But why does it have to be “socialized medicine”? Why not a Canadian-style system?
Except I am not asking for free health care… Right now I pay $270/mo for my wife and I overseas. I think I should be able to BUY (ie PAY FOR) the same system of coverage that my elected officials get… either at the state or national level. The governor of Nevada gets health care for free, why can’t I pay for the same?
This is why Obama has my vote… oh yeah, and he never was a member of a party that wanted Illinois to break away from the union.
My favorite part of the speech was where she compared herself to Harry Truman, with the more or less implicit assumption that if Truman could become President after a short time as Vice President, she’d be fine if her 72 year old multi-cancerous mentor had something go wrong. Well, maybe. Truman hadn’t been the Governor of a state or the mayor of Wasilla, but he’d served ten years in the Senate. But we all know that time in the Senate is wasted.
Well put!
Poor old John McCain. Second banana is no fun, especially when you’re supposed to be the headliner.
My eyes are rolling a little.
It sounds like they negotiated a better deal with their employer than you did when you were in the U.S… Most people (pace DtC) do manage to get a decent employer-sponsored health plan. Some of them (not all) cover pre-existing conditions.
As for your “I think I should be able” – several thoughts arise. You don’t really want to “pay for” the coverage – you want to pay a small portion of what it would cost, in the relevant market. Point two: where you are is a different relevant market than the U.S. Point the third: I think I should be able to make my current salary as a professional video gamer, and I think I should be able to be banging Heidi Klum right about now. The market, and Seal, disagree with what I think I should be able to do. Odds of any politician intervening to adjust reality to what I think I should be able to have? Low at best.
You’re so disgusted with the present state of America that you’ve taken the trouble to absent yourself from your home country, yet simulataneously disgusted that someone else would have suggested, in a different way, getting themselves the Hell out of the Union? Weird.
This $270/mo is not through an employer - it is just private insurance purchased by me as an individual directly from a large UK-based insurer. It is valid everywhere in the world except the USA.
Over the past eight years I have spent about $30K on my insurance premiums. I have filed zero claims. If I wanted to have my UK insurance valid in the US, it would be $1080/mo, but is not available to US passport holders who are living in the US… only for visits. If I were British living in the US it’d be ok. So why can’t a Nevada company insure me for a similar amount?
I don’t hate America at all, but the reality is that I needed health care coverage and being self employed meant that I was able to live overseas just as easily as at home (mostly). I just don’t see how I can be “uninsurable”, but if I got a job for a 5 person company (taking an 80% pay cut), then I could be insured on a group plan. It makes no sense since my risk of needing care would be the same… but no insurance company will cover me even at five times the normal premium.
What does it say when your hometown paper (well Anchorage, not Wasilla) calls you out for untruths during your big Convention speech?
Well you have to admit it was the same AP story that was reported earlier in the thread…
It sounds like there is a profitable business niche waiting to be filled.
Except insurance industry professionals seem to have concluded that there is not.
I’m not trying to give you a hard time, and I sympathize with your personal frustration. It’s just that – as the absence of anyone entrepreneurially trying to fill the gap you describe suggests – delivering Cadillac-level health care to everyone in a nation with a substantial underclass and a substantial existing and unfunded commitment to various other huge social and military projects is not easy without some wrenching dislocations and/or wrenching re-distribution of wealth.
That is why when an HRC or BHO promises “universal healthcare for all,” I not only hold on to my wallet, I begin to find them less, not more, plausible and likable, because the promise is always delivered indignantly, as though it were shameful that this easily-achievable goal had not been implemented long ago (and, cue the meme of the evil conservative bosses trying to keep medicine out of the public’s hand because they just plain like suffering and sickness).
I am just of the opinion that the war in Iraq has been pointless from the start… Iraq posed no threat to the US and the US has now made life in Iraq worse. The billions wasted here every month could certainly insure 50 million people.
A quick Google shows $12 billion spent per month in Iraq, put that towards 50 million people’s insurance and you get $240/mo each, which is nearly double what I am paying (since my $270/mo covers my wife and I).
So the country can afford it. We just need to decide between guns and butter and I think Obama will better allocate our resources to help Americans rather than war-mongering around the world.
