I am glad of one thing about these gomers:  They’re too dumb to keep the mask in place.

”Give you the money to go buy it in a reformed marketplace where it is affordable”—WTF kind of generic non-answer is that?

If they reform the marketplace, it will be affordable. That’s because the marketplace is kind and good and pure-hearted, and only gets out of whack when the eeeeevil gubmit is involved.

Typical. It’s simply inconceivable to these people that someone could acutally be doing their best and still be unable to (fill in the blank). They have to be failing in some way - they’re lazy or they’re irresponsible or whatever. It’s so infuriating to me, being that I have survived lo these two decades on the skin of my teeth, in that strangely wide no-man’s land where I make too much money to qualify for help but not enough to even be parking cars in the remote parking lot of the ballpark of ‘comfortable’.

A government run program (laugh) is going to subsidize not only yours (laugh) but everybody in this room.

This is the real issue here.  The woman with a full-time job and her child may be worthy or deserving of health care, but there just might be some person in this room who doesn’t deserve it, and we can’t risk let them have something they are deemed unworthy of.  To conservatives, it’s better to let the deserving and worthy go without the stuff they need, as long as it punishes those few unworthy people in the process.

Yeah, they’re too dumb to keep the mask in place, but:

What’s pathetic is that with the horrid performance of so many GOP pols out there at these town halls the spineless Dems and the White House STILL can’t get their sh*t together on this and counter the lies and reality-free, compassionless behavior by elected officials like Jenkins.

I actually was naive enough to think the August recess would help us. I thought it would be like last summer, when the GOP’s concern mask fell off and people realized they are a bunch of drooling morons who have no business running the country.

Well, their performance over the past month has been just as bad as I had hoped. And yet they are winning. Michele Bachmann says, out loud in public, that she wants to form a blood brotherhood to deny people health insurance. And she isn’t laughed out of office.

I’m convinced.

The GOP really are lizard people.

But she isn’t deserving, Catgirl. She needs to just grow up and buy health insurance. And a pony.

Slightly OT, but does anyone know when Congress will finally vote on this health care reform bill?  I think it’s sometime this month, but I don’t know exactly when.  I want to mark it on my calendar so I can look forward to day that this particular nonsense will end.

I must disagree with RickMassimo. I think the tide has turned in our favor. Exhibit a). Sen. Max Baucus has stated that if need be health care reform will be passed without any GOP votes. He’s said they’ll do the reconciliation route. Exhibit b). The New York Times has editorialized that the Dems should go it alone, if need be. Exhibit c). GOP reps are experiencing pushback, as is the case here.

Recall last year at this time, when the talking heads were all wringing their hands about how Obama was losing the race. But he is judo master. He let John Mccain act like the energizer bunny on meth when TARP was proposed and thus ended McCain’s campaign. And here, he’s let the bozos hang themselves with rope once again.

So, all this moaning about the public option being dead—well, it ain’t over, til it’s over.

You give me hope, revrick.

Maybe Jenkins is looking to attain High Priestess rank in Bachmann’s bloodletting Druid cult.

Yeah, be grown up and buy insurance.

I’m grown up and have bought insurance, as much as I could afford as a minimum wage earner. I’ve got a bachelors degree and have been looking for a better job for nearly 20 months but with the way things are I simply can’t get better work.

My insurance is crap and still it takes a good bite out of my paycheck, making harder to go see the a doctor or dentist because I feared the co-pays. But I had insurance. I was “responsible.”

Oh but it get’s better. I’m 26 and was just diagnosed with cancer. The treatment costs are going to be $300,000 or more but my insurance only covers $1500 for medical bills and my catastrophic might cover $40,000 if my insurance decides to pay, I only just signed up with them late last year.

But guess what? My meager savings of $4000, which took years to build, makes me “too rich” to get assistance and my insurance is also “too good” for me to be able to get assistance, and no private insurance company who has called me since I got sick wants to help because I’m too expensive.

Normally I’d be totally screwed by the system and left to die unless my family could bankrupt themselves to save me.

I got lucky though, my cancer is rare and its subtype even rarer, and a teaching hospital is going to fix me up as a charity case.

But not everyone is that lucky. I think our society has to grow up and take care of each other. I was willing to pay more taxes to help others before I got sick, I am convinced now that if everyone made a small monetary sacrifice in terms of higher taxes for healthcare we’d all reap big benefits from it when we do get sick and also live in a society where people more consciously cared for one another because they are looking out for each other.

I remember learning as a kid that part or being a “grown up” means being less selfish and more selfless. I grew up, but apparently to some, growing up to care about others is childish, naive, or irresponsible.

Sorry, I won’t believe we’ve turned the tide until Wellpoint (BC/BS), Aetna, and UnitedHealthCare stock start dropping.  As long as they keep climbing, it means that we’re getting “insurance reform” that gives 47 million new customers to the insurance companies and forces tax payers to pay ever increasing premiums to cover them.

