We also received notice that Root was scheduled to be on Hannity tonight, but have not yet confirmed that he was on.
33 Comments
Comments are closed.
June 11, 2026
Your Premier Source on Third Parties and Independent Candidates Since 2008
We also received notice that Root was scheduled to be on Hannity tonight, but have not yet confirmed that he was on.
Comments are closed.
Conscription redistributes wealth?
Oh, yes. Slavery is the original redistribution-of-wealth.
We already have a government option – it’s called Medicare and Medicaid.
Yes, they have controlled costs. How did they do it?
By conscripting healthcare workers. They simply refuse to pay anywhere near the going rate for services.
In general, they do not pay enough to cover the costs of billing and recordkeeping.
That’s part of why *your* healthcare costs are so high – because healthcare providers must make up the difference.
A decade or so ago, many doctors simply started opting out of the government options, and stopped accepting new patients on Medicare/Medicaid.
This program is nothing more than an attempt at the conscription of the healthcare industry. Look for medical professionals to leave in droves.
Thereby driving down the quality of care.
Joey, the clue less ………..
Well what is rumored in the bill is a mandatory 5 year consultation. So for someone completely not interested with any of it, they still have to be told about it by a doctor every 5 years.
This is my opinion as a loser 17 year old libertarian. But I’m hearing doctor after doctor being disgusted with elements of this plan. I beg supporters of a public option and government getting involved to read what is known about the plan, and realize this isn’t reform in any sense of the word.
@ # 17 Mike Theodore writes; “So this particular item goes under Medicare, not the public option?
So everyone under Medicare goes through this?’
Mike what this is as I understand it is a change in the Medicare compensation rules that allows a person 65 or older to discuss end of life care, that is advance directives, pallative care and hospice care as well as perhaps other things, with their doctor. Then the doctor can bill Medicare for that consultation. This was not possible before.
And in my opinion everyone should have at least an advance directive so that if they end up in a coma someone knows what their wishes as for care would be.
That’s my non legal, non medic opinion.
MW
Thanks, Peter. I’ll keep my eyes open. I know I flipped through one of his motivational books at the library. Senseless hogwash in my opinion.
That’s pretty sad on many levels.
I got a press copy of Wayne’s book to review for the newspaper I’m starting here in NH and I gotta tell ya, WAR is the most credible candidate the LP has ever put forth.
Conscription redistributes wealth?
I don’t recall many socialists touting food rationing as a way make everyone equal, but I suppose you could characterize it that way. I think the food rationing in the US was rather limited. Gasoline rationing was probably more severe. In Europe after WWII food rationing was worse.
In terms of the WPA, which would be a bigger program, having everyone pay for a few people to build infrastructure or having everyone pay for health care for everyone?
**Obamacare reaches out to everyone and will be bigger than the prescription drug benefit addition to MediCare.
exactly , and the costs are going to be unprecedented for taxpyers
Are food rationing and conscription socialist programs?
How else would you characterize them? Forcible redistribution of wealth…
The WPA only involved a small segment of the population.
Not if you include those who paid for it.
@21 Are food rationing and conscription socialist programs? The WPA only involved a small segment of the population. Obamacare reaches out to everyone and will be bigger than the prescription drug benefit addition to MediCare. Obama has been dialing it back some, and the progressives are not happy, but still…
I don’t know, both Wayne segments seemed similar to me. There is no doubt Wayne comes from a conservative approach. Everyone comes from somewhere…
Wait. The US has had *food rationing* and *conscription* and the damned *WPA*, for goodness sake – and Root calls ObamaCare ‘the most socialist program in American history’?
Get some perspective, please!
Last night’s Hannity:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUEIYUZGrXA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-E47M7FzWhA&NR=1
Root is deplorable in the first video, again pandering to the Trent Lott/David Duke faction.
In the second, he actually does sound sort of libertarian. If only he was.
PEACE
@18 “…the problem debated does nothing to promote good health, just how treating bad health will be paid for.”
Bingo! And we don’t even really have health insurance, we have sickness insurance.
There are a myriad of reasons why the state of the health industry is as it is today. Although things like surgical techniques and diagnostic instrumentation have improved, Big Pharma companies go after compounds in nature to mimic in order to patent them a la “The Serpent and the Rainbow”.
