“Most of us did not, but we're stuck with this dude and need to advise him the best we can and stop being silly ass cry baby anti-liberals like Flush Lamebra.”

“That can't be true Hyway.
Obamy promised four days of public debate on everything.
*snicker*”

“I'm thinking oxygen deprivation.”

“I thought plant life thrived on C02?”

“It's counterintuitive, I know....”

“It's uncanny what the Kool-Aid drinkers know:

Fox News is BS and a shill for the right wing....anyone watching is a kook...they say this lie and that lie on Fox News.

Right wing talk radio is full of hate and lies and anyone listening to it is a kook....they say this lie and that lie on right wing talk radio.

The racists and racist websites are full of hate and lies and anyone listening to them is a kook....they say this lie and that lie and say all this hate filled stuff.

And they know this without listening or watching?? Why, it's some kind of miracle!”

“Do you believe in miracles Mistforconnon?”

“Um yeah. I can say racism is hate. Most definitely.”

“Face it guys, Obama won. The country is his to destroy if he so chooses.”

“I can dig that. But its too much fun to essentially cut and paste comments from the last 4-8 years and replace Bush's name with Obama and see the left go ape#&%!$ over the awful way we treat the messiah.”

“Ain't it though..remember with the Stalinsts starting to follow Obamster FREE SPEECH is anything "they" agree with.

Kinda like the professor I had in Graduate school who had all the Dope smoking maggot infest photos of her in her "free spirit" days....She was big on "free speech".

We had a neat week long class on "tolerance". On Thursday I asked about "Tolerance" for Conservative White Straight Males....I got excused from the rest of class.

Remember for the libbies free speech is only free if they have it.”

“

How Pharma and Insurance Intend to Kill the Public Option, And What Obama and the Rest of Us Must Do

Robert Reich


I'ved poked around Washington today, talking with friends on the Hill who confirm the worst: Big Pharma and Big Insurance are gaining ground in their campaign to kill the public option in the emerging health care bill.

You know why, of course. They don't want a public option that would compete with private insurers and use its bargaining power to negotiate better rates with drug companies. They argue that would be unfair. Unfair? Unfair to give more people better health care at lower cost? To Pharma and Insurance, "unfair" is anything that undermines their profits.

So they're pulling out all the stops -- pushing Democrats and a handful of so-called "moderate" Republicans who say they're in favor of a public option to support legislation that would include it in name only. One of their proposals is to break up the public option into small pieces under multiple regional third-party administrators that would have little or no bargaining leverage. A second is to give the public option to the states where Big Pharma and Big Insurance can easily buy off legislators and officials, as they've been doing for years. A third is bind the public plan to the same rules private insurers have already wangled, thereby making it impossible for the public plan to put competitive pressure on the insurers.

Max Baucus, Chair of Senate Finance (now exactly why does the Senate Finance Committee have so much say over health care?) hasn't shown his cards but staffers tell me he's more than happy to sign on to any one of these. But Baucus is waiting for more support from his colleagues, and none of the three proposals has emerged as the leading candidate for those who want to kill the public option without showing they're killing it. Meanwhile, Ted Kennedy and his staff are still pushing for a full public option, but with Kennedy ailing, he might not be able to round up the votes. (Kennedy's health committee released a draft of a bill today, which contains the full public option.)

Enter Olympia Snowe. Her move is important, not because she's Republican (the Senate needs only 51 votes to pass this) but because she's well-respected and considered non-partisan, and therefore offers some cover to Democrats who may need it. Last night Snowe hosted a private meeting between members and staffers about a new proposal Pharma and Insurance are floating, and apparently she's already gained the tentative support of several Democrats (including Ron Wyden and Thomas Carper). Under Snowe's proposal, the public option would kick in years from now, but it would be triggered only if insurance companies fail to bring down healthcare costs and expand coverage in he meantime.

What's the catch? First, these conditions are likely to be achieved by other pieces of the emerging legislation; for example, computerized records will bring down costs a tad, and a mandate requiring everyone to have coverage will automatically expand coverage. If it ever comes to it, Pharma and Insurance can argue that their mere participation fulfills their part of the bargain, so no public option will need to be triggered. Second, as Pharma and Insurance well know, "years from now" in legislative terms means never. There will never be a better time than now to enact a public option. If it's not included, in a few years the public's attention will be elsewhere.

Much the same dynamic is occurring in the House. Two members who had originally supported single payer told me that Pharma and Insurance have launched the same strategy there, and many House members are looking to see what happens in the Senate. Snowe's "trigger" is already buzzing among members.

All this will be decided within days or weeks. And once those who want to kill the public option without their fingerprints on the murder weapon begin to agree on a proposal -- Snowe's "trigger" or any other -- the public option will be very hard to revive. The White House must now insist on a genuine public option. And you, dear reader, must insist as well.

This is it, folks. The concrete is being mixed and about to be poured. And after it's poured and hardens, universal health care will be with us for years to come in whatever form it now takes. Let your representative and senators know you want a public option without conditions or triggers -- one that gives the public insurer bargaining leverage over drug companies, and pushes insurers to do what they've promised to do. Don't wait until the concrete hardens and we've lost this battle.”

“Vile is now posting straight from Talking Points.”

“Robert REIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIICH? LOL Vile the guy was a failed economist. NOT one of his ideas ever worked. Jeeze thats like us quoting Richard Nixon on an ethics course.”

