The Littlest Penguin

WHAT?!?! >8(

I’ll have you know I’m -ODD- handed thankyouverymuch!!

>_>
<_<

*stabbity* =P

I don’t update my FB status enough, but I need to include some more political things. I’ve got some extremely conservative friends (just shy of being birthers), but they respect me so hopefully seeing me support something might at least give them something to think about. Sometimes that’s all we can hope for.

I do a lot of defending the health care bill on digg. I’ve managed a few decent discussions. It usually ends up with people deciding they don’t have a problem with the parts of the bill they thought they did (the public option usually) but have a problem with other parts (the subsidies or employer mandate usually). That is progress, and I often agree that the bill isn’t perfect. The biggest battle is really fighting of the Reaganist idea that Government = bad! It does get tiring sometimes, but I think the healthcare fight is worth it.

I need to look up and have available some of Obama’s more obviously Christian statements. I really believe he is probably the most devoted Christian President we’ve had in a long time and that he is really helping the “Religious Left” find our voice. That’s a good thing.

You have every right to be able to express your opinions, thoughts, concerns and questions. Unfortunatly when doing so on political and religious matters it does tend to open up a can of worms. Many people are exremely passionate in their views and some even have given the issues at hand some thought (not enough people but…).
I am a conservative and a republican but that doesn’t mean that Democrat = bad or republican= good. I was in the Army and so have lived under an entirely Govt. run system. As far as I can tell it works well for the military, but unless we want to either return to the ways of Sparta or move in the direction of socialism it is not the way to run a country. It is my personal view that we should not allow ourselves to become dependent on the goverment for too much.
You know where I work and I can tell you that I deal with the entitlement attitude that results from the idea that the goverment ( and our entire society via that entity) not only will, but is somehow obligated to, take care of individuals and that they can just sit back and wait for everything to be dropped into their laps. I have been told by a very knowlegable source that you have a certain independent streak in you. That is what our society would benefit from rediscovering.
I have rambled on long enough and actually said very little so I will go get ready to go to work. Karen and I pray for you, william and your baby daily.

We all live in the cocoon of our microcosms. If those cocoons are safe and warm with all of our needs and wants supplied, it is difficult for some to see or care about the outside world. There is a pervasive self centeredness so we don’t notice other people’s woes as touching us and so we can ignore the pain of others. It takes effort and understanding to look at something like a health care bill and realize that although we personally don’t require it and it may not be perfect according to personal views, it is necessary to do something to assist in the healthcare of those who are not lucky, rich, healthy or well educated with health care covered employment. If for no other reason – let’s work together, compromise and support health care for all because it is the humane thing to do.

I am sorry for lashing out there love. I honestly can dress someone down and call them a douche-sipping tosser but buy them lunch with zero hostility ten minutes later. I just can’t suffer foolishness. This discussion is for grownups only, and if you want to sit at the grown up table have your shit straight or you are simply part of the problem.

See, I did it again!

Right you are Turtle. I have serious concerns myself. And I can’t BELIEVE Obama is saying this won’t cost us anything upfront to which I call shenanigans. But front-cost is a minor issue to me when compared to the value and quality and overall effectiveness of healthcare.

And I’m sorry for ignoring your intellengence and going right for the trolls Jeff. I should follow your example more, instead of smacking down.

And love, sorry for sullying your Facebook. But that’s who you marry! You are so smoking hot right now, by the way.

Choyrt, I believe you could express yourself more eloquently if you dropped the icky language.

Awwwww MOOOOooooooooOOOM!!!!!! Don’t embarass me infront of all my internet friends! I’m trying to look cool here you know? Geeze!

And Petit, I agree in so many ways. I think you and me, we see an example of two people who want what is best but diverge on how to go about it. I delight in your foils sir, and your conter arguements teach me all the time.

As much as a cynic you pretend to be, I remember where you work and how you’ve dedicated your life to human stewardship you big softie you.

Regarding up-front cost: I agree that this is the hardest pill for me to swallow. I mean, how can something so sweeping not cost me anything? My daddy told me all about “too good to be true”. But then I listened to (a portion of) an interview with Mr. President tonight that asked that specific question and his answer has merit, though it’s still lacking in specifics. What he generally said was that the United States, as a country, already spends more dollars per person on health care than any other country in the world. What we need to do is tweak this system so that the money we’re already spending is allocated in a more efficient manner providing more desirable results.

This makes sense to me. I don’t think many would argue that there are plenty of other countries that do health care better than we do. If that’s the case, and we’re outspending them, why aren’t we doing better? I’d still like to hear how we’re planning to do it, but I feel the answer would be too complex, at this stage, for any one hour interview. I’m still cautiously optimistic.

