Say Anything Blog

Susan collins is a Democrat posing as a Republican so I could care less what she said.

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You’re really not that smart are you goon?

Excuse me, you were saying?

“Health-care costs are climbing much more rapidly than incomes or the growth in the overall economy,”

Good old socialism; not fiscally responsible.  None of us can afford socialism.  Let’s not buy it.

Save America; boycott the MSM.

So Boob, why doesn’t everyone who thinks this is a big problem chip in and start paying for people’s health care?

Oh yeah, because it’s not a problem worth spending their own money on.

What’s going to happen to US industry when the global warming extremists like John McCain double the price of electricity?  I would think all these factories will close and set up in countries where they aren’t scared of technology.

OK, I know I am in trouble with my Conservative Brethren, (and my friend Bob will think I’ve drunk the KoolAid) but Obama’s plan on all this works. 

If the Republican’s don’t get on board with a plan that makes sense they will be beaten over the head with a health care 2X4 in the fall.

Remember, we won the war, the economy is coming back, gas prices are dropping, the housing debacle is seeing light at the end of the tunnel, but social costs which includes Social Security, Medicare Medicaid et al and unaffordable health care is a big dog about to bite us in the arse.

McCain’s tax credit is phony and weak. 

I wish I could talk to him. 

Obama’s Plan works. It’s not nationalized health care unlike Hillary Care.  If we don’t get something equal or better we could lose this thing, and just when it looked like the messiah was circling the drain poll wise.

Somebody say something.  It’s ours to lose.

[b]Old Tigers are more dangerous when they believe this could be their last hunt.

From , “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen”
Old tigers, sensing the end,
they’re at their most fierce. 
And they go down fighting.

unaffordable health care is a big dog about to bite us in the arse.

First, get rid of the unnecessary costs in health care: trial lawyers.
Support tort reform or shoot a lawyer, whichever suits (suits! Get it?) your style!

Barack Obama: All hat and no cattle since 1997!

The back and forth with health care simply as a campaign issue has long passed.

Something must be done.

(Thanks Gene. Look for that case of Old Mil in the next few days)

Excuse me, you were saying?

Our problem is a shortage of healthcare, not a shortage of health care insurance.  Obama’s plan is just more redistribution, and will make things worse.  Anything but restoring market forces to healthcare will make things worse.

Save America; boycott the MSM.

Isn’t the title of your blog the premise of the conservative agenda against universal health care?

Right.  Nobody can afford central govt-controlled healthcare; there are no cost controls.  You either have costs going out of sight, or rationing, like all the other socialized medicine systems in the world.  Socialism doesn’t work!

Save America; boycott the MSM.

The problem is when you give it away for free demand is unlimited.  Then its up to the government to ration it somehow.

If you didn’t like your HMO you’ll hate Obamacare.

It’s time to have the freeloaders pay their way rather than recruit more free riders.

What’s going to happen to US industry when the global warming extremists like John McCain double the price of electricity?  I would think all these factories will close and set up in countries where they aren’t scared of technology.

The problem is when you give it away for free demand is unlimited.

Reminds me of a girl I used to know years ago!

“Poverty of goods is easily cured; poverty of the mind is irreparable.”

Gene,

With all due respect, Obama’s “plan on all this” does NOT work!

In the first place, requiring businesses to provide health insurance is of dubious constitutionality, and will certainly have a pronounced, deleterious effect on the economy in general and employment in particular.  Tax credits, as have been proposed to help offset the costs, are certainly not going to come anywhere near to making up what it will cost a small business to comply, and will only exacerbate the federal budget situation which Dems have promised to fix (Yeah, right!)

Just as importantly, the Medicare system, which Obama plans to expand to cover those not currently (or soon not to be) employed and covered) was already in more dire fiscal shape due to unfunded liabilities than the Social Security system.  And that was before the foolish addition of the recently passed Prescription Drug Benefit, yet another unfunded boondoggle.

Like the old time milking stool, the obama healthcare “plan” purports to rest on three legs.  Problem is, one leg is shorter, one is cracked, and the third leg isn’t really there at all in the first place.

