I said this about the school speech and I'll say the same about this one: these speeches were both in part about exposing the insanity of the conservative "base" and the disgraceful support of the lies and vitriol by the GOP members of Congress. Obama and his team know that if they can change the meme in the media and get more people to realize, "Wow, the Republicans really are a little nuts and all they seem to care about is taking down the president," they win.

Operation "give them enough rope to hang themselves" accomplished, Mr. President.

The reason, quite simply, is lack of regulation. The environment of deregulation promoted by the GOP led to a passive SEC and Justice Dept, and allowed merger-mania to run riot among health insurance companies. Read below for more:

http://www.emaxhealth.com/72/5561.html

Were we watching the same speech, or did you just hear what you wanted to hear? Christ.

Because it's really Obama's fault anyway.

Learn how to read legislation and LISTEN, you Republican dumbshit.

The healthcare proposal would allow illegals to buy insurance on the exchange, but they would have to pay for it, just as they do now. The issue was that the GOP liars have been screaming that the public option would allow illegals to get government-run health coverage, which is does not.

Basically, the Obama plan changes nothing for them except that they become part of the exchange bargaining pool, which benefits everyone (even fuckwits like you) by bringing down costs with economies of scale. They would still have to pay for their own private coverage and would not have access to publicly run insurance.

Is that clear now, or do I need to write it in crayon???

Clearly, you're an Obama hater who hears what he wants to hear and sees what he wants to see. You know as well as the rest of us that the issue is the public option. If you choose to parse the information in order to feed your anti-Obama bile, that's your problem. I've got better ways to spend my time.

It's about time people starting calling out the lunacy that is Beck. How about ramping up the advertiser boycott, too?

Here's some supporting material to drive home the point that I made a few minutes ago: that the Obama plan would not allow illegals to get public subsidies for insurance or sign up for a publicly funded plan (from http://mediamatters.org/research/200909110013):

But illegal immigrants would pay out of pocket for insurance and are barred from receiving federal subsidies

PolitiFact: "[I]t seems that health reform leaves in place the status quo on illegal immigration." PolitiFact.com concluded that Wilson's accusation that Obama lied about health care reform applying to undocumented immigrants is "[f]alse" and stated that "it's worth pointing out that illegal immigrants participating in the exchange would be paying for their insurance like everyone else. That's similar to the current system":

But it's worth pointing out that illegal immigrants participating in the exchange would be paying for their insurance like everyone else. That's similar to the current system -- we're not aware of any particular restrictions that stop illegal immigrants from buying private insurance now. Under health care reform, illegal immigrants would be able to buy private insurance or the public option.

When we look at all of this evidence, it seems that health reform leaves in place the status quo on illegal immigration, and certainly does not provide any new benefits particularly for illegal immigrants.

Again, in what way is this unclear? It won't make a difference of course. All the conservative twits will still scream "Liar!" while ignoring the real facts, which all they're good for anyway.

And regarding my assertion that having illegals in the exchange pool being pathetic, in what way? Explain to me how having more insurance buyers in a pooled system would do anything but benefit consumers by driving down prices? They may not be legal consumers, but they are consumers.

Oh, I forgot, you'd rather deny them the ability to buy insurance at all, pretend they don't exist, and force all of us to pay for them to be treated at the ER. Or better yet (since you're a Republican the cruelest option is probably the most appealing), deny them treatment at trauma centers as well! Great! Maybe then all 12 million of them will just go home!

Lucky for all us taxpayers that we live in the real world.

I misspoke about the public option. Illegal immigrants can buy into either the private exchange or public insurance. What they are barred from is getting any subsidy to pay for it, which since many illegals are low-income, seems to be to be a solid incentive for pursuing citizenship.

My question is, why are only legal residents and citizens required to have insurance? I don't know how you would track people who technically don't exist, but shouldn't all residents, legal and otherwise, be required to have it? Just sayin'.