R.E.S...P.E.C.T. , All I Want Is A Little...

I don't know, maybe some of us like women... or even are women. The GOPers made a real big point of telling us they "love women" and about what a tough job they have. The biggie in delivering that "love" was Anne r-Money with her slew of affordable spawn. It may have escaped the notice of the GOPers that Ann and Mittens r-Money could have afforded another 25 or 30 rug rats and if any medical issues came up it would take pocket change for them access the best care in the world. Well, the Democrats invited somebody who thinks women have brains and ethics and that liking them or loving them includes letting them exercise those assets.



What the hell could I add to this? Maybe I could suggest to my mostly male* readership that you go hug your wife, girl friend, or lady pal and tell her that you trust the female gender because you actually respect them. Is that real hard - to respect women?

*if you're not male, tell him or her - well, you can figure it out for yourself...

Oh, and by the way... DAMN, how much better a place is this world for the fact that Aretha has been in it?

Here's A Real Pisser

Dr. Jack Cassell's Mount Dora practice says, "If you voted for Obama, seek urologic care elsewhere. Changes to your healthcare begin right now, not in four years."

I suppose there's something to be said about this, I'm just damn unsure what...

Oh, this is Florida ...

Socialized Medicine

Which Democrat is going to stand up to the "socialized medicine" crap and point out that with hospitals required to provide emergency care that we already have the most bastardised ineffective possible socialized medicine? Effectively, bankrupted and uninsured consumers of health care are covered by the costs of the Federal programs and private insurance - all laid directly on taxpayers. There is no point in telling the teabaggery crowd anything. The rest of America? Well, one can hope.

This Is What You're Up Against

One of the more coherent and less threatening comments at "FreeRepublic.com." (No, I won't link them - doubt it - go find it)

I know exactly what you mean. After the vote went down, I went outside and looked at the sky. I had the thought this this wasn’t a sky over America anymore, and there is no America now, and it felt like America just disappeared into the night’s sky, and now I was standing on someone else’s land, someone else’s home, and I could never go home again.

I will forever look at others as strangers, wondering, “Whose side were you on the night it all disappeared?”

This is the night that Ben Franklin feared when he replied to the question as to what they, the founders had given us, “A republic, if you can hold it.” We failed. We failed to stop the media from destroying George Bush to the point that America thirsted for Democrat rule. The media started the Reichstag fire, and we stood by without even lunging for a water hose.



48 posted on Sunday, March 21, 2010 8:29:06 PM by chilltherats (First, kill all the lawyers (now that they ARE the tyrants).......)

Here's the deal:
You know I didn't like the Senate Bill and I don't even think all that much of the Reconciliation. But... The status quo going forward years and years is not acceptable and what the GOP would be willing to actually do (who the hell knows?) would be so damn plutocratic and FYIGM that it would be worse than the status quo.

OK, the Freepers are loons, trolls like to call me a Leftard - I look real mild next to that bunch - but the Orange One (Boehner) already called out their strategy from the House floor. You cannot defend the Bill, you have to go on the offense and SELL it. It is hopeless to try to defend the thing in an election; with enough bad in it they've had to lie their asses off already in opposition. There is enough good in the Bill to win by campaigning on it. How many Democratic Congressmen will do so is open to question - political nerve is always in short supply.

***BTW, Ben Franklin would've called this putz a Tory and tried to get him tarred and feathered***

NRO, Some Places You Don't Go

If you purport to be a Democrat there are some places you don't go to in an effort to make your case. Rush Limbaugh might be one such place, another very sure to make the list outfit is National Review. NRO isn't a kind of middle right sort of place, it is full out wingnut land full of Randian stupidities and neo-con chest beating. Maybe Bart Stupack is at home there - for some indefinable reason, since he is nominally a Democrat. Residence in The Family's "C" St home and close association with Catholic Bishops might explain such a brain fart as going to NRO, but clearly there is something amiss in Stupack land.

If Obamacare passes, Stupak says, it could signal the end of any meaningful role for pro-life Democrats within their own party. “It would be very, very hard for someone who is a right-to-life Democrat to run for office,” he says. “I won’t leave the party. I’m more comfortable here and still believe in a role within it for the right-to-life cause, but this bill will make being a pro-life Democrat much more difficult. They don’t even want to debate this issue. We’ll probably have to wait until the Republicans take back the majority to fix this.”