“Any economist that has had a job and has been in the media over the last 7 years, is an abject failure, because the ones that knew the truth of this crash weren't given the time of day.”

“What VILE totally misses is that more and more parasites will begin abusing the system. Eventually any "producer" meaning non-parasite will be drug into the system to fund its evergrowing needs.

Eventually John Galt will be right, the real producers who have the wherewithall will get out. The little guy will be overwhelmed.

And we will see "rationing" like Canada or England.”

“Capitalism's approx. two hundred year life span has been reached. Throw the whole game in the box and shake it up before trying to play again, but this time stay in front of the crooks(Sure, that'll happen). Silly 500 hp americans.

Do you think minimum wage at Mickey D's or Wally World is anything other than rationing?
last edited: 6/08/09 7:18:12 AM”

“nothing keeps someone working for minimum wage but their own lack of desire/ability to do better.”

“Three hundred and twenty million CEO positions were listed in the paper this Sunday, you'd think they'd read about em, eh? Oh that's right they haven't the desire or talent to be lying thieving tools.

We could try the let them starve Darwinian method of stepping over the bodies to get into the Four Seasons .
last edited: 6/08/09 12:02:40 PM”

“LOL...a friend of mine in the Health care industry told me their bean counters are asking for Cost/Benefit analysis of medical proceedures. Apparently the Government is beginning to develop lists of 'approved" proceedures.

So say A guy Fries his liver drinking too much. At a certain age the government would decide that it would not be beneficial (i.e. the proceedure to save him would not result in financially positive long term benefits) to have necessary treatments.

hyway you are correct. Since (as I have stated with information prior) minimum wage is normally an "entry level" or training wage no one really stays there. As a rule these positions are held by youthful entry level students or retired people just making some extra bucks.”

“damn, sale has a very weird idea about business, you either make minimum wage or you are the head hancho of the company.”

“Better start looking at what business will have to become instead of the old military model that has worn out it's welcome. This country can't hang out while the rest of the world tries to repair the WWII damage anymore. That's all over and we have to compete with countries that have better education and everyday we're being passed up in living standards, because we still think we're in the wild west.”

“yeah, so lets start being socialist and give everyone everything the government thinks they need and then just sit back and start watching all that increased productivity and inspiration carry us to the promised land.”

“You want productivity?

Look behind the counter of any doctor's office and you'll see half of the staff shuffling insurance paperwork.

We're employing armies of people to push paper around in circles.

Does this seem like an efficient use of resources to you?”

“you think it will get better when its government run? You must have never done any business with the government”

“The government can change as biz is going to have to. I didn't like the whole idea of all this change until this country was walked to the edge of the earth and ask to jump by the silly neo-cons and their PNAC.”

“WHAHAHAHAHAHA....

And if you don't believe Rationing can happen....

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/nation/story/69467.html

Wagstaff and other administrators are betting that the state will rescue the "welfare to work" program. But they are bracing for cuts that would slash benefits to the lowest levels since the late 1990s, when CalWORKs began as part of the federal government's bold reform of the welfare system.”

“You must have never done any business with the government

No kidding - it's interesting how an otherwise intelligent person can harbor bizarre, child-like naivety about the workings of the world.”

“Mutt government workers get immune to the stories. You cannot look at individuals on a case by case basis. There is a set of regulations and you MUST follow them.

If individual #1 is a Societal Parasite who meets the "requirements" and Indivdual #2 is an elderly person who has doen their best to be productive and just fallen on hard times but ends up scoring less on the "requirements" you have to give preference to #1.”

“You really shouldn't go #1 or #2 on this thread, but you do.”

“http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124451570546396929.html

And the reality checks keep rolling in.


Here is what you libbies have to look forward to.

For example, Sylvia de Vries, an Ontario woman, had a 40-pound fluid-filled tumor removed from her abdomen by an American surgeon in 2006. Her Michigan doctor estimated that she was within weeks of dying, but she was still on a wait list for a Canadian specialist.


Indeed, Canada's provincial governments themselves rely on American medicine. Between 2006 and 2008, Ontario sent more than 160 patients to New York and Michigan for emergency neurosurgery -- described by the Globe and Mail newspaper as "broken necks, burst aneurysms and other types of bleeding in or around the brain."

Only half of ER patients are treated in a timely manner by national and international standards, according to a government study. The physician shortage is so severe that some towns hold lotteries, with the winners gaining access to the local doc.

LOL..need I hearken back to the crap I took about Natasha Richardson case?


To limit the growth in health spending, governments restrict the supply of health care by rationing it through waiting. The same survey data show, as June and Paul O'Neill note in a paper published in 2007 in the Forum for Health Economics & Policy, that the poor under socialized medicine seem to be less healthy relative to the nonpoor than their American counterparts.”

“They do a great job of pitting the underclass against the under-underclass, black against white, brother against brother.”

“Um Tilt...the above appear to be "government against the citizens"

I mean I know its the cliche of the left to use the race/wealth envy crap...but wasn't Natasha kinda well off? And she died as her brain swelled because there were no proper assessment tools and probably a three week backlog for Neurosurgery.

WOW...think about that. In a civilized country a rather well off person just DIES....too bad they couldn't fly her to an American Hospital.
last edited: 6/09/09 1:53:47 PM”

“Don't worry; the insurance companies will save you.   They're just waiting in line to pay for your transplant.”