Healthcare in America...

[Friday]

...is fucked.

Just so you know.

 

[Sarek]

Then the status quo will be maintained.

 

[Robert "Monkey" Loggia]

Yeah!! How dare they not deny insurance to people for pre-existing conditions!!!

 

[Starship Coyote]

Yeah!! How dare they not deny insurance to people for pre-existing conditions!!!

You've got to be out of your fucking mind if you think things are going to get better.

 

[Friday]

Yeah!! How dare they not deny insurance to people for pre-existing conditions!!!

True Story...

I was diagnosed with cancer a few years ago. Had surgery, it's gone, no chemo, in remission, blah blah blah.

I had Blue Cross/Blue Shield at a killer 90/10 plan (which means they paid 90% of my medical costs. That isn't pertinent to the story...just bragging).

A year ago I changed jobs, still with Blue Cross, but a different plan altogether.

Guess what? They *accepted* my cancer, the procedure I need to have every six months, and every doctor visit and medication associated with the cancer, even tho it was pre-existing.

So that argument has so may holes it sunk yesterday.

 

[Eggs Mayonnaise]

Well if BCBS & Medicare were the only game in town, everyone would have it that good.

But health insurance is a free-market industry (well, a little less so now, heh), and BCBS only administers to a third of the nation. It's the other 2/3rds that cause all the need for reforms.

 

[SAUSAGEMAN]

Second opinion!

Now that it’s done, Barack Obama will go down in history as one of America’s finest presidents. It’s always possible of course that, like LBJ, he’ll get involved in some unrelated fiasco that mars his reputation. But fundamentally, he’s reshaped the policy landscape in a way that no progressive politician has done in decades.

Let me offer a ludicrously premature opinion: Barack Obama has sealed his reputation as a president of great historical import. We don't know what will follow in his presidency, and it's quite possible that some future event--a war, a scandal--will define his presidency. But we do know that he has put his imprint on the structure of American government in a way that no Democratic president since Lyndon Johnson has.

I’ve been saying for many months that if healthcare reform passes, I believe that Obama, for all of his myriad flaws, will be the best President of my lifetime and one of the ten best in the nation’s history.

 

[Dirk Funk]

I'm not sure I'd be thrilled about being compared to Lyndon Johnson.

 

[FBI parte due]

Vietnam was a travesty, but LBJ was a great man.

God bless the South.

 

[SAUSAGEMAN]

Smugpost

This health care issue Is D-Day for freedom in America. If we’re able to stop Obama on this it will be his Waterloo. It will break him.

At the end of the address Michael Steele was asked by the Huffington Post whether he agreed with Sen. Jim DeMint's (R-S.C.) assessment that health care reform could be Obama's Waterloo -- a chance for the Republican Party to break the president politically. "I think that's a good way to put it," he responded.

A huge part of the blame for today’s disaster attaches to conservatives and Republicans ourselves.

At the beginning of this process we made a strategic decision: unlike, say, Democrats in 2001 when President Bush proposed his first tax cut, we would make no deal with the administration. No negotiations, no compromise, nothing. We were going for all the marbles. This would be Obama’s Waterloo – just as healthcare was Clinton’s in 1994.

[...]

We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat.

There were leaders who knew better, who would have liked to deal. But they were trapped. Conservative talkers on Fox and talk radio had whipped the Republican voting base into such a frenzy that deal-making was rendered impossible. How do you negotiate with somebody who wants to murder your grandmother? Or – more exactly – with somebody whom your voters have been persuaded to believe wants to murder their grandmother?

I’ve been on a soapbox for months now about the harm that our overheated talk is doing to us. Yes it mobilizes supporters – but by mobilizing them with hysterical accusations and pseudo-information, overheated talk has made it impossible for representatives to represent and elected leaders to lead. The real leaders are on TV and radio, and they have very different imperatives from people in government. Talk radio thrives on confrontation and recrimination. When Rush Limbaugh said that he wanted President Obama to fail, he was intelligently explaining his own interests. What he omitted to say – but what is equally true – is that he also wants Republicans to fail. If Republicans succeed – if they govern successfully in office and negotiate attractive compromises out of office – Rush’s listeners get less angry. And if they are less angry, they listen to the radio less, and hear fewer ads for Sleepnumber beds.

