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Affordable Health Care for America Act is fair
Published Thursday, November 19, 2009
Americans agree that the health insurance system in our country is broken. The cost of doing nothing is too great for our nation. If Congress fails to enact reform, things won’t just stay the same — they’ll get worse. That’s why we need the Affordable Health Care for America Act and we need it now.
A recent report released by the Urban Institute illustrates what happens if we remain with the status quo. In Minnesota alone, delaying health insurance reform would hit our communities hard, with the estimated number of uninsured in ten years skyrocketing to 577,000. Nationally, up to 57 million Americans could find themselves uninsured. Unless we enact changes now, those who manage to keep their coverage will pay an even heftier price over the next ten years, with individual and family spending on health care increasing by 49 percent in Minnesota by 2019. And these, according to the report, are the best case scenarios.
Saturday’s vote in the House of Representatives was a victory for working Americans and Minnesotans. Congressman Walz, along with a majority of his colleagues, chose to side with working families instead of propping up the insurance industry. They voted for a comprehensive health insurance reform bill that will provide coverage to 96 percent of Americans, lower costs, expand coverage, make insurance portable, and will reduce the deficit by $30 billion over the next 10 years.
In our district alone, according to the U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee (http://energycommerce.house.gov), the Affordable Health Care for America Act will:
Improve employer-based coverage for 439,000 residents.
Provide credits to help pay for coverage for up to 160,000 households.
Improve Medicare for 108,000 beneficiaries, including closing the prescription drug donut hole for 13,000 seniors.
Allow 17,000 small businesses to obtain affordable health care coverage and provide tax credits to help reduce health insurance costs for up to 15,300 small businesses.
Protect up to 700 families from bankruptcy due to unaffordable health care costs.
This legislation will guarantee that employers will pay no more than their fair share to provide insurance to employees. It includes a public health insurance option to lower costs and keep insurance companies honest. It includes a surtax on the very wealthy who can afford to pay more rather than balancing reform on the backs of working families. It also allows families to keep the health care they have instead of facing cuts in benefits and higher costs.
As a new employer, I’ve experienced the health care crisis from the other side of the negotiating table. One of my duties as President was to secure health care for the Labor Council staff. This bill offers much needed assistance to small businesses who want to be able to provide health insurance to their employees. For example, it will create a new small business tax credit that will be available for two years for low-wage, small firms who choose to provide health coverage to their workers. And it will create a new grant program to encourage small employers to develop employee wellness programs.
The Affordable Health Care for America Act starts solving problems immediately. It offers strong consumer protections for those with private insurance. It allows children to stay on their parents’ insurance plan until they are 27. In addition, it insists that insurers must submit enough hard evidence to justify all premium increases to state insurance commissioners beginning in January 2010.
Thanks to our Congressman and the three other members of the Minnesota Congressional Delegation who voted for H.R. 3962, inequities will be fixed that exist in the current Medicare reimbursement system if the bill becomes law. It ensures that health care providers are compensated for their Medicare clients based on the quality of care they provide, not how many tests they order. This new pay-for-results method will be developed by the experts at the Institute of Medicine. The bill also creates a federal study that will recommend how to remove the geographic inequities in the current Medicare payment system.
We will continue to applaud and support Congressman Walz and his colleagues as they fight for fair and effective health insurance reform. Now it is time the pass the fight for reform to the Senate. Americans cannot afford to have Congress pass up this opportunity to reshape and improve our health care system.
Laura Askelin serves as president of the Southeast Minnesota Area Labor Council which represents 70,000 union and Working America members who live and work in the 16 counties in southeastern Minnesota.
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Comments
Posted by newyankee (anonymous) on November 19, 2009 at 8:18 a.m. (Suggest removal)
The unions are sure working hard to spread socialized health care. I see they are still "fighting" and the elected officials they support are also "fighting" for "fairness" and for "working" people and not those industries or companies.
