It is even more odd to argue that the government owed you money, no matter how small, and then complain that when they gave it to you they were inefficient. I mean wow, is there no happiness for the government? They did something right and you are still a naysayer.…seems like you just don’t like government in any form and are hyper critical of the thing. It’s like getting mad at your kid for getting an A and not an A+. You should be happy the government is honest enough to give you your money back.

Plus, i imagine most of the checks from the treasury are automatically handled with computers, thus, its probably not that expensive to get you your check.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12714130?dopt=Abstract

One can argue it hasn’t been a long time so let’s see what happens with taxes at the end of the first 4 years.

All I know is that I got a bigger tax cut from Bush than the meager 7 bucks by Obama.

I’d love to know the cost of sending 7 bucks to me when you pay IRS employees, stamps, paper, etc.. I’m sure sending those 7 bucks per month cost them 100.

That’s the problem of government. They really don’t do any ROI study on their services.

You’re not taking into account the debt, the interest rate on the debt that cannot even be paid by the GDP right now, the manageability of a system run for a population of the size of the US, the ethical questions related to personal freedoms, the amount of money that will have to be printed if you don’t want to raise taxes, creating another form of taxation: inflation. When China will tell us to piss off because our dollar is worth crap, your healthcare won’t be there anymore.

And you’re not looking around. Such policies haven’t controlled costs in other countries. My very own — France — isn’t able to control cost. And that’s only on the scale of 60 million people. Multiply the waste by 5 or 6, the bureaucracy, the increased size of gov, and it can only be worse.

Furthermore Krys I think you are uninformed on how the bailout actually works. First, the bailout money has not been spent in its entirety. From my last recollection roughly 33% of the money has been used. Second, AMERICAN TAX PAYERS DO NOT PAY FOR THE BAILOUT. The bailout is like an advance loan to the companies with troubled assets. THUS, the companies that were bailed out have to pay the money back, AND THEN, have to pay considerable interest on the bailout money they received. This means that not only does the bailout pay for itself, but that it also makes money. In turn, eliminating the need to raise taxes one cent as a result of the bailout.

As far as the stimulus, thats money that goes to creating jobs right now and helps state economies from failing. For example, in idaho, the Governor wanted to reject spending stimulus money. However, Idaho also has a serious road problem in that they don’t have money to upkeep the roads. So the governor decided to spend a part of the stimulus money on road reconstruction and maintenance. Now thousands of people are working on road construction throughout the state. Without that stimulus money those individuals would not be working, the roads would get worse for idaho, and the problem would cost EVEN MORE to fix later down the road.

I’d like to know how much money in taxes you are paying as a result of “O’s” stimulus plan. I really would. I made quite a bit of money this summer (5k/month) and paid my 20% (roughly) right out of my check, a large portion to FICA, social security, and then state taxes, and the fact that I didn’t take a deduction. I didn’t notice an increase in my taxes, my CPA didn’t see an increase in my taxes, my employer didn’t see an increase in his taxes. Thanks to President Obama, I haven’t paid a single bit more in taxes. Tell me, what taxes were raised and by how much, then I’ll believe your taxes were raised. It is easy to raise the spectre of “tax hikes” when you don’t have to prove anything, tell us how much you or your friends lost in taxes.

Next, tell me why you think insurance companies are going to just go away? and more importantly if you believe in Capitalism, which I assume you do, then why is that a bad thing? If the insurance company loses out because they can’t compete, isn’t that the most pure form of capitalism? Realize I believe in regulated capitalism so, my concerns for insurance companies isn’t as great as my concern that everyone have satisfactory healthcare. So here, PROVE that the insurance companies will suddenly collapse, and if so, tell me why you love your current insurance company. AND, if you love your insurance, who provides it, and have you ever had emergency surgery, Emergency room visits, or had a catastrophic medical event?

I know my plan, Altius, tried to charge me over 600 dollars for going to an emergency room when I couldn’t breathe; Altius argued that I didn’t need emergency care. I wrangled with Altius over the necessity of breathing to remain alive, something that i figured was a basic concept of human biology, and had to argue for hours before they finally covered the insurance visit. Not exactly my fondest moments with my insurance company.

