Btw, with regard to the “elimination of the working class”, I completely agree that our public education bares the bulk of the blame. One of the many reasons why I am an avid supporter of charter schools and vouchers.

If this is what you are saying then we obviously have lost our intellectual and rhetorical ability to construct viable healthcare models for U.S. citizens. We would be unable to emulate the healthcare systems of Cuba, Canada, or France since we lack the intellect to assimilate their practices!

Has the U.S. caused its own ‘brain drain,’ by not developing enough of its own intellectuals to take on careers in science, technology, engineering, and medicine? The answer is yes, the lack of high school and college students taking on S.T.E.M. careers is well documented in the literature. This may have something to do with our public education system. We are not educating or cultivating the minds we need to sustain our own healthcare needs.

If we have less people with healthcare then obviously we will not see the frightening shortages we are facing. A finger in the damn, is a perfect analogy for the state of U.S. healthcare today.

First, in my ideal world employers would not have any part in healthcare. So I consider the move towards a reduction in employer responsibility of healthcare a good thing.

Why? The reason is that it is precisely employer provided healthcare that has contributed to the drastic rise in healthcare costs - in other words, it is employer provided healthcare that reduces healthcare affordability for the poor.

Economists explain it this way:

“Health care is expensive because the vast majority of Americans consume it as if it were free. Health insurance policies with low deductibles insulate people from the cost of the medical care they use — so much so that they often do not even ask for prices. And people don’t recognize the high premium costs of this low-deductible insurance because premiums are paid by employers. Finally, the tax code subsidizes these expensive, employer-purchased insurance policies.

To control health care costs, we must give consumers an incentive to spend money wisely. We can do this by encouraging the purchase of high-deductible policies and providing the same tax benefits for out-of-pocket health spending that employer-provided insurance enjoys.”

More can be found here.

So if healthcare affordability is your goal, the trend towards a reduction in employer provided healthcare should be celebrated, not condemned.

That’s one thing. The second thing I wanted to comment on is that all political sides, whether the left or the right, to a large degree supports government assistance for the poor. What we disagree on is government assistance for everybody else. For example, the left feels that Warrent Buffett, one of the richest men in the world, is entitled to free government healthcare simply because of his age. The right strongly disagrees.

Or to make a broader example, take the difference between medicaid and medicare. Medicaid is healthcare for the poor, medicare is healthcare for the elderly. Why should the elderly, independent of how much they make, get free healthcare simply because of their age? I have no problem with medicaid (though I have some quibbles on how better it should be ran) but medicare I cannot understand. The basis of healthcare should be on income not on age.

Furthermore, the way things are done now, “Medicare gets the gold (more political clout in the over-65 population) and Medicaid gets the shaft (absolutely no political clout in that population)”. Why do you think that is? The reason is votes. The elderly vote much more consistently than the poor does and as such medicare gets all the financing and medicaid gets the shaft. A clear reduction in ’social justice’, if there ever was one.

This brings me full circle to my original point. Government run healthcare is no solution to the poors healthcare problems - It is inefficient, costly, and will not lead to those who most need healthcare receiving it. This has been the experience of healthcare as it is today, and I have no reason to think it would be any different tomorrow.

So lets look at this qualitatively, numbers that may not be convenient to display but likely exist. I would say that there has been a significant decrease in employee provided health care benefits in the united states.

Now if you are talking about a working class that can not count on it employers to provide healthcare for their children then aren’t we closer to behaving like a third world country instead of a socialist one?

If employers and corporations are not somehow regulated or legislated to provide healthcare to its employees and dependents then wouldn’t these same households move into poverty? Then requiring government assistance and healthcare?

There was a time, when a working class family could survive and provide their families with healthcare, a home, and even private schooling if they chose.

In the last twenty years the working class has been targeted for elimination in my opinion. If employers provide neither a living wage nor benefits then are they not behind the increased government dependency?

Do capitalist, the wealthy, and middle class actually subjugate the working class to increased governmental dependency?