Healthcare and politics redux

[Delija]

Sorry mods...forget the "PV"<HR style="COLOR: #d1d1e1" SIZE=1><!-- / icon and title --><!-- message -->

My mailbox was full, so I went to try and empty it. But I perused the messages not wanting to lose anything I might need to refer to later (warnings from moderators, stuff like that....LOL).

Anyway, I got (as he called it) a "pat on the back" for a particular post. I wasn't sure what it was the fellow was refering to, so I looked for it. Found it. Read it. Felt it was timely now with the coming election and it's issues. And of course with our ever divisive politics here (which astound me...I used to think I was a "conservative", then I'm called a "liberal extremist, etc.".....I think I am neither. I'd be ashamed to be labelled as we all should be. The world is a complex place and issues are seldom black and white.

Enough preamble.....here's what I had to say then (in a thread started over 2 years ago), and my thoughts remain exactly the same today:

Peace
D.

I could be wrong.....especially since I pay very little attention to such things.

But I was under the impression that some or most or all of the proposed health care programs were alternative choices for most people and a safety net for the indigent.


I might have it all wrong. But I do believe that no way will any law prevent you from getting the best medical care you can afford. No way can the govt. dictate that you go through a govt. (tax) sponsored health program.

What I object to is how the insurance companies are now dictating what health costs are. They tell the doctors, the doctors tell us. (or more accurately, their bookkeepers do).

It seems not only ridiculous but illegal. And I will always hold the insurance industry responsible for my wife's death at a very young age.....she changed jobs and was forced to go into an HMO for the first 6 months before she could switch back to her PPO - in that six month period of time the pencil pushers denied her the treatments THEIR OWN DOCTORS recommended. But the pencil pushers said the treatment was "not medically necessary".....contrary to the doctors that were part of that HMO...un-freaking-believable!

She got her PPO coverage back just in time to be re-diagnosed with inoperable cancer. If they even had examined her a few months before (not medically necessary) she might be alive today.

I can't imagine a worse system than what we have right now, Anything would seem better.

This should not be a "liberal" vs. "conservative' issue....this should be a matter of the American people not getting screwed by the insurance companies and by the litigation that makes malpractice insurance so expensive that doctors leave their fields of specialized medicine on a daily basis.

I know I am different from most here. I don't care a bit about paying taxes because i know that if there were ZERO taxes and the average person pays 30% of their income into the tax system, overnight, everything would go up by 30%...What you pay in taxes is a non factor. What your buying power is with your after tax dollars is all that matters.


I do care about getting my money's worth for my tax dollars.

I don't expect free (govt. run) health care. I do want to be able to pay for my own health care insurance of my choosing. But most of us can't because after all the waste our tax dollars go to, there's not enough left to pay a few thousand dollars a month for top notch health insurance for a family (which is what it easily could amount to). I seriously see no reason the bulk of my tax dollars should be wasted on weapons systems that have absolutely no use.

The amount of tax money spent on medical research is almost nothing at all in the big picture.....Polio was cured by donations to the March of Dimes. I don't know if any tax money went to that research. That's how it's always been here. "Free enterprise" except when the govt. decides otherwise. No-bid contracts to giant oil companies. People bitch and moan about how their money goes to illegal immigrants and welfare cheats. All of which isn't spit in the ocean compared to what we are cheated out of by the 'military industrial complex" that Eisenhower warned us about 47 years ago.

Our priorities are a total mess. A bridge fell into the Mississippi River in Minneapolis that was declared in need of repair. Part of the Interstate system (I believe), so it should have been fixed with our federal tax dollars. But we get tax cuts to buy votes and we borrow money from the Chinese and the Saudis and the Japanese so we can spend a trillion dollars trying to "westernize" a part of the world that does not want to be 'westernized'....And somehow people are naive enough to believe this won't come back in gigantic tax increases down the line?

Or, maybe we just won't honor our debts to the foreign powers that buy our treasury bonds. And then our dollars will become worthless. Go to Walmart and see what you can find that isn't made in China.

What happens when they tell us that a $4 pillow case is going to be $300?

Don't think that can happen? Study history.

Or maybe some people believe we can exist without products from China and the rest of Asia......hahahaha...find a TV set or a camera or virtually any electronic anything manufactured in the US...they basically don't exist

I don't think a single TV set has been manufactured in the US in at least 10 years. Radios? LOL...

