If we can pay $4.00 for gas we can afford single-payer healthcare.

The average price for a gallon of gas in the U.S. on January 1, 2009 was $1.61, by the end of the first quarter of 2009, the average price for a gallon of gas was just over $2.00^{http://gasbuddy.com/gb_retail_price_chart.aspx">GasBuddy}.

During that same period, one company--ExxonMobile--made a profit of $4.55 billion^{NY Times}.

Compare all this with the $14.83 billion Exxon made^{http://money.cnn.com/2008/10/30/news/companies/exxon_earnings/index.htm">CNN} in the third quarter of 2008 when gas prices averaged between $3 and $4^{Gas Buddy}.

That's 10 billion dollars more profit when the price essentially doubled from $1.61 to $3 on the low end and $2 to $4 on the high end.

For a little perspective, compare what ExxonMobile's CEO Rex W. Tillerson's salary for 2008: $10.53-million.^Forbes with the mean and median wages for the average American in 2008 from the Bureau of Labor Statistics^BLS:

Median Hourly: $15.57
Mean Hourly: 20.32
Mean Annual $42,270

Oh, and don't forget the average unemployment for 2008: 5.8%^BLS.

One company was able to rake in billions off people making a fraction of what the corporation's CEO was making.

Knowing all this, how can the tea-baggers claim we cannot afford to pay a little more in taxes for healthcare?

We paid it for gas, we can pay it for our health.

I'm not saying I completely disagree with you, I'm only saying that there's more to it than just raw numbers.

Can you imagine if all that money had gone into real health care for every American and not polluting industries and CEO salaries?

Can you imagine if the TARP bailouts went to real healthcare and not subsidizing the failed financial Ponzi scheme that was behind the depression-scale economy?

$4 billion, $10 billion was literally burned into the atmosphere causing more people to get sick instead of spending it on helping people get well.

That's all I'm saying.

Nationalize health care, make for profit health care an option, not a requirement, problem solved.

... for those who choose not to, they can purchase private vehicles.

that's when people actually started changing their driving and trying to figure out how to cut back on driving. not that that is a bad thing, i guess, in the sense that they actually thought about what they were doing. but they weren't doing it for fun... they did it because they couldn't afford it.

i think we can afford single payer... because we are already paying more than once... we pay our premiums. then we pay for programs like medicaid. and we pay deductibles and/or copays and our costs are exorbitant because we are paying for the uninsured who end up in the ER. plus we are paying with waiting in the ER if we have to go because people are going there for things that a doctor should be dealing with, but since they wait until it's really bad costs a lot more.

single payer would mean paying ONCE.... and since there are fewer suits involved, the costs should go down. sure insurance companies could do a great business with supplemental insurance. i see a lot of commercials for supplementing medicare.... so there must be something in it for them.

if we can spend billions on defense every year, then we can afford single payer. maybe just changing how we view non violent drug crimes could do a lot towards spending on other things. how much do we spend putting small time drug users in prison for years and years??? i am sure there are a lot of ways we could cut spending in alot of areas... too bad there are people who seem to benefit from all the expenditures... and why would we do what's best for the people when we have contributors who need to be making money to contribute to our campaigns.

That's close to what I was trying to say.

I was just hoping to get people to remember how angry they were as gas prices kept creeping higher and higher. I'm not saying that the cost of healthcare under a single-payer system would be as unpredictable, just that all those pennies added up to billions for one company.

Exxon made obscene amounts of money even as people changed their driving/shopping habits.

A large percentage of our healthcare cost are wrapped up in the salaries of health care executives.

On another thread someone reminded me what Elizabeth Edwards said on the Daily Show about how 1 in every 700 dollars spent on healthcare went to the salary of one guy.

Disgraceful.

$4.00/gal. gas prices were the nail in the economy coffin if you recall.

That is a bad analogy

It sounded better in my head.

it be a group from the same batch of government people whom we complain mess up medicare and/or medicaid, or social security, or (insert program here)? Recall some time back when IRS took over Mustang Ranch in Nevada, and failed when they tried to keep it operational. There we have a group that failed at an enterprise that sold whiskey and prostitution. How pitiful is that!

So, who will manage health care?

If I'm not mistaken, the Mustang Ranch failed because a lot of their regular customers were afraid they would be followed or watched by other branches of government and taken in for other, unrelated activities.

I think you bring up a good point, though: who would run the the single-payer program?

Personally, I'd like to keep GOPers far away from it. They don't seem to want government to work and will do everything they can to be right about something.