Best article yet on health reform

[Kayak Fish]

there is no mention of race in the post. that you thought of race when you read it just demonstrates that you stereotype based on behaviors. The Dean of Harvard Medical School warns this will limit access and destroy medical innovation. The Mayo Clinic and Cleveland Clinic, beacons of medical innovation and quality care, are against it. Your blind partisan support and that of your party's leader is exactly why John Boehnner will be Speaker of the House in 2010.

LOL. Sorry but that is a load of you know what. Of course there is no mention of race, then it would be easier to call it out for what it is. The subtext of that letter is obvious. This same "clever" code is used by the right wing time and time again.

 

[Kurt]

It is outrageous that reposting a letter to the editor from a reputable newspaper written by a doctor about his own experience with the health care reform debate would be deleted by the moderators, but bob's insults at you 30-a were not deleted.

Please provide a source or a link to your posts with material written by others, also use quote tags so we don't assume it wasn't written by you. Also include your own comments so we understand your point, or at least the reason for posting.


We normally don't delete insults, or at least stupid attempts at insults. 30Ashopper called him out on it and that is usually the best way to handle it.

 

[Lynnie]

OK, well reading this thread before the article is like reading the last page of the novel half way through.

I almost don't even need to read the article now. Yep, that was a stupid attempt at an insult.......well-stated. And, I don't like the word 'stupid.'

 

[sisters4]

HealthCare

I was reading this with interest. So many different opinions. 30ashopper is so right when they talk about why our country is different. I have friends/family way left to way right. Nobody I know would ever want someone to suffer because they could not afford healthcare. This is such a complicated issue. I work in the medical field and am a provider of health care. Most governmental agencies we work with are extremely disorganized, do not have efficient systems in place and hold us to a standard they would never be able to adhere to. I live in a wonderful city and there are so many resources for people that they are not aware of. Mobile, free mammography, free clinic, low cost dental clinic, social service programs. Isn't is interesting that in the last week new "guidelines" for breast cancer and cervical cancer screening have come out. Who published those guidelines??? Could it possibly be a precursor to new guidelines so that when health care reform is enacted they can save money by loosening the screening parameters? Health care does not come cheap. I do not think there is enough focus on capping litigation. Health care costs have soared because of personal injury litigation. I have no doubt that everyone who is weighing in on this subject here is a good person. I hope you are all doing some small thing to make a difference for a better life for someone in your community. I am fairly new here and am wondering why there are all these annoying, smiley faces on the right of this screen??? Have a wonderful weekend to all of you who are down in my beloved 30A. That water, sand and air are like no other.

 

[30ashopper]

What a horrible and condescending statement. I'd be ashamed!:angry:

It's not horrible or condescending, it's historical in nature. I'm not ashamed at all.

So our idea of "leadership" is to our deprive citizens!! Unbelievable.

Deprive our citizens of what exactly? It's certainly not opportunity or incentive. What is it? FYI, you want to deprive them, you just don't have a grasp of how you'll inadvertently do it. I'd suggest spending some time studying the principals this great country of ours was founded upon.

 

[Winnie]

Very convincing racial stereotypes. The doc is right- anyone with gold teeth and an R&B ringtone should bleed to death on the gurney! YEEHAW!

By the way, Massachussetts has mandates to buy private insurance but no public option which is precisely why its costs will continue to explode. Think about who put it in place and it all starts to make more sense.

LOL. Sorry but that is a load of you know what. Of course there is no mention of race, then it would be easier to call it out for what it is. The subtext of that letter is obvious. This same "clever" code is used by the right wing time and time again.

Could you point out a small example? I don't perceive anything racist at all in the article. Not even when I re-read it looking for the elusive "clever code" that the right wing purportedly uses.


I also don't see how a public option brings health care costs down. It's a government run (subsidized) insurance plan isn't it? Maybe it brings insurance plan costs down for those who become subsidized, but how does that decrease the cost of medicine, treatment, or office visits? Healthcare costs money no matter who ends up footing the bill. I think it costs too much, but insuring people only raises the prices because it artificially raises the amount people are willing to pay for services.

I read that the Senate proposal will assure 94% of people are insured - up from the 83% currently insured. I don't think that's much bang for the buck or for the re-working of the entire system.

 

[Kayak Fish]

Example: reagan talking about a "welfare queen from the south side of chicago". No mention of skin color. Clear intent.

But hey if you want to be disingenuous that's fine. Even if I were to grant that there is no racial subtext to the letter whatsoever (there is, especially considering the audience it was intended for), it's pretty clear the image being used is there for a reason. It's because it stirs contempt in certain types of people who want to put an "undeserving" face on those who will be helped by serious reform.

