OT: Do you want a public healthcare option for all?

I'm trying out my political action chops on an issue dear to my heart - healthcare - and it's hard in Republican Texas to be a liberal.

Curious, since all of our lives here are so impacted directly by our healthcare plans or lack there of, would this board as a whole lean towards a public healthcare option with a standard of care required by law for all or ...away cuz you all are Texans? And Texas believes in guns, dealth penatly, and you welfare cheats get off our lawn! (Yes, it's a stereotype, but it hits close to home.)

So...survey, for or against a public healthcare option like Medicare for all - with the option to keep your own private, too. And why or why not?

FOR ... but I turned in my Republican membership card thanks to George W. 

Seriously, after 30+ years in a social service agency, I honestly think it ranks right up there with equality in education and civil rights.  It's crazy that so many people have no health care. 

BTW, I think you are a brave woman to post this on the TMB.  Don't be surprised if you get flamed.

Yeah, I got my abestos suite on. I realy wanted to know just for Texas, my home, so that is why I posted here...Thanks for your reply!

Larissa....I am all for everyone having health care as long as it isn't going to cost us more money !!!!   As we ALL know...someone will have to pay for the one's who can't !!!    I am sorry but our country is in such a financial mess at this moment !!!  UGH you don't even want to get me started on that.   LOL  Anyway we all deserve health care.   I have a son who is 23 and has no healthcare.   We end up paying out when he gets sick even though he doesn't live with us.    

Hugs and blessings ~~~ Vivian

"As we ALL know...someone will have to pay for the one's who can't !!"

I'm curious, how is this inherently evil? Do you tell the poor mother stricken with cancer, so sorry, your kids are going to be orphans cuz I'm not helping with MY money?

I guess that statement came across wrong.   I know that this healthcare system works for other countries...but not sure about for the USA.   No I don't believe that anyone should be turned away from any treatment that is necessary.   Trust me....Everyone deserves healthcare.   But with the USA in such major debt...not sure how it will happen.   Trust me...wouldn't hurt all the hospitals and doctors to treat patients in dire need for nothing !!!   Afterall they are the ones that took the calling to help those in need.   LOL  I doubt that will ever happen though.   People are so greedy and money hungry here in USA.    Anyway that is my thoughts...as I said my 23 yr old son has no health insurance and can't afford any either.   As it is we pay his truck payment and insurance and that is not cheap at all !!!!


Hugs and blessings ~~~ Vivian

FOR!  It's not even a hard question.  But I would go further.

I love me some Barack.  But why he is still blathering about "insurance for all" instead of a single-payer system that cuts out the middleman is beyond me.  Well, not beyond me, really -- I know he's trying to avoid the insurance and healthcare industries' fear-mongering arguments about "socialized medicine."  There needs to be a lot of reworking of the system, but there is a colossal amount of waste in the way medicine is practiced and billed now.  We as a nation need to suck it up and make hard choices, such as palliative care only for those over the age of, say, 85 unless they private-pay for curative care.

Those who can afford supplemental insurance coverage should be able to get it, but there needs to be a baseline level of care (including preventive care and support for fundamental lifestyle and nutritional reforms) in a single-payer system for ALL.  It can't be worse than the current system, in which working Americans are routinely turned away from hospitals and sent home to die because they're uninsured and can't come up with a huge deposit for their cheomtherapy or surgery or whatever.

OK, TMB, flame away!  Better to have a healthy discussion (pardon the pun) than continue to stick our collective heads in the sand.

Healthy discussion is correct, because I haven heard the naysayers come up with a viable alternative other than keep the status quo, which is unacceptable and bankrupting the country.

Do I understand you correctly..are you saying that  if we get a national healthcare program , once you reach 85 doctors should not try to cure you of any sickness you may have unless you private pay?  If so isn't that playing God.  Man deciding whose live is worth saving.  Do you know how many grandparents are raising their grandchildren these days because the parents can't or won't.  Each year of my teaching carreer I  had some  students whose parents were not in their lives.  Some were just gone, some were in prison, some had their rights taken away by the state.  If these grandparents became ill in your system and was denied treatment ( believe me, they would not be able to afford to self pay) and died as a result, who would care for these innocent children?  Eskimos used to place their elderly on ice floats and let them drift away and die.  We have evolved since then.

I believe that there is value in all life.  I would not want my government deciding who should be allowed to live and who should die based on age.  What about premature babies.  Do you know how expensive it is to keep extremely  premature babies alive and some conditions they are born with or develop are life long and very expensive to treat.  In your system would you want them taken care of? 

Would we have some government committee formed to decide whose life is worth protecting and whose isn't.  What would the critera be.  Age, cost of treatment,  patients productivity and contribution to society, their family connections, etc.?

I could have totally misunderstood your statement about pallative versus curative care.  I sure hope so.