Is the Health Care Reform Bill really overwhelmingly opposed by the American Public???

There was a very interesting debate on this between Ralph Nader and Congressman Kucinich today - well worth listening to especially if you want to hear how Kucinich now supports this bill despite his being wholely against the for profit health care and insurance industries. Very much in line with my thinking and strategy on it. Nader is his usual inflammatory and dramatic self...oh, and he's against everything!

Well worth the listen regardless of your views:

www.democracynow.org...

73% of statistics are made up.

The problem is that a lot of people for their opinion based on statements from OPINION BLOGS (from the Internet or TV) instead of real news and facts. They stopped thinking for themselves, and chose to parrot whatever they hear on their favorite "news" show.

Sadly, the "news" often isn't really news, but rather an opinion by some talk show host. If you look at FOX's lineup, you'll notice that their "news" segment often parrots stuff they mention during their "opinion section" of the programming schedule.

People should start thinking on their own again.

reply to post by ChrisCrikey


Thank you for that link...it was quite interesting.

After listening to Kucinich...I kinda wish he was the main player pushing for health care reform. But then again...maybe not. He is dedicated to the public option (which I support), but he isn't exactly tenacious. He is stubborn...but not a very authoratative.

His views are kind of the same as mine. I wish there was a strong public option in the bill...I don't care about single payer at this point...that may be too drastic...but public option is what I would really like to see. But at this point...we have to take some step in the right direction. We can't afford to wait another 16 years to talk about health care again. And that is what will happen if this fails...no one will want to touch it for a long long time. So it isn't exactly what I would like...but I am strongly supporting it because it is needed to do something...we can't just do nothing.


Nader has always scared me...I don't know why. Nothing he says is really that bad...he just says it in a way that is a bit crazier then I would like to hear. He takes things a bit too far.

Has anyone ever seen Cannonball Run? It's a movie with Burt Reynolds about a cross country car race? Well Nader reminds me of the doctor from that movie, Jack Elam's character...I'm always waiting for Nader to pull out a syringe and wave it at someone.

The real Americans hate what Obama and his communist friends are doing.
Yes, there are people that do not want to pay for trashy girls to get abortions. Now maybe pay to terminate those trashy girls would work.

Originally posted by OutKast Searcher
And so by your logic...since things aren't great in our country right now...we should just stop everything...right?

I think we should stop spending incredible amounts of money that the US government AND American taxpayers don't have.

If you were down to your last $20 bill, would you put a down payment on a new TV? Would you use it on a gamble *hoping* to create more money 10 years from that point?

Or rather, would you very carefully spend that $20 -- only if you *had* to in order to make sure that your bottom-line necessities are met?

The government is broke. They have no business gambling on a healthcare reform package of this magnitude that by their own admission is not what "they had hoped it would be."

Do you think medical costs are just going to stop? Are insurance companies going to stop raising rates?

Of course not. However, this bill does VERY little to combat that anyway. It's once again a half-arsed attempt to solve a very large problem.

Do you think waste and fraud are simply going to disappear? Do you think social security's problems are going to just disappear? These are failing programs already in existence.

Perhaps the government should clean up the messes it has already started before embarking on creating yet another trillion-dollar potential disaster.

Originally posted by CallMeCrazy
The bill is still going to pass, and like other previous legislation that was proposed by democrats and opposed by republicans, ten years from now most people will be grateful it did.

What on earth would give you the idea that 10 years from now we will be happy? What has this administration done to demonstrate to the American people that they can successfully implement a bill and program of this magnitude?

The best indicator of future behavior is past behavior. Obama's behavior to date has shown me he is not capable of successfully implementing a darn thing.

Mortgage program? Auto program? Bank bailout? Iran? Financial reform? Transparency initiative? You can't check one: "Great job!" box for ANY of these.

In general, would Americans be happier 10 years from the start of a successful, cost-efficient healthcare reform bill? More than likely.

But here's the thing -- this isn't the bill and this isn't the guy to do it.

Originally posted by MrXYZ
The problem is that a lot of people for their opinion based on statements from OPINION BLOGS (from the Internet or TV) instead of real news and facts. They stopped thinking for themselves, and chose to parrot whatever they hear on their favorite "news" show.

Sadly, the "news" often isn't really news, but rather an opinion by some talk show host. If you look at FOX's lineup, you'll notice that their "news" segment often parrots stuff they mention during their "opinion section" of the programming schedule.

People should start thinking on their own again.

