was intended to be:

paid for by NSF grants

Why should they support a system of “freeloaders”?

That’s their attitude – I’ll never use it…let it wither on the vine.

A single payer system would spread the burden of caring for the sickest people evenly. Studies show it will provide better care, for less money. Examples abound: England spends 40% as much per person as we do, but gets better results. What you saw in Sonoma was what needs to be fixed.

I hope and believe repeating this basic refutation of the Libertarian/GOP/”free-market” cult will be time well spent. To take back our nation from the corporatists, we’ll have to be obliged to smack the cultists down whenever they trot out their deadly lies in public.

My eaasy above is only one way of doing so – I’m hoping the ideas and examples can be of use to others who want to reclaim our nation and our common life from the corporatists.

And I’m hoping they’ll be far more succinct than I can.

Loved your succinct comments above – esp your 121!

The great thing about freedom is you can do anything that you want as long as it doesn’t impede the freedoms of others. Anyone in this country has the freedom to go out and get health care, whatever health care they want. You can choose between Free State sponsored health care, or get the best health care plan available to man. You may need to take steps in order to afford that type of health care, but again that is another freedom.

Yes, all those infants born with developmental abnormalities can just raise themselves up by their bootstraps – assuming they have arms and legs – and take take steps to afford “the best health care known to man”.

Sorry, kurt – won’t join you in sacrificing more human lives to the church of libertarian ideology.

I agree that there are aspects of socialism in our society, but it doesn’t mean it’s a good thing. The only way that socialism works is if everyone is doing it, that’s why Clinton has set up her health care program the way she has. I order to do that, you have to penalize people for not participating, that’s loss of freedom.

Socialism is a small step away from Communism. Both of those words should scare the hell out of everyone. If we go this route, you will not truly understand what you had, until it is gone, and then you can’t get it back (unless there is a revolt of some type).

Gee. Outside of the feverish delusions of the ideologues, the citizens of Scandanavia nations (all with private enerprise and heavy state intervention/taxation – often termed democratic socialism) have the best quality of life on the planet. The best health system by many measures is the state-funded French sysem.

Of course, for ideologues, empirical data doesn’t matter. Worship of their pet ideology does.

But the ideologues have had thirty years to sacrifice our children and elders and global competitiveness on the altar of their religion.

While continuing to use public roads and public services – and even to collect paychecks from public agencies.

Cause their ideologies are so – well – flexible.

When it comes to looking after themselves.

Its a well known point that any dollar the government throws at any program, about 70% of that dollar is gone before it even gets to what it is supposed to help.

Yes – this is a well-known GOP/libertarian talking point – pushed by Reagan and the Club For Growth. And this talking point is a pernicious lie.

As another commenter observed:

Medicare is said to be the most efficient and least expensive insurance one can buy.

Yep. Overhead approx 1-2% vs 20-40% for commercial insurance.

The two parts of Medicare that don’t match the 1-2% overhead? Medicare Part D – designed to allow your precious private sector (Big Pharma and Big Insurance) to gouge as much as possible. And Medicare “Advantage” HMO’s – designed to allow Big Insurance to gouge as much as possible.

So – outside of Libertarian/GOP fever dreams – the most efficient health care funding system in the US is public. This public system fails to be efficient only where Rethug pols diverted public dollars into for-profit “answers”: Medicare Part D and Medicare Advantage.

You don’t need to challenge me, I used to work as a nurse in a clinic of Sonoma County’s (CA) public health system, that why I don’t ever want to see the government take over the country health care in any way. The “Free” health care is absolute garbage, but there were good people there trying there best. There was just always a severe shortage of everything, so treatment was difficult. That in turn lowered moral which made the place seem like a mortuary.

Uhh…Sonoma County Health is a delivery system. So too are Cedars-Sinai in LA (great care), the University of California teaching hospitals (great care), CPMC in SF (great care) and innumerable shitty for-profit HMO’s that take Medicare.

Medicare, in contrast, is a payment mechanism. Single payer is a payment mechanism.

To confuse payment mechanisms with delivery systems is to demonstrate fundamental ignorance of the basic concepts in health care public policy.

So I ended up going back to college, getting my masters degree (during this time I had basic health coverage), and went to work in the Silicon Valley in technology. That is where my big salary boost came.

Before the Libertarian/GOP wet dream known as Prop 13 came along, Californians’ TAXES funded the best system of public higher education in the world. The system was so good that the full destructive effects of Prop 13 (and the greedball initiatives that followed behind it) took decades to degrade that once grand system. Even Californians and Americans who attended “private” colleges/Universities were heavily subsidized by Federal tax dollars.

Silicon Valley and Orange County are both the results of piles of Federal wealth that created and funded the infrastructure and much of the basic innovation which allowed both areas to serve as centers for private sector work that piggibacked on Federal investement. Orange County was the site of massive War/Defense/NASA/NSA spending that began in WWII and continued to this day. The Silicon Valley firms created before the Internet enjoyed Federal puchashing and demand for technology as a prime mover in their growth, as well as enjoying the fruits of basic research conducted in Federally subsidized Universties and paid for by NSA grants. As the basis for the Internet was the (Federal) DARPA’s work, all the ‘net based Silly Valley wealth is the direct beneficiary of Federal tax dollars – and the social investment they paid for.