The doctor today tends to isolate the disease from the patient and attacks the disease. The shaman 5,000 years ago may not have had an MRI, but the drugs were just as powerful, and the patient was treated holistically in the context of the family and community. Spiritual health and physical health went hand in hand.
We seem to have lost some of that today and this debate is not bringing any of it back. That said, just because Wayne didn’t mention all of the problems with health care doesn’t diminish the one he did mention.
The problem is as much of one of semantics as it is substance.
First, the semantics. This is not a “health care” debate. It is a health insurance cost debate. Had this been a health care debate, the things discussed would not be coverages and copays, but instead proper diet, exercise, and the like–the things that help keep the insurance costs and use down in the first place. That debate is not occurring because it is not the debate the benefactors of the program (Big Insurance, Big Pharma, and Big GMO Agriculture, not John D. Taxpayer!) want to have, because they will lose it every single time when they are confronted with their cost, poison, and junk food scams. This “health care” debate is only about caring for the health of the bottom line of the benefactors.
Second, the context. I’ve addressed this in the past (http://muddythoughts.blogspot.com/2009/04/more-on-universal-health-care.html) and the problem debated does nothing to promote good health, just how treating bad health will be paid for.
Is there a dialogue in Congress on those issues? Nope. Why? Follow the money.
The best way to promote reduced health care costs is to promote good health, and to stay out of the health care system as much as possible. Sure, traumas can and do happen, but for most day-to-day issues, the personal responsibility of what one eats, drinks, learns, and exposes themselves to goes a long way to proper health, far more than any stearate-laden pill, far more than any toxic soup vaccination, and far more than the most expensive technology in the allopathic field.
So this particular item goes under Medicare, not the public option?
So everyone under Medicare goes through this?
Also, under the rumored bill, senior citizens must discuss dying with dignity once every 5 years with a government doctor.
Bullshit. Libertarians will make themselves look like foolish stooges of the Republican Rant Brigade if we focus on these ‘rumors’, misinterpretations, and downright fabrications produced by the right-wing-retard factory.
We should bring to the discuss the *core libertarian message*, which is not about ‘rumors’, but about the idea that it’s as wrong to socialize medicine as it would be to set up collective farms a la USSR.
A 14 Mike Theodore write: “. Also, under the rumored bill, senior citizens must discuss dying with dignity once every 5 years with a government doctor. ”
I understand this is an option and the change allow for this to be covered by Medicare. Before that was not the case.
Peter, how insane is his book?
BTW, I’m out in healthcare land right now (Colorado Springs). I’m noticing that everyone isn’t debating Obama’s plan, anymore. They’re simply debating whether government should get involved or not. Thus, everyone who supports getting the government involved goes ahead and ignores the terrifying aspects of this plan. Of course, they are not releasing the bill for public debate, but rumors are out there. This “public option” does not allow you to join it temporarily. Once you join it (If you were unemployed, for example), you’re on it for life. Also, under the rumored bill, senior citizens must discuss dying with dignity once every 5 years with a government doctor.
Above all, the bill isn’t being released to the public. This isn’t a debate between government involvement or not. This should be a debate over this secret plan.
Anyone who is intereste din healthcare should once in awhile check out this url http://www.dartmouthatlas.org/
Heree’s an interesting comment.
“Taming Wide Variations in Spending Key to Health Reform-New England Journal of Medicine Commentary from Dartmouth Atlas Project.
Huge inefficiencies in the U.S. health care system are hamstringing the nation’s ability to expand access to care, according to a new analysis of Medicare spending by researchers of the Dartmouth Atlas Project, published February 26, 2009 in the New England Journal of Medicine. Many experts have blamed the growth in spending on advances in medical technology. But the differences in growth rates across regions show that advancing technology is only part of the explanation. Patients in high-cost regions have access to the same technology as those in low-cost regions, and those in low-cost regions are not deprived of needed care. On the contrary, the researchers note that care is often better in low-cost areas. The authors argue that the differences in growth are largely due to discretionary decisions by physicians that are influenced by the local availability of hospital beds, imaging centers and other resources-and a payment system that rewards growth and higher utilization. “
I thought Root was supposed to be on tonight, Thursday night. Thank you for saving my evening, now I don’t have to sit through an hour of Sean Hannity.
