The Healthcare Wars
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One of the signature temper tantrums of the Republican Party is trying to sell people on the idea the Affordable Care Act is evil and bad for people.
Anyone with half a brain would think the way things are going is wrong. Just the thought of being denied insurance because of a pre-existing condition or even because a treatment is expensive is wrong.
In the beginning, HMO’s were designed to keep doctor’s costs down. Remember, this was back in the day when doctors still made house calls. Somewhere along the line, HMO’s became corrupted. Over time, bean counters became doctors and decided who was treated and who got the boot. If you were to sit in on a board meeting, the main theme was how to keep investors happy while maintaining a healthy profit margin.
Soon, people began to look to Europe and Canada for solutions to health care cost which were rising faster than a Saturn V Rocket. Insurance companies began a campaign saying these programs were Socialist and an attempt to take away your freedom to choose.
As a matter of fact, blocks from where Democrats are holding their convention, a Canadian resident is warning of the dangers of President Barack Obama’s health-care law.
Shona Holmes is in Charlotte, North Carolina, to promote an Americans for Prosperity ad this week, Bloomberg reports in its Political Capital blog. The nonprofit backs Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and was co-founded by billionaire industrialists David and Charles Koch.
Its latest ad, called Replace, is part of a $27 million Americans for Prosperity ad buy in swing states including North Carolina that expressly calls for people to vote Obama out of office. Holmes said she sought treatment for a brain tumor in the U.S. rather than wait several months for health care in Canada, a delay that she said would have put her life at risk. “To protect Americans patient-centered care, we must replace President Obama,” an announcer says in the ad. Holmes made a similar claim in Americans for Prosperity ads in 2009. She has also testified before Congress and appeared at rallies related to the health-care law. Some groups have questioned both Holmes’s personal story and the tie between Obama’s health-care law and the Canadian system. One difference between them: The U.S. health-care law doesn’t implement a single-payer system in which all Americans are covered by the government. Canada does.
Americans for Prosperity President Tim Phillips said the two plans are “not exactly alike, but they’re relatively similar.”
“The history of greater government involvement in other countries is that wait times do increase,” he said.
It is an “exaggeration” to say Holmes would have died from her condition, a top Canadian neurosurgeon said in a July 31, 2009, report by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Holmes was diagnosed with Rathke’s cleft cyst, a benign, slow growing tumor that’s not known to be fatal. Back home, Holmes was vilified as a traitor and received death threats, according to a July 30, 2009, report in the Globe and Mail. At today’s press conference, Holmes said Obama supporters “attacked the messenger rather than listening to the message.” She said she has endured “an avalanche of criticism” because Canadians “are very defensive of our health-care system.”
In addition to highlighting its new ad in Charlotte, Americans for Prosperity will hold a rally this evening outside the convention center there. And the group is starting a bus tour this week from Charlotte.
Holmes said she’ll be in Charlotte all week to do interviews. The group also held events during the Republican National Convention last week in Tampa, Florida. Co-founder David Koch and fellow board member Art Pope were honored by their group for their contributions to business.
From my research, European Countries as a rule have world-class healthcare and believe the system we have is absolutely barbaric. Just the thought of turning down a person for healthcare just “because” fills them with horror.
Insurance Companies are in it for the money and that is it. We need to change that and we need to do it now.
Thanks to Bloomberg for contributing to this article.
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The Republicans are actually not against the heath care bill, they are against President Obama. It really has nothing to do with health care, or a jobs bill, or the deficit, or anything else. It is pure and simply hatred of President Obama and has been from the beginning. Some, if not most, of it has to do with his race. It doesn’t matter how much they try to deny it, that is a truism.
There is a meanness within the Republican party and their surrogates that knows how to play to the lowest common denominator of people in the party. They will buy any trash that is being said about anyone. They did it with Kerry, Gore, Clinton, and Obama. They tried to make him out to be a Muslim, a non American (which by the Donald Trump and Joe Apaio are still pushing)and a Socialist among other things. It has been clear in recent years that the only thing they are interested in is the almighty dollar and the ones that have the most of them.
If you combine the the sheer hatred for Obama with the meanness of the Republicans this race has not seen the end of its nastiness. Between the Koch brothers, Adelson, and the Karl Rove Super Pac “Crossroads” they pledge half a billion dollars last week to beat Obama. That much money from just three people is not about what is good for the country. That is simply hatred and racism.
I think Rick can tell us as well how they feel in Canada about America electing a man like Romney. What a disaster and something I don’t want to think about.
Problem is all that spilt blood would create a bio-hazard and with no FEMA, we stand a chance of getting some weird ass infectious disease.
In the Western states particularly Rick, virtually everyone that can walk carries a gun I think. The Republicans, and the Democrats for that matter, are terrified of the National Rifle Association so gun control options don’t exist in the United States.
Yes, health care for only the rich! Typical Republican think-tank! If I had to choose between death and giving up my home and all my money and possessions so I could live a few more years, I’d choose death. What is life if there’s nothing to live for but poverty? If you’re rich you don’t have to worry about paying your health costs, only which mansion you’re going to buy next. Yeah, socialism is evil, the ordinary Joe doesn’t deserve to live because he was born in poverty and never had a fucking chance to do better. GOP mentality is so rotten it makes me sick. I’d better not get sick, I can’t afford it, so let’s just get rid of the GOP idiots – anybody got a gun? I hear there’s lots of them in America!