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Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Sen. Begich's U. S. Senate Health Care Speech This Morning
Sen. Begich will be holding a health care public forum this Friday at Bartlett High School, from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. KBYR-AM-750 will broadcast the forum live.
Thanks for posting this, Phillip. I never know when any members of our congressional delegation are going to make a public speech, so I generally miss them. Anyway, I went to a Town Hall meeting last weekend that Sen. Begich held at Providence for Health Care personnel. It was heavily dominanted by physicians, and they spoke up loud and clear about the problems with the current system that poorly reimburses them for Medicare, Medicaid, and Tricare (Military insurance when military people have to be seen outside of a military or VA facility). Even though they are unhappy with how things are now, I really didn't hear them sound like they embrace health insurance reform. They aren't happy with how things are, yet they seemed to more or less spout the general talking points that the Republican party feeds people. I was hoping for more openness to change that would benefit more people, but their concern was that more people would just add to the existing problems of poor reimbursement to them, especially if a public option became available.
Susie said... I really didn't hear them sound like they embrace health insurance reform. They aren't happy with how things are, yet they seemed to more or less spout the general talking points that the Republican party feeds people.
That is why I think they are exagerating the problems. I think they want to show the government programs don't work. In other states pretty much every doctor takes some medicare patients, here doctors just flat refuse and people on medicare are dying because they can't get to see a doctor. There does not seem to be a lot of caring about people, just caring about the bottom line. Doctors in other places also take patients who have no insurance or way to pay them and don't charge them, especially specialist who make a lot of money. I can name a couple of cardiologists and a nephrologist in Washington who have treated people for free. The same problem is true of attorneys. In Alaska they do hardly any pro-bono work. It's the old I got mine to hell with you attitude.
I'm happy to say that the attitudes of doctors in Los Anchorage is not the attitude of doctors in Juneau, at least at the group practice I have been using since I was a child. My current primary care doc told me that they will keep me as a patient when I have Medicare in 2 years and 3 months, and they have been very accomodating and helpful over the past few years while I have been uninsured --- since I have pre-existing conditions that make it impossible to find affordable insurance that would do me any good.
But about Mark's speech --- just more hot air from him that says NOTHING, NOTHING. WE NEED TO GET THE MESSAGE TO HIM OVER AND OVER AGAIN TO STOP FARTING AROUND AND SUPPORT A ROBUST PUBLIC OPTION, AND ALLOW NEGOTIATING FOR LOWEST PRESCRIPTION PRICES.
why is it that so-called progressives are suddenly so willing to accept the lowest and least effective compromise coming out of Congress?
The current proposals which speak of a 'public option', still leave the insurance industry and the health care corporations their 'option' of retaining their hold on the nations health.
A single payer system for everyone, with the health care and insurance corporations on the outside looking in, is the goal we should be looking to achieve.
As long as we set a place at the table for corporate profit, corporate profit will trump the health care needs of the nation.
If you're going to pretend you're an active proponent of progressive ideals, please try to promote something truly progressive.
As to Begich. We all know Begich isn't demanding a public option, he isn't promoting and supporting, or even acknowledging that a public option should be included in any compromise.
Forget Begich, he's not interested in you or your healthcare needs. He's not concerned with the nation's needs. He's playing you. He's not about to become an advocate for your interests.
But Begich is little more than an irrelevant aside to the issue at hand. Compromise shouldn't be the goal in any case.
Reforming health care deserves no less than the ethical and moral conviction to get it right, there will be no resolution in compromising what is right and just.
when profit drives the decision whether our nation is healthy or not, profit is not only anti-progressive, it is immoral and unethical.
Our nation cannot live up to it's potential if the health of it's citizens is bought and sold as a commodity.
Our nation living up to it's highest potential isn't an abstraction to be questioned as to whether it's a partisan notion. Doing that which is right and just shouldn't be 'labeled' as merely some dastardly 'Democratic Party' inclination, it's crucial to our very survival and every bit the reality necessary and attainable.
There is no more essential necessity than to have a strong, fit and healthy nation, that's not a partisan uncertainty to be 'debated' or 'parlied' in a game of petty one-up-man-ship.
The idea that private profit should trump the best interests of the nation is simply unthinking moronic idiocy,
...and it's hypocritical, irrational and simply a pretense held by the woefully unhinged.
You who pretend to abhor the government 'taking over' private enterprise have no such pretentious qualms when the government taking over private enterprise suits your purpose, you just don't want the government to benefit those you'd rather think you're superior to.
If you were actually against government taking over private enterprise, you'd be advocating tearing up the nation's transportation system and roads, scrapping the military, eliminating public safety, police and fire protection. But you don't.
