I haven’t been posting anything in almost a month? Wow, does time fly when you’re holding your breath! You see, the health care reform bill has really got me on the edge of my seat. I’m hoping for the best, but it looks like we’ll all be settling for a lot less, unless the Dems have something coming in under the radar.

I guess we’ll know soon enough. But I’ve been hesitant to state any opinions because things keep changing around so fast.

One day the public option is alive, the next its dead and expanded Medicare is on the table, then its dead too.

All I know is a lot of people are going to be pretty pissed off if they’re forced to pay for health insurance through a mandate, and get no concessions from the insurance companies.

Maybe our last best chance is if the House Dems show the Senate Dems what a real bill should look like and stick to their guns.

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Technorati Tags: changing the bill, expanded Medicare, health care reform, public option, senate bill

Senator Harry Reid said today that the health care reform bill he’ll take to the floor of the senate will have a public option, but one that’ll let individual states opt out of if they so choose. Now this seems like a good idea, and it should get more senators to vote for it. But there’s a couple of points I haven’t heard anything about yet . . .

First, who in each state will decide whether to opt in or opt out?

I suppose it would be the governors after conferring with their house and senate leaders, but I sure would like to see it brought to ballot at some point or another. If the states have to opt in at first, like some are proposing, then that would give them plenty of time to allow the people to vote on it.

Sure the senators have said they’re basing their voting decision on their constituents, but that’s what they say. Who knows which one they’ve talked to, and how much money they’ve been paid to hear these people’s opinions? So bringing it to the people is the fairest way to go.

Secondly, if a state decides to opt out, can they change back later on?

I live in a state where, from time to time, we get a Republican governor. If one was in office when the decision was to be made, I know a lot of people around here would be mightily furious. There should be a way of turning back any decision that wasn’t actually brought to a general vote.

Hopefully these questions will be answered soon.

Technorati Tags: health care reform, public option

In his address this week, President Obama urged the passing of the Health Insurance Industry Anti-Trust Enforcement Act. This, hopefully will be passed and become part of the over all health care reform presently going through Congress. But you can help!

Senator Leahy would like your help in making sure everyone involved in passing this is notified about the peoples’ wishes. To give your support, you’re urged to go here: http://ga3.org/campaign/hcr_antitrust and sign a letter addressed to your state’s senators.

You can also see President Obama’s comments about this at the above site.

The Health Insurance companies have literally gotten away with murder, because there is nothing  preventing them from dominating any state’s health care market, and deciding who lives and who dies. Now we get a chance to fight back.

Technorati Tags: anti-trust, health care reform, Health Insurance Industry Anti-Trust Enforcement Act

A lot of the pundits on both sides keep pointing to the fact how the Republican got control of the health care reform issue and almost ran it into the ground. That was their intention, because frankly, if President Obama and the Democrats succeed in bringing in major reform, it’ll be a cold day in hell before Republicans can drag themselves back into good graces with the public. But was it a mistake on the President’s part to let them get away with this for so long?

It certainly was unfortunate that so many people got so badly affected by all the lies and deception, but I have a feeling former President Bush’s misquote a while back will come up in the end and haunt the GOP for a long time to come. “Fool me once, shame on me . . . you. Fool me twice . . . and we won’t get fooled again!”

The madness of this past August allowed the Republican right to play out their entire hand and expose them clearly as mere obstructionist. They used every underhanded trick in the Rove Play Book to kill Democratic efforts. But in the end, they never really got away with their phony “grassroots” appearance, and even the spewing of people like Glen Beck didn’t hide the fact it was coming directly from the GOP.

And now they face the “Community Organizer” tonight as President Obama addresses the Joint Houses of Congress. What do they have left to say that could possibly be taken as credible? How will what they’ve already said measure up to Obama’s ability to motivate in a positive and progressive way?

We’ll see who gets the last word on health care reform, but I have a suspicion the Rove Play Book may end up being good kindling for the GOP funeral pyre when this is all said and done.

Technorati Tags: Community Organizer, Democrats, health care reform, Joint Houses of Congress, politics, President Obama, Republicans

A sleeping giant has awoken! And no I’m not talking about some lunatic fringe who wants everyone to just say no to health care reform, or some frightened, unread mob who wave their banners and guns at town hall meetings. We’re talking about labor here!

