Whoa!!!!!! Let’s dissect this “fair and balanced” post:

Jobs is one of the richest men in the world (#136 in the world according to Forbes). He earned it. He is in the process of personally revolutionizing a third major industry in his lifetime (#1 personal computers; #2 computer animation; #3 handheld devices). As a result of all that, he owns a private jet. Because he owned a private jet, he, a northern California resident, was able to get on the donor list in Tennessee because he could get from his home to the hospital in 4 hours.

You are arguing that THAT is WHAT’S WRONG WITH HEALTH CARE TODAY??? Are you suggesting that EVERY person on the organ donor list should be assigned the use of a private jet so that they have the same advantages as Jobs? If so, do you realize that there are more people on the organ donor lists then there are private jets in country? Do you want to take a wild guess about the cost of that asinine proposal? Or, are you saying that Jobs shouldn’t have been permitted to use his private jet to safe his own life because it was “unfair” and “inequitable” to people who couldn’t afford it?

Steve Jobs is sui generis, if you’ll excuse my latin. His situation has absolutely nothing to say about the larger health care debate. If you can think from premise to conclusion coherently, you’d agree.

In the afterward to 1984, George Orwell has a manual on newspeak. He says that the eventual goal of the developers of his fictitious language was to allow propaganda to bypass the brain entirely, so that anything that the speaker would spout the party line without any more thinking occurring than a quaking duck.

I think liberals have the same goal, and think this post illustrates it. There’s not an ounce of coherent thought here. It sounds like: Quack, quack, health care crisis, quack, quack, quack, the rich are evil, quack, quack, equity, quack, fairness, quack, quack, republicans are evil, quack, private jet, quack, compassion, quack, quack, quack.

Quackery, indeed.

The point the author was making is simply that, with the current American health care system, rich people live, poor people die (or go into bankruptcy paying their bills), because health care is, for the most part, not available to poor people. Is that inaccurate? I am not sure what that quacking stuff was all about. You said you are a lawyer, is that right? And you said something about the author not being coherent?

“The point the author was making is simply that, with the current American health care system, rich people live, poor people die …”

And this HCR bill will not change that.

You are sort of right. More people on the margin will be able to get affordable insurance through the exchange that has been set up, and those that have pre-existing conditions will be protected staring in 2014, I believe. If anyone is interested in a basic summary of the provisions check out this article: http://www.salon.com/news/healthcare_reform/index.html?story=/news/feature/2010/03/19/healthcare_facts_slideshow

And the award to missing the point entirely goes to AnonymousFinch for completely missing the most basic points that an ideological noob can understand.

The problem in the story is that only the rich can be treated, and even then in this case it was a god damn nightmare. So that would be a problem with the health care (As opposed to the insurance, as is the main problem), despite the myriad of claims from conservative nutjobs (You know, like the ones who berated a man with Parkinson’s not too long ago, and the ones who mocked an 11 year old child whose mother had died) who claim the healthcare is the best in the world.

Did I mention AnonymousFinch is intellectually dishonest?

Like @AnonymousFinch, I also don’t see a relationship between Steve Jobs’ appearance or anything in the Mercury News article that has anything to do with the health care reform bill.

Mr. Jobs was making an appearance to bring attention to the need for more organ donors and as I interpret it, he was endorsing a piece of California legislation that would make people decide whether they’d like to be organ donors at license renewal. I’m not sure that this simple change would really increase the number of donors, but that’s the way they do it in most states and by having the appearance and the discussion, they are highlighting the need.

Unless there’s some hidden provision somewhere, nothing in the insurance reform package is going to increase the number of donors. Now, I’m sure that if you were to ask Mr Jobs about it, he’d probably also endorse the President’s agenda, but that’d be a little like Larry King asking for Betty Whites’ thought, when she was making a simple talk show appearance.

I mean, heck, I was at the soccer fields all morning and some of the sideline parents are doctors. Now, I could’ve asked for their opinions about insurance reform if I wanted, but they were there to support their kids and to watch a game.

First, there already is an insurance program for the poor. It’s called Medicaid. This isn’t about the poor.

Second, why was it “a god damn nightmare” in the case of Steve Jobs? He doesn’t say that. In a five year period, he survived pancreatic cancer and a liver transplant. Is it a nightmare because he had to fly to Tennessee? The only way to avoid that is to have more organ donors, which is exactly what Jobs was trying to do, but was deemed insufficient by the author of this article. Spare livers don’t grow on trees.

