First of all, the "death tax" is bs. Yes there are society's leaches like the mentioned Ms Hilton that benefit, but there are also those that busted their rumps to provide a better life for their family, whether they foresaw death or not. Should we just get rid of wills all together? Is it just money that you're concerned about? If I put all my money into collectors items, would you feel as entitled to my belongings while not in cash form after I die?

"But of course, the beginning of Section 246 of the House bill (HR 3200) states very clearly: 'NO FEDERAL PAYMENT FOR UNDOCUMENTED ALIENS.'" Though I have not read the phonebook sized document at hand, I'd imagine it is also illegal to ask one's citizenship when going in for treatment... nice loophole guys. Please prove me wrong... and I really mean that.

Also, this whole article is bashing Republicans (as if they're the only ones fighting the steam roller of blindly following the piper) for not wanting health care reform. Reform doesn't necessarily equate to changing the whole system. There are plenty of changes (read improvements) that can be made to the current system before throwing it out completely. What's wrong with taking steps to improve our current system before completely changing it? I haven't seen anyone demanding that all infrastructure for gas stations be torn up for electric re-charge stations yet. Why demand better gas mileage with gasoline before completely tossing it, it's bad, isn't it?

Posted 8.28.2009 1:59 AM

If the government gives amnesty to illegal aliens than they would be covered. Also, you should know, if you have read any of Morton's prior columns, that Morton is the CP assigned DNC mouth-piece. He has yet to say anything original or that doesn't come directly from the DNC weekly talking points. Morton's a joke and his columns are about as sophormic as they come.

Posted 8.28.2009 3:24 AM

Great column and right on the MONEY (which is what it always comes down to). It is nice to find the rare article that actually has that mythical ‘liberal bias’ that the Republicans constantly whine about. I’ve pretty much given up on all the conservative corporate media as it is usually nothing more than a megaphone for right-wing propaganda. But I happened to come across your article in my doctors’ office as I was coincidently waiting for a very long time to receive heath care, and was pleasantly surprised.

The “illegal alien” talking point being pushed by the insurance industry and the Republican Party is just another red herring meant to muddy the real debate and bring all the closet (and some very open) racists and xenophobes on board to help stop real reform. The fact is with our current system anyone today can walk into an emergency room and get the most costly and inefficient care available. So this is just more of the short-sighted, selfish Republican “I got mine so screw you” mentality that has made us a less moral and just nation than most of the other mature and emerging countries around the world. Besides, if a guy got in an elevator with me and started coughing up a lung, I would surely hope that he has had access to a doctor and antibiotics whether he is a legal citizen or not!

The Republicans assume that because they issue daily talking points and distribute them widely and loudly that the Democratic Party actually does the same. I wish they were that organized and all following the same script! Anyone with a brain could figure out by just listening to any two Democrats talk about health care reform that there is no coordination between them. Where are those DNC talking points people? What a joke it is to talk about Democrats being original and having talking points when you can turn on any Republican TV or radio propaganda show and hear the exact same things being said 24x7!

And who is talking about “changing the whole system”? Adding a public option is just a small step to add another choice and more competition (I thought Republican’s were all about the competition of the so-called “free market” – oh, wait that’s right, they don’t like competition, only monopolies), not “throwing [the system] out completely.” None of the bills proposed by the congressional committees so far have even come close to seriously considering throwing the whole system out. What planet have you been spending your time on?

Posted 8.30.2009 8:40 PM

Yeah, right "AJ" or should I just say Brian. If your are not Brian, then you are just another DNC brainless automaton who blindlessly accepts whatever the position of the current "liberal" crisis du jour is taking. I've read the current bill crafted by Pelosi and company (http://docs.house.gov/edlabor/AAHCA-BillText-071409.pdf) and there is enough legal double speak vagueness and out-right stupidity that the bill should never see the light of day. I understand that there should be health care reform, but doing it wrong is worst than not doing it at all.

Posted 8.30.2009 10:40 PM

Yeah, right "Charles" or should I just say Rush. How's the tin-foil hat fitting these days?

Funny how quickly a civil discussion turns into personal attacks and name calling whenever someone like you gets involved. You add nothing to the discussion. I also sense a lot of projection on your part. Brainless automaton? Take a look in the mirror pal.