So this Democrat figures the Republicans are his only ally? Whoa... Maybe there's a problem with his reasoning. Since the Hyde Amendment prohibits the use of Federal monies for abortion there must be a bit more to it. Stupack's idea is that the problem is that paying for an abortion rider out of pocket doesn't avoid the Federal money that got into a subsidy. There is some logic to this, but taken to Stupack's stupidity level you have to understand that those Catholic Bishops he's taking his orders from are just pedophiles since those collection plate tithes paid for priests to abuse boys and from there paid those pedophilia Bishopric salaries. Oh, they didn't do the dirty deed of sex with boys? Same money there pal, in fact with this close association to "C" St that would mean money makes Stupack an adulterous pedophiliac Nigerian gay executioner. Some of us are fairly clear on who his allies are...

“They’re ignoring me,” he says, in a phone interview with National Review Online.

I've lived in Northern Michigan and the UP of Michigan and I have to tell you that beyond my parents, there are a lot of nice people there that aren't anything like Bart... I really wish we all could ignore Bart.

Make Or Break Health Insurance Bill

If you think this blog is going to get used to call the Senate's pile of steaming crap something good, you need a box of rocks to improve your IQ. It reeks of stupidity and short-sightedness and corporate greed. If health insurance and more largely the health care industry is a vehicle running on four flats this thing amount to airing the tires back up, part way, and maybe patching one. At some point we're going to be back on the rims and grinding them off with the owners of air compressors refusing to let any more air get used. Yes it stinks - yes it needs to be passed.

The reason, and laugh at the we'll fix it rhetoric, is that the alternative is to leave the status quo in place until the wheels fall off and the suffering is sufficient to force the corporate hacks in Congress to do something. That would mean that somewhere approaching half the nation was dying or being bankrupted because only the rich and near rich could afford insurance. That might not be enough...really.

Even the reeking garbage that the Senate passed won't take effect immediately, it sits out there in the future. If you wait out the crash, those already screwed will suffer longer and their numbers will swell and there still is no guarantee. The mess this Congress has been capable of producing will have some palliative effect and guarantees its eventual failure but should demonstrate quite effectively what failure looks like without the long delay. Yes, the enriched groups will have more money for influence but their credence in the argument should be completely undercut.

The Senate is not going to cough up with much to fix the real problems. Some of the egregious junk like the Nelson vote buying will probably get some kind of repair but there is no real will in either the House or the Senate for methods that would affect the spiraling costs and monopolistic practices. Pass this thing because it is all you're going to get and because its built in flaws will force real correction - sometime real late in the game.

I won't bother calling my Rep because Greg Walden (R -OR 02) is as plutocratic and screw the regular guy as it gets... Yours might be a bit more amenable.

Health Care...Redux

I have to say that I'm glad I'm not a Democrat trying to fluff the Senate Bill, but I'm much happier I'm not a Republican trying not to look like a plutocrat while doing their shilling. You'd think, in a world where voters count, that Democrats could figure out that a Public Option polling at 60% and over versus the crappy numbers for the Senate Bill means something. That it doesn't, does mean something.

Yes, watching Rep Wiener call Republicans a "wholly owned subsidiary of the Insurance Companies" was gratifying, but the net was cast a bit narrowly since it missed a whacking big chunk of the Democratic Senate Caucus. Nope, you're not supposed to shiv your fellow Party elected officials and that is part of the problem. We do have the best health care in the world that big money can buy and we do have the best Government big money can buy. You do understand that if wealth were suffering under the health care we have that it would have been fixed long ago.

Religion Trumps Health

Boy, don't get yourself into a Terri Schiavo position in a Catholic Hospital. You may think you've covered the ground with an Advanced Directive but...

United States Conference of Catholic Bishops
58. In principle, there is an obligation to provide patients with food and water, including medically assisted nutrition and hydration for those who cannot take food orally. This obligation extends to patients in chronic and presumably irreversible conditions (e.g., the “persistent vegetative state”) who can reasonably be expected to live indefinitely if given such care.40

If you're bothered by this and particularly if your only hospital is a Catholic one then you might want to check Compassion and Choice. Those of you in urban areas might be surprised by being told that sometimes the only hospital is Catholic, well guess what.

