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Dying for affordable healthcare — the uninsured speak
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by Babel-Fish | August 21, 2009 at 10:57 pm
144 views | 20 Recommendations | 2 comments
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President Obama's Weekly Address: Myths and Morality in Health Insurance Reform
sourced by Babel-Fish
In the furious debate gripping America over the future of its health system, one voice has been lost amid the shouting. It is that of a distinguished gynaecologist, aged 67, called Dr Joseph Manley.
For 35 years Manley had a thriving health clinic in Kansas. He lived in the most affluent neighbourhood of Kansas City and treated himself to a new Porsche every year. But this is not a story about doctors' remuneration and their lavish lifestyles.
In the late 1980s he began to have trouble with his own health. He had involuntary muscle movements and difficulty swallowing. Fellow doctors failed to diagnose him, some guessing wrongly that he had post-traumatic stress from having served in the airforce in Vietnam.
Eventually his lack of motor control interfered with his work to the degree that he was forced to give up his practice. He fell instantly into a catch 22 that he had earlier seen entrap many of his own patients: no work, no health insurance, no treatment.
Ironic situation of what can happen to a wealthy man
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at 10:01 on August 22nd, 2009
Obama's hypocrisy is detestable. To try to get what he wants in healthcare, he has used terms related to christianity like "brother's keeper", etc. -- terms making out like he is so christian in all of this & that christians must therefore follow him (blindly). Well, that is odd, because homosexuality & abortion are not so christian, and he sure supported those things quite a lot! The President needs to be honest rather than dishonestly deceiving people with slick talk to manipulate them. That is the typical politician strategy: manipulation. So what if it is all hypocrisy as long as you get what you want, right? whatever happened to the term "integrity", America? Good grief, talk straight. Grown-ups, even our elected officials, acting like a bunch of grade-school kids who can't say anything meaningful or take a stance on anything certain because they're too worried about being unpopular or losing friends or fellowship with a certain clique. Hey, WHAT an example for all the kids to see, huh?!
As for the healthcare plan, I was listening to a commentary today about an elderly woman in the NW U.S. who, under a state healthcare plan, was rejected for health treatment that she needed because it was too expensive. The state offered her, instead, the financial help to do doctor-assisted suicide: they would pay for that drug rather than the one she needed for better health. I kid you not! (The drug company surprisingly wound up giving her that very expensive drug anyway.) So, this is real, and if it is this way under a state healthcare plan, why should we think it will be any different under a federal one?
Not only that, but I personally do not wish to pay for other people's abortions & sex-change operations. Why should I be forced to. The liars say it won't be that way, but I also heard an interview with a man who stated how they had tried to get the wording of the bill changed to simply include that it would not provide for abortions, but the Democrats wouldn't allow it. So, that pretense is a lie: they evidently do intend to force all America to pay for gov't-funded abortions. Considering the matter related to costs, above, does this also mean that if they thought yout kid needed to be aborted for some reason -- maybe due to "endangerment" of the mother or costs of some kind -- that they would require the child be aborted? What about if you didn't want to? Would your "apparently reckless endangerment" of the mother be made into a criminal act? Would they make you an outlaw by it, throw you in jail, seize the mother-to-be, and "for the good of all"...kill the unborn child? This is all too much to leave to chance or to politicians who often lie just to get what they want.
Another scenario. What if someone has a child that admits some kind of sexually-related anxiety in teen years (or before). Will the gov't then force homosexuality-approving counseling for the child irregardless of the faith of both the child and the family? After all, they could claim it to be legitimate due to "mental health" reasons. What if they found that, in the eyes of a homosexuality-receptive doctor, that the child needed a sex-change operation in order to become "whole" or to become "better in tune with the inner person & psychological person"? Wouldn't they then also force the youth to have such "treatment", and anyone opposing it (including that child) would be regarded as acting unlawfully and "not in the child's 'best interests' as deemed by the State..."? Whoa! Not so fast Obama! WE are not lemings! Give the people time to think. Besides, why is it soooo important that we all sign on the dotted line right now! This isn't some car salesman gimmick, is it? what is the catch? If there is not "catch", then why all the pressure to agree to whatever you say RIGHT NOW, without easing up a bit to let us all think for oursleves?
Look where the money is: who is spending so much to brainwash everyone & force the matter? Someone supposedly said that, if the gov't deregulated the healthcare industry instead of allowing some states to outlaw out of state healthcare, there would be more competition & thus lower prices to become insured. France & Germany (much smaller nations) have more competition among healthcare providers than in the USA! I also heard about the matter of special rates or special coverage relating to things that endanger health, like smoking, alcohol abuse, etc. I don't wish to pay for a smoker's or alcoholic's stubborn refusal to stop a habit that harms their health. I don't wish to pay for all the health problems caused by a junk-food junkie's addiction to bad food choices, either, or for that matter, the health problems of some obese person who eats & eats while watching TV soaps or playing video games or watching "reality TV" too much. If I make sane, good health choices, I should be allowed to benefit from it.
at 16:44 on August 23rd, 2009
You seem to think you can speak for all Christians? How "Christian" is that? Some Christians I know are homosexual, and they actually care about other people. Homosexuality is not a choice, it is a bio chemical situation arising from pollutants that cross between the mother and the fetus. Back in ancient Roman times, the lead in the drinking vessels brought about the biochemistry that is necessary for homosexuals to exist. In our modern times, many different pollutants seem to casue this. Look into Theo Colburn's work on plastic in the water and how they affect the reprodcutive organs of frogs and alligaters. I find that most people opposing the idea of health care reform are either older and are now on MediCare (Talk about hypocrisy - they have a "public option, that is MediCare, but they don't want others to have it.) Or they are younger and don't see how many of us cannot have health insurance because of pre-existing contditions. Once you are in your fifties, it is very very hard to find anyone to inusre you, unless you are working for a latrge employer. The same people opposing health care reform are the same people that wanted these senseless endless wars. Why does this nation always encourage expensive blood baths waged against brown skinned people in far away places? Do you not htink that Jesus is NOT upset that we killed one million people in Iraq?!? For no real reason other than their oil. And our need to establish military bases in the Middle East. Anyway, the majority of Americans, over seventy per cent!, want health care reform. Only because Obama is in the pockets of the Big Insurers did he bother to address the Right wing nut jobs that showed up screaming lies at the top of their lungs. If he wanted real health care reform, he should have reminded the nut cases that: 1) 61% of all Americans voted for him - a majority wanted Barack over the Republican candidate 2) It is an emergency - 30,000 people die each year from not having insurance, or having insureres that deny treatment or even retroactively cancel their policies. 3) Seventy per cent of us or more want Single Payer Universal Health Care.