President caves in completely

[DaShi]

When it stops working.

[Drake Tungsten]

Is it working now? Liberals have been calling right-wing healthcare protesters racists for the past month and it hasn't done anything to save the public option.

[DaShi]

Oh, is that what it was supposed to do?

[Drake Tungsten]

Oh, is that what is was supposed to do?

Does not compute...

[DaShi]

You're as bad as Sloww.

[SlowwHand]

What's that crack supposed to mean? I didn't do anything, you jackass.

[Zkribbler]

When are the Dems going to learn that yelling "that's racist!" doesn't really work anymore? My president is black, yo...

Please note: I have not called any of Obama's opponents racists. My criticism of Wilson is based on him being incredible rude and too lazy to read the health-care bill, which he doesn't understand.

[Straybow]

1. Although efforts have been made to reform the health care industry since 1912, this piece of crap is all we've gotten for those efforts. No thanks, we can wait longer.

2. The federal government has no business interfering in peoples health care decisions, unless a woman is trying to kill a living human being for whom she is the only means to continued life, just because she thinks it inconvenient to her lifestyle.

3. The government is incapable of running anything efficiently, and if allowed to offer a health care option, will under-price it compared to actual costs management and expenses that it will put private insurers out of business and drive quality of health care given downward.

4. We are a Christian nation, and we don't believe in helping the least among us by forcing other people to pay for it. Nobody deserves or has a "right" to unlimited health care at public expense. Getting sick is rarely God's punishment for doing something wrong, and God doesn't need public funding to arrange for healing.

5. The current system, with 30-40,000,000 mostly young and healthy people who opt not to purchase insurance, is working just fine. A million medical bankruptcies annually is not relevant because most of those cases involve people who had insurance. The 18,000 deaths annually due to lack of insurance can be addressed without tearing up the healthcare sector by the roots. In fact, we have the best health care system in the world!

6. Citing a bogus anecdote of older couples who are forced to divorce in order to avoid catastrophic financial losses due to medical expenses has nothing to do with the morality of homosexuality.

7. A conversation with your doctor about end-of-life issues, scripted by the people who gave us the VA Death Book (aka, Kill Me When My Care Becomes Inconvenient), is an opportunity for the underpaid doctor brought in by the government when all the present doctors have left the practice to tell you about how the euthanasia program in the Netherlands probably only kills a few thousand people a year who didn't really want to die.

8. We can afford to spend more on our military than all other nations combined because our economy hasn't been ruined by the socialists yet. We have to spend so much because our so-called allies are weak-willed weenies who've bought into the "peace in our time" disarmament myth that brought us WW2. We do it for ourselves, but if a few of those in other nations who benefit are actually grateful it is heartening.

9. Single-payer, government-run health care is good enough for our men and women in uniform, because it operates within limits and benefits from the engines of economy and science that makes our regulated but free market system the greatest in the world.

10. Pooling our resources to provide roads, schools, clean water, military, police, and fire protection for each other is not socialism. Promising health care that will magically become cheaper if the government is put in charge is socialism. Yes, the same government that promised retirement pensions and medical care and raided the fund so that it is inevitably going bankrupt will do the same to universal health care.

11. Socialism is bad. Very bad. That's why we're in the deepest recession in 25 years and the US unemployment rate is still lower than the French rate.

12. Health care is an issue best handled by individual states, but it can be made portable and conformed to a national standard over time without instituting a single-payer system or so crudely crafted "public option" that lacks any credible financial integrity.

13. No claim of Iraq nor Afghanistan having universal healthcare is even remotely credible. They have marginally adequate hospitals and medicine. They're third world nations without the education, financial, or industrial infrastructure capable of doing more at this point.

14. Money and corporate profits are more important than vague promises by liars in government who have failed on every such promise they've given in the past. The profit motive ensures the sustainability of health care as an industry. Sure, reforming the insurance companies would save thousands of lives, and we can do that without destroying all the parts that presently work.

15. Freeing people from holding on to their dead-end jobs for the insurance would not allow them to become entrepreneurs. They would still need to pay premiums to the proposed government-run option, and for that they'd still need their dead-end jobs. Ninety-nine percent of them haven't the balls or ingenuity to become entrepreneurs.

16. Someone like physicist Stephen Hawking, but without the mathematical genius, would have been stuffed away in a pathetically underfunded institution in the British health care system.

17. We already have health care for people without insurance: there are clinics and charities that give medical services for free or very low cost. If you think that is a good idea, donate some of your money and perhaps time to them. Get off your arse and do it yourself instead of asking your government to tax me for it.

