Health Care

[pattygreen 5]

Because it sucks!!!! and He knows it!

[Cleo's Mom 257]

BTW - 90% of the teabaggers poll that they think the government is too big and headed toward socialism

BUT 70% of them poll that they want the government to create jobs.:tt1:

I don't think they even know what they want, how the government works or much of anything. They just know they hate Obama and they take it from there.

[Cleo's Mom 257]

Because it sucks!!!! and He knows it!

DUH!! No, it's because he already has healthcare. If you like your healthcare you keep it. Why would he want to change it? :tt1: Is this too difficult a concept for you to understand?

[LeighaMason 19]

ariscus--By the way, he (Obama) tried to give you access to the health care policy that he has (cadillac plan), the Republicans blocked that.

PS Do you have a nickname we can use? I always have to cut and paste yours to make sure I spell it right.

[tdslf1 0]

PG,

Please post some personal space attacks. These congress people were attacke in a public forum. Please post where a supporter of the Democratic platform went to a congress persons home and attacked their family?

That is a whole nother level when you have the balls to do that.

[BJean 16]

patty where did you get that information about an organized group of "tens of thousands" of people who violently attacked people, threw cement bags from bridges on Republicans going to the convention? Were the Republicans on foot or in cars or buses or what?

Why did they attack a bus full of Cub Scouts? And Clorox? In the bottle or squirted from a sprayer or how'd they do that? Squirt guns? Did they put anybody's eye out? What "curse slurs" did they yell at Republicans?

But the most important piece of data would be who the heck were these people? If there were tens of thousands of them, were they a huge organized group of some kind? What did they call themselves? Who organized them?

Since the news media didn't see fit to tell us any of this at the time - nor have they since then, that I know of - we need to know about this and it seems like you're the person who is willing to report this important news item.

So please, give us the specifics because I very much want to know about this. I'd specifically like to know how many people were sent to the hospital and what their injuries were. Were the Cub Scouts physically harmed or only emotionally? Also, how many of those tens of thousands were arrested? I'm sure there must have been a lot of arrests because I saw lots and lots of policemen lining the areas near the convention hall.

[tdslf1 0]

Cost should never trump access. This is a moral issue.

[pattygreen 5]

DUH!! No, it's because he already has healthcare. If you like your healthcare you keep it. Why would he want to change it? Is this too difficult a concept for you to understand?

Nothing should get passed that Obama, his family, and congress is not willing to abide by.

[Cleo's Mom 257]

Nothing should get passed that Obama, his family, and congress is not willing to abide by.

And exactly what is it that those who already have insurance have to abide by?

[Cleo's Mom 257]

From Maureen Dowd's column entitled: Benedict Must Go

American bishops have gotten politically militant in recent years, opposing the health care bill because its language on abortion wasn't vehement enough, and punishing Catholic politicians who favor abortion rights and stem cell research. They should spend as much time guarding the kids already under their care as they do championing the rights of those who aren't yet born.

This is so true. Talk about having your priorities out of order. Yeah, make sure you deny communion to someone who supports the current law about abortion while covering up for molesting priests and moving them to another parish to molest again.

[BJean 16]

The hyprocrisy in the Catholic Church has always been a problem. Now that the Pope himself has been shown to have put the church before its' parishoners health and well being is almost unthinkable!

If any of these priests had been teachers in a public school, the uproar and anger would have been played out in the news media and in our communities to the point that Americans would be calling for public lynchings.

There's nothing much worse than for someone who has influence over a child, for them to sexually abuse those children. Children look to adults for guidance. They consider adults the ones who are there to teach them to do the right thing in all ways.

We have a friend whose son attended a Baptist Church elementary school in Tampa, Florida. They didn't find out about their son's sexual abuse by one of the male teachers until after he was grown and had been in the Army (in a bomb disposal unit) for several years.

He came home from the desert a wreck. It took many nights of drinking alcohol, hand wringing and support by his parents before he could unburden himself of the horrific things that happened to him when he was a child at the hands of that teacher.

Can you imagine that scenario? Can imagine that happening to your child? They did their research and learned that the same teacher who abused their son was still a teacher at that school. How many years did that vile human being commit disgusting acts on boys who relied on him? How many other parents learned what that man did to their own sons over the years?

Anyone who didn't report it and anyone who swept it under the rug is just as culpable as the pedophile himself as far as I'm concerned.

John is still in therapy - too many years after his first discussion with his parents about the sexual assault against him when he was a child.

The Pope and everyone involved need to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Otherwise when will it ever cease?

[Cleo's Mom 257]

Let's start with how health insurance reform will expand and strengthen coverage:

• This year, children with pre-existing conditions can no longer be denied health insurance coverage. Once the new health insurance exchanges begin in the coming years, pre-existing condition discrimination will become a thing of the past for everyone.
  
• This year, health care plans will allow young people to remain on their parents' insurance policy up until their 26th birthday. This year, insurance companies will be banned from dropping people from coverage when they get sick, and they will be banned from implementing lifetime caps on coverage.
  