A Must Pass Bill

I've been told that the Senate Health Care Reform bill is very important. The insurance mandates are not an evil and advance the health of Americans. I've watched and listened with a certain amount of fury mixed with amusement.

If there are any actual teeth in the regulations proposed about health insurance practices, the owners of policies may see some improvements. May see some improvements, so far I don't really see where it isn't about you hiring a lawyer.

I was under the impression that the mandates were about the health of Americans. If nothing gets Americans into doctors' offices rather than hospitals that would seem to be a chimera. Health is about staying the hell out of hospitals, that is a place for real serious problems and most real serious problems can be short circuited by primary care.

The Senate seems to think that uninsured Americans can cough up with a month wages to buy an insurance policy that will ... well what will it do? Real basic health insurance has high deductibles and low limits and lots of co-pays. Once you've stripped out a month wage from people on the very edge; what do they have left for co-pays and etc? What do they have to pay the deductibles with? You've just gotten into the hospital and have a $5000 bill that insurance won't cover and you can do what with that?

I suppose the rationale left for mandates is that the medium big hospital bills won't get passed on to everyone else. You've left me as to where that benefits Americans health. I do see some pretty good things happening for private insurance companies.

The Democratic Senatorial Corporate Shills

It is a whole lot of fun to bash hell out of the (L) Party member Lieberman and some of his co-conspirators like Nelson and Baucus and in some ways it is accurate enough. There is a bit more to it than that, well a lot more to it.

The Democratic Senate Caucus has enough votes to essentially end the career of any member of the Caucus. It is a real bad practice to do this to the opposition Party's membership, it encourages payback when majorities shift. It is a bad practice regarding floor votes because politicians need to be allowed their convictions and their constituency's interests. It is a whole 'nother kettle of fish where a procedural vote like cloture is involved. This is the Caucus' business and if it is important enough to the Caucus to bring the matter to the floor for a vote then they need to make sure it happens.

It is not that important to the Democratic Caucus. It is not a matter of sufficient import to that Caucus that minus any options other than the rapists of HealthInc a mandate to buy insurance remains. This is even more Halliburtonizaton of the public good. This is the Federal government adding more to the coffers of the same bunch that has driven this national fiasco, by fiat. This is BushCo's corporate welfare taken to extremes, it makes them pikers in that game.

You will buy their insurance and the taxpayers will make up the difference for some. You will get a handful of regulations that the industry will find ways to shit on. If you don't like what they do to you with your policy you will do what? Hire a lawyer? There is nobody and nothing to take your back, just you and your lawyer up against the richest corporations in the nation. There is nothing that will contain or control costs and no reason for the corporate rapists to act as though their rate payers mean spit next to their business models. They will "compete" with a couple of their fellows with exactly the same ends in mind and they aren't yours.

The Democratic Senators give exactly the damn you've seen them give, nothing. If you find a difference between what those Senators tell you and what is happening and what Joe Lieberman looks like - maybe you should listen to Lieberman. It is just this simple, Joe Lieberman is the Democratic Senate Caucus in operation. If that Senator of yours protests that this is too harsh; you're allowed to laugh in his face and ask just exactly what the results were and who allowed this. I will tell you flatly that there is not a majority in the Democratic Senate Caucus who give a damn about the difference or this would not be the result.

The Caucus knows what it can do to Lieberman and the other couple jerks, those jerks know what the Caucus could do; and they also know that they won't do it. They can act just exactly as they please on a procedural vote and there will be no repercussions. Not one damn thing.

The mandate should be a deal breaker for any Democrat as this mess stands. The rest of it is political window dressing and matters not the least other than as propaganda. If you think it means something and want to support it, then do so - minus that mandate. The mandate means that this is worse than the status quo, that BushCo still runs this country for the sole benefit of the plutocrats and your lot just got worse. Once HealthInc is sucking at the public tit in this manner they will never be removed from it and their influence in government will be multiplied by an exponential factor.

