These comments open several cans of worms for me.F...

2007-12-18T11:19:00.000-05:00

These comments open several cans of worms for me.
First, one of your last comments about how the government should not be a safety net for people who made bad decisions is absolutely true. I've thought of this most recently with all of the people who got in over their heads in mortgages and are now defaulting on their loans. The president wants to freeze interest rates for THEM ONLY for five years so they don't lose their homes. I'm all for not making people homeless, but it is their own fault for the predicament they are in. Also, all homeowners are obviously not happy with the currently falling market and rising interest rates, but the rest of us, smart enough to not get in over our heads, are not getting any special help from the government. We're not asking for it either.

Second, you mentioned the American Dream. Sadly, it appears to me that the idea of said Dream has changed for everybody from Generation X down from "work hard and you can vastly improve your situation" to "My parents have it good, I want it now". Part of that is that parents don't realize they are hindering their children by paying for their school, cars, letting them live at home indefinitely, etc. and part of it is that new technology (like You Tube and digital cameras) and the media have turned our country into a me-first, instant gratification society. Look at the rising credit card debt, the endless amount of teens trying to be the next big thing on YouTube and MySpace and the over-glamorization of the shallow parts of celebrity lives for examples of this.

Third, as for health care, I think the only real way to get people to change how they live is money. Health obviously isn't enough of a factor because EVERYONE knows what they should do to be healthy, but they don't do it. Briefly (got to get back to work) my proposal is that businesses give insured employees and annual health checkup and if they pass (in shape, active, good cholesterol, etc.) they get a kick-back of a certain percentage of their already-paid insurance premiums. I pay like $3,500 a year in health insurance premiums and if I got say $1,000 of it back if I was healthy, that would definitely motivate me. And a healthy me would save the company more money than they'd lose by giving me money back. Granted, this is a limited-reach proposal, but it would help at least a little bit, which is better than nothing, which is happening now.

Comments on DavidTheSteak: Health Care in America

These comments open several cans of worms for me.F...