Bravo for the City of Marietta for realizing that setting up its own employee health care clinic will save money as opposed to dealing with the profit-centric hucksters of the insurance industry! However, this admission that government and non-profits can give better health care for less cost than the "medicine as just another commodity" private sector shows the glaring ignorance and hypocrisy of the GOP and right wing in their attack on the allegedly "socialist" Obama health care program.
If government - by the own admission of the city - can provide better health care for less cost, then just what could be the legitimate objection to allegedly "socialist" national health care?
In fact, the right wing has opposed and labeled "socialist" for over 100 years virtually everything dealing with regulation or public programs which make our world more civilized and a cut above lower forms of life which don't have the capacity to put moral judgment in "possession" decisions. Outlawing child labor in the early 1900s: "socialist, against free enterprise." Job safety laws from the 1930s on: "socialist, meddling in business." Protecting the environment from the 1960s on: "socialist environmentalist whackos."
The examples of right wing "socialist" labeling of all the things which have made our society better and more civilized is so base that all one has to do is use the same script over and over again and just "fill in the blank" (i.e.; civil rights, worker rights, environment, school lunches - or even public schools) with the good ideas which the right affixes the "socialist" label to.
Now that the city realizes that health care is better and more economical being "socialist" (as the right has put it forever) perhaps more people will realize that the things the right has labeled "socialist" are not so bad after all.
The telling thing about not only the right's ignorance but also its hypocrisy is the councilman who wants to shut down the clinic if President Obama's health care plan is struck down in the courts (not likely). Certain "thinkers" on the council don't care about the health of city workers, only what is "cheaper" and the right wing is only concerned with "money, property and greed" being superior to everything else in life.
If allegedly "socialized" health care is better - as the city admits - what is so wrong with it?
Dennis Michael Smith
Marietta
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Should we bring back child labor?, there's a place for that in the free market. Companies could sell their goods for less, and poor kids working would provide relief for an already crowded school system.
And those Food and Drug laws...let the market discipline poisoners, right? Social Security? A drag on the market.
Roads?, bridges? Police? Schools? Fire Department? Libraries? Universities? Hospitals? The military, all branches, these are 'socialist' enterprises, collectively funded and used.
Get real. Lobbyists and craven congressmen have screwed up the market, unless you feel the playing field is level now...that corporations have the rights of an individual, but not the accountability.
Right on Mr. Smith
I am tired of the government telling companies, people and everyone what is in their best interest and taking my money to make it happen. Why sir to you think unemployment is so bad? Because it cost to much to hire people here. When you think of the SS tax, the Fed tax, the State tas, the now healthcare tax - that each employer has to pay, couple that with the competition of sitting at home and collecting welfare/unemployment versus getting a minium wage job. it is too expensive to hire anyone here.
You libs have distroyed free market. I don't think you can be very proud of that - even if you had good intentions