• This year, restrictive annual limits on coverage will be banned for certain plans. Under health insurance reform, Americans will be ensured access to the care they need.
  
• This year, adults who are uninsured because of pre-existing conditions will have access to affordable insurance through a temporary subsidized high-risk pool.
  
• In the next fiscal year, the bill increases funding for community health centers, so they can treat nearly double the number of patients over the next five years.
  
• This year, we'll also establish an independent commission to advise on how best to build the health care workforce and increase the number of nurses, doctors and other professionals to meet our country's needs.
  
• Going forward, we will provide $1.5 billion in funding to support the next generation of doctors, nurses and other primary care practitioners -- on top of a $500 million investment from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
  

Health insurance reform will also curb some of the worst insurance industry practices and strengthen consumer protections:

• This year, this bill creates a new, independent appeals process that ensures consumers in new private plans have access to an effective process to appeal decisions made by their insurer.
  
• This year, discrimination based on salary will be outlawed. New group health plans will be prohibited from establishing any eligibility rules for health care coverage that discriminate in favor of higher-wage employees.
  
• Beginning this fiscal year, this bill provides funding to states to help establish offices of health insurance consumer assistance in order to help individuals in the process of filing complaints or appeals against insurance companies.
  
• Starting January 1, 2011, insurers in the individual and small group market will be required to spend 80 percent of their premium dollars on medical services. Insurers in the large group market will be required to spend 85 percent of their premium dollars on medical services. Any insurers who don't meet those thresholds will be required to provide rebates to their policyholders.
  
• Starting in 2011, this bill helps states require insurance companies to submit justification for requested premium increases. Any company with excessive or unjustified premium increases may not be able to participate in the new health insurance exchanges.
  

Reform immediately begins to lower health care costs for American families and small businesses:

• This year, small businesses that choose to offer coverage will begin to receive tax credits of up to 35 percent of premiums to help make employee coverage more affordable.
  
• This year, new private plans will be required to provide free preventive care: no co-payments and no deductibles for preventive services. And beginning January 1, 2011, Medicare will do the same.
  
• This year, this bill will provide help for early retirees by creating a temporary re-insurance program to help offset the costs of expensive premiums for employers and retirees age 55-64.
  
• This year, this bill starts to close the Medicare Part D 'donut hole' by providing a $250 rebate to Medicare beneficiaries who hit the gap in prescription drug coverage. And beginning in 2011, the bill institutes a 50% discount on prescription drugs in the 'donut hole.'
  

Once these great and popular benefits start to take place and people see how they were lied to by the republicans, I can't wait for the republicans to ask them to vote for them so they can repeal it all.

Edited March 29, 2010 by Cleo's Mom

[Cleo's Mom 257]

Okay, this is the final straw! How much does this man get paid to write what I've been writing for free?

Part of an article entitled: "The Rage is not about Health Care" by Frank Rich of the NY Times

That a tsunami of anger is gathering today is illogical, given that what the right calls “Obamacare” is less provocative than either the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or Medicare, an epic entitlement that actually did precipitate a government takeover of a sizable chunk of American health care. But the explanation is plain: the health care bill is not the main source of this anger and never has been. It’s merely a handy excuse. The real source of the over-the-top rage of 2010 is the same kind of national existential reordering that roiled America in 1964.

In fact, the current surge of anger — and the accompanying rise in right-wing extremism — predates the entire health care debate. The first signs were the shrieks of “traitor” and “off with his head” at Palin rallies as Obama’s election became more likely in October 2008. Those passions have spiraled ever since — from Gov. Rick Perry’s kowtowing to secessionists at a Tea Party rally in Texas to the gratuitous brandishing of assault weapons at Obama health care rallies last summer to “You lie!” piercing the president’s address to Congress last fall like an ominous shot.

If Obama’s first legislative priority had been immigration or financial reform or climate change, we would have seen the same trajectory. The conjunction of a black president and a female speaker of the House — topped off by a wise Latina on the Supreme Court and a powerful gay Congressional committee chairman — would sow fears of disenfranchisement among a dwindling and threatened minority in the country no matter what policies were in play. It’s not happenstance that Frank, Lewis and Cleaver — none of them major Democratic players in the health care push — received a major share of last weekend’s abuse. When you hear demonstrators chant the slogan “Take our country back!,” these are the people they want to take the country back from.

They can’t. Demographics are avatars of a change bigger than any bill contemplated by Obama or Congress. The week before the health care vote, The Times reported that births to Asian, black and Hispanic women accounted for 48 percent of all births in America in the 12 months ending in July 2008. By 2012, the next presidential election year, non-Hispanic white births will be in the minority. The Tea Party movement is virtually all white. The Republicans haven’t had a single African-American in the Senate or the House since 2003 and have had only three in total since 1935. Their anxieties about a rapidly changing America are well-grounded.