Posted 8.31.2009 9:22 AM

Brian is a DNC hack and you just a another sycophant of his. I take it your home page is his very appropriately named "Lies of Brian" website. As for a tin-foil hats, I'm sure your collection is great indeed. By the way, this a little bit of brown stuff on your nose.

Posted 8.31.2009 9:52 AM

By the way, I did contribute, I have read the bill and have made comments about it. Learn to read the entire post, before looking like a fool.

Posted 8.31.2009 9:55 AM

It would be nice to hear some actual rational concerns. To date most of what's been pushed is the most idiotic nonsense that serves to rile up people to the point of relating everything back to Hitler. I still have yet to hear an alternative besides "leave it alone". Meanwhile our country has a relatively poor healthcare system unless you have a lot of money. Then again...if you have the money it doesn't matter where you live in the world...because you can afford the best. This is something we are behind the entire western world on. Meanwhile all this debate going back and forth is silly because people voted health care reform into office. The Presidential election shows we want it. Instead of trying to find reasons why this is a bad plan, time would be better spent formulating one that's better. Truth be told that's not the oppositions real interest.

Posted 8.31.2009 10:19 AM

Ah, that’s right – thugs like you, Charles, always have to have the last word, always have to shout louder, always have to distract people from talking about real issues.

You have shown yourself to be a petty, ignorant, scared, angry, immature, pathetic, venomous, hateful person. The only fool here is you, and you are the one that should read entire posts before replying. What I wrote was “you add nothing to the discussion”, not that you didn’t make comments. Apparently you have a comprehension problem. Anyone can post dumb, worthless comments but it takes intelligence to engage in calm, rational, reasoned debate and add something of value.

Also, I’ve noticed that you are really quick to reply to my posts. I imagine you glued to your computer screen, desperately hitting refresh constantly and checking every second to see if anyone replied to one of your posts, probably with Faux News blaring in the background. How sad. You really should get a life.

Why exactly is it that you keep coming back here? Obviously it’s not because you are interested in having a civil discussion. You don’t seem interested in the topic of Brian’s column either, which is about how the Republicans and anti-reformers are using specific language and lies to stoke up irrational fear of reform. And you’ve shown your hatred of Brian and admitted yourself that you think his writing is “sophormic” [sic]. Normally people avoid the things they don’t like. Unless they have some other agenda. Like the tea baggers who are instructed to disrupt the town hall meetings and prevent legitimate questions from being answered. I’ve heard of people being paid to go to web sites and liberal blogs to disrupt discussions. They get paid for every post. Is that what’s going on? Have you been assigned to harass Brian and the people that post here? Is that your job? Or do you just have a lot of free time and do it to satisfy some perverse sense of fun?

Well, I’ve got better things to do than to continue to exchange insults with someone like you. It’s the only thing bullies like you are good at and I’m more interested in conversing with reasonable people and having discussions about how we can collectively make life better on our planet for every living thing. I’ve already stooped too far down to your level and feel dirty. Besides, you’ve already done a great job of discrediting yourself without me providing any more rope for you. By now any rational independent-minded people can see that you have no credibility and that there is nothing of importance in anything you write. You’re just another partisan right-wing ditto-head.

Posted 9.1.2009 12:21 PM

Amadeo -- great post. I agree. And it would be nice to hear some actual rational concerns once in awhile. Personally, I’m concerned that Obama and the Democrats won’t go far enough and will settle for a weak “compromise” plan that won’t solve any of the problems. That’s not the change I voted for. Single-payer never should have been taken off the table from the beginning as a possible solution and co-ops are doomed to fail. I’m afraid the spineless Harry Reid will cave in again to the Republicans and the Blue Dogs and let the nut-jobs block real reform. The Republican Party does nothing more than continually obstruct progress. They had (at least) 8 years to do something to fix the system and did nothing but make it worse (see Medicare Part D). They want to maintain the status quo because they benefit greatly from it.

Guess Charles will be attacking you next. I'm surprised he hasn’t already.

