I write as a canadian whose husband has had stage 2 colorectal cancer, with operation and 3 year follow-up treatment, heart attack which required stent and meds and ongoing monitoring regarding diet and exercise, and recently a full hip replacement. This was all paid through our public health care. there is no dealing with any insurance company, the government handles it all on our behalf. He is also a pain clinic patient, but no narcotics are given there, only epidural injections which work rellly well and prevent drug abuse.

We pay 6.11 for our medications, but some such as sleeping pills, are not included in the plan. But all medications for cancer, for the heart, are subsidized and 6.11 is all we pay.

I think the US insurance companies are the ones who don't want you to have a health care plan because their profits will be less of course. But how can you go on being at the mercy of insurance companies who judge you fit or not to be accepted? THere is none of that here, every single canadian from the day of birth is eligible for full health care, and it has given us tremendous impetus to focus on preventive care. In Canada, the problem of prescription drug abuse does not even come close to what is going on in the USA. With public health care, the government takes extraordinary measures to keep the population healthy, we feel often like we are being babysat, but at our age,we sure appreciate having it.

Support your president and what he is trying to do for you.

Geez Old, it took a Canadian to get a straight answer out of you!

I was alive when our health care system came into effect, I was 16 years old when I received my health card, and it changed our lives, the lives of my parents and grandparents, who all lived long and happy lives, free of medical money worries, and were able to leave very worthwhile estates. Probably those debt free estates would never have come our way if that health care system did not exist, Such is the reality you have to look at the long term benefits of things in all areas.

Obama's speech last night was terrific, and he said the words that I was longing to hear,

I've heard it summed up this way:

Obamacare = My kids will pay for
the effects of his smoking habit.

When I watch the media, it seems the only area of agreement
is that both sides would like to see costs lowered.

The President and both houses are Dems now. If it's not passed - it's their fault. They have the majority.


(What the Hell was wrong with Pelosi last night? My Gawd).

First let me say I'm a total idiot when it comes to politics (disclaimer) so please, don't shoot me if I say something completely stupid. I don't really follow any of this and I'm not much of a news reader (and I don't own a television) but I read the headlines on Comcast and all I saw about health care was that they were going to start charging Americans who didn't pay for personal health care. That is what I thought this discussion was about. I know, I need to read more and get more involved. I thought, how idiotic is that? To charge people who already cant afford health care. Obviously, there is a lot I am missing. Anyone want to fill me in?

Well, I guess as long as he "says what you want to hear", your happy.

But remember, what politicians SAY and what politicians DO are two very separate things.

Can you name three, yes only three government social agencies that are not completely screwed up and nearly a total waste of money?

Again, I am 100% for the regulation of private insurance.

But people who are poor or under 18 can already get health insurance in EVERY state.

Since 1992, every state has been required (and do) give health insurance to those who cannot afford it.

So, why does Obama act like thats not happening?

What if I do not what to pay for health insurance? Is he going to charge me anyway?

And lastly, why should I be required to pay for other peoples health?

The last time I checked, thats not how America is supposed to be run.

I dont mind paying for old people, veterans or children. But every single man/woman in America is going to be from tax payers?

What if someone was driving drunk and smashes into a pole and is crippled his entire life. I am all of a sudden responsible to pay his insurance the rest of his life because he made the wrong choice?.

An alcoholic needs a liver transplant, so does that mean tax payers are going to foot the $300,000 bill because he chose to destroy his/her own liver?

Im a liberal Independent, and I dont want to live in a country like that.

And some Dems may vote against it because in truth they really aren't Dems. They are Republicans who ran as Dems in 06 and 08 because they knew they couldn't win as Republicans in their state or district (in the House)

You got that right. Basically moderate Republicans have been forced out of the Party since the crack-pot faction took over, and Politicans, who otherwise would have been with the GOP, are now "Blue Dog" Democrats.

It takes 60 votes to pass in the Senate. The Dems have 59 now that Ted Kennedy has died. And some Dems may vote against it because in truth they really aren't Dems. They are Republicans who ran as Dems in 06 and 08 because they knew they couldn't win as Republicans in their state or district (in the House) The Republicans have 40. Maybe one may vote for it but that's not certain. So if ALL Republicans vote AGAINST healthcare, it's the Democrats fault it loses? You must be kidding!

