If conservatives do expect to be taken seriously, and to have any real role in the upcoming discussion, then I suggest they need to consider how to provide serious alternaives for managing the following:

a) the rising of health care costs at much higher rates than our economic or population growth

b) the observations that with among the most expensive health care programs in the developed world, the U.S. has one of the poorer outcomes from health care in the developed world

c) private health insurance has been unable to contain health care costs

d) private health insurance has been unable to provide coverage for all Americans

e) private health insurance has been unable to show equitable coverage for a number of those actually covered by insurance: consider retroactive cancellations when individuals get seriously ill

I can continue, of course, and it is not clear from the earlier posts whether the posters in WMB have realisitic alternatives for managing these issues: it is clear that the Republicans in congress do not.

And without serious and realisitic alernative proposals, the conservative input is moot.

P.S. and a clue: since free markets for health care have brought us these problems, it is not obvious that free markets can solve them. I am reminded of foxes and chicken coops.

P.P.S. and as an increasing minority in congress with increasingly weak ability even to stage a viable filibuster, the GOP in congress expects to exert power how???

P.P.P.S and of course, appeals to states rights on this issues has worked so well so far. Consider Sanford and the stimulus money.

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since you have not addressed the consitutionality of Medicare, an issue I raised in my first post, then it would appear that you are tacitly admitting that it is not unconstitutional for the government to fund health care.

And with this as a foundation, additional Federal health care programs would not seem to be changing the fundamentals of our government.

Unless you can show, and get the supreme court to agree (please do read our constitution on this point), that medicare is unconstitutional, then your argument would seem to be without foundation.

To avoid what would seem to be a glaring inconsistency in your arguments, I suggest that you demonstrate, and show how the supreme court will support, that medicare is unconstitutional.

But perhaps you are right in your earlier post, perhaps often the tenth amendment is not the answer?

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hmm if we are to focus onthe problem(s) (I think you will find there are many), then why focus on the individual.

It would seem that you are being self-inconsistent in decrying partisanship even as you yourself appear to be demonstrating a partisan spirit.

If the problem is government run health insurance (plausibly the issue in this discussion thread) then lets talk about the issues surrounding government run health insurance. To confound government run health insurance (supproted incidenctly by nearly all political stricpes inthe form of medicare) with Brack Obama is, to say the least, a bit disingenuous.

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What you fail to address, Musing, is that you want to literally change the nature of our government. Read that Constitution!!!! Read some history. The Tenth Amendment exists for a reason.

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and you are not acting partisan???

I agree that 6 months has apparently been sufficient to clearly see that the Republicans have no clear plans, no coherent agenda, but do appear to be highly focused on attacking Obama’s proposals on every front independent of the policy arguments.

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There is a sense in which that is true for me. I want the people to succeed and the government (that is government leaders as a body) to fail, if the success of the government means the harm of the people. In a competition between the state governments and the national governments, I want the states to succeed and Washington to fail.

However, I want out country, that is, the people of our country to succeed.

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actually if competition were working so well, we would not need your suggestion that we regulate to ensure coverage of preexisting conditions.

A critical look at private plans suggests that they have in the main neither provided solid coverage nor controlled costs.

Medicare (perhaps the elephant in the room) by contrast is run very inexpensively (consider medicare overhead costs to private insurance overhead costs), has been the mainstay of elederly coverage in the U.S., and has exerted downward pressures on costs.

A Federal program would appear at this point nearly inevitable, in large measure due to failures by the private plans.

Opting out would appear to plausibly be illegal. One might look to the attempts to opt out of the stimulus for examples of how this would probably evolve.

And based on past history, it would appear that rivate plans left to the forces of “competition” have demonstrated a clear inability to respond to the health system pressures in the U.S..

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