Today’s Q for O’s WH – 7/22/2009

That was a great question: it elicited the most pure horse-puckey of any. And the “answer” made it absolutely clear that Obama has never been within a country mile of anybody who even KNOWS anybody with a serious medical situation — even if Mrs. O DID take home nearly $400,000 a year as a non-profit “health executive” at U/C.

THat was one long answer. The short answer is: jake, Americans will have to sacrifice. That MRI that everybody wants to make them feel better is going to have to wait. That test you heard about for cancer gene and you want to see if you have it, well you can forget about it.
You see Mr. President it doesn’t take 6 minutes and thousand of words to answer one simple question.

Obama made it pretty clear that millions of illegals will get free health care.
He said everyone–47 million.
Get ready for rationed health care.

The fact is health care needs to be fixed or we will all go broke. All these wingnuts who are arguing that it’s socialized medicine are only repeating talking points from the right.
I, and all my friends and family, stand with the president on this.

I have heard too many “It’s not about me. It’s about you”. Mr. Obama is very skilled politician.

“The fact is health care needs to be fixed or we will all go broke.”
The only way to cut health care costss is to cut health care. Period.
Just look at the comments from lefties complaing about what insurance companies won’t pay for. Everyone wants EVERYTHING covered and then they whine about how much health care costs.
Obamacare is RATIONING. Get used to it.
It means Chris Dodd and Harry Reid decide what you get, not your doctor. It means your parents will have to die sooner.

I hear a lot about how bad insurance companies are but in my 12 years of having it I have never had one complaint. I was just diagnosed with breast cancer in June of 09. I felt a lump under my arm on a tuesday, went to see my gyno on a thursday, got a referral in 25 minutes to see a surgeon, got an appointment to see the specialist 10 minutes after. Went to see the surgeon the following week on a Monday, had a referral to get a momogram and a ultrasound on wednesday. My radiologist kept me there and told me I needed to have a biopsy. Got a referral the same day to have the biopsy the next day. Came back positive in two days. Got a referral to have an MRI and a PT Scan that same day. Got the MRI and the PET scan done 1 day later. Surgeon told me I needed to see a oncologist and I got a referral for that too on the same day, and I got to pick my doctor. Started chemo 2 weeks after MRI results came in.
I have Zero, Zero complaint about the American health care system. None Nada. I have Anthem Blue Cross. Maybe I was lucky, but from discovery of lump to treatment 3 weeks. AMAZING CARE!!!!!! When Obama says that the insurance company decide what kind of care I get, I don’t know what he is talking about. Everything, my doctor asked for they got.

The questions left for Americans about the healthcare reform is very simple.
Would you rather have free healthcare that is cheaper to the government but is slow to get care and not adequate or healthcare that is expedient and life saving but expensive? I don’t know about everybody else, but I would rather go bankrupt paying for great healthcare that saves my life, than have free healthcare that keeps me waiting months to see a specialist while I die inside.

“We will compete for health care with millions of illegals.”
That is a great point and the Numero Uno reason to kill off this bill.

Nice question Jake. When do you think Mr. Obama will begin answering it? I was also glad to hear in his answer that he inherited a bad economy (twice in fact)–I hadn’t heard that before.

Bet Noir:”It sounds like the expected course of treatment for a well-to-do person,”
Also standard practice under single payer programs, where the wait times for such serious illnesses is well documented as being quite short (cancer getting pushed to the front of the line is why it takes forever to get an MRI of a bum knee).

“I don’t know about everybody else, but I would rather go bankrupt paying for great healthcare that saves my life, than have free healthcare that keeps me waiting months to see a specialist while I die inside.”
Believe it or not, several dozen MILLION poor, and near-poor, people — unknown millions of whom are literally dying inside at this very moment — can’t make breezy pronouncements about “going bankrupt”.
For MOST people, Single Payer is the best answer.
The VIP classes should consider that certain specialists, certain transplants, etc., are already “rationed”.

“Our CURRENT system is RATIONING by for-profit companies who make more money the harder they make it for you to get care. Get used to it I guess.”
You don’t have the first idea how insurance works. Insurance companies provide what your company negotiates. If you don’t like what they do, you can change insurance carriers. You can’t do that one Obamacare takes you by the neck.
Your disdain for “profit” is interesting since you are a for-profit enterprise as well. People have the sad tendency to hate those who make one dollar more than they do.
Most companies are “for profit” or they don’t survive.
That is, unless you have enough union members. Then Obama takes over the company and wipes out the debt and the creditors. If you’re a small company you get to pick up the tab.