How can this possibly be a valid argument when posting on a site entirely formed on people's opinions?

Further, what is real news? CNN? FOX? MSNBC? You can't trust what most of them say because they own at least one or more companies in the various topics they address -- it's a complete conflict of interest.

If they have an interview with the President coming up -- they tread lightly. If they don't get a press invite, they trash him on that night's show.

How on Earth can those behind-the-scenes happenings be considered the *actual, real* news?

If we are against this bill, it is because we are somehow brain-washed by other people's opinions? Or could it possibly be that those opinions are the most common and therefore are reiterated the most?

Just because people are saying similar things doesn't mean they are wrong in the statement they make. And just because most people are discussing similar bullet-point items concerning this healthcare bill, doesn't mean they are not fact.

Read the bill yourself.

Is the Health Care Reform Bill really overwhelmingly opposed by the American Public???

In short...NO.

The only poll that has been run recently that was genuinely independant and done well was done by the Kaiser Foundation and that poll revealed that though there was evidence that the rhetoric from the GOP had taken hold in some....When asked not about the bill in general...but rather the actual components of the bill...The vast majority of Rep/Dems and Independants were for the components of the bill.

see here
www.kff.org...

Originally posted by OutKast Searcher
See them here: Health Care Polls

NBC News/Wall St. Jrnl: +12 opposed

Lets just play find the bias for a moment..

OK...the site that you got the poll averages from.

realclearpolitics..

RealClearPolitics is an American non-partisan[2][3][4] political news and polling data aggregator, and conservative-leaning blog based in Chicago, Illinois.

Well, have they played with the numbers? In my opinion YES.

I just took the NBS/WSJ poll becuase I tend to expect them to be more legit than most...

Lets look at the actual poll

online.wsj.com...

I see 59% of folks dissaproving of the GOPs handling of healthcare reform..

Also when the following question is asked...
"Do you think it would be better to pass Barack Obama’s health care plan and make its changes to the health
care system or to not pass this plan and keep the current health care system?"

It is +1 in favor of passing it...

There are lies, damn lies ...and statistics...forgot who said that.

It's all about critical thinking and trying to find the truth.

The first step is to eliminate bias sources and spin (in either direction) whenever possible.





[edit on 19-3-2010 by maybereal11]

reply to post by Cabaret Voltaire


The abortion provision will most likely be taken out...and I hope it does because I don't support that.

But you do know you can opt out of the OPTIONAL $1 in premiums towards abortion funding...right??? It would be really silly of you to complain about it and not know the facts.

reply to post by lpowell0627

I think we should stop spending incredible amounts of money that the US government AND American taxpayers don't have.

And that is your opinion. My opinion is that you don't sit and watch a building crumble and fall down...you take when you can and do what you can. Now the best action may be to completely restore all reinforcements, replace all the rotted wood, replace windows, get all energy efficient appliances, pour new concrete where needed and fix it up all nice and shiny new....but if all you can do at the time is fix the reinforcements so the building at least doesn't fall down...then that is what you do. Even if you have to spend a little money...money that you wish you didn't have to spend...it is cheaper than if the whole building collapses and you are left with a pile of rubble. Sure...you saved some money...but now you have no building.

Or rather, would you very carefully spend that $20 -- only if you *had* to in order to make sure that your bottom-line necessities are met?

If my family needed money because of health or medical issues...I would do things that I may not do if the situation wasn't so critical.

They have no business gambling on a healthcare reform package of this magnitude that by their own admission is not what "they had hoped it would be."

Rarely are things exactly how we hoped for. I was talking to someone else about this same issue (maybe it was you?). The difference here between me and you is that I am thinking as a realist...and you are thinking as an idealist. Is it perfect? No. Is it exactly what I would of liked see passed? No. But REALISTICLY...it is a step in the right direction and it is better to pass this than to let if fail and wait another 16 years before anyone has the courage to pick up the healthcare debate again.

However, this bill does VERY little to combat that anyway.

Source? CBO estimates show it saving lots of money over a 10-20 year period. If you are going to make a claim like that...you have to back it up.

Do you think waste and fraud are simply going to disappear?

No...but this is not a reason to do nothing.

Do you think social security's problems are going to just disappear?

No...but social security has little to do with health care reform. So maybe we agree on something....maybe social security is the next thing they should work on

Perhaps the government should clean up the messes it has already started before embarking on creating yet another trillion-dollar potential disaster.

You prioritize based on how critical a situation, what the immediate and long term risks are, and how much you have already invested in it.

