Yes, there are problems now, e.g.,
"how many people have nothing else to rely on.".

But, really, the existing system has faced
such problems for a long time and put in place
a complicated, disorganized, collection of
pieces, patchwork, to respond to it. E.g., there is the
Hill-Burton hospital act where to build a
hospital can get Federal money but then
can't turn away patients who can't pay.
So, do 'cost shifting' and charge more for
patients who can pay. Or have a city run
and funded hospital. Patchwork.

Could we improve it? To borrow from Cheney, no doubt. Could
we make it worse? No doubt.

To me, the 'sausage making' process
of Obamacare promises a poorly designed
product. And the origins and motivations
of Obamacare concern me: As I recall,
really Obamacare was in its first drafts
(did anyone read the 2000 pages enough
to do a second draft?) was basically pulled
off the shelf from where it had been
stored by a health care team under Senator
Ted Kennedy. There the dream, Ted did
like the "dream", was simple --
socialized medicine.

I suspect that 'socialized medicine'
can be made to work well; maybe it does
in Switzerland. But I don't trust
the results of the people who want 'socialized medicine'
in the US mostly just as I don't trust
the people who just want socialism in the US.
My guess is that too soon we will be
paying too much (yes, we are now, also)
or screaming about bad medicine like
people do in the UK and Canada.

In a sense Medicare and Medicaid
have an advantage because they are mostly
just payment mechanisms placed on top
of what is roughly, very roughly,
a 'free-enterprise' system. But if just
socialize the whole thing, then
can end up with a bad version of the
USPS.

I'm not against the Federal Government
doing some things: In places what the
Federal Government does works out
great -- Hoover Dam, Bonneville Dam,
TVA, Los Alamos, NSF, NIH, DARPA,
funding of the top three dozen or so
US research universities, the Interstate
highway system, the FAA (the safety
and engineering parts; some of the
air traffic control parts), in the
end most aspects of the USPS,
the Agriculture Extension Service of
the USDA, the FDA (pretty good on
safety, a bit slow on efficacy),
and more. For the VA, I don't know:
There are complaints about the
access and quality, but I know no
details.

So, for Obamacare, I'm
concerned that in the US
'socialized medicine' is just super
tough to get right and that the
Nancy, etc. efforts are not even
10% as serious as needed. Then,
from the structure of the 'board'
or 'panel' appointed by the president,
I'm concerned that Obamacare
will become a
'political football'
that results in low quality health
care at high prices.

"Political
footbal"? For an example, that's my view of 'climate
change' and 'clean energy': For
fossil fuels, use 'climate change'
as an excuse to tax them and throttle
them. E.g., in his 2008 interview
at the SF Chron., Obama explained
his intention to raise carbon taxes
enough to "bankrupt" our coal fired
plants -- then 49% of our electric
energy and, as I recall, ~23% of all
our energy. I suspect he was just
posturing, but it was dangerous.
Then supposedly about $92 billion of
the various 'stimulus' and TARP
(I and II) funds went for 'clean
energy' but turned out to be
make-work jobs and campaign
contribution kickbacks. Supposedly
since then we've thrown another
$45 billion at 'clean energy' --
to me, 99 44/100% about politics,
e.g., campaign contribution kickbacks,
and the rest water and not at all
about energy or the even the climate
(in my view, there's no very good
evidence that the climate is at risk).

So, with US socialized medicine,
I fear 'waste, fraud, abuse' from a
political football.

E.g., now we've got NSA: Politics?
Sure: No politician wants to get
blamed for "being soft on terrorism".
So, NSA suspends good judgment and
goes overboard -- 'over reaches', e.g.,
data on calls of 120 million or so
Verizon customers, maybe all the
US e-mail traffic, maybe all the
US phone voice data.

E.g.? Sure: Snowden was a GED,
contract, bottom level employee in
Hawaii but apparently had his fingers
directly on huge volumes of data,
all at the NSA supposedly just
terrific at 'computer security'.
Why? Poor oversight. Poor
execution. From the White House,
don't give a sh!t about the details
and otherwise a political football.

I fear the same for a US national
health care system. Yes, what
we have could be better, but it could
also be worse, and for having it
worse Nancy is just the person to
lead us there.

Maybe in an honest moment Nancy
would have said, "We will just
pass it. That's all we can do.
Then we will leave the details
up to the execution of the Executive
branch, in some big office buildings
somewhere within 100 miles of the
Washington Monument, and pass more
bills if really necessary. So, we
will just get it started and then
let others make it work well."
But they don't have to make it
work well -- they might just make
a mess. I'm thinking, re-engineer
and rebuild a Boeing 747 in flight,
with people who just started learning
about sheet metal.