C-SPAN's announcer reported it was Cao. TPM's reasoning for his vote here. It's an attempt to hold on to Jefferson's former seat, still overwhelmingly Democratic-leaning.
I'm an idiot. ...scratch that previous Snowe reference as well. i'll use my cover-all though, I'm a Canadian and I'm flipping through hockey at the same time...this is my secondary Saturday hobby ...why am I at home on Saturday? ...I'm a Canadian. grats, neighbors to the south.
Wow...really? You OBVIOUSLY have no idea what is really going on out there. At my workplace, we have very good insurance. It is cheap for the employee, but to add the wife and kids, it would cost the employee $1,100.00 per month. Even a basic insurance (ie doesn't pay for much until you spend the $2,500 deductible) for a family of four can easily be $700. A decent policy costs much more. It is difficult to rent a two bedroom apartment in Houston in an average neighborhood for $800, let alone a house in the burbs (after you factor in insurance and taxes). You begrudge a family owning cars? For two adult drivers, insurance alone would be about $200.00 a month. In your $800.00 example, that would be monthly payments of $300.00 each for two cars (assuming two cars are needed because both spouses work). That will not buy extravagant vehicles. That would be two very modest $15,000 cars. Wow...yeah...how stupid. I cannot believe that people would buy modest cars to go to work and a modest residence to raise their families rather than live in a box and walk to work so they can buy health insurance.
Or buy one car, live further outside of Houston, not have cable, go out less etc. Or shop around for a better job. The bottom line is people see cars, better housing and plasma screens as more important than health insurance and now are getting burned for it.
Being as I represented people in bankruptcy for 6 years, I can tell you that what you are saying is a gross generalization. It is intellectually lazy, ignores reality and is a reckless way to think. There are a very good number of people (some of whom I know through work) that live 30 miles outside of Houston. A cursory (2 minute) search of 2 bedroom apartments (assuming a couple with kids) shows the lowest rent in League City (roughly 30 to 35 miles from downtown) is $749.00. Living in the suburbs isn't exactly cheap these days. To suggest that they buy one car for two people to commute to work is just a dumb thing to say. Reality would dictate that it simply is not possible for that car to be two places at once. Shop around for a better job? Really? It isn't like the last two years has exactly been a job seeker's market. I have yet to meet one person that chose to buy a plasma TV rather than health insurance. Keep in mind that I represented debtors in roughly 1,500 bankruptcy cases. Nice stereotype though.
Casey-- One more thing... If somebody has the monthly income to afford "better housing" and electronic toys, they likely have health insurance through their employer already. Again...nice stereotype....also nice attempt at building a strawman.
Cao is a goner no matter how hard he tries to get re-elected. He has no chance to keep that seat and only won by complete fluke. Now the Republican party leadership will disown him after bragging about his election last year.
I'm not doing strawman and I don't think you understand what I am arguing. My argument is people did not put enough emphasis on healthcare so now the government is making it the law that you have to have it. Why is it becoming law? Well you obviously know, bankruptcy and people skipping out on hospital bills. Your 1,100 is very high and higher than mine would be ( very nice insurance) if I had two kids. I looked up the average cost is about 800 or so for a family of 4 from www.nchc.org which is probably quite biased. If people's priorities were different, if they thought it was more important than a second car or other things not needed for basic life, it would be a different system. That is all I am saying.
median household income in houston is around 40k. lets say your take home pay is around 35k. that leaves half the families in houston on less than 3k a month. let's say 1000 dollars for a modest 3 bedroom apartment, 100 dollars for two phones, 100 plus dollars for electricity, 50 dollars for water and really cheap dsl. Lets say 1300 dollars. so now before groceries, before any luxuries, before the fact that if you have a modest income, you have no money saved up to furnish your place, you probably had to finance luxurious things (that these families clearly don't deserve, in your world) like a computer and a bed or a couch. i'd imagine you may need more than one bed if you have 2-3 kids. have fun paying for cars, groceries, gas, and raising two kids on 1500 dollars a month. nevermind lets make that 700 dollars, since 800 dollars have to go to the healthcare premium. if half the people live on household incomes of less than 3k per month, you claiming that they should be able to afford 500 to a thousand dollars per month on health care is rather naive. and this isn't even taking into account the million plus houston families who live on UNDER 3k per month. the fact is, we're the only country in the developed world lacking a comprehensive plan. our healthcare policy is an outliers, a backwater, a joke. i don't understand why you keep trying to defend the uncivilized. after this passes the senate and conference, you could always go live in a third world country, and not have to have insurance. but if you want to live in the developed first world, you just have to deal with it.
I have to agree with you, just from personal experience. My father was self-employed and at one point owned 2 cars, a boat, multiple property, including a house on Padre Island with a pool. The first time I *ever* had health insurance was after college when I got my first job in Houston. My father thought it was a waste of money. I never saw a doctor when I was a kid, no matter how sick I got. Now my father has advanced stages of diabetes and is nearly blind, goes to dialysis three times a week in a county hospital, and lives off of disability. His business went bust when his health got bad and he had to fire 10 employees. My uncle tried to make him get health insurance a few years ago and even offered to help pay for it but his premiums are sky-high due to the fact that he's dying. He didn't want to pay for insurance then, but now gets his bills paid and his kidneys cleaned courtesy of the taxpayer anyway. Wouldn't it have made more sense to pay in when he was healthy and not be a burden to the system? Anyway, I have no issues with universal health care. If its the state's responsibility to prolong his life now, it's easy to argue it was his responsibility to pay in when he had the means.
Who cares. Let the insurance company lackeys be 100% in opposition. The American people have a very short memory, aided by a mainstream and conservative press who won't remind them. However they will remember for a generation which party tried to get them health care. Let the GOP keep digging itself a hole.
i keep coming back to this. i bring it up everytime i discuss the issue with anyone who says, "it will break us...we can't do it." so every other industrialized country in the world can do it...but we can't?
Our cost of healthcare and expectation as Americans is radically different than alot of other countries. As Americans, we have the expectation that we deserve technologically and medically advanced healthcare quickly. Unfortunately, this expectation leads to much higher costs. I hope the bill will include cost saving measures that will help create a more efficient system (i.e. portable nationalized medical charts, faster billing systems, futile care measures, etc...)
That's the beauty of it for him, though. If he's not running for reelection (or knows he's losing), he doesn't have to worry about pissing off the GOP leadership. He can just vote whatever he believes, consequences be damned.
This bill was initially supposed to be easy to get through the House, and difficult to get through the Senate. As it turns out, it barely passed in the House, where there was talk about delaying the vote as late as Saturday afternoon. Now, the issue moves on to the Senate, where there still is no actual Senate bill that has been written. As you may recall, the most contentious issue in the Senate is whether or not the bill should have a public option. Every indication has been that the Senate does not have the votes to pass a bill with a public option. Harry Reid came out with a bill that included a public option with an "opt-out" option for the states. Joe Lieberman immediately said he he would filibuster this bill, and about six other Democratic Senators made statements that were not supportive of it. This bill is not done by a long-shot. The hard part was always expected to be in the Senate. Passing the bill in the House was supposed to be easy, and, as it turned out, it was not. If the Senate passes a bill without a public option, can it pass the House? Stay tuned....
It doesn't need to. The public option can be included in the merged bill, and has more than 50 votes in the Senate. The only reason the initial Senate vote is the difficult one is that it needs 60 - but the final one only needs 50.
This thread is actually pretty interesting with a low troll-to-content ratio! Congrats especially to CaseyH, refman, deji, et alia. Much appreciation rains on you.
