Posted On: June 25, 2009, 1:56 pm CDT

Posted By: James Stewart

Moving people into a public plan at lower reimbursements than what a private plan can arrange is not savings, it's cost shifting.
This is the most dishonest debate I have ever endured. The administration is not at all about reducing cost - it's about "federalizing" another segment of our society. We have many states that mandate auto insurance but 10%+ don't buy it anyway. And there is no single payer auto insurer - wouldn't auto repair be more cost effective if the government included that as a right of the public. But then they would have to create a right to have a car, and it would have to be the same car for everyone, right? How about life insurance or disability or dental and vision insurance. Don't we have a right to that too?
We can have government sanctioned gambling halls where people destroy their lives by risking money they don't have, but we can't allow people to decide to what degree they want to protect themselves from personal financial risk.
Neither health care or health insurance is a right guaranteed by the Constitution, and it is certainly not something that the founders of this country envisioned for our society.