The ObamaCare Divide Creating Two America's...
by: Les Carpenter
Rational Nation USA
Purveyor of Truth
This site is not a supporter of the mechanisms of ObamaCare and questions whether it in fact will ultimately make health care either more accessible r affordable. Except for those receiving a subsidy or are getting it free.
All that aside I do agree with following Moyers & Company article stating that ObamaCare is widening the gap between red America and blue America.
Something needed to be done with our health care and insurance system. Most agree that the pre ObamaCare system needed some work. Unfortunately reason failed American politics and what we have achieved is an ever more polorized country with no end to the polarization.
Perhaps it is time to officially form a Blue United States of America and a Red United States of America. Because in reality we are moving ever closer to the breaking point.
Read the full article BELOW THE FOLD
Via: Memeorandum
Rational Nation USA
Purveyor of Truth
 |
| Red and blue state map, based on returns in last four presidential elections. (Wikimedia Commons/ Angr) |
This site is not a supporter of the mechanisms of ObamaCare and questions whether it in fact will ultimately make health care either more accessible r affordable. Except for those receiving a subsidy or are getting it free.
All that aside I do agree with following Moyers & Company article stating that ObamaCare is widening the gap between red America and blue America.
Something needed to be done with our health care and insurance system. Most agree that the pre ObamaCare system needed some work. Unfortunately reason failed American politics and what we have achieved is an ever more polorized country with no end to the polarization.
Perhaps it is time to officially form a Blue United States of America and a Red United States of America. Because in reality we are moving ever closer to the breaking point.
The fact that the citizens of “red” and “blue” states live in what are essentially two countries with very different governments has largely flown under the radar, but it may become the defining story of our time. The two major parties are not only highly polarized ideologically, but as Dan Balz noted in The Washington Post, “polarization has ushered in a new era in state government, where single-party control of the levers of power has produced competing Americas.” Three-quarters of US states are now controlled by one of the two major parties — the most in 60 years — and “officials in these states are moving unencumbered to enact their party’s agenda.”
When the Supreme Court ruled that states could decline Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion without facing a penalty, the justices set in motion a process that’s now pushing our two countries even further apart as about half of the states passed on the opportunity to insure their poorer residents.
Read the full article BELOW THE FOLD
Via: Memeorandum
Red state/blue state stats on uninsured and insured: Texas has the highest number of uninsured citizens; Massachusetts has the lowest.
ReplyDeleteHere's a article that explains how Republican Governor Romney's "Romneycare" is working in Massachusetts.
I'd as your commenters, Les, how not participating in the A.C.A. is beneficial to red state citizens, and what are the reasons the GOP governors have opted out by way of the SCOTUS's ruling.
How is that helping their citizens? And is it a good thing that so many Americans in red states are denied that coverage? What plans do the GOP governors of those states have to address those who are not covered? Emergency room health care is not "insurance," so that can't be an option.
I'd like to know how denying people the ability to access health insurance is a good thing.
Also, Les, this article speaks to what you've posted:
ReplyDelete"You’ll be startled to hear, via Bloomberg News, that House Republicans have once again put on hold their plans to release their alternative to Obamacare. Bloomberg quotes Republicans claiming they are in the midst of making process-y decisions about how to offer their alternative in legislative terms.
But it may also be that Republicans are running into the same old problem: There just isn’t any real policy space for an alternative that would meaningfully accomplish what the law accomplishes. Indeed, along these lines, one GOP aide was remarkably candid in an interview with Sahil Kapur:
One congressional GOP health aide, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly, said his party is as determined as ever to fight Obamacare, and will remain so as long as it exhibits failure. He said devising an alternative is fraught with the difficulty of crafting a new benefits structure that doesn’t look like the Affordable Care Act.
“If you want to say the further and further this gets down the road, the harder and harder it gets to repeal, that’s absolutely true,” the aide said. “As far as repeal and replace goes, the problem with replace is that if you really want people to have these new benefits, it looks a hell of a lot like the Affordable Care Act…To make something like that work, you have to move in the direction of the ACA. You have to have a participating mechanism, you have to have a mechanism to fund it, you have to have a mechanism to fix parts of the market.”