Posted 9.1.2009 12:23 PM

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090914/williams

"The spinmeisters of the right have done quite a job with what used to be straightforward English etymology. Thanks to Rush Limbaugh and Fox News, "integration" was inverted to mean "takeover" and "colorblindness" is code for abandoning the advances of the civil rights movement, which itself is synonymous with an "industry" of exclusion. It's no surprise, then, that whenever a piece of progressive legislation comes to the table, the same manipulations come into play from right-wing pundits who shamelessly profess their desire to see the Obama presidency fail. Thus it is that America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 is being turned upside down as the neat equivalent of Germany's Bankrupting Forced Death Act of 1939." ...

"All of this is complicated but surely, with a bit of listening, comprehensible to the average citizen. So how do we connect the reality of our dismal life-expectancy and health-cost statistics to the hysterical sobbing of people who come to town-hall meetings furious that "the insurance companies won't be able to make a profit"? Much of the epic woe is not about healthcare or public options. It's about roiling resentments that need to be dressed up as something else, the coded mummery of Halloween monsters hybridized into new chimeras of hate. It's about FEAR that precious resources are being transferred to "alien" others. FEAR that the gains of others are ill-gotten, leaving the lonely patriot survivalist as victim, "thrown away," trash. In these fiery monologues, even our president is figured as conspiratorially alien-birthed, from a galaxy far, far away, who's just pretending to be one of "us."

"This morning I saw a picture of President Obama dressed as Hitler, complete with little mustache, tacked high on a tree trunk. At first it seemed jaw-droppingly ridiculous, sociopathically paranoid. But if the rule of reversal is what's encoded in that image, all people of good will must worry that what's really at stake for some of our gun-toting, demagogic fellow citizens is nothing less than America's very own Weimar moment."

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090914/williams

Posted 9.3.2009 9:43 AM

Amadeo proved himself an ass long ago, you AJ are just another blinded fool who seems to worship the pathetic writings of a man who stated on his website "There are two kinds of people in the world, people that can be had, and suckers." I know where you and Amadeo are in that short list.

Posted 9.3.2009 8:17 PM

Insurance companies have the power to tax, and don't be fooled -- they tax the public highly. When 20% - 30% of payments do not go to health care, but to denying care and profiting from it, that constitutes a tax on the 96% of voters that have health care. But the tax does not go to benefit those who are taxed; it benefits highly-paid executives and the investor class. And the people taxed have no representation. Insurance company health care is a huge example of taxation without representation. And you can't vote out the people who have taxed you. On average, health insurance premiums have increased by 114% over the last ten years while workers earnings have only increased by 27%. Under the status quo, middle class families pay a hidden tax of nearly $1,100 per year to provide care for the uninsured and underinsured.

Insurance companies are inefficient and wasteful. A large chunk of your health care dollar is not going for health care when you give them your hard-earned money. The administrative overhead for Medicare is only about 4%. I think it's about 6% in Canada, which is still higher than other single-payer systems around the world.

Insurance company bureaucrats deny you care. That's what all the paperwork and administrative costs of insurance companies are about - denying you care if they can. Insurance companies ration care. Coverage is not care. You think you're insured? You very well may not be, because insurance companies make money by denying you care and may drop you if you get sick.

Doctors care; insurance companies don't. Giving Americans the choice of a public plan will help to put care back into the hands of doctors.

Insurance companies govern your lives. They have more power over you than even governments have. They make life and death decisions. And they are accountable only to profit, not to citizens.

Insurance company plans have failed to care for our people. Most Americans (at least those that don't watch Faux News) care about one another. A public option or single-payer plan is both the moral and practical alternative to insurance companies so we can provide care for our people. Health care is a patriotic issue. It would be very patriotic for our representatives in government to guarantee care for all of our people.

The insurance companies are doing their worst, spreading lies in an attempt to maintain their profits and keep Americans from getting the care they so desperately need. The failure of our health care system is an insurance company failure. Why keep something that is failing?

For those who aren't already brainwashed by all the insurance industry propaganda, here's a good web site to help cut through the lies... http://www.pleasecutthecrap.com/

Posted 9.4.2009 2:06 PM

Charles...thanks for showing your character...stay classy.

Posted 9.6.2009 9:38 AM

No prob, sucker.

