OPM other people’s money until there is none left

So much hate comes from the liberals, why?
This is tragic to say the least. I hope everything works out for them. The right would not say let them die, they would say poor universal health care is not the answer. When the government starts to let everyones parents die due to decisions being made that it is not cost effective to treat the elderly, who most likely worked hard all of their lives and truly deserve to be helped, affordable care will have shown its true colors. I beleive everyone deserves to get treatment with decisions being made by family and doctors.

Please advise when your contribution has been mailed, so sell your assets, and give big, just like Zippy and his demon-crats are doing on a daily basis, Right

Perhaps they couldn’t afford the pill. Perhaps their birth control method failed. Perhaps they are Christians of a sort that doesn’t believe in birth control. At any rate, they didn’t opt for abortion, which I personally would have done. They chose to do what the right would want them to do and now are being called irresponsible. We don’t know their reasoning and should not judge them. Everyone has a right at least to catastrophic health coverage.

it’s the “wealth” the kid is amassing working at target ( or walmart or any other entry level, low wage, no benefit job )

Frank, your good wishes for the Nation notwithstanding, I’ve got to put a couple of questions to you. First what is “minimum healthcare”, legislators are not medical practitioners – since you point to cooperation (given current national discourse), obviously you see this as a national mandate. Leaving aside the role of employers, who else should be ‘made’ responsible for an individual’s “healthcare”? It’s a very broad subject, potentially, making sure someone gets enough exercise, proper nutrition, etcetra before we even reach trauma and post-trauma medical care. Even if we limit the discussion to treatment of the innocent victims of crime, we do have a legal system (such as it is) to work out who may be financially responsible for failures of security and so on. One way or another someone will foot the bill for these medical expenses. Will the victims ever be restored to the condition prior to the crime? No, that’s a given because it is impossible – so to suggest the impossible and then blame “legislators” (or even the NRA & ‘tea party’ as Conason has done) is to perpetuate the insidious theme of the article.

The country started talking back in the Clinton administration about “assault weapons”. Originally the reference was that some firearms were look-alike products of modern military automatic firearms (like AKs and NATO style M16 derivatives). The problem for folks like Conason (who are not factually detail-oriented) is they have cut corners to imply that fully automatic firearms are actually legal for sale in this country. You could purchase one, but it would take a very high level firearms license. What you can purchase is an auto-loading (not manual) firearm that only looks like an “assault weapon”. They are not actually suitable for military assaults, except in the broadest sense of the word. So to call for a ban on “assault weapons” is a bit of a red-herring. Proponents want to use the vague term to disarm the general population, depending on your point of view that might be a good thing or a bad thing. My opinion is that; should they accomplish this, only “law enforcement” and criminals would have fire arms. The general population would be entirely dependent on others for their personal safety (can anyone say TSA and any other initials?) with our personal responsibility being only the time and location of our victim-hood.

Where “socialistic concepts” come in is that many European countries (of smaller size and often, more homogeneous cultures) have disarmed their populations. They lacked the fundamental right confirmed to Americans by our Constitution to not be disarmed by their Government. Those countries are usually left-leaning and thus the charge that this disarming is a socialistic tactic.

What medical assistance are they getting? So long as you’re pretending to know. They’re not going to be poor enough for medicaid.

This is generally the last answer of conservatives on the coverage crisis– denial.

You state: “Ten people shooting back at the gunman would have changed the outcome dramatically!” In the darkness of the theater and with all the pandemonium, without doubt the original shooter would not be the only “target”. Several of the vigilantes would undoubtedly have been mistakenly targeted by the other vigilantes!

You said it all my friend!!!

Cindy… If you want lower costs health insurance, you only need to look at the efficiency and low cost of the auto insurance market and auto repair industry. What we have now is NOT “health insurance” but prepaid healthcare where most of us bear the brunt of the few high cost consumers instead of bearing the risks of our own personal health habits. Your car insurance is based almost exclusively on your personal risk profile and history, allowing for geography and type of car you drive. It does not pay for every oil change or new breaks or maintenance. It does pay for the big bills that you could not afford if you had to. And, there is almost NO government involvement in it. That’s why it’s highly competitive, efficient, low cost, and widely available.

