After more than a year of debate I find I am more confused about health care reform, and more conflicted about rooting for/against the current bill than I was in the beginning. I believe whatever reasonably well-made argument I hear or read last. Just when Krugman makes me think it’s better than nothing, Brooks makes me think it’s a train wreck waiting to happen.
I know the Republicans are lying because I can see their lips moving, but that by-no-means dictates that the Democrats are telling the truth. And how about the Congressional Budget office report that the bill saves $138 billion in the first ten years, a rounding error in the Federal budget, but will save over a trillion dollars in the second ten years?
That’s great, but who is going to call them on it in 2030 when the facts are all in and they fall short? It’s hard to believe the CBO had time to even read the whole bill let along construct a twenty-year detailed economic impact model of it.
Plus they are still wheeling and dealing in the Capitol Building this weekend in an effort to buy enough votes to pass this pig. It would be so easy to talk myself into opposing the bill, and yet all I have to do is spend five minutes thinking about dealing with my own medical insurance issues to get mad at the obstructionist coalition of insurance companies, big pharma, and their toadies in Congress to feel the opposite. I can only imagine how I’d feel if I had no insurance.
What is everyone else thinking about this bill?
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My thoughts are simple: 30 million more under the tent and no more preexisting conditions. As Dennis Kucinch said, "It's a beginning."
First of all i commend you for having the balls to quote DK. i thought only Gaga would do that.
That said, the costs and the unknown components don't scare you?
A 2,700 page bill? I would vote no just on that fact alone. Scrape it and start over. I do not see what the rush is all about.
I would rather they take their time, streamline the bill and pass something that makes sense.
I'm all for it. I'm also for universal, single payer health care but that's not going to happen -- yet. The fact that insurance companies can force children off the parents program when they turn 22 (and by the way the premium doesn't go down a nickel)regardless of their status as students is a hot button issue for me. This gets corrected in this bill and right away.
It is a start and I love how the CBO numbers are either gospel or bullsh** depending on what you thought going in.
If this one sinks, no party in their right mind will touch it till well after the flesh is off the bones of everyone on this thread. It is sinkhole into which an politician will avoid at all costs. The good might be the enemy of the mediocre.
But let's just look at it this way: if the Republicans are against it, I'm for it. Tar and feather Joe Lieberman to boot and I might actually smile.
It's a start. It will evolve. Social Security, Medicare and the Civil Rights Acts did. 30 million more covered. People can leave their jobs. There will be exchanges where people can purchase competitively. Plus, anything to turn John Boner's (sorry, Boehner's) brown skin blue.
Fenway made a great point, one that I heard Nancy Pelosi make the other day, that people can leave their jobs. This is a big, liberating, quality of life issue for those that have been chained to a job they couldn't leave because of health insurance.
As to the costs d'blank - I'm no more afraid of these costs than any number of other expenses that need to be reined in or our children are in a heep of trouble. I believe this is a first step in getting health care costs under some sort of control.
I volunteer at a nonprofit agency. Most of the people who come in looking and asking for assistance - food, clothes, financial, and now HUD is helping with donations, are people who came out of the woodwork and voted BO into the Presidency. I've seen grown men cry because of their situation and there are no jobs for them.
From what I just read Medicaid cards have started being shut out of places like Walgreens in the state of Washington. What happens when it spreads to other/all states. Does this mean that emergency rooms will eventually no longer take people with no insurance at all?
I dont believe for a second that all the people in Dr white coats backing BO on tv are actual DRs. There arnt enough Drs as it is and there will be a whole lot of them that will quit if they have to give the government the rest of their control like they did with the HMOs.
What a crappy situation for all the people hoping for a positive change in their lives. The ones that stepped up front - maybe for the first time - and voted for that man that is the POS.
I'm having a hard time with the math. They raise and collect taxes over 10 years and only pay out over the last six years and it saves $138B. Creative political accounting. So over the next 10 years it's suppose to save trillions more?
If the President and the Dems really wanted health care reform, they would have started over after the summit. This is about controling 1/6 of the nation's economy and the power that it brings.
The only people that will benifit from this are the ones that received the bribes and the sweetheart deals.
Funny DB, I saw DK last night on Bill Mayer & he still makes plenty of sense. He said & I agree that the politics of fear prevent people from making rational decision that would benefit themselves.
The inability to get this bill done is based on two things. One, we'r still fighting Commies(socialism) & two, we'v forgotten that the purpose of the collective is to care for each other,especially those who cant take care of themselves. Fat ass living in the burbs on his union pension cant see the working poor over the fence. He thinks the brother downtown cant afford the doctor because his money is going in his arm.
The bottom line for me on this bill is that for millions of people its not called "health care reform." It's called "health care."
We are the greatest nation on the planet because we.....?
I want to get this straight: only the Democrats have an agenda. They are all in on this nefarious plot to destroy democracy as we know it. The bill has no redeeming value if we sell our birthright.
1 The power of the Presidency borders on illusionary.
2 Both parties are horns on the same bull. I think d'blank has established this.
3 The Democrats may have their share of corporate influence, but they are mainly characterized by ineptness rather than subterfuge.
4 Medicare exists. People like it. It works. If you want pure, go to the Republican camp, they are purely obstructionist, having nothing to do with your interests, rather a play for power.
5 The Democrats actually have to do something, the Republicans merely have to try to trip as many feet as they can.
6 Hypocrisy is endemic in every quarter. Everyone is selling used cars, including the Tea Party.
7 You might not like paying for this piece of legislation, but it is a start to solving a situation for which the Democrats and Obama was elected, notwithstanding what Mitch McConnell might profess.
8 I don't know who looks more constipated, Mitch McConnell or Harry Reid.
9 The country is broken whether this goes through or not. You owe China big time.
10 The past party in power (now who were they?) got us in Iraq and Afghanistan where we sit with leeches over the US Treasury and the only things moving of any importance are body bags, promoting "Democracy" to the barbarians. And that party is talking about saving our money?
11 If you don't stop listening to Glenn Beck, you are going to grow warts on your tool.
Jon Daily's Glenn Beck impression is one of the funniest things I've ever seen:
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-march-18-2010/conservative-libertarian
The best plan would be single payer. There are too many special interests...people making a ton of money...to allow it. So we will continue to pay 15% of our GDP, the highest in the developed world, to have greater infant mortality and a shorter life span.
A conservative writer friend of mine, author of two books who writes for a couple of conservative publications, will, in private, always refer to those without health care as "deadbeats."
In his and many of his reader’s minds, all people without insurance are shiftless minorities who want him to look after them.
I would believe the right wing more, if to stop deficit spending and government control of health care, they proposed abolishment of Medicare. Until they do that, I suspect that their opposition is just politics.
Just because the Republicans are lying doesn't mean the Democrats are telling the truth.
I know we are in real trouble when we start quoting Dennis Kucinich.
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