For more responses to Republican talking points, I have a good collection about rationing, waiting times, us-world comparisons, anecdotes, etc. on my Health Care Reform Debate Blog at http://cmhmd.blogspot.com

Cheers,

Furthermore, I’m a contract employee. Even if my employer offered health insurance, I wouldn’t be eligible (again either with or without tax credits). I have to depend on my spouse’s ability to hold a shitty little crap-ass job so we can have insurance at something approaching an affordable rate (usually over half of what she makes goes towards insurance). To top it all off, if we allow it to lapse, the pre-existing condition clause that most insurers put into their policies kicks in and we’re toast.

No, Universal Coverage/Single Payer is the only real solution. Everything else is just tinkering with a piss-poor broke-dick system that depends on denying coverage to make money for the insurance companies (those @^%(!&% leaches!) who are the primary contributors of the massive increase in healthcare costs over the last forty-fifty years, and when combined with big Pharma just bleed us dry.

They (insurance & pharma) have to be stopped, and WE THE PEOPLE are the only ones who can make it happen.

/rant

Offering tax credits to individuals for whom employer-provided insurance is not available is a way to offer immediate relief to people locked out of the current system, and to move slowly toward a better one.

If any of the Trad Media had the wherewithal to grasp a sniff of the real lives of Americans, they could easily refute the above non-talking point by pointing out the fact that most of the people “locked out of the current system” could not afford to buy, as individuals, health insurance.

Unless of course the GOP proposes giving these folks 12-13,000 per year tax cuts (per person, more for families, plus much much more of a tax cut (like, say, no taxes at all) for anyone with pre-existing health conditions (if available for such folks in the first place).

I think the Blue Dog and Yellow Puddle Democrats are leveraging specious Rethuglican socialist-baiting to make themselves look like battle-worn heroes for offering the private-insurance-friendly crap that they’re peddling…and that they would still be peddling even if Republicans didn’t exist.

How tragic that single-payer advocates have to squander energy and treasure to deflect double-talk not merely from right-wingers but from Democratic connivers (Schumer/Baucus) and capitulators (Moveon/Dr. Dean), hell bent on creating a “level playing field” between private insurance and a “public option.”

Anyone confused about what I mean by the above can click on over to Oxdown here, here, here, and (thanks, selise), here.

I have used this with my ditto-head boss. Got him thinking.

http:www.synoia.comSingle_PayerUniversal_Health_care.htm

and we don’t want this?

Now *there’s* fraud I can believe in!

Even when an important issue for the people comes up – economic reform, health care reform you can see where the elected officials go and who they answer to and who their constituency is – IT”S NOT YOU.

Once they get your vote you have no role to play.

The only real change and progress will come from the direct agitation and demands of the people.

STRUGGLE IS THE ONLY WAY.

Get informed and get involved and probably get arrested.