Comments Posted By michael reynolds
Displaying 181 To 190 Of 839 Comments
THOUGHTS ON THE PASSAGE OF HEALTH CARE REFORM
The emergence of Rush Limbaugh, Fox News and even this blog are all results of technological advances.
I don't really have a comment, I just enjoy savoring the stupid.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 8.11.2009 @ 19:27
And here comes #14 above with the Republican response:
When the debate is on the size of and food to be served in the extremination camps, there is no basis for honorable barter.
And then we have #23:
Or, we could say “Are you an adult living with muscular dystrophy who can’t get nursing care because ‘budgets are tight for everyone’, and Sheila Jackson-Lee needs a private jet?”
Um, what?
Want to know why Democrats are running the government? Can you guess why Obama is still polling in the mid-50's and the GOP is running about even with used car dealers?
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 8.11.2009 @ 18:13
Again, Busboy makes excellent points. Trimming the fat is exactly what the GOP could have done. But that would have required them to act like adults.
Instead they turned the party over to Glenn Beck, Michelle Bachman, Rush Limbaugh and turned the laughable leaders of the House and Senate into acolytes of certifiable loons.
Are you an adult living with muscular dystrophy who can't get nursing care because the CEO of your health insurer needs a private jet? Well too damned bad, pal, the GOP does not give a damn. The GOP is focused on destroying the president and doesn't really have time for you and your so-called need not to die helpless in your own filth.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 8.11.2009 @ 10:32
Busboy just pwned you, as they say on the internets, Rick.
You don't know anything about this issue. All you have on offer are ideological platitudes. You don't really like to engage on the specifics because you sense that if you did you'd be with us and not with the GOP.
What's your solution to pre-existing coverage Rick? Is it, "screw kids with CP?" Is it, "to hell with a battered woman who now can't get care?"
I doubt it. That's your party's position, but you're not enough of a douche to express actual indifference to real people who may suffer or die because of your party's devotion to destroying Obama.
So you never engage on the issues, you offer blah, blah, blah GOP talking points brought to you by the Insurance industry and the usual crap about how large a bill is.
We're right. You're wrong. And that's why we're winning.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 8.11.2009 @ 09:59
220 yea votes.
Now to the Senate.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 7.11.2009 @ 22:15
TMLutas:
Good lord, if anyone ever needs an example of Republican idiocy on this topic it's your comment comparing Romania and the United States.
That's right: we're going to become Romania.
Not France, Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Finland, Japan, Canada or Australia. No, our future is Romania.
Yes. That makes perfect sense.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 7.11.2009 @ 16:34
TMLutas:
The only reason I can incorporate and thus -- maybe -- get insurance, is because government, in the form of the State of California, has mandated it by law.
And really, spare me the "little Google goes a long way" bullshit. My time is valuable. It's more efficient for me to pay a lawyer than to give up work time. It's money wasted whether it's my time or a lawyer's time, just as it would be wasted money whether I had to do the accounting or used my accountant.
The many groups you imagine will offer me insurance are baloney. They tend to offer policies with too low a cap to do me any good. A quarter mil cap isn't going to do it if my wife gets Alzheimers.
And finally, yes, I understand that insurance companies are only doing what they do best: pursue profit at all costs. Which is precisely why I like the government getting involved. Because I don't really want to trust my life or my kid's lives to people whose only moral standard is self-interest.
The one person whose medical care I don't have to worry about his my father: he is covered by the government in the form of the VA. The lousy socialist.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 7.11.2009 @ 16:30
It's not narrowing or taking away my choices.
My choices have been narrowed and taken away by the free market. I'm self-employed, so I have to get my own health insurance. Something I have been unable to do because I've committed the sins of being 1) old and 2) taking Zocor.
My income, my lifestyle, my kid's college, they are all in danger because your precious private insurers refuse to cover me as an individual.
So I've had to form a corporation and try to use that as a work-around. That has cost me thousands of dollars. It has cost me many, many productive hours. It is still costing me time and money and I'm not there yet.
I'm not even getting to the cost of health insurance, I'll pay what's necessary and fortunately have the means to do so. But I cannot get coverage.
I am hardly alone in this. Millions of us are denied coverage and left at risk of instant bankruptcy so that health insurance execs can fly around in private jets.
So please don't tell me my liberty will be impinged. My only "liberty" right now is the liberty to lose everything in an instant.
The current system is an atrocity the evils of which are concealed by the fact that employers bear them and pass along the pain in depressed hiring and depressed wages. If it were up to me I'd have a single payer system and to hell with Aetna, Blue Cross and the rest of these criminal organizations with their rescisions, refusals, deliberate stalling and time wasting, absurd paperwork and utter dishonesty, all in the service of profit.
Until you have been out in the market trying to deal with these people one-on-one you have no idea what is going on.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 7.11.2009 @ 13:01
I'm with Modulo. I think this is much ado about very little. Two years from now no one will even remember why people were so hysterical. The right wing's reaction has been just weird, a tale told by idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
You haven't read the bill or don't know what's in it. The level of interference in people's lives will be astounding - shocking. It's not about health insurance or even "health care" like going to a doctor or hospital. It is the dozens and dozens of new agencies, board's, and departments promulgating thousands of regulations that will seek to control - benignly or not - the behavior of Americans on a scale that was never imagined by anyone even a generation ago.
Why so sanguine in the face of this onslaught? I thought you were something of a libertarian.
It's about narrowing or taking away choices. If that isn't anti-liberty, I don't know what is.
ed.
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 7.11.2009 @ 12:22
THE HOPELESS BANALITY OF THE BLOGOSPHERE
Rick, you might find this interesting:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kamran-pasha/a-muslim-soldiers-view-fr_b_348973.html
Comment Posted By michael reynolds On 6.11.2009 @ 23:04