“Poverty of goods is easily cured; poverty of the mind is irreparable.”

Whistler:

If you didn’t like your HMO you’ll hate Obamacare.

It’s time to have the freeloaders pay their way rather than recruit more free riders.

I posted on this earlier on this blog:
Health Care. This one is really the conundrum. It’s broken. OH, it works OK for those who are government employees, it works OK for Retirees on Medicare, It works OK for some corporate workers, but for 25 million Americans who are uninsured or under insured it doesn’t seem to work very well. I would call that broken. Oh we have health care available. It seems like however that the only two options available are 1. Don’t get sick or 2. Get sick, go to hospital, go bankrupt.

Not really options now are they? Those who have coverage of some kind or another will say that we should be happy that we have good health care available to all. Really? I pay almost 20% of my AGI for health Insurance from a private company. I know they have to make a buck. But, for that I get the most marginal of insurance coverage and I pray every day I never have to use a dime of it. To date any claim I have submitted has remained unpaid by them.

None.

Here’s the problem. I don’t want the government in the business of DMV or Post Office style health insurance administration. I don’t want regulation on Doctors. I don’t know what I want actually. If I had an answer it would be GENE for PRESIDENT. It’s not.

I do know that we spend as a percentage of or GDP and Per Capita more on health care in the USA than anywhere else in the WORLD. And we are NOT healthier for it. On a healthy index we are pretty low.

And I hear all the stories about people who come from far and wide, Canada, Great Britain, Saudi Arabia to access our Health Care system. Oh, for those who can afford it, it’s a wonderful system. Just not to the marginally insured which by some estimates is almost a third of the US population today.

I’m just not sure who can afford it, from here. I don’t seem to be able to.

Our health care system is broken. As is Medicare, Medicaid and while we are at it the whole social support system. It’s a giant black hole. We keep pouring money into it. Nothing is being fixed.

I’ll make this observation. Our social costs including the upward spiral of health care will kill us all off. We are in deep weeds in this country. This in my opinion is more important than the price of oil.

This is very broken but let’s not try to fix it without knowing what we are doing. I think as a conservative this is one issue where the Republican Party Must become aware of. Just hoping it will go away is death to any victory. I don’t want OBAMACARE. But, we must have a clear conversation.

I suspect that Private Health Insurance must be the Supplement with Public overarching coverage of catastrophic. Paid for HOW? I don’t have all the answers.

I would hope one of the wise ones on this blog will tell me.

I am healthy, 63, Not terribly overweight or sick. Yet, in trying to find any alternative to the home wrecking insurance costs I carry I am told over and over again that I better hold on to what I have, that’s all there is, there are no options. This by insurance professionals. I am fully hostage to my insurance company.

That would be broken in my estimation.

Here’s the rub, Mr Whistler, I don’t have an HMO.  Most of the self employed people I know either pay 2-3,000 per month premium as my dentist friend does or have the most skelatal of insurance programs that cover only catastrophic with a $5000 deductable. 

I was with some friends last night, one of the men when he got sick was sent back all his premiums from the policy he was on and told, sorry we don’t want you as a customer. 

He is now out in the cold without insurance and is not well.  He cannot afford to go to the doctor.  His sickness is poor circulation and complications thereof.

So, while we have this great system that to those with insurance or Medicare or as an Arab sheik serves well, to those of us who are on the self employed margins we are screwed.  Screwed and ignored by policy makers.

Free market would be great, but there is no free market.  In fact if I as an individual go to the doctor and tell them I don’t have insurance to cover the visit I pay MORE than the insurance company would have from the same provider.

This is a badly broken system and Obama’s plan it pains me to say is the one that makes sense.  Now if McCain could only read.

OH, and THIS IS NOT simple redistribution of income.  This plan Obama has uses the same things in place just making access available.  How is that redistirbution?

WE must get this mess under control.  Too many people who don’t work for the Government or have insurance thru an employer or are on Medicare are uninsured or as in my case functionally (except for cancer or a heart attack) uninsured.

