SCOTUS upholds healthcare law — Page 7

I just wish the Affordable Care Act could treat Obama Derangement Syndrome.

Broadway Joe, thanks for responding with that information. It's not a plan I personally would feel comfortable paying into for the reasons sidwich listed, but if it's working for you, that's great.

But since you didn't answer the question I posed, let me rephrase: do you think the 45 million Americans without insurance all have access health care plans that cost only $100 a month? The point I'm trying to make is that your case is an extreme outlier, not the model from which you should be judging the entire health care system in America.

The fact that insurance companies are charging $400+ a month for something most healthy young people will use maybe 3 times a year is the real issue. You keep using the iPad excuse as a misuse of funds, but an iPad costs less than a month of private health insurance, and they last for years.

So I can understand the logic of the "lazy" young people who think $5000 a year to pay for a service they barely need or use is the real misuse funds. That's a lot of money for what probably amounts to 15 minutes annually of face time with a doctor. It's a scam, and that is what needs to change, not the priorities of our generation.

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I guess I'm puzzled then why you oppose this bill so much- it forces people to re-order those priorities and act responsibly- as you have- and get insurance.

"I actually do think that most Americans do have their priorities wrong ..."

Let me tell you about how that came to pass. In 1981, when Reagan became president, he ushered in our current era of selfishness. In the backlash to the social changes of the '60s and '70s, of which he was the figurehead and loudest mouthpiece (the backlash, not the changes), he told the citizens of this country that what THEY wanted as individuals was the most important thing, that helping other people was not a priority.

He gave people permission to not give a crap about their fellow citizens. He enabled white working class men to feel aggrieved, gave them permission to not even think about racism, since white guys checking their biases is "reverse racism" anyway.

He set the stage. He set the stage for materialism and focused on the pleasure centers in the brain not stimulated by counter cultural drugs, but by purchase power, ownership and greed. The more you "get" the better you feel and the more of a winner you are! Screw the losers.

31 years of that. 31 years of people missing the fact that "Greed is good" was supposed to be a critique, not a mantra. When he ran for reelection, Reagan's "Are YOU better off than you were four years ago?" was a question about individuals, because thinking about anybody but ourselves was passe, very twenty years before.

Of course it continues to this day. What did Bush tell the citizens of the US to do after 9/11? Go shopping! GO SHOPPING!!!

The deregulation Reagan ushered in let insane credit card policies to go unchecked, marinated generation after generation of people intent on "getting theirs" and screw everybody else, and shopping and acquisition the only measure of success and worth that most people recognize.

31 years of that will really screw up a country. I don't really see a way to blame people who have lived in this, since so many have never known anything else and most have certainly never been expose to anything that gave them permission to think about anybody but themselves.

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Updated On: 6/29/12 at 01:57 PM

And now we're through the looking glass. Now people who think gay people have the right to be equal to other tax paying citizens of this country, for example, are urged to "support" JC Penney because their multi-million dollar spokeslesbian has come under attack by a group of people who may as well have been created with Reagan's rib!

This is one of the only ways people feel connected to any sort of collective voice. "Support" JC Penney! Save the Ellen!!

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Updated On: 6/29/12 at 02:18 PM

None of my screed is intended to dismiss the people who DON'T have their priorities wrong. I think of our own late, lamented IflitIfloat who had a very busy professional and personal life and STILL managed to volunteer overnight at a men's homeless shelter.

But I think it has been really hard for people who stayed committed to things like that. Laughingly dismissed as "do-gooders" as if those two things, doing and goodness are just far too beyond the pale for a world where knowing cynicism prevents people from caring, less they be the objects of derision too.

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But he sold a feel-good message predicated on selfishness. And a LOT of people did feel good as a result of it. Again, his era condemned pleasure as it had been experienced for the previous two decades (just say no!), and sold the idea that there were winners and losers and it's better to be a winner no matter the cost to other people, your wallet or your soul.

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The deification of that awful man is the biggest mystery of my life.

So many social problems went from bad to catastrophic. It was heartbreaking to see the difference in care and treatment for PWAs under Clinton. If only we hadn't had to wait 12 years!

And of course, don't forget- the rise of Al Queda was absolutely due to Reagan's awful policies. Osama Bin Laden would be working in his family construction business if not for Reagan's terrorism training.

Reagan sold weapons to Iran, Saddam Hussein, and the Taliban. Remind a conservative hero-worshipper of that and watch them try to justify the conservative contradiction.

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Ronald Reagan raised taxes eleven times. That is one fact Republicans today HATE hearing.


http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/02/05/142288/reagan-centennial/

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The Tea Party and the Republican Party today (is their really a difference?) would disown Reagan.He would be labeled a socialist and a communist by the RNC.

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I would love to see her go on Hanity's show on Fox to promote this book and tell that story. Will Sean be turned on or just get angry?(or both?)

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