martha
Blue Crack Supplier
No, they could have gone to US doctors. It was easier and cheaper to fly to Toronto to get the health care they needed.
MANDATORY health insurance
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No, they could have gone to US doctors. It was easier and cheaper to fly to Toronto to get the health care they needed.
coolian2
Blue Crack Supplier
i meant to make that point in my post
clearly, i need to get some super cheap memory drugs or something.
martha
Blue Crack Supplier
I'm not paying for them. I'm already paying for your meth!
coolian2
Blue Crack Supplier
i'm sorry, but the weed makes me forget stuff like that.
INDY500
Rock n' Roll Doggie Band-aid
Thanks for not answering the question.
INDY500
Rock n' Roll Doggie Band-aid
But if you believe healthcare is a right, why not hire only from companies that provide it to their employees? Or if they're independent contractors gladly pay them the living wage you believe is a "right." Or all good liberals believe in the sanctity of unions -- so support one. United Brotherhood of Gardeners and Chauffeurs Local 101.
Lead by example. Remember, you're better than the rest of us.
'Cause it makes more sense then for Toro-Americans like myself, who mow their own yard, to pay for their healthcare through higher taxes.
INDY500
Rock n' Roll Doggie Band-aid
Carbon footprint be damned.
These selfish Canadians should care less about their health and more about our planet -- who has a fever you know.
martha
Blue Crack Supplier
On the contrary, you asked if the educational system was at fault, and I said it was!
martha
Blue Crack Supplier
Because I can't afford it! I'm too busy paying for lazy and stupid people's health care!
martha
Blue Crack Supplier
Just invade us and get it over with already.
martha
Blue Crack Supplier
INDY500
Rock n' Roll Doggie Band-aid
financeguy
ONE love, blood, life
Are you a member of a union?
INDY500
Rock n' Roll Doggie Band-aid
No.
I'm not against people organizing as they see fit, but they tend to breed corruption and inefficiency over time.
BVS
Blue Crack Supplier
Like the Christian Coalition...
this is incredibly out of line. name calling is not okay. and sorry, i'm not buying that it was a typo. this isn't the first time i've had to warn you on this recently either. keep it up and you'll get banned.
U2DMfan
Rock n' Roll Doggie VIP PASS
Sort of like the free market?
maycocksean
Rock n' Roll Doggie Band-aid
I love Domino's pizza.But then, I live in Ohio, and although I've been to New York and Chicago many times, I've never had any big-city "real" pizza.
What! And you haven't been to LaRosa's? That's the best pizza I've had anywhere!
maycocksean
Rock n' Roll Doggie Band-aid
What the hell are you talking about?
"yard people"? "better than the rest of us"? Don't tell me you really believe all these ridiculous stereotypes? How many of the left leaning posters on this blog fit this profile? Anyone?
I just can't believe you're basing your position on this kind of gross caricature of your opponents.
INDY500
Rock n' Roll Doggie Band-aid
Martha raised the point that her "domestic help" can't afford heath care to which I asked, 'Well who's fault is that? You pay their salary."
Yes, the "better than the rest of us" is indeed a riff on the liberal elite stereotype. I'll admit to it being a cheap shot if you promise to call out supporters of Obamacare when they resort to gross caricatures such as "uninformed" or "racist" for opponents.
VintagePunk
Blue Crack Distributor
I was actually looking forward to a reply to this, but I never got one.
BVS
Blue Crack Supplier
I haven't seen anyone call anyone a racist in here based on the simple fact of opposing the healthcare plan.
And I haven't seen anyone really give an informed opposition either, it's either "socialist", or complaining that one entity will control everything(but that's what it is now), they yell free market(which it isn't now), and then they leave when the hard questions are asked...
martha
Blue Crack Supplier
Somebody took my rants seriously.
Or, more confusingly, only took parts of them seriously.
Jeannieco
Rock n' Roll Doggie Band-aid
Hi everyone, excuse me for interrupting the flow of the convo in the thread, and I haven't looked to see if this has been discussed but I thought this article/editorial by Wendell Potter (an American hero IMO) would add to the health care debate conversation. He felt the need to blow the whistle on the insurance industry after working for years as an industry exec. Anyway, I found this interesting.
Wendell Potter's CNN Editorial: How Insurance Firms Drive the Debate
Submitted by Wendell Potter on August 17, 2009 - 10:34am.
NOTE: Wendell Potter, the former health insurance PR executive who is now Senior Fellow on Health Care with the Center for Media and Democracy, provided CNN with the follow editorial posted on their website.
(CNN) -- Having grown up in one of the most conservative and Republican places in the country -- East Tennessee -- I understand why many of the people who are showing up at town hall meetings this month are reacting, sometimes violently, when members of Congress try to explain the need for an expanded government role in our health care system.
I also have a lot of conservative friends, including one former co-worker who was laid off by CIGNA several years ago but who nonetheless worries about a "government takeover" of health care.
