Obama Says ‘Stars May Be Aligned’ This Time for Health Care Reform

How about CIVIL RIGHTS reform? Repeal DADT, Obama! You got yours and now everyone else is on their own, right?
He was raised privileged and he never had to deal with civil rights issues, he only benefitted from their remedies. In spite of his race, he neither understands, nor cares about true equal rights for all American citizens.

‘He was raised privileged’: paul
Paul, if you are actually referring to Obama’s early life as privileged, you have just posted the most inane thing I have ever seen on Jake’s blog, and there’s been a truck load of dumb stuff by all sides.
Just out of morbid curiosity what would you call G. Bush’s upbringing?
would you say they’re equal?

posted by Paul: ” In spite of his race”
and exactly, what race is that?

This is from the nation’s most accurate pollster:
“For nearly four-out-of-five U.S. voters, the problem is not their unwillingness to pay taxes. It’s their elected representatives’ refusal to cut the size of government.
“Seventy-seven percent (77%) of voters say the bigger problem in the United States is the unwillingness of politicians to control government spending. Just 14% say the problem is that voters are unwilling to pay enough in taxes, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.”

The teleprompter isnt helping him on this so he’s consulting the stars. What have we done???

“the market allows the players to charge unrealistically high prices for just about everything.”
A competitive free market allows no such thing. There is very little competition, and very little consumer choice, in health care–totally as a result of government intervention.
Every place on planet earth where government becomes the provider, it controls costs by rationing care. And choice is eliminated altogether.

good comment: “The teleprompter isnt helping him on this so he’s consulting the stars.”
(he covers up the cross at christian facilities when on tv, but uses “new age astrology” terms for a SERIOUS matter)

“Dewde” – I do love the way you partisans try to change the subject to periphery issues rather than the actual point that you cannot defend.
We’re not talking about the idiotic George Bush. Don’t know if you got the memo, but he’s retired.
Obama NEVER experienced the effects of institutional bigotry and unequal laws for himself, as opposed to other citizens like myself in 21st century America.
I, on the other hand am discriminated EVERY DAY of my life by the US government – the same one he runs now. (again, check your memos)
As a homosexual, I do not have the same rights as Obama. I cannot marry my boyfriend. I cannot join the US military. Obama is fine with these things.
Every day I am told that he is too busy to deal with EQUAL rights for gays, and every day I see that he time for every other issue you can think of.
Time to make NCAA picks, time to conduct Easter egg hunts, time to go to basketball games and drink beer, time to meet with the Phillies, time to meet with the Steelers, time to carefully choose just the right purebred dog.
He even has time to worry about foreign terrorists in Gitmo and whether their rights are being protected according to the US Constitution!! People whose life’s goal is to murder American citizens!
But no time for equal rights for gay Americans. That is absolutely disgusting.

But I never heard him talk about it in eight years as much: Fascist Hyena
maybe you should have had your hearing checked by a doctor, or paid attention more

