One Republican's view on health care reform...

This poor guy's gonna get run out of the party on a rail - he makes FAR too much sense.
From last Saturday's Augusta (GA) Ledger-Enquirer:

Beware health-industrial complex

By Jack Bernard
Ledger-Enquirer
August 23, 2009

I am a Republican, former chairman of the Republican Party in Jasper County, Ga., and chair of that county commission.

In my view, it is unpatriotic to continue to lie to the American public about the situation facing us. Over the last 10 years, wages have gone up by about one-fourth. Health insurance premiums have gone up well over 100 percent. We cannot continue along this path to fiscal destruction. Inaction is not an option.

It is also against American values to mislead the public into believing that everyone can get good care even if they do not have insurance. The mark of a great nation is not how well it treats its privileged, but rather how well it treats its downtrodden. On this measure, we fail miserably; strange for a nation that prides itself on being the most religious democracy in the world. Where in the Bible did Jesus say “might makes right” or “those with the gold rule”?

Very few health or insurance professionals advocate for a single-payer system, the best way to control costs and ensure access. I hear all sorts of reasons: rationing (really, like HMOs do not do that now), paperwork (apparently insurance company bureaucracy does not count), socialism (come on — practitioners will still be independent and we all know it) and so forth. It is rare that we hear the underlying cause openly stated: greed. It will cut my income.

The members of Physicians for a National Health Plan are an exception to this rule. If you take a look at their Web site, www.pnhp.org, the rationale for a single-payer system is clearly articulated.

The French have the top system in the world, with something like Medicare covering 66 percent of costs and private insurance for the rest, yet their cost per capita is half of ours. Universal Medicare will both control costs and achieve universal access to high quality care. Congressmen would get the same insurance as you and I. You better believe your coverage would be just as good as or better than what you are getting now.

The problem is not technical; it is political. It is high time we put the country ahead of ourselves and establish a single-payer system.

Jack Bernard is CEO of Monticello (Ga.) Health Care Solutions and a former chairman of the Jasper County Commission and the Jasper County Republican Party.

Anybody ELSE wanna say the bank bailouts were wasted money?

How much you wanna bet that the mainstream media totally ignores this?

LONDON (Reuters) – The Federal Reserve has made $14 billion in profits on loans made in the last two years, The Financial Times reported on Monday, citing officials close to the matter.

The U.S. central bank also earned about $19 billion from interest and fees charged to institutions that tapped liquidity facilities during the global financial crisis, the report said.

If the Fed had invested the same amounted loaned out in three-month Treasury bills since August 2007, it would have earned $5 billion in interest, the FT said.

This estimate excludes company bailouts and purchases of long-term assets as well as unrealized gains or losses on the Fed's portfolio of mortgage-backed securities and Treasuries purchased as part of the $1.75 trillion asset purchase program.

The Fed was not immediately available for comment on the report.

A brief, documented history...

Of Right-wing ignorance:

What I want to know...

is, what is the REPUBLICAN healthcare plan? For weeks and months, all I've heard is their criticism of the Democratic plans. "They are socialistic." "They cost too much." "They are going to pull the plug on Grandma", and so on. Now, I want to hear what their plan is to fix healthcare in this country.

What do they say about universal coverage? Do they think every American should be able to afford going to a doctor if they get sick?

What do they say about portability? If you lose or leave your job, do they believe you should be able to take your coverage with you to your next job?

What about costs? Are they satisfied with 10% increases or more every year in health insurance costs? How do they plan to bring it down other than by "tort reform"? Those lawyers support Democrats, don't you know?

What about pre-existing conditions? Do they have a plan where someone with a pre-existing condition cannot be denied coverage by insurance companies? Also, do they have a plan where they are not priced out of the market?

What about a public option? How do they plan on creating competition? Do they think letting insurance companies compete across state lines will open up competition? Are they willing to open insurance companies up to trust and monopoly violations? Are they willing to put regulations on big insurance companies?

