Then why Thom did you support Hillary Clinton. She was the epitome of the corruption from money in politics. If she had won, we would of gotton someone worse than Trump in 2020,a Trump 2.0, because with HRC, it would be more wars, more empire, more neoliberalism, and more corruption. Trump puts an ugly face on empire, you know, the shit we are already have been doing for decades. Maybe with Trump, people will stop being partisan sheep and wake up. Supporting the lesser of two evils (which was the establishments plan from the beginning to get her elected because they pushed Trump, Carson and Cruz in the MSM) just gets us more evil in the end. We must break this neoliberal fever and stymie the move to more corporatist control. Get money out through an amendment. What has Hillary done since the election? Crap! What has Bernie done? Still fighting for us. No more Clintons, no more corporatists, no more neoliberalism!!!

My Democratic Senator also voted against it. I wrote an email complaining that he is voting opposite of his constituents without even polling. Waiting an answer.

I was a Bernie supporter that became an anyone other than Trump supporter. Before even being inaugurated, Efhusoe, Trump all ready has a close to war or a trade war with China. His foreign policy is based on irrational Tweets at 3 in the morning. He has no rational thinking. His cabinet is even turning against him.

Paul Ryan did not blow it with his answer to Jeff. It was the response of someone who does not care. Whether or not people without health insurance live or die is not his problem. This is who he is and this is who the party he represents is.

Are you kidding? Ryan has a plan, replace the ACA with exactly what we had before the ACA!

Why aren't we more worried about replacing Trump and Pence first ?.... The election needs to be declared invalid? Both the FBI and CIA are sitting on Trump/Putin collusion evidence and Obama knows about it. Not releasing it before Friday will make Pence president within months. The collusion evidence will be the excuse Trumps's own party will use to impeach him. Ryan and Turtleman both want Pence as president because they know that Pence will sign every god damn bill they send him. Obama's excuse for not doing anything will be.." I though it was just propaganda"! ..mark my word on this.

I'm fully aware many are of the opinion that this election will cause a rock bottom moment in history and during the next four years everyone will wake up to the republican lies....it ain't going to happen that way...we're all ffdd..meaning the entire planet if something doesn't happen to change history in the next four days.

#Luigi: Which begs the question, if these elected politicians don't care whether or not people without health insurance live or die because they consider it not their problem, then what the Hades did they put them into office for? I mean, what are they doing, and for whom are they doing it? You mean we elected a bunch of people who will change all of our laws so they intentionally don't take care of us? That makes sense. (Maybe after people get their teeth kicked far enough down their throats they will wake up, stop being church-mice Republicans, and put people into office who will do the bidding of the electorate instead of being mesmerized by how greedy a certain class of investment earners can be.)

As in all large societies throughout history, America will always have about two percent of eligible, able-body people who try to scam the system and refuse to work. Another two or three percent can't work because of their physical or mental health. We have (or should have) various programs to catch the slackers and help the helpless.

The vast majority of working-age citizens are willing and able. At the present time, 4.6 percent unemployment means 95.4 percent are employed.

Notwithstanding the "illegals" comment, I agree with ct (#2). Surely, our large workforce can somehow come together to pay for a universal healthcare program at an affordable cost to keep us all healthy, happy, and living longer. A rosy-cheeked population translates into a vibrant and productive society.

Of course, a few other issues would have to be resolved first to make it even more affordable:

Pay livable wages so workers don't have to resort to public programs to supplement their incomes -- which only serves to subsidize the profits of multi-billion dollar corporations, who deliberately pay low wages just for that outcome, i.e., Wall Mart.

Quit siphoning off premiums that go to immoral investors who profit on sickness and death.

Get all blood leaches, i.e., insurance companies, out of primary healthcare.

Instead of creating a whole new bureaucracy, use the very efficient one we already have called Medicare, which nearly everyone loves (operating on only a three percent overhead), and expand it to include all ages.

Force the pharmaceutical industry to negotiate with the government for lower prices on bulk purchases, just like the VA does.

Rein in the carpetbaggers charging outrageous prices for their products and services, such as the outrageous drug companies, the over-priced medical equipment providers, the for-obscene-profit hospital chains, the greedy doctor associations operating like price-fixing cartels, etc., etc.

Don't reelect politicians who care more about their corporate donors than their other constituents.

Do elect politicians who are committed to pass legislation to get money out of politics, nullifying the regressive laws passed by the Supreme Court's right-wing interventionists, who handed our Democracy over to the oligarchs.

If all pertinent statistics were laid bare on the evening news every night (Yeah, right!), instead of the normal fare of shallow, salacious infotainment, the stark reality of American fascism would be revealed for all to see -- God willing, arousing a passive, sedentary audience to action.

Unfortunately, 95 percent of the news that Americans consume is filtered through a corporate lens to keep people ignorant of the facts that matter the most. The lion's share of public funding in our plutocracy goes to hidden, euphemistically titled corporate welfare programs at the top of society to line the pockets of the already obscenely wealthy elites pulling the levers behind the curtain. Contrary to the corporate-sponsored, right-wing meme, an ever dwindling, adjusted for inflation, much smaller portion of public monies trickle down to those at the bottom.

@ ErinRose #12:

I absolutely agree with all of the sentiments you have so passionately expressed. The "they" are the reactionary ruling elites behind the scenes who buy and sell politicians, who are raping the population for its wealth, who benefit by keeping the status quo.