Uhhhh….okay. Whatever. Well, nice try Jake. I’ll bet the president and Gibbs understand eachother perfectly fine.

Jake I loved your question to the president as to what I may have to give up, but unfortunately I must be really dumb because his answer has me a lot more confused than I ever was before, as a matter of fact to me this entire press conference has me wondering what the hell it is that Obama is trying to do with health care, please someone make is simple for the average folks like me to understand.

If Obamacare is not good enough for Obama and it is not good enough for Democrats in Congress it is not good enough for my family either.

Funny how it took him six months to pick out a family dog, yet only two weeks to reform healthcare. Everyone should just feel sooooo much better now. Wouldn’t want him to get the wrong dog, now would we?

@jo schwarz: I wish you a very speedy recovery. And hope your insurance company will cover it all.
Two things. First, that was an awfull lot of tests: physical examination; a mammogram; an ultrasound; a biopsy; an MRI; and a PET-scan? That’s really overkill from what you’ve written, especially since you are receiving chemotherapy and no surgery.
Typically: physical examination, mammogram and biopsy are enough. Especially when the treatment is chemotherapy. MRI is more and more included when the mammogram is inconclusive but an ultrasound and PET-scan? Seriously?
Second. Since you are now a “marked” woman, it will be very difficult under the current system to change your insurer. Premiums will increase dramatically. Even your daughters might now find it more difficult to get affordable insurance.

Jake, I missed the presser but I think you’re doing a pretty good job so far for ABC. One complaint I have is that often this site loads slowly. It would be nice if the content loaded and appeared first, but it appears that it’s waiting for various ad servers to load ads before displaying your posts. Sometimes I just give up and check other sites.
Is anyone else experiencing this issue?

I saw it. Mr. O is one scary guy.

drjohn:”You don’t have the first idea how insurance works. Insurance companies provide what your company negotiates. If you don’t like what they do, you can change insurance carriers. ”
Don’t you mean your company can change insurance carriers? And if you’re a small business, good luck – you will pay that 20% a year cost escalation or take a hike. As for an unemployed person or independent contractor, if you have any pre-existing condition you cannot get insurance, you cannot change carriers, and you are stuck.

jenniferT7:”Pass it, dems. You’ve got the numbers. What’s the hold up? Just do it. What are you afraid of?”
Some Democrats are paid off by the multi-trillion-dollar healthcare industry. Some represent very conservative districts. And all of them want to be sure to get it right.
I find it refreshing that Congress doesn’t just march in unquestioning lockstep to orders from the Whitehouse like Republicans under Bush.

The news conference is now up on the White House web site for anyone who missed it.

drjohn:”Yes I do.
And I am a small business.”
And how have your insurance rates been doing the last 8 years? They have not gone up a cent for your competitors in every other first world nation.

“If there’s a blue pill and a red pill, and the blue pill is half the price of the red pill and works just as well, why not pay half price for the thing that’s going to make you well?”
___________________________________
Isn’t that what generic drugs do? What is this red pill, blue pill tap dance?

Question for you- should a car insurance company be forced to take you on and pay for your accident damage AFTER the accident?
Posted by: drjohn
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So you think a woman with a history of breast cancer should be treated as a car wreck? It’s okay for health insurance companies to deny that woman, and her daughters, insurance because she poses a risk?
Thank you for making the case how immoral conservatives are.

“Do you think — do you accept the premise that other than some tax increases on the wealthiest Americans, the American people are going to have to give anything up in order for this to happen?”
Well, Jake. You uh see it’s uh like this. Uh, hit it Gibbsy!
“The head-bone’s connected to the neck-bone, the neck-bone’s connected to the back-bone.
The back-bone’s connected to the thigh-bone, the thigh-bone’s connected to the knee-bone.
The knee-bone’s connected to the leg-bone, the leg-bone’s connected to the foot bone.
Oh hear the word of the Lord!”

Hi Willem van Oranje
Actually cancer outcomes are about the same between the US and Canada. But that is mainly because the really sick Canadians pack a bag and head for the US to get life saving treatment on their own dime. The US provides a valuable safety valve for the Canadian system. When that is gone, the short-comings of national health care will be come more apparent.