Just looked at my "All American" Ipod ...on a hunch. Sure enough...Made in China. Same with my Microsoft mouse I have in my right hand right now. Don't know where my HP laptop computer that I am typing on right now was made, but I'm sure not here. I do know he battery for it was made in china. And if I call ANY tech center, I'll call India. Not here. I know Motorola is supposed to be an American company, How come my Razor cell phone says it was made in China (and the battery as well).?

When will people wake up and realize that we have sold this country?

And the way things are run now, we will eliminate the middle class as the rich get richer and the poor get more numerous and poorer.

And the punch line to the big joke is that the people hurt the most by these policies are the first to go along with them. They vote for the candidates that have NONE of their interests in their agendas. Why oh why do the poorest people vote for tax breaks for the richest (who don't generally even care....they have so much money they can't give it away fast enough).

The 'red states'....all about 'conservatism' and 'family values'....with the higher rate of divorces than the 'blue states' - The far, far lower concern with anything 'conservative" (derived from the word 'conserve).

Where being educated is looked at almost as a negative. I can't remember how many posts I read right here after Bush and Kerry had their debates and people realized that Bush had the comparative knowledge of world and domestic affairs of a child compared to Kerry....and no command of the English language. Is proud to say he isn't a reader, etc....and people said he was the better candidate because he represented the typical American more than the over educated and too intellectual Kerry.

We want' ORDINARY people in the Oval Office rather than EXTRAORDINARY?

Well, we got it.

Welcome to an America gone mad. Welcome to the repeal of the Bill of Rights under the name of scare tactics and commercialized paranoia - The new America with its Patriot Act and its preemptive war mentality. (BTW,, how come all the "orange alerts' before the last presidential election and not one single one since? Have we won the war on terror? If so, why do we still need legalized domestic spying and why is the Patriot act still around? When WWII was over, gas rationing was over too. So are we winning or losing? Or is this just a permanent state of maintaining control of the government by weakening the rights and freedoms of the citizens?


Anyone who loses sleep worrying about 'socialized medicine' (that will never happen) needs to open their eyes and turn off Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter who are entertainers, not informed or even serious political commentators. If not for them, where do these people get their misinformation? Do they ever read a newspaper? A news magazine? Change the channel on their Korean made televisions from the fishing and hunting and cartoon channels to C-Span? (I know...beer and Homer Simpson go better together than beer and C-Span or Oxycontin and Rush -who told us that all drug users, not just dealers, should be in prison).

I used to think I was politically and conservative. But now I realize that i am not since I don't want to shoot people who I disagree with or call them idiots if they are in favor of any political issues I disagree with. I don't want to sit on a lounge chair with a high powered rifle and shoot illegal immigrants as they cross the border. I don't want to dress up in BDUs and proclaim myself as a member of some unrecognized vigilante "militia".

I am offended by political strategists that get votes by telling us that God is on the side of their candidate who has a personal hotline to His office.

Most of all I am offended for being ripped off on my taxes. I am offended that I have virtually always paid a larger percentage of my income into the tax system than the very richest Americans. I don't like being urinated on and told that it's raining.


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[Brickboy240]

Part of that "ever divisive tactics" wouldn't have anything to do with seeing those that want border security and illegal immigration reforms as "those sitting in lawnchairs on the border with a rifle"...would it?

...nah!

- Brickboy240

PS: and yes...I am sick of my tax dollars being spent on things I am not in favor of as well.

[Delija]

Originally Posted by Brickboy240

Part of that "ever divisive tactics" wouldn't have anything to do with seeing those that want border security and illegal immigration reforms as "those sitting in lawnchairs on the border with a rifle"...would it?

.

Forgive me for exaggerating the issue by using the stated desires of some here in the past.

Border security is important. It is not however very much in the spirit of the America I believe in and that I have lived in most of my life to shoot those who try to cross in illegally. To claim that an enjoyable afternoon would be to sit on a lawn chair with a high powered rifle and a bottle of bourbon and shoot illegals attempting to cross is what? Civilized? On which planet if so? I'm sure you remember the "dearly and thankfully departed" XDBug who (among others) stated that very desire.

Then there was our "friend" "Captain Ray" who stated innumerable times that he would gladly shoot anyone with whom he disagreed if he could only get away with it.......meaning anyone to the left of Attila the Hun.

Politics of divisiveness? I'd say so.

Peace,
D.

[KEVWYO]

I remember Delija's post from some time ago and he's right it's as appropriate now as it was then AND it's just as good (or better) now!