Jack & Jill Politics

Why, oh why, did you have to post that beautiful picture of MY First Lady with that windswept look? Damn, if she ain't gorgeous.

God damn that woman is beautiful when she smiles.

So Whoopi Goldberg just shut Michelle Malkin down on her quote about Obama Admin. being the "most corrupt" as the show was going off the air and the credits were rolling because of a comment that Malkin had said on the Today Show.

I love Whoopi!!

But what good does that do? The time to take it to that witch was during the interview, not as they were going off the air. They just sat back and let Malkin talk over them, and spew bs. It was like a 6 minute infomercial for Malkin's book!

Does no good cuz even I almost missed it.

But, I'm sure they wanted to double check it before they just went off the cuff like they do over at FoxNews. So at least Whoopi waited until she had her facts to say what she said. It was def an informercial for her book, but conservative pundits--if you wanna call 'em that--have mastered the ability to over talk someone. Michael Eric Dyson is the only person I've seen be able to shut a fellow journalist down with irrefutable facts at that.

So Michelle knew she was walking into a snake pit with The View, and Joy almost pulled back cuz homegirl was snippy as hell when Joy asked her a question. but, with people like that, it's best just to let them go ahead because both sides had their preconceived notions that were NOT going to be resolved in that segment.

But, you have two moderates on either side of the aisle and the table with Whoopi balancing Barbara Walters; Joy being the rabid liberal balancing out Elisabeth's dingy conservatism and you got dumbass Sherri in the middle who just voted for the first time in her life---I'm DONE!!!

Why is Michelle Malkin getting booked on these shows? What the fuck is this? This shit is ridiculous! Why not just let any ole crackpot come and spew their nonsense?

ABC is trying to get in the race with cable news stations. It will be to their detirment, if they continue to book satin's helpers on their daytime tv shows.

The soap operas ratings are dwindling, and "Guiding Light" was laid to rest last year, I believe.

I think ABC is counting on the layoff population to tune in this spectacle. I hope the ratings start to plummett, no offense to Whoppi and Sheri, or Joy Sistas gotta eat, but folks aren't going to stand for the hate-spewing drivel of the right wing on the View... not for long.

Right wing?

R u serious? Only right wing voice is Elisabeth and Barbara isn't going to let her politics get in the way of journalism. The View is categorically left of center if anything.

What she said? I missed it!

according to the note cards whoopi had for michelle, there was this assertion that she had made that the statement or had written that "obama's administration is the most corrupt" and Michelle called Whoopi on it and Whoopi was just saying that it was what she had on the notecard and to not blame her.

Michelle was about to go there and thought twice about it, and after that Whoopi calmed down as usual and just let them spew for whatever reason. So, apparently, a fact checker called Malkin's bluff and during the credits Whoopi said that Malkin had made that statement on the Today Show which would make her statement fair game for commentary.

AFTERNOON OPEN THREAD IS UP

But it's still morning! :oP

Yeah! It's only 10!

Where are you?

I'm in Ohio, it was 11:57 when I posted my comment. LOL, technically it was still morning :oP

Where?!

Columbus

Ahh...okay. I lived in Cleveland for a couple of years, then moved out to Bedford (closer to work).

When will you hear about the bar results?

October 30th :o(

I think I'm done with you.

Cutting and pasting spin from the administration does little to get to the heart of the debate, nor does it actually address the legislation that is making its way through Congress.

This is just more kool-aid. Drink up!

Allowing you to post 'cut-n-paste' ad nauseum has done nothing but stifle discussion. You monopolized the threads on Sundays. I don't understand your point. However from having experienced something similar at 'Talk Left' I invite the administrators here to institute that akin to what Jeralyn put into action. Either outright ban your postings or limit them in the number of posts and/or length per day.

I saw that too. It is a little "pot meets kettle..." isn't. it. I understand that JJP wants to foster debate, which is the perrog of being an open and accessible blog, but I decided personally a while back not to respond to posting by certain posters, because it's obvious that some of them don't really want to freely exchange ideas. It's about pushing their own agenda. Shout out to D, for at least being respectful in his wrongness (LOL!).

Shout out to D, for at least being respectful in his wrongness (LOL!).

Truly, I don't have a problem with D. I don't think D is here to score points 'agin us' whereas, I get the definite gut-level impression that's WHY Conserv1 is here.

Some of my extended family members are Mormon. I cannot tell you the number of conversations I have had with my older nephews (mid-20s) and, I swear, the only time it got loud was when it was about that Peterson guy in California who killed his wife & unborn child. And I think that's because the one who was so intense had just gotten married some 6 months previous and couldn't see how a husband could do such a thing.

Okay, now they are arguing over Cookie Monster on the View, and I agree with Whoopi, I never tried to shove cookies in my mouth like Cookie Monster. Cookie Monster eating veggies is just wrong. . .

Obama health care battle to be waged during congressional 'recess'

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval...

Politics Today: Health Care "Drumbeat Across America"

http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/08/03/politic...

This has got to be the funniest commercial I have EVER seen (I may just have a dirty mind though) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4S3C4AC908w

I just saw that on the View and all I could say was "Noooooooooooo no no no no no" and of course Sherri's dumb butt starts talking about how it looks like a good exercise tool.

Just LMAO!

You don't have a dirty mind... I felt that I was watching a segment of a porn video that was Photoshopped onto an exercise commerical. Instead of the femme fatale holding a ... ahem, she was holding a hand weight.

Apologies if this was already posted.
Lawmakers Move to Sell Health-Care Plan to Voters (Update2)
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103...

Detroit -- Facing a budget deficit of $300 million, and with many of its costs contractually fixed, some in the city are willing to consider something that was previously unthinkable -- filing for Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection.

Detroit bankruptcy would require state-appointed financial manager

But the process won't be as simple as filing for Chapter 9 -- a rarely used form of bankruptcy reserved for municipalities and school districts -- and welcoming a major restructuring of the city's debts and obligations. For Detroit to receive bankruptcy protection, it would have to give up some of its autonomy.

No Michigan city has filed for bankruptcy. This month, however, there has been talk of both the city and its school system taking that step.

---

The car compaines may survive, but its almost a certainty Detroit and its school system will not.

There is a huge partisan gap on perceptions of the U.S. health care system. Seven-out-of-10 Republicans rate it as good or excellent, but only one-of-four Democrats agree. Among those not affiliated with either major political party, 53% rate the current system as good or excellent while just 18% say it’s poor.

Over the past few months, as the health care reform debate has raged, confidence in the current system has increased significantly among Republicans and unaffiliated voters. There has been little change among Democrats.

The new polling also shows that 80% of those with insurance rate their own coverage as good or excellent.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/...

Healthcare is not a democrat or republican issue it is an American issue.

You miss the point. 80% like what they have and want to keep it.

The House health care bill is a one-way ticket to single-payer, government-run health care — period.

Obama (D-IL): “I don’t think we’re going to be able to eliminate employer coverage immediately. There’s going to be potentially some transition process” (3/24/07, at SEIU “Universal Health Care Forum”); “I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer universal health care system” (2003 at AFL-CIO event)

Frank (D-MA): “I think if we get a good public option, it could lead to single-payer; that’s the best way to reach single-payer” (7/27/09)

Schakowsky (D-IL): “And next to me was a guy from the insurance company, who then argued against the public health insurance option, saying ‘it wouldn’t let private insurance compete’ — that ‘a public option will put the private insurance industry out of business and lead to single-payer.’ He was right! The man was right!” (4/18/09)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-bY92mcOdk&eurl...

Of that 80% the vast majority of it don't pay for it the employer does. Every year the number of employers that pay for it drop it or shift more of the cost to the employee. Given the way insurance works the smaller the pool becomes the more expensive insurance becomes. So one way or another it is coming to a single payer system.

You are welcome to delude yourself that the best employees will go where the best benefits are so the employer must offer them. The employers have plenty of good opportunity to recruit without the benefits because many employers dropped the good, the bad and the ugly employees this time around. If they want good they are out there and they do not have to pay the either because people want to work.

People are delusional if they think the a government option will take away from them. They have lost every year for the last ten through cutbacks in plan benefits or higher cost out of there pocket. And they are stupid because they do not read their policies to find out there is a dollar limit a policy will pay in aggregate, i.e.per family or individual.

Your just a nasty lump of cancer.

In your own desperation it is YOU who are missing the point.

BACKGROUND QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
ON HEALTH CARE PLAN
Q. I like my current insurance coverage. Will I have to change plans?
A. No, you will not have to change plans. For those who have insurance now, nothing will change under the Obama plan – except that you will pay less. Obama’s plan will save a typical family up to $2,500 on premiums by bringing the health care system into the 21st century: cutting waste, improving technology, expanding coverage to all Americans, and paying for some high-cost cases.