I want to hear the media challenge them just the way they have challenged the Democrats. I'm going to enjoy that - especially since the GOP had 8 YEARS to come up with a plan, and did NOTHING.

With all the cries of "Socialism" going about...

I thought I'd compose a handy guide for Conservatives:

So, you say you don't like socialism? You don't want the government running anything? Wellll....

Don't EVER say you honor and support our military. The military (even including private, outsourced companies like Blackwater) are all paid and supplied by the Federal government.

Don't EVER call 911 for a medical, fire or police emergency. Emergency services are largely provided for by public servants using government-provided equipment and training.

Don't EVER drive on a federal or state or local highway. You can only drive on roads built and maintained by private companies. You'll really have to do this as you will not have a driver's license which is a product of a government agency.

Don't EVER buy any food that passed an FDA inspection. You have to grow your own fruits and vegetables and raise your own cattle, pigs, chickens, etc. Same goes for any medications.

Don't EVER visit a National, State, or Local park and especially don't participate in any activities there (fishing, hunting, camping, hiking, etc. that would require further expenditures for licenses.)

Don't EVER be in a position you would need a public defender. They are paid for via public dollars.

Don't EVER expect or ask for the prosecution against someone who did you harm, directly or indirectly. The judicial system, you see, is a government-run agency paid for by our tax dollars and other fees.

Don't EVER visit a public library and use the resources there as tax dollars bought those books, PCs, etc.

Don't EVER put your children in public schools (elementary, high school, or college). The elementary and high schools are free via tax dollars. Teachers are paid via tax dollars.

Don't EVER apply for Medicaid if you become disabled or indigent and need assistance such as food stamps, medical care, utility bill assistance or job training. After all, you don't want other Americans who have no insurance to have it paid for via tax dollars, why should you get to take part in that system?

Don't EVER accept Medicare after you retire and no longer have any type of private health insurance.

Don't EVER accept any Social Security payment after you no longer work or a spouse has died. Live off of your private investments or the charity of friends and family.

Don't EVER apply for a small business loan from any government agency. Where do you think that money would come from anyway?

Don't EVER ask the government for help in getting child support payments from a deadbeat spouse.

Don't EVER apply for Unemployment if you should happen to lose your job.

Don't EVER mail a letter via the USPS and contact every single entity that would otherwise use the USPS for mailing you items to have them sent via UPS, FEDEX, or electronic delivery.

Don't EVER visit a museum that was built or is maintained or operated by any government agency.


Got that?

Now HERE'S some talent...

Something non-political, for once! :-)
This is Ryan's friend Michael playing Beethoven's "Fur Elise". Bear in mind - Michael is 9 years old.


If you're getting this by e-mail, come to the blog to see the video - this kid's something else!

What happens if Health Care Reform fails...

as Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, et. al. seem to want? Here's Uwe Reinhardt's take on it.

So who is Uwe Reinhardt, and why should you care what he says about this?
Uwe Reinhardt is James Madison professor of political economy at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School. From 1986 to 1995 he served as a commissioner on the Physician Payment Review Committee, established in 1986 by Congress to advise it on issues related to the payment of physicians.


Uwe Reinhardt says health costs are rising at unsustainable pace, gobbling up middle-class incomes.

(CNN) -- Watching the angry outbursts at town hall meetings on health reform and the continuing public ambivalence about current efforts to reform our health system almost makes me wish that the reform effort fails.

Perhaps Americans need to be taught a basic lesson on the economics of employment-based health insurance before they will feel as smugly secure with it as they do now and before they will stop nitpicking health-reform efforts to death over this or that detail.

And America's currently insured middle class will be increasingly desperate if health reform fails. Millions more such families will see their take-home pay shrink. Millions will lose their employment-based insurance, especially in medium and small-sized firms. And millions will find themselves inexorably priced out of health care as we know it.

