On Fri, 27 Jun 2008 11:07:01 -0400, with neither quill nor qualm, "Ed
Huntress" quickly quoth:


"Larry Jaques" wrote in message
.. .

I hear it in all of his speeches, at least for the brief periods I can
stand listening to pols spew their bull****.

I listen to his speeches, too. You must be listening to different speeches.

Perhaps I listen to his speeches with a bit more cynical mind. Take
off them blinders, son.


Shrub started the money
disgorgement and a Democrat is right in the wings to take over and
likely expand it. He'll stop the war and go right on spending
billions/day. Mark my words; if he's elected and makes it to office.

OK, we'll mark your words. g I suspect that we'll have a significant
increase the federal budget one of these years, when single-payer finally
(and inevitably, in my view) becomes the way we pay for healthcare. But it
won't, in itself, increase our out-of-pocket. It will just switch it from
private payments to public payments.

When that happens, if it happens with the current medical monopoly,
it'll break us. If the gov't is smart (fat chance, you say?) they'll
offer lots of clients to new doctors for a set price per year. At 1/8
to 1/4 mil per year (what's fair?), lots of new doctors might jump on
that. Finding drug companies who want all the gov't clients shouldn't
be too hard, either, once gov't gets rid of the TOTAL cluster**** they
just signed onto. Hospitals will have to be run totally differently,
too. $4mil to redo the lobby while serving patient meals on 9 year old
plastic plates? (Tri-City Hospital, Oceanside CA a couple decades ago)
Then there are the $7 aspirin tablets. SOMETHING is wrong there.

The medical community is as entrenched as heavily as the pols are.
sigh All that has to go if we're to have a decent, full-service,
"free" healthcare system.

Ayup, all we have to do is completely overhaul our political, medical,
and legal systems and we'll be OK.


Obama may be the one to do it. He'll try, anyway. He may not succeed, given
the politics, and given the astronomical sums contributed to politicians by
my former employers, the drug companies. It will mean the end of their
joyride in candyland (mostly with no competition, thanks to all the tricks
that can extend drug patents, and paid for by you and me, and everyone else
who has health insurance or who pays out of his pocket), and they won't go
down easily. But it will happen sooner or later.

I sure hope they'll put a clause (or 20) in there which requires
preventive medicine, not just allopathic.


As for the effects of taxes themselves, we've been over this before, but tax
money doesn't just disappear from the economy. As you say, they spend it --
in other words, it goes right back into the economy. Beyond a certain point
taxes put other burdens on the society, and they change the complexion of an
economy. But note that several countries in Europe, where they pay taxes
that would make your eyes roll back in their sockets, are doing a lot better
than we are right now.

_IF_ it's spent here, some of it goes back into the economy.


Our problem is debt, not taxes. And, from Ronnie Reagan to the Shrub, our
supposedly "conservative" Republicans have had us living on a big credit
card in the sky. That has to stop, and right now. McCain won't stop it.
He'll continue the deficit spending that has us in this big black hole,
given half a chance, because he'll do everything he can to continue Bush's
tax policies -- mostly for the wealthy. That's one of my big worries about
McCain. I like the man, but he's married to some profoundly stupid and
destructive economic doctrines.

I'm far more afraid of Obama than McCain regarding spending.


I doubt if she'll ever give up being a control freak. She's been like that
all her life.

Most lawyers (and then politicians) are, but she's taken it to another
level altogether, hasn't she? g

That's a severe understatement, Ed.

--
Deep doubts, deep wisdom; small doubts, little wisdom.
--Chinese Proverb
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