What makes any sane person think that the government can manage health care. Look at what the government has done to Social Security, Medicare, Public Housing, and now AIG. With this kind of a track record they have proven that they aren’t even capable of successfully operating the local burger stand. To start with where will the money come from and not cause an increase to the government debt any more than it is? In his entire 8 years in office Bush increased the debt of the US Government by roughly 4.8 Trillion dollars. In his first 60 days in office Obama has increased the debt of the government by 412.8 Billion dollars. At this rate he will increase the debt of the Government by 2.4 Trillion dollars in his first year alone and 9.9 Trillion dollars by the end of his 4 year term in office. Since the debt owed by the Government was 10.6 Trillion dollars when he took office an additional 9.9 Trillion will almost double the debt in just 4 years. This is money that the Government does not have. It was recently reported that the interest alone on the debt is nearing $1 Billion a day, that $365 Billion a year which when you look at it in those terms is a very large chunk of the federal budget. At this rate there is absolutely no money available for health care. Get real and realize that it is time to stop spending and do what should have been done long ago, cut all spending which is not specifically authorized in the constitution. There is NO money for healthcare, there is NO money for Cap and Trade, there is NO money for education reform or any other dreams in the upcoming budget. Look at what the government has done to Social Security, Medicare, Public Housing, and now AIG.
As far as the federal government cost of health care to its own employees you can Google FEHB and see what the different plans available to federal employees are. It should be noted that these are the same exact plans which are available to our elected federal officials. The government does not pay 100% of the employee health insurance and the portion they pay is considered a benefit in lieu of wages just like most major employers who provide a health benefit to their employees. Usually the larger the company (more employees) the more likely is that they provide the health insurance rather than paying the larger wage as most employees would rather have access to the health insurance instead of the small increase in wages. For an employee in California with a family looking at an HMO (California Health Net, High Option) this amounts to roughly $4.40 an hour. For the same family in California looking at a FFS (Blue Cross Blue Shield Service Benefit Plan, Standard Family) this also amounts to $4.40 an hour. Small business’s which have fewer employees cannot afford to offer this type of benefit to their employees without having to make drastic cuts (layoffs) or drastically raise the price of their finished product/service both of which will probably cause the business to fail in time due to lack of profit. The federal employee still has to pay to participate in the insurance ($292 a month for the HMO and $357 a month for the FFS) so the government does not provide 100% of the insurance to the government employee. Probably the best that the government could do for health care would be to somehow expand the FEHB type of insurance for the general public to participate in but with no government funding for the general public. You have to remember that the federal employee is receiving his government share of the insurance funding as part of his wage and benefit package and performing labor in return, the general public would provide no benefit to the government for any government funding of their health care. Perhaps another question you may want to ask yourself is how much would I pay for healthcare insurance? Would you pay $1055.00 per month to be able to partake of the HMO I used as an example? Would you be willing to pay $1120.00 per month to be able to participate in the FFS I used as an example? If yes then maybe the answer is not government paid healthcare but the government allowing all citizens to participate in their healthcare programs at their own expense (they would have to pay the total of what the government pays for their employee plus what the employee pays). I would imagine that there are some plans which would be cheaper but they might not offer the same level of health care as a more costly one. If this was the way they go then it would be up to each individual to carefully compare costs and benefits between plans before making possibly a wrong choice.
When Medicare was created in 1965, benefits were relatively limited and retirees paid a substantial percentage of the costs of their own care. In 1965, Congressional actuaries expected Medicare to cost $3.1 billion by 1970. In 1969, that estimate was revised to $5 billion, and it actually came in at $6.8 billion. Things have gotten worse since, and Medicare today costs $455 billion and rising. Medicaid was intended as a last resort for the poor but now covers one-third of all long-term care expenses in the U.S. — that is, it has become a middle-class subsidy for aging parents of the Baby Boomers. Its annual bill is $227 billion, and so far this fiscal year is rising by 17%. Schip was pitched a decade ago as a safety net for poor kids, Schip is now open to families that earn up to 300% of the poverty level, or $63,081 for a family of four. Any new federal health plan will inevitably follow the same trajectory, no matter how much Senators might claim they’ve guaranteed otherwise. The Lewin Group consultants estimate that 119 million people who now have private insurance could potentially be captured by the government under the Obama public option. This is on top of the 90 million already in Medicare or Medicaid. This would guarantee a spending explosion that would over time lift federal outlays as a share of GDP into the upper 20% range or higher. This health-care debate isn’t like the “stimulus” bill, which was largely about short-term spending and deficits. This one is about whether to turn 17% of the U.S. economy entirely and permanently into the arms of the government.
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, during the phase-in period of Social Security, Congress was able to grant generous benefit increases because the system had perpetual short-run surpluses. Congressional amendments to Social Security took place in even numbered years (election years) because the bills were politically popular, but by the late 1970s, this era was over. For the next three decades, projections of Social Security’s finances would show large, long-term deficits, and in the early 1980s, the program flirted with immediate insolvency. From this point on, amendments to Social Security would take place in odd numbered years (years that were not election years) because Social Security reform now meant tax increases and benefit reductions. When revenues exceed expenditures, as they have in most years, the excess is invested in special series, non-marketable U.S. Government bonds, thus the Social Security Trust Fund indirectly finances the federal government’s general purpose deficit spending. It is also interesting to note that the Supreme Court has established that no one has any legal right to Social Security benefits. The Court decided, in Flemming v. Nestor (1960), that “entitlement to Social Security benefits is not a contractual right”. In simple terms, the decision means that since no one has any legal right to Social Security benefits, Congress can cut or eliminate benefits at any time.
The Trust Fund is regarded by some as an accounting trick which holds no economic significance. Others argue that it has specific legal significance because the Treasury securities it holds are backed by the “full faith and credit” of the U.S. government, which has an obligation to repay its debt. It is important to note, however, that while the Treasury guarantees the interest and principal payments it makes to the Social Security Trust Fund, the benefit payments made from the Social Security Trust Fund to American retirees have no guarantee at all. The Social Security Administration’s authority to make benefit payments as granted by Congress extends only to its current revenues and existing Trust Fund balance, i.e., redemption of its holdings of Treasury securities. Therefore, Social Security’s ability to make full payments once annual benefits exceed revenues depends in part on the federal government’s ability to make good on the bonds that it has issued to the Social Security trust funds. The federal government’s ability to repay Social Security, in turn, is contingent on fiscal policies taken today (which have tended to increase deficits and the percent of the budget spent on interest and principal payments) and in the future. Once again in simple terms if you want Social Security then the government is going to have to reduce its debt (lower spending to pay off debt) or raise the FICA taxes to ensure that there is enough coming in during the current year to cover the benefits which are to be paid. Raising the FICA taxes is probably not the way to go as in the coming years there are more people who will be receiving Social Security than there will be people paying the taxes which means that the government has to stop spending on all of their dream programs that they are now trying to pass. Bottom line is the Government does not have this kind of money and there is no way they can get this kind of money without a large tax increases on the entire population.