Milliman Inc., an employee benefits consulting firm, publishes annually its Milliman Medical Index on the total health spending by or for a typical American family of four with private health insurance. The index totals the family's out-of-pocket spending for health care plus the contribution employers and employees make to that family's job-related health insurance coverage.

The Milliman Medical Index stood at $8,414 in 2001. It had risen to $16,700 by 2009. It is likely to rise to $18,000 by next year. That is more than a doubling of costs in the span of a decade!

Since 2005, the index has grown at an average annual compound rate of 8.4 percent. Suppose we make it 8 percent for the coming decade. Then today's $16,700 will have grown to slightly over $36,000 by 2019.

Economists are convinced that this $36,000 would come virtually all out of the financial hides of employees, even if the employer pretended to be paying, say, 80 percent of the employment-based health insurance premiums. In the succinct words of the late United Automobile Worker Union leader Douglas Fraser:

"Before you start weeping for the auto companies and all they pay for medical insurance, let me tell you how the system works. All company bargainers worth their salt keep their eye on the total labor unit cost, and when they pay an admittedly horrendous amount for health care, that's money that can't be spent for higher [cash] wages or higher pensions or other fringe benefits. So we directly, the union and its members, feel the costs of the health care system." ("A National Health Policy Debate," Dartmouth Medical School Alumni Magazine, Summer 1989: 30)

Unfortunately, very few rank-and-file workers appreciate this fact. Aside from their still modest out-of-pocket payments and contributions to employment-based insurance premiums, most employees seem sincerely to believe that the bulk of their family's health care is basically paid for by "the company," which is why so few members of the middle class have ever been much interested in controlling health spending in this country.

The price for that indifference will be high. If efforts at better cost containment fail once again, and health care costs rise to $36,000 on average for a typical American family of four under age 65 -- as almost surely it would -- that $36,000 will be borne entirely by the family. That family's disposable income would be much higher if the growth of future health spending was better controlled. And, as noted, many smaller firms will stop altogether providing job-based health insurance.

It would be a major problem for families with an income of less than $100,000 a year. In 2007, only about 25 percent of American families had a money income of $100,000 or more. Close to 60 percent had family incomes of less than $75,000.

Here it must be remembered that the wages and salaries of the solid American middle class have been relatively stagnant in recent years and are likely to remain so for the next decade. Unemployment is not likely to fall significantly soon, regardless of what stock prices do on Wall Street. Indeed, often stock prices rise as firms lay off workers to drive up profits through leaner payrolls.

This prospect -- relatively stagnant family incomes combined with family health-care costs that double every decade -- is what America's middle class should contemplate as it thinks about the imperative of health reform. (emphasis by the blog poster)

It is a pity that this central issue seems to have been shoved aside by mendacious distortions from Sarah Palin, Betsy McCaughey, Rush Limbaugh and other extremist commentators seeking to frighten Americans with their prattle about "death panels" and "pulling plugs on granny" that no bill before Congress even remotely envisions.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Uwe Reinhardt. (except for the fact that I agree with them 100% because he happens to be right. - Damon)

In other words, if this reform effort fails, YOU pay. YOU pay higher taxes because the multitudes of uninsured will be forced into ERs - YOU will have less money to spend because costs will continue to spiral while your wages stagnate.
If you want that, then by all means fight the President's proposal - but don't even THINK about complaining to me when you lose your coverage. My sympathy will be shockingly limited.

What Healthcare reform means to YOU...

Start on the upper left:



Any questions?

Jon Stewart on the Great healthcare debate...

Glenn Beck VS....GLENN BECK?!?

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-august-13-2009/glenn-beck-s-operation

Seems as if his opinion about our nation's haelth care system has changed DRAMATICALLY over the last year and a half...

Actually, turns out Sarah Palin's RIGHT...

There ARE "Death Panels". Only the Government has nothing to do with them.