And despite these realities, Orange County and Silly Valley are the two regions in California most likely to vomit up and fund more Libertarian anti-government lethal delusions CA state ballot initiatives that make California ever more nasty, brutish, and poor.

Odd – I don’t see the apostles of Libertarian theory/ideology refuse to use:

Federally subsidized highways. CA has a few toll roads – the rest of the State’s transport grid is publicly funded.

Federally subsidized airports.

Federally subsidized hospitals.

USDA inspected meat – even before the free-marketeers gutted the USDA inspection system.

Medicare

Social Security.

However, I’m very familiar with the priests of Libertarian/GOP religion seizing on the fact that the deliberate “drown it in a bathtub” strategy of destroying public sector services and infrastructure precisely in order to discredit public services (in service of their real goal of discrediting the State/Federal governments) really has degraded the quality of public services.

And then using the predictable results of their war on the public sector – defunded services and institutions – to support the Big Lie that the failure is the result of the deliberately defunded public institutions.

I used to work as a nurse in a clinic of Sonoma County’s (CA) public health system, that why I don’t ever want to see the government take over the country health care in any way. The “Free” health care is absolute garbage, but there were good people there trying there best. There was just always a severe shortage of everything, so treatment was difficult.

Of course, faltering public institutions are the intentional result of Libertarian/GOP/free-market policies. And from the Libertarian/GOP/free-market perspective, trashing our public services isn’t a failure – it’s a success. For them, destroying the roads and schools and hospitals the rest of us rely upon is just collateral damage in their jihad against public sector controls on megacorps.

For the cultists, the deregulation that brought California blackouts and Enron’s looting is a suceess.

For the cultists, the deregulation that leaves shit and E Coli in our food is a success.

The deep pockets behind the Libertarian/Free Market cults have theirs – the best that mega-fortunes of inherited wealth can buy. For the deep pockets, trashing the public sector is the mechanism to persuade US to remove all regulation on the megacorps.

So we see destruction of our health care and environment protection and food safety as a failure.

Yet for the Free Market/Libertarian/GOP cultists who trashed California and the US over last thirty years, destuction of the public institutions required for our well-being was the deliberate goal.

To remove all public checks on megacorp power, the cult first must discredit the public sector, public services, and government.

And as we’ve seen today and over the past thirty years, they and their supporters (witting or duped) will use any possible lie to attain that goal.

And as they’ll see this year: they trashed our nation, yet failed to consolidate power.

And we’re pissed – and coming for the megacorps.

As we rebuild California and America, we’ll also have energy for the investigations, trials, impeachments, and confiscations required to take back our public services, life, and public instituitions from the cultists.

And I’ll love rubbing their faces in it every step of the way.

Bon appetit, cultists. We’re taking our country back.

My reference to turning 13 and reading the Communist Manifesto was related to, what seemed to me, to be a patronizing tone in your discussion. I’m 64 years old, have a Master’s Degree in American History, have been an officer in the US Air Force, and worked as an air traffic controller, superfisor, facility manager, and staff specialist in the FAA for 36 years. Most of us “didn’t fall off the turnip truck yesterday,” and are aware capitalist, communist, and socialist theory.

With regard to foreign ownership (which I’m not sure of the relationship to the discussion of the role of government), if it plays too great a role in the disparity a greatly increases the division between the wealthy and the remainder, we may have to return to protectionism, even though it might lower the standard of living. That will be our choice. But surely you understand that my point related to the fact that our society was more stable, and offered more to its meember, prior to the current adminstration’s tax policies.

as for:

Case in point:
“Ted Kennedy, he only pays taxes on what he makes in the senate, yet everyone knows he is a millionaire several times over. No-one can track what he is worth because of laws surrounding Trusts. Which gets us to your point…..who makes these laws”?

Your right Kurt. I was confounded when I heard Ted Kennedy say we must “compromise”. I got goose pimples…….He lost me after that!

Those who go along with poor laws because there is one thing good in them is what caused the mess we’re in. Really, beginning with Reagan & the lawmakers and Senators in Washington since. We need to clean “House” and Senate as these wonderfull bloggers are pointing out!
Thanks Jane & Christy!

In a perfect world what you wrote above would be it. This world is far from perfect and those we put in government we absolutely can’t trust. We can hope that they make the right decisions for us, and if not they get replaced.

One of the dirty little secrets of liberals is that all conservatives are rich. Funny thing is that is not the case anymore and there are more liberal millionaires/billionaires than conservative. What is even funnier is that they take advantage of all the same tax loophole’s/advantages that they claim the conservatives were exploiting during the 80’s. Case in point: Ted Kennedy, he only pays taxes on what he makes in the senate, yet everyone knows he is a millionaire several times over. No-one can track what he is worth because of laws surrounding Trusts. Which gets us to your point…..who makes these laws? We want to trust them, to penalize themselves when they are being corrupt.