Shenonymous,

Another one of my pet peeves regarding insurance companies is the disingenuous way they save money on prescription costs.  They have these formularies of drugs for which they approve insurance coverage.  Basically they cover the cheaper drugs.  To rationalize not covering a drug they call it “pharmaceutically equivalent” to the cheaper drug.  The fact is there is no equivalence whatsoever other than they can be used to treat the same condition. Even studies showing equivalent effectiveness are completely bogus.  Why?  Because each person is not a “population” and each person reacts differently to drugs.  Within that population a different set of people are helped even if it has roughly the same success rate.  So you may find a great drug that works for you but the insurance company says “no” take this other drug whether it works for you or not or we won’t cover it.  I am all for companies and doctors starting with the cheap drugs but if an individual does not respond to them they should not be penalized by this deceitful practice.

Shenonymous,

If your drug has been on the market for decades check into buying a generic version.  Patent protection for presciption drugs officially lasts 20 years but in reality that is only about 8-12 years because the clock starts ticking on the patent application date way before receiving FDA approval (compare this to a lifetime copyright protection for a Beatle’s hit song).  I am not excusing everything regarding drug companies but they are net positive and a good result of capitalism.  Also consider that clinical trials costs about $100-200 million and only has a 10% chance of approval.  That is not counting the money spent on discovery for drugs that never make it that far.  The problem with these companies now is that they won’t work on anything unless there is a “blockbuster” billion dollar market for it.  Otherwise it does not make economic sense.  These companies are far from the societal leeches that are the health insurance companies.

glider and Outraged, you both provide really good and thoughtful points relative to your topics.

It is true, the pharmaceuticals are the ones to develop new drugs, and hence provide tangible products that promote health, but they also charge outrageous prices.  Once the R&D is over and drugs are in production, the cost of the factory machinery, employees, chemicals and related materials, i.e., dissolvable capsule casings, packaging, warning labels and information sheets, that I agree incur costs, but once that has been prorated, the costs of drugs ought to be reasonable and not merely moneymaking hand-over-fist profit makers.  For instance, I take a drug, thank goodness for my Rx plan from employer, that costs me $25.00, but the statement I receive notes that it costs the insurer $489.00, for 30 pills.  The pharmacist never fails to show me how much I’m saving! This is not a new drug, but one that has been on the market for decades.  He also tells me this drug is not even close to being one of the expensive ones.  I think of people without Rx insurance.  They cannot afford to get medicines, so they die, or live with horrible illness.  Or if elderly, Medicare gets stuck. The Rx insurance company provided by employers also gets stuck, so that evil entity does not get off scott free!  It all cascades because of the cash cow medicines.  Perhaps there could be a regulation that says once the drug has been sort of “amortized” the price of it could be set at a reasonable level.  Now what is a reasonable level?  I do not have an answer for that, but some professional in the medicine world should.  Just let a MSM talk show ask for someone to do that and they would be coming out of the woodwork.

The other thing is, to address doublestandard’s point again…if the uninsured don’t have insurance because they can’t afford it, how are they to pay a 12% surtax for it?  There is something not quite right about that.

Outrage, you do have a point on the counting of the popular vote being done simultaneously to any national election. What concerns me is that if that were the policy, direct democracy, then maybe people would vote differently, or there would be more fraud, or, or, or… I do like the idea of deliberative democracy.  Prima facie it sounds like the best of the two systems.  How can we get a movement started to get that to happen?  Had we had that form of voter participation, we might not have had to suffer for the previous 8 years and wind up with the bloody fiscal fiascoes we are experiencing. The Supreme Court would not have had to have been consulted and slanted the results the way they did???  Maybe if a frog had wings, so the saying goes…

However, [b/Johathan5052 seems to have a positive view of the electoral college system (strong representative government), even suggesting the founding fathers were prescient. 

So where are we now?  For me, the dialogue is fascinating and engagingly informative and I look forward to considering all these and any other pieces of the puzzle of governance of this behemoth and still wild country.  What I find most exciting is that this dialogue we are having could permeate the entire society through the 6 degrees of separation formula where everyone in the world could be affected (what pollyanna optimism!) and instigate much discussion and thought amongst the “rabble.”

Jonathan5052,

Thanks,

If Bush wanted to get rid of the electoral college that seems reason enough to for me to support it. What say you Outraged?

We occasionally have this discussion and as time flies by, I seem to be reminded again of what I do not understand, so again I cannot understand the reason for the electoral college, it may as well be an electrical college for all the sense it makes to me.

As usual, my mind is not etched in stone, so call me flip flop Leefeller, but both Outraged and Jonathan5052 seem to have valid comments about the electrical college? Seems TD had an article on this awhile back which covered all the bases, so here we are again?

And one more thing about The Electoral College: I read where The Electoral College was created to accommodate several parties, so it was designed with third parties in mind.  The framers of the Constitution were probably looking way into the future back then….

From Leefeller:

“If we would like a VIABLE third party we would need to:

1. DEMAND the abolishment of the Electoral College….”

Leefeller, The Electoral College, which is found in the main body of our U.S. Constitution, is not broken!  It is the corruption of the political system and power-hungry leaders who hijack the system by dismissing protocol and bypassing the letter of the law as outlined in the Constitution that has created the problem to give The Electoral College a bad name.  The Electoral College has worked as it was supposed to, that is, when politicians played by the rules and did not abuse the system!  The last Presidential administration abused and hijacked the system back in 2000, and was one of the major groups to suggest that we abolish The Electoral College.  I didn’t buy into the deception, and I hope that other voters won’t, either!

Re: Shenonymous

Your comment: “I submit further that if the electoral college does not represent the will of the people that action take over for words.  However, election theory might have some insights into how to manage 212 million haphazardly assorted voters.  Direct democracy would be pandemonium, extreme socialism would be disastrous, and anarchism would be death.”

Abolishing the electoral college would not be “direct democracy” as you imply.  It would still be a “representative democracy” such as it is today.  A direct democracy, Wikipedia:

“Direct democracy, classically termed pure democracy, comprises a form of democracy and theory of civics wherein sovereignty is lodged in the assembly of all citizens who choose to participate. Depending on the particular system, this assembly might pass executive motions, make laws, elect and dismiss officials and conduct trials.

Direct democracy stands in contrast to representative democracy, where sovereignty is exercised by a subset of the people, usually on the basis of election. Deliberative democracy incorporates elements of both direct democracy and representative democracy.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy

As far as “how to manage 212 million haphazardly assorted votes” isn’t an issue.  We already count the popular vote, only with a direct vote for president the popular vote would be the people’s choice and not the electors.  There would be no “pandemonium” regarding the voting, nor would this change our form of goverment.

Shenonymous,
I think I am pretty close to your world view. But I do not really agree that the pharmaceutical industry is anything close to the health insurance industry.  While I deplore their apparent disproportional waste of spending on advertisement and physician promotions relative to research expenditures the pharmaceutical industry actually produces products that make peoples lives better.  On the otherhand these insurance companies produce nothing for the public except cutbacks in medical care.  Quite a huge difference!

Your defensive retort ardee shows an insecurity.  I am not angry in the least, and you cannot point to any comment I’ve made that would show the contrary.  I understand street fighting.  It’s all right.  When looked at objectively, it looks as if you and I are not radically far apart in our views.  Our blends of capitalism and socialism are of different ratios. And we express ourselves differently, and place ourselves at different places on the graph of socialism, capitalism, and the combination of the two but you don’t seem to be able to tolerate that kind of variation.  Even as shallow as you may estimate my view of your position, I fail to see where you were insulted.  I certainly can bear yours and others who have differing socio-economic opinions.  I will stand up for what I believe.  Perhaps your mental feet are planted in a mental block of cement that hampers you from allowing shades of difference?  Perhaps, now, that is an insult.

doublestandards/glasshoues, if Waxman said that, then fishpiss on him and insurance company asskissing.  The insurance companies is the absolute evil twin to the pharmaceutical companies that absolutely have raped Americans over their healthcare for half a century.  Everybody knows it and everybody understands it.  If this measure passes, and I hope Obama has the boldness to veto it, then it is back to the drawing board of getting these impotent Democrats out of office.  That would mean campaigning in each and every one of their districts, it would mean fanatical work for those who care!  Because he is more interested in passing a health care plan, more than he is the ramifications of what is actually submitted by Congress, it might just be that Obama has his Health Care Bill Signing Fountain Pen primed with ink ready to sign.  If so, then he should suffer consequences as well.  We need not-for-profit, single-payer, universal health care without the obscenity of taxing the uninsured of their income.  That is a scandalous idea.

As usual for congressional democrats, Waxman expressed his fear of republicans and his unwillingness to get into a fight with them for real health care reform.

To which class do you belong, ardee?

“While there is a lower class, I am in it. While there is a criminal element, I am of it. And while there is a soul in prison I am not free.” Eugene V. Debs

I have said as much and obviously prefer a system of governance that combines the benefits of both capitalism and socialism but you prefer to ignore that and wish to accuse me of being nourished intellectually by a student of a civics class’s vision.  As if the word capitalism sticks in your fanatically leftist throat.  That is your prerogative and I think your short-sighted view and polarized position.  Whose reality am I ignoring?  Yours?  Entertain the possibility that your view of reality is skewed.

Your anger perturbs me not at all, and your insults even less . Your insistence that you support both socialism and capitalism is unsupported by the post to which I responded. Considering that I plainly stated my vision of a regulated capitalism in conjunction with socialism in an ideal government I find your own shallowness in condemning my position, one you apparently make up to suit your argument as needed, to be rather obvious.

This began as a conversation regarding the third party movement. You turn it to an angry defense of whatever….sad for you, waste of time for me.

Today on democracynow Waxman said that under the health care plan passed by his committee in the house, the uninsured will be paying 12% of their income for health insurance.  They can buy their own plan from the insurance companies or pay a little less for a medicare plan.  The public option will not cost signifigantly less than the private plans so as not to frighten the insurance companies with competition.  Thanks a lot democrats, party of the people.  Like the uninsured have 12% of their income available to lay out for insurance!

