Gabbords is conspiring with Russians!

[CarlinAnnArbor]

Gabbards has been an apologist for Putin's boy Assad.

So she got a moment of attention before people finally figured out that she was nuts. SPLAT!

Warmonger!

 

[karpenter]

Tulsi Only Needs A Few Thousand More Donors
To Qualify For The September Debates
I Might Visit Her Site For $25

 

[Rigby5]

Gabbards has been an apologist for Putin's boy Assad.

So she got a moment of attention before people finally figured out that she was nuts. SPLAT!

That is just STUPID!
Assad is incredibly POPULAR, with most Syrians.
The ONLY people against Assad are Sunni being paid by the Saudis, and armed by the US.
Why do you think the rebellion against Assad has totally and completely failed, even though the US has invested billions to create it?
Gabbard is one of the few candidates who is telling the truth and is not lying.
She is also likely the smartest.
Which is why she is about the only democrat candidate who is not hysterical about the gun control issue.
She realized gun control does absolutely no good because dishonest or violent people can not possibly be disarmed by it.

 

[mikegriffith1]

Oh, it's clear that CNN and MSNBC are upset with Gabbard for exposing what a fraud Kamala Harris is, and for not towing the far-left line on every issue.

 

[Rigby5]

Tulsi Gabbard supports the same policies as socialist Bernie Sanders. She supports Medicare for all. She bashes Trump on his border policy.

Medicare for all is the only way to fix the economy.
Right now, US products are about 30% higher than they need to be in order to be competitive, all because of ridiculously inflated health care prices. And all that extra health care costs are because of insurance companies.
They not only skim, but encourage providers over charging, because that makes insurance more necessary.
Getting insurance companies out of health care is essential if we want to survive as a major country.

 

[fncceo]

The Russians can have my vote ... for a price.

 

[Rigby5]

From NBC back in February

Since Gabbard announced her intention to run on Jan. 11, there have been at least 20 Gabbard stories on three major Moscow-based English-language websites affiliated with or supportive of the Russian government: RT, the Russian-owned TV outlet; Sputnik News, a radio outlet; and Russia Insider, a blog that experts say closely follows the Kremlin line. The CIA has called RT and Sputnik part of "Russia's state-run propaganda machine."

So, i see you are onboard with the spin...amusing..but not unexpected.

Spin.

Putin's state news orgs clearly support Gabbard

You only showed there were some articles about her, that does not at all indicate or prove they support her.
And someone supporting someone else does not mean they are bad.
White supremacists can support Trump without any suspicion that Trump supports white supremacy.
One persons opinion implies nothing about the other person, at all.

 

[Ray From Cleveland]

Tulsi Gabbard supports the same policies as socialist Bernie Sanders. She supports Medicare for all. She bashes Trump on his border policy.

Medicare for all is the only way to fix the economy.
Right now, US products are about 30% higher than they need to be in order to be competitive, all because of ridiculously inflated health care prices. And all that extra health care costs are because of insurance companies.
They not only skim, but encourage providers over charging, because that makes insurance more necessary.
Getting insurance companies out of health care is essential if we want to survive as a major country.

Insurance companies have little to do with our cost of healthcare. Most of our cost is because of government. I've seen it first hand when I worked in medical for ten years.

There is a lot of waste and fraud with government because unlike private insurance, they have no need to watch every dime. Insurance companies don't take your money and put it under a mattress until it's needed. They invest that money so the profits help offset claims. Not only that, but a portion of their income is dedicated to insurance fraud.

Everybody talks about a better system, but nobody sets the priorities correctly. The first thing we need to do is find out why medical care is so expensive, fix that, and then figure out how we are going to pay for it.

 

[EvilEyeFleegle]

Gabbards has been an apologist for Putin's boy Assad.

So she got a moment of attention before people finally figured out that she was nuts. SPLAT!