So today’s defeat for free-market economics and Republican values is a huge win for the conservative entertainment industry. Their listeners and viewers will now be even more enraged, even more frustrated, even more disappointed in everybody except the responsibility-free talkers on television and radio. For them, it’s mission accomplished. For the cause they purport to represent, it’s Waterloo all right: ours.

[YOUTUBE]Gu1q17rUkVU[/YOUTUBE]

 

[Eggs Mayonnaise]

How long until David Frum is shot dead in a parking lot? Let's start the clock...

 

[Dirk Funk]

Vietnam was a travesty, but LBJ was a great man.

God bless the South.

Of those three statements, I agree with two. Guess which ones?

 

[SAUSAGEMAN]

Let's compare democrats.org and gop.com this fine morning.

 

[Big Dick McGee]

Welcome to the USSA, the United Socialist State of America, where the government knows what's best for you, so shut up and take it.

I posted that as my FB status last night, and I'm gratified that Friday and a few of my other friends posted that as thier status. Democracy is DEAD.

 

[SAUSAGEMAN]

Every single one of the members who voted for the bill was elected democratically just over a year ago, dude. And you get to vote them out in November if you're not happy. That's precisely how democracy works. It's very much not dead, and it doesn't mean getting your way every time.

 

[Donovan]

The country is no more fucked now than it was before. It's amazing how pwned our populace is when the idiots on tv, bought and paid for by the insurance companies, can actually convince us that health care is a terrible thing for all of us. Or that spending a couple billion on making us healthier is somehow worse than spending trillions (with a T) blowing up brown people half a world away.

When the Republicans held universal power we went to war over bad info and lies and gas was five bucks a gallon. With Dems in the same position we just overhauled health care for the first time in decades and in the process stripped insurance companies of some ability to deny our sick people coverage. And gas is under three bucks a gallon.

Democrats are bastards! Somebody call Rush!

 

[Big Dick McGee]

Every single one of the members who voted for the bill was elected democratically just over a year ago, dude. And you get to vote them out in November if you're not happy. That's precisely how democracy works. It's very much not dead, and it doesn't mean getting your way every time.

Sure, we can vote them out, but the damage is done, the bill has passed. You can execute a serial killer, but his victims are just as dead.

 

[SAUSAGEMAN]

Well, I obviously disagree with your assessment of the bill's effect, but even then, it was passed by democratically elected representatives in a democratic way. To say that democracy is dead because a majority of elected officials working within the rules of the House passed a bill is nothing but petulant drama-queening.

 

[Friday]

Dono, the new healthcare plan is estimated to cost 1.5 trillion, not billion.

One of the issues that makes my radar go *blip* is the fact I no longer have a choice in whether I even have healthcare. It's mandated, or I'm fined $750.

If I cannot afford healthcare, I could certainly go on Medicaid. But who is going to be paying for the extra Medicaid assistance to those who now qualify? The Medicaid Fairy?

During his town hall meeting here when he was on his ObamaCare crusade, Obama touted Kaiser Permanente as a caring, patient oriented HMO where every doctor there will know your history, so you'll get more bang for your buck.

Spin much? First off, Kaiser is NOT patient oriented. They are the epitome of a business model. And dammit, if I need surgery to remove a tumor in my small intestine, I want to be able to have the same doctor for all follow-ups, and not be handed around from MD to MD like I was the office whore.

 

[SuN]

last yr, 62% of bankruptcy claims were due to medical expenses. That's gotta be a bad thing for teh economy.
Besides, preventative medicine is how health systems are supposed to run; making money out of peoples sickness should be confined to pharmaceutical company's, not everyone and anyone who wants a piece of the pie.