This is being followed very closely in our business (insurance brokerage!)...
but what REALLY disturbs is the fact that the democrats are trying to get it pushed through the house without having to VOTE on it - simply voting a referendum to approve the Senate version without a House bill to present.

Porkbelly politics! And their constituents are supposed to be so stupid they won't equate passing the referendum with a "YES" vote to having this half-assed bill crammed down their throats? Think they will just miss that fact altogether????

I'm neither Demo nor Repub, but I do know a great deal about health care AND health insurance (2 entirely different issues people - insurance tracks spending on HEALTH CARE, not the other damned way around). This bill will get crammed through, it will be a disaster, states will declare it unconstitutional, and the end result will be a hamstrung "clearinghouse" (Whatever!) with increases in insurance premiums over what people can hardly afford now.

Health CARE costs will be unaffected, of course, and will continue to rise in the double digits each year.

Rant over. Don't get me started...bad for my equilibrium.

Edit: because I was all riled up and misspelled half the words.

Well, at least we'll still have Doctors Without Borders. Between trips to the African bush, they can set up in our inner cities.

Again I'm no expert on the American constitution and political set up and I won't comment on the bill itself as I've not read it (and don't really want to - sorry)

However, being from the good old U of K I do know that universal healthcare is nothing to be scared about. Even those diabolical Tories with their privatise first ask questions later attitude would never dare to get rid of the NHS. I can't get my head round good health being something you can either afford or not. For me it's something that everyone, regardless of income, or any other discriminatory factor should have access to.

But then I too am an evil socialist.

I agree that healthcare is something that everyone should have access to, but from everything I've read about this bill, it's complete crap!

It's estimated that healthcare insurance costs will increase somewhere between 40 and 70%. They want to penalize those who don't purchase health insurance, and the majority of americans are against the bill, yet they are doing their best to ram it down our throats!

Lastly, the federal government does NOT have the constitutional right or power to regulate healthcare and was never intended to!

They are citing that they do have the power to do so under the commerce clause, but since when has healthcare had anything to do with interstate commerce?

For those of you in England, Germany and other nations you have to remember that we are a Republic, and a nation of states that united and formed a federal government to work for the states, not the other way around.

We are not socialist and have not had a socialist party on the ballots in the U.S. If the federal government want to overturn our Constitution and the fundamental makeup of our Country, then it should be put before the States and the citizens of those states to decide.

The opening line of our Constitution states" "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

We the people, formed the federal government and estiblished confines and limitations on what power and authority it would have. They have been trampling all over the Constitution and grabbing powers never intended to be in their hands!

We even created an amendment to the Constitution to prevent them from doing so, but that hasn't done much good either.

The 10th amendment to the Constitution states: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

(03-20-2010 2:34 PM)mark-in-dallas Wrote:  The opening line of our Constitution states" "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

Hate to say it but ummm!

I don't think that means provide subsidies to automakers.

Anyone know a site that has a fairly unbiased explanation of the healthcare reform thing? Like explaining what we have going on now and what will change with the current reform? Or can someone who is knowledgeable about it explain it to me? I'm reading up on some of it on CNN and I like some of the stuff in the bill. Providing coverage for people with existing conditions and increasing coverage is nice. The thing that really pisses me off though, is that I'm forced to buy insurance or I'm fined. I have insurance, but the fact that I would be fined if I didn't enrages me.

(03-22-2010 5:06 PM)zeph Wrote:  The thing that really pisses me off though, is that I'm forced to buy insurance or I'm fined. I have insurance, but the fact that I would be fined if I didn't enrages me.

I imagine HIP (Health Insurance Police) will be really busy handing out citations to homeless, mentally ill, druggies, stubborn idealists and assorted dirt poor folk. Here in downtown Honolulu police are stationed on nearly every block, handing out jaywalking citations. Apparently it generates massive amounts of cash in these times of low tax revenues. Perhaps insurance criminals will be a cash cow too.

Bipartisan even with no Repooplican votes, I guess is a reference to the purported 200 Rep. amendments to the bill that was passed by the Democraps.

