Subscribe
Sarah Palin used to travel to Canada for icky, awful government health care
Former governor of Alaska and Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin was in Canada speaking to a bunch of Canadians when she admitted to the crowd of listeners that as a child, she used to partake of the awful icky socialized Canadian medical system. From The Globe and Mail:
PALIN: We used to hustle over the border for health care we received in Canada. And I think now, isn’t that ironic?
No, that’s not ironic. It’s hypocritical.
Sarah Palin has long railed against health care reform saying that if we reform health care in this country, it will lead to socialized medicine. Like they enjoy in Canada.
Amending the Maryland Constitution to prevent requiring people to buy health insurance
One of the problems with health care in this country is that the people that don’t have health insurance make things more expensive for those that do. Not only do hospitals and other health care providers pass on the cost of treating the uninsured over to the insured, having a large group of relativity healthy people not participate in the pool of the insured makes things that much more expensive for everyone. The more people that buy insurance, the cheaper insurance should be.
At least that’s the theory.
Though I don’t agree with forcing Americans to participate in the for-profit health insurance industry, I think it’s better than the alternative.
Three local members of the Maryland House of Delegates, Christopher B. Shank, Andrew A. Serafini, and Charles A. Jenkins, are trying to do something about any federal mandate requiring health insurance. At least they want to make it look like they are. The Health Care Freedom Act of 2010, if passed, would prevent Maryland residents from paying fines for not purchasing health care coverage.
And yes, all three delegates are Republicans.
I have to believe that these Republicans know that the state of Maryland is not in a position to dictate terms to the United States government. That’s just not the way it works. My guess is that these three are just trying to score points with the local George Bush loving, NASCAR watching, voters. In other words, people that played a lot of hooky during high school government class.
Scott Brown wins! Scott Brown wins!
The World Wide Internet Webs is in all a flutter today with the news that former Cosmo centerfold model Republican Scott Brown beat Democrat Martha Coakley in Massachusetts’ special election yesterday to replace Ted Kennedy in the U.S. Senate. Visit ten political centric websites today and you will likely read ten different reasons Brown won and Coakley lost.
Personally, I think there are many reasons Brown came out the victor yesterday. Though I wouldn’t have voted for Brown if I lived in Massachusetts, I certainly wouldn’t have voted for Coakley. I wouldn’t have voted.
Martha Coakley was an awful candidate. Not only does she have the charisma of a dead fish, she treated the campaign trail like it was radioactive. Scott Brown campaigned hard, driving around the state meeting with the voters.
Martha Coakley does not even know who Curt Schilling is. She thought he a New York Yankees fan.
The fact that the Republicans will now have 41 Senators in the U.S. Senate means that health care reform is dead. At least that is what I’ve learned from watching the cable news shows. If that’s true, then I guess Scott Brown winning yesterday is a good thing. I’m all for health care reform, but not if it looks and smells like the health care reform currently being discussed, then its death is a good thing.
If I lived in Massachusetts, I wouldn’t vote for Martha Coakley either
Today voters in Massachusetts go to the polls in a special election to decide who fills Senator Ted Kennedy’s vacant Senate seat. Voters must decide between Democrat Martha Coakley or Republican Scott Brown. The election is important because even though the Republicans seemed to have no problem getting things done in the U.S. Senate when they held only a 50 seat majority (with Dick Cheney breaking all ties), the Democrats claim they need 60 votes to get anything done.
Not that they’ve been able to get anything done even with 60 votes.
If Coakley wins tomorrow, she will represent a continued 60 votes for the Democrats. If Brown wins, he will represent 41 votes for the Republicans. With 41 votes in the Senate, the Republicans will be able to stop the Democrats from doing anything.
This begs to question why the Democrats were not able to stop the Republicans when they represented the minority party in the Senate.
I’m at the point now where I just don’t care about the Democrats having 60 votes in the Senate. They’ve enjoyed a 60 vote, filibuster proof majority for nearly a year now, yet they haven’t been able to get much done, unless you count a military escalation in Afghanistan.
I sure don’t.
The health care reform bill coming out of the Senate looks like it’s something the Republicans would have crafted if they were in control. President Obama promised that any health care bill he signed must contain a public option. He has since backtracked on that promise. In fact, he even claims now that he never said that.