I heard someone shouting in the crowd toward the end, “It’s not our job to pay for your health care.” 

This is the trope I wish people would pound on more.  When you deny large numbers of people access to health care by denying them the ability to afford insurance that covers anything beyond Band-Aids, you end up paying more for those people in the end through premiums getting raised to cover the cost the hospital charges to cover the cost of the uninsured “destitute” patients to whom they are required to give care whether they get paid or not.

If everyone were covered through a governmental system, everyone would end up paying less in the long run since everyone would be able to afford to go to the doctor early on when problems are more easily solved.

<blcokquote>Slightly OT, but does anyone know when Congress will finally vote on this health care reform bill?  I think it’s sometime this month, but I don’t know exactly when.  I want to mark it on my calendar so I can look forward to day that this particular nonsense will end.
catgirl </blockquote>

Heya catgirl!
There isn’t ONE bill right now. There are FIVE different ones.
So they’re going to have to go through all of those, make a bill, etc. So I’m thinking more Oct./early Nov. at the earliest.
Probably. Maybe.

I’m shocked she didn’t pull a Coburn and tell the poor woman to come to her office with a begging bowl and she’d “personally” help her.
These conservatives- it’s all about the fetus, screw that 2 1/2 year old.

Slightly OT, but does anyone know when Congress will finally vote on this health care reform bill?  I think it’s sometime this month, but I don’t know exactly when.  I want to mark it on my calendar so I can look forward to day that this particular nonsense will end.

I wish it was so, but there is next to no chance in hell that this nonsense will end in September.

The White House’ goal is to have something signed into law by the end of the year.

Currently, Obama wants the Baucus Finance Committee to produce a bill by September 15th, but it isn’t certain whether or not that will happen.  The Baucus Bill will almost certainly be devoid of a public option, but may pass the Senate.  The House Bill does contain a public option, and right now 60 progressive Democrats in the House are saying they absolutely will not pass a final bill without a public option.

What’s likely to happen is that the Senate passes a bill with no public option and the House passes a bill with a public option.  At that point, thy go into conference committee, and work out a final bill that blends the two.

My sincere hope is that the House progressives hold firm in their stance.  Even though the failure to pass any bill this year will likely be very bad for the Democrats during next year’s midterms, I would rather no bill gets passed than a really bad bill that amounts to a jackpot for the insurance industry.

Letting the Republicans dictate what sort of bill gets passed here will only dovetail into the Republicans effectively controlling Congress for the remainder of Obama’s first term, which could ultimately result in him being defeated in 2012, as he’ll be seen as a weak leader who can’t get anything done.

The Democrats need to take a firm stand right now.  They need to pass a bill with real substance in the form of a public option, and say to hell with the ridiculous notion of bipartisanship.  Pandering to assholes like Grassley and Enzi will yield no positive dividends for the Democratic Party, short-term or long-term.  Not getting any bill passed will certainly be bad for Democrats in the 2010 elections.  Passing a really, really shittastic bill will not only be bad in 2010, but likely 2012 as well.

If the Blue Dogs manage to block a good bill from being passed, well they’ll be the first to find themselves unemployed next year.  Nancy Pelosi’s job isn’t in any jeopardy.  But the Blue Dogs who are trying to suck up to the insurance lobby aren’t gonna do themselves any favors if they kill healthcare reform, because then their constituents will just boot their wannabe Republican asses in favor of actual Republicans next November.

I heard someone shouting in the crowd toward the end, “It’s not our job to pay for your health care.”

In a perfect world, Smith would have turned around and shot back “It’s not my job to pay for your roads and fire departments!”

I went to a town hall with my Rep, Rob Whittman in Warsaw. I’m 26, white, male, uninsured because I don’t have a job and I’m a type I diabetic. Unfortunately, my name wasn’t called for a question, but two people got up and essentially stated, to wide assent, that if you got rid of all the illegals, the pool of uninsured would drop to near-zero.

This one woman, who volunteers as a pharmacist at the free clinic, and evidently loathes her customer base, made that case, and then asked if “illegals” would be covered under the reforms. Whittman did some sickening bigot pandering as he weaseled around the idea that “there was no specific language in the bill prohibiting illegal aliens from obtaining coverage”.

Thankfully, some old guy in a flannel shirt with a talking points memo in hand got up, and read the line from the bill banning coverage of “non-naturalized citizens”. Cute trick, Rob.

The Teabaggers were there in full force. The younger ones, next to me, were talking about the difficulties of installing an in-ground pool on their waterfront property, what with the county’s rutheless enforcement of the draconian Save The Bay act.

Whittman, as his constituant services dude had done earlier, told me I could go get treatment at the free clinics, too. Super-Awesome Dickensian Free Market Move, Congressman!

