplyDeleteCM: People tell me that I shouldn't hitchhike because I might get robbed or killed on the road, but I am a Christian and the Lord protects me.
ReplyDeleteThe Lord called me on the road back in 1996. I pray a lot, share my Christian faith with people on the road and write about my experiences. Whenever I need to make a little money, I always find work. I have met a lot of great people on the road and my faith in God has grown stronger over the years.
I was hitchhiking through South Dakota a year ago and this guy from Algeria picked me up. He complained that there are very few hitchhikers in the United States. He said there are many hitchhikers in North Africa and in Europe. He said you could hitchhike from Egypt to Morocco as fast as you could drive a car.
I told him that Hollywood has a lot of influence in America. 95 per cent of the time, when a hitchhiker is portrayed in a film, he is either a robber or a killer. There is too much fear of hitchhikers in America and there is too much believing everything that the mainstream media says.
Fear is the absolute opposite of faith in God. People need to live by faith in God. That is why I believe in the free market/capitalist economy: the hand of God can move more freely in a free market economy than in a socialist, Marxist (government-controlled) economy.
Karl Marx is the Charles Darwin of economics. Charles Darwin is the Karl Marx of religion (evolution is a religion, not a science). We need less reliance on government and more reliance on God.
Here are some good quotes from Milton Friedman:
ReplyDelete“If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand.”
“Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.”
“The Great Depression, like most other periods of severe unemployment, was produced by government mismanagement rather than by any inherent instability of the private economy.”
“The greatest advances of civilization, whether in architecture or painting, in science and literature, in industry or agriculture, have never come from centralized government.”
“The most important single central fact about a free market is that no exchange takes place unless both parties benefit.”
“Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.”
“We have a system that increasingly taxes work and subsidizes nonwork.”
Milton Friedman, Economist (1912-2006)