As Joe Conason writes:

When Republican politicians and right-wing talking heads bemoan the fictitious “death panels” that they claim would arise from health care reform, they are concealing a sinister reality from their followers. The ugly fact is that every year we fail to reform the existing system, that failure condemns tens of thousands of people to die—either because they have no insurance or because their insurance companies deny coverage or benefits when they become ill.


The best estimate of the annual death toll among Americans of working age due to lack of insurance or under-insurance is at least 20,000, according to studies conducted over the past decade by medical researchers, and is almost certainly rising as more and more people lose their coverage as costs continue to go up.

They die primarily because they didn’t have the coverage or the money to pay doctors and thus delayed seeking treatment until it was too late. They don’t get checkups, screenings and other preventive care. That is why uninsured adults are far more likely to be diagnosed with a disease, such as cancer or heart disease, at an advanced stage, which severely reduces their chances of survival.

This isn’t news. Seven years ago, the Institute of Medicine found that approximately 18,000 Americans had died in 2000 because they had no insurance. Using the same methodology combined with Census Bureau estimates of health coverage, the Urban Institute concluded that the incidence of death among the uninsured was enormous. Between 2000 and 2006, the last year of that study, the total number of dead was estimated to have reached 137,000—a body count more than double the number of casualties in the Vietnam War.

The Institute of Medicine also found that uninsured adults are 25 percent more likely to die prematurely than adults with private health insurance, and other studies have warned that uninsured adults between the ages of 55 and 64 are even more prone to die prematurely. A lack of health insurance is the third-leading cause of death for that age cohort, following heart disease and cancer.

All those appalling figures, which are real rather than mythical, do not include the casualties of insurance company profiteering—namely, all the people, including small children, who perish because of the anonymous “death panels” that deny or delay coverage to consumers. Perhaps the most notorious case in recent years was that of Nataline Sarkisyan, the 17-year-old leukemia patient whose liver transplant was held up by insurance giant Cigna HealthCare. She died for no reason except to protect Cigna’s profit margin, but her unnecessary and cruel demise was hardly unique.

Research by the American Medical Association found that the nation’s largest insurance companies deny somewhere between 2 and 5 percent of all the claims submitted by doctors. That rough estimate is the best available because private insurers are not required to reveal such statistics (although they certainly maintain them), and the government does not collect them. But in June, a House Energy and Commerce Committee investigation found that three major insurance companies—Golden Rule, Assurant and WellPoint—rescinded the coverage of at least 20,000 people between 2003 and 2007 for minor errors, including typos, on their paperwork; a preexisting condition; or a family member’s medical history.

“They try to find something—anything—so they can say that this individual was not truthful,” said Representative Henry Waxman, the California Democrat who oversaw the committee probe. He warned that insurance companies launch these nitpicking inquisitions whenever a policyholder becomes ill with a certain kind of condition—usually a costly and deadly one, such as ovarian cancer or leukemia. The result is denial and loss of coverage—and we now know that means increased mortality for innocent people.

So who are the members of the death panels?

You can find them among the corporate bureaucrats who concoct excuses to deny coverage and throw the sick off their rolls. You can find them among the politicians and lobbyists who have stalled reform for years while people died. You can find them among the morons who show up to shout slogans at town halls rather than seek solutions. And you can find them among the cable and radio blabbers, who invent scary stories about reform to conceal the sickening truth.

An Evangelical Minister speaks on the Health care debate

Jim Wallis is an Evangelical Minister Editor-In-Chief of Sojurners magazine

To get working links and so forth, go to http://blog.sojo.net/2009/08/12/we-must-act-on-health-care/

As a nation, we are engaged in making decisions about our health care that will impact our families and communities for generations to come.

And I must personally share with you that I’ve had enough of the misinformation and, frankly, misleading statements coming from those who oppose the transformation of a health system that currently renders the best health care to the wealthiest, depletes the savings of solidly middle-class Americans, and leaves 46 million people with no health-care coverage at all.

