September 17, 2012

I am the 47%

I am one of the 47%. I am definitely going to vote for Obama. So will my mother and her husband. My husband and my 21 year old son plan to vote for him as well. So will my sister and her adult daughter. That makes all of us part of the 47%. What do we have in common (besides a desire to see Obama serve a second term)? According to Mitt Romney, we are "dependent on government" and "believe that (we)are entitled to health care, to food, to housing".

Let’s analyze these claims one at a time, starting with health care. I have employer sponsored health care that covers me, my husband and my 21 year old college age son, so none of us gets healthcare from the “government”. Obamacare will allow my healthy son to stay on my insurance for five more years, but I am not sure that counts as being “dependent on government” for his health care. My mom’s husband is covered by his aerospace industry employer. My mother, a NASA retiree, is covered by NASA, Medicare and her husband’s insurance. That makes her super-insured. Is Romney trying to claim that her Medicare is a government handout? Does he think that federal agencies like NASA should not provide retirement insurance? My sister gets insurance for her and her two kids (one college aged) from her employer, a petrochemical refinery. She has a union and good benefits, but no one could call her insurance a government handout.

On to food. None of us gets food stamps. On the contrary, we donate to area food banks. None of our kids gets free school lunches. The only “free” food we get is that which we grow in our own gardens. Romney and Ryan may complain that the food my mother buy’s with her Social Security check is a government handout. But she is over 70 years old and worked her entire adult life paying into the Social Security system, so I tend to think of it as retirement income.

My home is paid for. My mother’s home is paid for. My sister is still paying a mortgage on her new home, but no one helps her make her payments.

I guess you could say that we are “dependent on government” since we use the roads and if we have a fire, we call the fire department and the public health department sprays for mosquitoes when West Nile is a problem and we rely on the FDA to make sure the food (which we buy with our own money) is safe to eat. But we aren’t getting any government services for “free”. All of us pay taxes. We pay income tax. We pay sales tax. We pay property tax. We pay fuel taxes and alcohol taxes. And when all the taxes are paid, we give to charity, too---

Come to think of it, we are not dependent upon the government. The government is dependent upon us. And we want to be sure that our tax dollars are spent wisely. We want to see our taxes spent on roads and disease prevention and good schools and clean air and water and national security and all the other things that government is supposed to provide. We absolutely do not want to see our tax dollars diverted into the accounts of people who are so rich they will never be able to spend all their money.

You know how I define the so called “47%”? We are the ones who want to have some control over how our country is run and our tax dollars are spent. We are the ones who think America is worth investing in. And Romney/Ryan despise us because we are too smart to buy their "trust us, we can pay for those tax cuts and still balance the budget" line.

September 10, 2012

Romney's Lies Can Kill You

This is for the guy who had a heart attack, lost his job and his insurance and now cannot get the care he needs to get himself back in shape in order to go back to work. Your blood pressure is through the roof. You can hardly climb the stairs to your second floor apartment without collapsing. At night, you wake up gasping for breath. Your wife is working two jobs in order to support you and your four kids. Neither job offers health insurance. Luckily, the rest of your family is healthy.

When you applied to buy private health insurance, you were laughed out the door. You are trying to hold on until 2014, when your pre-existing heart condition will not disqualify your from coverage. You are more than willing to pay, if it means staying alive and getting back in shape and eventually getting back to work so that you and your family won’t have to live in poverty.

You don’t think that it is fair that you will have to pay for insurance for your wife and your three kids, too---they aren’t sick. They don’t need insurance. They just need for you to get better, so you can get another job with good wages and benefits like the one you lost when you got sick.

Yesterday, you heard on Fox News that Romney feels your pain. He wants you to be able to buy insurance if you want it, regardless of how sick you are. He just doesn’t believe that your wife and kids need to pay for insurance they aren’t going to use. That sounds like a pretty good deal to you. You were going to vote for Obama, because Obamacare was your only hope. But now, you are thinking about Romney instead….

Here’s what will happen if Romney/Ryan do what they have already pledged to do. Obamacare will be repealed. When the year 2014 arrives, there will be no health insurance, not for you and not for your family. Because Romney wants the “market” to decide whether or not you are a good financial risk, and the market has already told you in no uncertain terms that it wants nothing to do with your bad heart. You will swallow your disappointment. In four more years you will qualify for Medicare. Maybe you can hang on until 2018. But wait! By the time you are old enough to apply for Medicare, Medicare will no longer exist. Instead, the government will give you a voucher and tell you to buy your own insurance. They will give you the same voucher they give the 65 year old woman down the street who jogs three miles every day and has perfect health. She will have no trouble getting insurance. You will get laughed out the door again. Assuming you live long enough to see your 65th birthday. Chances are, you will be dead by then. Your wife will continue to work two minimum wage jobs up until the day she has a stroke from that high blood pressure she did not know she had, because she never had the opportunity to get a medical checkup. From the hospital, she will be sent to a nursing home. Once every penny she owns has been spent, she will qualify for government assistance---Oops. Sorry. That was the old way. Under Romney/Ryan your state will be able to opt out of covering nursing home care for the disabled. But don’t worry. Your wife won’t be out on the street. The nursing home will be able to bill your kids for your wife’s long term care. After paying $250 a day to take care of their mother, the four of them will be too broke to buy health insurance for themselves.