She was probably wearing a button that said, “The poor ain’t so bad” 
You’ll get no argument from me on the Iraq mess. But significant disengagement from the Middle East seems unlikely as both parties have made commitments there. BHO as well as McCain reported to AIPAC and pledged the party line, which is one that is in favor of an “active foreign policy” that puts down rogue states (as broadly defined). You or I may believe that McCain is more gung ho about wanting to go after every Muslim country, but BHO is not going to be some isolationist (I wish he could).
I don’t know if it was the same woman, but I read (somewhere) that a woman was escorted from the arena for holding up a sign that said, “Your Blunderwar is Showing!”
Community activism/organising is so broad a category that Guiliani and Palin have insulted many of their own constitients. What are all those “faith-based” organizations if they aren’t run by community organizers? Guess those people are just slackers–let’s get our tax dollars back from them.
Not to mention, this country that those knuckledraggers apparently love so much was founded on the backs of brilliant community organizers. Do they think the colonists fought against the British as disorganized guerrillas? No. Folks like Franklin and Jefferson rallied people in the streets and created a fervor.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was a community organizer. Jesus Christ was the ultimate community organizer. To insult Obama for following these people’s examples is to shit on the very thing the conservatives think they have a monopoly on. Moral consciousness.
“Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country” is not a statement that compels us only to run for public office or serve in the military. It essentially calls for all of us to serve our communities in some capacity. Being a governor and a Naval officer are respectable, but they’re also glamorous positions sought by power-hungry individuals. You have to really love people and hard work to stick yourself in the urban trenches. You can’t want power, fame, or fortune if you want to be a community organizer. That alone makes it admirable.
Where does Hockey Mom get off sneering at a man who’s lived a life more hard-scrabble and altruistic than hers? His turds are more Christ-like than she is.
I’ve really missed you. You always manage to encapsulate issues in a way I find compelling.
I was baffled by the community organizer guffaws during the Palin and Giuliani speeches. I felt like there was an inside joke I wasn’t getting.
Brava! Standing O!
Its not the organizing, its the community. The PTA is a community organization, so is the school board, so is government itself. What they find troublesome is the community he was organizing, and the purposes to which that organization is directed. Oddly enough, when you organize the poor and disadvantaged, they tend somewhat leftish. The Republican mind finds this puzzling, and troublesome. No good can come of this.
Yeah, the people who need the most organizing are the ones we shouldn’t have any dealings with. Because they’re dirty and slothful, and if they would just pull themselves up by their bootstraps, then they wouldn’t need any pansy librul do-gooding on their behalf.
Really, all the laughing about the “community” made me angry. My mother is a community activist. She works 12 hours days and struggles monthly to pay her staff and herself, just so that poor people don’t have to go hungry. For her, it was a calling from God (she’s a minister). But the Republicans only seem to get callings from God when it involves war. So maybe it’s not their fault that they don’t understand.
I’m sure over the course of my mother’s 30+ years of work, her organization has helped more people than have ever lived in Alaska, let alone currently live there. And I’m sure there’s more nights that she’s gone to bed completely stressed out than Hockey Mom has.
The Republicans are the FIRST to point the finger at the black community and yell at us for not helping ourselves. What, do they think out-of-wedlock parenting and the academic achievement gap is supposed to be solved WITHOUT community activism of some type? They think the government can do a better job? Oh, wait! They’re the party of small government, where everyone can take care of themselves. Forget that that kind of individualism goes against so-called “Christian” values. Wouldn’t want to highlight yet another example of conservative hypocrisy, would we?
Every time I try to find common ground with conservatives, I am thwarted by the words that come out of their mouths.
jsgoddess, you’re my sister from another mister, girl.
So, what is the inside joke that everyone in that convention seemed to get but I didn’t? Is there a secret code there in the words “community organizer”? I’m baffled. That audience and Giuliani laughed uproariously! It was a kneeslapper! My out-of-the-loop knees remained unslapped.
Who knows why they laughed. Maybe beause “community organizer” doesn’t sound like a “real job” to them. It also has a leftist connotation. More likely it’s because it’s on Obama’s resume, and a mention of anything on Obama’s resume is their cue to laugh or boo. I haven’t heard the term since the 60’s. It brings back fond memories of the War on Poverty and the Office of Economic Opportunity, Model Cities, etc. Sigh.