18. The Congressional health care initiative, which Obama apparently hasn't read and keeps promising us things that aren't in it, is part of the liberal- socialist- agenda to take away your freedom! The liberal elites like Obama really do think only they are qualified to make these decisions. No history or present evidence of abuse, malfeasance, corruption and plain idiocy in their midst and in every similar program thus engendered is going to dissuade them. Only your potential vote for an opponent in the next election registers on their pea-brain senses.

[Straybow]

[Q=Zkribbler;5673633]I know how to friggin' read. Do they??

BTW: The CRS used the word "might." Well, tomorrow pigs 'might' put on top hats and tuxedos and dance the porkpie fandango. Does your side have anything definitive showing that, despite the clear language of Section 246, money WILL be spent on illegals?[/Q] Yes, it's called "universal healthcare," and they will get healthcare services which will be paid from the general coffers. Section 246 only says they won't get their mandated premiums subsidized.

[DaShi]

1. Although efforts have been made to reform the health care industry since 1912, this piece of crap is all we've gotten for those efforts. No thanks, we can wait longer.

2. The federal government has no business interfering in peoples health care decisions, unless a woman is trying to kill a living human being for whom she is the only means to continued life, just because she thinks it inconvenient to her lifestyle.

3. The government is incapable of running anything efficiently, and if allowed to offer a health care option, will under-price it compared to actual costs management and expenses that it will put private insurers out of business and drive quality of health care given downward.

4. We are a Christian nation, and we don't believe in helping the least among us by forcing other people to pay for it. Nobody deserves or has a "right" to unlimited health care at public expense. Getting sick is rarely God's punishment for doing something wrong, and God doesn't need public funding to arrange for healing.

5. The current system, with 30-40,000,000 mostly young and healthy people who opt not to purchase insurance, is working just fine. A million medical bankruptcies annually is not relevant because most of those cases involve people who had insurance. The 18,000 deaths annually due to lack of insurance can be addressed without tearing up the healthcare sector by the roots. In fact, we have the best health care system in the world!

6. Citing a bogus anecdote of older couples who are forced to divorce in order to avoid catastrophic financial losses due to medical expenses has nothing to do with the morality of homosexuality.

7. A conversation with your doctor about end-of-life issues, scripted by the people who gave us the VA Death Book (aka, Kill Me When My Care Becomes Inconvenient), is an opportunity for the underpaid doctor brought in by the government when all the present doctors have left the practice to tell you about how the euthanasia program in the Netherlands probably only kills a few thousand people a year who didn't really want to die.

8. We can afford to spend more on our military than all other nations combined because our economy hasn't been ruined by the socialists yet. We have to spend so much because our so-called allies are weak-willed weenies who've bought into the "peace in our time" disarmament myth that brought us WW2. We do it for ourselves, but if a few of those in other nations who benefit are actually grateful it is heartening.

9. Single-payer, government-run health care is good enough for our men and women in uniform, because it operates within limits and benefits from the engines of economy and science that makes our regulated but free market system the greatest in the world.

10. Pooling our resources to provide roads, schools, clean water, military, police, and fire protection for each other is not socialism. Promising health care that will magically become cheaper if the government is put in charge is socialism. Yes, the same government that promised retirement pensions and medical care and raided the fund so that it is inevitably going bankrupt will do the same to universal health care.

11. Socialism is bad. Very bad. That's why we're in the deepest recession in 25 years and the US unemployment rate is still lower than the French rate.

12. Health care is an issue best handled by individual states, but it can be made portable and conformed to a national standard over time without instituting a single-payer system or so crudely crafted "public option" that lacks any credible financial integrity.

13. No claim of Iraq nor Afghanistan having universal healthcare is even remotely credible. They have marginally adequate hospitals and medicine. They're third world nations without the education, financial, or industrial infrastructure capable of doing more at this point.

14. Money and corporate profits are more important than vague promises by liars in government who have failed on every such promise they've given in the past. The profit motive ensures the sustainability of health care as an industry. Sure, reforming the insurance companies would save thousands of lives, and we can do that without destroying all the parts that presently work.

15. Freeing people from holding on to their dead-end jobs for the insurance would not allow them to become entrepreneurs. They would still need to pay premiums to the proposed government-run option, and for that they'd still need their dead-end jobs. Ninety-nine percent of them haven't the balls or ingenuity to become entrepreneurs.