I think Obamacare will become less and less an issue as time goes by. It's so far having net positive effects for the country, millions more Americans are now insured, and the private insurance industry is rolling along reaping their pointless profits the same as ever. Obamacare does look like it's going to reduce the rising costs of healthcare a bit, but in the end the costs are still looking to get out of hand, and Obamacare just doesn't do enough to address that. So, if anything, we're going to need a another Obamacare-level reform sometime in the next generation. Who knows? Maybe one day we'll all wake up and ask, "Hey! Why do we need to have this employer/private insurance healthcare system in the first place?"
ReplyDeleteAs for the Reds and Blues, the Red States are dependent on the Blue States, so they're not going anywhere. And eventually, all those Red States will take that Obamacare money, or they won't be Red much longer, which, really, is happening in some large Red States already. This latest rendition of American Conservatism - I call it Goldwaterism - is on the wain.
JMJ
jmj, pointless profit? Don't know where to begin. So I'll just chuckle and leave it at that. Don' t want to embarrass you.
ReplyDeleteObamaCare is having positive results... To early to make that.sweeping statement. If in fact the positive claims are substantiated over the next three years good.
By tweaking with another ObamaCare reform you mean single payer government health insurance and healthcare just say it jmj.
I'm quite certain I won't be around to witness the ultimate results of Obama's fundamentally changing.America. Frankly, for me this is a good thing.
Call it what you wish, Goldwater was a principled politician, a good man, and would have made a fine principles and honest president.
Perhaps a future generation will wake up and say, we're broke, it is previous generations (including Obama) that are to blame, and we can no longer support the Santa Dream.
Time for my single malt scotch, a good movie with the finer half of my life, and to say... to hell with this never ending debate.
Les, you can't embarrass me here. The private health insurance market is a hedge for production overhead. It has nothing to do with what it's definitively supposed to do. It's a sham and only Americans are stupid enough to allow it. No other developed state has an insurance system like ours, and sure enough none of them have millions and millions of uninsured citizens. Idiocy.
DeleteJMJ
A portion of our taxes go for national defense. A portion should also go to personal defense (healthcare) also.
DeleteJersey: Germany's health care program is managed via private insurance.
DeleteAnd you need to take your complaint about insurance to Obama and the democrats who shoved this spiked suppository known as Obamacare up our collective wazoo. They had the votes, they could have pitched the whole insurance model over the side and went with a nationalized system.
Perhaps they didn't do that because then they couldn't milk the insurance industry? Could it be possible that liberal democrats are swayed by corporate interests, too *GASP*
So, in summary, your complaint lies firmly and wholly at the feet of Obama and the Democrats who gave us this system.
Managing via private companies is a long ways from letting the private market play around with our health.
DeleteThe system we have today is little changed with Obamacare, with some notable beneficial exceptions.
Look, you trust insurance companies, I think you're retarded for that, so that's that.
JMJ
Jersey: Why would you assume I trust any entity?
DeleteI do trust a well-policed free-market infinitely more than the soviet-style system Obama and the Pelosicrats have set up.
That's the dumbest thing ever said. The whole point of Obamacare is to have a well-policed free-market sector system. What don't you get about that? It was a God damned m'f'n conservative f'n idea in the first place!
DeleteJMJ
Obama was for single payer but that was before he got a boatload of money from the insurance and pharmaceutical companies and proved well beyond a shadow of a doubt that he's every bit as crony as 2 predecessors.
DeleteWill said: "Obama was for single payer but that was before..."
DeleteSo he shifted from a megalomaniac, Stalinistic power-hungry approach to a corrupt one. Pretty clear he has never had any good idea or good intent on this issue...
IMO, the red/blue-left/right phenomena predates the ACA by decades: political beliefs are likely innate and spread across the left/right spectrum. The last several years of instant media/talk radio/spinmeisters, etc has exacerbated the divide, politeness & compromise are considered weakness, facts and logic are OK only if they are OUR facts and logic and somehow we have ended up instead of 'we' it is 'us' & 'them'. It is a disturbing trend and those that study it are still sorting it out .