That is just STUPID!
Assad is incredibly POPULAR, with most Syrians.
The ONLY people against Assad are Sunni being paid by the Saudis, and armed by the US.
Why do you think the rebellion against Assad has totally and completely failed, even though the US has invested billions to create it?
Gabbard is one of the few candidates who is telling the truth and is not lying.
She is also likely the smartest.
Which is why she is about the only democrat candidate who is not hysterical about the gun control issue.
She realized gun control does absolutely no good because dishonest or violent people can not possibly be disarmed by it.

ROTFLMAO!
yeah...Assad..very popular..with the 10 million who fled his rule...and the hundreds of thousands he gassed..oh and the hundreds of thousands more he barrel-bombed...yup...you either like Assad..or you're dead! If you live in Damascus..you might like Assad..outside the city..not so much...if you're a Kurd..no.
As for the US creating the rebellion..totally untrue..not that they didn't try to take advantage of it..once it started.
Why it failed....in a word..Russia. I have to say..your post sounds a bit....propagandized. If not..then a bit of research might be called for. for the record, I've been to Damascus 4 times in the past 10 years...know just a bit about the region.

Syrian Refugees
Quick facts: What you need to know about the Syria crisis

 

[Ray From Cleveland]

Their hate and paranoia is making them lose their minds.

Well they need an alternative to RACISM! Not only is it all worn out, but I believe people are getting sick of hearing it. So the new theme is Russia. Russia this, Russia that.

I may not agree with any of her politics, but the woman is stunning. She is a real threat to those dog faced women the Democrats are running. She's young, pretty, in shape, and served our country.

 

[Ray From Cleveland]

Gabbard is a liberal just like Bernie Sanders.

Nah, she's way prettier.

 

[Rigby5]

Tulsi Gabbard supports the same policies as socialist Bernie Sanders. She supports Medicare for all. She bashes Trump on his border policy.

Medicare for all is the only way to fix the economy.
Right now, US products are about 30% higher than they need to be in order to be competitive, all because of ridiculously inflated health care prices. And all that extra health care costs are because of insurance companies.
They not only skim, but encourage providers over charging, because that makes insurance more necessary.
Getting insurance companies out of health care is essential if we want to survive as a major country.

Insurance companies have little to do with our cost of healthcare. Most of our cost is because of government. I've seen it first hand when I worked in medical for ten years.

There is a lot of waste and fraud with government because unlike private insurance, they have no need to watch every dime. Insurance companies don't take your money and put it under a mattress until it's needed. They invest that money so the profits help offset claims. Not only that, but a portion of their income is dedicated to insurance fraud.

Everybody talks about a better system, but nobody sets the priorities correctly. The first thing we need to do is find out why medical care is so expensive, fix that, and then figure out how we are going to pay for it.

Everyone knows why medical care is so expensive.
It is deliberate.

The whole system got screwed up in 1957, when insurance companies convinced the government to allow employer benefits to be tax exempt.
This not only created a privilege of subsidized healthcare for only the wealthy, but gave the wealthy so much greater collective bargaining power through the employer, that it essentially made health care suddenly totally affordable for anyone without insurance.
This caused insurance companies to encourage providers to charge outrageous rates that ensured even more people would have to buy insurance.
The Problem With Tax-Exempt Health Insurance
{...
The Problem With Tax-Exempt Health Insurance
BY EZEKIEL J. EMANUEL OCTOBER 10, 2008 4:15 PMOctober 10, 2008 4:15 pm


In this installment of Health Care Watch, Stuart M. Butler and Ezekiel Emanuel talk about what the candidates are saying about taxes and employer-sponsored health care coverage. Go to Mr. Butler’s post.

Ezekiel Emanuel, an oncologist, is the chairman of the department of bioethics at the Clinical Center of the National Institutes of Health. He is the author of “Health Care, Guaranteed: A Simple, Secure Solution for America.”(Full biography.)

