Conservative comments

I promised several days ago to post some actual debates I have with conservatives on message boards and whatnot, but this has proven extremely hard to do. It seems that if you actually put an argument together against them they never respond, or the response is a short diatribe of profanity laced insults. I even got banned from FreeRepublic just by asking a question of a poster, what kind of website censors debate!?! I was actually quite civil in my questioning of a poster that put forth the language of a declaration for a state to secede from the union... I'm going to keep trying, but actual debate seems hard to document! Sphere: Related Content

Bible Too Liberal? Conservatives Say Yes

Bible Too Liberal? Conservatives Say Yes

Shared via AddThis

Maybe this is just too easy of a target to pick on, it almost hurts my head to think about!!

A lot of what I probably would have said or at least eluded to is stated pretty well in the Czech, check out the post here:

http://theczech.wordpress.com/2009/10/07/thank-god-liberal-bias-to-be-removed-from-bible/ Sphere: Related Content

Actual Conservative comments

Reading web stories, looking at message boards, and just generally hearing people talk about the Health Care debate has made me painfully aware of the amount of misinformation that is out there. In the coming days I will be posting some of these interactions with conservatives who think that Health Care reform is the worst thing since Nazi Germany...If you have any snippets of a debate that you've had online that you want to share post it in the comments section and I might add it to the main page. Sphere: Related Content

Cigna's treatment of Dawn Smith

I find it extremely heartbreaking to hear the struggles of Dawn Smith to have Cigna cover needed tests for her brain tumor. This, I'm sure, echos the sentiments of many like my parents who have had to go through this for seemingly decades now. If you haven't heard the story, here is an excerpt:

"I have a brain tumor. Doctors are ready to help me. But CIGNA has been blocking me from getting testing and treatment for two years, while almost doubling my premiums.

Then, this week was the kicker. CIGNA's pharmacy called to say that the co-pay on the medicine that helps control my debilitating head pain is skyrocketing from $10 to $1,115. That's not a typo. They're making me pay one hundred times what I'm paying now, in addition to my $753/month premium.

I can't afford that. So when the pain comes, I won't have any defense. I'll spend hours in the fetal position, out of my mind with pain.

When my story went public a couple of weeks ago—with the help of over 100,000 MoveOn members—CIGNA said they would pay for a test I'd been asking for at Cleveland Clinic. It was a step in the right direction. But after two years of denials, and with a long course of treatment ahead of me, I knew better than to just take them at their word.

So I asked questions. But they wouldn't offer any explanation for why they denied my coverage for so long, or any assurance that they had changed their procedures so I wouldn't face the same unjust denials again. And I began to wonder if they were more interested in just sweeping my story under the rug than actually helping me."

Sign on to MoveOn's website to sign on to a letter that is going to Cigna's CEO, it might also be a good thing to forward to congress to ensure that whatever bill they pass would help solve Dawn's issues. It is unacceptable that we allow these companies to put our health in jeopardy in exchange for shareholder profits. Sphere: Related Content

I'm back!!

I'm back from a short hiatus due to vacation and work picking up, sorry to everyone who has been looking for updated posts. I am still fairly pessimistic about the tone of the healthcare debate and the misconceptions of the program, and have resigned myself (for now) to just letting the debate run it's course before getting myself too worked up about it. What I am really thinking about now is the nature of work, which is the subject of a in depth posting I plan on making in the coming months. I am approaching the post as if it's a research project, something I hope will change some minds.

As for this post, I was sitting in a meeting and of all topics the EFCA (employee free choice act) came up. Being a corporate employee who is fairly well taken care of, we don't hear much about unions and the company's "anti-union" policy - but this was indeed not the case yesterday during this meeting. I'm not going to get into the debate about EFCA here, because I think there are definitely some positives and negatives to the legislation that are worked out before it's passed. What I want to talk about is the nature of companies and how we would be potentially better off without Wall Street.

An example was brought up about pharmaceutical manufacturers and their practice of increasing the prices of their branded drugs on a fairly regular cycle. This has to be done largely because companies like Pfizer have products that go generic and with too few new drugs in the pipeline they have to sell their existing products for more just to maintain previous levels of profit. So bottom line here, the people who buy pharmaceuticals end up paying more so that stockholders of Pfizer can make money. They may not even make money, they may just maintain the status quo - but nonetheless consumers pay more. Companies also pay dividends to investors to give investors value, all out of money that could go to hiring employees, offering wages, and more. It seems frustrating to me on the surface, and it looks like something I am going to do some digging in on...just wanted to keep everyone posted on what I was thinking ;)

More (regular) posts to come! Sphere: Related Content

Rest in peace Senator Ted Kennedy

Just wanted to send my condolences out to the family, and express the great admiration I have for him. The country will be worse off not having him in the Senate fighting for us all. I hope that our Congress members work towards a health care reform in Teddy's memory, for it was his life's work that he never was able to see to fruition. Sphere: Related Content

State of Politics

I have found myself as of late being fairly distraught with the entire debate encircling health care reform. While being intimately involved in politics for the past 12 years (I'm only 28), this is the first time I feel like I am truly loosing faith in the system. While there have been instances in the past where certain members of congress or even the President (i.e. Bush) have given the impression that they are operating for corporate interests over the interests of the people, I have never felt that the majority of the government cared more for corporate interests and/or profit over the well being of the people. Call me naive, maybe I saw the world through rose-colored glasses, but these glasses have been beginning to cloud over as of late.

I (for reasons previously mentioned in this blog) have a personal stake in this debate and I would have greatly preferred a single payer system to be proposed by congress. I accepted the compromise, the went along with the so called "public option", believing the President when he said it would increase competition and keep the insurance companies honest. But now, the public option seems to be in the very least in deep trouble and there is now talk of co-ops - which are widely considered to not be an effective solution.

I recommend reading the "So What’s a Health Insurance Co-op, Anyway?" article by Anne Underwood of the New York Times @ http://prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/17/so-whats-a-health-insurance-coop-anyway/?hpw
She gives a great overview of what exactly a co-op is, an why in her opinion they won't be effective in lowering costs.

In the end, I am really upset with the special interests and how they are spinning the debate and putting out utter false statements. I am also disappointed in the American people that blindly take these falsehoods and accept them as fact. The protesters in the town halls across the country over the last couple weeks are a prime example of this. I applaud Barney Frank for his handling of the protester who compared the "Obama's Health care plan" to a Nazi policy. I don't even know where to begin with this, and I think Rep. Frank had it right when he asked her, "On what planet do you spend most of your time?" Sphere: Related Content