Health care

The Health Care debate in the USA is reaching new heights. And most of what is being said you cannot trust.
I'm still waiting for a News organization to take a running tally of the proposals being considered and offer explanations about what each does and doesn't. What I see is a barrage of off-base commentaries, name dropping, spurious comparisons using anecdotic events, both from our country and from others with different approaches to public health care, which mostly cannot legitimately be compared, considering demographics. It isn't the same, say, to look at Canada and then Germany or England. What about other countries with private health care delivery and single-payer systems? What about countries where the government owns the hospitals, or the system includes non-profit AND government in the ownership of major health care centers (i.e. Unions owning hospitals for their members which offer reciprocity to other Unions' members, like in Argentina and other countries.)?
I would suggest that we stop paying attention to the tactics of scare, and get serious finding out about the alternatives available. And get the Lobbyists barred from this issue.
Now, how about them comparisons? Let's look at the accumulated profits of the private Insurance plans in the last ten years and contrast it with the reported costs of the alternatives being considered in Congress for the next ten years. Just by going the route of private delivery with single payer system, we save enough taxpayers money without increasing the cost and without jeopardizing the universal coverage goal, with enough spare change to grant funds for developing community owned medical centers, with the latest technology, which could and will compete with the private hospital chains.

I heard this many times… "I think they should make all Hospitals, Emergency Facilities and clinics Non-Profit"
It isn't as simple as it sounds. People like you and me invested (shares) in the hospital corporations. With that investment the corporations built and equipped those hospitals, medical centers, and emergency facilities. They spend the money we gave them, in, among other things, training a specialized work force, getting supplies needed for their function, etc.
We cannot confiscate those corporations and make them non-profit, because that means that the people who bought the shares will never get their money back, nor any expected dividend. It means that we should compensate them for their investment. And the government doesn't have (now) the money for it. Especially if we consider that right now we need to address the millions not covered in our country. Taking the insurance companies out of the health care system already will mean thousands of jobs eliminated. They can absorb some in their other business but it will be minimal: employment will drop again. And so on… Also the logistics are important. Medicare is prepared to address certain number of beneficiaries. Who are barely a fifth of the people we should cover under the single-payer system. The rationale should be to replace the present system of health insurance and HMOs with that single payer one step at the time. The employees in the private health insurance plans can move into the structure of the single-payer system and keep their means for making a living... but it takes time to set it up. This isn't a summer picnic... kind of let's do it while we think about it... Deadlines are foolish when we need to investigate every and all the consequences of each change and how we will shape the system... Actually those who oppose the real reform, are the ones that would like it resolved now and dread any further study. And we know who they are. They are the same people who are now flooding the web, television, and printed media with their groundless 'opinions'. Like the darling Bobby Jindal, who still believes he's dealing with the Bush Administration in Washington.
Talk about all these alternatives being considered are nothing more that end runs to avoid real reform and to push us out of any attempt at designing a meaningful structure for our health care system.