You have Medicare for chrissakes!! It’s nationalized health insurance and a superior system to this patched together ‘reform’. Medicaid etc. are worse, but they’re already there too. But you have been brainwashed to think that these don’t count, so you need to go looking for some club foot with elephantitis to jam in the door. “Medicare? This is not the foot in the door of public health care you’re looking for.” (jedi handwave)

Well, good thing you aren’t playing the blame game.

But I’m sure if no health care bill passes, you’ll be right here blaming the liberals again. Because it’s always our fault, dontchaknow.

And if the House does pass the Senate bill, a bill you and everyone but Nelson and Lieberman think both sucks and blows, you’ll castigate us all for not saying that the crap sandwich tastes wonderful come November. “It’s better than nothing!” — True, but not a winning campaign slogan, is it?

And by the way, thanks Harry Reid and all you “sensible centrists” for taking reconciliation off the table from the beginning. Boy, imagine if you’d listened to liberals about that. I mean we’d be much worse off than now, right? Why, health care reform might be dying right now if we’d done that. Or, you know, maybe we’d actually have a decent bill instead.

“If you can’t win, don’t try.” “Why negotiate when you can capitulate?” Thanks as always, centrist Dems.

I’ll just take what I want when I want it with as much arrogance and self-entitled swagger as the elite have. I figure if you put on a brave enough face you can get away with anything.

What are the odds you’ll get us to side with you now? I’m just going to get a bag of popcorn and watch you all lose your minds and cheer, just like you cheered as our dreams were shattered and our hopes were destroyed.

You get what you give, and you give what you get.

Give this country a generation or two of shock treatment, all those women suddenly finding that they will have to carry a fetus to term, all those men looking at eigthteen years of child support…And we can go back to the good old days of “visiting an aunt in Kansas City.” Good times, good times…

You’re probably right about the outcome. The problem with shock treatment is the lives damaged or destroyed in the process. I’m never a fan of “let it get worse without trying to make it better” because there are real consequences to letting “it” get worse. For example, our political parties are corrupt, but do you think that the people running around in 2000 saying that there was no difference between Bush and Gore and therefore they were not voting were right?

It’s bizarre to say, “Wouldn’t it be terrible to walk into that buzzsaw?” as we do it, but we seem determined to take that walk.

The consequence of passing the bill will that some people get health insurance, a lot of unwanted children will be born and some women will die. But it’s better than nothing – for you.

Won’t that be fun?

M. York: OMG! They’ve taken our FLAG! We must get it back!

Marty: Haven’t we got another?

Better health care bills CAN be legislated.

Please read page 45 of the health care bill. You won’t have to wait 5 years for the “pre-existing condition” parts of the bill to kick in. You’ll have to wait ninety days.

here

‘Twill be interesting indeed. I do look forward to Citgo pushing pro-Venezuela positions – that will drive the teabaggers (more) insane.

I’ve got a “pre-existing condition” that will put me in a grave before I become eligible for medicare. It’s an easily treatable condition but it’s expensive. I can’t get insurance, and I’m not going to bankrupt my wife and daughter just so I can live a normal lifespan.

This shit is life and death for me, and I really don’t want to hear about why there shouldn’t be a single-page bill, today, in congress that says “Insurance companies shall not deny people based on pre-existing conditions”. No, it wouldn’t help the entire health care system, but it would save lots of lives.

Instead, we have to get this “comprehensive” shit which really means “giveaways to insurance companies”.

Fuck that. The pre-existing conditions parts of the bill before congress doesn’t even kick in for 5 years, during which I should just have “hope”.

Kill this fucking bill instead of “just passing” the Senate version, I say. Start over. What do I care.

No offense, D, but it's MY fucking foot in the door and the cobag Dems, led by Rahm Emmanuel, who are slamming the insurance industry on it, over and over–then making me pay to get it fixed. Tortured metaphor, but it's mine goddammit and I'm sticking with it.

