Comments on: Why Can’t a Better Health Care Plan be the Next Stimulus?

By: letsgetitdone

letsgetitdone — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 23:00:23 +0000

Jane, you were great. Who was that low-life Dave Shuster had on opposite you? The latest version of Cheri Jacobus, or Fran Townsend?

By: Jane Hamsher

Jane Hamsher — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 22:44:43 +0000

You’re right! I knew it came from somewhere. Thanks for that. When I heard Biden speak about more stimulus, I thought “why are we trying to cut costs here so we can spend them there when it’s the same thing.”

By: Jane Hamsher

Jane Hamsher — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 22:43:07 +0000

Thank you Victoria!

I thought maybe people were just busy, but I’ve gotten a small fraction of the hate mail I usually get when we change formats. RGB worked REALLY hard on this and so did Siun. I think they did a great job, too.

By: Svejk

Svejk — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 22:37:48 +0000

Thanks, I’ll be looking for it. I didn’t know about Amnesty International, so thanks for that information. My activist group will welcome the news.

By: kevsters

kevsters — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 20:55:03 +0000

Or we could just become a Socialist nation now that we have Hannity and Palin cheering for it.

Must watch. Socialism…HOORAY!!!

http://progressnotcongress.org/?p=2025

By: letsgetitdone

letsgetitdone — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 20:43:06 +0000

I’m all for single payer this year. Now, what can you and I do about that considering that the President and Max Baucus have taken it off the table, and all the progressive groups have gone along by concentrating their support on the public option. I was at a Moveon event today pressuring Senator Webb, and a lady next to me said “. . . of course single payer is better, but we’ll never get it passed now. We need to take the sneaky way and support a public option.” That’s the attitude among most progressives. They want to take the “sneaky way” thinking we’ll outsmart someone else outside of ourselves.

By: wildflowerseed

wildflowerseed — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 19:59:45 +0000

Jane you were wonderful on MSNBC.

By: Margot

Margot — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 19:52:33 +0000

I’ve been pounding this idea forever…a great health system that serves all citizens is ‘infrastructure’. Just like roads, bridges and fire and police protection universal health care could protect our people and country and preserve democracy.

I’ve long felt the same way.

By: Rayne

Rayne — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 19:22:47 +0000

The U.S. already spends more than enough to provide health care for each and every citizen.

WE ARE ALREADY PAYING FOR IT - RIGHT NOW.

You can stop with your right-wing talking points, because they come from the same kind of stupidity and lousy management that launched an illegal war costing us at least a trillion dollars — and we don’t see too many of your kind complaining about that, now do we? And what do we have to show for it?

How about doing a better job of managing the money WE ARE ALREADY SPENDING and ensuring that we all of us have a better health care system? It’s a national security prerogative since we can’t protect our people and our resources without having adequate systems in place. We already spend more per person on health care in the U.S. than any other country in the world, including those with nationalized health care systems — yet a large percentage of our people do not have health care.

And how about ensuring that all those grandchildren you’re so worried about actually have health care NOW? It’s going to be awfully hard for them to pay their own bills as adults if they are unable to get health care as children.

You want to worry about the little ones? How about the fact that the U.S. has the highest infant mortality rate of all developed countries? Cheese-on-a-stick, the grandchildren aren’t going to survive your right-wing bullshit because you refuse to spend allocate* the rather puny amount it costs for preventative prenatal care than on the catastrophic coverage a sick newborn requires.

* American men spend $5 MILLION A DAY on a certain drug therapy for ED EVERY DAY. How about allocating just a percentage of the profits from this single drug to health care for children 18 and under?

By: cepr

cepr — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 19:14:36 +0000

Dean Baker proposed health care reform as stimulus during the debate about the last stimulus. See his Guardian column from last Nov:

Save the economy, spend on healthcare

We need to spend big to boost the ailing US economy – and extending healthcare is where Obama should do it