Sure, pharmaceuticals want to get their drugs into the hands of Americans, and yes they spend lots of money to ensure they get American consumers. However, despite their large amounts of money the FDA has been emboldened with the Democratic win and is really pushing on pharmaceuticals. Case in point, FDA is right now considering removing ALL television adds for medication (like the annoying cyalis and viagra ads). More importantly, even during a friendly administration, like in President Bush’s admin, the FDA got rid of numerous drugs like Vioxx, and increased regulations on Celebrex and other COX-2 inhibitors because of their dangers on Americans. Ultimately this bill does NOT do a thing to break the numerous forms of oversight that are built into the medical system.

AND, Frogburger, lets assume that the pharmaceutical companies did get their way and they had an avenue for pushing loads of drugs on Americans, what would be the end result? You have made a catastrophe scenario that misses one very key part, the actual catastrophe. Pharmaceutical companies giving individuals loads of medication, while certainly ill-advised, is not inherently going to be the end of days for American society. Granted I disagree with the overmedication but, Frogburger, you have not explained at all what your scenario looks like, how does pushing a bunch of unnammed, unknown drugs hurt society? I guess you could argue flouride is an example of your doomsday scenario, but there is WAY too much evidence to prove that those kinds of public medication efforts are beneficial (Again i refer to my polio vaccine example in my above post).

Furthermore, there are plenty of companies who work VERY close with the government and spend LOADS of money on advertising to get what they want. They also have failed to execute some grandiose plan to make society rue the day that the company came into existence. Companies like Northrup Gruman, Lockheed Martin, and Raytheon. These companies are extremely close to government because their contracts determine the fact and outfitting of our army. Do they do a bad job? I don’t think so. (you might counter with a company like Halliburton, which I agree is doing a poor job in Iraq, but still they have failed to execute any master plan as a result of being close to the american government). I get the natural scare of seeing huge companies with tremendous revenue, expend that revenue on lobbyist efforts in government. BUT, that does not mean that lobbying is a directly related causal link to government misfeasance, malfeasance, or nonfeasance.

Anyways, continue reading the bill, i seriously doubt the bill alters the oversight from hospitals and the FDA. However, i provide this caution, there is no just one bill. There is the house bill and three senate bills. Reading them at this point is not necessarily a good idea because a conference committee needs to be called first to reconcile all these bills. Once the conference committee has passed a bill, THEN you read the bill (because that bill will be the most likely to become the new healthcare reform bill, then law). I’d love to read the thing but my law books are thick enough as it is.

And a tinfoil hat apparently.

Sheesh. We are thinking long term. At least I know I am. My cost of insurance has increased approximately 65% in the past ten years in looking at my pay stubs over the years. At this rate, I hate to think what my long term looks like if we don’t do something.

I’ve been reading the bill, 3200, as it was originally published. I have also read many, many, many sites on both sides of the issue as well as CBO workups and a smattering of non-profit and non-partisan research sites.
Now, in anticipation of the bill that comes out of Baucus & crew’s next draft, I would like –NO I CHALLENGE– anyone with a con opinion on this bill to please give an insightful clarification of their side that does not devolve into a shouting match about ACORN, death panels, rationing, and other nonsense. AND I expect in your response to have a suitable alternative to suggest to bill 3200.

You’re so naive. It’s incredible.

Corporations don’t care who’s in power. All they want is to make money, Democrats or Republicans. How do you explain Obama got the most money from the banking industry at the last election, even though he spoke numerous time about regulating the whole industry?

Americans have to stop thinking through the Democrat — Republican divide. They’re all of the same kind: taking money from all sources for their campaign so they can stay in power.Look at the corruption ring in NJ where I think 40 democrats were involved.

Halliburton used some tax payer money with Bush. The banks scammed us with Bush and Obama with the bailout plan. Now the pharmaceuticals will feed us some wonderful drugs that the government, with our taxes, will approve and pay for.

Wake up, people.

Now they’re pushing the envelope because they know they’ll be able to sell even more drugs to us. Especially in the context of free (no cost-sharing per the bill) preventive medicine where the smallest booboo may be addressed with medications.

We already know how the FDA works and where it’s failed to really check on some drugs that have terrible side effects or lead to addictive behaviors (Paxil).

So now the government will work even closer with the pharmaceutical lobby. The collusion of interest could not get any worse than that.

Critical and long term thinking, folks. That’s what you need.