Her insurance company’s bill’s insert on healthy lifestyles suggested raw twigs for breakfast as “a great source of natural fiber”. Sadly, digestive splinter surgery is not a covered service.
Correction….REPEAL Obamacare! REPEAL Obamacare!REPEAL Obamacare! Besides, the way Obama is doing it is AGAINST the Constitution. He doesn’t have the authority to change it the way he has been.
I am sorry that your relatives have had bad results. I submit that the system we have here in the US has its fair share of bad results as well. There are inept doctors in every style of health care system and in most every locality. The people who administer the programs just put words in the doctor’s contract to the effect that the doctor will not be incompetent. The doctor signs and all is well.
The Death Panel idea is an intentional misrepresentation which has worked to confuse the public much better than I would have expected. (Repeat a lie often enough, and it often seems to become truth.) EVERY system has to have limits as to what it covers and what it doesn’t. There will always be someone who will make the decision as to what treatments will be paid for and which will not. If that’s a death panel, it is unavoidable, regardless of what system it is in. I will say, though, that human nature suggests that more treatments and doctor consultations will be denied in a system wherein people are monetarily rewarded for finding ways to deny coverage (the current for-profit insurance system) than in a system where this behavior is not encouraged. This is not to say that there shouldn’t be someone watching for fraud and improper billing. I’m talking about the cases where the insurance company says, ‘We aren’t saying the patient shouldn’t have this treatment. We’re just saying we ain’t paying for it."
We get similar results in this country at a much higher cost.
I am willing to admit that, despite my 30+ years as a doctor, I might be wrong about the best health care plan. Feel free to come up with a better one and I’ll jump on your bandwagon, but in my experience the system that Obamacare replaces is on the verge of final collapse. Obamacare will buy us time to come up with a better one, because it will collapse, as well, with time. Of all the systems I have researched, and I have done plenty, single payer has the best chance of providing good care at reasonable cost for the most people. It also forces everyone to pull their weight, eliminating the “I don’t want to have to pay care of lazy bums” meme that is so popular these days.
“i think if we the customer were the only payer with say health accounts, would be a much easier solution. It also does not require any lies to bring down and bankrupt what we already have.”
Harley, no one is looking at bankruptcy except patients, and maybe a few doctors. The industry is doing very well with this, and loving every minute of it.
Agree, though, that no patch is going to do anything good for it. It is what it is – a gift to the insurers, when we were promised reformed coverage, actual access to care.
The insurers never agreed to anything like this, nor will they ever. It was the insurers who went back on the agreement, if they ever agreed to anything. If anyone lies, it is the insurance industry, from the Marine insurers right down to health care and homeowners and auto. Their position is to take money, not pay it out, unless their back is to the wall.
Single payer is the most efficient and cost effective way to manage health insurance. Since single payer doesn’t offer the insurers, BigPharma, the hospital industries – to make obscene profits off the ill and dying, there is no political support for it. That’s what it comes to. They aren’t willing to settle for a reasonable profit, it’s all or nothing for them, and our government has been complicit in their abuses for many decades. Both parties have enthusiastically supported industry’s right to exploit the population in any way they can dream up.
Clearly you disagree with this position, but seriously, Harley, don’t get sick, and pray nothing goes wrong with your cash flow. It only takes one illness, or auto accident, or other untoward incident to educate you beyond any educational ambition you have ever held.
Sadly, that kind of education generally comes too late to be useful.
“i think if we the customer were the only payer with say health accounts, would be a much easier solution.”
Are you talking about health savings accounts? If so, I’m for it. I just know human nature. You might keep one, I might keep one, but we know that many people will just gamble that they won’t need that money put aside…..until they really need it, and then we’re back to the people who plan having to pick up the tab for the people who don’t. I don’t know about you, but I’m tiring of that system.
It’s ideal on paper, but only if everyone….and I mean everyone….is willing to play along. I don’t have that faith in humanity.