Scott if he is going to go on a program and answer questions then he should at least try to get a basic understanding of the issue and blaming “lawyers” is not the answer. Yes Congress is at fault and a lot of congresscritters are lawyers, but that does not exempt Root, in my opinion, from doing some basic research into the issue. A sound bite does not explain how Libertarians would solve the issue.
Maybe he should take some time to ask other in this movement what they suggest. As I recall Roderick Long had some good points. Maybe he should read a bit more.
“Michael H. Wilson // Jul 29, 2009 at 11:21 pm
In this video Mr. Root shows he has no idea what the problem is regarding medicine as practiced in this country and has spent little or no time to find out. Lawyers are not the problem.”
************************************
Mr. Root is not a health care policy expert who has been given an hour to explain all of the problems with the nation’s health care system. He is a politician who is trying to give good sound bites.
That being said, lawyers are a large cause of the problems in health care.
1. Medicare, Medicaid, and all federal laws on health care were written by the lawyers in Congress, and the lawyers who work in their Congressional offices.
2. Most doctors, including myself, are forced to order more tests, and order say an MRI scan instead of an ultrasound, because the more expensive MRI scan might pick up that one out of ten thousand case of cancer that the ultrasound did not pick up. If you think a lawyer would not sue you if you do not order the most sensitive test available, and you miss a cancer because of that, you are dreaming.
The other major cause of our health care crisis is Congress basically forcing patients and employers to provide very comprehensive health insurance, and discouraging people from getting high-deductible, low cost, true health care *insurance*.
What we have right now, before Obama Care, is pre-paid health care, not insurance against infrequent, “catastrophic events” such as car accidents or appendectomies.
Scott Lieberman, MD
i’ve heard the argument that it’s not the lawsuits only, but largely the defensive medicine that’s practiced due to hyper litigiousness.
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d03702.pdf
Sorry forgot to add the url. here it be.
MW
Her’s a GAO study on medical malpractice insurance. It is worth a read and look at the graph on the first page, or thereabouts. People may wish to ask why the cost of insurance differs so much in some place, for example Minnesota from Dade Co, Florida
I do not know what the average award of a lawsuit for medical error is. I do know that when my brother-in -law finally closed his private practice, he had to continue carrying the malpractice insurance for a couple years, at significant cost.
When he did have his private practice, he could see the same patient as the county hospital, run the same tests, and proscribe the same course of treatment as the county hospital, but would only get reimbursed from medicare or medicaid at one-third the rate of the county hospital.
The federal policy is to centralize healthcare into large regional medical dispensing facilities. So of course you are going to have more problems with errors and infections. I think that is a bigger problem, but the costs resulting from lawsuits are certainly a contributing factor to the centralization process.
Mik they may be a big issue, but what is the average award in a lawsuit for medical error? Any idea? Or is most of it hype we read in the news?
@2 Lawyers may not be the problem per se, but lawsuits are a big issue in medicine. The problem is people expect some guarantee that they will be healed by the medical system or that there will be no risk with medical procedures, but that is not the case.
That’s one of the problems with creating a closed medical community that is licensed exclusively by the government, it creates the expectation of certainty. There is something to be said for the folk doctor with the herbal medicines who receives payment in the form of a chicken or some other token of appreciation.
In this video Mr. Root shows he has no idea what the problem is regarding medicine as practiced in this country and has spent little or no time to find out. Lawyers are not the problem.
Lawyer are not responsible for the 50,000 to 100,000 deaths annually form medical errors. Lawyers are not responsible for the deaths from hospital acquired infections that may kill an estimated 100,000 annually. You have about a one in sixteen chance of collecting if you suffer a medical injury.
The costs of medical malpractice insurance has a small impact on the overall costs of medicine in the country and is not the culprit it has been described as.
Mr. Root was on Hannity tonight.
I bet the video will be on Wayne’s web site by Friday.
Wayne did a spectacular job of representing the Libertarian Party on the second highest rated Fox News Channel program.