Originally Posted By Dabob2 <When Bill Clinton was President, FEMA was an effective and respected organization that did wonders when hurricane's hit Florida. > That's right. And not just Florida, and not just under Clinton, too. A good friend of mine works for the GSA, which at that time was the Dept. responsible for FEMA (now it's Homeland Security, IIRC). Hurricane Hugo did some pretty bad damage on the mainland US, but REALLY hit the US Virgin Islands hard. My friend was sent down there to oversee the FEMA response. I was amazed both by the pictures he sent back of the devastation, and by how quickly things got fixed. And this was under the first Pres. Bush, so don't take this as partisan. What counts is competence. The government response to Hugo was excellent, and on the mainland too. I'm also amazed when I hear people talk about how single-payer health insurance (or even some hybrid system) would be so awful, because "care should be between you and your doctor, not you and a bureaucrat." Well, newsflash, Mr. Congressman-with-the-gold-standard-health-plan: health care NOW for most Americans is between "you and a bureaucrat;" it's just an HMO bureaucrat rather than a government one. And that HMO functionary sitting in a call center in Buffalo (or Bangalore) has as his/her primary objective the profit of the HMO, which means all too often the denial of care. Health rationers who deny a greater percentage of cases make money and get promoted; those who let "too many" procedures or treatments get paid don't, or even get laid off. I've seen countless former HMO employees interviewed talking about the pressure they faced to deny care. More profits for the company. I simply don't think single-payer, government-run health insurance (like the rest of the developed world has), without the profit motive of the HMO's, could be worse than the current system most Americans live with, IF they have insurance at all.
