Reply #15: And, as anyone who has used it knows...

[ConstitutionalLib]

Oxford is the definitive dictionary. On a side note, where in the U.K. I lived for 4 years in Banbury, Oxon. My eldest son was born there. But to address your points; and I DO apologize for taking so long to get back here)

I must point out that you are arguing from the left leaning perspective, and I chose no sides in this, I merely use the platform planks stated by each party. I pointed out that governmental regulation/intervention/control, call it what you will, is a desire/device of the left, as stated; while less government influence is supposedly the goal of the right. And, yes, I will concede that the right does not achieve that goal, but again, that is not what I was talking about. I was trying to explain how differing ideology has it's grounding in their perspective of issues and events.

In terms of the governments function; Constitutionally the Federal government has certain function reserved to it alone, these are very few, and usually things it would be impractical for each state to perform on their own(ie: National defense, maintaining of interstate roads, negotiating treaties and international agreements, etc.) Most all governmental function that we take for granted on a federal level, more properly should be the province of the several states according to the Constitution. This makes sense as the Founders evidenced great trepidation about the potential growth and encroachment of individual liberty of the federal beast they were creating. I would prefer functions like education to be less federal and more local, as I believe, as Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin did, that the closer government is to the people the more responsive it is to their needs. If your selectmen do something bone-headed, it is easy to walk into a selectmen's meeting and tell them about it. It is much more difficult to do so, when the action occurs 500 miles away in Washington. But, then again, I am something of a purist in this.

Communism in it's pure form is unworkable because there would be no one of any greater influence than anyone else. Even in a commune you have someone, or a council that acts as guidance for the communes efforts.

Fascism and Socialism are two sides of the same coin, as it were, Socialism on an economic level controls the means of production, as does Fascism(hey, we are going to ALLOW you to own your business, we are merely going to tell you who you can sell to, how much you can sell it for, and how much you will make for your efforts) Fascism adds a virulent jingoism to the mix, more of a dictatorship than a politburo.

Ok, regarding health care, I believe you are both right and wrong, let me explain...

Correct almost no one spoke of "government OWNERSHIP" of hospitals as a National policy" although part of the 1,300 page health care bill did propose the building of government owned hospitals in some cities across America. What they spoke of was "single payer" meaning all health care payments being paid by or through various government agencies. Part of the problem here is that the cost of services is removed from those who contract for those services. This is always a recipe for increasing costs and little accountability. Let me give you a personal example; I do not have health insurance. Have not had it for 10 years. This is by choice. I am self employed and the cost of insurance for me is prohibitive. However, My doctors office visit costs me $35.00, doctors bill insurance companies and medicare $110.00 for the same visit. Whenever I go for any treatment of any kind I negotiate with the doctor and my costs are reduced because I am paying for it, and they don't have to spend hours on paperwork, chasing payments from insurance and the government, and partial payments from both. I just had a chest x-ray two weeks ago, I went to the place I had one done 10 years ago when I had insurance. They said a chest x-ray would be $400.00 that is what they bill medicare and insurance companies. They do this because medicare, which by it's sheer size effectively sets the reimbursement rates for insurance companies as well, most use the same percentages as medicare, usually only pays 15-40% of the cost of any procedure. I told them I would be paying cash, what could I get it for, after some haggling I ended up paying $70.00.

The point of this is that the single payer while it seems great on the face of it, masks the true costs, because they are no longer your responsibility but the governments. It masks the fact that the government has no money until they take it from us. It masks the fact that as more people use the system, and more bureaucracy forms around it, the costs escalate and the quality drops, until the government in an effort to reduce costs begins making decisions about what is necessary and what is elective, and how long you can wait to have something done, much as is happening right now in Canada, and on the NHS in Britain. I have some personal experience with the NHS, and please correct my perceptions of circumstances ave changed in the last 20 years, but here is my story...

In 1986, I had a car accident on the A421 coming into the edge of Milton Keynes. My Daimler Sovereign that I had just bought from a director of the company I was working for collided with a Ford Sierra. We were both going 60 or so. it wasn't pretty. within minutes of the accident a tour bus of American nurses(as fantastic as this sounds it is the God's honest truth)The long and short of it was they took us to Milton Keynes General, which at the time was the newest, most modern hospital in the country. My left eyelids were torn about and inch and a half back from the corner of my eye, my left ear was torn half off, and my face and beard were caked with dried road dirt, and glass, I had chunks of glass embedded in my face. The doctor(his name tag said "student doctor", which I took to mean intern, but in reality meant someone going to school and working to gain practical experience) poured water across the eye to irrigate it and proceeded to button stitch the eyelids with 3.0 suture material(usually reserved for scalp wounds, too thick for face wounds)(I was a just retired USAF Medic at the time) Never cleaned out the eye nor the ear, but sutured the ear with the same material, closing into the wounds the road dirt, and glass. Put a cast on my left leg, and sent me up to the ward. Next day I was talking to my ward mates, a lovely young lady named Moira to my left, 51 y/o who was finally having her hip replacement after waiting 19 months (her 76 y/o mothers had been denied a hip replacement, the NHS telling her that she did not have the requisite life expectancy to justify the cost of surgery, Mom, had it done under BUPA, private health insurance in the U.K.) 3rd, day I asked the matron if I could get someone to pick the glass out of my face, or clean off the road dirt, she came back with a basin of soapy water and a mirror, and told me to call her when I was done. I checked myself out of the hospital that day, had my wife drive me to the Base hospital at RAF Upper Heyford, and the USAF med. techs spend 4 hours in the ER pulling glass out of my face, re opening the sutures and cleaning and resuturing with the proper material.

The point of this story, and I admit it is anecdotal, it is merely my personal experience, and may or may not be indicitive of how the system operates, is that government generally increases costs and decreases quality in whatever they do rather than the inverse.

I sincerely hope my tale did not offend you, and I did not mean it as an indictment of the NHS, merely one man's experience getting care through that system, in comparison to the US Military system.