Q. How will I be able to sign up?
A. Signing up for the plan will be easy. You will be able do it on your tax return, on the Internet, on forms you can get from your employer, in churches, libraries, motor vehicle bureaus and all sorts of places.

Q. How will the mandate that children be covered affect me?
A. When children are born, their parents will be assisted in signing them up for
affordable, high quality coverage, either through their own employer-sponsored insurance plans, through Medicaid or SCHIP, or through options established by the Obama plan. We will continue to make sure that children are covered, which may include verification when parents sign them up for daycare or school. Obama’s plan will help parents make sure their children get the care they need, at the time they need it.

Q. I am on Medicaid / my family is on S-CHIP. Will I be able to stay on these
programs?
A. Yes. The Medicaid and SCHIP programs are examples of successful state-federal partnerships, covering millions of low-income children, adults, disabled individuals and seniors, including many seniors in nursing homes. As we work to expand health coverage to every American, it makes sense to build upon these successful partnerships, and equally important, to increase the funding to keep them sustainable, instead of dismantling them. The Obama plan would actually expand Medicaid and S-CHIP to cover more families and working people.

Q. Won’t my employer drop coverage?
A. No. Employers who do not offer meaningful coverage to their employees will have to contribute a percentage of their payroll to help offset the cost of providing coverage to all Americans. In most cases, this will eliminate an employer’s incentive to drop coverage. Some small employers will be exempt from this requirement.

Q. Obama says his plan will save $2,500 annually for my family. How?
A. Through a combination of developing efficiencies in the system, expanding
coverage to all Americans, and picking up the cost of some high-cost cases.

Specifically:
􀀁 Health IT investment, which will reduce unnecessary and wasteful
spending in the health care system. Examples include extra hospital stays
because of preventable medical errors and duplicative diagnostic tests;
􀀁 Improving prevention and management of chronic conditions;
􀀁 Increasing insurance industry competition and reining in the abusive
practices of monopoly insurance and drug companies;
􀀁 Providing reinsurance for catastrophic cases, which will reduce insurance
premiums; and
􀀁 Ensuring every American has health coverage, which will reduce spending
on the “uncompensated” care of uninsured people who end up in
emergency rooms and whose care is picked up by institutions and then
passed through higher charges to insured individuals.

Q. I have insurance, but I spend so much money on deductibles, premiums and copays that I can’t afford anything else. Will Obama’s plan help me?
A. Yes. The Obama plan is designed to help people exactly like you. His plan will help the millions of families who currently have health insurance from their employer, but nonetheless are feeling squeezed by fast-rising premiums, co-pays, and deductibles. Nearly 11 million insured Americans spent more than a quarter of their salary on health care last year. Obama’s plan will reduce a typical family’s premium by up to $2,500 by reducing costs, improving technology, and reigning in the power of insurance companies.

Q. I don’t want the government telling me which doctors to see or what treatments to get. Will the Obama plan force these kinds of decisions on me?
A. Senator Obama agrees with you. His plan will not tell you which doctors to see or what treatments to get. Under the Obama health care plan, you will be able to keep your doctor and your health insurance if you want. No government bureaucrat will secondguess decisions about your care.

Q. Will I still have choice in health plans?
A. Yes. Obama’s plan actually will increase the choices available to you. If you like the insurance you have now, nothing will change under the Obama plan, except that you will pay less. If you do not have insurance you can choose to enroll in the new public plan, which will offer benefits similar to what every federal employee and member of Congress gets. Or you can choose private plan options through the national health
exchange. But none of the plans will be allowed to drop you just because you get sick.
Q. I am a business owner, how does the Obama plan affect my company and the
economy in general?
A. By reducing health care costs, the Obama plan will save employers $140 billion
per year.
First, Obama’s plan includes a reinsurance pool for employers. If employer health care costs exceed a certain amount, the federal government will pick up the tab, as long as the employer agrees to pass the savings onto their employees. That helps businesses who have that one sick employee to be able to continue offering health insurance to their employees and keep their doors open.

Second, Obama’s plan goes beyond short-term fixes to address the main cost drivers in health care, which will help to stabilize the rising costs of health care, which are simply unsustainable over the long term. The Obama plan makes a real investment in health IT and other health system changes, which will dramatically improve quality and efficiency of the health care system, bringing it into the 21st century. The Obama plan will also aggressively hold the insurance and pharmaceutical industries accountable for unfair and abusive practices that are raising prices for families and employers. Finally, Obama will invest in prevention and public health systems, which will help Americans stay healthy
and lower costs from having to treat preventable diseases.

Third, for employers that already offer coverage to their employees, Obama’s plan will make it less costly for them to continue to do so, because every American will be covered. The health care costs of the uninsured will no longer be passed along to those who do have health insurance, which will drive down health insurance premiums. The Obama plan will also help employers that are unable to offer health coverage to their employees right now. The main reason employers do not offer health coverage to their employees is because it is simply too expensive. Obama’s plan directly addresses the cost issue by allowing small employers to purchase a new public plan with subsidies for those who need it. For those who want private insurance, the Obama plan creates a National Health Insurance Exchange, which will act as a watchdog group and help reform
the private insurance market by creating rules and standards for participating insurance plans to ensure fairness and to make coverage more affordable and accessible.

Q. I own a small business but don’t offer insurance. How much will I have to
pay for each employee? And how does the Obama plan help my small business?
A. Obama’s plan will help small employers that are unable to offer health coverage to their employees right now. The main reason small employers do not offer health coverage to their employees is because it is simply too expensive. The Obama plan allows small employers to enter the National Health Insurance Exchange to purchase either a new public plan or a private plan for their employees, who will be eligible for subsidies if they need them. Very small businesses and start-ups will be exempted from the obligation to
pay into the system or provide meaningful coverage for their employees.
The reinsurance proposal will also reduce the volatility of premiums for small businesses.

For small businesses, having a single employee with catastrophic expenditures can make insurance unaffordable for all of the workers in the firm. The Obama plan would reimburse employer health plans for a portion of the catastrophic costs they incur above a threshold if they guarantee such savings are used to reduce the cost of workers’ premiums. Offsetting some of the catastrophic costs will make health care more affordable for employers, workers, and their families.

Q. What if I am self-employed?
A. Then you know how hard it is for self-employed people to buy affordable health insurance today. Obama’s plan will ensure that small businesses and those who are selfemployed have affordable health care. Obama's new health plan will give individuals the choice of buying affordable health coverage that is similar to the plan available to federal employees and members of Congress or a private health insurance plan through an insurance market place known as the Health Insurance Exchange. The insurance will be affordable for all Americans and the insurance companies will not be allowed to deny you coverage or drop you because you get sick, the way they do now.

Q. What if I have a pre-existing condition?
This guaranteed eligibility will apply to all private and public insurance plans, whether they are offered in the National Health Insurance Exchange or outside of it. No insurance companies will be allowed to discriminate because of a previous bout with cancer or some other pre-existing illness.

Q. Does the Obama plan support mental health parity?
A. Yes. Under the Obama plan, private insurance offered by employers and both the private and public insurance plans will include coverage of all essential medical services, including mental health care. Obama is a strong supporter of mental health parity and he believes that serious mental illnesses must be covered on the same terms and conditions as are applicable to physical illnesses and diseases. He does not think health insurance
companies should be allowed to discriminate against the mentally ill.

Q. How much will it cost us taxpayers?
A. The Obama plan will cost between $50-65 billion a year when fully phased in.

Q. How will we pay for the Obama plan?
A. The Obama plan will realize tremendous savings within the health care system to help finance the plan. The additional revenue needed to fund the up-front investments in technology and to help people who cannot afford health insurance is more than covered by allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire for people making more than $250,000 per year, as they are scheduled to do.

http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/Obama08_Healthca...

Val,

Q. I like my current insurance coverage. Will I have to change plans?
A. No, you will not have to change plans. For those who have insurance now, nothing will change under the Obama plan – except that you will pay less. Obama’s plan will save a typical family up to $2,500 on premiums by bringing the health care system into the 21st century: cutting waste, improving technology, expanding coverage to all Americans, and paying for some high-cost cases.

This is UNTRUE.

IF your employer drops your private plan or changes your coverage for any reason or in any way, you will AUTOMATICALLY be moved to the 'public option' from which you may choose a 'qualified' plan. Further, there are proposasl on the table that will tax employers and insurance companies on so-called 'gold-plated' plans. What do you think will happen to the market for those plans and the incentive for employers to offer them?

Cutting and pasting spin from the administration does little to get to the heart of the debate, nor does it actually address the legislation that is making its way through Congress.

This is just more kool-aid. Drink up!

