edited to add: they are big on individual rights instead of collective rights.

How the fuck can ANYBODY be against healthcare?

I'm sorry, I just don't get it to the point that I'm about ready to move to a different country. We have tons of money to pay for wars we don't even get to watch on TV but we can't afford to make people healthy? Somting wong here.

poor enough to get government aid, but not welathy enough to buy insurance. So i go to jail?

how does that give me healthcare?

healthcare is helathcare. This bill is about insurance, not healthcare.....
that is the whole problem.

You are confusing apples and oranges and turds. Nobody is against health CARE. Some people are against MANDATED, PRIVATE health INSURANCE.

You are also assuming that if you lack health INSURANCE it means you lack HEALTH and/or HEALTH CARE.

The reality is that you can have the best health insurance in the world, and still have crappy health. You have have the best health insurance AND the best health care in the world, and still have crappy health (just ask Dick Cheney).

And, you can have the best Health Insurance, get sick, and still find yourself either untreated or unable to pay for treatment that your insurance company refuses to or that falls below a high deductible.

When you buy auto liability insurance, which is the only part which is mandated, you are not insuring yourself, you are insuring that anyone you harm while using that auto can be compensated for that loss. The state requires that as a condition of registering the car to protect other people from being harmed by you.

If you have a loan on the car, the lender may require that you have collision and comprehensive insurance. Again, that insurance protects the lender, not you.

Both things are the result of you deciding to purchase and operate a motor vehicle, and in the latter case to do so with borrowed money.

Health insurance, if mandated, is protecting only you, eliminating your own ability to choose, and is not a result of choice but is imposed simply because you are alive.

Big, big differences.

too many people buy overpriced insurance they cannot afford to actually USE

health insurance would provide treatment if you have an infectious disease that could harm others. That could prevent you from spreading the disease. A good example is covering the cost of therapy for HIV positive people to prevent them from spreading the virus.

HIV treatment may reduce your viral load to where you can have sex without spreading it. Or you can simply refrain from having unprotected sex.

And I could be wrong, but I suspect there are already plans in place for the treatment of highly infectious diseases that can be spread by everyday activities such as breathing, such as mandatory vaccination of children to enter school, along with free vaccines for the poor.

And yet, having both insurance, free vaccines and mandates hasn't stopped people from refusing to vaccinate. It also didn't stop a former boss from sending his sick toddler to daycare -- hoping that the center wouldn't notice the measles spots!!!! -- so he and his wife could both come to work.

Likewise, having free, government provided Tuberculosis treatment offered around the world didn't force people to take the entire round of drugs, which in turn didn't stop it from evolving into multi-drug-resistant Tb.

you are required to have collusion insurance. And liability insurance is protection from you being sued for bodily injury to the other party involved in an accident.

My boyfriend learned this when he moved down here from Virginia Beach.

He was shocked. He has to drive 45 minutes a day to and from work. Going to a grocery store is at least a 15 minute drive. Going to the high school, farther than that.

And if we moved closer to the high school then we would be farther from the grocery store, etc.

And there is no public transportation, and we CERTAINLY do not have the money to move or make our lives better... if we did we probably would.

Our town JUST legalized alcohol two years ago, and JUST got a taxi service. One taxi.

So owning a car is the only realistic way to have a job that pays enough to support a family, which in turn, is the only way to survive.

After moving here my boyfriend realized that people from big cities, or even small cities, don't fully fathom what it is like to live in the solid red, ultra republican, boonies. A place where I had the misfortune of being born

You two could have moved any place with public transportation.

Unless you are a farmer, staying in the place where you were born, or moving to the boonies, is a luxury you choose to pay for. Providing your own transportation is part of the price.

Collision by your lien holder.

you do not even need to have insurance, just showing (i think it some kind of account) that you have the $25000 or so minimum payout available is enough to exempt you from buying insurance on all your cars. That is what rich people like Jay Leno who have 100s 0f cars use.

No hypocrisy here, but I still think its going to pass. At least one of the conservative justices must be reading Heritage foundation newsletter where the individual mandate is seen as essential in promoting personal responsibility or realize that their insurance buddies are going to make a pant load off this bill.

$1000 says this bill passes 5-4

Car liability insurance is mandated by most states (if you drive on public roads). Tenth amendment:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

You could either self-insure or drive the car on private property.

I work for a large corporation where we do not have insurance on the company-owned vehicles. If something happens, the company cuts any victims a check. The cars are licensed and registered and just uninsured. Also, alot of farmers or people with alot of land have vehicles that are not licensed or registered or insured... they just don't use public roads.

In short, there is no federal mandate to buy car insureance even if you own and use a car. The health insurance comparison is not hypocrisy... it's different.

... mandating that someone buys health insurance simply because they're alive is an entirely different matter.

