Damn, I'm good.

:)

Idiot Republican conservatives. Where are the Lincoln Chafees, the decent men, who still call themselves Republicans? What happened to them?

Bring them back, please, or else just go away, Republicans. Wither.

The debate over "public health care" vs. "private health care" doesn't revolve around the same poles as "community police vs. private security firms" or a "citizen-staffed military" vs. "private mercenaries."

A single-payer/publically funded health care system does NOT mandate that doctors drop their option of private practice to be drafted into medical staffs as employees (ironically, it's the private insurance HMO plans that have put substantial pressure on physicians to do this.)

The private health care insurance vs. public health care insurance debate is over who gets to do the billing- should it be a redundant overlap of profit-seeking concerns determined to exclude or pass on high marginal costs to as many categories of high-risk patient as possible (research your PPO plans, people), with attendant paperwork costs above 30% (as in the present American system), and which reserves preferential breaks on an escalating scale, with individual plans at the bottom, and the best rate-for-care ratio made available only to the group plans made available to large corporate employers with the deep pockets to purchase them and offer them as a recruiting perk; or a publicly funded agency decoupled from profit-making machinery that seeks to provide universal health care to the citizenry, thereby distributing costs across the largest "group plan" possible, emphasizing preventive health care programs for long term cost cutting, and cutting paperwork and bureaucracy overhead to a fraction of the privatized health care insurance in the USA (as in Canada.)

http://www.nchc.org/facts/cost.shtml

http://www.pnhp.org/facts/singlepayer_faq.php

http://www.pnhp.org/

http://www.workforce.com/section/00/article/26/22/90.php

http://www.denverpost.com/recommended/ci_12523427

The last URL is linked at my highlighted signature- debates like these are much better informed when they feature a plentiful array of reference links, don't you think?

(Private health care insurance advocates- your turn...)

[ apologies for the repeat- the syntax of my original post was too poor for me to allow it to stand uncorrected. ed. ]

The debate over "public health care" vs. "private health care" doesn't revolve around the same poles as "community police vs. private security firms" or a "citizen-staffed military" vs. "private mercenaries."

A single-payer/publicly funded health care system does NOT mandate that doctors drop their option of private practice to be drafted into medical staffs as employees (ironically, it's the private insurance HMO plans that have put substantial pressure on physicians to do this.)

The private health care insurance vs. public health care insurance debate is over who gets to do the billing.

Should that task be a redundant overlap of profit-seeking concerns determined to exclude or pass on high marginal costs to as many categories of high-risk patient as possible (research your PPO plans, people), with attendant paperwork costs above 30% (as in the present American system), and which reserves preferential breaks on an escalating scale, with individual plans at the bottom, and the best rate-for-care ratio made available only with the group plans offered to large corporate employers with the deep pockets to purchase them and offer them as a recruiting perk;

OR, a publicly funded agency decoupled from profit-making machinery and instead designed to provide universal health care to the citizenry, thereby distributing costs across the largest "group plan" possible, emphasizing preventive health care programs in order to maximize individual health while lowering overall costs to the system, while cutting paperwork and bureaucracy overhead to a fraction of the privatized health care insurance in the USA (as in Canada)?

http://www.nchc.org/facts/cost.shtml

http://www.pnhp.org/facts/singlepayer_faq.php

http://www.pnhp.org/

http://www.workforce.com/section/00/article/26/22/90.php

http://www.denverpost.com/recommended/ci_12523427

The last URL is linked at my highlighted signature. I've thought about re-posting it in full as a comment, but I'm trusting the readers to, at minimum, click the link at my signature for themselves. (Reading them all will provide more information and a fuller perspective, of course.)

Debates like these are much better informed when they feature a plentiful array of reference links, don't you think?

Private health care insurance advocates- your turn...I promise to read every link that's supplied by you, as long as each one is no more than 7 pages in length.

Fuck that barfly shit.

YOU WON'T READ THIS IN THE STATE-RUN MEDIA:

June 28, 2009

Media nervous on new Duke U. rape case (updated)

Thomas Lifson, American Thinker Blog

A new and even more scandalous rape allegation has surfaced at Duke University. Yet the usual media and campus PC crowd are keeping mighty quiet. Identity politics apparently trumps all sense of outrage.

Of course, after the disgraceful media and university reaction to the phony allegations against Duke Lacrosse team members, it is wise avoid jumping to conclusions, but the comparative silence on the current case is nonetheless remarkable, considering how many particulars of the case were left out of the main AP account.

Mike Adams, writing on Townhall, lays out the facts the MSM won't:

Frank Lombard is the associate director of Duke's Center for Health Policy. The university administrator was recently arrested by the FBI and charged with offering up his adopted 5-year-old son for sex. I tried to contact Frank Lombard over the weekend to probe his expertise regarding the health benefits of raping small children. So far, he's declined to comment.

University administrator Lombard is accused of logging on to a chat room online and describing himself as a "perv dad for fun." The detective who wisely looked into the suspicious screen name says that Lombard admitted to molesting his own adopted son. All this was before allegedly inviting a stranger to travel to North Carolina from another state to statutorily rape his already-molested adopted son.

It gets worse. The allegations are stunning and sickening. Adams spares us what he says is the worst.

However, identity politics are probably also involved in understanding the media response. Again, Adams:

The Associate Press (AP) did not mention the fact that the five-year old offered up for molestation was black. Bringing that fact to light might be damaging to the political coalition that exists between blacks and gays. Nor did the AP mention that the adopted child is being raised by a homosexual couple. Bringing that fact to light might harm the gay adoption movement.

I am afraid that as far as the media and academic communities are involved, it is not the crime itself that matters, but rather whether the alleged perp is a member of an "oppressor" group. Although white, Lombard is gay, so in the interest of avoiding unpleasant stories involving homosexual adoption, the media is anxious to shut down public interest in the affair.

However, the outspokenness and willingness to judge in advance a case involving white jocks - easy targets - of Duke and media, inevitably place a spotlight on their handling of another Duke rape allegation.

Update: Thomas Lifson notes that Stanley B. Chambers of the Raleigh News and Observer (hat tip: C. Edmund Wright) brings is the following nugget:

Lombard, a licensed clinical social worker with a master's degree in social work, is a health-disparities researcher who studies HIV/AIDS in the rural South.

This means that Lombard toiled in fields of the victimology industry, mining data for correlations that would underwrite government favoritism of victim groups.

A victimologist victimized at least one child in the most heinous way. The ultimate victim(s). And the media see no hypocrisy, and want to make sure the public doesn't either. Nothing to see here, move along.

All this coming in the wake of another highly publicized incident at the same prominent university? I don't think they can suppress this one. The conservative media have the power to put this case on the national agenda. It is too dramatic.