Indefensible.

Not to sound like an ass, but your friends are part of the problem. While people sit around dinner tables and talk about theories and ideologies and free markets and socialism, there are children who won't have healthcare if this doesn't pass. Not just statistics in some study, but actual human beings.

What do the parents of these children do if they can't afford health insurance? Tough shit? Too bad? Quit their jobs so they can qualify for medicare What's the answer?

And again, this isn't health insurnace for 300 million people. It would increase the number of children covered by about 5 million (if I read correctly).

And here's the other thing, this program is being funded by a tax on cigarettes. So in other words, it's not costing us anything.

Insuring more children, with no cost to us...what's the problem?

 

Also, the bit about "illegal immigrants" is a lie.
Not a difference of opinion, but a barefaced non-fact.
You have to produce, among other things, a SS number to qualify for SChip. This is another Schiavo moment, when the crazies take the GOP position over the cliff. If I were running for, say, Senate as an R, I would be on my fourth Manhattan by now.

 

First off, I'm not terribly appreciative of the insult to my wife and our close friends. If you had ANY idea what my wife's job entails, you'd have kept your mouth shut. Like basically how I can count on two hands the number of full days I've spent with her since August because fucking Kennedy feels he's falling behind the House and is pushing committee staff into overdrive to get a markup on No Child. Like how last week she had been 60 hours in the office - before Friday and worked nine hours on Sunday and a long day on Monday, which was a federal holiday for the rest of her colleagues. Like our knowing joke that I've become an abandoned husband.

Secondly, why does the setting matter? I initially agreed with HB's premise - how the fuck can he veto this bill? - so I asked people I know and respect. Why does the setting matter? Would you have felt better had I called and asked? Or does it help serve your point better knowing we were drinking wine and Blue Moon over pork tenderloin and beef ribs at a nicer restaurant to celebrate a birthday?

Lastly, I think I answered your question. They saw a problem. I asked them to explain it to me, they did, and I relayed what they told me.

 

What!? Using illegal immigrants to scare people into supporting a conservative opinion? Next you'll be telling us that illegal immigrants aren't spreading leprosy.

 

To address some of Hustle's friends' comments:

There is a big difference between "government-run" healthcare and "government-funded" healthcare. But the former sends off little alarms to those who have a panic attack where anyone says something is "run" by the government.

Doctors who work under the latter are NOT working for the government and are not paid a "government salary".

 

First, I never meant to insult anybody.

My point, which you seem to have missed, is that while people are talking about political ideologies, real people, real human beings will be caught in a health care crunch. If a working family loses their insurance because of this veto, and their son ruptures an appendix which forces them into massive debt, I doubt the fact that they avoided a "push toward a socialist system" will make them feel better.

I repeat:

Insuring more children, with no cost to us...what's the problem?

 

Hustle, while I disagree with your friends' rationality, at least you were able to post something rational. I can't even compare that to the utter rubbish and flat out lies posted by O_T. It is almost sickening.

In sticking with rationality...
I believe that one of the major reasons for this program's existence, for me, is that it alleviates some of the expenses that are unexpected and unfortunate. With the rising cost of colleges, where do we see ourselves as a nation in the future?

I view this expansion as a means by which we can unburden the middle class families from potentially crippling bills in order to enable them to save for college. The child that is sick now, given the proper medical coverage and care, won’t be sick in the future. That child needs that future to be full of opportunities.

If the parents are burdened with medical costs that cut into the potential college fund savings the child will be given the short end of the stick simply because he obtained some ailment either by accident or birth.

I see this as the real reason to promote and pass this bill.

 

Ragu, I don't believe that it "won't cost a thing" to the tax payers. However, the bill is designed to raise funds to pay for it from a cigaratte tax increase.

 

First of all, health care need not be as expensive as it is in this country. It simply doesn't have to be. It simply is not elsewhere in the developed world.
Second of all, Ragu, the events I was talking about are decades in the past, when American physicians, through the AMA and its influence, linked themselves with the insurance industry as a way to stave off Truman's -- and, earlier, FDR's and, later, Ted Kennedy's -- attempts at national health care. (My mother in law, a pediatric cardiologist, fought this in her professional associations for most of her career.) The fact that insurance companies are the greediest, most duplicitous bastards on the planet didn't enter into the discussion, although it's there now. I don't deny that many doctors now are paying a price in aggravation for decisions made long ago. Nonetheless, that doesn't make me a pay-as-you-go advocate. You know better than that from our earlier discussions. You keep talking about the other systems as "utopian," and yet, all they really are, is better at delivering care at a lower cost than ours is. Every independent study done in the health care field has demonstrated that.