Obama should make 'decent' his calling card. The American people are basically moral people. The Republican party not so much.

I used to think that someone with cancer could, as a last resort, go to an ER and get treated. If you think that is how things work, you are sadly mistaken. Someone who shows up at the local ER with cancer but without health insurance is likely to be sent home without treatment. Sent home to die. Come back later, when you have insurance!

That is just not decent.

There is someone close to me, whose husband got sick with cancer and they were left bankrupt. He had treatment, but he didn't make it. She had a hard time getting considered for positions because of her bankrupcy. The bankrupcy resulting from losing her husband.

That is just not decent.

The truth is that the Democrats are the real pro-life party. The decent party. And the Republicans are not.

There are many more examples. We have John McCain's history of supporting the filibuster against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. He said woman like her, who proved in court she had been intentionally paid half what her male coworkers did, should 'work harder'.

We have the budget impasse this spring, where the President of United States, a Republican I believe, refused to include winter heating assistance in his budget. Let them eat cake!

We have John McCain's apparent deaf ear to the stagnant wages of middle class working families. We must always favor the upper class, the ones who earn millions of dollars, the ones who derive a large percentage of their income from inheritance and capital gains.

We must allow the hedge fund managers to structure their salaries so that they don't appear to have any salary at all, only cap gains. We must set the cap gains to ZERO. We must set the inheritance tax to ZERO. This would make the Steve Forbes of the world very happy (they already have much to be happy for!), as they could basically live tax free lives.

And who will pay for the war ships and education and bridge inspections and FBI and everything else the federal government does? You guessed it: The middle class.

We must do everything we can do to kowtow to the corporations, whether it comes to a new bankruptcy law, or the rights of the common man in court, or most recently John McCain's proposal to allow helath insurance companies to be regulated in a friendly state of their own choosing. Say goodbye to all consumer protection laws. Bye, bye!

That is just not decent.

Send that patient to the hospital Michelle Obama works at and the patient wouldn't get past the front door.

Her hospital is reputed to be the most restrictive hospital in the surrounding community to prevent people from getting care.

It is understood her job was heavily involved with sending people w/o insurance away.

Obama = cynical hypocrite of unfathomable dimension

So, let's just get this out of the way: any actual evidence? Say a link, even to one of the loony right rags you like to cite?

Did Michelle Obama own this hospital or serve on its board, or are you criticizing her for a policy she didn't have a say in creating?

And how is anything McCain will do going to change the health-care prospects of even one person turned away from that hospital?

From a program I saw she was hired to do "community outreach" because the hospital's ER costs were to high.

She went into the community and forced local clinics to take the hospitals patients. often times over the objections of doctors. They did not want ER patients who could not pay.

She reduced the hospitals ER costs so that they far below the nations average.

Immediately after Barack became Senator her salary went up way over 100%.

I think I also saw a show once that said Bush had planted bombs in the WTC to fake 9/11. It might have been an episode of South Park, though.

I did manage to dig up an article on the hospital story, and if you tell me one thing a McCain administration will do to help the people turned away by Michelle Obama's hospital get healthcare, I'll even post it here. Sound like a deal?

It would be a challenge to overcome an oppressive hospital administrator for starters.

Hospitals are supposed to take ER patients and it would be up to Michelle Obama's staff to accept them.

If she has connived a way to get the hospital out of accepting them, that is her's and her hospitals and her local community's business.

You really shouldn't believe everything that Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly say.

You obviously care very much about the plight of the uninsured, so much, in fact, that you're willing to make vague, unsubstantiated claims about Michelle Obama.

I'm not sure Government is the solution to healthcare. I know there are medicad programs for those who are on welfare. There are CHIP programs for kids, which was all the debate recently. "No family in Pennsylvania makes too much for CHiP." from the radio ad.

So I think we need to take a good look at who is not insured and why. Our lowest income brackets are covered by the welfare system. All kids (at least in Pa) are elligable for CHIP coverage. So where is the system broke and is more government the answer? What income bracket is "the uninsured"?

Not poking fun at you, my questions are sincere ones.

I think "uninsured" is a blanket term for: people who are currently unemployed and don't have health insurance and either can't afford to get their own or who cannot afford COBRA or their COBRA coverage has run out; people who have crappy insurance and can't get the care that they require or can't afford the co-pays; people who are employed but whose employers do not offer healthcare as a benefit; and so on. I'm not sure this would all fall within one income bracket. I think it depends more upon what type of company you work for, what industry you work in, etc.

I work for a subsidiary of an extremely large company, and I'm very fortunate in being able to say my benefits are fantastic. I am currently expecting my first child, and have been to the doctor more in the last 2 months than in the last 10 years combined. All I have paid so far is a $10 co-pay to my primary doctor to for confirmation, a $10 co-pay to my OB (even though I've been in to see her numerous times already), a $50 co-pay for a visit to the ER last weekend for a kidney stone (ouch), and a $10 co-pay for a referral to a specialist. And $15 for about $150 in prescriptions. Less than $100 so far.

But many people are not that fortunate. Their co-pays are higher and therefore they can't afford to go see the doctor. Or, they don't have a prescription drug benefit and so cannot get the medications they need. I was in line getting a prescription filled just recently and the person ahead of me had a $50 co-pay for her prescriptions. She couldn't pay that and asked if she could get a smaller prescription and then come back for the rest after she got paid.

CHIP programs only cover children -- which is very important, don't get me wrong -- but does not include adults that need health care. And they vary from state to state. In my state, there is no CHIP program at all. So many children cannot get the care they need.

Sheldahgal,

Thanks for your answer. Being career military I admit I don't know that much about the healthcare issue. I can tell you that government run healthcare isn't what it is cracked up to be. You get very limited choices on what you can and can not do.

I once had to pay $500 out of pocket for a prescription for my son because he got sick out of my region. Hence why I don't think government run healthcare is the answer.

Government seems to be the solution to the healthcare problems of nearly every other nation on this planet, so I do not see why America should be different. The difference with other countries is that they have one program that covers everybody in the nation while America has a hodgepodge of programs that covers only certain segments of the population.

The solution to the healthcare problem is to consolidate all the programs into one and apply it to everybody in America, Medicare for all. Is it socialist? Yes. Does it work? It seems to work fine in all other countries.

I don't think putting it into the hands of the feds is the way to go either, but something must be done. No one should be put into the position of having to decide whether to put food on the table or go to the doctor, or to put gas in the car or get a prescription filled. It would be awesome if someone could just wave a wand and make it a law that insurance companies have to operate as not-for-profits, because then the issues of stock price and stockholders would be moot. Never gonna happen of course.

'I can tell you that government run healthcare isn't what it is cracked up to be. You get very limited choices on what you can and can not do.'

my experiences with the VA were atrocious. this was 35 years ago. never again would i ever consider letting the government run a healthcare system.

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