Didn't we already discuss the "if your employer drops the plan" meme already? My company changed plans at least 5 times during my tenure here at work. . . . this would be no different. You will not automatically move to ANY plan. You have to enroll in a plan. You can choose a plan from your company or you can go with the public option. To say otherwise is just silly.

"Cutting and pasting spin from the administration does little to get to the heart of the debate, nor does it actually address the legislation that is making its way through Congress."

raotflmao. Did you actually read your comment? Does it really make sense to you? lol enjoy your day Conserv

FYI - I don't drink koolaid. It has no nutritional value.

Yeah - our insurance plan has changed every year for the past 3 years. I like the one 3 years ago. However, I don't have a family on my plan and supposedly they (the employer) switched to accommodate families. Now we just had this discussion in June. We will have the same plan we had last year with "conditions." Let me tell ya - 80% are NOT satisfied with their employer-based insurance.

For example:
- Annual exam by physician to every 2 years.
- You can see your physician 3 times at the copay amount, on the 4th visit and beyond you pay the full office visit amount.
- We have no say over the deductible amount. $750 individual; 1500 family.
- Medications .... Jezzus!

FYI - I don't drink koolaid. It has no nutritional value.

Wow - no shit....

No Val. You are misinformed. If you employer changes your coverage you will be AUTOMATICALLY enrolled in the 'public option' which will give you a choice of only 'qualified plans' that may or may not include your previous doctors or coverages.

Try and square that circle. Or just take another gulp.

Conserv. Let me humor you for a second. Didn't you JUST write that nothing actually actually addresses the legislation because it is making its way through Congress."

So how can you also write "If you employer changes you coverage you will be enrolled in the 'public option' which will give you a choice of only 'qualified plans' that may or may not include your previous doctors or coverages." :-)

I told you multiple times. . . an employer changing plan options that may or may not include previous doctors or coverages is not new. They have ALWAYS done this and there is no way you can be AUTOMATICALLY be signed up for anything. You have to select that option. So. . .?????

Besides Conserv, I don't have to try and square anything. I am FOR a strong public option and I am not thirsty so I don't need to take another gulp.

It's alright Conserv. After we pass healthcare reform which will include a strong public option. . . I am sure you and your repub friends will find something else to argue against.

Val.......step away. You already know Conserv is full of shit. Its entire motive is just to distract and misinform. It doesn't matter when you point out how it contradicts itself, because in true right wing fashion, it'll just flat out LIE.

lol Miranda -- . . . . awwhh man I wanted to play with it. it was fun watching it's head spin.

**walks slowly away dragging my feet**

Good try, Val! But I kept the coffee in my mouth!

lol I have to laugh WordSmith. It's just too easy yanking Conserv's chain. Don't have to make anything up either. His own words trip him up every time.

But Auntie Miranda told me to stop and I saw that raised eyebrow so . . . . lol

"Don't have to make anything up either. His own words trip him up every time."


That really is the beauty of the GOP these days isn't it? They write their own material. I guess they are good for something.

Krugman:

Health reform made simple
Kudos to the Times for a story that, for once, emphasizes the remarkable unity of vision health reformers are showing, rather than the squabbles that are an inevitable part of passing major legislation.

The essence is really quite simple: regulation of insurers, so that they can’t cherry-pick only the healthy, and subsidies, so that all Americans can afford insurance.

Everything else is about making that core work. Individual mandates are a way to prevent gaming of the system by people who don’t sign up until they’re sick; employer mandates a way to hold down the on-budget costs by preventing a rush by employers to drop insurance; the public option a way to create effective competition and hold costs down further.

But what it means for the individual will be that insurers can’t reject you, and if your income is relatively low, the government will help pay your premiums.

That’s it. Any commentator who whines that he just doesn’t understand it is basically saying that he doesn’t want to understand it.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/01/hea...

True, and all of these regulations and mandates can be achieved without a 'public option' or single-payer system run by the federal government.

No it can't. These individuals need a threat just as wall street needs regulation or prison sentences to set them straight.

The public option you are screaming your head over is not even strong, hell it just provides an insurance listing for those in the HIE program. Do you honestly think the Insurance Company are scared of a public option? Get the hell out of here.

Read HR 3200 Please, its double spaced and 14 font before you come on here writting. Don't let the 1036 pages fool you, its double spaced, you can read it in 4 hours.

And if you are against the federal government running anything, DO not take Medicare, Medicaid, hell don't even call a fireman. Send it the $$ to me.

Same folk who talked about free market/globalization sold this country down the drain. I am sorry these folks [Insurance Company] are corporate capitalist and not capitalist period. Learn the difference. The "founding fathers" [Thomas Jefferson] you guys like to yell to the world about said this "I hope we shall crush ... in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country."

This health care debate should force this country to review the words of Justice Louis Brandeis that we have two choices in this nation: “We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both."

"VIDEO: Watch New Ad Slamming Dobbs And CNN For Birther Footsie"
http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/political-med...
slamming-dobbs-and-cnn-for-birther-footsie/#comments

I told you Friday that Media Matters is set to run a new ad attacking Lou Dobbs’s birther flirtation, dubbing it CNN’s “Lou Dobbs problem” in a spot running during Dobbs show.

Well, here’s the ad, which will start running tomorrow for a week on CNN, MSNBC, and Fox...
The spot, which directly names CNN president Jonathan Klein, comes as Dobbs’ birther footsie is ballooning into a serious problem indeed for CNN. The Associated Press has now labeled Dobbs a “publicity nightmare” for the network who has “embarrassed” Klein. And yesterday, New York Times columnist Frank Rich noted that “one of the loudest birther enablers is not at Fox but CNN.”

That Fox comparison, coming on the Op ed page of The Times, has to rankle CNN execs and editorial staff. The question now is whether the campaign against Dobbs will foment internal discord at the network and ratchet up internal pressure on CNN brass to politely ask that Dobbs knock it off already.

Dobbs should have gotten that azz spanked after showing up at that rally and buying Obama Waffles and posing for a picture with the box. If a black reporter showed up at a rally and bought some McCain Depends and posed for a picture they'd be serving hot dogs on the side of the road as we speak.

Here's another interview with Clifton Green, the Emory professor who does his Ethiopian daughter's hair. It's so moving.

http://blackgirllonghair.blogspot.com/2009/07/b...

BGLH: I'm assuming you've been around caucasian hair all your life. This may be a kind of silly question, but what to you, is the most striking difference between the texture of your daughters hair, and the hair you were used to?

Clifton: I would say perhaps the most striking difference is how dry her hair can get. In my experience, white people's hair tends to get oily between washings; with Miriam her hair dries out instead.

It's like this inverse relationship in hair.

BGLH: Do you find anything uniquely beautiful about afro-textured hair?

Clifton: My favorite is the way it looks with two strand twists. It seems uniquely black and beautiful to me.

Yeah - I understand this.

As an aside when my daughter was small we would braid or twist her hair and, to me, there was something sedate (calming) and lovely about it.

What's so great about private health insurance?
The bloody battle in Congress over a 'public option' ignores the insurers' role in creating the nation's healthcare crisis and their efforts to throttle reform.
Michael Hiltzik
August 3, 2009
Throughout the heroic struggle in Congress to provide a "public option" in health insurance, one question never seems to get answered: Why are we so intent on protecting the private option?

The "public option," as followers of the debate know, is a government-sponsored health plan that would be available as an alternative to, and in competition with, the for-profit health insurance industry, otherwise known as the private option.

On Friday, the House Committee on Energy and Commerce narrowly passed a reform bill incorporating a public option resembling Medicare. It was a bloody fight among members of Congress, some of whom believe that the public option will give the government unwarranted power over healthcare, and all of whom enjoy government-provided healthcare that's a lot better than what most of us get.

But the battle is just beginning. After the committee vote, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi warned that the health insurance industry will conduct a "shock and awe" campaign to kill the public option when Congress returns from vacation in September and starts debating the measure. We can expect to be overwhelmed with an industry ad campaign worth millions of dollars (remember Harry and Louise?) exhorting us to write our lawmakers to preserve the American way of healthcare.

So it's proper to remind ourselves what that American way entails. For if the insurers have proved anything over the last 15 years as the health crisis has gathered speed like an avalanche roaring downhill, it's that they're part of the problem, not the solution.

The firms take billions of dollars out of the U.S. healthcare wallet as profits, while imposing enormous administrative costs on doctors, hospitals, employers and patients. They've introduced complexity into the system at every level. Your doctor has to fight them to get approval for the treatment he or she thinks is best for you. Your hospital has to fight them for approval for every day you're laid up. Then they have to fight them to get their bills paid, and you do too.