We don’t have to fall victim to the naysayers – those seeking to prop up the status quo and sustain the profits of the massive insurance corporations.

Business as usual is not what we’re about. It’s not what change is about. It’s certainly not what people of good will from all faiths, who embrace the Golden Rule and seek the common ground of justice and fairness, are about.

During the last big national debate on health-care reform in the early 1990s, the religious community mostly stayed out of the discussion. Not this time.

A friend of mine recently traveled across several states in the U.S. visiting friends on summer vacation. He told me that, everywhere he went, people asked him to read e-mails they’d received. These e-mails had no author and no citations to support the misleading statements about health-care reform they contained – including the false claim that, if health-care reform passed, it would force families to see doctors and receive care dictated by a government panel. This is not true.

At a recent meeting of leading faith groups in Washington, D.C., a leader of a large, national organization said they were receiving calls asking if the elderly would be simply left to die if health-care reform passed. The answer is NO.

These egregious and false accusations are being created for only one purpose: to manipulate and instill fear in American citizens.

This must stop. We are the ones who can stop it. Together, speaking out, acting out, and joining as one on a mission, we can push back the clouds of misinformation and fear-mongering, and allow the light of truth to shine through.

Today, right now, let’s join together making the health-care debate factual, worthy of our families and communities. Let’s put the special interests on notice that we want real health-care reform, not misinformation and fear-mongering.

Sojourners has created a rapid response Web site where you will find what you need to fight for the truth: Sojourners’ Health Care Reform Resources.

At this Web site I want you to:

SIGN Sojourners’ Health-Care Creed and let Congress know you stand for values-based reform.

SHARE Sojourners’ Guide to the Health-Care Reform Debate with your church and neighbors.

DISTRIBUTE Sojourners’ two-page flyer with health-care reform facts and values at your small group or Bible study.

USE the messages and talking points that Sojourners has created in your discussions with others.

CALL your Members of Congress today, toll-free, at #1-866-279-5474 and ask them to vote for health-care reform.

We must act.

We must speak out in our communities, schools, and workplaces. If we all take part, then our voices will join thousands of others across the nation. Other things you can do include writing a letter to the editor of your local newspaper supporting health-care reform.

I pledge to you that I will do my part by keeping you updated on what’s happening here in Washington, D.C. Be prepared to receive action requests and notifications of conference calls that you should join.

Together, imagine the thousands of faithful voices speaking out, in unison – with all joining in.

Together, we can bring about the most sweeping change to our health-care system in history.

Together, passing health-care reform for our families is what people of good will from all faiths, who embrace the Golden Rule and seek the common ground of justice and fairness, can do. Join me.

Olbermann strikes again...

This time on Right-wing fearmongering, like Sarah Palin and the "Death Panels" that don't exist...

A relevant cartoon...

Here's something about Government-run health care...

Since 1964, Medicare has provided health care insurance for more than 100 million Americans...
no Medicare participant has ever been denied coverage because of a previous medical problem...
or because of a change or loss of a job...
No medicare participant has ever been told which physician he can or can't use...
or had his deductibles go up by 50% without warning...
No Medicare participant has had to send 15 letters to get her medical bills paid...
or had her contributions go toward a billion-dollar bonus for the head of Medicare...
As a percentage of the minimum wage, Medicare premiums have gone up only 20% in 45 years while covering everyone eligible...
while the average private health insurance premium has gone up 200% in the last 5 years, despite denying coverage to millions who need it most...

This is the so-called government-run health care that the right wingers want you to be afraid of. What they're afraid of is losing donations from the private health insurance lobby.

A Tip for The GOP: Look Away

This from a CONSERVATIVE columnist:

By Kathleen Parker
Wednesday, August 5, 2009



Southern writer Walker Percy liked to poke fun at Ohioans in his novels, just to even things out a bit.

