Health Care Speech to CongressFollow

Easily confused.

My sister has epilepsy. She had it before she moved in with me. Because of this, and the fact that I now work for a small company, my insurance costs are about 50% more than the average person / family. Additionally, she has to have EEGs at least once per year which cost me ~$500 after insurance. Any blood work her neurologist does usually ends up costing me ~$100 after insurance.

I'm not here to dispute any claim that the private insurance industry is ****** up. All I'm saying is that where doctors are concerned, their primary insurance complaint is generally the rising cost of malpractice insurance, at least in Illinois (though I presume it's a fairly common story elsewhere). Whether their patient's insurance pays for a visit, or the patient does, is usually not a major concern.

Cites:
http://www.jg-tc.com/articles/2004/09/03/news/news01.txt
http://www.heartland.org/policybot/results/14633/Doctors_Flee_Illinois.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4798572/

There are plenty more. Also, these are older articles, and some recent Illinois legislation (2006ish) has helped the problem some, but according to local doctors, it's starting to become a problem again. Admittedly, I don't know the details of these recent developments.

Also, I saw a minor argument above regarding malpractice statistics and thought this might be useful information:

Why won't Republicans support any plan to reform the healthcare industry. Simple they want the plan to fail.

Oh wait. That was supposed to be sarcastic, but it was true...

Okay then, how about this: it would be worth it to me, not a fair trade, but a worthy one. Would I grieve at the injustice? Yes. Would I still be happy at a pragmatic change? **** yes I would.

Gonna answer this bit, since it leaped out at me:



Yes. The GOP does have class and respect for the Presidency. But the Dems and Obama appear not to. I'm sorry, but as I was watching that speech, there were at least 4 or 5 specific points where my mouth literally dropped open and the only thought running through my mind was "OMG! He's just blatantly lying! How could he stand there and say that with a straight face?".

He's playing on the assumption that we're supposed to be polite and not point out that he's lying in order to get away with lying. And before someone makes some reference to Bush, there's a difference between having a difference of opinion, or even ideology, and making statements which are designed solely to deceive those hearing them. And Obama seems to be a master at doing exactly that.


During the campaign he repeatedly insisted that he could somehow magically increase spending, while lowering taxes, and not increase the deficit. Well. I hope by now we can all see that this was a lie. Heck. It was mathematically impossible at the time, yet far too many people had obama-tinted glasses on and didn't apparently want to be impolite and point out the impossibility of what he was claiming.

Now, he's doing it again. He's promising that he can increase the total number of people covered, while decreasing the cost to consumers, and improving the overall coverage, yet somehow magically not have to increase by one dime the amount of money the government (aka: taxpayers) have to pay. Um... He's lying. He darn well knows that it'll cost more. He also knows that if he can convince people that it wont long enough to get it passed, it'll be too late for anyone to stop it. Once the programs are created, you can't uncreate them. He knows this. It's his entire strategy.



And that's before even addressing the blatant partisanship displayed by the President in this speech. Thinly veiled references to Republicans as fearmongers, and spreaders of false information were scattered through the whole thing. I have not seen a more partisan speech by a president in my lifetime.


I guess he was lying when he said he'd work to bridge the divide between parties too. Not surprising...

False. You're defining "any plan" to mean "any plan the Dems came up with".

There are many proposals from Republicans. But see, the Dems control both houses in Congress, which means that they control which bills get considered in committee and which proposals get discussion time, and ultimately which bills might ever get voted on. Want to take a wild guess as to why you haven't heard about any of the Republican proposals?


Hint: It's not because there aren't any.

The actions last night would suggest otherwise.


Good to know.

Just open a newspaper. It was defined thusly by our own judges. By which I mean the actual sum total treatment of prisoners.

It is well known.

gbaji compared the evidence for torture to that of space aliens.

It seems a more apt metaphor would have been the frequency of his/her being actually right and that of space aliens landing on Earth.

I do value gbaji's contributions to this forum: it is so easy to come here and realize there are no rational voices opposed to progressive politics. But then again, this place is the assylum, so by all means s/he should carry on!

Maybe if Obama acted like a president he might get treated like it. It's a matter of decorum. Members of Congress don't boo the president when he's giving a speech. But the president also doesn't directly attack a party in Congress while giving a speech either. Want to count how many references he made to "bogus claims" made by "some", and "Instead of honest debate, we've seen scare tactics, and other similar statements are in the speech? And let's be honest, he bashes Republicans (sure, he doesn't name them, but you know what he means) for being partisan ideologues who are unwilling to compromise, yet his entire speech pretty much consists of praising all the plans the Dems have proposed while downplaying or demonizing every suggestion and idea the GOP has put forth.

Who's unwilling to compromise? Are you seriously saying that this section of the speech isn't incredibly weaselly:



Notice how he addresses the issue of malpractice reform, then dismisses it, but does so in a way that implies that he's going to somehow fix the problem. But not by actually doing anything about outrageous malpractice suits. You know. Cause evil insurance executives should be punished for seeking profits, and evil big business should be punished for being successful at their business, and the wealthy as a whole should be punished for their wealth, but we shouldn't do anything about trial lawyers who push the boundaries of common sense when pursuing big money settlements, not designed to help their clients, but to line their own pockets. Nope. Obama will go after everyone else except the one group of people involved who don't actually contribute in any way at all to providing access to health care, payment for health care, or the actual health care themselves.


It's hysterically hypocritical, but he delivers the speech so well that most people don't even notice that he just sidestepped the issue. This from a guy utterly unafraid to bash anyone and everyone else. Funny...



He also twice (at least that I can remember) referred to ideas proposed by Republicans as though what he was proposing was the same and that we should support it because this somehow means he's being non-partisan. It's an obvious setup of course. If you oppose what he's suggesting you need only say "But that's the same thing McCain/Bush proposed!". Um... It's not. Obama just said that it was. Bush actually pushed for medical malpractice reform. Obama is clearly not. But by pointing to one component that's kinda similar, he makes it appear as though he's just doing something that Bush wanted to do...