Public Option Would be Cheaper Than Healthcare Now
While many of America’s uneducated masses are screaming and crying against a healthcare reform act that would insure America’s well-being in the future, the insurance companies are lapping up the profits and disregarding the flagrant misuse of money spent on healthcare. The common cry from the ignorant masses, along with the unsupported and maniacal fears of euthanizing elderly and children with special needs, is that it’s impossible for the public option, not to mention a single-payer system which is even better, to be paid for by government without a monstrous increase in taxes.
What isn’t understood is that the cost of healthcare would substantially decrease once a public option was included, and more so with a single-payer healthcare system. Why? Because while we work together to negotiate costs with the healthcare providers, they lose the ability to gouge prices and abuse the system. Working together, through the public option and more so with the single-payer system, will improve Americans’ Constitutional right to “pursue life” which cannot be attained when healthcare isn’t available. Conservatives commonly ignore that small but important detail in the Constitution, preferring instead to rail against any type of gun laws because of an outdated 2nd Amendment.
So, what are all of these costs that would drop expodentially once a public option was in place?
That’s a lot of waste. While some of these would continue perhaps, there are those expenses that would not be involved any longer: overtesting, costing $210 billion/year, is mainly done to increase profits for hospitals, doctors, and other healthcare professionals, or to provide coverage against a malpractice suit; processing claims, costing upto $210 billion/year, is a symptom of corrupt insurance practices which intentionally make it difficult for doctors to process claims with insurance companies because then they can hold out from paying said costs and said costs may be unintentionally disregarded by the doctor, or the more difficult the insurance company makes their claims process, the more claims are going to be lost or filed incorrectly thus saving the insurance company the expense of actually covering their customers; and unnecessary ER visits is another large expense with $14 billion/year spent on illnesses that could have easily been taken care of for a small fraction of the costs with regular doctor visits.
It’s time to wake-up sleepy conservatives… your doe eyed love of all things anti-government is illegitimate and unfounded. While you disregard public healthcare, none of you have yet to disregard your police protection, your fire department, your roads, etc., etc. It was because of liberal politics and social progression that those things were provided when they were.
Here’s something, Denmark’s approval of healthcare is 90%. 90%!!!!! It’s unbelievable, and yet their healthcare professionals are government employees. That’s socialized medicine baby! Lou Dobbs makes only one thing clear, that we need to be looking at socialized medicine. The public option and the single-payer system are only going to partly fix the problem.
If I’m right about true or false, why not just stick to that. Why did Obama select these people and not others? Every White House is deluged with resumes.
Believing the earth is 6,000 years old. Which former policy-maker of the Bush administration believes that? And if you could find someone, tell me what relevance it has to policy.
You don’t think there’s an important connection between Ayers and Obama. Here’s a few. http://www.noquarterusa.net/blog/2008/08/12/the-obama-ayers-top-ten-highlights-of-the-20-year-obama-ayers-connection/
You don’t have to believe anything. You’re an atheist, recall? How about research? How about facts?
But, that’s just GOP creationists.
Here’s a guy, Paul Hoffman:
In April 2003, he went against the wishes of the staff of Yellowstone and asked the U.N. World Heritage Committee to remove the park from its “In Danger List.” In 2004, he instructed the Grand Canyon National Park’s visitor centers to stock a creationist book that explained how God made the canyon 6,000 years ago, ordering up a flood to wipe out “the wickedness of man.” This year, Hoffman pushed for wholesale revisions to the Park Service’s management policies. Instead of giving priority to protecting natural resources, Hoffman proposed that managers emphasize multiple uses for their parks–including snowmobiling, Jet-Skiing, grazing, drilling, and mining.
Now, how does that effect policy? You must be a believer or a sympathizer. How could someone that really thinks the world is only 6000 years old regardless of all of the scientific evidence against that belief, when they only have a poorly written and highly edited book as their own proof, be trusted to make rational decisions in any other arena? They can’t. At any time, reality might slip away because of something that a book says that’s being interpreted one way or the other, and it decidedly trumps all reality-based evidence. Worse yet, since they know their beliefs have no substance, they might try and create some false story of ’scientific research’ which proves their point. Like Creationists.
I watched the video, but cannot identify who raised their hands when asked if they did not believe in evolution, moreover since it was a “yes or no” question it didn’t really offer (I’m assuming) much opportunity for people to nuance their answers. Skepticism, in science, is considered a virtue — or was at least. One would expect scientists to disagree with all sort of specific aspects of a particular theory. Of course none of these men are scientists. In any case, their beliefs are largely irrelevant to science — and most of the time — to policy.
As to the book, did a very quick internet search. There seems to be some nuance there as well. Some critics of the book wanting it gone. Other critics satisfied to have the book placed in an “inspirational” section in the book store. One critic commenting that despite the books obvious flaws, it was a good seller.
In January, David Shaver, the chief of the Geologic Resources Division of the NPS, issued a memo recommending that the book be pulled because it, “purports to be science when it is not and its sale in the park book store directly conflicts with the Service’s statutory mandate to promote the use of sound science in all its programs, including public education.” Yet, according to Sevy, “Now that the book has become quite popular, we don’t want to remove it.”. link http://www.agiweb.org/gap/evolution/AZ.html
There are other issues here: censorship being one. How the book got into the book store in the first place, one could inquire about that. Does it really rise to the same importance as Obama’s Orwellian appointments?
Isn’t the Grand Canyon still there, still a natural wonder, still protected?
You say: “Now, how does that effect policy? You must be a believer or a sympathizer.” The “you” here is me? Am I a believer? In what? Creationism? What does “creationism” mean? A 6,000 year old earth? No, I don’t believe in that. I do believe the cosmos was “created.” I think that puts me — though this is not without controversy also — in the same company as Plato. Plato was no slouch. It might put me in the same company as Stephen Hawking, though Hawking and I might argue the merits of “create” as a metaphor.
I believe in God. I’m a Christian, as a matter of fact. However my sympathy with the “creationists” is pretty similar to my sympathy for hicks. We have a government of consent by the governed. I do think the wackos of whatever stripe (Code Pink, too) deserve to have their essential humanity respected. I’m also very sympathetic to free speech. Whatever wacko idea, it’s a free country still. Stand on the soap box and have at it.
My personal views of “evolution” are not really interesting. I have views, but they are so little grounded in actual science as to be meaningless.
You see, being an atheist, you have put a huge magnifying glass on the 6,000 year-old-earth crowd. And it takes a magnifying glass to see them. How many people believe that? And who cares anyway?
