Obama Slams Health Care Critics For Spreading "Outlandish Rumors"

[me]

Congressman Mike Rogers' opening statement on Health Care reform in Washington D.C.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G44NCvNDLfc

[Exterminator]

Mike Rogers obviously doesn't have any more of a clue than you do.  What I would love to see happen is that health care reform happens but that those of you who oppose it never see any benefit from it...that would be just.

[me]

Obviously he does he even pointed out the parts he was referring to.  You are only hearing what you want to hear and not paying attention.  Have you ever asked yourself who wrote the bill in the first place, not who introduced it to congress but who wrote it?

[Exterminator]

Obviously he does he even pointed out the parts he was referring to.  You are only hearing what you want to hear and not paying attention.  Have you ever asked yourself who wrote the bill in the first place, not who introduced it to congress but who wrote it?

Certainly not the insurance industry.  If the litmus test for healthcare reform is a perfect solution, it will never happen because there are no perfect solutions.

[Henry Hawk]

Certainly not the insurance industry.  If the litmus test for healthcare reform is a perfect solution, it will never happen because there are no perfect solutions.

But there ARE other solutions that do not require as much gov intervention...the republicans have offered three bills that have been ignored.....they included tort reforms, tax breaks for business to cover employees, private healthcare accounts to just name a few.....so, though there may be NO perfect solutions...there are other solution that should be looked at more seriously.

[Bo D]

But there ARE other solutions that do not require as much gov intervention...the republicans have offered three bills that have been ignored.....they included tort reforms, tax breaks for business to cover employees, private healthcare accounts to just name a few.....so, though there may be NO perfect solutions...there are other solution that should be looked at more seriously.

Here's an opinion of what the Republicans are offering ...

Mr. Steele's Health-Reform Distortions
   
Thursday, August 27, 2009

Michael S. Steele's Aug. 24 op-ed, "Protecting Our Seniors," showed that the Republican National Committee chairman has a great future ahead of him -- as a writer of fiction. His health-care reform column was tethered neither to facts nor reality.

Contrary to Mr. Steele's creative writing exercise, health-reform bills pending in Congress do not ration care, dictate the terms of end-of-life care, enable government to dictate medical decisions or cut Medicare benefits. These are discredited canards designed to scare seniors for partisan, political purposes.

Instead, the health-reform bills would provide significant new benefits for seniors. They would help to close the big gap in prescription drug coverage (the infamous "doughnut hole") for seniors needing multiple medicines; eliminate co-payments and deductibles for preventive care services; extend cost-sharing subsidies for more low-income seniors; and extend the life of the Medicare trust fund by five years.

These are important health-care improvements that seniors will share as our nation moves toward high-quality, affordable health coverage and care for all Americans.

RON POLLACK

Executive Director

Families USA

Washington

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/26/AR2009082603532.html

[Exterminator]

But there ARE other solutions that do not require as much gov intervention...the republicans have offered three bills that have been ignored.....they included tort reforms, tax breaks for business to cover employees, private healthcare accounts to just name a few.....so, though there may be NO perfect solutions...there are other solution that should be looked at more seriously.

Read below, Henry, for an example of one of those jokes you are calling an alternative.  How easily you will jump on anything simply because it was offered by a republican would be almost funny if it weren't so pathetic.  The repubs had every opportunity to offer a solution to the health care problem and every opportunity to get it passed for at least the first half of this decade and they did nothing.  The time has come for them to sit down and shut up and let the people who really want to accomplish something get it done.

[Bo D]

Here's another great article on the Republicans' offerings....

Michael Steele, chairman of the Republican National Committee, this week revealed a secret Republican plan that would end up eliminating all federal farm subsidies; closing down Yellowstone and Yosemite national parks; selling off the interstate highway system; and canceling Head Start, subsidized school lunches and the entire college loan program.

The plan came to light as a result of an op-ed piece this week in The Washington Post in which the party chairman committed the GOP to spending an ever-increasing share of the federal budget, and the national income, on Medicare. When combined with other Republican promises -- to balance the budget, protect defense spending and never, ever raise anyone's taxes -- the inescapable inference is that the government would run out of money for every other domestic program sometime around 2035.

Steele's stunning announcement brings the conservative strategy of "starving the beast" to a new level. Under the guise of protecting the elderly, Republicans hope to realize their dream of eliminating half a dozen Cabinet agencies, firing tens of thousands of government workers and ending government regulation as we know it.

Steele's op-ed was the latest salvo in his party's campaign to defeat President Obama's health-care reform effort at all costs and build public support for a Republican alternative that remains, to this day, a closely held secret. The new Seniors' Health Care Bill of Rights, however, hints at the outlines of the GOP domestic strategy.