I don't buy all the "it's better than nothing" bull–let's just fucking ban pre-existing conditions and be done with it, since that's everybody's darling in this bill. The rest is pure shit.

Two thoughts (because I care enough to move the cursor two inches to the comment box):

Give this country a generation or two of shock treatment, all those women suddenly finding that they will have to carry a fetus to term, all those men looking at eigthteen years of child support…And we can go back to the good old days of “visiting an aunt in Kansas City.” Good times, good times…

You’re probably right about the outcome. The problem with shock treatment is the lives damaged or destroyed in the process. I’m never a fan of “let it get worse without trying to make it better” because there are real consequences to letting “it” get worse. For example, our political parties are corrupt, but do you think that the people running around in 2000 saying that there was no difference between Bush and Gore and therefore they were not voting were right?

But our corporate overlords will protect us from teabagger excess. I don’t think that business generally thinks much of creationism, for example, and the average megabank I am sure looks askance at the prospect of Christian-style Sharia law. Who knows, Mobil may be willing to shaft the insurance companies and create universal health care since it probably helps their bottom line.

Except that the last generation’s archetypal big corporations, the car companies, actively lobbied against last generation’s health-care reform even though it would have saved them money. Big corps are run by people just as irrational as everyone else. If I though big corps made rational, Galtian choices I would still not trust them, but I wouldn’t be worried that they would pump billions into idiocy. To use your example, I’m worried about a company like Domino’s spending hundreds of millions or billions lobbying for the agenda of the RCC, which is irrational in terms of their bottom line.

Oh sure, but you end too soon. Once we’re all serfs (due to the mechanism through which one corporation siphons money from another), we’ll eventually be absorbed wholly in thrall to a singular corporation. At this point in the the end-game the wars start in earnest. Once basically everyone is too poor to buy anything and your slaves are too beaten and whipped to produce the amounts that you crave you’re just going to have to revert to the old tried and true methods: kill other people to take their shit. Corporate war-making will flourish each with their own army and underclass to supply it and man it.

No, I think the interesting thing here is how, once the cheering and gloating has stopped, the civil war will only accelorate in the GOP. After all, your average Wall Street corporation isn’t interested in the teabaggers, probably actively dislikes the unhinged and thus uncontrollable populism they represent. Peasants with torches and pitchforks: not generally good for business. So, I believe that the bait-and-switch that Frank Thomas described in _What’s the Matter with Kansas_ will likely continue: talk a good line of red meat but never actually toss it to your rabid followers.

Now, abortion may be toast–Mobil probably doesn’t have any particular opinion about it because it doesn’t affect their bottom line. Coors, Domino Pizza and Curves (among others) care desperately however, and loud voices in a vacuum, etc. And in a way it will be a relief to see Roe v Wade go–I am so tired of being held hostage over it, of being told to incrementally give up these rights because I need to prove I’m a good Democrat and “take one for the team.” Fuck that. Give this country a generation or two of shock treatment, all those women suddenly finding that they will have to carry a fetus to term, all those men looking at eigthteen years of child support…And we can go back to the good old days of “visiting an aunt in Kansas City.” Good times, good times…

But our corporate overlords will protect us from teabagger excess. I don’t think that business generally thinks much of creationism, for example, and the average megabank I am sure looks askance at the prospect of Christian-style Sharia law. Who knows, Mobil may be willing to shaft the insurance companies and create universal health care since it probably helps their bottom line.

Sure, we can wave bye-bye to unions, watch every feasible aspect of the federal government will be privatised (but even the prospect of at last being a soldier of fortune won’t get the 101st Keyboardists to join up) and see Social Security destroyed. But we may be starting fewer wars than you might fear, since war may be good for some businesses and not so good for others–one of many fractures that will running through the new overclass.

And, hey, at least we aren’t going to put into FEMA camps: not profitable enough.

Also, I guess the insurers made you choose between losing your house or your life, whereas the banks just made you lose your house, so maybe you’re right that the first did more damage …