ReplyDeleteWell stated BB Idaho, and accurate IMNHO.
ReplyDeleteAnd Jersey steps in again with his lie about red states being beholden to blue states. We've slapped down his comments every time he pops up, but he persists in spreading his propaganda.
ReplyDeleteWe've explained to Jersey that even the author of the study does not make such a categorical statement as the MSNBS leftwing nutballs do. We've further explained to him that the author of that study has also said he cannot explain the results. Federal money is spread everywhere.
So, if a state has a high percentage of military retirees and Social Security penioneers, they would count as a 'taker' in Jersey's book keeping.
Farm subsidies, military installations, federal land, all of those things go into the calculation. Just because a state has those things doesn't mean it is a taker.
One final note: Look at that vast sea of red in America's heartland. That is where your gas and oil and minerals, your food, meat and dairy products come from.
Such twaddle as sputtered out by Jersey springs from the ignorance of a leftwing latte liberal clinging to the blue fringes of America, someone who has never been to Kansas or Wyoming, where hard-working men and women produce our food and mine our natural resources so metrosexuals like Jersey can sit in upscale coffee houses and spount progressive nonsense while looking down their snooty noses at we stupid, rightwingchristians who live in flyover country.
Thank you, Jersey. You perform a valuable service. You tell us what the left really thinks of a broad swath of America. You and your leftwing ilk hold us in contempt as you talk in bumper stickers, but refuse to put up facts when challenged.
Sorry, Silver, but you can take out whatever you feel doesn't count (who pays for the military? to whom are they selling their agriculture?) but you can't obscure the reality that the Red States are dependent, poorer states. And when you look at the statistics, the Red States are national embarrassments, with a lot more of almost every social ill than the Blue States suffer. I'm not holding anyone in contempt, as you defensively assert, just pointing out the Red States would be suicidal to ever try to go on their own.
DeleteJMJ
Also Jersey, I'm not 'taking anything out.' What I am doing is explaining the distribution of federal funds.
DeleteYou love to lie and characterize it as red states with their hands out, and that is clearly not the case. You want to talk about welfare and foodstamps? Look to the liberal-dominated enclaves.
If the blue states are so great, why are people fleeing them to go live in those crappy, unenlightened red ones?
It is evident, after many back and forth with you on this, that you have not read the study, but rather just read huff and puff po and Daily Kook red propaganda rants about it. Aren't you and educated man? You should be ashamed of yourself, being caught in such ignorance so many times. You are an indoctrinated ideologue spewing the same crap. So much easier than reading the study, analyzing it and thinkning for yourself.
Suicidal? Try living in your blue fringe without food and natural resources.
@ Jersey: who pays for the military?
DeleteWe all do, via federal taxes. But your reasoning is tortured. By your absurd reckoning, if a state has many military installations and people on the federal payroll, including social security recipients, it is dependent. Makes no sense, like most of what comes out of your gob.
How does the reason for the dependency make it any less dependent?
DeleteJMJ
OK. You got me, you paycheck-dependent mug...
DeleteArticles such as the one you cited lament that too many states are controlled by one party or another. Why is that a bad thing? That is how our system was set up. I would not want to live in liberal Mass, but people are happy there, so who am I to criticize how you run your state?
ReplyDeleteState governments better represent the will of the people, and that is why I believe that is where more governing should happen. It is easier for me to contact my state representative, or drive to the capital in Denver, that it is to petition someone in DC.
Having been on active duty in Alabama in 63-65, states rights can be ugly, IMO. One party state control in my state resulted in CC carry on college campuses, despite opposition by most residents, all college presidents, all police departments and a vast majority of students.
DeleteNone of those were permitted to speak at hearings: only the NRA, which wrote the legislation. It is easier for me to petition someone in DC than get through to a bonehead state
representative, so it cuts both ways, SF.