The incoming president of the AFL-CIO has laid down the law on those Blue Dog “Demoochrats” who beg for votes on election day, but turn their backs on the people when its most important. No more playing both sides of the fence. It’s fish or cut bait time for those who think they can get away with pandering to the big corporations’ funding schemes while playing nicey-nice to the Labor Unions.

The message is clear . . .

You vote for the people, or the people won’t vote for you. You back our best interests, or we won’t back you.

Now we’re talking!

Technorati Tags: AFL-CIO, blue dogs, health care reform, Labor Unions

As we wait for Congress to come up with a viable health care policy for the country, there are things we can personally do to get started on our own health care reform. It has nothing to do with politics or money, big business or insurance. Instead it has to do with breaking a cycle we’ve all grown far to comfortable with.

The fact is, we are all slaves! Slaves to a life style that is, frankly, unhealthy. One of the goals President Obama wants to include in the country’s health care reform, is a health initiative to encourage people to act more responsibly when it comes to their own bodies. Without too much pondering, its easy to see how doing things to prevent illness will drastically decrease the need for pharmaceuticals, doctor and hospital visits, and the over all costs of treating the sick.

For example, we’ve all been snowed into believing the most important aspect of food intake is taste. If it tastes good, we’re all over it. So our food manufacturers go through great lengths and chemical expense to create “delicacies” to attract our pallets with little regard for nutritional value. Our mouths are delighted, while our organs strain to accomplish their natural filtering processes.

As a result, we store too much fat which leads to obesity. We ingest far too many chemical compounds, which leads to illnesses like breast cancer. And we lose the taste for natural foods with their natural healing properties, neglecting their rejuvenating benefits to our bodies.

The sad truth is, we’re destroying our body’s ability to heal itself. So this creates the need for pharmaceutical intervention to right the wrongs that we could have avoided all together by eating the right foods. Naturally, to get those drugs we need to make doctor and hospital visits that add to the demand and the cost of health care.

And this all snowballs because, as we stop feeling well due to what we put into our body, the less active we get. Thus we tend to sit more and walk less, watch TV rather than do some other activity that can pump blood and purify our systems, and seek more comfort foods while we sit depressed in front of the tube.

If we’re going to have successful health care reform, it has to start with us. The way we can lighten the load off the expensive system is to take care of our own body and change our lifestyle choices in a way that gives us a fighting chance to stay healthy.

And we don’t have to wait for a Congressional vote either. We can start right now, this very minute to begin our own health care reform process.

Technorati Tags: eating habits, food, health care reform, lifestyle, lifestyle changes

The polls vary somewhat, but what is a sure bet, most liberals want a public option and a full reform of the health care system. But what about the part where the government takes over health care completely and decides when someone is too old to bother with?

Well either 70% of the country really doesn’t care about granny, or something is wrong with the picture some people have painted about health care reform. I mean, does it really seem reasonable that so many people subscribe to the Logan’s Run scenario?

You remember Logan’s Run don’t you? It was the movie where no one over 30 could be trusted, so they’d bring them to Carousel where they were put to death on the ride of their lives.

Or how about Solient Green, where old people were done away with and turned into food? Wow, imagine if instead of food we could turn them into fuel? Two birds with one stone!

Hey, if you’re going to allow your paranoia to run rampart, you might as well go all the way, right?

But while you’re dreaming up your narrow minded conspiracy theories, and calling President Obama a nazi, fascist, socialist, think about this . . .

No one in their right mind would go along with the crazy notion that anyone is expendable just because they’ve grown old or can no longer contribute to the money machine we call capitalism. Old people are loved, and most people, yes even liberals, go through great lengths and expenses to make sure their old people live out the rest of their lives with as much comfort and happiness as can be generated.

So you might be able to question the motives of one man, or one administration. But do you really think 70% of Americans would stand back and support a reform bill that would snuff out the people they’ve loved most in all the world?

Cracker anyone?

Technorati Tags: death panels, grandma, health care reform, Liberals, love grandmas

At President Obama’s recent town hall meeting in Montana, a bona fide member of the NRA got up and asked the question that is, what I feel to be root of the issue, and the real reason many are so easily churned in to a frenzy over false reporting on health care reform.

“How are you going to pay for it?”