And I'm an Independent and don't believe that EITHER party cares a rat's butt about the people. They only care about giving big corporations whatever they want so they can continue to get the huge dollars from them that they need to get re-elected and continue to enrich themselves at our expense! We are an Oligarchy. We have not been a Democracy for a VERY long time.

OldandWorn, I very much look forward to the day that your kind are eliminated - it will be a big improvement to the gene pool.

It was your kind that ruined our reputation in the world and lied us into multiple wars. Tell me, does the blood of other people's children that you sent into war wash off easily? It was your kind that mortgaged our country to China, let the banks run amok and trashed the economy.

You and your kind - lying, thieving, greedy "i got mine, screw everyone else" Republican pigs.

Since you love your damn guns and playing war so much, why don't you sign up and go get yourself killed in Afghanistan or Iraq? It will be the only patriotic thing you've ever done for your country. Be sure to take your children and grandchildren with you too, along with all your Republican gun toting neighbors.

We were never a democracy genius. We are a Republic. Soon, who knows?

Lies
by Hendrik Hertzberg
September 21, 2009

After the tea-partying, town-meeting-disrupting, pistol-packing mensis horribilis of August, more than a few commentators complained, as one of them put it, that “Obama should have seen it coming.” No one doubted that the current attempt to overhaul America’s uniquely wasteful and unjust system of health insurance and non-insurance would touch off the kind of demagogic, misleading attacks that have greeted every past attempt at ambitious reform, successful (Medicare) and unsuccessful (all the rest) alike. The plan is socialism; government bureaucrats will choose your doctor and prescribe your treatments; the economy will be ruined; taxes will crush you—all that and more was to be expected. But the predominant tone of opposition to the emerging Democratic health-care proposals, and to the President personally, came as a surprise to the White House and a profound shock to many who voted for Barack Obama last November.

Perhaps it was naïve, and obviously it was optimistic, to hope that once Obama—having been elected by a large and undisputed majority, unlike his two predecessors—took office the nastiness of the assault against him would subside. And so it did, briefly. But as the reality sank in that this temperamentally conservative President intends to make good on his substantively progressive promises, the fury returned, uglier than before and no longer subject to the minimal restraints inherent in a national electoral campaign aimed at persuading a plurality of voters. Lies and fantasies about health-care reform swirled together with lies and fantasies about the chief executive himself. Obama is plotting to set up “death panels,” government tribunals authorized to euthanize the old and sick. Obama was born in Kenya and therefore his very Presidency is unconstitutional. Obama will cut Medicare benefits to provide coverage to illegal aliens. Obama seeks to indoctrinate children in Marxist ideology and put teenagers in “reëducation camps.” Obama is a Communist. Obama is a Fascist.

This sort of lunatic paranoia—touched with populism, nativism, racism, and anti-intellectualism—has long been a feature of the fringe, especially during times of economic bewilderment. What is different now is the evolution of a new political organism, with paranoia as its animating principle. The town-meeting shouters may be the organism’s hands and feet, but its heart—also, Heaven help us, its brain—is a “conservative” media alliance built around talk radio and cable television, especially Fox News. The protesters do not look to politicians for leadership. They look to niche media figures like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, and their scores of clones behind local and national microphones. Because these figures have no responsibilities, they cannot disappoint. Their sneers may be false and hateful—they all routinely liken the President and the “Democrat Party” to murderous totalitarians—but they are employed by large, nominally respectable corporations and supported by national advertisers, lending them a considerable measure of institutional prestige. The dominant wing of the Republican Party is increasingly an appendage of the organism—the tail, you might say, though it seems to wag more often from fear than from happiness. Many Republican officeholders, even some reputed moderates like Senator Chuck Grassley, of Iowa, have obediently echoed the foul nonsense.


