Millard Fillmore's Bathtub

142 Responses to Another way to tell Republicans and opponents of health care reform have lost their minds, or their hearts, or their conscience

1. James Kessler says:

   August 5, 2009 at 6:06 pm

   It’s rather simple, LW. If you want to argue that you have the right to refuse to get health insurance then that right also includes the right to get it. But yet you have no problem in letting the insurance companies cut people off from their health insurance to pad their profits.

   The funny thing about rights, LW, is that they work both ways. My right to vote includes my right not to vote. My right to own a gun includes my right not to own a gun. My right to pray includes my right not to pray. If you object to the government telling you that you must have health insurance then have the decency to object to the insurance companies screwing over those that have it, those that need it and those and that want it. Else your hypocrisy is showing.

   And you may be willing to sit down and attempt to fix the problem but the insurance companies and the Republicans aren’t. And since they, not you, are the ones leading the opposition then if you want to argue that there’s a better way then the President’s plan then you really should get the ones that speak for you..the Republicans and the insurance companies..to sit down and compromise.

   And do bother to remember that compromise means you’re not going to get it entirely your way. Some of what you inanely call “socialism” you are merely going to have to swallow.

   Then you can kindly quit stretching the definition of socialism so that it loses all meaning.

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2. Lady Why says:

   August 5, 2009 at 4:59 pm

   James, you had me agreeing with you there for a minute! I was with you until you got to the part about strict government oversight. Bad idea. What does the government know about health care? I take you back to the ‘Cash for Clunkers’ debacle.

   I also disagree with you on the government capping pay. The government doesn’t get to tell private industry what to pay its people.

   And, the government will not “compete” in the industry, it will monopolize the industry. The free market will be a thing of the past.

   You don’t want to pay for all those vacations and mansions? You already are in the Goldman Sachs, AIG and other Wall Street firms that took your money and yachted away with it, right Ed?

   Covering illegal immigrants? Why doesn’t the US take our military, storm the borders of Mexico and force Mexico to provide health care for its people? Why should we pay for what the Mexican government should be forcing down the throats of their own people? And, if Mexico refuses the American government should invade, take over and manage their affairs for them, right? If not, why not?

   James, you brought up the private school thing before and I didn’t ‘go there’ because we are talking about health care, but it might be a valuable example to use now. Private schools and homeschools do NOT compete with the government schools. We ALL pay taxes which fund government schools whether we use them or not. If we decide we don’t like government schools, those of us that can afford to, pay OVER AND ABOVE our tax dollars to buy a better education for our children. At this point, we still have the choice to opt out of government school while still paying for it… a choice we won’t have in health care, by the way.

   For education to TRULY be competitive, the government should GIVE US BACK all our education tax dollars and allow citizens to CHOOSE which school they want and spend their tax dollars there… be it government school, charter school, private school or homeschool. THEN the government, I dare say, would see a mass exodus from their schools for more quality education. As it stands, the government holds the poor and middle class hostage because they force them, through taxation, to spend their money sending their children to substandard government schools. The Dept. of Education doesn’t want you to have choice (hence, the constant defeat of the voucher systems) because they would no longer be needed and they’d lose their big mansions and vacation villas.

   That is NOT free market competition. I wanted to clarify that since you think it will be a similar situation with health care. It will be similar in the sense that quality medical clinics would most likely pop up and IF YOU CAN PAY, you can seek medical attention there… similar to exclusive private schools.

   Is that what you really want?

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3. Lady Why says:

   August 5, 2009 at 4:41 pm

   OK, James. Maybe the better thing is for me to ask YOU the definition of socialism. Can you tell me what socialism is and how the current bill is NOT socialism in spades?

   I would expect you to only scream “Fascism!” if what I say is actually fascism. That’s all I’m doing. Calling socialism what it is… socialism.

   James I think you’re having a little trouble keeping up with our conversations. You said:

   “As for my questions..gee I don’t remember asking you to give up Medicare, Medicaid, Social security and to refuse to say the pledge before. Well correction, i did ask you about Medicare but not the others.”

   When four comments prior you did just that:

   “And you’re going to give up your Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security right, LW? And you’ll also agree that any money you have in the banks will not be protected by the FDIC insurance right?

   And you’re also going to refuse to say the Pledge of Allegiance anymore right?

   After all..the Pledge was originally written by *gasp* a Socialist.

   Come on..let’s see you live up to your claimed principles.”

   I don’t really know what the Pledge of Allegiance has to do with this discussion but I’ll bite and say that I would not give up saying it because I love my country and I pledge my allegiance to it. The fact that it was written by a socialist just goes to show socialists are good for something! Just not running my country or my health care! :-D

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4. Lady Why says:

   August 5, 2009 at 4:30 pm

   So, Ed, you think the American government should provide sweeping preventative, wellness, and acute medical care to ANYONE IN THE WORLD that wants it? (or that doesn’t want it, if it’s mandatory) You think that the current bill is not doing enough and that the government should be more far reaching and invasive to its citizens’ (and non-citizens’) lives?

   I am guessing that you are thrilled with the nationalization of the auto industry then and I take from your arguments we would be better off if government controlled all industry?

   I mentioned two examples on August 3rd at 8:22am and I’m copying them for you here so you don’t have to look back:

   “Let me just throw out another example for your consideration. Following your logic, it is terrible that people are homeless living in shanties in the Appalachians or under the interstates of Los Angeles. Those of us in privately owned houses should be more than willing, then, to allow the government to step in and reform housing. They should be allowed to tear down all existing housing (in the same way they will drive private insurance companies out of business) and build – to the tune of billions of tax payer dollars – rows upon rows of government housing which we will all get to/have to live in. It’s not fair that some people have big beautiful homes while some are homeless so we need to make it fair by implementing a system by which everyone has a house.

   Same thing.

   Or maybe this one… Some people can’t afford food. Now we have welfare, food stamps, WIC and all that, but still some people are hungry and it’s not fair that the wealthy people have access to their choice of grocery stores while the hungry can’t afford to shop. So, the best thing is for the government to step in, tear down the grocery stores and have us stand in government run soup kitchen lines. The government gets to decide what we eat and how much we get.

   Same thing.”

   Would you support these two examples I gave if the government wanted to come in and take over housing and the food industry? If not, why not?

   And, finally, is there ANYTHING that you disagree with this president about other than what you mentioned, that he’s not doing enough to seize control of our lives?

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5. Lady Why says:

   August 5, 2009 at 4:18 pm

   James, my answer to your Medicare question is found on August 1st at 1:08pm. I include it below since you missed it:

   “Hi again James, In answer to your second post to me, yes, I would happily give up my Medicare (which is not free, by the way. My mother found out she would have to pay $196.00 per month for it which is more than she pays for her private insurance at work). I think it is poorly run and will be bankrupt by the time I would be eligible for it.

   No, I would not strip the military (which is horrible health care says my friend whose husband is a retired Air Force pilot) or the politicians of their employer provided health care. The government is their employer and I think it is appropriate for the government AS AN EMPLOYER to provide their employees with health care. It is NOT the government’s job to provide the rest of us health care, however.”

   I also answered it a second time on August 2nd at 8:26pm. Here it is again:

   “I think I already covered that I would gladly decline Medicare for my private insurance as my mother has also done. I also covered how I feel about the government providing insurance to their employees. I won’t beat that dead horse. ”

   You are right… not everything the government does that falls into a category of “something I don’t like” is socialism. They do an awful lot I don’t like which is not an aspect of socialism. But, that’s a rant for another day. :-) The health care bill, by the way, does.

   In answer to your car insurance question… I don’t have a problem at all with car insurance being required. If I don’t want car insurance, I simply choose not to drive a car. Furthermore, my not having car insurance has the potential to negatively impact another person I might injure in an accident and I need to be able to make restitution for damages or injury and most people do that with auto insurance. Therefore, insurance is required to drive a car. Not a problem for me because I still have a choice whether or not I want to have car insurance by my choice whether or not to drive a car.

   I do not, however, want the government to come in and take over the car insurance industry – though, you could argue just as loudly that they are out for money and stick it to us consumers every chance they get. If there are problems (and there are because no system is perfect) then, under your thinking, the government should step in and take over car insurance, micromanage benefits and bring requirements down on what kind of car we can drive, how far we can go, what we pay for gas, and how many miles we are allotted per week. Would you have a problem with THAT?

   Under Obama’s plan, I will NOT have a choice whether or not I have health insurance. I will not have a choice between insurance companies. I have a problem with that and so should you.

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6. James Kessler says:

   August 5, 2009 at 3:33 pm

   LW, if you drive a car you are required to have insurance for it. Do you really want to argue that it being mandatory that you have health insurance is any more onerous then that? And as for the 1.4 million dollars a day the Insurance industry is spending, the citation is from PBS. The 540 million dollars I listed I cited when I said it.

   And as for my asking you to give up Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare gee..I checked your posts and unless I missed it you never answered that question. Even ran a Find function on your posts. The only time you mentioned any of those things was when you were trying to convince Ed that socialism exists where it doesn’t. Well correction..you did mention Medicaid in one other post but it still wasn’t you saying whether or not you’d accept it.

   Sorry, not everything the government does or attempts to do is socialism just because you don’t like it. Which is what’s going on.

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7. James Kessler says:

   August 5, 2009 at 3:22 pm

   But if you want reasonability here lets try this.

   Insurance companies can no longer use preexisting conditions as excuses to cut people off coverage.

   They can no longer take money from customers and then refuse to pay for medical care.

   They lose their control over what sort of treatment a patient can get and how long they can stay in a hospital. That decision is to be made by said patient and by that patient’s doctor.

   They have strict oversight done by Congress.

   And the vast majority of the money they spend lobbying has to go to providing health coverage for every person in the country. And that includes immigrants and yes illegal immigrants. As Ed stated..it is risking an epidemic otherwise.

   And none of those rules is allowed to be changed ever. Meaning the next time the Republicans gain control of Congress they can’t give the Insurance companies free reign like they’ve done for the last 20+ years.

   oh..forgot the part about top executive pay is capped. Sorry, I don’t want my health care costs jumping through the roof to pay for the President, CEO’s and the senior vice president’s 5th homes, 10th car or vacations to Fiji every month.

   Well?

   Otherwise I see no reason why the government shouldn’t compete with them to bring down the costs of health care. After all..the government has to compete when it comes to education and several other things. Like I said before…if a private school can be allowed to compete against the government when it comes to education in this country then you have no valid reason to make health insurance companies a sacred cow.

   If you want to believe the government has no business doing so..fine..then private schools are outlawed, and mercenary companies like Black Water are also outlawed.

   Sorry, your standard doesn’t get to be one thing for one set of circumstances and another for a different set of circumstances. So choose.

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8. James Kessler says:

   August 5, 2009 at 3:09 pm

   No, LW, I did not say that Republicans invented Socialism.

   I said they’re calling Socialism what is not Socialism. You and your side use it as an excuse to oppose anything you don’t like. And hence it’s lost nearly it’s entire meaning. Sorry, you just can’t call something socialism merely because you don’t like it. Which is what is going on. it’s the same as if every time you or a Republican said something I screamed “Fascism.”

   And its you and your side who is being unreasonable and unwilling to compromise. it’s your side trying to maintain the status quo at any cost.

   As for my questions..gee I don’t remember asking you to give up Medicare, Medicaid, Social security and to refuse to say the pledge before. Well correction, i did ask you about Medicare but not the others.

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9. Ed Darrell says:

   August 5, 2009 at 1:35 pm

   I don’t think it’s ambitious enough in providing coverage for uninsured people. The provision that prevents coverage for illegal immigrants and illegal aliens is a positive threat to public health — consider what would happen in an outbreak of influenza along the lines of the 19l8 killer, which was closely related to the current strain of “swine” flu. Preventing care to anyone is a threat to the health of everyone, always more expensive, and immoral (Jesus delivered health care benefits regardless of race, creed, color, or country of origin — there’s a good moral there).

   I think there is way too much compromise to allow insurance executives and Republicans to save face.

   Generally, it’s just too little, too late. Republicans kept Harry Truman from making the changes. They blocked more extensive improvements in the Johnson Administration, though most people agreed they were necessary. Republicans and business interests blocked reform in 1994, and since then costs have risen by about double, contrary to the claims of the “anti-socialists” back then.

   If the Soviet Union had done to us what Mitch McConnell is trying to do to us again, we’d have declared war and targeted our nuclear weapons.

   It’s time to act, and stop complaining about imaginary monsters under the hospital bed.

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10. Lady Why says:

    August 5, 2009 at 1:13 pm

    Ed, let me ask you this…

    Is there any part of the bill, any part at all, that gives you pause? Do you think that each and every line of that bill is necessary and desirable?

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11. Lady Why says:

    August 5, 2009 at 12:34 pm

    James. Please. This is getting laborious. Are you reading my answers? You keep asking me questions I have already answered.

    So now the Republicans invented socialism? It’s not real it’s just a term my “side” invented to muddy the waters?

    How can I reason with the unreasonable?

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12. James Kessler says:

    August 5, 2009 at 12:10 pm

    And you’re going to give up your Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security right, LW? And you’ll also agree that any money you have in the banks will not be protected by the FDIC insurance right?

    And you’re also going to refuse to say the Pledge of Allegiance anymore right?

    After all..the Pledge was originally written by *gasp* a Socialist.

    Come on..let’s see you live up to your claimed principles.

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13. James Kessler says:

    August 5, 2009 at 12:06 pm

    LW, under the right wing definition of socialism anything that government does that the private sector can do is socialism.

    That would include your, assuming you have it, city sewer and water. The building and maintaining of your streets and parks. And your local police and fire departments. It would also include, just a short list, the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, NASA, the Secret Service, the CDC, the FDIC, the FEC, the SEC, the US Army, Air Force, Navy, Marines and Coast Guard.

    In other words your and the right wing’s definition of socialism is nonsense. It’s merely a word your side started using because you can’t use the word “Communism” anymore.

    Sorry, nothing about the proposed bill is socialism, doesn’t even come close. So what we are left with is that you have no problem in letting companies making money at the cost of people’s health and lives. That they can make a profit means more to you than the people mean to you.

    And considering your side has devolved into making the arguments that the bill means the government is going to kill people older then 55, is going to force abortions and is going to force sex change operations is the clearest cut indication that you and your side has no credible argument to make. And your side especially lost credibility with the “socialist” canard and amusingly the “nazi” and “fascist” canard because apparently somewhere since we fought WW 2 your side forgot that Nazis and the fascists were on your side of the political spectrum.

    As I asked you before..and as you refused to answer. Have the insurance companies done anything to mend their ways in the last 20+ years? Have they? Have they stopped the practice of “preexisting conditions”? Have they started delivering what they promise instead of taking people’s money and then refusing to pay for health care? Have they cut their lobbying expenses so they could provide health care to every person in the country? Have they brought their top executive pay in line so that it isn’t so obscenely more then their lowliest paid employee makes?

    Have they done any of those things? Have they even offered to?

    Because I haven’t seen it and since they seem so bent on stopping any reform period instead of offering to compromise then why in God’s name should we protect them?

    Because they’re private industry and can make a profit? Sorry…haven’t seen that in the US Constitution where the government has to protect a company’s profit. Nor have I seen it in the US Constitution where it says the government can’t get in the business of providing health care. But gee..I do believe “promote the general welfare” would include seeing to the health and well being of the people who make up this country. If the private industry can not provide then the Government has a responsibility to do so.

    You are on the wrong side of this issue. You are on the wrong side politically, you are on the wrong side morally, you are on the wrong side intellectually. So as I told you before you and your side gets to compromise first. Because for damn sure you and your side hasn’t been interested in actually improving things and compromising yet. You and your side are too busy blathering “socialism” “fascism” and other stupid dimwitted fear tactics.

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14. Ed Darrell says:

    August 5, 2009 at 11:34 am

    LW, is it safe to assume you oppose, as socialist and unnecessary, the programs you’ve catalogued from H.R. 3200? Are any of those features desirable, in your view?

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15. Lady Why says:

    August 5, 2009 at 11:23 am

    Ed, you think I’ve never followed health care before? What is that supposed to mean?

    My list shows I have blind opposition to making things better? Can’t wait to hear how that is so.

