The Repubs have a house majority now

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We have other parties we have Libertarians, Socialists, Greens, and the Constitution Party but they only have about a million registered voters, independents number around 42 million, Republicans number 55 million and Democrats around 72 million.

Two kinds of people oppose the bill, the first being the fiscally conservative, who wonder how we're paying for it. The others are idiots who brainlessly oppose everything the President does, no matter what.

A life line and a long one in which you have to stand and wait your turn.

ruveyn

As opposed to the United States?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/deborah-b ... 55749.html

Those who sit in glass waiting rooms ought not to throw stones.

I reckon watching a documentary a few years ago that was a precursor of what we see today. It was regarding an organization of volunteers that usually travels abroad to treat villages in need of medical care, only this time they had to take care of a village in the USA (matter of priority i guess...). The spokesperson deplored that they had to treat Americans (when they shouldn't need to, mind you) before people that might need it more (such as refugees or the like). =/

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hello jaydee!
2 important facts: 1] is that real health-care reform [covering everybody affordably] will never happen in this country until the present corrupt for-profit system collapses-in upon itself due to the downward spiral of too-high costs chasing too-few folk able to pay- because [as noted by Alexis de Tocqueville in "Democracy in America"] americans [as a nation], uniquely among other modern nations, views its working-poor citizens with undisguised contempt, sees them as disposable cogs which, when one breaks down, just kicks them to the curb and picks from an inexhaustable supply of replacements, thus sees universal health care merely as a waste of precious, limited resources which should be strictly privileged to the monied classes who are selfishly worried only about losing theirs;

and 2] MOST IMPORTANTLY- the working class in this country, for the most part, cannot be roused to get OUT and VOTE in their own [blue-state] SELF INTEREST. [you bet i'm angry about this as well as being ashamed of my country right now] i honestly don't know why so many of us yanks just "don't get" that all american citizens are just as worthy as canadians, europeans, japanese et al, of having primary health care without becoming bankrupted in the process.

you see, the republican party here has succeeded in using a tactic called "divide and conquer" - where you pit interest groups against one another- middle class against working class, one race versus another, using red herrings [gays, et al] to distract the voters by using their own petty class/group hatreds for one other, from voting in their own best economic self-interest and instead voting to further enrich the top class/corporations. they do this by saying "vote for me! i will smite thine enemies!" these enemies are gays, liberals, single people, black people, poor people, inner-city people, anybody not part of the religious and financial elite of this country- these are perceived here as alien and not deserving of citizenship, or even something as decent and fundamental a human right as health care.

please, pray for this nation, we are in trouble, and don't realize it.

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it never ends, does it? so you would rather that substantial portions of the american citizenry just do without primary healthcare, rather than put-up with a queue?
half a loaf is undeniably better than NONE. tertiary care in the ER doesn't count as a reasonable source of healthcare for the working class because it is the most expensive type of health care and as such is the leading cause of bankrupcy in this country. why can't more folk understand that ER indigent care is simply a hidden healthcare tax, where the cost is transferred to those in a higher economic bracket? the repubs get this- if they had their way, they would be dumping the indigent out in the street in the first place.

the folks who oppose health care reform know this and still they persist in their obstructionism. god save us from this evil mercenary mindset of "rugged individualism" - it's just cold-blooded selfishness, from folk who are clueless about just how vulnerable they too, could be to financial ruin from some rotten medical luck that their insurance company won't pay for, leaving them holding the bag.

Amen!

We've got guns too, their arsenal is just larger. Still if we could get an organized resistance of enough people under a competent leader, then we might have a chance. It happened before in the South.

Of course, organization is scarce among this melting pot of cultures, and competent leaders are hard to come by

I'm in.

Seems here that both parties are only being portrayed in their Fringe groups by many people in this thread. Auntblabby you are very very wrong about the reasons for opposition to the healthcare bill.

Being a Libertarian-Conservative 2nd gen Hispanic brings with it an outlook on things that not many others have.

Aside from congress, I don't know of many people who view the working poor with contempt. They aren't looking to hoard resources or any such thing. They'd like to see our government act responsibly with our money and it's not happening. We have no way to pay for the sort of universal healthcare that is being proposed in the bill seeing as we already owe trillions of dollars. What's more pressing right now is jobs, people being able to work and make money. Much more than the healthcare system, healthcare INSURANCE needs very serious reform and should be a focus way before the healthcare system.

The "working class" which I myself am a part of, votes with their values just like everyone else. How can you say what's in someone's self interest better than they?

What you say the republicans are doing, is the same thing that the democrats are doing. You can't only blame republicans for the state of things or even for blocking the healthcare bill because the democrats had a super majority, which means that their OWN SENATORS were voting against the bill. The reason that we are in trouble is because the democrats have force fed you the lies that the people on the other side of the political isle are as extreme as you're describing here, and the republicans do the same. That's how they divide and conquer because no matter who's running the show in congress and in the white house we keep getting screwed because they are all the same people.

