The Dems really screwed up their message from the begining when they called this health care reform rather than insurance reform.

Obama is on to that now, but it's a bit late.

Not like they get a choice. I always hear folks tell them to not use it, but you HAVE to pay in, there ain't much alternative. Like SS.

creative profit

You do know what your pal Castro does for babies with dangerous conditions, pre-existing or not, don't you?

Here's a hint, they don't take a chance on those babies dragging down the infant mortality numbers.

nobody on the left minded any screaming at bush when they were protesting the war in Iraq, now its screaming like teenage girls...........


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HYPOCRISY STRIKES AGAIN.

unnecessary war is worth protesting

should have called in semantic experts like nom, davis and inyer for help in communicating their lies.

so are bills passed that congress doesnt read before they sign.

They should have hired Frank Luntz.

got wmd?

That's every farking one of them.

‘You Are Terrifying Us’ Voters send a message to Washington, and get an ugly response.By PEGGY NOONAN

We have entered uncharted territory in the fight over national health care. There’s a new tone in the debate, and it’s ugly. At the moment the Democrats are looking like something they haven’t looked like in years, and that is: desperate.

They must know at this point they should not have pushed a national health-care plan. A Democratic operative the other day called it “Hillary’s revenge.” When Mrs. Clinton started losing to Barack Obama in the primaries 18 months ago, she began to give new and sharper emphasis to her health-care plan. Mr. Obama responded by talking about his health-care vision. He won. Now he would push what he had been forced to highlight: Health care would be a priority initiative. The net result is falling support for his leadership on the issue, falling personal polls, and the angry town-hall meetings that have electrified YouTube.

In his first five months in office, Mr. Obama had racked up big wins—the stimulus, children’s health insurance, House approval of cap-and-trade. But he stayed too long at the hot table. All the Democrats in Washington did. They overinterpreted the meaning of the 2008 election, and didn’t fully take into account how the great recession changed the national mood and atmosphere.

And so the shock on the faces of Congressmen who’ve faced the grillings back home. And really, their shock is the first thing you see in the videos. They had no idea how people were feeling. Their 2008 win left them thinking an election that had been shaped by anti-Bush, anti-Republican, and pro-change feeling was really a mandate without context; they thought that in the middle of a historic recession featuring horrific deficits, they could assume support for the invention of a huge new entitlement carrying huge new costs.

The passions of the protesters, on the other hand, are not a surprise. They hired a man to represent them in Washington. They give him a big office, a huge staff and the power to tell people what to do. They give him a car and a driver, sometimes a security detail, and a special pin showing he’s a congressman. And all they ask in return is that he see to their interests and not terrify them too much. Really, that’s all people ask. Expectations are very low. What the protesters are saying is, “You are terrifying us.”

What has been most unsettling is not the congressmen’s surprise but a hard new tone that emerged this week. The leftosphere and the liberal commentariat charged that the town hall meetings weren’t authentic, the crowds were ginned up by insurance companies, lobbyists and the Republican National Committee. But you can’t get people to leave their homes and go to a meeting with a congressman (of all people) unless they are engaged to the point of passion. And what tends to agitate people most is the idea of loss—loss of money hard earned, loss of autonomy, loss of the few things that work in a great sweeping away of those that don’t.

People are not automatons. They show up only if they care.

What the town-hall meetings represent is a feeling of rebellion, an uprising against change they do not believe in. And the Democratic response has been stunningly crude and aggressive. It has been to attack. Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the United States House of Representatives, accused the people at the meetings of “carrying swastikas and symbols like that.” (Apparently one protester held a hand-lettered sign with a “no” slash over a swastika.) But they are not Nazis, they’re Americans. Some of them looked like they’d actually spent some time fighting Nazis.

Then came the Democratic Party charge that the people at the meetings were suspiciously well-dressed, in jackets and ties from Brooks Brothers. They must be Republican rent-a-mobs. Sen. Barbara Boxer said on MSNBC’s “Hardball” that people are “storming these town hall meetings,” that they were “well dressed,” that “this is all organized,” “all planned,” to “hurt our president.” Here she was projecting. For normal people, it’s not all about Barack Obama.

The Democratic National Committee chimed in with an incendiary Web video whose script reads, “The right wing extremist Republican base is back.” DNC communications director Brad Woodhouse issued a statement that said the Republicans “are inciting angry mobs of . . . right wing extremists” who are “not reflective of where the American people are.”

But most damagingly to political civility, and even our political tradition, was the new White House email address to which citizens are asked to report instances of “disinformation” in the health-care debate: If you receive an email or see something on the Web about health-care reform that seems “fishy,” you can send it to flag@whitehouse.gov. The White House said it was merely trying to fight “intentionally misleading” information.