16. Someone like physicist Stephen Hawking, but without the mathematical genius, would have been stuffed away in a pathetically underfunded institution in the British health care system.

17. We already have health care for people without insurance: there are clinics and charities that give medical services for free or very low cost. If you think that is a good idea, donate some of your money and perhaps time to them. Get off your arse and do it yourself instead of asking your government to tax me for it.

18. The Congressional health care initiative, which Obama apparently hasn't read and keeps promising us things that aren't in it, is part of the liberal- socialist- agenda to take away your freedom! The liberal elites like Obama really do think only they are qualified to make these decisions. No history or present evidence of abuse, malfeasance, corruption and plain idiocy in their midst and in every similar program thus engendered is going to dissuade them. Only your potential vote for an opponent in the next election registers on their pea-brain senses.

Brilliantly brilliant Straybow!

[Felch]

I'll toss my opinion in, since I'm bored.

First, no matter what happens, the world will not end. If Obama gets his way, the world won't end. If the GOP gets their way, the world won't end. Taxes might be raised, the dollar might depreciate, people might go bankrupt, or infant mortality might remain at unacceptable levels. But this isn't the end of the world. It's a domestic policy debate, and it's exactly as mundane and boring as that sounds.

My choice list for fixing matters.

• Reduce health care costs. Medical liability needs to be fixed, with arbitration by medical boards instead of using easily duped juries. As a trade-off, the AMA has to work to expand the number of doctors. Increasing the number of schools, and making it easier for qualified foreign doctors to practice medicine would be a good start. Reducing liability would compensate for the reduced wages that doctors would receive, and would also help control costs by getting rid of CYA procedures.
• Tax-free medical savings accounts would make most routine care easily affordable, and reward people who live healthy lives. There's no reason why the community should pay for treating smokers with lung cancer, or couch potatoes with heart disease. If these people want to engage in risky behavior they should pack extra money away in their MSAs, while the more conscientious people can put their money elsewhere.
• Prohibit advertising of prescription drugs. This goes against my free-speech inclinations, but I think it's a reasonable restriction. If you can't go to the store and buy it without a licensed professional giving you permission, then the product shouldn't be advertised. Advertising money has to come from somewhere (increased drug costs), and it encourages people to seek out drugs that they probably don't need.

Single-payer is a mediocre solution, and one that will only result in mediocre results. The reason a mediocre solution looks so enticing is because the situation we have right now is ****ing terrible. Instead of settling for what other countries have, America should try to do better. Dynamic, free-market solutions generally trump plodding bureaucracies. The tricky part is the vested interests who profit from the current system. The trial lawyers, the insurance companies, the drug companies, and all the other interest groups need to be rounded up and sent to gulags, or we'll never get anything done.

Of course, even if everything I said came true, there'd still be problems. Problems are just the way of the world, no matter what.

[Drake Tungsten]

First, no matter what happens, the world will not end. If Obama gets his way, the world won't end.

I'm not sure this is the best metric by which to judge the wisdom of proposed legislation.

Instead of settling for what other countries have, America should try to do better.

[Spec]

They're separate issues. You can have universal health care without paying for abortions. I don't even know if abortions are covered in Canada?

Yes, they are.

And while we're on the reproduction subject, why is your avatar a Panda ****ing the Apple Logo while your iconic dildo watches? Are you ok? What happenned? Did snuggles **** you over?

Spec.

[Zkribbler]

... it's called "universal healthcare," and they will get healthcare services which will be paid from the general coffers. Section 246 only says they won't get their mandated premiums subsidized.

I don't understand what you are saying. If illegal aliens cannot get their health insurance premiums paid for the federal government, what will be paid for out of the general coffers?

[I believe this is the critical question. Although Obama's speech repeated referred to providing health insurance to "all Americans," the bill refers to "individuals," not to "Americans." The bill's definition of "individual" does not contain a limitation to just Americans. And the only provision I see limiting payments on behalf of illegals is § 246.]

[Felch]

I'm not really bothered by illegals being treated, so long as the treatment is economic. If it's an emergency, like a heart attack or a birth, then it would be cruel and uncivilized to turn someone away. If it's a relatively petty matter, like a broken bone or a torn ligament, then it's a pretty minor expense and not worth quibbling over. If an illegal needs long term care, then they can be stabilized and returned to their country of origin. And if it's a dangerous and communicable disease, then treating illegals serves the taxpayers better than leaving them as a vector to infect legal residents. Lawyers do more harm to American health care than all the illegals put together.