That's a false choice.

Nick, You don't know me from Adam. Yet somehow in the shallow political postings of this board you can analyze my brain and diagnose irrationality in my brain. You are amazing.




You sound just like a stereotypical Alabama bigot with your grouping of subhuman dogs from Red states.

My father is the source of my vision of freedom. He, like Josef, fled his home country as Communists Iron boots stamped out one freedom after another (and quite a few citizens). It was appropriate to defend freedom in that country and it is also appropriate to do so now in this country. Only a tyrant fears freedom.



Classic Nick. For you to call freedom and equality "religious vomit" shows your true political colors. I feel sorry for you.



Anytime is a great time to be a Liberterian.

Big government picked the pockets of and enslaved your grandchildren to "fix" a problem that they created by deviating from freedom and equality with their well meaning but misguided programs. Special interest groups benifitted and were well rewarded for bad management. Rather than admit that the original program was bad economics, they played politics and transferred the pain to future generations. Frankly, they should all be taken out behind the White House and shot for treason.



Slavery only benefits the enslavers. I would love to see Health Care reform. It is mostly with full government backing that the Insurance and programs are out of control. They are going to "fix" the problem by enslaving my great grandchildren. I have yet to hear a single detail about costs and what the program specifically does. Have you? I would love to see something better in place but so far that has not been forthcoming.

Glad you get your mail. I changed to electronic billing and electronic banking and would not mind having my junk mail delivered only 3 times a week.

Wrong. Gov't mandates auto insurance on a local level (not national) to limit liability of both the individual as well as the local gov't. You clearly don't understand that this is not an issue of personal freedom.



Wrong. Clearly again you have no grasp of the issue when you use the concept of shared cost benefit as an argument against shared cost benefit.



Wrong. The reason why Fedex and debatably DHL & UPS 'deliver stuff more efficiently' is not because they are not bloated bureacracies. It is because they haven't been mandated to deliver mail. If you saddled these private companies with the money-losing proposition of having to take a loss on each piece of mail they delivered, they'd be in the same same as the US Postal Service or worse.



Wrong. In spite of the fact that gov't non-intervention in the banking business clearly lead to the economic collapse this past October, you continue to argue that the private sector is better at self-policing then the gov't.

Seems to work just fine for elected officials and the military.



The post office delivers a letter from Florida to California for something like $.50. Mail comes to me at the same time every day. Works out great for me. If I want FedEx, I can choose to pay for it.



Like there's no corruption or fraud in the system we have now? Taxes? I thought the public option was supposed to collect premiums, just like private insurance.

If there was a clinic in town that was public and inexpensive, you bet a lot of folks that need healthcare and can't afford insurance would be there seeing doctors. Grandmas, mommies, babies. Now, it seems the only option available to them is the emergency room.

I was hoping a good, inexpensive plan was actually going to become available. I know a lot of people are suffering right now, and they can't afford health insurance. Maybe not you.

I've got a question for you (all). If someone has a family and can't afford the health insurance premiums offered by the private companies, what should they do? Self-pay-as-you-go is expensive, and emergency room visits must be paid for, or they will go to collections on ya.

"Big government picked the pockets of and enslaved your grandchildren to "fix" a problem that they created by deviating from freedom and equality with their well meaning but misguided programs."

Bullshit and hype. Also bullshit.


"Special interest groups benifitted and were well rewarded for bad management. Rather than admit that the original program was bad economics, they played politics and transferred the pain to future generations."

Bullshit and more hype.

The national debt was 125% of GDP around WWII - way more than it is now - yet in the following few decades the standard of living in this country rose like crazy and the debt as a percentage of GDP was paid way down.

Now, I have plenty of criticisms of the bailouts. But Big Government acted, and every economist I've heard agrees that it was because of that - flaws and all - that we're not in another Great Depression.

"I have not seen a government program that helps."

More bullshit, hype, lame ideology, bullshit, hype, and Ayn Rand droppings. That's just plain horseshit as well.

Everywhere you look there are government programs that help, from our infrastructure on down to Social Security, Medicare, public education (severe criticisms notwithstanding), veterans' programs, and on and on.

It must be the cold in MN that makes you like this.

"Nick, You don't know me from Adam. Yet somehow in the shallow political postings of this board you can analyze my brain and diagnose irrationality in my brain. You are amazing"

Thanks but it doesn't take great powers of insight to diagnose irrationality in your brain. For a start you're libertarian in ignorance of reality. But beyond that, saying everything government does is against freedom and equality, and government intervention to prevent another Great Depression is enslaving your grandchildren...that's at least irrational and possibly psychotic.

Or maybe just plain stupid.

amazing how insanely wrong about everything you are zcocks - and how pitiful that the taxes I pay in cali filter into that failure of a pisshole called minneapolis

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/08/17/potter.health.insurance/index.html?iref=newssearch

Like Nick said, some things shouldn't necessarily be for profit. Healthcare is probably one of them. A for-profit healthcare system invites corruption and makes a wager on our lives and health for the profit of insurance companies. Insurance companies should not be allowed to decide whether we receive care or not.

This is not the Wild West nor Colonial America anymore where you could and would expect government to take a hands off approach. If we are to consider ourselves a highly-civilized nation then we need to provide for something as basic as the health and well-being of all our citizens. We have too many people and some of our problems are too big and complicated to expect the private sector to be able to handle them efficiently. There is a time and place for the private sector and there's also a time and place for government. Rather than waste our time debating the merits of government-run organizations as they currently exist, we should be figuring out how to make them run better.