Glad to see the Republicans are still running Congress

The repubs admit health care has to be fixed. Some selfish, short term thinking board members say they like their health care as it is. That’s nice but it wont stay as it is. The repubs admitted that in 2000 and 2004. It is costing an increasingly ,unsustainable section of our budget. It wil, be trimmed over and over and soon they will have a health care they can not recognize. It is a problem that needs to be solved as quickly as possible. Now is the time. The dems have to get it done. The repubs are just being political. If the dems do get it done, the repubs will wind up in the dumpster they deserve to be in. They demonstrate that they place the party over the country.

Or, they demonstrate that they just have a different idea of what’s best for the country.

In other words - we like what HAS been proposed. But - we don’t like what has NOT been proposed, and therefore we stand in opposition.

My argument wasn’t the fact that I thought illegal immigrants were going to receive free health benefits, but its a good link.

But since you brought it up, are they going to die on the doorstep of the hospital when they get turned away because they aren’t covered?

Can’t remember where I found this but it was during some research of a different subject.

So I don’t have a link but here is a list of the CEO salaries of big pharma and health care companies:

Top 17 CEO yearly salaries in big pharma

  1. Miles White - Abbott - $33.4M
  2. Fred Hassan - Schering-Plough - $30.1M
  3. Bill Weldon - Johnson & Johnson - $25.1M
  4. Bob Essner - Wyeth - $24.1M
  5. Robert Parkinson - Baxter - $17.6M
  6. Daniel Vasella - Novartis - $15.5M
  7. Richard Clark - Merck - $14.5M
  8. Frank Baldino - Cephalon - $13.5M
  9. Sidney Taurel - Eli Lilly - $13M
  10. Jeff Kindler - Pfizer - $12.6M
  11. Jim Cornelius - Bristol-Myers Squibb - $11.3
  12. Franz Humer - Roche - $11.1M
  13. Robert Coury - Mylan - $8.5M
  14. Jean-Pierre Garnier - GlaxoSmithKline - $6M
  15. Werner Wenning - Bayer - $4.77M
  16. David Brennan - AstraZeneca - $4.3M
  17. Gerard Le Fur - Sanofi-Aventis - $3.27M

The point being, it doesn’t really matter what “for profit” companies pay their employees and the only reason it gets brought up is because for the average American (and me) these numbers look huge.

Would you have it so?

Actually, it’s all big pharma

Don’t play stupid eluci. Either this plan they are proposing is going to cover them or not.

Not so much that, but it seems that you are determined to make illegal immigration the central core of your argument. Perhaps only you amongst the vast teeming are equipped to understand the absolutely crucial significance, in that it has escaped lesser minds. Like mine, for instance. And so many, many others.

But might we dare to think of it as a separate issue? Might we not think of this plan as being for the benefit/destruction of our own citizens, and address the question about care for illegals as a separate question?

Or perhaps you are anxious to demonstrate that the suggestion that the plan is intended to provide such care is a valid one?

But if you believe as you seem to, that they will receive some level of humane care regardless, its rather a moot point, don’t you think? Perhaps if you would just tell us baldly what your point actually is?

I didn’t think there was much point to Pit posting?
You are blindly for public funded health care. I am against it. Does there really need to be anything to MY Argument while you offer nothing substantial of your own?

My “stance” has always been that there are other methods of refining our current health care than what is currently being proposed. Surely, even you, can follow along on this path.

Who are you talking to? I posted the OP because I am unwaveringly in support of a public option, yes. I don’t know if it will be implemented well or not, but taking a crack at it is infinitely preferable to doing nothing, or any “compromise” that continues to support the backbone of the current system. I want to see the health insurance companies brought to their knees and forced to crawl back into the wretched black womb whence they spawned.

That adds up to roughly 249 milllion dollars, which, compared to the gross revenues and net profits these companies make, is not really all that significant. Nor does it take into account the taxes these people pay (I can hear it now, "Bullshit – rich people don’t pay taxes! Which is not only bullshit all its own, but to the extent they are allowed exemptions, it’s Congress who created them. So why not blame Congress instead?)