Third, there is no factual basis whatsoever for the claim that only the rich can get liver transplants. That’s just made up out of whole cloth. And I’d like someone to show me documentation of someone in this country being denied a transplant because they couldn’t afford it.

While I don’t want to go into a lot of details about my professional life, a few years ago I was working with one of the top pediatric nephrologists in the world as an expert witness. He was not a surgeon himself, but his administrative duties included running a major transplant center for children (one of the best in the world). He told me that more than half of their work is charity care. That is typical.

Liberals like to assume that: (1) the health insurance issue is about poor people; and (2) lack of health insurance = lack of health care. Neither is true. That’s why the two most significant changes that will be brought about by Obamacare will be to: (1) fine and/or imprison people who can afford health insurance but choose not to buy it; and, (2) raise insurance rates for people who are currently insured by creating a “floor” and mandating insurance plan requirements (which is, in fact, a massive subsidy to those evil insurance companies we’re all supposed to hate).

To be clear, I’m not saying there aren’t legitimate problems. There are a good 8 to 10 million people who want and need health insurance but can’t get it because of bona fide financial issues, portability, and pre-existing conditions. I’m all for designing a program to hep them. But you don’t need that legislation to reach the other 290 million people in the country. At best, that’s letting the tail wag the dog; at worst (and I fear the worst hear) it is a cynical attempt to create a middle class entitlement so that the federal government can have command and control authority over 1/6th of the U.S. economy.

That’s not intellectual dishonesty; that’s a principled application of the values that served this country well for the last two centuries.

I’m sorry finch, but there are at least forty million people with no insurance, and there are a least a hundred million who are slowly being priced out of the healthcare market. Is that because they are wealthy? No, it is because they are poor or middle class.

Tail wag the dog? The overwhelming majority of people in this country, primarily the ones that serve in our military, and who perform virtually all of the blue collar grunt work, are middle class. Currently the gap between the wealthy and the middle class is the largest it has been since the turn of the 20th Century with the upper 2% of the population owning or controlling 90% of the wealth.

The values that served our country for much of the last two centuries would include, slavery, oppressed womanhood, and unregulated capitalism with the resulting dumping of raw industrial pollution into our rivers and air. Progressives ushered in changes to those “traditional values”. Was that a bad thing. Or as Beck would say, is that really the cancer that is destroying our country?

Two hundred years ago no country in the world had national healthcare. Now, virtually all of the civilized countries in the world have progressed to include the notion that all people, who are of equal value under God, deserve, yes, are entitled to at least modest health care, even if they can not afford it. America is the glaring exception.

Nice to hear you acknowledge that there are legitimate problems with our health care system. It would have been nice if the Republicans had participated in trying to solve those problems, however, they made the calculated decision to attempt to block any change, and to present no alternative plan for change. That, apparently so they could say to the American people in 2012: “Hey, the President and his party failed, elect us”. And that placing of politics over the good of the majority of the people, I assume you would say, constitutes a principled application of values.

.

When they do the reconciliation “fix” to the health care bill — and that will be much like “fixing” a dog, by the way — they really need to add free private jet service for the 30 million uninsured. Wouldn’t be fair for them not to get the same care as Steve Jobs.

I suppose you are being facetious. But that is by no means what Drew Grant said in his article.

Steve Jobs is alive because of our healthcare. For god’s sake…this is not a situation where you pound your Orwellian choice for Obamacare. Pancreatic cancer is generally incurable, a truly deserving and wonderful human being died last year, he was a professor but not rich!. The fact that he got on a waiting list ahead (THAT IS AHEAD!!) of others is because he is rich, period!! The organs can be flown anywhere so there must have been something special. But, the whining and bellyaching is not only disgusting, but despicable to boot. This has nothing to do with healthcare. But, for those of you pounding that dog, please understand clearly that you, if you are an average citizen were never up for nor ever will be up for a transplant with the new Obamacare that is being forced down our throats. Too bad our governor has nothing of substance to do with the bankruptcy of California. And remember, where California goes, so does the nation.

Whenever I read that “Obamacare” tag it is easy to recognize where the post is coming from. From now on maybe we should call the current healt care system, with the 45,000 dead people per year, the 40 million uninsured, the 100 million middle class soon to be priced out, and the very rich insurance and health care companies, with their multi-millionaire executives, and their hundred million dollar a year lobbying (and ownership of our lawmakers), “Republicare”.

“…their hundred million dollar a year lobbying (and ownership of our lawmakers), “Republicare”.”

You might want to stop with those Kos/HuffPo/MSDNC talking points

A simple google search shows that the Healthcare industry donated since 2008:

2008:
$49,984,339 Democrats (53% of Donations)
$44,907,700 Republicans (47%)

2010:
$14,809,920 Democrats (54%)
$12,541,206 Republicans (46%)

Total:

$64,794,259 Democrats
$57,448,906 Republicans

Now, supposedly because I am a conservative, I am not as smart as you, but I know that $64.8MM is 7.5 larger than $57.4MM.

So, where, please, does it show that the Healthcare Industry is in the Republicans pockets?

Election Cycle Donations to Democrats Donations to Republicans % to Dems % to Repubs
2010 $14,809,920.00 $12,541,206.00 54.00% 46.00%
2008 $49,984,339.00 $44,907,700.00 53.00% 47.00%
2006 $20,227,485.00 $34,116,496.00 37.00% 62.00%
2004 $27,917,611.00 $45,956,646.00 38.00% 62.00%
2002 $15,941,917.00 $26,289,478.00 38.00% 62.00%
2000 $19,820,491.00 $27,353,041.00 42.00% 57.00%
1998 $12,755,829.00 $18,503,076.00 41.00% 59.00%
1996 $13,551,584.00 $24,004,785.00 36.00% 64.00%
1994 $13,801,967.00 $16,527,461.00 45.00% 54.00%
1992 $14,052,037.00 $13,556,340.00 50.00% 49.00%
1990 $7,532,884.00 $7,699,887.00 49.00% 51.00%
Total $210,396,064.00 $271,456,116.00 43.00% 56.00%

germ,
I didn’t say anything about “Republican or Democratic” with regard to those “insurance and health care” industry lobbying donations. They own (or significantly influence) virtually all of our politicians, both sides of the isle. That is the current system. But at least there are a few Democrats who want to change that system. The Republicans, to a man, want to retain the current system, thus I call it: “Republicare”.

The sad thing about the tea party is that they believe they are standing up for liberty, but the people who are using them (and in some cases even funding their efforts) to oppose Obama’s health care reform bill, are the cynical corporations who are making billions all at the expense of the common man.

Val:

Corporations are nothing more than individual investors that come together to pool their property in hopes of growing their investment. They have just as much right to liberty and property as anyone. Their “billions” in profits are spread out over millions of individuals.

And, Val, I would remind you of Thomas More in A Man for All Seasons:

>At one point More’s future son-in-law, Roper, urges him to arrest Richard Rich, whose perjury will eventually lead to More’s execution. More answers that Rich has broken no law, “And go he should if he were the Devil himself until he broke the law!” Roper is appalled at the idea of granting the Devil the benefit of law, but More is adamant.

>”What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil? … And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you – where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s, and if you cut them down — and you’re just the man to do it — do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!”

The same goes for corporations. I protect a corporation’s right to benefit from its own labor for my own safety’s sake. If the government can deem that corporations cannot earn a profit and are consigned to work for what the majority deems to be the “public good,” the government can do the same thing to me. And even if I agree with the majority’s definition of the “public good” today, the majority is fickle, and someday I won’t agree with their goals. The result will be that my work will be consigned to further the illegitimate goals of others. There’s a name for that, by the way, if you recall (I’ll give you hint: the 13th Amendment outlaws it).

And, for the record, corporations do not make a profit “at the expense” of anyone. In a capitalist system, you make a profit by creating value for other people. There is not a limited pie of wealth to be divided up. Corporations create wealth by creating value for others.

Only government, which has the power to tax (i.e., the legal right to take someone else’s property at the point of a gun) can profit at the expense of others.

