Oh, God no, dude - Matthew - sorry, there are a lot of points covered in these debates - sometimes you forget to lay out all the pre-stated rules - but speaking only for me (though I think Jodi and others have agreed with this in the past when it's come up) no one is against doctors making profit.

Because - are you ready for this whacked out liberal logic?  The doctors (and all clinicians - nurses, medical assistants, PSR/BSR/Front Office, hell, even Respiratory Therapists (though, not really) - ALL provide service and deserve profit.

What medical service, exactly, do insurers provide? 

Oh - we NEED insurance, for sure, so it is a service, but it's not a medical service.  When you pay a doctor, it's for the medical service that you received.  When you pay more than you should to an insurance company, that's usury.   

I'm not sure I'm making my point clearly here - clearly we need insurance - because it costs a lot of legitimate money to see a doctor - more than the average citizen has on hand.  So, to compensate for that, people pay into funds that they withdraw from to make the large payments to the doctors.  That's insurance 101.  Easy. 

What I'm getting at is this - we don't need, say, auto insurance.  That's a luxury.  You don't need a car.  But you need your health.  So why are we letting "bottom line" enter into this picture at all?  What medical service is the CEO of Aetna providing to us?  He's taking our money each month and then, maybe, just maybe, he's paying for some visits.  But not the expensive ones.  And no MRIs.  Those cost too much.  Cuts into his bonus. And forget that insulin.  Just lay off the carbs, fatty.  Type 1, type 2, it's all the same.  I have a new car I have my eye on, I can't be bothered paying for your diabetes meds.  In fact!  Who let a diabetic into our club??  That's a pre-exisiting condition!  We're not paying jack-shit for that guy!  It's not our fault he was born with a bad pancreas!  etc.

Sorry for the rambling nature of this, but I have zero sympathy for health insurance people's profits.  Those profits come at the expense of human life.   If they get into car insurance or life insurance or whatever, power to them, but not health insurance. 

Dude -

I work for the federal govt and find that last statement about beaurocrats insulting and completely sends an incorrect message. 

First and foremost is that we don't make a lot of money and our healthcare coverage is no better than anyone elses (hell, we finally got dental and eye care a little over a year ago .. and, believe me, it's a not great coverage).

We're already understaffed and many of us do multiple jobs.  We try very hard to do a good job.  We have ethics training every year and that's part of it..... so, if healthcare begins to fall under federal govt management, someone will certainly complain about it but you can trust that federal workers will try hard to make it work for you.

Like Matthew before me, I don't have time for a long reply - and it sounds like Matthew had more to say anyway - I only have a second, but something David just added reminded me of a sore point:

I hear a lot - not from Matthew, per se, but on Right Wing Radio and in the Republican Media, about how workers - govt workers, union workers, etc, are paid too much.

Let me repeat that - Paid too much.

First - when did we, or the Republican Party anyway - become the party of the downwardly mobile?  Don't we all strive to make more, to be paid more? 

Second - did I blink and miss the end of the free market in America?  You're paid what the market will support.  If you are overpaid, union or no, and the business model can't support it, you will no longer be employed.  I don't say this out of naieveity (SP?? I mangled that one...) - I've had union jobs and I've managed union employees - the free market still works - it's just that if you're working with a union, you have to be more carefull.  But you can fire all day long, you can cut pay, etc.   But...

Not so that the bosses can make more money.   Which leads to my third and final point before I resume my offline activities -

Third - We hear a lot about workers being paid too much, but where do we hear about bosses being paid too much?  Fact is, as was mentioned earlier - the ratio of worker to boss pay has gone out of control, and the Republicans don't mind the bosses making money - they're just upset that workers are making a decent middle class living.

(Also related: Republican opposition to minimum wage.  Minimum wage = if I could legally pay you less, I would.)

Is this bad, wrong, incorrect?  Hell no - Republicans are free to believe what the hell they want - here's my beef with that - if they're going to support bosses over workers, why are so many working class people republicans?? * 

(my guess plays the race and religion cards, and happily I'm ducking out for a while, so... fire those slings and arrows in my absense!)

* - of seek out Malcolm X's explanation - type his name, and "house" and "field" into google and see what you get.

While I agree that when there's nothing more to give, everybody should be willing to cut back a bit (it has helped save a lot of businesses in my county, at least for a while), I can also understand how people with job security wouldn't want to give an inch. 

They are hardly the only ones in this situation looking out for number one.  Practically everyone on Wall Street seem to be singing THAT tune.

In the past, when belts have been tightened through collective bargaining here in Norway, the signal effect of bosses giving up their bonuses (or at least promising to give up their bonuses, whether they actually do it ...)  has usually been the clincher.

The problem is that once you tighten that belt, (and even a zero increase is a de-facto reduction due to inflation), they'll expect the same next year, and the year after that, and the year after that. No matter whether profits increase.

It's pretty hard to recover abandoned ground. So in that sense I suppose they can justify their hard-line attitude.  

I certainly value solidarity in a crisis, and agree with you that they should have taken a (time limited perhaps) pay cut if it could keep everybody on the payroll. But cynic that I am, I find it difficult to hope for solidarity these days.  

And ,again as a cynic: I've seen situations where employees have been promised that more people would keep their jobs if everybody agreed to a paycut, just to see management take the savings of both the pay cut and the downsizing.

The choices are difficult. I suppose what it comes down to is whether there is a relationship of trust between Unions and Management.