71 replies to this topic

[vascudave]

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/08/03...l-philadelphia/

[devilsfan0405]

It's nice to know that exactly 7, count 'em, 7 of our 100 Senators have actually read (or plan on reading) the stupid bill. They don't even know what the !@#$ they're voting on. Pathetic. And I don't want to hear the "It's too long" excuse. Bull!@#$; read 25-50 pages a day while you're on your much-needed (yeah, right) summer vacation. It's not that hard. Kids in this country probably read as many pages of written material or more with summer reading programs. Is it any wonder that people are fed up and have no faith in these politicians? Another excellent point made by one of the people at the meeting; they couldn't get Cash For Clunkers right; how do we expect them to make split decisions on people's health? Utter nonsense.

[lab94]

As much as I would like to see something with healthcare, I dont see anything good coming until something is done with the Ins company, These CEO's and other big wigs making Millions each year.

OK so I opened my mail today and got all the bills for my son's knee surgery. Thankfully I only owe a few hundres dollars, but here is a break down of what got paid...

Surgon's bill $4,400 Ins paid him $805.00

Total of all the hospital bills (ER bill, stay, cruches, etc.) $18,200 Ins paid them $4,100

[devilsfan0405]

lab94, on Aug 3 2009, 11:25 PM, said:

As much as I would like to see something with healthcare, I dont see anything good coming until something is done with the Ins company, These CEO's and other big wigs making Millions each year.

OK so I opened my mail today and got all the bills for my son's knee surgery. Thankfully I only owe a few hundres dollars, but here is a break down of what got paid...

Surgon's bill $4,400 Ins paid him $805.00

Total of all the hospital bills (ER bill, stay, cruches, etc.) $18,200 Ins paid them $4,100

Understood. There are abuses in these corporations to be sure. I'm also certain that a lot of claims are denied to protect the company's bottom line, ensuring that they meet their quarterly profit goal. The thing is, I just don't believe that government is the answer. They never seem to do anything right the first time and I am not convinced that they will rein in costs. Medicare ended up costing nine times the original projections. How about tort reform? Let's find a way to throw out these baseless lawsuits before they cost everyone an arm and a leg in litigation fees. I hear that some doctors' malpractice insurance premiums are well over $100k per year. They're getting squeezed and it gets passed to patients. Couldn't we also open up more options for people? Let them get insurance policies in other states instead of being restricted to their own. Wouldn't that open up competition?

[vascudave]

devilsfan0405, on Aug 3 2009, 11:33 PM, said:

Understood. There are abuses in these corporations to be sure. I'm also certain that a lot of claims are denied to protect the company's bottom line, ensuring that they meet their quarterly profit goal. The thing is, I just don't believe that government is the answer. They never seem to do anything right the first time and I am not convinced that they will rein in costs. Medicare ended up costing nine times the original projections. How about tort reform? Let's find a way to throw out these baseless lawsuits before they cost everyone an arm and a leg in litigation fees. I hear that some doctors' malpractice insurance premiums are well over $100k per year. They're getting squeezed and it gets passed to patients. Couldn't we also open up more options for people? Let them get insurance policies in other states instead of being restricted to their own. Wouldn't that open up competition?

stop making sense will you..after all this is gov't were talking about. you would want consumers to have the opportunity to get better prices due to competition. all your banter is starting to sound like the "American way".

[Ehop]

CEO pay is so minor in the scheme of things, but sells well.
Add all CEO pay and replace with zero, then compare to the whole healthcare cost and realize it makes no difference.
The gvoernment wants more power, and that is all they are looking to accomplish.
The govt already controls enough of healthcare, fix those problems, then come back to me.
Dont give me, will pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.

People with insurance have so little concern about cost and that is a problem.
You need to get more people involved.
The pols will not do this, since they do not want to ask the people to do more.

When looking at healthcare, ask yourself, how much does you car insurance compay pay for your gas or oil changes. then ask what would these cost if paid by insurance without you having a care about the actual cost. Now ask, how is the governemnt being more involved going to fix this.

[weatherbowl]

I think the longer it takes for the healthcare bill to pass, the better the chance it won't pass. As time goes on, more people are realizing what a bad ideal it is for the government to run this. If the politicians truly wanted to lower costs of healthcare, they would do something about tort reform.

[icehater]

weatherbowl, on Aug 4 2009, 07:37 PM, said:

I think the longer it takes for the healthcare bill to pass, the better the chance it won't pass. As time goes on, more people are realizing what a bad ideal it is for the government to run this. If the politicians truly wanted to lower costs of healthcare, they would do something about tort reform.