@Nathan_Demi“On TV? I guess you also like the death panel option too. Well I love my Grandma and appreciate the fact that she’s with us to see her Great-Grandchildren pal.”Everywhere industrial medicine is practised – or any other kind, I’m sure – there are a few bum doctors. We have them here, too – but the list of people abused by physicians in my personal knowledge goes well beyond a few family members. If you want family members, though, you can have both my parents. So far they have not managed to kill me or my friends or siblings, but that is pure blind luck.What I don’t hear out of Canada, the UK or Australia (or the EU) is people arbitrarily denied treatment or medication because they are the wrong gender, or they don’t like the way the diagnosis was made, or any of a host of other offenses against humanity, medical science, biology or common sense. That’s what you get when you have bureaucrats and insurance clerks with fourth grade educations rubber stamping medical decisions made by doctors who aren’t competent enough to survive private practise.Yes, there are doctors who should not be permitted to practise on patients. We had one in the US a few years ago who had killed a lot of patients in Australia, and came here and killed a lot more. I think they finally succeeded in indicting and convicting him, and pulling his license.It is more than reasonable to demand that incompetent doctors be deprived of the privilige of practising, but doctors, like industry, perceive they can do no wrong.There aren’t many criminal incompetents, fortunately, but they exist in all systems. We have no oversight of doctors, and as long as we don’t force people to continue to see a doctor they don’t like, we can probably afford to continue that.Oh .. I forgot. In this system, trying to switch doctors can be a formidable project. There’s a need we could fill right there – put a stop to this nonsense that lets insurers force us to keep seeing the doctor we’re seeing, however destructive his treatment may prove.Ten years ago, I was told by an oncology nurse that I ‘must be my own advocate’. This proved nothing but the unvarnished truth. It also freed me of the deeply ingrained convention that ‘doctors know best’. Some of them do, but all of them don’t. Some can be worked with, some cannot. If your doctor isn’t supporting your health needs, you need a new doctor.A system which makes that change difficult is a bad one. It forces people to use doctors which might not suit them – or might be dangerous. But the system which fosters the most abuse is not single payer systems, it’s ours.
" They should not have had to do that to save the life of the girl who needed a lung yet a Obamacare bureaucrat told them. “Some live some die” and of course you have Obama saying a 95 year old lady should just take a pill."
Honestly, Harley – where have you been for the last forty years? That is exactly what we’re complaining about! But it was established long before Obama got anywhere near the WH.
Insurer policies, heavily backed by government, killed my parents twenty years ago. Back then, we put the blame where it belonged: on the insurers, on the government who backed them, and on the doctors who wouldn´t fight them.
Credit where credit’s due, Harley. Obama had nothing to do with crappy health care in the US. He failed to fix it, yes. Not his job, actually, according to the Constitution . That failure should be laid squarely at Congress’ door.
Elected representatives? Yours and mine? But they aren’t representing our interests, are they?
@I Play One On TV“It’s ideal on paper, but only if everyone….and I mean everyone….is willing to play along. I don’t have that faith in humanity”Uh … actually, I support the hypothesis, but it does rather depend on an economy which allows everybody sufficient income over a substantial period of time to allow them to make such savings.That kind of economy disappeared in this country by the end of the sixties. Working people have had a hard time making any savings at all since the seventies; credit replaced savings in this economy, and it seems to me that the result is predictable. Really shouldn’t surprise anyone. It’s not so much a matter of poor judgement as lack of resources, though with the decline of the education system, poor judgement isn’t rare avis either. Still … if your choice was to eat and feed your kids a sound diet, or a savings account against a health need … not an easy call.I’d certainly support the savings plan too, if the economy would support that in a realistic way. You just can’t fix anything, if you don’t factor in all the issues. Ignoring the past fifty years of voodoo economy can’t lead to functional reforms.
Well of course it can’t be done through the insurers.
Isn’t Paul Ryan one of the goons whose ignorance of basic life is such that he thinks that a woman who is ‘legitimately’ raped can’t get pregnant, because her body will reject the pregnancy? Why do you think his financial understanding is on a higher plane?
How does it save money for anyone to send people to the ER with chronic conditions which can’t be treated with advil and admonitions? How does it save money to refuse to treat people until they need draconian and expensive surgeries or interventions, when they could be maintained drug free if anyone was interested in sound health?
They are digging their own grave as well as ours, and since most of us have paid in to the system most of our lives without ever using it, yes, we resent being further gouged, and told the fault is ours. We paid our dues, and are being denied the benefits.
The fault is not ours. The faúlt lies with our sociopathic and genocidal industries and government. Yes, they are strong words, and yes, I know what they mean. We are being systematically poisoned, while simultaneously deprived of health care. We are nonetheless expected to pay government’s health care coverage 100% – by law.
What, exactly, do they do for us which entitles them to this privilige? That is a serious question.
