I don't want to hear that it was just a lone nut. I don't want to hear about bad behavior from the left. I want to look at this chart and have you convince me it had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that 18 people were hit by gunfire today and 6 are dead. And Congresswoman Gifford took a shot to the head. Will she be able to continue to serve or has she sustained serious and permanent brain damage? Time will tell.
The pundits will talk themselves into laryngitis.
Of course it was a lone nut. John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Robert Francis Kennedy, and Dr. Martin Luther King were all killed by lone nuts too. Maybe. But lone nuts aren't created in a vacuum. They thrive on inflammatory political propaganda.
I'm ready to listen to your side when the shouting dies down. Convince me.
I have a disease that renders me virtually uninsurable at this point. Wouldst thou have me both ill and bankrupt? Roger once spent 89 days in the hospital. His father had to take out a mortgage on the house to pay for it.
I don't want to saddle future generations with exorbitant bills that we ran up, but I want all people in our wonderful country to have access to good health care.
Surely both Republicans and Democrats and liberals and conservatives can agree that an ounce of prevention (a mammogram, a blood sugar test, a dental cleaning) is so much cheaper than treating the consequences of neglected simple medical procedures.
And if you've spent 5 hours in an emergency room lately waiting for people to get treated who only needed a quick visit to a doctor, surely you will agree that we can do better.
I don't know what else to say...except that we need to talk, not shoot, not yell, not leave families bereft of husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, children, grandparents, aunts, uncles.
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What is there to say? I totally agree with you.
Where's the "like" button? :-)
My daughter tells me about her friends who say they don't want to pay for "worthless homeless bums who don't want to work" who are ruining health care. Of course, at 13, they don't actually know about thing about the health care system, they are just parroting what their parents say.
As another Southerner, I find I have to watch what what I say and who I say it to. It's volatile out here.
I couldn't agree more. I used to live in a country with a national health plan, and guess what? It was AWESOME! The care was great, the copays were reasonable, and the plan was entirely funded through affordable premiums that everyone who was employed paid. I paid enough for each procedure to make me think about whether I really needed it, without it ever being prohibitive. It rocked. Oh, and was it communism? Hardly. That was in South Korea, one of the most capitalist countries in the world. They just happen to recognize that not only is health care a basic human right, but also that universal access strengthens their nation. Crazy, eh?
I wonder if this will make Arizonans rethink their love affair with the gun? I doubt it. Delusions die hard.
What a world.
I didn't know about this thing of Sarah Palin's until this horrible event. ...I don't even know what to call it, poster of people/states targeted as if by a firearm?
Talk about inciting violence!
"As another Southerner, I find I have to watch what what I say and who I say it to. It's volatile out here."
I can't imagine living like that, although I have imagined it's been that way for some time in some US states. I truly hope something can be done about it all. It's quite frightening to watch and think about.
The rhetoric is astounding and no one wants to take any responsibility for how the climate produced by it is making it seem reasonable to kill anyone who disagrees with you. I live near Canada and people here are always saying that our health care system is so much better than Canada's because Canadians come over her to get MRI's. Yet their death rates are lower and the healthy births higher. A recent poll in Canada confirmed that Canadian's are very happy with their health care system. Why are people here still talking about 'death panels' when they know they are a lie? Politics and financial gain are what that is all about. One of the provisions I like best in the new health care law here is that insurance companies will have to spend more than just the 50 cents of every dollar they collect on paying for health care they now spend. Talk about who is ripping off the public. Medicine has become just another business and not a calling with the insurance companies deciding who gets what health care. Worried about the government making your health care decisions? Well the clerk at the insurance company is doing it right now. Oh, well. You obviously found my hot button. -
Well said.
As a Yank in the land of socialised medicine (and yes I do love the fact I can turn up at A&E and not worry that I don't have my card to hand), I simply shake my head listening to the rhetoric of the tea party. And to all of my fellow countrymen who cannot see the injustice and inequalities that exist. I still pay my US taxes and proudly carry that passport but I am not sure I ever want to come home. How sad is that?
they are not the tea party...they are tea baggers. that was the name they started with and that is what they are... calling them anything else gives them status they have not earned and do not deserve. they are loud mouthed ignorant people led by the most ignorant of all... god help us with those people in office. i guess we get what we deserve... but i sure don't feel like i deserve it.
Of course we all want everyone to have access to health care. And you're right. It's time to TALK. Shutting people and groups out of meetings and refusing to listen to anyone that doesn't agree isn't getting us anywhere.
On a separate note, with all the things I've heard about this guy in Arizona, I'm actually going to be surprised if he was a right-wing nut.
It's a pity the deranged young man who committed this atrocity was a far-left nut which makes the tea party/Palin bashing a bit of stretch, n'est ce pas?
