Comments on: Change.gov feature jump-starts health care discussion

New feature on President-elect Barack Obama's transition site encourages collaborative problem-solving for big issues like health care reform.

[sanenazok]

Sounds like Obama has been forced to develop some policies...finally. What worries me about healthcare? Costs, costs, costs. How's a larger government presence going to bring those down?

[Lerianis]

By making all insurance companies get together and negotiate for lower rates on treatments and drugs, with hospitals, drug companies, etc.

Really, it's simply time to nationalize and socialize (oh, that so scary word to conservatives) health care in this country. Too many insurance companies, instead of trying to offer health insurance at a good price a reasonable profit to people, are trying to make the most profit they can and hike the rates up as high as they can, ala CareFirst.
I'll be blunt: I am a 28 year old male, with NO health problems (no HBP, no diseases, no heart ailments, no NADA)..... and I am still paying 328 dollars a MONTH for health insurance.... plus, 10/20 bucks for office visits and specialist care, WHICH I HAVE NEVER USED!
Now, why is my price so frigging high? It just doesn't make sense at all.

[scdecade]

Forgotten in the health care debate are the Constitutional Rights (and natural rights) of the doctors. The one thing that goes unsaid in all these debates is the inevitability of legislation removing a doctor's right to "opt out" of the "solution." Somewhere along the way we've lost our measure of worth for individual liberty and correct morality.

[Lerianis]

The doctors should not be able to 'opt out' of something that is VERY fair to them. No doctor should be making 1 million a year like my primary care doctor does. 'Necessary to our community' or not, why the hell do they keep on crying poverty when there are 15 of them at the office I got to, making anywhere from 500K a year to 1.5 million a year?

[DavoRider]

Couple questions:

1) How does such an obvious campaign site qualify for a .gov domain name?

(hint: it doesn't)

2) Who, exactly, is this "government office" accountable to?

(hint: nobody)

Just because Bush used a .gov web site during his transition doesn't make it right. The site isn't even on government servers, but is instead hosted by Blue State Digital, the same group that hosted his fundraising site.

[dbackfan638]

We need to stop the corperate providers from not covering any one person period. And the Corperations who cover thier employees from reducing coverages and increasing costs to each employee.

[Lerianis]

True, but whenever someone talks about doing that, the companies start whining "It will put us out of business!" No, it won't...... if we REQUIRE everyone who is breathing to have health insurance, period and done with.

[JEngdahlJ]

Good to see the incoming administration using Web 2.0 to gather ideas from Main Street. There's a similar, more localized effort afoot in Seattle right now: a town hall meeting on healthcare reform and electronic health records. Interested parties can submit questions ahead of time using Facebook and LinkedIn; people can even win prizes for submitting questions that are used at the event. Join the "Healthcare Town Hall" groups on either site to submit a question. Or go to:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=34957980823

or

http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1226857