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Originally Posted by oil pan 4
Then you have to wonder are people's life's being shortened by gmo foods, pesticides, hormone filled milk or meat, the government making health care more unaffordable, more expensive energy ect.
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I have wondered all those things. An alien would look and be puzzled as to what our concept of GMO is. Organisms have constantly modified themselves by nature, which brings the diversity of life. Man has modified organisms since the beginning of agriculture, and you could argue from the beginning of hunting/gathering.
Pesticides and hormones have allowed the US to become the food producing powerhouse that it is. We can afford to throw away 1/3 of the food we produce because of the relative abundance and low cost. The waste of which is a real shame.
We've mostly got the worst aspects of both socialized medicine and privatized medicine. It wouldn't have been as bad had insurance been tied to the individual, tailored to their needs and risk tolerance. At some point it became commonplace for employers to include insurance as a perk, and I think it's even government law for businesses of a certain size to provide that perk. Instead we should be getting that enormous amount of money in the form of increased pay, and be responsible to select the individual insurance. Perhaps there is a case that the government should require at least a high deductible plan for everyone, because insurance doesn't work if only sick people are buying it. The "Adverse Selection" problem and all.
Individualized insurance, divorced from whether you keep your current job or not, wouldn't solve everything, but it's a good place to start.