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This breast cancer survivor is grateful for all the good that has come from the healthcare act. After worrying about a reoccurance of cancer, worrying about continued insurance is the next major worry. Now I cannot be denied coverage or treatment for a pre-existing condition, nor can I be dropped by my insurance.
But, I agree with Aliceinwonderland that single payer is still the most humane option for a Democracy.
The only way you will get anything close to single payer is the way Canada did it. One state at a time. Thom has said this many times. Romney had the right idea. It is simple if A state has better health care for less then the rest of the states everyone will follow. The problem with the Dems is they want to federalize everything but USA is way too big and every state has different needs.
Kend, a lot of things would make more sense but we can only dream of most of it.
But Ralph Nader was right, there was a veto proof majority in both houses of Congress so there were "no excuses" not to pass single payer. That was before we needed Lieberman.
The only possible outcome will be single payer because the corporations will be screwing everybody again so that will be all that's left to do!
If you would all just listen to me in 2008. Sorry I had to say that. Only 7.5 million people signed up for ACA. You disrupted the whole health care system, damaged your economy with all the uncertainties of the future for businesses and no one likes what you have.
It would make way sense to put a healthcare plan in print for all Americans to study for months and then they not the crooked politicions could vote on it and decide if it's good for them. That way it would keep all the lobbist out of it. Wouldn't it?
Oops. Damned if I know how my post ended up before Mark Sauly's, since it was posted partially in response to him. It was only after I'd re-written the damn thing that I discovered it hadn't vanished after all. (Weird.)
By the way RFord, Nixon was no liberal. Republican progressives?!! Dream on…
Nixon's Idea was not a republican idea. It was a liberal progressive idea. A republican Idea would be a proposal for each state to address their own healthcare issues because the definition of a republican is someone who favors state government over federal government. Once upon a time there were such things as liberal progressive republicans. I haven't seen any lately though.
We are The United States of America. We sent men to explore the Moon and machines to explore Mars and the other planets. We defeated Japan on one side of the world while defeating Germany on the other side of the world at the same time. With all of our faults we are still an amazing country. So why are we ranked about 20th in the world when it comes to healthcare? We could be ranked #1 in health care if that's what we all wanted. The problem is conservatives would never let that happen. What we need are more progressives in office weather they are democtatic, republican, or something else. Then we could have the best healthcare in the world for everyone in These United States.
Right on, leighmf! Bingo, Willie W!
w1ders, you and your wife have my sympathy.
Mark, I seriously doubt Obama ever intended to pass single payer. Thanks to the Hightower Lowdown, I was already privy to the huge campaign contributions he got from the health scare extortionists when he ran for office the first time. He's been in their pockets all along.
Most of our Republicans in Congress are little more than paid "avatars" of the Koch Brothers. They have repeatedly shown by their voting record that they don't give a damn how many American men, women, and children they kill (by denying them healthcare coverage and allowing Koch industries to continue their deadly pollution policies), as long as they continue to receive large chunks of money from right-wing PACs, billionaires, and millionaires for their re-election campaigns.
In 2014, our ideologically clueless Democratic campaign committees allowed those Republicans to get away with such misconduct which led to disastrous electoral results for Democratic candidates who chose to run like "Republican Lights" and to "distance themselves from President Obama." Dumb! Dumb!
I hope that those Democrats who remain in Congress will WISE UP in this regard in time for the 2016 elections.
Why did a British media source have to find this? where is the american media? oh" ya" they are in bed with the cops,and corrupt polititans.
This is a serious breach of not only constitutional rights but also of civil liberties granted to all. Certainly not a states' rights issue. The axe should fall squarely on Rahm Emmanuel's shoulders.
It was thanks to Joe Lieberman that we don't have a public option. We needed every Democratic and Independent vote in the Senate to pass it for a filibuster proof majority and the Connecticut Clown had always been in the pocket of the insurance lobby so he insisted it be taken out. Had it not been it would've competitively routed all other plans and yielded single payer, as was, no doubt, Obama's intent.
That is, the term "crazy communist, left-wing, socialist plot" is oxymoronic - because of the word, "crazy".
