Health Care

I agree. Healthcare is good. Everyone should have it. Some say that the insurance process is sucking the funds out of healthcare, but I don't think it's a huge percentage, even if it's 15 or 20% that's way smaller than the problem.

I just know that the healthcare system we have now doesn't work. The ACA tried to fix it and is failing. So what do we try next? The Republican bill is just Obamacare lite and won't fix a damn thing.

--

Rick C 

Viewed the eclipse at Wintercrest Farms, 
on the centerline of totality since 1998

The comparison with even the most extravagant of European health care systems suggests that Americans are paying at least 50% more per head than they should.

Canadian economists who have looked at the US Health care system thinks that the major difference is excessive administrative costs in the US health care insurance business.

Worse, it looks as if it is aimed at restoring those obvious defects of the previous system that Obamacare did manage to correct.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

Ulp! There, he just hit himself in the face with that knee!

--

Rick C 

Viewed the eclipse at Wintercrest Farms, 
on the centerline of totality since 1998

You really are one stupid shit (typical lefty).

You know the ERA never passed. Women's rights improved with the passage of the 19th amendment, but in practice are not equal to men's to this day.

--

Rick C 

Viewed the eclipse at Wintercrest Farms, 
on the centerline of totality since 1998

Cut the BS. We live by the _present-day_ Constitution.

What rights do men have that women don't? ...Jim Thompson

--
| James E.Thompson                                 |    mens     | 
| Analog Innovations                               |     et      | 
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    | 
| STV, Queen Creek, AZ 85142    Skype: skypeanalog |             | 
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  | 
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com |    1962     | 

Why is it that the most unproductive members of our society blame 
the most productive members of our society for their failures?

[snip]

The US Constitution doesn't "evolve", it's amended by the rules set up within the Constitution and NO OTHER way.

"Evolve" is a pansy leftist warm cozy feeling rather than rational thought.

Are you a pansy leftist? I think so >:-} (Definitely a pansy ;-) ...Jim Thompson

--
| James E.Thompson                                 |    mens     | 
| Analog Innovations                               |     et      | 
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    | 
| STV, Queen Creek, AZ 85142    Skype: skypeanalog |             | 
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  | 
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com |    1962     | 

Why is it that the most unproductive members of our society blame 
the most productive members of our society for their failures?

te:

nt

nd

No, it couldn't "be health care" for a couple of reasons.

First, "promote the general Welfare" did not mean "an increase in rank for Gen. William T. Welfare," nor did it mean "advertise handout programs," nor any other such silliness. (The latter did not exist until FDR.)

"General welfare" meant 'to advance the safety and security of the United States as a whole,' not individuals within--that wasn't the federal government's purpose.

The federal government was created to organize the actions and efforts of the several States into a unit so they could conduct war, enter into treaties, discharge debts, resolve disputes between the States, etc. It was not meant for micro-managing individuals (which was thought to be a direct threat to liberty).

Second, the phrase is indicating what the Founders believe they've created by the government described in the remaining text, not that Congress should be allowed to do anything that they deem in the general welfare. The latte r, as they explain, would be carte blanche; an unlimited government, the opposite of their careful design.

?Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfa re, but only those specifically enumerated.? --Thomas Jefferson

Several of the framers pointed out that if the latter were what they meant, their listing of the specific powers permitted to the federal government that followed would've made no sense. They could've stopped right there an d just let Congress do whatever it wanted.

James Madison, principal drafter of the document:

"If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their Own hands;

they may appoint teachers in every state, county, and parish, and pay them out of their public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may assume the provision for the poor; they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post-roads;

in short, every thing, from the highest object of state legislation down to the most minute object of police, would be thrown under the power of Congress; for every object I have mentioned would admit of the application of money, and might be called, if Congress pleased, provisions for the general welfare. [...]

Were the power of Congress to be established in the latitude contended for, it would subvert the very foundations, and transmute the very nature of the limited Government established by the people of America."

--James Madison (1751-1836), on the cod fishery bill, Feb, 1792

It's not a set of guidelines. Since this was supposed to be a free country, the government's powers were specifically limited.

?If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by mon ey, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions.? --James Madison

Again, to achieve the aims of the preamble is *why* they created a governme nt

*strictly limited* to *only* the powers specifically enumerated in Article I, Section 8.

Of course we've gone way past those since the dawn of the Progressive era. Woodrow Wilson, its first fat-headed know-it-all, was the one responsible for the "living and breathing" argument for the Constitution, because he, like many well-meaning fatheads, thought the ruler should be able to do whatever he wanted to mold the people like clay, and not be inconvenienced by any limitations on what he would be allowed to do to the People under a constitution.

Cheers, James Arthur

It's the "general welfare" part in the preamble:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defe nce, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ou rselves and our Posterity,...

Then you the legally accepted definition of general welfare as established by the legislature and the courts:

General Welfare. The concern of the government for the health, peace, moral ity, and safety of its citizens. Providing for the welfare of the general p ublic is a basic goal of government. The preamble to the U.S. Constitution cites promotion of the general welfare as a primary reason for the creation of the Constitution ...

You're just too originalist. Don't you know the Constitution is a "living" document? It means whatever some leftist, any leftist, wants it to mean! Get with the program, James!

rote:

e:

ment

and

,"

The fact that a possibility didn't exist until FDR doesn't make it silly. W e now know a lot more than we did in 1787, and it's no criticism of the aut hors of the constitution that they didn't anticipate stuff that hadn't been discovered then.

l

Even then, it was known that a plague could damage the welfare of the Unite d States as a whole. Quarantine was the only precaution available against p lagues at the time, and it should have been familiar to the constitution's authors.

Quarantine is a direct threat to the liberty of the individuals quarantined , but it was an accepted practice at the time. Perhaps the founding tax eva ders saw it in the same way the Jamie sees vaccination (which wasn't invent ed until 1796, though innoculation - a rather more dangerous procedure - wa s known and practiced in the American colonies before the revolution).

d

ld

ter,

A careful design would have included provision for quarantine. The word doe sn't show up in the text.

James Arthur then goes on to demonstrate that James Madison was a throttle- bottom fat-head

e g

Every other government since then has seen these a legitimate government ac tivities, but James Madison didn't want to be taxed to pay for them

s

y,

Since Madison and his crew were fans of the Moderate Enlightenment, their i dea of "free" was what suited people with money. Subsequent thinking - driv en in part by the defects of the US constitution - has moved over to the Ra dical Enlightenment view that the interests of the whole of the population being governed are paramount, rather than just the short term interests of the people with money.

Plagues threaten the interest of people with money just as much as the poor - James Arthur's hero, Bastiat, die of tuberculosis - but you have to have experienced a plague to be properly nervous about the risk. There had been some in the colonies, but not all that recently.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney