Kennedy Health Care Reform Bill.

[Cops]

Why would you ever want the state to collect all your assets when you die? Guy was clearly full of shit to begin with.

We've all had this discussion and you call it heartless but I dont want to see the national debt go up any more. I also am worried about the level of care people receive. If you truly received better care in Canada or in Europe then your hospitals would be at the top of any of those lists, cause they do such a good job.

He was an ultra socialist with extreme views. He was also a walking hypocrisy. It reminded me of kthx, in regards to him having strong convictions, yet not being able to stick by them.

I have no problems with my health care, I know it's not the best in the world but it is pretty fucking good. I'd rather have good health care that everyone has access to, rather than great health care only some have access to. Anyway you look at it, it's a heartless system that lets those at the bottom suffer even more.

[Tone]

Remember, on the Tonight Show with Conan, John McCain said "its not the quality of our health care thats the problem, its availability"

This is a direct lie

[Squeezer]

Remember on the Nightly News with Katie Couric, Chris Brown said "I din't hit da bitch."

This is a direct lie.

[Jerome Scuggs]

This month a UCLA professor did an analysis of the great depression and found Herbert hoover's interventions, which FDR merely expanded upon, actually caused the depression to become Great. I'll find it if anyone's interested, but I suppose since the mainstream media hasn't reported it, it can't be true

[Tone]

This month a UCLA professor did an analysis of the great depression and found Herbert hoover's interventions, which FDR merely expanded upon, actually caused the depression to become Great. I'll find it if anyone's interested, but I suppose since the mainstream media hasn't reported it, it can't be true

And, it was on purpose, not like accidentally doing the wrong thing to make it become the Great Depression.

[Izor]

this is actually fairly true...i watched a documentary...forgot the name...might go looking for it, and afterwords read some articles about the cures for cancer and AIDs. many top medical researchers openly stated that they could have a cure for AIDs in the next 5-10 years if sufficient funding was allotted. (cancer is a different story). they don't get the funding though. insurance companies don't want to see a cure for AIDs, because it will nerf their profits. in fact, they actually counter fund in some situations. what they would prefer is something that delays the effects so that the patient must keep coming back and buying over and over, rather than a cure-all treatment.

also wark said something about government spending not being able to stimulate an economy and raise us out of debt. please refer to FDR and the new deal. i think he kinda pulled us outta that one.

You know you are losing an argument when you start reading tone's posts hoping he agrees with you.

You know you are losing your sanity when you actually start agreeing with him

[Reaver]

I read a few posts around page 3 so I might have missed if someone already said this, but I'll point it out anyways. The argument on whether or not government health care will be amazing, ok or crap is irrelevant to me, and it should be to you as well. The private sector will still exist, but it will have competition and they'll either bring their prices down to compete against the government-run health care or they'll lose customers. I may very well be oversimplifying this, but it seems fairly straight forward to me.

[Vatican Assassin]

I read a few posts around page 3 so I might have missed if someone already said this, but I'll point it out anyways. The argument on whether or not government health care will be amazing, ok or crap is irrelevant to me, and it should be to you as well. The private sector will still exist, but it will have competition and they'll either bring their prices down to compete against the government-run health care or they'll lose customers. I may very well be oversimplifying this, but it seems fairly straight forward to me.

I'm sorry man but I think that you are underestimating the connections between gov't and private sector in USA atm. Simply put, the private sector has benefited from medicaid and medicare because they do not have to compete with them at all, in fact, the gov't gave them some awesome deals so whenever someone buys a bottle of pill for 2$ they are actually buying it for 50$ with $48 coming from taxes. It's an oversimplification, I know, but you see my point. Although no one actually knows what the gov't health care reform will turn into exactly, my guess is the insurance giants are actually in favor of it.

[Mattey]

This thread is pretty depressing.

Kthx, Izor, read this : http://www.rollingstone.com/politics...ck_and_wrong/1

Post after you read it, and we can discuss it.

The system doesn't work for anyone. It cheats patients and leaves them to die, denies insurance to 47 million Americans, forces hospitals to spend billions haggling over claims, and systematically bleeds and harasses doctors with the specter of catastrophic litigation. Even as a mechanism for delivering bonuses to insurance-company fat cats, it's a miserable failure: Greedy insurance bosses who spent a generation denying preventive care to patients now see their profits sapped by millions of customers who enter the system only when they're sick with incurably expensive illnesses.