Posted by NoDFL (anonymous) on November 19, 2009 at 8:43 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Wonder how they feel about the new rules for mammograms? If you read them it is a blue print for rationing. Early screening has help everyone reduce their risk for cancer. This new government run healthcare will take it away. Here is the news story on it.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33973665/ns/...
Posted by NoDFL (anonymous) on November 19, 2009 at 8:48 a.m. (Suggest removal)
A little light reading for you.
In the heated debates on health-care reform, not enough attention is being paid to the huge financial windfalls ObamaCare will dole out to unions—or to the provisions in the various bills in Congress that will help bring about the forced unionization of the health-care industry.
Tucked away in thousands of pages of complex new rules, regulations and mandates are special privileges and giveaways that could have devastating consequences for the health-care sector and the American economy at large.
The Senate version opens the door to implement forced unionization schemes pursued by former Govs. Rod Blagojevich of Illinois in 2005 and Gray Davis of California in 1999. Both men repaid tremendous political debts to Andy Stern and his Service Employees International Union (SEIU) by reclassifying state-reimbursed in-home health-care (and child-care) contractors as state employees—and forcing them to pay union dues.
Following this playbook, the Senate bill creates a "personal care attendants workforce advisory panel" that will likely impose union affiliation to qualify for a newly created "community living assistance services and support (class)" reimbursement plan.
The current House version of ObamaCare (H.R. 3200) goes much further. Section 225(A) grants Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius tremendous discretionary authority to regulate health-care workers "under the public health insurance option." Monopoly bargaining and compulsory union dues may quickly become a required standard resulting in potentially hundreds of thousands of doctors and nurses across the country being forced into unions.
Ms. Sebelius will be taking her marching orders from the numerous union officials who are guaranteed seats on the various federal panels (such as the personal care panel mentioned above) charged with recommending health-care policies. Big Labor will play a central role in directing federal health-care policy affecting hundreds of thousands of doctors, surgeons and nurses.
Consider Kaiser Permanente, the giant, managed-care organization that has since 1997 proudly touted its labor-management "partnership" in scores of workplaces. Union officials play an essentially co-equal role in running many Kaiser facilities. AFL-CIO President John Sweeney called the Kaiser plan "a framework for what every health care delivery system should do" at a July 24 health-care forum outside of Washington, D.C.
Posted by realchange (anonymous) on November 19, 2009 at 8:48 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Why don't any of them say why they believe that the government can successfully run this program when they have failed at everything else. They never say how it will work, or how it will be paid for, making the rich pay, will in no way come even close to paying for it.
A lot of these people that are for this health care reform, AKA government socialized health care, just have in their minds free free free........NOTHING is free...they will get less care at a higher cost. It may take a few years after it is implemented. My wish is that people take a closer look at what our government wants to do to us.
It is amazing how the "unisured" gets blown way out of proportion. There is not 57 million, it is less that 20 million. God help us all if this get through. Our politicians need to realize that the majority of the citizens do not want this. Those who vote for it, will likely have their careers ended......unions are for this, because they are in bed with Obama and will be not be required to pay for it.
Posted by NoDFL (anonymous) on November 19, 2009 at 8:49 a.m. (Suggest removal)
part 2
The House bill has a $10 billion provision to bail out insolvent union health-care plans. It also creates a lucrative professional-development grant program for health-care workers that effectively blackballs nonunion medical facilities from participation. The training funds in this program must be administered jointly with a labor organization—a scenario not unlike the U.S. Department of Labor's grants for construction apprenticeship programs, which have turned into a cash cow for construction industry union officials on the order of hundreds of millions of dollars each year.
There's more. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus has suggested that the federal government could pay for health-care reform by taxing American workers' existing health-care benefits—but he would exempt union-negotiated health-care plans. Under Mr. Baucus's scheme, the government could impose costs of up to $20,000 per employee on nonunion businesses already struggling to afford health care plans.
Mr. Baucus's proposal would give union officials another tool to pressure employers into turning over their employees to Big Labor. Rather than provide the lavish benefits required by Obamacare, employers could allow a union to come in and negotiate less costly benefits than would otherwise be required. Such plans could be continuously exempted.
Americans are unlikely to support granting unions more power than they already have in the health-care field. History shows union bosses could abuse their power to shut down medical facilities with sick-outs and strikes; force doctors, nurses and in-home care providers to abandon their patients; dictate terms and conditions of employment; and impose a failed, Detroit-style management model on the entire health-care field.
ObamaCare is a Trojan Horse for more forced unionization.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424...
Posted by Truth (anonymous) on November 19, 2009 at 9:03 a.m. (Suggest removal)
"We will continue to applaud and support Congressman Walz and his colleagues as they fight for fair and effective health insurance reform. Now it is time the pass the fight for reform to the Senate. Americans cannot afford to have Congress pass up this opportunity to reshape and improve our health care system."
This is just one of many reasons why I will not vote for Mr. Waltz.
Posted by leftys2221 (anonymous) on November 19, 2009 at 9:11 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Were you going to anyway?
Posted by bornFree (anonymous) on November 19, 2009 at 9:49 a.m. (Suggest removal)
I think Laura conveniently forgot to inform her readers about the huge cuts in Medicare, come on Laura don't hold back inform those who will lose some of their benefits. I think the Democrats have a bait and switch going on and they hope most Americans can't figure it out.
Posted by Truth (anonymous) on November 19, 2009 at 10:07 a.m. (Suggest removal)
This needs to be read again. Thanks NoDFL
Posted by NoDFL (anonymous) on November 17, 2009 at 4:20 p.m. (Suggest removal)
The Cloward/Piven Strategy is another method employed by the radical Left to create and manage crisis. This strategy explains Rahm Emanuel's ominous statement, "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste."
The Cloward/Piven Strategy is named after Columbia University sociologists Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven. Their goal is to overthrow capitalism by overwhelming the government bureaucracy with entitlement demands. The created crisis provides the impetus to bring about radical political change.
According to Discover the Networks.org:
Rather than placating the poor with government hand-outs, wrote Cloward and Piven, activists should work to sabotage and destroy the welfare system; the collapse of the welfare state would ignite a political and financial crisis that would rock the nation...
Making an already weak economy even worse is the intent of the Cloward/Piven Strategy. It is imperative that we view the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan's spending on items like food stamps, jobless benefits, and health care through this end goal. This strategy explains why the Democrat plan to "stimulate" the economy involves massive deficit spending projects. It includes billions for ACORN and its subgroups such as SHOP and the Neighborhood Stabilization Program. Expanding the S-Chip Program through deficit spending in a supposed effort to "save the children" only makes a faltering economy worse.
If Congress were to allow a robust economy, parents would be able to provide for their children themselves by earning and keeping more of their own money. Democrats, quick to not waste a crisis, would consider that a lost opportunity.
The Cato Institute reports that the plan will harm a faltering economy, intentionally causing increased job losses leading to increased demands for the aforementioned programs. Even the jobs to be created are set apart to render social justice, not economic revival. Robert Reich believes new infrastructure jobs should not go to white construction workers. Meanwhile, workers at Microsoft, IBM, Texas Instruments, and the retail market find themselves experiencing the life of the welfare poor.
If highly educated and trained workers continue to lose jobs and business falters as a whole, where will these jobless workers go? Could this be construed as revolutionary social reorganization that puts the underachiever above the achiever? Where is the future economic strength when jobless professionals collect welfare and unemployment while dreaming of a minimum wage job? For whites, there's not even the hope of a good paying construction job.
Posted by Truth (anonymous) on November 19, 2009 at 10:07 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Posted by NoDFL (anonymous) on November 17, 2009 at 4:22 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Because these programs are financed with deficit spending, the effect of the Cloward/Piven Strategy becomes doubly destructive. Talk about a perfect storm! The Democrat stimulus plan is a mechanism whose goal is the destruction of the traditional American way of life. It is bitter irony that the American taxpayer will actually fund the destruction of his own ability to live according to the values of our Founding Documents. It is not alarmist to identify this situation as a coup d'etat.
