The private sector delivers the things we need and want best if we let it. Our problems in health care (speaking as someone who has made a life of delivering health care) are the result of government intrusions, beginning during WW2, which have disrupted the market mechanisms which have provided so well for us in other portions of the economy.

Libertarians have offered alternatives to the major party approaches, and you can read them, if you want to understand the problems and solutions better, at Heartland.org or at Tidewater Liberty at http://tinyurl.com/hc-choose-one

Both are not short reads, but health care reform will not fit on a bumper sticker. We have spent 70 years messing this up, and it will take a while, and some careful untangling of the mess, to set it right. But turning the whole industry over to bureaucrats is not going to help.

Taxes must be collected, which wastes the efforts and talents of people such as our hostess, and then allocated and spent and tracked, which wastes yet more effort and talent. The fewer levels of government the money has to go through, the less waste there is. That’s why conservatives prefer taxes and spending to be as local as possible.

Furthermore, the States have the authority to establish their own health care systems, such as TennCare and MassHealth. The federal government does not.

Newport, I agree the GOP doesn’t have any true alternatives for making healthcare better. some of my ideas are:

# Removing mandates from health insurance enabling wider array of options to more people to include many uninsured young people who end up in the emergency room because they cannot afford basic coverage.
# Shifting tax credits from the employer to the citizen to create a true Free Market for coverage and enable employees to switch jobs without the fear of losing coverage for pre-existing conditions.
# Tort reform to prevent trial lawyers from suing for obscene amounts which do not benefit the patient and raise costs for everyone
# Getting rid of the inept FDA approval process for life saving drugs and instead enforce transparency on drug trial results.

I would like to see all of these done because there is not silver bullet and even these together won’t solve 100% of the problem. my full posting at: http://bearingdrift.com/2009/07/11/multiple-choice/

Blue Dogs may have some legitimate concerns that should be addressed, but doing nothing is what is killing jobs, economic growth and creating the deficit Doing nothing is a abject failure of leadership. Doing nothing is the GnOP solution to all crisis.

If Congress derails health care reform once again, there will be hell to pay.