Reader comments
Government takeover

Americans elected Barack Obama. He's doing what the smart ones among us sent him to the whitehouse to do! Keep up the rants though if it makes you feel better.

OBAMA in 2012! Get used to it!

The author of this letter is correct! Its all about the government taking over private industry. Don't agree? Who controls GM, Chrysler and most of the larger banks in America these days? Next on the Democrat agenda; your healthcare! Wake up America, you are losing your country to Washington DC bureaucrats and politicians who will decide how you live, not you! Oh but its "freeeeeee"! Nothing from the government is ever free! Democrat playbook: create a crisis, then dupe enough simple minded people into believing the government can run it better by distroying its competition.

Personally, I think the healthcare industry needs to lose its anti-trust exemption status, which allows healthcare companies to merge and become near monopolies and oligopolies in states. The lack of competition is what is driving up the costs of healthcare. Simply by allowing healthcare companies to start competing in other states can do much to spark competition.

The problem is that there is virtually no competition. The public option is one way to create that competition and the limits on the public option -- from states being allowed to opt out to restrictions for whom can join -- should make it that the public option doesn't completely drive private companies out of business. They will have to become more competitive -- no question -- and that could lead to some companies currently overly bloated and protected by anti-trust exemptions to become more effective.

The CBO estimates 5% would end up on a public option plan. Yet protecting this small group who fall through the cracks will eventually destroy private health insurance?

Conservative paranoid fantasy.

In France there is a robust supplementary private insurance industry, despite a public universal plan that covers every person. But any type of public option will demolish all private insurance here.

Continuing to stoke this paranoid dooms-day scenario effectively employs conservatives as free marketing for large private insurers, who are giggling all the way to the bank.

I've done the research, I've balanced the different approaches. I won't be a dupe of Democrats or Republicans. A limited public option will help save lives. That's more important than ideological debate.

The Republican plan presented actually was quite good. I knkow I was shocked. It stopped short of what needed to be done, but it was better than the mess the Dems are trying to get us into.

I am looking for the government to create a single payer system that serves us all. It works, and is a great way for us all to have access to a service we all need at one time or another.

Sorry Mandate but I saw the exit poll interviews with the "smart ones" that gave us Obama.

So GTO was it an evil liberal plot to destroy the US economy so that when they took control in 2009 they would have the cover they needed to take over private industry? Oh wait, the republicans have had control 20 of the last 28 years, and Bill Clinton was the most pro business democrat in history.

By the way you wing nuts are the only ones claiming anything from the government is freeeeeeee. Talk about simple minded dupes you and your ilk suspended reasonable thought decades ago when you somehow convinced yourselves that you are part of the capitalist class, masters of your own destiny, and deserving of exceptional rewards resulting from your exceptional talent and effort. All the while your real income has gone down, your masters have given and taken away jobs, retirements, and any form of meaningful work. Let's hope God will bless America becuause you've handed it over to Haliburton and Wells Fargo.

Your rant is not even close to the truth, but no doubt it's fun for you to believe.

I'm guessing you'd have preferred GM to go belly-up? The credit markets to have completely self-destructed? Unemployment rates to skyrocket even beyond where they are now?

Would that be your preferred alternative?

Are not the corporations that took bailout money working like demons right now to repay their debt to the Fed?

The economic crisis was and is very real - the only people "duped" in the past year were those of you who now throw tantrums about "The government is coming! Run for your lives!"

Baloney.

This is just silly. Anti-government types say government is not efficient as the private sector, so shy are you concerned that a public option will harm the private insurance companies? You can't have it both ways. And to GTO, the money the government put into GM is scheduled to be paid back at a date certain. The government has no interest in long term control. GM asked the government to save them, not the other way around, and policy considerations made this advisable. This is not unprecedented. Chrysler was sold off to other investors. So please, stop your Chicken Little impersonation and stop making things up.

To "Clyde Milton Pack" why would the government plan compete with private insurance plans? First of all, it wouldn't play by the same rules as the private plans. Second, it is the government that has been driving up the costs of insurance.

Over the past 4 years, the average profit margin has dropped for health insurance companies from around 5% to 2.2%. If premiums are increasing, why are their profit margins decreasing? If you research an answer to that question, you will find out what the problem is.

If the government is as inefficient as conservatives claim, it will never be able to compete with the free market. Whya are you worried?

Obama never had a "mandate" on health care or anything else. He was elected by a minority of the electorate, mostly by people who were just sick of the Bushes and prepared to gamble on some unknown guy who sounded good (they all sound good). He kept pretty quiet about the specific nature of the "change" that was in the offing.

The election results last night show conclusively what the electorate now thinks of the current crop of Democrats. Interesting that Obama is so little regarded that his personal intervention in State gubernatorial elections meant nothing except perhaps more certain defeat.

To "Doug G | 7:10 a.m." but everybody does have access to health care. If I go to a doctor's office, I will not be thrown out and told to go away.

If I show up at an ER, I will be seen by a doctor, regardless of my ability to pay.

Be honest. What you want is for somebody else to pay for your health care.



To "Dear GTO @ 1:01 | 7:42 a.m." what would have been so wrong for GM to file bankruptcy, renegociate their contracts, and continue to operate as they have?

Do you know why those banks are "working like demons right now to repay their debt to the Fed"? American Express was still in financial trouble when they paid back the Fed. The strings that were attached to that money were so cumbersome that the banks are trying to get out as fast as they can to save themselves.

If a mere 5% will end up in the program, why are we spending a trillion dollars? Uncle Same needs your money and this whole ridiculous unreadable bill is a contrivance to get it.

The government is as and more inefficient than conservatives say, claim and know.

It will never be a fair fight between private and public sectors. The public sector will keep on subsidizing their side with stolen taxpayer money. They are, after all, "too big to fail".

More 'conservative' pablum. Oh, scary government. Listen up, WE ARE THE GOVERNMENT!! We vote for our representatives. We have for over 200 years. Just because you lost an election doesnt mean the sky is falling or the reds are going to grind you children into kid-burgers.

We spend twice as much and get less from our health care system. The majority wants to change that. Stop listening to the extreme reich and your life will improve immediately.

To "Roland Kayser | 8:11 a.m." how fair do you think the Government will be to the private companies? The government makes the rules, enforces the rules, levies the penalties. Now they want to play in the game too.

It will be like playing a game with a child who makes up the rules. It doesn't matter how well you play or how well you follow your child's rules, you will lose. That child is the government, and the game being played is control of health insurance industry.

The government currently is in control of 30% of the economy. If they could capture the health insurance industry, that would give them another 18%. In the past you have denied that Obama is pushing us to Socialism, yet, if the government can take over healthcare they will run 48% of the economy. At their current rate of expansion, it wouldn't take much for the government to control a majority of the economy. That would be bad. Just think USSR, but on a slower death spiral.

Chrysler is owned by the ITALIAN company Fiat.
Last I checked, Italy is not owned by America.

No! A government ran option. Private business can't compete with the serve government provides. I guess, conservatives are finally admitting government can do a better job. By doing a better job, Americans will abandon the private sector.

This is so humorous.

To hack with democracy. Seven-twp-percent of Americans favor a public option. Wealth care for billionaires is opposed. We will see mijority rules if they out spend you.