[Vision2020] Otter fights health care with "sue the feds" law

Thu Mar 18 12:41:54 PDT 2010

In part, Garrett wrote:

"Obama blew it by not insisting on a single payer health care system.
Instead he pandered to the insurance industry who will be raking it in under
the federal proposal."

Sorry, Garrett, I disagree:  Obama couldn't "insist" on a single-payer
health care system without the support of a sufficient number of Dems &
Repubs, and the sad fact is that we didn't have them because there are too
many DINOS like Minnick and too many others with personal - rather than
national - agendas.

Another sad fact is the short-sighted willingness of the current GOP
leadership to successfully demand that their minority elected federal
legislators put on brown shirts and march in lockstep opposition to All
Things Good to the detriment of this country and their constituents.  Their
success with that tactic has been in no small part due to feelings of
betrayal by their own previous administration(s), and their ire is
completely misdirected and short-sighted, but there you have it:  they are
frighteningly willing to cut of their own noses to spite not only their
faces, but the face of this nation.

Finally, another sad fact is that the US has absolutely no hope of regaining
any kind of edge in a competitive world market if we don't get meaningful
and successful health care reform, and the GOP's shortsighted obstructionism
has made that an impossibility for now.  Which is devastating for any
meaningful economic recovery, IMHO, because if we can't successfully compete
in the global market . . . 

All of that said, I do agree that Obama made a significant political mistake
by misreading the willingness of the GOP to sink this nation all for greed,
and by leaving the initial stages solely to Congress for far too long after
the GOP's graffiti was on the wall.  It was clear to me long ago that about
all the GOP cared about in the health care reform debate was protecting
insurance carriers & drug companies and putting politics ahead of policy,
just like they've been doing on everything else for the last year.  Big
surprise there, eh?

I'm definitely not keen - at ALL -- on the personal mandate, but I do
understand that to have any realistic hope of cost containment, the pools
have to include the healthy who have a tendency to opt out for various
reasons, some of them very valid.  It literally makes me ill to think that
people will be forced to deal with the devil (insurance companies), but
absent a single-payer system . . . 

Plus, the financial drain of one catastrophe with an uninsured person on
those of us with health insurance is huge -- all you have to do is look at
the cost increases for the rest of us from the uninsured to see we're not
talking chump change.  Of course, that gets us back to why a single-payer
system really is the best answer, or perhaps a non-profit hybrid system
similar to Switzerland, but . . . 

So, am I happy with where we're headed now?  No - in fact, I'm really angry
at the GOP obstructionism.

However, we have to start somewhere, and something is better than nothing.
Big Business has proven it is all too willing to continue to sell out the
health of its workers for even more greed, and the insurance industry has
proven that it's all too willing to sink the health of this nation to more
deeply line its own financial pockets.  Stupid & short-sighted, but that's
the way it is.

Then there are those 45,000+ fellow Americans who DIE each year because they
don't have health insurance.  Compassion alone should be enough for ALL of
us to say that we're mad as HELL and not going to take it anymore, but GOP
obstructionism doesn't give a rip about those fellow Americans.

We have a patriotic obligation to do whatever we can to make that STOP, and
STOP now, not in another year or five or ten.  While the current proposed
plan doesn't do nearly enough, it's far, far superior to doing nothing for
another year or generation, which is what the GOP is advocating.  As best as
I can tell, they seem to be advocating a kind of trickle-down health reform,
and most of us know what a failure that was with respect to economics for
tens of millions of Americans

Doing NOTHING while tens of thousands of Americans continue to DIE isn't an
option for any real American.

Saundra Lund

Moscow, ID

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do
nothing.

~ Edmund Burke

***** Original material contained herein is Copyright 2010 through life plus
70 years, Saundra Lund.  Do not copy, forward, excerpt, or reproduce outside
the Vision 2020 forum without the express written permission of the
author.*****

From: vision2020-bounces at moscow.com [mailto:vision2020-bounces at moscow.com]
On Behalf Of Garrett Clevenger
Sent: Thursday, March 18, 2010 9:37 AM
To: vision2020 at moscow.com
Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Otter fights health care with "sue the feds" law

Kenneth writes:

"Otter's response to the universal health care needs and the financial
challenges they bring to citizens and providers alike is increasingly
paradigmatic of what not to do to achieve substantive improvements."

On the other hand, forcing voters to buy health insurance from a private
company is probably not the best way to get reelected.

It's probably not the best way to solve the health care crises, too.

Can you think of anything else the government requires its citizens to buy?

That sounds fascist to me, something I don't support, and it's certainly
understandable why a libertarian governor Otter is charting this course.
It's probably not the best course either, but what else would you expect?

Obama blew it by not insisting on a single payer health care system.
Instead he pandered to the insurance industry who will be raking it in under
the federal proposal.

The middlemen need to be cut out of health care if we really want to cut
costs...

Garrett Clevenger

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