Posted 9.6.2009 7:46 PM

Hmmmm....You're hitting on all cylinders...not one intelligent or meaningful post.

Posted 9.7.2009 9:02 AM

Preying on Fear and Predicting the Final Solution

by Lou Dubose | September 1, 2009

http://www.washingtonspectator.org/articles/20090901preyonfear.cfm

...

Ten minutes into the meeting at the Tillamook library, a man asked the question that would be asked at least twice, in one form or another, at each of the four meetings: "I hear if you're a certain age, you're going to have to go before a committee where they're going to try to convince you that it's not in the interest of the country for you to get the medical care that you need."

The senator explained that a provision in the House bill would require the government to pay private physicians for one voluntary counseling session regarding end-of-life decisions every five years. The questioner didn't buy it.

End-of-life counseling was the topic of the moment. That afternoon in Astoria a woman asked, "Why do we have to have mandatory end-of-life counseling?" The senator again explained the provision in the House bill: an optional consultation with your private physician paid for by the government. His explanation was followed by a variation on the same theme from yet another woman. "Would you be willing to let me counsel your parents without knowing what my belief system was and I encourage them to end their life?" she asked. "I think the government has no business making end-of-life decisions." She angrily refused to accept the senator's explanation that counseling would be provided by private physicians.

It was evident that these questions had little to do with the actual content of any health care bill. It was also evident that the most vocal opponents of reform were literally reading from the same script. In this case, a script that revealed the influence of Christian extremists, whose sloppiness in dealing with facts and programmatic deceit has been largely ignored by the media.

I spoke with one of the women who had asked about mandatory end-of-life counseling. She said she knew the counseling was mandatory because "it's in the bill." Yet she hadn't read the bill. She was reading from a memo posted on the website of the Liberty Counsel, a Christian law firm and advocacy group related to Jerry Falwell's Liberty University in Virginia.

Among the 112 talking points in the Liberty Counsel's ten-page electronic samizdat were the following:

Sec. 2511, Pg. 992 - Government will establish school-based "health" clinics. Your children will be indoctrinated and your grandchildren may be aborted!

Sec. 1233, Pg. 429, Lines 10-12 - "Advanced Care Consultation" may include an ORDER for end-of-life plans - from the government.

Sec. 1713, Pg. 768, Lines 3-5 - Nurse Home Visit Services – Service #1: "Improving maternal or child health and pregnancy outcomes or increasing birth intervals between pregnancies." Compulsory ABORTIONS?

Sec.1751, Pg. 800 - The government will decide which Health Care conditions will be paid. Say "RATION!"

None of these claims are true. Nor were they compiled by the Liberty Counsel's staff. They were provided by right-wing blogger Peter Fleckenstein and posted under the imprimatur of the Liberty Counsel.

In The Dalles, a seventy-four-year-old woman wearing a nasal oxygen tube held in place by a retaining headband asked about "this new House measure in the bill which says the government will determine when I stay and when I go." When I asked her about her sources, she handed me a printout of the Liberty Counsel talking points, which she said she "got from a pastor on the Internet." She also said that "getting rid of the old people was how Hitler got started."

In Madras, where the crowd was extremely vocal and angry, an elderly woman linked the House's proposed solution to the nation's health care crisis to the final solution. "In Germany when Hitler came in, he started out with the insane and mentally retarded," she said. "And nobody ever saw them again. Then he came for the senior citizens. Later word got out that they were all euthanized. Hitler said we'll have more food for the healthy people." (She neglected to mention six million Jews.)

The woman said she is Christian and believes in "the End Times," in which she fears Obama is playing a role. When I spoke to her, I found that she, too, was reading from the Liberty Counsel talking points, printed out from Rick Joyner's Web site.

Rick Joyner is "the pastor on the Internet" who somehow managed to inform much of the debate in Oregon. He is a South Carolina evangelical with a large church and an even larger Web-based ministry. He derives his spiritual authority from a claim to have been transported to Heaven for an extended conversation with Jesus. Joyner has done eight "National Health Scare Bulletin" Webcasts that are also available in transcript format. They all provide links to the Liberty Counsel memo, which he continues to promote.

...

