JD,

Some more thoughts for you. Most people born in this country have as part of their hospital birth records, hand and footprints (although I still don’t know about people with birth defects that might not be able to supply those). Military personnel are routinely fingerprinted and now have DNA samples for later ID if needed. I guess that DNA is now the solution for amputee ID. There’s that pesky Iraq thing again.

And if I were a conservative I wouldn’t claim the GOP either.

Rich Brown

ACORN turned in registration forms of dead people and addresses that had no houses on lots. Not just in St louis, but around the country, and the vast majority of those were democrat.

You must be living in some other world if you really believe there is no liberal bias in the media, be it printed, radio or tv. I take the radio back since no body wants to listen to liberal talk radio, cutting down the country, military and just about everything else. If the PD hadn’t been losing so many subscribers, they probably wouldn’t have added a few conservative columns. The majority of the liberal print media has been losing so much money and advertisers, they have had to let hundreds of people go. Their stock has also dropped.

If you have collected registrations for Move ON, you are one sick person. I suggest if we are forced into a Universal Health Plan, you make an appointment to have your head examined. It may take a year or 2 to get an appointment, so you better start looking for one now. Mabe they can add the brain cells that liberals are missing.

Mr. Brown

Sir, I am fingerprinted every couple of years, and have been since my military days. I know about fingerprinting.

You sound so ANTI-American, I can see why you want Obama, birds of a feather…

JD,

This is like shooting fish in a barrel. Besides name-calling do you have a point? So you’ve been fingerprinted and you know fingerprinting? What’s your point? MY POINT (which I thought was too obvious to state) was that since we’ve mostly all been hand and footprinted at birth it would be easy enough to set up a data base for comparison purposes, assuming there isn’t one already. I’ll take bets either way.

Subscription declines in print media are reported everywhere across the political spectrum as people drift more and more to video as their news sources. If you think its only among “liberal papers” then show me the stats that prove it! Plus you have to define liberal so we can agree on what we’re talking about. But of course you can’t answer my comments on conservative media of the airwaves, because you only have to look at who owns most of it. Something you wouldn’t know if you only listen to Bill O’Reilly, or Gush Faux Pas.

You can add up all the accusations made by republicans against ALL the ACORNS in the U.S. and they still don’t add up to an oak tree. Several states had prosecutable offenses, but nothing that rises to the scale of what was done and documented in Ohio by republicans to skew a national election. All you interested people can google search these events and judge for yourselves.

You don’t want Universal Health Care? Then you like overpaying for substandard, inadequate, non-transferable, unaffordable, non-competitive, inadequate, inflated, care that doesn’t cover everyone, like it does in most other developed nations and leaves 47 million of my fellow citizens uninsured and a great many more underinsured? I’ve been blessed to be currently covered by 2 insurance policies. In recent months having 2 surgeries. One that went very well for which I received excellent care, and one that every detail of was like pulling teeth to get accomplished. Without going into detail too much, the surgeries were at different hospitals, one of which was a nationally known top rated hospital, and I don’t know the rating of the other (where the outcome and care was much better). The blizzard of billing paperwork is still coming in and these were done in Nov. and early Dec. of last year. An auditor’s nightmare and accountants don’t come cheap. Don’t tell me we don’t need universal health care, I’ve studied this problem for 15 yrs. now and I can show you why what the U.S. has doesn’t rise to the level of calling it a system. Whatever it is it”s broken. I want to cover all Americans. I want to make health care a right. I want U.S. industries to have the advantages that civilized nations in other parts of the globe have so that health care costs don’t make our products unaffordable. Frankly none of the leading candidates solutions to the problem is any good. Hillary’s is probably the best of a very bad lot. But I voted for Obama on the chance that he’s the most likely to get anything done. McCain’s proposal is another way of saying if I pee in the soup maybe it’ll taste better. You don’t seem to know anything but bumper sticker slogans fed to you in your daily talking points. How does Australia finance their UHC? Where does the U.S. rank in longevity, infant mortality and birth weight, cost as a percentage of gdp? Do you even know what percentage of bankruptcies are caused by medical bills? I suggest you spend some time googling health care systems in the nations of the developed world. The differences will make your head explode, which I personally would enjoy, but too much education would make you a liberal like me and then you’d have to develop hygene habits.

Please define anti-American. I love this country. I participate in its governance, I regularly communicate with my elected officials, I pay my taxes, and I’ve written letters in support of every veterans benefit that has been brought before Congress since we invaded Afghanistan. I want our troops out of Iraq as quickly as can safely be done, because it’s BAD foreign policy. If that makes me anti-American then you shame yourself in defining me that way.

Mr. Brown

You are a liberal idiot, sir. You may just get your wish with Obama. He or Hillary will bankrupt this country with Universal Health. California is $20 billion in debt and New York is $5 billion in debt, because of trying to supply health care to people that don’t want to purchase it, or to lazy to get a job. Get off the far left web sites. Lord help us if either one get elected! ‘nough said

JD,

The level of my writing proves that I’m not an idiot. The level of your argument proves that you are both ignorant and pathetic. Neither California nor New York has currently anything that approaches universal health care, so how could it be putting them in debt to the extent you describe if it doesn’t exist. Like so many republicans if you can’t back up your arguments you just make stuff up. I forgot you aren’t a republican, you just act and speak in every way like one.