Democrat = Republican = deceivers

where to start? if you'd rather this country continue accruing debt on foreign wars and corporate welfare for multinationals, rather than helping its own common citizens within our borders, then continue harping about our government "acting responsibly with our money" and be obvious about the fact that you've thoroughly bought into the status quo, whose "values" you [who claim to be "working class"] are supporting when you vote with the conservatives/gop. and if you indeed are really worried about the debt, then stop supporting a republican party which in the process of "starving the beast" [bleeding government coffers dry to kill social programs] is deliberately running up debt in the first place. consider reading the book "what's the matter with kansas" sometime, it is enlightening on this issue. and please spare me the "trickle-down" garp. "straining at knats while swallowing camels" applies here. to support the current rationed-by-wealth healthcare financing system while saying "they aren't looking to hoard resources or any such thing" is patent nonsense. it IS rationing after all, by a cruelly mercenary criteria.

you wrongly implied that i failed to see anything wrong with the democrats, when i said no such thing. i criticise repubs because they [and their sympathizers] are behaving like beasts, which is not to say that the democrats have [by and large] behaved with any sort of integrity- in fact, the supine posture of many democrats in recent debate, just made me want to puke. democrats voting for useless wars is an unforgiveable state of affairs, but politics is the art of the possible, and in our 2-party system, there is no real exit to third parties. although votes are drained from the mainstream parties in the process of 3rd-party protest-voting, there never has been a 3rd-party presidential win. the american voter must choose the lesser of two evils, and if one has never been able to afford health care [i can't believe you know nor care anything about this], then it is only in one's own best self-interest to vote for the party which at least acts the part of universal health care [read: the democrats] - the only alternative is to slit one's own throat by voting for the republicans- a party which never seriously claimed to be about anything other than supporting the monied classes, everybody else be damned.

and to say that health insurance reform needs to occur before healthcare reform, just demonstrates an incomprehension of the fact that insurance and healthcare are intertwined and inseparable. some entity with deeper pockets than the average individual private citizen must pay for healthcare. to demand that the minimum-wage earner pay-out several months-worth of wages each time s/he gets ill, is an unrealistic expectation. misfortune can happen to anyone, and to just stand by while a fellow citizen is medically bankrupted and say "tsk tsk, he should have made more money," is disgusting. to the tax-protestors and "family-values" people- remember, the only truly efficient form of government is a dictatorship which we are surely headed straight towards, unless we all cooperate instead of uselessly fighting each other. universal health care [whether government-run or privately run] is the ultimate family value. denying a sick person medical care is surely as much a moral failing as denying a hungry person food. you may diss my emotional response to this issue, but if you were ever destitute you would be emotional also.

universal health care is a MORAL issue. plus it is plain damned embarrassing to be the only western nation that doesn't value all of its citizens sufficient to provide a basic healthcare safety net for them. america doesn't know it all, and certainly has much to learn from other countries which have tackled the issue of universal health care. pride cometh before the fall, and the way we as a nation are going, i can see the fall from here. let us not keep whistling past the graveyard, but get together as a nation and DO SOMETHING.

americans are easily terrorized by scary slogans and catch-phrases.

also the word socialism is terrifying to us.

we march in the streets in favor of medicare (government run healthcare) and oppose the public option because it's government run healthcare.

we'll fight, tooth and nail, to keep government bureaucracy from rationing healthcare. when the insurance industry's bureaucracy tells us they won't cover the drugs or surgery the doctor says we need, we just cry.

death panels is probably my favorite reason americans are opposed to healthcare reform. the idea that i might be able to consult with a doctor about my options and what to expect as i near the end of my life without paying is the worst affront to democracy since adolf hitlertron5000 authored the communist manifesto and enslaved the israelites to build the great wall of china. now, if you were to charge me 1200 dollars for that same conversation with the same doctor i'm totally ok with it.

my grandfather fought in the korean war. he had a long, successful, military career. he spent the last few years of his life at a VA (veterans affairs) hospital just north of san diego, california. because of this, he had free access to healthcare. he went through the process that sarah palin referred to as "death panels." my mother was there with him as he met with the doctors and the lawyers and said it was a very comfortable meeting. he understood that his organs were failing and that we had run out of options to prolong his life. he could no longer eat or digest food. he arranged to have visits from friends and family and then he set a date to have his "plug" pulled. 2 days before his last, he fell and broke his hip. he was rushed to surgery and they replaced it with a prosthetic. with organs failing and less than a hundred hours of life left, this example of socialized medicine opted to provide the highest level of care to the very end.

death panels? his ex wife, my grandmother, has been dying of several forms of cancer for years. last week, 4 years past her doctor-given expiration date, her doctors told her that this would likely be the last year of her (relatively) good luck. then they set up appointments to give her blood transfusions throughout the year so that she would feel better even though there's nothing more they can do to save her life. she doesn't weigh enough to continue any sort of radiation treatment and no surgery will help. she does not have health insurance. she's covered by medicare. socialized medicine.



so why do we oppose socialized medicine?
we already have a public option. you just have to be old or disabled to get in.
other aspects of our "safety" system is socialized already. does anyone think privatizing law enforcement is a good idea? or privatizing fire protection? socialized health care wouldn't remove private health care just like there are private security firms and even private fire protection firms. it would significantly impact our economy and punch a few of our least favorite "too big to fail" companies and we're really not ready to admit that we need to swallow such a bitter pill.

i think the real question is why do we still support privatized health care?

the short answer is that we're a nation of untrusting (but easily influenced) idiots and a**holes willing to exploit them.
er...um..... i mean.... um... GO AMERICA! BOO CANADA! BOO UK! BOO EUROPE! BOO EVERYONE WHO ISN'T ME!! !! !! !


the long answer is much more complex and uncomfortable.

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right on. jingoism seems to be the only american currency which is gaining in value.