I have been reading the comments on your blogs, and it appears to me that a lot of sane people want universal health care, or at least Obama’s public option while a lot if insane people oppose that. For example, ref your blog post at http://newsroom.blogs.cnn.com/2009/07/19/5007/.
I don’t see how CNN in all of its programming can fail to report that most of the objection to the public option, government health care, or Obama’s plan — whatever you want to call it — is illiterate or hateful, and most of the people who want it are presenting good sound arguments with true numbers and issues, and nobody at CNN is saying anything about that difference.
Instead, you put up an iReport challenge that asks if I have a friend of a different political bent and can I send in a video of how we get along. Excuse me? We need people to pay attention, not just give 3 minutes to this side and 3 to that one and fluff it off.
Doesn’t CNN have someone who can at least read the comments and compare and contrast the opinions? Do we have to believe that one opinion is as good as another when one is supported by facts and concern and the other is just misconception and hate? What are we supposed to do as a nation when the conversation is reduced to simple-minded disagreement at the level where the ideas come together for reporting? If the public option fails, CNN will be much to blame for not truthfully reporting the opinion that comes in to them and giving perspective on the debate.
Some interested intelligent people need to be weighing in right now on this issue, because a good idea is in danger of falling to ignorance and bigotry and hate. If it does, the lives of many people will fall right along with it. People who have a forum need to speak out.
– Sarah
Posted in Health Care
These are the 30 Republican senators who voted against the Franken anti-rape legislation. And yes, McCain of Arizona is on the list:
Once in a while there is something good that comes about because I have been around a long time, like becoming eligible for Medicare. It appears also that when I was in school in 1957 there was a strain of flu similar to H1N1, and people exposed to that one are immune to H1N1. Whether or not I was exposed to flu in 1957 would be one of the many things I have trouble remembering…
Posted in Reality
Open letter to Barack Obama:
For a long time now we have heard the rantings of fringe elements, the voices of hate and fear that have been gathered into one loud rant against the public option. I think it is time to take the offered compromise off he table and announce the dropping of all age and disability requirements for Medicare. The system is in place. People want it. People need it.
I admire your commitment to having everyone at the table, but that commitment assumes that the people at the table are people, not purchased pawns of ideologies and financial interests that cannot by prior agreement that they put above their legislative duties say anything but “no.” The Republicans have never been at the table. The insurance companies have never been at the table. They have not considered reason or bargained in good faith. They have not bargained at all. They have just continued their rant.
If the public option is off the table, then we need to step back to single payer. That is the way you have to bargain with people who do not recognize a reasonable compromise.
Posted in Politics
Congressman Boucher here in southwest Virginia’s 9th District has brought many good things to our area of the state over the years, not the least of which is the technology that we enjoy connecting our schools and colleges. He is a good representative for our region of the Commonwealth, and his service to citizens in the region is undisputed.
In the health care debate, he and I are on different sides with regard to the public option. That said, I appreciate his attention to keeping children in the insurance loop. Here is a quote from his recent e-mail to me:
… we must ensure that low-income children enrolled in Medicaid and the Children?s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) do not have their health care benefits reduced. Children enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP often receive specialized care, and we must ensure that children, particularly special-needs children, continue to receive the health care services they need.
During consideration of the health reform legislation in the House Energy and Commerce Committee, I supported an amendment which ensures that no children would be moved from CHIP to the new Health Insurance Exchange until the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) determines that their coverage will not be reduced as a result of the transition.
I also strongly support provisions to reduce the administrative burdens required for enrollment in Medicaid and CHIP to ensure that eligible, unenrolled children are able to sign up for these vital programs.
I very much appreciate Congressman Boucher’s initiatives to protect our children, especially our special needs children. This is critical to health care reform.
I am asking him also to consider supporting the public option to cover all children and their working parents. Many working parents are excluded from insurance or unable to afford their employer’s plans. Parents are very important in children’s lives, and their health needs to be protected as well. Health care is not a commodity to be traded for profit, but is essential infrastructure for a productive economy.
I am still hoping that Congressman Boucher and Senator Warner both will support President Obama’s idea of the public option. I believe that insurance companies and health care providers will adapt to the new economic environment with a public option and continue to thrive and make money. People on the other hand cannot adapt to not having health care.
Posted in Politics
I have talked to many people out here in the still-pretty-red end of Virginia who took and wore the blue ribbons I gave out in support of the public option. In the Ninth District, Congressman Rick Boucher opposes the public option. He invited panelists who have vested interests in the for-profit system to stand by him at his town hall. I am sure that was easier for him than speaking on his own to people who voted for him who will continue to be exploited for profit if the public option fails.
The opponents of the public option are loud, but they are not representative of the general population. Most of them are coached or paid to equate support for the public option with support for illegal immigration, abortion, and (thank you, Lyndon LaRouche website, Sarah Palin, Chuck Grassley) death panels.
The great majority of people who need the public option work every day. There are a lot of us, doing our jobs and counting on the people we elected to stand up for us. We can’t come to a rally because we have to go to work. There is a privileged, sponsored, well-orchestrated few of the bus people and Tea Party crowd. That is why their sponsors have to train them and bus them around.
We need the public option. We need single payer in America, but if a strong public option is as close as we can get, we want that.
People like Jim Moran (Virginia, Eighth District) are listening to the real voices of America and not the bus people and tea party brigade. They are making hard decisions and they are committed to finding a way to get what people need. They are holding true to the principle that government should be representative of the people, not sponsored by a corporation.
Posted in Politics
Sam Youngman on “The Hill” in an article titled “White House insists it wants bipartisan health bill” reported:
Some Democrats want the administration to use special budget reconciliation rules that could allow a healthcare reform bill to move through the Senate with only 51 votes. That would negate the need for Republican support.
But of course the Republicans have a good reason to oppose that:
Former President George W. Bush used reconciliation rules to move tax cuts in 2001 and 2003. Republicans have argued using the rules to reform healthcare would be different because of the scope of the legislation.
Do they mean it would affect more people, and some of them would not be millionaires?
Posted in Politics
Life in the Third Layer 