Steele promised that under the Republican health plan, runaway Medicare spending would continue unabated. Not only would that mean no cuts in benefits, but it would ensure that reimbursement rates to doctors, hospitals and drugmakers would continue to rise faster than inflation, regardless of how much they earn or how unnecessary or wasteful the services they provide. Any effort to contain future spending growth, Republicans now believe, is nothing more than a "raid" on Medicare, the government-run health plan that Republicans were against before they were for it.

The country's top Republican official also vowed to cut off all federal funding for research to determine what are the most effective treatments for heart disease, cancer, diabetes and even that new scourge, restless leg syndrome. Left unclear was whether he prefers to have such research done by the pharmaceutical and medical-device industries, but one suspects that is the case.

On the issue of end-of-life care, Steele was uncompromising: In a Republican world, no government funds could be used to pay doctors to provide information about living wills, hospices or palliative care, whether seniors and their families ask for it or not.

"Government programs that seem benign at first can become anything but," Steele explained in articulating the new philosophy. Once back in power, look for Republicans to apply the same approach to issues such as flu vaccinations, disaster relief and air traffic control.

According to Steele, Republicans will also seek to outlaw "any effort to ration health care based on age." You don't have to be a lawyer like Steele to understand that would effectively make it a federal crime for any hospital to refuse a heart transplant to a 95-year-old, or for any doctor to refuse to prescribe Viagra to a sexually precocious seventh-grader. Although Steele did not indicate what the penalty would be, he did not rule out the death penalty.

Indeed, Republicans seem determined to preserve the uniquely American system under which health care is rationed today -- on the basis of employment status and ability to pay. According to the respected Institute of Medicine, this market-based approach to rationing has held the number of untimely deaths each year to a mere 18,000 uninsured souls. Thanks to Medicare, all of those victims are younger than 65, but apparently that is the kind of age-based rationing that real Republicans can embrace.

After reading his broadside, one is left wondering exactly what health reform plan Steele thought he was attacking. At one point, Steele claims that Democrats would prevent Americans from keeping their doctors or an insurance plan they like. Later, he warns that government will soon be setting caps on how many heart surgeries could be performed in the United States each year. Where is he getting this stuff? Has the chairman of the Republican Party somehow gotten hold of a top-secret plan for a government takeover of the health-care system that GOP operatives snatched during a break-in at Democratic National Committee headquarters?

If all that sounds spurious and unsubstantiated, it is. And like many of the overstated claims in this column, its purpose is to highlight the lies, distortions and political scare tactics that Steele and other Republicans have used to poison the national debate over health reform.

Have you no shame, sir? Have you no shame?



http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/25/AR2009082503136.html

[Exterminator]

It is apparently difficult to think clearly while tea-bagging.

[Henry Hawk]

The time has come for them to sit down and shut up and let the people who really want to accomplish something get it done.

Tell that to those at the Town Halls who CLEARLY do not want, what the democrats are proposing...

[Bo D]

Tell that to those at the Town Halls who CLEARLY do not want, what the democrats are proposing...

At least that's what they have been told to think.

[Locutus]

At least that's what they have been told to think.

Exactly!  The problem with this whole thing is that rather than letting the evidence and facts craft the discussions and decisions, people are taking conclusions (fed to them by the usual propaganda outlets) and then looking for evidence to support them.

[Henry Hawk]

I say this with all due respect, but you guys are full of shit!!..   These are people from ALL walks of life...who ARE very well informed.....just go to youtube...and look at town halls...they are loaded with REAL people who simply do NOT want a gov controlled healthcare...and THAT is what we are having shoved down our throats.....it is NOT that complicating...nor does anybody HAVE to listen to Rush to get it.

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=townhalls&search_type=&aq=f

[Bo D]

I say this with all due respect, but you guys are full of shit!!..   These are people from ALL walks of life...who ARE very well informed.....just go to youtube...and look at town halls...they are loaded with REAL people who simply do NOT want a gov controlled healthcare...and THAT is what we are having shoved down our throats.....it is NOT that complicating...nor does anybody HAVE to listen to Rush to get it.

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=townhalls&search_type=&aq=f

Is it my imagination or am I seeing a few of the same faces over and over in those videos? And I swear I've seen them before somewhere .....

Wait!  I remember those guys! They were bit actors in several movies I've seen! Anything for a buck.

[Henry Hawk]

Is it my imagination or am I seeing a few of the same faces over and over in those videos? And I swear I've seen them before somewhere .....

Wait!  I remember those guys! They were bit actors in several movies I've seen! Anything for a buck.

they probably look familiar to you, because they are EVERYWHERE....your neighbors, co-workers, accountant, plumbers, teachers, military personel.....they are the ones who are not too excited about turning their perfectly good healthcare plans over to the Government....these are the ones, who reflect the dropping approval ratings of this POTUS....they are real people.