Sen. John Cornyn of Texas on Wednesday wrote to the president saying he feared that citizens’ engagement could be “chilled” by the effort. He’s right, it could. He also accused the White House of compiling an “enemies list.” If so, they’re being awfully public about it, but as Byron York at the Washington Examiner pointed, the emails collected could become a “dissident database.”

All of this is unnecessarily and unhelpfully divisive and provocative. They are mocking and menacing concerned citizens. This only makes a hot situation hotter. Is this what the president wants? It couldn’t be. But then in an odd way he sometimes seems not to have fully absorbed the awesome stature of his office. You really, if you’re president, can’t call an individual American stupid, if for no other reason than that you’re too big. You cannot allow your allies to call people protesting a health-care plan “extremists” and “right wing,” or bought, or Nazi-like, either. They’re citizens. They’re concerned. They deserve respect.

The Democrats should not be attacking, they should be attempting to persuade, to argue for their case. After all, they have the big mic. Which is what the presidency is, the big mic.

And frankly they ought to think about backing off. The president should call in his troops and his Congress and announce a rethinking. There are too many different bills, they’re all a thousand pages long, no one has time to read them, no one knows what’s going to be in the final one, the public is agitated, the nation’s in crisis, the timing is wrong, we’ll turn to it again—but not now. We’ll take a little longer, ponder every aspect, and make clear every complication.

You know what would happen if he did this? His numbers would go up. Even Congress’s would. Because they’d look responsive, deliberative and even wise. Discretion is the better part of valor.

Absent that, and let’s assume that won’t happen, the health-care protesters have to make sure they don’t get too hot, or get out of hand. They haven’t so far, they’ve been burly and full of debate, with plenty of booing. This is democracy’s great barbaric yawp. But every day the meetings seem just a little angrier, and people who are afraid—who have been made afraid, and left to be afraid—can get swept up. As this column is written, there comes word that John Sweeney of the AFL-CIO has announced he’ll be sending in union members to the meetings to counter health care’s critics.

Somehow that doesn’t sound like a peace initiative.

It’s going to be a long August, isn’t it? Let’s hope the uncharted territory we’re in doesn’t turn dark.

Or Charlie Daniels - farking redneck ignant hick.

That's The Baby Jesus - the Great Communicator.

Any word on Puggs Pelosi's lie about swastikas? Any confirmation or still just another liberal lie?

Exactly, that guy gets the pulse of the nation.

Either Frank or Dickie Morris.

I think The Baby Jesus needs to triangulate his message and strangulate the right-wingers swastika carriers.

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_...healthcare.html

There's the pic.

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_...bed-6.html#more

That there's some kewl ass sytem they got there.

Would that I had the power to make insurance companies act in my interest. Wouldn't that be nice. But that's not the way it works. I have a much better shot at influencing my care if I have the power to vote out the controlling authority.



Policy is set at the top. That's were it needs to change. None of us have any influence on the insurance company policy, but we can have an effect on the government, since I have a voice via voting.



Were it not for the Iraq war Medicare would be just fine. It's worked for generations and can continue to do so if we choose. We just have a "baby boomer hump" to get over.

However, there are two sides to this equation in opposition to each other. There's the level of service provided, which you speculated about negatively yesterday, and there's the cost associated with the services provided, which you are speculating negatively about today. Pick a side. When you argue against one side of the equation you are arguing in favor of the other. If you want Grandma to have expensive medical service in the last days of her life you have to pay for it. It's certainly a good conversation to have, but at some point realism has to enter the debate. With insurance companies running the show the expectation is lower service and higher cost - since resources are diverted into profits and bonuses - when Grandma gets sick she may lose all benefits. With a government option the expectation is higher service (Grandma is safe since the service provider's job depends on satisfying constituents) but there is a higher cost.



Unless you just won the lottery recently, out of pocket medical expenses are prohibitively expensive. It's not realistic to expect that Grandma is going to be able to spend several hundred thousand dollars on medical care out of pocket every time she needs a procedure.

Protest away. I wish y'all had done like Kane suggested and protested Obama in Iraq.

But that kind of risk never seems to make the menu when it's so much more important to protest Bush in favor of Saddam. That was a real life saver.

Not sure what you mean, unless it's simply my expectation that there would be less rationing and more cost associated with a public option compared to more cost and more rationing for the current insurance dominated model. In the current model rationing takes the form of cancelling all coverage when the insured gets sick, as well as denial of individual procedures on an ad hoc basis. Rationing occurs in both models, since, obviously, we're not dealing with an unlimited product. But the claim that more rationing will occur in the public option is certainly a myth since the profit motive involved in denying service will be absent, coupled with the ability to fire the provider via the democratic process. Grandma is surely likely to be on firmer footing with a public option than a private one, which is presumably why surveys indicate that 56% of people would abandon private insurance for a public option were it offered. People aren't stupid. We've experience the difference between Medicare and private insurance either personally, or though our relatives and friends, and the services you receive through private insurance are sub par comparatively speaking, unless you as an individual are very wealthy.

