Talk Elections

I said during the 2008 campaign that universal healthcare would never happen in a million years in the US.  Democrats would either fail to ever get enough votes in Congress or the right wing Supreme Court would strike it down anyway.

Its simply not possible.  When are Democrats ever going to get 60 seats in the Senate and 260 seats in the House again?  Even if they somehow do, what's to stop the Supreme Court from striking it down again?

If the Supreme Court strikes this down, there will be no second chance for Democrats.  Remembering what happened in 1994 and 2010 when they tried to touch healthcare, even if they do get big majorities again, they will be too afraid to even go near healthcare reform.

These idiotic Dem Presidential candidates like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama need to get with the program and stop promising universal healthcare because its never going to happen.

This charade has been going on since FDR promised it in the 1930's.  If its been 80 years and it still hasnt happened, it never will. 

Or Republicans could stop being hateful dicks about it.
And poor people could stop voting against their self interests because they've been indoctrinated that voting Democratic is equal to unpatriotic baby murdering.

Mr. Phips needs to stop making concern troll threads about the Democrats.

It would be funny to see Mr.Phips make a thread in 1853 about Whigs needing to stop tease us with abolition because it will either never happen or be struck own by SCOTUS (which made slavery a right 3 years later..and now SCOTUS is threatening us with handing down the right not to have Health Care Access).

You mean the program that leaves tens of millions of Americans out of health insurance coverage and allows tens of thousands of them to die preventable deaths every year?  Yep, that's a program we can all be proud of.

Judging by the ludicrous (and rising) amount the US spends on healthcare I wouldn't be surprised if you are forced by money reasons to go to a single payer system, whichever party is in power.

The Republican party would rather waste tons of money than do the right thing.

Why must I be the first to point out that the Democratic party is not teasing anyone with anything  because they don't believe in it and have given no pretense in doing so, except some vague and obvious false to some of the more blind of the party faithful.

So, in other words, Be gone concern troll!

No one is going to go to war for health care.

You type that as if that is something your nation should be proud of.

I don't know why you would infer that from a statement of simple and undeniable fact.

Regardless, the courts need to get out of politics. The present system of party hacks nominated by the President to sit there for life, telling the rest of us what to do, is grotesque.

Yes but the implication is hilarious when you consider the comparsion you were originally referring to (ie. Antebellum slavery).

Anyway, my point is that Phips would have been right in 1853 and is probably right now. The Whigs never did get more than a tease of abolition, the party collapsed under its own weight because of the issue. The political process never did allow abolition, it took war and secession, something you wont get over health care. The Democrats squandered a great opportunity in 2009 and the watery Obamacare is probably the best we can get. Thank people like Joe Lieberman and Diane Feinstein.

...well Abolition was a vehicle for things like central monetary policy and internal improvements...can't a war over Abortion or Gays be a vehicle for things like Universal Healthcare or a new National Rail System?

if the US is going to exist in its current form for the duration of our lifetimes health care will have to be nationalized.

Squishy Democrats like that exist because of other voters of your stripe.

Until it's single-payer, it doesn't really matter anyway.

Not like it's going to happen, though. The US is slowly making its collapse more inevitable.

How?

...and what do you mean by "Collapse", that were going to go back to Great Britian or that we are just going to become 50 seperate countries?

Lol what is that supposed to mean?

Health care isn't a revolution or a war.

Abolition was innevitable because the founding documents of America promised life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The American Revolution happened in the midst of an enlightenment because foundational ideas like "consent of the governed" were flying around. Although abolition and the Revolution were contentious, they weren't as complex as the health care debate:

Life and liberty? Abolition!
Taxation without representation? Revolution!

There are natural connections between these ideas.

Where are the natural connections between America's foundational ideas and an overgrown state-run health care system? I don't like the way the OP said it, but he's probably right.

At the end of the day Universal Health Care is pretty simple. It's about every person's Right to Life. Arguably this is prior to all other rights, even those involved in the Revolution and Abolition, because if you are in bad health or dead you can't exercise any other rights.

Maybe Democrats should care more about getting things done than elections. Maybe that would lead to more success. I think it's clear that if obamacare is struck down, anything the democrats pass in the future will be much less palatable for Republicans than the current bill. It probably won't happen though, mainly due to the senate. Also Republicans will do nothing if Obamacare is struck down. Maybe expand HSA usage and weaken regulations on insurance companies but that's about it. So the fortunate get even more help due to HSA's and the unfortunate get screwed a bit more. And many of them will be voting for the Republicans. If people want to dig their own graves, I can't feel too bad about what ends up happening to them.

Hagrid,

I'll leave aside for the moment the supposed "inevitability" of abolition (it only came only with great effort, cost and the loss of many, many lives).  I'll also leave aside the "foundational" nature of resistance to taxes for the time being.

There was no such things as health insurance in the United States at the time of the founding.  The earliest policies regarding accidental insurance were not offered until the mid-to-late 19th century.  Does the non-existence of health insurance at the time of the country's founding imply that it should never be an issue of national importance or constitutional debate in the future?  If the founders wished no changes be made the the Constitution to suit the needs of future generations, why would they have put an amendment process in place?  If they had not wishes the democratically elected representatives of the people to make laws to meet their changing needs through time as they saw fit, why did they map out a legislative process at all?

If the U.S. has anything that can be called "foundational ideas" of lasting value, they are about the process of governing and the limits of governmental powers, and much, much less about the content of what we should or shouldn't do at any given time.  If there ever does come a time when Americans want to find a way for everyone to have access to health insurance, then the founders have mapped out a process through which we can do it.  We haven't done it up to now because, all things considered, we haven't wanted to.  If there was a willingness to do it on the part of enough citizens and representatives, we would find a way to do it, and our Constitutional and legislative processes would not block our path, they would enable us to walk on it.

The above is not an option for the Pubs sbane. We can't afford it. Everyone with a clue knows that.  

So they will cut Medicare and send back Medicaid to the states where some will cut sharply into that. The fiscal problem gets solved but of course the access problem does not. I wonder if Republicans consider that a problem since I haven't heard anything that addresses that. Expanding HSA's and extending tax benefits for healthcare to all are good ideas but should be part of a more comprehensive plan.

In fact, wouldn't deregulation give us the same problems we have already had with consumer spending a real estate? Wouldn't we just rob Peter to pay paul until we are back where we started, but with a another mountain of consumer liability that weighs further upon our economy?  Without Obamacare, or Obama and the Democrats for that matter, we are pretty much doomed to fall down a spiral of speculative booms quickly followed by even stepper busts until we just plum run out of money.

We have two tiered system of heath care, the medicaid and medicare program and the everyone else system of health care where prescriptive drugs are astronomical.  Scrap medicaid and medicare and provide a 1 tiered system where it is a single payer option like what Kucinich wanted to do medicare for everyone.

Well, this or a Public Option system will be the only thing we can really do until the health insurance plan we have in place totally collapses. There's too many people who know where their paychecks comes from. If the stopped getting their paychecks from the insurance companies....that will be our next shot at reform.