Hi folks,

I'm not likely to appreciate being labled as anything other than a decent fellow. I don't like being pigeon-holed into one distinct ideology but if I had to say I had one I would say I'm more liberal and less ideology driven. I like science.
Facts are important to me but I don't pretend to have them all. I don't understand what conservatives stand for as an ideology because it's seldom displayed in rock solid terms. I could also say I often feel liberals often times get some things and skip over others. I write a lot of lazy sentences and I do think I am lazy because I feel I haven't gone out and stood for much with any real meaning ever - in a civic sense.

That said, I feel free market spirit is ok as long as people realize somethings aren't free market and never were.

Also, the free market left to its own devices has many times over been shown to reak a lot of havoc on many people over the ages, including now and especially with healthcare insurance coverage now being battled over, weakly on all sides. The housing and financial market schemes that produced some windfalls for many since the 2001 terrorist act of 9/11 is yet another - mindless of factual discussion, and detrimental to us all.

Concerning the Health care front - we should deal with insurance coverage, how it is paid for and how to lower cost in the effort to cover all.
I say first and foremost we should call for universal healthcare.
We then must agressively and openly look for a way to do such a thing in the most efficient way.

I would propose a single payer system - but I know it does have its drawbacks. So I would more reasonably suggest any system where coverage includes all, and has a minimum amount of overhead.

I don't have a good number as a percentage, but I think we should shoot for anywhere from 5 - 8 percent. This would allow all people to be covered, lower the middle man cost - and if private still allow for very agressive competition like they have in France or other countries where they acheive better results at lower costs per individual.

Second, I would state that we do need to look into actual healthcare operations, which I maintain must stay private. I do think things that are tried that don't work are often retried too many times. We do need to get better at best practices and the ergonomical systems that have and currently do cause waste. This in an effert to do more with less. Better effectiveness delivered more efficiently is a good model which requires a high level of thought and engineering strategy.

So, in a big sense, I would look at the goal first. Something we all want must be the first goal. It has to be a goal that is moral and important to all.
Then, we mandate the goal and do so non-politically. We should choose what we once did best - look all around and get the best information we can and then engineer it even better in a way that the final outcome will be so darn good other countries will do their best to adopt it for themselves - otherwise known as a win win situational outcome.

Anyway, I feel that we do need to have genuine discourse. I don't like it when people just put someone into a group they either appreciate or dislike because I can see there's a lot of people who are just rightly sick of it.
This is one country, and we can have different points of view but we should try our best to listen and not just paint people into a box - and this is what our News Media is it seems really very good at doing.
So now, you have people who just go ballistic or you have others who just opt out completely from any real discussion regarding the important issues of our day.
Again, I might say I'm perhaps more of a liberal, but I've also worked with people who were conservative who've had fantastic ideas and showed a good deal of acumen regarding solving problems; and because I've worked for a living for over thirty years I do know that what you don't want in a company that works for profit and must be efficient to stay afloat, is people who are too extreme nor the opposite; people who are basically just tuned out.
What you need is participation and this participation has got to have with it responsibility. In a company that is constantly trying to improve you might have some folks who want to stay just where they are at - but they also need to improve. Just like there are a group of people who in a company want to reach the top - those folks need definition and time to develop what they do - and they have to be accepted so that there is no resentment, so there can be no question about what they put in and what they themselves get out of success.

It's called team work. It's called a chance. It's called being a human.
It's not called being a democrat or a being a republican when you are born.

I look forward to reading your posts fellow contributors!

Peace!