Forces and progress within large societies are like a sine wave, up and down, yet within that inexorable path there are those regions of ascending and descending between the highest and lowest points, say the A and Z points, of the regularly curving path.  One has to learn to adjust, like adding chemicals to a new formula where exactitude is unknown until the right mix shows up through diligence and rational thought through adding a little of this and a little of that until that better moment arrives.  I would not dispense altogether with emotion, or passion, since the passions are what motivates the mind, but it must be tempered with the cool vision of what is the final goal.  While regularity makes for a feeling of security, one should never be “happy” with the status quo since status quo is stagnancy and liable to corruption.  Am I happy with the status quo? No.  But I also realize that the fact of present American society is an ever changing beast, like Proteus, that changes shape as the dynamics within society determines it.  I am not in any way a well-off upper middle class “liberal” with conservative fears of change.  I celebrate change.  You fail to understand the likes of me since to do so would force you to see beyond your fixed notions of the nonexistence of “a homogenous society that is found in any newspaper on any day of the week.”  I find the minds who write for newspapers deficient at assessing reality.  It is romantic to postulate hard and fast bounded classes. The fact is that like the existence of a geometric line, classes are hypothetical constructs.  Useful for discussion but have no physical reality.  To which class do you belong, ardee?

I have said as much and obviously prefer a system of governance that combines the benefits of both capitalism and socialism but you prefer to ignore that and wish to accuse me of being nourished intellectually by a student of a civics class’s vision.  As if the word capitalism sticks in your fanatically leftist throat.  That is your prerogative and I think your short-sighted view and polarized position.  Whose reality am I ignoring?  Yours?  Entertain the possibility that your view of reality is skewed. 

We, this government that is, are headed for regulated capitalism for that is properly what the forces of socialism does.  The vocal wars that have been given voice in Washington these days testifies to that.  It is a civilized war without the primitive resort to spears or guns.  It is human intelligence working at its best.  Who can win the war of words, who can convince the masses best?  Unfettered capitalism is utterly damaging. But so is unfettered socialism.  I hope you can read my words as I say them, for you do like to reinterpret them as defined within the confines of your own idiosyncratic dictionary.

Because one holds a view different from yours does not mean, in reality, they are politically blind.  You simply want to see it that way, and by doing that, show yourself to be blinded by your own brand of hubris.

I think frankly too.  And, frankly, I think to be stuck in an ideology is like having a sherbert brain.

Shenonymous, August 4 at 7:29 am #

The distinction between Social Democrats and Democratic Socialists has to do with goals.  Holding more with the former, I do not lock myself in a fixed ideology called socialism, but give myself the credit to change as needed to find a satisfying life not only for myself but for others as well.

This seems to ignore reality, and it seems that you replace one such rigid view of governance (Socialism) with another ( our current two party fiasco). Some of us see the need for both in our government, each doing what it does best.

If I give it a disservice, so be it.  I focus more on the word ‘democrat’ with a small letter.  I find the “democratic” welfare structure of a homogenous, but economically mixed society furthers the society and provides the egalitarian treatment of people and as the only way for humans to live propitiously in a collective society.  I have no intention nor desire to overthrow or replace the capitalist nature of this country, evil as many on this forum find it.

I do not understand how you can simply ignore the reality of our current condition and continue to posit the views you were taught in civics classes. The myth of a homogenous society can be found in any newspaper on any day of the week, and your acceptance of class and its ultimately harmful nature seems strangely naive.

As to the “overthrow” of capitalism, I fail to understand how the expressed need for third party politics leads to the eventuality of such extremism on your part. Regulated capitalism is what you speak for, yet we have no such animal today, and the call for the principles of socialism in government, especially in regard to the social contract between the people and the government is not a “baby and bath water” situation. One can certainly incorporate socialism without a revolutionary change.

I think capitalism encourages personal achievement and that the communistic or overly enthusiastically socialist attitude tends to destroy the individual.  I think representative democracy is indeed a realization of political equality as well as an affirmation in economic, social, and civil rights for all of the people.

I think. frankly, that to hold such views as this is to betray a political blindness rather difficult to comprehend. You posit a straw man scenario in which supposed fanaticism in your “opponents” replaces an honest debate of the realities of what is being proposed. Are you really happy with the status quo? I would imagine that, in the absence of proof to the contrary, you are a well off upper middle class liberal who fears that what he has might be jeopardized by change.

The distinction between Social Democrats and Democratic Socialists has to do with goals.  Holding more with the former, I do not lock myself in a fixed ideology called socialism, but give myself the credit to change as needed to find a satisfying life not only for myself but for others as well.  If I give it a disservice, so be it.  I focus more on the word ‘democrat’ with a small letter.  I find the “democratic” welfare structure of a homogenous, but economically mixed society furthers the society and provides the egalitarian treatment of people and as the only way for humans to live propitiously in a collective society.  I have no intention nor desire to overthrow or replace the capitalist nature of this country, evil as many on this forum find it. I think capitalism encourages personal achievement and that the communistic or overly enthusiastically socialist attitude tends to destroy the individual.  I think representative democracy is indeed a realization of political equality as well as an affirmation in economic, social, and civil rights for all of the people. 

I realize there is the single-minded crowd who believe that political power is held by a “ruling class,” or as otherwise what they call, “the elite.”  Perhaps.  Perhaps that is the eternal struggle that is natural among those self-perpetuating groups who gather out of common interests.  Historically that is the way it has been since primitive man’s realization of his collective humanity. That at some point in their “progressiveness,” the drastic socialist too succumbs to totalitarian construction. I submit that by nature, people are not as generous as is thought by communists, anarchists, et al.  That basically self-interest rules, but concern for the welfare of others evolved, which was the survival instinct also at play.  I am willing to take less so that less fortunate may have more, but I see from the intellectual left a lot of ineffective metatalk about the improvement of society and that is where it stops, at the talk about… 

Notice the way Outraged puts it and Leefeller reiterates it:  Demand! End!  It is a Dreamer’s Pose.  The anarchist.  You say, ardee ”...Nader has no chance to win. So what?”  Well you can piss into the wind, but I always take my pragmatic but also my public-spirited umbrella.  Loyalty may not always be an admirable quality, that is quite true, but do not mistake to what that loyalty is.  It is always for what is perceived to be self-interest.  Altruism always comes second, but it does come for most conscious human beings.

I submit further that if the electoral college does not represent the will of the people that action take over for words.  However, election theory might have some insights into how to manage 212 million haphazardly assorted voters.  Direct democracy would be pandemonium, extreme socialism would be disastrous, and anarchism would be death.

Outraged comments make some sense.

“If we would like a VIABLE third party we would need to:

1. DEMAND the abolishment of the Electoral College, and,

2. END CORPORATE PERSONHOOD”

It seems corporate personifying with it’s selfish demands of opportunism has become the elephant in the room.

Electoral College makes sense only if your weedgee board is not missing a component.

If we would like a VIABLE third party we would need to:

1. DEMAND the abolishment of the Electoral College, and,

2. END CORPORATE PERSONHOOD

These are the things which would make third parties VIABLE.  Nothing else short of blood and gore will do it.

“ardee, bring on a third-party candidate that will appeal to the majority of the voters in every state that importantly counts electoral votes and then you have a case.”

Ahh, Shenonymous, Loyalty is not always an admirable quality, especially when it serves to cover the truth that a ballot cast for either of the two parties is a wasted vote,indeed, a vote perpetuating the descent into fascism. I think you understand that every plank in Nader’s platform serves the best interests of all the people, but it doesnt serve those who control the media, thus Nader has no chance to win. So what?

I know you call yourself a Social Democrat, as if that were even possible. But my call to support Third Party growth does not necessitate finding someone who can win the presidency, that is simple absurd.

I believe you smarter than this, and echoing those democrats who seek to dissuade folks from voting to end a monopoly on our Legislature and White House, a monopoly that serves only to enrich the two parties and a very few already obscenely wealthy old white men, and at the expense of the vast majority of Americans as well as those who murder daily around the world.

Voting for independent and third party candidates serves multiple purposes. It serves to show the two parties that the electorate is increasingly unhappy with the way they serve the corporate master and ignores the real needs of the people. It puts folks in government pledged to refuse the contributions that bend politicians to the will of the military industrial complex. It helps to keep a progressive agenda prominent and , with enough such elected representatives, makes more difficult the sellout of the people that is business as usual in our governing bodies these days.

Continuing to cast your ballot for democrat or republican is a disservice to socialism, to the social safety net you claim to uphold and , most important of all, is a disservice to what our Founders created.

Sir Pass me the Porkalot jmr must be reminiscing about the Nixon Days when honesty was rampant not in the White House. JMR, when you say “you clowns”, who are you referring to?

Sounds like ye old Politicians have it so hard, guess we are supposed to feel sorry for them and their crappy medical plan and the horrble experience they endure when always running for office while sleeping with lobbyists?

Pass me the Pork please! 

While we are at it JDR, pigs running to the trough was my comment, of course as the original thought comes form your mind, lucky for me I can read minds even empty ones! Since I used to raise hogs I can truthfully say hogs run to the trough and don’t get in their way.

Think of it as a snail doing a U-turn.

KDelphi,
I share and understand your frustration but try to remind myself that it is simply the nature of the beast.  We have been around some 200+ years so things have settled to an equilibrium.  Change then is naturally slow excepting during the occasional shocks that can precipitate faster rates.  If this is correct then you need to acquire more patience, wait much longer periods of time and look for smaller effects to see the differences between Bush and Obama (we are only 7 months into his term).  I think they are real and the direction of change is better, but yeah it is slow.  However this is better than slow change in the direction that the GOP would steer us to.  I personally am most upset with Obama not taking advantage of the finance shock we had suffered to make much bigger changes in that arena.  That was a huge missed opportunity.

There is an irony in the contrast between public health-care in Wise County, Tennessee, and the annual free clinic sponsored by the man who used to be one of the hosts of Mutual of Omaha’s “Wild Kingdom,” which draws thousands of patients to Wise County from around the Midwest and Eastern U.S.: If I’m not mistaken, this year’s clinic was held last month.  FREE doctor visits, FREE eye exams and prescription glasses, FREE dental care and services, FREE physical screenings and medications, and list probably continues.  That’s what REAL medical care is all about!  The doctors donate their time to give back to the thousands of visitors, most of whom have no kind of health care or health insurance.  A country like the United States should find the resources to make sure that EVERY citizen is properly insured.  Being health is not a commodity or marketing tool, it’s a necessity…it’s our lives!