Joyner admits that there are errors in the Liberty Counsel memo and said that its executive director, Mat Staver, and Staver's staff are working on a revised copy. Two weeks after the Oregon hearings, I called to ask about the inaccuracies. Joyner's administrative assistant told me they would get back to me. I called the Liberty Counsel, where a woman in the press office told me she knew nothing about any revisions and that Mathew Staver would call me with a further explanation. As this issue went to press, neither Joyner nor Staver had returened calls. These are organizations that enjoy non-profit status under the IRS Code, are fully engaged in the health care debate, yet answer to no one.

Posted 9.10.2009 10:07 AM

Five myths about health care around the world

http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2009/08/five_myths_about_health_care_a.html

All the other industrialized democracies have faced problems like ours, yet they've found ways to cover everybody -- and still spend far less than we do.

I've traveled the world from Oslo to Osaka to see how other developed democracies provide health care. Instead of dismissing these models as "socialist," we could adapt their solutions to fix our problems.

1. It's all socialized medicine out there.

Not so.

...

2. Overseas, care is rationed through limited choices or long lines.

Generally, no. Germans can sign up for any of the nation's 200 private health insurance plans -- a broader choice than any American has. If a German doesn't like her insurance company, she can switch to another, with no increase in premium.

...

3. Foreign health care systems are inefficient, bloated bureaucracies.

Much less so than here. It may seem to Americans that U.S.-style free enterprise -- private-sector, for-profit health insurance -- is naturally the most cost-effective way to pay for health care. But in fact, all the other payment systems are more efficient than ours.

U.S. health insurance companies have the highest administrative costs in the world; they spend roughly 20 cents of every dollar for non-medical costs, such as paperwork, reviewing claims and marketing. France's health insurance industry, in contrast, covers everybody and spends about 4 percent on administration. Canada's universal insurance system, run by government bureaucrats, spends 6 percent on administration. In Taiwan, a leaner version of the Canadian model has administrative costs of 1.5 percent; one year, this figure ballooned to 2 percent, and the opposition parties savaged the government for wasting money.

The world champion at controlling medical costs is Japan, even though its aging population is a profligate consumer of medical care. On average, the Japanese go to the doctor 15 times a year, three times the U.S. rate. They have twice as many MRI scans and X-rays. Quality is high; life expectancy and recovery rates for major diseases are better than in the United States. And yet Japan spends about $3,400 per person annually on health care; the United States spends more than $7,000.

4. Cost controls stifle innovation.

False. The United States is home to groundbreaking medical research, but so are other countries with much lower cost structures. Any American who's had a hip or knee replacement is standing on French innovation. Deep-brain stimulation to treat depression is a Canadian breakthrough. Many of the wonder drugs promoted endlessly on American television, including Viagra, come from British, Swiss or Japanese labs.

Overseas, strict cost controls actually drive innovation. In the United States, an MRI scan of the neck region costs about $1,500. In Japan, the identical scan costs $98. Under the pressure of cost controls, Japanese researchers found ways to perform the same diagnostic technique for one-fifteenth the American price. (And Japanese labs still make a profit.)

5. Health insurance has to be cruel.

Not really. American health insurance companies routinely reject applicants with a "preexisting condition" -- precisely the people most likely to need the insurers' service. They employ armies of adjusters to deny claims. If a customer is hit by a truck and faces big medical bills, the insurer's "rescission department" digs through the records looking for grounds to cancel the policy, often while the victim is still in the hospital.

...

The key difference is that foreign health insurance plans exist only to pay people's medical bills, not to make a profit. The United States is the only developed country that lets insurance companies profit from basic health coverage.

...

This fragmentation is another reason that we spend more than anybody else and still leave millions without coverage. All the other developed countries have settled on one model for health-care delivery and finance; we've blended them all into a costly, confusing bureaucratic mess.

Which, in turn, punctures the most persistent myth of all: that America has "the finest health care" in the world. We don't. In terms of results, almost all advanced countries have better national health statistics than the United States does. In terms of finance, we force 700,000 Americans into bankruptcy each year because of medical bills. In France, the number of medical bankruptcies is zero. Britain: zero. Japan: zero. Germany: zero.