As the flow of money from the top of the economy dries up, job losses and mortgage busts will mount exponentially. The Democrat stimulus plan provides for welfare expansion but not for a robust economy that creates high paying jobs. Is this what Obama means when he warns, "It's going to get worse before it gets better?" If we are not bailing out corporate America so they can regain profitability, we must conclude Obama is working toward another end goal. Recognizing these attack methods reveals the only logical response -- an unwavering wall of "No!"
Posted by Truth (anonymous) on November 19, 2009 at 10:10 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Now throw in Obama-care and we have the perfect storm. Why do you think they keep calling it a crisis?
Posted by Truth (anonymous) on November 19, 2009 at 10:20 a.m. (Suggest removal)
"Funding the bill is proving troublesome. Mr. Reid decided to pare back a proposed tax on high-value insurance plans, bowing to liberal and union complaints that the measure would hit middle-class families. Under his proposal, the tax would fall on plans valued at more than $23,000 for couples, up from $21,000 in legislation written by the Senate Finance Committee. The tax was estimated to raise $149 billion over ten years, far less than earlier envisioned.
To help make up for the lost revenue, Mr. Reid inserted a provision that would raise Medicare payroll taxes on couples with income of more than $250,000 a year. For those families, the levy would be raised to 1.95%, up from 1.45%. Overall, the proposal would bring in $54 billion over ten years. Mr. Reid is also proposing a new tax on elective cosmetic surgery, generating $5 billion."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB12586353...
Don't forget hip replacement is called cosmetic surgery. So is artifical limbs. Minnesota business who make medical equpiment will see huge tax increases as well.
Time to stand up and kill this bill. If Amy and Al vote for this it will be time to send them packing....
Posted by Truth (anonymous) on November 19, 2009 at 10:28 a.m. (Suggest removal)
A government panel's decision to toss out long-time guidelines for breast cancer screening is causing an uproar, and well it should. This episode is an all-too-instructive preview of the coming political decisions about cost-control and medical treatment that are at the heart of ObamaCare.
As recently as 2002, the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force affirmed its recommendation that women 40 and older undergo annual mammograms to check for breast cancer. Since regular mammography became standard practice in the early 1990s, mortality from breast cancer—the second leading cause of cancer death among American women—has dropped by about 30%, after remaining constant for the prior half-century. But this week the 16-member task force ruled that patients under 50 or over 75 without special risk factors no longer need screening.
So what changed? Nothing substantial in the clinical evidence. But the panel—which includes no oncologists and radiologists, who best know the medical literature—did decide to re-analyze the data with health-care spending as a core concern.
The task force concedes that the benefits of early detection are the same for all women. But according to its review, because there are fewer cases of breast cancer in younger women, it takes 1,904 screenings of women in their 40s to save one life and only 1,339 screenings to do the same among women in their 50s. It therefore concludes that the tests for the first group aren't valuable, while also noting that screening younger women results in more false positives that lead to unnecessary (but only in retrospect) follow-up tests or biopsies.
Of course, this calculation doesn't consider that at least 40% of the patient years of life saved by screening are among women under 50. That's a lot of women, even by the terms of the panel's own statistical abstractions. To put it another way, 665 additional mammograms are more expensive in the aggregate. But at the individual level they are immeasurably valuable, especially if you happen to be the woman whose life is saved.
The recommendation to cut off all screening in women over 75 is equally as myopic. The committee notes that the benefits of screening "occur only several years after the actual screening test, whereas the percentage of women who survive long enough to benefit decreases with age." It adds that "women of this age are at much greater risk for dying of other conditions that would not be affected by breast cancer screening." In other words, grandma is probably going to die anyway, so why waste the money to reduce the chances that she dies of a leading cause of death among elderly women?
Posted by Truth (anonymous) on November 19, 2009 at 10:29 a.m. (Suggest removal)
The effects of this new breast cancer cost-consciousness are likely to be large. Medicare generally adopts the panel's recommendations when it makes coverage decisions for seniors, and its judgments also play a large role in the private insurance markets. Yes, people could pay for mammography out of pocket. This is fine with us, but it is also emphatically not the world of first-dollar insurance coverage we live in, in which reimbursement decisions deeply influence the practice of medicine.
