Is Barack Obama joining the socialist way?

***”First off over 56% of American polled … said that they would be willing to pay more in taxes to provide health coverage to all…. This is not a radical socialist position.”

Whether radical or populist, it is nonetheless socialistic.

***fact the cost of administering Medicare is 3%,

Whose cost is 3% of what number? My wife is a well compensated RN employed by a for profit hospital. Her sole job consists of preparing paper work to comply with Medicare filings for the hospital for which she works. I am a lawyer and represent a client whose business is filing Medicare paper work for physicians. The administrative cost is huge and growing. It is much more than 3% of the cost of health care. Private insurance companies (other than BC/BS) have more difficulty than the Federal government shifting the administrative cost to the health care provider, but the administrative costs for government funded health care are huge, and ultimately borne by us all.

***Unpaid medical bills ….

Unpaid medical bills are a significant problem, but they are not the whole problem, bureaucracy is another huge problem, and guess who is at the epicenter of that. The Federal Government.

***We have a healthcare market which provides as much care as you can afford, WITH NO REGULATIONS REQUIRING….”

Such regulations would be socialistic. Perhaps you are a socialist. I do not mean that as name calling. If you examine what the word means, you may find that you are proud to be a socialist. I am a capitalist.

Right now, although most Americans (US citizens) consider themselves capitalist, they approve of many socialistic policies. At the same time, they have a knee jerk reaction to be offended when called a socialist. That is why the Socialist Party does poorly in elections, but we have so many socialistic programs in our government.

***This has smothered small businesses and cost middle class families their homes.

This is true. What is more, the high cost of medical care, driven by unpaid medical bills; high administrative cost due to burdensome government payment remittance requirements; inefficiencies in the insurance industry such as waste, large executive salaries and large profits, all have put an almost unbearable burden on small business and the middle class.

The economic reality is that the middle class accounts for the vast majority of US citizens and most of the money in the country passes through their hands each year. Regardless of whether the system is socialistic or capitalistic the middle class and small business will always (as long as they survive) bear the burden of health care cost for themselves and the poor.

There just are not enough rich people. If we took every last penny from the wealthiest 10% today, one year from now, there would be no wealthy people and we would still have all of the problems that face us today. Taxing the wealthy is not the answer, because they collectively do not have enough money.

***Bushes proposal to create 401k style savings accounts would do nothing to change the system….

This also seems correct, although I have not studied the plan in depth.

Schwarzenegger’s plan … tax citizens who can’t afford healthcare and give tax breaks to those who can. Did some one say something about socialism using the government to take away from some to give to others?

Giving a tax break to people who pay all of the expenses of their own care is not giving them money from the government. It is simply taking less. Paying the costs for those who cannot afford it is another example of socialism in our supposedly capitalistic government.