He’s expressed constant opposition to any idea that involves the government handling money. He says he’s willing to make regulatory changes to increase competition in the insurance market. The specific regulatory changes he plans to support are Tort Reform and enabling insurance companies to sell me policies overseen by C. Goober Emperitor, head of insurance standards for South Dakota.
These changes do not introduce compitition.
Liar.

But she isn’t deserving, Catgirl. She needs to just grow up and buy health insurance. And a pony.

Wait, hold on… I didn’t sign up for that…

WOLVERINES!

I think a lot of the problem, though certainly not the bulk of it is that this is the end-stage of cancerous free-market capitalism. The idea of capitalism as the sole economic and moral force in the game ends up creating a society where people are trained that if other people have to die to give you a leg up, then you should capitalize on that before you fall behind.

Basically, success goes to the biggest bastard and quickly bastardology replaces any human empathy because those who can successfully shut it off are the most rewarded.

But yeah, it’s a crap system. No one should have to die for someone’s Q3 earnings report.

Cerebus, I think the key word there is ‘moral’. Capitalism is great, but it is NOT ‘moral’. And it is simply immoral to the point of evil to make money off of people’s misfortune - whether that be their house burning down or illness or whatever.

I literally don’t understand this hostility towards providing everyone with affordable access to health care. Especially from what I’m assuming are members of the middle class in the audience. The other option is to watch premiums continue to skyrocket to the point that they’ll double over the next decade and possibly push the country into financial ruin.

And any member of congress who can ignore the needs of a 27-year old single-parent with a full-time job and tell them to “grow up” isn’t fit to represent anyone.

Republican POV as summed up by Airplane!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Bs7EqlLiSs

(“Shaynaaaaa. They BOUGHT their tickets. They KNEW what they were doing. I say, let ‘em crash!”)

If our Congress had the fortitude, they would probably be most successful (and by most successful I mean actually writing something with a chance of actually working) by concentrating on single payer.
Something along the lines of HR676. That bill is 30 pages long. It could be understood, could be fixed if something isn’t working. HR3200 on the other hand, can’t be understood, and won’t be able to be fixed because stuff will unravel faster than it can be ammended. We can see what needs to be done, but we have a system which won’t let us get there. This is just not a fun time.

One side or another of the Democrats will buckle.  There will be a bill this year.  It’s probably going to be the Blue Dogs that buckle because if the Rethugs refuse to play at any price they don’t have any reason to compromise.

Wait a minute here ... Who’s this “we” that Rep. jenkins is saying ought to give that woman the money to buy insurance with? It can’t be the government, since she’s opposed to the idea of doing that. Maybe she was planning on passing a hat around for people at the town hall to chip in?

One very important element to a politician’s success is the ability to pretend to care about people (or actually care, but I’m too cynical to think most politicians give a shit).  It makes me wonder how the hell Rep. Jenkins managed to slither her way into Congress.

Danica Lefse Queen,
Here’s my guess of how this will take place. Sometime in September Committee bills will go to the House and Senate respectively, and if the House Progressive bloc holds together, the House bill will include the public option. Blue Dogs have signalled that if the choice is a public option or nothing, they’ll reluctantly go for the public option. The Senate will then pass some Rube Goldberg version of health care reform. It doesn’t matter. Then the two bills will go to a House-Senate conference. Nancy Pelosi has made it clear she’ll stack the House side with public option advocates; she will gently suggest to Harry Reid that he make sure some Senators who favor the public option will be included in this Conference. In Conference, there will be a charade in which Sen. Baucus gets his arm ‘twisted,’ so that he’ll ‘have to’ agree the final bill includes it. Every House and Senate Dem will then face the question, it’s the public option or nothing, and the vast majority will vote for it. If it comes to a cloture vote in the Senate, no Dem will dare to support the Republican filibuster, though someone like Nelson of Nebraska may cast a meaningless vote againt the final bill after cloture. Baucus has made it clear he’s prepared to go the Reconciliation vote (October 14th is the key date here) which means the final bill will only take a one-vote majority in each chamber and bingo, we have health care reform with the public option. Some time after October 15th, Obama signs the bill and gently reminds the press that he told them not to bet against him.

Baucus has made it clear he’s prepared to go the Reconciliation vote (October 14th is the key date here) which means the final bill will only take a one-vote majority in each chamber and bingo, we have health care reform with the public option.

And in the case of the Senate, they may or may not need that one vote majority (depending on whether MA appoints an interim seat-warmer senator before the January special election)... a 50-50 tie will be broken with a guaranteed “Yea” vote from Vice President Biden.

“And any member of congress who can ignore the needs of a 27-year old single-parent with a full-time job and tell them to “grow up” isn’t fit to represent anyone.”

