Entitled much?

I watched a little bit of Obama's healthcare speech today. The best part was when some politician yelled from the bleachers, "You Lie!" when Obama said his plan wouldn't cover illegals. I got a kick out of that, it was the highlight of an otherwise rather boring, humdrum procession.

I don't know where I stand on all of this, it certainly isn't on either of the defined sides. I am opposed to any form of single payer, everyone gets covered plan because of how pedestrian it is. Its easy to say you want free healthcare if you aren't currently paying for it, and we have over 20+ million people not paying anything; welfare is dandy for those receiving it, but sucks for those who have to foot the bill. Why should the collective whole have to pay for individuals who may, or may not need care because of their own bad decisions. We have an increasingly sick and stupid country. Give a mouse a cookie... see where I'm going here? Of course people want free things, especially when those free services serve to enable poor life choices.

I'm also sick of all the assholes who rail against the pharmaceutical industry and their 'corporate greed'. I want the big pharma companies to be greedy, I want them to make billions because when they do they have even greater incentives to create newer and better drugs to fight the diseases we humans face. The only reason I'm not 3 feet tall, and my Dad isn't dead from cancer is because a pharmaceutical company devoted decades of research and millions of dollars into R&D on highly technical drugs. If they weren't incentivized by the promise of profits there is no way in hell these drugs would have been produced.

I work in a field where I get daily access to not only the most cutting edge research in medical imaging, but access to the scientists themselves. These people are doing research that is so incredibly expensive that if their parent organizations weren't able to charge what they do the research wouldn't happen, at all. We all benefit from their work.

The only reason AIDs and Brain Cancer aren't death sentences anymore is because of the work of the scientists and companies which profit off the sale of treatments. I have absolutely no problem with this system.

That said, I don't have any love-loss for insurance companies who provide no cures, only headaches to people who are insured (or trying to get insured) and need treatment. If we could figure out a way to manage insurance company profits then we'd have a good system. That said I have no idea how this will happen.

Unfortunately I don't think any conclusions will be reached in this debate; perhaps that is what we deserve as a country. When people take their political opinions from the likes of John Stewart, or Glenn Beck they reap the level of substantive debate that they sow.