More important for the future, every Democratic version of ObamaCare makes this task force an arbiter of the benefits that private insurers will be required to cover as they are converted into government contractors. What are now merely recommendations will become de facto rules, and under national health care these kinds of cost analyses will inevitably become more common as government decides where finite tax dollars are allowed to go.
In a rational system, the responsibility for health care ought to reside with patients and their doctors. James Thrall, a Harvard medical professor and chairman of the American College of Radiology, tells us that the breast cancer decision shows the dangers of medicine being reduced to "accounting exercises subject to interpretations and underlying assumptions," and based on costs and large group averages, not individuals.
"I fear that we are entering an era of deliberate decisions where we choose to trade people's lives for money," Dr. Thrall continued. He's not overstating the case, as the 12% of women who will develop breast cancer during their lifetimes may now better appreciate.
More spending on "prevention" has long been the cry of health reformers, and President Obama has been especially forceful. In his health speech to Congress in September, the President made a point of emphasizing "routine checkups and preventative care, like mammograms and colonoscopies—because there's no reason we shouldn't be catching diseases like breast cancer and colon cancer before they get worse."
It turns out that there is, in fact, a reason: Screening for breast cancer will cost the government too much money, even if it saves lives.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424...
Posted by Truth (anonymous) on November 19, 2009 at 11:20 a.m. (Suggest removal)
On a controversial issue that threatened to derail the House-passed bill, Reid would allow the new government insurance plan to cover abortions and would let companies that receive federal funds offer insurance plans that include abortion coverage. http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Senate-gir...
Can this plan get any worse? Who gives you the right to take my tax dollars to pay for abortions?
Posted by outoftownlandlord (anonymous) on November 19, 2009 at 11:28 a.m. (Suggest removal)
"More important for the future, every Democratic version of ObamaCare makes this task force an arbiter of the benefits that private insurers will be required to cover as they are converted into government contractors. What are now merely recommendations will become de facto rules, and under national health care these kinds of cost analyses will inevitably become more common as government decides where finite tax dollars are allowed to go.
In a rational system, the responsibility for health care ought to reside with patients and their doctors. James Thrall, a Harvard medical professor and chairman of the American College of Radiology, tells us that the breast cancer decision shows the dangers of medicine being reduced to "accounting exercises subject to interpretations and underlying assumptions," and based on costs and large group averages, not individuals.
"I fear that we are entering an era of deliberate decisions where we choose to trade people's lives for money," Dr. Thrall continued. He's not overstating the case, as the 12% of women who will develop breast cancer during their lifetimes may now better appreciate."
How many of you are willing to watch your loved one die because of government run healthcare. This is what you are asking us to do under Obamacare. Wake up before we lose more of our loved ones to something if caught early can be cured.
This is not a right or left issue. It is just proof that the government should not be in healthcare.
Posted by newyankee (anonymous) on November 19, 2009 at 11:57 a.m. (Suggest removal)
The 1963 Communist Goals were entered into the Congressional record by Albert Herlong, Jr. in 1963.
I thought of a few in relation to this topic.
15) Capture one or both of the political parties in the US.
17) Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for Socialism, and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers associations. Put the party line in text books.
20) Infiltrate the press. Get control of book review assignments, editorial writing, policy-making positions.
32) Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture - - education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
36) Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
I also think of the environmental movement since the fall of the Berlin wall, and the flood of communist bureaucrats that took positions in these groups since then.
Posted by mankind (anonymous) on November 19, 2009 at 12:21 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Why can’t the tribune put an ignore button next to each post so if a person does not want see all of this B.S. that is being put out by the right or the left we don't have to. It’s not a violation of free speech as we the readers are the ones choosing to read or ignore their commits. Many of us have come to just skip over anything that NoDFL and Truth write anyway.