Just to make a distinction...To say the public overwhelmingly is against it, makes it sound like the public doesn't want to change the status quo, but the truth is about 25% who are polled as being against it are against it because it's not single payer. In other words because it doesn't go far enough.

Adding those numbers to those who want to change the status quo, the public overwhelmingly supports overhauling what we have.

It's ridiculous all the money we have for war, bombs, maiming, torture, but when it comes to health care, we can't afford it.

Conservatives fought against banning slavery, & against women voting, blacks voting, child labor laws, any labor laws, workplace safety, cleaner air and water, anti-trust laws, any attempts to prevent jobs from going overseas, food stamps to prevent starvation in the USA, medicare for elderly, medicaid for babies and children, minimum wage, time and a half; basically any human right or social program to help the people, conservatives have fought tooth and nail.

That said, this is a bad bill and a trojan horse for the insurance and medical cartels. Western medicine causes more harm than good. If you want to stay alive longer, your odds increase by staying away from allopathic medical mafia practitioners whose interest in you is not curing or preventing anything, but putting you on as many drugs for life as they can hoodwink you into believing you need -- All of which will give you side affects for which they will give you more toxic drugs...

Or talking you into surgery that you usually don't need or into radiating your body needlessly.

Take mammograms that squeeze breast tissue so severely that non malignant tiny cysts that would have been fine just left alone, get ruptured and then are exposed to radiation that creates malignancies.

Doctors aren't even allowed, by law, to tell their patients the truth that 80% a cancer is avoidable via vitamin D, especially sunshine. Most doctors don't even know it and it's not in their interest to keep us cancer free anyway.

They'd rather put us all on dubious statin drugs that harm us instead of tell us to eat blueberries.

This bill forces everybody to pay into a corrupt system, even though of us who pride ourselves of not being a part of the problem. It's going to increase the scope of the IRS to wreak havoc in the lives of people as well.

This bill is the insurance cartel's wet dream. There are 4 giant corporations that account for the vast majority of coverage. Most states have 2 choices. Some have only one.

This bill did not even have a public option that would have created competition.

There is nothing in the constitution about interstate highways, by the way, but I don't know that we should do without them.

Yes, even a single payer system, like all the other non 3rd world and civilized nations (and even some 3rd world nations) have, in and of itself, is
not the end all answer to the obstacle of the medical mafia of big pharma, AMA, allopathic monopoly, but it would keep people from being indentured servants to the corrupt system, due to owing their soul to the company store when catastrophic illness or events strike them.

Did anyone see, "Sicko"?

Why should insurance executives make billions while telling people they can't have the health care their doctors are saying are needed to save their lives?

It's not at all unlike the banks and AIG getting billions while Joe Lunch Bucket and Suzy Secretary get foreclosed upon.

This is class warfare. It's getting worse and worse, and conservatives continue to fight against their self interest and take up for the right of the elite to make as much money as the "market" allows for. The unfettered market is sending us to hell in a hand basket, and real change is desperately needed.

Unfortunately this bill is not real change and Obama is no differnet than Bush, McCain, Clinton, et al.

The only way to make sense of what is going on is to recognize the globalist agenda that has been in affect for generations and is eerily close to their stated goal of "global governance", (in the words of Al Gore).

Anybody here listen to Alex Jones? inforwars.com / prisonplanet.com

Click - Listen To Alex

(03-23-2010 4:20 AM)cosmomac Wrote:  Just to make a distinction...To say the public overwhelmingly is against it, makes it sound like the public doesn't want to change the status quo, but the truth is about 25% who are polled as being against it are against it because it's not single payer. In other words because it doesn't go far enough.

Here's an MSNBC poll showing that out of the 743,498 people who voted 67.2% are ANGRY.

MSNBC Poll

(03-23-2010 8:35 AM)mark-in-dallas Wrote:  Here's an MSNBC poll showing that out of the 743,498 people who voted 67.2% are ANGRY.

That should be "sheeple", the radical far right wingnuts (Tea Baggers, et. al.)scream loud and long enough and the sheep will follow. He!!, 60% of the American population believes humans sprang fully formed from Hera's head.