Given our remarkable medical assets -- the best-educated doctors and nurses, the most advanced hospitals, world-class research -- the United States could be, and should be, the best in the world. To get there, though, we have to be willing to learn some lessons about health care administration from the other industrialized democracies.

Posted 9.10.2009 10:30 AM

The problem is not the health insurance, that is just a red herring. The problem is the cost those providing health care are increasing their fees for extreme and, often times, needless test and procedures. This is in response to huge wind-fall lawsuits against doctors and hospitals, taking care of those who fore-go insurance (like illegal immigrants) and the common fat and unhealthy lifestyle many Americans have that is needlessly causing us to have a whole range of health issues.

The insurance companies are passing on the cost of paying for these problems and Obama (and those that worship him) are vilifying insurance companies so they can push a program that will make people more dependent on the government. The government that spends $700 on a toilet shouldn't be the ones controlling healthcare, their track record for running large programs is horrible, be it military spending or the mismanaged Social Society and MediCare (which spends more than they take in and will soon run out of money).

As to compare the US to other counties, it amazing that when it comes to failures, the liberals always overlook the failing Canadian health-care system that the Canadian Medical Association has recently said is "Imploding", or the Japanese model that now has had to charge people for their "free" health-care.

Posted 9.10.2009 2:31 PM

"U.S. health insurance companies have the highest administrative costs in the world; they spend roughly 20 cents of every dollar for non-medical costs, such as paperwork, reviewing claims and marketing."

Yeah, they are just a red herring. Riiiggghhhtttt. Anyone who understands a business model or has had to deal with an insurance company knows what BS that is. Here's more from "Money-Driven Medicine - The Real Reason Health Care Costs So Much" (http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/142328/bill_moyers:_money-driven_medicine_-_the_real_reason_health_care_costs_so_much/):

Dr. Espinoza: "Ah, okay. The insurance companies, you know, are clearly in the room with us. You know, employers are in the room with us. You know, you get into these issues of out of network, in network; we're only going to pay 20 percent of your hospital visit versus 50 percent if you go to this hospital. These are all brokered deals and negotiated contracts and things like that, that in larger insurance companies have with specific hospitals, which specific testing centers. "

Bureaucrats getting in between patients and their doctors.

Maggie Mahar: "The fact of the matter is that insurance companies tried saying no in the 90s, in that era of manage care, when the great many HMOs would say, "No, we're not going to pay for that." The problem is that HMOs made their decisions on what they are going to pay for based, too often, simply on cost. If something was too pricy, they would say no. But they weren't looking at the quality of the procedure. They weren't asking, "Well, would it really benefit the patient?" They were simply saying, "Well, where does it fit on our schedule of costs?" So, sometimes, they denied ineffective, unnecessary, expensive care and sometimes they denied very good, effective, expensive care."

Maggie Mahar: "A physician takes an oath to put his patient's interests ahead of his own. A corporation is legally bound to put its shareholders' interests first. And this is part of the inherent conflict between health care as a business, part of our economy, and health care as a public good and part of our society. Health care has become a growth industry. That means higher health care bills. That means more and more middle class people cannot afford health care in this country."

And on top of that you have guys like UnitedHealth Group CEO "Dollar Bill" McGuire raking in $100 million each year salary (for what?)

Malpractice lawsuits only contribute a miniscule amount to the soaring costs. So fine, do something about it like Obama proposes. It'll just be a waste of time. But in no way can all the blame be put on that one issue and as a patient I still would want to be able to get some justice for malpractice. And I agree that American's have the least healthy lifestyles in the world, but again, not the major cause. Address it but focus on the major issues.

No one willingly "fore-go"'s insurance. Insurance companies aren't just passing on costs (if that were true, insurance rates would be rising at the same rate, not far greater, than medical costs). Military spending is a problem with the corporations that drive the military-industrial complex, not our government. Social Security and MediCare are not mismanaged, nor will they run out of money soon. MediCare Part D is helping to destroy MediCare, but that was a Republican abomination. And the Canadian health care system is not failing.

Just more lies, misdirection, distractions and fear tactics from the right-wing corporatists.

