Members of Congess, sitting or former, generally do not find themselves in dire financial straits. For that matter, seriously potential members of Congress rarely – sometimes (see Dennis Kucinich’s personal history), but rarely – find themselves in dire financial straits. Just seems to work out that way.
Why not? Take BrainGlutton’s point to its logical conclusion: If they’re in dire financial straits, they’re very likely no longer Congresscritters, and therefore no longer have Congressional health coverage. If they’re in dire financial straits, they can’t afford private health insurance. So, what does that leave them?
Tha… that’s… that’s a joke, right? Right? :eek:
Sorry to be a downer, but I’m not sure it’s wise to teach that lesson to kids. It’s a distinctly American message and there is much truth in it; but a far greater truth is that success stories like Obama’s are more the exception than the rule. If you have any imagination at all, most of your dreams will probably be unrealized. Hard work is no guarantee of success. That’s life, in America or anywhere else. If your dream is to be a great pianist, but you were not born with the necessary level of musical talent, then you will never be a great pianist, no matter how many hours of practice you put in. If you want to be a professional athlete, and you have great athletic talent . . . you probably won’t be a professional athlete. There’s not much room at the top. Only a small fraction of high-school athletic stars get to play on college teams and only a small fraction of those get into the pros. And, in any field of endeavor, a lot depends not only on native talent and hard work, but on sheer luck and getting the breaks and who-you-know. That’s just how it is, and while we should encourage kids to strive their hardest and do their best, we should not set them up for disappointment.
Well, how about, “kids, if you work hard, you could become President of the United States… but you won’t.”?
He looked for the Union Label. o/`
There’s an acceptable level of competition in the grocery industry that means we can leave it to supply and demand to get us cheap prices. There is no such competition in the healthcare insurance, hospital/doctor or pharmaceutical industry, rather a series of local monopolies. An independent body capable of taking into account both the payers and the payees of the industry would be a vast improvement on the current situation where the monopolies literally get to write the legislation that sets the terms and conditions under which they operate their business.
It’s one of the ways in which we could make the healthcare market operate more like we expect a free market to operate, with freedom of movement, vigorous competition, extensive transparency and market knowledge between participants, resulting in a highly competitive marketplace where profits trend towards zero! But this doesn’t seem to be what the healthcare corporations want for some reason. Don’t you think it would be better than the current situation though?
I’ve asked this question, and maybe its too theoretical, but its bugging me. We know that the Big Insurance guys fuck people over for a profit, we got that part. But suppose they didn’t, suppose they stopped doing that shit tomorrow…could they still make a profit, or is cynical grubbing essential?
Which might mean that any attempt to bring in competition while simultaneously cleaning up their act for them will fail, because if they behave like decent citizens, they will go broke. And if there’s no way a corporate entity can be humane and profitable at the same time, then why should we tolerate them at all? If they can’t do the right thing, well, gee, that’s too bad but does that me we pay them gross bucks to do wrong?
(As far as impoverished Congresscrittes, by and large our representatives are from the finest, and have, historically, been men of substance. IIRC, there were a couple of occasions when a couple fell on embarrassingly hard times, and this made sitting critters squeamish. Long story short, Congresscritters have very, very generous retirement and pensions plans. And sometimes, very involved and concerned parole officers…)
Meaningless. Lots of Old, White, and Southern people voted for Obama. The only true bigotry I recall seeing during the election involved rural areas of Pennsylvannia and West Virginia, both Union states.
You mean Brainglutton’s doublespeak is dishonest, or that someone believes that SOCIAL services are a form of socialism are dishonest?
Nitpicking connotation is a dishonest tactic. Dismissing people’s real concerns because they don’t use a word in the way you think it should be used, is dishonest.
It’s a way that you can avoid actually having a debate and just clap your buddies on the back and congratulate yourselves on being smarter than everyone else.
After all, conservatives are evil dumbasses, why should their opinion matter at all? They just need to shut up and let their betters handle the important stuff.
Yeah, I hate the, “You can do or be anything.”, message we tell little kids. It’s totally not true. And by trying to tell them to emulate the President it sets them up for disappointment when they are anything less than the President.
What we need is for some rich dude or dudes to endow a non-profit foundation with billions of dollars to create a privately run insurance company that doesn’t have to worry about shareholder profits. It could be done fairly easily if you could get a pledge from several billionaires to leave something of their fortune to such a business.
Marvelous dry wit.
No, because it’s Calvinism. You deserve whatever you get in life, good or bad. But especially the bad.
sigh unfortunately.
Republican [registered. How i vote is nobodys business but mine]
Female, 48, northern whitebread WASP. I am about as WASP as you can get … most of my family has been here since the 1600s…
Did I mention I voted for Obama?
Actually, I would prefer that the new cars the clunkers are to be replaced with were required to get over 30 MPG and be able to use alternate fuels instead of just over 18 MPG … other than that I think it is a good idea.
Who are you asking?
Hahahahahahahahahahahaha.
I really do wonder how long Democrat Dopers can keep up the pretence that the health reform plans are wildly popular and it’s just a minority of nasty Republican fascists that are opposed to them. At the very least the nation is split in two on them, and a closer analysis of the polling shows Dems are losing ground rapidly on this.