Behind closed doors, Obama also moved to cut a deal with the drug industry. "It's a dirty deal," says Russell Mokhiber, one of the protesters whom Baucus had arrested. "The administration told them, 'Single-payer is off the table. In exchange, we want you on board.'" In August, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America announced that the industry would contribute an estimated $150 million to campaign for Obamacare.

Edited to add a couple quotes.

[Izor]

It's become a black leprosy eating away at the American experiment — a bureaucracy so insipid and mean and illogical that even our darkest criminal minds wouldn't be equal to dreaming it up on purpose.

Thats ironic. Government is notorious for bureaucracies. Already starting off by saying 2 things stupid in the opening paragraph.

Greedy insurance bosses who spent a generation denying preventive care to patients now see their profits sapped by millions of customers who enter the system only when they're sick with incurably expensive illnesses.

So when they're sick with incurably expensive illnesses and the budget is failing who's going to pay for it? Someone posted where the UK (i think) was letting people die when they could have been cured and they're a lot smaller than us.

The cost of all of this to society, in illness and death and lost productivity and a soaring federal deficit and plain old anxiety and anger, is incalculable

Again, the government isnt going to make money off this...so there goes that federal deficit.

Just as we have a medical system that is not really designed to care for the sick, we have a government that is not equipped to fix actual crises. What our government is good at is something else entirely: effecting the appearance of action, while leaving the actual reform behind in a diabolical labyrinth of ingenious legislative maneuvers.

blah blah blah, our government is terrible, so lets entrust them with our health.

We have an urgent national emergency on the one hand, and on the other, a comfortable majority of ostensibly simpatico Democrats who were elected by an angry population, in large part, specifically to reform health care.

Yes, the idiot people chose terrible leadership out of anger that in my opinion was mostly media-generated. However, most of the country is against health care reform.

Even Ted Kennedy, for whom successful health care reform was to be the great vindicating achievement of his career, and Barack Obama, whose entire presidency will likely be judged by this bill, managed to come up small when the lights came on.

Wow, heres a surprise no one saw coming. Barack Obama is coming up short on the hundreds of campaign promises he made?

Simply put, the article you posted is trash. This article offers no solution to the problem, but is whining for something to be done. They are making it seem like theres not problems specific to America that will make this ineffective, such as illegals that dont pay taxes still being able to get seen and run up bills.

It's funny how Bush got criticized for fearmongering to get his policies pushed and his iraq war, but this is really the same thing. Besides what the hell kinda source is rolling stone?

Oh god damn I just realized that theres more to this than 1 page...jesus fuck. I'm pretty done with that, but in response to your second quote, the pharmaceutical companies are going to campaign for it because it is profitable to them for this legislation to pass, otherwise they wouldnt do it. Dumbass.

[kthx]

Obviously a music magazine knows a lot about politics.

AFK now.

Going to find an economic op-ed piece about the dollar failing in glamour.

[Cops]

I wanted to say before you had to chance to write a response, that Rolling Stones political articles are top notch. Before bashing it, give it a read. It's actually really well written.

The problem is that you're so closed minded to what other people with a different political background have to say, that you miss the rare opportunities when we're likely to agree. If you took a second to actually read the article it criticizes your current government for fucking up, the one you perpetually disagree with if more than not based on your belief structure. It's kind of funny in the sense that you'll probably be trolling this bill to death in the near future when that article provides you with more than enough cannon fodder to make yourself feel better about your own political affiliation.

[kthx]

I don't need to read someone else criticizing my country when I do it enough already. I just read that Obama joined the UN security council when I think that the US should stop backing the UN completely because it is a corrupted shithole that we devote way too many resources to please. I also read that they wanted to create a new currency, a "one world currency" to replace a dollar that is very likely to fail in the near future due to so many large countries and unions pointing out that it isn't fair that we can just print out trillions of dollars out of thin air and they have to support it like it is actually real valuable money.

[Cops]

You pass up every opportunity to surpass your shell and see human beings as individuals, instead you categorize people like cattle.

I love it, the arrogance is outstanding. 'It's written by someone on the left, I'm not reading it!' Do yo realize how childish this is?

[kthx]

Maybe your feeble brain can't understand what I meant.. I read the article and it was poorly written.

But I have my own opinions and criticism about my country and don't need someone telling me what I should be criticizing.