Decisions made more than half a century ago are a large cause of today’s health care mess. During World War II, the War Labor Board ruled that fringe benefits, like health insurance, did not violate wage and price controls. Then, in the mid-1950s, employer provided health insurance was made tax exempt. Thus, $1 in health insurance, which was not taxed, became worth more than $1 in income, which was taxed. The result is that today’s health care system relies on employers to provide coverage and encourages more and more health insurance and spending.

Stuart Butler is right. Almost everyone who examines the issue — both conservative and liberal policy wonks, doctors, economists, lawyers and politicians — believes this tax exemption is a grievous error.

It is inequitable. It gives more benefit to the rich because their tax rate is higher. For instance, the Lewin consulting group estimated that for the exact same family health insurance package, an executive making more than $100,000 per year gets nearly $3,000 in tax benefits, while a blue-collar worker making less than $30,000, it is under $750. In addition, richer people tend to get bigger and more expensive health insurance packages from their employers, so they get more “freebies.”

It is also inefficient. The tax exemption provides an incentive for people to take more health insurance rather than wages, spending more on M.R.I.’s instead of other goods and services, like education or vacations.

This tax deduction is not free. Tax deductions are subsidies. This one costs more than $210 billion per year. It is the single largest tax break in the United States and dwarfs the mortgage interest deduction. Make no mistake, when the Treasury collects less taxes in one area, it must make up for it either in higher taxes somewhere else or in more debt on our children and grandchildren.

Thus, John McCain’s proposal to eliminate the tax exemption for health insurance is good policy. (About a year ago, President Bush made the same proposal.) The problem is having built the whole health care system around tax exemption, we simply can’t get rid of it without combining it with some other policies. And, as Mr. Butler acknowledges, this is where John McCain’s reform proposals — and President Bush’s proposal earlier — gets it very, very wrong.
...}

The solution is simple.
End all the illegal employer benefits exemptions, so then the wealthy and poor would all be on a level playing field.
Then instantly almost all people would be without insurance, so then would all demand single payer, to collectively bargain for everyone instead of just the wealthy.
And the collective bargaining power of single payer would quickly force providers to cut charges in half, just like the rest of the world.

And by the way, you are wrong about government administration.
The VA and Medicare for example, add less than 10% overhead, while private insurance companies balloon over head to more than 30%.
That is because government has an inspector general department to cut costs in an unbiased manner. Private companies have no over sight at all.

Again I should repeat, public heath care does NOT increase costs at all.
We now are paying over TWICE what any other country does, per person, and we have some of the worst health care in the world. We have almost half a million deaths a year from medical malpractice.
Deaths by medical mistakes hit records
{...
It's a chilling reality – one often overlooked in annual mortality statistics: Preventable medical errors persist as the No. 3 killer in the U.S. – third only to heart disease and cancer – claiming the lives of some 400,000 people each year. At a Senate hearing Thursday, patient safety officials put their best ideas forward on how to solve the crisis, with IT often at the center of discussions.

Hearing members, who spoke before the Subcommittee on Primary Health and Aging, not only underscored the devastating loss of human life – more than 1,000 people each day – but also called attention to the fact that these medical errors cost the nation a colossal $1 trillion each year.

"The tragedy that we're talking about here (is) deaths taking place that should not be taking place," said subcommittee Chair Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., in his opening remarks.

Among those speaking was Ashish Jha, MD, professor of health policy and management at Harvard School of Public Health, who referenced the Institute of Medicine's 1999 report To Err is Human, which estimated some 100,000 Americans die each year from preventable adverse events.

“When they first came out with that number, it was so staggeringly large, that most people were wondering, 'could that possibly be right?'" said Jha.

Some 15 years later, the evidence is glaring. "The IOM probably got it wrong," he said. "It was clearly an underestimate of the toll of human suffering that goes on from preventable medical errors."

It's not just the 1,000 deaths per day that should be huge cause for alarm, noted Joanne Disch, RN, clinical professor at the University of Minnesota School of Nursing, who also spoke before Congress. There's also the 10,000 serious complications cases resulting from medical errors that occur each day.