If I lived in Massachusetts, I’d stay home today.
Is this as good as it gets?
The fight for health care reform has really made me think about things. When I look at this joke of a bill coming out of the Senate, I have to wonder what being a Democrat really means.
Democrats control the White House, the Senate, and the House. If there was ever a time that we could get substantial health care reform in this country, it’s now. If there was ever a time we could make sure that every American has access to quality, affordable health care, it’s now.
Instead, we get a health care reform bill that the Republicans could have written. It does not have a public option. It does not expand Medicare. It requires all Americans to purchase health insurance from the for-profit health insurance cartel.
That last part is the real kicker for me. I can see requiring Americans to purchase health insurance if there was a not-for-profit alternative. Because this bill lacks a public option, this is not the case. This is requiring Americans to purchase a product that’s purpose is not to improve health, but to make a profit for the health insurance company.
I cannot help but thing the Democratic party is a lot like a dog chasing a car that doesn’t quite know what to do when it catches the car. The Democrats are in position to enact a good health care reform bill. They are choosing not to do that.
I have a real problem with that.
This is the best they can do?
It looks as though health care reform will pass, but that’s only if you choose to label the bill coming out of the Senate as health care reform. The key points:
- No public option.
- No Medicare buy in.
- Penalize those that do not have health insurance.
- No tax on cosmetic procedures.
- A 10% tax on tanning.
What a joke. This makes me feel embarrassment to be a Democrat. Seriously, this is what you get when the House, the Senate, and the White House are all under Democratic control? We get 30,000 more combat troops in Afghanistan and a piece of crap bill pretending to be health care reform.
Is this what Change looks like?
The fact that people will be penalized if they don’t buy health insurance, coupled with the fact that there is no public option, means that the health insurance cartel is getting a heck of a Christmas present this year. I wish I sold a product that the government forced people to buy.
Al Franken points out we are entitled to our own opinions, but we are not entitled to our own facts
Senator John Thune, Republican from South Dakota, spoke on the Senate floor Monday and said that the benefits of the proposed health care bill don’t kick in till 2014. I’m told he even had a chart. Senator Al Franken, Democrat from Minnesota, openly challenged that assertion saying that it was not true.
Franken went on to say that though we are entitled to our own opinions, we are not entitled to our own facts.
If you were a listener on Franken’s former radio show on Air America, you probably remember the phrase. Franken also pointed out that many of his Republican colleagues have not read the bill and that if they want to debate the bill, they really need to read the bill.
Teabaggers are still confusing
Someone from a local Taxed Enough Already (TEA) party wrote a letter to the editor of my local newspaper, The Herald Mail, and it was published in today’s edition. This person wrote:
TEA partiers consider themselves educated and responsible enough to make their own decisions regarding all aspects of their lives. Leftists who embrace big government, including Obamacare, feel they are neither well-enough educated nor responsible enough to make decisions regarding their lives. There is no argument here. Both sides are absolutely correct.
If this person ever bothered to read up on our nation’s history, he might discover that our system of government is based on a constitutional republic. We elect people to represent us and to make educated, informed decisions on our behalf. It’s not the best system of government, but I guess it’s better than everything else.
Does this person even know any “big government” embracing leftists? And what exactly constitutes big government? Is it spending billions of dollars on a massive professional military? Is it spending billions of dollars on weapon systems that may or may not work against enemies that may or may not even exist?
I’ll be the first to admit that when it comes to spending our money, I’d rather spend it on health care then on the industrial military complex. Mostly that’s because sickness and disease is a far greater risk to America’s well being than any foreign army is. Since April of this year, 10,000 Americans have died due to the H1N1 virus. Thousands of others have died from other medical problems. How many of those deaths could have been avoided if we had universal health care?
I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t understand people in the Taxed Enough Already (TEA) party. They sat by and just watched President Bush spend billions of their children’s money invading two countries while cutting taxes to the rich.
They didn’t say a word.
President Obama then came into office and actually cut taxes to people making less than $250,000 a year and the teabaggers protest against him by holding up signs comparing him to Hitler.
I don’t get that.