Yep, and you just got the President of the USA on your TV telling you that, "...not everybody will get what everybody wants..." and the only people who got what they wanted is Joe the Ho and his HealthInc buddies. You get talk. Yes, you good guy Senators, I am talking to YOU and about YOU. Go ahead and ask me and a bunch of people just like me for something again... Our name isn't Aetna - or Halliburton or Inc anything. I really figure the effort to fill in a space on a ballot is asking too goddam much. Show me I'm wrong - I ain't holding my breath, though.

Health Care (ahem) Reform

It begins to look as though the Senate version of health care reform will be composed of letting some older Americans "buy" into some sort of "Medicare" and piling some more customers into the HealthInc rapists' paths (on the public dime). There are some pretty good guys in the Senate Democratic Caucus, the operative word being some. Maybe it isn't fair to call the US Senate a wholly owned subsidiary of the Corporate World and HealthInc, but it is sufficiently so to make the lack of that absolute immaterial.

I'll wait awhile to absolutely lose my mind. While it is true that the longer legislation spends in Congress the generally less representative of the public good it is, it is also true that it generally changes. It might actually make some difference to Senatorial Hacks that nearly 60% of the voters want HealthInc to be forced to compete with an entity that actually holds the public's welfare in some esteem. It might not.

Er, probably not...

I'm The Most Important Person - Joementum

The Baucus debacle made Olympia Snowe as 1/40th of the Party Of No the most important person in the room. For some types of people such a thing is an untenable prospect, like say Joe Lieberman's supposed position on Health Care Reform.

Just to be clear, I think Joe is a complete dickhead, a tool of AIPAC only happy when we're blowing up something in the Middle East and a deficit hawk, especially while voting for unfunded warfare. It might be piling on to note Hartford and HealthInc.

If you live in CT it would behoove you to write something polite and persuasive to his office, you know the drill - business envelope, letterhead, proper salutation...

Mess With Us And We'll F**k You Up - AHIP

Association of Health Insurance Providers today, on the eve of the Baucus Bill vote in the Finance Committee, released a report commissioned from Price Watershouse Coopers that says the HealthInc bunch will raise rates 40% and then 70% and then 110% at the end of 10 years. I think you get the idea.

I shoot guns and I like them, but I don't much care for one held to my head. So...?

Death Merchants

As Keith Olberman noted in his extraordinarily good special comment last night, health care is about death. It is a major facet of our avoidance of that inevitable consequence of life. Very many people are very afraid of that ending. That fear can lead to all kinds of strange behavior, including going nuts over lying rat bastards' talking points about reform or spending outrageous sums to little or no effect to stave off death.

Here is a number Keith brought up, you are 40% more likely to die if you don't have health insurance. Health insurance companies make a fortune from selling a product that adds nothing to health care performance. Nothing whatever. What they sell is access to health care and, hopefully, the avoidance of economic catastrophe from accessing health care. Understand that what happens is that these outfits ensure that a good portion of the public die in the name of their profits. They ensure this by cutting out any recourse for the uninsured through political means and policy limits and exclusions.

Some of what is going on is a sociological problem, excessive fear of death. Death has been isolated from us, it seldom happens in the home - instead it is pushed into the cold sterile environment of hospitals. Very nearly death is something participated in only by conscious choice. Sure, we hear about it on the news and watch movies with horrendous body counts, but only at that distance. Mortuaries have removed the necessity of keeping a body in the home prior to burial and go to great efforts to prettify it. We are all going to die and while it may be reasonable to not unnecessarily court it, it is bad to be freaked out by the prospect.

Don't expect the health care reform project to be reasonable or even particularly rational, not in consideration of what it finally is about. It is about who gets to die and when and whether we give a damn. The Republicans have made it pretty clear that a whole bunch of people could do the nation a big favor and get around to dying.

Playing With Matches

It may not come as a news flash that the economy sucks and some people are getting hurt quite badly. It is also statistically males that are losing most jobs and that the hits are hardest in manufacturing, construction, and lower management - jobs primarily held by mid-aged white males. Here is a nasty statistic, non-family essentially random murders are primarily committed by ... white mid-aged males under stress, particularly economic stress buttressed by paranoiac conspiracy feelings regarding authority.

