All this opportunity "to choose" from people who do not want everyone to have choices...hummm

Presumably their anti-socialism campaign will include beginning a "grassroots" effort to terminate Social Security and Medicare. Funny how their talk radio mouthpieces don't like to add those two "socialist" programs to the discussion.

Funny how you assume any non-Democrat, non-liberal voters in this county agree wholeheartedly with Lars Larson or Rush Limbaugh. Just like I think Jesse Jackson and Keith Olberman reflect the true feelings of the Left.

I hear social security and medicare mentioned all the time in the health debate. Because they are government run failures.

Right, D, Medicare and Social Security beneficiaries are SO unhappy with those programs, they're practically begging the federal government to close them down and take them off the rolls. Horrible failures, each one!

Just read Jack's "no taunting" policy, and I fear I have unwittingly violated it. Since I can't take it back, I'll just note to D that I don't think Medicare and Social Security are failures, unlike my comment above, which failed to further the debate.

From today's MSN:

"Perhaps as early as this year, Social Security, at $680 billion the nation's biggest social program, will be transformed from an operation that's helped finance the rest of the government for 25 years into a cash drain that will need money from the Treasury. In other words, a bailout"

Aside from the check cashers, you should ask how eager health professionals are to take on medicare cases.

Yes, Medicare is such a failure. All it did was provide the too-numerous-to-count treatments and procedures that helped my retired mother beat down stage 4 breast cancer into remission. I'll take that kind of failure anytime, thanks!

Unfortunately, both "D" and "Miles" have good points. The programs do their intended job for the recipients, but no longer pencil out for society. Members of our fine deliberative bodies can only consider solutions that work for either a narrow constituency or 'K' Street sharpies. Here's an off-the-wall proposal:

http://tinyurl.com/ornkod

And while we trade sound bites, this is what we medico deal with:
http://www.lvrj.com/news/53343302.html

This is very real and I had a patient under the same conditions, illegal, 3x weekly dialysis, 24 hour nursing care.

Multnomah County has a Republican Party?

I think they may attract more folks by calling it a "flash mob." No, not THAT kind of flashing.

Just read Jack's "no taunting" policy, and I fear I have unwittingly violated it.

This might be ripe for clarification. I would think irony is not a taunt even if, taken literally, it could be.

Wouldn't it be a lot cheaper to fly those undocumented immigrants with chronic illnesses back to their country of origin?
If children are involved - fly them too. Once back in their home country they could obtain treatment and because it is necessary on an every other day basis, they would have to stay there to survive. Another no-brainer?

"Surfdom"

How funny. As if education and health care expenses don't currently force people into working for Barons.

So let's get this straight, people who don't work for anyone can give you the "straight and skinny" on any subject, including health care. BUT, if you work for an employer (insert "Baron" here) then that worker has no intelligent thoughts about anything?

Wake up people, GOVERNMENT IS BIG BUSINESS. Start to realize that private employers aren't the enemy. Every employer I've had for over 50 years, YES, every employer treated me well, gave me good medical benefits and I got a pay check, TOO.

And NO, I DO NOT support President Obama's current proposed health care plan, compared to some other reasonable changes. He doesn't even understand or support parts of it and obviously, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius doesn't even know what's going on, yet. Consequently, no one really knows what is in the proposal.

For S... I'm glad your mother got her care, as did my dad before he passed away, but this BLOATED health care plan won't solve the problems which exist. And you are assuming that if there wasn't medicare, she would not have received the care. Lastly, we can't continue to carry the expected future obligations of approximately $32 to $89 TRILLION dollars for Medicare, or Social Securities $18 TRILLION dollars of unfunded liability.

While Americans DIE every day for lack of basic care , we pour fortunes into the bottomless pit of the pentagon with NO accounting ! They even admit they lost trillions , wake up and smell the coffee ,folks.If you will live with your money being thrown away for arms and death abroad , then you can afford to help your neighbors.
I would ask each of you opposed to health care for your fellow Amercans , What Would Jeebus Do?