    There are plenty of things that I don’t like that Republican presidents put into place, the Patriot Act for example. Don’t even get me started on welfare. I don’t like socialistic policies no matter who brings them on board. I don’t play favorites when criticizing those that seek to expand government, usurp my personal authority over my life and erode liberty.

    I really think we’re spinning our wheels here because we clearly are speaking two different languages.

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16. Ed Darrell says:

    August 5, 2009 at 8:15 am

    LW, one thing is clear: You’ve never followed health care before.

    I’ll get to your list. It’s astounding to me that you think every part of medical care in the U.S. is “socialism,” and programs that originated with Ronald Reagan are now “big government” and too socialist to continue.

    Your list, by itself, demonstrates a blind opposition to any proposal to make things better. Is that what you intended?

    Off to my physician, ironically. Later.

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17. Lady Why says:

    August 4, 2009 at 7:06 pm

    James, let’s consult good ole Noah Webster for the definition of socialism, shall we?

    1. a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole.
    2. procedure or practice in accordance with this theory.
    3. (in Marxist theory) the stage following capitalism in the transition of a society to communism, characterized by the imperfect implementation of collectivist principles.

    I have read a good portion of the bill… I’d dare say a good bit more than the members of Congress that are attempting to foist it upon me. Have you?

    I addressed some of my concerns with the bill line by line in an earlier comment. It is clearly a socialist bill by the very definition of socialism.

    If you want to live under a socialist regime where your benevolent leaders control every aspect of your life, you have lots of choices. Pack your bags and go. I personally want to live in a nation where the Constitution is still the law of the land, our elected officials are held in check, and our right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is intact.

    Maybe that’s just me.

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18. Lady Why says:

    August 4, 2009 at 6:57 pm

    OK, Ed. I’m going to try and talk about the health care bill but I really think it is fruitless when I realize you have no problems with Wall Street (the good guys?) and call those of us who note the CLEAR socialist agenda in this health care bill ‘baby killers’. But, I’m willing to give it a go.

    Here are a few of my problems:

    Pg 22 of the HC Bill MANDATES the Govt will audit the books of ALL EMPLOYERS that self insure.

    Pg 30 Sec 123 of HC bill – There will be a government committee that decides what treatments/benefits you get.

    Pg 29 lines 4-16 in the HC bill – Your health care is rationed.

    Pg 42 of HC Bill – The Health Choices Commissioner will choose your benefits for you.

    Pg 50 Section 152 in HC bill – HC will be provided to ALL non US citizens, illegal or otherwise.

    Pg 58 in HC bill – Government will have real-time access to individual’s finances & a National ID Health care card will be issued.

    Pg 59 in HC bill lines 21-24 – Government will have direct access to your banks accounts for electronic funds transfer.

    Pg 72 in HC bill lines 8-14 Government is creating a health care exchange to bring private health care plans under government control.

    Pg 84 Sec 203 in HC bill – Government mandates ALL benefit packages for private health care plans in the exchange.

    Pg 102 Lines 12-18 – Medicaid eligible individual will be automatically enrolled in Medicaid. No choice.

    Pg 124 lines 24-25 – No company can sue government on price fixing. No “judicial review” against government monopoly.

    Pg 127 Lines 1-16 – Doctors/ #AMA – The government will tell YOU what you can make.

    Pg 145 Line 15-17 An employer MUST automatically enroll employees into public option plan.

    Pg 126 Lines 22-25 Employers MUST pay for health care for part time employees and their families.

    Pg 149 Lines 16-24 ANY Employer with payroll of 400k & above who does not provide pubic option pays 8% tax on all payroll.

    Pg 150 Lines 9-13 Businesses with payroll betweeb 251k & 400k who don’t provide public option pays 2-6% tax on all payroll

    Pg 167 Lines 18-23 ANY individual who doesn’t have acceptable health care according to government will be taxed 2.5% of income.

    Pg 170 Lines 1-3 Any NONRESIDENT Alien is exempt from individual taxes.

    Pg 195 Officers & employees of health care administration (government) will have access to ALL Americans financial and personal records.

    Pg 203 Line 14-15 – “The tax imposed under this section shall not be treated as tax”

    Pg 239 Line 14-24 – Government will reduce physician services for Medicaid. Seniors, low income, poor affected.

    Pg 241 Line 6-8 – Doctors, it does not matter what specialty you have, you’ll all be paid the same.

    Pg 253 Line 10-18 Government sets value of doctor’s time, proffesional judgments, etc. Literally value of humans.

    Pg 265 Sec 1131 – Government mandates & controls productivity for private health care industries.

    Pg 268 Sec 1141 – Federal government regulates rental & purchase of power driven wheelchairs.

    Pg 272 SEC. 1145. – Government regulates treatment of certain cancer hospitals & cancer patients – welcome to rationing!

    Page 280 Sec 1151 – The government will penalize hospitals for what government deems preventable readmissions.

    Pg 298 Lines 9-11 – Doctors treat a patient during initial admission that results in a readmission, the government will penalize you.

    Pg 317 L 13-20 – PROHIBITION on ownership/investment. Government tells doctors what/how much they can own.

    Pg 317-318 lines 21-25,1-3 – PROHIBITION on expansion-Government is mandating hospitals cannot expand.

    Pg 321 2-13 – Hospitals have opportunity to apply for exception BUT community input required.

    Pg 335 L 16-25 Pg 336-339 – Government mandates establishment of outcome based measures. Health care the way they want it.

    Pg 341 Lines 3-9 – Government has authority to disqualify Medicare Advantage Plans (Part B), HMOs, etc. forcing people into government plan.

    Pg 354 Sec 1177 – Government will RESTRICT enrollment of special needs people.

    Pg 379 Sec 1191 – Government creates more bureaucracy – Telehealth Advisory Committee. Health care by phone/internet?

    Pg 425 Lines 4-12 – Government mandates Advance [Death] Care Planning Consult. Think senior citizens end of life.

    Pg 425 Lines 17-19 – Government will instruct & consult regarding living wills, durable powers of attorney. Mandatory!

    Pg 425 Lines 22-25, 426 Lines 1-3 – Government provides approved list of end of life resources, guiding you in death.

    Pg 427 Lines 15-24 – Government mandates program for orders for end of life. The government has a say in how your life ends. (and you accuse opponents of this of being killers?)

    Pg 429 Lines 1-9 – An “advanced care planning consult” will be used frequently as patients health deteriorates.

    Pg 429 Lines 10-12 – An “advanced care consultation” may include an ORDER for end of life plans. AN ORDER from GOVERNMENT? (who are the killers again?)

    Pg 429 Lines 13-25 – The government will specify which doctors can write an end of life order.

    PG 430 Lines 11-15 – The government will decide what level of treatment you will have at end of life (This really does give the government the authority to determine who lives and dies, and when. A government bureaucrat really will be making this decision for you and your loved ones. You’re FOR this?)

    Pg 489 Sec 1308 The government will cover marriage & family therapy. They will insert government into your marriage.

    Pg 494-498 – Government will cover Mental Health Services including defining, creating, rationing those services.

    PG 502 Sec 1181 – Center for Comparative Effectiveness Research Established. – Hello Big Brother – Literally.

    Pg 503 Lines 13-19 – Government will build registries and data networks from YOUR electronic medical records.

    Pg 503 lines 21-25 – Government may secure data directly from any department or agency of the US including your data.

    Pg 504 Lines 6-10 – The “Center” will collect data both published & unpublished (that means public & your private info)

    PG 506 Lines 19-21 – The “Center” will recommend policies that would allow for public access of data.

    PG 524 18-22 Comparative Effectiveness Research Trust Fund set up. More taxes for ALL.

    PG 621 Lines 20-25 – Government will define what quality means in health care. Since when does government know about quality?

    Pg 622 Lines 2-9 – To pay for the Quality Standards, government will transfer money from to other government trust funds. More taxes.

    PG 624 – “Quality” measures shall be designed to assess outcomes & functional status of patients.

    PG 624 – “Quality” measures shall be designed to profile you including race, age, gender, place of residence, etc.

    Pg 628 Sec 1443 – Government will give “Multi-Stake Holders” pre-rule making input into selection of “quality” measures.

    Pg 630 9-24/631 1-9 – Those multi-stake holder groups include unions & groups like ACORN deciding health care quality.

    Pg 632 Lines 14-25 – The government may implement any “quality measure” of health care services as they see fit.

    PG 633 14-25/ 634 1-9 – The secretary may issue non-endorsed “quality measures” for physician services & dialysis services.

    Pg 635 to 653 – Physicians payments Sunshine Provision – Government wants to shine sunlight on doctors but not government.

    PG 660-671 – Doctors in Residency – Government will tell you where your residency will be, thus where you’ll live.

    Pg 676-686 – Government will regulate hospitals in EVERY aspect of residency programs, including teaching hospitals.

    Pgs 701-704 Sec 1619 – If your part of health care plan isn’t in government health care exchange but you qualify for federal aid, no payment.

    PG 705-709 SEC. 1128 – If secretary gets complaints on health care provider or supplier, government can do background check.

    PG 711 Lines 8-14 – The secretary has broad powers to deny health care providers/ suppliers admittance into health care exchange. Your doctor could be thrown out of business.

    Pg 719-720 Sec 1637 – ANY Doctor who orders durable medical equipment or home medical services MUST be enrolled in Medicare.

    PG 724 Lines 16-22 – Gov’t reserves right to apply face to face certification for patient to ANY other health care service.

    Pg 765 Sec 1711 – Government will require preventative services including vaccines. (Choice?)

    Pg 769 3-5 Nurse Home Visit Services – “increasing birth intervals between pregnancies.” Government ABORTIONS anyone?

    Pg 770 SEC 1714 Federal Government mandates eligibility for State Family Planning Services.

    Pg 789-797 Gov’t will set, mandate drug prices, controlling which drugs brought to market. Bye bye, innovation!

    Pgs 797-800 SEC. 1744 – PAYMENTS for graduate medical education. The government will now control Doctors’ education.

    PG 801 Sec 1751 – The gov’t will decide which health care conditions will be paid. Say RATION!

    Pg 810 SEC. 1759. – Billing Agents, clearinghouses, etc req. to register. Gov’t takes over private payment system.

    Pg 820-824 Sec 1801 – Gov’t will identify individuals ineligible for subsidies. Will access all personal financial information.

    Pg 824-829 SEC. 1802. – Gov’t sets up Comparative Effectiveness Research Trust Fund. Another tax black hole.

    PG 829-833 Gov’t will impose a fee on ALL private health insurance plans including self insured to pay for Trust Fund.

    Pg 838-840 Gov’t will design & implement Home Visitation Program for families with young kids & families expect kids.

    PG 844-845 This Home Visitation Program includes gov’t coming into your house & telling you how to parent!!!

    Pg 859 Gov’t will establish a Public Health Fund at a cost of $88,800,000,000. Yes that’s Billion.

    Pg 865 The Gov’t will MANDATE the establishment of a National Health Service Corps.

    PG 865 to 876 The NHS Corps is a program where Drs. perform mandatory HC for 2yrs for part loan repayment.

    PG 876-892 The gov’t takes over the education of our medical students and doctors. Just think what they’ve done for public schools!

    PG 898 – The Gov’t will establish a Public Health Workforce Corps to ensure supply of public health professionals.

    PG 898 The Public health workforce corps shall consist of civilian employees of the U.S. as Secretary deems.

    PG 898 The Public health workforce corps shall consist of officers of Regular & Reserve Corps of Service.

    PG 900 The Public Health Workforce Corps includes veterinarians.

    PG 901 The Public Health Workforce Corps WILL include commissioned Regular & Reserve Officers. Health care draft?

    PG 910 The gov’t will develop, build & run Public Health Training Centers.

    PG 913-914 Gov’t starts a health care affirmative action program through guise of diversity scholarships.

    PG 915 SEC. 2251. – Govt MANDATES cultural & linguistic competency training for health care professionals.

    Pg 932 The gov’t will establish Preventative & Wellness Trust fund- initial cost of $30,800,000,000-Billion.

    PG 935 21-22 Gov’t will identify specific goals & objectives for prevention & wellness activities. (no more hamburgers for you!)

    PG 936 – Gov’t will develop “Healthy People & National Public Health Performance Standards” Tell me what to eat?

    PG 942 Lines 22-25 – More gov’t offices of Surgeon General -Public Health Svc, Minority Health, Women’s Health.

    PG 950- 980 – BIG GOV’T core public health infrastructure including workforce capacity, lab systems; health info sys, etc.

    PG 993 – Gov’t will establish school based health clinics. Your kids won’t have a chance.

    PG 994 School Based Health Clinic will be integrated into the school environment.

    Whew! There’s more but that’s all I’m going to type for now. That should be enough to get the conversation started, don’t you think?

    LikeLike

19. Lady Why says:

    August 4, 2009 at 6:09 pm

    Ed, Ed, Ed… where do I even begin? You are DEFENDING Goldman Sachs?! Seriously? Wow. You really have been drinking the Kool-Aid!

    OK, let’s see if I get this straight… you have no problem with the fact that Goldman Sachs with the help of its former executives now working for Obama taking tax payer bailouts while their number one competitor, Lehman Brothers, was driven out of business? You have no problem with their payback being so small? You have no problem that money was also funneled to them by AIG? You have no problem that they are now taking our tax payer money and giving out obscene salaries (to make up for the massive bonuses that was frowned upon earlier this year). You have no problem with this? They are the good guys and I am the baby killer? Seriously? Where do you come up with this stuff?

    Here are a few things you might want to read:

    http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1911056,00.html?xid=rss-topstories

    http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1891281,00.html

    http://money.cnn.com/2009/07/15/news/companies/aig_bailout/

    http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2008/09/aig-bailout-saved-goldman.html

    http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/03/goldman_sachss_double_dip.html

    http://bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=a2X3hNaWcbeg

    http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2009/07/craig-roberts-former-assistant-treasury.html

    Goldman Sachs Now Entirely Free From Treasury, On The Cheap (GS)

    And, just when I thought you were starting to talk some sense.

    LikeLike

20. James Kessler says:

    August 4, 2009 at 1:22 pm

    LW, Define socialism.

    Because I’ve discovered that the vast majority of the people who bandy about the term “socialism” have no actual clue what it means.

    It’s a republican buzz word that has lost all meaning.

    Because sorry government run health care isn’t “socialism.”

    Unless of course you want to argue that the Catholic church..you know..one of the main reasons Communism fell..is socialist. Do you?

    LikeLike

21. Ed Darrell says:

    August 4, 2009 at 1:04 pm

    You left out Goldman Sachs. Do you know how many people Obama has on his staff that were past executives of Goldman Sachs? Do you know how much ‘bail out’ money went down the proverbial rabbit hole at Goldman Sachs never to be seen again?

    LW, Goldman Sachs paid back the money they got from the bailout — the public profited $1.4 billion from the deal.

    Surely your “liberal biased” newspaper carried the story — you can even read about it in New Zealand:
    http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10586234

    July 24 — Goldman Sachs yesterday exited the US Government’s bailout programme after paying off a loan that has netted US$1.4 billion (NZ$2.1 billion) for the taxpayer.

    The investment bank yesterday said it would pay US$1.1 billion to buy back warrants issued to the US Treasury as part of a US$10 billion federal loan agreement.

    Goldman and eight other major banks were told to accept bailout money last October in order to restore confidence in the US banking system, and hundreds of smaller banks followed suit. The Government has received dividends on the loans and will also receive cash for the warrants if banks decide to repay the money early.

    Goldman paid back its bailout money last month but it has taken several weeks to negotiate a price for the warrants, which enable the Government to buy shares of the bank at a set price in 10 years, capitalising on gains in market value.

    You guys really won’t let Obama get credit for anything he does right, will you.

    Do you know how many babies could have been insured with that money?

    1.4 million kids could be covered for $1,000/year with the profits from the Goldman Sachs deal — except your side won’t let the bill pass.

    Yeah, we know exactly how many babies you’re trying to kill keep from getting health care.

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22. Ed Darrell says:

    August 4, 2009 at 12:47 pm

    Which section of the bill do you claim is socialist, LW, and why?

    Is it socialist to prevent child abuse?

    Is it socialist to spread private insurance?

    Is it socialist to train more doctors, in a program that has existed since 1968? Is it socialist to train more nurses?