We have thrown into that mix a politically driven toxic waste, health care reform opposition. It was toxic enough when it involved just the term socialism, but it has advanced quite a ways since. National debt is no longer the talking point, it has become a Nazi program with euthanasia for the elderly, sick, and disabled promoted by people with the agenda of ruining the nation. This mantra is spouted by "respectable figures" like Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and the fake grassroots organizations of K St. It is said with authority and by people held in some esteem by a particular group. Sarah Palin refers to "Obama's death board" and Rush quite openly makes Nazi comparisons. The proposition being that the program is composed of truly vile actions taken by truly vile people against the defenseless by big government with an agenda.

The pictures and sound are everywhere as townhalls become increasingly chaotic and rage is showcased. There is the illusion of a mass movement of crushed citizenry in revolt against the faceless oppressors highlighted by the black face of Obama. People are being motivated by everything from racism to confusion with ignorance as the most common factor and rage as the result.

If one wished to mine very fertile ground for a couple people with serious issues that could end in murder these would be the tactics and the place for it. I would guess that it is a near certainty that someone or some will take these as their cues to commit a crime that is not only justified but that will have approval for having as its target someone not only deserving in this context but responsible in a larger sense for all that ails this nation - and the individual in action.

Rep Broun (R-GA) won't be packing the gun but his finger will be on the trigger, along with the rest of the irresponsible cretins playing at this political terrorism. Ginnning up imaginary devils to scare hell out of people is terrorism, the shouting isn't but when the shooting starts it will be. Some poor sick SOB will have had all his buttons pushed in this environment and an innocent will suffer. Yes, it will be a gun because bombs take way too much complicated preparation and time and the perpetrator will feel justified enough to desire to be present.

I can hope to be wrong and I do, but reason tells me that the outcome won't be happy. It can be hoped that such a person will be caught or otherwise short-circuited but that's a lot of wishing going on. The deliberate lies, hate speech, and fear mongering are going to have a result beyond the political inconvenience of some Democratic members of Congress. The really scary question is whether that is by design with some. Keep in mind that regardless of whether or how much blood is spilled these assholes will get re-elected, get their media salary, or get their corporate masters' wage without recrimination or consequences ... that'll be reserved for their accomplice and his victim.

I am scarcely the only one who sees this on any side of this debate and that should inform you as to their ethics and morality and the cost they're willing to make someone else pay. I don't have a broad enough range of expletives to tell you what I really think about these ... people.

Sixty Votes

Did you vote for a Democratic Senatorial candidate who won? Did you think you'd accomplished something? When Al Franken was finally certified did you think it meant something? Well, all of that stuff added up to a Senate with 60 (D) members. And so?

If you're a Democrat or paid attention to Democratic politics you'd know that monolithic is as far from descriptive of Democrats as it gets. There is damned little that you could get those 60 to agree on. I don't know who thinks meaningful health care reform is going to get all 60 of those votes. I don't like the idea of an ideological litmus test for Democrats for the simple reason that very seldom does someone choose such a label without a pretty fair amount of congruence with the Party, lacking in some areas but darned important in others.

Senators Nelson and Baucus and some others might have ideological points I don't and that's not such a bad thing. What really sucks and I find offensive is their playing HealthInc's points while taking great whacking piles of their cash. If they propose to take the side of HealthInc mega-corps and investment banks over the general citizen's welfare then I cannot see Democratic congruence, all I see is mis-labeled Republicans. That the GOP has become the CPoR doesn't excuse a (D) from turning into a complete plutocratic tool.

So far what I see within the packages is a mechanism to enrich HealthInc. I will be clear, HealthInc bankrupting me by presenting alternatives I could not afford in the past makes it a damn sure bet that I will not send them one single dime of mine, mandates or not. It's not gonna happen. I might buy into a government plan, but if it is in any way connected to those rapists I'll consider it the same as them.

If Rahm doesn't like Democrats kicking Democrats he might want to think about something a bit past the existance of a (D) when it is entirely meaningless.

To Be Fair To Senate Democrats See Merkley and Brown

In a recent post I cast doubt on the future of health care reform of meaningful proportions. Saying anything good about the GOP and Health Care is simply beyond me and anyone that is actually willing to look at the entire mess without junk prejudices. A bunch of Democrats are laboring mightily to bring something like reform into being without being high profile names like Sen Ted Kennedy.