Nor is it significant in terms of what good the country’s population would derive from taking away even 100% of their income. It amounts to less than one dollar per U.S. citizen.

This is the trouble with class warfare, a specialty of the Democrats. It creates specious hostility and unrealistic views on the part of the uneducated of the so-called damage being done to them by “the rich.”

Probably not. Would you prefer that to happen? I’m wondering what you propose we do about this. Because I don’t think it’s in the national interest to halt domestic programs that benefit our citizens simply to spite illegal aliens.

How about we stop them from getting here in the first place? Or, or get them to go through the proper channels so that, at the very least, they are paying taxes?

Now I wonder how we go about doing that. Probably a separate discussion.

Did you know that if an illegal alien gives birth in the US, that not only is THAT baby a citizen, it also grants rights to the mother and father as well?

Well, heck, Starkers, its just a list of numbers! It doesn’t necessarily slander anybody, it just them facty thingys! I would have thought you might be pleased that vigorous entrepreneurship and innovation would be grossly…I mean, justly!..rewarded?

So what if they get this money by squeezing it from sick and suffering fellow Americans? Its not like they made them sick, its just seizing the opportunity to grab a buck, and if that’s not the American way, well, what is?

Why blame Pinnochio when its Geppeto’s fault? Its the Golden Rule: the guys whats got the gold, they make the rules.

I want mine back.

Piffle. The Dems long ago rebranded themselves as Republican Lite, they stopped waging class war, they have mostly been conducting our surrender negotiations.

“Please, sir, can I have some more?”
“No!”
“Quite right, beggin’ your pardon, sir, anything you need sucked?”

Do doctors make too much money eluci?

RIGHT NOW, it’s the insurance co., soon it will be doctors, then lawyers, where down the line do politicians get pay cuts?

Oh wait, that’ll never happen as they actually would have to vote themselves one.
Business is run as any business should be run. If there is money to be made, let them make it and keep the government out of it (except for taxing the living shit out of those ‘entrepreneurs’)

The government doesn’t realize it but tax hikes don’t target big business because like most folks already know, they just pass on the added costs to the people.

What is your stance on MAKING a business be non-smoking?

Kearsen, since you are so eager to find reasons why UHC is economically unfeasable in your country, you need not look any further than your absurd “Defense” budget:

Military expenditures

**World: 1,470,000,000,000

USA: 636,292,979,000**

636/1470 roughly equals 42% of all military expenditure in the known universe.

How bad do you (collective) need to kill other people as opposed to saving your own?

Why do people try to correlate national defense and universal health care?

I, for one, could give a rat’s ass about the budget for national defense. If they CAN cut spending on frivolous shit, then they should.

ACROSS THE BOARD, the government spends WAY too much. I don’t like it.

It wasn’t your to begin with, luce, I was talking about how little impact there would be if the government siezed 100% of it from the people who earned it and “used it for the public good.”

So far as I can tell this this sense of entitlement when it comes to other peoples’ money is one of the major problems with your worldview.

Which ones? I know a couple of doctors who don’t make enough money, they became doctors to make people better. And may the Goddess bless them and hold them to Her bountiful bosom all the days of their life, amen.

Interesting question. Let’s discuss that some time. Some other time.

Does that call for a rebutall, or a “whatever”?

No. If business cannot be run as a decent and humane exercise, it should not be run. Ever notice how when we get into a military stance, how business rushes to provide for our troops on a non-profit, at-cost basis? Neither have I. Irrelevent, yeah, but you’re doing it, so what the heck…

Hmmmm. Don’t let them?

Absolutely hate it, I smoke, and I feel gradually ostracized. By “ostracized”, going out in below zero weather to feed my monkey. But they’re right, and I’m wrong, so fuck me.

(PS: I kind of like the “eluci” cognomen, when I picked my username, it never occured to me how many times I’d have to put with some “some 'splaining to do” and Ricky Retardo jokes…)