The Dragon's Comments concluded June 3 2011

Jack Kevorkian is dead at 83. The dragon sheds not one tear for the passing of this sick human being.

Unemployment rise to 9.1% with no end in sight. Despite the media spin this in not good news. In a normal world Obama should be toast in 2012.

Ok E.J. lets discuss your article entitled “Why Paul Ryan is losing the Medicare argument”, posted 1 June 2011. You claim that Mr. Ryan is losing his argument about Medicare reform.

So let’s examine your points of discussion. You say “a shortage of revenue and rising health-care costs” are the core of the problem. You are quite right with the second issue but wrong about the first. The US government is collecting plenty of money in taxes.

Next you state “He’s (Paul Ryan) losing because Americans are alarmed that they are paying ever more for coverage, co-pays and deductibles.” True also, but try to imagine a world in which health insurance covers catastrophic illness and perhaps certain chronic conditions yet keeps out of day-to-day healthcare expenses such as going the doctor with a cold.
Of course you bring up the cliché “And they’re weary of battling over health bills with insurance-company bureaucrats.” Give me a private bureaucrat over a government bureacrat any day.
You discuss the enactment of Medicare to provide government support for senior citizens as justification for the passage of Obamacare. Well, if Medicare was adjusted to accommodate an aging population, longer lifespans, advances in medical technology, and realistic means testing then it would be fine. It seems that if something has relatively simple and straightforward as Medicare was meant to be – proved to be a failure, then how the complicated Obamacare Act can prove to be a success? Hint: The issuance of 2000 waivers so far seems to foreshadow a failure.

Your conclusion that in the end people will choose government over private healthcare may indeed be true regardless, but that does not mean we should give up fighting it.