The most vocal folks at the town hall meetings seem to share the same ideology as my kinfolks in East Tennessee and my former CIGNA buddy: the less government involvement in our lives, the better.
That point couldn't have been made clearer than by the man standing in line to get free care at Remote Area Medical's recent health care "expedition" at the Wise County, Virginia, fairgrounds, who told a reporter he was dead set against President Obama's reform proposal.
Even though he didn't have health insurance, and could see the desperation in the faces of thousands of others all around him who were in similar straits, he was more worried about the possibility of having to pay more taxes than he was eager to make sure he and his neighbors wouldn't have to wait in line to get care provided by volunteer doctors in animal stalls.
Friday morning my former CIGNA buddy sent me an e-mail challenging something he said his wife heard me say in a radio report about my press conference in the Capitol on Wednesday with Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-New York, chairwoman of the House Rules Committee.
"She heard you say that these protestors are funded by the insurance companies. Frankly, nothing would surprise me, but certainly not each and every person," he wrote. "If there was a meeting near me, I certainly would tell my local representative how I feel about this entire subject (and it wouldn't be pretty), and I certainly am not funded by anyone. So I am ultimately wondering what proof there is that seemingly ordinary Americans are finally protesting what is going in Washington and there are all of these suggestions of a greater conspiracy."
If the radio report had carried more of my remarks, he might have a better understanding of how the health insurance and its army of PR people are influencing his opinions and actions without his even knowing it.
Until I quit my job last year, I was one of the leaders of that army. I had a very successful career and was my company's voice to the media and the public for several years.
It was my job to "promote and defend" the company's reputation and to try to persuade reporters to write positive stories about the industry's ideas on reform. During the last couple of years of my career, however, I became increasingly worried that the high-deductible plans insurers were beginning to push Americans into would force more and more of us into bankruptcy.
The higher I rose in the company, the more I learned about the tactics insurers use to dump policyholders when they get sick, in order to increase profits and to reward their Wall Street investors. I could not in good conscience continue serving as an industry mouthpiece. And I did not want to be part of yet another industry effort to kill meaningful reform.
I explained during the press conference with Rep. Slaughter how the industry funnels millions of its policyholders' premiums to big public relations firms that provide talking points to conservative talk show hosts, business groups and politicians. I also described how the PR firms set up front groups, again using your premium dollars and mine, to scare people away from reform.
What I'm trying to do as I write and speak out against the insurance industry I was a part of for nearly two decades is to inform Americans that when they hear isolated stories of long waiting times to see doctors in Canada and allegations that care in other systems is rationed by "government bureaucrats," someone associated with the insurance industry wrote the original script.
The industry has been engaging in these kinds of tactics for many years, going back to its successful behind-the-scenes campaign to kill the Clinton reform plan.
A story in Friday's New York Times about the origin of the absurdly false rumor that President Obama's health care proposal would create government-sponsored "death panels" bears out what I have been saying.
The story notes that the rumor emanated "from many of the same pundits and conservative media outlets that were central in defeating Bill Clinton's health care proposal 16 years ago, including the editorial board of The Washington Times, the American Spectator magazine and Betsy McCaughey, whose 1994 health care critique made her a star of the conservative movement (and ultimately, the lieutenant governor of New York)."
The big PR firms that work for the industry have close connections with those media outlets and stars in the conservative movement. One of their PR firms, which created and staffed a front group in the late '90s to kill the proposed "Patients' Bill of Rights," launched a PR and advertising campaign in conservative media outlets to drum up opposition to the bill.
The message: President Clinton "owed a debt to the liberal base of the Democrat Party and would try to pay back that debt by advancing the type of big government agenda on health care that he failed to get in 1994."
The industry goes to great lengths to keep its involvement in these campaigns hidden from public view. I know from having served on numerous trade group committees and industry-funded front groups, however, that industry leaders are always full partners in developing strategies to derail any reform that might interfere with insurers' ability to increase profits.
advertisement
So the next time you hear someone warning against a "government takeover" of our health care system, or that the creation of a public health insurance option would send us down the "slippery slope toward socialism," know that someone like I used to be wrote those terms, knowing it might turn many of the very people who would benefit most from meaningful reform into unwitting spokespeople for the industry.
but I thought this article/editorial by Wendell Potter (an American hero IMO) would add to the health care debate conversation. He felt the need to blow the whistle on the insurance industry after working for years as an industry exec. Anyway, I found this interesting.Wendell Potter's CNN Editorial: How Insurance Firms Drive the Debate
Submitted by Wendell Potter on August 17, 2009 - 10:34am.
NOTE: Wendell Potter, the former health insurance PR executive who is now Senior Fellow on Health Care with the Center for Media and Democracy, provided CNN with the follow editorial posted on their website.
(CNN) -- Having grown up in one of the most conservative and Republican places in the country -- East Tennessee -- I understand why many of the people who are showing up at town hall meetings this month are reacting, sometimes violently, when members of Congress try to explain the need for an expanded government role in our health care system.
