This articles accurately exposes the Republican ploy to defeat healthcare reform like no other I have read. If Americans listen to them, not only will we not get healthcare reform, we will get even higher medical costs being passed on to the consumer. The right wing could care less about our health...starting foreign wars is their forte...but giving the American people help with outrageous health costs is considered socialism.

Your mind is fetid just like that bog you slithered out of when you had no legs and breathed through gills.

Now you have evolved to the level of a cockroach and as a result you cannot possibily comprehend the glorious experiment of the Soviet Union. Read Cancer Ward by Alex Solzhenitsyn to get a good idea of free health care.

Truly, I would give a nickel to hear you howl and complain about your "free treatment" from a doctor whose income was determined by federal bureaucrats who can't determine the difference between an "itis" and and "asm"

However, I do not want to deprive you of the joy as a taxpayer of paying for the health care of all the millions of "undocumented guests" we have in the country.

And if you are younger than me, thank you in advance for subsidizing my social security.

Pulga suja!

You have some good questions about the possiblities of the contract concept.

One state on the east coast is currently seeking a waiver from the Senate to apply the concept to their Medicaid program.

Another state is looking at its application for Medicaid, its Department of Corrections and its state workers - those three groups will comprise almost 1 million people.

If these two issues work as designed - it may be applicable to a national roll out - time will tell.

Savings from this concept may be sufficient enough to pay for the costs for those who cannot afford the monthly fee.

You are such an idiot, my dog would feel insufferably superior to you and rightly so. I have lived and travelled in countries with single payer universal healthcare. When I needed surgery once, I had it done by terrific doctors, no paper work, no payment and no insurance company bureaucrat to deny it because of imaginary "pre-existing conditions". When I needed medical care, it was immediate, quick and didn't involve any paperwork and NO, I repeat No forms to fill out, unlike her, when every procedure involves endless forms and endless conversations with insurance hacks whose only function is to try and deny you the surgery,/procedure/treatment, something you wouldn't know about you fucking redneck moron. The word "profit" should never be associated with healthcare. It's immoral and criminal to take away that most basic human right from people.

Hey Republicans---Obama thinks you are a bunch of suckers. He wants to lure just enough of you into voting for his Tax & Cap and Health Care bills that he can blame you for the economic disaster he is creating. He tried to get you on the totally corrupt AIG Bonus Guarantee/Stimulous bill, but he only managed to buy off 3 Rep Senators and no House members. If enough of you had voted for the corruption Obama would be blaming you for 9.5% unemployment and a trillion in debt saying "see the Republicans thought it would work to". If you vote for Tax & Cap Obama will give one of his Teleprompted speeches and blame you for the tripling of electric and heating bills and the 15-20% unemployment it will bring. If you vote for Obamacare he will give another speech and blame you for the end of private health care, for the sick dying while waiting on waitlists for care, for the old denied care and left to die, and for the trillions and trillions of debt that will wreck the economy for a generation or more, for the enormous tax increases on all working Americans, and for the 20-25% unemployment that results. Bipartisanship Obama style is a corrupt trap. Obama and the Democrats have the votes to ram through whatever they want. Be the loyal honest opposition and let them take 100% credit for the train wreck!

"I pay my own way on, get this, an average income of 80k."

Lucky you! That's about twice what the average American makes in a year. Some people only make half that working two or three jobs. But I'm sure they don't make as much as you because they are lazy, or on welfare, or don't apply themselves, or don't pull themselves up by their bootstraps, or some other nonsense.

"I know a lot of you flaming liberals out there have sampled all that life has to offer, and now have health problems because of that. Choices have consequences."

Yeah, you're right. Like all of those people with hereditary or genetic conditions that strike them from out of the blue. Or people who get into car wrecks. Or get respiratory disorders from pollution. How smug can you get? You act like everyone who supports single-payer insurance is just some dried up hippie who drank, drugged and fornicated themselves into poor health. Not so!

It's your attitude- the "I've got mine, now screw all of you!" -that has plunged this country into the messes it now finds itself in.

As long as the current system that allows corporations to buy votes (face it, that is what our "government" comes down to), no meaningful reform of any kind that threatens corporate profits will ever come to pass. Maybe term limits of 4 yrs house, 6 yrs senate might help a little, but I doubt it. I'm just sick of all politicians of all stripes; bastards one and all, fuck 'em.

Did you complain about the massive, record deficits run up by Bush? Did you complain about the fact that he doubled the debt handed to him by Clinton? Did you complain that he set records for worst trade deficits in our history?

Did you complain that tax receipts DECLINED for four out of eight years under Bush?

Did you complain that he handed Obama the worst economy since the Great Depression, one disastrous, totally unnecessary war (Iraq) and one botched disaster in Afghanistan?

Did you complain that the Bush administration was at the helm when America had its worst job creation record since Hoover? Just 1.45 million jobs were created under Bush. As a point of comparison, Clinton created 22 million. Did you complain about Bush's abysmal economic, budgetary, debt and trade records?

So, given that, given the fact that Obama inherited all of that, 11 trillion dollars in debt and a current accounts deficit of 1.3 trillion, given the fact that he inherited a collapsing housing market, a bankrupt Detroit, a bankrupt Wall Street . . . you still want to scream that Obama is destroying the economy? You still want to say it's his fault for creating massive deficits and debt?

No president since FDR has been given a lousier hand to deal with at the beginning of his presidency. And, yeah, Obama has made plenty of mistakes. But his mistakes aren't that he's failed to listen to conservatives. It's that he's listened to them waaaay too much. Conservative economics is what ruined this economy, and the faster Obama moves in the opposite direction, the better we all will be.

So far, he's been far too conservative and pro-corporate in most of his economic moves. He's taken the advice of center-right economists like Summers and Geithner, when he should have listened to Stiglitz, Galbraith, Baker, and Krugman. If the right wasn't so completely Pavlovian about everything, they'd see that Obama has been a dream come true for them. A president governing from the center-right on most economic and States Secrets issues, and one who has protected the previous law-breaking occupants of the White House.

Why you folks can't see Obama for the cautious, moderate, pro-corporate president is actually is . . . is beyond baffling.

I only hope he finds his inner progressiveness soon and starts governing like one. If not, this country is truly in trouble.