“Isn’t that what generic drugs do? What is this red pill, blue pill tap dance?”
Red and blue, Crips and Bloods, Republicans and Democrats.
Isn’t he cuuute? Don’t you hate it when in a supposedly-grown man, in a supposedly-somewhat-serious position, stoops — during the primaries — to cute, then goes on to prove that’s ALL he can do?

The thing lots of people don’t like about President Obama is that he actually is intelligent and articulate. Some people prefer the ‘gosh shucks, we gonna smoke him out’ gibberish of a Bush or a Palin.
This was an articulate session with generous amounts of information for people to digest. A substantial individual and a substantial presentation despite the cat calling from the ideologically single minded.

Terry:”Is that only in payouts, or does that also include all the unnecessary testing done in defensive medicine? Let’s at least be honest with our figures.”
You should check out some of the CBO’s work, “The Effects of Tort Reform:
Evidence from the States” is a good place to start. States that DO have limits on malpractice cases do NOT show statistically significant reductions in ‘defensive medicine.’ The research on this is pretty solid, thanks to the fact that you can crunch the data from US states that have implemented tort reform and compare it to demographically similar states that have not.
Obama is also guilty of pushing this fallacy. Every time the data has been crunched, the reality is that billions of dollars WON’T be saved just by reining in ambulance chasers.

He said the problem was too many tests. Hello? Defensive Medicine?
Posted by: Terry
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Just read Jo schwarz story in this thread. They dianosed her with 6 different test – some of them very expensive – were typically 3 are enough, especially since the treatment turned out to be chemotherapy.
To give you an analogy, it’s like they first photographed every rooftile in Nagasaki with high-res satelite imagery to get a precise location where to drop the atom bomb. They could have used a simple map of the region to get the same results instead.

“His very first sentence is so dishonest, I left the rest of it as fast as I would walk away from a con-man at the corner.”
_______________________________________
There’s your problem right there Carol, judging someone on their first sentence and then being so intellectually generous as to walk away and condemn the man.
Either that or you’re being intellectually dishonest in your first sentence.
That type of approach to understanding and evaluating someone, or their policies, is pretty darn lame.
Press you own reset button.

Concerned in OH:”Conservatives aren’t the ones proposing doing a cost-benefit analysis on people’s lives to see if a certain procedure is “cost effective” enough.”
Amazing how if you fear monger hard enough you go all the way around to a naivete that would make a liberal scoff. If every person in America were given an MRI that was closely examined by a professional, lives would be saved. At a cost of hundreds of millions of dollar (representing many lifetimes of human labor) each.
So I suppose you are in favor of an immediate government program costing trillions to get those MRIs done, right? After all, how can you put a price on a human life?

Ah. That urban myth again, “tort reform”.
Reform tort all you want, but you will have only addressed 0.49% of health-care spending. After all, *including legal fees, insurance costs, and payouts*, the cost of the suits comes to less than one-half of 1 percent of health-care spending.
Posted by: Willem van Oranje | Jul 22, 2009 11:06:28 PM
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And of course you have the numbers on extra tests ordered to avoid these law suits.

Obama’s plan: a third-rate VA that has no doctors OR hospitals — just paperwork.

Traffic Cop Timmy:”And of course you have the numbers on extra tests ordered to avoid these law suits.”
? How hard is this to comprehend:
1. Some states HAVE IMPLEMENTED TORT REFORM.
2. Data from those states do not show a reduction in diagnostic costs.
3. Hence the CBO, repeatedly, has been forced to conclude tort reform is not a magic bullet to cut costs.
Obama has (erroneously) advanced tort reform as one way to pay for his health plan. I though you’d be eager to point out that he is exaggerating on this point (reality doesn’t always have a liberal agenda).

I had the sense around December that perhaps we had already seen Obama’s greatest moment: Nov. 4 Election Day
Posted by: Carol | Jul 22, 2009 11:14:10 PM
__________________________________
Nah, it was definitely in January when he danced with Michelle while Beyonce sang “At Last” in the background.

It’s sad to see a presient lying in order to promote legislation that will harm most people and help very few. He’s a dishonest man, as we now know, and if there is any delay between now and when this deceitful program comes up to a vote, the widom of the people will have worked its way, and it will be defeated.
He is harmed by having been untruthful about it from the beginning.

Radiation Wait Times Canada
British Columbia: .9 weeks
Manitoba: 1 week
Newfoundland: within 30 days
Prince Edward Island: 1.6 weeks
Alberta: 4 weeks
Quebec: less than 4 weeks
Canadian Institute of Health Information
(2008)

“Two things. First, that was an awfull lot of tests: physical examination; a mammogram; an ultrasound; a biopsy; an MRI; and a PET-scan? That’s really overkill from what you’ve written, especially since you are receiving chemotherapy and no surgery.
Typically: physical examination, mammogram and biopsy are enough. Especially when the treatment is chemotherapy. MRI is more and more included when the mammogram is inconclusive but an ultrasound and PET-scan? Seriously?”
You know what, I agree with you. I said the same thing. The mammogram is standard procedure when they find lumps, but the mammogram did not show a lump. It only showed specs of calcification. The ulrta-sound showed the lump. The Dr. ordered an MRI so could know what they could get a better idea of what they were looking for surgery. The PET scan is to know if the cancer had spread to other parts of my body since it was in my lymph-nodes that means it could have migrated to the brain, the lung or God knows where-else. It did not or at least no showing, that is why the chemo is necessary before surgery. I have high-grade invasive cancer.
The mammogram was semi-useless in my case, but it is the first step before they pay for the more accurate and expensive MRI. All those test had their merits. Not one of them was useless.

Fructuoso Solano-Revuelta: How is the president’s going to “harm most people and help very few?” Do you have specifics or are you just spouting?

Danita, why on earth do you keep redundantly posting Canadian wait times as if they are strengthening your argument for a single-payer system like canada? If I lived in British Columbia and had to wait 9 weeks for radiotherapy to begin, I would be on a plane to the US pretty darn quick. Yes, there are short wait times in some place for some procedures and therapies and long wait times in other places for other therapies and procedures. So?

moderate”
Under the healthcare plan, if you like your current healthcare arrangement you can keep it. So what is the problem? Do you just not care about the nearly 22,000 people who die every year because they don’t have access to your system? What is your response to the nearly 1M people who file bankruptcy every year because they can’t pay their medical bills. And with our job-based system in this slumping economy, what advice do you have for the nearly 2.5M people who will loose their insurance this year? What is your solution?

How can the president say, with a straight face, “you haven’t seen me out there blaming republicans” when he did just that in his opening statement? I have seen him blaming Republicans, when actually there is opposition to the bills as currently circulating not only among Republicans but also Democrats.

moderate . ..
“How can the president say, with a straight face, “you haven’t seen me out there blaming republicans” when he did just that in his opening statement?”
moderate he was responding within the context of a question on getting health care passed, not the economy . …
And if you’re going to be fair, the President seldom attributes the economy and the deficit he inherited to ‘the Republicans’. He didn’t even mention the Republicans in his opening statement.

Hi jhw,
Not only the patients come here, but a lot of Canadian doctors and nurses come here to practice, preferring the US system to the Canadian system, causing doctor shortages and longer wait times in Canada. Private health care is now a booming growth industry in Canada, people preferring to pay out of their own pockets to escape the government system. The more well to do and those near the boarder just head south. You would too, if you were really sick and wanted the best care possible quickly…
Of course under the plan being considered in the house, both you and the doctor would be eventually be federal criminals if you pay for your own health care. They will need everyone in the government system to even begin to balance the books.
Don’t even think about getting old or you will get the dreaded “pain pill” instead of a hip-replacement.

Dr. Diane Normandin learned that the hard way.
A graduate of Montreal’s McGill University, Normandin moved to Clearwater in 1994 because she thought U.S. doctors had more freedom.
But she spent an inordinate amount of time trying to tell whether a patient’s insurance covered visits to a particular lab or specialist.
“You had maybe five minutes with the patient but 20 minutes of paperwork and the ridiculous sorting out of where the patient could go,” says Normandin, who needed six employees to handle the workload. “It was crazy.”
In 2003 she went back to Canada and opened a family practice near Montreal. Now she has one employee.

Hi Danita,
If a doctor has a problem with billing, he hires a medical billing company to do his billing, or someone on his staff to do the work. That way he has more time for patients, and someone else has a job with medical benefits. Problem solved.

Error correction on link to an interview with Betsy McCaughey, former Lt . Gov . of NY,
Obama Health Bill: Those on Social Security – Mandatory Counseling on Assisted Suicide
click this link: http://tinyurl.com/mcmq6h On Page 425 of Obama’s health care bill, the Federal Government will require EVERYONE who is on Social Security to undergo a counseling session every 5 years with the objective being that they will explain to them just how to end their own life earlier . Yes . . . They are going to push SUICIDE to cut medicare spending!!!

Just take the red pill already!

I hope Jake enjoyed his question not being answered. My goodness, that was the most bizarre so-called press conference I have ever witnessed. What a bumbling, incoherent loon our TOTUS is. He did not answer one question, and basically stumbled and bumbled his way through. Kind of like he smoked pot or something prior to the press conference.
Can we all just have the blue and red pill now, please? Maybe that will take away the pain that we have elected an absolute idiot as our president.

The White House hopes people tuned in for the knock-out opening statement…and then turned the TV off for the very wonkish and uninspiring Q&A.

The President did not “blame” republicans in his opening statement. He pointed out a fact that some republicans are working against any healthcare reform because they want to “break” Obama.
****WRONG! He pointed out Republicans and again blamed the Bush Admin for him inheriting this mess even though his party has been in control of Congress since then end of 2006! Second- HE SAID HE heard a Republican say those words—really? He HEARD THIS? Did anyone that is not stuck up his rear hear these “alleged” comments as well? If so, please stand up, if not then shut up about it because there is no proof to back your accusation so that you can further push your political propganda to destroy America because you and your wife cannot stand America!***
Do you just not care about the nearly 22,000 people who die every year because they don’t have access to your system? What is your response to the nearly 1M people who file bankruptcy every year because they can’t pay their medical bills. And with our job-based system in this slumping economy, what advice do you have for the nearly 2.5M people who will loose their insurance this year? What is your solution? Posted by: FairIsFair22 | Jul 23, 2009 12:14:54 AM
***FairIsFair22: Here is my answer to your question: Why push this through without reading it properly and then screwing tens-of-millions of Americans over? Why not be responsible and read through the bill, make sure it is in the best interest of ALL AMERICANS and bring it to a vote say in October or November?
I hate to break it to you, but ramming this through in August is not going to change much, if any of what you have mentioned above-it is a sad fact but it will not!
Second: The GOVERNMENT DOES NOT need to get into the health care business-period! They need to pass strict laws so that insurance companies cannot keep screw over Americans by jacking up the prices and denying care, but we see how well the government operates and business like: Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, Housing and the VA Hospitals.
All one has to do is look at just the RECENT issues over the last 6 months to come out of the VA hospitals to know what I am talking about.
10,000 Vets from three states had to be notified because the VA hospitals exposed them to HIV and Hepatitis. 96/111 cancer patients received botched treatements from ONE doctor in ONE VA hospital who then tried to cover it up. ABC just this past April aired and printed (look on line) about how filthy, health hazard and poorly ran the VA hospitals are.
Most recently-last week a 22-year old Air Force soldier went in to a VA hospital for a routine gal bladder surgery and came out losing his legs because the Surgeon screwed up.
Here is the best part (not in a good way)-because of the current law in place, he nor his family can sue the government for what they did to this poor YOUNG man!
I await your responses!

Posted by: danita | Jul 23, 2009 12:16:24 AM….And if you’re going to be fair, the President seldom attributes the economy and the deficit he inherited to ‘the Republicans’. He didn’t even mention the Republicans in his opening statement.=================================Ummmmmmm woooohooooo——earth to Danita…….did you watch the same BS the rest of us did? He again said he Inherited this mess and he pointed to Republicans—TWICE. A friggin reporter even called him out on it asking him how he can blame Repbulicans like he did in his opening statement when HE WAS THE FRIGGIN SUPER MAJORITY!!!!
Good Grief it is one thing to be soo far up your party’s but you cannot see straight, but to blatantly LIE about what he said when everyone and their mother heard it is, well just IGNORANCE at its finest.
Danita——please go back and listen to just his opening statement and then get back to us. Obama would not even acknowledge the fact that many in his OWN friggin party do not like his bill!!!!!

The president “acted stupidly” last night.