That bill represents the best toilet paper ever produced. Imagine changing the coverage of 300 million people so that 5-7 million people, most of whom are probably illegal aliens who can get coverage for obvious reasons. This is the tail wagging the dog to the 10th power.

[devilsfan0405]

icehater, on Aug 7 2009, 01:12 AM, said:

That bill represents the best toilet paper ever produced. Imagine changing the coverage of 300 million people so that 5-7 million people, most of whom are probably illegal aliens who can get coverage for obvious reasons. This is the tail wagging the dog to the 10th power.

Seriously. Since when does minority rule in this country as opposed to the majority? Haven't nearly 80 percent of people polled said that they were satisfied with their current health care program?

[vascudave]

devilsfan0405, on Aug 7 2009, 09:35 AM, said:

Seriously. Since when does minority rule in this country as opposed to the majority? Haven't nearly 80 percent of people polled said that they were satisfied with their current health care program?

welcome to the new America dev.

[devilsfan0405]

vascudave, on Aug 7 2009, 10:27 AM, said:

welcome to the new America dev.

Disgusting. And add Harry Reid to the list of horse's *** politicians. He says that the people protesting the health care proposals are interfering with the Democratic process. Hey, moron. Protesting is one of the most Democratic things you can do! But it was OK when the loony lefties were protesting violenty at G8 summits during Bush's presidency and starting riots with police during the Vietnam era. What a bunch of hypocrites. The town hall meetings may have been heated verbally, but I didn't see any violence.

[NittanyLion]

devilsfan0405, on Aug 7 2009, 11:30 AM, said:

Disgusting. And add Harry Reid to the list of horse's *** politicians. He says that the people protesting the health care proposals are interfering with the Democratic process. Hey, moron. Protesting is one of the most Democratic things you can do! But it was OK when the loony lefties were protesting violenty at G8 summits during Bush's presidency and starting riots with police during the Vietnam era. What a bunch of hypocrites. The town hall meetings may have been heated verbally, but I didn't see any violence.

Actually it wasn't. They were labeled as terrorist-supporters and anti-American (esp with the Iraq War). Anyone who went against Bush was against the troops.

But I agree protesting is a good thing and it keeps the country fresh and open.

[devilsfan0405]

NittanyLion, on Aug 8 2009, 04:35 PM, said:

Actually it wasn't. They were labeled as terrorist-supporters and anti-American (esp with the Iraq War). Anyone who went against Bush was against the troops.

But I agree protesting is a good thing and it keeps the country fresh and open.

Not according to the media. They didn't have much of a problem with the rioting from what I remember.

[vascudave]

http://blog.nj.com/njv_paul_mulshine/2009/...lping_obam.html

[satellite_eyes]

vascudave, on Aug 10 2009, 09:23 AM, said:

http://blog.nj.com/njv_paul_mulshine/2009/...lping_obam.html

give me a quick summary if you can. munshine is usually pretty good. can't access here at work.

[vascudave]

satellite_eyes, on Aug 10 2009, 10:10 AM, said:

give me a quick summary if you can. munshine is usually pretty good. can't access here at work.

I wonder who's the genius who first thought up the idea of having a bunch of thugs all wearing the same colored shirts show up to intimidate opponents of the government.

Now I remember! It was that funny little guy with the mustache from Austria. What's his name again? I think it was "Schicklgruber" or something.


Anyway, that sort of stunt loses a little something when it crosses the Atlantic, as you can see from the above video. A gang of thugs wearing matching shirts bearing the initials of the Service Employees International Union can be seen engaging in what appears to be an attack on a person who was handing out "Don't tread on me" flags in opposition to the Obama administration's health-care plans.

Various liberal bloggers are already trying to put a positive spin on this incident that occurred outside a town hall meeting in Missouri. But they've got a couple of problems. One is that according to the St. Louis Post -Dispatch, "Two men were arrested for misdemeanor assault for allegedly punching, pushing and holding a man who was handing out American flags and fliers outside the school."

The paper didn't report whether the two were among those wearing SEIU shirts who participated in the assault. But that will come out in time.

But more damning evidence comes from the video itself. At the one-minute mark, you can hear a man remark, "Two of you guys attacked that poor guy." The anonymous goon who responds says, as if to justify the beating, "he attacked America."

The clear implication of the goon's statement is that America and the Democratic Party are the same thing.

I've seen this sort of thing before. Back when the Sandinista Party was ruling Nicaragua in the 1980s, those Marxists declared both the police and the army to be arms of the party, not the government. Oh, and they also had gangs of thugs called "turbas divinas" who would attack opposition protesters.