BB: When a state violates the constitution and basic human rights, it can become ugly, and there is where there is a legitimate role for the federal government to step in.
DeleteJersey:
DeleteMass corruption? Looked at the District of Criminals lately?
Corruption is codified into law, and the wasteful spending practices are legendary and obscene.
Nationalizing government does gain one great efficiency: The rent-seekers only have to go to one giant honeypot instead of 50.
The District of Criminals is enjoying a new gilded age while Main Street languishes. That doesn't bother you?
Personally Silverfiddle I believe local, state, and federal government in that order represents how a representative democracy should function. Which is to say power should be diluted at each higher governmental tier. At least philosophically and in theory. What have seen since the days of Jackson and Lincoln in a slow inversion.
ReplyDeleteMore devolution is a recipe for mass corruption. All ideology, no reality. The fact of the matter is most of the trouble you will ever have with government will be with your local or state government, not the federal government.
DeleteJMJ
Yes indeed, Les, and the people who advocate this one-size-fits-all would throw a fit if gun totin' rightwingchristianconservatives invaded their blue-state bubble and sought to change the very character of their state.
ReplyDeleteWe are a diverse nation, and the differences in the states reflect that, and as I said before, that is as it should be.
Blue states remain comfortably blue because they have stable or declinging populations when compared to the overall national average. Red states move to the purple column because people are flocking to them. So, what this means is that on a state-by-state bases, people get the government they vote for, unlike in a national system where a electorially contrary region must bear whatever the rest of the nation votes for. (Yes, this can be applied to states as well, where rural populations have very different values than city dwellers, which goes to you comment about local government being the fundamental basis)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_population_growth_rate
If you look beneath the data, and just study migration pattern, it is even worse for the blue states, but overall better for blue politics, since those escaping collapsing and increasingly progressive states take their liberalism with them and turn red states purple, and sometimes blue.
We will see an evening out, and an end to leftwing wide-eyed amazement at how Republicans can be the majority in the house when so many people voted for Obama. (hint: Liberals are concentrated in a handful or congressional districts.) The key to future liberal dominance is for them to do what they are doing: Escape the 80% liberal congressional districts and move to red ones, diluting GOP control in the process.
If this were happening in reverse, liberals would be screaming and blaming it on Dick Cheney, Halliburton and the Koch brothers.
Those are valid and reasonable assumptions, SF. We note other factors, for example the
Deleteperfectly legal practice of geryymandering the methodology of which can result in partial voter disenfranchisement. Who knows what prompts people to move from state to state? Jobs, primarily; in my case a chance to move
to the mountain west. Certainly, we are a nation of movers, my grown kids being scattered to the edges of the country to follow their professions (and marry kids from Kentucky and South
Dakota)
Blue States are better off because they have better schools, better services, better transportation, better healthcare, better jobs, more diversity, more civility, and more socio-political activity.
DeleteJMJ
Jersey: Actually, look at the statistics. At least a couple of parts of your statement are false on the face of it. Better jobs? No. Check the government unemployment statistics.
DeleteMore diversity? No again. The Northeast, for example is much racially-diverse than the south.
I could go on and on, but facts and data mean nothing to you...
So, genius, why are so many people escaping the blue states and heading for the red ones?
Silver, I don't know what planet you come from, but here on Earth every American knows exactly what I'm saying and that it is true. I've been around, I've seen it with my own eyes. They are just backwards.
DeleteJMJ
Jersey: I've looked at the state comparisons also. What Americans know is very different than what you claim.
DeleteA Jersey: every American knows...
DeleteBandwagon fallacy. Game over. You got Nothing!
Again I ask you, so why are millions of Americans escaping the blue paradises and running as fast as they can to those horrible red states?
Silver: Going the other way, I looked at these stats about what state is really better than the other (frankly, its jingoistic the way football fandom is) and found it was very complicated and defies generalization. I found blue states that have population growth, just as well as red states.
DeleteBy the way, in Jersey's kitchen sink list of careless generalizations (like "better jobs", which tends to favor red states somewhat more), one stood out earlier. Civility? I wonder if he looked into that at all.
