This is tongue-in-cheek, but isn't it typical that the Young Republican wants so badly to disagree with Moore, but actually doesn't know what the hell she's talking about??

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My current coverage is OK, but I'm not willing to believe that I would escape financial ruin if I encountered major health issues.

At my previous job, the quality of our coverage would decline year after year. We would have to pay more, yet the coverage was always worse.

Then there's the upper management. They are always offered a better insurance plan. Though I'm sure that the quality of their coverage also declined over the years as well, I think that they would fair much better if they encountered a major health issue.

So even though they already make more money, get bonuses that are literally exponentially higher than the lower managers, techs and engineers (because they get a higher percentage take), and would be better able to survive a major health crisis financially (even if they had the inferior insurance coverage), they still get better coverage.

That's great. These are the people that have descent coverage. The rest of us have to worry about bankruptcy if we or our family members fall ill.

Also, a friend of mine sustained a major injury that will keep him from working for maybe a year. Luckily, he works a union job that has great benefits. He and his family will do just fine.

If this had been an average worker that made descent money but had the run-of-the-mill coverage, their outcome would most likely have been far more grim.

I guess that's the only coverage that an average middle class worker could feel safe with.

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Progressives often roundly criticize Chris Matthews for his confrontational style and often Bush sympathetic reporting. But in this case I thought he was doing a good job - letting Moore have his say and not asking negatively provocative questions. The young woman clearly had no well-thought out position she could defend coherently.

In general, it makes me feel optimistic that we're moving toward real positive change. It was a knock-down-drag-out fight to get Medicare approved. Now it's a sacred cow.
Our current insurance system is so dysfunctional that it affects almost everyone, not excluding doctors, especially those who provide primary care.

I live in Massachusetts. You can't force people to buy something they can't afford. How to cover medical costs for everyone in the country is not a problem that can be dealt with state-by-state.

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He is a shill and a liar. Go ahead and ask him if he is and see what he says.

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Posted by: CJC ...You can't force people to buy something they can't afford. How to cover medical costs for everyone in the country is not a problem that can be dealt with state-by-state.

I disagree... everyone can pay through automatic payroll deductions, [failing that payment method] through unemployment insurance, and [failing that payment method] through welfare... anybody with a SAN# should and would be covered and yes it can be done State by State!
It would be easier and less costly than in Canada as Canada has a total population the size of California alone and Canada's Medicare is done Provincially.

Its the huge buying power that socialized medicine gives to its populated shareholders that will see the most savings at the bottom end... and thats how most will be covered... but you can also ease the financial burden further by getting employers to pay a tax deductible share into the plan, also by limiting the profit of other medical service providers and pharma by amending patent laws to better suit a truly national system and also by limiting the amount of legal penalties Doctors pay in malpractice suites...
If people will support nationalized medicine they "WILL" support protecting there doctors legal concerns and by paying the people working in the field an appropriate scale for there skill... IT WILL WORK... dozens of countries have working models that prove it!... and one country is on your doorstep and has 1/10th your population that "PROVES" IT WORKS!...

If all funds go into a centralized account thats specifically designed for Health Care, the purchasing power and abilities of that fund can reduce the overall cost to a fraction of what is being paid today... the overall benefit to the population and to the economy would be unmeasurable as the added cost to employers through pension and medical plans they include in there benefit packages would shrink in costs and be an enormous boon on there Balance sheets!

It works rather well up here in Canada and am surprised that you haven't adopted it yet as "your" model as "our" model was shaped from "your debates" on the issue.

You may read this and think that I'm just a socialist but I assure you, I'm not... I'm as Conservative as you can get up here without going Neo-con crazy ala "the NEW GOVERNMENT"...

We free thinkers up here just think that there are advantages to using both Adams and Jefferson arguments to maximum effect because in reality, they are both right!

My question to all who read this is simple.
If this is so blatantly and obviously provable, whats the real reason behind this "anti-movement"?

just think about it!