You get steamed about The Grand Canyon: A Different View. Me, I studied literature. It’s Harry Potter that gets the bee in my bonnet. Other people seem to think it’s a book. Those afforementioned Dem friends of mine let their kids read it. My kid’s gonna read Wordsworth or Mark Twain or Emerson — or she’s out of the will! (Not that I have any money to really lord over her — but I can still give her the time-out of her life! How’s 25 years in your room sound?!)
People are going to read Harry Potter. The author is so super, stinking rich. And good for her. Life is too short for caring about what everybody else believes.
And I don’t want our president making it any shorter. I read this after our exchange and thought of you: http://www.ocregister.com/articles/life-expectancy-health-2529244-say-good
It’s funny. And offers an interesting new definition of “bisexual.”
Cheers. And cheer up, the earth is very old — but she’s still young — who knows how old planets are supposed to be?
The video clearly states who raised their hands. I support people’s right to believe whatever they choose, but I don’t support having those people make decisions on public policy.
The Grand Canyon is still here, thankfully, because people aren’t allowed to do the things that Bush’s appointee was specifically calling for to be allowed.
Creationism is not science. It’s refreshing to hear someone openly state that their beliefs on creation aren’t based on science and leave it at that. That’s where it should stay, out of science. Plato had many important things to say, but many of them were inaccurate; they were important though because it got the conversation started and it spurred thought. Those ideas were prevalent over two thousand years ago, but not really prevalent in modern science.
Because I’m atheist and I’m an American, I have a huge magnifying glass on Christianity. Why? Because Christians (that’s everyone that believes/follows Christ) have an unwarranted amount of respect in this country. Simply being religious gives a person grounds for receiving respect in the public arena. Whatever wackodoodle thing is said, if it’s made by a Christian, in supposed support of their religious beliefs, then everyone is suppose to take pause and respect their opinion. Nope, can’t go along with that. Freedom to say it, sure, and then they should be openly laughed at. I’m looking forward to America being a country that recognizes the silliness that is Christianity. It’s a joke. An acquaintance of mine, the founder of Atheist Nexus, said that people have a “god box” that they put their belief into. It’s a box that can’t be touched by reason, rationale, or critical thinking. He use to have that box but since has given it up. Maybe someday, you’ll do the same.
Good luck. And try not to be so scared of your government, they work for us, not the other way around.
Okay, watched it again, saw the names. I like Huckabee a lot. Very decent guy. Am not aware what his opinions of evolution are, however I would be surprised to find him at odds with science. Do you have any statistics on the 6,000 year crowd. I can honestly say I have never met anyone who believes that — unless perhaps my aunt. She’s very elderly and has no appreciable education in science at all.
It was very kind of you to say I write well. It might puzzle you why I have written so much here about politics when I earlier decried having to set aside my much beloved work to fight Mr. Obama’s policies. Since I love my work so much, why am I not doing it? Well, I write. Writing is not my primary job, though it’s an essential part of my job — and I love writing. I would write under my own name now except that my proper work is far removed from politics.
I cannot have my political views known to my usual audience, many of whom are political opponents. If they know I oppose Obama, that I supported Bush, it would color their experience of my topic and perhaps I would lose them. Worse, perhaps my topic would be sullied. Maybe I lose them for the topic — my topic, which as I said, has nothing to do with politics.
If my name were Jean Smith, I’d take a chance and write under my own name. However, I have a rather unusual name. I am exceedingly googlable. As a consequence, my every idle editorial opinion can boomerang right back to my non-political desk.
It’s not entirely a reluctance to be identified with my views among my peers many of whom would be hostile. Though I’d have great difficulty enduring the constant barrage of criticism that Bush got every day for eight years, yet I’m not exactly a shrinking violet. It’s that my topic matters in people’s lives. Why would I risk poisoning it through political discourse? I might turn away half my readership. Of course I might win others who agree with me. But I don’t want to lose political critics. Nor do I want to win anybody through an unrelated loyalty. Bush is gone. He’a a private citizen now. Obama will also soon be gone, perhaps after only one term. What does it matter? My topic affects people over much longer time frames. I don’t risk disaffecting them. I don’t.
Let me give you a parallel example that unmasks my assertion and renders it somewhat less mysterious. You criticized Bush for his appointment of a businessman to head a department at Interior. I can readily appreciate your concern and share it. It exactly parallels my anger over learning that a homosexual advocate heads a program for “safe schools.” It shouldn’t have to be this way for either or us, though I think the latter is a more serious harm and that children are more vulnerable than the Grand Canyon.
Nature is not a political topic really. I have yet to meet anyone who is insensible to the beauty of nature. Admittedly my oldest friend’s mother’s idea of paradise was a shopping mall. Perhaps it came of a childhood lived during the Great Depression. People had no money. My father told me stories about bartering — so many eggs would get you into a movie theatre. And after World War II when the economy expanded, and poor people found themselves able to advance into the middle class, is it any wonder that they built and worshiped shopping malls?
Many of them had grown up on farms. But their experience of nature was a bit less lofty than a Wordsworth poem. Nature meant crapping in an outhouse, rising at dawn to milk cows, enduring the intense heat of summer and shivering in winter. That all these sensations have a sort of beauty also was not entirely unfelt or unappreciated — nostalgically. But they might have said, as we say today, “been there, done that.” They were ready to revel in asphalt and enclosure, “give me air conditioning and an automatic transmission, or give me death!”
Yet even my friend’s mother didn’t want eagles kicked out of their eyries or the Grand Canyon turned into Disneyland. The consensus to preserve large tracts of wilderness for integer nature is still strong. I’ll hazard that most Americans favor it. They disagree about details. Toes must be stepped on. But a large swell of longing for beauty and wilderness exists in our souls.
I blame Greenpeace and organizations like it every bit as much as “corporate greed” for disintegrating the consensus to protect wilderness. The Greenpeace crowd told a whole generation that nature was doomed, species were dying. They convinced many people. The will to preserve wilderness has suffered as a consequence. Many people wonder “what is the point?” Moveover, they turned nature conservation into “environmentalism.” The change is significant. Underlying the change in terminology is a change in belief. Formerly “nature” was something “out there” of which we are just a miniscule part. Now, the “environment” is our habitat – rather equal to a town house or an apartment building. We “manage” natural “resources” now. It all sounds very reasonable, perhaps, but it is also sterile.
