Saturday, August 15, 2009

President Barack Obama's Op-Ed in the New York Times

The fight is on, POTUS has awaken...health care fight is on....

OUR nation is now engaged in a great debate about the future of health care in America. And over the past few weeks, much of the media attention has been focused on the loudest voices. What we haven’t heard are the voices of the millions upon millions of Americans who quietly struggle every day with a system that often works better for the health-insurance companies than it does for them.

These are people like Lori Hitchcock, whom I met in New Hampshire last week. Lori is currently self-employed and trying to start a business, but because she has hepatitis C, she cannot find an insurance company that will cover her. Another woman testified that an insurance company would not cover illnesses related to her internal organs because of an accident she had when she was 5 years old. A man lost his health coverage in the middle of chemotherapy because the insurance company discovered that he had gallstones, which he hadn’t known about when he applied for his policy. Because his treatment was delayed, he died.

I hear more and more stories like these every single day, and it is why we are acting so urgently to pass health-insurance reform this year. I don’t have to explain to the nearly 46 million Americans who don’t have health insurance how important this is. But it’s just as important for Americans who do have health insurance.

There are four main ways the reform we’re proposing will provide more stability and security to every American.

First, if you don’t have health insurance, you will have a choice of high-quality, affordable coverage for yourself and your family — coverage that will stay with you whether you move, change your job or lose your job.

Second, reform will finally bring skyrocketing health care costs under control, which will mean real savings for families, businesses and our government. We’ll cut hundreds of billions of dollars in waste and inefficiency in federal health programs like Medicare and Medicaid and in unwarranted subsidies to insurance companies that do nothing to improve care and everything to improve their profits. read more here....

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I'm sorry, but I am not convinced you and the rest of the government wouldn't make a massive hash of it all. I don't want to pay for a government run health care system or have the government have anything to do with health care.
You don't want to pay to save lives, but you're A-O-phucking-Kay with funding the largest military force in the world. Have you actually lived outside of this backasswards place? You do realize that there are very successful government run health care programs in other countries from which we can learn a lot? Look north. Look south. Look east.

If you still can't find a good example, take your pessimism and your complaints to the highest place you can find, jump, and land ass first on a tree.

So damned tired of stupid ass people...
@Eric - With the assumption that you pay taxes, you already pay in some way for Medicare, Medicaid, and the VA system.

Your argument that "the government wouldn't make a massive hash of it all." is very weak considering there is already some government run insurance options - you not trusting the government does not say anything about what's being proposed. The discussion isn't even about a "government run health care system" - we're talking about a public option to purchase insurance for the uninsured.

The label of "Government Run Health Care" is disingenuous. We're talking about creating a self-sustaining, affordable, non-profit health insurance option for all Americans that need or want to purchase it - government isn't going to run health care but they'll assure that everyone can afford to be sick without creating undue economic hardship for its citizens.

Every time you hear "Government Run Health Care" it's usually just another attempt to stifle any critical thought into what's going on.

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