They remind me of mobs.

Well, that's the whole point. The anti-UHC teabaggers are there precisely to shut down conversation, not just for them, but for everyone. That IS the point.

Hmmm...

Saw that too. Someone got a nice bonus.

A. With a private plan you have a contract.

B. With a private plan you can switch to another private plan if you do not like your contract.

C. With the inevitable gubment plan to single payer path you will not have a contract nor will you be able to switch to another plan...

He could have used the lobby of CMS as an example instead...

and you better not let the government take over Medicare!

Yes and Medicare is not like that at all...

Silly statement of the year... and that's saying something.

Medicare denies treatments every day. Medicare screws up billing everyday. Medicare drives providers out of the program everyday with their low reimbursements. Medicare would screw up premium payments except that they have the Treasury do that job and they (the Treasury) screws that up everyday. Medicare Part A premium is paid by folks who are almost entirely not the beneficiary. Medicare Part B premiums paid by the beneficiary only covers 1/4 of the actual costs. Private insurance company run like Medicare would not be in business the next day.

You say gubment plan leads to single payer is a myth then you say that is exactly what you hope happens...

How about you have the immediate power to drop a provider and hire another?

Seen what the rate of incumbents winning is? With gerrymandering your idea of voting somebody out over one particular policy disagreement is laughable. You can't get rid of the most useless bum that you disagree with all the time, much less tossing somebody out for one issue.



To that end the real choice we get is a strategic one. Government that takes most of our disposable income and spends it as the top sees fit, or a government that leaves most of the money in our hands and expects us to do the best we can with it.



Medicare and SS have structural and demographic problems, not some cash flow problem fixable by removing one discretionary expense.

Not to mention the fact that if we were on defense in the WOT and Saddam were still causing trouble and bankrolling/supporting Islamic radicals there is no telling what the geopolitical situation might be. Another 9-11 in the last 8 years and who knows what the tax receipt situation might have been for some portion of the last 8 years. You just don't know what might have transpired, and there's no way we will agree on the possibilities. The bottom line is for whatever reason there was NOT another 9-11 style attack. Something that would have cost trillions had it occured.




Grandma is the worst case scenario. A lot of basic stuff isn't prohibitively expensive. Those cuts, scrapes, coughs, colds, flu etc could probably be handled for a small cash charge at the local clinic by any competent nurse or GP. Which we could use more of.

Ongoing treatment for BP, arthritis, chronic pain and the like could be taken care of by the local doctor with regular appointments. A lot of the stuff that doesn't change too much and is controllable by some testing and regular prescriptions would be a LOT cheaper if we didn't require people to pay a doctor ten times what the medicine costs just to refill the same damned prescription constantly. It's insane. A fifty dollar or more office visit to refill a $4 prescription. It's the AMA keeping us away from our meds, not helping us get them.








I'm all for realism. I'm not for forcing grandma to do anything she doesn't want to. If she wants a LOT of pain med and to slip off that's fine with me. Euthanasia doesn't drive me over the edge like some folks you argue with. But those lines and wait times aren't just for the old and deeply infirmed. They hit everyone. Young folks were cruising the hospital parking lots just like the oldsters, and it was as a result of government rules from on high not working.

I'm no fan of tying medical insurance to work, just like I'm not a fan of single payer. At this point enough people are satisfied with what they have that I don't want Obamacare changing the whole system to cover a small minority, and I am part of that small minority. If anyone ought to want the intrusive plan that gives me care paid for by somebody else it ought to be me. But I'm not likely to EVER believe in single payer or it's economic equal, the command economy. It's a very basic strategic debate, that can pretty much be used to compare and contrast most any country or economic model in the world today.

It's hitting me very close to home. Day before yesterday my dad was checked back into the hospital with a recurrence of the infection in his blood that was spread when he had an infected stent. He isn't in condition to have any operation so there is pretty much nothing to be done. The dialysis cost was more than poor countries could have paid in any case, but at this point most of the decision making revolves around nursing home care and how agressively to treat him. They could do more in the hospital than the nursing home, but I don't see that it changes the outcome. In all likelyhood he never leaves the hospital, and only the doctor has much control over the cost. And this doctor isn't very communicative. It's like he's playing God, but doesn't really give a damn about the lowly humans around him.

It's been a while since Iraq took total blame for the world's ills, so I let it slide a bit.

Unfortunately it will stoke the paranoid fantasies of the Inyeriot... Dick, Rummy, and W waged war on Iraq to kill Medicare!

replace with bush tax cuts

Without a doubt, Puggs Pelosi is the worst Speaker evah.

She's a world class moron.

"Dissent is the highest form of patriotism." - unknown
except when Democrats control the House, the Senate, and the Executive Branch.