The change in nomenclature does not harm nature, of course. The volcano whose caldera underlies the whole of Yellowstone National Park is still active. Or to take an example on an even larger scale, the black hole at the center of the Milkyway galaxy will continue gobbling up matter until it collides with Andromeda galaxy and makes way for whatever the next grand thing may be. Our assistance to preserve this wilderness will not be necessary. We are dust.
To treat the meadow, the atmosphere, the water that streams out of my faucet as just a more biotically fuzzy version of an asphault parking lot outside Target or Walmart involves humanity in a psychologically dangerous innovation. Whatever else I am, I am built of this star stuff. I am not preserving it, it is preserving me!
I’ve spent time at this conversation of ours because I find that debate becomes a sharpening stone for ideas. Defending my ideas in the face of your criticism forces me to examine my ideas in stronger detail. It also reveals the chinks in one’s armour. Do people really want to know at what point their pet notions fail? Perhaps it depends upon one’s motives as well as upon one’s level of confidence. I do want to know when I’m wrong. I’ve been a student all my life. You don’t make progress concealing your errors. I’ve mentioned I study French. French, you know, is French. An English speaker can wonder bemusedly why the French are not more like us. But to impose English notions about language will not lead toward fluency in French. One will merely sound awkwardly un-French. Some less generous French people might even doubt the speaker’s intelligence, alors!
Finding out that Bush had appointments that were only political does not surprise me. Yes, I agree it’s disappointing. But I do not feel outrage at Bush in light of this news. My kid survives despite No Child Left Behind. We will survive other aspects of Bush’s administration. He did not damage the Grand Canyon, either, as happily you note. But being honest, isn’t the threat to the canyon not a consequence of some uniquely Republican policy? Argue successfully to your fellow men that staying at home cultivating their gardens holds deep blessings, and you’ve done more to save the canyon from snowmobilers than all the legislation in the world.
In lamenting Obama’s more weird political appointments, I was implicitly arguing that his people do more tangible harm to society than the usual crowd of bandwagon riders. Having a Harvard doctor alleging that the unexamined life is not worth medical treatment rises to a different level of alarm than the sale of creationist fiction in a Park Service bookstore. My opinion. Also I see that kind of contempt for one’s fellow man (that’s what it is) as eroding morality.
Ideas like this cheapen life. What is it about Dr. Emanuel’s life — and his own hide — that he thinks us likely to find so enchanting? A Harvard education blinds a man to much that life has to offer. Not without reason did F. Scott Fitzgerald drop out of Princeton and Hemingway avoided college entirely. What a different thing it is to attend college verses being the topic of study! At what university would we have a violinist of a young Anne Sophie Mutter’s talent be educated? Who among professors of music even approaches such virtuosity? Some sensibilites — talk about nature — some forms of intelligence are pure products of nature, coming straight from the tap. You don’t teach a Bach to compose the Goldberg Variations. The Bachs of life come already wired for sound, though some assembly is perhaps required. Examine Bach’s harmonies, compare them to Mr. Hawking’s equations, perhaps one finds a parallel? But tell me where does the thread itself get woven?
We discover things about ourselves through living. A Bach finds that he has music inside him. That he came from a long line of musicians helps enormously. Music has deeper roots than one man’s life. And Bach did not invent the scale. And he is hardly the first musician, though he is one of the greatest. All that’s “nature verses nurture”!
I’ll ask you a challenging question, Mr. Godless American, one that’s more vitally important than even whether this president transforms American medicine into a Byzantine maze — for let’s face it, we’re all going to die — of something or other — sooner or later. What is the grist for your mill?
What work sits just inches from your hands? Who are your neighbors? Your present or former wife or wives? Your children? Your friends? The anonymous strangers standing at your bus stop? All these mysteries are more deep, more real, than even my beloved Wordsworth’s Prelude. They are the conscious life surrounding you. They are the stream of DNA flowing through time. They are matter, molecules assembled, living, thinking, walking around, making plans. Do I get charged up about the Tea Parties? You bet. Do I plan to outwit the Lefties? Bring ‘em on. But by Golly, take a moment to observe the crowd, consider the symphony (or cacaphony) of mentation and life that transpires in the assemblage of these persons — go to the rally and look at the people, peer into all their private mysteries, all their hope, fear, longing — all the links to past life, all the excitement of the ages, all the unwritten love stories of men and women, all the family dinners going back through moldy centuries, incandescent light to candle light to star light. You want evolution? Goodness, just look around you.
I am more amazed by the thought of these molecules cohereing to form this desk where I write than by all the policies that your Harvard educated president supposes he will fashion. He is a leaf of grass. Here today, gone tomorrow. Beautiful in his way, too. But ephemeral, a nano-blip on Nature’s radar. It is this miraculous present that puzzles me and scares and delights me.
I would urge you to wake up to your own life. You are watching the parade when, if you but knew, you are the main event! You are the focus of 13 billion (?) years of “random activity.” You’re what all the fuss is about. You are the point of it. Everything that you can know is inside your mind — the cosmos — the whole enchilada.
Subjectivity, Mr. Godless. Think about it. Really think about it. You don’t believe that a God could care about little ol’ you, and yet already he/she/it has entrusted a portion of reality exclusively to you — inside your skull.
ANF,
You refuse to acknowledge the wrong doings of any conservative person, it seems. They never do anything wrong, they’re always shamefully attacked by the Left, and isn’t this table pretty.
I know about Obama’s safe schools appointee; I applauded his decision.
I, sincerely, hope that you never shape public policy.
I’m not sure if it’s a symptom of one’s ego or something else to think that others don’t take the time to look around them and ponder the universe.
Your view seems to be rather simplistic; i.e. there’s so much beauty around us, why fuss about the small details? The details are everything. Religious dogma has haunted mankind for centuries and, frankly, I’m ready for it to end.
While you choose to demonize Obama for doing… well, I don’t know what he may have done to deserve this. Especially compared to our last president who lied to the American people to start a war that killed thousands and injured tens of thousands solely to get his hands on oil fields so his oil baron buddies could make an extra billion. I am a veteran, it pains me greatly to see the exploitation of the American military for corporate gain and that is exactly what took place.
The Right continues lying today, securely justified within their own party and by their own religious affiliations, pragmatically enabled by the American Religious Right. Christianity and capitalism are the heroes of the Right, regardless of how many lives are lost, how many ecosystems are destroyed, or how many civil rights are withheld. You choose to close your mind to the atrocities of the Right, and instead visualize a simple and gentle group of people. That completely baffles me, and it is with awe that I watch individuals, like yourself, ignore anything and everything that doesn’t settle with their preconceived notions of what is and what isn’t.