What do they gain by abusing their workforce? I want to know that too … i’m not smart enough to figure it out on my own. I’d say they are gaining something, though, or they wouldn’t have exported most of our manufacturing overseas, nor would they be importing labor at the rate they are going.
You can pretend these things aren’t happening, or that they aren’t relevant to the situation, but that won’t change reality for you nor for the rest of us.
“So are you ready to admit he was elected on a very big LIE?”
No, I’m not. I believe he was stating his position honestly, it just wasn’t a position Congress was interested in hearing, because they were already commited to the insurance company model, bought and paid for.
That does´t make it a lie, Harley. How do you know what the insurers told Obama? What makes you think they honestly stated their position, which is that it is their job to strip the aged and infirm and disabled, and they weren’t going to let anybody put a stop to it?
Why do you think the insurance companies have any interest in anything at all except making as much money as they possibly can, with no restrictions on who they hurt doing it? Why? It’s not as if insurance companies haven’t been with us long enough for us to understand how they operate. All of a sudden you think they’ve done a full face and become altruistic?
Obama knows what his advisors tell him. He is only one man, so if his advisors are lying to him, or giving him only one side of the issue, why would you blame him for it?
His choice of advisors – if they were his choices – have been less than sound, on several fronts, but those advisors are suits, and ‘experts’ from the various special interests this country harbours. Again, how do you know how they were chosen? Special interests have far more power globally than is safe for any of the rest of us, but they do have money, and they know which politicians to spend it on. That is the strongest common trait among the predatory special interests: political influence.
So, sorry, we still can’t agree on this beyond the fact that things are still going downhill. On that we agree, we just don’t agree on the cause. Corporate Industry has proved to many of us that they can NOT be trusted to self regulate. Until enough people grasp that the government’s job IS to regulate industry, not citizens, nothing will change. There can be no personal freedom in a country governed by and for industry, which is what we now have.
And I’ll say this one more time, too – yes, I support free market capitalism. That seems to me the soundest system overall, at all levels of society. That’s not what we have though. What we have now is government supported corporate monopolies.
We need to bring back regulation. I don’t recall Obama addressing that issue. He certainly campaigned on the issue he knew would gain public support. I believe he campained as honestly as any politician campaigns, which is to say, he knew he would be dependent on Congress and industry’s support to accomplish his goals.
It may have been naiveté, or he may have received credible assurances. You may have noticed – politicians do lie. Why would you assume they wouldn’t lie to each other?
It ‘s easy to accuse. I don’t think Obama is smart or powerful enough to have fixed fifty years of abuse. That’s what it boils down to. It’s a lot easier to shriek ‘LIAR’ than to look deeper into the issue and see whether there is a more realistic approach. Politicians know they are considered to be professional liars, and they know they can accomplish nothing by telling the truth, which would in any case compromise national security in some cases.
No one with any sense takes political speeches literally. People don’t even take their friends and family’s pronouncements literally – how often is anything we say to be taken absolutely literally?. I’ve had to learn the hard way, I’m literal minded to a fault. I don’t, however, accuse those I’ve misunderstood of lying. Pretending that any political speech is anything other than marketing is foolhardy, at best.
But single payer systems are consistently serving more patients at lower costs in other countries. I know you disbelieve any stats that don’t support your belief, but the sheer weight of them bears a certain credibility by itself. Since no other country has done as well by cutting the insurers in, and those which have severely regulated the insurers … well, why assume it’s the best approach? Doesn’t it seem more practical to work from the systems which are consistently working for others?
@Harleyquinn“And in other News What he promised is all BS!”Oddly, I don’t recall Obama saying any of that. The GOP claimed he said all kinds of stuff like that, from the very beginning, before he’d said anything at all, except that he thought the most efficient system would be single payer.After that, nothing he said was published or broadcasted without the GOP interpretation perversions.Congress operates just like a bunch of grade school kids playing Telephone. Unfortunately, Congress has a stranglehold on the economy and politics in this country, and their infantile tactics are setting the example for the rest of the world.Or providing our humiliation, but there are only a few of us who see what is going on apparently. Polarizing politics from both sides of the aisle are destroying the country. Much easier to force fascsist policies down the public throat if you can sow the seeds of discord among your opponents. Divide and conquer is a reliable winning tactic.The catch is, we are not supposed to be our government’s opponents. We are supposed to be their employers. Swallowing their lies because they are easier to live with than reality is letting the side down, dropping the ball.We don’t exist to serve them. They are supposed to exist to serve us. We invented them, put them in place. We have let them get out of control. At this juncture, we aren’t supposed to lie down on the ground with our legs open saying ‘rape is nice, rape is nice’, we are supposed to get off the dime, kick them in the goolies, and put them straight.We don’t serve them. They are supposed to serve us. They aren’t doing it. They are selling us openly to the highest bidder.I don’t know about you, but I wasn’t bred nor raised to be a slave, and I’m too old to learn. The fix for racial bigotry isn’t to reduce all races to slave status, absent ‘acceptable’ social status – it’s to recognize all races as being equivalently human, and all social status as being humanly equivalent.I realize that’s a radical position, and maybe blasphemous to boot.It’s probably humanist.