And it's funny because the subject of the letter gets medicaid, and will no matter whether reform passes or not. So why is he even bringing it up? It seems to me reform is aimed at better coverage for the self-employed and the middle class and those with pre-existsing conditions. So the example is misleading at best.

Quote: I read that the Senate proposal will assure 94% of people are insured - up from the 83% currently insured. I don't think that's much bang for the buck or for the re-working of the entire system.

Maybe this is part of your problem, because I bet that 11% feels like it's pretty worthwhile.

 

[30ashopper]

Example: reagan talking about a "welfare queen from the south side of chicago". No mention of skin color. Clear intent.

But hey if you want to be disingenuous that's fine. Even if I were to grant that there is no racial subtext to the letter whatsoever (there is, especially considering the audience it was intended for), it's pretty clear the image being used is there for a reason. It's because it stirs contempt in certain types of people who want to put an "undeserving" face on those who will be helped by serious reform.

And it's funny because the subject of the letter gets medicaid, and will no matter whether reform passes or not. So why is he even bringing it up? It seems to me reform is aimed at better coverage for the self-employed and the middle class and those with pre-existsing conditions. So the example is misleading at best.

Quote: I read that the Senate proposal will assure 94% of people are insured - up from the 83% currently insured. I don't think that's much bang for the buck or for the re-working of the entire system.

Maybe this is part of your problem, because I bet that 11% feels like it's pretty worthwhile.

Why would anybody complain about getting a government check?

I don't see why we can't have valuable reform without all the free hand outs. I'd be willing to accept medicaid expansion to 150% of the poverty line as long we couple it with fraud prevention and healthy living initiatives, but subsidizing private insurance payments up to 90K a year for families? I mean really, what the heck is congress thinking.

 

[Winnie]

Example: reagan talking about a "welfare queen from the south side of chicago". No mention of skin color. Clear intent.

But hey if you want to be disingenuous that's fine. Even if I were to grant that there is no racial subtext to the letter whatsoever (there is, especially considering the audience it was intended for), it's pretty clear the image being used is there for a reason. It's because it stirs contempt in certain types of people who want to put an "undeserving" face on those who will be helped by serious reform.

And it's funny because the subject of the letter gets medicaid, and will no matter whether reform passes or not. So why is he even bringing it up? It seems to me reform is aimed at better coverage for the self-employed and the middle class and those with pre-existsing conditions. So the example is misleading at best.

Quote: I read that the Senate proposal will assure 94% of people are insured - up from the 83% currently insured. I don't think that's much bang for the buck or for the re-working of the entire system.

Maybe this is part of your problem, because I bet that 11% feels like it's pretty worthwhile.

I think you must be talking about something other than the opinion article written by the dean of the Harvard Medical School referenced in the first post of this thread. There is no mention of Reagan or welfare or anything else that by any stretch of imagination could be racist. The audience of the Wall Street Journal is predominately people interested in business and finance, I believe. The image is of a man getting a shot.

As to my wanting to be disingenuous - I am always frank on this board. I absolutely believe there is no hint of racism in the article.

I think that the 11% will be comprised of many people who currently don't want to allocate so much money to health insurance. I do not equate health insurance to good health nor to health care. They aren't at all the same things. The article states, and I agree:

Our health-care system suffers from problems of cost, access and quality, and needs major reform. Tax policy drives employment-based insurance; this begets overinsurance and drives costs upward while creating inequities for the unemployed and self-employed. A regulatory morass limits innovation. And deep flaws in Medicare and Medicaid drive spending without optimizing care.
Speeches and news reports can lead you to believe that proposed congressional legislation would tackle the problems of cost, access and quality. But that's not true. The various bills do deal with access by expanding Medicaid and mandating subsidized insurance at substantial cost?and thus addresses an important social goal. However, there are no provisions to substantively control the growth of costs or raise the quality of care. So the overall effort will fail to qualify as reform.

I believe the current proposals are going to decrease access to and the quality of health care while increasing the costs enormously. We need reform in our health care system, not just to buy everyone health insurance. If it were really a good bill (the Senate version), there would be no need to rush it through nor to bribe Senators to vote for it.

 

[Kayak Fish]

Winnie, I see the problem here. The post I was talkig about was deleted (probably by the moderator for the racial subtext it contained). This happened after I made my first post about underlying racism. I just assumed the post was still in the thread, so likely having not read the post in question, you were not being disingenuos. I can see why there would be massive confusion about why I would find racism in the original article- I certainly don't find a thing racist about that. Dominoes posted something that is no longer here.

So we are arguing about two completely different things and are therefore both right imo. (Except about health care policy, where only one of us is right and I suppose we can guess who each of us thinks it is).