Ron Paul is very fiscally conservative, while the other GOP runners and Obama are claimed to be fiscally-democrat (with regard to increased spending).

Ron Paul is judicially conservative in that all decisions (judgments and laws) should lead to minimal government and maximal personal freedom. Obama and the remaining GOP candidates are judicially democrat in that they all want to legislation social behavior.

Obama is socially democrat, while the GOP candidates are socially republican, except for Ron Paul whose judicial-republican belief rejects all social legislation (both social-republican and social democrat).

Overall, there is a widespread problem of multiple uses of the words “democrat” and “republican” and most everyone blurs their speech and thinking with oversimplified, black-and-white, explanations.

The problem is that the individual mandate does not require individuals to be responsible for themselves. It requires them to purchase a product. Insurance is a product. Health care services are a product. If you go to the ER or any other health care provider to get health care services you should be required to pay for that product, unless the provider is openly giving away the product.

Forcing individuals to buy a Healthcare Insurance Product does not do anything to deal with the rising costs of healthcare. It simply means that the insurance companies (large corporate conglomerations of bankers and investors including capital investors like Bain Capital) get to sell more of their product because of the government mandates. Hospitals can still perform unnecessary services that the insurance companies will refuse to cover leaving the individual with a responsibility to pay that he or she cannot because they were relying on insurance. Hospitals can still provide unnecessary services that the the insurance companies will pay for, increasing the premium costs for everyone. Insurance companies can still refuse to cover the cost of necessary medical procedures, again leaving the patient with bills that he or she cannot pay for and increasing the cost of those services for everyone else.

Patients can still use the ER for services that a family doctor could have provided at a fraction of the cost, or the necessity of which could have been prevented by the patient living a healthier life style. Providers can still render services without discussing the actual cost with the patient because they are just going to bill the insurance company. Dishonest providers can even bill for extra services that the patient refused and pad the bill, but because the patient is not directly involved little to nothing will be done about it.

The individual mandate is just another big government, big business solution to a problem that was created by big government and big business in the first place!

The ONLY REAL SOLUTION to this problem is to again make patients personally responsible for their own medical expenses. A TRUE single payer system. The RECIPIENT of the services must PAY for the services. If that individual choses to purchase a healthcare insurance plan and then submit for reimbursement of that payment, or arrange with the insurance company and the healthcare provider before receiving the services for the insurance company to make the payment that would also be an acceptable arrangement. But it is entirely unacceptable and unethical for a doctor to provide services to a patient without being able to tell the patient the cost of those services and making certain with the patient that they can pay for those services.

The HMO act of 1973 provided tax benefits to employers for who would give their employees healthcare insurance benefits (or managed care benefits) instead of paying them the cash value of those benefits. If I understand it correctly, an employer can pay me $120 per week in salary or wages and they have to pay an additional percentage in SSI tax, Medicare tax and unemployment insurance tax totaling to approximately an additional $24 per week. If however they instead provide me with a $120 per week qualifying healthcare plan, they do not have to pay those taxes, and in special circumstances can write off those benefits as a business expense, thus saving themselves the $24 in additional taxes, and possibly more on their corporate income tax.

What we really need to do is get rid of the IRS and the income tax system entirely and replace it with an Article 1 Section 8 style consumption tax. That would mean that employers can pay their employees more wages and allow the employees to spend those wages as they see fit. It would mean many more patients searching for market based healthcare insurance plans. It would mean more patients paying out of pocket for their own medical services. It would mean wiser medical care choices. It would mean more compitition throughout the health care industry. That is a Truly Conservative Solution that actually does require personal responsibility.

I am not so sold on the thought of Ron Paul leaving the race. He has a sizeable warchest, and note that the states primaried aren’t very reflective of his demographic, so the results are semi-expected.

This is good info on the issue, but its a shame that it took a long time to find it on Yahoo…

I hold our military in high esteem, but I don’t understand how it has become heresey to even contemplate cutting spending in that field as a conservative. I think it should be held in highest regard, but exempting military spending from audit is assinine.

Ron Paul is not pro-abortion. That talk is rhetoric, and to say that is near sighted: He thinks that it should be voted on by each individual state. It is not the government’s right to rule iron-fisted across the land, so each sovereign state has the ability to choose yay or nay within its boundaries. That being said, I think state’s rights is a poor excuse to allow abortion to be legalized. So I agree with you in that standpoint, but we arrive at our thoughts from different paths.

Thanks for the write-up, Beau! And the thought never occured to me to write God in…