    Is it socialist to move the delivery of health care out of the fairgrounds and tents, as the video shows, and put it into a private doctor’s office?

    Which part of the bill is socialist?

    I get a very strong impression you’ve not read the bill at all.

    LikeLike

23. Lady Why says:

    August 4, 2009 at 12:42 pm

    James, how can you say my “side” isn’t interested in debate? I know tons of people on my “side” that are more than interested in debate and figuring out the best way to correct the problems that exist. I haven’t found that to be true at all.

    Health care coverage has to be mandatory? I don’t think so! I am a smart girl and I can decide for myself how to raise my children, what food to eat, where to live, what to do for a living and whether or not I want health care coverage. The day the government gets to step in and take any of these choices away from me is the day I no longer have liberty. The government is not our parent and we don’t need someone to usurp our common sense. There will always be stupid people but you don’t steal freedom from everyone to protect the stupid.

    There isn’t an age limit on Medicaid. It’s essentially a welfare program. Children are on it. The woman you mention can go to Blue Cross and buy an Individual Blue for $99.00 a month. Her employees can do the same. Health care isn’t going to be free under the new plan either. Government health care isn’t free now. I take you back to the example of my mother and Medicare. $196.00 per month she would have to pay if she wanted it.

    14,000 people died because they did not have health care last year? Citation please.

    You gave me all these numbers involved in money being spent to raise awareness against the bill. Do you know that Obama had two one hour infomercials on prime time national television in which he was unopposed to promote his bill? How much do you think THAT cost? How many babies could have been insured with that money? I don’t think it’s wrong for people to spend their money and efforts to get the truth out about the things that are wrong in this bill. Otherwise, Americans who are not willing to do their research on this issue (which is the majority, I dare say) would believe the propaganda being spewed from the White House that says the grass will always be green, people will never get sick, and every one will always have ice cream for dinner if we only support this fabulous bill! I think there needs to be some balance and both sides should be heard.

    No, the Republicans have not done diddly to fix the problems. I’ll give you that and more! Personally, I don’t think the fix comes from government because what do politicians know about health care?! I think the answer has to come outside of government in the private sector. That’s the only thing that will truly work well.

    Obama tried for compromise at the start? Citation please.

    I agree with you totally on the bad corporations that have stolen from their employees, investors and consumers. You left out Goldman Sachs. Do you know how many people Obama has on his staff that were past executives of Goldman Sachs? Do you know how much ‘bail out’ money went down the proverbial rabbit hole at Goldman Sachs never to be seen again? Do you know how many babies could have been insured with that money? While you’re drawing and quartering, don’t forget Obama and each and every one of his greedy power hungry cronies that want to take all your money AND your freedom. But, that’s a rant for another day. At least the insurance companies only want to take your money.

    While you’re dusting off that corner of hell for all the powerful corporate heads, you give a free pass to all the evil that currently resides in the White House? Hmmmm.

    I want to compromise. People that are freedom loving, compassionate, free market capitalists want to compromise. I think every decent American wants to compromise. I think both you and I have a problem with the same people, only you are turning to another even more evil institution to receive your fix, where I am turning away from all of them and looking outside both corporations and government for the fix.

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24. Lady Why says:

    August 4, 2009 at 12:15 pm

    Well, Ed, I’d say the bill is a socialist bill. It is copying socialized heath care from other countries that have socialized health care.

    I don’t think anyone is saying anything about mandatory murder of old people or that people are dying of neglect. (outside of the kooks) That’s absurd. Medical care is not denied anyone whether they can pay or not. It doesn’t further the discussion to throw out all sorts of exaggerated and inflammatory language. How does that progress the discussion in a positive way?

    I am an opponent to the bill and I think I’m being quite sensible, thank you very much. :-)

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25. James Kessler says:

    August 4, 2009 at 12:07 pm

    Because, Lady, your side isn’t interested in debate, compromise or doing anything whatsoever to fix the current system. You may be..but your side is not. And health care coverage should be mandatory, it has to be. Why? If not for the obvious health benefits to the people then swallow this..how much do you think the economy suffers by having people getting sick, staying sick and getting sicker? If people’s only access to health care is the emergency room how much do you think that is a drag on the economy when emergency care is so much more expensive than regular health care. How much of a drag on the economy do you think the health care system as it currently is is? Last night on Keith Olbermann’s show he mentioned a woman in one of the Arkansas congressional districts who is having to wait three years to get on Medicaid, as she is not yet old enough, to be able to afford the operation necessary to repair her heart. Oh..and to also be able to afford to give health care coverage to the 6 employees of the restaurant she owns.

    And as for your saying you can’t afford a 21% percent tax..I’m going to assume you’re not removing your current health care costs out of that. If not how long do you think it will be until your health care costs equal and then exceed that? Because people are going bankrupt because of their increasing health care costs. People are having to choose between the house payment and their health care costs. 14000 people have died in the last year because of a lack of health care. How long will it be until it’s you do you think? Or someone you love?

    If your side of the equation was actually interested in change that’s one thing. But they’re not, they’re too busy spending money scaring people to death, making asinine claims, crying “Socialism” and using your money to organize fake town hall ambushes against Democrats. They are spending 1.4 million dollars A DAY to destroy the public option. Real telling about your side of this debate when it’s not interested in actually having an honest debate and has to resort to having the health insurance lobby bus people in from out of congressional districts to disrupt town hall meetings that Democratic Senators and Congressmen/women are having. Now I am not blaming you for that..but your side of that is to blame.

    Like I said, Lady, has the health insurance industry and the Republicans done anything to even attempt to fix any problem with health care in the last 20-30 years? Have they? Because I haven’t seen it so why should I and the rest of the Democrats trust your side now?

    Obama tried for compromise at the start and your side of the political spectrum said, in effect “No, **** you.”

    If I pay Blue Cross Blue shield to be there when I need them and they refuse to be that is textbook definition fraud. Every time the health insurance industry takes someone’s money and then cuts their health care coverage that is fraud. And instead of protecting the people your side of the equation seems to be suffering from the delusion that in the United States it is “For the Corporation, by the Corporation and of the Corporation.” If a company acts by the rules, acts in good faith and is a good corporate “citizen” to the community then I have no problem with them. If they act otherwise then my personal opinion is that company’s board and top executives should be, metaphorically speaking, drawn and quartered, boiled in oil and hung from the nearest yardarm. As a warning to the next ten generations of Enrons, KBR’s, Halliburtons, Adelphi, Kaiser that there is such a thing as too much greed and contempt for those beneath you.

    Either the health insurance industry bows and agrees to make the changes they need to make and agrees to having the government looking over their shoulder to prevent any further abuses or, in so far as this Democrat is concerned, they can burn in hell. And if the industry dies so be it, if they want to remain a malignant cancer on the United States why should we tolerate them?

    So you want compromise? You first.

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26. Ed Darrell says:

    August 4, 2009 at 9:40 am

    (again, not saying Heritage Foundation folks are kooks because I don’t know) The government is full of them!

    The Heritage Foundation is full of kooks. Fortunately, they are not part of government.

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27. Ed Darrell says:

    August 4, 2009 at 9:39 am

    The current bill seems to be replicating all that is wrong with the other systems. It’s a bad bill.

    Gee, that would be a shock to 2 Cents and the Heritage Foundation, who say the new bill is tantamount to surrender to Karl Marx. “Nanny state” is the form of socialism they say the new bill is. They say it requires manadatory murder of old people. I was unaware we had mandatory murder of anyone under the current bill.

    I wish the opponents of the bill would be sensible, and defend their position that we should continue to let people die from neglect, waste hundreds of billions, and invite inflation — which will probably take money from insurance companies and apply it to health care for humans.

    The bill in discussion before Congress has provisions designed to stop the problems.

    LikeLike

28. Lady Why says:

    August 4, 2009 at 8:35 am

    Sorry for the double post. I thought I had lost my first comment so I wrote another similar comment.

    LikeLike

29. Lady Why says:

    August 4, 2009 at 8:34 am

    James, I think you and I are finally getting somewhere! That’s all I’ve been saying all along. Why can’t we? I think we can if people who truly CARE about American health care start writing as opposed to people who are in it for the money and the power… and I’m speaking of the government here.

    Ed, 21% tax may not be crushing to you but it would be crushing to me. I pay significantly less than that. Since, as you say, we are wasting so much money, why can’t we cut the wasteful spending and reallocate those funds to improvements to access to health care… not making it mandatory, as Obama wants to do, but making it available to those who want it?

    I can’t help you with the Heritage Foundation question because I am not familiar with them. I will say I don’t like any parts of the bill that give the government access to my home, my children, or my records. I don’t know if that’s what they were balking at in the child abuse protection portion but I thought that came up earlier in the discussion. I am not a fan of giving up my liberty under the guise of protecting children, women’s rights, national security and all the other happy umbrellas the government likes to use to make those of us that value liberty look like mean old baby haters. Again, I don’t have a clue what they said or what their problem with the bill was… I’m just taking that from the comments on this post.

    Also, let me add, there are kooks on both sides (again, not saying Heritage Foundation folks are kooks because I don’t know) The government is full of them! :-D

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30. Lady Why says:

    August 4, 2009 at 8:11 am

    James, I think you and I are finally making progress! That’s all I’ve been saying all along. Why can’t we? The current bill seems to be replicating all that is wrong with the other systems. It’s a bad bill.

    Ed, 21% may not be crushing to you but I pay significantly less tax than that and it would be crushing to me. Since, as you say, we are wasting so much money, why can’t we create a system that uses no more money than we already spend but cuts the wasteful spending and reallocates that to some of the improvements that would actually make access to great health care easier for everyone?

    And, I can’t help you with the answer to the Heritage Foundation question. I’m not familiar with them. I will say there are plenty of kooks on both sides (not, of course, saying Heritage Foundation folks are kooks because, again, I’m not familiar). Our government is full of them! :-D

    LikeLike

31. Ed Darrell says:

    August 3, 2009 at 9:29 pm

    Another thing I wonder but expect no one to tackle is this: If the proposal for health care reform is such a piker, a failure, why do the Heritage Foundation and other opponents find it necessary to tell whopping lies about the proposal? Fighting child abuse is not creeping socialism, not “a nanny state.” It’s a good cause, and if they must impugn good provisions of the bill to get the bad ones, the bad ones must be good, too.

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32. James Kessler says:

    August 3, 2009 at 9:09 pm

    Or france’s plan for that matter.

    Because you keep on saying that we have the best health care on the planet.

    If so that has nothing to do with the health insurance companies.

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33. James Kessler says:

    August 3, 2009 at 9:08 pm

    Oh I never said the Canadien system is perfect, Lady.

    What I did ask 2cents and now I’ll ask it of you.

    Why can’t we take what works of the canadien system and fix what doesn’t work with it? And if we can do it better and cheaper in the process then what exactly is the objection?

    LikeLike

34. Ed Darrell says:

    August 3, 2009 at 9:00 pm

    Of the two I read about, France’s plan sounds very nice and I wonder why we can’t take what is working well for France, figure out how to do it without the crushing burden of 21% tax rates and keep the high quality of health care America is known for around the world.

    There is a proposal to do that. Right now it’s been modified a bit. The House passed it, as H.R. 3200. The Senate is considering it.

    The French don’t consider 21% “crushing.” In the U.S., the top income tax rate is 33%, though most Americans pay much less than 15%.

    The question is, how much is it worth to save our nation? 21% tax doesn’t sound bad to me, but Republicans claim we can’t afford to save the nation at current rates.

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35. Lady Why says:

    August 3, 2009 at 8:02 pm

    James, Did you read my example about the lady in Canada that the Canadian government airlifted to Montana so she could receive proper care for her quadruplets? Care that Canada either couldn’t provide or the waiting list would have made it impossible for them to provide.

    Fail.

    LikeLike

36. Lady Why says:

    August 3, 2009 at 8:00 pm

    I just read your article which made me wonder about France’s system, Finland’s system, etc. I found a few articles on France that sound really nice in some regards. Their people pay 21% tax to pay for this (though it said half is paid by your employer if you work) which is far more tax than Americans pay. BUT, they all seemed to agree that Americans pay more overall for health care.

    The same held true for Finland though I couldn’t find in my quick internet search a figure for their tax rates.

    What stood out to me most, though, was that everyone also agreed that America has better medical technology, better doctors and more innovation and research. This is because there is financial incentive for this here where the medical profession in these other systems is more vocational in nature.

    That’s the rub. I wish someone could come up with a plan that would be the best of both worlds. That HAS to be possible!

    Of the two I read about, France’s plan sounds very nice and I wonder why we can’t take what is working well for France, figure out how to do it without the crushing burden of 21% tax rates and keep the high quality of health care America is known for around the world.

    I have to tell you, the current plan doesn’t even come close to being France’s plan. The current plan is more closely modeled to the UK and Canada which the French people (according to three articles… and I know that’s not enough to be conclusive but I’m just telling you what I found) think that brand of socialized medicine is atrocious.

    France may be on to something but they haven’t quite gotten there yet.

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37. James Kessler says:

    August 3, 2009 at 7:34 pm

    Have the health insurance companies made any attempt to fix what is wrong, Lady? Have they made any attempt to curb what is wrong with them? This debate has been going on since the 90’s at least. In near 20 years what have they done to fix things, Lady?

    And in what countries has public health care failed, Lady?

    LikeLike

38. Ed Darrell says:

    August 3, 2009 at 6:45 pm

    I may have misremembered the total percentage from the reports I did consulting a while back, but here are some public figures from the distinguished and respected Commonwealth Fund’s study of U.S. health care, published in 2005 (.pdf here; Google’s HTML cache here):

    (Page 20)
    Higher Prices
    Despite the large differences in per-capita spending between the U. S. and other OECD countries, Anderson and colleagues have pointed out that the U.S. has fewer physicians, nurses, and hospital beds per capita than other industrialized countries.43 U.S. residents also go to the doctor less often, are admitted to the hospital less frequently, and have shorter lengths of stay when they are admitted than residents of other OECD countries.

    The authors suggest that people in the U.S. are paying much more for their health care services than are those in other countries, and cite evidence in prices for physician visits, hospital stays, and pharmaceuticals. 44 Higher overall compensation for professionals in U.S. industries probably explains part of the price differential. But Anderson and colleagues also argue that the highly fragmented nature of the demand side of health care markets (i.e., multiple purchasers of health care) allow prices to climb above those in other industrialized nations. Canada, for example, is characterized by single-buyer purchasing power on the part of the provincial health plans on behalf of Canadians. But even in countries without a single-buyer system, like Germany, purchasing power can be far more concentrated than in the U.S., with multiple payers allowed to collectively negotiate prices with health care providers, within global health care budgets.

    High Costs of Insurance Administration
    The fractured and disorganized nature of health care financing in the U.S. creates other excess costs. The U.S. is unique in that a significant percentage of the cost of health insurance goes toward administrative activities: an estimated 10 percent to 40 percent of premiums, depending on the market and state, is consumed by claims administration, underwriting, marketing, profits, and other administrative costs.45 In fact, the cost of insurance administration is the fastest-growing component of national health expenditures. Between 2000 and 2005, net insurance administrative overhead, including administrative expenses and insurance industry profits, as well as public insurance program costs, rose by 12 percent per year compared with an average of 8.6 percent for overall spending.

    Indeed, the U.S. leads all other industrialized countries in its share of national health expenditures devoted to health care administration. In 2003, spending on health and insurance administration commanded 7.3 percent of national health spending. Similar spending in other industrialized countries ranged from 5.6 percent of national health expenditures in Germany to around 2 percent in France, Finland, and Japan (Figure 23).47 Davis and colleagues estimate that if the U.S. had a level of administrative spending similar to that of France, Finland, and Japan, it would have saved $97 billion on health care costs in 2004.48
    Even reducing spending closer to the rate of countries with mixed public and private insurance systems, like Germany and Switzerland, would have saved an estimated $32 billion to $46 billion in that year.

    Even at the reduced rates, those are huge savings — just from not doing wallet biopsies.

    (I added the bolding; the charts at the original site are well worth the visit there.)

    LikeLike

39. Lady Why says:

    August 3, 2009 at 5:30 pm

    “If we just close down the private bureacracy that is designed solely to stop health care delivery, we can save 25%”

    Citation please.