Regarding etitlement: This is a divisive issue from the outset. For every example of a person behaving as though the world owes them everything and they need not return the favor, there is another example of someone who helps and helps and works and produces and is a valuable and productive member of society who just can’t seem to get a break. The trouble is finding the middle ground. Unfortunately, no matter where that middle ground is placed, one side or the other is going to be upset about where the line is.

Personally, I’m on the side of “lets help as many as we can and if we end up enabling a few, that’s better than letting the hard working and deserving suffer”.

Here’s my personal case example – I know a couple who are small business owners who can’t afford to offer insurance to themselves or their employees. They live in a region of the country where today’s minimum wage is actually enough to make a decent living, and each time the government raises it, they have to decide how they’re going to stay in business without letting go of any of their employees. They each work easily 60 hours per week and he has a second job to try to make ends meet, and they often don’t.

She, right now, has a dislocated shoulder and some malady that’s actually eating away at the muscles of her leg (I can feel the groove in her leg muscle where it’s going away). She’s not having either of these treated because she simply cannot afford to. She’s also suffering from a previously diagnosed autoimmune disease that makes it so that, even if she would otherwise qualify for mainstream healthcare, she can’t have it treated (at least right away) because it’s a pre-existing condition.

She doesn’t qualify for medicare or medicaid because they make too much money, even though the vast majority of what they salary themselves is being used elsewhere to try to keep the business running (there’s a lawsuit involved, they’re the claimants, and it’s been going on for years and is not showing any signs of being settled any time soon, meanwhile the lawyers just keep billing and the judges just keep stalling. But hey, Tort Reform is another discussion entirely, right?).

Ginger, to your original topic, I’m sorry that you had to have a bad experience trying to have a conversation about passionate topic, but I’m glad that you have an opinion and you care to learn what others have to say on a topic, should that maybe amend your views. So many out there either don’t care or worse, care vehemently but don’t know what it is they’re actually arguing about.

In other, slightly related, news – CONGRATS on your healthy baby boy!! We’ll be by to visit just as soon as we possibly can (that you’ll allow).

Zeb,
I am not adverse to there being assistance for those who helps and works and produces and is a valuable and productive member of society who just can’t seem to get a break. There are are some programs in place now. What does concern me is the goverment running it. If you take a look @ how poorly medi-care/cade has been handled this should give us pause.
Also look @ “cash for clunkers”. The actual administering of this program is/ was so poor that some dealerships stopped participating. 1st they ran out of money. They did not have the resources in place to handle the load. Many payments still haven’t been made and may not for many monthes. Dealerships can not pay overhead and commissions on promises from the goverment that it will all be worked out eventually. If you pay rent or a mortgage your landlord or mortgage company want their money now, not eventually. Imagine this happening with healthcare. In Canada their national health care system has had to cancel 300 operations scheduled to take place this year due to insufficient funds. Now this may not seem too bad upfront, unless you or a loved one is among this 300. The goverment doesn’t have to turn a profit so efficiency and these types of concerns are not part of their way of doing business.
Yes we do need to make modifications to the system that we have, but doing SOMEthing is not necessarily better than doing NOthing. Wisdom and change will serve us better than hope and change.

Dale,

And that’s where we agree. I’ll be the first to admit that this current plan (plan being used loosely here) may not be the answer, but it’s getting people talking and thinking about what the right answer should be and of this I very much approve.

As an aside, I tire of hearing about comparisons to Canada’s health care system. I’m no expert on either one, but the impression I’m getting from those who know better than I do about both systems is that what is being discussed now has very little resemblance to what Canada’s doing. The first glaring distinction (someone who knows better may come by and correct me here) is that Canadians don’t even have an option for private health insurance, whereas what is being discussed here in the US does not intend to do away with the existing private insurance we already enjoy. (I use the word “intend” specifically because that may eventually happen as a result of a public option, but that is not the *purpose* of the public option.) So let’s compare what’s being discussed with a more similar approach being done elsewhere. I’m not aware of any, but that certainly doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

Now that I’ve expressed why I don’t like to compare to Canada, let’s address the 300 operations that got cancelled. The flip side of that coin is that if there were no nationalized health care, how many hundreds or thousands of surgeries wouldn’t even have been scheduled in the first place? What percentage does that 300 entail? Ten percent? Twenty? I doubt it’s that high, but even if it were we’re still talking about thousands of surgeries that are still going to happen. If it’s as low as one percent then that’s tens of thousands. To me that 300 being cancelled is still better than the alternative.

~Zeb

My god you two learning and constructively talking to each other makes me SO HOT right now.

I can totally get why people will first look to how other systems operated (ie Canada) to try and estimate how WE will operate, but I also get how that will only go so far.

Here are my concerns:

1.) We need to change healthcare. Period. With all the nuts on either end aside, the challenge is settling on how to change it. So why are so many loud pundits and house members avoiding that conversation?