Obama’s star gazing, Hollywood included, is what has this countery headed in reverse. Obama is a penniless fool as it is, and SS, Medicare and other vital programs remain unfunded and unfixed. Obama is spending the next generation into oblivia. The Dems are in total power, and look what we have. A big steming pile . . .

Universal Govenment Run Healthcare will work just as well as Prohibition did!

Bush was born with a silver foot in his mouth and Obama wasn’t.

“Had we allowed GM or Chrysler simply to liquidate that would be a huge anti-stimulus on the economic as a whole and could have dragged us even deeper into recession or even depression. Ultimately I think GM is going to be a strong company and we’re going to be pulling out as soon as the economy recovers and they have completed their restructuring.”
Yeah, sure. Cancel all my debts and stiff all my creditors and I’ll be strong too.
Does anyone else notice that only the unions are making out here and everyone else is getting it in the back side?

Folks I think you may be getting health care refrom mixed up with spending and tax revenue. Health care reform must focus on some of the following:
1. reducing errors and omissions that kill about 98,000 citizens per year
2. moving from sick care to well care, after all sick care or “fix it when it breakes” is inconsistent with “preventative maintenance” or well care
3. we have more commercials that are drivers for sick care then we have for well care, it should be one for one
4. we punish citizens who have a catistrophic health problem, some of them become bankrupt
5. we punish citizens with pre-existing conditions, they can’t get insurance and many employers can not hire them
6. small business is droping the health care benefit at the rate of 4.5 % per year
7. insurance companies have reserves that far exceed what is required, they could give it back if the gov. supported a shared risk pool and all insurance companies were required to share the risk
8. the average Joe with a family of four only earns, rural America, about $27K per year and currently has an effective tax rate of 30%. Many corporations pay a lot less. And the average Joe, if they are trying to take care of a parent who has dimentia is facing a yearly outlay, on average, of $72K for 24X7 care. To make matters worse the average Joe is paying for health care at about $10K per year, given his employer is a small business and they dropped Joe’s coverage, so that, they could remain competitive. So the average Joe and others need health care reform both to stay solvent and to receive some form of quality of care that delivers value.
9. the cost of medication for Joe is three to five times higher then his counterpart in Mexico, Canada and in other parts of the world.
These are just a few of the issues related to health care reform. If we need to pay for it then tax drug usage, that is, after we make it possible to control it. We have been spending $10 to $20 billion for years, since Nixon, and we haven’t stopped it. Look at our attempt in Afganistan. When we went in, we were told that the output of opium was way down, now the crop is the biggest in the world. Something is very wrong. We need to fix health care now!

I haven’t heard a thing about the people on Medicare who live on a fixed income and can’t afford “quality” care or many times can’t dfind a doctor who accepts the little that Medicare pays them.
I wonder why ? I don’t believe that Obama thinks that seniors are worth saving. We take Social Security from THEIR private “piggy bank” leaving the government to take less. If seniors wer gone, Social Security funds go back into the pot. He has only talked about “working people” and since many of us are retired and don’t work where does that put us?
On the bottom, as usual. He is peddling socialized medicine, don’t fool yourself. We don’t need that in America – we need insurer’s to stop being greedy and work with the insured they coverto make premiums easier and lower to be paid.