The Health Insurers Have Already Won

How UnitedHealth and rival carriers, maneuvering behind the scenes in Washington, shaped health-care reform for their own benefit

Ditto private health care, with the added burden that they'll drop you like a hot potato when you get sick and you end up with nothing at all. None of this is a mystery.



Uh, no. What I said was a myth was the belief that RATIONING would INCREASE under the public option were it available - i.e. the Republican meme currently being pushed that "Obama wants to kill your Grandma." I don't expect rationing to increase under the public option, for the reasons I stated previously, but rather the COST will INCREASE due to greater coverage and greater input by the insured over the process. That's the choice we face no matter what method is used to provide health care. Grandma is in greater danger from loss of coverage under a private plan than a public plan, but the cost is cost. So you have to determine which is more impt to you - Grandma's health or the cost to keep Grandma healthy. If you are arguing that Grandma deserves extreme measures that won't likely affect her health at the end of life, then you are arguing for an increased cost. If you are arguing that the cost of UHC is too high, then you are arguing that Grandma deserves less. Pick a lane - any lane.

Replace what with Bush tax cuts? The chocolate chips in the Toll House recipe?

sounds like you need your milk & cookies

Not sure I'd trust your recipe, but I'm always open for cookies. Milk I can take or leave.

[

I don't have that option with private insurance. It's part of work. I could certainly opt out of insurance coverage all together, but would be unable to get the same level of service for the same price seeking insurance as an individual rather than as an employer group. Additionally I would very likely be denied any coverage at nearly any price due to pre-existing conditions. The average Joe working a typical job has to take what he can get, or get nothing, or be rich enough to seek a private policy. Work determines what policy is offered, what benefits are offered, how much they cost, etc. I only get to take it or leave it, and there are no real alternatives to leaving it, unless one is rich enough to afford paying for an individual policy.



I've seen people try to cut SS, Medicare, etc. It's a political hot potato, and yes, people, especially older people who vote most regularly, do indeed vote single issue on this issue when it begins to affect them. People have a tendency to take cutting Grandma's health benefits rather personally. It's not some esoteric philosophical issue when medical care is cut - it's real and visceral and in your face because it affects us intimately in our everyday lives. Of course that doesn't mean that every battle is won, only that a battle is guaranteed.



Well, the choice is really whether the money goes into a community pot, or into an individual's pocket as a bonus for denying service.



It's been working just fine for longer than either of us have been alive.



If you chose to pay out of pocket for these services rather than using your insurance that's certainly your choice. It'll be way way way way way way way more expensive though. But hey, if you're rich, what do you care? It's only a problem if you are not rich.



I'm sorry to hear that.



That's why it's so important to be able to pick your Dr., IMHO. He or She is the most important element of your health care.

Medicare only since 1965. SS since the 1930s but within months of insolvency in the 80s. Medicare hasn't been viable without massive gubment subsidy ever

No other option but Medicare and what most people like about Medicare is their supplement provided by the evil healthcare insurance industry...

Medicare already limits choice of treatments and drugs. Also has very low reimbursement rates, not negotiated with providers but set by gubment. Clearly all the single payer folks will immediately go to gubment plan when they can and others will be funneled into the gubment plan mostly the poor and sick. This will lead to further lowering of reimbursements in order to keep plan affordable and likely taxpayer subsidy. More and more providers will opt out of gubment plan and likely Congress will also require they opt of of Medicare too. When all the folks on gubment plans cannot find a provider, what ya'll gonna do?

get what Congress has

FEHBP (Congress and all other Federal employees) does not have a government plan.

You pubes are some twisted puppies.



Palin: Obama Might Euthanize My Baby

With the escalating standard of Republican craziness and whackadoodlism over recent days, I'd been wondering if Sarah Palin would feel pressed to get back into the game, if for no other reason than to defend her brand as chief Republican moonbat.

And I think my question has been answered.

Palin is now out claiming that Obama's "death panel" might decide to euthanize her Down syndrome baby.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/...p_the_crazy.php

If government becomes the one take it or leave it choice it isn't going to be any better. I'd prefer gov be a supplier of last resort rather than first. I'm not averse to it pooling risk for pre-existing conditions. Even to the point of forcing each private company to take a share of the high risk as a condition of getting into the business.




Mostly it gets kicked down the road. Guarantee today's old folks and make the kids work a little longer.



There is no community pot. No lock box, gym locker, secret compartment. Only being able to print money is saving us.





If you define fine as paying more tax and working longer.





If it were possible to buy cut rate products and do more yourself that option might be viable.





A lot of guilt and pain in the family, but not much I can do.





I wonder if Kennedy was thinking that when he came up with the idea of HMOs? Personally I'd rather be able to rely less on doctors. They lock up the meds and demand we pay them for the right to cure ourselves.