Obama wants credit for trying

[BreezeWood]

and proving Hard to beat ...

 

[Desperado]

Miami Dolphin's head coach Tony Sparano said basically the same thing after finishing last year's season.
Fortunately, Tony Sparano is no longer the Miami Dolphin's head coach.
We can only hope that Obama faces the same fate with his current job.

 

[Immanuel]

I give him credit for doing his damnedest to divide this nation.

Come on you guys, give credit where credit is due.

Immie

Not doing exactly as the Republicans want now equates to dividing this nation; kinda funny. What is funnier is that in many cases he actually did exactly what the Republicans wanted. But funniest of all is a con trying to convince me that Obama is some left wing nut job who is completely out of touch with the people and reality.

Exactly, here are the FACTS:

In fact, says Len Nichols of the New America Foundation, the individual mandate was originally a Republican idea. "It was invented by Mark Pauly to give to George Bush Sr. back in the day, as a competition to the employer mandate focus of the Democrats at the time."

The 'Free-Rider Effect'

Back in the late 1980s — when Democrats were pushing not just a requirement for employers to provide insurance, but also the possibility of a government-sponsored single-payer system — "a group of economists and health policy people, market-oriented, sat down and said, 'Let's see if we can come up with a health reform proposal that would preserve a role for markets but would also achieve universal coverage.' "

The idea of the individual mandate was about the only logical way to get there, Pauly says. That's because even with the most generous subsidies or enticements, "there would always be some Evel Knievels of health insurance, who would decline coverage even if the subsidies were very generous, and even if they could afford it, quote unquote, so if you really wanted to close the gap, that's the step you'd have to take."

One reason the individual mandate appealed to conservatives is because it called for individual responsibility to address what economists call the "free-rider effect." That's the fact that if a person is in an accident or comes down with a dread disease, that person is going to get medical care, and someone is going to pay for it.

"We called this responsible national health insurance," says Pauly. "There was a kind of an ethical and moral support for the notion that people shouldn't be allowed to free-ride on the charity of fellow citizens."

Republican, Democratic Bills Strikingly Similar

So while President Clinton was pushing for employers to cover their workers in his 1993 bill, John Chafee of Rhode Island, along with 20 other GOP senators and Rep. Bill Thomas of California, introduced legislation that instead featured an individual mandate. Four of those Republican co-sponsors — Hatch, Charles Grassley of Iowa, Robert Bennett of Utah and Christopher Bond of Missouri — remain in the Senate today.

The GOP's 1993 measure included some features Republicans still want Democrats to consider, including damage award caps for medical malpractice lawsuits.

But the summary of the Republican bill from the Clinton era and the Democratic bills that passed the House and Senate over the past few months are startlingly alike.

Beyond the requirement that everyone have insurance, both call for purchasing pools and standardized insurance plans. Both call for a ban on insurers denying coverage or raising premiums because a person has been sick in the past. Both even call for increased federal research into the effectiveness of medical treatments — something else that used to have strong bipartisan support, but that Republicans have been backing away from recently.

'A Sad Testament'

Nichols, of the New America Foundation, says he's depressed that so many issues that used to be part of the Republican health agenda are now being rejected by Republican leaders and most of the rank and file. "I think it's a sad testament to the state of relations among the parties that they've gotten to this point," he said.

And how does economist Pauly feel about the GOP's retreat from the individual mandate they used to promote? "That's not something that makes me particularly happy," he says.

What does any of that have to do with the idea that Barack Obama has done more to breed hatred and disunity in America than anyone since... oh, shall we say, the delegates that formed the Confederate States of America?

Immie

 

[naturegirl]

Dem or Republican idea, the healthcare we ended up with is horrendous for businesses, the upper class, the middle class and the poor.

Obama's signature legislation and he's still not running on it. You can keep the change. I don't care how hard he "tried", it didn't work.

 

[hortysir]

Are you barbarians for real? The sooner or later can be controlled with proper medical care.

I want to hear you justify the premature and preventable death of fellow Americans. The first 50 year old woman in this story is probably dead from something that could have been prevented.


Health reform's human stories

New Orleans, La. — — It happened as I watched a 50-something woman walk out, after spending several hours being attended to by volunteer doctors. "She's decided against treatment. A reasonable decision under the circumstances," the doctor tells us as she heads for the next patient. The president of the board of the National Association of Free Health Clinics tells me why: "It's stage four breast cancer, her body is filled with tumors." I don't know when that woman last saw a doctor. But I do know that if she had health insurance, the odds she would have seen a doctor long ago are much higher, and her chances for an earlier diagnosis and treatment would have been far greater.

After watching for hours as the patients moved through the clinic, it was hard to believe that I was in America.

Eighty-three percent of the patients they see are employed, they are not accepting other government help on a large scale, not "welfare queens" as some would like to have us believe. They are tax-paying, good, upstanding citizens who are trying to make it and give their kids a better life just like you and me.

Ninety percent of the patients who came through Saturday's clinic had two or more diagnoses.

Eighty-two percent had a life-threatening condition such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, or hypertension. They are victims of a system built with corporate profits at its center, which long ago forgot the moral imperative that should drive us to show compassion to our fellow men and women.

We have all made mistakes. But Dante tells us that divine justice weighs the sins of the cold-blooded and the sins of the warm-hearted on different scales. Better the occasional faults of a party living in the spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a party frozen in the ice of its own indifference.
President John F. Kennedy

psst.....


Abortion

 

[PoliticalChic]

GOP= most disgraceful, dishonest opposition EVER.

I happen to say....."Just lacked competence....."

...and you had a fit!


I get it....you must be just sick and tired of hearing that phrase, huh?

 

[gallantwarrior]

We've tried obama's hope n'change. Time to move on...

 

[daveman]

Are you barbarians for real? The sooner or later can be controlled with proper medical care.

I want to hear you justify the premature and preventable death of fellow Americans. The first 50 year old woman in this story is probably dead from something that could have been prevented.


Health reform's human stories

New Orleans, La. — — It happened as I watched a 50-something woman walk out, after spending several hours being attended to by volunteer doctors. "She's decided against treatment. A reasonable decision under the circumstances," the doctor tells us as she heads for the next patient. The president of the board of the National Association of Free Health Clinics tells me why: "It's stage four breast cancer, her body is filled with tumors." I don't know when that woman last saw a doctor. But I do know that if she had health insurance, the odds she would have seen a doctor long ago are much higher, and her chances for an earlier diagnosis and treatment would have been far greater.

After watching for hours as the patients moved through the clinic, it was hard to believe that I was in America.

Eighty-three percent of the patients they see are employed, they are not accepting other government help on a large scale, not "welfare queens" as some would like to have us believe. They are tax-paying, good, upstanding citizens who are trying to make it and give their kids a better life just like you and me.

Ninety percent of the patients who came through Saturday's clinic had two or more diagnoses.

Eighty-two percent had a life-threatening condition such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, or hypertension. They are victims of a system built with corporate profits at its center, which long ago forgot the moral imperative that should drive us to show compassion to our fellow men and women.

We have all made mistakes. But Dante tells us that divine justice weighs the sins of the cold-blooded and the sins of the warm-hearted on different scales. Better the occasional faults of a party living in the spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a party frozen in the ice of its own indifference.
President John F. Kennedy

psst.....


Abortion

That's different. Somehow. It just is.

Right, Bfgrn?

 

[LeftofLeft]

Thanks for 9/11, the stupidest wars ever, the depression, and the paralysis since 2/2010, dupe. A disgrace.

This refute has absolutely NOTHING to do with the fact that Obama had a Democrat Senate and House and STILL could not pass a budget.....beyond disgrace.