The problem President Obama has in answering this is, the answer isn’t entirely available yet. It’s the main issue being worked on in Congress, so he can only explain what’s been initially agreed upon throughout the various committees thus far.

Unfortunately, Americans can be a bit impatient when it comes to money questions, and are easily lead into speculations that lean to the negative side. So all sorts of radical thought is coming out of the extreme right as to why the President is keeping this information about how he’s going to pay for health care reform, secret.

But the truth is, the answers (and the final plan) aren’t coming from the President. Though he certainly may know more than the average American on what’s going into the bills, he can’t possibly know more than those who are actually working things out in the closed door committee sessions. And they don’t even know the end results yet.

So we can only take a leap of faith and conclude that the longer it takes to come out with real definitive answers on how health care reform will be inevitably paid for, the more we can reason that its not going to be taken as a trivial matter.

Congress wants to get it right. The President is patiently waiting for Congress to get it right. And so all we can do is wait in hopes that they all get it right, and health care reform becomes a reality.

Once the final bill is brought forward, the American citizenry will have plenty of time to pick through it before its voted on. So let’s give them time to nail down the details before we go spinning ourselves into conspiracy theories and doomsday scenarios, OK?

Technorati Tags: health care reform, Obama, paying for health care reform, President Obama, town hall meetings

Let’s see . . .

1. Senator Grassley taught us what its like to sneer in the face of honesty, by playing the “fly in the ointment” game on his unaware fellow senators. Apparently integrity and good work ethics isn’t everything.

One thing that still puzzles me though. If he, as he claims, “stuck his finger in the dike,” wouldn’t that indicate a slow and methodical trickle was taking place (slow and steady progress) rather than the deluge (rushing health care reform on America) the Republicans claim is going on?

2. It’s typically American to scream in outrage over the assassination of Grandma without actually calling Grandma to find out she’s alright and comfortably at home enjoying her government run Medicare.

3. We are now the “What if” generation.

Cheney’s paranoia over “what if” the terrorists may someday get nuclear weapons of mass destruction; to “what if” President Obama is secretly plotting, in spite of everything he stands for, all he’s now telling us, and all the campaign promises he’s fulfilled already, to bring down America; to “what if” the census, after all these years, will now be used to round up people into concentration camps.

Here’s another one: “What if” everyone just waited to see how things turn out before jumping on the bandwagons of these right wing extremists who know how to push our buttons.

I have a feeling the volcano laying dormant under Yellowstone Park has a better chance of getting us all than any of these other things occur.

4. Americans have short-term memory loss.

Let me give you a recall. The government, during the Bush administration was listening in to your phone conversations, reading your emails, watching the websites you browsed, usurped the Constitution, lied to us, fed the corporations our hard earned money, and ruined our collective reputation by torturing people.

And that’s just what we know about.

So all in all it was a very revealing week!

Technorati Tags: America, health care reform, paranoia, politics

I find it kind of strange that all those in Congress who are holding town meetings over the health care reform issue aren’t taking a more aggressive approach to the naysayers. It’s not like nobody knows what the talking points are, so why not come right out and nip it all in the bud with an opening statement?

We know key points from the dissenters are, they don’t want “Death Panels” deciding when to pull the plug on Grandma, they don’t want the government taking away their current insurance policies, they don’t want government run health care that will put the insurance companies out of business, and they don’t want abortion funded with taxpayer money.

Now anyone with a lick of common sense who knows what the current bills circulating Congress are including and excluding can honestly agree with these people. Nothing in these bills including any of those things.

So why not have the senators and representatives stand at the podium and announce they’d like to begin by making a statement about what they’re against? It could go something like this:

“Before we begin our discussion, I’d like to make a brief statement. I am vehemently and absolutely opposed to any health care reform that would bring about death panels, or would mandate which insurance policy a citizen must use, or would cripple the insurance industry and force them out of business. And, let me make this perfectly clear, I am definitely opposed to any reform that would use taxpayer money to fund abortions!

I will never, as long as I am a member of Congress, approve or vote for a bill that would include any of these things!”

It would seem to me, a statement that uses the pre-written script these dissenters come armed with, and agrees with them, would pretty much end the ruckus.

Wouldn’t you say?

Technorati Tags: Congress, dissenters, health care reform, town hall meetings