my connection with the tea party

[kandrathe]

So what is now exactly the issue with spending tax payers money on a more fair health care system for example. If you apparently all know about the ways politicians and big companies make money, why not spend the money directly on the simple guy in the street? I don't take this from Palin and from republicans in general.

The disagreement that tea party folks have with the current direction, and trend in health insurance is that it is replacing the private sector with government (socialism). They don't have any faith that the government would do better, and in most(all) cases where the government takes over, things cost more and we get lower quality (e.g. postal service). Rather than diagnose and cure what ails our health care system, they have taken the knife to it. Politicians aren't very good analysts, and so their solutions tend to be knee-jerk and popular (e.g. if we call it "The Patriot Act" it must be patriotic). In 1973 they drove everyone onto HMO's with the illusion of containing costs. It never happened.

The simple answer is that there is no simple answer. First you need to separate health maintenance from emergency care. When it comes to emergency care (and unplanned catastrophic illness), no one will set a limit on how much to spend. If my boy were dying from a bee sting, and the antidote was a million dollars I'd buy it and figure out how to pay for it later. In this way, health care is not like a normal commodity. Technology has allowed us to have expensive treatments for what were otherwise terminal illnesses. Often they don't even work, but people take the chance that they can cure themselves or their loved ones. Whether it be the evil insurance company, or the evil death panels, someone needs to be the voice of reason both to scrutinize the efficacy of treatment, and to indicate whether the prescribed treatment should be undertaken for that particular patient. This is what has worked for socialized medicine in those places that have implemented it. The government becomes the final say in what care gets delivered. If you disagree and can afford it, you come to the US and buy the treatment you can't get in your own country. Here, when people can't afford it, they go to Mexico to buy the same treatment at reduced price.

The not so simple answer to health care costs is that from an economic perspective we need to increase the supply, and reduce the demand. This will bring the price down so that it will be affordable. How do you do that? First, you get rid of the stranglehold that the AMA has on medical schools. We need to vastly increase the number of doctors and nurses produced for the next 20 to 30 years just to keep up with the number of retiring boomers. Second, we need that "death panel" as a independent medically astute arbitrator to review medical treatments and indicate to patients (and their insurance companies) what will be efficacious.

So, here is an idea. Let's treat medicine like the peace corps. If you join the peace corps, or Americorps and serve for 4 years after college, they pay off 70% of Perkins student loans. Let's do the same for doctors and nurses. Create a health corps, pay them a living wage, and send fresh doctors and nurses into places in the US that need them. Give grants to colleges to create or expand their medical programs.

Then you have the pharmaceuticals. I guess I'd apply the same type of incentive of helping with grant funding for advances in treatments and in return, the company would release the drug to market, for double the full patent period, with a very marginal profit. There is a role for government leadership in using tax dollars to create win-win situations for companies and consumers. Our problem is that the government has become one sided enabling the companies to win, but the people lose both our tax money and in the marketplace.

Again, I'll reiterate. Not surprisingly, most of the money spent in the US on health care is spent during the last years of a persons life. The money is often spent attempting to revitalize a patient beyond help. Example --> The story of Terence Bryan Foley

I never hear these stories in Sweden, Denmark, Finland, the netherlands canada etc. I hear them from Italy, Greece, the US, Zimbabwe, russia. I must agree with fireicetalon; it looks more like socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor.

FIT looks at the current mess, which is mostly created by fools and interventionists who've become "public servants" to feather their own nests, and claims "see free market capitalism doesn't work". It's like the nation version of Munchhausen's by proxy. The best example is how our Congress approaches "Stimulus", which would be laughable if it weren't so tragic. "What we need is another dose of the same poison that made us sick in the first place." What's worse is that it's administered by the same addle brained doctors (take your pick... Paulsen, Bernancke, Reid, Boehner, Pelosi, Bush, Obama -- there is little difference in their cluelessness).

I mean if a person dares to say these things (like Palin does) why not start a big campaign against funding of candidates to pay for their election campaigns? I mean who can take her seriously. Just like in e.g. Italy politicians are a special class that don't really care about the normal people...but is that because the US government collects taxes or is there another reason? For example that not everyone has the same chances, even though on paper they should have?

You are right. We need to implement laws to restrict our politicians. We need better campaign financing laws. We need laws to reign in crony capitalism. We need to find honest politicians with principles who will vote away their own power. How hard is that?

I would start with some fundamental reforms to how Congress can spend money. Like, only on means tested programs that benefit all US citizens equally with only need being discriminated. This would eliminate stupid pork barrel spending to bring home the bacon to congressional districts. Student loan program, fine. Backing loans for Solyndra, nope. We can talk about research and development grants, but only if they are offered based on their contractually direct benefits to all US citizens.

End social security payments for the wealthy. Raise the retirement age to 67 now, and 72 by 2015. Eliminate the cap on SSI for the wealthy, and use that to reduce the withholding rate for everyone. Offer an incentive to stay off the dole, whereas you increase your payments by x% for every year you remain employed.

For Medicaid, and Medicare, convert the system to vouchers where the government offers a fair market rate for health insurance, but the individual is free to use that voucher for any insurance they choose. Allow health insurance portability between employers, and across state lines. Allow people to create a tax free retirement/education/health care account where they can save money for future rainy days. Many states, including mine, have a special catch all means tested program for anyone not covered by health insurance (and even due to preexisting conditions). Our uninsured rate was just a few % (like 4-5) before that program, and now it is nearly zero. Even so, I would create a tax penalty for insurance companies that either deny based on pre-existing conditions, or terminate insurance altogether. I'm fine with a cap on yearly benefits, or even lifetime benefits so long as the consumer is well informed. Insurance companies shouldn't have to go bankrupt just to satisfy everyone who wants every treatment. The insurance I have now is very affordable, but I pay out of pocket the first $5000 for the family, or $3000 per individual (we typically hit the $5000 mark about May, so we save that up in a health care savings account from June to December).

With the current system of employer provided (and COBRA) health insurance, there will always be some people between programs due to unemployment (which is actually another stupidity of government). For example, when I was laid off in Fall of 2008, I was able to extend by insurance through COBRA for awhile (but it is very expensive -- you also pay what the employers was paying). After awhile, that expires, but my family did not qualify for any social safety net because my former annual income was too high (never mind that my current income was zero). Realistically, the only way to avoid falling through the cracks now, if you are not poor already, is to have a nest egg of at least $25K to enable you to afford open market (non-group rates) health insurance for a year. The only way to change this is to reduce the price such that we can shift 100% of the cost to the individual/family, and make that insurance portable.