Posted by outoftownlandlord (anonymous) on November 19, 2009 at 12:36 p.m. (Suggest removal)
mankind you already do that by skipping them. I for one find ALL comments insightful. You just want to read what supports your narrow view of the world or the issues. Again just trying to control issues by restricting free speech. Sounds like something from the Rules for Radicals play book.
Posted by realchange (anonymous) on November 19, 2009 at 1:42 p.m. (Suggest removal)
One more liberal that has no facts to back up what they "believe". They just go for negative bashing arguments. Fact is government's health care plan would be doomed to fail just as their current health care plan - Medicare. Can't handle the facts and the truth as what Truth and NoDFL have put down. Thank god, they take the time to do this and not just get on and say how dumb the liberals are.
Let's hear some truths and facts from the liberal side.
Posted by leftys2221 (anonymous) on November 19, 2009 at 4:01 p.m. (Suggest removal)
realchange, if they put down all of the "facts and truths" and not just what benefited their points then it would be different.
Posted by MissIndependent (anonymous) on November 20, 2009 at 10:11 a.m. (Suggest removal)
mankind - If you don't like the comments section, just skip over as you do today.
I see many are expressing concern and outrage over the breast cancer screening issue. It is no coincidence, IMO, that we have a public health option on the table and now our government is saying no to self exams and mammograms shouldn't start until age 50 unless family history.
I am sure we can all think of at least one person whose life was saved as a result of either a self exam or a mammogram prior to age 50. I know of one person, with no family history, who found a lump at age 38. I also had a collegue pass away from this at age 41 - again, no family history.
As a woman, I am disgusted with this. Breast cancer hits 1 out 9 women (think that is latest stat?). With that high frequency, to go back on guidelines is irresponsible at best. How do these people live with themselves?
Posted by outoftownlandlord (anonymous) on November 20, 2009 at 12:04 p.m. (Suggest removal)
leftys2221,
Just because you don't agree with their point of view does not mean they don't have the facts and the truth. You always question but never do you have facts to back up your challanges. Here is one for you. Show us where in the Constitution that healthcare is a right. It does say I have a right to free speech, and a right to my gun. So questioning a fact or a truth is just your way around the reality that what people say is true. This is a bad bill that must be killed before it kills real people.
Posted by MissIndependent (anonymous) on November 20, 2009 at 2:07 p.m. (Suggest removal)
I am afraid it will with the breast cancer guideline changes.
Not to get off on sexism but I have to ask the question. Who is coming up with this? Men? Will they follow up with a change to the prostate cancer screening guidelines? And is Viagra going to be covered under the new public health plan? Better not be.
Too many women get this disease and too many die. We cannot have this. This is just wrong on all levels and it will be hard to convince me that this is completely independent of this health bill. It is just a little too coincidental.
Posted by outoftownlandlord (anonymous) on November 20, 2009 at 2:55 p.m. (Suggest removal)
I am with you MissIndependent. Been reading on here for weeks about how this will led to rationing of care. Those who support this over look the basic facts. Scarcity drives all issues. Add more people and cut funding you will get less care period. Trying to say otherwise is like saying you can rewritte the law of gravity.
They put this out as a trial balloon to see if anyone was really paying attention. This is going to be how Obamacare works. There will be people who die because of the new rules. We need to take a stand but if this gets a pass in the Senate on Saturday night (again lets do it in the middle of the night on a weekend) we will all face having to live with 3rd world medical care.
Posted by MissIndependent (anonymous) on November 20, 2009 at 3:11 p.m. (Suggest removal)
I can say this. Any politician who votes yes on this will get a no vote from me next election. They have not listened to the majority and are rushing some half-assed bill (sorry for the language) through for the sake of doing something and for certain people to make a name for themselves politically. There is also a lot of hidden spending in this including funding for ANY organization that claims to be health and wellness. Plus special funding if you are not white and want to be a nurse (Google Betsy Mccaughey's WSJ article for details).