Check "The Most Polite And Potty-Mouthed States In The US".
Blue Mass is polite. Blue Minnesota is rude (Minnesota Nice, Heh). Red Louisiana and Mississippi (typical whipping boys in such jingoistic "my state is better" comparisons) are very polite, very civil. Etc etc etc.
"
Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi are just three red states I certainly wouldn't crawl to let alone rush to.
DeleteThere is so much rhetorical BS flying around it can be difficult to separate fact from fiction.
Everybody seems to have their favorite spin on this as well as other issues.
I base my comments on census data:
Deletehttp://www.governing.com/gov-data/census/census-state-population-estimates-births-deaths-migration-totals-2013.html
More red states at the top of the list (gaining people). More blue states at the bottom.
Washington, Oregon, DC and Deleware are the only solid red states in teh top 20. Throw in Virginia and Iowa, and that's it for blue states that are gaining population. Purple Florida and Colorado are also gaining.
NOTE TO EVERYONE: Colorado Sucks! Stay away! The weather stinks. Snows on the 4th of July so hard it'll put out your BBQ fire!
New York, Illinois, California, New Jersey bring up the rear, bleeding out the most people. Kansas is the only reliable red state in the bottom 10.
Well, it's a far more complex subject than we're really getting into. For instance, the Blue States are going to have a decline in population as the Baby Boomers retire to southern states that have much lower property taxes, but those lower property taxes mean worse public services that retirees don't care about, like schools.
DeleteBut this just goes on and on and on. Just the same, everyone knows the story here. The righties just get defensive about it. If the South was run by Dems, the righties would be decrying the same problems we're talking about here.
But hey, if you like backwards shitholes, then embrace it. Why pretend they are like developed moderns states? "Does your conscious bother you? Tell me true."
JMJ
Yes Jersey, you are sorry. More fact-free blather.
ReplyDeleteIf the red states are so crappy, why are people fleeing the blue states and flocking to the red states?
And I'll ask you again: Got food? Thank a red state.
It must be comfy in your fantasy bubble, insulated from reality
Exactly... one gets an idea of which state is really better or not by looking at migration figures, population growth, etc.
Deletedmarks: But one could understand how such logic is lost on progressives. Who do you believe? People picking up everything they own and voting with their feet, or a panel of liberal experts?
DeleteIf I may interject a thought, doesn't it make sense to believe those who like you look at both sides of an argument, analyze it without allowing preconceived prejudices to color thought, and then select the most sensible argument?
DeleteIf we all thought precisely alike it would not only be boring it is likely we would all be driving Flintstones cars.
Les: Good observation. Notice I haven't denegrated red bastions like your own Mass. I celebrate America's diversity. Devolving goverment power down to states, counties and localities will preserve that diversity.
DeleteProgressives want one uniform national system ruled over by a Soviet-style politburo. The very idea that people would make their own choices and live their lives as they see fit is abhorent to the the intolerant left and their progressive statist fellow travelers.
Silver: I messed up in my description of the map, in describing some states as polite when they were rude. However, there are other states that fit the "polite but red" description to replace them.
DeleteRN said: "If we all thought precisely alike it would not only be boring it is likely we would all be driving Flintstones cars."
DeleteThere is a small point to be made there about the CAFE/etc standards forcing people into tiny, flimsy, unsafe cars..... And the political side which unfortunately has made this push to make vehicles less safe and far less useful.
Jersey: Are you purposely being ignorant just for the sake of arguing?
ReplyDeleteThere is a difference between someone working for a paycheck and someone standing with their hand out for federal aid.
National Park workers are working for their paycheck, as are military and civil servants who happen to serve in a red state.
You have not presented any facts to back up your absurd claim. Put up or shut up.
.
ReplyDelete"... ObamaCare is widening the gap between red America and blue America."
And? Your point is ...?