    LikeLike

40. Ed Darrell says:

    August 3, 2009 at 5:29 pm

    If we just close down the private bureacracy that is designed solely to stop health care delivery, we can save 25%.

    Look at it another way: You have four quarts of soup. For every quart you serve, the guy you pay to serve it pees in one, and you have to throw it away.

    Why not make him stop peeing in the soup?

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41. Lady Why says:

    August 3, 2009 at 5:13 pm

    Ed, you’re going to be paying for that indigent care one way or another. You can pay the 43% now (and I’m just using your figure, not that I believe it to be accurate) or you can pay much MORE than 43% later to pay for the HUGE bureaucracy that will have to be created to cover the indigent with a government plan. The indigent do get care. I’m glad to see you finally concede that point. We pay for it, yes. We’ll pay for it either way. The way we pay now is expensive. The way we’ll pay for it with the government plan will be through the roof!

    I LOVE saving money… which is why I’m so against this plan!

    Here is something else I found that may be helpful:
    http://www.hoover.org/publications/digest/49525427.html

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42. Ed Darrell says:

    August 3, 2009 at 3:27 pm

    What’s wrong is that 50 million Americans are uninsured. This means that I pay 25% of every procedure to cover the administration against indigent care premiums. It means, here in Dallas, we pay 18% or more of every procedure to a pool to cover indigent care.

    Add it up: 43% of my health care dollars go to cover the private insurance bureaucracy designed to keep people out of the doctors’ offices. Instead, they go to the emergency room, and I pay for them anyway.

    I resent paying 43% of my dollar to keep a stupid system running. If we get a system that automatically covers indigents for care, there is no reason for me to be charged that 43%. That means I can get nearly twice as much care for my dollar.

    Every bill-paying American is getting screwed by our current system. What possible advantage do we get from getting screwed? Costs keep going up — it’s more an more expensive to cover emergency room care, and the increasingly sophisticated machines at the health care insurance company require bigger bureaucracies with fatter salaries.

    We can’t touch that 43% until we cover the 50 million uninsured.

    What do you have against saving money? What do you have against covering more people and making them healthy for the same cost?

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43. Lady Why says:

    August 3, 2009 at 1:52 pm

    Why can’t we just fix what’s wrong instead of slapping on an entirely different system which has failed other countries as the fix?

    LikeLike

44. James Kessler says:

    August 3, 2009 at 1:27 pm

    Apparently it doesn’t occur to Lady that if the health insurance industry had instead spent that 540 million dollars on making sure that everyone in the country, everyone in the country would have approximately 1.8 million dollars worth of health insurance. And therefor there would be no real need for a public health care option and no reason for, as she believes is Obama’s intent, to destroy private health insurance in this country.

    Of course, Lady is also ignoring the fact that private health insurance companies somehow manage to survive in Canada.

    But then somehow in Lady’s view government should have to compete with private industry in the realms of education and the military but God forbid that private industry have to compete with the Government in the realm of health insurance. Because somehow Health Insurance companies are sacred cows and can not be touched.

    One almost wonders how private schools and companies like KBR and Halliburton survive having to compete with the government. They must just be hanging on by a thread, making no profits and their executives barely earning more then their lowliest employees.

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45. Lady Why says:

    August 3, 2009 at 1:11 pm

    Another clip for your consideration:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-bY92mcOdk&feature=player_embedded

    LikeLike

46. James Kessler says:

    August 3, 2009 at 12:57 pm

    It was reported in the Star Tribune today that the Health Insurance has given 40 million dollars over the last decade to politicians in Washington D.C. with the vast majority of the money going to Republicans.

    They’ve also spent an additional half billion..billion with a B..lobbying over the last decade.

    Tell me, Lady…where do you think they’re getting that money from?

    http://www.startribune.com/politics/state/52318332.html?elr=KArksi8cyaiUncacyi8cyaiUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aU7DYaGEP7vDEh7P:DiUs

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47. Lady Why says:

    August 3, 2009 at 12:57 pm

    James, James, James…. have you read anything I’ve written? I think your anger and bitterness are clouding your judgment just a tad. If we could ratchet down the emotion a bit, we might be able to reason together.

    I have covered more than once how it is perfectly right for the government to provide insurance to their EMPLOYEES as their EMPLOYER. Beating. a. dead. horse. here.

    I am not going to discount your obvious multiple bad experiences with Blue Cross. As another perspective for you to consider, we’ve had Blue Cross for years and they have been terrific. They’ve covered ambulance rides, elective surgeries, well care, sick care and more. We’ve been thrilled with them. I have a friend with a terminally ill baby who has been hospitalized more than not over the last year. Their insurance (which they buy themselves since they are self-employed) has flown their baby to several states, performed experimental treatments and continue to treat him with very expensive treatments even though he will not survive his disease. I have another friend with a child who has a heart condition. Again, there have been experimental treatments, airlifts to hospitals in different states and multiple heart medications that are over-the-moon expensive. Again, their insurance has provided for their needs to their satisfaction even counting red tape, approvals and referrals required in some instances.

    For every bad experience I can cite a positive experience. I can tell you have a deep and abiding hatred of insurance companies. The question I keep asking you to answer is why you think things will be better with the government in charge? Why do you think them any less evil? Why do you think they care about their citizens over their bottom line? And, why do you not ‘hope to God they are destroyed’? I think your anger is misguided and misplaced and your solution will only take you from the frying pan into the fire.

    You’re not offending my Libertarian sensibilities (by the way, I wouldn’t classify myself as a Libertarian, per se), you are offending my common sense sensibilities.

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48. James Kessler says:

    August 3, 2009 at 12:16 pm

    This is just some of my personal experiences with the health insurance industry, Lady.

    There’s the 6 month delay i’m facing on a surgery I need not because the delay is medically necessary but because Blue Cross Blue Shield is praying to God that something happens so they don’t have for it.

    There is the fact that my best friend’s mom got kicked out of the hospital one day after having a rather large tumor removed from one of her legs. Was it the doctor who did it? No..it was Kaiser.

    There’s a cousin of mine who’s not even ten years older then I am who had her insurance initially balked at paying for her chemo.

    Then there’s my aunt who got put through no small amount of insurance rigamarole when she had to put my uncle, my dad’s brother, into a nursing home because he has parkinsons.

    Then there’s the uncle on my mom’s side who is having to wait months for the surgery he needs to fix his ankle. He can barely leave the house. So far he’s been waiting nearly a year.

    Then there’s two stories that were on the local news here recently. A woman got her insurance canceled because her health insurance company discovered that she, years earlier, had undergone acne treatment and they got it in their heads to declare that a preexisting condition.

    then there is the guy, in the same story, who got his insurance canceled because when his insurance agent filled out the application the agent put the wrong weight down.

    Then there is my personal favorite. 5 days after my mom’s funeral Blue Cross Blue Shield tried charging my dad 80 grand for the 4.5 days she was in the hospital. There were no extrodinary measures done to prolong her life, she was dying from what amounts to lung cancer. There was nothing the hospital did that should remotely come close to costing that much. It’s especially telling because Blue Cross Blue Shield accepted a $10,000 payment. In other words, Lady, they were in effect engaging in extortion.

    The health insurance industry is out of control. They cut people from insurance to pad their profits..and to pad the bonuses they get. They, not doctors and certainly not the patients, control health care in this country..they control if you get the help you need or not.

    So frankly I don’t give a damn if this offends your libertarian sensibilities or not because I damn well know that if any of this had happened to you or those you love, Lady, your libertarian sensibilities would gone out the window because there isn’t an actual libertarian in the country, those that call themselves that are merely Republicans by another name. The second they need the government to help them any thought of libertarianism goes out the window.

    So either the Insurance companies are brought to heel..either they accept a great deal of regulation on their behaviors and on their profits..more then there is now..either they actually start caring about their clients instead of the bottom line or yes…I hope to God they are destroyed. Their screwing over people and costing people their lives in their quest for as much profits even if it reaches obscene levels offends my Christian sensibilities.

    If you don’t like it then lets see you put your supposed libretarianism in practice. Say that Medicare should be dismantled. Say that Congress shouldn’t get government run health care. Say that neither should our people in the military get government run health care. Come on…you’re a libretarian right? Let’s see you prove it. Let’s see you uphold your principles even if it will make you look bad. Surely they mean that much to you right?

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49. Lady Why says:

    August 3, 2009 at 8:22 am

    Ed, you’ve offered not a ‘shred of evidence’ that we won’t be wasting $300 billion dollars on the government plan. Why you think the government is going to step in and make the world a better place, I don’t know. Past behavior is the best indicator of future behavior. I have no confidence the government can do anything correctly, efficiently and in a cost effective way. Maybe that’s just me.

    You mentioned that I didn’t offer any opposing viewpoints so I’ll include a few now:

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/27/AR2009072701905.html

    http://www.lewrockwell.com/schiff/schiff35.1.html

    And since you value the opinions of doctors so highly, here are two more from the medical community:

    http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=10218

    http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jul/21/mayo-clinic-calls-house-plan-bad-medicine/

    Let me just throw out another example for your consideration. Following your logic, it is terrible that people are homeless living in shanties in the Appalachians or under the interstates of Los Angeles. Those of us in privately owned houses should be more than willing, then, to allow the government to step in and reform housing. They should be allowed to tear down all existing housing (in the same way they will drive private insurance companies out of business) and build – to the tune of billions of tax payer dollars – rows upon rows of government housing which we will all get to/have to live in. It’s not fair that some people have big beautiful homes while some are homeless so we need to make it fair by implementing a system by which everyone has a house.

    Same thing.

    Or maybe this one… Some people can’t afford food. Now we have welfare, food stamps, WIC and all that, but still some people are hungry and it’s not fair that the wealthy people have access to their choice of grocery stores while the hungry can’t afford to shop. So, the best thing is for the government to step in, tear down the grocery stores and have us stand in government run soup kitchen lines. The government gets to decide what we eat and how much we get.

    Same thing.

    I don’t want the government controlling health care. It’s a bad idea. Government controlled health care in other countries is substandard to our level of medical excellence. I give you the example I’ve already used about the Canadian mother being airlifted to Montana. If we do away with our quality health care, who will the Canadians fall back on when they need specialized care? Don’t you care about Canadians? (tongue in cheek, of course)

    I’ll close with Donna’s point. She said it best:

    “And I also submit that there is no one in the U.S. who is denied medical treatment when needed. It is merely the definition of “needed” that is being discussed. I witnessed an illegal who fell climbing over the mountains between Mexico and Arizona receive completely free an emergency C-section because she fell on the U.S. side. She and her baby received the same quality care my Tricare insured daughter did in the same hospital.

    What uninsured people do not have access to is regular screenings and preventive care. Frankly, this is not a national emergency. A lot of the preventive care is a matter of education and we really don’t need to revamp the entire insurance/medical system to remedy that.”

    LikeLike

50. Ed Darrell says:

    August 2, 2009 at 11:42 pm

    Ed, are we debating health care reform or politics? Why are we going over and over who the liberal journalists are?

    I don’t know. You claimed to be unaware of the points I noted, so I offered documentation, including video, from several straight up sources. Then you went off on some tangent claiming the sources were “liberal,” I assume implicitly claiming they can’t be trusted and so the stories they tell aren’t real — you didn’t My respond to the points at all, other than to claim they were “liberal.”

    Why are you claiming the journalists are liberal and refusing to discuss them? Why did you raise a pointless political claim rather than respond? I don’t know.

    My point continues to be that the government can not fix this problem. They will only make things worse.

    But that is contrary to the experience of every other nation where the government offers assistance — and it’s contrary to our experience in this nation with Medicare and Medicaid, where health care is cheaper, administrative costs are only 3% of total costs (compared to 25% for private companies).

    If you think government can’t fix things, offer some evidence that there is any hope under the current system. Every year we delay the change our costs skyrocket. We now pay more than double what every other nation pays for healthcare per capita — including paying for those 50 million people who get nothing for what we pay. In that regard, we have the most wasteful system on Earth (50 million people times $6,000, the rounded-down per capita cost — how much is that? $300,000,000,000. We pay $300 billion dollars just down a rathole, money we spend for which we get nothing at all).

    You’re defending wasting $300 billion a year, claiming that’s “good.” Nuts.

    Whoever is standing in line now will still be standing in line under the government plan…

    None of those people standing in line in Virginia was on our current government plan. You’re making wild assertions for which there is no evidence.

    <blockquote< . . . only there will be millions more. Waiting lists now? Longer waiting lists later.

    We waste $300 billion, we have rationing now, we have lines now, and our health achievement is below nations like Canada where the cost per capita is half our costs here.

    You know, a little waiting would be a fair trade.

    But then, you’ve offered not a shred of evidence to support the claim that waiting will increase if we cover those 50 million people with a government-spurred plan.

    I think, for $300 billion, we can do better for those 50 million people than to tell them to screw off and stay out of hospitals.

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51. Lady Why says:

    August 2, 2009 at 11:21 pm

    James. Shut up? Really? I thought we were getting along so well. :-)

    Let me ask you, how is your wait going to be any shorter or your care any better under the government plan?

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52. Lady Why says:

    August 2, 2009 at 11:19 pm

    Ed, are we debating health care reform or politics? Why are we going over and over who the liberal journalists are? My point continues to be that the government can not fix this problem. They will only make things worse. Whoever is standing in line now will still be standing in line under the government plan… only there will be millions more. Waiting lists now? Longer waiting lists later.

    My Canadian friend, the one I mentioned earlier, called me out on the video piece saying it was one sided and didn’t say that the mother of the quadruplets was airlifted out of Canada to Montana at the government’s expense. She was saying this as a positive aspect of Canadian health care. I told her that if our government gets control of health care, Canada will no longer have Montana. Where will they airlift all the patients they cannot take care of? Does the US ever airlift its patients to Canada for medical treatment? To England?

    John McCain is no conservative, by the way.

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53. James Kessler says:

    August 2, 2009 at 11:00 pm

    No, Lady, i can’t. Because every single health insurance company that does business in my state has either the same exact waiting period..or one that is longer. It’s either a 6 month wait or a one year wait.

    And I can guarantee you that any other health insurance company would scream “preexisting condition” and then deny me insurance.

    What you count as reality, lady, is a delusion. The system is messed up and nothing you suggest either is a fix or even attempts a fix.

    So unless you and your fellow conservatives/republicans actually come up with an actual solution..shut up.

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54. Ed Darrell says:

    August 2, 2009 at 10:44 pm

    Denialism is a skeptic blog which has an overall liberal bent. Just because you’re a doctor, doesn’t mean you can’t be a liberal.

    Agence France Press is notoriously in love with Barack Obama way back before he was even the Democrat candidate. It is sickening, really.

    And, I see you didn’t even bring up Portland Oregonian. You can’t even use their name and objective journalism in the same sentence.

    So the only reliable source we have here is the unbiased, far-right-wing Heritage Foundation?

    I thought you were serious until you went after the Oregonian.

    Yeah, I suspect that denialism’s authors vote rationally — I think it’s interesting you concede that conservatives are irrational by default — but the underlying research is peer-reviewed. If you want to complain of bias, show it.

    Same with Agence France Presse — who also had a “love affair” with John McCain and is considered biased on U.S. health policy by no rational person.

    Oh, but you’ve already dismissed the Oregon paper, and I’m sure you’d find bias in any source.

    Anyone who can write must be a liberal. I see where this is going.

    You’ve got no sources, but you’re sure all the information that contradicts your claims is biased.

    Oy. This is the depth of thought opposing the bill?

    I’m reminded of the line in Tom Sawyer: ‘Ain’t we got every fool in town on our side? And ain’t that a big enough majority in any town?’

    Jefferson and Madison had hoped for so much more.

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55. Lady Why says:

    August 2, 2009 at 10:31 pm

    Well said, Donna!

    LikeLike

56. Lady Why says:

    August 2, 2009 at 9:59 pm

    No James. It’s my desire to keep my ‘for profit’ government from screwing over my nation left and right.

    Have you considered changing insurance companies? You have the option of doing that in our current free market society. If the government gets its way, you’ll be waiting a whole lot longer than six months and you’ll have no other options.

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57. Lady Why says:

    August 2, 2009 at 9:55 pm

    Denialism is a skeptic blog which has an overall liberal bent. Just because you’re a doctor, doesn’t mean you can’t be a liberal.