One Wendell Potter reminded a Senate committee in June that health insurance executives had assured Congress in 1993 that they would work to secure universal medical coverage and end denials of coverage to people with pre-existing conditions. Then they moved heaven and earth to kill reform.

They've made the same promises now, Potter observed. But they're in an even better position to throttle reform. Mergers and acquisitions have turned the industry into a cartel of huge corporations.

"The industry is bigger, richer and stronger, and it has a much tighter grip on our healthcare system," he said. The last thing they want is a government program set up as their competition.

Potter knows the insurers' ways because he was a top executive in the industry for 20 years. But the hard numbers bear him out. The two largest insurers, WellPoint and UnitedHealth Group, each acquired 11 other insurers between 2000 and 2007. They now control a total of 67 million "covered lives" (that's customers in health insurance-speak).

This consolidation has produced functional monopolies in communities across America. The American Medical Assn. (itself no great fan of reform) found in a 2007 survey that in 76% of the country, defined as its major metropolitan statistical areas, one insurer had a share of 50% or more of the conventional insurance market. This phenomenon gives the companies enormous power to drive up premiums and maximize profits.

Why do we tolerate this? The industry loves to promote surveys indicating that most Americans are "satisfied" with their current health insurance -- 37% are "very satisfied" and 17% "extremely satisfied," according to one such study.

Yet these figures are misleading. Most people are satisfied with their current insurance because most people never have a complex encounter with the health insurance bureaucracy. Medical care generally follows the so-called 80-20 statistical pattern -- 20% of patients consume 80% of care. If your typical encounter is an annual checkup or treatment of the kids' sniffles, or even a serious but routine condition such as a heart attack, your experience is probably satisfactory.

But it's on the margins where the challenges exist. Anyone whose condition is even slightly out of the ordinary knows the sinking feeling of entering health insurance hell -- pre-authorizations, denials, appeals, and days, weeks, even months wasted waiting for resolution.

And that's among people with affordable employer-paid insurance, an ever-shrinking cohort. The percentage of small and medium-sized businesses offering health coverage to employees shriveled to 38% from 67% between 1995 and 2008, according to the National Small Business Assn. Without reform, the number will continue to plummet.

Meanwhile, people employed by big companies that offer a health plan are within a layoff notice of losing coverage for themselves or their families, joining America's 46 million uninsured.

Their only alternative right now is the individual market, where insurers scrutinize applicants' medical histories, looking for reasons to turn them down or charge them exorbitant premiums. Have hay fever, asthma, a cholesterol pill prescription? Are you a woman of child-bearing age? You're virtually uninsurable at an affordable cost.

Even if you're accepted, your carrier reserves the right to cancel your policy retroactively if it finds that you left even a tiny condition from years back off your application.

The public option may be your lifeline -- if it's enacted.

Signs of the industry's mobilization against the public option are everywhere. I don't claim clairvoyance for having predicted this development back in March; given the industry's record on reform, a child could have done so.

You've heard of the Blue Dog Democrats, those mostly rural conservatives who blocked a summertime vote on reform legislation on Capitol Hill? According to the Center for Public Integrity, the biggest backer of the Blue Dogs’ political action committee is the healthcare industry, which is on the path to pumping a total of $1.2 million into the PAC's maw in the current 2009-10 election cycle.

Then there's the advocacy group called the Campaign for an American Solution, which describes itself as "a grass-roots effort . . . to build support for workable healthcare reform." The organization owns up to being an "initiative" of America’s Health Insurance Plans, or AHIP, the industry's chief lobbying arm. Unless I've missed a radical change in lawn and garden horticulture, you can't get much further from the grass roots than to be a creation of the industry with the biggest stake in the debate.

Despite all this, America's health insurance plans, which helped create our dysfunctional world, are deferred to as though they're a disinterested party. AHIP subtitled one of its policy papers "A Vision for Reform." But are the insurers now, and have they ever been, anything other than a roadblock?
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hiltzik3-...

They all hate capitalism and its a fact. They all hate competition and rather be monopolies period.

For too long capatalism to them means generating wealth at the cost of canceling policy for pre-existing conditions or denying coverage or high premiums or backdoor profit. To be honest Insurance company are not really afraid of the public option itself, its the competition they cannot tolerate.

Health Care Insurance Companies [Major ones]
Aetna
American Association of Retired Persons
American Family Insurance
American National Insurance Company
Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield
Assurant
Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association
Cigna
Fortis
Golden Rule Insurance Company
Group Health Cooperative
Health Net
HealthMarkets
Humana Inc.
Intermountain Health Care
Kaiser Permanente
LifeWise Health Plan of Oregon
Premera
Principal Financial Group
Regence Group
Shelter Insurance Companies
Thrivent Financial for Lutherans
UnitedHealth Group
Unitrin
Wellpoint

They do not compete among each other. Now in some respects, they would have to compete with each other in their pricing and the basic plans they offer to the public. HR 3200 forces them to compete in some respect, that is create a market basket of competitively priced plans. Nothwithstanding, the public option [Title II in HR3200] is not one the insurance company will loose sleep over because all it offers is a list of insurance plans that eventually will be managed by the above private sectors. Title II provides for HIE[Health Insurance Exchange] for individuals without insurance to apply for, employers that fall into 3 categories to get into and merely requires the above carriers to provide qualified health care. Those who enroll into the HIE will then have to pick from a list of insurance plans. Moreover, the bill will not be in effect until 2013, what does that tell you? Enough time to insurers to implement a new game plan to cheat the new system.

Another think that amazes me is that majority of Doctors, Nurses and health care providers prefer a single payer but for some reason they don't get a voice, rather the Insurance Company tells the Public what is good for them. Folks including my friends would rather have a salary like Mayo Clinic than getting paid $150.00 per doctor visit [AND you have to fight to get $150.00 from the insurance company who want a discount, so end up with $80]

If people think HR 3200 is a means to single payer then the American public needs to wake up. I am hoping HR 676 get tabled because it provides for a single-payer system on the state level, note that 13 republicans voted for it. I think 676 is great for the States to exercise what the GOP calls "state's right" and its merely an option. Thus if southern states don't want it then that is their problem, but If Vermont wants it good for them. This will create a domino effect from state to state. Nothwithstanding Title II in HR 3200 must be stronger than the watered down provision it is.

Here Private Insurance:
"For a 23 year old who buys insurance for $990.00, expect to pay first initial deductible of $150, then a split of 60% to 40% on all bills with the Insurance Company, and please don't forget your $30 co-pay and your $80 for your emergency room co-pay. Oh my the way make sure you stay in a PPO network and insuers will terminate your benefit if they find you to be in a risk group or for any cause they determine; and if that is not enough your doctor must call the insurer to approve your treatment or not; and see if your prescription is acceptable. Oh did I mention that If your insurance is the kind that becomes a hassle for doctor in getting payment, he/she will not see you. OH How can i forget to tell you that if your insurance does not pay the doctor, expect a letter from the doctors lawyer with 3 weeks telling you to call them or meet them in court Thank you"

Thank the flying spaghetti monster I have socialized medicine.

Heck if it was not Politically incorrect, I would say I want socialized medicine period. [Did I say it out loud?] I am pissed that was my experience years ago with private insurance, ended up having to pay a lawyer.

What kind of insurance do you have?

I have VA and my family has Champva.We get to choose our own doctors our meds are at a discount and there are no limits on care.I dont want to hear you were a Vet so you deserve it blah,blah and a double blah.Every American should have the same level of care I received and their congressmen gets without the threat of bankruptcy or choosing their health or putting food on the table.

I agree with you 100% that why I think people who think the HR 3200 is "government takeover" are silly. Its just a public option at best, I want what you have a single payer.

I was so young to have to deal with dealing with a settlement with my doctor's lawyer because health insurance [blue cross] would not pay.

I am with you, every american deserves the best.

"The firms take billions of dollars out of the U.S. healthcare wallet as profits, while imposing enormous administrative costs on doctors, hospitals, employers and patients. They've introduced complexity into the system at every level. Your doctor has to fight them to get approval for the treatment he or she thinks is best for you. Your hospital has to fight them for approval for every day you're laid up. Then they have to fight them to get their bills paid, and you do too."

The elephant in the room. "A little reported fact of the hemorrhaging US economy is that healthcare companies are raking it in."

And Medicare does not? Doctors in ever increasing numbers are refusing to accept Medicare patients.

Reform can happen, but we do NOT need a 'Medicare for All" single payer system.

And, who is at the Medicare trough? The health care industry's welfare billionaires.

Humana 2Q Profit Rises 34% On Medicare Business

"Humana Inc.'s (HUM) second-quarter earnings rose 34% as revenue rose despite falling enrollment on strong gains at its Medicare Advantage business, where profit surged 62%. . .