Throughout history life's improvements have always had a ripple effect. Those at the center respond before those around the edge react over time. USA went through events like ACA implementation before. The 'electrification of USA' projects in the 20th century took time and early on in its applications could have been seen in the same way. Some states had more early-on advantages than others (with even some parts/regions resisted getting electricity). But over time as the benefits of the advances of having electricity in people's home/regions became clear, USA developed an infrastructure grid to be emulated.
ACA is having a positive affect on the healthcare insurance markets. People are benefiting by having more and better insurance coverage/protection. In states that have and are resisting the advances of ACA, the people will see the advances in neighboring states and change their local leaders so as to allow their states to join ACA's programs.
"Perhaps it is time to officially form a Blue United States of America and a Red United States of America. Because in reality we are moving ever closer to the breaking point."
Not even close. It is not the time to be throwing your hands up and wailing the end is neigh. People of USA have so much more in common than not in common. People know this.
Ema Nymton
~@:o?
.
So much for "...in order to form a more perfect union"! IMO, there is as much economic and political variation within a state (urban v rural) as there is between states; for example the
Deleteseveral Colorado counties that want to secede, or Nevada where some farmer is squatting on BLM land with an armed militia, while US tourists flock to Las Vegas. In general, IMO, the
only large regional factors may be the fundamental religious south or states with large universities, to consider two poles. A check of dmarks' states that are rude and swear,
showed that my state is a leader in both areas: something I'd never noticed among friendly
Idahoans.
BB: Great points. Some of these red states or blue states are largely "purple". Or some blue states have some intensely red areas. Or vice versa. Or....
DeleteAnyway, you can get a better idea of this when you look at the county-by-county red vs blue map, seen here. Source: umich election maps page. I am presenting this not for someone to make a case of "yeah, the country is mostly red" (which is not really a correct conclusion), but to show how scattered and varied things are within states.
In fact, at the county level, the borders of red vs blue states are not actually visible at all.
@BB: ".... something I'd never noticed among friendly Idahoans."
DeleteYeah right..
Jersey said: "The whole point of Obamacare is to have a well-policed free-market sector system. What don't you get about that? It was a God damned m'f'n conservative f'n idea in the first place!"
ReplyDeleteConsidering that Obama has himself said that that is ultimate goal is complete control of the healthcare system, this "whole point' you mention really isn't the case. And it was definitely not a conservative idea: the ObamaCo officials who crafted it were left of center.
dmarks -"Obama has himself said that that is ultimate goal is complete control of the healthcare system"
ReplyDeleteUltimate goal and complete control?!? How about a link to that quote, dmarks. Or are you just making shit up?
" Or are you just making shit up?"
DeleteNo, I am not like you, Jerry.
"“I happen to be a proponent of a single payer universal health care program.” - Barack H. Obama, 2003
I won't provide a link to this, as it is so prevalent from so many sources, that if you are too lazy to look this up, you really aren't qualified to discuss this at all. There's evidence that you have already come to this discussion several cards short of a full deck, as you are clearly ignorant (or feigning ignorance) of Obama's statement.
Your sort of "the sky really isn't blue, give me a link to prove it is" commands really aren't very helpful. Demanding links for obscure things, yes, but not for extremely well known matters.
In other words, dmarks, there is no quote where Obama said that the ultimate goal was complete control of healthcare. That' she cause he never said it.
DeleteAll we have is your opinion that being in favor of a single payer plan is the same as wanting complete control of healthcare and that being in favor of something makes it your ultimate goal. I happen to think you opinion is wrong.
I presented this quotation. If you do insist, I will give you some of the many places it is found. Single payer is indeed complete control of healthcare (by the entity that is the single payer).
DeleteThe fact is that single payer is complete central control over health care. Being in favor of it DOES mean it is your goal. That's a fact, not opinion.
My opinion, which I have not mentioned before in this discussion, is that this is not the direction we should be going in.
dmarks,
DeleteYou said, "Obama has himself said that that is ultimate goal is complete control of the healthcare system". You didn't say that he said he favors single payer. I know he favored single payer. I asked for a link to where he specifically said that his "ultimate goal is complete control of the healthcare system".
