Nixon was shady long before Watergate. Read up about the Alger Hiss trial.. Nixon helped prosecute him. Although he publicly called Joe McCarthy a fraud, he supported McCarthy in many of his actions.

Kennedy became extremely popular because he was assassinated. He was very polarizing but someone needed to be, to get the Civil Rights issues out there, IMHO.

That said, I have a really hard time understanding why people don't want everybody to have health insurance and access to good health care. I just don't get why people think that either some people should just be left to die or that hospitals should be expected to provide services for free. It doesn't make sense to me.

Most people I know who have reservations about or are against the health care changes (me included) are more worried about rising premiums, getting dropped by their current insurers and/or being forced into a new government plan that covers less but costs more to the individual. Insinuating that people with these valid concerns want others to just die in the streets is pretty insulting.

Kennedy totally didn't want to "deal with it" as far as civil rights was concerned...he was far more into his foreign policy. He was basically forced into even talking about it.

Right. My sense is that the question about making sure everyone has access to affordable coverage that brings about the divisions are not the "whether" but the "how."

And I think the problems of the "how" are exacerbated by our decision years ago to rely primarily on an employee benefit-based system. Wish we could have a do-over on that.

Yes, this is the problem with a sorta half-way system. We should really just go to single-payer and be done with it.

I think a single-payer system would be a disaster, which is why I like the act as it has been passed. I believe firmly that it will lower premiums significantly because it focuses on competition and quality both. I can say that the health insurance plan that is my current employer is scrambling to get the per member per month administrative costs down so that they can offer competitive premiums. Additionally, as the only non-profit health care plan in Michigan right now, they have been the insurer of last resort who could not turn away people because of previous history. When that entire burden rests on one health plan, that plan has to fight to survive because they get the entire high risk pool dumped on them, which increases premiums for all of their members. Ditto for hospitals in the inner city who bear most of the burden of providing free care for the uninsured.

My ideal system would take the plans out of the employers' hands completely, save for vouchers they could provide to their employees to select any plan they choose. That would enable them to lure high quality employees with "benefits", but the "benefits" wouldn't dictate which insurance plan the employee could choose. This would be real choice, real capitalism, because you could pick based on cost, quality, customer service, providers covered, etc. Health care insurance companies are scrambling to improve all of things right now, in advance of the health exchanges going up in October, 2013.

Let me pick. Give us freedom. Maintain competition among them to keep prices down.

Yes but this would then lead us down the same path that the U.K., Europe and Canada has already gone down with poor service and increased costs. I think we should go back to fee for service with catastrophic insurance coverage offered at varying levels dependent upon ones wants and needs. The government can assist those in need with assistance for non-emergency care.

"It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication and a government bureaucracy to administer it." - Thomas Sowell

I never understood why health insurance should have anything to do with your employment. Why health insurance? Why not car insurance, your phone bill, or rent? In fact, let's just let our employers pick our cable provider, type of car we drive, home, and everything else and just pay all of our bills for us in lieu of a salary?

/Tounge + cheek

As opposed to the Government picking out and paying for all of those things in lieu of a salary?
;)

Don't be ridiculous, then we'd be Commies.

/Snarf

Can you clarify what you mean by "Europe"? You know that that ranges from Iceland to Turkey right? Quality of healthcare varies greatly in Europe. Scandinavian and Benelux countries have possibly the best healthcare in the world, while other European countries have abysmal heathcare and a hospital visit is both costly and downright scary there.

Back in 2009, this American Life did a good little summary on how our employer-based health insurance system developed. You can hear the segment on that here.

The short answer is that the granddaddy of health insurance companies -- Blue Cross -- got started marketing itself to employers/employee groups to build pools of premium payers, most of whom wouldn't need to use the insurance much. (Though I don't think they mention it, Blue Shield had a similar start. Blue Cross was for hospital care and Blue Shield for physician care.)

Then, starting with WWII and its tighter labor pool and limited wages, employers began to offer health insurance more widely (along with other fringe benefits) to lure workers. Then, the government said that employers didn't have to pay taxes on health insurance premiums, giving employers a major incentive to offer health insurance as an employee benefit. And there we were.


Not to mention that single-payer and universal health care are not the same thing. While most of Europe has universal health care, not all European countries achieve universal health care through a single-payer system. Germany comes to mind as one country that has universal health care with a multi-payer system.

And still manages to have a very decent medical care.