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Socialized federal health care systems in the United States:
Federal Bureau of Prisons:
Veterans Administration:
Investigational studies (NIH):
Military retires:
Active Military:
Public Health Hospitals in past:
Merchant Marine Health care:
Public Health Service:
Indian Health Service:
Pennsylvania PACE card (Lottery pays senior's drugs)
Child Health Improvement Program:
Womens catastrophic cancer fund for uninsured women:
Michael
Obscene profiting from a fellow human being's ill fortune IS immoral!
B Roll,
Okay, I'll get specific and use my husband as an example (though I've known other people to whom this applies.) Mike seems to have a special "understanding" with animals. I've seen him "befriend" strange (in that he's never "met" them before) animals, talk to them and touch/pet them, when they don't react the same way to others. Maybe he is doing the same thing the "horse whisperer" does, I don't know. He also has this same kind of "relationship" with very young children. There is a real kindness, gentleness or "understanding" between him and those beings. (However, he doesn't have much patience for unthinking, unfeeling, self-centered adults.)
i will never forget Milton Friedman saying greed is good.
1)It has become obvious that this is an antitrust problem, and Conyers has introduced a bill to remove the antitrust protection from the insurance business.
Why not have insurance/and or health care provided cheaper by Canadian companies, or those from the EEU or by Britain or China, Brazil??
2) in the Kucinich hearings yesterday, the insurance reps lied by omission, possibly directly, but oddly, they revealed they believe a public option would put them out of business.
3) see my fake newscast and comment at kos site above
do some people hate america for what american corporation have done around the world?
do some hate america because of what corporate power has done to the people of other nations?
we need campaign reform now. max baucus has shown us the urgency for reform. thom mentioned that if each taxpayer payed $10 this would be enough for reform, than it would be funded by we the people.
Quark,
I'm not sure if you're saying that people who are sensitive to animals have a special relationship with animals or with youngins. I'm not a big animal person so I wouldn't know about that. But now that I think about it, a lot of children reach out to me in stores. I just assume they reach out to a lot of people.
I almost put in my post, but decided to apply self-discipline. that I've noticed that dogs seem to behave the same way that children do. I've seen something like this countless times. I'm walking around at some outdoor event and see someone walking with their dog on a leash. Someone comes walking a dog in another direction and the two dogs recognizes each other as dogs and try to connect, usually in a friendly manner.
Thom and all, I just called my two senators... Boxer and Fienstein (I'm in San Diego) to tell them that I changed my mind. I no longer want a "Public option" because it's become too polluted with profit. I want a single payer...but I think I may have come up with a worthwhile meme - the public option is polluted with profit - in fact campaigns have become polluted with profit... government has become PWP...
Thanks for being there,
B Roll,
Your "standing in line" story was lovely. Not only do very young children "recognize" each other, I've noticed that people who are sensitive to animals often have a special "relationship" with them (or recognition of a kind of friendship), even if they don't "know" them.
'Looks like the "gang of six" has become the "gang of four" (video):
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31510813/ns/msnbc_tv-morning_meeting#32913008
WSJ on Sotomayor's "There could be an argument made that that was the court’s error to start with… [imbuing] a creature of state law with human characteristics"
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125314088285517643.html
DRichards
Did you have multiple links in your posts? I've had posts disappear that had more than 3 links in them. Now I never put more than 2 or 3 links in any post.
The GOP was right to be afraid of Sonia Sotomayor
Politically, you had to wonder why the GOP was so up in arms about Sonia Sotomayor -- it was terrible politics, after all, to alienate Latino voters as their power as a voting group continues to grow. Maybe it's because Sotomayor is proving to be the Republicans' worst nightmare: A Latina who's wise enough not to buckle to the clout of American corporations:
WASHINGTON -- In her maiden Supreme Court appearance last week, Justice Sonia Sotomayor made a provocative comment that probed the foundations of corporate law.
During arguments in a campaign-finance case, the court's majority conservatives seemed persuaded that corporations have broad First Amendment rights and that recent precedents upholding limits on corporate political spending should be overruled.
But Justice Sotomayor suggested the majority might have it all wrong -- and that instead the court should reconsider the 19th century rulings that first afforded corporations the same rights flesh-and-blood people have.
This is the true battle for the heart and soul of the Supreme Court -- and of America. Not all the -- pardon my initials -- BS that wastes everyone's time during these increasingly pointless confirmation hearings. The real story of justice in America since the 2004 election is this, that George W. Bush appointed two of the most corporatist flunkies ever to the bench in John Roberts and Samuel Alito and now we have Sotomayor seeking to tip those scales back toward the people.
It's probably not enough. Sometime in the coming months, the Roberts-Alito court is going to vote 5-4 to allow a flood of corporate money into American politics, which will probably result in legislation that will make the billionaire bailout of Wall Street seem as tame as voting to rename a post office. You want to know the real problem with Justice Sotomayor...it's that we don't have four more like her.
-Will Bunch
http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/attytood/
Mark
Yesterday I had my two posts listed as "awaiting moderation" They were simply links to news articles.
