Look at all of these angry white people who spontaneously showed up in Austin, Texas, to express their concerns to Congressman Doggett about “what they heard” about the health care reform efforts. Expect lots of coverage of these “grassroots events” by certain 24-hour news networks:
And I’ll bet there’s some “Birthers” in that bunch (allegedly 28% of Republicans are “Birthers”). Here’s their leader:
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
democrats running tv attack ads in nebraska against senator Nelson……hmmmmmmmmm don’t turn your back!
Mayo clinic totally against obamacare and you should be too!
Comment by steve da beave — August 5, 2009 @ 8:49 am
And do you have a solution for us then?
Besides chanting “Just Say No!” (The Republican Motto)
Comment by jerry — August 5, 2009 @ 10:16 am
ABSOLUTAMUNDO!!
Comment by steve da beave — August 5, 2009 @ 11:00 am
Start by creating Jobs!! 2nd get government Out of Healthcare….Privatize medicare medicaid…bring insurance companies together in agreement to cover pre-existing conditions. Garnish illegals wages for expenses owed for immigration and healthcare until citizens
Comment by steve da beave — August 5, 2009 @ 11:07 am
Kansans weigh in on health care reform
Have your say, too
August 4, 2009
Congress’ efforts to overhaul the nation’s health care system have business owners, insurance providers, doctors and the average Joe sitting on pins and needles.
What lawmakers do — or don’t do — could profoundly affect Americans.
One point everyone seems to agree on is that the current system is greatly flawed. Health care costs are too high, and too many Americans have no insurance.
So it seems clear that some sort of action is needed.
Since 2000, average family premiums have increased by 105 percent in Kansas. The average cost of family premiums is $12,783 — the annual salary of a person who works full time, at minimum wage.
Meanwhile, 13 percent of Kansans are uninsured, and 71 percent of them are in families with at least one full-time worker.
The Journal-World contacted a variety of people, asking them to weigh in on health care reform. We posed these questions: What is the primary problem with our current system? What should be included in any legislative reform? What is their biggest fear when it comes to health care reform?
Follow the links below to see what the following Kansans have to say:
• Graham Bailey, vice president of public relations, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas
• Rod Bremby, Secretary, Kansas Department of Health and Environment
• Corrie Edwards, executive director, Kansas Health Consumer Coalition
• Jerry Kemberling, Unemployed, Lawrence
• Gene Meyer, CEO/president, Lawrence Memorial Hospital
• Marcia Nielsen, vice chancellor for public policy and planning, Kansas University Medical Center
• Sandy Praeger, Kansas insurance commissioner
• Jon Stewart, Director, LEO Center
• Judy Bellome, executive director of Douglas County Visiting Nurses, Rehabilitation and Hospice Care
• Dr. Alan Cowles, Social Security disability benefits advocate
• Marcia Epstein, director of Headquarters Counseling Center in Lawrence
• Dr. David Goering, medical director for Health Care Access
• Mitzi McFatrich, executive director of Kansas Advocates for Better Care
• Dan Partridge, Lawrence-Douglas County Health Department director
• Margie Wakefield, small business owner
Comment by steve da beave — August 5, 2009 @ 11:15 am
>Start by creating Jobs!!2nd get government Out of Healthcare….Privatize medicare medicaid…bring insurance companies together in agreement to cover pre-existing conditions<
**If there is any institution that has failed us more than the government on this issue, it is the insurance companies. What have the insurance companies (and their benefactors, the Republican members of Congress) done to insure a higher percentage of Americans than when we first tried to tackle this problem in 1992?
**You keep inserting your anti-Mexicans opinions into this health care debate. I’m not sure that they are that huge a factor in the health-care problem. Maybe you know otherwise?
Comment by jerry — August 5, 2009 @ 1:03 pm
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner berated top financial regulators with an “expletives-laced critique,” The Wall Street Journal reported this week, for their failure to get with the program and focus on regulatory reform instead of turf battles.
And this with ladies present!
According to the Journal report, those attending the session last Friday at the Treasury Department included FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair and SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro, as well as Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and other assorted regulators.
What happened to that cool-as-a-cucumber, consensus-building paragon of technocratic genius, as Geithner has been portrayed to us?
Reuters
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner
A supervisor in the private sector who used obscenities, as Geithner reportedly did, would be running the risk of a harassment suit. But perhaps it’s the Rahmbo influence beginning to pervade the administration; White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel is famously fond of using expletives.
When Richard Nixon used obscenities on his infamous White House tapes, it was widely seen as yet another sign of his moral turpitude. But those were more innocent times, no doubt.
Geithner has as yet been unable to stand up to bank chief executives and make them pay for their mistakes, but perhaps he feels that with the regulators he has a captive audience of underlings to whom he can safely vent.
The problem is that none of these regulators are under the authority of the Treasury secretary. They are the heads of independent government agencies, appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate, and only can be removed for serious malfeasance. They expressly do not report to the Treasury or any other government department.
And, in fact, Geithner’s reported outburst on Friday did not stop Bair, or Comptroller of the Currency John Dugan, or acting director of the Office of Thrift Supervision John Bowman from repeating their contentious opinions at a Senate hearing on Tuesday.
Bair, a holdover from the Bush administration, insisted on her preference for a council of regulators to monitor systemic risk, as opposed to the administration’s plan to have the Fed play this role.
This is not, strictly speaking, defending her (expletive deleted) turf, as Geithner is said to have charged. It would give the FDIC a bigger role than it might otherwise have, so it’s really more like a power grab.