Here’s what will happen if Obamacare is not repealed. If you are lucky, one of your wife’s employers will start offering health insurance for her and her family. Even if they don’t, since your family is financially strapped, you will receive money from the government to help you pay for health insurance . The insurer will not be able to deny you coverage because of your bad heart. The insurer will also have to provide your wife with that Pap and mammogram she has been putting off for the last four years. Your adult daughter will be able to afford birth control, and you will be able to stop worrying about what will happen if she gets pregnant. Your kids will be able to get check-ups. Most important of all, you will be able to see a cardiologist. Those blocked coronary arteries of yours can be fixed. You will get on medications that will make you feel like a new man. When you apply for jobs, employers will no longer look at you and think “That guy’s gonna drive our health insurance premiums through the roof!” Once you are back to work, you will qualify for excellent benefits. And those benefits will cover your adult daughter and you three teenagers until they are 26---out of college and with jobs of their own. When you reach retirement age, Medicare will be there for you. If the worst happens, and you require long term nursing home care, the government will pick up the tab, and your adult kids will not find themselves burdened with debt.

You are not powerless. You have a choice. Make the choice that makes sense and your future can be bright. Listen to Romney’s lies, and you will likely die prematurely.

September 10, 2012

David Gregory, GOP Shill Helps Romney Set Up a Big Lie About Healthcare

If Romney Flops on HealthCare for Pre-existing Conditions and the News Does Not Report It.....does the American independent voter utter a big sigh of relief and say to himself "Romney's just like Obama---but white"?

In a story from Associated Press featured prominently in today's Fort Worth Star Telegram, voters are assured that Romney will keep key provisions of Obama-Care, including insurance for those with pre-existing conditions and coverage for kids up to age 26 on their parents plans. We know this because that is what Romney told David Gregory on Meet the Press yesterday. Slick move, given that the only thing most folks object to about the bill is the requirement for coverage.

http://www.star-telegram.com/2012/09/09/4244456/obama-romney-spar-over-healthcare.html

Sound too good to be true? It is. The health insurance industry grudgingly agreed to accept folks with medical problems in exchange for the mandate. If the mandate is struck down---the centerpiece of the Romney/Ryan campaign---Blue Cross and the rest want nothing to do with your diabetes, hypertension, cancer. In the current health care marketplace, insurers make money only one way---by collecting money from the healthy and refusing to cover the sick.

Not surprisingly, when pressed on this point, the Romney campaign did a back flip that would have earned then 10s if there were an Olympics for flip-flopping.



http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/09/within-hours-mitt-romney-takes-back-everything-he-said-about-preexisting-conditio#13472967122231&action=collapse_widget&id=1485197

The author of the Mother Jones piece goes on to write:



Too bad most independent voters do not read Mother Jones. I decided to check around and see what other news outlets decided to cover the "flip" but not the "flop."

Not surprisingly, Fox News is absolutely delighted that Romney wants to let those with high blood pressure buy insurance. In an article titled Romney, Ryan sound bipartisan tone on taxes, health care we are told



http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/09/10/romney-ryan-sound-bipartisan-tone-on-taxes-health-care/

Fox does not mention that Romney's solution is to let the insurance market decide. As we already know, writing policies for those who actually need health care does not make money---and the market goes where the money is.

The Washington Post, aka the NeoCon News is rooting for Brother Jeb in 2016. Therefore, I was not surprised to see Romney's flip flopping get coverage at that paper.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/09/10/who-would-be-left-out-of-romneys-preexisting-conditions-plan-about-89-million-americans/



Let's just hope Americans read the Business Section of the WaPost. The Fort Worth paper posted the initial "flip" on its front page.

Yahoo News has a video feature entitled "Romney's position: Protection for pre-existing conditions" that is basically the Fox News piece. Meaning it is lies, lies, lies.

http://news.yahoo.com/video/opinion-15749653/romney-s-position-protection-for-pre-existing-conditions-30551131.html

The high holy of newspapers, the New York Times has this to say in an article entitled Romney, Easing, Says Health Law Isn’t All Bad



Be sure to read this part, too:



In other words, Romney has no beef with white Democrats. That's why he is running on the "I'm the same as Obama---but white!" platform.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/10/us/politics/romney-adopts-softer-tone-in-critique-of-obama.html

How does a Big Lie like this work? Get enough Republican shills in the press to report it, and a bunch of basically apolitical independents will hear it. And once they hear it, it will get stuck in their brains. And once it is lodged in their brains, they will believe it. And no matter how much you argue, no matter how much contradictory evidence you present, they will insist that their belief trumps your data. So, Democrats who do not want independent voters to go to the polls this fall convinced that Romney is just like Obama---but white need to nip this one in the bud right now. Let's hope the mainstream media will be as obliging to Dems as they have been to the GOP.

September 1, 2012

(US) Lack of Health Care for Millions Putting Lives at Risk Says Doctor

Another election, another round of articles about how bad folks in the U.K. have it with their cradle to grave insurance.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014214769

Really saddened to see this kind of private health insurance propaganda on the front page of DU. This family practice doc thinks we need to insure people first, and then we can work out the problems later. A system that flat out kills millions from the lack of any health care at all is much much worse than one that throws up a few barriers to care. Remember, the biggest barrier to care is having none at all.