I was wrong, but not as wrong as Emperor or Der Fuerher Obama. What is the matter with Libs? They cannot admit how inept and vicious he is. He has told obvious lies from the beginning. I knew it and you Dems who pretend smarts, knew it but where to proud to admit it. Just think, you voted for the most devious Black politician since and including THE CLINTONS! I was wrong and totally under estimated the evil Obama meant to commit. He only apologizes cause he has been caught. And each new step only compounds the problem. He is now trying to shove the blame on the Insurance Companies whose selfishness let him cheat the Citizens. He lied and sick citizens will die.
“……Death Panels by another name are real read up on what is happing in Great Britian, they are literally killing people rather then treating them. Note also we have a more expensive system because we actually will move heaven and earth to try to save a life…”.Excuse me while I barf!
I doubt if Brietbart.com is an objective arbitrator of what Dean and Palin said and meant, but Dean’s concerns about the IPAB will be justified only if the IPAB abuses their responsibilities and makes bad decisions.
Magnaut over 10 years ago
DesPotus……… Despot US
I Play One On TV over 10 years ago
Her insurance company’s bill’s insert on healthy lifestyles suggested raw twigs for breakfast as “a great source of natural fiber”. Sadly, digestive splinter surgery is not a covered service.
hippogriff over 10 years ago
I had tree bark last night – cinnamon raisin toast.
Don Winchester Premium Member over 10 years ago
Correction….REPEAL Obamacare! REPEAL Obamacare!REPEAL Obamacare! Besides, the way Obama is doing it is AGAINST the Constitution. He doesn’t have the authority to change it the way he has been.
I Play One On TV over 10 years ago
I am sorry that your relatives have had bad results. I submit that the system we have here in the US has its fair share of bad results as well. There are inept doctors in every style of health care system and in most every locality. The people who administer the programs just put words in the doctor’s contract to the effect that the doctor will not be incompetent. The doctor signs and all is well.
The Death Panel idea is an intentional misrepresentation which has worked to confuse the public much better than I would have expected. (Repeat a lie often enough, and it often seems to become truth.) EVERY system has to have limits as to what it covers and what it doesn’t. There will always be someone who will make the decision as to what treatments will be paid for and which will not. If that’s a death panel, it is unavoidable, regardless of what system it is in. I will say, though, that human nature suggests that more treatments and doctor consultations will be denied in a system wherein people are monetarily rewarded for finding ways to deny coverage (the current for-profit insurance system) than in a system where this behavior is not encouraged. This is not to say that there shouldn’t be someone watching for fraud and improper billing. I’m talking about the cases where the insurance company says, ‘We aren’t saying the patient shouldn’t have this treatment. We’re just saying we ain’t paying for it."
We get similar results in this country at a much higher cost.
I am willing to admit that, despite my 30+ years as a doctor, I might be wrong about the best health care plan. Feel free to come up with a better one and I’ll jump on your bandwagon, but in my experience the system that Obamacare replaces is on the verge of final collapse. Obamacare will buy us time to come up with a better one, because it will collapse, as well, with time. Of all the systems I have researched, and I have done plenty, single payer has the best chance of providing good care at reasonable cost for the most people. It also forces everyone to pull their weight, eliminating the “I don’t want to have to pay care of lazy bums” meme that is so popular these days.
I Play One On TV over 10 years ago
Thanks for calling me “pal”. Haven’t heard that one in years. Cool.
Hawthorne over 10 years ago
“i think if we the customer were the only payer with say health accounts, would be a much easier solution. It also does not require any lies to bring down and bankrupt what we already have.”
Harley, no one is looking at bankruptcy except patients, and maybe a few doctors. The industry is doing very well with this, and loving every minute of it.