The problem for Geithner is that Bair and the others have found sympathetic ears in Congress for any opposition to giving the Fed more power. Lawmakers feel that the Fed fell down in its existing regulatory role and should not be rewarded with even more authority.
It’s a legitimate point of view, as is Bair’s contention that the pooled wisdom of the various regulators, each with their own special perspective on things, might have a better chance of spotting the next disastrous trend in our financial system.
There is pretty much of a consensus in the Democratic caucus and in the regulatory community for most of the administration’s reform plan — a resolution authority to seize and unwind financial holding companies, regulation of swaps and other over-the-counter derivatives, and a consumer protection agency.
There is even consensus about monitoring systemic risk, with the only bone of contention being who should do it.
There are some, no doubt, who are happy to see signs of a backbone in Geithner’s outburst. But it seems to have been an ill-timed and wholly ineffective tantrum.
Nor would it be hard to imagine that professionals of the stature of Bernanke, considered by many to be the second-most powerful person in the country, and Bair, designated by Forbes last fall as the second-most powerful woman in the world, might be irked at being dressed down in an “expletives-laced” manner. Perhaps a front-page story in The Wall Street Journal reporting the event is already evidence of that.
The bottom line is that legislation is not done in the White House, let alone the Treasury building next door, but further up Pennsylvania Avenue in the Capitol. We probably can’t expect Geithner, always punctilious and generally polite in his Hill appearances, to launch any obscenities at Congress.
So maybe he should just save his breath and focus on getting 90% of his plan through.
) The people who voted this administration into office are getting just what they deserve! oh, wait. He was NYFed –
A Geithner was the NY Fed head since mid decade and OVERSAW the development of the worst crisis in banking history. Both the Fed and Geithner are living proof of what failure looks like. We could not have an organization (the Fed) or a person (the New York Fed head) who have been involved in more disasters as reguators. Now they want more power????
“But wait! That’s F’in Treason!”
Why, yes, Timmy, it is.
Oh, and now, the FHFA chief and the chief over at Fannie and Freddie quit within minutes of each other. What does Timmy know that we are all about to find out?
Whatever it is, it ain’t gonna be pretty.
Hold onto yer guns and butter, people. Here it comes!
Comment by steve da beave — August 5, 2009 @ 1:55 pm
Yes, Jerry!! You are absolutely correct!! 17 million of the 45 million uninsureds are illegal immigrants that deserve NOTHING from this countries legal immigrants. And yes!! Right again!! 10 million make over $75,000/yr. and choose not to purchase coverage (majority dems lookin for da free ride)! The rest can be dealt with easily by tweaking the system. Yes YOU are RIGHT!! IT IS very stupid to create another bureaucracy with an unknown budget and unworkable constraints at ANY time, let alone a recession. Yes its crumbling…and it ain’t gonna be pretty……..I’m pleased you are leading the charge.
Comment by steve da beave — August 5, 2009 @ 2:03 pm
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/07/weekend-opinionator-a-sick-debate/
August 7, 2009, 8:13 pm
Weekend Opinionator: A Sick Debate
By Tobin Harshaw
Comments:
12. August 8, 2009 1:57 am
I have lived in Europe, the USA (NYC and FLA) and currently live in Canada. I am a reasonably well-informed financial executive. I make my living as a capitalist.
I wouldn’t know where to begin re: the health care debate but I will make a couple of observations:
1. The USA has the finest health care in the world — bar none — provided that you have a no-limit gilt-edged money is no object health plan. Or you are rich. In my experience the 2 go hand in hand.
Failing such insurance or such boundless wealth how any rational human being with an IQ over 75 and an income below, say, $250k (forget the social compassion argument) could defend the existing system is beyond comprehension.
2. The outright lies — yes lies — that critics of health care reform spew is disturbing. The intentional misrepresentation of the Canadian and European models is outrageous. The Canadian model is flawed. There needs to be greater access to ‘private-delivery’ alternatives (which currently exist in some fields.) Having said that, since I returned to the province of Ontario in the late 1990’s until now the improvement in standards and care is staggering and in most cases matches anything I witnessed or experienced in NYC. Yes, health care is rationed here (hence a need for ancillary private care) but it is rationed everywhere — including the US. The exception being as per point #1 above. Per capita Ontario spends approximately 65% of what the consumers/taxpayers of the US/NY spend. However Ontario delivers 90% — or more — of the US standard. That is one very big financial/efficiency/productivity gap. That money gap goes to the US insurance companies, doctors, malpractice lawyers and lobbyists. The common canard about Canada etc is that “faceless bureaucrats make life or death decisions” (as opposed to, say, faceless HMO clerks). The truth is that in Canada the ‘gatekeepers’ who allocate critical care are the physicians themselves — the specialists.
3. Aside from private-payment plastic surgeons it is true you will not see many doctors in Canada driving a Rolls Royce. But you will see an awful lot driving a Benz or a Jag. Doctors here work hard and are well compensated. What we lack here is the concept that a medical degree should be attributed Venture Capitalist returns.
4. Lastly, a general observation/question (again, I really am a capitalist). Why is it that in the USA (a country I genuinely love) millions of people who barely make a living or are working class and/or just holding on to the ‘middle class’ are the most vocal — hysterical wouldn’t be an exaggeration — in defending the privileges of the rich and the corporate? Against their own self-interest I might add. Anywhere else in the western world the existing US health care tyranny would have people in the streets demanding reform — not ‘debating’ it.
— jon c
Comment by Gman — August 10, 2009 @ 9:10 am