Humana's 2Q09 results reflect significant improvement in the government sector driven by higher margins in the Medicare and [prescription drug plan] book of business," Credit Suisse Group (CS) analyst Gregory Nersessian said . . .

Humana was among three companies poised to lose Tricare federal contracts to provide health coverage to U.S. military personnel in 11 southern states. Loss of the multibillion-dollar contracts beginning April 2010 is likely to result in substantial drops in revenue and profits as membership is likely to drop by 3 million. Humana does a substantial amount of business within government programs and has one of the industry's biggest Medicare efforts, making it more vulnerable to next year's lower government payments.

"The company reported a profit of $281.8 million, or $1.67 a share, up from $209.9 million, or $1.24 a share, a year earlier. . ."

http://online.wsj.com/...
Oh, the irony of it all.

Fucking Humana!

I worked for a Humana hospital in Louisville, Kentucky when my husband was stationed at Ft. Knox.

During the job interview I was told that 'welfare cases' were accepted and the cost was offset by "paying customers." And it became obvious what I didn't totally understand during the job interview was that Humana was overcharging the gov't to offset charges not paid in other areas.

The American people, by and large, do not hate the insurance companies enough to completely dismantle and destroy them.

We know that, while it is not perfect, we have the best system in the world.

The demonization of the private insurance companies is a transparent attempt to save the 'public option' which is in jeopardy of being dropped from any health insurance reform legislation because it has been exposed as nothing more than a giant step towards a government run, single payer system.

I lived in England for nearly five years. I saw the Gp down the road when I needed it, had emergency dental work on an absess in two hours from arriving and didn't pay out of pocket. My tax was 35% and I was happy to pay that.

I heard this on NPR the other day.

Mento in 3 by Larry McDonald. This has been running thru my head all weekend.

And here's more about Larry McDonald...."Reggae percussionist Larry McDonald recently got the chance, at age 70, to record his first solo album after a 40-year career as a session player and member of the bands Dub Is a Weapon and the Rocksteady 7."

Polling shows Birther issue straight up racism. Duh? As if we didn't know?


"only in the South is there a sizable number of Americans with questions about the president’s citizenship. While around 90 percent of people in the Northeast, Midwest and West know that Obama was born in in United States, only 47 percent of people in the South believe this. Twenty-three percent think he was born somewhere else; 30 percent don’t know.

But how many Southern whites aren’t sure whether the president has lied about his citizenship? The “South” defined by the poll includes 30 percent of the country’s population, in twelve states: Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas. That’s around 99.2 million people, of whom 61.3 million are non-Hispanic whites, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. According to the exit polls in those 12 states, 30.6 percent of the voters in this region who cast ballots in 2008 were black, Hispanic or members of another minority group.

According to Del Ali of Research 2000, if you excluded those people from the poll—if you look only at white voters in the South—the number of people who doubt Obama’s citizenship is higher than the 47 percent figure that has grabbed headlines today. “There was no deviation in the number of black, Hispanic, and other voters from one region of the country to another,” Ali told TWI. In the South, like everywhere else, the vast majority of non-white voters said that Obama was born in the United States; 97 percent of black voters, 87 percent of Hispanic voters, and 88 percent of other minorities. The extremely low overall percentage? That’s due to white Southerners, who dragged down the average with an extremely high level of doubt about Obama."

http://washingtonindependent.com/53396/how-many...



Nixonian Southern strategy alive and will

Have White Supremacists Really Gone Mainstream? The answer is "yes".

Not only have they gone mainstream, but they've done so in the most diabolical way possible: by controlling the media narrative. These people *know* that Black, Latino and (conscious) Asian Americans have little or no power or control in media. The by-product of this lack of power and control of our image, is that racism and bigotry are afforded "the other side of the story".

A distinguished Black professor assumed to be a burglar of his own home? There's now two sides to that.

Innocent children invited to swim, and then dis-invited when they're seen to be Black? There's now two sides to that.

Police brutally shoot and kill unarmed Black and Brown people? Two sides to the story.

Hell yes racism has gone mainstream. It's now guaranteed that it'll get at least 50% of the benefit of the doubt.

And, we can't believe our lying eyes and ears. In fact, we must wait for the M$M to tell us how we feel or what we believe. /sarcasm

That headline should read "Have Obvious White Supremacists Gone Mainstream?"

New message...it is Health INSURANCE Reform...not HealthCare New polling.

"Nancy Pelosi has armed Democratic members of Congress with a stark message to use back at home selling constituents on health care reform during August: Opponents are nothing but stooges of the insurance industry.

Dems their script: “Be clear” that reform will transfer “control from insurance companies to the people,” it says, instructing them to “build a narrative about taking power from the insurance companies and giving it to people.”

I'm nobody's stooge.

Ok, not true. I'm not a stooge of the insurance industry. LOL.

Reform will transfer control from insurance companies to the federal government. It will take power from the insurance companies and hand it over to the federal government.

The American people are waking up to the fact that the 'public option' is a path to single payer health care. The Dems need to do what they always do, find a villain to demonize, to prey on the emotions of the 'victims' and whip them into a frenzy to DO SOMETHING!

It will not work this time. This is a desperate attempt to save the 'public option' and it will not succeed.

Fine with me.

"Reform will transfer control from insurance companies to the federal government. It will take power from the insurance companies and hand it over to the federal government."

Control needs to be transferred from an industry that builds profit models based in its ability to deny health care coverage.

This can be done without a 'public option'.

Too late, when the industry had a chance to self-regulate it did not reign in greed.

No it is not too late. We will see reforms that mandate universal coverage and that allow for consumer protections like being dropped or denied coverage for pre-existing conditions.

What we may not see is the 'public option.'

Why is the public option bad for a public good?

Havent you been paying attention to Conserve."The public option would lead to single payer which would destroy the health insurance industry ability to pay obscene salaries to its CEOs and setback the goal of turning America into a serfdom.Because we cannot have any kind of justice,its not the free market way."

RAOTFLMAO

Today's Conversation: Remember When I Said the Democrats Would Bring Obama Down? Maxine Waters Calls Out Rahm Emmanuel & Blue Dogs
http://bit.ly/YnC7d

exceprt: Furthermore with a less than 6% population and an aging powerhouse, what will the blacks in the California do when Maxine Waters and other advocates like her eventually retire or leave this mortal coil? For to deny the fact that Waters has been an advocate by taking Geithner to task, talking about the failed loan modifications, still fighting for the Katrina survivors after most politicians have moved you'd have to be an idiot. Not to mention the 2010 Census will result in a shift in representation.

FLOTUS' eyebrows too pointed again. Hope she brings back the makeup person that made them more arched and less angular.

Britain to track slave trade money
Published: Sunday | August 2, 2009

THE BRITISH government has earmarked over £600,000 for the University College, London (UCL), to carry out an in-depth study to measure how monies accrued from the slave trade were spent.

The study will look into those British companies and institutions established from the profits of slavery. The government has said that the study should highlight how the owners were involved and how they contributed to the provision of social services.

Encouraging development

University of the West Indies (UWI) professor of history, Verene Shepherd, has hailed the development as encouraging.

"This major project has the potential to add strong support to the reparation movement," Shepherd said.

She added: "It will place the matter of culpability for African enslavement - that great crime against humanity - squarely on the table and will allow an unambiguous naming of those who benefited from the labour and productive skills of enslaved Africans in the Caribbean."

Meanwhile, another UWI professor, Barry Chevannes, who is chairman of the National Commission on Reparations, told The Sunday Gleaner that he was looking forward to the research.

"It is an exciting piece of research. It is the kind of study which will certainly enrich the work of the commission and something that we will be very interested in," Chevannes told The Sunday Gleaner.

But Government minister Mike Henry, a champion in the fight for reparation, is not salivating at the grant by the British government to research the beneficiaries of the slave trade.

"It is a sleight-of-hand approach," Henry told The Sunday Gleaner.

"They already know who are the beneficiaries of the slave trade. They have enough material to show who benefited. This money should go towards paying the descendants of the slaves, rather than studying to escape the responsibility, or to reduce what they must be asked to pay," Henry added.

Henry said that up to last week, he discussed the matter with an international lawyer and he intended to pursue the issue of slavery and reparation at the International Court of Justice.

Patients forced to live in agony after NHS refuses to pay for painkilling injections
Tens of thousands with chronic back pain will be forced to live in agony after a decision to slash the number of painkilling injections issued on the NHS, doctors have warned.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/59...

But don't worry THIS cannot possibly happen here once our government gets involved. :-o

Patients lived in agony and then died because they lost their jobs with benefits.
www.lookattheworldthatisrightinfrontofyourface.com

Your link is broken.