    Agence France Press is notoriously in love with Barack Obama way back before he was even the Democrat candidate. It is sickening, really.

    And, I see you didn’t even bring up Portland Oregonian. You can’t even use their name and objective journalism in the same sentence.

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58. James Kessler says:

    August 2, 2009 at 9:50 pm

    And yet, Lady, I am having to wait 6 months for an elective surgery as a result of the dictate of my private health insurance.

    So guess what..the boogymen you have about public health care…is already happening thanks to private health care. So what this boils down to is your desire to protect for profit health care…your desire to let for profit companies to screw over their clients left and right.

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59. Donna B. says:

    August 2, 2009 at 9:44 pm

    James Kessler… it’s interesting that you say your private insurance company is requiring that you wait six months for a surgery you say you need now.

    Surely they provided a reason for this… some rationale? It brings to mind my having to take a drug that did not alleviate my symptoms for three months and for my doctor to document such lack before my insurance will pay for the more expensive alternative drug.

    And I am on a government run insurance program — Tricare.

    I also bristle a bit at you (or was it Ed? don’t remember) lumping military care in with Medicare. There is a HUGE difference. For one, many military folk of a certain era were promised IN WRITING healthcare for life if they served a certain number of years. This was surely an incentive for re-enlistment, especially of the enlisted class.

    That promise was also mentioned when enlisted pay didn’t quite meet minimum wage. That and the medical care they and their families currently received were said to make up for it.

    I also find it ironic that there has been mention of the lines to get free medical care… why would there not be? Even the insured generally have a co-pay!

    But I find it odd that it’s not mentioned that some people have an aversion to getting medical care. How many, I don’t know… but I have heard over and over during my lifetime people say “Going to the doctor will just make you sick. They are bound to find something to treat.”

    Though it was years ago, my father was actually a victim of this medical mentality. While serving in the US Army during WWII as a cook at Fitzgerald Army Hospital, his appendix ruptured. Being near a hospital, this was treated rapidly and probably saved his life… but then they nearly killed him because they thought… since you’re in here, we might as well take your tonsils out. Uncontrolled bleeding after that surgery led to kidney failure and he was in that hospital for over 9 months.

    It’s really quite easy to see how the average citizen sometimes fears medical treatment.

    As an opposing scenario to yours, my insurance, Tricare, favored removal of a benign brain tumor, but I chose radiation treatment instead. The cost of radiation treatment to the government was $20,000. I can guarantee you the cost of brain surgery and the subsequent week’s hospitalization would have been double that amount (based on charges of a week’s hospitalization gleaned from various family members for various problems.)

    And I also submit that there is no one in the U.S. who is denied medical treatment when needed. It is merely the definition of “needed” that is being discussed. I witnessed an illegal who fell climbing over the mountains between Mexico and Arizona receive completely free an emergency C-section because she fell on the U.S. side. She and her baby received the same quality care my Tricare insured daughter did in the same hospital.

    What uninsured people do not have access to is regular screenings and preventive care. Frankly, this is not a national emergency. A lot of the preventive care is a matter of education and we really don’t need to revamp the entire insurance/medical system to remedy that.

    As for screenings, false positives and false negatives drive up the cost of health care whether publicly funded or not. Because of intensive screening, my father – at age 86 – just had 44 radiation treatments for a lung cancer that probably would have never killed him. His initial gut response was to do nothing, but doctors talked him into it. I’m not sure how I feel about this because radiation does not come without risks…

    If healthcare were a simple thing capable of being “ruled” by a single monolithic plan, I’d be all for nationwide standard of care government run plan.

    But health and medicine is not that simple. And frankly, our congressmen and senators are not smart enough to figure out how to FIX something that they cannot even define.

    LikeLike

60. Lady Why says:

    August 2, 2009 at 9:43 pm

    Yes, Ed… the reality of GOVERNMENT RUN HEALTH CARE!

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61. Ed Darrell says:

    August 2, 2009 at 9:21 pm

    Ed. Please. You put up links from liberal websites and call that “proof” of anything?

    Denialism blog is run by two MDs and a PhD researcher. In that post, they were reporting on peer-reveiwed research.

    The second one was from Agence France Press, one of three top-ranked news gathering organizations in Europe. To call it “liberal” is to say Attila the Hun and Hermann Goering were objective reporters of the news.

    So I give you unvarnished fact, and you call it “liberal.”

    Yes, reality does have a well-established liberal bias.

    Pretend they’re not biased (as the rest of the world does). Look at the issues.

    There are probably 20 different sources on that one incident of thousands of people driving hundreds of miles for free health care in Virginia. The group that delivers the service has been doing so for 24 years.

    That’s not liberal. It’s reality. Deal with it.

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62. Lady Why says:

    August 2, 2009 at 8:41 pm

    Hi again James. I’m sorry to hear about your long wait for surgery. I have not experienced anything like that personally but I have seen among people I know, situations where procedures were declined or drugs were required to be tried first before a surgery, etc.

    I keep saying it but I’ll repeat it again, no system is perfect. There is always someone who will fall through the cracks. Insurance companies are out to make a profit. But, SO IS THE GOVERNMENT! The government is not our savior and is not the solution. What is the solution? I don’t know. You don’t know. Someone smarter than both of us is going to have to figure that out. But, I do know that I do not want the government controlling health care. It’s been tried and it’s not a great system. That’s what I know.

    I don’t know where you are getting your health indicators but I take issue with them. Can you give a citation? Everything I have seen says we have the best medical care in the world. I’m not saying we have the best insurance coverage but the best technology, the best doctors, the best facilities, the best innovation of medical care anywhere in the world. If you have something that PROVES otherwise, please pass it along because I’d like to see it.

    People waiting for GOVERNMENT HEALTH CARE are waiting in lines. If this bill passes we’ll ALL be waiting in lines. Who would want that?

    Again I take issue with your 50 million people don’t have health care. There is Medicaid, don’t forget. My state has government health care for children that don’t have private insurance so there is not one child uninsured (unless their parents just choose not to participate). I would love to see a system where the grass is always green, people don’t get sick and everyone has fabulous health care. We don’t live in a perfect world and there will always be room to improve.

    I don’t have all the answers. But, I do know one thing. The government is NOT the answer to all the world’s ills.

    Who would I ‘cry foul’ to if I lost my health insurance? The government? I don’t expect the government to take care of me. It’s not their job.

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63. Lady Why says:

    August 2, 2009 at 8:26 pm

    James, I said many times there are problems with our current system. There are problems with EVERY system. Nothing is perfect.

    I neither called myself a Republican nor am I one. I am a conservative… something that the Republican party abandoned a long time ago. If I had to put myself in a box (which I don’t like to do) I’d say I’m a Constitutionalist with Libertarian leanings. Or maybe a Libertarian with Constitutionalist leanings. I can’t be sure. :-)

    What the government would do to stamp out its competition (the insurance companies) is NOT a free market system. It would be a government controlled market system. The ones making the laws governing an industry can’t actually be competing in that industry. Conflict of interest. Economics 101.

    And, since you bring up government schools… another dismal failure of government control at work. But, that’s a blog post for another day.

    When did I say that insurance companies can’t be touched? If good healthy FREE MARKET competition drives a company out of business. Hooray! That’s the system working as it should. I’m fine with it. If government regulation forces private companies out of business in order to drive their own grab for profit and power, that’s tyranny.

    I think I already covered that I would gladly decline Medicare for my private insurance as my mother has also done. I also covered how I feel about the government providing insurance to their employees. I won’t beat that dead horse.

    I’m not annoyed by the conversation at all! I love a good lively debate! I’m willing to keep talking if you are. :-)

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64. James Kessler says:

    August 2, 2009 at 8:16 pm

    Lady, in case you missed my saying it earlier..I am having to wait 6 months for a surgery i need to fix a problem with my leg. I have private health insurance. Until this last year my health insurance company only ever had to pay for my annual physical. But they…they..they..not the doctors, not the government..they are requiring me to wait 6 months for a surgery that I need because, and this part is only a surmise on my part, they are hoping to God that they don’t actually have to pay for the surgery.

    When you have health care, lady, that is run by for profit companies you have those companies making decisions based not on what is best for their clients…but what is best for their bottom line.

    And again..if we are at best at average on nearly every health indicator then no..we don’t have the best health care in the world despite your contentions to the contrary.

    We are already waiting in lines whether you want to admit it or not, lady. health care is already being rationed whether you want to admit it or not. And it fast getting to a point where only the upper middle class or the rich can actually afford health care.

    Something needs to be done and your side of the argument offers no changes whatsoever. 50 million people in this country don’t have health care and you don’t give a damn apparently. I can hardly wait til you lose yours to see how fast you cry foul, woman.

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65. Lady Why says:

    August 2, 2009 at 8:05 pm

    Ed. Please. You put up links from liberal websites and call that “proof” of anything?

    The lines you are showing are for people waiting for GOVERNMENT RUN HEALTH CARE! So, is your contention that we should all wait in lines??

    My point is that our American health care system is the best in the world. For those who can not afford their own private insurance, there are already programs in place. They are not as good in that, there are waits and difficult access. That just makes my point that we don’t want to spread that kind of care to everyone! Let’s instead figure out a good way (i.e. no government involvement of any kind) to take our excellent standard of health care and make it affordable for anyone that wants it.

    Why do you think that the government is the best way to go at this thing?

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66. Donna B. says:

    August 2, 2009 at 7:28 pm

    If life expectancy is considered an outcome of good healthcare… and there’s plenty of argument for and against that, it should be taken into consideration that U.S. men (on average) live longer the closer they live to Canada.

    http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2009/08/male-life-expectancy-story-of-region.php

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67. Donna B. says:

    August 2, 2009 at 7:14 pm

    Ed, you’re argument seems to with the Heritage Foundation. Why would you think their views (which I haven’t read) are also mine? Doesn’t that sort of qualify as a straw-man argument?

    Let me state again — I have no problem with the proposed child abuse prevention legislation, I simply have a problem with it being a part of massive insurance reform.

    Child abuse is a criminal/social problem. That it has consequences for the health of the abused is why this is so. Is it possible that putting it under the umbrella of healthcare might take away some of the tools to combat it?

    Ever-widening definitions of something tend to dilute that something to the point of uselessness… we don’t need “homeopathic” healthcare reform, do we?

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68. James Kessler says:

    August 2, 2009 at 5:49 pm

    You’re the one being naive, Lady. You’re the one blithely pretending that the status quo is fine and that there are no problems with the current system.

    And you call yourself a republican? I thought Republicans were all for the free market? Well, lady, party of the free market is competition. You know what that is right? The claim you Republicans use to justify private schools and home schools? That it will improve the public schools because competition improves things.

    So exactly when did the insurance companies become the sacred cow? Why is it in your mind that they can’t be touched?

    And if it drives private insurers out of business then so what? That’s part of the free market too. If a company can’t suceed it dies.

    Must be annoying to you and 2cents to be arguing against a former Republican isn’t it? After all…I know all the Republican arguments and contentions by heart.

    If you’re really against government run health care, Lady, then you should have no problem in saying that you will not accept Medicare and that you think congress should get rid of it’s government run health care and that our military also doesn’t need government run health care.

    Come on Lady, put your money where your mouth is. Be what you claim you are.

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69. Ed Darrell says:

    August 2, 2009 at 5:03 pm

    US the most expensive system, with 8 times as many uninsured (read, deprived of care):
    Explained nicely by the researchers at denialism blog (ironic, no?):
    http://scienceblogs.com/denialism/2009/05/are_patients_in_universal_heal.php

    Also see here: Portland Oregonian, “On health care, U.S. looks awfully third world”
    http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2009/07/on_health_care_america_looks_a.html

    Agence France Press video story: “Americans line up for health care,” vision and dental services most sought after — about 3,000 people waited overnight to try to get free care:
    

    Uninsured camp out for free healthcare
    Posted by: Shannon Stapleton
    Tags: Reuters Photographers, clinic, health, healthcare, insurance, ram, uninsured, virginia

    The Remote Area Medical Volunteer Corp (RAM) is a non-profit organization that provides free health care, dental care and eye care in remote areas of the United States and the world since 1985. Volunteer doctors, nurses and support workers provide the care at their own expense and the medical supplies, medicines, facilities and vehicles are all donated by supporters.

    From July 24-26, I attended the RAM event at the Wise County Fairgrounds in Wise, Virginia. The area is in the Appalachian Mountain region bordering Kentucky, Tennessee and North Carolina.

    People received numbers and started lining up to enter the health clinic around 4 a.m.

    For those who did not receive the full range of health care they needed, they spent the night in their cars and returned the next day.

    It was truly a remarkable experience to witness how many people in the United States, ranging from infants to the elderly, have little or no access to healthcare. It was truly the front lines of the healthcare problem in our country.

    Editor’s note: On Wednesday, July 29, President Barack Obama discussed his healthcare plans at a town hall meeting in Bristol, Virginia, 62 miles from the Wise County Fairgrounds. He acknowledged the outstanding work of everybody associated with the event.

    “People are able to get care because of the great volunteer efforts of people all over the country. That’s great,” President Obama said in front of employees of the local supermarket.

    Since 1985? 24 years this crisis has hammered these states and you doubt that it’s happening?

    Do you think, LadyWhy, that the dental problems these people have come from their eating cake?

    I said: “Can you explain why Americans go without dental care, pulling teeth with pliers, rather than see a dentist? Can you explain why Americans so often get no care for problems they have?”

    Are you sure you’re not thinking about England?

    See the video above. Consider the Navajo Reservation in Arizona/Utah/Colorado/New Mexico, and all other reservations for native Americans. About a third of Texas counties have medical care only with a drive of more than 50 miles. We have a couple dozen counties with no physicians at all.

    Now consider similar situations in New Mexico, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Arizona, Oregon, Washington, North Dakota, South Dakota, rural Minnesota, rural Wisconsin, Michigan, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Maine (I’ve probably missed a few states).

    I fear you don’t get out enough. Maybe you’re afraid to travel? You think you might need medical care on the road, and won’t be able to get it?

    See the photo here:
    http://bulletin.aarp.org/yourhealth/policy/articles/the_doctor_is_in_in.html

    By the way, are you in America? Or are you writing from somewhere else?

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70. Lady Why says:

    August 2, 2009 at 4:08 pm

    James, don’t be naive. Obama’s plan will eventually drive private insurance out of business. I think the guy in the piece said it best when he called Obama’s plan the “bridge” to government run health care. Ultimately, if this bill passes, the stage will be set for a single payer system, which is what Obama thinks is best per his comments before the election.

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71. Lady Why says:

    August 2, 2009 at 4:02 pm

    “Can you explain why every government-run health care system in the world gets better results at far less cost than our system?”

    Can you give a citation please? Everything I have read says they get poorer results. I recently read an story (from an English source) that said a man in England resorted to pulling his own teeth because there was not a dentist that would take new patients. Waits are tremendous. Even my Canadian friend, who LOVES their government run health care and argues with me about it all the time, admits she’s come across the border for elective surgery and that they wait upwards of five hours for a sick child visit. In her area, there is also a lottery to get in with a family physician. Our system may have its flaws, but going to that kind of system is not the answer!

    “Can you explain why the government-run part of the U.S. system costs much less and provides comparable service to private insurance?”

    I’m not sure I accept that it costs less or provides comparable service. Medicare will cost my mother $196.00 per month. I pay a little more than half that for my private insurance for a family of 8. She is one person. Her private insurance… which is MUCH better, I might add… costs her $99.00 per month. Where are you getting your figures?

    “Can you explain why Americans go without dental care, pulling teeth with pliers, rather than see a dentist? Can you explain why Americans so often get no care for problems they have?”

    Are you sure you’re not thinking about England? We provide medical care for those in need through multiple government programs that our tax dollars already fund! Again, I’m not saying there isn’t room for improvement, I’m just saying let’s not plunge head first into the mess of government run health care.

    “Can you explain waiting lists for MRIs and colonoscopies in the U.S.?”

    Again, I think you’re confusing England and Canada with the US. My mother has colonoscopies every three years and she schedules them and has them a week later. She had an MRI on her back last week. She had it two days after her doctor ordered it for her. Please. You think we have waiting lists now? If Obamacare comes to fruition, then you’ll see what a waiting list is!

