"When you put it that way, it sounds so petty."

[Radical Activist]

Obama: “If the point, Jon, is that overnight we did not transform the health care system, that point is true.”
Stewart: “When you put it that way, it sounds so petty.”


Yes, it does sound petty. Am I the only one who hoped a few pundits out there heard that line and had a moment of self realization?

[northernlights]

1. but that is not the point.

The point is that you didn't do anything to bring down healthcare costs or increase access or transform health CARE. Instead, you used health care reform as an opportunity to provide CORPORATE WELFARE TO HEALTH INSURANCE COMPANIES.

Health Insurance Companies do not contribute on iota, not on nanosecond, one nanogram, nor one nanoliter of healthcare. They skim profits off the top, the middle and the bottom.

That is all.

[petersjo02]

3. Well, by G__, you better vote Republican then.

They'll have a better idea.
:sarcasm:

[Name removed]

10. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[spanone]

18. go for it. tea party?

[northernlights]

22. green. socialist. something not dem or repub

last time I looked, tea was just the leading edge of repub. the edge leading those losers off a cliff.

[Radical Activist]

5. It's simply untrue to claim

that nothing was done to bring down healthcare costs or increase access to care.

[northernlights]

9. how much have people had their insurance go up since HCR went through? nt

[Radical Activist]

13. That would depend on whether they belong to an insurance company

that's trying to manipulate people into blaming Obama and opposing HCR.

[northernlights]

15. that would be pretty much all of them, wouldn't it?

I have yet to see a single DUer report their health insurance stayed the same or...gasp...went down.

Many, many have reported skyrocketing costs.

I blame Obama for the insurance mandate. I don't have insurance and plan to pay the penalty.

I don't need insurance companies to "manipulate me" into opposing health INSURANCE reform. I opposed it all by myself without a push from them. They left me to die 20 years ago. Now I'll be forced to pay them my hard-earned money so they can leave me to die again.

that is all.

[Hannah Bell]

2. funny how some things can be transformed overnight & some can't.

[Radical Activist]

7. Like the decision to end Bush's torture guidelines.

That was changed overnight by executive order since it's something Obama actually had the power to do overnight.

[zipplewrath]

4. The point is, they didn't transform health CARE at all.

They were successful and reforming medicaid, and to some extent medicare, and save the federal government alot of money. But as for health CARE reform, they didn't do anything.

[Radical Activist]

6. That's a warped view.

Millions of people who will be able to afford health care will likely disagree with you. I think the pundits who focus on the 10% we didn't get have presented a very distorted view by letting people like yourself remain ignorant of what we did get.

[northernlights]

12. baloney. health insurance costs have already been cranked.

and you too do not seem to understand the difference between health INSURANCE and health CARE. THEY ARE NOT THE SAME.

[frylock]

16. no, millions of people who will be able to afford MANDATED health INSURANCE

[zipplewrath]

25. Or the 10% we did

Millions of people who already qualified for some form of government assistance for health insurance now have it mandated that they get it. The people thrilled about this legislation are focusing on the 10% that we got and ignoring 90% of the bill, that was originally written BY the GOP.

[mdmc]

8. All I know is this

I live in terrible pain that could be reduced / cured with proper medical treatment.
I am fully insured, yet don't earn enough $ to pay for my medical treatment.
And my health "insurance" costs just went up.

I will be voting straight working families party line in NYS. All the dems that got the WFP endorsement will get my vote..

[treestar]

11. I hope so

The instant gratification thing in this culture goes too far. Especially with political processes. Maybe McDonald's can deliver your burger within five minutes of ordering it, but a huge overhaul of health care is different.

[Radical Activist]

20. Barack Obama...he's not McDonald's.

You can order Chicken McNuggets after 10:00am so calm down.
Love it!