Good day to you ANF, please come again. I’d like to say it was fun, but being reminded that there are well-intentioned people out there foolishly and blindly following the Right’s talking points and pastors is more than a little disturbing.
Whose wrong-doings am I ignoring? I don’t even know to whom you’re referring. I have enumerated several things about President Bush that I didn’t like and took pains to remark that initially I voted “against” Gore as much as “for” Bush. I said I like Huckabee, but that doesn’t necessarily translate into a vote. He seems like a decent man is all I said. Obama similarly seems like a decent man. And George W. Bush is a decent man. All the hobgoblins of politics are so silly. Except regarding Nancy Pelosi who is truly evil.
Did I say that you don’t ponder the universe? No, I did not. Did you say that conservatives are uneducated? Reread your own comments.
So much beauty around us? Yes — however I defined nature more broadly than Al Gore does, I think. Were the volcano beneath Yellowstone to erupt, most survivors would not find it “pretty.” (Though I’m not losing sleep over an event that could transpire anytime between tonight or the next million years or so.)
I thought you deserved an object lesson in demographics: that not all Christians believe the earth is 6,000 years old. What a pedestrian thing to allege. Anyway, your president is — purportedly — a Christian though his policies, perhaps we’ll agree, reveal little evidence of it. Meanwhile when I refer to Stephen Hawkings, it’s because I’ve read Brief History of Time. It’s a tough read, and it took a while before I made my way through it, and I don’t pretend to understand all of it, or perhaps even most of it, but then I’m not a mathematician or a physicist.
Be honest. Who’s demonizing whom? I can find plenty of nice things to say about Obama, and I did say some of them here. You, on the contrary, are reacting to Bush as though he is a cardboard stereotype, and your comments are more play book referenced than mine. Who among Republicans is saying what I’ve said? Au contraire I think my views are in many respects rather unique. If McCain was waxing philosophical about subjectivity, it’s sure news to me.
And recall McCain was the GOP candidate. Since when is McCain “conservative”?
Me, dogmatic? some of what I’ve written here might be considered as almost heretical in some Christian churchs. Dogma — I am very undogmatic. So many ideas are okay in one context and disastrous in another. And yet one wants structure in ideas. Al Gore talks about “global warming deniers” (despite the fact that the warming stopped about ten years ago). How is that not dogma? To insist upon something for which no data exists is the essence of dogmatic. Anyway, wasn’t it you who cheered when I described my views of evolution as insignificant because I’m not a scientist. When did Al Gore get his Ph.D in climate science? What qualifies the man to be shooting off his mouth all over the planet? Talk about a carbon footprint! When Al stops talking and finally goes to sleep at night, the CO2 levels take a huge dip.
Science is the art of skepticism. Science moves and changes. And in a somewhat different way so does faith. There is something that remains stable and something that changes. Rather like evolution. (But don’t tell my aunt I said so.)
You just blew off my reference to Plato as though he were thoroughly eclipsed by science. That presupposes that one knows what Plato was talking about (or even that Plato’s ideas can be definitely separated out from those of the many voices in his dialogs). A lot of scientists, and I’ve talked to more than a few, are tone deaf to arguments about objectivity and subjectivity. They reflexively project “knowledge” out into — I don’t know what — the space-time continuum (?) as though it exists unto itself (a Platonic notion) only they seem to be blind to their doing it. But what knowledge “is” (I use quotes because Bill Clinton is still groping for a definition of this verb) constitutes a philosophical problem. And it’s very old. And according to today’s newspaper, it hasn’t been solved as yet.
As to war, why have the Lefties been so comfortable with Iraqis dying under Saddam? Why no outrage about the recent persecution of citizens in Iran by its own government? Why is it okay when dictators around the globe kill their people, but when the US Marines go into a country and depose a tyrant, allowing democracy a chance to flower, the Lefties have a hissie fit.
Don’t preach to me. Who said I even supported Iraq? Why do you assume that? My rejection of Gore as a candidate (because he is a lunatic) does not automatically translate as support for Bush’s war. Does it?
What about wealth, capitalism? Do you have any idea of Kerry’s net worth? Ted Kennedy’s? Pelosi’s? Susan Saradon’s? What about Obama, who is rich, also. And Michelle got $300K working at a hospital — how much did that contribute to patient care? How many lives did she save in the OR? While we’re cutting out waste and greed in health care, too bad we can’t to it retroactively.
You are the person painting the picture all in black and white. Not I. And you presuppose that Christians are all the same. We are just clones. We don’t all eat watermelon, Mr. Godless.
How is your bias different from racism? Many of my Dem friends who supported Obama are Christians or are adherents of other religions. Religious dogma? Which one? There are so many, and they are all quite different. I have friends or acquaintances who are Catholic, Unitarian, Presbyterian, Muslim, Jewish, Chinese (don’t know if my Chinese friend has a religion — maybe Taoism), and various other things. My husband describes himself as agnostic. I have no idea what all these people believe.
I don’t have a problem with this diversity. I’m not trying to tell people what to believe. And to you, I said hardly more than what Annie Dillard said in a book she wrote about 30 years ago. Indeed, I half wondered if I should cite her as a reference.
You have emotional, not scientific or rational, reasons for rejecting religion. How do I know? Human nature. You are not content to not believe. You want to undo the beliefs of others. About that I cannot say this in a polite way if I adhere to the truth: it is a fool’s errand. The math reveals it. How many would you have to dissuade? To what purpose? And how is it that evolution’s cheerleaders cannot recognize the obvious: that religious belief is part of “evolution”? St Francis preached to the birds, it’s true; but I don’t see many non-homo sapiens attending church.
You might find solace or rapprochment or — I don’t know — peace — with your views if you opened yourself to other possibilities. I will not address religious questions because that injures you — let’s just say that “reframing” one relationship to things can be very enlightening. Live and let live is a good policy too. (Would that Dr. Emanuel subscribed to it.)
I feel quite sure you live in harmony with people you disagree with — you do it in regard to all kinds of other things — and religion is just one of the things in life. Even a Christian realizes that reality is clothed in mystery. My church cannot have all the answers. In any case, sometimes its the questions that one wants.
Well, Mr. Godless, we’ve been having a spirited talk. It behooves people to watch and learn from opponents. You’re a good teacher.
Godless,
My last novel length comment (I’ll be the first to admit I’m long-winded — we’ll pretend it’s charming) was full of assertions. Agreeing with them is actually rather beside the point. I said that Obama had these various associates. I said that the associates had done this or that. These things are either true or false.