If Congressional Republicans want to maintain a politburo-like homogeneity in opposition to the Democrats, that’s their right. If they want to replay the petulant Gingrich government shutdown of 1995 by boycotting hearings and, as John McCain has vowed, refusing to cooperate on any legislation, that’s their right too (and a political gift to the Democrats). But they can’t emulate the 1995 G.O.P. by remaining silent as mass hysteria, some of it encompassing armed militias, runs amok in their own precincts. We know the end of that story. And they can’t pretend that we’re talking about “isolated incidents” or a “fringe” utterly divorced from the G.O.P. A Quinnipiac poll last week found that 74 percent of Tea Party members identify themselves as Republicans or Republican-leaning independents, while only 16 percent are aligned with Democrats.

After the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, some responsible leaders in both parties spoke out to try to put a lid on the resistance and violence. The arch-segregationist Russell of Georgia, concerned about what might happen in his own backyard, declared flatly that the law is “now on the books.” Yet no Republican or conservative leader of stature has taken on Palin, Perry, Boehner or any of the others who have been stoking these fires for a good 17 months now. Last week McCain even endorsed Palin’s “reload” rhetoric.

Are these politicians so frightened of offending anyone in the Tea Party-Glenn Beck base that they would rather fall silent than call out its extremist elements and their enablers? Seemingly so, and if G.O.P. leaders of all stripes, from Romney to Mitch McConnell to Olympia Snowe to Lindsey Graham, are afraid of these forces, that’s the strongest possible indicator that the rest of us have reason to fear them too.

•

Edited March 29, 2010 by Cleo's Mom

[pattygreen 5]

The hyprocrisy in the Catholic Church has always been a problem. Now that the Pope himself has been shown to have put the church before its' parishoners health and well being is almost unthinkable!

If any of these priests had been teachers in a public school, the uproar and anger would have been played out in the news media and in our communities to the point that Americans would be calling for public lynchings.

There's nothing much worse than for someone who has influence over a child, for them to sexually abuse those children. Children look to adults for guidance. They consider adults the ones who are there to teach them to do the right thing in all ways.

We have a friend whose son attended a Baptist Church elementary school in Tampa, Florida. They didn't find out about their son's sexual abuse by one of the male teachers until after he was grown and had been in the Army (in a bomb disposal unit) for several years.

He came home from the desert a wreck. It took many nights of drinking alcohol, hand wringing and support by his parents before he could unburden himself of the horrific things that happened to him when he was a child at the hands of that teacher.

Can you imagine that scenario? Can imagine that happening to your child? They did their research and learned that the same teacher who abused their son was still a teacher at that school. How many years did that vile human being commit disgusting acts on boys who relied on him? How many other parents learned what that man did to their own sons over the years?

Anyone who didn't report it and anyone who swept it under the rug is just as culpable as the pedophile himself as far as I'm concerned.

John is still in therapy - too many years after his first discussion with his parents about the sexual assault against him when he was a child.

The Pope and everyone involved need to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Otherwise when will it ever cease?

............. Amen!................

[pattygreen 5]

This is a great editorial I read today.

Obamacare has made a mockery of America's freedoms

According to the book of Genesis, Adam and Eve lived in the perfection of God's creation, the Garden of Eden. They had the will of God written in their hearts, and for a time all was well. They were forbidden from eating the fruit from one of the trees. But true to human nature, they wanted more. They craved what did not belong to them. It was the work of God, not of their hands, but it was so tempting. They could see no harm in it, and surely it would be good for them. It didn't take much of a push from Satan to get them to follow what their baser instincts dictated, and they ate the fruit. God had warned them "on that day you shall surely die," but their self-serving inclination was just too strong, so they ate and lost paradise.

Fast-forward a few thousand years. We have been placed in a land that had its founding rooted in the will and laws of God. We were by no means a perfect people, but our laws reflected Judeo-Christian laws and traditions. We thrived like no other country in history.

Our founders warned that unless we were a moral (God-fearing) people, this great American experiment would not endure. But our human nature led us to open Pandora's Box and seek our own way. We encoded legalized theft in the forms of income and property taxes (what part of "Thou shalt not steal" don't you understand?). These taxes were not onerous at first, but it was a matter of time before our appetites increased to an unsustainable point.

We voted again and again for politicians who promised us the most, not considering the immorality of where the funds were coming from, as long as it benefited us. Like the proverbial frog in the kettle, we ignored the principle and the danger, and now I fear we are already boiling. The federal government is broke and mortgaging our future and the futures of our children. States and municipalities are broke. The only light at the end of the tunnel is the train of promised obligations that surely will run over us. All from the same sin as Adam and Eve: the desire to possess what was not ours.

With the signing of the health-care abomination, we have made a mockery of "freedom" in America and made ourselves even more indentured servants of government. As in I Samuel, chapter 8, our king (government) will take our young men and women, the first fruits of our labor (automatic withholding), and everything we have to satiate the beast of government. Yes, we did it to ourselves. It was our human nature rebelling against the will of God.

Just as God said to Adam and Eve, "... on that day you shall surely die," so we will look at a once great people and witness the death of our nation.

The Rev. Martin E. Kiesel

Southbury