Agree, though, that no patch is going to do anything good for it. It is what it is – a gift to the insurers, when we were promised reformed coverage, actual access to care.
The insurers never agreed to anything like this, nor will they ever. It was the insurers who went back on the agreement, if they ever agreed to anything. If anyone lies, it is the insurance industry, from the Marine insurers right down to health care and homeowners and auto. Their position is to take money, not pay it out, unless their back is to the wall.
Single payer is the most efficient and cost effective way to manage health insurance. Since single payer doesn’t offer the insurers, BigPharma, the hospital industries – to make obscene profits off the ill and dying, there is no political support for it. That’s what it comes to. They aren’t willing to settle for a reasonable profit, it’s all or nothing for them, and our government has been complicit in their abuses for many decades. Both parties have enthusiastically supported industry’s right to exploit the population in any way they can dream up.
Clearly you disagree with this position, but seriously, Harley, don’t get sick, and pray nothing goes wrong with your cash flow. It only takes one illness, or auto accident, or other untoward incident to educate you beyond any educational ambition you have ever held.
Sadly, that kind of education generally comes too late to be useful.
I Play One On TV over 10 years ago
“i think if we the customer were the only payer with say health accounts, would be a much easier solution.”
Are you talking about health savings accounts? If so, I’m for it. I just know human nature. You might keep one, I might keep one, but we know that many people will just gamble that they won’t need that money put aside…..until they really need it, and then we’re back to the people who plan having to pick up the tab for the people who don’t. I don’t know about you, but I’m tiring of that system.
It’s ideal on paper, but only if everyone….and I mean everyone….is willing to play along. I don’t have that faith in humanity.
Hawthorne over 10 years ago
@Nathan_Demi“On TV? I guess you also like the death panel option too. Well I love my Grandma and appreciate the fact that she’s with us to see her Great-Grandchildren pal.”Everywhere industrial medicine is practised – or any other kind, I’m sure – there are a few bum doctors. We have them here, too – but the list of people abused by physicians in my personal knowledge goes well beyond a few family members. If you want family members, though, you can have both my parents. So far they have not managed to kill me or my friends or siblings, but that is pure blind luck.What I don’t hear out of Canada, the UK or Australia (or the EU) is people arbitrarily denied treatment or medication because they are the wrong gender, or they don’t like the way the diagnosis was made, or any of a host of other offenses against humanity, medical science, biology or common sense. That’s what you get when you have bureaucrats and insurance clerks with fourth grade educations rubber stamping medical decisions made by doctors who aren’t competent enough to survive private practise.Yes, there are doctors who should not be permitted to practise on patients. We had one in the US a few years ago who had killed a lot of patients in Australia, and came here and killed a lot more. I think they finally succeeded in indicting and convicting him, and pulling his license.It is more than reasonable to demand that incompetent doctors be deprived of the privilige of practising, but doctors, like industry, perceive they can do no wrong.There aren’t many criminal incompetents, fortunately, but they exist in all systems. We have no oversight of doctors, and as long as we don’t force people to continue to see a doctor they don’t like, we can probably afford to continue that.Oh .. I forgot. In this system, trying to switch doctors can be a formidable project. There’s a need we could fill right there – put a stop to this nonsense that lets insurers force us to keep seeing the doctor we’re seeing, however destructive his treatment may prove.Ten years ago, I was told by an oncology nurse that I ‘must be my own advocate’. This proved nothing but the unvarnished truth. It also freed me of the deeply ingrained convention that ‘doctors know best’. Some of them do, but all of them don’t. Some can be worked with, some cannot. If your doctor isn’t supporting your health needs, you need a new doctor.A system which makes that change difficult is a bad one. It forces people to use doctors which might not suit them – or might be dangerous. But the system which fosters the most abuse is not single payer systems, it’s ours.
SClark55 Premium Member over 10 years ago
Nope – he’s in charge of your health, so he can – and will – dictate what you’ll eat.
Hawthorne over 10 years ago
" They should not have had to do that to save the life of the girl who needed a lung yet a Obamacare bureaucrat told them. “Some live some die” and of course you have Obama saying a 95 year old lady should just take a pill."
Honestly, Harley – where have you been for the last forty years? That is exactly what we’re complaining about! But it was established long before Obama got anywhere near the WH.
Insurer policies, heavily backed by government, killed my parents twenty years ago. Back then, we put the blame where it belonged: on the insurers, on the government who backed them, and on the doctors who wouldn´t fight them.