[sabrina 1]

30. So, it's instant gratification to want to stay alive in this great

democracy that is among the wealthiest in the world but allows over 44,000 people a year to die because even if they ARE insured, they cannot afford the medications or the co-pays? We have been so NOT into 'instant gratification that we have allowed nearly half a million Americans to die since 9/11 for lack of access to proper medical care.

I would say that is a failure of such proportions that we might have learned to start demanding 'instant gratification' when it came to health care. Apparentl not, we are to continue to ignore the dying because we just cannot bring ourselves to force our Representatives to do what is moral and right.

Lives, such a small thing to be worried about when when we have politicians' reputations to protect. I'm failing to see the connection between a McDonald's burger and someone actual life in terms of 'patience'. I guess when you're dying and you would like to survive for the sake of your loved ones at least, that is now the equivalent of the kind of 'instant gratification' involved in buying a hamburger. Thanks for that analogy. Next time I'm trying to help someone who needs medical care desperately, I'll remember to tell them to avoid being selfish, that their need for instant gratification to get the necessary life-saving health care treatment to stay alive, is pretty shameful and what do they think, that it's like buying a McDonald's hamburger or something'? I'm sure that will calm them down and make them think about how selfish they are being.

[RagAss]

14. Single Payer....Or forget this whole fucking thing !...Let the rich live and the poor die slowly.

Fuck it! What is so goddam hard about this???

[Radical Activist]

21. Personally, I don't want big brother health insurance.

I'd rather see all health insurance companies be non-profit, member owned co-ops that allow members to vote on the governing board. Something like credit unions or rural electric co-ops. That was brought up during the HCR debate but everyone was too focused on the great white whale known as the public option.

[Curmudgeoness]

26. Big Brother health insurance? That's a Repug scare tactic.

And I don't care what anyone says, Medicare is a great program that helps older people who would have no other options in the "health insurance companies"---too high a risk, too high premiums if they had to cover themselves in the private sector. And yes, this IS your Big Brother health insurance! If that is how you want to define it. Socialized medicine is NOT Big Brother.

[Radical Activist]

27. It's an anti-authoritarian opinion.

Not everyone on the left like centralized power.

[Curmudgeoness]

28. Connotations as they are today, this is meant to incite. nt

[TheKentuckian]

17. Overnight is a lame cop out of a talking point

The health care system won't be transformed even over the decades on this trajectory.

Time has never been the issue but direction. 20 years from now this will still be a complete fucking nightmare and net worse than today unless we do something substantially different like actual reform of the system, even a legitimate market based reform as a first step as I have constantly called for throughout this clusterfuck.

I am convinced that any bill labeled 'Health Care Reform' would be defended tooth and nail with the same vigor and logic.

[Radical Activist]

23. States will be allowed to set up a single-payer system.

And they must offer either a government or non-profit insurance option. That's not as much as what Obama proposed, but I see those as the first steps toward more fundamental changes down the road. When a few states set up single-payer, and others see that it works, then it will spread from there.

[TheKentuckian]

29. We'll see but the nature of the system is inefficient and just as likely to break the other way

We need a national pool and universal standards and regulation not a hodge-podge of the already overwhelmed and captured state systems. I see it as a fatally flawed system with a little ember of hope for the few well run states and the rest eventually going bust trying to keep up with their Medicaid requirements.

Please don't present this as a sure or even a good bet to move to a single payer system. It is little more than a shot in the dark, a prayer.

I hope you're right but I firmly believe you are being very rosey in your forecast.

We're betting our future on a couple of chestnuts-"permission" to enact state single payer systems (that they could do now in the wild west we have) and the increase in clinics.

This isn't reform but a couple of hopeful seeds and a gigantic bail out of a predatory cartel.

Odds are stacked that we will, on the whole, be worse off with more expensive premiums and higher out of pockets for less coverage.

[Kurovski]

19. There is a great deal more to be done around the health care issue.

I think Mr. Stewart was being a gracious host.

[Radical Activist]

24. True.

I think Obama acknowledged that there's more to be done.