I think Republicans are succeeding at scaring people over health care again.

[Nym90]

I fear this as well, though one advantage we have is that we can (hopefully) learn from the mistakes of before.

In addition, Congress overall is quite a bit more progressive now than it was during Clinton's first two years. We have a more Democratic Senate, and while the numbers in the House are about the same, there are far fewer conservative Southern Democrats, so that alone makes the likelihood of passage quite a bit higher.

[Nym90]

Yeah, it is scary at how much the "OMG Big Government!!!" thing scares people. For some reason that logic doesn't apply to things like national defense or public safety, but yeah.

[Nym90]

I would argue that the costs of doing nothing are far greater than those of taking action, but of course those are less directly quantifiable.

But if y'all want to argue that Medicare/Medicaid have been colossal failures and that we'd be much better off without them, feel free to make that argument to the public, including citing such figures as poverty rates among the senior population today compared to 1965 to help prove your case. People in poverty don't pay much in taxes of course, hence my argument in paragraph 1 about the costs of doing nothing....that's even leaving aside any quality of life/moral arguments of course.

[Nym90]

We all know what the end game of this, don't we, which is absolutely necessary. The word I am thinking of starts with an "r."  The trick is how to effect "r" politically, which is damn tough. Do you get my drift?

Yes, reform is always difficult, as the deck is stacked strongly in favor of the status quo.

[Nym90]

I'd like to know what the Republicans are pushing for healthcare reform?

The party of no is fresh out of ideas.

They are pushing for more competition and transparency, and have some good ideas about it, but can't get their arms around how to deal with the uninsured, and if you don't deal with that, along with the skyrocketing cost of all these new medical technologies, you just aren't in the game, but nibbling around the edges. It is pathetic really.

They need to sell the accurate fact that nationalized medicine will squash medical innovation. The uninsured are a small segment of the population. Why should we destroy the healthcare of the vast majority of Americans to cover 10-15 million Americans?

Well, I don't agree with the first part of your post to begin with but don't you find the fact that millions are uninsured a little, err, morally disturbing?

Insurance =/= medical treatment. Insurance should exist for only catastrophic circumstances. The way that health insurance exists now is the major reason why we are having the problems we're having now.

A major reason why costs are so high is because people who are uninsured are not going in for preventative measures and other more basic procedures, and this is then leading to larger problems down the road that are more costly. This also increases the likelihood they will then not pay the larger bill later and thus drives up the cost for everyone else.

Another large contributor is people making unhealthy lifestyle choices, but obviously trying to legislate "good behavior" is (for good reason) taboo, though I think we should incentivize healthier choices as much as possible. Otherwise we simply have to accept expensive health care as being one of the consequences of our actions.

[Nym90]

We all know what the end game of this, don't we, which is absolutely necessary. The word I am thinking of starts with an "r."  The trick is how to effect "r" politically, which is damn tough. Do you get my drift?

Yes, reform is always difficult, as the deck is stacked strongly in favor of the status quo.

No the "r" word is "rationing."  Write it down.

Well, we have rationing in the current system, too.....just from a different source.