Our country is broke (in more ways than one), so how do we fix it?

James,  this blog has to be one of the best I have ever read on BP.  There is so much well thought out information that you have provided us.  I have a hard time making a challenge to anything you say.  I am still trying to weed through the replies, but so many people sure get way off subject.  Jeez!

I am still trying to figure out why Aaron was accused of being arogant.  Hit a wrong button I guess.  Then the bickering back and forth begins, so the rest of us get lost in the verbage.  Some day I would like to see us all try to stay on subject and not call people names or give them labels.  Please!

Enslaving doctors?  How do we get so far off subject?  Why keep picking on Canada and England?  People here don't have a clue about how those systems work.  They are happy with it, so who are we to say?

I agree with Sharon who says the corporations run this country.  I also think that big government is not the answer,  Medicare is totally out of control.  If we are going to put programs like this in place, then we had better have a way to "inforce it".  Every time there is a new government program, there are thousands of those figuring out ways to game it.  Let's start spending a little extra for some legal inforcement.  We had better figure that out before we start planning to give away even more.  But I am all for universal health care. Let's just do it right for a change.  Keep the corporations out of it for starters.  And as for the government, show us the checks and balances first.

James, planning on running for office any time soon?  You would have my vote.  I have to go back and take notes about all you have said, and I may be back with comments.

Plus I want Aaron and Carl to come back.  I want to hear what they really have to say (not about each other).

 Dan Sanley,

You said "I am still trying to figure out why Aaron was accused of being arogant.  Hit a wrong button I guess."

I guess you must have skipped over Aaron's comments.  When I read his comments, I too intially thought he was an arrogant.  Then when he said that he was smarter, it proved that my initial opinion was correct.

"I'm sure you will see that most people that will find this blog will be on the right.  Good luck weathering the storm.  I'm finding most to not be free thinkers, they just rattle off what they heard the day before on Fox"

"Now run along and watch your Fox news and cry about the state of our country.  And, why didn't you go after poster #8, she was way more direct than I was.  Besides, I said most and not all, and I never called anyone a name like you did to me.  Are you just mad because I'm smarter than you?"

James, Just because someone isn't for government healthcare or government education does not mean that they are against healthcare and education for everyone.  It's how we get there.  A house for everyone would also be good.  Do you want the government controlling how much in commissions you can charge?  Are you OK with the government forcing you to help someone buy or sell a home and paying you whatever they decide is appropriate?

James,

You are living in a society that has succeeded in separating church from state: The society we have is what we get when secularists like you go into politics.

Although you probably cannot articulate it, your perspective is progressivism; the belief that because society becomes more enlightened over time, our government must do what its modern citizens require of it, rather than what our antiquated government did when "men with white wigs" founded it upon certain inalienable rights granted by our Creator. ... A Creator whom you reject.

And you believe you're thinking outside the box.

Now THAT's funny.

Patrick A. Daniels

Long Beach, CA

James: Don't take their bait. Their have nothing but bait. They race bait, the gay bait, the belief bait. Well, it's time to either fish or cut bait.

Where did I say people shouldn't get health care?  What I said is that nationalizing health care (and let's not kid, that is Obama's goal) will NOT help people get health care.  In Canada there are several million people that can't get a primary care physician.  Since they have about 10$ of our population, the problem would be magnified 10x. 

Simply put, rationing care isn't going to help people get the car ethey need. 

The Democrat plan seems to be for old or sick people to die more quickly and not use up too much of the system...  Isn't that what Rep. Grayson said?

Lane, you clearly completely misunderstand Canada's health care problem and I wish you would stop using it as an example for this reason. 

The problem with not having primary care physicians in Canada is many fold, but to say it is based primarily on nationalizing the care is entirely faulty. It is based on not educating more physicians, or encouraging the education in this direction. We have had at minimum a 10% reduction in medical enrollment since 1993 based on budgetary cuts to the education system. This is not because medicine is socialised, it is because of political priorities in budgetary spending. The shortage is also based on not recognizing the foreign talent we have already in the country waiting to get national accrediation and encouraging more foreign talent. There has also been a big cut in national health spending and education in our country while increasing the budget (an unlimited budget at that) to our military in the past several years. Our politicians have chosen, unfortunately, to follow the American example of militarization to the detriment of all our well-being and our health care has truly suffered because of this.This disgusts me beyond belief.