Disch cited the case of a Minnesota patient who underwent a bilateral mastectomy for cancer, only to find out post surgery a mix-up with the biopsy reports had occurred, and she had not actually had cancer.
...}

 

[Rigby5]

Gabbards has been an apologist for Putin's boy Assad.

So she got a moment of attention before people finally figured out that she was nuts. SPLAT!

That is just STUPID!
Assad is incredibly POPULAR, with most Syrians.
The ONLY people against Assad are Sunni being paid by the Saudis, and armed by the US.
Why do you think the rebellion against Assad has totally and completely failed, even though the US has invested billions to create it?
Gabbard is one of the few candidates who is telling the truth and is not lying.
She is also likely the smartest.
Which is why she is about the only democrat candidate who is not hysterical about the gun control issue.
She realized gun control does absolutely no good because dishonest or violent people can not possibly be disarmed by it.

ROTFLMAO!
yeah...Assad..very popular..with the 10 million who fled his rule...and the hundreds of thousands he gassed..oh and the hundreds of thousands more he barrel-bombed...yup...you either like Assad..or you're dead! If you live in Damascus..you might like Assad..outside the city..not so much...if you're a Kurd..no.
As for the US creating the rebellion..totally untrue..not that they didn't try to take advantage of it..once it started.
Why it failed....in a word..Russia. I have to say..your post sounds a bit....propagandized. If not..then a bit of research might be called for. for the record, I've been to Damascus 4 times in the past 10 years...know just a bit about the region.

Syrian Refugees
Quick facts: What you need to know about the Syria crisis

Wrong.
Assad did not start the rebellion, fighting, or violence, and anyone claiming Assad gassed anyone is just lying.
There have been no substantiated autopsies to prove that there were any toxic gas attacks at all, and it is clear Assad's own troops have never had or used equipment to survive gas attacks, so he could not possibly have used poison gas.

And of course the US started the rebellion.
Why do you think Stevens was in Benghazi, arranging for unemployed extremists like ISIS, al Qaeda, and Kurdish nationalists to get the lastest US weapons.
ISIS was all from Iraqi Sunni the US caused to be unemployed.
The US had them imprisoned.
When the US suddenly released them all, they all then were instantly equipped with millions worth of new Toyota trucks and weapons.

And no, the Russians did almost nothing.
They never had any land presence, and they only provided a minimal mount of air power.
The do not even have the air power to run large bombing missions like the US does with B-52s and B-1s.

Sure the Kurds hate Assad, but the Kurds also hate the Turks, Iranians, and Iraqi because they want to restore Kurdistan.
It would not mater if Assad was a saint, they would still hate him because they want their country back, that as taken away by the British, French, and US, after WWI.

Your own link says:
{... Anti-government demonstrations began in March of 2011, as part of the Arab Spring. But the peaceful protests quickly escalated after the government's violent crackdown, and armed opposition groups began fighting back. ...}
The Arab Spring is Hillary's catch phrase. It is clear it was the US that started the rebellion, and it was not organic at all.
Nor was it ever widely supported.
It was always clearly a foolish attempt by the US to disrupt anyone who the Israelis do not like, just like we did to Saddam and Qaddafi.

 

[Rigby5]

Gabbard is a liberal just like Bernie Sanders.

Nah, she's way prettier.

I like Tulsi Gabbard, mostly because she is anti war, but also because she has the military background to realize gun control is essentially treason.

 

[EvilEyeFleegle]

Gabbards has been an apologist for Putin's boy Assad.

So she got a moment of attention before people finally figured out that she was nuts. SPLAT!

That is just STUPID!
Assad is incredibly POPULAR, with most Syrians.
The ONLY people against Assad are Sunni being paid by the Saudis, and armed by the US.
Why do you think the rebellion against Assad has totally and completely failed, even though the US has invested billions to create it?
Gabbard is one of the few candidates who is telling the truth and is not lying.
She is also likely the smartest.
Which is why she is about the only democrat candidate who is not hysterical about the gun control issue.
She realized gun control does absolutely no good because dishonest or violent people can not possibly be disarmed by it.

ROTFLMAO!
yeah...Assad..very popular..with the 10 million who fled his rule...and the hundreds of thousands he gassed..oh and the hundreds of thousands more he barrel-bombed...yup...you either like Assad..or you're dead! If you live in Damascus..you might like Assad..outside the city..not so much...if you're a Kurd..no.
As for the US creating the rebellion..totally untrue..not that they didn't try to take advantage of it..once it started.
Why it failed....in a word..Russia. I have to say..your post sounds a bit....propagandized. If not..then a bit of research might be called for. for the record, I've been to Damascus 4 times in the past 10 years...know just a bit about the region.

Syrian Refugees
Quick facts: What you need to know about the Syria crisis

Wrong.
Assad did not start the rebellion, fighting, or violence, and anyone claiming Assad gassed anyone is just lying.
There have been no substantiated autopsies to prove that there were any toxic gas attacks at all, and it is clear Assad's own troops have never had or used equipment to survive gas attacks, so he could not possibly have used poison gas.

And of course the US started the rebellion.
Why do you think Stevens was in Benghazi, arranging for unemployed extremists like ISIS, al Qaeda, and Kurdish nationalists to get the lastest US weapons.
ISIS was all from Iraqi Sunni the US caused to be unemployed.
The US had them imprisoned.
When the US suddenly released them all, they all then were instantly equipped with millions worth of new Toyota trucks and weapons.

And no, the Russians did almost nothing.
They never had any land presence, and they only provided a minimal mount of air power.
The do not even have the air power to run large bombing missions like the US does with B-52s and B-1s.

Sure the Kurds hate Assad, but the Kurds also hate the Turks, Iranians, and Iraqi because they want to restore Kurdistan.
It would not mater if Assad was a saint, they would still hate him because they want their country back, that as taken away by the British, French, and US, after WWI.

Your own link says:
{... Anti-government demonstrations began in March of 2011, as part of the Arab Spring. But the peaceful protests quickly escalated after the government's violent crackdown, and armed opposition groups began fighting back. ...}
The Arab Spring is Hillary's catch phrase. It is clear it was the US that started the rebellion, and it was not organic at all.
Nor was it ever widely supported.
It was always clearly a foolish attempt by the US to disrupt anyone who the Israelis do not like, just like we did to Saddam and Qaddafi.

Huh...nope..a compendium of lies and half truths. At first i thought you were just ignorant--but now it is clear your are an apologist for someone. it amazes me that anyone would think, in this day and age of the internet, that lies and half truths could still gain any credence.

I'll not bother to do a line by line rebuttal..just the first paragraph is enough for me.
Welcome to ignore.

 

[Rigby5]

Gabbards has been an apologist for Putin's boy Assad.

So she got a moment of attention before people finally figured out that she was nuts. SPLAT!

That is just STUPID!
Assad is incredibly POPULAR, with most Syrians.
The ONLY people against Assad are Sunni being paid by the Saudis, and armed by the US.
Why do you think the rebellion against Assad has totally and completely failed, even though the US has invested billions to create it?
Gabbard is one of the few candidates who is telling the truth and is not lying.
She is also likely the smartest.
Which is why she is about the only democrat candidate who is not hysterical about the gun control issue.
She realized gun control does absolutely no good because dishonest or violent people can not possibly be disarmed by it.

ROTFLMAO!
yeah...Assad..very popular..with the 10 million who fled his rule...and the hundreds of thousands he gassed..oh and the hundreds of thousands more he barrel-bombed...yup...you either like Assad..or you're dead! If you live in Damascus..you might like Assad..outside the city..not so much...if you're a Kurd..no.
As for the US creating the rebellion..totally untrue..not that they didn't try to take advantage of it..once it started.
Why it failed....in a word..Russia. I have to say..your post sounds a bit....propagandized. If not..then a bit of research might be called for. for the record, I've been to Damascus 4 times in the past 10 years...know just a bit about the region.