Terry:”Don’t even think about getting old or you will get the dreaded “pain pill” instead of a hip-replacement.”
Funny you mention hip-replacements, as people often like to highlight that the US has low wait times for a new hip versus the dreaded Canada. Of course, in the US the majority of those quick and efficient hip replacements are paid for by… Medicare. The government health care system.
Your comment about a growing private healthcare system is obvious considering it was only 2005 when such an industry was made legal by the Canadian Supreme Court striking down a law banning it. Of course it’s growing, four years ago it was zero!
Hardly an indictment against government care, the growth of private insurance along a well-entrenched total public option clearly demonstrates that the Republican argument that government health care would drive all private firms out of business is just another lie to try to stop any change through their fear, uncertainty and doubt obstructionism.

James Danley:”Could he also be warning us that we may have to stop eating junk food, sweets or even possibly red meat; stop drinking sodas; stop buying non-green products, etc.?”
Has government health care in ever other first world nation EVER resulted in that? Even once? Heck, under most government health care system you can even get cheaper cigarettes (albeit with huge warning labels on them)!
Why do you believe that your government is uniquely incompetent, when the fact is the government our Founding Fathers put in place has resulted in the most prosperous free country and sole superpower remaining in the world?

Terry:”If ever get hospitalized under Obamacare, just remember, take the green pill, but not the red one…”
Is that your cute way of saying you have no rebuttal to the documented facts I laid out, yet deign to have reality impact your opinion in any way?

jhw,
do you ever disagree with obama or his policies? I have never seen anyone defend every word or action coming out of another human. seriously, it’s like obama can do no wrong in your eyes. i’m glad france, spain, etc have gov’t run healthcare. Good for them…but we’re NOT france, spain, etc. if you love them so much…move. the gov’t has yet to run anything without turning it into a large money pit…you should be able to admit that…and believe that because obama is in the WH, things will change is quite naïve. Do we need some kind of reform? yes, but it doesn’t involve the gov’t actually running our healthcare. Do you honestly believe that these people actually know what they’re doing? Do you think that they know what’s best for you in regards to healthcare? Do i think the current insurance companies know all of the answers? no, but they’ve been in the business for quite some time and appear to be pretty successful…as opposed to medicare. personally, i do not care who lives in what mansion as long as i can afford what i need and it does it’s job. i didn’t have healthcare until i was 25 by choice. sure, there are people out there who want healthcare, but can’t afford it. my fiancé is one of them…but she’s just as opposed to this plan as I am. shocking that someone who could benefit from this bill is actually against it, right? well, some people can see the big picture. You know, if they REALLY wanted to ensure that people could keep their current coverage, why not just open clinics around the nation and issue those who cannot afford insurance their own little card. That way, illegals wouldn’t be allowed into the clinics and those who really NEED it can have access. juat a thought.

kmday:”France/Spain/Sweden ALSO do not INSURE ILLEGAL ALIENS, or do they? Do they have approx. 20 MILLION illegal aliens who are bilking their system more than they are paying in???? I am very interested to know the answer to this.”
Yes, France and Spain certainly do have a significant illegal alien problem. And the US does not have 20 million illegal aliens bilking the system. The most reputable studies (Current Population Survey, National Institute for Health Care Management Foundation, Kaiser Family Foundation) indicate 9.7 million of the uninsured are immigrants, and that includes legal immigrant. The best guess is that half of those are illegal, but clearly your 20 million number is at best a wild exageration. That you have to fabricate false support for your opinion makes it look very weak.
“all three of these country’s are suffering financial burderns because of health care and their COMBINED total of citizens do not even equal half of ours. ”
? No, they are not suffering financial burdens due to healthcare like the US. They are spending less than half as much PER CAPITA (that means per person, so the populations are normalized out) than the US is. And their life expectancy is longer than the US (by years in one case, despite having higher smoking rates).
“Please tell me this is not the basis for your argument!”
The basis of my argument is documented facts pulled for a variety of publicly available and verifiable sources. And yours?
“We are expected to insure double what these three country’s have combined with less coming in because of the close to 20 million illegal and you do not see the problem with your statement? ”
Ah, your argument is based on a lie about 20 million illegal aliens that is supported by no reputable studies, and is in fact contradicted by every one of them. I’ll stick to reality. Thanks.

stdntDrvr:”do you ever disagree with obama or his policies? ”
Yes I have, publicly and on this board.
“Good for them…but we’re NOT france, spain, etc.”
I believe America is the best nation in the world, and that we can do better than any other in the world.
As you chose to both personally insult my integrity and then insult my country in your first four lines, I don’t see any point in responding further. Good day.

jhw,
i did not question your integrity, just your loyalty…nor did i insult our country. just stating the facts, as you like to say.
…personally, i would never insult a land that every generation of my family has fought for…nor would i support antyhing that would jeopordize it’s future…but that’s just me.