And that’s what’s being missed here: determining what is true, what is false. Obama has himself recently come out with the talking point that he’s not “pulling the plug on grandma.”
Can you see how his claim might be received more credibly even by Republicans were it not for his on-record opposition to the Born Alive legislation early in his career back at a time when not very many people even knew he existed. Wouldn’t his claim have more credibility if Raum Emanuel’s doctor brother had not written about rationing medicine to people whose lives rendered them no long productive. If his White House Office of Science and Technology Policy director had not written about forced abortions in a college textbook during the 70s.
Either these people really did and said these things or they didn’t. How — out of the vast pool of resumes for White House appointments — does he manage to find these people? His close associate Bill Ayers exploded a homemade bomb at the Pentagon. What, I ask you, are the odds? How many people might you or I have to meet before we accidentally choose a former domestic terrorist to be the host of our campaign debut?
This is what really puzzles Republicans like me. You criticized Reagan’s “economic policies” without being very specific about what exactly these policies actually were and without examining their effects. But tell me — do some advocacy here on behalf of your guy — what exactly should I find comforting about handing America’s medicine over to a president who has these Draconian types in his administration in high level positions? Like he couldn’t find Democrats who never wrote policy papers examining the Constitutionality of forced abortions?
This man, Barack Obama, tapped into your dreams. He evoked all your highest aspirations for helping your fellow man. You trusted him, and he turns around and fills the nooks and crannies of White House political slots with Orwellians. Doesn’t that bother you? Did you know of these people before my comment? If my information is incorrect, I’d like to know. But if I’m right, doesn’t it matter to you? To other Democrats? Were these your sensibilities also? Are these the people you wanted running your goverment?
I voted for George Bush twice. I voted against Gore and Kerry as much as I voted for Bush. Looking back — despite a war with Iraq, despite No Child Left Behind, despite Bush’s big last minute bailout — I still cannot see how I could have voted otherwise than I did. I never thought Bush was perfect — never sought a “hero.” He was “better than” Gore (who thinks he’s going to save the planet, for goodness sake) — and Kerry who is an elitist old gas bag whose principles are laser-focused on polling data.
Bush stood up to unrelenting criticism of a sort unprecedented in American history, and that alone testifies to his character, but I’m still not searching for a hero. I can admire Bush. But the point was he ran the country, he didn’t try to remake it in his image. The United States after Bush is pretty much the same as the United States before Bush.
That is not true of Obama. He has already sunk the US into more debt than ever before in its history. And now he wants to trend that even more into federalism/socialism by adding the medical industry to the pot, an industry estimated as being about 1/8th of the US economy.
“Agreement” is a different animal. We can interpret circumstances in different ways. We can want different things for our country. But facts do exist. Did these people really write the things attributed to them? What views do they hold today? Why couldn’t Obama find policy makers whose ideas are more representative of America’s public?
And just between you and me, do you really think the “forced abortion” guy is the best for the job? Forced. How much of a “slippery slope” do you need?
Ann
references:
http://www.ostp.gov/
http://www.amazon.com/Ecoscience-Population-Environment-Paul-Ehrlich/dp/0716700298/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1250445530&sr=8-2
You’re right, it’s about what’s true or false. I don’t think there’s any important connection with Ayers. I don’t think there’s any conspiracy by Obama affiliates to take over America. I can’t believe that people listen to Sarah Palin about anything when she’s repeatedly shown that she, literally, has no brain, no capacity for thought, no understanding of the most rudimentary of political machinery, and has no ability for critical thinking. I can’t believe that people are trying to blame Obama, or Democrats, for the National Debt when he’s only been in office for seven months.
I can’t believe that people take comments completely out of context, like the “forced abortion” guy’s and think that there’s some evil government plot to kill everyone’s babies. Is forced abortion an undesirable thing? I think most would agree. Guess what needs to be done? Improve sexual education and start giving condoms to teenagers before it’s too late; also, stop religions from pushing the insane policy of ‘go forth and multiply.’ The world is running out of resources and the population is growing. It’s simple math. Take care of the problem now or later.
I can’t believe that in this day and age, there are people out there that literally believe the universe was created 6000 years ago in only six days. I can’t believe that openly racist Right wing commentators are a respected part of the conservative movement. I can’t believe that the same old tactics used against civil rights in the 60s are being used again against anything that the Obama administration puts forth. I can’t believe that people have no idea what the differences are between communism, socialism, or fascism. I can’t believe that the same people that defended President Bush and all of his lies, and his scheming, and his revoking of Americans’ personal freedoms are now attacking Obama for doing the same thing when he hasn’t done any of that. I can’t believe anybody votes Republican.
Oh, and telling critics to shut-up, calling them unpatriotic or unamerican is not “standing up” to critics. Bush babbled his way through office, only realizing the pain and the suffering he’d caused near the end. Secondly, he deserved the criticism so he gets no props for taking it. That’s like a person being sentenced to death row for mass murder being described as having character because he, “stood up to unrelenting criticism.” Really, what did that spoiled rich, Texas oil baron’s son ever have to worry about? I’m sure he’s surrounded by plenty of people that just looove him up in that recently desegregated community he lives in.
I didn’t expect you to agree, but I do suggest that you read some of the Reagan documents. They might surprise you. Though it may sound odd, the book I’d recommend first is the Nancy’s collection of personal letters that I mentioned above, “I love you Ronnie,” chiefly because it reveals more of Reagan’s private life.
Anyway, American history is moving along. And we’re both observers of it. Our different viewpoints alert us to different things. And that’s as it should be.
Best, ANF
I have no doubt that the love between Nancy and Ronald was pure and true. They always seemed like a loving couple. More so than any president since than, except Michelle and Barack.
Nancy later was showing her love when she asked for embryonic stem cell research to continue because of the promise it had in curing Alzheimer’s disease. Unfortunately, Bush wouldn’t allow that. Thankfully, Obama has.
That’s funny, I got the e-mail for that comment, and replied to it, but didn’t notice it was labeled spam till now. I think it’s all the links.
“You completely go around the question and avoid the point. The public option plan, or a single payer option are not profit motivated industries.”
You are pretending that public employees are somehow exalted beings. Obama is not starting up a monastary of doctors who will be working for nothing but their pure love of fellow beings. You yourself admit to believing that most conservatives are uneducated hicks. And what happens to the “uneducated hicks” when someone of your views happens to be their government sponsored doctor?