To stop health care reform now and switch gears would be a complete waste. Over a year wasted...taxpayer money wasted on salaries, meetings, summits, and time lost working on other things....all that and now end solution??? Aren't you all for eliminating waste from the government???

reply to post by maybereal11


I 100% agree with you. That is why I tried to put a little disclaimer at the top of my post saying that I really don't like using national polls for this type of issue because there are so many factors that can affect the outcomes.

The way the question is asked is very important in these polls...and not all of them will release the raw data with the exact questions. Or I should say I couldn't easily find them will looking...maybe I didn't look enough or they hid it really well.

reply to post by OutKast Searcher


I think the better question to be asked is why when a given poll (let's take the NBC/WSJ poll for example) shows that +1 WANT THE BILL PASSED...does a site claim the same poll shows +12 are opposed to the bill?

There is propaganda at play here and it is to the detriment of every American of any political leaning to continue to encourage media and politicians to lie to us.

In this specific case...the "right wing" media cherry picked one question on that poll and slightly spun it. The +12 number comes from a question asking if they thought the bill was a "bad" bill.

+12 felt said the bill was bad.

But the public usually thinks most bills are bad, loaded with pork etc.

When the same people were asked if the bill should be passed..there was +1 in favor of passing it.

AND nowhere did the GOP explain how the same survey found that 60% of Americans of any political leaning thought the GOP had done a horrible job in the debate.

It's the way numbers are used, questions are postulated and answers are spun.

ALWAYS try to find the actual Questionairre with results and make your own conclusions. DON'T trust someone else to tell you what a poll is saying....AGENDA'S ARE OMNIPRESENT IN THIS DEBATE.

reply to post by OutKast Searcher


So your answer to a falling down building is akin to propping it up with 2 x 4s and hoping for the best. Band-aids do not provide sustainable long-term benefit.

Whereas my opinion is that you carefully analyze exactly what areas of the building can be salvaged first, hence cutting down on unnecessary expenditures later.

Then, you reconstruct the building, cautiously and carefully avoiding all prior mistakes that caused the building to fall in the first place.

All while remaining within budget.

Like any poll, you can get favorable results by asking the right questions. If you ask, “Do you support Health Care Reform?” you will probably get a majority in favor. If you ask, “Do you support the legislation currently proposed by Congress?” you will probably get a resounding no.

Most Americans see this for what it is. This “Health Care Reform” legislation has as much to do with health care as the “Patriot Act” had to do with patriotism. Pure and simple, it is a bonanza for insurance companies. Exactly what does the legislation do to improve the quantity or quality of health care you receive? Nothing. The legislation is designed to do one thing, force you to buy health insurance. Well, it forces the insurance companies to cover you if you have pre-existing conditions, right? No problem for the insurance companies. Nothing in the legislation prevents them from charging you $20,000 a month if you have a pre-existing condition, as far as I have read.

If you don’t buy the insurance, you have to pay a fine. If you don’t pay the fine, you go to jail. What happens if the insurance company decides not to cover you bill? From what I saw, they will be fined $100 per person per day. So, suppose you need life-saving surgery that costs $50,000. You’ll die within a year without it. The insurance company can just decide that it’s more cost effective to pay $100 a day until you die. Of course, that’s not like a death panel or anything. It’s just good business and all legal under the proposed legislation.

If this goes through, tens of millions of people will be forced to buy insurance. Well they’re going to get their money’s worth. Suddenly, doctors and hospitals will have tens of millions of new patients. How many new doctors or hospitals does this “Health Care Reform” create? Zero, zip, zilch, nada, butkis. But somehow the existing health care professionals can accommodate the influx of tens of millions of new patients without rationing. We’re getting a lot of promises about this “Health Care Reform” legislation, but then we got a lot of promises when Congress was discussing Federal Income Tax, Social Security, and the Federal Reserve. Promises that were broken, and no way to hold the liars accountable, and no way to undo the damage done.

Proponents say that insurance companies oppose this bill. That defies common sense. If Congress were trying to pass a law requiring people to buy fast food burgers do you think McDonalds would oppose it? Trying to fool people into thinking that insurance companies oppose this bill is a blatant lie designed to gain public support. We’re told that having more people buy insurance will lower insurance costs. Is there anything in the proposed legislation that supports that assumption? Why would the insurance companies cut into their profit margins if they weren’t legally required to do so? Is there anything in those thousands of pages of legalese that fixes a dollar limit to your premiums? Not that I’ve seen, but if anyone knows different, then please share.

