When did this become “Theatre of the Absurd?”

I don’t see Canadians, Brits, the French, or Saudis flying here for public K-12.

How preposterous.

Personally, I am against entitlements. I beleive that one is entitled to what he earns. If one is UNABLE (not unwilling) to earn, then I would do my utmost by way of charity to prevent them dying in the street, but I would not say that they are entitled to anything beyond their rights as human beings to life, liberty, and a pursuit of happiness.

So, for health care, should it be an entitlement? No, and here’s why: primary care is cheap enough that it is affordable by anyone who can afford a cell phone. Yet we daily see medicare and medicaid patients shopping around for meds they don’t need, going to clinic after clinic because it doesn’t cost them a dime. How do I know this? Because we work in multiple clinics, and we’ll sometimes see the patient in the morning in one clinic, and again in the afternoon in another. Same complaint. If you pay for something, you value it, and you don’t abuse it. Currently, our services are overutilized and undervalued by those who pay nothing for them. You think that making healthcare “free” will correct this?

To close: “Ain’t nothin’ free in this life. Anybody tell you otherwise, he crazy or a liar… Pay your own way, don’t take nothin’ from nobody, then you can stand up and hold your head high no matter what company you in.”

Words of wisdom from a time we forgot.

But isn’t that why we have this discussion. Perhaps we should get rid of our education system and give all the money to the health care system. Which one is more important?

My son learned how to read in kindergarten and was more competent in math than most adults by the third grade. Why are we wasting our money on him when we could provide health care for that women who died in the ER from a perforated intestine because no one would help her? Or that one that sat in Kings County hospital until a blood clot killed her?

I am currently listening to my son practice his trombone that he plays courtesy of tax payers, wouldn’t you rather eliminate the band program. The $40,000 the three band teachers in our school district make could give provide health care for quite a few people.

“will they enjoy the same wages? “

In the end, it’s more about money than anything else. Do I want that Mercedes or do I want my neighbor to have access to health care? Am I willing to forgo that probably useless MRI on my knee so the guy down the street can afford his insulin? Am I willing to volunteer in my community, perhaps at a hospital or a school or would I rather get paid so I can go on that expensive vacation?

“…I guarantee the outcome will not be as good as the proponents tell you.”

I am well insured and have access to some of the best hospitals in the nation. I have nothing to gain by health care reform-and will probably be one of the loosers. Am I willing to help others-to live in a community where people matter including our health care providers? How much am I willing to pay for that?

Our food supply is subsidized and I don’t see anyone complaining about that. Maybe we can take all those corn subsidies and instead of government sponsored doritos and coke, we can pay for medical school for our doctors.

Great, I hope my next doctor got his degree on the internet.

“With the internet and electronic media, almost anyone can become educated for a fraction of the cost of formal education.”

We can all sit in our little cubicles, day after day, staring at a computer screen with little Sim characters acting out Shakespeare plays.

So I guess that answers my question. Education and health are the same.

“The government pays teacher to teach any child. If you don’t want your child taught by those teachers, you send them to a private school or home school them.”

I explained above non-contradictory principles upon which rights are delineated. The example above is why, when you introduce contradictions (public payment for education), you undercut the whole system. Once that inroad is made, people like this commentator, begin to expose the contradictions inherent. The mistake, though, is in having the government provide education. It should not be in their purview.

“It’s not a moral obligation for someone to learn integral calculus yet we provide that opportunity for everyone.” Again, there is the mistake.

Parenthetically, it is a separate but related issue that the government does the ‘job’ of public education so poorly. Because parents are not directly controlling the money, via tuition, the result is rather poor.

It is also surprising that many people feel that a formal education is such a requirement today. With the internet and electronic media, almost anyone can become educated for a fraction of the cost of formal education. There are online degrees available too, at much reduced costs. There is simply no moral or logical support for our arcane system.

Define “basic healthcare”.

So we think everyone should have apples and not oranges?

The government pays teacher to teach any child. If you don’t want your child taught by those teachers, you send them to a private school or home school them. Of course, your tax dollars pay to educate everyone whether or not you send kids to a public school. We do this for the benefit of society. Even higher education is funded by tax payers. Many of your doctors went to public universities for their undergraduate and medical degrees.

If we went to a voucher system, tax payers would still pay for the education of ALL children.

If our education system was like our health care system, we wouldn’t offer everyone an education-it would be only for those who could pay. Perhaps it would be included in your benefits package for you job. We could have “emergency education sites” where if you don’t know how to read, someone could charge you a lot of money to teach you how to read that form you need to fill out.

It’s not a moral obligation for someone to learn integral calculus yet we provide that opportunity for everyone. But we don’t provide them with basic health care?

“nut-cases”

From you comment, you prefer name calling to having an intellegent conversation.

Apples and oranges, again –

1. A large segment of the public wants VOUCHERS — but TEACHER UNIONS FORCE the public to ONLY buy from them. Like Single-Payer nut-cases — yes, nut-cases.

2. The PUBLIC EDUCATION MONOPOLY does such a LOUSY job, by age 16, most kids would pay to get out of the system. Anyone who thinks otherwise has obviously never been in a lousy public K-12.