Activist Judges - they go both ways

Judge strikes down healthcare reform law - chicagotribune.com

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Or maybe it's empty

Universal Coverage

Heard an anti-health care reform advert tonight. 50 million additional patients with no new doctors. Ergo, reform will result in rationing and diminished health care for all.

Isn't this an argument for more doctors rather than less health care? Unless you are of course you are making the somewhat more philosophical argument that distribution of resources in any system are imperfect and because health care is a resource, some people just aren't going to get it and are going to die and that's okay. I'll accept that argument to a point but 50 million seems a little high to me. Plus I would argue (1) making sure your neighbor doesn't get swine flu and give it to you is probably a good thing and (2) If I found myself with potentially terminal cancer with no insurance, no money and in need of medical care in a country that encourages massive inequities in wealth and gun ownership and has a capable prison medical system, that would be a pretty easy decision for me.

Not to mention I guess with not enough doctors for the 50 million people the Republicans don't see a way to help now, it's sure a good thing we are aborting all those babies, god forbid we have another 1 or 10 million more that we don't have doctors for - we can't simply get more doctors.

I guess I need to go back and read the bible. Thousands of uninsured dying are just God's will. That's the new health insurance.

White meat only

Yeah, I read the post below. The bill clearly states that illegal immigrants aren't covered. NPR had a good piece on this the other day. Excluding the people who think that everything Obama says or writes is untrue, there are a few who have legitimate concerns. Illegal immigrants could still potentially falsify records to receive treatment. Or when they do seek treatment they could either impose costs or be turned away.

I just think that the right-wing has no real solutions to these problems. Close the border. Ha! And the oceans? It isn't to difficult to see the unveiled racism. The new bill may not have tough enforcement provisions or procedures for weeding out illegal immigrants, but what would the right-wing have us do without adding to government bureaucracy (which the also hate)? Maybe just give the doctor a skin tone chart to check if someone is white enough to get treatment? That would exclude many illegals and have the added benefit of excluding legal blacks, hispanics, arabs and indians.

I just love where pro-life ends. After the umbillical cord is cut. Pro-life means that after you are born, others have the right to deny you medical care, sustinance, education, housing, employment, justice, etc. Even if you will die without it. I can't believe this type of hostility to fellow human beings is really a beneficial, adaptive, competitive trait.

Hey America - Steinberg just called ya yeller

The only thing we have to fear...

I don't know why Europeans are so much better at change than we are ... For whatever reason, France -- no stranger to tradition -- could scrap its 350-year-old franc and embrace the euro while we can't even replace dollar bills with sturdier dollar coins.

Part of it is leadership vacuum -- our politicians continually run for re-election, and who wants to risk alienating the generous zinc industry by scrapping the penny? Americans resist change, not because we love the status quo, but because we're terrified that whatever comes next will be worse. That isn't a laudable national quality, but then we didn't invent timidity either. As Hamlet muses, we'd "rather bear those ills we have, than fly to others that we know not of. Thus conscience does make cowards of us all."

And there is a definite cowardly feel to this moment in American history. Serious problems face us, yet the public howl is for inaction.

Where in the world is this facility?

Receptionists with no medical training were left to to assess patients arriving at the hospital's accident and emergency department, the report found.

Julie Bailey, whose 86-year-old mother Bella died in the hospital in November 2007, said she and other family members slept in a chair at her bedside for eight weeks because they were so concerned about poor care.

"What we saw in those eight weeks will haunt us for the rest of our lives," said the 47-year-old. "We saw patients drinking out of flower vases they were so thirsty.

"There were patients wandering around the hospital and patients fighting. It was continuous through the night. Patients were screaming out in pain because you just could not get pain relief."

California Nurses Association: a terrorist group?

oh! to be a merry plutocrat (cont'd)

Most Republicans Think the U.S. Health Care System is the Best in the World. Democrats Disagree

Source: Harvard School of Public Health

A recent survey by the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and Harris Interactive, as part of their ongoing series, Debating Health: Election 2008, finds that Americans are generally split on the issue of whether the United States has the best health care system in the world (45% believe the U.S. has the best system; 39% believe other countries have better systems; 15% don’t know or refused to answer) and that there is a significant divide along party lines. Nearly seven-in-ten Republicans (68%) believe the U.S. health care system is the best in the world, compared to just three in ten (32%) Democrats and four in ten (40%) Independents who feel the same way.

Smiff is going to send them a few bucks...

Watch it...

60 Minutes: Charity Trying To Make Up For Failing U.S. Health Care System

Of course, we still have the best health care system in the world. And, by best, i mean absolutely the most pathetic for the richest country in the world. And, by richest, i mean most in debt. And, by most in debt, i mean thanks, Dumbya! And by Dumbya, i mean the idiotic, brainless moron "running" the country...