Here Here.
The health care debate is too involved to give it a cursory late afternoon policy debriefing here. I, like all Americans have an opinion or two on it and the debate left a few questions unanswered. Some things I was uncomfortable with I am still uncomfortable with to a degree while comforted with other facts. I appreciate the disclosure on the prohibition on any abortion coverage. Smart. Overall the speech gets an 85.B+
I still don't think it sits well with people that the government is going to force people to buy insurance -the government option policy if all else fails, rather than let them assess risk of going without for a time (especially young adult people with no job) and most people I know believe ability to pay should be means slide assessed in terms of cost of insurance and ability to pay/income level somehow. Fining people who can't afford health insurance in the first place for not carrying it strikes me as just not something that the government should be doing and the analogies to car insurance are just scary. What is the "just liability coverage" please in case I hit another car equivalent in this plan. What is the penalty if the fine can't be paid- suspension of breathing privileges? Whoever thought of that analogy needs to revisit that proverbial drawing board. Instinctively it makes nearly all the friends I have cringe.
One in eight (1 in 8) houses are in some stage of foreclosure and its getting worse. That means one in 8 people (more than a tenth of the country) are not able to timely pay their mortgages. So those people who don't have insurance on top of not being able to afford it or their mortgage are going to be fined for not buying the government insurance?
Are you crazy? Just a rhetorical question there- don't send the Gulag after me.
Calling all people who chose not to buy health insurance "irresponsible" was not a good move. Way to insult all the Christian Scientists in the world. Some people on limited finances make a totally rational choice in light of their other obligations (including to children and other people) to forego the cost prohibitive insurance for themselves. Until you present something slide scale means appropriate to buy, calling anyone who doesn't buy something they can't afford "irresponsible" is just, well "irresponsible."
The Joint House/Senate congressional session for the first time looked less like a Glee Club and more like the Houses of Parliament in Britain where the back and forth cheering, jeering, jowls -a -flailing booing and hissing are common practice- to be expected on hot button topics especially. It's political theatre at its finest It would be odd in Britain if a debate this contentious didn't spill over into the Houses of Lords and Commons with wig-flapping hurrahs, hoots and the occasional booing.
But the guy shouting that the President was a liar was over the top even for British Parliamentarian decorum standards. Over the Top. Uncalled For. Rude. Disrespectful and Totally Ignorant. Even heckling has an ethic about it, and he overstepped even that. It is precisely this sort of behavior that gives Republicans a rather bad rap. It also feeds into the paranoia that white southern guys are just out to turn everything Obama into a failure regardless of whether it is in the interest of furthering the good of the country or not. (note bene; it's not 'paranoia' if they are actually doing this so I give this a polite benefit of the doubt here.) In this case this white guy was the liar not Obama on the issue of insurance covering undocumented or "illegal" immigrants in the bills proposed--at least until they redress it in the upcoming immigration reform legislation soon to follow.
Yes, this guy should have apologized. Disgraceful.
Now as they say, be part of the solution or get out of the way.
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