"We need to take our time on healthcare," is what a lot of folks are saying. Well, we've pretty much been doing that. Almost sixty-four years ago Harry Truman proposed a health care bill! Here's a page from the Harry S. Truman Library & Museum site on that subject:
http://www.trumanlibrary.org/anniversar ... rogram.htm

President Truman's Proposed Health Program

On November 19, 1945, only 7 months into his presidency, Harry S. Truman sent a Presidential message to the United States Congress proposing a new national health care program. In his message, Truman argued that the federal government should play a role in health care, saying "The health of American children, like their education, should be recognized as a definite public responsibility." One of the chief aims of President Truman's plan was to insure that all communities, regardless of their size or income level, had access to doctors and hospitals. President Truman emphasized the urgent need for such measures, asserting that "About 1,200 counties, 40 percent of the total in the country, with some 15,000,000 people, have either no local hospital, or none that meets even the minimum standards of national professional associations. "

President Truman's plan was to improve the state of health care in the United States by addressing five separate issues. The first issue was the lack of doctors, dentists, nurses, and other health professionals in many rural or otherwise lower-income areas of the United States. He saw that "the earning capacity of the people in some communities makes it difficult if not impossible for doctors who practice there to make a living." He proposed to attract doctors to the areas that needed them with federal funding. The second problem that Mr. Truman aimed to correct was the lack of quality hospitals in rural and lower-income counties. He proposed to provide government funds for the construction of new hospitals across the country. To insure only quality hospitals were built, the plan also called for the creation of national standards for hospitals and other health centers. Mr. Truman's third initiative was closely tied to the first two. It called for a board of doctors and public officials to be created. This board would create standards for hospitals and ensure that new hospitals met these standards. The board would also be responsible for directing federal funds into medical research.

The most controversial aspect of the plan was the proposed national health insurance plan. In his November 19, 1945 address, President Truman called for the creation of a national health insurance fund to be run by the federal government. This fund would be open to all Americans, but would remain optional. Participants would pay monthly fees into the plan, which would cover the cost of any and all medical expenses that arose in a time of need. The government would pay for the cost of services rendered by any doctor who chose to join the program. In addition, the insurance plan would give a cash balance to the policy holder to replace wages lost due to illness or injury.

President Truman's health proposals finally came to Congress in the form of a Social Security expansion bill, co-sponsored in Congress by Senators Robert Wagner (D-NY) and James Murray (D-MT), along with Representative John Dingell (D-MI). For this reason, the bill was known popularly as the W-M-D bill. The American Medical Association (AMA) launched a spirited attack against the bill, capitalizing on fears of Communism in the public mind. The AMA characterized the bill as "socialized medicine", and in a forerunner to the rhetoric of the McCarthy era, called Truman White House staffers "followers of the Moscow party line".* Organized labor, the main public advocate of the bill, had lost much of its goodwill from the American people in a series of unpopular strikes. Following the outbreak of the Korean War, President Truman was finally forced to abandon the W-M-D Bill. Although Mr. Truman was not able to create the health program he desired, he was successful in publicizing the issue of health care in America. During his Presidency, the not-for-profit health insurance fund Blue Shield-Blue Cross grew from 28 million policies to over 61 million.** When on July 30, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Medicare bill into law at the Harry S. Truman library & Museum, he said that it "all started really with the man from Independence".**

Doing things right does take time. But lets get on with it.

Did anyone read the Mackey (Whole Paycheck CEO) article in WSJ.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... 65070.html

It is funny how so many people who get so very rich think just the same.

I agree, Doug. It centers on ways to save money and keep entry level health costs high enough that no one below some income levels can use their health care because of the high deductibles. Then it tosses in the flawed thinking about constitutional rights, a standard Republican dodge when it comes to legislation that has a positive impact on the state of the union by having a negative impact on the pocketbook of the wealthy.

"Comfort the afflicted. Afflict the comfortable."

It rightly discusses the impact of foods and lifestyle on health but once again the question is how much will we allow our government to enforce individual life style choices by denying benefits. These are the very people one wants to ask questions about alternative medicines because they are the ones who propose cost breaks for 'approved' life style choices. Again, they don't seem to have a concept of true individual choices and liberties; they have a concept of keeping their options open by restricting the options of those with less ownership.

There is no "right" to have an Air Force or the CDC either in the Constitution. Nor NASA. Nor... you get the point. The debate about the right to health care is a way to keep from debating the necessity of it. Again, it is a smart investment but it has no short term payoffs that the ownership society can take advantage of to increase their personal wealth.

What they neglect to mention, whenever they invoke the Founding Fathers and the Constitution as an excuse against the right to health care, are things like there really wasn't much health care back then. Medicine was still pretty primitive in those days, full of, among other things, conjecture, wild guesses, misconceptions and superstitions. Hell, George Washington died from complications of being "bled" by his physician. Lincoln's Surgeon General may have contributed to his demise by probing Lincoln's brain (while he was still alive) with skewers to find the bullet Booth fired ("Nope, that wasn't it. Maybe it went more to the right. Try again!"). Heck, nobody even sterilized medical and surgery equipment until after Pasture discovered what germs were in the mid 1800s and even after that it took until the early 1900s for it to catch on!

It seems that, when it comes to providing health care to the people, our systems are still in the dark ages. And a lot of people in the industry and in government are intent on keeping it there.

The CDC is reccomending that circumcision be MANDATORY for all male newborns. Did they throw this into the mix now deliberately to make a goodly number of people not want any government intrusion into healthcare?

I saw something about the CDC conducting research on whether circumcisions reduce STDs, specifically AIDS & HIV but nothing from a reliable source about making it mandatory. Most of what I saw of that was from conspiracy "fringe" sites. Sounds like another right wing rumor to throw another monkey wrench in the works. You'll see that they did the same to Truman, if you read the above piece.

Actually, I saw it on the local action news.

Which local news? The only thing I found (without going OCD looking for it) was a CDC report that stated that circumcision, "while not mandatory" (quoted from the CDC thingy), was recommended. That does not mean that they want to make it mandatory. This whole "debate" has gone into the idiocy of splitting hairs, it seems to me, by factions that want it killed. And most of the media seem to be helping them along.

Sounds like it's only a draft report at that, with the "recommendation" still under discussion, and being only a recommendation:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/24/healt ... on.html?hp

Their official position -- from February 2008 -- remains:

http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/resources/factsh ... cision.htm

But I also found numerous articles which misrepresent what the NYT originally reported (everything out there appears to be derived from the NYT story), which is...just great.

I can't see circumcision being made officially mandatory; lawyers would have a field day with any attempt to do that -- and rightly so. On the other hand, I could see some local "public health official" or a "doctor" with ineptitude matching some of the media's (or with an agenda of their own) trying to bully people into accepting circumcision. That's only one of the reasons it's important to look below the surface of a story like this and see what's really there.