So far I've heard his bill would make it illegal for insurance companies to drop coverage when people are sick.

http://www.youtube.com/whitehouse?feature=ticker

It's live right now

weird on tv theres like a 1 sec lag compared to the youtube live

how??

That's the delay in case he drops the F-Bomb.

cause heaven forbid that kids hear a swearword that they probably use on the playground themselves.

For some reason I can hardly hear what he's saying. The audio is muffled or something like that.

WOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW

Different transmission methods will have different lag times. This proves the internet is superior to TV!

Not enough death panels.

Joke





























Your head.

i have a question... if the current government run health care systems are becoming unsustainable how will adding the rest of the population to a government system help this?

Gah! another thing that is rankling me at the moment is, when did it become a employers "responsibility" to provide health coverage for its employees? its the individuals responsibility to get insurance not that of the employer. health benefits are just that, an ADDED BENEFIT.

You know, the government has done such a good job with education, social security, welfare, and economic concerns, that I would gladly hand over my personal health to them!

Never, who said that?

the president, in his speech.

While I fully agree with the intention of health care for all....it's this thought that you usually slaps me back into some sense

This is how I feel. If you can't afford health care, get another job. If you don't want to do that, then too bad! Stuff like this seems to be geared toward taking care of the lazy. The ONLY good thing I have heard so far is making it Illegal to drop sick people, which is as it should be. The whole reason people pay for health care is to be taken care of when they are sick, if you get dropped for being sick, you should be able to sue someones ***.

Grr... this country is REALLY starting to piss me off. If I didn't live in Texas (where we pretty much do what we want), I would probably move. Who knows where. Even rats know to get off the boat before it sinks.

Yeah, because good-paying jobs with benefits are sooo easy to find. I didn't have ANY benefits at USPS... let alone sick days...

which is kind of ironic seeing as how the usps is a government agency...

Correct me if I am wrong here.. but wouldn't any kind of government health care raise our taxes up quite a bit? Or are they planning to fund it in some other way?

I haven't been up to date on this issue much.

according to the president the public option would pay for itself only through premiums it collects... however he has offered no evidence that that would actually cover the cost.

as far as reform for existing insurance agencies... they would just have to eat the cost of the reforms.

The only "government health care" being proposed is the public option, which would be paid for by the people who use it. The cost of the reform bill itself is intended to be offset by the savings it creates...

They do plan on subsidizing poor folks so they can afford it easier.

They should start taxing the rich to pay for it...

**** that. Don't penalize the rich for being rich. Goddamn communist.

The rich hardly pay taxes at all

I agree with Steven on this one, that isn't the proper attitude to hold.


but thanks for clearing that up for me guys.

Can someone explain to me what happens under the current system if you are born with a condition that requires medical attention?

Let's take for example someone born with a defect that's caused mild mental retardation and requires periodic surgery to deal with other issues. This person is very unlikely to hold down more than a minimum wage job. How do they survive in the US?

They are a burden on their family or the state for their whole life.

They are immediately promoted because it is discriminatory not to!

Higher wage earners shoulder almost 95% of income tax revenue right now you know. I don't see how on Earth you can say that the rich hardly pay taxes.

Even AFTER the Bush tax cuts that "favored the rich" in 2004 the top 25% wage earners shoulder 85% of tax revenue. The rich pay much higher MARGINAL tax rates. Even the most common tax rate of 15% back then paid HALF as much in taxes as top earners. That same top 1% accounted for 25% of federal tax revenue. So no, they aren't "hardly paying taxes at all". They are actually paying a lot more in the marginal sense.

lol income tax

How can ANYONE propose taxes of any kind in these times? If there is anything we need to be doing is cutting taxes. WHY? So that people and business can have more money spend on goods and to hire people. The rich being the ones who pretty much own the business, need to be given more tax breaks so that they can grow their business, and generate more employment.

Vinny is just pissy because he is an uneducated, unemployed, uninsured homosexual drug user and a festering zit on the *** of society.

Because in times like these people HOARD their money. Taxing it and using it takes it from under peoples' pillows and puts it into the economy.