Credit where credit’s due, Harley. Obama had nothing to do with crappy health care in the US. He failed to fix it, yes. Not his job, actually, according to the Constitution . That failure should be laid squarely at Congress’ door.
Elected representatives? Yours and mine? But they aren’t representing our interests, are they?
Hawthorne over 10 years ago
@I Play One On TV“It’s ideal on paper, but only if everyone….and I mean everyone….is willing to play along. I don’t have that faith in humanity”Uh … actually, I support the hypothesis, but it does rather depend on an economy which allows everybody sufficient income over a substantial period of time to allow them to make such savings.That kind of economy disappeared in this country by the end of the sixties. Working people have had a hard time making any savings at all since the seventies; credit replaced savings in this economy, and it seems to me that the result is predictable. Really shouldn’t surprise anyone. It’s not so much a matter of poor judgement as lack of resources, though with the decline of the education system, poor judgement isn’t rare avis either. Still … if your choice was to eat and feed your kids a sound diet, or a savings account against a health need … not an easy call.I’d certainly support the savings plan too, if the economy would support that in a realistic way. You just can’t fix anything, if you don’t factor in all the issues. Ignoring the past fifty years of voodoo economy can’t lead to functional reforms.
Hawthorne over 10 years ago
Well of course it can’t be done through the insurers.
Isn’t Paul Ryan one of the goons whose ignorance of basic life is such that he thinks that a woman who is ‘legitimately’ raped can’t get pregnant, because her body will reject the pregnancy? Why do you think his financial understanding is on a higher plane?
How does it save money for anyone to send people to the ER with chronic conditions which can’t be treated with advil and admonitions? How does it save money to refuse to treat people until they need draconian and expensive surgeries or interventions, when they could be maintained drug free if anyone was interested in sound health?
They are digging their own grave as well as ours, and since most of us have paid in to the system most of our lives without ever using it, yes, we resent being further gouged, and told the fault is ours. We paid our dues, and are being denied the benefits.
The fault is not ours. The faúlt lies with our sociopathic and genocidal industries and government. Yes, they are strong words, and yes, I know what they mean. We are being systematically poisoned, while simultaneously deprived of health care. We are nonetheless expected to pay government’s health care coverage 100% – by law.
What, exactly, do they do for us which entitles them to this privilige? That is a serious question.
What do they gain by abusing their workforce? I want to know that too … i’m not smart enough to figure it out on my own. I’d say they are gaining something, though, or they wouldn’t have exported most of our manufacturing overseas, nor would they be importing labor at the rate they are going.
You can pretend these things aren’t happening, or that they aren’t relevant to the situation, but that won’t change reality for you nor for the rest of us.
Hawthorne over 10 years ago
“So are you ready to admit he was elected on a very big LIE?”
No, I’m not. I believe he was stating his position honestly, it just wasn’t a position Congress was interested in hearing, because they were already commited to the insurance company model, bought and paid for.
That does´t make it a lie, Harley. How do you know what the insurers told Obama? What makes you think they honestly stated their position, which is that it is their job to strip the aged and infirm and disabled, and they weren’t going to let anybody put a stop to it?
Why do you think the insurance companies have any interest in anything at all except making as much money as they possibly can, with no restrictions on who they hurt doing it? Why? It’s not as if insurance companies haven’t been with us long enough for us to understand how they operate. All of a sudden you think they’ve done a full face and become altruistic?
Obama knows what his advisors tell him. He is only one man, so if his advisors are lying to him, or giving him only one side of the issue, why would you blame him for it?
His choice of advisors – if they were his choices – have been less than sound, on several fronts, but those advisors are suits, and ‘experts’ from the various special interests this country harbours. Again, how do you know how they were chosen? Special interests have far more power globally than is safe for any of the rest of us, but they do have money, and they know which politicians to spend it on. That is the strongest common trait among the predatory special interests: political influence.
So, sorry, we still can’t agree on this beyond the fact that things are still going downhill. On that we agree, we just don’t agree on the cause. Corporate Industry has proved to many of us that they can NOT be trusted to self regulate. Until enough people grasp that the government’s job IS to regulate industry, not citizens, nothing will change. There can be no personal freedom in a country governed by and for industry, which is what we now have.
And I’ll say this one more time, too – yes, I support free market capitalism. That seems to me the soundest system overall, at all levels of society. That’s not what we have though. What we have now is government supported corporate monopolies.
