Comments on: Surprise, surprise, surprise!

By: Dragan Glas

Dragan Glas — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 13:25:37 +0000

Greetings Mr, Schofield,

“Or maybe we can just adopt public campaign financing as Democracy NC proposes.”

True – however, I had two reasons for posting the alternatives,

1) If they don’t pass the public funding bill, these possibilities would be available,

2) From what I’ve read, there seems to be some dispute as to whether such a bill would end current practices – consider the free flights which the most recent ex-governor received…

Kindest regards,

James

By: Single Payer Action

Single Payer Action — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 23:31:08 +0000

The Obama administration and the Democratic Congressional leadership have sold out health care reform for the tainted coin of the medical-industrial industry, and are holding, or trying to hold, these meetings around the country to promote legislation that has essentially been written for them by that industry–legislation that will force everyone to pay for insurance as offered, and priced, by the private insurance industry. What a deal for those companies–a captive market of 300 million people! There will be little or no effort to control prices, and the higher costs will be financed through higher taxes, and through cuts in Medicare benefits.

This isn’t “reform.” It’s corruption, pure and simple

By: Mad As Hell Doctors

Mad As Hell Doctors — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 20:59:55 +0000

http://www.madashelldoctors.com/.

Clinicians for single payer…….

By: Wes

Wes — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 20:46:07 +0000

and democrat majority leader Harry Reid has collected the most donations from insurance companies in the past year!! Maybe this is why he’s spearheading the effort to past a partisan piece of legislation that he knows want pass rather than working for a bipartisan bill that will help everyone. Look at what they did is Massachusetts. It took two years but they still passed a bill that has 98% of their population covered and didn’t have to have the state run healthcare (it also came in 200 million dollars under budget). If you want to talk about health care reform look how much money trial lawyers donate to democratic candidates so that they will prevent tort and medical malpractice reform (couch John Edwards) and keep insurance premiums high. People accuse the Republicans of not trying to get reform passed during the past 8 years and that’s largely because they believe that the state’s should handle their own healthcare. Afterall, would you rather have the federal government handle the health care of over 300 million Americans or the north carolina government (who i think better understand the health care needs of its citizens) handle health care for all ten million citizens? Also if you want to talk about insurance companies donating to North Carolinian candidates look how many people are employed by insurance agencies in NC. Blue Cross Blue Shield is a non profit organization and it one of the state’s largest employers, so i think they have a good reason so make donations to our politicians campaigns.

By: Paul

Paul — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 18:10:28 +0000

It’s funny we hear Republicans say that they do not want “faceless bureaucrats” making medical decisions but they have no problem with “private sector” “faceless bureaucrats” daily declining medical coverage and financially ruining good hard working people (honestly where can they go with a pre-condition). And who says that the “private sector” is always right, do we forget failures like Long-Term Capital, WorldCom, Global Crossing, Enron, Tyco, AIG and Lehman Brothers. Of course the federal government will destroy heathcare by getting involved, Oh but wait, Medicare and Medicaid and our military men and women and the Senate and Congress get the best heathcare in the world, and oh, that’s right, its run by our federal government. I can understand why some may think that the federal government will fail, if you look at the past eight years as a current history, with failures like the financial meltdown and Katrina but the facts is they can and if we support them they will succeed.

How does shouting down to stop the conversation of the healthcare debate at town hall meetings, endears them to anyone. Especially when the organizations that are telling them where to go and what to do and say are Republicans political operatives, not real grassroots. How does shouting someone down or chasing them out like a “lynch mob” advanced the debate, it does not. So I think the American people will see through all of this and know, like the teabagger, the birthers, these lynch mobs types AKA “screamers” are just the same, people who have to resort to these tactics because they have no leadership to articulate what they real want. It’s easy to pickup a bus load of people who hate, and that’s all I been seeing, they hate and can’t debate. Too bad.

By: Rob Schofield

Rob Schofield — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 14:14:11 +0000

Or maybe we can just adopt public campaign financing as Democracy NC proposes.

By: Dragan Glas

Dragan Glas — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 14:10:21 +0000

Greetings,

Perhaps if/when they bring in legislation to force legislators to reveal whence comes their funding, the relationship of votes-for-money will become clearer to the taxpayer,

Failing that, a simpler solution is to disallow legislators from voting on a bill if they’ve been funded by a “interested party”.

Kindest regards,

James

By: Rob Schofield

Rob Schofield — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 13:47:02 +0000

Credit to Walter Jones for speaking out and, I guess, to those members who have been able to accept the contributions while still doing the right thing.