Schivo was diagnosed by Dr. Senator Frist and he said she was fine.  No wonder health care in Tennessee is in the shape it’s in. 

http://wwww.wisecountyissues.com

Teri Schivo had been brain dead for years. The autopsy showed that. If someone decides that they want their body to be supported without a brain, they should leave it in a living will, for their closest relative—say, husband.

Keeping her body alive for so long was the cruel part.

The last time too-clever-by-half “good cop bad cop” clowns like you had their say, via Ralph Nader, we got Bush.

Politicians must balance competing interests.  They get things done, they can’t please everybody, so of course somebody’s always mad at them.  Politicians can’t deliver you your millennium, so of course they are corrupt scoundrels.

Your sarcastic dismissals of perspective are like the Jacobins and the Bolsheviks responding for pleas to take off the ideological blinders:  Off with the heads of the counterrevolutionaries!

Of course there are corrupt politicians, as the GOP have proved.  There are even corrupt Democratic politicians, as Mr. Jefferson has proved.  But to quote one of your favorite slogans, Not all Muslims are terrorists.

Members of Congress despise more than anything else the necessity of raising money.  But as long as money is empowered to call elections, the politicians will be forced to raise it to stay in office.  Congress, despite GOP assholes like Mitch McConnell, has tried mightily to turn off the spigot, but the court that gave us Bush has declared that political money is political speech and thus immune from regulation.

The claim of a ““bullet-proof” majority begs the question.  The majority is NOT bulletproof.  I just gave the example of 1994, and you ignore history.  Why?  Because this is a fatuous left-wing echo chamber, as wedded to dogma as the right’s wingnuts.

Here’s a little more perspective for all you geniuses, based on fact, not a priori pseudo-intellectual pose:

Washington, like all capitals, is a big pie, where the people send their representatives to bring back their fair share of that pie. If they get back more than their share, even better. You think Ted Stevens’s “bridge to nowhere” is pork? Ask the people whose island the bridge serves. West Virginia is one of the poorest states in the country, yet it’s one of the few states that have managed to stay in the black. A big reason is that their senator, Robert Byrd, is Senator Pothole.  The bacon, the “pork” he brings back to his state is fungible, i.e. it relieves the state budget from expenses it would otherwise incur.  Thus, when the state overhauled its budget a few years ago, it wiped out its payables in perfect timing for the recession.  Of course it’s been hit by high unemployment (8%), but unlike other states, W.Va. hasn’t laid off workers, cut services or raised taxes.  THIS is politicians at work.

22 states get more than their share (above the average) of per capita federal spending.  They are, in order, Virginia, Maryland, Alaska, Kentucky, New Mexico, Hawaii, North Dakota, Wyoming, Connecticut, Massachusetts, South Dakota, Missouri, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, West Virginia, Vermont, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Rhode Island, Montana, Maine.  Excepting the obvious Virginia and Maryland, there’s no rhyme or reason for the ranking, besides the effectiveness of the politicians from these states.  This is not corruption but good politics.

Of course, to these FACTS, the wisacres here, who haven’t had an original thought in their lives, will come back with warmed-over cant and tired platitudes, because this is where they go to get their mental comfort food.  Like pigs at the trough, they attack anyone who disturbs their feast of facile cynicism.  It’s an exercise in arrogance to say “They’re all corrupt,” then walk away.  It’s an excuse not to take the trouble to learn the issues, it’s a cover for moral and intellectual sloth, it’s the difference between trying to sound clever and actually knowing what you’re talking about.

Same thing over at the Vidal thread.  A couple of guys had facts and reason that didn’t follow strict party dogma, who argued that maybe “police state” is a bit of a reach.  Of course, they were immediately set upon by the commissars.  Yes, it’s a trough here…a sad little Animal Farm.

In reply to glider,@ August 2 at 7:19 pm #

Glider wrote ..... What proof do you have that Obama wants to kill you other than that is what Hannity tells you?..

Simple

REMEMBER TERI SCHIVO

Can some Dem please explain to me, what, exactly, would be so “different” if the GOP were in power? Iraq? (Bush signed the exit date) Health care ‘reform”? (what the Dems are pushing is antithema to what the people want, they just dont know it yet), Afghanistan? GITMO? USA Patriot Act? Wiretapping? Spying on peace groups? Using Blackwater vs DynaCorp? A useless credit card bill? A useless ““foreclosure” bill? Bank Bailout? Taxing the rich, justly? (you saw how well the “taxing people making over $300,000” went over with Pelosi and Co)

The Blue Dogs are not “should be GOP”—they are GOP—most of the Dem Party is, save a few, and they are treated like shit by other Dems.

I may never have a person I voted for win another election—but I’ll never vote for a Dems again….

tmullins—the status quo killed my father and now its killing me. Wise County RAM director is totally anti-universal coverage, although I dont understand why—maybe he likes seeing 1000s of people line up for charity care? I dont know. He would never really answer me. But he can go to hell, We should all be ashamed that he has to take time off from Bangladesh to come here…

jmr—I have been pro-single payer for decades, ever since I was treated in Europe and was a medical social worker, watching clients die for a lack of a few dollars .

If the South is so selfish that it wont pay a few pennies value added tax on pop or seomthing they should secede again—-this time, we wont fight—I promise. Go with Texas. President Perry is waiting.

The “Southern wisdom” allows people to drive from out of state to get all their teeth pulled (which coulve been saved) in a horse barn and to be grateful for it. It is pathetic and makes me ashamed to be a USAn. Yes, I would leave if I had my pension money back…might actually save my life at this point, but, waiting on Obama and the Dems, I might as well forget it.

My neighbor has a dog named blue, who barks all the time and when he can pisses on my leg, if I don’t kick him first. Two party system has always reminded me of good cop bad cop, depending on which side one is on. Seems all politicians are expendable and are politicians not supposed to be representatives of the people instead of teachers for ideas, which would be more supportive of status queue?

Speaking of perspective…while it may be true the so-called BlueDogs “helped” Democrats towards having a majority in both houses, the fact is, they are supposed to be Democrats.  Either they are or they are not regardless of how “fiscally” conscious they are.  To think of them as a separate entity says they should not be counted as Democrats at all.  They are just plain dogs and I think that casts aspersions on the species dogs.  That separatism was media driven and now everybody, almost everybody, believes it. 

Shall there be a separate group of Republicans who radically think having social programs are better for the country?  Are there such Republicans?  Uh, the moderates?  What shall be their name, MauveCats? (Mauve is a kind of grayish tertiary color by the way a little on the red side of the spectrum.) You had better believe that Republicans go into the moderate Republicans’ districts and attempt to have them replaced by hardline Republicans.

Agreed all politicians are concerned inordinately by money, right or left orientation.  However, it is patently obvious the BlueDogs are seduced singularly by money, and not for any other interests, to be put in their own electoral coffers and not in the government agencies to aid in the responsible operation of social programs. Yes, I think they are expendable and replaceable by true Democrats, which could be done if the correct and forceful arguments are presented to the constituencies.  They must be made to understand that their best interests are served by true Democrats.

ardee, bring on a third-party candidate that will appeal to the majority of the voters in every state that importantly counts electoral votes and then you have a case.  Problem is that third-party candidates may have good ideas, and even has the public interests at heart (which I am way too cynical to believe), they do not have the personal charisma, or ethics, to carry it off.  Kuchinich has many altruistic ideas, but he does not have the attractive aspect to get him elected.  Look at Nader, also has interesting economic ideas, but nobody likes him personally, except for his entourage.  For the lemming minded public who loves a hero, the herd wants to have it both ways, ideas and beauty.  Someone who looks good and can ignite the imagination of the plurality is what it will take to crack the wall of the two-party citadel.

jmr, August 3 at 9:32 am #

A little perspective, here…

Can we agree that the worst outcome overall for this country is that the GOP regains power in Washington?  As important as healthcare reform is, the GOP’s winning back the seats they lost anytime soon would be, for me, a nightmare.
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By all means let us have perspective.

With a bullet proof majority in the Senate, with a popular President in the White House, with polls seemingly indicating a willingness of the people to consider drastic revision to our health care system, even in the face of an unending stream of misleading propaganda regarding the direction and details of that change, we see a “three stooges” Legislature accomplishing nothing.

The single most important thing we can work towards , in my own opinion, is an ending of the myth that electing one party over the other is going to solve our problems. This has been sold to a naive American voting public as a way to continue control, to maximize profit, to deny essential and necessary services to the people because they would cut into those profits.

Electing a Democrat or a Republic to office brings cosmetic change that is no real change at all. The system functions to benefit a very small percentage of Americans, and at a great loss to the vast majority of us. Until and unless we understand that it is reform of that system that best adds to the health of our democracy there will be no reform.

A little perspective, here…

Can we agree that the worst outcome overall for this country is that the GOP regains power in Washington?  As important as healthcare reform is, the GOP’s winning back the seats they lost anytime soon would be, for me, a nightmare.

Bluedog Democrats are taking lots of heat for upsetting Pelosi’s and Obama’s applecart.  The article speaks of the “13 Obstructionists” and their corruption by healthcare industry contributions.  This may be the case, but it isn’t the whole story.

The Bluedogs helped give the Democrats the majority in both houses of Congress.  In most cases they won Republican seats by narrow, sometimes extremely narrow margins.  The GOP is targeting these Bluedogs to regain their seats.  The healthcare industry is pumping its money not only into campaign coffers, but into scare propaganda aimed directly at voters in Bluedog districts.  Bluedogs are going to be spending the August recess in town meetings, trying to educate voters.  If the propaganda wins, should we ask these Bluedogs to commit political suicide by following the leadership in voting for healthcare reform?