The made in Japan Model works. Could we take a lesson??

[b]Old Tigers are more dangerous when they believe this could be their last hunt.

From , “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen”
Old tigers, sensing the end,
they’re at their most fierce. 
And they go down fighting.

Gene: If centralized govt control of markets really worked, the Soviet Union would be the wealthiest country in the world. Where are they now?  The only economic system that works is “free people making free choices”.

Save America; boycott the MSM.

In the first place, requiring businesses to provide health insurance is of dubious constitutionality

Plus, look for the law of unintended consequences to rear its ugly head! If Congress exempts firms with “less than a certain number of employees” from the requirement, look for firms with a handful of employees over that number to lay that same number of employees off! I’ve seen it happen before, it will happen again!
Now those people will have no job and no insurance!

Barack Obama: All hat and no cattle since 1997!

OH, and THIS IS NOT simple redistribution of income. This plan Obama has uses the same things in place just making access available. How is that redistirbution?

This is the nub of central economic control.  Instead of the consumer finding a vendor that he likes and who charges a good price for a good service or product, a bureaucracy controls the selection process and the payment process.  The redistribution is from the private sector to an unnecessary govt superstructure.  Ask your doctor how much of his time and money(and staff) it takes to deal with insurance.  This is an added cost to what would normally take place in a demand system.
I’m sorry you don’t get a better price by paying cash, since that is generally a good way to cut costs.  It costs the doctor far less than dealing with the govt system, and the “fee for services” customer benefits from that.
It does require negotiation, though.
Some people just want to be taken care of, like children, and they pay for that.

Save America; boycott the MSM.

Free market would be great, but there is no free market.  In fact if I as an individual go to the doctor and tell them I don’t have insurance to cover the visit I pay MORE than the insurance company would have from the same provider.

Gene,

Since there is “no free market”, how can you think that making that market less free, while piling more unfunded liabilities on top of those we already cannot pay, is going to improve our situation?

“Poverty of goods is easily cured; poverty of the mind is irreparable.”

OK Whistler, Bat and 108.  I don’t have the answer, but in view of an election we can’t afford to lose the tone deafness on the part of our R candidate is profound.

Obama HAS a plan. Snipe at it if you will, but it looks to me as if it WILL work.  And it’s infinitely superior to anything proposed by any Conservative anywhere.

McCain’s is hopelessly so last decade.  I don’t need a tax credit, I need health insurance that works.  Or I need affordabilty.  Neither of which I can achieve. 

I can shop till I drop.  I’m Self Employed, work alone, have a wife and even though I am healthy enough, can’t get competent insurance for any amount of money.  I have faux insurance.  It’s pretends to insure me.

And forget about trying to pay out of pocket.  Just a checkup now is well over a hundred twenty bucks.  No copay for me. 

If I wanted insurance that would pay for a anything with say a thousand deductible and some kind of preventative care feature for getting my oil checked (Like I had thru blue cross at one time when I worked for someone else) the price would be right at $18,000 per year.

I don’t know about you all, that would take a lot of fuel out of the ol corporate jet now wouldn’t it.

I am functionally among the uninsured and I’m wondering why.

This IS something that is fixable, tax credits are not the answer.  Competition might be.  We have regulations that do not allow me to go to Oklahoma to buy insurance.  That would be a start. 

I’m angry about this and angrier still that those who tout all things free enterprise don’t seem to grasp that we do NOT have a free enterprise system in Health Care.  There is no competition.

John Stossell once talked of this.  He was right.

Free enterprise doesn’t exist in the Health Care system.

If that’s the cultural choice we have made, to have a bastardized government quasi insurance controlled system unaccessible to individuals who are uninsured or functionally uninsured then let’s fix that.

We do not have anything resembling private enterprise or free markets in health care.  Ask any doctor.

[b]Old Tigers are more dangerous when they believe this could be their last hunt.

From , “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen”
Old tigers, sensing the end,
they’re at their most fierce. 
And they go down fighting.

Gene , you’re paying a lot for your insurance.  How does that make it feasible for me to pay for your coverage and for my family?