Quark,
Thanks. I thought of you yesterday while I was in line at a store. I have an addition to our past discussion about spirituality.
I was in line at a checkout stand. One line over there were two families. Each had a child too young to walk in their carts. The children saw each other and each reacted by trying to reach out to the other. They wanted to make a connection.
I'm fascinated that children that age seem to recognize other young children as being members of their tribe. They accept each other without question and want to connect, while they're more suspicious of adults they don't know.
Mundane things like this seem to touch my spirit (such as it is) and I find beauty and healing in them.
PS: I've been reading but not posting.
B Roll,
'Glad to see your post. 'Missed you...
I was reading in the Tikkun Magazine or on the Network of Spiritual Progressives bog that the Day of Atonement is not just for Jews. As a cradle Catholic I BELIEVE that a Day of Atonement should be set aside one day of each month. It should be a day when Americans reflect on their crimes against humanity, such as wars, torture, and the rape of other nations' resources.
A story I have to share…
I used to love debating the role of government with my conservative Republican mother-in-law, especially when there was a legitimate debate over what actually makes a people more free and secure, and which policies can actually work as intended. After realizing we were not even basing our arguments on the same facts and figures (things that cannot be disputed), we stopped. How can you have any meaningful philosophical discussion when you disagree on the facts?
Anyways, my mother-in-law was visiting this week; out of the blue she turns to me and says, “I read an article that proposed allowing all Americans to buy into Medicare. It could be paid for from the common fund for seniors, children, and the disabled. Everyone else can have the option to buy into it. Why isn’t anyone pushing this instead of a ‘government take-over public option’?” Wow! She had no idea that this is exactly the public option many people would love to see. It made sense to her, and she LIKED it! Now, I understand Thom has had this idea for a while, but somehow I doubt my mom is reading Common Dreams, the Huffington Post, or listening to Thom on the radio. I’m guessing she read Bill Moyers OpEd in the Washington Post. Regardless…
Bravo Thom for simplifying a complex issue with a common sense solution that even some conservatives can appreciate. Unfortunately, after I informed her that this is actually a progressive solution that many Democrats would love to see passed into law, she suddenly seemed not so sure anymore. We’ve become so polarized that the merits of an idea are clouded by party loyalty. What a shame. How do we overcome this hurdle?
Randy Winn,
As a former Episcopalian, I have long admired Shelby Spong. He is one of the most admirable theologians of our time. I'll have to check out his book. Thanks for the tip.
Here is a real and a serious problem as part of the American psyche.
http://original.antiwar.com/engelhardt/2009/09/17/is-america-hooked-on-war/
Mark,
I've only seen the "awaiting moderation" message on this board once before; It was on a very civil post I made in which I disproved (using undeniable facts) one of Thom's claims.
What your post and mine had in common was they both were very long. Mine was over 2000 words. Yours looked like it could be of a similar length. I think there may be a length limit programmed into the software on this board. My post had that awaiting moderation message and after a while it disappeared.
I read your comment the day you posted it and didn't see anything particularly offensive that you said about Thom. I have no way of knowing what happened, but I suspect it had to do with the length of the post. That's why I made by post on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict (that you enjoyed so much) a 2 part post.
As for Rasta, he had at least 1, maybe 3 comments deleted from the Tuesday/Wednesday blog. He posted a comment as Rasta, then it looked like he posted a comment agreeing with Rasta's comment as Jsmith or something. I think he may have been deleted for doing the sock-puppet thing.
Now that my Joe Wilson imitation is out of the way, back to health care reform. In the aftermath of President Obama’s speech, Sen. Max Baucus discovered a sliver of audacity hidden somewhere in his conservative being, declaring that he was prepared to move without the Republicans on the Senate finance committee in putting forward a health care reform proposal. On Wednesday, like some Bizzaro the Conjurer, he revealed a rather hastily cobbled-together “plan,” that at first blush appears to be the product of his alchemistry set: a “nonprofit” co-option with no public option; no requirement for employers to provide health care benefits, but obliged to pay a reimbursement fee to the government for subsidizing insurance for their employees; and an “excise tax” on high-end insurance, but no additional taxes on the richest Americans.
Republicans predictably dismissed it out-of-hand (because they have no intention of supporting anything proposed by a Democrat, even a Blue Dog), and Democrats ranged from lukewarm to positively scornful (because this plan is pure idiocy, let alone not a serious one). After six months, this all Baucus’ committee could come with it? What have they been doing—sitting on their fundaments, waiting for the insurance companies to submit their proposal, to sneakily rename it as a finance committee production?
Baucus’ plan should be dismissed without further ado, because it should be obvious that there was never anything worthwhile to be had from his committee, given its right-wing decline.
If anyone thinks that my post yesterday is in need of moderation, which I take to mean I was unfair to Thom (I must observe, however, that I never see a "awaiting moderation" for Rasta's posts), I'll submit this: I think Thom is conflicted on issues such as immigration, as many people are, because left-wing principles often run head-on with right-wing impulses. I still think he's a good guy, though.