I also have a lot of conservative friends, including one former co-worker who was laid off by CIGNA several years ago but who nonetheless worries about a "government takeover" of health care.
The most vocal folks at the town hall meetings seem to share the same ideology as my kinfolks in East Tennessee and my former CIGNA buddy: the less government involvement in our lives, the better.
That point couldn't have been made clearer than by the man standing in line to get free care at Remote Area Medical's recent health care "expedition" at the Wise County, Virginia, fairgrounds, who told a reporter he was dead set against President Obama's reform proposal.
Even though he didn't have health insurance, and could see the desperation in the faces of thousands of others all around him who were in similar straits, he was more worried about the possibility of having to pay more taxes than he was eager to make sure he and his neighbors wouldn't have to wait in line to get care provided by volunteer doctors in animal stalls.
Friday morning my former CIGNA buddy sent me an e-mail challenging something he said his wife heard me say in a radio report about my press conference in the Capitol on Wednesday with Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-New York, chairwoman of the House Rules Committee.
"She heard you say that these protestors are funded by the insurance companies. Frankly, nothing would surprise me, but certainly not each and every person," he wrote. "If there was a meeting near me, I certainly would tell my local representative how I feel about this entire subject (and it wouldn't be pretty), and I certainly am not funded by anyone. So I am ultimately wondering what proof there is that seemingly ordinary Americans are finally protesting what is going in Washington and there are all of these suggestions of a greater conspiracy."
If the radio report had carried more of my remarks, he might have a better understanding of how the health insurance and its army of PR people are influencing his opinions and actions without his even knowing it.
Until I quit my job last year, I was one of the leaders of that army. I had a very successful career and was my company's voice to the media and the public for several years.
It was my job to "promote and defend" the company's reputation and to try to persuade reporters to write positive stories about the industry's ideas on reform. During the last couple of years of my career, however, I became increasingly worried that the high-deductible plans insurers were beginning to push Americans into would force more and more of us into bankruptcy.
The higher I rose in the company, the more I learned about the tactics insurers use to dump policyholders when they get sick, in order to increase profits and to reward their Wall Street investors. I could not in good conscience continue serving as an industry mouthpiece. And I did not want to be part of yet another industry effort to kill meaningful reform.
I explained during the press conference with Rep. Slaughter how the industry funnels millions of its policyholders' premiums to big public relations firms that provide talking points to conservative talk show hosts, business groups and politicians. I also described how the PR firms set up front groups, again using your premium dollars and mine, to scare people away from reform.
What I'm trying to do as I write and speak out against the insurance industry I was a part of for nearly two decades is to inform Americans that when they hear isolated stories of long waiting times to see doctors in Canada and allegations that care in other systems is rationed by "government bureaucrats," someone associated with the insurance industry wrote the original script.
The industry has been engaging in these kinds of tactics for many years, going back to its successful behind-the-scenes campaign to kill the Clinton reform plan.
A story in Friday's New York Times about the origin of the absurdly false rumor that President Obama's health care proposal would create government-sponsored "death panels" bears out what I have been saying.
The story notes that the rumor emanated "from many of the same pundits and conservative media outlets that were central in defeating Bill Clinton's health care proposal 16 years ago, including the editorial board of The Washington Times, the American Spectator magazine and Betsy McCaughey, whose 1994 health care critique made her a star of the conservative movement (and ultimately, the lieutenant governor of New York)."
The big PR firms that work for the industry have close connections with those media outlets and stars in the conservative movement. One of their PR firms, which created and staffed a front group in the late '90s to kill the proposed "Patients' Bill of Rights," launched a PR and advertising campaign in conservative media outlets to drum up opposition to the bill.
The message: President Clinton "owed a debt to the liberal base of the Democrat Party and would try to pay back that debt by advancing the type of big government agenda on health care that he failed to get in 1994."
The industry goes to great lengths to keep its involvement in these campaigns hidden from public view. I know from having served on numerous trade group committees and industry-funded front groups, however, that industry leaders are always full partners in developing strategies to derail any reform that might interfere with insurers' ability to increase profits.
advertisement
So the next time you hear someone warning against a "government takeover" of our health care system, or that the creation of a public health insurance option would send us down the "slippery slope toward socialism," know that someone like I used to be wrote those terms, knowing it might turn many of the very people who would benefit most from meaningful reform into unwitting spokespeople for the industry.
HyperU2
War Child
Do you support the Government telling people what they can and can't eat, drink or smoke?
Bluer White
New Yorker
BVS
Blue Crack Supplier
Well they already do...
They tell you you can can't smoke pot.
Insurance companies tell certain patients what they can or cannot eat, if you can't help yourself they'll drop you.
So either way someone is telling you, it's their way of managing risks...
So don't think it's going to be a new thing.
I wasn't aware that the government was telling the French or the Japanese what to eat and drink and I don't see them as obese as your compatriots.
HyperU2
War Child
Gotta be very selective in which countries you choose for that comparison huh?
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