Have a nice day!

What the heck does your post have to do with Holmes, his family and affordable health care?

Where are the moderators?

Obozo? Are you in middle school?

Comparing health care to car maintenance? OMG, that’s unworthy of you. Give it some more thought. You can’t solve everything through ecoonomics. Auto insurance companies do have “death panels.” If your car is too expensive or too old to repair, they “total it out.” Are you suggesting that method for health care? I suppose, economically speaking, that could lower health care expenses, but I’ll let you propose that, not me.

Have a nice day!

It’s fitting that you chose to use ‘bozo’ in your moniker, because you are the clown of the entire forum.

Just for a moment, I’ll pretend that you aren’t a rabid bigot whose primary goal in life is hating on President Obama because he’s black and you hate it. Long enough, mind you, to address your latest argument, which has become eerily lucid by chance (although still dead wrong).

Health Insurance akin to Auto Insurance? Exactly the same principle? Are you typing all this with a straight face?

First, autos are inanimate objects. We don’t need or want as much regulation on auto insurance or the auto industry in general as we do in health care. Why? Well, for starters we don’t really care what grimy old wrench a mechanic uses on our cars, but you bet your ass that we care whether a doctor re-uses hypodermic needles. Since we care about it we impose regulations on it, otherwise some unscrupulous clown (hint, hint) would try to save a buck by cutting corners to the detriment of the patient.

Second, all people have health care needs. It may be more or less than others, but all have them. People cannot opt out of illness or injury, but they can opt out of auto expenses by taking the bus or walking.

Third, quite some time in the distant past our ancestors (those with the bigger brains, anyway) found that by banding together and assisting one another we could ensure a better survival rate for our species. I’ll admit that in your case, Bozo, this may seem to be of questionable value, but for most it still holds true.

So stop trying to equate tires and gasoline with health care expenses. I don’t remember my insurance ever paying for tennis shoes or beer either. One reason that health care is expensive is that it’s important. Another is that private insurers and health companies will try to make as much money as possible – even to the point of fixing prices (which has happened). But the real point that will prove you a lying sycophant is this:

Medicare, a single payer government-run health option, is vastly more efficient that the private alternatives. Medicare overhead expenditures are about 2 percent. The current Affordable Care Act law allows private companies up to 20 percent overhead before they must by law pay refunds to their customers.

So in reality, if you weren’t a lying slug but were actually concerned with cost you’d opt for a single payer option. Of course you won’t, and we know why.

You may now return to your hating on the black man in the White House.

You Sir, are an Idiot

Just lovin’ the r.w.n.j.’s who call everything “socialized”. Clearly ignorant of what “socialized” means. You state, “We have socialized prepaid healthcare.” That is so wrong as to be laughable. “Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership, control of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy,[1] and a political philosophy advocating such a system. “Social ownership” may refer to cooperative enterprises, common ownership, direct public ownership or even autonomous state enterprises.” Socialized anything MEANS public ownership. So exactly what part of our insurance system is government- or publicly-owned? Can you enlighten us as to the MEANS of production owned by the government? Having laws governing the industry does not constitute ownership.

You also gloss over the activities of the states in our current situation. Obama’s gotta go, you say, but Obama is not the problem. It’s the states that regulate most of our health insurance market, and hospitals, clinics and all the rest. There are very few Federal laws pertaining to health care. That’s a huge part of the problem. If I buy my insurance in NJ, but go to Florida on vacation, have the misfortune to get sick or be hurt in an accident, I’m facing the possibility of having no coverage at all in that state. Think on that a bit. You believe it’s a good idea to be a captive of your state due to your insurance?