You'll never need car insurance if you never purchase a car, but if one is alive, sooner or later, one will need health services of some kind.


The question is how that gets delivered and who pays?

A lot of people never need anything more than over-the-counter until they are on Medicare. What health care I have needed, I have ended up paying out of pocket, whether or not I was insured. I learned early on what a scam the health insurance industry is.

And some people make other choices. Going to a nursing home, ending your life trapped in a hospital bed with tubes stuck in every orifice, with half-dead people waking you at 5am to stick you repeatedly with needles, trying desperately to find a single functioning vein so they can take your dwindling blood from black, shriveled arms, daily until you are found dead in that bed, frankly is NOT my idea of how I want to spend my final minutes, let alone final years.

Like it or not, there are other choices. You may or may not agree with them, but other choices exist and other people have a right to choose them.

This is the part many people disregard.

If you have enough funds to pay for millions of dollars of health care that may arise from a catastrophic event not of your own doing, you are exceedingly fortunate.

If you don't, then who pays that bill?

Other people may have the right to choose, but society also then has the right to make them pay for their choices.

How would you then feel about being taxed in order to pay for your own health care? Are you also against that?

You know that there are people that would fight even that aspect of health care, they would want to be excluded from paying those taxes, even if they benefitted greatly from them.

I have no problem being taxed. I have never complained about taxes, although I do have problems with how some of my tax dollars are spent.

I have serious problems with being forced to buy insurance from the same private companies that took thousands of my dollars and then left me to die in my early 30s. I am still here because I ended up paying cash for my health care, plus a little luck, and a (non-insurance) dentist who recognized how ill I was (probably septic) and put me on a month of antibiotics.

I did have a catastrophic accident in which I was paralyzed below the neck. I regained feeling and movement, after about half an hour of being a head lying in the dirt, only after I came up with a reason to live. Those kinds of events are pretty rare and I know I had zero interest in living as a "head." As I recall, one of the first things Christopher Reeves said to Dana was that "maybe I should just check out." In that half hour of being a head lying in dirt, I totally understood what he was saying. In that situation, you don't even need help to die. You can will it.

I have no intention of fighting catastrophic illness, certainly not in the western health care model. I work in a hospital, so am not speaking from ignorance, but rather as a witness and, sadly sometimes, participant. The director of training at a nearby hospital, a Yale graduate nurse with decades of experience, told us straight out if she goes down, step over her body and get a cup of coffee or something. Do NOT call 911. Do NOT get help. Let her go.

I recently read an article about how many medical professionals facing catastrophic illness choose to go home, spend more time with their families and die. There is a reason for this. I understand and agree with it.

A living will takes care of that, for the most part.

But you CANNOT speak for others.

You stated that everybody will eventually require health care in their lives.

I said not necessarily.

My care gets paid cash as I go, and will do so until I check out, regardless of insurance or lack thereof. I know plenty of other people who share my wishes and have plans in place or are working on them.

I can state categorically that EVERYONE needs health care of some type at least once in their lives.

You admitted that you have seen a doctor yourself, yet state that you don't need health care.

Unless one is born at home, is never vacinated, lives their entire life without ever seeing a doctor, you might have a point.

The population of that universe would be statistically invisible.

and people everywhere keep referring to health insurance as health care, so it does become confusing.

When you stated that everyone needs health care in their lives, it was within the context of car insurance as an analogy for health insurance.

And you went on to state that the question is about who will deliver and how will it be paid for.

You also went on to write about "what ifs" in reference to catastrophic accidents.

And so the discussion migrated through catastrophic accidents, etc.

Yes, everybody will need health CARE at some point. My health CARE has consistently been paid for by me. Only Delta Dental, when I had it, actually honored the insurance contract. When I have been seriously ill, the health INSURANCE company denied treatment, and I paid out of pocket for my care.

If I have a truly catastrophic accident I expect to leave. I will not try to fight any health insurance companies for coverage, nor would I willingly enter the health CARE system. I know other people who feel the same. Some of whom actually work in the health CARE system.

Also, regarding living wills, they are in reference to those in the health care system. I am talking not entering the system, period.

You can pay for healthcare expenses out of pocket.

Just like those that have enough money to in some states that allow it, they can forgo auto insurance by posting a bond, in cash, first.

NOT after an accident happens, the money gets put in escrow BEFORE the need arises.

Same should apply to all those that say. "I'll just pay as I go."

Have you seen the price of even routine surgical procedures lately?

The people that say that they'll "pay as they go" are not being serious in any way, unless they are independantly wealthy

They are just taking a huge gamble, and hope that they beat the odds.

Self-insure or drive exclusively on private land... either case involves private vehicle ownership without insurance.

...a certain threshold. Same damn logic.