Over the summer, the organism probably succeeded, on balance, in accelerating the decline in Obama’s poll ratings, a decline that was inevitable once the inaugural glow faded, the economic crisis failed to vanish, and the messy, confusing legislative battles began. With the help of what appeared to be White House passivity, it certainly succeeded in demoralizing the center-left, stoking the fears of the ill-informed and persuading the press that health-care reform was in serious, maybe terminal, trouble.

Part of Obama’s task last Wednesday evening, when he delivered an address to a joint session of Congress, was to dispel the talk radio–Fox News miasma—to give heart to his nervous supporters in the House chamber and beyond, reassure them that he knows what he’s doing, and bolster their confidence by showing them his. In that, he succeeded. The address was his best as President. Some centrist positioning early in the speech—especially an implication that “those on the left” who favor a single-payer system and “those on the right” who favor leaving everybody to buy health insurance individually are equally “radical”—gave some a sinking feeling. (Medicare is a single-payer system. It is not radical.) But the President’s bipartisan pleasantries only made his firmness more impressive. His civility was matched by fight and fire. He called the death-panels claim—“made not just by radio and cable talk-show hosts but by prominent politicians,” some of whom were sitting in front of him—exactly what it is: “a lie, plain and simple.” And this:


If you come to me with a serious set of proposals, I will be there to listen. My door is always open. But know this: I will not waste time with those who have made the calculation that it’s better politics to kill this plan than to improve it.

Obama is sometimes faulted for conducting government by speech. But this speech was part of a patient strategy that, despite August’s rough weather, is looking increasingly sound. In 1993, President Clinton delivered a similarly well-received health-care address on Capitol Hill. But he then dumped a detailed, already-worked-out bill in Congress’s lap. The implication: Take it or leave it. Obama has left the bill-writing to the legislators (with intense White House kibitzing, of course) and has waited until the stretch to take the reins. When Harry and Louise torpedoed the Clinton plan’s popularity, Democrats panicked and abandoned the foundering plan. Obama’s approach made it difficult for him to stump for “his” plan, because its shape was necessarily unknown; now his numbers are slipping, too. But slipping poll numbers are less apt to panic members of Congress who have invested themselves in the shaping of the legislation and have had time to reflect on what followed failure last time: the Democrats lost control of the House for the first time in forty years.

Obama’s treatment of the “public option”—a kind of mini-Medicare that would compete with private insurance in a limited way—encapsulated his strategy. He defended it passionately, convincing many liberal doubters that he truly believes in it and knows that it would yield better care at lower cost. He also made it clear that he prefers reform without the public option—but with near-universal coverage and an end to “preëxisting conditions,” arbitrary cancellation of insurance, and the fear that losing or changing your job will cost you your savings and perhaps your life—to no reform at all. If it were up to the House alone, of course, the public option would be a lock. But in the filibuster-hobbled Senate the fate of reform may come down to the whims of a tiny handful of preening moderates from states that are mostly empty of people, notably the Democratic chairman of the Finance Committee, Max Baucus, of Montana, and Olympia Snowe, Republican of Maine.

Bipartisanship is a fine sentiment and an appealing tactic, but where health care is concerned it was never a great idea. The boorish South Carolina Republican who shouted “You lie!” at the President after he said, truthfully, that reform “would not apply to those who are here illegally” did the public weal a favor by underlining bipartisanship’s futility. A bill that reflects a necessary compromise among Democrats is bound to be stronger than one that reflects an unnecessary compromise between Democrats and Republicans. And that’s no lie. ♦

Wow. Obama hasn't fixed all the problems Bush and 12 years of Republican Congresses left him in the first 6 months! How stupid and inept he must be!

I'm not a Dem or a REP. They all care not a hoot about the people in this "REPUBLICAN" form of DEMOCRACY.

"The average American has no representation in Congress (Legislative branch), the courts (Judicial branch) or White House (Executive Branch), even with a smarter, more erudite president since January 20. A Chinese friend of mine when I worked in China once said: "in theory we are Communist but in practice we are Capitalist." He was right. And in the U.S. in theory we are a Republican form of Democracy ("We the People") but in practice we are an Oligarchy and as PK says, a Duopoly."

Sadly I must agree.