Poor hicks.
Don’t think it can happen? Well, consider this: “Dr. Emanuel, a nationally renowned bioethicist who also has a doctorate in political philosophy from Harvard University, said he was not expressing his own opinion in a short article published in a bioethics journal in 1996.
He wrote then that “services provided to individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens are not basic and should not be guaranteed.” ”
The Washington Times and Fox News are of course “conservative” sources which is reflexively supposed to nullify their credibility. But these assertions have been reviewed and publicized by others as well. In fact the Fox News source is NOT where I first learned about Mr. Holden. I don’t recall the source I read, but that first source quoted extensively from the books and posted photographs of the pages from which the quotes were taken and also used extended quotes so that the most egregious and “shocking” passages could be viewed in context.
When I read about this following White House official, I could not and at first did not believe what I read. I thought it must be some weird exaggeration being offered by some overly excitable Obama critics. But I checked this one against one of the White House’s own sites and found that it was accurate: “As I predicted last year, Kevin Jennings, the former head of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) would eventually become part of the Obama Administration. It’s happened. He is President Obama’s latest Czar—the gay agenda Czar. Jennings has been hired to head up the US Department of Education’s “safe school” program.” The article goes on to report some of Mr. Jennings activities in making schools “safe” — and I’m not going to enumerate them. If you want to find out what your government is doing, you can read the article for yourself.
[http://www.traditionalvalues.org/modules.php?sid=3660]
Don’t believe it? I was skeptical. Do some google research. Root around on the web for yourself.
When Bill Ayers was first tied to Barack Obama, Democrats brushed the whole thing off as a tempest in a tea pot. And I think back on a conversation I had with one of my Dem friends during the primary period (all my friends are Dems, Mr. Godless America. You cannot swing a dead cat or an alive one either in this part of Maryland without hitting a Democrat). My friend had “heard” something or other about Ayers. It was just a casual relationship, she told me. They served on a board together. Objection settled.
It still amazes me how little scrutiny Obama has gotten from his supporters! I know more about their guy than they do! That includes good and bad. I looked at dozens and dozens of pictures taken during one of Obama’s trips to Africa before he was a presidential candidate. In the pictures he looks like a decent caring man.
But the Ayers friendship is not a casual thing. Ayers and Obama have a long standing and close relationship. And Jack Cashill makes a very compelling argument that Ayers, author of “Fugitive Days,” may have written “Dreams of My Father.”
link: http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/who_wrote_dreams_from_my_fathe_1.html
Since textual analysis happens to be a subject I know something about, I have been thinking about getting my own copies of both books to make up my own mind. Notably Cashill compares “Dreams” with “Audacity of Hope” and finds differences that leads him to conclude that a different ghost writer was used with it.
Because a close friend of mine had personal knowledge of the Weathermen of Chicago in the 60s, I took rather a more disapproving stance toward Obama’s association with Ayers than the aforementioned Dem friend, who is too young to have any personal memories of the 60s in America.
Oh, gosh, one could go on and on.
As I said earlier, I’m very willing to believe in your altruism. It’s just that I think you’ve been had. Your party is taking advantage of your fine sensibilities and is also spreading lies about some very good people.
Of the good people who have had many lies spread about them, I put my “favorite president” at the top of the list. Since Reagan’s death, many documents have been made public that were not available during Reagan’s presidency. (Some indeed did not even exist yet.) I’ve read tons of Reagan’s letters. He was an inveterate letter writer, going back to way many years before he ever entertained a single political thought. (There is, for instance, a very lyrical, beautiful letter he wrote to his wife Nancy, care of his then 2 year old daughter Patty. Found in Nancy Reagan’s book “I love you Ronnie.”)
I’ve also read largish portions of Reagan’s diaries. A diary, even you might be persuaded, is a particularly hard genre to “fake,” since the writer doesn’t know how events will turn out. It’s very interesting to read Reagan thinking to himself about events whose outcomes are now well known.
I also recently read a very charming book by Lou Cannon on Reagan’s presidency. Cannon had covered Reagan extensively during Reagan’s years as a governor, and Cannon’s “biography” is judicious, containing both appreciations and pointed criticisms. But what I found most remarkable about it was its ending! Cannon wrote the book and published it during the middle of Reagan’s first term. In his conclusion he takes some educated guesses about where Reagan’s legacy was headed. And the delightfully charming thing was Cannon’s assertion that he didn’t think Reagan would run for another term.
He didn’t think Reagan could win and really believed that age would be a huge factor, though not the most disqualifying factor. But, of course, Reagan did run and did win. And it was his second term that has been (so far) remembered as most significant — with those negotiations between Reagan and Gorbachev that radically transformed the US’s relationship with the Russians.
If you don’t like Reagan, you are never going to like any “Republican.” Reagan was an incredibly humane man. You really see it in his private musings, in the letters, in the diaries — though, for goodness sake, it’s there in his speeches. He was not a saint. He was a man. But he was as good a man as any you are likely ever to find.
People ought to care about the truth. People ought to care especially about slandering good people. I do not hate Barack Obama. On the contrary, every time I see him on tv, I marvel at what a good man he seems to be. His associations, however, give me pause. Having one crazy uncle in a closet — oh, heck, who doesn’t have a wacky friend or two. But, dear Godless (hope you don’t mind first names), with Obama there are just so many wacky uncles. It’s beginning to seem like it’s all wacky uncles.
I think, as another Obama associate once said, that in time Obama’s “chickens will come home to roost.”
I don’t bother telling my friend what I’m telling you. She’d never believe me. She probably won’t set aside a whole afternoon to research all this stuff. Who has time for all this stuff? She might resent my preaching to her. (I know I hate it when lefty friends send me all their wacky links to this and that.) So, I just say nothing.
In time, I feel confident, the truth will come out. My Dem friend is no dummy. And she as good a person as I’ve ever met. And when she finds out what Obama’s administration is really about, she won’t be pleased. She might be “liberal” and have all kinds of gay acquaintances (who doesn’t have gay friends?), but she doesn’t want her kids being taught about “fisting” any more than I do.
They were not paying attention. The Dems said Bush was “incurious” and the lefties loved it! The lefties who are not paying attention themselves, loved hearing Bush being bashed. They said he was an “idiot.” But all their “smart” people couldn’t beat the “idiot.” However, now the “smart people” are incharge. And their supporters are not fact checking! But many of Obama’s supporters will NOT like what they find when they do eventually start looking.