Before answering, consider this:  The 103th Congress was, in my view, the “Profile in Courage” congress.  This was the congress which passed landmark budget reform that ended deficit spending and paved the way for the historic prosperity of the Clinton years.  It also cost the Democrats control of Congress, which they didn’t regain for twelve years.  We know about these twelve years. They brought the most malign, corrupt, incompetent government in U.S. history.  We are now only beginning to crawl out of the enormous pile of crap they buried us in.

The question is whether budget reform was worth the price.  It may have been, and maybe the Democrats would have eventually lost their majorities anyway.  But I think the consensus of historians is that budget reform was the watershed.

If universal healthcare is Obama’s only accomplishment as president, he will have been a great president in my book, and the congress that passes it will be a great congress.  But beware of what we wish for.  If the price is those Bluedogs’ losing their seats, and this leads to the Democrats’ coming anywhere near losing control of Congress and ushering in another GOP regime, then I’m not sure I want to pay that price.

Maybe you do, but before condemning the Bluedogs outright, think of what they face, and then decide whether, given the consequences, they are expendable.

MIPIC: MEDICAL INSURANCE PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX has already written the hoax called a healthcare bill,

just as Exxon wrote the energy bill & Philip Morris wrote the tobacco law. That’s the way FASCISM & or an OLIGARCHY works, &

WALL STREET wins & MAIN STREET loses always. We know energy prices are manipulated & resulted in impoverishing we the

people. We also know that tobacco products continue to kill we the people. So far no surprises. Now comes the great shocker &, for

most people, a real surprise, no it’s not that Obama is Bush 3, that’s a given. The shocker is that MIPIC is the leading cause of death &

injury in the U.S. & is responsible for almost 800,000 iatrogenic deaths per year. That’s more than deaths resulting from life styles

which cause unhealthy changes in the heart & blood vessels. More deaths than gluttony induced diabetes resulting from a pancreas

unable to keep up with the extra burden imposed on it.

For the specifics on how MIPIC does this, Google: “Medical system is leading cause of death and injury in US” .

The reality & farce is that the new so called healthcare bill has nothing to do with health, but is just a ploy to continue the existing

system which is nothing more than leading we the people to an early grave by treating symptoms or conditions caused by self

induced life styles. For example: heart attack  

” Sudden interruption or insufficiency of the supply of blood to the heart, typically resulting from occlusion or obstruction of a coronary artery and often characterized by severe chest pain. Also called myocardial infarction.”

Or consider cancer, which is : the rapid uncontrolled growth of abnormal cells. Here’s how it works. If a person inhales toxic

substances, such as asbestos ,coal dust,or tobacco smoke, into his or her lungs, cells die & the body replaces those cells in order to

repair itself. The more these irritants are inhaled over time, the body can’t keep up producing normal cells & malignant cells form

instead. Like trying to clean chickens on a conveyor belt that’s moving too fast. The same principles apply to the skin, whether over

exposed to the sun or tanning beds.

So then, what is health, and how can we care for it ?  Health is : (I’m going to leave mental alone for someone else to cover) meeting

the needs of the body by eating nutritious foods in moderate amounts, avoiding known poisons, getting adequate rest, & exercise,

drinking water instead of alcoholic,caffeinated, or sugar drinks. Not drinking with your meals (washing the food down interferes with

digestion & stretches the stomach), & wearing comfortable shoes.

The congressional whores & the predator in the White House playing good cop bad cop couldn’t care less whether we live or die.

If you don’t take care of yourself & your family, don’t expect a “program” from a corrupt government to do it for you.

Remember, these FASCISTS send us off to die in fake perpetual wars, feed us & our pets toxic food from China, & sell us

deadly toys for our kids to play with.

The apartheid that the conservatives have created and are maintaining only builds a case for their continuing existence.

I firmly believe that most polarization in our society has been developed and maintained by a combination of neo-conservatives and a corporate media whose profit margin and audience depends on conflict, rile, and spectacle.

That is the dangerous combination we face. It brings a cultural paralysis that conservatives savor. It reduces critical issues to sound bites and makes possible the emergence of an empty-headed demagogue like the female equivalent of George W. Bush, Sarah Palin.

Neocon strategy is based on propaganda and probability, certainly not on reason,concern for fellow humans or issues. It’s like quantum-level manipulation of truth to suit your theory.

Anyone, blue dog Democrats or Republicans, who hold up reform on health care, only show that their needs, their interests, take precedence over everyone else.

My sympathies to you, and I pray that you will be alright.  Those pictures should be enough to arouse anger in any compassionate voter, and it’s precisely why all of us need a genuine patient-centered health-care plan, set up just like the health-care plans enjoyed by our duly-elected representatives and other federal officials.  We voters elected our Senators and Congresspeople to REPRESENT US, so why should we allow them to gather lobbyists’ handouts to encourage them to fight their constituents and disable any kind of proposed patient-centered health plans, even if they copy of Medicare.  That’s why I say vote ‘em out of office next time!  Put on the collars and send these blue dogs barking back on their way home and leave them in the doghouse to retire!

Mullins,
Sorry for posting too much.  That gaping hole is a bed sore.  When an older person is bed ridden it can cut off the circulation at pressure points which results in gangrene and then a sore like that one.  It is horrific.  My dad got one inspite of being in what I thought was good care.  He died about a month later.

It’s a bedsore (stage V).  It was so big you could have stuck a grapefruit in it.  He walked into a hospital for a three day procedure that turned out to be a ten month long nightmare and in Tennessee it’s called quality care, he never took another step, his feet rotted to the point his legs had to be amputated.  Their advertising is disgustingly fraudulent and misleading.

Tmullins, I had trouble logging into that site using my user info, would you tell me about those horrifying pictures, especially the one showing a large hole deep in the skin?  Looks like a small crater.  Thanks.

driving bear,

I saw the speech you are referencing.  I don’t believe this is a matter of “context”.  I had thought it was in response to a question (which bears on whether it was off the cuff as I said).  I would also like to find the quote as I thought he said “pill” rather that “pain pill” which I think may be an embellishment by republicans designed to enhance their talking point of health care reform killing seniors.  To those who don’t understand the difference let me explain.  Today in the USA old people are essentially euthanized legally in hospices.  If a senior signs a standardized end of life directive and selects the option not to restrict pain medication even if it may accelerate their death this may result in their death.  This is because, ususally in dire health situations, the administration of morphine will not only calm and remove pain, but will also remove the senior’s appetite for food and they will simply wither away. So driving bear is right to be concerned about that issue if he does not want that kind of treatment (but no one forces anyone to sign, although few understand the implication)

Why all the news about how horrifying health care is in Canada and the UK ? We have our own health care nightmares and rationed care but don’t hear enough about that, all they want to holler is Obama is going to kill granny. The status quo killed my father. http://www.wisecountyissues.com/?p=62 In Tennessee and Virginia, profit care comes way ahead of patient care.

Hey driving bear,

I am starting to get annoyed.  I want you to ask yourself a question.  Imagine there is no Medicare.  Imagine Obama is trying to get you Medicare.  Now, think very hard.  What do you think the ultra-rich Limbaugh/Hannity/O’Reilly cabal would be advocating?  Do you think they might be screaming socialism?  or do you think they would be saying this is something that would be socially responsible to create a tax for to help our senior citizens?  Try to be honest and see through their fog for 2 god damn seconds.  I know the answer to this question, do you?

driving bear,

I know what you think.  I am asking for your logic and reasons.  Insane people have thought to but that does not make them legitimate.  What proof do you have that Obama wants to kill you other than that is what Hannity tells you?

jmr,

Krauthammer is certainly more intelligent but as your insightful post points out he has deeply bought into “the big lie” and suffers the consequences.  Because of that I view him as a slimeball extrordinaire.  I have heard deeply offensive garbage coming from mouth.  In terms of intellectual grist I miss William F. Buckley, who as a conservative thought independently and did not drink the party cool-aid.  I felt he had genuine dissenting opinions.  I mean how often do you find a republican acknowledging the failed war on drugs?  It would be fascinating to hear his take on the current state of affairs.

For all my criticism of driver bear I am guilty of my own philosophical waffling.  Sometimes I feel the best way to obtain reform is too allow this ObamaCongressInsurance_Lobbyist_Care to fail, use that to highlight our legislature system deficiencies and then push for campaign finance/lobbyist reform and thus make single payer a viable alternative.  At the moment I think that would be giving our system too much credit for being capable of doing the right thing.

I admit to being very cynical about what is going on with this healthcare reform.  I think all this talk of single payer is just noise to the powers that be.  In my opinion a basic deal was fixed prior to Obama’s election.  That deal was that the health care insurance industry would barter giving up the “pre-existing condition” clause in exchange for public mandated purchase of their insurance.  This industry had pretty much tapped out their growth, so this legislative reform is now the only way to go.  Once this passes they will be able to reduce their actuary expenses, tap further into the citizen taxes, and have the safety of permanently integrating themselves into the system.  What you see is this scenario playing out.  Notice that there is no argument over this barter deal at all.  At this stage they only need to assure that the public option does not compete effectively with private insurance and if possible makes it just a taxpayer subsidized dumping ground for the most sick.  All this liberal talk about the Blue Dogs , the Republicans, and Baucus being bribed by insurance companies is true, but they fail to count those same contributions to Obama who was the biggest taker of them all.

If this is not the case why did Congress not start with a study of the efficiencies of all the different health care systems and go from there?  Why did they exclude single payer from consideration?  Why if Obama truly believes that single payer is the best solution does he not promote a gradually phased in expanded Medicare so that his excuse for not doing so, “if I was starting from scratch” is no longer a concern?  It obvious to me.  You got to cut deals to be POTUS and you got to cut deals to be a member of Congress.  All the shit we are seeing now is a inconvenient formality for these guys.

to glider, August 2 at 1:49 pm

First off I don’t think Obama’s remark was taken out of contexts.

Do I think that Obama and the democrats would be willing to withhold treatment to the old people; yes they would in a new york nanosecond.

Thanks, glider.  Actually, I didn’t include Fox News because a couple of them really are thoughful, even brilliant.  I’m think mainly of Krauthammer.  I wish there could be a running debate somewhere between him and Mike Kinsley.  Krauthammer is wrong in may ways about healthcare reform, but he’s also right in many ways.  Reading him makes a thinking person think, not react.