But IF you want to see to it that health care insurance is not dropped due to job loss there is a way to do that without forcing someone into a government run plan.

Insurance companies can be regulated and mandates issued. We do NOT need a public option. The public option is a path to single payer, government run health care.

You need to get a sense of humor.

I don't want to be an indentured servant to the bossman who will give me my benefits from healthcare to pensions. We are a nomadic people and this system is a way to enslave us to large corporations instead of working for smaller or for ourselves or even to change career's completely.

In their own words, here are Barack Obama, Jan Schakowsky, and Barney Frank exposing the true aim of the “public option.” Yes, of course, it’s a Trojan Horse for government-run health care and the elimination of private industry.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-bY92mcOdk&eurl...

Good. If the insurance companies can not provide better financing options the the US Government they shoud go out of business. I suggest to you their profits will decrease and they will work together like, FedEx, UPS and USPS.

Yoy realize of course they share transportation resources and are based on a government provided and developed back bone, USPS national addresses USPS Zipcodes.

ROTFLMBAO
KARMA meet Prof GATES. SLAAAAAAPPPP!
Negro you didn't go to bat for those two girls. Now you expect Harvard to protect your AZZZ? You are crazy aren't you?
SLLLAAAAPPPPP!
Now take the hanky off your head. Redeem yourself negro and sue the shit out of Harvard over this.

"Town Halls Gone Wild"

Over the weekend two Democratic lawmakers held town hall events to see Health Insurance Reform to their constituents.

Democrat Rep. Lloyd Doggett went home to Austin, Texas, and heard from his constituents about the planned government health care takeover.

Message: “Just say no!”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8UjY3YDlwA&eurl...

In Philadelphia, Kathleen Sebelius and Arlen Specter get an earful and Specter is booed as he explains that he routinely delegates the reading of 1,000+ page legislation because he has to make decisions quickly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-Bpshk5nX0&eurl...

I read an article regarding the Philadelphia incident and my favorite part is:

"When I asked one of the belligerents why he and his companions wouldn't stop shouting so others could speak and be heard, he shouted that it was his right to yell under "the first amendment." I then asked why he couldn't respect the first amendment rights of others and he answered by glaring at me and walking away.

After the question and answer segment ended, I asked three of the boisterous opponents of health care why they do not support it and one of them pulled a copy of the Constitution from his hand and waving it, said, "Health care is not covered in the Constitution." Their arguments were illogical and based on lack of knowledge and an abundance of fear. I commented to them that they were being had, that they were working against their own best interests and they kept waving the Constitution.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/denise-dennis/rig...

Let them come and continue to be disruptive and ignorant. Lies and ingorance will lose the debate. Truth and knowledge will win. The truth is not in the protestors. 300 people yelling and screaming mena nothing compared with the need in this country for universal health care.

These are hired goons who go there to disrupt the democratic process. There was a memo about this. So you are not fooling anybody.

I love it. Dissent is patriotic only when liberals do it? Grassroots movements can only be born out of progressive positions?

Go ahead and keep telling yourself that if it makes you feel better.

Stay home liberal activists, move along....there is nothing to see here.

"I love it. "

Of course you do. Ignorance seems to be a valuable GOP/Republican trait. But I agree . . . keep it coming. The whole WORLD is watching.

Yes there are people who pro-healthcare reform who want single payer so don't equate anti-healthcare reform with dissent.

I like this- go on and shoot yourselves in the foot, LOL.

Ohhh.....so suddenly dissent is patriotic, eh, Conserv? Suddenly, you stupid fuck. You make me sick. From Sept 12, 2001 until, oh, about mid-year 2008, it was considered treasonous to dissent. I certainly remember.

And as a matter of fact, grassroots movements are generally considered progressive because they are - generally speaking - for the betterment of society and originate with the grassroots - the people. Corporate sponsorship of 'grassroots movements' is NOT "grassroots" nor is the initiation of, promotion of by corporate or media or paid for by corporate or media sponsorship.

'Conservatives' like yourself rarely go beyond the personal - it's all about you. It's not about your fellows or countryfolk; it's about how anything benefits or affects YOU. That's why relatively little you bring here is relevant because your motives are not true.

Spare me.

Altruism, humanitarianism, charity and fellowship exist well beyond the realm of the federal government and the 'progressive' or 'liberal' movement.

Simply because I do not adhere to a philosophy that sees the federal government as the answer to all of society's ills, does not make me a stooge, a crazy or selfish.

As this debate progresses is is becoming more defined and it is clear that the goal of progressives in Congress and the activists on the left who support health insurance 'reform' are out to do much more than improve the existing system for the better...they seek to dismantle and destroy the private health care sector and replace it with a single payer government run system.

I oppose a single payer system. It's just that simple.

The federal government will NEVER be as innovative, efficient and as cost effective as the private sector. NEVER.

Thats funny since this thing called the internet that you spew your BS on was commissioned by said government. I wonder how we remain the premier military in the world without innovation, efficiency and foresight?!?

Yep - ya missed the point.

Get you feelings hurt once, did you?

You can call me every name in the book and my lack of faith in big government will not be diminshed.

From Sept 12, 2001 until, oh, about mid-year 2008, it was considered treasonous to dissent.

Not treasonous....just unpatriotic. Treason didn't come about until after November 5, 2008, at which point everyone woke up as experts on the subject. And we on the right didn't start that one...but damn if the charge is mostly leveled at us.

It's all turnabout...people on the left are making the same complaints about us on the right as we did when to them when we were the majority. Elections have consequences, and this is among the stupider of them.

Truth be told, the "corporate sponsors" are shunned a hell of a lot more often than they're brought onboard. And same "sponsors" don't pay people to show up at rallies and cause trouble, as that generally doesn't require any funding...just a couple hours of leave time from work.

No, D. It was considered treasonous - beyond unpatriotic. I know - I haven't forgotten.

It's all turnabout? No, it's not turnabout. The ReThugs aren't in power any longer - period.

Truth be told, the "corporate sponsors" are shunned a hell of a lot more often than they're brought onboard. And same "sponsors" don't pay people to show up at rallies and cause trouble, as that generally doesn't require any funding...just a couple hours of leave time from work."

Oh give me a break....don't even go there because it's been documented. So don't.

Simply put - I cannot stand the type of 'politics' either you or Conserv1 espouse - and even more simply put, I'm not interested.

If you didn't ride around with that flag magnet on your car (I didn't) or wear a flag pin (I didn't) in that year after 9/11 you were looked at with great suspiscion.

delete

Fear not; I gave up looking for converts on JJP a long time ago. LOL.

The same stuff we on the right were saying for the past few years-suggesting there were corporate sponsors behind, for example, the antiwar protests of '03-'07, calling the protestors paid shrills, asking those that disagreed with us why they hated America-is the same stuff that's being said by those on the left now about their opposition. We claimed to have documented your "sponsors," and you claim to have documented our "sponsors."

They're getting their digs back...it's silly, but really no big deal. It's a cycle, and it'll flip again.

True, there are 'sponsors' who will wade into both sides of any public debate, but one cannot deny a growing movement in this country against not just single-payer heath insurance reform, but big government spending, bailouts, and higher taxes.

The health care insurance debate is at the nexxus of this growing unease about the expanded scope and reach of the federal government because this legislation will effect EVERY American on a very personal level.

Good Morning.Your Monday Jam.Enjoy
Nina Simone - See Line Woman (Ezel's Remix)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOOTTEd7Vac

Thanks Search for meaning of See Line, got different answers. Is it about underground railroad? Or, is there another meaning for it in this song?

A song whose atmosphere lifts your spirits and embraces you in an energetic Caribbean-African ocean dance. The song features flute, percussion, hand clapping, and pulsating chant. Simone sings of a mysterious woman, a siren of the sea who can "make a man lose his head."

Thanks

Caffeine induced thoughts:
Middle class taxes may go up to pay for health care:
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/08/03/us/p...

Health care numbers are vapor ware:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALe...

I have noticed that people here want OTHERS to pay for the proposed health care "reform". No one wants to pony up 2% or 3% of their own total gross income to pay for Mr Obama's plan. Its easy to spend OPM (other people's money) for whatever, but when it comes off the top of their income, whoa partner.
Where is the enthusiasm for increasing the Medicare Trust Fund tax to pay for the baby boomer's retirement health care? Say another 2% off the top?

"I have noticed that people here want OTHERS to pay for the proposed health care "reform". No one wants to pony up 2% or 3% of their own total gross income to pay for Mr Obama's plan."

There is no honest discussion about the galloping costs associated with health care and there definitely isn't discussion about who benefits from the system as it stands today. The PUBLIC pays taxes, whether they are insured, uninsured, or the under insured. The Obama plan simply is an effort to level the playing field. The plan will include tax paying citizens in a health care system they are subsidizing health care for "others".