Part of the whole health scam is to stick the bills on the younger workers.  Did the current senior citizens pay this kind of money for their seniors when they were younger?

If your health isn’t worth spending your money on why is it worth mine.

Who do you want rationing your care; you or some jerk benefit.

As a small businessman do you think it will cost you less when the government intervenes to help you?

Gene I’m not saying this as an attack but to make you examine the underlying assumptions in your thoughts.

What’s going to happen to US industry when the global warming extremists like John McCain double the price of electricity?  I would think all these factories will close and set up in countries where they aren’t scared of technology.

...but in view of an election we can’t afford to lose…

We’re going to lose either way, Gene; that’s no excuse for increasing the problem with more central control of the healthcare market.

Save America; boycott the MSM.

Gene: The problem with healthcare is the same as the problem with our “education” system; govt monopoly.  In simple economic terms, whenever the govt enters a market, it eventually monopolizes it, because it doesn’t have to be responsible for its bottom line; the govt can’t go out of business for bad financial decisions, and doesn’t have to be efficient.  This is why we don’t want to socialize markets in order to achieve some idealistic social outcome; it doesn’t work, and the taxpayers end up financing something that doesn’t give them what they want for their money.
If your goal is to have affordable healthcare for as many of our citizens as possible, the free market is the way to go; nothing else can accomplish that goal.

Save America; boycott the MSM.

I don"t pay 18K for my families insurance but I pay a lot.

To me it’s worth it.

If I had to take a different job to make it affordable I would.

Self employment is grand but you have to look at what it gives you.

I have to note that that 18K is inflated because of govt.  Why would you want it worse?

What’s going to happen to US industry when the global warming extremists like John McCain double the price of electricity?  I would think all these factories will close and set up in countries where they aren’t scared of technology.

108

If your goal is to have affordable healthcare for as many of our citizens as possible, the free market is the way to go; nothing else can accomplish that goal

I agree, It’s just that we have nothing of the kind.  We won’t have anything of the kind.  It’s imaginary to think we could.

Too much political capital is tied up in the mess we have. 

We are (as a political movement) throwing millions under the bus saying

108

The problem with healthcare is the same as the problem with our “education” system; govt monopoly.

Yep, and it’s a decision we as a country made long ago.  The Social contract was formed and now is disintegration at the expense of an inept conservative movement that only puts head firmly in sand and says la la la hoping it will all go away.

It’s not.

One other thing, If I thought for a moment I could go to work for anyone at any kind of wage that had attached a health care plan I would.  Wal-Mart has shown the way on that.

I’m unemployable and uninsurable.

It’s easy to speak from an ivory tower of full insurablity and coverage and tisk tisk the peons in a land of kings.

Sorry fellows, I’m not buying it and neither will the electorate.  This is a death knell.

I’m against abortion, pre birth or post birth because health care is not available.

We are so screwed.

[b]Old Tigers are more dangerous when they believe this could be their last hunt.

From , “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen”
Old tigers, sensing the end,
they’re at their most fierce. 
And they go down fighting.

If Obama gets the nod, he will get his plan enacted hands down. If MC is elected, he will go along with whatever plan the congress sends him, and I suspect that plan will be less logical and more expensive than the plan Obama has in mind. Obama’s plan is at least understandable and not as overbearing as the plan hillary had in mind. Congress will probably send MC a plan that is much bigger, much more invasive, and MC will sign it.
If my scenario is correct, cons would be better off with Obama, at least on this issue. Health care reform is a forgone conclusion. The question is who will pen the bill and who will sign it.

I agree, It’s just that we have nothing of the kind. We won’t have anything of the kind. It’s imaginary to think we could.

I don’t agree that our economic system is “imaginary”, Gene.  The false promises of politicians have gulled us into thinking that govt intrusion in healthcare would be a benefit, but it’s not, and everybody knows it.  Here’s the key, in your own words:

Yep, and it’s a decision we as a country made long ago.

It’s a decision, and can be redecided at any time.  Don’t give up; that’s the way to sure defeat.

Save America; boycott the MSM.