    “Do you think Natasha Richardson would have had a Medevac helicopter for an accident in West, Texas? Why not?”

    Sure. Why wouldn’t she?

    “Doesn’t it ring alarm bells that rich people get quick service in the U.S. — and that the rich people who Stossel says come to America for help, don’t use private insurance in the U.S. to get the care?”

    They don’t use private insurance because they are wealthy enough to pay for it themselves and they know their government care is substandard to US health care… which, again, may have it’s problems but it is the best health care in the world! Also, I’m not rich and I would say I get ‘quick service’ when I need it from my doctor.

    “Is there a reason that heart attacks that do occur in Canada kill less often? Is there a reason that heart attacks in Canada recur less often in survivors? Is there a reason a heart attack in the U.S. costs three or four times as much as Canada to treat, while they get better results north of the border?”

    Can you give a citation on these facts please? I don’t accept your conclusion on that but I will say, assuming your sweeping statements are true, it might be because Canadians take better care of themselves, knowing that they must take personal responsibility for their own health due to their ‘less than ideal’ health care system. Just a theory off the top of my head.

    “Have you tried to get an appointment with your physician lately?”

    Yes. I made a well check up for my two year old. I called last week and I’m seeing the doctor on Wednesday. When I have a sick child, I see the doctor the same day. Always. Without exception. The longest wait I’ve ever had was for my own yearly check up. I generally wait two weeks for an appointment. That is a stated fact up front so I know to make my appointments that much in advance. I shudder to think how long I’ll wait if state run health care comes along.

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72. Ed Darrell says:

    August 2, 2009 at 3:05 pm

    Lady Why,

    Can you explain why every government-run health care system in the world gets better results at far less cost than our system?

    Can you explain why the government-run part of the U.S. system costs much less and provides comparable service to private insurance?

    Can you explain why Americans go without dental care, pulling teeth with pliers, rather than see a dentist? Can you explain why Americans so often get no care for problems they have?

    Can you explain waiting lists for MRIs and colonoscopies in the U.S.?

    Do you think Natasha Richardson would have had a Medevac helicopter for an accident in West, Texas? Why not?

    Doesn’t it ring alarm bells that rich people get quick service in the U.S. — and that the rich people who Stossel says come to America for help, don’t use private insurance in the U.S. to get the care?

    Is there a reason that heart attacks that do occur in Canada kill less often? Is there a reason that heart attacks in Canada recur less often in survivors? Is there a reason a heart attack in the U.S. costs three or four times as much as Canada to treat, while they get better results north of the border?

    Have you tried to get an appointment with your physician lately?

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73. James Kessler says:

    August 2, 2009 at 2:44 pm

    Of course, Lady, you’re ignoring the fact that the government proposal is not a complete takeover of health care, that the private sector of health care will still exist and that private health insurance are doing those claims that guy is saying will happen under a government plan.

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74. Lady Why says:

    August 2, 2009 at 2:38 pm

    For your consideration:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdx_2cuPgQQ

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75. James Kessler says:

    August 2, 2009 at 2:06 pm

    Oh and by the way, 2cents, while Castonguay does advocate some privatization of the health care system in Canada to allow greater individual choice..he doesn’t advocate the dismantling of Canada’s publicly funded health care system. He advocates both a greater role for the private sector yes…but he also advocates greater public investment in the system through taxes and user fees. And his advocation of a greater role for the private sector was in a report done for the province of Quebec. In other words, 2cents, he was not saying this for the entirety of Canada or doing the report for the government of Canada.

    Oops…what? Didn’t think I’d look him up? That was a fools mistake on your part. In other words, 2cents, what he advocates is exactly what the President is trying to do.

    So which was it? You were ignorant or you were lying as to what Castonguay adovcates?

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76. James Kessler says:

    August 2, 2009 at 1:54 pm

    2cents, your “proof” is a blog. It’s biased. Come up with some actual evidence for once. You know..from an unbiased source.

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77. James Kessler says:

    August 2, 2009 at 1:52 pm

    Sorry, we don’t have the best health care system top to bottom when we rank at best average on so many indicators of health. We do not have the best health care system top to bottom when near 50 million people are without health care. We do not have the best health care system top to bottom when people get kicked off their health insurance for preexisting conditions or for acne treatments or because the insurance agent put in the wrong weight of the person when they were filling in the application. We do not have the best health care system when insurance companies kick people off health care to padd their profits.

    You can engage in that jingoistic nationalistic nonsense all you want but you are deluding yourself.

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78. James Kessler says:

    August 2, 2009 at 1:24 pm

    Yeah..Republicans have resisted expanding the power of the federal government…unless it means outlawing gay marriage, homosexuality, divorce, abortion, warantless eavesdropping of US citizens, using the US military for policing in the United States, torture of US detainees, detaining people indefinitly without court trials, screwing California’s attempt to impose stricter restrictions on vehicle emissions and anything else I could name that I can’t think of at the moment.

    In other words..the Republicans have absolutely no problem in expanding the power of the federal government. They just like to pretend otherwise because they so hate the American people that they think the American people are idiots.

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79. James Kessler says:

    August 2, 2009 at 1:21 pm

    Donna, since child abuse is unhealthy to the child being abused…exactly how is it unrelated to health care?

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80. Ed Darrell says:

    August 2, 2009 at 4:42 am

    Preventing child abuse should not be confused with insurance reform — which is what I understand most of the unread bill to be about.

    Health care covers a broad range of topics. Republicans especially have bottled up almost all attempts to reform all aspects of health care for many years.

    Health insurance reform is the chief goal of the bill, but there are other serious problems that need to be tackled along the way.

    Preventive care is one. Prevention is cheaper than waiting for a disease to fully develop to treat, every serious person understands. There is much on disease prevention in this bill.

    Including this program to prevent child abuse. It incorporates a very popular — but blocked by conservatives — provision that takes pilot programs, like the one in Missouri that has been in place since 1983, founded by conservative Republican Sen. Christopher Bond, and extends it to other states who volunteer to set up similar programs; in the programs, parents who volunteer to get counseling can get it, to help them be parents who do not abuse their children. There is a quarter-century track record in this program in Missouri of reducing child abuse. This program to fight child abuse really works.

    In the bill, there is some standard language used that tell the Department of Health and Human Services to target the grant money to communities where these programs don’t exist, and especially at communities where there is high child abuse. Spend the money where it’s needed, in other words.

    1. Money is set aside to fight child abuse.
    2. States may apply for the money.
    3. States who apply and get the grants will contract with agencies to deliver the services.
    4. Care will be given to target the money to prevent the most child abuse possible.
    5. Modeling after decades of success, the services to families will be strictly voluntary.

    No bureaucrat will knock on anyone’s door with a warrant, even though there is every indication someone needs to knock some sense into the heads of some critics.

    That’s the entire program. I have quoted the entire thing above. I’ve quoted the entire press release from Sen. Bond on the anniversary of the Missouri program in another post here.

    It is my contention that no concerned American in their right mind can find much objectionable there, especially in these economic times. Federal money invested in a great cause, with extremely high return, at a critical time.

    Tell me where you see creeping “nanny state” in that program?

    And — dammit — if that is “nanny state,” then make the most of it. Why should we sacrifice any child to abuse? Don’t they deserve better? What in the hell is wrong with Mary Poppins anyway, and why does the Heritage Foundation have such a problem with fighting child abuse?

    These are two separate issues and should be dealt with separately. Why would that be a problem? Laws designed to prevent child abuse would likely meet little to no resistance. Why confuse the issue?

    In an ideal world, that would be great. Here’s the problem: Conservatives, like the Heritage Foundation, have confounded the passage of Sen. Bond’s bill — it passed one house last year, but conservative fights over programs like this (“cost too much; looks like Joe Stalin to me”) prevented it from becoming law.

    So, here we have an omnibus health care/health care insurance reform bill. Sen. Bond says he may vote for the entire package if it addresses serious prevention issues, like child abuse prevention. His popular-but-not-yet-passed bill is inserted into the larger bill.

    Why not? Child abuse is a serious problem. In economic recessions, child abuse skyrockets. Child abuse prevention programs have been languishing across the nation. One of the most insidious forms of child abuse is rape of young girls; a few of these girls get pregnant and seek abortions — there’s even a good case to be made that this provision will reduce abortions by preventing those rapes. Preventing those rapes is good enough justification for the provision.

    There is no good reason on God’s Earth to oppose this provision. When we call the critics out, even people like 2 Cent say they don’t oppose the program, though they demonstrate extreme confusion as they criticize that exact same program.

    Having worked with my state’s agency charged with removing abused children from their homes, I know that lack of insurance or medical care has little to do with abuse. If there is a relationship with medical care, it is that the parents are not identified as needing mental health care until the child is already abused.

    Well, now you’ve hit one of the complaints of the Heritage Foundation. This program targets places where abuse is high — even higher income communities, though the bill’s language says lower-income communities ought to be earlier in line. With their nose high in the air, Heritage Foundation complains:

    The home visitation provision dictates that the state will “prioritize serving communities that are in high need of such services, especially communities with a high proportion of low-income families or a high incidence of child maltreatment.” While the home visitation program is described as “voluntary,” it’s not clear whether it would remain voluntary throughout or just up to the time a parent trainer enters the home.

    Go read the bill. There is no hint of “non-voluntary” in the bill — ever. Bond’s program has been running for 26 years in Missouri, so we might assume it’s got a long enough track record to edify us.

    My concern is this: Heritage Foundation is inventing a whole cloth lie here. In the history of the program, in the hearings in the Senate and the House, in the bills introduced in the Senate and the House, in the language of the bill, there is not the faintest whiff of “mandatory.”

    That’s a lie. It’s imagining bogey men under your bed. It’s claiming there are monsters in your closet. It’s saying that you need a tinfoil hat, and the bill doesn’t provide it to you, free.

    It’s a lie. As you know from your work with the state, it’s a lie.

    And yet, you almost believe it.

    Now… if that is what this provision intends to address, I don’t automatically have a problem with it. When specifics are known, I might have. The big problem right now is that specifics aren’t known and it’s tucked into a huge bill that is essentially unrelated.

    Donna B, if these people will lie about you, claiming you are the very embodiment of creeping socialism, claiming that you look to them like the ghost of government control of the family writ large, what will they NOT lie about?

    If they will invent fantastic lies about a child abuse prevention program, claiming it to be the worst piece of socialism possible, how can you trust them to be fair about anything else in the bill?

    I hope you’ll let us know.

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81. angela says:

    August 2, 2009 at 1:04 am

    I would think your debating could be more exemplary (especially to those on Cap Hill) by taking a more logical, less emotive route. Now if you say it’s because I don’t care about this particular issue you’re being illogical.

    Your arguments and commentors lose credibility by such angry approaches.

    Example: Mike

    Where is the reasoning behind saying that the Republicans are “despicable” for wanting to respect the privacy of women except in the case of a woman’s womb? The issue at hand is the passing of the healthcare bill as a whole. Republicans as a party historically have resisted greater power of the federal government. It is a party belief and they may have moral reasons behind it, individually and as a group. To take that knowledge of the party, despite their hypocrisies on many levels and things you may dislike about them personally, one cannot further claim that their intent is to see child abusers run amuck in this country. I suppose if you cannot see it from another’s perspective then you cannot see it, even if you disagree with it, and then perhaps it is difficult to argue with that person or group in a respectable and productive manner.

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82. Donna B. says:

    August 2, 2009 at 12:03 am

    Preventing child abuse should not be confused with insurance reform — which is what I understand most of the unread bill to be about.

    These are two separate issues and should be dealt with separately. Why would that be a problem? Laws designed to prevent child abuse would likely meet little to no resistance. Why confuse the issue?

    Having worked with my state’s agency charged with removing abused children from their homes, I know that lack of insurance or medical care has little to do with abuse. If there is a relationship with medical care, it is that the parents are not identified as needing mental health care until the child is already abused.

    Now… if that is what this provision intends to address, I don’t automatically have a problem with it. When specifics are known, I might have. The big problem right now is that specifics aren’t known and it’s tucked into a huge bill that is essentially unrelated.

    Let me make a few other things clear — I support easy access to birth control, including the “morning after” pill and any other means. I’m not religious at all. I do not support legislation designed to make abortion illegal, though I personally deplore it.

    I support the legalization of many of the now illegal drugs. To me, that leads the way to treatment of those who are addicted to malevolent drugs such as meth. I’d really rather they were able to get cocaine legally.

    I am an atheist and find fundamentalist Christian arguments against birth control and drugs absolutely silly… at best.

    But… I am still a conservative and do not wish for systems that work to be dismantled without a proven system to take their place.

    There are some truly awesome aspects of the medical system in the UK. For example, any woman can walk into a drug store and request birth control pills and they are provided FREE. I like that, I really do.

    A law like that would go a long way toward a reduction in the number of abortions in the US, I think. And it would be easy to pass on its own… why contaminate with other policies?

    The really big problem I have with the healthcare reform legislation as it now stands is that it tries to do too much too soon with too little thought.

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83. 2Cents says:

    August 1, 2009 at 4:14 pm

    Ed Darrell — *sigh* Is this even productive anymore? You make so many baseless assertions in this last response that I’m not sure it is. Still, I’m going to make one more attempt to explain my position.

    First of all, you seem particularly disturbed that I did one post entirely about this provision. Do you also realize that, during the course of the past month I’ve posted roughly 50 times about Obamacare? I was trying to cover as many aspects of this bill as possible, but you apparently missed that. So, I think your reaction to me ‘singling out’ this particular provision is way over the top, and this accusation is baseless.

    But, let’s look at this specific post. You continue to accuse me of throwing abused children under the bus and other assorted mean things, but you don’t seem to understand what I keep trying to tell you: if this was really about preventing child abuse, do that as a standalone bill, let it see public and thorough debate, and if it’s really that good it’ll fly into law. What’s the problem with that?

    My point is that this bill — the entire collection of provisions, taken as a giant collective — is going to be very, very bad for America. Once again, I’ll give you that some provisions in this thing may be okay…but they are vastly outnumbered by the demonstrably bad ones.

    Okay, now for the insults. Let’s see…

    – I did not dedicate an ‘entire post’ to defending Bond’s legislation. I said I didn’t know anything about it. You’re the only one insisting I do.

    – ‘suffer the children?’ Have you ever head of context? Your usage of this scripture lends doubt.

    – yes, many government officials have endorsed exactly that, including Barack Obama: http://www.theresmytwocents.com/2009/07/heres-how-that-government-option-will.html

    America has the best health care in the world, top to bottom…if not, why would people from all over the world come here to get treatment? When Americans get sick, do they fly somewhere else? No. The reason costs have skyrocketed have much more to do with trial lawyers, government interference, improved technology, development costs, and yes, some insurance. But, you don’t spend your way out of debt, and you don’t nationalize your way out of poor nationalized health care.

    Eh…you know what? The longer I read into your post, the more convinced I am that this conversation clearly isn’t worth continuing. I’ll post what I’ve already written in the hopes that you’ll be intellectually honest enough to check out the proof of what I’ve said, but somehow I’m guessing you won’t.

    I know you’ll probably crow about sticking it to us conservatives by me giving up like this, but at some point it’s simply not worth my time to continue the conversation, and we have reached that point.

    Best of luck to you in the future, and be careful what you wish for.

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84. 2Cents says:

    August 1, 2009 at 3:49 pm

    James Kessler – you asked:

    “And as for you, 2Cents, since you brought up Canada and Britain. Tell me…have you heard of any person from Canada or Britain say that they wish they had a US style health care system?

    Do be aware that if you say yes I’m going to ask you to prove it.

    Or would you like to acknowledge the possibility that one can have what is best of their systems while correcting what is wrong with their system? Or has your ideology trumped your rationality?”

    My answer is absolutely yes. Here are a bunch: http://www.theresmytwocents.com/2009/07/whats-canadian-health-care-really-like.html

    And, if you want a specific person, how about the guy who actually designed the Canadian system himself, Claude Castonguay? Yep, he’s now saying the private sector is the way to go: http://www.theresmytwocents.com/2008/06/canadian-health-care-suckssays.html

    Is that good enough proof for you? Or has my ideology trumped my rationality?

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85. Ed Darrell says:

    August 1, 2009 at 3:10 pm

    Ed Darrell – wow, I seem to have hit a nerve, as your vitriol has been ratcheted up a notch! Let’s take another crack at it.