Senate health care reform bill allows for an annual cap to benefits
Now this is just getting embarrassing. The Associated Press is reporting that the current bill floating through the Senate includes language that prohibits insurance companies from placing lifetime caps on benefits, but allows them to place annual, yearly caps on benefits.
This means if you have cancer and need surgery, followed by chemotherapy or radiation treatments, you very well may have to wait to get the chemotherapy or radiation treatments after the new year. The surgery may use up all your available insurance coverage for the year, leaving you all tapped out. It will be up to your insurance company. A company that is more interested in maximizing profits than making sure people are healthy.
I don’t know why they have to make this so hard. Every other industrialized nation has universal health care. Why can’t we? I’d like to think we are capable of doing anything. This includes ensuring the every American has access to quality health care.
It really shouldn’t be this hard.
Fox News falsifies video to make Republican protest against health care look bigger
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Sean Hannity Uses Glenn Beck’s Protest Footage | ||||
|
||||
Fox News applied some of their trademarked Fair and Balanced treatment to video footage of a recent Republican protest against health care. The November 5th protest was organized by Congresswoman Michele Bachmann and took place in Washington D.C. on steps of the Capitol. Bachmann told her supporters that they should flock to Washington and “scare” her colleagues into voting against health care reform.
The Washington Post estimated the crowd to be around 10,000 strong. Sean Hannity claimed it was around 20,000. Bachmann claimed the number was somewhere between 20,000 to 45,000. Video of the protest seemed to confirm the Washington Post’s estimate, not Hannity’s or Bachmann’s.
So what did Fox News do?
They showed video from a protest that took place in September that had nothing to do with health care reform. It was from Glenn Beck’s September 12 movement that attempted to get people to remember how they felt the day after the 911 terrorist attacks.
Republican congressman predicts the Democratic party will be history within a year
Mike Pence, Republican representative from Indiana and the chairman of the House Republican Conference was on Fox News Sunday this morning and made the claim that last night’s vote for health care reform will bring about the end of the Democratic party.
In about a year.
From Fox News:
“I think the American people are deeply frustrated with a liberal establishment in Washington, D.C. that is ignoring their will,” Pence said. “If Democrats keep ignoring the American people, their party’s going to be history in about a year.”
Personally, I get somewhat frustrated with the liberal establishment in Washington D.C., but that’s because it’s not liberal enough. Something tells me that’s not what Rep. Pence was talking about. I think Pence is confused and believes that the uninformed, poorly educated people that scream and shout at town hall meetings demanding that the government keep it’s hands of Medicare, represent the entire country.
Thankfully, they don’t. Not all of us spend our afternoons throwing teabags into plastic wading pools.
Health care reform bill passes the House
H.R. 3962, the Affordable Health Care for America Act, passed the House last night, 220 for and 215 against. Every Republican except one voted against it. There were 39 Democrats that voted against it. The Senate now has to pass their version of the bill.
So what’s this mean? Here’s a list of some of the key provisions of the bill (from CBS News’ Political Hotsheet):
- Creates a public health insurance option and a national exchange for the uninsured and small businesses to purchase health insurance. The Secretary of Health and Human Services would negotiate rates with doctors and hospitals on reimbursement rates.
- The bill includes mandates for individuals to purchase and businesses to provide health insurance or pay a fine. Individual penalty is 2.5 percent of gross income unless they get a waiver. Businesses that don’t offer insurance pay a fine equal to 8 percent of their payroll. Businesses with a payroll of less than $500,000 are exempt from the mandate.
- Insurance companies are prohibited from denying coverage based on a pre-existing condition. There are caps on deductibles and annual out of pocket spending is capped at $5000.
- Allows individuals up to 27-years-old to stay on their parent’s health insurance
- As amended, it prohibits federal funds from covering abortions. Women would need to purchase riders to insurance purchased on the exchange if they wanted that coverage.
- The bill taxes individuals making more than $500,000 and $1 million for couples. It is a 5.4 percent tax.
The public option will only be open to people who do not have insurance. I’m not sure how this will actually save money, but then again, I’m not an economist. It seems to me that if the goal was to lower health care costs, the public option should be open to everyone. The more people that are enrolled in the non-profit, government run health insurance, the less costly it will be.