For different reasons Drs. Ktrauthammer and Relman agree that Obamacare won’t work as intended.  Most of us here agree that we need universal healthcare badly.  I think where the debate lies is whether Obamacare is the solution.  Some say it’s a start.  Others say it’s a cure worse than the illness.

You know, the Germans have had one or another form of universal healthcare forever.  Through the years they’ve refined it, to the point where today their healthcare delivery system is arguably the world’s best and something they are quite satisfied with it. And no, they don’t mind its taking a big chunk from their paycheck, because (unlike here in the land of Me-Now) they have a sense of community, and because the return benefit is palpable.

We need something like that.  Maybe just getting a system in place and refining it over time, letting it evolve, is the best we can hope for.

That quote, glider and jmr, is going into my collection too!  It is one of the gems of all time.

Just a bit more on democracy…Jefferson, it was said, by historian Benjamin Barber, misjudged and underestimated the appetites for slaughter of the French revolutionaries (though not much more than the critics of the Jacobins misjudge and overestimate the tolerance and goodwill of the established ecclesiastic and secular hierarchies against whom the revolutionaries acted.)  His retreat later in his life from his encomiums was not a retreat from his belief either in democracy or in democratic education-celebrated to the very end in the epitaph he composed for himself. It was clear to him even to the end of his life that a theory of democracy rooted in active participation and continuing consent by each generation of citizens demands a civic pedagogy rooted in the obligation to educate all who would be citizens.

Jefferson felt that democratic foundationalism could undermine democracy.  Representational (popular sovereignty) government distances the citizenry from their immediate passions but it could also erode popular responsibility and destroy active participation by the population.  The civic virtue of democracy commands, rather demands, proactive citizen involvement.  Democracy requires a constant and permanent, thoughtful sort of revolution, that affords each generation the space for evolving change.  True it also requires that the population be fit for this responsibility and that means educated to be fit.

As long as there are at least two ways of thinking about men’s relative relationship to each other, there will be criticism of the other’s point of view.  The main thing is that humankind be civilized rather than savage about it.

doublestandards, I don’t know where you come off putting me in the same company with driving bear.  If you read all my posts or listened to the audio clip I’ve linked to, you’d know I’m nowhere near driving bear’s camp.

The bailout is a bit off-topic here.  Anyway, of course the bailout was ugly and unfair.  But it was necessary.

We were a hair’s breadth from a complete financial breakdown, national bankruptcy and another Great Depression.  Yes, some of Wall Street was “too big to fail” and had to be bailed out to avoid even worse damage.  The outrage is that they were allowed to become so big.  The watershed was repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act.  Restoring it should be one of the first fixes to the system.  NO company should ever be alowed to become too big to fail.

By the way, the bailout of one company, AIG (around 180G), would more than cover the deficits currently suffered by the states (130G).  Now, that’s an outrage.

As for healthcare, the arch-fiend in the healthcare calamity is indeed the insurance companies, who profit off of sick people, as do doctors, with their corrupt pay-for-service fees, the hospitals and big pharma.  And of course the politicians they own, which is the subject of the blog.

I have heard a few health-care experts say that the national plan should be Medicare or something very close to it, because Medicare does not involve the insurance companies.  Patients under Medicare has almost no restrictions on choosing doctors, prescription refills, hospitalization, and policy plans.  In other words, Medicare has no middle man to interfere between patient and physician.  Instead of the insurance companies standing in the way of a patient’s right to choose and enjoy affordable health care, there is peace of mind.  As for the so-called Canadian “socialist” health-care system, the “statistics” presented by members of Congress unfavorable to the Canadian system have padded the figures and exaggerated their findings on the quality of care north of the Border.  In fact, the wait times for hospitalization and surgeries is on the average anywhere from 1 week to 3 weeks, a big decline from the inflated figures reported to U.S. citizens.  And patients in Canada do not undergo unnecessary additional tests and visits, which are basically profit-making measures to help the insurance interests generate more funds.  Our lobby-paid reps are using scare tactics to frighten U.S. voters into not supporting health care that will benefit everyone, just like the health care our politicians are enjoying on Capitol Hill.

“The thought process of the psychotic is perfectly rational if one accepts his completely delusional premise, i.e. any normal person would behave this way had the CIA planted a chip in his head.”

jmr, thanks for this quote, its going in my collection.  Hmmm, come to think of maybe the Fox News viewer do have….nah, never mind.

Thank goodness, Paolo, for the mob who would deny you LESS democracy.  Try to transport your mind to the times of the revolution, which by the way, would never have come about without those democratic mob-sters.  Once you have imagined yourself to have lived in the 18th century and as a colonist under the excising fist of the British monarchy, think of what Paine and Jefferson were really saying:

First of all Section 8 of Article 1 primarily spells out taxation, borrowing money, regulating commerce both home and abroad, naturalizations, backruptcies, coinage, standardizing weights and measures (thank goodness for that one!), counterfeiting legal tender, creating post offices, promotion of science and art and inventor ownership of inventions, lower courts (tribunals), piracies, felonies on the high seas, declaration of war, military, but the final paragraph sums it all up:

“Congress shall…make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.”

So while Amendment X does forward leftover powers to the states, (who do also run popular sovereignty democratic governments, that is, democratic power as given by a popular sovereignty meaning a representative government in contrast with direct democracy where no proxy representatives are involved), the final paragraph of Article 1, Section 8 retains central government power and republican government based on the rule of law not a monarchy or dictatorship.

John Adams realized that political divisions would exist in a democracy.  He was a strong Federalist (pro-British) when it was self-servingly beneficial (he defended the British over the Boston Massacre) but later in his presidency broke with the strong Federalists which lost him his second election to Jefferson, although it was Adams who encouraged Jefferson to write the Declaration of Independence.  Adams disagreed with Paine’s idea of radical democracy.  Adams analysis of the aristocracy produced his classical categories of the one, the few, and the many (MarthaA would appreciate these categories).  He proposed that these categories of people were facts of human nature. While Adams was aware of economic inequality his tendency was always for the executive, aristocratic domination.

Paine also thought that a “government that governs least” was the best for a free people.  But transcending that, on the other hand, he believed that a democracy (government based on the will of the people) is the only form of government that can guarantee natural rights.

Cherishing my self-reflective care about a government for the people, I’d go for as much democracy as can be had every time.

Yes, at the heart of the opposition to unversal healthcare is the big lie.  I respect principled opposition, but opposition based on lies, like what we’re talking about here, is not principled, not honorable, and should be allowed no quarter.

Already, the big lies are being trotted out—“killing the elderly” and “socialized medicine”—to push the buttons of the base.  It reminds me of classic psychosis.  The thought process of the psychotic is perfectly rational if one accepts his completely delusional premise, i.e. any normal person would behave this way had the CIA planted a chip in his head. 

Once the big lie is accepted, universal health care is socialism which equals communism which equals the anti-Christ and must be stopped, gay teachers will recruit our children to their lifestyle, the Pope will control America through a Catholic president, the Jews are out to get us, America is a police state, commercial media are controlling our brains. (Hey, that last one’s true!) 

Because popular delusions are so deeply ingrained, because they are mutually reinforced, they are almost impossible to shake and, thus, quite effectively exploited by the demagoguges.  From there you can construct the most elegant, most compelling, most rational arguments.  The big lie in the hands of demagogues is nothing less than applied mob psychology, of which Hitler, Goebbels, Reagan, Hamas, Chavez, Ahmadenejad, Limbaugh and the Southern GOP are masters.

The problem with a nation turned into a mob by the big lie is that you are dealing with an illness, whether it be a mob convinced that the Jews are conspiring against them or a mob convinced that “socialized medicine” will end American life as we know it.  Ironically, in the healthcare debate, it appears the only cure for this condition is, alas, medical.

“However, the financial bulwork of this country was in the gravest peril, whether you wish to acknowledge that or not”

Shenonymous,
Please reread my post.  I acknowledge the disaster and only debate the fix! Get that?  Summers (corrupt bankster influence)/Gietner (failed regulator) are extending the -bailout without accountability policy- of Paulson.  What would I have done differently in Obama’s position?  How about not rewarding and enriching executives that brought us to the brink?  Start off by putting someone in charge of fixing the mess that was not involved in making the mess (e.g. Krugman, Brooksley Born, Buffet, etc.).  If the government did not nationalize some of these bad institutions they should have at least forcibly restructured them and broken them up into companies “small enough to fail”.  I would have forced management and CEO changes.  There is nothing like bringing in a new management team in terms of airing out all the dirty laundry.  Everything suddenly becomes transparent, they will be able to tell you just how bad the problem is because it becomes the yardstick of their own performance.  I would also tend to reinstate the laws that protected us for 70 years from these predators, who basically bribed our legislature to legalize their crimes.  I would not trust the government now infiltrated with ex-Sachs men to create a new regulatory structure so they can retain these socially useless exotic financial products and yet to come wonderful financial innovations.  I want my banking boring as can be!  I would start a criminal investigation perhaps using Rico anti-racketeering laws to bring some justice and set an example for the future.  I love capitalism when it comes to making a better mousetrap in the traditional sense.  There was a discussion of unfettered capitalism earlier and this industry is the ultimate expression of it.  Yeah, we will get some trickle down but this current fix and Obama (in this area) are a huge disappointment.

So let me ask you.  Why are you not for accountability?  Why do you want to have more risk in the future by allowing extreme risky financial service behavior?  Or do I read your criticism wrongly?

from driving bear:
“First off study the history of the 3rd Germany , and you will find that the Holocaust didnot start with the Jews or the commies, but instead started in German hospitals with the disabled , the insane and then the elderly. this was done (  officially) to save money. Fast forward 60-70 years to Barack Obama who said ” instead of surgery , maybe instead just give them a pain pill.”

Wow!!! Sorry I missed your response yesterday. Driving bear why can’t you recognize this as fear mongering plain and simple (it fits my Goebbels analogy below perfectly)! Obama has never advocated euthanasia. How can anyone win if one’s opponent are allowed to make such fanciful extrapolations? He as every recent president simply acknowledged the need to save money because the system will go bankrupt with the onslaught of aging baby boomers (your quote was simply an off the cuff example that you are twisting for the conservative agenda).