Again, penalizing the smart people who have money to help out losers.

Like I said in the other thread (which I might add Goldy has dropped out of) I believe in the welfare state. I'd rather that my money has a CHANCE of helping someone deserving and less fortunate than me than me just squandering it on more crap I don't need.

I was unbelievably fortunate: I have two living, married parents with good (blue collar) jobs and I was able to go to university, graduate and get a good job. The odds were all in my favour because of my birth - the chances of most young people in the UK are not that good, and that's not their fault. Higher taxes to benefit those people is important to me, because I realise how easily I could have needed them if I were born to parents just a mile away in a council estate.

EDIT: http://forums.massassi.net/vb3/showthread.php?t=55308&page=3#post1031271 that's what I wrote before. It's probably clearer.

That's crazy-talk, Martyn -- off to the asylum for you! ( )

Basically, I believe health care should be a government provided resource, just like the fire department, police department, education, etc. I throw health care in there with public protection just like anything else. There are too many people out there that don't go to the doctor in the early stages of a medical problem (when it can be stopped and done inexpensively) because they can't even afford the deductible. Then they wait until it becomes a major problem and then they have to fight the insurance company for the money to pay for it. So what good is having insurance? What's the difference between a greedy for-profit insurance company making a decision to pay for a procedure and a social worker?

If I had a choice to either keep paying an insurance company out of my pay check and the government to cover my health care costs, I'll pick the government every time.

I wish that was the case, but more often then not a larger portion of the welfare dependent population abuse it rather then utilize it to create better living standards for themselves. Which makes me bitter when it comes to the whole welfare situation, because not only is my hard earned money being shuffled off to someone who is most likely sitting on their *** doing ****, but also I am enabling them to sit on their ***, rather then teaching them that money doesn't and shouldn't fall into their lap at no expense to them.

If my welfare money went to say.. kids in Darfur or something, I would be completely content with that.


I would say I am of the belief that welfare should have stopped after the FDR regime. Once we pulled out of everyone being screwed, to the normal unemployment/poverty percentages, it should have been stopped completely. I would think that we would have less of an unemployment/poverty rate without it. It would motivate people to actually DO something. Rather then "oh ****.. I'm broke again and walked out of my last job.. guess its back to good ol' welfare!" it would be "****, I am broke and need a job asap or my entire life is going to crash down on my *** because I can't get money from anywhere else."

Granted, if we did this in our current economic state it would certainly not help any bit, but if and when we pull out of it I think this is something that should seriously be considered.


EDIT: just read the other Obama thread and probably should have thrown this over there but oh well. I'm sure Jon'C will still find this and rip it to pieces regardless.

That's all good and everything and I agree in principle. But what you are talking about is applying very correct theory (tax cuts do spur growth) in a state of economy that cannot support it right now mostly because of the massive spending in Washington. You can start to afford tax cuts when you stop spending trillions of dollars that we already don't have. Frankly, we can't PROPOSE tax cuts because we can't AFFORD tax cuts. It already came out that this is the lowest tax revenue the country has had since the Great Depression, and Obama is smart enough to know that if that statistic holds true in 2012, that is NOT good for his campaign. We are speaking trillions of dollars here. Not to mention that tax cuts for the wealthy at this point would make Obama basically a devil in the eyes of the rest of America.

Obama is basically facing the choice Reagan had in the 80s. Cut taxes to spur growth (which did happen), but also rack up MASSIVE MASSIVE MASSIVE DEFICIT. It's too hard to just make a stark blunt statement and say we should go one way or the other. You need to tread much more carefully than "CUT TAXES". There is a lot more politics and unintended future consequences involved.

I'm surprised no one is discussing the "YOU LIE" statement.

Back on Topic.

Yes, it is too late for tax cuts. In fact were faced with a debt that our grand children will be paying, and as long as that debt is there, it will only grow, bankrupt more families, businesses and other factions. We're on a downward spiral, honestly, HEALTHCARE should not be the main concern right now. The economy is being put on the back burner it would seem. More action is required there.

I can't sleep, someone is wrong on the internet.