    Yes, you hit a nerve when you posted this at your blog, “Obamacare: Stealth agenda”:

    This one deserves its own post:

    The massive 1,018-page health care bill introduced by House Democrats is full of bad policy ideas, and they’re not all even about health care. One troublesome provision calls for a home visitation program that would bring state workers into the homes of young families to improve “the well-being, health, and development of children.”

    You’re the one who appears to endorse the idea that child abuse prevention is a “troublesome provision.” Your claim, not mine. I thought it sounded particularly ill-informed at the time, and I can’t imagine why a sane person wouldn’t back off of it and say, “oops, I misspoke.” But here you are defending your views. Churlish, mean, brutish views, might I add.

    Yes, I did take a whack at the bill…the entire bill.

    You made an entire post dedicated to slamming the child abuse prevention program. Have you made similarly ill-informed swipes at the rest of the bill?

    I suspect you didn’t have a clue what you were talking about in that diatribe against the child abuse prevention provision, and I’m not sure you’ve figured that out yet. You swallowed the line of the anti-social, misanthropic Heritage Foundation, hook, line, sinker, fishing pole and pier, without once pausing to look at what the bill actually said, or what was at stake.

    You didn’t hesitate to throw abused children overboard. Your only human, American, Christian/Jewish/Moslem position would be to back off and apologize for misunderstanding the bill — but here you are defending your position.

    I’m not ticked off. I’m embarrassed that people would attack a good idea without knowing what they were doing, and then when informed about how their attack damages children, redouble their attack.

    Were there justice in the world, your mother would grab you by your ear and drag you away from your computer before you offend again.

    And, as I was pretty clear in explaining, with a bill this big we have to take a look at the balance of the provisions. To me, the in-home visitation isn’t nearly as significant as the government control (I believe you would call in the ‘public option’). As I was also pretty clear in explaining, this thing is over 1,000 pages long and is probably full of things that are both good and bad.

    Balderdash. You singled out the child abuse prevention program. You dedicated an entire post to slamming the Section 440 program, and then you said:

    Can we say nanny state control, anyone?

    There’s my two cents.

    You singled out a small section, the section on child abuse prevention, and called “nanny state control.”

    We already know your occupation, ma’am. We’re just dickering about the price right now.

    Of course, you can resign that occupation anytime you choose.

    I’m going to gloss over your petty insults and try to address what little substance you have in your response.

    I’m not going to gloss over your defense of child abuse. You thought those were petty insults? Here, let me step it up. In your mad drive to slam Obama unfairly, you’ve thrown babies under the bus.

    Do you get the picture yet? You called child abuse prevention “nanny state.” That’s cruel and merciless. Shame on you. What sort of language does it take to get you to see reality? Can we get some giant to shake some sense into you, to let you feel what shaken baby syndrome feels like as your brain tissue tears away from your skull?

    I thought you were merely in error before. Now I’m wondering whether to notify the cops. Am I wrong? When do you figure it out and say “Oops — I didn’t mean to stupidly impugn child abuse prevention. I don’t favor child abuse, and I erred?”

    Regarding Bond’s Missouri bill…I know nothing about it, so unlike some people I am reluctant to comment out of ignorance.

    Bovine poop. You spent an entire post on it, repeating crass lies, and then you called Bond’s bill “nanny state control.”

    Don’t pee on my leg and call it rain. Don’t pee on my Constitution and call it flag-waving. Don’t pee on abused children and call it “free enterprise.”

    You haven’t read up yet — and you’re still spouting nonsense.
    

    I will just again point to the fact that I have said all along that it is likely there are worthy provisions in this bill, and that this whole thing should be pulled apart and done piecemeal for just that reason. Once again, you are equating opposition to the bill in its entirety to opposition to child abuse prevention, and that’s asinine.

    And yet, you singled out the child abuse prevention portion for special abuse. Don’t say “there may be worthy provisions” after you singled out one of the most worthy provisions for special abuse. I assume you know even less about the rest of the bill. Have you read any of it?

    Now I’m getting angry. Ignorance can be dismissed with a smile, and a pledge to cure it. Intentional defense of damaging ignorance is a sin. Jesus said “suffer the children,” not “make the children suffer.”

    Yes, the government will end up in control, and thus decide who lives and dies.

    Pure, uncomposted bovine excrement. There is NO PROVISION in the bill that can be interpreted that way without lying about it. Do you seriously think that any elected official in this nation would advocate that, even if he thought he could get away with it? Shame on you for impugning good people so.

    And in this specific case, since you say that about the child abuse provision, I challenge you: Look at the Missouri program, which has been in existence now for 26 years. Show us where there is any “government control over who lives and who dies.” And if you can find anything, prove to me that it’s more and worse than the control private insurance companies and George Bush’s Medicaid provisions do. Under the current law, from George Bush, hospitals are forced to take sentient people off of life support and let them die — the current bill removes those draconian, cruel provisions. (Remember the woman in Houston?)

    Since you obviously don’t understand this, let me summarize for you. Unlike the private sector, the government is not required to turn a profit to keep things running (decades of increasing deficits prove that beyond doubt).

    Since you don’t know anything at all about government health care, let’s look at the facts. Here in the U.S. we pay twice as much annually for health car, per capita, than any other industrialized nation — than any other nation, period — and we get less care. We do not even provide care to nearly 50 million Americans, one out of every seven. But we pay twice as much for the care they cannot get. What’s wrong with that picture?

    Health care costs in the U.S. are rising faster than inflation. Health care costs bankrupted General Motors — BMW, Mercedes, Toyota, Honda, Nissan and others don’t pay those costs because their government-run, single payer plans provide better health care at half the cost. You’re bankrupting my nation, you’re costing my family thousands, you’re putting our nation on the shoals of destruction to guarantee profits to private companies which profits can only be described as mysteriously huge. This health care cost is a cruel tax on Americans for which we get no additional benefits.

    Unlike government run programs, like the Air Force, or Air Traffic Control, or water systems, or sewer systems, or traffic lights, or road building — our privately-dominated health care system refuses to serve at least one seventh of the nation, and poorly or disastrously serves another 100 million. It doesn’t do too well with those who get full service, either — Americans have the world’s highest levels of chronic, preventable diseases like heart disease, lung diseases and diabetes.

    For this Yugo health care we pay Maserati prices.

    It’s unjust and costly — and you’re defending it.

    Profits are not the measure of a well-run health system. There’s a reason we speak of “health and wealth” as separate entities.

    Government doesn’t have to make a profit? Then can you explain why it is that Medicare and Medicaid can handle health claims at about $1.00 per claim, while your privately-run insurance companies pay ten times that much? Can you explain why insurance companies pay around 25% of their total budgets on administration, while government programs typically run at about one third that cost?

    What are the private companies competing for, to see who can bankrupt the nation fastest?

    I probably shouldn’t be so hard on you. For all I know you may work in health care somewhere. I spent ten years working these issues for the U.S. Senate, and I worked them for private industry for a while later. I’ve consulted for several of the largest health care and insurance companies, and for Fortune 500 companies they serve, on health care issues. I keep current with health care issues, because I’m American, and I have close relatives with heart disease, cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, and a variety of other diseases. I am called on to assist with living wills — less now than in the past — and these issues are a key part of the business law courses I occasionally teach at local universities.

    No, I don’t know these issues inside and out. But I know enough not to be bullied by interest groups who are trying to do me and my family dirty.

    By the way, what has the Heritage Foundation ever done to your benefit? Do you know? I know they’ve opposed equal pay for equal work, wise land conservation policies, pollution clean up, and almost every advance in health care plans to come down the pike. How did you ever come to regard them as a reliable authority — and do you seriously agree with them that child abuse prevention programs are dangerous and must be stopped, as you posted on your blog?

    They will mandate price controls and policies that will drive private insurance out of business, leaving only the government ‘option’ left.

    That hasn’t happened in aged care. If government is the higher-cost option as you argued a few sentences ago, then the government will be outcompeted by private companies.

    Of course, you and I, and the insurance companies, know they are not the low-cost providers. You know what? I think they need competition from the government to get them to do the right thing at the right price. Government plans pioneered portability of benefits from place to place, and from organization to organization. Government plans pioneered preventive care. Come to think of it, is there any benefit that was pioneered by private plans? Can you name one thing private insurance did that made things better for Americans, before government plans did?

    This will include things like setting how much doctors can be paid (which will drive good doctors out of practice), determining how much insurance companies will be paid (ditto), dictating which procedures will and will not be covered, etc.

    Private companies do that now. Why is it worse when the government does it for my benefit, than when private companies do it against my benefit? Please explain.

    And, since you’re so big on reading the bill, did you notice the part about how Obama misrepresented the concept of keeping one’s own doctor and plan? The truth, upon reading the bill, is that once Obamacare goes into law, no new plans can be created, and no changes can be made to anyone’s existing plan. Basically, all insurance freezes. Then, as companies go out of business (or voluntarily switch to the public ‘option’), those existing plans go away, leaving employees with no option at all. It won’t be long before there are no options but the public ‘option’.

    I think you’re misreading the plan. Can you point us to those sections — or are you taking the word of the Heritage Foundation on this?

    By the way, in every other nation that has a plan where the private insurance companies are gone, as you describe, citizens pay less and get more care.

    I’m unconvinced that private companies in the U.S. are doing the great job you claim. We pay more, we get less. Many Americans can’t get the care they need (I’m in that category, and I have insurance).

    What advantage do we get from our costly, rationed service system now that you want to keep?

    At that point, we will really see costs rise because there is no competition to keep costs down.

    Competition isn’t keeping prices down now. Remember when I said ‘don’t pee on my leg and call it rain?’ That’s what you’re doing now. From our experience in America, it seems, in health care, that competition drives prices up. We pay more for less.

    Do you have a lot of stock in insurance companies, or have you just failed to study health care in America?

    Everyone will get everything they want for a time, but only a short time. Costs will spiral up until the point at which taxes cannot be raised any further to pay for those costs. Then what? Rationing.

    We have more rationing of health care in America now, under private insurance, than any other industrialized nation — including Russia. In no other nation is there a significant portion of the citizenry kept out of health care altogether. If you get sick in France, their national system will pay for your care, generally without any copay — it’s cheaper to just deliver quality care than to try to bill for it.

    We pay 25% of every health care dollar for a private insurance system whose sole goal is to keep uninsured people from getting health care. In that regard, I guess you could say the private system is a great success — if by “success” you mean leaving the entire population sicker, dying younger, in pain, and with less money, and with one out of every seven people shut out of health care altogether. We pay more for less. Do you think that’s a bargain?

    Don’t talk to me about deception in the design of a government plan if you support the present system and its deceptive goals. Leg, pee, rain.

    Once again, I suggest you look around the world, where people are denied treatment because their lives are not deemed ‘worth’ enough.

    In the industrialized world, that occurs mainly in the United States, maybe only in the United States. In poor countries, people can’t get health care they need, not because they don’t deserve it, but because it simply isn’t available. Only in the U.S. do we consciously keep people out of health care because they don’t “measure up as people,” based on whether they have a job where good health benefits are provided. In practice we regard poor people, small business owners and employees, hourly workers, and children as expendable. We deny them care because they don’t drive BMWs. BMWs, remember, are mostly built by people who have single-payer, government health systems. Those workers are healthier than workers in the U.S.

    I’ve looked around the world, and I conclude that anyone who opposes health care reform in America, hates Americans and hopes to see this nation fail. Rush Limbaugh said that right out loud, and he’s pushing against health care reform the same as you are. Is this a trend? Our present privately-dominated health care system costs more and delivers less than any other plan on Earth, more than any government-run system. We ration health care, keeping more people from having any care than any other nation on Earth, in numbers and in proportion.

    Can you name any other health care system on Earth that is as expensive as ours, and covers a smaller portion of its people? No, you can’t.

    People in Britain are pulling their own rotten teeth, people in Canada have to go blind in one eye before getting treatment for the other, people regularly wait on months-long lists to get basic tests that Americans get in hours, life-saving drugs are denied because they are expensive… The list goes on and on.

    Okay, you’re on. Document any of that. And, critically, document that the problem is greater in those nations than it is in our nation now.

    In the U.S. life-saving drugs are denied because people can’t afford them. We don’t make a decision that a person has lived a long and productive life, and that it costs too much to get them the drug. We kill them young because they don’t have the right job.

    Then, if someone wins the sweepstakes and lives to old age when Medicare and Medicaid can cover, we try to save lives with the expensive drugs, but when they can’t work for long if at all. Instead of covering diseases when people are young and the disease treatment is cheap, we wait until the disease is progressed and the person is nearly invalid before we act. We treat too late, and it costs us far, far too much. Failing to provide health care for younger people drives up our health care costs enormously.

    Tell me again, why is it you support throwing so much of our money and talent away?

    So we pay more, but we kill more, and we die with more pain.

    What do you claim the advantage of the U.S. system is? Pain?

    Are you a disciple of de Sade?

    When a bureaucrat uses a formula to decide who gets what treatment, that’s the government deciding who lives and dies.

    I’d rather a government bureaucrat do it in the light of day than a private bureaucrat who is trying to cover up his tracks to boost his bonus, in the dark. Private industry rewards private bureaucrats for saving money even when it kills people.

    When a government bureaucrat makes such a decision, there’s an appeal. When a private bureaucrat kills your mother, do you think that’s fair? Where do you appeal? Doesn’t it bother you that a private bureaucrat can get a bonus for depriving your mother from getting a life-saving treatment?

    If not, why not?

    I suggest you take your own advice and learn a little more about what’s at stake.

    I don’t take advice from people who defend child abuse. I don’t take advice from people who defend child abuse and don’t know they’re doing that. Maybe if you rethink your irrational defense of high cost, low care, child killing systems, I’d think your advice was worth at least the piss you’ve been trying to put on my leg all day. But until you show a sign of humanity and sense together, your advice isn’t worth the urine you’re wasting.

    Don’t tell me: Your excuse is that your health care bills have made it so you don’t have a pot to urinate in? Is that right?

    Somebody find a toilet — not for this guy, for me. I have to vomit.

    You ought to see how I react when you hit a nerve.

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86. Lady Why says:

    August 1, 2009 at 1:08 pm

    Hi again James, In answer to your second post to me, yes, I would happily give up my Medicare (which is not free, by the way. My mother found out she would have to pay $196.00 per month for it which is more than she pays for her private insurance at work). I think it is poorly run and will be bankrupt by the time I would be eligible for it.

    No, I would not strip the military (which is horrible health care says my friend whose husband is a retired Air Force pilot) or the politicians of their employer provided health care. The government is their employer and I think it is appropriate for the government AS AN EMPLOYER to provide their employees with health care. It is NOT the government’s job to provide the rest of us health care, however.

    We already have provisions to provide health care for the uninsured which is funded by my tax dollars. There is Medicaid. In our state there is a health care plan for children that anyone can get into for minimal cost regardless of need. So, it’s not like we don’t already offer services to those that need help. What we don’t need is sweeping government control over every person’s life. I’m not a big fan of a ‘nanny state’.

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87. Lady Why says:

    August 1, 2009 at 12:57 pm

    Hi James, I’m saying that I’d like the free market to regulate health care costs. Why, may I ask, do you think the government is not out to make money and seize power? You think the insurance companies are the only ones doing that. Out of the frying pan, into the fire.

    Are you saying that it is better for babies to be murdered in the womb than to have no health insurance? Your abortion argument is a bit strained.

    200 people died in New York yesterday due to lack of health insurance?? Could I have a citation on that please? That’s absurd! Uninsured people get care EVERY SINGLE DAY thanks to our tax dollars.

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88. Lady Why says:

    August 1, 2009 at 12:49 pm

    Ed, try a little decaf. Seriously. Isn’t it a positive thing to have an open dialog on these important issues? Let’s just ratchet it down a few notches and continue.

    First of all, could you show me where I said child abuse prevention workers are evil? Never said it. Don’t think it.

    I am anti-abortion AND anti-child abuse. It’s the METHOD of preventing child abuse that I am questioning because (though your Missouri program may have been a resounding success) generally speaking, the government creates a big money pit without accomplishing a whole lot of good most of the time.