I don’t like the provision that will fine people who choose not to purchase insurance. I think fining someone 2.5% of their gross income if they choose to go uninsured is too low. That’s less then they would pay for health insurance. If the goal is to get people to sign up for health insurance, then the fine should be something substantially higher then what they would pay for health insurance. If the fine is too low, some will choose to pay the fine. I also don’t like forcing businesses to offer insurance. Once again, a robust public option open to everyone would allow businesses to get out of the health insurance business and instead concentrate on their business.
I like the part about capping out-of-pocket expenses. I like it a lot. I’m just concerned that it’s too low. Five grand a year is a lot of money if you just don’t have it. The goal is to stop forcing people into bankruptcy if and when something catastrophic happens to them. Don’t get me wrong, a $5,000 cap is better than no cap.
The part about not covering abortions was put in the bill to appeal to members of the anti-abortion party, also known as the Republican party. A lot of good it did. All but one Republican voted against the bill. The bill does allow abortion in cases of rape, incest or where the life of a mother is threatened. How exactly does that work? Say a woman is raped and as a result, she becomes pregnant. Just how then is she to get her insurance to pay for the procedure? Does she have to first wait until her rapist is caught and then tried in a court of law? If her rapist is acquitted, does that mean she wasn’t raped? Also, how does one go about proving that the pregnancy is a result of incest? The whole thing seems incredibly stupid to me.
I hope this man has good health insurance
Republican Teabaggers held a protest yesterday on the steps of the Capitol in Washington D.C. to protest against government run health care and/or health care reform. Unfortunately, one of the people at the protest collapsed. Luckily for him, paramedics from the Office of the Attending Physician, the organization responsible for the medical welfare of the members of the House, members of the Senate, and members of the Supreme Court, were on the scene and were able to quickly provide assistance to this man.
As this photo shows, they gave him oxygen and started an I.V. They later removed him from the scene via a stretcher, presumably to take him to a hospital.
For this man’s sake, I hope the Office of the Attending Physician is in his health insurance plan. Otherwise, his out-of-pocket expenses are going to be ginormous. I don’t even want to think about the added surcharge someone has to pay for paramedics wearing a jacket and tie.
Also, I hope that he had the foresight to call his health insurance company before he collapsed to get pre-authorization for the collapse. As we all know, failure to do so can be grounds for your insurance company to deny the claim.
The man doesn’t appear to be old enough to qualify for Medicare, the popular and very successful government run health insurance plan for our nation’s seniors and disabled. That’s too bad because if he was on Medicare, he wouldn’t have to worry about his claim being denied because of a preexisting condition or because he was treated by health care professionals outside his insurance plan’s network.
If he was on Medicare, he’d only have to worry about getting well.
Photo: Chip Somodevilla of Getty Images
Health care reform is scarier than terrorism
Republican Representative Virginia Foxx from the fifth district of North Carolina spoke on the House floor and said that we have more to fear from health care reform than we do terrorists. Watch it:
If she said that not having access to quality, affordable health care was more of a threat than some radical Islamic fundamentalist hiding in a cave in Pakistan, I might actually agree with her. She didn’t say that. She’s not telling people to be afraid of not having access to quality health care, she is telling people to be afraid of health care reform because it will somehow infringe on our freedoms.
I don’t really understand people that actually encourage others to be scared. As an elected official, she really should be doing the complete opposite.
Lieberman threatens to filibuster with Republicans against health care reform
Shocker of all shockers, U.S. Senator from Connecticut Joe Lieberman is threatening to filibuster with the Republicans against any health care reform bill if it contains a public option, something Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says it will have.
To say that Joe Lieberman is a weasel is an insult to weasels.
It’s almost hard to remember that Lieberman was the 2000 Democratic nominee for Vice-President. That almost seems like a bazillion years ago or that it took place in some other alternate universe. My how things change. Connecticut Democrats refused to make him their nominee in 2006 and instead picked someone else. Someone who was not Joe Lieberman. They voted for Ned Lamont, not Joe Lieberman.