2.) I seriously SERIOUSLY doubt this will not be costly. And we have two wars going on right now. Where are we going to get the money for the overhaul, assuming we are looking at actually avoiding further debt (I get the whole ‘dig a ditch, fill it in, dig a ditch’ bit though, but is that what we’re aiming for?)

3.) Will this healthcare battle alienate Obama from the Republican party to where every other issue will fall flat like international military deployment or the economy.

4.) Will this unrefined bill, assuming it works, really save the economy?

5.) Obama himself, I feel, needs to tell Democrats to let go of the Wilson thing and focus on what matters. The more time spent on Wilson the less time spent on this bill.

One thing to remember about the costs of this plan. Our economy currently pays all the costs of healthcare, or else hospitals and doctors would all be bankrupt. It simply does so in a very in-efficient manner with Insurance Companies adding approximately 25%-30% overhead to the total costs. Unless they really screw it up the overall costs to the economy will be less. The tricky part is making sure that the evil industry of your choice (Insurance, Pharma, Doctors, Lawyers or whatever) don’t manage to get a grip on all the savings. On a macro-economic level there is no doubt we can afford this. As a few articles have pointed out, what we really can’t afford is to maintain the status quo.

I would disagree with Dale that Medicare is poorly handled. It’s poorly financed, but is a very efficient organization. It’s overhead is estimated at around 5%, compared to around 30% for private insurance companies. Having worked in medical billing in the past I can also say that’s its generally easy to work with and pays pretty quickly. It admittedly doesn’t pay as much as private insurance. It is running out of money, but Medicare tax rates haven’t changed since (I believe) sometime in the mid 80s, while private insurance premiums have skyrocketed.

Here’s a few of my favorite articles that I’ve bookmarked:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-abrams/some-ammo-for-healthcare_b_260692.html is where much of my above post is borrowed from.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/01/AR2009090101027.html is another analysis of whether we can afford this.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/29988909/sick_and_wrong/1 is an excellent article overall. Why is it that Rolling Stone seems to have done some of the best investigative reporting over the past year or so anyway?

Oh for heaven’s sake. That Wilson thing. I’m right there with you on that. He gaffed. He’s not really sorry, but he said he was – politics every day. WAY too much is being made of it. Mr. President himself said, right after the incident, that this is not what we’re supposed to be talking about. It seems like the people who are supposed to be working out “the plan” are looking for any excuse whatsoever to talk about something else instead of just rolling up their shirt sleeves and getting on with it.
Here’s my speculation about your numbered queries…
1) Because they’re in politics and they need to spend as much time as they can trying to figure out how to offend as few people as possible instead of trying to figure out what should be done.
2) It will be costly. The two wars have been going on for far too long now. It’s time to figure out a way to extricate ourselves from those as well. That’s another long and difficult conversation, too, I’m afraid.
3) No, I don’t think it will. At least, no more so than any Democratic president has been a foe to Republican congressmen. I can’t think of anything that’s been accomplished recently that wasn’t accomplished mostly along strict party lines. Even during the Bush years, 6 months after 9/11, the goodwill our legislators shared was gone and things have, in my view, gotten even more bitter than they were before. I think that too many politicians are afraid to *not* toe the party line, on both sides.
4) I actually have this notion that it might work the other way around. The economy will recover and that will make things like this bill easier to pass because the federal coffers will be less strained. We’ll see, but I’m an optimist.
5) Very much so. He’s implied it, but he needs to come right out and say “Enough about this guy. Before you guys made a big deal out of it, no one outside of his home district had even heard of him. He’s not an issue, he’s a distraction. Eyes on the ball, people!”

Pettit and I chatted today at work, and we made some interesting discussion. He’s a small-ish government guy whereas I’m more a meduim-ish government guy, which is an empirical difference that, as Pettit observed, will lead to moral divergence.

With that said, I told Pettit I think there is a doomsday scenario that is motivating some of the opposition (particularly the hilarious ones that follow Glenn Beck) but there are some solid solid arguements and worries here. The bigger ones (for me at least) were: the VA sucks ass and is that an example to expect, insurance policies would be faster to reform with less hassle and would ease a lot of this process, and tort reform is a major compounding issue.

So, do we fix a busted joint with one surgery or many? And how do we sort Tort reform?

VA Healthcare is actually the highest rated health care system in the US. Any system has horror stories associated with it and VA stories tend to be overblown. Ignore the stories and look at the statistics and rankings. We’ll be in excellent shape if we all got VA level care.

http://www1.va.gov/OPA/pressrel/pressrelease.cfm?id=893

My grandfather is a WWII vet, my mother and father both Viet Nam veterans. They have all been exceedingly happy with the care they’ve received, though my grandfather is much more versed in it. He goes almost monthly for this reason or that. I agree with Le Turtle that if we could get all the uninsured THAT kind of coverage, we’d have something to be proud of. Alas, that would be a bureaucracy with nearly unparalled scope.