Nice to see you here at mullentown, in your non-anonymic and insightful way. Keep coming back!

Mark

To me it seems an inferior compassion, if it is compassion at all, to be generous with (tax) money taken from others with the threat of imprisonment. Sorry. I guess that’s why I’m a conservative.

Keep up the good blog.

I think maybe you misunderstood my statement on the feds paying for kids’ insurance. I’m all for chip where it’s needed, but am concerned at the expansion for income levels where it’s likely not needed. You indicated earlier how much more we spend for health expense than other industrialized nations. There are many complex reasons for this, but a couple of them are that we litigate at the drop of a hat and have shown a willingness to overmedicate and overtreat. I worry that some number of families with insurance now at the new income levels (50-80K) that would be covered by the expanded chip would drop their kids’ coverage and let it be covered by taxes. For example, with my companies’ insurance I could save a couple hundred a month if I dropped my kids coverage and let someone else cover it…

But think more about your first response: why should the feds pay kids medical bills? Fairly heartless response, IMHO, cause if the families had health insurance the kid would be covered already. But of the 45 million or more in USA that do NOT have insurance are all of them under the poverty line? Nope but we as a community still will end up paying their medical bills one way or another. I, for one, would much rather pay a few cents per capita into a federal program that allows for childhood immunizations, etc. instead of having to pay dollars into local insurance programs that have to raise rates to cover indigent care in local emergency rooms.

I’m all for changing the medical care system–when i was laid off for several months a few years ago i found it daunting that at the worst possible time I had no reasonable access to insurance. But I guess I’d rather the system be shaped with a state-level scalpel, rather than a federal level axe.

The US has the highest GDP going to health care of any other country (15%), in fact nearly double that of comparable western countries. The per capita cost of health care in the US is over $4,500 while that of European countries like Sweden, Switzerland and Germany closer to $2,500 per capita. The US has over 45,000,000 people without any medical insurance while those same European countries that have “socialized” medicine covers all citizens. And what does our system buy? Well, I have the best health care in the world, much of it supplied by University of Utah graduates and managed by either IHC or University Health care programs. But the quality of my health care does not trickle down. The infant mortality index is a good indicator of the quality of health care in a total population: the US has the worst in the western industrial countries (greater that 7 per 1,000 live births), higher than that of Italy, UK, Australia, Germany, Switzerland or Sweden (which has about half the US death rate).

What CHIP does is lower the cost to society of health care to the citizens over their lifetime. Our health care system is tragically broken for many more people in this country than just the 45 million without insurance: just ask the UAW. This CHIP program is a no brainer, the same way that having your kid get a diptheria immunization is a no brainer. Bush, though, has no brain.

Dennis’ net worth is under $50,000 unlike the multimillionare Democrats that are the “front runners”. He understands the plight of the homeless, the poor, the sick, the disabled…..

Orrin Hatch
is a catch
that’s better
thrown back.