And after MY EXPERIENCE in MASSACHUSETTS, you don't want this plan for the USA!
But you just might get it!!!
By the way, another one of my shattered belief systems is the idea of National Health Care in this country. If the U.S. could do it like Canada or England, etc, I'd be for it; however, there is TOO MUCH $$$ at stake in AmeriKa!
Just chalk me up as another Ron Paul convert!
Sorry, Mass. liberals (of which I know so many!).
"Kennedy leads renewed effort on universal healthcare; Presses for bipartisan support before new president takes office" by Lisa Wangsness, Globe Staff | July 2, 2008
Senator Edward M. Kennedy's office has begun convening a series of meetings involving a wide array of healthcare specialists to begin laying the groundwork for a new attempt to provide universal healthcare, according to participants.
The discussions signal that Kennedy, who instructed aides to begin holding the meetings while he is in Massachusetts undergoing treatment for brain cancer, intends to work vigorously to build bipartisan support for a major healthcare initiative when he returns to Washington in the fall.
Those involved in the discussions said Kennedy believes it is extremely important to move as quickly as possible on overhauling the healthcare system after the next president takes office in January in order to capitalize on the momentum behind a new administration.
Kennedy was an early endorser of Senator Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee who is also a member of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, which Kennedy chairs.
Obama's Senate staff has attended the roundtable discussions. If Obama is elected, Kennedy's effort to identify points of agreement among senators could smooth the way for the new administration to press ahead on universal healthcare, which Obama has promised to implement within four years.
The last time a national healthcare plan was attempted, under President Clinton in 1993. Kennedy's effort appears to be designed to identify areas of common ground between Democrats and Republicans, business and labor, providers and insurers, and others before the new president takes office.
The initiative also suggests that Kennedy, who has made healthcare his signature issue in his 45-year Senate career and who is fighting an aggressive brain tumor, is considering his legacy as a new administration arrives in Washington - a moment many see as the best chance for widespread changes in the healthcare system in 15 years.
Kennedy played a critical role in helping Massachusetts create a healthcare overhaul proposal in 2006 by aiding the state in obtaining the federal money needed to subsidize it.
Then WHO IS GOING TO SUBSIDIZE the NATIONAL PLAN?
Aides to Kennedy have also assembled a network of Massachusetts advisers, including healthcare lawyers, economists, nonprofit leaders, doctors, and health insurers who may be asked to work on specific aspects of a national plan. At a recent meeting in Boston, the group discussed how different elements of the Massachusetts approach might work on a national level.
Oh, no!!!
Even though health costs have soared along with the number of uninsured over the past 15 years, the defeat of the Clinton health overhaul plan was so politically devastating to the administration and to efforts to enact universal health insurance law that nothing approaching such a large-scale effort has been tried since. One purpose of the roundtable discussions, participants said, is to educate Senate staff on broad issues that have not been seriously debated in years.
Craig Orfield, a spokesman for Senator Mike Enzi of Wyoming, the ranking Republican on the committee:
"There's been talk about the healthcare crisis for years, but I think in the last year and a half, the system is failing so many people and becoming so costly, that I don't think there's anybody who doesn't understand there's got to be fundamental changes to the system."
But it's the best one in the whole world, right?
Trillions for wars, billions for banks and Israel, you've heard it before....