Astrology and politics have other links throughout history. Maybe this is why we had to repair the Hubble.. to keep up on the healthcare reform forecast…
Remember, the SmarmMeister quipped about Nancy Reagan’s belief in the supernatural.. he probably needs to drop the ‘star’ thing, before it comes back to bite him.

Just what everyone needs, “Health Care Reform”. In government-speak, that means another huge bureaucracy on top of what we have now, with maybe a quarter million more tax-paid paper shufflers, and the extra cost that goes along with all of that will be added to what we pay now. By the way, this is the same “government” who, after 233 years of trying, can just barely get the mail delivered on a good day.

WHATEVER THE FEDS HAVE SPONSORED, EXCEPT FOR MAYBE THE MILITARY, HAS BEEN A DISASTER. WHY SHOULD A GOV RUN HEALTH CARE SYSTEM BE ANY DIFFERENT?? ONCE IT”S IN PLACE,MAYBE WE COULD HAVE A LOTTERY LIKE THEY DO IN CANADA IN WHICH THE WINNER GETS MOVED UP THE HEALTH CARE WAIT LIST!! CANADA’S FOUNDER OF CANADA’S SOCIALIZED MEDICINE HAS PUBLICLY STATED THAT THE SYSTEM IS A FAILURE AND HE VERY MUCH REGRETS GETTING INVOLVED WITH IT.

A woman in a hot air balloon realized she was lost. She lowered her altitude and spotted a man in a boat below. She shouted to him, “Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don’t know where I am.”
The man consulted his portable GPS and replied, “You’re in a hot air balloon, approximately 30 feet above a ground elevation of 2,346 feet above sea level. You are at 31 degrees, 14.97 minutes north latitude and 100 degrees, 49.09 minutes west longitude.”
She rolled her eyes and said, “You must be a Republican.”
“I am,” replied the man. “How did you know?”
“Well,” answered the balloonist, “everything you told me is technically correct. But I have no idea what to do with your information, and I’m still lost. Frankly, you’ve not been much help to me.”
The man smiled and responded, “You must be an Obama Democrat.”
“I am,” replied the balloonist. “How did you know?”
“Well,” said the man, “you don’t know where you are or where you are going. You’ve risen to where you are, due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise you have no idea how to keep, and you expect me to solve your problem. You’re in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but somehow, now it’s my fault.”

I don’t get the republican reasoning here. To argue that government is always bad is like saying that people are always bad. I’ve worked in government before. Some coworkers were great; some not so great. To say that adding a profit motive makes people good strains creditability.
Though I would agree with them that government is corrupt when certain republicans are in charge. Then it is all about pushing problems down to the populace while enriching rich campaign contributers.
Rural electrification, sending a man to the moon, the GI bill, creating roadways, bridges, social security, state colleges, the postal service, yes, there are many, many things that government does well.

Two simple questions;
1. Where is the constitutional athority for any health care program?
2. How are we going to pay for any of our massise un-constitutional programs already in existance when effectively a full half of the population is removed from the tax roles?
I am tired of leeches crying that the people paying their way are not paying their way in grand enough style.

the king of Republican talking points, Frank Luntz, put out a memo outlining how the GOP could once again kill meaningful health care reform.
And in what has become par for the course, Luntz advised distortions and obfuscations, while offering no plan of their own.
So of course Republican lawmakers have been all over it.
And now Democratic strategist Paul Begala has come out with a memo of his own, advising how Democrats can counter the “Republican Orwellian Rhetoric”:
… the road ahead will not be easy, and health care reform has powerful opponents.
Veteran Republican pollster Frank Luntz has circulated a memo which attempts to teach Republicans how to kill health care reform by misleading people … There is one fact that animates the Republicans’ strategy. It should animate yours as well.
That fact is this: the overwhelming majority of American support health care reform.
The Republicans have three goals:
1. Co-opt our messaging;
2. Confuse voters; and
3. Kill health care reform.

“Your usage of the word ‘bigot’ referencin Obama also indicates you really are not quite sure what your talking about………”
Your defense of a bigot against a legitimate description of him as such indicates that you are a partisan apologist who will say anything to protect “your guy” from any criticism.
I know he’s a bigot because I am a victim of his homophobic bigotry. That’s a fact.

“- you are a victim of your own making.. sad” – Dewde
Sad that you would deny discrimination and bigotry perpetrated and perpetuated by your own President. Good thing you weren’t around in the 60′s to tell black people to get over it….or better yet, to move somewhere else, as you advised me to do.
Enjoy your equal rights, Dewde, because some of us don’t have them.