Although if one is pricing private insurance, I would suggest looking at medical savings accounts versus the normal HMO package that corporate employers and the federal gummit would prefer for you.

Okay Terry, I'm a news junky.

I watch Fox News, CNBC and CNN almost all day.

I listen to BOTH Rush Limbaugh (Rabid Republican), Neal Boortz (Rabid Libertarian) and NPR (just rabid) when I'm away from the boob tube.

And I'm an avid web surfer.

I have yet to see any "hunger in this country" (again using the Ethiopian and Somali standard of bloated bellies and fly's around the face of starving babies), it 'jest ain't happenin' heah. as they say in our Carolina coastal lowcountry. Granted, you can always find an isolated case where someone absolutely refuses help from others, but as a whole, there is NO hunger in America.

As far as insurance goes: I'll grant you that when there are pre-existing conditions that would require a prudent 'for profit' insurance company to take on an obligation to fund an existing condition, I can see where that would not be in the best interest of their share holders or other clients that would rely on the viability of that insurance company to be there when and if THEY needed them.

If the need was to insure against a potential condition, such as some healthy person coming down with a diease or accidental injury, then any of those yellow page insurance agents would be glad to help you.

But your statement was "People are hungry, without healthcare, without decent paying jobs"

I don't agree with you about the hunger 'cause I haven't seen it... (other than when Sally Struthers is on TV saying that I can feed a family of four on $0.75 a week (that's the country where I sent MY kids) :-)

I've discussed WHY those of us that don't have "decent paying jobs," don't have decent paying jobs... mainly because they don't (or can't or won't) provide their customer (i.e. employer) with a decent service or good in exchange for the payment they are demanding.

But people without healthcare? Here? In good ol' USA?

Why is it that people in countries WITH gummit supplied healthcare like England and Canada, are COMING HERE for their operations or services etc.?

Please read Walter Williams article "Do We Want This?"(http://www.townhall.com/columnists/walterwilliams/ww20050622.shtml)

And then tell me if that's the kind of healthcare you are advocating.

As to the $1000/month prescription drug expenses, I think the entity that you are demanding to save you (gummit) is realy the entity that is the cause of your distress in the first place (again, gummit). You might spend a minute or two and read John Stossel's "What's the Alternative" article on why our medical services cost so much and who's to blame. (http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JohnStossel/js20050608.shtml)

You said; "We face many many issues in this country, and while I have no magic bullet, amending our constitution to outlaw burning our flag is about as stupid as it gets" and I gotta agree with you on that one. With important stuff like the impending bankruptcy of Social Security, reforming our draconian income tax laws, balancing the budget and protecting our borders, why all this B.S. about the very rare and isolated instances of some wacko-nutcase burning an American flag? I don't advocate it, but it certainly isn't gunna cause me to loose any sleep because some weirdo burns a flag during a demonstration somewhere. (don't these people have jobs?)

Anyway regarding the issue at hand, the burning of an American Flag, as dispicable as that may be, doesn't effect my life or those around me at all. So I say that our congresscritters need to get back to the task at hand and reform our tax laws, reform Social Security and start eliminating many of our stupid draconian regulations that are on the books. Congress needs to support judges that respect private property rights and support states rights.

This flag stuff is just a show boat diversion to get us off the important stuff.

The only word I can think of to describe the "flag burning" amendment is "cynical". Just as you say, it is very clear that the Members of Congress who voted for this thing are far more concerned with self-aggrandizing appeals to emotion than they are with the high-minded principles the flag actually stands for.

Only rarely does the price of freedom include dying in uniform in some foreign country, as we're so often told. The price of freedom far more often means having to tolerate things that you find offensive but don't really do you any harm. "Offensiveness" is such a vague, subjective and hard-to-define concept that if we ban flag burning simply because it offends, it won't be long before we're passing amendments to ban all sorts of things merely because the majority deems it "offensive". And then the flag won't mean much of anything anymore.

Do we have a huge problem with people burning flags? The only time I ever see any flags burning is old 60's footage on CNN whenever this debate gets rehashed by Congress.

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Okay Terry from Vero, so what's your magic bullet?

RE: Hunger - Please show me where in the USA there are people that are hungry (I'm talking Ethiopian and Somali style hunger, i.e. bloated bellies and fly's around the face of babies)? There are so many charities, gummit programs, church groups, etc. that you can't find 'em except for the very rare isolated instances where people DON'T want someone to help them.

RE: Without Healthcare - Okay Terry, I know you are from the Palm Beach/Broward County area, so I'll say this real slow... pick up a copy of the yellow pages, turn to the section that says INSURANCE at the top of the page, pick out an agent and call them.

Just about any of these guys and gals will be HAPPY to sell you a health insurance policy. If emergency medical care is what's needed, every county in America must provide EMS services, by law. Now, aren't you glad we solved THAT problem?