Sorry, for the long rant. I don’t often get time to post like this. Back on topic. CNN poll numbers show that a “slight” majority are opposed to “Health Care Reform”. Considering how hard CNN has been trying to sell this legislation to the public, I would suspect the number is a lot higher. CNN would love to be able to say that most Americans support this bill. They will bring in their usual pundits who will say that most Americans want it, but when it comes to posting numbers, they just can’t fudge the data enough.

From a personal point of view, I can say that I have spoken with no one, face to face, that is in favor of the legislation proposed by Congress. Not scientific, I know. The people I’ve discussed this with tend to be friends, family, co-workers, trades people, etc. Mostly middle to lower economic class.

Wait for the rest of America tax payer to find out that within the bill is an increase of Medicare and Medicaid taxes and people will get the point, we are to gouged by the private insurance and the government again and again.

the current proposal in the House under HR 3590 would add an increase in the form of payroll taxes. The bill, as it stands currently, would add .9% to the Medicare payroll tax to those individual taxpayers earning over $200,000 ($250,000 for married couples filing joint tax returns). That would bring the total tax rate to 2.35%.

The current Medicare payroll tax rate is 1.45% and is part of what we know as FICA, or Federal Insurance Contributions Act tax. The tax is imposed on employees and employers to fund Social Security and Medicare. Since it's imposed on only those who work, the tax has been quite controversial. Unearned income, including interest, stock dividends, and capital gains such as profits from the sale of stock or real estate, are not affected by this tax.

www.walletpop.com...

Originally posted by lpowell0627
reply to post by OutKast Searcher

 

So your answer to a falling down building is akin to propping it up with 2 x 4s and hoping for the best.

"propping it up with 2x4s" is better than letting it collapse upon all those inside...of course the other option is evacuation...but evacuate where (in this dilapidated building:health care reform analogy)

Interesting...I moved on to the PEW Poll to take a look at the actual poll.

Which does a have a question where respondants showed a 10 point spread opposed to the health care bills.

But the question RIGHT BEFORE THE QUESTION ABOUT SUPPORT reads verbatum

ASK ALL:
Now thinking about health care…
Q.25 How much, if anything, have you heard about the bills in Congress to overhaul the health care system?
Have you heard…[READ]

people-press.org...

I cannot for the life of me find what they edited out for publication with "[Read]"

If I had to bet...what they did was ask one "question"...Have you heard that (insert push-poll question here) and then moved onto to whether they support the bill.

Example: have you heard that if the bill passes the US government will institute Death panels to determine whether Senior Citizens are worth keeping alive or not?

How do you feel about the health care reform bill?

When John McCain ran against GB Senior the Bush campaign ran polls in NC that asked questions like...

If you were made aware that John McCain had had an extramarital affair with a black prostitute and had a child from that affair, would that change your opinion of him?

"Have you heard x, y and Z about the bill" and then asking them how they feel about the bill...that is not a legit poll.

[edit on 19-3-2010 by maybereal11]

[edit on 19-3-2010 by maybereal11]

reply to post by lpowell0627

So your answer to a falling down building is akin to propping it up with 2 x 4s and hoping for the best.

Seriously...how do you get that I said I would prop it up with 2 x 4s when I said "fix the reinforcements"???? When I say "fix" the reinforcements....I mean FIX THE REINFORCEMENTS. I know you read my posts...but I don't think you comprehend them very well.

Whereas my opinion is that you carefully analyze exactly what areas of the building can be salvaged first, hence cutting down on unnecessary expenditures later.

Great...let's hear those suggestions of yours for healthcare reform (if it is Tort reform or selling insurance across state lines with no regulation...save it...I don't need to hear the talking points).

And...how is what you said any different than what I said? I would have analyzed the building and decided that fixing the reinforcements so it doesn't fall down is the best option.

All you said above is "I would look at it and do something"...what exactly would you do?

Then, you reconstruct the building, cautiously and carefully avoiding all prior mistakes that caused the building to fall in the first place.

Or you spend too much time looking for the perfect solution...and the building falls down.

Again...let's hear your solutions to healthcare reform if you have it all figured out.

All while remaining within budget.

It's easy to stay within budget when you do nothing...but it doesn't solve anything.

Again...you are an idealist...and idealists don't work out really well in the real world. They will always be the shoulda, coulda, woulda type...sometimes you just need to take the best possible action you can at the time...even if it isn't perfect.