The public's tax dollars currently pays for at least $1.2 trillion in annual U.S. health care expenses:

-- Medicare and Medicaid,
-- the Veterans Administration
-- the Indian Health Service.
-- health coverage for federal, state, and municipal government employees and their families
-- many employees of private companies working on government contracts.

Less visible but no less important, the tax deduction for

-- employer-paid health insurance, along with other health care-related tax deductions, also represents a form of government spending on health care.

Where are the complaints seeking reduction in the above $1.2 trillion expenses? Or, cries to have these benefactors to get out of the taxpayers pocketbooks?

"Where is the enthusiasm for increasing the Medicare Trust Fund tax to pay for the baby boomer's retirement health care?"

If everyone is so anxious to end the hemorrhaging of medicare (socialized medicine) why didn't the repugs accept Weiner (D-NY) challenge to "Put-Up or Shut-Up" and abolish it?

Really, where did you read we don't want to pay for it? We do and everyone else.

In fact there is poll that showed Americans are willing to pay at maximum $500 per year to fund healthcare.

I meant on this board as that is whom s/he was mentioning. I am sure there are people who don't understand that they already pay far more for their healthcare than that.

I pay taxes too, muthafu__ah. In fact, I pay more taxes than the many of the OTHERS you so seem to so desperately worship. And as for me, my money is better spent on reforming health care for the people's sake rather than corporations' sake.

The demonization of the private sector and the desire for progressives to destroy the foundation of our economy is crazy.

Soak the rich! Corporations are EEEVIL! It is madness.

When the rich have been taxed into the middle class. When the corporations have been co-opted or eliminated by the federal government where will we find ourselves?

Just keep in mind that the Government does not create wealth, does not produce products or create jobs.

Government should play a role in regulating the private sector but progressives have moved well beyond that.

And tell me Ronnie, how long will you feel good about paying for 'the people's sake'? When your taxes rise and rise and rise to cover the growing healthcare costs of a single payer, government run system, what will do when you reach your limit? Will you demand costs be cut? How do you think that will happen?

It all sounds so good, so easy in the abstract but if you take your thinking to its logical conclusion, we are left with a system that will eventually be forced to ration care, stifle innovation and limit individual liberty on an unprecedented scale.

Demonizing government is also not a good thing either.

Then write your congressperson, muthafu_ah, and till them you want to pay flat rate taxes to support medical care. And please tell that person you want to raise taxes to FULLY fund Medicare for the baby boomers.

As a business owner in a retail development, I don't pay a "flat rate" utility bill to the developer. Why? Because the developer--a big corporation--doesn't believe that the smaller companies should shoulder the financial burden of the bigger businesses that use 3x as much water and power.

Ask any small business owner, and they'll tell you the same thing: we want our financial burdens to remain at scale. Yet the useful idiots for corporations have decided that they want their tax burdens just the opposite.

Fools.

For a comprehensive plan for America I do not think 2% is a burden at all, i.e. Medicare for everyone. It will be hard to prove given human nature but in the long run I believe we will all be better off.
yes the costs will explode in the ifrst decade as everone comes on board. yes people will bring bringing their children for anitbiotics for viral diseases. the elderly will come to their doctors to complain about a pain when they really want to just talk to someone. My theory still is that as all the diseases that aren't caught early are treated the huge costs of hospitalization when we are forced to treat will disappear.
Just take immunizations, every school district in America has literally ahd to suspend school over children w/ measles, rubella. What did that just cost America in paarents paying for baby sitting, anxiety, time off from their job if they can't find care?
Healthcare is not a zero sum event.

Thats an additional 2% for the Obama plan, an additional 2% to pay for the boomers, on top of the current Medicare trust fund rate of 2.9% (half from employer/half from employee or 2.9% from self employed) for a grand total of at least 5.45% to 6.9%. And that does not even include the cost of Medicaid and all the other health programs.
Why more for the boomers you ask, well just like the school systems of the 50s and 60s, the boomers are going to overload the Medicare trust fund and the health care system. It might even need and additional 5% off the top of your income to pay for the boomers health care.

It is true that boomer will overwhelm the system. What should we do to meet the growing demand?

We should offer MORE competition, more choice, more freedom, NOT LESS.

Why? Because the federal government does NOT HAVE THE MONEY to pay for a government run system.

Funds for health care do not fall from the sky. We will pay for health care in much higher income taxes, sales or value-added taxes, gasoline taxes (think $8 a gallon at the pump) and in many other ways, effectively reducing our take-home pay and living standards.

Health care costs money.

The richer a society, the larger the proportion of income that is spent on it. (Poor societies have to spend income gains on food and other necessities.)

The dramatic improvements in medical care over the last 30 years lead to longer life, less pain, fewer exploratory surgeries and miracle drugs. Of course the research, the equipment and the training that produce these improvements don't come cheap.

The rising cost in health care has been accompanied by clearly superior results.

"The rising cost in health care has been accompanied by clearly superior results."

This is a straight up LIE!

Point of fact, the rising costs have not accompanied better quality. Which is why there needs to be health insurance reform. The only thing improving is the insurance companies profits. Not the care people receive. Point of fact, insurers refuse to pay for expensive care and deny coverage. They are the ones who are between consumers and their doctors. Always have been.

The list of quality improvements is so long that I will just bring up one(1) drug: ZIDOVIDINE (aka AZT).
one(1) lab test: HER gene
one(1) diagnostic tool: CAT scan
one(1) medical device: cardiac pacemaker
one(1) operation: Cardiac Bypass


Compare a 1950 PDR (physicians desk reference) versus a 2009 PDR, almost all the medications are new since 1950. Check out patents on medical devices - 10s of thousands. Look in a medical laboratory - automated, computerized, self checking, quality controlled, reports out data within minutes instead of days.
The Joint Commission (JCAHO) and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) kick hospital butt to ensure quality of care.

Comparison of a 1950 PDR to a 2009 PDR ..... that's a 56-year spread. I would expect with the discoveries in medicine that many, many medications are new. That's what Research & Development is all about. I've been in Radiology for 30 years. When I first started we mixed the chemicals by hand to develop films. We now can read plain radiographs to MRI via digital. AND - that's just Radiology.

And mon dieu - it's zidovudine. (jus' had to do it)

It is not a lie. And while the system needs REFORM, what we are debating right now is much more than reform.

Demonizing corporate profits will NOT increase the quality of our health care but will result in the creation of a single-payer system that will lead to rationing, stifle innovation and increase taxes on all those who pay them.

We can work to make the system better but we need to do it without dismantling and destroying what is working!

Medical care in the United States is derided as miserable compared to health care systems in the rest of the developed world. Economists, government officials, insurers, and academics beat the drum for a far larger government role in health care. Much of the public assumes that their arguments are sound because the calls for change are so ubiquitous and the topic so complex. Before we turn to government as the solution, however, we should consider some unheralded facts about America’s health care system.

1. Americans have better survival rates than Europeans for common cancers. Breast cancer mortality is 52 percent higher in Germany than in the United States and 88 percent higher in the United Kingdom. Prostate cancer mortality is 604 percent higher in the United Kingdom and 457 percent higher in Norway. The mortality rate for colorectal cancer among British men and women is about 40 percent higher.

2. Americans have lower cancer mortality rates than Canadians. Breast cancer mortality in Canada is 9 percent higher than in the United States, prostate cancer is 184 percent higher, and colon cancer among men is about 10 percent higher.

3. Americans have better access to treatment for chronic diseases than patients in other developed countries. Some 56 percent of Americans who could benefit from statin drugs, which reduce cholesterol and protect against heart disease, are taking them. By comparison, of those patients who could benefit from these drugs, only 36 percent of the Dutch, 29 percent of the Swiss, 26 percent of Germans, 23 percent of Britons, and 17 percent of Italians receive them.

4. Americans have better access to preventive cancer screening than Canadians. Take the proportion of the appropriate-age population groups who have received recommended tests for breast, cervical, prostate, and colon cancer:

* Nine out of ten middle-aged American women (89 percent) have had a mammogram, compared to fewer than three-fourths of Canadians (72 percent).

* Nearly all American women (96 percent) have had a Pap smear, compared to fewer than 90 percent of Canadians.

* More than half of American men (54 percent) have had a prostatespecific antigen (PSA) test, compared to fewer than one in six Canadians (16 percent).

* Nearly one-third of Americans (30 percent) have had a colonoscopy, compared with fewer than one in twenty Canadians (5 percent).

5. Lower-income Americans are in better health than comparable Canadians. Twice as many American seniors with below-median incomes self-report “excellent” health (11.7 percent) compared to Canadian seniors (5.8 percent). Conversely, white, young Canadian adults with below-median incomes are 20 percent more likely than lower-income Americans to describe their health as “fair or poor.”