"Usually Mississippians and Georgians are getting it from everybody, and Alabamians," he once explained to an interviewer. "So, what's wrong with making smart-aleck remarks about Ohio? Nobody puts Ohio down. Why shouldn't I put Ohio down?"

Percy, the genial genius, laughed at his own remark.

Now, apparently, it's the Buckeye State's turn to poke back. In a fusillade of pique, Ohio Sen. George Voinovich charged that Southerners are what's wrong with the Republican Party.

"We got too many Jim DeMints and Tom Coburns," he told an interviewer with the Columbus Dispatch, referring to GOP senators from South Carolina and Oklahoma. "It's the Southerners. They get on TV and go 'errrr, errrrr.' People hear them and say, 'These people, they're Southerners. The party's being taken over by Southerners. What the hell they got to do with Ohio?' "

Down South, people are trying to figure out what "errrr, errrrr" means. Jack Bass, author of eight books about social and political change in the South, speculated in an e-mail that Voinovich really meant grrrr, grrrrr, as in "growling canines whose bark scares more than do Obama's purrs, especially with the Dow at a nine-month high."

Whatever Voinovich's sound effects were intended to convey, his meaning was clear enough: Those ignorant, right-wing, Bible-thumping rednecks are ruining the party.

Alas, Voinovich was not entirely wrong.

Not all Southern Republicans are wing nuts. Nor does the GOP have a monopoly on ignorance or racism. And, the South, for all its sins, is also lush with beauty, grace and mystery. Nevertheless, it is true that the GOP is fast becoming regionalized below the Mason-Dixon line and increasingly associated with some of the South's worst ideas.

It is not helpful (or surprising) that "birthers" -- conspiracy theorists who have convinced themselves that Barack Obama is not a native son -- have assumed kudzu qualities among Republicans in the South. In a poll commissioned by the liberal blog Daily Kos, participants were asked: "Do you believe that Barack Obama was born in the United States of America or not?"

Hefty majorities in the Northeast, the Midwest and the West believe Obama was born in the United States. But in the land of cotton, where old times are not by God forgotten, only 47 percent believe Obama was born in America and 30 percent aren't sure.

Southern Republicans, it seems, have seceded from sanity.

Though Voinovich's views may be shared by others in the party, it's a tad late -- not to mention ungrateful -- to indict the South. Republicans have been harvesting Southern votes for decades from seeds strategically planted during the civil rights era. When Lyndon B. Johnson predicted in 1965 that the Voting Rights Act meant the South would go Republican for the next 50 years, he wasn't just whistling Dixie.

A telling anecdote recounted by Pat Buchanan to New Yorker writer George Packer last year captures the dark spirit that still hovers around the GOP. In 1966 Buchanan and Richard Nixon were at the Wade Hampton Hotel in Columbia, S.C., where Nixon worked a crowd into a frenzy: "Buchanan recalls that the room was full of sweat, cigar smoke, and rage; the rhetoric, which was about patriotism and law and order, 'burned the paint off the walls.' As they left the hotel, Nixon said, 'This is the future of this Party, right here in the South.' "

That same rage was on display again in the fall of 2008, but this time the frenzy was stimulated by a pretty gal with a mocking little wink. Sarah Palin may not have realized what she was doing, but Southerners weaned on Harper Lee heard the dog whistle.

The curious Republican campaign of 2008 may have galvanized a conservative Southern base -- including many who were mostly concerned with the direction Democrats would take the country -- but it also repelled others who simply bolted and ran the other way. Whatever legitimate concerns the GOP may historically have represented were suddenly overshadowed by a sense of a resurgent Old South and all the attendant pathologies of festering hate and fear.

What the GOP is experiencing now, one hopes, are the death throes of that 50-year spell that Johnson foretold. But before the party of the Great Emancipator can rise again, Republicans will have to face their inner Voinovich and drive a stake through the heart of old Dixie.

kathleenparker@washpost.com

Keith Olbermann's being mealy mouthed again...

Man NEVER says what he thinks...:-)