I am not saying he handled it well. He bungled it politically - just as Clinton bungled stuff early in his administration, and certainly as other presidents do. But what confuses me is the demonizing that Obama wants to kill babies and old people. I mean, WTF????
That is to be expected from a vocal opposition and in the case of Obama we already heard extreme rhetoric directed at him during the campaign.
When you consider some of the crazy stuff said about Obama during the campaign, and still being said, I'm not surprised.
But then that proves this isn't about health care, it's about conservatives taking Obama down. Is this what our country has come to? Extreme liberals and conservatives resorting to whatever dirty trick they have to take down the current leadership if it's of the opposing party? America is doomed if this is the case.
The card that should be played by the Dems is that in 93 when healthcare was still fairly cheap, they knew that eventually the system was going to start pricing people out. its only going to get worse
Or just ask yourself what anyone who wasn't a lying greedy d******d would do. The most incredible thing in the recent polls is how many people who are being deeply screwed by the amoral insurance industry take their defense of that same evil industry as an almost religious cause. It's too bad about TV, the internet and bumper stickers. Most of the citizens who make up this country are just so freaking dumb as to lose their voices screaming bloody murder against their own interests. And they don't even know they're doing it. If this wasn't the case, there wouldn't even be a Republican party anymore.
It's said that we have the highest level of health scare spending, but our life expectancy is less than 30 other countries. Poor countries like Spain and Cuba have higher life expectancy than us. The Republicans just want to keep the status quo to fill their pockets with money from special interest groups. http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience...ce/thetruthaboutrecordsettinguslifeexpectancy
I'm hesitant to rely on this as a measure of our health care system's effectiveness. I'd place most of the fault for this statistic on the average american's insanely unhealthy lifestyle: Eat ****ty foods, sit on your ass all day, and work like a dog.
I don't think that all of the critics of health care reform are only concerned about taking Obama down but there is definately a signifigant portion them that do. That is to be expected given the way our system is set up that we have two adversarial sides. While this might seem bad the country has been through worse periods of partisanship.
I'm with you on this (take a look at first post in this thread)... I just think the life expectancy thing is particularly impacted by the american lifestyle. Which would make sense, I think, since it can be viewed as a "cumulative" statistic. Accordingly, I think that should be addressed as well in reform strategies:
That there have also been other periods worse than now. For instance in the late 90's when government was shut down and Clinton Impeached. Technically since one party dominates the government thoroughly partisanship shouldn't be a big factor since the Democrats could pass legislaton on their own if they hold together.
To the OP, I think the following graphic answers your question nicely. The official media wing of the republican party is doing everything it can to defeat healthcare reform. (Chart from Media Matters.)
