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Originally Posted by saz
that depends on your decision. the legislation hasn't even passed yet, but if it does, you may tell your employer that you want to stick with your current insurance provider.
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We're having a basic misunderstanding. Perhaps you have never had employer-provided health care? My employer doesn't let me make the decision. My employer decides whether to provide health care coverage or not. And if they decide to provide coverage they tell me what sort of plan I have. If I like Blue Cross, that's tough because it's not offered. If there is a national plan that employers don't pay for, then employers have an incentive to not offer any private insurance at all. I can say "hey, I choose to stick with my old plan" and they can say "fuck you, we're not offering insurance anymore."
If this is really about nationalizing the entire US health care system, then let's have that discussion. But Obama, and the people in congress who support "health care reform" are telling me that it isn't about nationalization. I'm being told that I will have the same great plan I have today, and I don't see how they can guarantee that. I suspect that they're lying to me. Until I can trust what they're saying, I can't get behind any legislation. Again, I think it's dangerous to say "we have no idea what we're doing but we need to do something so aaaaahhhhh, we're going to pass a bill we haven't read." I know it's happened before, like with the republicans' prescription drug bill under Bush, and I opposed that bill too, for the same reason.
I want to insure poor kids, I really do. But tell me the truth about the cost and what we're going to cut to pay for it. There are many, many things that I'm willing to cut. I haven't heard anything that Obama or Pelosi want to cut yet, at least nothing significant. And the argument that we can pay for this by cutting "waste" is silly. This is where McCain was an idiot. Waste is a tiny percentage of the budget compared to entitlements. We have to cut entitlements. And defense of course.
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Originally Posted by saz
but you're okay with your money going towards two endless, foreign wars, one in which was based on total b.s. and outright lies? you're okay with paying for bush's tax cuts for rich people? you're okay with paying for the american empire? you're okay with paying for a bloated, wasteful defence budget? you're probably not okay with those, but this is what outsiders don't get about many americans, that they don't want to pay into a system that benefits the entire society, it's this "me-me, fuck everyone else" mentality.
how about cutting the waste out of the defence budget? how about ending the illegal occupation in iraq, which is costing approximately nine billion a month?
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I was against the war from the get go. I was also against the first Iraq war. But I didn't get to make those decisions. If Obama and Congress are going to keep funding those two wars, then there is an opportunity cost (and has been for years). We can't do everything. I'd rather have the money going to poor kids than to Afghanistan, but I don't want it going to poor kids AND Afghanistan. So far, it seems that this president and this Congress want to do everything at once, and the deficit is scaring the shit out of me.