Shouldn't it be mandatory that Congress and the Senate fully participate in any Health Care System they deliver to the American public without exception?

I’d rather turn this around and say, shouldn’t the entire American public be entitled to the same level of coverage and care that is provided to Congress? After all it is a Government Program. If they don’t dread it for themselves, why do they dread it for us?

I am with pdworkin. We would all kill for the Federal Workers health care plan, which is what Congress has as well. Oh, plus they have a private physician on duty at the capitol.

That should tell you something about what kind of care you are about to be getting. Terrible idea to be honest. Best bet is to reform the legal system and the FDA. Eliminate the ability to sue a doctor or drug company for anything other than outright negligence, and by negligence I don’t mean making a mistake I mean being outright wrong. Truth is medicine is a risky business and your costs go up everytime they do uneccessary tests and the like. Further, it costs a freakishly large amount of money to bring a drug to market. Protect the drug companies (to a point) and reduce the difficulty in bringing a drug to market. Truth is, you can’t reasonably expect a drug company to test a drug for 50 years to figure out all of the side effects.

It’d be nice to provide healthcare to the entire nation, but I am not willing to pay for it. I already get taxed into the ground. Fix the problem, don’t add another one. Everytime you think about how great Socialized medical care would be imagine yourself a VA patient.

I don’t much care for the idea of forcing anyone to have a certain type of health insurance. I don’t want Congress telling me what kind of heath insurance I need to have, and I don’t think it is my place to tell Congress what kind of health insurance they should have.

That being said, it would go a long way towards giving credibility to their cause if they were willing to place themselves in the same position that they are threatening to put the rest of us in.

Politicians get all the perks and for what? Making laws they themselves usually don’t have to follow? In a fair society, the people who pay the taxes get the perks, the servants of the republic live on the same healthcare and retirement plan as their constituents, and the only people deserving of the private plan that those porkers at the public trough get would be our military veterans.

And now those bastards are going on a six week recess. How many of us tax payers get that sort of vacation from our jobs?

@StrykerCavScout: But where do you draw the line between “making a mistake” and “being wrong”?

What they are voting against is our right to they same chices THEY have. Congressmen have free, unlimited and no deductible medical coverage for themselves and their families,

More interesting is seniors who are against govt supported health care while they have Medicare.

It just seems the whole thing is so hypocritical – If “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander” then there would likely be a thought out plan that would need not be rushed through before the American Public wakes up.

Why isn’t Congress looking at Tort reform and getting malpractice insurance under control?

Congress does as Congress is paid to do by lobbyists. In my opinion if all campaigns were entirely publicly financed and there were no such thing as a “donation” we would have better leadership and better laws.

@tullbejm because so many of them are lawyers and the trial attorneys have a rich, ergo powerful, lobby.

@pdworkin: I agree, unfortunately for most of us, you always need to “follow the money” if you really want to find the intended consequences of there actions.

the american people should be the ones to vote on this. not congress. offer the same insurance they have and see how they react to that!

@barumonkey I would imagine you would have to create a sort of review committee at the hospital or by region or something. There’d be no way to ensure it was always fair and always correct, best you could do is ensure members don’t sit the board for too long and there are doctors, nurses, and maybe some private citizens on it. Kind of like democracy, not a really great form of government, but the best we’ve got.

@evelyns_pet_zebra I would love nothing more than to have a “fair society” where everyone got the perks and no one rode the bottom of the bubble. Unfortunatly, short of solving the problems inherent in Communism, I don’t see that happening. Truth is, the best you can do is create an enviornment where competition exists for customers, in this case Health Insurance, lower the costs of care to make prevmiums more affordable and continue to encourage people to sign up through tax incentives or education.

Generally the most I would support is a government funded system that provided some measure of basic preventative care at a minimum for children, possibly adults. I would say things like sports physicals for school sports, basic immunizations, annual check-ups for kids, annual dental checkups… those things I would be behind. I might even support a voucher system where the government helps poorer people pay for basic care for things discovered in these physicals like cavities. In fact, I think a voucher system is a decent compromise; I haven’t thought it all the way through yet but it seems this way Liberals can feel like the government is helping the poor and Conservatives can feel like the government isn’t running healthcare. It’d probably be cheaper too.

Finally, the members of Congress do have a pretty great healthcare program as well as some other sweet perks. My only issue with revoking some of the perks of office is that I don’t know how else you can recruit talent. If you cut their pay, take their benefits, and reduce their perks you can’t expect the best and the brightest would run… hell, I’m not sure they do now with all the benefits they are given. We can preach all day about sacrifice and patriotism, but truth is until we fix [most] people’s desire for prestige and/or wealth it’ll stay the same.

Oooo yeah, what @pdworkin said.