If you guys don't vote Obama in November I'm gonna bust out my first ever non-spamming forum member ban.

Oh no he didn't!







Damn! That Obama smiley is too big to install.

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“Lesser artists borrow... great artists steal.” - Igor Stravinsky
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Lol Joe.

On a serious note, I am really up in arms on this one. I have voted Democrat 3 times, and that's how many times I could vote. This time is different for me, I don't know what to do.....

I don't support national free health care. I am a person that it would greatly help as I haven't had health care since 2002. I don't want to have to pay to opt out, and that's bullshit. 5 people I know with pretty good health care have had their monthly fees basically double in the past 2 months. All 5 are employed into the medical field. Health care is expensive now, and and it will only get more expensive for middle class and below middle class people.

Look at Europe, their money is worth more than the Dollar, because they pooled together. A lot of euro countries are struggling, and they have national health care. It is too expensive to have the middle class pay for with taxes. We will see a decline in quality.

The only way I can see national health care working is if we have college grads working off student loans in '' health centers''. Kinda like teachers working off debt in inner city schools. But that becomes a problem, because the quality of health care will decline.

Other issues that matter to me are abortion, religion in government, student loans/ lack of jobs, and foreign war policy. I have a personal conflict of interest. There is not a candidates that agrees with me down the line, but there are a lot of people that do.

I don't know what to do at the this point, I am tired of the 2 party, hard left/hard right system.

I guess I will have to decide what matters more to me.

Before deciding, seriously, TAKE THIS POLL: [www.isidewith.com]
^^ A fantastic (and very cool) resource to see what pol. you really side with based on your views (don't just click "yes" or "no" on everything as well if you can help it, pull down the extra options as many of those are viable as well).

Now, onto my rant:

I'm sorry but what world are you living in that Obama is representing the hard left? (Talking about his ACTUAL policies not the 2012 rerun rhetoric of the Red Scare.)

I hate when people call the Affordable Care Act/Obamacare "national free health care," I'm not really sure where that comes from other than hard-right, anti-Socialist type rhetoric trying to spin the deal in an unfavorable Socialist light. As you noted yourself its not free, and saying its simply gonna make health-care coverage more expensive is a cop-out. While it is far from a great solution IMO there are plenty of things in that legislature that should be applauded: seniors paying less for prescription drugs, young adults being given the opportunity to continue being on their parent's plans, stopping insurance companies from NOT providing coverage for those with pre-existing conditions AND insuring that insurance companies spend 80-85% of their dollars on HEALTH CARE! (that last one is a kicker IMO and will hopefully eat into the excessive inefficiencies and profits in that industry).

Ultimately Obamacare is very simply an individual mandate, that's the SAME policy approach that Republicans have favored in the past! I'm not just talking about "Romneycare" in Mass. but in other options offered in the 90's by moderate Republicans. Now when Obama puts it forth its a Socialist free-for-all on government spending.


Romney has essentially said he likes and will keep all the individual terms of Obamacare (a policy he framed with other folks in Massachusetts) but repeal the legislature. He's spewed hard-right rhetoric for a full year (after a term as a relatively moderate Republican governor in my former home state--that is, relative to his "current" views) to win over the GOP base and is now scrambling back to the center to save face (though he's just lying through his teeth, saying: he'll cut taxes, raise military expenditures and not cut much of the domestic social policies Obama has been championing). IMO, its hard to tell if/when Romney is actually putting forth ideas he believes in or ones that he believes will get him elected; in either case, he clearly is all over the place. In the face of fact-checkers the Romney camp has essentially laughed and said "well keep doing our own thing."


Sorry for the rant, but I can't get down with that view that our 2-party system is hard-left vs. hard-right. Both parties have been pushing (and as a reaction, being pulled) farther and farther right in the past 20 years. The GOP's own deity in Ronald Reagan would have been laughed off the stage as too liberal if he ran in the GOP presidential primary race this past year. Obama is right in the middle if you ask me (he would've made a great Republican 15 years ago); sure, he's pushed some left-leaning social policies in repealing DADT, the Dream Act, etc etc. But Obama would be right at home as a moderate Republican from the 90's.

As for the middle-class, let Romney continue treating his million/billionaire pals like they need financial pampering in the form of lower tax rates and loopholes and its the middle-income bracket that'll bear that weight.

And for whatever its worth, I'm sick of a two-party system as well; one where the federal candidates look increasingly similar and where in Congress they won't work together at all. The Green Party might get my vote this time around.

Sorry, I need to go

How is healthcare cost rising "affordable", affordable for who? How is saying that the costs have doubled in the past month for the people I know a cop out?

I can't afford healthcare now, I still won't be able to afford it when Obamacare kicks in.

Quote
DJBoomBap
How is healthcare cost rising "affordable", affordable for who? How is saying that the costs have doubled in the past month for the people I know a cop out?

I can't afford healthcare now, I still won't be able to afford it when Obamacare kicks in.

I used the word "affordable" once in my post to refer to the actual bill at hand (Obamacare), you're building up an argument from something that wasn't in my post to begin with. That said, on the affordable side of things you didn't mention the concrete facts of the bill that will save money: " seniors PAYING LESS for prescription drugs, young adults being given the opportunity to continue being on their parent's plans, stopping insurance companies from NOT providing coverage for those with pre-existing conditions AND insuring that insurance companies spend 80-85% of their dollars on HEALTH CARE! (that last one is a kicker IMO and will hopefully eat into the excessive inefficiencies and profits in that industry)." (directly from my post...so, more affordable for elderly, young people, etc. etc.)

Those folks that you know that have had their costs double in the past month aren't experiencing that in a vacuum of "Obamacare." You make it sound like its directly attributable to "Obamacare" that their costs are rising when in fact those costs have been rising for a long time before that policy was ever introduced. Now that its been introduced and the roll-out on specific policies is on its way people start pointing fingers saying "see my health care is more expensive now than it ever was!" Well, the same could have been said before Obama ever took office, take a look at these figures:

"Private health insurance spending on health care grew nearly three times as quickly as spending by Medicare [over the last year], the report on the S&P Healthcare Economic Composite Index shows. Private insurance costs rose 7.7 percent compared to 2.7 percent for Medicare. Private insurers' hospital costs increased by 8.4 percent, which was more than four times faster than Medicare's (h/t Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)."

Bottom line: " Families, employers and government programs are bearing the burden of rising health care costs, which are making health insurance too expensive and driving up the number of Americans who are uninsured." (article here: [www.huffingtonpost.com])

If you wanna look at those rising health care costs and blame "Obamacare" and say its wrong then I can't help that, its a cop-out to implicitly attribute those rising costs to "Obamacare" nonetheless (and I think you were implying that in your post with the paragraph starting with "I don't support national free health care...", I've yet to hear about national free health care still).

I sympathize for you and close friends, family (my brother and my father for example) and coworkers that don't have healthcare now. "Obamacare" is far from a fix-all and I know it puts some people in a sticky situation, I'm far from agreeing with everything in that bill. Still, I think "Obamacare" does a hell of a lot to help millions of folks OUT of sticky health-care circumstances (such as simply being shit-out-of-luck) as well as take steps towards driving down inefficiencies and bottom-line profits for insurers. If nothing else, Obama is putting forth ideas and policies to fix what is quite clearly a huge problem in this country.