You're right, JAP, except for one minor point: It will never balance out.

     If current proposals are approved, the end result will be more small businesses shutting down because the employers can't afford to pay the premiums, and more large corporations will move operations overseas in order to maintain competitive prices in their respective markets. "The Invisible Hand" is inherent to free-market capitalism, and self-regulating markets will continue to self-regulate regardless of whether operating costs increase or decrease. Companies that wish to survive in a depressed economy must keep consumer prices low in order to sell their products or services to people whose paychecks are already stretched to their limits. Passing the extra cost of health care on to the consumer will only serve to ensure a firm's rapid demise, because a company with fewer employees or one with factories in India or China, for example, will quickly step in and offer the same product or service at a lower price.

     Our government has developed a bad habit of making very simple tasks as complicated as they can possibly make them. Personally, I prefer taxpayer-funded health care over that which is government-funded, and nothing could be simpler. All they'd have to do is include another box on our tax forms, along with instructions stating, "Check here if you want $100 of your taxes to fund public health care. Checking this box will not increase your tax nor reduce the amount of your refund." It wouldn't cost employers a dime out-of-pocket, doctors would still get rich and everyone in the country would have access to adequate health care any time they needed it. The problem with this very simple method is that the monies collected would be exempt from alternative allocation by congress, just like the Presidential Election Campaign Fund, and they're not about to put up with that.

     In my opinion, the public health care debacle is designed to move America one step closer to the necessity of adopting a more global currency which isn't so sensitive to world market fluctuations, as our dollar clearly is. Our GDP is falling at a rate of nearly $200 billion per year, and it can only get worse as more of our corporate anchors move their operations to more business-friendly environments.

     Jim

I keep hearing that our health care system is broken. Will someone please tell me what is "broken" about it?

And don't point to that homeless man sleeping off an alcohol buzz under the park bench and say "What if he has cancer? What then?".

He made his choices at the same time I made mine. I never made much money during my working years but I made the right decisions because I thought about the future and where I wanted to be when I retired. Some people do whatever they want, whatever they feel like doing, then cry to the government to rescue them from their bad decisions.

Public health care is a cry from those who don't wish to pay for health care. They want their money going to casinos, liquor stores, drug dealers, and the lottery. They want me to pay for their health care instead.

The other big question in my mind has been:   How can the govt. guarantee participation from everybody? Let's start with illegals and millions of others that operate under the radar.   This plan again, like every govt. plan, is borne on the backs of the hard working honest USAmerican taxpayer.   The govt. pays for nothing they take it from us working class schmoes and redistribute it. I'm FED up with this crap and its been getting worse and worse regardless of the parties in power.

I agree with all your statements, can't add anything substantive to the discussion 'cause it's all been covered.