[Solace]

Originally Posted by GundamFan0083

Which is why Obama should not have signed onto the federal version of Romneycare and should have instead pushed for a version of healthcare as invisioned by Thomas Jefferson.

Thomas Jefferson Also Supported Government Run Health Care
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/plu...erson_sup.html

I'm aware of the older proposals for healthcare. There is no way you can push through single payer without everyone on board. You're fighting HUGE amounts of money and people swayed more by opinion than facts. You have to make inroads. The public option could have gone in, and liberals were a bit miffed at the idea that all of this stuff was negotiated away to get Republican votes, they didn't vote for it, so you're just going to pass it as is? It's a bad taste. The behind the scenes stories are interesting though. The bill really is a deal made between government and corporations. *cue dramatic music here*

I am not a Libertarian personally, I vote Libertarian because they are the closest thing I can vote for to a classical liberal.

That's why I said you're big on it, not that you are one. You frequently advocate similar positions to libertarianism, not that you're wrong for it or anything. It's just what you believe.

We partially agree here.
Healthcare is not an imperative, it's a good idea, but not a right in and of itself.
It is a service, and if we want our society to be where everyone has it, we must either amend the constitition and make it a right protected by it, or we must make it a service that is provided for using the taxing power of congress.
As it stands it is a mandate to buy a product or pay a penalty, and thus it is more a benefit to the insurance companies and IRS than it is to the people.
Interesting how it either benefits corporations or the government, but not the citizenry at large.
The marriage of corporation and state is the reason for the nonsense that is the AFA.

Healthcare isn't a product, it is needed for basic survival of the species. We could have put it into the Constitution, but since that never happened we got it as this mess. The marriage of corporation and state is the problem, certainly. The insurance industry is a middle man that should never have existed to begin with.

Bear in mind I don't have many issues with what the bill is trying to fix, but rather the way it attempts to do so. There just isn't enough political capital yet for a true single payer system, unfortunately.

That's because these companies (like Big-Pharma) are huge corporations that have been allowed to destroy the system through profiteering, drug laws (like the prohibition of holistic remedies such as marajiuana) and other corporatist practices.

This is a bit of a strawman. You aren't incorrect, but it's not the whole picture. Companies are nothing more than a way to profit from goods and services. They are self serving before all else. It is not in the interest of a company to fix a problem, unless it becomes a matter of life and death for the company. Problems mean opportunities for more profit. Why cure diseases when you can treat them? Why prevent pollution if you can profit from cleaning it up? In a world driven by money, is it any wonder we find it so difficult to solve problems? It takes forcible change, through policy or technology, to make progress. I wish this wasn't true, but that's our history so far.

Government. No.
Political parties. Yes.
You know, the Democrat-Republican Party.

We had a fantastic government (though flawed in many ways) before the corporatists began altering it into something it was never intended to be (starting in 1913): a totalitarian system.

Washington was never a fan of the party system, but it is only natural for them to form when extremes in interests appear. I wouldn't say we had a fantastic government (that's too much rose colored goggles for my taste), in fact it's always been rather dysfunctional and full of special interests - especially rich ones. It's been punctuated by moments of people and leadership giving the finger to the establishment to a large enough degree that things change for the better, but progress happens in fits and starts.

I partially disagree with your vision of government.
We agree that government is a tool.
We're we disagree is what the nature of that tool is.
History has shown without doubt that government has the power vested in it to use force: be that force war, taxes, imprisonment or other powers.
Therefore, the primary function of government is force, nothing more, nothing less, and that force must be controlled lest it become extremely destructive.
It is for this reason that classical liberals like myself hold that the government that governs least governs best.

Government is what you make of it. It is the people that determine the government they want, but they have to be invested in that change to see it through. It is not the duopoly and force of government that people should fear, it is themselves. They are the instruments of change. It's the very purpose of a representative democracy - send the guy who advocates what you believe, and fire him if he doesn't represent you satisfactorily.

Big or small, it doesn't matter. Taken to the extreme, the only good government is one that doesn't exist at all. Since that's an unpalatable concept to most, it's up to the people to determine what they want the government to do for them, and to pull it back when they think it goes too far.

Governing is telling you how to live: i.e. excercising authority over a person or persons through the administration of policy and/or laws.

You will always be told, your entire life, how to live. Much of it will be subconscious. You won't even think about it. Do you use a chopstick or a fork? Do you wear jeans or a toga? Do you speak English or French? Even without government, society enforces the norms of the group. True freedom is an illusion. The better question to ask is "within this framework, can we solve problems with more freedom instead of less?". Sometimes the answer is no, and you move on.

Remember, even the Founding Fathers had slaves. Women and minorities couldn't vote, or even own property. Workers had no rights. For much of history, people just thought this was the way things were, and that they had no reason to change, or that it couldn't change. It's amazing to think back on all the change in the last 236 years, really.

Since we're speaking of strictly healthcare here I'll stick to that as my example.
For healthcare to be within the confines of the constitution, the SCOTUS had to declare it a tax because even they said a mandate to buy a product is unconstitutional.
Nevertheless, while it may be a "tax" on paper via the SCOTUS decision, it is in actual practice a mandate to buy a product since you will now HAVE to buy insurance from a private company or pay the penalty to the IRS (if your employer doesn't cover your insurance).

Not quite. The decision was to determine if the classification of the mandate as a tax was constitutional under the commerce clause. They said yes. It's a tax, according to the highest court of law.

I'd rather it just be "Medicare for all"; but I also recognize the complex issues of the matter.

I'm curious to know what's going to happen if someone doesn't pay the fine, and doesn't get insurance and is self-employeed.

That is going to be very interesting.

The men in black show up. They don't ask questions.

In the united states of America, the contract that creates the Federal government and gives it the jurisdiction and authority is the constutition. It is not a simply words on a piece of paper, it is the contractual agreement between the people of the states and their respective governments to create a central body that will govern interstate issues with an emphasis on common defense, taxes, and uniformity of law and protection of the inalienable rights of citizens of all states.

We bind ourselves to contracts such as these so that anarchy doesn't reign supreme and to protect ourselves from tyranny.

But it is just a piece of paper. What you're clinging to are the ideals of the paper, the symbolism, and those change. Contracts only hold meaning when everyone agrees with them. We all agree on "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"....but the details, not so much.