I urge you to please stop citing Canadian examples since you are not doing so responsibly and with valid information. What you also seem to neglect is that a national health care system can be altered to overcome many of the problems described if properly managed and executed. If you see a problem in other national health care systems, you can use these to help design better systems. Incentive systems could be set up for government health care so that it runs based on positive performance. There is nothing forbidding this. For example, some national health care systems in Europe pay their doctors more for reducing the health of their patients (ie. they receive higher salaries if their patients experience reduced blood pressure or if they quit smoking). Why does everyone keep insisting that only companies are capable of creating incentives? Government systems can be incentive based as well. If we mostly agree that companies are not to be trusted, why would we give them increased responsibilty by handing over everything in privatization schemes? That makes absolutely no sense to me at all.

And Patrick's claims that the US has already succeeding in the separation of church and state made me literally laugh out loud. Are you kidding me? Now THAT is funny.

Perhaps you should look at what you are saying...  WHY would anyone go through years and years of medical training in order to take a government job that doesn't pay as well as they could get on the free market?  So... declining numbers of doctors. 

And where is the "seperation of church and state"?

You seem to have again missed my point. They cut the budget to education, not people stopped enrolling.

According to the figures I have read the average doctor in Canada can make over $200,000/year and they can make well over that depending on what they specialize in. That's not exactly starving... or "indentured servitude" as you so eloquently put it earlier. That's still one of the highest pay scales (except for maybe executives of big corporations) and more than the majority of the population will ever make. Maybe many deserve more than that and work insane hours (especially while interns!), I'm not arguing that, but I don't think this is the reason we are in a doctor shortage. Why is it then that we did not have this doctor shortage before these education cuts happened, when we were still under a nationalized health scheme for years and the pay scale was actually less than this? Our government literally CUT funding to education reducing the amount of people who got accepted into medical school by at least 10%. More actually applied. Less got accepted. This has nothing to do with making more money... If our government increased the amount who got accepted, maybe we wouldn't have a shortage and people would still apply to be doctors in good numbers.

Yes, we have had a brain drain to the US of some who want to make more money, but we actually also have thousands upon thousands of foreign doctors in our country just waiting to be approved and if we would allow a better process for them to become licensed here, we also wouldn't have such a shortage.

Yes, the free market will save us all-- either that or make us slaves of the corporations (which we already pretty much are). As I have said, incentive packages could make these doctor's pay scales even higher and create incentives for doctors to earn more money through positive performance. There are tons of tweaks that could be made to make the system far more efficient than it is. Why is only the free market capable of creating innovation? That just bull. There are tons of fantasticly innovative people working in government positions. There are tons of incredibly good managers there too. I'm not saying the way that government care is run is the best it could be. It could be much, much better, especially if we actually returned the money to the budget that was taken to go help kill people overseas.

Definitely not a separation of church and state, in the US or Canada (I think we may actually agree on something Lane! Cool! We've got a starting point at least!:) ). When was the last time you had a president who didn't profess his religion extremely publicly in their campaign? Do you not have "in God we trust" on your money? Does your Pledge of Allegiance that you must say in school not have "under God" in it?

I could go on and on here with examples from both our countries.... how is this a real separation of church and state Patrick? If you believe in God and want that in your states, fine-- but don't claim that it is not part of your state systems. It clearly is.

Ok. I'm done. This debate has gotten so off topic and I have no interest in continually trying to defend the Canadian health care systems over and over again. It won't change minds, and it definitely won't stop people from spouting our "failures" as reasons to not nationalize their own care. I urge all you Americans to not believe all the hype you hear on TV about these failures (and many others), because they simply are not true. You are being told propaganda, plain and simple. Read. Read up on things from independent sources of all kinds and come to a conclusion on your own. There is propaganda on both sides and I'm not sure the "truth" can ever be found, at least we have the ability to search things out in so many places now. All I know is that our system does have faults, but ask any Canadian, and I'm sure 90% of them (at least!) would not trade our free health care for anything. It is the best thing our country ever did for its people and I hope one day your people will get to see the same.

Rebecca, I do not know you or anything about you, so please do not think I am making assumptions about you - you may know about American history or not.