People that argue against single-payer UHC invariably bring up imaginary exorbitant costs, and ignore the other half of the equation. If you are paying for the insurance by taxation its a cost, but if you are no longer paying by payroll deduction for insurance its a savings. Add to that the savings from administrative costs and advertising, accountants and lawyers that bill 4 or 5 times for the same procedures or figure out how to deny benefits based on weasel wording in the policies. Add to that the savings from the ability to detect and prosecute fraud easier. Add to that the savings from not having to pay for unnecessary tests from doctors covering their butts to the insurance companies. Add to that the savings from being able to negotiate drug prices as any buyer of mass quantities of pharmaceuticals has in the private sector. I could keep listing for a while, but it all adds up to savings that would pay for coverage for all our citizens and still be less than what we pay now.

You’re going to give me a bunch of hooey about wait times and rationing, and I tell you if you don’t think we have that now then visit any emergency room and see how fast you get in. And according to you I live on some other planet. How is the view, Magoo?

Also you don’t need to call me sir, I work for a living.

JD,

I misread your last post, it was so badly worded it sounded like you thought California and New York had UHC already. Both states are actively pursuing universal health care. AHNOLD has even proposed it to the California legislature, because he knows that the cost savings would help California financially. Free up more money for consumption. Keep down the costs so old ladies on fixed incomes don’t have to choose between food, and prescriptions, etc. Still I would look at the Taiwanese model. They just recently implemented theirs. They took the best of all the different variations they could find and eliminated as many problems as they could, so they’ve already done the research for us. No wonder China wants them back.

Rich-The numbers qouted by JD on CA. and NY, was one of the questions asked by Bill O’Reilly in his interview with Hillary last week. They both agreed that both states were going broke providing health care, not universal health care, but close to it.

Hi Art,

It doesn’t matter where the quotes come from. Because they only point out how badly broken the state of health care is in this country. Neither state has anything approaching UHC. As I said before none of the leading candidates plans are any good. We need a single-payer UHC, because allowing the private sector to run health care is what has caused this mess. The Canadians have a good system. Most of its problems are from underfunding. If Canada provided as much money as a percent of GDP as the U.S. does, there wouldn’t be waiting lines even for elective surgery. The last poll I read which is admittedly dated (it was around 2000) indicated something around 85% satisfaction by Canadians. California and New York are looking at UHC, because it saves money as well as lives. Mandating people buy insurance from the same old pool of insurers only guarantees the insurers more money, it does little to nothing in solving the inefficiencies of the status quo. In a true UHC plan you still get to choose your doctor, hospital, your course of treatment. There will be limitations, but they won’t be anywhere near as severe as the ones we have now! Rationing and the government invading your medicine cabinet are scare tactics employed by republicans. Do people believe we don’t have rationing NOW? How many poor people can get a heart transplant without declaring bankruptcy, even if they have insurance? Neo-cons, republicans, libertarians HATE GOVERNMENT, therefore they don’t trust governmental solutions. You could make a great case for that, but mainly because the people who are running government now made it untrustworthy. Iraq, Katrina, EPA, FDA, SEC, if you underfund any agency, why do you expect it to succeed in its mission? Why Americans have allowed them (republicans) to remain in charge of government is a tribute to the apathy that is bred from frustration they caused. I’m sure republicans are overjoyed with the situation in the world right now. Privatization, deregulation, and division have really improved the lives of corporate aristocracy and left the rest of us with crumbs. I don’t believe government is the solution to everything, neither do I believe capitalism or communism is the solution to everything. Ideology is secondary. What works is primary. UHC single-payer works comparatively much better than what we have in at least a dozen other countries I can name. 12 to 1 odds is good enough for me. The reason we don’t have it here is because the insurance industry, the pharmaceutical companies, and mindless or paid off politicians have fought it tooth and nail.

Let me ask you a question. If you could eliminate one profession from the face of the planet, what would it be? Is there anyone more annoying to deal with? Whose benefits you almost never get to see, even though you pay exorbitant amounts to them? My vote goes to Insurance salesman. Now you could vote for tax collector, but you see the benefits of taxes from the moment you turn on the tap to brush your teeth. Clean water, waste collection, roads to drive on, public schools, the list is endless, because most of what we take for granted as a standard of living was brought to you by taxes. And if things aren’t as good as we want the reasons are pretty obvious. Underfunding can be caused by actual lack of dollars, or corruption or a bad plan. Well our food inspection used to work well so the plan isn’t bad, must be lack of money or corruption. Same for FEMA, etc. You know I can hardly wait for Nov. I talk to a lot of people and the wake up call is on the way.

Mr. Brown-The one profession that I would eliminate from the face of the planet would be Liberal Politicians. The second would be liberal blowhards like yourself.