I realize you think you’re clever and that you’ve hit upon the best analogy ever but, no-o-o-o, it’s weak and sad, exposing your lack of comprehension of the issues we face. It’s rather pathetic to compare auto insurance with health insurance. Cars do not equal humans. You don’t die if your car is in a fender-bender or gets hit by a runaway shopping cart, or has a tree fall on it. But if you don’t get regular health checkups/maintenance, you will in fact die sooner than those who have access to health care maintenance.

Furthermore, your auto insurance is not tied to your job. If you lose your job or change jobs, you still have your same auto insurance. But if you lose your job, you lose your health care. Purchasing personal health care is way more expensive than being part of a group (economies of scale). Additionally, if you find yourself in Florida and you have an accident, all you have to do with your auto insurance is demonstrate that you do still in fact live in the state of purchase, regardless of where you travel to.

Every developed country in the world, and even many undeveloped countries “get” that there are many reasons for universal health care:
1. A healthy population is more productive than an unhealthy population. Many view health care as a human right, and understand that it benefits the country as well.
2. Economies of scale: you can negotiate better prices when representing larger groups of people and amortizing costs over healthy and unhealthy populations.
3. You don’t lose medical coverage when you lose or change jobs.
4. Countries w/social health care do not permit advertizing for health care companies (what for? It’s state run), and they don’t run ads for pharmaceuticals. This alone is worth billions in savings.
5. There are no extravagant salaries, bonuses and golden parachutes for execs. No shareholders, no profit goals required. Further savings in billions.
6. Medicare overhead is 1.5%-2% while private insurance companies have operating costs that run between 12%-30%. So, for those who claim that government-run anything is de-facto poorly run, Medicare exposes that lie.

It’s not about “fair”, it’s about what’s smart and what’s right. Even in countries with socialized medicine, it’s still possible for the wealthy to purchase cadillac policies for such things as private hospital rooms, internet and TV inclusion, dietary upgrades, etc. Some of this policies will support “alternative” treatments, including message, chiropractic and acupuncture. You can still show off your wealth if you wish, or get the superior perks that your importance is so deserving of.

Last but not least: Obamacare as was passed is a gift to the insurance companies. By bringing in more purchasers of insurance, the risk for the companies is spread over the healthy and the unhealthy. There will still be private insurance for all who want. Those that cannot afford it can resort to the new expanded Medicare. The way insurance companies operate now is by charging more for insurance because very few young and healthy people purchase insurance. So the insurance companies try to make up for that by denying “pre-existing conditions”. This leaves a lot of people uninsured, who then become a burden on the entire country because they cannot pay for their medical bills. So those costs are reflected in higher insurance rates and escalating costs for hospital and medical. As I say, it’s not about being “fair”, it’s about being smart.

Is it possible that you don’t have a job and have a few mental problems of your own?

Sheila, please, please turn off Fox News and talk radio. You are being lied to. You are being a victim to the very propaganda you preach about. You are being used, manipulated by angry men who are insane over the election of a man of color to the highest office in the world. They simply cannot bear it and will tell people anything to try to undo what has been done. Your #3 point is the only one that makes any sense at all. But, you need to include in that comment: we should stop going into other nations, destroying them and then paying to rebuild them. If you at least understood that, then possibly you would be able to realize that our incessant wars are unnecessary, serving only to enrich the top 1% of our country.

As far as the TP goes, as long as there are people who persist in the notion that President Obama is “foreign”, or not legitimate in some way, an “alien” who “lied”, then neither the TP nor any of its followers can ever be taken seriously. You need to take your own advice, “Look to the individual always, get the whole story to make an informed opinion.” Your opinion is not informed in any way, and that has been proven over and over again. You, my friend, are listening to the wrong people. Believe this: if President Obama had done even one thing that was impeachable, he would have been impeached. There are that many out there who hate him. But, he is not impeachable, he has done nothing wrong, and the hate is based on ignorance and fear.

So, you either need to enlighten/educate yourself, or crawl into your delirious world of fear and hate, and become one of those painfully misguided pawns in the game of right wing mania. You are more to be pitied than scorned. I’m very sorry for you.