BTW, the DNC also published a map with districts they were targeting using a bulls-eye — pretty common imagery in political campaigns.
To me, it's the height of hypocrisy for the left to be raising concerns over the vitriol in political speech after the years of "hate speech" towards Bush.
As to the healthcare questions you raise, I do believe that our system needs reform. I do not believe the bill that was passed will accomplish in a fiscally prudent way.
Unfortunately, your premise that preventative care will save money is an incorrect one. The immense cost for preventive care for everyone would actually be far more costly than the money saved. That s**ks bigtime but it's the fact.
Personally, I believe a system where catastrophic insurance is available to all and pay-as-you-go is the norm would be workable.
Wouldn't a Doctors Care or other urgent care facility be preferrable to an ER for all but the most critical needs?
I'm all for talking but it's difficult when no one wants to listen.
Long-time reader and lurker... In response to Linda Carle - even though I thinks it's rather, well, petty in light of the fact that people lay dead, there is absolutely no concrete evidence concerning his political leanings. However, given what we can surmise from bits and pieces of his life, it seems more likely than not that he was more "right-wing" in his leanings. Regardless, what we do know for sure is that he was also ill... which actually somewhat segues into my next point. Evidence shows that preventative care is indeed cheaper than reactive care. (http://www.newsweek.com/2008/04/23/yes-prevention-is-cheaper-than-treatment.html - an easy read that tells just that) What also seems glaringly obvious is that we can and should do a better job of caring for our ill - for not only their benefit but for all of ours as well.
Sorry that you thought my comment was petty. It was in response to the blog (and other comments) placing blame for the deaths on political discourse from the right. Is it simply because I didn't agree with those opinions?
Somehow, the bits and pieces of the accused's life don't seem at all right-wing to me - doubt you'd find the Communist Manifesto & Mein Kampf on most conservative favorite book lists.
Here's a quote from the CBO re the cost of preventive care as it relates to covering mass populations: "In its own analysis of preventive care, CBO said earlier this month that the cost of making cancer screening, cholesterol management and other services broadly available is likely to far outweigh any savings ultimately generated." http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/104xx/doc10492/08-07-Prevention.pdf
Understand, I'm not personally advocating that those services not be made available to as many people as want them, but it's a fallacy to say we'd see cost-savings from them.
One thing we do agree on is that we can improve our healtcare system but I suspect we probably disagree on the best way to go about doing so.
Linda, I did prematurely jump to a conclusion that it was a right wing lunatic. Should have known better..this guy sounds like he is seriously mentally ill, which brings up another problem...care for mentally ill people.
But I was thinking about preventative care in the light of that story a few years ago. Remember the kid who died from a brain infection after his teeth were infected due to poor dental care and no dental treatment? His hospital bills were over $250,000 as I recall...
The girls' schools (Lex Ric 5) do offer a dental cleaning clinic, which pleases me to no end.
I guess it depends on what you screen for.
I personally think cholesterol screening as worthless, but maybe that is because I cannot take statins due to my fibromyalgia. I eat very healthy and have high "bad" and high "good" cholesterol.
Oh, and blood sugar. You know the South is filled with undiagnosed diabetics or pre diabetics and their care can run into the zillions. I'm sure blood sugar doesn't cost much to screen.
I'm thinking of a clinic that could treat simple infections before they go bad. I had a student one time who had a urinary tract infection and couldn't afford to go to the doctor. Oh they hurt! And I had the medicine in my purse, and couldn't give it to her. I felt so bad.
Also-treating pneumonia. See www.uppercasewoman.com Her mother is running up hundreds of thousands of dollars of bills due to pneumonia that probably could have been treated early with a cheap antibiotic. Now they are afraid she will not survive and she is in ICU. Our tax dollars will be paying for that.
I'm skipping mammograms--I've read a lot of stuff about how they are not very efficient, I have never had any problem in that area, and several friends of mine have discovered a lump themselves after a perfect mammogram a few weeks earlier.
@Linda, I don't know if I would say you are petty so much as ignorant. If you think Das Kapital (left) and Mein Kampf (right) are in any way linked. I also think you don't need to be either (a normal) Leftie or Rightie to note that the language used by what used to be the whacko Right but which seems to be accepted as the now normal right is vitriolic, unbalanced and violent. Blood libel anybody? How Palin dares to use that term blows my mind. But her ignorance is overwhelming.
And as an American resident of a country with a public option and the obligation to have health insurance (fulfilled by the government for those too poor to buy it), I say you are full of it. This country pays far less in health care per person than the US (as does every civilized country with national coverage) and has better outcomes for infant mortality and illnesses that re chronic. The US does excel in extremely expensive end of life care and options for the extremely wealthy, though. N'est pas? (That's affected, not petty, unless you are actually Francophone.)
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