I've mentioned Nixon's healthcare to people and they never knew it. If like ACA no one would have wanted it. I just lost my doc after a dozen years because he went to a yearly payment to, so he says, give him more time with less patients. In other words he dumped all of us on Medicare. I was lucky to find another doc and have one that is trying to get rid of me by not filling prescriptions on time with no refills. My pharmacy is fed up with having to fax her, and I prefer a male doc, many times for one prescription. Our health care has gone to he!!. Hope things change. My wife is being fined for not being able to afford ACA. We can't even find the exemption forms. It says it is easy, fill out this form. They don't show it because wait, there is another one to fill out first. Good luck finding that one. So if the IRS can't collect the fine I suppose they will garnish her wages, put a lien on our home, cause us to file bankruptcy, move in the street and wonders and wonders being dirt poor we can finally afford ACA.
What happened to National Health Care? That's what Obama ran on. Somehow that morphed into National Health Care Reform, and now it's ended up as National Health Care Insurance Reform. If he had started out with that six years ago, he would have lost.
There is no reason for a national health fund pool to be private. We need to get private insurance out of Medicine. There are plenty of other things they can insure.
Almost no doctor who is not in a "group" will take insurance of any sort in my town. Private office practitioners are stopping accepting Medicare as well. This is because either the insurance company or Medicare makes processing claims unreasonably expensive. Sometimes it takes four passes of shufffling papers back and forth to get re-embursed for an office visit. Office girls have to get paid.
A surgeon told me that many times doctors don't even bother to process Medicaid. They treat the patient but throw the bill in the trash because it will end up costing them money to process the claim.
This is ridiculous! But the culprit will always be the private insurance companies. We do not need a middleman between us and our doctors!
Yes, obstructing the president is all they are after, simply because they are immature sore losers that can't handle the truth about themselves, or the truth about anything else for that matter. So sick and tired of their stupid games and underhandedness. This country can't progress with regressive fools like this in our congress. Of course the American people would have had single payer health care if not for the Republican party houseboys for the greedy health care insurance companies that literally own the Republican party, along with corporate stigmatas like the Koch brothers.
"Obamacare" is better than nothing. But compared to single payer, it sucks.
It will eventually be passed because government debt to international bankers, all legislation passed benefit corporations. Politicians work for corporations not the American people
Aaaaaaaarggg!!
Think about the word "investment" for a minute. When you buy stock, it is from a person who already owns it. You don't buy the stock from the company. Nothing goes to the company and 100% goes to the former owner of the stock. (Minus the market skim.) The company has the responsibility to give the new stock owner dividends but the new stock owner has contributed nothing to the company and a part of the productivity of the company's workers will be diverted to the stock owner. The stock market should be termed "vampire capitalism!" It bleeds resources from the company to someone who had nothing to do with any benefit to the company whatsoever.
Think twice when you use the word "investment." It doesn't mean what you think it does.
Saddam Hussein is not the one whose head popped off in his hanging. That was Barzan Ibrahim, 2 weeks later.
http://www.seattlepi.com/national/article/Iraq-hanging-turns-into-a-beheading-1225412.php
It is not legal to smoke marijuana in public here in Colorado. I have had the smoke forced on me by people behaving illegally (and inconsiderately) in that regard. I opposed the law change was because it relaxed things so suddenly, I didn't expect the culture to adapt quickly enough.
In the early 1950s a radical Republican member of Congress, Joseph McCarthy, called for a law that required every citizen to sign a pledge affirming their mandatory allegiance to the government, Fascism had come to America. In the same period Right Wing Religious elements in Congress added the words "Under God" to the pledge obliterating the rights of all secular Americans who sought protection, backed up by the Constitution, from mandatory adherence to a state sponsored religion. Elements of the Right persisted in their attempts to create a country where the citizens are required to march in lock step behind an all powerful and oppressive government with more recent Contracts with America that effectively challenge any and all forms of Constitutionally guaranteed rights and individual self expression. Given the obvious total sell out by our government in recent years to private financial interest, any form of capitulation to these people amounts to a further surrender of everything we once celebrated and held dear as individual free thinking American Citizens !
Mathboy, no argument from me. Geography does matter for both positive and negative consequences.
Singapore probably has clean air mostly because it's on the tip of a peninsula. Geography matters.
EXCELLENT points, Geo! You’ve got my resounding applause.