Pardon me, "province."

That's all very sound advice and it's important to be reminded that the issue of healthcare is not just a technical problem regarding insurance coverage. Nevertheless, just to further complicate the issue, the folks most likely to lack coverage are also the ones most likely to be generally unhealthy, largely can't be helped through tax deductions or exemptions since they don't pay taxes, and are most likely to have dysfunctional family lives that make personal care unavailable or unpalatable. The principle of subsidiarity is hard to sell when we can reasonably expect that the folks in the most need are often the ones who can expect the least at that level. This is NOT an argument vs subsidiarity, which I think has to be central to any HC solution, but an emphasis on personal care will sound a lot like govt asking you to take care of your own to a lot of people, and often precisely to those who find that a less than comforting prospect.

That's why we need both tax credits and direct subsidies (to those who don't pay taxes)...

The whole debate about Health Care is problematic because the real issue is not care or accessibility but the forces that drive up medical costs and that is first and foremost liability costs and the cost of insuring against it. That combined with declining numbers of doctors in areas that tend to give out high jury settlements in such cases, drive up medical costs right across the board. Perhaps the only way to resolve this issue is to limit tort liability in such a way that unless you can get criminal charges for the malpractice, damages should merely be for actual damages.




As for hospital costs, if one idea could be to merely require hospitals not to transfer costs of the non-insured to the insured or the self-paying but to bundle such debt to be sold off to investors or businesses looking for debt lower their tax liability. Turn a lemon into lemonade. Also this will keep money out of Congress' hands in the first place.




Also why not give tax credits for the time and labor of caregivers within the family who take care of the ill and the handicap? Again, anything that takes money out of the hands of Congress is a good thing.

Your income tax dollars are used to fund the intrest to the currency that the federal reserve system loans at intrest to the federal government. There is no way for the government to honor all the promises it has made right now. I beleive this administration came up with a the prescription drug plan that made sure the drug giants were able maximize profits. The question that must be brought up is quality of life. As a society why do we send the ederly to die in homes? I have been through this with multiple relatives and the healthcare industry seems to be all about prolonging misery till they can maximize the billing. In some regards the ederly are used by the industry as a comodity that can be kept alive just long enough for insurance or government money to roll in all the while the individual person rots in a crummy room in and out of it developing bed sores and parasites from lack of care and filth. Why do we view the elderly as a burden? One reason is that in the present state the dying process is so enlongated and full of misery that it breaks our hearts to see them on a daily basis. I am in no way supporting some crazy system of euthinization, but asking why we are prolonging people's lives when they can't enjoy living that way.