You know what that means? It means you, MojoMan, are a winner. Pat yourself on the back for you are full of WIN! Wait a sec, didn't you just personally attack Batman and MC Mark? Then sir, I take it back. By your own definition, you are a loser.
so the original poster was starting the thread in good faith with "obama s care" and a "democratic takeover" and a "clueless bunch of people". he really wanted an honest debate, is that your contention?
Jorge you lost the debate when you were made to change your moniker. anyway! Let's go Healthcare reform!
I just spent the weekend with my college buddy who is the CEO of a major Texas hospital chain. He said the system now is just a game, and the reforms are not any better, it will just shift the game around and make a lot of work for him. The fact is Americans will demand a lot more health care than they can afford because the alternative is pain and death. We will spend any system bankrupt. Good thing I'm old and will get all that good subsidized care before the inevitable triage begins.
I think this is part of the problem that neither political party will address, because its simply not popular for either them.
i hear the same thing from someone i know who sits on the board for one of the major healthcare systems in Houston.
You supply a bunch of fear based rhetoric and not one original thought in your entire mindless diatribe. Come back when you can say this is what I don't like about the bill, this is what should be done differently.
Healthcare for all is a noble idea however it will bankrupt the country. The economics of the senate plan are incredibly skewed to make it look like it actually saves money. The bill is touted to save money over 10 years as scored by the CBO however the trick is that the tax increases start as soon as the bill is signed into law and the benefits do not start for 4 years. Ten years of taxes and six years of benefits. The CBO should score the bill from 2014 until 2024 to get the real numbers. If our country could afford this I would support it. If our country goes bankrupt then nobody will have healthcare .
Of course, the CBO score is only designed to account for baseline government spending and revenues. It doesn't account for the billions Americans will save if rates go up more slowly. Or the millions of extra hours of economic activity from a healthier population. Or the hundreds of billions in extra economic activity that would be generated - and all the new high-quality jobs for nurses, medical techs, etc. Or the benefits to society and added productivity from reduced stress levels caused by a lack of healthcare. And the benefits from reduced bankruptcies caused by medical bills. And on and on and on. The rest of the developed world seems to be able to have universal health care and yet spends substantially less per person than the US.
Just because a poster makes assertions that contradict leftish notions of political correctness does not mean that poster is being dishonest. And it is rather astonishing to watch you guys routinely lower yourselves to trying to suggest that. The people that you attack in this way, such as myself, do not take you seriously with these sorts of comments. And to be quite frank, it is hard to believe that you guys believe it either. Different people honestly have different perspectives and beliefs, and I really do believe that you know that. So when posters such as the OP and myself express a perspective that differs from your own, I believe you also know that does not justify calling a person who thinks differently than you a "liar". But you do it anyway. These kinds of unfounded, highly antagonistic assaults do not speak well of you guys at all. My point was that if you want to refute what the OP is saying, and if you can refute what he is saying, then refute what he is saying. Calling people liars and ass-clowns just reflects badly on the people who talk that way, and it rightfully raises doubts about such people's ability to cope with the substance of the assertions offered by the poster on the receiving end of the personal attacks. Seriously, this kind of conduct just makes the name-callers appear to be bitter, immature and intellectually ill-equipped to engage in an adult-style debate and discussion around these kinds of topics. It is no different here on this board than in real life. If you go around in the three dimensional world losing your composure and calling people names whenever other people do not act the way that you want them to, or when you do not get your way, how does that come across? It leaves the same impression here on this board. But on a message board like this one, the name-callers have the anonymity of a fabricated user name to hide behind. So posters who routinely post these sorts of juvenile cheap shots inadvertently offer insights into their own character and personalities with this sort of conduct that are not very flattering. Those insights tells us a-lot about the person making the cheap shots, and nothing really at all about the people they are spewing their vitriol at.
I respect your opinion but when has a government sponsored plan ever come in under budget and this one is already skewed to make it look cheaper than it really is. There are a lot of wonderful benefits that would come from universal healthcare but we are now having trillion + dollar deficits. All the free spending we are doing at these insane rates will bankrupt us. There is already talk of the US having it's credit rating lowered which will cause the interest of all this money we are borrowing to go up which means even higher deficits from interest payments. If this country goes bankrupt EVERYONE WILL SUFFER. When the government is able to live within it's means and starts having surpluses again is the time to start a program like this because there are a lot of good things that can come from it.
Sorry - to clarify, I agree with you about the problems and dangers of bankruptcy. But that applies to the private sector too. Insurance going up at 7-10% per year while inflation/wages go up at 2% per year is unsustainable - we're already on a path towards bankruptcy. While the proposed solution increases government spending, it decreases personal spending. The overall cost of insurance doesn't go up (and hopefully goes down), regardless of where the money is coming from. Most importantly, it theoretically gives us a chance to get that 7-10% rate under control. If we don't do that - and without universal coverage, it's difficult to slow that rate - it won't matter whether it's the government or the people paying because we're on a collision course to bankruptcy with the current system.
Again, I respect your opinion but I still think this is a bad idea at this time. When the budget gets back under control is the time to do it.
That is the point major is trying to make, the budget will do nothing but get further out of control if we don't. In addition, the GOP is WAY too beholden to the insurance lobby to push HCR through on their watch, so the dems have to do it now. They have been trying for decades to reform healthcare, it is time to get some meaningful reform.
You get maybe 1 shot every 15 years at real reform, and it's failed every time so far. I don't think the Dems can afford to wait out a recession and hope the timing is right in a few years. HCR is a long-term solution to a long-term problem. Timing it for this year or in 2012 or 2015 is relatively minor in terms of the overall impact. For example, if HillaryCare had passed in 1994, our projected current health care spending today would be substantially less than it is now, which would be good both for our individual health and the economy as a whole. The longer you wait, the worse the problem becomes, and the more difficult it is to fix.
Once again Major has beaten me to the response but I think the question is if we don't address Health Care now when do we address it? I personally have some skepticism about how deficit neutral this program is but I can tell you as a small business owner that our current state of health care affects how we do business. The current situation makes it difficult for us to hire more employees because we can't afford health care even during some of our boom times and at the rate its going its not going to get cheaper. The status quo of the US health care is just awful and a drag on the economy. I understand how reform can be scary but I don't think it can be any worse than the current situation. Also in regard to getting the budget under control I agree we need to. Would you consider then cutting back military expenditures since those are a huge drag on our budget?
I support the war on terror but I believe there are some opportunities to reduce military spending. The Iraqi war was not needed and a slow drawback of troops there can save some. The terrorist declared war on us first and as long as we keep seeing people like the underwear bomber we can never truly let up on them.
I'm glad you answered that way as that helps me make my point. You recognize that we are in a crisis where we are fighting a war on terror so we should be still spending lots of money on fighting it. We are also in a crisis in regard to health care costs spiralling up while more people unable to afford insurance. In the same way as it would be foolish to ignore the crisis in regard to the threat of terrorism it would be foolish to continue to ignore the threat of the inherent problems with our current health care. Obviously these things have costs associated with them but we have to weigh the costs of doing nothing.