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The interview was pumped along at a brisk pace, but I didn't get to hear her say that if an individual cannot afford healthcare, then tough beans! If one is too poor to afford lifesaving surgery or medication, then die. It was on the tip of her tongue, but the questions asked were not quite pointed enough. I REALLY wanted to hear her say that! That's the kind of answer that can fell political campaigns.

There is NO way, if the quality healthcare available to those with money was equally available to those regardless of income, that the quality of the care would drop. There is no basis for that argument. It is absolute nonsense!

The only word I can think of that makes any sense in this argument is "greed," and it's a butt ugly attitude.

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...is probably still covered under her parents HC plan if she is under 23 and still a student. After that she has the option of extending for 18 months at extra cost under COBRA. I'm interested in what people like her would have to say if they had no insurance. My son is facing this. He will have to pick up coverage at his place of employment at extra cost to him with not as good of coverage as he has now.

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stock options over a four year period. Try and tell me some people didn't die so that company could make outrageous profits! The profit has to be taken out of Health Care!!!!!

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I think the situation described below is pretty common.

Most of your life you have had good health insurance, though you did not need it much. However, at 58 you lose your job and find that no one hires people that old except for possibly menial jobs without health care or other benefits.

This is not an unusual situation. Many companies routinely lay off older workers so as to hire younger, less expensive replacements (yes that is illegal, but so what?). Even if this were not the case, layoffs happen as companies move operations overseas and downsize for other reasons. Younger workers may find other work, but for older workers this is especially difficult.

So, what does a 58 year-old do for health care until he or she reaches 65? This is complicated by having low or no income and the fact that medical expenses actually increase for those without insurance.

You may be young now and healthy, but could this happen to you? It did to me.

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...striking them hard because they have started a smaer campaign against him. They did the rethug religious right wing thing, they found a 'friend' of his from college days and gave him words with which to smear.
So much for the rethug religious right wingers, nut jobs one and all.

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The very same thing happened to me, at the age of 55. Now I have no health care and have major health problems for which I can do nothing, so I do nothing and just hope it does not get worse and hope I can survive. I am living on what was supposed to be retirement savings. It is largely gone.

Once it is gone I will commit suicide and the religious right, the Catholics, my religion, and the evangelical fundies that are staunch Bushies and rethuglikkkans must be so happy.

The covenant we as americans have with each other, to care for each other and that same covenant we have with God to care for each other as His children is null and void, thanks to the right wing Catholic Rethuglikkkans. It is just disappeared, gone as if it never existed. Ooops it never did exist.

So much for the right wing Catholic Repugs. And that is exactly why these people are not pro-life and never were. The real agenda is their GREED for MONEY and POLITICAL POWER qith which to rule the lives of others.

These right wingers are truly all about the secular greed for money and political power. And who was it that set them loose, why it was their soon to be saint Pope John Paull II. I can't imagine how they can consider that criminal a saint. But then like their brethern the evangelical fundamentalists have an 'upside down and backward' view of the world.

They cherry pick the laws of God and the teachings of Jesus to accomplish their own agenda for America and the world. And pursue that agenda with viciousness and they don't care who has to die to serve their agenda's goals.

Oh well, I surely won't be the first and I surely am far from the last to die for this cabal of horrors, the right wing catholics, the evangelical fundies, the corporatocracy and the neocons, all in the same bed, all from the same cesspool of killing others so they may profit and gain in political power.

Hopefully I and my half dead computer can last and keep posting on the forums, until the next election so I can get my vote in to stop these killers for fun and profit.

How appropos it seems that the catholic church elected a Nazi for pope. And how appropos they are besotted with pedophile clergy, whom they so staunchly protect so that they may go on to attack children and maim them in mind for the rest of their lives.

The Catholic Church has finally hit bottom. I thought the church's support of Hitler and the Nazi Party was an aberration. But now that they support and are so staunchly aligned with the Republican Party and the nazis of today namely Reagan, Daddy Bush and now the worst of all, Baby Bush the right wing pope and the right wing catholics truly reveal themselves for what they are.

They are the evil that walks the earth and the death/ maiming/crippling of so many others for their gods of money and political power and the domination over the lives of others is their core agenda, their core values.

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