Those of you who who practice such artifice, duplicity, and deception, make such pretentious claims as to abhor government taking over private enterprise when it occurs to you that government taking over private enterprise gives you 'something for nothing'. You simply have no such concern when those many and varied social programs bring direct benefit to you. You like all of the current socialistic programs that you think benefit you and benefit your own 'private enterprise'.
If you had convictions, or the courage to follow through on your so-called convictions, you'd at least have a leg to stand on. As it is, it's all too obvious you don't, and you're naught but hypocrisy and greed personified.
And that hypocrisy is most apt to describe the typical dishonest, perfidious, self-aggrandizing Republican faux conservative.
If all you have to offer is pretentious yattering blather, and overweening, self-preferential hypocrisy, you've brought nothing to contribute to the nation.
Those of you who practice such artifice, duplicity, and deception, make such pretentious claims as to abhor government taking over private enterprise, are totally silent when it occurs to you that government taking over private enterprise benefits you personally.
"If you were actually against government taking over private enterprise, you'd be advocating tearing up the nation's transportation system and roads, scrapping the military, eliminating public safety, police and fire protection. But you don't."
I had thought this was an excellent point, but lately have run into people who are willing to:
1. tear up the nation's transportation system and roads through privatization, with a for-profit toll system following;
2. scrapping the military a la blackwater style private contractors (already happening to an alarming extent);
3. eliminating public safety and police protection, basically through increasing segregation of rich and poor, e.g. with gated communities;
4. fire protection-- I don't know how this is envisioned, I've just heard proposals for privatization bandied about. To me, remembering the disasters of 19th century privatized systems which included the burning to the ground of entire cities, it would seem no one would want a return to it, and maybe after a few fresh fiascos, no one will, but it is not unimaginable we'll have to endure fresh fiascos before this is realized.
5. You left out public water, drinking water systems, etc--these will be privatized, though.
In other words, I wouldn't accuse these people of hypocrisy...They are very thorough--just give them time to extend their methods into the domains you mentioned, above.
I also wouldn't try to appeal to their civic sense of responsibility--their civic sense of responsibility is defined in terms of looking after their own interests and then relying on the realization of these as best serving the community and nation at large. Even as it has become increasingly obvious over the last three decades it just doesn't work out that way.
10 comments:
Oct 20
follow the money
Thanks for posting this, Phillip. I never know when any members of our congressional delegation are going to make a public speech, so I generally miss them. Anyway, I went to a Town Hall meeting last weekend that Sen. Begich held at Providence for Health Care personnel. It was heavily dominanted by physicians, and they spoke up loud and clear about the problems with the current system that poorly reimburses them for Medicare, Medicaid, and Tricare (Military insurance when military people have to be seen outside of a military or VA facility). Even though they are unhappy with how things are now, I really didn't hear them sound like they embrace health insurance reform. They aren't happy with how things are, yet they seemed to more or less spout the general talking points that the Republican party feeds people. I was hoping for more openness to change that would benefit more people, but their concern was that more people would just add to the existing problems of poor reimbursement to them, especially if a public option became available.
Susie said... I really didn't hear them sound like they embrace health insurance reform. They aren't happy with how things are, yet they seemed to more or less spout the general talking points that the Republican party feeds people.
That is why I think they are exagerating the problems. I think they want to show the government programs don't work. In other states pretty much every doctor takes some medicare patients, here doctors just flat refuse and people on medicare are dying because they can't get to see a doctor. There does not seem to be a lot of caring about people, just caring about the bottom line. Doctors in other places also take patients who have no insurance or way to pay them and don't charge them, especially specialist who make a lot of money. I can name a couple of cardiologists and a nephrologist in Washington who have treated people for free. The same problem is true of attorneys. In Alaska they do hardly any pro-bono work. It's the old I got mine to hell with you attitude.
I'm happy to say that the attitudes of doctors in Los Anchorage is not the attitude of doctors in Juneau, at least at the group practice I have been using since I was a child. My current primary care doc told me that they will keep me as a patient when I have Medicare in 2 years and 3 months, and they have been very accomodating and helpful over the past few years while I have been uninsured --- since I have pre-existing conditions that make it impossible to find affordable insurance that would do me any good.
But about Mark's speech --- just more hot air from him that says NOTHING, NOTHING. WE NEED TO GET THE MESSAGE TO HIM OVER AND OVER AGAIN TO STOP FARTING AROUND AND SUPPORT A ROBUST PUBLIC OPTION, AND ALLOW NEGOTIATING FOR LOWEST PRESCRIPTION PRICES.
why is it that so-called progressives are suddenly so willing to accept the lowest and least effective compromise coming out of Congress?
The current proposals which speak of a 'public option', still leave the insurance industry and the health care corporations their 'option' of retaining their hold on the nations health.