To descend to a more mundane level, I recall the Democrats amassing armies of T-shirted union goons to hang around events at which Jim McGreevey appeared in the 2001 gubernatorial election. One such event was the televised debate with Bret Schundler held that year at Rowan University in Glassboro. Debates are supposed to be civilized affairs at which opponents politely disagree, but there was a distinct air of menace in the air that evening.

Am I arguing here that advocates of a political candidate don't have a right to show up at an event dressed in a similar manner? Not at all. They have every right.

But as this video shows, their purpose is often not discussion but intimidation.

Not only that, but their opinions should be considered in light of their obvious affiliations. I much prefer to listen to the opinions of individual citizens dressed in their individual shirts who are making particular points about their own lives.

In that regard, I have to say Obama and his minions are making a big mistake with their tactics and rhetoric here, the same one Jon Corzine made with his infamous toll-road plan.

The time-honored way to get a ghastly program through is to rush it to a vote before anyone knows what's in it. The longer it's in the open air, the more it begins to smell like a dead fish.

Instead, both Corzine and Obama made the mistake of assuming that the more people heard about the plan, the more they'd like it. They believed their own spin, in other words. That's a really amateurish mistake.

Also, the Dems are kidding themselves when it comes to the alleged "Astroturf" origins of the bulk of the dissent. As I noted in a column last month, I attended one of the first such forums. Congressman John Adler sponsored it. It was held in the Ocean County Library in Toms River, which is in Adler's district.

This forum was a relatively sedate affair and Adler, a Democrat, acquitted himself quite well in the face of strong opposition to the plan. But there was little doubt that the opposition was real and came from ordinary citizens opposed to Obamacare. Adler himself accepted that when I spoke to him afterward, and I think he took it to heart.

The opposition rose up from the grass roots. The Dems just don't know what those roots are. In this, these otherwise canny political operatives are succumbing to what I call on this blog "the Moron Perspective." Like so many of my readers, they fail to understand the political spectrum.

They seem to believe it is the old, dying GOP establishment of George W. Bush and Newt Gingrich that got these protests started. Nonsense. It was the new, upstart revolutionaries of Ron Paul. Democrats seem incapable of comprehending that the "tea party" movement began as a Paulian protest against not the Democrats but the big-spending Bush administration.

The original "tea-party" plan, from way back in December of 2007, came from Paul supporters who wanted to hire a blimp to dump tea in Boston Harbor. There's a nice summary of this on the blog of the one leftie who comprehends it, this guy at the Huffington Post.

In that regard, a couple of days before that Adler hearing I attended a July 4 tea party in Jackson at which the most well-received speaker was failed gubernatorial contender Steve Lonegan. He represents the upstart branch of the New Jersey GOP against the establishment pick, Chris Christie.

The main subject at that rally was another awful Obama initiative, cap-and trade. The tea partiers were calling for the removal from office of the three Republican congressmen from New Jersey who voted for cap-and-trade.

As for Christie, he not only skipped the tea party. He went out of his way to poke the Paul supporters in the eye by releasing a video a few days later embracing Obama's alternative-energy plans.

I bring that up to close the circle. It was not the thoroughly useless mainstream Republican Party that sunk Corzine's toll plan. It was Lonegan and a few outsiders. The town halls were humming along just fine, you may recall, until Lonegan sparked a similar parking lot clash with uniformed forces allied with the Democratic Party. That occurred when he refused to stop handing out leaflets outside one of Corzine's town-hall meetings on the toll plan in Cape May County and was arrested by police in the Democrat-dominated town in which the rally was held.

The toll plan soon collapsed, and with it Corzine's popularity.

That's the sort of thing that happens when a politician misreads peaceful protest and over-reacts. Will the Obama Democrats learn their lesson?

I certainly hope not. Keep those T-shirted goons coming, guys! It's always fun to watch a politician commit political suicide.

[vascudave]

http://blog.nj.com/njv_paul_mulshine/2009/..._stuff_fro.html

[NittanyLion]

The bill isn't for a complete takeover of the healthcare system by the government. It's about holding the insurance companies accountable and reigning in their obscene profits. They want to stop the caps on coverage that you can have and the refusal to coverage you because of past health incidents. He also wants them to cover pre-emptive screenings. You can keep the same healthcare if you want. It gives you options like the current Congress has.

[NittanyLion]

And I love how some on the right are making things up like "Obama Death Panels" and "Communal Standards".

[GameOfLove]

Some may or not like Obama's plan, but I have to give him kaos for actually trying to reform the system. No other president has done it before even though they always talk about it.