Republican's worship Republicans. Hence all the Republican's to this day who still can not find a single thing to disagree with Bush and Cheney on. Real Democrats and Independents, progressives and liberals, admire people but worship no one and are only bound to logic and reason, not party. We call out our own when they are wrong, unlike mindless partisan Republicans. For example...

Bill Moyers "Now look at this recent story in the Los Angeles Times. Lo and behold, since the election, the pharmaceutical industry's $2 million dollars a year superstar lobbyist Billy Tauzin has morphed into President Obama's pal. Tauzin says the President has promised not to pressure the drug companies to negotiate with the government for lower drug prices and has agreed not to allow cheaper drugs to be imported from Canada or Europe - contrary to the position taken by candidate Obama…"

Posted 9.11.2009 2:20 PM

@ Charles - No one has to go to any length to "vilify" isurance companies. They are businesses and their goal is to turn a profit. The problem is their product is basically your health. The measures they take to make more money often aren't to the benefit of their customers. Just like outsourcing, laying off staff and combining positions may be good for the profit margin of a company. It doesn't benefit the customers because they don't "pass on the savings" They just demonstrate "increased profit".

Posted 9.11.2009 4:43 PM

Of course, those that are charging the insurance companies outrageous fees for service have no effect, what so ever. Typical.

Posted 9.13.2009 4:33 AM

It always amazes me how easily a certain portion of our population are so willingly suckered into helping industries and the plutocracy maintain and expand their power. The right-wing think tanks, politicians and corporate media pull the puppet strings of these people and they eagerly dance their little hearts out for them. Obviously there are those people who have a vested interest in the status quo or are being paid to shill for these groups, but then these aren't the people who are currently acting against their best interest.

Unless you are, for example, EMPLOYED BY AN INSURANCE COMPANY or had some other hidden agenda, it amazes me why someone would be so quick to constantly provide protection for the insurance industry and fight so hard against the facts and the obvious case for reform? It is patently against the best rational interests of people to fight against health reform, to vilify government when it helps and protects them every day, and to do so in ways that guarantee that the folks who are screwing them continue to be able to do so.

http://www.alternet.org/politics/142582/how_the_right_manages_to_convince_people_that_something_that_is_clearly_good_for_them_--_like_health_care_--_is_not__/

"A good two and a half weeks after failed rescue efforts during Hurricane Katrina left bodies floating in the streets and people abandoned on roofs, 35 percent of the country believed that George W. Bush had done a good or excellent job responding to the crisis. That is roughly the proportion of the country with whom there is no real means of engagement. These are the birthers, Swiftboaters, climate change skeptics, Obamaphobes and Palin-tologists--the base. They live in a politically parallel world where everyone they know believes the same as they do. They don't like established facts, so they come armed with their own. The left has such people too, but they are marginal. With no news channels to promote them or Congressmen prepared to advocate for them, their views rarely reach the mainstream."

Posted 9.14.2009 1:50 PM

Here's another great example of our existing Pay Or Die health system. The REAL death panels are run by insurance company bureaucrats. I'm so glad it looks like the Republicans and Max Baucus Democrats who are bought and paid for by the insurance industry will succeed in maintaining the wonderful system we have now, denying us choice, and keeping us dependent on insurance companies like this to keep us alive ...

http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/09/12/norma-rae-dead-health-insurer/

Real ‘Norma Rae’ dead of cancer after battle with health insurer

Insurers’ delays are ‘almost … like murder,’ Sutton said

The woman whose life inspired the 1979 film Norma Rae has died of cancer after struggling with her health insurance company, which had delayed her treatment.

[Sutton] went two months without possible life-saving medications because her insurance wouldn’t cover it

Posted 9.16.2009 9:41 AM

It seems to me that naivete on the part of the people who believe in our politicians is laughable. The fact of the matter is health-care reform will reform nothing except by putting another government hand in our pockets again. In England and Canada people die all the time from the govt. administered health care denying them coverage and look at how the VAT keeps going up and up. As for Estate Tax- why are people's dependents not worthy of their family's money BUT the government is? Let me tell you something people always find ways to avoid paying those taxes by gifting their monies, putting it in trust, handing over or selling properties to their family at way below market values. Better look at how many millionaires there are in the government and how they got their fortunes.

Posted 11.29.2009 5:14 PM