Some thoughts on reading Carol's post:
1. Government is not business, big or otherwise.
2. Private sector employers are trying to earn money as a first priority. (That puts their goals in direct conflict with the goal of providing needed care.)
3. If no one knows what is in the health care proposal, how does anyone know it is bloated? To say nothing of BLOATED? Is that what 50 million uninsured Americans represent? Bloat?
4. Social security's future liabilities are manageable. Medicare's, not so much, which is a good part of the reason we are now where we are.
5. Carol's opinions do not gain weight with the use of capital letters.
6. The ban on taunting is painful at times.

Following is a message currently making the rounds. Of course I (like others) DID get angry about most of the things mentioned but writing, demonstrating and networking did absolutely no good. I sort of feel like that this time, too. Like a deck hand on the Titanic who keeps yelling that there's an iceberg and suggesting that we get cracking turning the ponderous ship before it's too late. Unfortunately the only time the ship turns smartly is when there's money to be made by someone in a position of influence. This is aimed, more likely, at the sort of uninformed people who might be attending the "informational gathering" under discussion.

That's not to say that the proposed health plan is perfect but I certainly don't believe that most of the people complaining have read it, have formed an opinion based upon its content or are doing anything other than responding to provocative ads and inflammatory tweets from the Sarah Palins of the world.

---

You didn't get mad when the Supreme Court stopped a legal recount and appointed a President.

You didn't get mad when Cheney allowed energy company officials to dictate our energy policy.

You didn't get mad when a covert CIA operative got outed.

You didn't get mad when the Patriot Act got passed and we lost some of our civil rights.

You didn't get mad when we illegally invaded a country that posed no threat to us.

You didn't get mad when we spent over $600 billion (and counting) on said illegal preemptive conflict.

You didn't get mad when over 10 billion dollars just disappeared in Iraq.

You didn't get mad when you saw the Abu Ghraib photos.

You didn't get mad when you found out we were torturing people.

You didn't get mad when the government was illegally wiretapping Americans.

You didn't get mad when we didn't catch Bin Laden.

You didn't get mad when you saw the horrible conditions at Walter Reed.

You didn't get mad when we let a major US city drown.

You didn't get mad when the deficit hit the trillion dollar mark.

You finally got mad when the government decided that people in America deserved the right to see a doctor if they are sick.

Yes, illegal wars, lies, corruption, torture, stealing your tax dollars to make the rich richer, are apparently all OK with you.

But helping other Americans...

that did it

NOW you're mad ...

Right?

Just saw a new Oregon Republican Party ad (cutesy - parody of a pharma ad) detailing the "side effects" of the proposed health plan.

This, just received from Dennis Kucinich:

The masquerade is over! The "public option" is ... dead.

Health care reform is now a private option: WHICH FOR PROFIT INSURANCE COMPANY DO YOU WANT? You have to choose. And you have to pay. If you have a low income, under HR3200 government will subsidize the private insurance companies and you will still have to pay premiums, co-pays and deductibles.

The Administration plan requires that everyone must have health insurance, so it is delivering tens of millions of new "customers" to the insurance companies. Health care? Not really. Insurance care! Absolutely. Cost controls? No chance.

You will next hear talk about "co-ops." The truth is that insurance company campaign contributions have co-opted the public interest.

The hotly-debated HR3200, the so-called "health care reform" bill, is nothing less than corporate welfare in the guise of social welfare and reform. It is a convoluted mess. The real debate which we should be having is not occurring.

Removing the "public option" from a public bill paid for by public money is not in the public interest. What is left is a "private option" paid for with public money. Why should public money be spent on a private option which does not guarantee 100% coverage nor have any cost controls? A true public option would provide 30% savings immediately which would then cover the 1/3rd of the population who presently have no health care.

Unfortunately, under HR3200, the Government is choosing winners and losers in the private sector; proposing to spend public funds on subsidizing insurance companies who make money not providing health care. This process will insure only the expansion of profits. Gone is the debate over cost.

As a result of current negotiations, the Medicare Part D rip-off will continue for another decade, further fleecing senior citizens. Drug importation has been dropped, so no inexpensive drugs can be accessed from other nations.

Instead we are told the pharmaceutical companies will accept a 2% cut in the growth rate of their profits - they call this cost control!