6. Americans spend less time waiting for care than patients in Canada and the United Kingdom. Canadian and British patients wait about twice as long—sometimes more than a year—to see a specialist, have elective surgery such as hip replacements, or get radiation treatment for cancer. All told, 827,429 people are waiting for some type of procedure in Canada. In Britain, nearly 1.8 million people are waiting for a hospital admission or outpatient treatment.

7. People in countries with more government control of health care are highly dissatisfied and believe reform is needed. More than 70 percent of German, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand, and British adults say their health system needs either “fundamental change” or “complete rebuilding.”

8. Americans are more satisfied with the care they receive than Canadians. When asked about their own health care instead of the “health care system,” more than half of Americans (51.3 percent) are very satisfied with their health care services, compared with only 41.5 percent of Canadians; a lower proportion of Americans are dissatisfied (6.8 percent) than Canadians (8.5 percent).

9. Americans have better access to important new technologies such as medical imaging than do patients in Canada or Britain. An overwhelming majority of leading American physicians identify computerized tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) as the most important medical innovations for improving patient care during the previous decade—even as economists and policy makers unfamiliar with actual medical practice decry these techniques as wasteful. The United States has thirty-four CT scanners per million Americans, compared to twelve in Canada and eight in Britain. The United States has almost twenty-seven MRI machines per million people compared to about six per million in Canada and Britain.

10. Americans are responsible for the vast majority of all health care innovations. The top five U.S. hospitals conduct more clinical trials than all the hospitals in any other developed country. Since the mid- 1970s, the Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology has gone to U.S. residents more often than recipients from all other countries combined. In only five of the past thirty-four years did a scientist living in the United States not win or share in the prize. Most important recent medical innovations were developed in the United States.

Despite serious challenges, such as escalating costs and care for the uninsured, the U.S. health care system compares favorably to those in other developed countries.

http://www.hoover.org/publications/digest/49525...

Tell it!

It is a lie because European countries have the same new stuff we have for less. Canada has the same health care technolygy we have with signifivantly lower cost per capita.

Of course the 21st century is better than the 1950s, but US (16.0% gdp, infant mortality 6.9, life expectancy 77.8) health care is not better or less expensive than Japan, Canada, France, Great Britain, Sweden, (8.5-11.1 % gdp, infant mortality 2.8 - 5.4, life expectancy 79.1-80.1 )

All of the above governmenat pay above 67% of the costs, which is still a smaller % of government budget (13.6 -17.7) than US (18.8%).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_compar...

I replied to the wrong person. I never agree with Conservo.

Democats are well versersed in class warfare. The 'rich need to pay their fair share' is a mantra they recite ad nauseum. The merits of that philosophy side, at some point we run out of other people's money. That day has arrived. The CBO has made it clear that the TRILLION dollar price tag of the health insurance reform legislation currently moving through Congress cannot be paid for by only the 'rich'.

Enter Tim Geithner to delight us with Democrat double speak.

Treasury Secretary Geithner, backtracking on one of the President's key campaign promises, would not rule out a tax increase on the middle class on ABC's "This Week" this morning. "We're going to have to do what's necessary," he said.

"The 'rich need to pay their fair share' is a mantra they recite ad nauseum."

Mantra?

Okay, then Who SHOULD pay for the rich's share if not the rich?

Perhaps one of the most common myths (or lies, depending on how you look at at it), is the idea the “rich don’t pay their fair share”.

The Federal Government published a CBO Paper in August 2004 titled Effective Federal Tax Rates Under Current Law, 2001-2014. On Table 2 (page 18 of the PDF) “Effective Federal Tax Rates” under “Share of Total Federal Tax Liabilities” heading shows some interesting results.
Taxes paid by highest incomes

* The top 1% pay 22.7% of taxes.
* The top 10% pay 50% of taxes.
* The top 20% pay 65.3% of taxes.
* The top 40% pay 84.3% of taxes.

Taxes paid by lowest incomes

* The bottom 20% pay 1.1% of taxes.
* The bottom 40% pay 6.1% of taxes.

The bottom 40% pay about 6% of taxes, while the top 40% pay about 85% of taxes — or about 14 times more than their counterparts in the lower brackets.

The rich pay. And soon, if government keeps spending and spending and spending MONEY IT DOES NOT HAVE, the middle class will have to pay as well.

But that is when they pay. These numbers actually skew the amount of tax they, themselves pay. It is a pretty common misconception.

But what percentage of government activity is for their benefit as opposed to those poor folks?

How much of national defense is for their benefit, as opposed to the people who don't own a lot? Or national parks...lots of poor folks can't afford to get there. How about policing?

I would think the top 1% gets considerably more than a quarter of the benefits from government. Add that to the fact that most of their income is unearned (hey, it's the government's term, not mine) and therefore taxed at a much lower rate than that of earned income, and it looks to me like the affluent are subsidized.

At minimum, tax unearned income at the same rate as earned income.

They rich still should pay more.

The National Rifle Association's threat to punish senators who vote for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor has been met with a shrug by Democrats from conservative-leaning states and some Republicans who are breaking with their party to support her.

NRA can’t halt Sotomayor’s march to court

The gun-rights group is used to getting its way by spooking lawmakers about the political consequences of defying its wishes. But it never before has weighed in on a Supreme Court confirmation battle. It was cautious about breaking that pattern, and it looks like a losing fight to defeat President Barack Obama's first pick for the court.

Sotomayor is expected to easily win confirmation in a vote this coming week that could deflate the long-accepted truism in Washington that you don't cross the NRA.

Voting "yes" will include A-plus-rated and NRA-endorsed Democratic Sen. Max Baucus and his fellow Montanan, A-rated Sen. Jon Tester, as well as A-rated and NRA-endorsed Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander, the only GOP leader to break with the rest of this party to back Sotomayor.

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) declared on Sunday morning that the GOP "have to recruit and elect Hispanics to office. And I don't mean just because they're Hispanics, but they represent a big part of the growing population in America."

McCain: Without Hispanic Voters, GOP In "Very, Very Deep Hole"

So his declaration on Sunday morning that the GOP faced a dire situation unless it did more to bring Hispanic voters into its ranks is likely to be treated as a blaring warning siren, not mere political analysis.

"On the issue of the Hispanic voter, we have to do a lot more. We Republicans have to recruit and elect Hispanics to office," McCain told CNN's State of Union. "And I don't mean just because they're Hispanics, but they represent a big part of the growing population in America. And we have a lot of work to do there. And I am of the belief that unless we reverse the trend of Hispanic voter registration, we have a very, very deep hole that we've got to come out of."

While he was one of only a handful of Republicans willing to tackle immigration reform in 2007, McCain faced a massive deficit with Hispanic voters in the 2008 election. His aides have said that, were he not the home state senator, he would have lost Arizona to Barack Obama, in large part because Hispanics had left the Republican Party in droves.

McCain and nem had better get their hired help out of the kitchens and gardens and recruit them for future campagin gigs....... GOP been shitting on Hispanics and now realize they are in deep shit without them... GAWD, thes mofos are STUPID!

And yet he might be voting against a Hispanic Supreme Court nominee. Nice.

I guess he's got some 'plainin' to do.

Black scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. has received numerous death threats since he accused a white officer of racially profiling him in a controversial arrest last month, prompting Harvard University officials to suggest he consider moving, the professor told a crowd yesterday.

Henry Louis Gates Jr. mulls moving over death threats

“You should die; you’re a racist,” read one e-mail that Gates recalled in his first public appearance since sharing a beer at the White House with President Obama and Cambridge police Sgt. James Crowley, who arrested him July 16. The threats forced Gates to change his e-mail address and cell phone number.

<snip>

On July 25, someone posted signs outside Gates’ Ware Street home calling him “shameful” and a “racist.” Gates said he has also received bomb threats.

<snip>

Gates is planning a documentary from both the perspective of police and people who have been victims of racial profiling so “Americans can understand that you can have two equally valid perceptions of the same event.”

Maybe he should become a member of the NRA...nahh, people would think he was stockpiling weapons to start an insurrection.

The red-necked crackas out in full force with their dumb ignorant ass!

Nor do they seem to GET how they illustrate so brightly their own point, do they?

Boston is one of the nations most racially polarized areas, along with Chicago.
Both towns have large IrishCatholic populations along with Poles and Italians.

“Americans can understand that you can have two equally valid perceptions of the same event."

Kiss my equally valid glutes.

“Americans can understand that you can have two equally valid perceptions of the same event."

Yeah, the failed "two wrongs" meme.

Precisely.

Gates better litigate or else!

Take it to the courts.