Well, she should have thought about that before she opened her legs and got herself knocked up.  If she got/stayed married and stayed at home to properly raise her offspring, God would have taken care of her needs.  But she didn’t.  So she does not deserve healthcare, and neither does her bastard child…  [/wingnut]

(Ever notice how important it was to spend whatever it took, and move heaven and earth, to keep Terri Schiavo’s empty but still breathing corpse alive?  But a living, breathing, sentient woman with a living, breathing, sentient child doesn’t deserve anything but scorn and mockery for daring to ask that their needs be met. 

Can anyone say, as cold-hearted and fascist as it is to even contemplate, that this woman does not have a value to society greater than what it would cost to cover her and her child’s healthcare needs? 

The Nazi’s may have coined the phrase, “life unworthy of life”, but is this not the direct conclusion you get from the application of our social/economic system on many of our citizens? 

I thought we won the war, not the brutal, inhumane, and amoral Nazis…)

@RT:
Good luck to you.
Be strong.

So her solution is not a government program, but for the government to spend the money on private industry, so what’s the advantage to that?  What advantage is there in the government paying rather than the individual paying and the money still goes to the insurance company?  What value do the insurance companies add?

Wiener Amendment, people.  It’s the only way that makes any sense.

I thought we won the war, not the brutal, inhumane, and amoral Nazis

Sorry, Mike - you did win, but it was the Germans who lost (along with everybody else in Europe, but they lost most badly). Many of the surviving Nazis just moved. A number of them moved to the winning side, where they burrowed into the nascent National Security State on the basis of their (admittedly impeccable) anti-Communist credentials, and they’ve been there ever since.

If anybody ever builds an army of Hitler clones… Well, let’s just say that it probably won’t be in Brazil.

She’s an actor.

@RT - I was diagnosed at 42.  Good luck.  Fight the good fight.

I heard someone shouting in the crowd toward the end, “It’s not our job to pay for your health care.”

Damn, I wish I had a soapbox to shout these people down with—I live in Maryland and all my congresspersons are totally down with the public option and all.

I went to the ER in the belief that I was having a stroke, while I was pregnant. I had fucking awesome health insurance because I WORKED FOR THE INSURANCE COMPANIES. I was still not seen within the 12 hour window of time that would have been needed to give me clot-busting drugs, had I been having a stroke, because the ER was overcrowded—not with illegal immigrants, we have relatively few of them in Baltimore (seriously, illegals account for 47 million people? Um, if 47 million people in this country are illegal immigrants, that would sort of imply a deep deep problem with immigration law), but with ordinary citizens, black and white, who pay their taxes and work for a living but can’t afford health insurance.

So Mr. “it’s not our job to pay for your health care” could well end up in a situation where, because he wouldn’t pay for other people’s health care, he doesn’t get any himself. Everyone has odds of possibly ending up in the ER, and if you ever go more than a mile from your house, you can’t predict which ER it will be. Better make sure *none* of them are overcrowded—and that means government-supported health insurance options. Or government-paid health care.

hbsweet, empress of ice cream, BadKitty:

Thank you for your support. It means a lot to me.

WTF?  I’m convinced that the Rethugs really wouldn’t mind if large swaths of the population (poor people, POC, non X-tians) and so on..just dropped dead. Less people=bigger piece of the pie to go to them.
That was disgraceful.

What value do the insurance companies add?

Why, they add billions of profit to their CEO’s pockets.  And the stockholders.  Lots of value sucked out of healthcare and given to the rich, b/c fleecing people when they are desperate and have no other choice is really, really profitable.

“If you do someone’s hair or nails or wax them, you can make a profit.
Why do you think my helping you with your most valued possession shouldn’t make a profit?”

If somebody doesn’t get their hair done, doesn’t get their nails done, or doesn’t get their pubes waxed, they won’t die or become seriously disabled.  If they don’t get medical care when they need it…?

No one in this country would seriously argue that doctors and nurses and other medical personnel shouldn’t be paid — which is certainly a way to profit from the health care needs of others.  A case can be made that it’s necessary to have non-medical administrative who will also need to be paid.  There are all sorts of ancillary people who keep a hospital or care center running, and they will need to be paid too.

However, it is one hell of an extrapolation to claim that it’s necessary for insurance and medical company executives to be paid so much they live lives of luxury unmatched by kings, queens, and Roman emperors.

That kind of profit based on somebody else’s suffering is immoral and unconscionable…

Oh, no. It’s not “compassionless”.

It’s taking responsibility for yourself. It’s standing on your own two feet.
It’s feminist, goddamnit. Now quit your whining and swim that deep end with that anvil tied around your ankle.

Things all started to go downhill when we got it into our heads that compassion and generosity were “enabling”. Of course, they weren’t the least bit interested in helping us figure out the difference.