From: hulsey@dbsun.uucp (hulsey)
Subject: Re: Clinton & Taxes: 7% for health
Organization: BioMerieux-Vitek, St. Louis Mo.
Distribution: usa
Date: Thu, 20 Aug 1992 16:08:06 GMT

todd.paulus%theweb@meaddata.com (Todd Paulus)  writes:

>HU.Have you ever thought about starting a business?  Have you thought about
>  .what would happen if your business would fail, and you would be left with
>  .no health insurance?  What if you developed an expensive medical condition
>  .while you were trying a new business, and no employer would let you onto
>  .their health plan?
>
>Oh boy! This is so frustrating.  If I fail at my business, why should I
>expect handouts from you?  Or you from me?  It's time we stopped
>expecting our gov't to pay for everything, because ultimately it all
>comes out of our pockets, or our children's pockets, like medicare, and
>the debt payments.  Yes, some expensive situations will be hard to
>understand, but nobody promised you life would be free, or easy.

I never said that life should be free and easy.  I said that the lack
of a national health insurance is a disincentive to strike out on your
own.  Because if you fail, you have no safety net.  And I'm not talking
about temporary failure, like a business failing.  I'm still healthy. I
can work, I can try again.  I'm talking about failing health.  Oh, I'm
sorry, you can't work because of a bad back.  Well, the business you
started will fail and your health insurance will lapse, and your family
will be bankrupted to pay the health bills.  So sorry, better luck next
life.

>HU.What I was saying was that the current health care system makes
>  .entrepreneurship even more risky, and that small businesses andindividuals pa
>  .ore for health insurance because the big companies
>  .get deals.  National health insurance would help level *this* field.
>
>Yeah.  Like the Federal Reserve Act did, right?  Leveled the ups and
>downs of the private banking industry, right?  Right into the depression
>when that house of cards failed!  Like farm subsidies - to level the
>playing field and help those poor farmers.  So now, instead of a few
>farms producing healthy crops, we got LOTS of farms - most of whom are
>bankrupt.  That house of cards also failed.  You just can't get
>something for nothing.  The constitution grants us 'the right to the
>pursuit of happiness', not a right to happiness.  There's a rather big
>difference.  And the Dems have never understood it.  Or perhaps, they do
>understand too well, and get rich and powerful over it.

I'm sorry, I do not know the specifics of the Federal Reserve Act.  How
did this Act help cause the Great Depression?  I thought the main cause
was the massive run up of the '20's, and when a natural correction hit
(1929), the Fed made mistakes in monetary policy which choked off the
money supply.  The differences between then and now are a smarter Fed,
and much more government spending.

I always thought that gov't subsidies hurt small farmers, because the
gov't has strict regulations you have to follow to receive them.  And
the big farms have a better ability to follow them (or more lawyers
to fight them).  What the real problem with farms is is that the U.S.
Gov't will not let U.S. farmers export at market rates.  The U.S. Gov't
sets the price.  I would like to see all farm subsidies removed, as well
as all U.S. export restictions removed.

BTW, don't you think family farms are hurt by health care costs?  Farming
is one of the most dangerous occupations there is, and I bet very few
family farmers are able to afford decent health insurance.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
hulsey%dbsun.uucp@wupost.wustl.edu (Jim Hulsey)   TBDBITL '84 ('85 Rose Bowl)
An Ohioan living in Misery (Missouri, same difference)

Watch what you say!                Won't you sign up your name
They'll be calling you a radical   So you can be their dependable
A liberal, fanatical criminal      Respectable, presentable vegetable
--  Supertramp "The Logical Song"