Ginwilly, I appreciate your perspective. But the reality is that those on the public till get medicaid. From what I have read, the biggest problem with lack of coverage comes from the working poor. With no employer mandate and no living wage ordinances,the current system, which I am not saying you defend, creates an incentive of sorts not to work. This is one thing Obamacare tried to address with expansion of medicaid and other provisions.
To Harrekin, I have worked since I was 14. I have a MBA from a top 25 university and have never received shit from the government. when I was working full time during my undergrad, making 12k/yr in Southern California, I did not qualify for "guaranteed student loans" because I earned too much after Reagan got done changing the rules. He also made food servers like me start claiming our tips, which caused the restaurants to be able to lower the minimum wage paid to us (Ca overuled that but few states were the same). I am not rich but comfortable, struggling to save to put my kids through college. I have seen what has happened to the middle and lower middle classes in the US over the past decades and it is sick. I should pay more taxes and the rich should much more. I believe in a better form of capitalism where companies try to maximize stakeholder wealth rather than just shareholder wealth so that we all enjoy the spoils of our labor. But until that paradigm shift happens, gov is the only cure or our separation of wealth will grow larger and larger. I have spent a good amount of time in Central America where that is the case and that is not what I want for my country. I don't sport capable people not working. But the reality is that we need a working class that can survive and live well. That is slowly disappearing here. Healthcare is just one manifestation of it. I am not saying your system is perfect. I am saying that no one should have to go without visiting a doc when they need to. No one should have to decide between medicine or food. What I see is hard working people getting fucked. And what I hear is a neverending complaint about the small fraction of people who abuse the system, which in my opinion is nothing more than a red herring to make people lose their humanity.