I would have thought the email snitch-on-your-fellow-citizens (flag@whitehouse.gov) would startle the lefties out of their slumbers, but not yet. I am wondering if my Dem friend even knows that the government is asking her to report on folks like me, spreading all this “misinformation”!
Well I did my part. They wanted me to report on fishy internet stuff so I reported them. I sent them their own link. I learned later that lots of other people did likewise.
It wasn’t orchestrated. It’s not rocket science, you know. Lots of people were seriously annoyed and spontaneously came to the same conclusions and reacted in similar ways.
Well, anyway. Hears back at you. I hope at the end of Obama’s term we can answer Reagan’s question in the affirmative (“are you better off than you were four years ago”). I would love to answer “yes.” But I seriously doubt I will. Unless, of course, Obama is ending his presidency as a one-termer.
best, ANF
ANF,
You are a fine writer, and passionate about your stance. But, I couldn’t find a single thing that I could agree with in your comment till the last few words.
America can now look back at Reagan’s economic policies, and see the ruin they’ve forced on this country. We’ll see how President Obama is able to handle the slop given to him by our last president whom was handed a growing economic, budget surplussed country by Clinton.
Come back any time. Door’s always open.
You’re correct, we fundementally disagree. I think Reagan was the worst president the United States has seen in the last century. Worse than Hoover, worse than Nixon, and even worse than Bush 43. He started the self-fulfilling prophecy that nows has become the conservative mantra, government is the problem. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy because by stating that government is the problem, then electing someone that doesn’t care to govern correctly, you create a government that is indeed broken. By continuously voting for Republicans, Americans are fulfilling Reagan’s words that government is the problem.
Greed is the problem. That’s why neither party will serve the people completely. Campaign finance reform is key; check out the clean money, clean elections advocacy group.
I don’t believe that all Right wingers are all hicks. I think a large majority of them are. They are, unfortunately, the uneducated masses mentioned earlier that vote against their own best interests.
Nope, not referring to Rand. She’s very famous, but I’ve never read anything by her and cannot claim any familiarity with her ideas.
“If healthcare is only a profit based market, then when do insurers and healthcare professionals profit more, when people are sick or when people are healthy?” Excellent question. Obviously people are healthy more than sick, and having a system aimed at the healthy has more of a payoff. And you have just described Mr. Obama’s health care: a system of “preventative medicine” staffed by “primary care practioners, offering lots of really nice, but mostly unnecessary “stuff.” In return for the stuff, he expects the recipients to reward Democrats with their votes. A power grab.
Meanwhile, sick people in such a system become a heavy drain on it. And over time, you will see pressure on people to accept some form of palliative care leading eventually toward euthanasia.
The destruction of the housing market was a direct consequence of Democrats interference with it, beginning with Carter, through Clinton, and most recently with Barney Frank, Chris Dodd and other backers of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Bush and McCain were both on record as attempting to reform the system before it broke. ACORN, Obama’s community organization, played a role as well (that I witnessed in microcosm personally), going out into communities of people living in apartments who could barely afford the rent, who were encouraged to get mortgages. ACORN advertised that they would “teach” people how to get mortgages, getting something for nothing. Nice trick. Whether selling mortages to people who could not afford them was part of a systematic Alisnky inspired attack on the housing market or whether a simple exercise in greed and power politics manipulated by many players for varied reasons is still unknown. A nice dissertation topic for historians in a generation or so.
You have a fine resume. But you err in supposing that “right wingers” are a bunch of hicks. I personally believe that the opposite of a left-winger/progressive/socialist/Democrat/liberal (whatever other label du jour) would be a classic liberal among which I would number myself. But even that doesn’t get at it.
A label-less person would be the opposite. I experience human beings as complex individuals. Don’t know about you, but I have yet to meet another person who is not in all particulars a very deep mystery. Some generalization of experiences is, of course, occasionally helpful. But in an event such as an election which boils down to choices between A and B, it becomes obvious to anyone who thinks about it that people have wildly different reasons sometimes for supporting the same candidates or for not supporting a candidate’s opponent. My father and I had very different world views, but we supported the same candidates ever since Reagan.
As to my education, like you I come from the lower middle class. My father was a soldier and auto mechanic. My mother worked as a secretary. I’m among the first handful of people in my large extended family to go to college. I have bachelor’s degrees in two subjects, one of which is English language and literature. And I completed courses towards a Masters degree in English, but quit without writing a thesis. (I was expecting at the time.) I have studied French and am finally getting good enough at it to read French — um — reasonably well, some topics being friendly to me in French than others.
Politically, I would say that Reagan was the greatest American president in modern times. Ironically, in contrast to his age, he was visionary and youthful in his boundless optimism and faith in the basic goodness of his fellow man. In comparison to him, I find Obama old. His policies have resembled Carter re-runs from the beginning with the difference being that Carter’s “malaise” speech was three years in the making whereas Obama delivered his malaise speech at the Inauguration.
All these “changes” that we’re seeing are “been there/done that” productions. They didn’t work particularly well on the earlier occasions. I see no reason to suppose they will be any more effective now.
I’m perfectly willing to accept that you embrace the ideas you do for altruistic reasons. Certainly greed is a component of human nature, and it always will be. It is for precisely that reason that I believe the private sector is more trustworthy (over the long haul) than the government — because it is more directly answerable to the polity. Congressmen and Senators and Presidents can, of course, be voted out of office. But institutions that structure the bureaucracy don’t die, cannot be simply voted out or impeached. Federal employees don’t answer to anyone — not even to their supervisors — once tenure is obtained. So, to the extent that law gets codified into such durable form, we’d be wise to make sure that these structures comprise duties that are genuinely vital to federal government (like the military) because once they are set into place, they are very hard to get rid of.
Well, it’s been nice debating you. I’m sure I haven’t changed your mind about the larger issues, but perhaps I have made my point that stereotyping the other side is an exercise in fiction.
Best wishes, Ann
PS – it’s interesting that you cite the Huffington Post. I once used to post comments there — until I was summarily censored. They do not appear to be exactly champions of diverse views. I think, in fact, that I was a little too persuasive. And thus, I had to go!
Sometime or other I’ll take a peek at Beck just so I can be au courant, but mostly I’m reading other stuff. Republicans seem to be trending toward the founding documents — most of which I’m embarrassed to say I haven’t read. So, I’m going to look into Common Sense and the Federalist Papers first and maybe check out Beck another day.