    My main question is who would be in charge of the program, what makes them qualified to run it, and who gets to be the czar of deciding what is considered ‘abuse’ (outside of the obvious). Why are you so quick to believe those in government have such big altruistic hearts that love and care for children? I’m skeptical.

    Important questions, I’d say.

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89. 2Cents says:

    August 1, 2009 at 12:37 pm

    James Kessler – I think you’re actually getting Lady Why’s post and mine mixed up. No problem.

    If you’ll consult the facts, that 47 million number is very misleading (http://www.theresmytwocents.com/2009/07/about-those-47-million-uninsured.html). When you take college kids plus those earning $75,000 or more who chose not to sign up, that removes roughly 20 million people. Then take out about 10 million more who are not U.S. citizens, and 11 million who are eligible for SCHIP and Medicaid but have not signed up for some reason.

    So that really leaves only 10 million to 15 million people who are truly long-term uninsured.

    Do we need to spend $1 trillion and have government control health care for everyone in order to cover .03% of the nation? There are better ways to do this, and this 47 million number is hysterical hype.

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90. James Kessler says:

    August 1, 2009 at 12:37 pm

    Oh forgot one thing, you speak of rationing, 2 cents. You are aware that we have that in our health care system right?

    For example, I’m having to wait 6 months for a surgery to fix a problem with my right leg. Why? Because my health insurance company says so. How is that any different then what you say goes on in Canada or Britain?

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91. James Kessler says:

    August 1, 2009 at 12:35 pm

    And as for you, 2Cents, since you brought up Canada and Britain. Tell me…have you heard of any person from Canada or Britain say that they wish they had a US style health care system?

    Do be aware that if you say yes I’m going to ask you to prove it.

    Or would you like to acknowledge the possibility that one can have what is best of their systems while correcting what is wrong with their system? Or has your ideology trumped your rationality?

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92. James Kessler says:

    August 1, 2009 at 12:33 pm

    Tell me, Lady Why, if you oppose government run health care you’re willing to surrender your right to medicare right?

    After all..that is government run health care. You’re also willing to strip the people in the US military of their government run health care right? And also you’re willing to get rid of the VA? And you’re also willing to press the Republicans in Congress to give up their government run health care right?

    Because I’m sure you find it hypocritical that the leaders of your political party use government run health care for themselves but that they object to us being given access to it right?

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93. 2Cents says:

    August 1, 2009 at 12:33 pm

    Ed Darrell – wow, I seem to have hit a nerve, as your vitriol has been ratcheted up a notch! Let’s take another crack at it.

    Yes, I did take a whack at the bill…the entire bill. And, as I was pretty clear in explaining, with a bill this big we have to take a look at the balance of the provisions. To me, the in-home visitation isn’t nearly as significant as the government control (I believe you would call in the ‘public option’). As I was also pretty clear in explaining, this thing is over 1,000 pages long and is probably full of things that are both good and bad.

    I’m going to gloss over your petty insults and try to address what little substance you have in your response.

    Regarding Bond’s Missouri bill…I know nothing about it, so unlike some people I am reluctant to comment out of ignorance. I will just again point to the fact that I have said all along that it is likely there are worthy provisions in this bill, and that this whole thing should be pulled apart and done piecemeal for just that reason. Once again, you are equating opposition to the bill in its entirety to opposition to child abuse prevention, and that’s asinine.

    Yes, the government will end up in control, and thus decide who lives and dies. Since you obviously don’t understand this, let me summarize for you. Unlike the private sector, the government is not required to turn a profit to keep things running (decades of increasing deficits prove that beyond doubt). They will mandate price controls and policies that will drive private insurance out of business, leaving only the government ‘option’ left. This will include things like setting how much doctors can be paid (which will drive good doctors out of practice), determining how much insurance companies will be paid (ditto), dictating which procedures will and will not be covered, etc.

    And, since you’re so big on reading the bill, did you notice the part about how Obama misrepresented the concept of keeping one’s own doctor and plan? The truth, upon reading the bill, is that once Obamacare goes into law, no new plans can be created, and no changes can be made to anyone’s existing plan. Basically, all insurance freezes. Then, as companies go out of business (or voluntarily switch to the public ‘option’), those existing plans go away, leaving employees with no option at all. It won’t be long before there are no options but the public ‘option’.

    At that point, we will really see costs rise because there is no competition to keep costs down. Everyone will get everything they want for a time, but only a short time. Costs will spiral up until the point at which taxes cannot be raised any further to pay for those costs. Then what? Rationing.

    Once again, I suggest you look around the world, where people are denied treatment because their lives are not deemed ‘worth’ enough. People in Britain are pulling their own rotten teeth, people in Canada have to go blind in one eye before getting treatment for the other, people regularly wait on months-long lists to get basic tests that Americans get in hours, life-saving drugs are denied because they are expensive… The list goes on and on. When a bureaucrat uses a formula to decide who gets what treatment, that’s the government deciding who lives and dies.

    I suggest you take your own advice and learn a little more about what’s at stake.

    LikeLike

94. James Kessler says:

    August 1, 2009 at 12:29 pm

    Lady why writes:
    Are you actually saying that anyone who opposes Obama’s sweeping attempt at controlling our health care is akin to supporting child abuse?

    Are you saying that you’d rather have a bunch of health insurance industry bueraucrats controlling your health care then the government? You’d rather have a bunch of people who’s only interest in making as much money as possible control your health care?

    She then writes:
    By the way, since Obama is pro-abortion, even late term abortion, I would question his desire to stop child abuse. But, maybe that’s just me.

    I’m presuming you’re “pro-life.” Tell me..exactly how do you reconcile that position with 40+ million people having no health care? How do you reconcile that with 5 million people losing their health care since just last year? How do you reconcile that with 200 people dying in New York yesterday because of a lack of health care?

    And I find it curious you can say “Sadly, it’s typical of the liberal mindset that resorts to slander and attacks while lacking any solid basis in logic or reality” when you support a party that has done nothing but that. No, it isn’t typical of the liberal mindset, lady, it is typical of the conservative mindset. What Ed did was not slander. What you did was twist what Ed said into a bunch of folderol. Why? Because you had no intention of reading what Ed actually wrote and doing any thinking about it.

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95. Ed Darrell says:

    August 1, 2009 at 11:59 am

    Are you actually saying that anyone who opposes Obama’s sweeping attempt at controlling our health care is akin to supporting child abuse? That’s quite a leap. I wonder why you think government programs can stop child abuse.

    No, I’m saying anyone who claims the child abuse prevention program is creeping, totalitarian communism, has been fooled, or is really very mean.

    And I say that because they have chosen to attack the child abuse prevention part of the bill, falsely characterizing it as a serious intrusion on freedom. That’s exactly the sort of perverted, immoral argument that kept us from having anti-child abuse laws a hundred years ago.

    I can’t say for certain that they actually favor beating children, but that would be a logical extension from their over-the-top attack on prevention of child abuse.

    Do I think such a program can work? Look at my immediately preceding post — such a program has worked since 1983 in Missouri, under the aegis of good, flag-waving Americans. (See the press release from Sen. Bond.)

    Shame on you for accusing child abuse prevention workers of being so evil.

    By the way, since Obama is pro-abortion, even late term abortion, I would question his desire to stop child abuse. But, maybe that’s just me.

    So you’re anti-abortion, but pro-child abuse? You think that a fetus has rights, but they end when the child leaves the birth canal? How quaint, perverse, ill-informed, and nasty.

    LikeLike

96. Ed Darrell says:

    August 1, 2009 at 11:53 am

    Two cents ranted:

    I find it interesting that, of all 1,018 pages of this bill, you single out literally just one provision to use as your justification for saying that all opponents of Obamacare have lost their minds and hearts. Pull that provision out and send it through as a standalone bill, and if it’s so great it’ll probably have damn near unanimous support, so why doesn’t Obama do that if it’s so important? No, you’re staring so hard at one particular tree that you’re missing the burning forest around you.

    I picked the one part of the bill that you criticized. I find it interesting, and a demonstration of conservative perversion of morality, that you criticize the child abuse prevention section of the bill. If you’re going to criticize section 440, don’t now complain that you didn’t know what you were doing. Stand up like a citizen and defend your attack on child abuse prevention.

    Or admit your error and stop being such a yapping lap-dog about issues you don’t understand.

    You don’t know anything at all about what you talk about. You’re probably not an idiot, so we can only wonder why you’ve chosen to act like one on this issue.

    Child abuse is a problem. Child abuse can be prevented. Conservative Republicans piloted this program starting in 1983 in Missouri, and they have found none of the bad effects you claim. Missouri has not gone communist. Missouri is not a police state. Missouri has had some success reducing child abuse. Sen. Christopher Bond started the program when he was governor of Missouri, and he’s the Senate sponsor of the bill that makes up the section you criticized.

    I’m assuming you are simply ignorant of what you claim and do (“Father forgive 2 Cents”), and not really the enormous, tensed up anal sphincter you appear to be from your blog post and snarky, inaccurate response above.

    There is no government dictating who lives and dies in H.R. 3200, nor in any proposal from Obama, nor in any proposal from the House, nor in any proposal in the Senate. None. What sort of loss of heart, mind and soul would cause someone to claim there were?

    I’ve not slandered you in any form. You’re the one who viciously and inaccurately slandered the bill and the people who are trying to fix health care. You specifically picked one worthy provision to claim the onset of totalitarianism — but even you can see now that your description was in error and beyond the pale.

    It’s typical of the conservative totalitarian to accept nasty and false claims against other people and good ideas at face value, without bothering to learn what the facts are.

    Now that you know the facts, don’t blame me for your distorted description – I didn’t hold a gun to your head and force you to post that tripe. You posted freely. Under the bill, you would also remain free. I didn’t force you to lie about it, and it’s awfully odd that you blame me for pointing out your error.

    Here’s Sen. Bond’s press release from last year on the long-running pilot program in Missouri; tell us what is wrong with this program in Missouri — where does it go awry, as you insist it must?:

    Bond Celebrates 25th Anniversary of Children’s Trust Fund
    Senator Congratulates Missouri Group for Keeping Children Safe

    April 11, 2008

    ST. LOUIS, MO – U.S. Senator Kit Bond today joined child advocates, health care professionals and community leaders to celebrate the Children’s Trust Fund (CTF) for 25 years of leadership in combating child abuse and neglect.

    “It will take all of us, the Trust Fund, hospitals, service providers and elected officials working together to continue to make progress,” said Bond. “I am proud of our legacy and I look forward to continuing our strong partnership for children.”

    Senator Bond helped create the CTF in 1983 as Governor of Missouri. Over the past 25 years, the CTF awarded more than $35 million in child abuse prevention grants to community-based organizations. The grants helped to develop effective and innovative home visitation programs for at-risk families, mentoring programs for teen mothers, safe crib programs, and respite care programs for families in crisis.

    Bond noted that the CTF has made important progress and according to Kids Count, a database which tracks the status of children in the United States, overall rates of child abuse decreased in Missouri from 2002 to 2006. Bond stressed that although the CTF has made great strides in preventing child abuse and neglect, there is still plenty of work to be done. More than 1,500 children died in the U.S. in 2006 from child abuse and 900,000 more were victims of maltreatment.

    As a policymaker, child abuse can either be addressed on the law enforcement side or much better, on the prevention side, stressed Bond. These prevention efforts need to focus on the earliest years of a child’s life, said Bond, pointing out that the first few years of life can be a dangerous time for children. Children under 4 have the greatest risk of serious physical injury or death from child abuse and according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study, 1 in 50 infants are victims of nonfatal child abuse or neglect in a year. One-third of these babies were abused or neglected in the first week of life. The best child abuse prevention methods include parent education, home visitation programs, and training child care providers, teachers and hospital workers to recognize the signs of abuse early.

    When established, the CTF brought together children’s leaders from all sectors – health, education and the ministry. These leaders came back to Governor Bond with the idea to adopt another critical early education program to help all families know how to deal with the challenges of raising a child – Parents as Teachers (PAT). This program is now one of Bond’s most important achievements and with his help has expanded across the state and nationwide. In Washington, Bond is working to expand PAT even further on the national level through the Education Begins at Home Act that he has cosponsored with Senator Clinton.

    From the statewide campaign to prevent Shaken Baby Syndrome to working with Children’s Hospital to train residents to recognize abuse, these child advocates have made great strides in improving families and keeping children safe, praised Bond. To continue this progress support on the federal level is critical, emphasized Bond, who pledged to continue support for programs like the Children’s Graduate Medical Education Program, which provides federal dollars to support graduate medical education for doctors who work in children’s hospitals.
    ###

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97. Lady Why says:

    August 1, 2009 at 11:24 am

    Are you actually saying that anyone who opposes Obama’s sweeping attempt at controlling our health care is akin to supporting child abuse? That’s quite a leap. I wonder why you think government programs can stop child abuse. They can’t even handle a small ‘Cash for Clunkers’ deal. I don’t think they are qualified to tell me how to manage the care of my dog much less the care of my children. This bill would not prevent child abuse, but it will waste my tax dollars and allow the government one more area where they think they have a say in how I raise my children. Who defines child abuse in this provision? Maybe they will tell me that if I buy my child a McDonald’s hamburger I’m an abusive parent. Who knows? That’s the scary part… give them an inch and they’ll take a mile.

    Socialized healthcare is a disaster and will be a disaster for us. That’s it in a nutshell. I just can’t understand why people don’t see it for what it is. Baffling.

    By the way, since Obama is pro-abortion, even late term abortion, I would question his desire to stop child abuse. But, maybe that’s just me.

    LikeLike

98. Murfyn says:

    August 1, 2009 at 11:10 am

    “Right out of 1984?”
    “Nineteen Eighty-Four” is over-rated. OK, there is some good stuff in there, but it is far more of a horror novel than it is a political novel. Orwell’s other books are so much better! “Homage to Catalonia”, “Road to Wigan Pier”, “Animal Farm”, are better written and have more to say.

    LikeLike

99. 2Cents says:

    August 1, 2009 at 11:02 am

    No one favors child abuse, and no thinking and rational human being would buy your empty assertion.

    I find it interesting that, of all 1,018 pages of this bill, you single out literally just one provision to use as your justification for saying that all opponents of Obamacare have lost their minds and hearts. Pull that provision out and send it through as a standalone bill, and if it’s so great it’ll probably have damn near unanimous support, so why doesn’t Obama do that if it’s so important? No, you’re staring so hard at one particular tree that you’re missing the burning forest around you.

    When talking about legislation that is this vast and sweeping, we have to look at the balance of things. There may be a number of truly beneficial provisions and spending programs in them, but there may also be many others that are not that outweigh the benefits. That’s the danger of huge, sweeping reforms, and a great reason to avoid them. For this particular one, I have not seen enough evidence of potential positives to offset the demonstrable negatives. This is nothing more than the government literally forcing its way into citizens’ homes and exerting control over their lives. And what you call an opportunity to stop child abuse, I might call an opportunity for State abuse of citizens who don’t share the same views as the State (it wouldn’t exactly be the first time in history that’s happened, you know). Sure, you might catch a handful of genuine child abusers (which is certainly desirable), but would that be worth the cost of the State abusing tens of millions of good, caring parents in the process? Not everyone would think so.

    But let’s get back to the primary goal of the bill itself. Having government-controlled health care will cause costs to skyrocket and quality to plummet. There is no debate about this because even a cursory look around the world provides proof after proof after proof. It always — ALWAYS — happens in a socialized system. Then, to control those skyrocketing costs, the rationing begins, and real people will be forced to live with pain and suffering leading to premature death, all of which could have been prevented. Again, there is no debate – look at Canada, look at U.K., look at Cuba, look anywhere else in the world. It’s happening everywhere this system has been tried.

    So, let’s turn your logic around: are you saying that you endorse the government dictating who lives and dies at all ages and in all circumstances? Now that sure seems like a loss of mind and heart to me!

    What you have done here is to slander everyone who opposes this bill for any reason by accusing them of opposing one worthy (in your opinion) provision, and that’s absolutely ridiculous. Sadly, it’s typical of the liberal mindset that resorts to slander and attacks when lacking any solid basis in logic or reality.

    LikeLike

100. Mike says:

     August 1, 2009 at 7:03 am

     What is despicable is that they are so “Pro-Life” that the only place in which it is okay to intrude on privacy is an a woman’s womb.

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