I'd like to suggest you take a real look at two, Sen Jeff Merkley (OR-D) and Sherrod Brown (OH-D). They aren't alone, but rank as a couple of my favorites. I tried pretty hard to help Jeff get elected and I've watched Brown with great interest since I was mostly raised in Ohio and had reason to be pleased with that - at one time.

I'm leaving out people with real claims to attention for the simple reason that 535 is just too many people to comb through (sure, discount any (R) but that's still a lot) and also manage to bore you. Sen Merkley will probably see this, but it wouldn't hurt for readers to send kudos to these guys and others you may know of independently. Thanks Senators and all the rest of you in the trenches.

Health Care, Or What

If you've followed this blog at all you know that I'm a supporter of the concept of single payer health care. I have no doubt that big health care insurance companies would take a hit but it would scarcely be fatal. Single payer would not be a 'gold plated' offering, it would no doubt have some limits on what would be covered and for how long.

This piece of limits would cause some serious hand wringing from the Right, as though no such things exist today. We have really stupid costs built into the system now, we spend incredible amounts on end of life measures, not creating comfort at that point but fighting futilely against death. A tiny minority of doctors are responsible for the vast majority of malpractice claims. The uninsured and under insured drive medical costs for everyone up drastically. Emergency rooms get used as doctor's offices and simple procedures get avoided until they are major. Insurance companies deny treatments until they fall onto the public dime.

Democrats and Republicans have completely different views of health care and who should survive - ie people or insurance companies' profits. Well, a bit more accurately most Democrats and some Democrats and Republicans have different views. You can certainly understand that campaign contributions from insurance companies (surrogates) go to those sympathetic to insurance companies and that doesn't quite reach bribery, but expecting something different is silly. The question that occurs is exactly why some Democrats are so damned sympathetic to insurance companies. It is important to realize that your premiums don't go to pay claims, they go to ... wait for it ... investment in investment banks. Remember the villains in the crash? Add them to this crapfest.

Real frankly what you'll get for your trouble in electing these folks is squat. There are some Democrats working real hard to look out for the public and they deserve kudos and support but if all Democrats were there - the deal would be done already. The Republicans have already shown where they stand - you're on your own - and considering them in the debate is simply childish approval seeking.

I don't have a lot of hope that Pres Obama would veto a junk bill since it is what he could get on his biggest issue. I wonder how I'll find myself dealing with how health care shakes out, I may lose my sense of humor. I'm closing in on the end of my leash, and my friends I break leashes.

Health Care

"Chuck for..." is an advocacy site, really. It may seem like I spend a lot of time bashing certain things or their advocates, but the bashing isn't what it is about. I take great swinging whacks at liars, not because putting them down is my version of advocacy, but because I advocate truth and openness in government. I'm going to take some swipes at all the candidates and health care. Some of you are in a lather about the difference between the Clinton plan and the Obama plan - McCain's isn't worth typing about - and I'm going to tell you a couple uncomfortable truths.

Neither plan means squat, Congress will do what it will do and that will pretty much be it. A President can send a nicely detailed plan down to them and they will make of it what they wish to. That is how that works. Even George II had to let his Republican lackeys play about with his plans and get them past a Democratic filibuster - if they had that much nerve - when he had his compliant Republican majority. Congress has been stalled since the Democrats got their narrow majority and even big wins in fall 08 probably won't ensure a filibuster proof Congress.



The differences between the plans as insurance company "insurance plans" is immaterial. Both are simply shills for health insurers. Rather than actually do anything about the mess, both simply guarantee greater insurer access to the citizenry and to the government's dollars (the citizenry again). Those plans and what is really required are so completely different in scope and reason that the details fade into insignificance. These so called plans are no more than sops to the idea that something must be done.