I hope I don't get blasted on this but white people will not be the majority over the next several years. The largest racial group, yes, but if you combine "non-white" groups, whites will be out numbered. Not sure how long that is in effect for but if the trends continue and the funding continues, you are giving funding to the majority of the country but no one white.
Before I get attacked, I am not racist. I want equality for all, no matter what color a person is. I am just trying to point out some flaws in the logic of this expensive bill. As a tax payer, I have the right to scrutinize how the government is spending my money.
Posted by bornFree (anonymous) on November 20, 2009 at 4:36 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Missindependent when you said the following I have to agree "I can say this. Any politician who votes yes on this will get a no vote from me next election." But here is the problem as I see it, we should never have been put in this situation, people who vote for Liberals have no one to blame but them self, but the Conservative voter suffers as the result. Obama is taking this country places its never been before and it's not going to be pretty. Minnesota is a die hard Democratic state and I'm afraid it's not going to change, most people in this state don't see the hand writing on the wall but will.
Posted by MissIndependent (anonymous) on November 20, 2009 at 4:52 p.m. (Suggest removal)
A lot of moderate voters voted for Obama on the premise that he was more of a "moderate". In fact, my impression between him and Hillary was that she was more "liberal" and especially in terms of health care (think of when Bill was in office). But now we are not getting what we thought we were. I think he is pushing this through just to say "Look what I did" and make a name for himself versus looking out for the country.
I am very disappointed. Between this and the continued "bailout" mentality our government has (Cash for Clunkers anyone?) I have no idea how the next few years will go. I guess I have to try to remain optimistic but I don't like what is happening now.
Posted by NoDFL (anonymous) on November 20, 2009 at 8:06 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Bornfree,
I think we need to rethink something. You and I attack Obama because we know what he is. He is liberal we knew it when he ran for office. I never bought the "moderate" idea. I listen to his words and studied his past and nothing in it told me he would be any different than what he is.
But attacking him will not work. He is popular. People like him. He is a rock star. Lets stop attacking him. Let's attack the policies. We can use the words Obamacare and such but attacking him is doing us no good. People would rather lose their freedom than admit they made a mistake. I am no different.
Follow the money. Who will benefit from this. Outoftownlandlord made a good point. This is all about scarcity. It is about tearing down the system to rebuild it. What the radicals figured out is that an armed revolution would not work. People believe they are free yet these are only words. Political correctness has made made us afraid to take a stand. To say Merry Christmas. To say it is ok to work and want to do better. It is ok to start a business. It is ok to be rich. It is time to give a hand up not a handout.
I read about this. Off the cost there is a place where vistors are taken out in flat bottom boats to look at the fish. To make sure the fish are there (and to make an extra buck) they encourage the people to feed the fish. Well they now have a problem. The fish will not go out and feed. They have become dependent on the tourist to live. With the way the economy is there is less tourist and these fish are dieing. This is what is happen to the American spirit. We have become so use to getting something for free (even though there is no such thing as a free lunch). People have quit looking for work or are working under the table why because they have lost the will to fight. I feel for anyone who has lost a job but the government is making it harder for them to get one. Time for a change lets do this for us not just to attack him. It is the only way to stop this.
Posted by bornFree (anonymous) on November 20, 2009 at 8:27 p.m. (Suggest removal)
NoDFL:
"I think we need to rethink something. You and I attack Obama because we know what he is. He is liberal we knew it when he ran for office. I never bought the "moderate" idea. I listen to his words and studied his past and nothing in it told me he would be any different than what he is."
You said a mouth full there, Obama seemed to me to be very transparent during his campaign, this sounds simple to say but he was the typical politician who would say ANYTHING to get your vote. Moderate???? He never came across to me as being such. What amazes me now is how he promised to be so transparent but doesn't back up his word and the people of this country say little or nothing about it, a person is ONLY as good as his word. I don't really attack him but what I do is simply listen to him and then compare what he says to what he does. He is not a very truthful person, there is not much else I can say, a persons honesty tells me alot about a person and it amazes me the people who blindly believe this guy.