RE: Decent paying jobs - Please explain to me why someone with limited job skills should be given a "decent paying job"? Why should someone give you $10/hour for $5 worth of work? Is that what you are asking for? If you have job skills, either go find a job or go create one for yourself, and while you are at it, create one for someone else.

The secret to decent pay is to give people more than what they feel the goods or services are worth. If an unemployed person did that, they would NEVER be unemployed again! If you want to give me $2 worth of service, please don't expect me to pay you $5 for it.

RE: Paying up to 3.00 for gas - Okay Palm Beach, for the past half century, the good ol' USofA has pretty much been the primary consumer of petroleum on the planet.

We build cars by the gazillions and build roads to drive on and we have a capitalist system where MILLIONS of people with DECENT JOBS can afford to buy shiny new rides. But mainly since Ronald Reagan's administration, the little squinty eyed furiners in east Asia have noticed that being a socialist or a commie just isn't the most profitable way of living or creating a higher standard of living.

For example, the People's Republic of China observed the mistakes that Gorby made in Russia when he tried to allow political freedom before allowing folks to have economic freedom. Gorby got the cart before the horse and only now is Russia starting to become an economic player in the world's community.

The Chinese learned that political freedom doesn't feed people, but economic freedom (i.e. freedom of ownership, freedom to create and own a business, freedom to hire people and own the profits generated, etc) DOES feed people.

It was around the time of Reagan that the Chi-Coms chose to liberalize their private property laws and allow their people to start owning there own businesses. At first, entrepreneurs were limited to four only employees, but when the state saw that these micro-businesses were generating both profits for the owner and massive taxes for the state, they let them hire ten employees, then fifty, and today... there are no limits on how big private enterprise can be.

Point being, people in China are now allowed to become wealthy. With wealth comes consumption, and the demand to trade their bicycle in on a BMW, a Toyota, a Fiat or a Chevy. In fact, General Motors just finished building it's largest auto mfg plant in the world in mainland China a year or so ago. And 75% of it's production goes to the domestic Chinese market.

So what does this have to do with $3/gal gas? It means that China has surpassed Japan as being the second largest consumer of oil on the planet... right behind the USA. And China's rate of oil consumption growth is a multiple of our rate of growth.

Today Exxon, Shell, BP et-al has a new buyer on the world stage that is competing with the USA in how many barrels of crude they need to buy.

So if there is a finite amount of product that only you were buying and suddenly the guy across the street started buying more and more of that same product, the seller would be able to demand a higher price because the there are more consumers bidding for that same product.

The alternative? New sources of oil or maybe some alternative fuels.

USA has TRILLIONS of barrels of oil in stratified shale rock... but it costs $35 to $50 per barrel to economically extract that oil from the shale. If prices get consistently above $50/barrel we will surely see Exxon, Hess and Shell extracting shale oil from our mid-west. And we haven't even mentioned ANWR on the north slope (which, by the way, is just up the coast from China!)

Let the price of a gallon of gas get up around $5 to $6 per gallon, and you will then see other economically viable alternatives come to the forefront. Hydrogen as a fuel would suddenly be viable in a world of $6 gallon gas.

But at $3 or below, gasoline way too cheap to boil the oil out of shale stone and hydrogen is too expensive to extract so neither can compete.

RE: Men and women are dying in foreign lands - If you are eluding to the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, then I would much rather see the insurgents targeting the best trained, best equiped military force on the planet in SOMEONE ELSE'S country and have our guys & gals killing 200 to 300 of them for every one of ours that's whacked than to have those same insurgents sneaking into our country and killing unarmed, untrained and unsuspecting American wives and children in our schools and shopping malls or office towers (like they did on 9/11).

Historically speaking as far as wars go, the 1800+/- American casualties that we've lost since 2001 is a drop in the bucket when compared to virtually every other war in history of warfare.

Our war in Iraq has also been the most sanitary war in history, with far fewer collateral casualties inflicted on civilians than in any other war in history.

During the initial days of the invasion, I recall watching TV of the 2000lb smart bombs dropped on military targets located next to schools and hospitals, only the bombs were filled with cement instead of high explosives.

A ton of cement falling at several hundred miles per hour, dropping exactly through the skylight of the exact room where the bad guys were standing was devastating on their health, yet the people on the other side of the building, in the schools and hospitals, were virtually unharmed.

So yes Palm Beach, men & women are dying in foreign lands... but the buddies of those warriors are asking to return to their comrades and keep on protecting you and I from those that would otherwise desire to travel to OUR country and kill US.

And if the American Military's presence in Iraq draws these insurgents from Syria, Iran, Saudi, Jordan and Sudan so as to see if they can have their shot at the best trained best armed battlefield combattent in the history of warfare? Go ahead, take your best shot.

Thanks for writing Terry from Vero... feel free to come chat any time!

:- )

Dr. Beverly Caffee Glenn