Actually, if I had a choice, I would make the country even LESS “democratic.”

In the original Constitution (which no one pays attention to anymore), the Federal Government was limited to just a handful of powers carefully enumerated in Article 1, Section 8. Just to be clear, the Founders also put in the 10th Amendment, which says that any power not specifically granted to the central government is reserved for the individual states, or for the people.

In other words, not every aspect of human endeavor should be left to tender mercies of the mob. Democracy is rule by mob.

Since there is nothing in the Constitution that allows the federal government to dictate medical policy, that power does not exist. But don’t worry; as I said—no one pays attention to the Constitution anymore. As George W. Bush put it, it’s just a god-damned piece of paper. Obama has the same attitude, from the other wing of our single-party system.

If we didn’t disagree on something glider, I’d be worried.  I really never paid much attention to Paulson, thinking he was quite the fool.  Oh I listened to his rhetoric, but for some reason he never struck me as having any reliable answers. I don’t think Paulson was responsible for any damage control or repair that might be going on right now.  Quite a few others hold that opinion too.  However, the financial bulwork of this country was in the gravest peril, whether you wish to acknowledge that or not. If not, I think it is like covering one’s face with the hands and thinking the problem has just gone away (sort of a Bishop Berkeleyan perspective).  The far-reaching financial disaster has had its deadly tentacles all over the world, not completely unlike the domino theory but not quite like it either.  The other countries were both dependent on world finances, because the world finances are interdependent, yet they also bore their own responsibility for part of that failure.  I hold with my buttress description, and I’m sticking to it.

What exactly would you have done to suture the nearly fatal wounds this country faced when Obama took charge?  Personally, I think his policies will work but we must be patient to see their antibiotic effect take place.  Rome was not built in a day, even though all roads lead there.  I heard the US referred to as an empire.  Maybe but I tend not to think of it that way since its politics can change drastically every four to eight years.  But it is a powerhouse that has weak spots from the nature of its various competitive politics at play.  But I think it is resiliant and have optimism, or let us say an optimistic inevitability (things will go the way they will because of its elasticity).  We will see, but I admit, as a realist, I’m cheating on any holding my breath pretension.  I don’t trust ephemeral and fickle politicians, never have, never will.

Expanding a bit on this brainwashing of the poor to vote Republican.  When I first heard Goebbel’s famous line about propaganda, “if you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it”, I thought the idea was preposterous.  What I missed then was the purpose the big lie served.  The big lie is better than a small lie only in so much as it is designed to promote the primal emotions such as fear and anger.

So right now you see Fox News propagating the big lie (which as Goebbels said must be repeated over and over again) that Obama is destroying America by turning it into a socialist country using this technique.  I will never forget the spectacle of Rush Limbaugh with veins popping out his forehead yelling Obama was an “angry man”.  I mean isn’t that Rushes entire M.O.?  But Fox News types just eat this stuff up like its candy!  Is there a gene for critical thought that these people lack?

Good post Shenonymous. 

I do however strongly disagree that “the buttresses put in place were needed for a crumbling economy left by the previous administrative”.  That sounds like Paulsen’s pitch.  The point is that there were much better fixes available than what Bush/Obama/Government Sachs came up with!

Ardee:
I got to admit my admiration got shot to hell after driving bears last post.

driving bear:
When you come on these boards it is best to present a consistent position.  You have neglected my question twice.  How is that you both rail against taxes and socialism and yet promote and defend your Medicare?  Without an explanation you are a simply a self serving hypocrite.  Democracy (if we had it) can work if everyone behaves only selfishly but that is not a model of behavior to promote publically.  You might as well just go home and do your selfish voting.

One of the most astounding phenomenas to liberals is that the the O’Reilly/Beck/Hannity cabal of ultra-rich conservatives can brainwash poor and middle class individuals to vote against their own self interests all in the name of letting the rich keep their money AMAP.  You sound exactly like one of these brainwashed people, the ones you hear in a single breath say “I don’t want that socialed medicine and don’t you dare take my Medicare away!”.  I would really like to understand your thinking here, if there is any.

I am going to tell you why I can’t stand the feel of wool over my eyes?  It is blindingly scratchy.

Leefeller - If special interests (read self-interest which is as old as human DNA) propagate ignorance (let’s just stay with ignorance for the moment since pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps takes the opposite of ignorance), so that they may buy what they want, we get, then, what we are willing to get.  Not so sure the bailouts are cases of ‘unfettered capitalism,’ as that entire phrase is quite murky and imprecise.  Smith’s idea of the wealth of a nation, given its public birth the same year as this country’s rebellion for independence, had to do with “enlightened” self-interest. Presciently he was more interested in efficient cause particularly for a new nation whose coffers had to become healthy, the war was to be expensive, as are all wars.  Smith’s capitalist views were quite different from what is seen in today’s so-called but blurry notion of “unfettered capitalism,” as exemplified by Friedman, Wallerstein, or the previous Wizard of American finances, Alan Greenspan.  I believe Smith’s POV was healthy capitalism, and that responded to robust but wholly acceptable incentives, which the human psyche naturally seeks in most realms of existence, whether it be business, the challenges of science, sports, friendships, and other social interactions.  Progress is the most important driving force, actually it is the only driving force as that is what species do, they live until they die out.  How capitalism works is very much like the way genes work to progress any given species.  We happen to be most interested in the human species.

Opportunism and manipulation are the cleverness of the human mind at work for the only purpose of self-interest.  Socialism comes along and throws a chink in that armor by saying, the community is more important than is thought, o’selfish one.  The community is the path of real survival because the individual who operates only on the foundation of self-interest cannot survive alone.  Socialism is the natural brake on unfettered capitalism but that does not mean the capitalism cannot be beneficial for human progress.  It is a necessary element in the equation of human advancement.  But that also does not mean socialism must be eliminated either for the above noted reason.

Contrary to the popular belief here on TD, the people will eventually benefit from the bailouts and other fixes being created in Washington.  There is a natural tendency for impatience when a situation is dire.  The buttresses put in place were needed for a crumbling economy left by the previous administrative wasting away of the national treasury on senseless and usesless wars as well as uninvolvement in the unfettered rampant greed on Wall Street and in the Real Estate industry which includes the banking and mortgage, and insurance industries.  Ah, yes, the insurance industry that was not politically noticed until it was intuited that they have been sucking the public dry for half a century.  But do notice, someone has noticed.

Well, my friends, that is all about to stop as WE ARE NOW PERMANENTLY NOTICING! And we, the more informed public, vociferously will do something about it all and keep our socialistically controlled incentive driven capitalism.

Kesey Seven, wishful thinking is always the first step.

She,

Would Unfettered capitalism be what we have just seen, with bailouts for opportunists and nothing for the people? Capitalism as Adam Smith believed was an unfettered competitive atmosphere, if my recollection is working? 

Collusion of interests and control is not unfettered instead seems opportunistic and manipulative. Socialism the word has been given a false meaning and used over and over as a negative driven into the single minds of the masses.

Bootstraps and ignorance seems to be propagated by special interests who buy what they want and we get the product they pay for.

Driving Bear,
Speaking of robbery, the wall street bail out is expected to be in the trillions of dollars.  I’ve heard it could be as high as 12 trillion before its over.  How do you and jmr feel about thuggery like that? 
Nothing wrong with the rich stealing from the poor according to your philosophy, right?

Wow.  I read some of the back and forth in the thread and want to raise a point that I didn’t see. 

Sirota is pointing out how much of a problem the media is in this debate, again. 

It’s simple: We’ve got to take the cash out of the campaigns. The only way to do that is to give free access to the media.  We need free commercials for congressional campaigns. We need free debates—debates not controlled by political parties and whack job talk show hosts posing as journalists, but by citizens.

Until that time politicians will continue licking the boots of large contributors and giving the rest of us the yo-yo finger, no matter what the subject, health care, war, education— 

Sheesh. 

——

Aside to Oldhip:

Anyone whose post brings to mind the lines “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness starving hysterical naked—” deserves a kudo. Americans have been driven to madness by “Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose blood is running money! Moloch whose fingers are ten armies! Moloch whose breast is a cannibal dynamo!  Moloch whose ear is a smoking tomb!”
 

“Howl” away my friend.

Kesey Seven

If the voters in these Blue Dog Democrats’ districts had any good sense, they would most definitely vote them out in the next 2 Congressional elections.  The Democratic Party should stand behind President Obama, just as the Republicans have stood behind former President Bush.  A party divided against itself, like a house divided, will not continue to stand.  And we cannot afford to jeopardize a second 4-year term for Mr. Obama, who may be traveling the wrong path right now but has returned to Washington a calmer and more genteel tone.

Driving bear, thanks for making my case.

When the Lewin Group, aka UnitedHealthCare is advising the GOP I have a problem with that logic.  If they scare enough of the folks in Hannity’s Amerika you will be guaranteed more of the same fascist system running health care.

http://www.wisecountyissues.com

While I am a socialistic Democrat (let it suffice to say that it is because Democrats are more socialistic and believe in social programs), I think it is debatable whether socialism, as regularly proposed by residents here to replace capitalism, is possible and hence the proposal is a matter of pissing into the wind.  Unfettered capitalism is what exactly?  How shall it be fettered (bridled)?  Shall there be another czar?  The Czar of Bridling Capitalism?  Shall he sit across from the Secretary of the Treasury?  What might that fettered capitalistic economic model look like?  What will happen to alllllll of those capitalists who have the capital?  Whhaatttt will happen to the capital?  Do we have an anti-unfettered capitalist death squad?

Yes, jmr, Dr. Relman is the only one who makes sense out there!  I’m telling everyone I know to listen to that interview!  And I’m making a poster that says Not-For-Profit-Healthcare!

I have a most dear friend who is a doctor in the deep Middle America countryside who says about salarying doctors, “Sign me up!”  He is tired of not getting paid by his poor patients.  He won’t turn anyone away regardless of whether they have insurance or not.  But he is rare!

glider, August 1 at 8:08 pm #

I have to admire driving bear for coming on this site and discussing his unpopular views.  We would do well to take his example so that we do not just speak to like minded people and not change anyone’s opinion. 
.........................