We have had this discussion before, finch. So I will return to where we left off. In a normal capitalist market, for example cell phones, where the need for the product is not life or death, people will spend what they can afford. If the cost is too high in relation to their available assets, they will not buy it. However, in the case of health care, the normal rules of the capitialist system is skewed by this reality: people will always spend whatever it costs to not die. If cell phones cost $2,000 (as they once did), only a few people, the very wealthy, would choose to buy them. Thus, the cell phone companies, assuming they want to reach more customers, must find the way to lower their selling price to increase demand and maximize profits. In the case of medical care, however, say for example certain drugs that will keep people alive, people will pay whatever it costs. Thus, for the corporation that makes drugs that people need in order to stay alive, they will charge a price that reflects the fact that people will pay whatever the asking price is, even if that price represents, for the buyer, a high percentage of their overall income. Indeed, to stay alive, or keep a loved one alive, most people will spend so much of their income on health care as to go into bankruptcy, if that is what it takes. And the price charged by the health care corporations for their products does not bare a genuine relationship to their costs as it normally would in a competititive environment. Why is that? Because corporations within the capitalist system are designed to make the maximum money for their shareholders. And in the case of health care, because people do not want to die, they will pay even inflated prices. And this is especially the case when the drug company or other health care manufacturer has a patent that prevents competition. It is the proverbial “offer that people can not refuse”.

So what is the result of this situation. The cost of medical care or insurance represents an every increasing precentage of the average person’s overall income. Where is that money going? Into the pockets of the corporations who, these days, pay their executives the excessive salaries justified by a corporation that is making massive profits off the blood of the the common man.

Corporations, left to their own devices, will do whatever it takes to make profits. Only government regulations, that progressives initiated, for example, deter chemical companies from dumping raw waste into rivers and the air. Corporations at the turn of the 20th century routinely engaged in both price fixing, and monoply practices that rendered massive profits at the expense of the American people. None of that was considered immoral, nor was it illegal. Indeed, that was a natural for corpoations because making profits is what corporations (actually, the men who run them) do, and the consumer is nothing but a mark for those profits. But progressives initiated government regulations to fix those problems. Of course at the time, the corporations screamed that such regulations were antithetical to notions of good old American liberty, as they did when they were forced to stop polluting via government regulation.. Likewise, government regulation is necessary to curb abuses in the healthcare and insurance industries. But to be sure, those industries, as they always do, now complain that such regulation is antithetical to liberty, etc.

Whether you lefties like it or not, the FACTS are the MOST americans OPPOSE BO’s HC plan, a recent study from the New England Journal of Med states that upwards of 50% of doctors will consider getting out of the field if it passed. Now someone please tell me how 50% LESS Docs is going to improve the situation? A breathlessly await your response.

While we’re at it, we all know the CBO reports wasn’t correct and the former head states it here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/21/opinion/21holtz-eakin.html

The current report is nothing but smoke and mirrors.

Oh and someone please explain this also, I’m consistently hearing how the VA system is awful and yet who runs it, the GOVT! How will it running everything be better.

Michelle,
I suppose you are right, we should turn over our military to private corporations to run. I am sure that Blackwater would do a better job than our government.

To say that the government can not run a decent health care system is to say that we are incapable of doing what many other nations accomplish, provide health care to all our people as equal citizens. I have more faith in our people than you do, because, if everyone were on the same page and committed, we as a people could certainly accomplish that. As it is now, though, we have one arm tied behind our back because one entire party does not want to help.

In any event, our alternative is to continue conedemning 50K people a year to a slow death, to continue seeing our health care costs exploding, with 40 million uninsured and maybe 100 million middle class people finally being priced out of the market. And finally, medical care will just be for a chosen few. Doing nothing, is not an option, though, essentially that is the option proposed by the conservatives, who keep beating the same dead horse hoping it will get up and run.

I am sorry that Mr. Jobs almost died while waiting for a liver transplant and I’m sorry for all those who did die while waiting for some life-saving procedure. The fact that Mr. Jobs “almost” died should speak clearly about the facts of reality–some people die sooner than they should.

Passing -0bamacare will not save some people although some believe the opposite to be true, and I’m rather doubtful anything will improve if -0bamacare is passed. It’s a bad bill for many reason: the language is vague so it can be interpreted in many ways; it obligates too much money for non-health related items; it significantly increases the size of government, and; (according to Moody) it endangers our bond ratings which could fall below their AAA status for the first time in history. In other words, this could be the economy breaker.

It is important also to realize that healthcare is NOT a right under the Constitution.