The president is saying here that Americans are too stupid and passive to avoid wasting time on invasive batteries of tests they’ve already endured.
I’m not about to have three colonoscopies in three weeks just because they’re free.

Jhw539 wrote: “…when the fact is the government our Founding Fathers put in place has resulted in the most prosperous free country and sole superpower remaining in the world?”
I totally agree with that statement. But that was because Capitalism, the Free Market and Individual Freedom has been the cornerstone of the entrepreneurial spirit that fostered the American Dream that so many strive to achieve.
However, the Left is now poised to destroy Capitalism, the Free Market and Individual Freedom with their Socialist agenda. They want to punish success and return the wealth to its “rightful owner,” the poor and middle class. Destroying what made this country the most prosperous free country in the world, by definition will destroy our prosperity and turn the greatest nation on earth to just another third-world country.

I’d like someone to ask him why TORT REFORM isn’t part of health care reform. Without it costs cannot ever be controlled.
That conference was thirty minutes of white noise.

JWH…..I would also like to know why so many foreigners come to our country for treatment rather than their own if they have such awesome and inexpensive health care.
Typically you see Americans heading over there because they have treatments that our FDA will not approve-in most cases.
Therefore, I await your response as to why they come here versus stay there.
Also-please clarify why tax payes should foot the bill for abortion and euthanasia because they are both included in the bill unless and amendment states otherwise.
With that-this is not a debate on Abortion or euthanasia but merely a logically question as to why legal tax paying american citizens should be forced to pay for some girl/womans abortion or someones “right-to-die” AKA: Take their own life.
If a woman is raped or it is medically necessary to abort is different, so please save that as well as I am for medically necessary abortions just not ones that are used as a means of birth control because they are too lazy to go down to planned parent hood clinics that are on just about every street cornor and pick up a FREE FRIGGIN condom or get on birth control that is free or cost them next-to-nothing.
I, of course await your responses.

So I finally have a chance to catch up on my web reading and I see that I had some responses to comments I made last night, to which I should respond in turn.
First of all, I must apologize to you, Danita, for not understanding the reason for your post of canadian waiting times and my harsh response to that– I asked “why on earth” you had posted them. sorry about that and thanks for explaining the context of that comment.
In your follow-up, you wrote, “You must not be feeling well moderate. You were just posting old Canadian wait times – so I responded with updated information.”
Now I understand. And you are right, I am not feeling well, as I may have mentioned here before. I should not have been up that late last night making comments, because I was physically and mentally drained. but I could not sleep and I made the mistake of not just reading the internet but posting responses. I should not post under those conditions. Sorry for the confusion. I have spent too much time lately interacting with our health care system, having spent at least part of each weekday for the past two weeks in either a doctor’s office, a medical lab, an emergency room, or a rehabilitation center.
Now I understand that since I had written about wait times for breast cancer treatment and the lawsuit that caused canada to work to reduce them, you responded with the most recent figures available on breast cancer radiation wait times in canada, or at least with general radiation wait times, which would include breast cancer radiation therapy. It does sound as if they have improved, and that is a good thing.
And I completely misread something else you wrote, and responded accordingly. Again, I apologize (yes, sincerely– no snark today). You wrote, “And I’m worried about your eye sight too.
That is .9 weeks or British Columbia, in other words 9/10 of a week. Not 9 weeks.” yes, I responded railing against 9 week wait times for cancer treatment and I was wrong to do so based on this figure. I did not, indeed, notice the decimal point. In my defense, expressing a week in decimal form is a little odd (on the part of canada, not you), since I tend to think of whole weeks and whole days, rather than tenths of weeks. But I guess since they are talking averages, they just express them in this form and I should have read more carefully.
Again, I will try to resist the temptation to comment while drowsy in the future.

OMG.. Blah blah blah… Talk about a bore..

The only question Mr Obama definitely answered was the one about his buddy at Harvard! You could ask Obama what color the sky is and he would spend 15 minutes answering with out an answer.