Through a glass darkly.

One may admire whatever one wishes, I choose not to admire a poster who adds only myth and hyperbole to an important issue. Methinks this person has swallowed when he should have spit.

To jmr

First off I am Glad you read the bible but like most liberals your interpretation of the story of the good Samaritan is 100 % ass backwards.

What you purpose in a compulsory tax system is nothing less than robbery. Charity can not be at the point of a gun is what you suggest because if you don’t want to pay the taxes to fund your good works( it true your motives may be good) what happens is the IRS goes to the local federal district court and gets an order to seize your money and then gives the order to US Marshals ( who carry guns )to execute .

Nowhere in the Bible in either the old or new testament does in suggest using force or weapons to
collect for charity

Driving bear, I think you’ve been eating those ‘pain pills’ by the handful. Stop it! Or you’ll say even stupider things than you already have. Now if you were talking about Dick Cheney, your image of a politician handing out pain pills to get rid of people he doesn’t want around would be completely accurate. But you haven’t mentioned him or his crimes, which are real and verified. Instead you create future, unsubstantiated and imaginary crimes for Barack Obama. My guess is you voted for Bush - and that’s your crime. Don’t compound your felony by dreaming up science fiction stories about Barack Obama because you’re afeared of them reds gathering dust under your bed.

I have to admire driving bear for coming on this site and discussing his unpopular views.  We would do well to take his example so that we do not just speak to like minded people and not change anyone’s opinion. 

“for myself I would be willing to pay some for health care , However I strongly oppose forcing others to do so with the power of the federal law”

This aspect of the original Obamacare legislation was deemed a necessity for a system that keeps private insurance companies in place yet eliminates rejecting customers with pre-existing conditions.  These companies have pointed out their business model can not permit people to wait to get sick and only then buy insurance.  They need to force young healthy people to pay into the system to cover the sick.  This is actually the one part of the bill that would most benefit myself but I to find it objectional if it means being forced to pay for overpriced private insurance.  For driving bear though, how philosophically do you rationalize opposing forcing others to pay for their own insurance yet have no problem forcing them to pay for your own insurance?  Of course single payer eliminates this messy problem yet I suspect if you are a repulican that you don’t favor this solution either.  Do you have an alternate solution for helping the 47 million uninsured or do you just favor the status quo?

“the devil is in the details applies here. The current bill is over 1000 pages, ..that is a lot of devil”

It is funny that I once used this saying with a co-worker and she laughed and said she was taught “God is in the details”.  In this case I strongly suspect the former.  To make that point I paraphrase a previous comment of mine.  “meaningful congressional bills are routinely gutted as opponents funded by special interests pile on provisions/modifications that render them meaningless.  They (the citizens) are distracted by the necessity of making a living.  They don’t have time to pay attention to the important details and are forced to leave that to their so called representatives.  This limitation does not apply to professional lobbyists.  So in the end what we have is a government that caters to the knowledgable full time lobbyists and seeks only to sufficiently placate the ill informed public.  This is a systemic failing of our government.

The real culprit is unfettered capitalism and the unrestrained appetites of the politicians. Unless we put restrains on campaign finance and re-regulate business and finance, greed will only get worse.

The only reason we are having this crisis and necessary reform of America’s health care and bailouts of the banksters and auto moguls because of the above.

The old saying of an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure certainly applies to health care.  However, the only sure way to that goal is universal singles payer.  We should be in the streets right now demanding the only reform that puts people before profits.

There is no reason that those greedy-assed doctors who put profits before care can’t continue to serve the same greedy-assed individuals too selfish to be a part of the rest of us. And they claim there in no class warfare in America!  BS!

It would be best to ask the people of Europe and Canada themselves how they feel about their health care systems.  The idea of giving anything free to ordinary people grated on Margaret Thatcher’s nerves, but she said once that if she had tried to privatize the British national health care system there would have been a revolution.

I am surprised at the number of people here who have been brainwashed by the insurance companies and their servants in Washington.  No one dies in countries which have government run health care because they can’t get treatment.  No one.  It is simply a lie.  People die in the US because their insurance companies won’t pay for treatment they need or they don’t go for treatment because they don’t have insurance and can’t afford it.
This country is run by gangsters who don’t stop even at making money from human suffering.  We need to join the rest of the civilized world, the sooner the better.

PhreedomPhan - the 2001 presidential campaign rhetoric (when Gore was said to have laid claim to inventing the internet) like all campaign rhetoric is just that - rhetoric and as such should not be relied on as factual or true. Failing to recognize that tends to make suspicious, in general, any other opinions one voices.

Al Gore never said he invented the internet: George Bush said Al Gore said he invented it.

Southern wisdom (I’m a Southerner, born and raised, so I know whereof I speak.) is precisely the reason we need a compulsory tax system, so the selfish amongst us are forced to contribute to highways they’ll never use, airports they’ll never fly into, cures for disease they’ll never suffer, food for children they don’t care about, the “common defense,” the “general welfare”.  For healthcare they may never need. 

You like quoting the Bible. Try the Good Samaritan, Jesus’s parable about a stranger who helped another, not because he was a friend or “deserved” help, but because he was a fellow human being in need.  Jesus wasn’t just preaching good works, he was preaching social conscience.  There’s the wisdom Southerners need.

For too long “Southern wisdom” has plundered and despoiled the nation, and now we’ve had enough. Southern wisdom is on the wane, thank God.

Dr. Relman says Obamacare will fail because it fails to eliminate the root cause of the healthcare crisis:  the rapacious for-profit food chain.  He says replacing it with the single-payer, clinic-based, fee-for-patient (instead of fee for service) system would save 40%, easily making healthcare affordable for the nation.

KDelphi and glider and others here, and Dr. Relman, know perfectly well that affordable universal healthcare in this country is doable far more easily than the politicians, in the pockets of the for-profit interests, are making it.

It seems Washington is handling the healthcare crisis the same way as the financial crisis:  bending over backwards to accommodate the very perpetrators of the mess we find ourselves in today.  The first target in the campaign should be the health insurance racket.  It’s a fat target, which nobody likes.  Replace it with public coverage by expanding Medicare, which is already in place and is scalable (no “new bureaucracy” for the Repugs to screech about).  That would be a huge cost saving right there.

Meanwhile, if you haven’t already, please listen to Dr. Relman.

I think the readers of this site need a little Southern wisdom .

An old Gospel song best sums up the current health care debate in general and not just this bill.
It’s called ” Everybody wants to go to heaven , But Nobody wants to die” Everybody wants health care , but nobody wants to pay for it.

Speaking only for myself I would be willing to pay some for health care , However I strongly oppose forcing others to do so with the power of the federal law.

Also the old saying that the devil is in the details applies here . The current bill is over 1000 pages , and to me that is a lot of devil
in fact I don’t think even a hard core satanist would want that much devil

A Democratic Congressman gave Republican’s the chance yesterday to co-sponsor his amendment to kill Medicare and thus rid the country of socialized medicine. It was put up or shut up time and the Republican’s shut up but whined about it being a stunt. Since the Republican’s voted against Medicare in 1965, I would have thought they would jump at the chance to defeat it 44 years later.
The GOP seems to have one strategy right - they are using the age of ploy of appealing to the mythology of our self-reliant spirit and coupling that with lies about changing the Medicare program to snuff seniors out who are a burden on the system. The book “Outliers” commented on Americans having a high “I’ve got mine, screw you mentality” which is possibly why Joe Queenan said last night on Bill Maher that American’s are very selfish and really don’t care that 47 million American’s are without insurance. We still tend to view health care as an entitlement and not as a right as other industrialized nations do. I wonder if we really are that selfish - I hope not.

to glider, July 31 at 3:55 pm #

First off study the history of the 3rd Germany , and you will find that the Holocaust didnot start with the Jews or the commies , but instead started in German hospitals with the disabled , the insane and then the elderly. this was done (  officially)  to save money. Fast forward 60-70 years to Barack Obama who said ” instead of surgery , maybe instead just give them a pain pill. why would he purpose this to save money because surgery is expensive and pain pills are cheap.

So to all Americans especially to those on the left
remember the words of an old Chinese proverb ” use great care in picking your enemies , because that who you will become

The very basic of any civilized country is that all it’s citizins have a right to a good education and free medical service. In the European Union they get that right. However each country runs it’s own education and health service and consequently it’s better in some than others. Citizens from one EU country are free to live and work in another EU country and also to use it’s free health service. I live in Spain and retired British living here often write to the papers praising the service here as being superior to the British one. From what I understand the main problem in Britain is that you have to wait so long.

However one does not need to use the free health service because you can also buy private health insurance which is reasonably cheap. I have private health insurance, but I doubt that it’s superior to the free Spanish service, but I do have a choice of doctors and can see one more convieniently. My insurance entitles me to see a doctor unlimited times, have every type of operation (I have just had 2 cataract) , X-rays, laboratory tests, private hospital accommodation, ambulance service etc.. In fact everything except any medicines you may have to buy once you leave hospital. I am 81 years old and that costs me 483.29€ every 3 months .... or about US$677.

It is not only a moral obligation for a country to give it’s citizens a good education and making sure that they stay healthy but it is also making an investment in the future of that country.

jmr—I was treated under the Danish system when I lived there and considered it the best in the world. Drs live middle class—they need to learn how to do that here. They are just workers like everyone else. And, as is obvious by US standards, they DO make mistakes.

The argument that “its so small” doesnt really hold water, when you consider that the EU is getting larger, and, that the population is about 36 million. Also, the “its easy when its not diverse” is bull, because canada and Austrailia are certainly diverse, and they do it. Also, EU countries are becoming more and more diverse. Holland has a very well regulated multiple payer system. Its just excuses. We could also start at the state level, as Kucinich and Sanders have suggested.

In 2003, Obama said that, what he needed to pass a single payer health care system was, “a Dem House, Senate and presidency”—-there it is….where is it???
Rep Wiener got a floor vote on a Medicare for All vote , in the House Energy and Commerce comm last night—-several supported him. We should support them.