Syrian Refugees
Quick facts: What you need to know about the Syria crisis

Wrong.
Assad did not start the rebellion, fighting, or violence, and anyone claiming Assad gassed anyone is just lying.
There have been no substantiated autopsies to prove that there were any toxic gas attacks at all, and it is clear Assad's own troops have never had or used equipment to survive gas attacks, so he could not possibly have used poison gas.

And of course the US started the rebellion.
Why do you think Stevens was in Benghazi, arranging for unemployed extremists like ISIS, al Qaeda, and Kurdish nationalists to get the lastest US weapons.
ISIS was all from Iraqi Sunni the US caused to be unemployed.
The US had them imprisoned.
When the US suddenly released them all, they all then were instantly equipped with millions worth of new Toyota trucks and weapons.

And no, the Russians did almost nothing.
They never had any land presence, and they only provided a minimal mount of air power.
The do not even have the air power to run large bombing missions like the US does with B-52s and B-1s.

Sure the Kurds hate Assad, but the Kurds also hate the Turks, Iranians, and Iraqi because they want to restore Kurdistan.
It would not mater if Assad was a saint, they would still hate him because they want their country back, that as taken away by the British, French, and US, after WWI.

Your own link says:
{... Anti-government demonstrations began in March of 2011, as part of the Arab Spring. But the peaceful protests quickly escalated after the government's violent crackdown, and armed opposition groups began fighting back. ...}
The Arab Spring is Hillary's catch phrase. It is clear it was the US that started the rebellion, and it was not organic at all.
Nor was it ever widely supported.
It was always clearly a foolish attempt by the US to disrupt anyone who the Israelis do not like, just like we did to Saddam and Qaddafi.

Huh...nope..a compendium of lies and half truths. At first i thought you were just ignorant--but now it is clear your are an apologist for someone. it amazes me that anyone would think, in this day and age of the internet, that lies and half truths could still gain any credence.

I'll not bother to do a line by line rebuttal..just the first paragraph is enough for me.
Welcome to ignore.

So are you going to tell us what poison Assad was supposed to have used, and what possible reason he could have had for using it?
From the images, we can see it is not sarin or VX because it is not an oil and no one is trying to wash it off.
More likely it was something like chlorine gas collected by the rebels, and released when the Syrian forces blew up the munitions dump.

You claimed the fighting was all Assad's fault, so why is it the rebels fired the first shots?

 

[Ray From Cleveland]

Gabbard is a liberal just like Bernie Sanders.

Nah, she's way prettier.

I like Tulsi Gabbard, mostly because she is anti war, but also because she has the military background to realize gun control is essentially treason.

Well, the left never had so much ammunition (no pun intended) as they do today. Another mass shooting in my state last night. I think we can all pretty much predict what the next main topic for the Democrat debate will be. I don't know if she is pro-gun or not, but if she is, the others will nail her to the wall with this issue.

 

[JoeB131]

The least nutty sounding one on stage is being sequestered by the REAL nutjobs lol

Um, Damascus Gabby is the real nut. In addition to her love for the Butcher of Allepo, she is rally tight with some cult out in Hawaii...

Tulsi Gabbard Still Dogged By Krishna Cult Rumors | HuffPost

 

[Ray From Cleveland]

Tulsi Gabbard supports the same policies as socialist Bernie Sanders. She supports Medicare for all. She bashes Trump on his border policy.

Medicare for all is the only way to fix the economy.
Right now, US products are about 30% higher than they need to be in order to be competitive, all because of ridiculously inflated health care prices. And all that extra health care costs are because of insurance companies.
They not only skim, but encourage providers over charging, because that makes insurance more necessary.
Getting insurance companies out of health care is essential if we want to survive as a major country.

Insurance companies have little to do with our cost of healthcare. Most of our cost is because of government. I've seen it first hand when I worked in medical for ten years.