We need to bring back regulation. I don’t recall Obama addressing that issue. He certainly campaigned on the issue he knew would gain public support. I believe he campained as honestly as any politician campaigns, which is to say, he knew he would be dependent on Congress and industry’s support to accomplish his goals.
It may have been naiveté, or he may have received credible assurances. You may have noticed – politicians do lie. Why would you assume they wouldn’t lie to each other?
It ‘s easy to accuse. I don’t think Obama is smart or powerful enough to have fixed fifty years of abuse. That’s what it boils down to. It’s a lot easier to shriek ‘LIAR’ than to look deeper into the issue and see whether there is a more realistic approach. Politicians know they are considered to be professional liars, and they know they can accomplish nothing by telling the truth, which would in any case compromise national security in some cases.
No one with any sense takes political speeches literally. People don’t even take their friends and family’s pronouncements literally – how often is anything we say to be taken absolutely literally?. I’ve had to learn the hard way, I’m literal minded to a fault. I don’t, however, accuse those I’ve misunderstood of lying. Pretending that any political speech is anything other than marketing is foolhardy, at best.
But single payer systems are consistently serving more patients at lower costs in other countries. I know you disbelieve any stats that don’t support your belief, but the sheer weight of them bears a certain credibility by itself. Since no other country has done as well by cutting the insurers in, and those which have severely regulated the insurers … well, why assume it’s the best approach? Doesn’t it seem more practical to work from the systems which are consistently working for others?
Hawthorne over 10 years ago
@Harleyquinn“And in other News What he promised is all BS!”Oddly, I don’t recall Obama saying any of that. The GOP claimed he said all kinds of stuff like that, from the very beginning, before he’d said anything at all, except that he thought the most efficient system would be single payer.After that, nothing he said was published or broadcasted without the GOP interpretation perversions.Congress operates just like a bunch of grade school kids playing Telephone. Unfortunately, Congress has a stranglehold on the economy and politics in this country, and their infantile tactics are setting the example for the rest of the world.Or providing our humiliation, but there are only a few of us who see what is going on apparently. Polarizing politics from both sides of the aisle are destroying the country. Much easier to force fascsist policies down the public throat if you can sow the seeds of discord among your opponents. Divide and conquer is a reliable winning tactic.The catch is, we are not supposed to be our government’s opponents. We are supposed to be their employers. Swallowing their lies because they are easier to live with than reality is letting the side down, dropping the ball.We don’t exist to serve them. They are supposed to exist to serve us. We invented them, put them in place. We have let them get out of control. At this juncture, we aren’t supposed to lie down on the ground with our legs open saying ‘rape is nice, rape is nice’, we are supposed to get off the dime, kick them in the goolies, and put them straight.We don’t serve them. They are supposed to serve us. They aren’t doing it. They are selling us openly to the highest bidder.I don’t know about you, but I wasn’t bred nor raised to be a slave, and I’m too old to learn. The fix for racial bigotry isn’t to reduce all races to slave status, absent ‘acceptable’ social status – it’s to recognize all races as being equivalently human, and all social status as being humanly equivalent.I realize that’s a radical position, and maybe blasphemous to boot.It’s probably humanist.
artistdavid over 10 years ago
I was wrong, but not as wrong as Emperor or Der Fuerher Obama. What is the matter with Libs? They cannot admit how inept and vicious he is. He has told obvious lies from the beginning. I knew it and you Dems who pretend smarts, knew it but where to proud to admit it. Just think, you voted for the most devious Black politician since and including THE CLINTONS! I was wrong and totally under estimated the evil Obama meant to commit. He only apologizes cause he has been caught. And each new step only compounds the problem. He is now trying to shove the blame on the Insurance Companies whose selfishness let him cheat the Citizens. He lied and sick citizens will die.
alex Coke Premium Member over 10 years ago
No problem with my coke and cigarette breakfast.
Gypsy8 over 10 years ago
“……Death Panels by another name are real read up on what is happing in Great Britian, they are literally killing people rather then treating them. Note also we have a more expensive system because we actually will move heaven and earth to try to save a life…”.Excuse me while I barf!
Gypsy8 over 10 years ago
I doubt if Brietbart.com is an objective arbitrator of what Dean and Palin said and meant, but Dean’s concerns about the IPAB will be justified only if the IPAB abuses their responsibilities and makes bad decisions.