The "we" are the weak and divided who cannot resist effectively, which is always the goal of the powerful and the greedy. It is the everyday citizens who must fully realize their victim-hood and rise up to demand serious, fundamental change in every institution at all levels of society. It means a radical change in the spirit of the People, in the zeitgeist.

Historically, that also means revolution. Hopefully, the next inevitable American revolution will be peaceful, which would be much more powerful than violence, especially nowadays with so much lethal weaponry in the hands of the fascists. But revolution it must be!

The Sioux at Standing Rock are showing us the way.

Four days to Trumpocolypse.

Where will you be when the United States falls apart?

BTW, is it not yet obvious the Repugnicons want sick people (or anyone who can't work to make the rich richer) to drop dead?

I'm not sure the GOP intentionally want to hurt people. I think they lack the life experiences that build their abilities to feel empathy for anyone they don't know personally. They seem to think that being on Food Stamps means they're too lazy to work hard enough to climb the ladder to success. In fact, many of "those people" work far more hours and often 2 or 3 jobs, and practically never get to see their families - unlike the hours or days any elected official has ever worked! Some of the people on Food Stamps had good jobs until the 2008 bubble burst and they've never found another job that provides for the family responsibilities they'd been handling well for many years. Unless you know someone who is going through these kinds of crises, you shouldn't judge them. You never know what your own future holds! People who hear derogatory untruths about themselves from the GOP rarely get a chance to speak back, because they cannot contribute enough to campaigns to be noticed, or granted an audience. Their truths are never on the radar of the GOP.

How about waiting to read the republican plan and understand what is actually in it before we run off a cliff.

It seems to me everyone did the opposite with obamacare and all we got was lies, disruption, dismantling of local clinics, and skyrocketing deductibles.

1. You can stop defending obamacare. It is a total disaster and was designed to fail from the start and you know it.

2. When obamacare was passed the Democrats had a majority in house and senate and frankly what was already in existence worked fine and was far less costly for most Americans. Regardless, stop living in the past. You are starting to sound like Hartmann.

3. Trump is not a Republican

4. You haven't seen Trumps proposal so CALM DOWN!

@ Diane #21:

1. "...was designed to fail from the start and you know it."

Yes, we know perfectly well who on the committee designed the Affordable Care Act to fail by promising they would vote for it only if Democrats "compromised" by not allowing a public option and by including Republican poison pills. Republicans double-crossed the American people a second time by voting against what they intentionally f--ked up and then refused to fix for the last seven years.

2. "...what was already in existence worked fine and was far less costly for most Americans."

Wrong. According to a 2009 study by Harvard Medical School and Cambridge Health Alliance, nearly 45,000 uninsured Americans every year were dying from lack of access to healthcare before the Affordable Care Act. Also, premiums were rising much faster than they are now, while insurance companies were skimming up to 40 percent. At least now, they are restricted to 20 percent, which could have been even lower if not for Republican "compromises." And, insurance companies can no longer deny coverage for preconditions. There are many more benefits for the American people, but the list is too long to include here.

3. "Trump is not a Republican."

Wrong. This statement is laughable and false! He ran as a Republican and virtually all Republicans voted for him. Are you now trying to distance yourself from the Republican Party or from Trump?

4. "You haven't seen Trumps proposal ..."

Correct. We haven't seen his proposal, because he has no proposal, and neither do Republicans in Congress. They can't figure out how to pay for it while still keeping all those millions of constituents insured.

Bonus: "...stop living in the past."

Yeah, history and facts really suck for Republican warlords who lied us into WWIII in the Middle East and destroyed the world economy under their last village idiot ... and for Trump groupies living in a Pollyannaish fantasy land.

Your first point is a non sequitur that makes no sense in the context of my previous post. I never contested that the Democrats had a majority to pass the bill. Of course they did; how else would it have passed? Does your reading comprehension suffer when you get mad and see red?

And it's a damn good thing the Democrats did have that tiny window of opportunity. (Although the Democrats had a majority in the House, they had a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate for only about three months until Ted Kennedy died.) They saved thousands and thousands of lives that otherwise would have been lost under a Republican majority -- as they will be now.

All the other points you just made are nothing but pure Republican propaganda, obfuscation, and the twisting of the historical record; or, as I prefer to call it: despicable lies.

Even deeply brainwashed right-wingers could easily check the record if they would only find the moral courage and a germ of intelligence to drag their red asses out of the swamp and attempt to comprehend the consequences of actual history, instead of denying it and creating an artificial past that suits their own cartoonish narrative.

The vast majority of sober-minded voters are not fooled by your alternate reality and did not vote for either Trump or your Republican puppet masters -- no matter how many times you recite the Trump mantra that he won a mandate from the people. He did not! He is the most unpopular Pretender to the Throne in modern history.

Yet again, you are resorting to a cheap psychological debate trick by projecting your own ignorant "excuses" and "bullshit" (to use your angry words) onto others. Seriously, why do you and your fellow ankle-biting trolls hang out on a truth-telling liberal forum, insist on mindlessly regurgitating the same old counterfactual Republican talking points over and over, and then whine and cry like babies when you are spanked? Sad.

Your whole threadbare shtick is becoming rather tiresome and boring. This is not the proper venue to seek the professional help you so obviously and desperately need.