Now that the August of hellish town hall meetings is over, most political junkies I know are glad that our senators and representatives are actually getting the hell out of their districts.
I still don't know what to say about Congresswoman Lynn Jenkins' town hall meeting at the Dole Institute in Lawrence on Tuesday, but a KU political science major named Derek has posted lots of great video from that meeting on his YouTube page. Jenkins said a lot of inane things, but this had to be the capper:
As the week winds down, a couple of other noteworthy items:
Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, was among the 83 U.S. House members signing yesterday's letter to President Obama saying they won't support any health-care-reform legislation that doesn't include a public option.
Unlike the White House, which appears to be thinking about caving in to the bullies of summer, Cleaver and his colleagues are unimpressed with all of the town hall disrupters.
"Public opinion polls continue to show that a majority of Americans want the choice of a robust public plan and we stand in solidarity with them," the caucusers wrote.
And as always, the best local thinker on this subject is Dr. Joshua Freeman, chair of the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Kansas School of Medicine. As Dr. Freeman notes on yesterday's installment of his Medicine and Social Justice blog, even if there's no official "public option," everyone who hates the idea of paying for other people's health care is paying for it anyway:
There are a lot of health care dollars spent directly by the government, federal, state and local.... Medicare, Medicaid, VA, military, Indian Health service. Then there are the public dollars filtered through private insurance companies -- the Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan and the various state and local governments that pay the premiums for their employees. Then there are the tax subsidies for employer contributions to health insurance -- the money that the government would get if your employers paid you higher wages, but doesn't get because, instead of higher wages, you get health insurance, which is tax-deductible to the employer. Of course, even with the availability of this tax break, you may not get health insurance; it depends on your employer. Not, mainly, whether they are nice or caring, but whether they are big enough to negotiate a good rate with an insurer, and also pay enough in tax to get the break. So your neighbor, the machinist working for Ford, may have a good health plan while you, the just-as-skilled machinist working for a small company may not. But your income taxes are subsidizing his (or her) health insurance. And if you are the insured worker and are healthy, your premiums subsidize the costs of those who are not.
So, yeah, opponents of reform: Go ahead and rail against the constitutionality of the public option. Then go look your employed-but-uninsured next-door neighbor in the eye and tell him why you did.
Showing 1-3 of 3
social security succesful? are you kidding me? it's on the brink of failure- same with medicare- and the public option is free to all those people who don't want to work- those trapped in welfare and even those illegaly in this country, so yes-it's free to them, but certainly not to american workers. ALso the single payer system will take away personal responsibility, my father had to pay for insurance for my family, he reminded us of that- he encourage our health- but when personal responsbility has no reflection on the level of health care then you change the threshold. Single payer will destroy our quality and encourage irresponsibility.
Who said anything about the public option being free? This isn't welfare. It will add more competition to the health insurance industry and lower cost at the same time. I don't know about you but I am glad I can pay 42 cent and have a letter/package sent from Florida to Alaska in 3-5 business days. Social Security and Medicare are two of the most popular and thus most successful social programs today. Poll numbers also reflect this as fact. The only problem with them is they are underfunded and in ten year budget projections they start to run out of money that doesn't mean they're bad programs. You should look up the amount of money spent on defense programs compared to these social/domestic issues. It's sickening.
UPS/Fed-Ex do just fine competing with USPS. Why can't it work for health insurance?
No one should die because they cannot afford health care, and no one should go broke because they get sick.
yes, we all end up paying for each others health care in some manner- but mandated healthcare - government ran ( hey how's social security , the post office, or even medicare.. how are they doing ran by the government? ) anyhow- back to "universal care" it's a great Ideal- I want people to be healthy, I like kittens- heck I even recycle- but the problem with "Ideals" is that they are just fuzzy warm ideas- How can you expect for health care to get better if it's given away to everyone, regardless of any possible personal responsibility? Should I pay for someone elses cigarette choices? Should I pay for someone to have a new liver if they destroyed the one given to them? I certainly think that our society already has compassion- it's called charity, it's voluntary. But to change the threshold of responsibility, to give more away- to help the unfortunate with give-aways- well, its similar to the welfare prisons we have created to 'help' but human beings need challenge, they deserve helping hands but when you just continue to say "Oh you poor thing- " you change the threshold of personal responsibility- We have vast problems with our health care system, but how could the government possibly run healthcare when even the post office is belly up... It's time to have more competition not less, it's time to help those in need and give them opportunity to grow, not free cable upgrades and free vicoden..
like
dislike