A single payer system for everyone, with the health care and insurance corporations on the outside looking in, is the goal we should be looking to achieve.
As long as we set a place at the table for corporate profit, corporate profit will trump the health care needs of the nation.
If you're going to pretend you're an active proponent of progressive ideals, please try to promote something truly progressive.
As to Begich. We all know Begich isn't demanding a public option, he isn't promoting and supporting, or even acknowledging that a public option should be included in any compromise.
Forget Begich, he's not interested in you or your healthcare needs. He's not concerned with the nation's needs. He's playing you. He's not about to become an advocate for your interests.
But Begich is little more than an irrelevant aside to the issue at hand. Compromise shouldn't be the goal in any case.
Reforming health care deserves no less than the ethical and moral conviction to get it right, there will be no resolution in compromising what is right and just.
freeper
"If you're going to pretend you're an active proponent of progressive ideals, please try to promote something truly progressive."
What exactly is progressive? Is it progressive for the government to take over private enterprise?
Is profit "anti-progressive"?
Progressive seems to be just another word for Democrat.
when profit drives the decision whether our nation is healthy or not, profit is not only anti-progressive, it is immoral and unethical.
Our nation cannot live up to it's potential if the health of it's citizens is bought and sold as a commodity.
Our nation living up to it's highest potential isn't an abstraction to be questioned as to whether it's a partisan notion. Doing that which is right and just shouldn't be 'labeled' as merely some dastardly 'Democratic Party' inclination, it's crucial to our very survival and every bit the reality necessary and attainable.
There is no more essential necessity than to have a strong, fit and healthy nation, that's not a partisan uncertainty to be 'debated' or 'parlied' in a game of petty one-up-man-ship.
The idea that private profit should trump the best interests of the nation is simply unthinking moronic idiocy,
...and it's hypocritical, irrational and simply a pretense held by the woefully unhinged.
You who pretend to abhor the government 'taking over' private enterprise have no such pretentious qualms when the government taking over private enterprise suits your purpose, you just don't want the government to benefit those you'd rather think you're superior to.
If you were actually against government taking over private enterprise, you'd be advocating tearing up the nation's transportation system and roads, scrapping the military, eliminating public safety, police and fire protection. But you don't.
Those of you who who practice such artifice, duplicity, and deception, make such pretentious claims as to abhor government taking over private enterprise when it occurs to you that government taking over private enterprise gives you 'something for nothing'. You simply have no such concern when those many and varied social programs bring direct benefit to you. You like all of the current socialistic programs that you think benefit you and benefit your own 'private enterprise'.
If you had convictions, or the courage to follow through on your so-called convictions, you'd at least have a leg to stand on. As it is, it's all too obvious you don't, and you're naught but hypocrisy and greed personified.
And that hypocrisy is most apt to describe the typical dishonest, perfidious, self-aggrandizing Republican faux conservative.
If all you have to offer is pretentious yattering blather, and overweening, self-preferential hypocrisy, you've brought nothing to contribute to the nation.
freeper
Edit:
Those of you who practice such artifice, duplicity, and deception, make such pretentious claims as to abhor government taking over private enterprise, are totally silent when it occurs to you that government taking over private enterprise benefits you personally.
"If you were actually against government taking over private enterprise, you'd be advocating tearing up the nation's transportation system and roads, scrapping the military, eliminating public safety, police and fire protection. But you don't."
I had thought this was an excellent point, but lately have run into people who are willing to:
1. tear up the nation's transportation system and roads through privatization, with a for-profit toll system following;
2. scrapping the military a la blackwater style private contractors (already happening to an alarming extent);
3. eliminating public safety and police protection, basically through increasing segregation of rich and poor, e.g. with gated communities;
4. fire protection-- I don't know how this is envisioned, I've just heard proposals for privatization bandied about. To me, remembering the disasters of 19th century privatized systems which included the burning to the ground of entire cities, it would seem no one would want a return to it, and maybe after a few fresh fiascos, no one will, but it is not unimaginable we'll have to endure fresh fiascos before this is realized.
5. You left out public water, drinking water systems, etc--these will be privatized, though.
In other words, I wouldn't accuse these people of hypocrisy...They are very thorough--just give them time to extend their methods into the domains you mentioned, above.
I also wouldn't try to appeal to their civic sense of responsibility--their civic sense of responsibility is defined in terms of looking after their own interests and then relying on the realization of these as best serving the community and nation at large. Even as it has become increasingly obvious over the last three decades it just doesn't work out that way.
-Yusef
as I said, the concept that private profit should trump the needs of the nation equates to nothing more than simple unhinged idiocy.
Yes, yusef, some of the unhinged are as extreme as you note, but generally, the rest of the unhinged are merely hypocritical idiotic morons.
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