But my deeper wish is that we could trust elected officials to represent constituents rather than to undermine their will. Maryland’s Senator Ben Cardin is quoted as saying that the Town Halls have only inspired him to fight harder. So, the views of his constituents even in “liberal” Maryland don’t matter. However, Ben having it “my way,” though it lead perhaps to his being eventually booted out, amounts to nothing less than petty tyranny.
So I wish we could trust these people, but we can’t. And it hurts “productivity” for ordinary people to have to lay their own proper work aside to go chasing down politicians trying to remind them about “we the people.” I have work that I deeply love doing, and every minute away from it bugs me. But as a citizen I feel that I cannot just stand by and do nothing.
How nice it would be if reforming medicine were an easy task. Certainly it would be easier if people weren’t using it for personal gain. I would rather have the system reformed in the private sector by those engaged in it — doctors, nurses, and — yes — even insurance agents. (Our insurance agent was extremely helpful and a real sweetheart.) Having law-makers in there writing Russian-novel length bills is just not a winning strategy.
So there it is. We just — as President Bush famously said — disagree.
Cheers again. ANF
You completely go around the question and avoid the point. The public option plan, or a single payer option are not profit motivated industries. Private insurance is. Private insurers only make a profit when no one is ever sick, healthcare professionals only make money when people are sick; neither of these is a realistic or desirable possibility. Profit has to be taken out as a motivational factor in providing the best healthcare available.
The present system literally sets up a ’survival of fittest’ system of people being healthy. Capitalism is then akin to Anarchy; no government necessary, only the mighty free-market where everything goes. The free-market system is a sham pushed on the American people and the world in general. It continuously favors those with a lot and disfavors those with a little; your background will have more to say about your success than your hard work. It is a zero sum game that necessitates winners and losers. Healthcare shouldn’t have anything to do with such a game; it does not need to be zero sum.
“While many of America’s uneducated masses are screaming and crying against a healthcare reform act that would insure America’s well-being in the future, the insurance companies are lapping up the profits and disregarding the flagrant misuse of money spent on healthcare.”
I’m wondering, before I bother reading any more of your blog, if you could define what you mean by “masses.” And how, in regard to these “masses,” you determine whether they’re educated or not. Are we defining the “uneducated” rather loosely as “doesn’t agree with me, and therefore are de facto uneducated.”
What is your level of education? (Since you set yourself up as a judge of others’ education.)
Second issue: what exactly is wrong with a company making profits? Even with “lapping up profits”? One hears this complaint a lot. But I think most people would prefer being employed, for instance, at a company that has lots of profits rather than at one that’s just barely keeping the doors open. Working at the company where the CEO is biting his nails isn’t much of a draw.
Indeed, with regard to health care when it’s provided by employers, the more “profits” the company makes, the more it’s able to provide “perks” for its employees. You improve working conditions by having money to improve working conditions. Get it?
And as to “disregarding the flagrant misuse of money” — that phrase strikes me as the epitome of government bureaucracy. I was — once upon a time — a federal employee, and one of the reasons I left government was the “fragrant misuse” of time, money, resources, and you name it. Me, I wanted to accomplish something. The federal employee doesn’t really answer to any very concrete standard in the ways that private companies do. If a private company ignores its customers, it eventually goes out of business. Whereas the federal employee can ignore citizens all it likes. And it does! The current Congress is a brilliant case in point. Oh, but of course they are “answerable.” And they may find themselves “answering” very soon! Some may find themselves transitioning to the private sector.
Wonder whether those transitioning workers will want to work for private sector companies that make profits? Or for the other kind of businesses?
Your brilliant president, Barack Obama, gave a good illustration of this very problem with his wonderfully intellectual metaphor, which he delivered at a well-orchestrated “town hall meeting” in New Hampshire (New Hampshire, you’ll recall, is the place where he ridiculed the plumber — another icky member of the “masses”). He said, “UPS and FedEx are doing just fine,” Mr. Obama joked. “It’s the post office that’s always having problems.”
He’s so brilliant. He’s SO well educated, isn’t he. Only problem is, well, “bingo” — “it’s the post office that’s always having problems.”
“[W]hile we work together to negotiate costs with the healthcare providers,” you say, “they lose the ability to gouge prices and abuse the system.” Under Obama’s system, you needn’t worry about costs. It’ll freeze American health care at 2009 levels of technology. A good year, you think? The advances previously associated with medicine came about in a system that rewarded success. That won’t be happening anymore. Success is tied to profits since it takes capital to create new technologies.
No money, no innovation. You’ve probably already anticipated that, you and the other “educated” people.
So, Godless American, you go right ahead and turn your medical decisions over to “the post office.” Me (and the other uneducated masses) will be fighting tooth and nail to make sure Uncle Sam minds his own business.
You’re living off the borrowed capital of Christianity, and you are too “educated” to know it. But perhaps you’d be wiser to look before you leap. The whole rights doctrine is built upon the dignity of persons made in the image of God, in the idea of rights that are “inalienable” precisely because they derive from God.
Meanwhile, thanks for the heads-up about Glenn Beck. Never heard of him, but I’ll check him out. If you disagree with him so vehemently, perhaps he has something interesting to say.
Me, I gotta go read Le Monde now. It’s in French, you know. Language of the masses.
Ann’s New Friend,
Are you referring to Rand? Because that would be Ayn Rand. Did you just hear about her? Good writer, I love her fiction.
The uneducated masses are those that are against the healthcare public option or single payer system when it’s in their best interest. That doesn’t include insurance agents and executives that understand how they’re raping the American public but view it ethically because it’s making a profit. Profit is not the factor that needs to be looked at concerning healthcare.
If healthcare is only a profit based market, then when to insurers and healthcare professionals profit more, when people are sick or when people are healthy? Sickness shouldn’t be a money making market, nor should it be in control of those that seek to solely make a profit. As for simply making a profit, please do, but things have gotten out of hand:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/14/income-inequality-is-at-a_n_259516.html
The Middle class is being destroyed in America and the present healthcare system is leading the way in destroying middle class homes.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/06/05/bankruptcy.medical.bills/
Being educated comes in many forms. While a college education is certainly ideal, an education in life is arguably more important. I have a B.A. and a M.Ed. I served six years in the Navy, and I’ve traveled to over a dozen countries through out South East Asia, the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf. I come from a lower-middle class background and I’ve been on my own since I was 17.
You better try and catch Glenn Beck as soon as possible. He might not be on the air much longer. All of his advertisers are leaving him.
http://leftagenda.wordpress.com/2009/08/12/glenn-becks-advertisers-are-fleeing/