Posted by NoDFL (anonymous) on November 20, 2009 at 9:43 p.m. (Suggest removal)
So true. His action do not match his words. I can not agree more but why can't others see this? I just feel that we can take them to the water but we can't make them drink. I wasn't trying to say you attack him just because what I was trying to say is attacking him as a person isn't working. Attacking his policies, attacking his choices, attacking the idea that the government is the answer is where we need to put our energy. At some point people will wake up and wonder why their money is going to someone else. The people will need to do the media's job. We will need to keep bring to light the facts. We will be attacked. We will be called names but this is bigger than us. It is a fight for the soul of our country. We must look to that 17 page (the original is 4 pages) that is the blue print for freedom. It is a simple request. Show me where in the Constitution that healthcare is a right. When put to the light of that great document most of what this government does is shown to be illegal. Time to stand up for the Constitution.
Keep up the good work bornfree.
Posted by Disgusted (anonymous) on November 21, 2009 at 7:12 a.m. (Suggest removal)
I based my judgement of Obama on the company he kept prior to the election. I did not vote for him and I really didn't want to vote for McCain but I chose the lesser of two evils. I fear for our country. The lying and spending of our Congress and Executive Branch will be the downfall of this country and anything that happens can not be "fluffed" off by either of them by claiming ignorance.
If our elected officials continue their deliberate attack on our financial foundation we need to start looking for crime to charge them with. WordNet Search -3.0 defines treason as a crime that undermines the Offender's government. We are getting plenty of "undermining" right now.
I am not an extremist. I am not an activist. I just want my children, grand children, great grand children , and great great grand children to be able to compete in a captalist economy without have to pay for the damage done by a bunch of socialists, marxists, communists, and idiots.
Posted by MissIndependent (anonymous) on November 21, 2009 at 7:32 a.m. (Suggest removal)
And now we have changes to the cervical cancer guidelines - another female disease. This makes me sick. They can say coincidence all they want but I don't buy it.
So Government - are you going to change prostate cancer screening guidelines too? Covering Viagra with your public health plan?
Posted by toby (anonymous) on November 21, 2009 at 8:19 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Eliminate NASA and you could pay for healthcare for all. Then watch all the insurance companies scream. Nobody cares what is spent every year at NASA. The biggest scare tactics and lobbying against health care reform is from the insurance companies. If you truly believe they are on your side,they are not. We're all in this together folks, they are not. Now if they would pack those rockets with politicians.
Posted by NoDFL (anonymous) on November 21, 2009 at 6:16 p.m. (Suggest removal)
GOP: Women's Health Recommendations Could Affect Care
by AP
"This is how rationing starts," declared Jon Kyl of Arizona, the party's second-in-command in the Senate, during a news conference. "This is what we're going to expect in the future."
Hope this answers your questions.
Posted by NoDFL (anonymous) on November 21, 2009 at 6:42 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Tonight we will see the death of liberty. I think this says it all.
"This is a vote about whether or not you want to fundamentally change the way health care is delivered in this country in a way which massively expands the size of government, the role of government and significantly increases the tax burden, especially for small businesses and cuts Medicare by a dramatic amount of money," Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., told Fox News before Saturday's session began.
This bill and this debate is not about healthcare. It is about contol. It is about overwhelming the system. It is about political pay back. It is about the Cloward/Piven Strategy. Don't know what that is well here is the highlights.
"The Cloward/Piven Strategy is named after Columbia University sociologists Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven. Their goal is to overthrow capitalism by overwhelming the government bureaucracy with entitlement demands. The created crisis provides the impetus to bring about radical political change."
"Rather than placating the poor with government hand-outs, wrote Cloward and Piven, activists should work to sabotage and destroy the welfare system; the collapse of the welfare state would ignite a political and financial crisis that would rock the nation"
"If Congress were to allow a robust economy, parents would be able to provide for their children themselves by earning and keeping more of their own money. Democrats, quick to not waste a crisis, would consider that a lost opportunity."
Thus we have the healthcare crisis. This has nothing to do with what is best for all. It is about destroying our system. Take a stand.
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