The horror engendered by the term socialized medicine is real...and utter nonsense. We have socialized medicine today, outside Medicaid and Medicare, and it is called - your insurance plan. If you have insurance you are the source of socialized medicine. People with no insurance are treated on emergency basis and when they cannot pay the hospital must recoup that loss and the source is your insurance. That bill you see with the horrid numbers on it is not what your treatment cost, it is what your treatment cost plus part of what someone who couldn't pay cost. Bad debts or a non-payment are a part of any billing procedure. I give "free" estimates for construction projects, the "s are real. I have to spend time and gasoline to give those and somehow I must get paid for it, so you pay when you sign a contract - and you pay for all those estimates that didn't pan out as well. I have to pay for gasoline and I have to have money to do that and where else can I get money other than from those who agree to give it to me? The exact same thing happens in hospitals except the numbers are a heck of a lot bigger than a few gallons of gas (for now).

Maybe, you think, if we make everybody buy insurance it will work out. No, it won't. What is it you propose to do to me if I refuse to buy your insurance? Why is it exactly that you'll be happy to not only subsidize my more costly needs in insurance but also make sure that somebody profits from them? My wife's pre-existing conditions make her an insurers nightmare, she's alright right now, but this stuff is going to come back to haunt whoever covers her and they know it. It is flatly inevitable that she is going to cost a fortune in medical bills and these candidate propose that you will not only be happy to foot that, but also to make sure that there is a profit available on it.

If you think this idea works out well, ask the domestic auto companies how it is working out as they give a $1500 per vehicle edge to the later foreign owned domestic manufacturers. They went down this route and it is breaking them. If you start out with "that's what they get for pandering to the unions" you've missed the point - it is exactly what the candidates are proposing. A for profit scheme financed on your back either in premiums or taxes. Why exactly are insurers supposed to stop denying treatments and foot dragging on payments when the profit motives remain exactly the same? What, you're gonna pass rules??

How is it exactly that your health became a product? I scoff at these so-called plans. There is exactly one thing that makes any sense at all and that is single payer not for profit health care - yes socialized medicine done openly and straight forwardly as socialized medicine instead of as a shell game. To be absolutely sure, those who can afford to do it will find a way to improve what is available to them versus the general public, that is already how it is done in every venue imaginable. You certainly do not believe everybody lives on Social Security??? The point is to ensure (not insure) that some minimum standard of health care is available to all without penalizing everybody with two nickles to rub together.

I cannot insure my wife, flatly cannot. I am fortunate personally to be extraordinarily healthy. I can get insurance, I don't, there is no point in it. My wife is going to ruin me, not I am going to ruin me. At some point you are going to get the bill for my wife, you may not like it, I certainly don't because I'll get ruined even though you get to pay for it. Do you mean to tell me that you also propose that somebody should get to profit from this mess? These "plans" will still pass the cost on to you through premiums, they won't get passed up the income scale to the plutocrats we all support with our work, they'll get the nice gold plated premiums they have gotten all along at a minimal increase (to them) and you'll get to be whacked once again.

If this sounds like class warfare, you haven't been paying attention. The class warfare has been going on since Ronnie Reagan and if you're in the bottom 3/4 of the income scale you've been losing. (and for god's sake voting Republican??) When the top 1% makes more than the entire bottom 50% put together sympathy for their tax load is a bit misplaced. If you do not see that these plans are a shifting of the burden of the entire population's health and a profit from it through premium increases onto those least able to afford that shift you are flatly crazy.

If you've come to me and criticized one of the Democrats for their health plan and I looked at you with a blank stare, maybe you understand - now. Hey, at least I didn't fall down laughing...

Supporting the Troops

Whatever else may be said about the Iraq war and what to do about it, this much is sure; we made promises to our soldiers and asked them to do the dirty work for us, it is unconscionable to not take care of our injured troops. There is no excuse, money is not lacking, facilities are not lacking, trained professionals are not lacking; what is lacking is the will to use whatever means it takes to utilize the existing infrastructure.

The Dole/Shalala Report points up serious inadequacies in troop health care, Bush said, "we'll adjust..." Later reports had a caveat - later. These people cry the "support the troops" mantra and never do a damn thing about taking care of them when they're hurt until their feet are held to the fire. If I sound pissed off, I am. I have friends who are Vets and injured Vets, many whose war ended a quarter century ago, and they still suffer. Whatever I may have thought about their wars, it does not change the fact that they were brave, honorable people who did what their country asked and now we do not do as promised?

We are creating injured vets by the thousands today and we need to show the will to do what is right for them. This is not a political issue, it is not a partisan issue, it is an issue of morality. Try hard to find some.