Lieberman responded to the will of the Connecticut Democratic voters by telling them to go take a hike. He ran as an “independent” and defeated Lamont and whoever else the Republicans put up against Lamont.
I thought it was shameful on the part of Lieberman. The guy was the Democratic nominee for Vice-President in 2000 and six years later he ran against and defeated a Democrat in a general election. He’s a Democrat when it’s convenient for him and he’s an “independent” when it’s not.
I have a fairly low opinion of Joe Lieberman. Maybe that wasn’t clear.
The current health care reform bill is a sweetheart deal for insurance companies
The Senate Finance Committee passed the health care bill crafted by Sen. Max Baucus (D-Montana) 14-9, with Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), casting the sole Republican vote.
I don’t know why more Republicans didn’t vote for this bill. If you didn’t know that it was written by a Democrat, you would think it was written by a health insurance lobbyist.
There’s no public option. There’s a mandate that everyone must have health insurance. If someone’s employer doesn’t offer health insurance, they must go and purchase health insurance on the open market and pay whatever the health insurance industry says they will have to pay. The only way this so-called “public mandate” makes sense is if people have the option of purchasing not-for-profit health insurance managed by the government.
My guess is that health insurance companies will start offering no-frills, “compliance” policies that will be health insurance in name only. They wont really help you when you or sick or injured and need medical attention, but will instead allow you to be compliant with the new requirement to have health insurance.
The purpose of a health insurance company is not to make people healthy, but to generate profit for it’s investors. Even if people have health insurance, too many times, a catastrophic health crisis will result in having to declare personal bankruptcy because of co-pays and out-of-pocket expenses not covered by their health insurance.
What’s the point of having Democrats in charge if this is the best we can do?
Republican congressman calls President Obama a liar during joint session of Congress
Was it a town hall meeting or was it presidential address to a joint session of Congress?
I thought it was the later, but Representative Joe Wilson, a Republican form South Carolina, shouted at the president from his fifth-row seat: “You lie!”
So what did Rep. Wilson think President Obama was lying about? That the proposed government health care plan would include coverage for illegal immigrants.
It of course would not, but a good many Republicans have been saying that it would because they know how much their constituents hate illegal immigrants. Except of course their constituents that employ illegal immigrants because they are willing to work for far less than the prevailing wage that people who are in this country legally expect to be paid.
Representative Joe Wilson later apologized for his outburst.
I think this incident only illustrates why we wont be getting health care reform anytime soon from our elected leaders in Washington. It doesn’t matter what the facts are. If the Republicans believe or feel that health care reform would provide coverage to illegal immigrants or that it would create special death panels that would dictate who gets health care and who doesn’t, there is nothing that can be said that will make them believe or feel otherwise. That fact that Wilson would shout that the President of the United States was lying while he was speaking to a joint session of Congress says quite a lot.
Facts don’t trump feelings or beliefs.
The commerical CNN refused to show
Americans United for Change, a non-partisan group dedicated to various progressive issues, tried to book time on CNN for an ad critical of the health care industry, mainly Ed Hanway, CEO of the insurance company Cigna. CNN refused to run the ad. The reason? Not because the ad isn’t factually accurate, but because it “unnecessarily singles out an individual company and person”.
I guess it depends what CNN’s definition of “unnecessarily” is.
I’ve often wondered just how the mainstream news media was going to react when the pressure for health care reform intensified. They make a lot of money running commercials for big pharma. Watch the evening news on any of the three major networks and a majority of the commercials are for prescription drugs that we are all supposed to run out to our doctors for.
At least those of us with halfway decent health insurance.
-
Recent Comments
-
siriunsun: Well, Rick.........you know how it is: John McSame just LOOKS the same as lots of people who were born in the United States. And his name is a ...
-
Ryan: Matt Damon? Matt Damon!...
-
Rick: Ryan: ‘Cause this here’s America!We play ...
-
-
Sören: Yes I am for real ;-) Never thought that my name is that cool. Actually I would rather change my name if I could......
-
-
Books I Am Reading
-
Music I Am Listening To
-
- Peter Graves has died - http://bit.ly/blfTde #cnn
- Courage? Really? http://is.gd/axTwj
- I just ordered my iPad! http://is.gd/auerZ
Follow me @rickrottman