You have not provided the link because it does not exist. You made up the quote.
If you are going to say he said something, it should be what he actually said, not your interpretation of what he said. If you interpret what he said, then you need to say so. Quote what he said, and then say "this means...."
Otherwise you are just putting words in his mouth. They are your words, not his. And to say that he said them is dishonest.
I have not provided this link because there are so many, and if you were conversant with the subject, you would know.
DeleteI will do so anyway. Here he is, in his own words:
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpAyan1fXCE
I don't find it disputable that he advocates a system of total, central control.
Of course there is a difference of opinion involved, but that is over whether or not this type of control is good or bad.
That is not the link I asked you to provide. It is only Obama saying he is in favor of a single payer plan, something I have not disputed. You quoted him, so where is the quote?
DeleteIt is the link you asked me to provide. as he is saying an exact quotation which I provided earlier, and correctly paraphrased saying he wanted total control. That's what single payer is.
DeleteIt is like you are being intentionally obtuse.
I guess I need to repeat the quote that I asked for. Here is what I said,
Deletedmarks -"Obama has himself said that that is ultimate goal is complete control of the healthcare system"
The quote that I have been asking for and you have not supplied is Obama saying "that his ultimate goal is complete control of the healthcare system".
Giving me Obama saying that he is in favor of a single payer healthcare system is not Obama saying he wants total control. Where does he say the words, "ultimate goal is total control of the healthcare system"? Those are the words you said he said. So far you have not provided that quote.
If he did not actually say those words then you are just making it up.
Actually I have not heard Obama say the worfs ultimate either. In a way though we are discussing semantics aren't we?
DeleteI think we can all agree that government single payer healthcare does put the government bureaucrats in decision making positions and therefore in control.
No RN, we are not discussing semantics. We are discussing misquoting the President of the United Stares. dmarks said "he said" and actually he did NOT say.
DeleteLooks like you got it, Les. Going over again and again an imagined major difference between my paraphrase and his actual quote (which I did provide) is becoming a dead horse... and the only "making things up" involves ignoring meanings and words. One can say I stretched it... matter of opinion. One cannot say I made it up.
DeleteOkay Jerry, I now must agree, you are being obtuse and intentionally argumentative without purpose.
DeleteI have been very clear from the beginning about what I was asking for. And I think it is clear by now that it doesn't exist. End of story. You can call it "paraphrase" if you want. I call it making up shit.
Delete" I call it making up shit."
DeleteBy doing so, you are not only not "rising above it", you are saying something that simply cannot be true.
I provided Obama's exact statement (which you demanded). I even provided a link to it later, as you really were unaware he said this. The statement clearly existed. You can disagree some with the paraphrasing (which I never said itself was an exact quotation), but you can't say it doesn't exist without playing infantile semantic games and engaging in bone-chewing.
Rise above it.
Also, surely most people know the difference between a paraphrase and an actual quotation. If I said that GWB said we needed to go to war, I'm very sure Jerry would not get all pedantic and demand the actual quotation of Bush saying "we needed to go to war" in a speech. He picks his battles, and does so out of pure partisanship, not any sort of consistently or principle.
DeleteNo, dmarks, you did not provide the exact statement that I asked for. See, you made that up.
Deletedmarks, It comes as n surprise to anyone that Obama was and likely remains an advocate of single payer healthcare, ie the Federal Government or more correctly stated the taxpayers.
ReplyDeleteJerry, correct me if I'm wrong Jerry, was asking for a link to the specic quote you seemed to be referencing.
On a different note dmarks, please refrain from personal attacks on commenters. Attack the message, not the messenger.
Yes, and single payer does involve total control. I see you are conversant with this subject, and aren't feigning ignorance, like with Jerry's demand for a link to show that Obama is and was an advocate of this.
DeleteI apologize for the personal attack. Jerry's own coarse attack, that I make sh*t up (something I never do) put me in mind to respond in kind.
I once had a superior manager who used to say. "rise above it." When appropriate this is good advice. Discussing politics, religion, issues of the are just such appropriate occasions.
Delete