Time to kill the current health bill?

[travesty]

Even DNC poster boy Howard Dean has come to his senses and agrees that the current amalgam of legislation and new bureaucracies proposed in the Senate Health Bill (as of yet) is absurd and is not in this country's best interest.
video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fy5nnvlbVlI)

It's good to see that someone is willing to admit that this thing stinks for both sides. It's just not good legislation and kudos to Dean for calling a spade a spade. Clinging to the hopes of passing bad legislation in order to claim some trivial political victory is shameful. Hopefully more legislators will wake up and smell the coffee, then sit down and write a bill that will actually cure the problem at hand for all Americans.

[saz]

obama has proven himself to be a tool for both the private health insurance and pharmaceutical industries. obama essentially went behind the backs of congressional dems (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/06/health/policy/06insure.html?_r=1) and sold out reform, by cutting a deal with the pharmaceutical industry behind closed doors in the white house (http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-na-healthcare-pharma4-2009aug04,0,3660985.story). he apparently cut the deal with billy tauzin (http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/K-Street_s-Drug-Kingpin-8221138-58521147.html) and the deal all but looks to be a betrayal of promises made by obama on the campaign trail, including that he would via the government curb drug costs to medicare (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCRO0g9CfAw) and negotiations would be open and transparent. for $80 billion in cuts and $150 million in supportive tv commercials (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/health/policy/09lobby.html?_r=1), the obama administration will protect the pharmaceutical industry from congressional efforts to utilize its bargaining powers to curb or lower drug costs.


glenn greenwald was spot on today in his critique of obama's health insurance industry and corporate leanings (http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2009/12/16/white_house/index.html).

this is really sad because not only are americans not likely to receive genuine health insurance reform, but america's two major parties are both tools for wall street and big industry/private health insurance lobbyists.

[travesty]

No one spells it out better than the MASTER (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acLW1vFO-2Q&feature=related)....R.I.P.

[saz]

^ nice (y)

lewis black on the two parties (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGlVhss6Gr4) and giving the dems hell (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCByM-JaAhY)

[Echewta]

Its such a shame. The lesser of two evils when so many hoped it would be something different.

[yeahwho]

glenn greenwald was spot on today in his critique of obama's health insurance industry and corporate leanings (http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2009/12/16/white_house/index.html).

this is really sad because not only are americans not likely to receive genuine health insurance reform, but america's two major parties are both tools for wall street and big industry/private health insurance lobbyists.

I am of this above quoted state of mind as far as this current bill, until proven otherwise, we the people are a distant second to special interests in the United States of America.

Here is a recent youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oLxi0RYhf4&feature=player_embedded) from Glenn Greenwald.

Fucking corporate whores, I will be banging away on the keyboard tonight. All of this right before the Holidays when citizens are busy trying to keep their families happy and warm.

[travesty]

six months. Six fucking months of debate and this steamy pile of shit is the best that our legislators can some up with? They all ought to be ashamed of themselves. They all ought to be ousted and they all ought to be forced to take mediation and economics classes. This is disgraceful.

[DroppinScience]

Keith Olbermann is also on your side, travesty.

http://www.commondreams.org/video/2009/12/17-1

[travesty]

According to Keith a mandate to buy from private insurance companies is "imorral" and "selling out the middle class", and worth killing this bill over....but a mandate to buy it from the government through a public option is A.O.K.??? WTF? I can't even put the hypocrisy of that in to words. Keith is still a misguided douche even after this brief momment of clarity.

[saz]

According to Keith a mandate to buy from private insurance companies is "imorral" and "selling out the middle class", and worth killing this bill over....but a mandate to buy it from the government through a public option is A.O.K.??? WTF? I can't even put the hypocrisy of that in to words. Keith is still a misguided douche even after this brief momment of clarity.

i have public insurance and you are guaranteed it. that's why medicare and medicaid are so popular in the us, meanwhile aetna and blue cross will fuck you out of your coverage in order to turn a profit. i thought you said you supported the states running their own insurance programs, (just like what we have in canada). it's also what independent senator bernie sanders is advocating.


Here is a recent youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oLxi0RYhf4&feature=player_embedded) from Glenn Greenwald.

thanks for that (y)

[yeahwho]

I'm no expert on travesty but one of the things I have a grasp on is he will never be singing sea chantey's with Keith Olberman.

It's kind of funny to see that button pushed though.

[travesty]

What I said was that I am not opposed to states running a single payer type system, fuck I'm not vehemently opposed to the Fed's doing it. If everyone is covered and everyone splits the tab I don't have much of a problem with that so long as it's run efficiently and humanely. It's not my ideal but what the hell, seems to be working elsewhere relatively well. A public option to compete with private companies is a far, far different scenario and mandates to buy something or else end up in jail is patently absurd regardless of who is selling it.

No Keith and I won't be doing karoake anytime soon, but I would have beer with him just to ask "What the fuck is wrong with you?".

[saz]

that's exactly what keith advocates. anyways, nicely said (y)

[yeahwho]

Robert Kuttner & Matt Taibbi (http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/12182009/watch.html) discuss Health Reform with Bill Moyers, December 18 2009.

so much being said in one half hour, very informative and right on point.


ROBERT KUTTNER: Think about it, the difference between social insurance and an individual mandate is this. Social insurance everybody pays for it through their taxes, so you don't think of Social Security as a compulsory individual mandate. You think of it as a benefit, as a protection that your government provides. But an individual mandate is an order to you to go out and buy some product from some private profit-making company, that in the case of a lot of moderate income people, you can't afford to buy. And the shell game here is that the affordable policies are either very high deductibles and co-pays, so you can afford the monthly premiums but then when you get sick, you have to pay a small fortune out of pocket before the coverage kicks in. Or if the coverage is decent, the premiums are unaffordable. And so here's the government doing the bidding of the private industry coercing people to buy profit-making products that maybe they can't afford and they call it health reform.