In any event, our Founding Fathers were of the Judeo/Christian heritage. That is a fact. The intent of 'separation of church and state' was that there would be no national church, as there was in England - the Anglican Church. The men and women who fought for and died to found America never intended for God or the Ten Commandments or the Bible to be removed from our schools and our political system. They intended for those morals and values to pervade our society.

"if properly managed and executed." is a quote you used in reference to your government. That is exactly our point. Goverments are infamous for NOT properly managing and executing. If you like your Canadian system, good for you, but it's okay for us American citizens to like our system - and we admit it needs some adjustments. We do have the freedom to say what we like and what we want.

I would not want government healthcare even if your system were the best in the world. I want less government and more individual freedom. I want the freedom to choose my doctors, hospitals, and the ability to get treatment when I need it, not when it's available for me, and by the best doctors who are free to succeed as much as they want to financially because there is no government official looking over their shoulder and holding them back. That is not freedom, that is control.

I think America needs term limits for its elected officials in Congress so we can get some people there who are not living in ivory towers.

Ok, I know I said I was done, but I just have to say this. Sharon, I just want to say: Absolutely-- you are free to like your system and I am free to like mine, and I am thankful that both of us live in systems that allows us to speak out and say what we like and don't like. I meant no offense to anyone, and I'm sorry if what I have wrote did cause offense.

As you can probably tell, I love debate, and sometimes I will just argue to play devil's advocate to stimiulate discussion. I've been studying international affairs and conflict in post-secondary education for most of the past decade and will probably be studying it for the rest of my life; it's a topic that facinates me beyond belief. I definitely see huge issues with socialized care and major government, and do not think it the end all and be all. I think government, if regulated in the right ways, could be much more efficient than it is. And I absolutely do think that it should provide its population with equal rights and access to the necessities of life. Besides that, I think it should mostly back off and just represent its people in international affairs. My biggest issue with free market systems has to do with the power it hands over to corporate rule. Money should not rule the world. The well-being of the organisms on this planet should. I will spend the rest of my life growing the majority of my own food and sewing my own clothes and buying from local or family run businesses and avoiding corporate rule as much as I possibly can.

And I have no issue personally with the belief in God and definitely think that if the majority of the population believes, then it has a place in the value system of their representatives. The idea of the separation of church and state goes beyond just American history. I just don't think that a separation of church and state exists here. Whether or not it should is not for me to say.

Oh, and ABSOLUTELY! Term limits! Ok. I'm really done now.

If the men and women running the corporations of America, the lobbyists vying for favor with our representatives, and our elected officials had a really strong moral compas that included "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," we would not be having this debate. Huge corporations would not be discriminating against individuals to profit their bottom line.

It is very telling that the same elected officials who will ram government healthcare down the throats of its citizens will not likewise partake in that system. They have their own healthcare system that is superior because it has been based on a free market model.

Bottom line: When will the back of the American economy be broken by the idea of entitlements of its people and elected officials? When is the tipping point? Does anybody see a conflict here?

@ Rebecca and Sharon:  Term limits ?  Absolutely NOT.  We already HAVE term limits... it's called "voting."  Term limits would take away MY right to vote for someone in office who I felt was already doing a great job.  Please leave my right to vote alone. 

You already have term limits... by just voting out the person you want out.

Rebecca...  The VAST majority of Americans like the system here.  Of course, those that want to change it bring up the very small minority of people that can't get health insurance... and add in all of those that choose not to get insured...  Those people are unhappy.  And those in Canada that can't get a doctor are unhappy, too. 

BTW, there are a LOT of countries with socialized medicine that have a shortage of doctors. 

And kids aren't required to say the Pledge of Allegiance at school... I suppose there might be peer pressure, though.

Just a question Lane, because I'm curious, is that new about the Allegiance? Do they still say it in most schools and kids can just opt out, or do they not say it anymore at all in a lot of places? I'm kind of surprised to hear that actually. Interesting.

Rebecca, they say it and kids can choose to opt out.  That would be the reason for peer pressure.  And for the record, I think that Under God should be removed from the pledge.  It was added in the 1950s, IIRC... 

I think this man speaks common sense for many Americans. He is Congressman Mike Rogers from Michigan.

Thanks Lane!