There is a lot of waste and fraud with government because unlike private insurance, they have no need to watch every dime. Insurance companies don't take your money and put it under a mattress until it's needed. They invest that money so the profits help offset claims. Not only that, but a portion of their income is dedicated to insurance fraud.

Everybody talks about a better system, but nobody sets the priorities correctly. The first thing we need to do is find out why medical care is so expensive, fix that, and then figure out how we are going to pay for it.

Everyone knows why medical care is so expensive.
It is deliberate.

The whole system got screwed up in 1957, when insurance companies convinced the government to allow employer benefits to be tax exempt.
This not only created a privilege of subsidized healthcare for only the wealthy, but gave the wealthy so much greater collective bargaining power through the employer, that it essentially made health care suddenly totally affordable for anyone without insurance.
This caused insurance companies to encourage providers to charge outrageous rates that ensured even more people would have to buy insurance.
The Problem With Tax-Exempt Health Insurance
{...
The Problem With Tax-Exempt Health Insurance
BY EZEKIEL J. EMANUEL OCTOBER 10, 2008 4:15 PMOctober 10, 2008 4:15 pm


In this installment of Health Care Watch, Stuart M. Butler and Ezekiel Emanuel talk about what the candidates are saying about taxes and employer-sponsored health care coverage. Go to Mr. Butler’s post.

Ezekiel Emanuel, an oncologist, is the chairman of the department of bioethics at the Clinical Center of the National Institutes of Health. He is the author of “Health Care, Guaranteed: A Simple, Secure Solution for America.”(Full biography.)

Decisions made more than half a century ago are a large cause of today’s health care mess. During World War II, the War Labor Board ruled that fringe benefits, like health insurance, did not violate wage and price controls. Then, in the mid-1950s, employer provided health insurance was made tax exempt. Thus, $1 in health insurance, which was not taxed, became worth more than $1 in income, which was taxed. The result is that today’s health care system relies on employers to provide coverage and encourages more and more health insurance and spending.

Stuart Butler is right. Almost everyone who examines the issue — both conservative and liberal policy wonks, doctors, economists, lawyers and politicians — believes this tax exemption is a grievous error.

It is inequitable. It gives more benefit to the rich because their tax rate is higher. For instance, the Lewin consulting group estimated that for the exact same family health insurance package, an executive making more than $100,000 per year gets nearly $3,000 in tax benefits, while a blue-collar worker making less than $30,000, it is under $750. In addition, richer people tend to get bigger and more expensive health insurance packages from their employers, so they get more “freebies.”

It is also inefficient. The tax exemption provides an incentive for people to take more health insurance rather than wages, spending more on M.R.I.’s instead of other goods and services, like education or vacations.

This tax deduction is not free. Tax deductions are subsidies. This one costs more than $210 billion per year. It is the single largest tax break in the United States and dwarfs the mortgage interest deduction. Make no mistake, when the Treasury collects less taxes in one area, it must make up for it either in higher taxes somewhere else or in more debt on our children and grandchildren.

Thus, John McCain’s proposal to eliminate the tax exemption for health insurance is good policy. (About a year ago, President Bush made the same proposal.) The problem is having built the whole health care system around tax exemption, we simply can’t get rid of it without combining it with some other policies. And, as Mr. Butler acknowledges, this is where John McCain’s reform proposals — and President Bush’s proposal earlier — gets it very, very wrong.
...}

The solution is simple.
End all the illegal employer benefits exemptions, so then the wealthy and poor would all be on a level playing field.
Then instantly almost all people would be without insurance, so then would all demand single payer, to collectively bargain for everyone instead of just the wealthy.
And the collective bargaining power of single payer would quickly force providers to cut charges in half, just like the rest of the world.

And by the way, you are wrong about government administration.
The VA and Medicare for example, add less than 10% overhead, while private insurance companies balloon over head to more than 30%.
That is because government has an inspector general department to cut costs in an unbiased manner. Private companies have no over sight at all.

