When they had the House and Senate and White House, they rammed through whatever they wanted, no matter what anyone else thought.

Now that Democrats have the House and Senate and White House, they demand a completely different standard.

And the saddest thing is that they might succeed.

When I went to gay bars with my friends in the early 80s, I was strenuously warned not to hit on the fag hags. I was told that they were there to be safe in public and not have to fend off male advances.

I was told that I would get the crap beaten out of me if I made one of the fag hags unhappy.

I guess this is apropos of nothing, but some writer implied that he made sexual connections with these women, and that is the opposite of my experience.

Rosalind Franklin didn't get the Nobel Prize because Nobel Prizes are not awarded posthumously. She died four years before Crick, Watson, and Wilkins were awarded the prize in 1962.

So your point is what, exactly?

gojackets wrote:

Anyway, I hate to break it to you guys, but insurance companies are not all in some evil corporate regime out to kill people. They do not make out-of-this-world profits and some, such as Kaiser, are not-for-profit. The issue is they operate in a cutthroat market and these horrific tactics come from all the wrong incentives.

Here is a link to a WebMD blog post written in 2007:

http://blogs.webmd.com/mad-about-medicine/2007/08/ceo-compensation-who-said-healthcare-is.html

Those numbers look pretty out-of-this-world to me.

typicalboss wrote:

I think Universal Health coverage is broadly supported, just not within a public system.

How do you get it in a private system? Seriously, I am not being snarky, I don't see an answer.

Do you see an answer? If so, what is it?

At this point, I don't give a damn how it happens, I just need it to happen so I can go back to work!

I currently cannot get private health insurance, because my condition is pre-existing, incurable, and requires medications that are overpriced at tens of thousands of dollars a year.

Is your plan gonna cover me? Sorry, but I don't believe it will. It might cut into the half-billion dollar salaries that insurance CEOs earn by denying care.

Convince me that private companies will offer me coverage, or there is a screaming need for a public option.

With the current state of my health, I cannot move thousands of miles away from my family.

And you prescription insurance sounds too good to be true. Some organization is going to knowingly provide me with tens of thousands of dollars of medication for only a few hundred dollars? (Speaking per year here.) They know going in that my medications will be that much of a liability.

Who is operating this program? How do I find it? No one I have talked to has mentioned anything like this.

Really, the old saw about if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is is my overwhelming reaction.

My left leg is so weak I can barely lift it. I have no stamina. My balance is so poor that I have a major fall at least once a month.

Currently I can still walk with a cane, but if things keep degenerating, I will be wheelchair bound in the next two or three years.

The normal treatment requires MRIs once or twice a year, and regular visits to a neurologist. (As an aside, cardio-vascular surgeons may be more arrogant and dismissive than neurologist, but they are the only ones. There is only one neurologist within reasonable driving distance who will even make an appointment with someone who has my condition and no insurance, and he is an asshole who doesn't pay any attention to anything his patients say.)

I am a college-educated professional, but because I lost my job at the wrong time I can never return to my chosen profession without a federally-mandated public option. I will never have insurance that allows me to earn a wage anywhere near what I used to earn while I was healthy.

No hospitalization (so far), just lifelong medication.

Currently the only drug option that has a success rate higher than 50% (54-58) costs $100,000 a year. The drugs that cost less than $20,000 a year have a success rate about the same as the placebo effect.

You say:

Just don't pay the insurance companies and they will dry up and go away.

Pay the doctors directly.

How can we make that happen? How can we wrest power from a multi-billion-dollar industry?

Congress isn't going to do it. They are far too beholden to insurance company largess. Someone has to start it, and that takes a very substantial amount of seed money. How can we make it happen?

I am not being snarky, I truly want to know. This issue is crucial to my life, since I have a pre-existing condition that makes it impossible for me to ever get private health insurance for the rest of my life, and any worthwhile job I get will make the limited state-sponsored insurance I have go away completely.

How stupid do you have to be to debate someone citing Ann Coulter?

Ann Freaking Coulter???

Let's start debating the merits of Eric Cartman's rants next, shall we?