If the matter were not so serious, it would be farcical: The executive branch pretends that the proposed health care reforms are something they are not. The legislation is being attacked for something it is not. Congressional leadership and the White House defend the legislation, pretending it actually is the very proposal that is being attacked. But it is not.

A commonsense government health care reform policy would insure that every single American has full access to health care by expanding Medicare to cover everyone under a Single Payer System. We are already paying for a universal standard of care, it is just we are not getting it.

Plenty of money for healthcare since Obama ended the wars in Iran and Afghanistan. Wha?

I didn't understand Carol's point because I never said private employers are the enemy.

As to whether employers are the enemy, I completely support business. I would rather support local small stores and mid-size regional businesses. My one sentence observation above is simply the irony of the Republicans that public health care creates “serfdom.” On the contrary, under the current system people are much less inclined to start their own business or be innovative because they cannot afford to pay for insurance premiums and pay their educational loans. At the same time, small and mid-size businesses continuously reduce the amount of benefits it can pay employees because of the employer contributions towards health care. And they hire fewer and fewer people because of this overhead. So, people naturally flock to larger corporations and businesses (“Barons”) because those organizations offer, usually, better benefits. Because they have name recognition, these costs are then passed to the same employee, but as a consumer of the products and services.

Middle class families are suffocating on the costs of medical benefits and higher education, the two very things that families need other than energy and food. What I do not understand is how the government is quite able to subsidize food and energy so families can enjoy affordable food and gas/oil/water/power, but it cannot be trusted to do so with education and health care.

On a related observation: if health care were not such a serious topic, I would find it amusing that people like Carol continue to bleat like sheep that the current health system is the best in the world. First, I seriously question whether most of these people have even lived overseas to know that health care in Europe is actually quite sophisticated and generally user friendly. Second, the world loves our system because it allows medicine and health technology to be cheaper overseas. These systems are cheaper overseas because their governments use the public system as leverage to reduce costs (like the US uses leverage to reduce energy costs at the expense of energy costs in Europe). But these same companies don't necessarily care because they make up their profits by selling the same meds and machines in the US but at a much higher mark-up. You, Carol, are already subsidizing cheap health care, but to the rest of the developed world and not to your fellow citizens.

For me debating whether or not the government could run a more efficient healthcare system without reducing existing coverage misses the point entirely.

We cannot pay for the entitlements that we have right now. We are up to our ears in debt and the dollar is in trouble.

We can't expect that creating new entitlements will help our current situation. We're barreling towards a financial cliff and democrats are oblivious (republicans were too when they held the reins but "two wrongs don't...").

Gambling on socialized medicine right now is akin taking a cash advance on your visa on your last day in Vegas so you can "win it all back".

No thanks.

God forbid we should ever raise taxes, though -- even if it would save Grandma's life.

Then raise Grandma's taxes. When I get sick, I'll deal with it with my own resources, too. That seems fair to me.

In all seriousness, at what point does that "safety net" for everyone turn into a noose around the necks of those high achievers who pay much of the taxes supporting this system? Or is that unimportant?

a noose around the necks of those high achievers who pay much of the taxes supporting this system?

Like Henry Paulson? Yeah, he's a great guy -- a real achiever. He's paying too much in taxes. If we just cut his taxes some more, it will help everyone.

Then raise Grandma's taxes

If you find a country where the majority of people are that selfish, move there.

Sorry Jack, but we're already there. Outside of this site and a few others, I think most are reporting that a majority of people are nervous about personally paying more for services that will, at best, be marginally better.

If costs are going out of control, there are two ways to tackle the problem - raise everyone's taxes and fees OR place limits / promote competition / establish guidelines to restrict the rise in costs. Why are Democrats only focusing on the first option and not the second?

And if you think that an increase is taxes will only be limited to 1% or 2% of the population, you are still drinking Obama's Kool-Aid. His own advisors have admitted that "no option is off the table," including higher taxes on the middle class.

nervous about personally paying more

We've been through this earlier in the week. You may have missed it, but the party of selfishness is now in the deep, deep minority in this country.

I'm not going to to argue with you any more, Mike.

Sickening these people.

Socialism for the rich is the only thing these people will hear of.

Can 1/2 of America be this stupid?

(yes)