Again I should repeat, public heath care does NOT increase costs at all.
We now are paying over TWICE what any other country does, per person, and we have some of the worst health care in the world. We have almost half a million deaths a year from medical malpractice.
Deaths by medical mistakes hit records
{...
It's a chilling reality – one often overlooked in annual mortality statistics: Preventable medical errors persist as the No. 3 killer in the U.S. – third only to heart disease and cancer – claiming the lives of some 400,000 people each year. At a Senate hearing Thursday, patient safety officials put their best ideas forward on how to solve the crisis, with IT often at the center of discussions.

Hearing members, who spoke before the Subcommittee on Primary Health and Aging, not only underscored the devastating loss of human life – more than 1,000 people each day – but also called attention to the fact that these medical errors cost the nation a colossal $1 trillion each year.

"The tragedy that we're talking about here (is) deaths taking place that should not be taking place," said subcommittee Chair Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., in his opening remarks.

Among those speaking was Ashish Jha, MD, professor of health policy and management at Harvard School of Public Health, who referenced the Institute of Medicine's 1999 report To Err is Human, which estimated some 100,000 Americans die each year from preventable adverse events.

“When they first came out with that number, it was so staggeringly large, that most people were wondering, 'could that possibly be right?'" said Jha.

Some 15 years later, the evidence is glaring. "The IOM probably got it wrong," he said. "It was clearly an underestimate of the toll of human suffering that goes on from preventable medical errors."

It's not just the 1,000 deaths per day that should be huge cause for alarm, noted Joanne Disch, RN, clinical professor at the University of Minnesota School of Nursing, who also spoke before Congress. There's also the 10,000 serious complications cases resulting from medical errors that occur each day.

Disch cited the case of a Minnesota patient who underwent a bilateral mastectomy for cancer, only to find out post surgery a mix-up with the biopsy reports had occurred, and she had not actually had cancer.
...}

Just mumbo jumbo. Do you really believe there are no deaths in socialized medicine? No mistakes made?

Private insurance was promoted by government by being tax exempt for the simple reason that the government would not have to be involved in taking care of everybody. If you don't like one insurance company, you can always switch to another one. If you don't like one doctor or facility, you can do the same with them as well. There is only one government healthcare, and if you disagree with how they handle it, too bad.

Government, particularly on the left, have been trying to gain more and more control over the people. The only two entities stopping them are energy and healthcare. Once they control those two industries, they will have total control over the people. Why? Because nearly everything in our lives revolve around those two things.

So down the road when we do go to government healthcare, they will eventually be able to tell you how to conduct your personal life. They will tell you what you can eat (Michelle Obama) what to drink, how much you can drink of it (Mayor Bloomberg), what you can smoke (Al Gore) and even how much exercise you must have. They may even place limits on television and the internet. You will get your government serving of both, an hour a piece. After that, they go off the grid until the next day when you get your new hours.

Don't think things like that can't happen here? Guess again.

Japan, Seeking Trim Waists, Measures Millions

Obese patients and smokers banned from routine surgery in 'most severe ever' rationing in the NHS

 

[Rigby5]

Gabbard is a liberal just like Bernie Sanders.

Nah, she's way prettier.

I like Tulsi Gabbard, mostly because she is anti war, but also because she has the military background to realize gun control is essentially treason.

Well, the left never had so much ammunition (no pun intended) as they do today. Another mass shooting in my state last night. I think we can all pretty much predict what the next main topic for the Democrat debate will be. I don't know if she is pro-gun or not, but if she is, the others will nail her to the wall with this issue.

Actually, I think that if the issue of gun control comes up, Tulsi will wipe the floor with all of them.
It is a very easy argument to win.
Gun control is totally and completely illogical, contradictory to a democratic republic, and can't possibly ever do any good.

The question is just whether or not she will "stick to her guns", or cave and pretend to go along with the mass hysteria?