My hometown (and alma mater) is in a Salon.com article, And it's on health care reform, I couldn't be more proud Options

[mipadi]

Arlen Specter visited my hometown to hold a town hall meeting on health care reform at the local university (where I went to undergrad) recently. Here's the article.

It's central Pennsylvania, so naturally most of the people were afraid of godless socialism and blind support-our-troops sentiments. Oh, and they completely buy into the "government-sponsored death panel" myth (without realizing that the US already has death panels in the form of large insurance companies). Sigh...

[brooklyneast05]

man if i hear one more person screaming and carrying on about death panels i don't know what i'll do. it's like so many other issues where it'd be nice if we could just all calm down, stop yelling lies and rumors, and talk about the actual reform.


i don't think there is anyway to shut these kind of people up though. there is still plenty of people discussing obama's birth certificate and whether or not he was sworn in with the qur'an. they don't even wanna believe the truth i don't think.

[hypnotique]

I saw a news clip from that town hall meeting and wanted to punch about 80 percent of the people who spoke for their rudeness and just pointless bitching.

</rant>

[Teesa]

I LOVE JOAN WALSH. whenever she's on hardball, especially if there's another conservative commentator, i'm like GO JOAN!

anyways, these town hall debates are so ridiculous. obama is coming to colorado this saturday and i hope people aren't going to be complete crazies. to lighten up the mood a little, jon stewart made fun of those crazies and had a little panel himself.

[brooklyneast05]

[Teesa]

lol you'd like this too

[hypnotique]

lol you'd like this too

I love that man soooo much.

[Teesa]

^ME TOO
and some more of jon stewart. he addresses arlen specter at the end, but the whole thing is so funny :)

[coconutter]

One of the town hall meetings had people screaming "we want bush!" i luled

[kryogenix]

You know what? I'm glad people are pissed. They should be. People have been silently accepting all the shit from the government for decades. Hopefully the anger will continue, and we can see some real change, not phony change that we can believe in but have yet to see.

[brooklyneast05]

yeah but it'd be nice if people were pissed over something that's really proposed instead of being pissed over like concentration camps and claims that old people will be forced to be killed in order to save money.

end of life planning =/= taking em out back and shooting them!

[kryogenix]

No, people are being pissed over real shit, it's just those that are for big government focus only the most radical protesters and try to paint them as the main force behind the protests in an effort to try to discredit those who are against Obama.

Yes, elderly people will end up dying. That's what happens when health care is rationed; some people end up not having access to it and they die while waiting for it. No, it's not people being taken out back and being shot, but it's also not the wonderful and wise government doing the old people a favor.

It's disingenuous to just write off these protests as a bunch of inbred redneck conspiracy theorists. The tea parties were real. The town hall protests were real. The government needs to wake up. They can't ignore the fact that people are unhappy with them for much longer.

[mipadi]

Yes, elderly people will end up dying. That's what happens when health care is rationed; some people end up not having access to it and they die while waiting for it. No, it's not people being taken out back and being shot, but it's also not the wonderful and wise government doing the old people a favor.

It's not like health care isn't rationed now -- it's just that right now, health care is rationed by a large corporation that is more interested in making profits, and thus has a vested interest in collecting payments but refusing to pay for treatments.

[kryogenix]

It's not like health care isn't rationed now -- it's just that right now, health care is rationed by a large corporation that is more interested in making profits, and thus has a vested interest in collecting payments but refusing to pay for treatments.

You mean it would be any different when run by the government? Politicians are merely more interested in votes rather than profit. The key difference though is that companies have to make decisions based on the money they have available. The government can merely borrow and spend as they please, or print money in order to buy those votes.

Healthcare is made up of goods and services, and the only limit on its availability should be the patient's ability to pay.

I trust the businessman more than I trust the politician. If I am unhappy with a company, I can simply cease paying for their goods or services and look for an alternative. With politicians, barring a recall or a revolution, I'm stuck with them until their term is over.

[mipadi]

Healthcare is made up of goods and services, and the only limit on its availability should be the patient's ability to pay.

Maybe that would be fair if health care was affordable, but as it stands now, even people with jobs (but no health insurance) can barely afford a simple doctor's visit sometimes. And a big part of the problem is due to the way health insurance is handled.

Take a standard operation, for example. Let's assume it costs the hospital $10,000, but luckily the patient has insurance. The hospital goes to the insurance company and says, "That operation cost $10,000, please pay us." The insurance company says, "The patient has a $500 co-pay. That means we owe you $9500 and the patient owes $500. But we're only going to pay you $3000. Take it or leave it." And the hospital has to take it because they have agreements with said insurance company, and the insurance company wields a lot more power anyway.

Another patient comes along. He has the same operation with the same cost. But he has no insurance, so he has to pay the full $10,000.

The issue here is that the operation might cost less if insured paid the full amount they should be paying, but because insured patients end up paying under-cost for the operation, the uninsured patients have to make up for the loss. This issue happens in everything ranging from operations to prescription medications to a simple doctor's visit.

Is that fair?

Furthermore, I can't, in good conscious, view health care in terms of goods and services. We have a moral duty as a society to take care of our sick -- and it's beneficial to take care of sick people, anyway.

I trust the businessman more than I trust the politician. If I am unhappy with a company, I can simply cease paying for their goods or services and look for an alternative. With politicians, barring a recall or a revolution, I'm stuck with them until their term is over.

The only people I trust less than politicians are businessmen, especially in regards to health care. Again, health insurance companies have a vested interest in taking in payments but not paying for medical procedures. Business is good if you take in money but never render the service which the customer was paying for! And health care providers make more profits when people are sick all the time.

Furthermore, health insurance isn't the sort of thing in which you can "look for an alternative". It's not as easy as buying shoes.