The GOP won out on the patents on Rx drugs part—thats bad, because it is one of out greatest expenses.

It’s a matter of money and medical accounting.  When you have a myriad of insurance carriers, comprehensive medical accounting becomes an impossibility and as the medical profession, hospitals, and drug companies increase their profits (cost to the patient), the insurance carriers raise the rates accordingly and everybody is happy except the ones paying the bill over and above the insurance coverage.

A single payer system is an abomination to the above groups because then medical accounting becomes feasible.  With a single payer system, over time, profits will be attenuated, salaries adjusted, and duplicate costs almost eliminated.  I have a colleague who is a civil engineer and of Italian heritage.  Once on a trip to Italy, he learned that in that country doctors and engineers make about the same salary——he was pleasantly surprised.  That’s what a single payer does——evens the playing field——would that work here???

Yes, glider, it may be that the only way we arrive at single-payer is incrementally. 

In my view, the ultimate model is the Danish system.  Basically, no one is billed directly for healthcare.  The doctors are well paid, but of course not on the corrupt fee-for-service basis we have here.  Anyway, what happens is this: you can opt for public or private care (though most folks opt in because their taxes pay for it in any event).  If you opt for private care, you pay all.  If you opt for public care and must wait over 60 days for treatment (of course, there’s no wait for acute care), the state will cover private care.  In Germany, you may opt out of the public coverage if you have over a certain income, but most who could opt out to stay in, because the quality of public care is so good.

Of course, the objection to Denmark has always been that, “it’s a small country blah blah blah….”  Same with Taiwan, which has a splendid system.  As if these plans weren’t scalable.  As if we weren’t capable of adopting what works elsewhere and modifying it to our own requirements.

Anyway, the bloated complexity of Obamacare, which turns everybody off, is due solely to the contortions required to accommadate the profit interests.  This has been the fatal flaw of every universal healthcare plan to date.  No one has had the courage or the juice to stand up to the barons and say, Screw you!

The one glimmer of hope is that it appears there’s a consensus that there must be a public option.  This is a true start.

By the way, thanks, glider, for actually listening to Relman.  I went in skeptical, but learned something from this wise old head.  He doubtless could have addressed the issues more fully but was constrained by the time.

“Just exactly what small problem did the internet intervene in?”

What disaster did it create?

jmr,
“Glider, part of Relman’s point is that Obamacare would be worse than nothing, because it would fail to halt the spiraling expenses”

Yes, I listened to Relman and agree with his points about single payer being the ultimate solution.  Kucinich likes the ObamaCare bill on this basis, if it includes his amendment to allow states to initiate their own single payer system, but even he may otherwise be against it.  I recall only a sentence or two by Relman saying in a rather non-quantitative way that “ObamaCare” would be more expensive.  I am not sure anyone disagrees with that statement and there are CBO cost projections that it will be more expensive.  Relman’s main focus was on single payer and salaried doctors as the solution to “containing costs”. 

However, this is not the only goal!  Providing a safety net of basic health care to all citizens is even more critical and has its own benefits.  Relman does not address the issue from that side of the equation.  Understandably Relman may have a physicians bias that colors his opinion.  Basically, a bill with a strong public plan (payment based on Medicare rates) will immediately hit physicians hard.  As has been said already many do not accept Medicare only payments and seniors typically have supplemental private insurance.  At the same time it is much less clear how fast and to what extent insurance companies will be effected.  So while doctors will be left absorbing much of the cost savings they will still be left with the administrative PIA of dealing with private insurance bureaucracy on top of it all!  Do you start to get the idea why they may not like ObamaCare so much?

However (again), it is arguable that the best interest of U.S. citizens may be served by passing an ObamaCare bill with a strong public plan.  Obama after a beer or two may confess to you that he is a pragmatist.  He may be right in spite of my frustration with his distasteful accommodations.  It may just be that you can not get anything done in this country without doing it in small incremental steps.  So getting coverage for most citizens may be a very significant step indeed and later increments can effect other needed changes down the road.  I doubt even Obama thinks ObamaCare 1 is the final solution.

“For example, take that government invention you’re using:  the Internet.  It is an utter disaster.”

Just exactly what small problem did the internet intervene in?  Besides, I thought Al Gore invented it like he invented Gore Bull Warming.

Rick

“Besides, if I’ve learned nothing else in my lifetime I’ve learned that there is no problem so small that government intervention can’t make it a disaster.”

For example, take that government invention you’re using:  the Internet.  It is an utter disaster. 

After seeing some reports about how bad that bill is, I downloaded a copy from my Congressman’s web site.  All I can say is that no honest representative can vote for that bill, because I don’t believe there’s a rep who read it let alone understood it.

There are many horror stories of people dying while on waiting lists to see doctors in other countries with government run health care.  With this monstrosity, I can easily picture Americans dying waiting for judicial rulings.  I can only see lawyers as beneficiaries of this bill.

Forget about so-called “democracy” when Congress passes bills like this.  The bill should be broken down into manageable segments, each dealing with a separate aspect so that all may understand it.  I don’t want my representatives voting for any bill that is too complex for the layman to understand.  How are we to be represented, if we can’t intelligently instruct our representatives how to vote on bills.

Besides, if I’ve learned nothing else in my lifetime I’ve learned that there is no problem so small that government intervention can’t make it a disaster.

Rick
http://PhreedomPhan-lostliberty.blogspot.com
http://phreedomphan-americasenemies.blogspot.com

I’ve always said that politicians are deeply superficial people and I now think that the notorious ‘13’ politicians are evidence that some are shallowly superficial people.

True, they’re supposed to work for the interests of their states/districts/constituencies, but when doing so sacrifices the economic viability of the country as a whole, they need to stuff it and work for what’s economically sound for the nation.

If they don’t, when this ship goes down (which it will if we don’t scrap our existing non-health care system), they and their constituents will go down right along with it. (A derelict ghost ship sitting on the bottom of an ocean is not a pretty sight.)

Bastards!

driving bear,
I was responding to what you wrote to spirit girl. Thanks for elaborating your position.  However, health care reform is about the health of all citizens.  There are plenty of people in the 40-60 year old age bracket that are dying from the current system.  The idea that if everyone gets Medicare there will be no one left to pass your expenses onto (while a valid concern) is certainly not a reason to accuse these other people (your current benefactors) of being “Nazis”.

Glider, part of Relman’s point is that Obamacare would be worse than nothing, because it would fail to halt the spiraling expenses which are driving the economy to ruin (as if the banks haven’t already).

I know the conventional wisdom is that single-payer is politically unfeasible.  Already, Obamacare is being tarred by the liars of the healthcare industry lobby as “killing the elderly” and “socialized medicine”.  Of course, since the biggest voting block in the nation is the elderly, scaring hell out of them is as effective as bribing the 13 obstructionists.  Imagine the field day they’d have with single-payer.

But single-payer is in fact the simplest, cheapest, most effective and most practical solution.  What “it’s politically unfeasible” really means is that we don’t have the political will to push it through, by educating the people and pushing the politicians to do the right thing.  If we could push single-payer with a clear, loud, persistent voice, I think the American people will see through the “socialized medicine” bogeyman.

Actually, I have heard some politicians talk recently of using the clinic model, like the Mayo, and private coöperatives, like the German model.  These would be fine.  The problem with any rationalization of the healthcare mess are those who, as Ira Flatow says, are profiting off sick people.

In fact, I see the healthcare industry as not unlike the NRA—the sick industry and the death industry perpetuating themselves through bribery, lies and fear-mongering.

to glider

First off read what I wrote to Sprit Girl

second under this bill medicare part C goes away

Also people in the south know that medicare only pays a part of serious medical care cost.

here in the south many doctors ( especially specialist ) will not accept patients who have only medicare because medicare only pays a limited amount.

Also doctors and hospitals transfer the cost that medicare does not pay onto others.

So if the whole nation goes onto a medicare type plan who is going to be left to pass the cost that medicare does not pay onto

I used to work in health care, years ago.  RAM shouldn’t even have to set up free health care clinics in America.  I am ashamed to see what health care has become, my father deserved better treatment than he got and he was supposedly in the best hospital with the best doctors and staff in this area, and it’s deemed, defended and supported as “the acceptable standards of care”.  Mitch McConnell and his buddies don’t have a clue on what is called the best health care in the world.

http://www.wisecountyissues.com/?p=62

The conservatives are getting too much advice from the Lewin Group aka UnitedHealthCare who are setting record breaking profits which enables them to spend $1.4 million per day lobbying greedy politicians who care more about padding their filthy pockets than the status quo concerning quality health care for America.

Driving Bear,
Thanks, I will read that portion of the bill and I would understand that as a legitimate concern for seniors.  But are you contending that the current private system does not consider age and expense of care and allows you to effectively appeal their decisions better than does Medicare?  Currently I know private health insurance is strongly biased against aging people as they escalate there cost of coverage as you age, so effectively they already do deny coverage for older folks.  Also would you favor the bill if that portion was removed?

David,

Boy, did this article hit a nerve with me. I found it exasperating that a small group of mostly conservative Democrats could not only hold the rest of Congress hostage but by default the entire country. It reminded me of the way a small group of Republican legislators held the state of California hostage over the state budget because of the requirement to have a 2/3 majority to pass a budget. And of course every four years, we face a scenario of states like Ohio and Missouri deciding the fate of our national election because of our ridiculous electoral college system. What was really annoying was having Republicans and conservative Democrats telling us that “America want to move slowly on health care reform”. My God, how much slower can these idiots move? Our health care problems are not exactly recent news and with every passing day just get worse. We should have fixed our health care problems decades ago when they were much more easily fixable. Obama is correct - this is one care we literally cannot afford to kick down the road. But that aside, these legislators are lying to us - We voted for change last November and now a very small minority are trying to deny us that change.

jmr

Yeah, Relman is absolutely right but our leadership is not providing Single Payer as an option, and as Relman himself points out they are unlikely to ever do so voluntarily. So the question becomes is the proposed “Obamacare” plan better than the status quo?  I believe the answer is yes if it has a strong public plan.  Hopefully, as the crisis gets more severe we will go towards his solution.