- Joined
- Aug 8, 2008
- Messages
- 2,166
- Reaction score
- 1,692
- Location
- Southeastern USA
- Gender
- Female
- Political Leaning
- Other
FD-The seniors are pretty darn hot about the Tea Party putting SS and Medicare on the chopping block while refusing to raise taxes on the wealthy.
cpwill -actually A) seniors aren't effected by any plan to reform those two entitlements and B) a plurality of seniors poll supporting the Ryan Plan over the Obama Plan.
FD-I don't know a single senior who supports the Ryan plan. After the enormous failure of GWB's Part D plan, senior want nothing to do with another voucher system. They got taken in once; they aren't interested in doing it again.
FD- The younger voters are upset that educational assistance when on the chopping block while refusing to raise taxes on the wealthy.
Cpwill - of course they are. our idiotic notion that everyone needs to go to college has resulted in my generation receiving little to no actual education in return for which we are saddled with massive student debts. THEN, we graduate (if we graduate), only to find that unemployment for our age bracket in the Obama Economy is around 15-25%. Underemployment is far higher than that and suddenly your studies in feminist theory and film don't seem as guaranteed to enable you to pay those loans back as easily as your guidance counselor seemed to have suggested.
FD - I've always felt educational loans should be larger for needed professions and smaller for those who are going into fields that are not needed
FD - There are a lot of Hispanic children born in the US to illegal immigrants that are now over age 18 and they are upset that that the GOP has blocked all legislation that would legal to their relatives be able to make their status legal and to have the protections most workers in America enjoy.
cpwill - that may be true, but the GOP is on the general side of the populace when it comes to immigration.
Not for long if projections about the growth of the Hispanic population come true
FD - The unemployed are upset that the GOP has tried to block programs to help them retrain and programs to create jobs
cpwill - to the contrary, the GOP in the House has passed numerous measures that would have created jobs, that have then gone on to die in the Senate. Democrats, by contrast, seem more interested in measures that constrain job growth.
FD - thus far the GOP seems to be trying to sell trickle-down economics and failed GWB policies. These ideas are what got us into this mess - not what will get us out of this mess
FD - A whole lot of uninsured people are angry that the GOP blocked a public option for healthcare.
cpwill - doubtful. people that are uninsured and can't get insurance generally qualify for Medicaid, which is a public option.
FD - you are woefully out of touch with just how poor someone must be to qualify for Medicaid. The working poor don't qualify - they have to buy a healthcare plan.
FD - People are angry that Americans pay far more for medications than residents of other countries do
cpwill - depending on how you count (do you consider unavailability of care a "cost"? how about time spent waiting?).
FD - have you seen healthcare delivery in a country that has universal, single payer healthcare? I have lived abroad thanks to my husband being in the USAF. People don't wait for months to get MRIs, CTs or most surgeries. Sick people normally get seen the same day as they do here. Home health care and medical equipment is easier to get there than in the US. Emergent care is readily available. Emergency surgery is the same as here. There are no 'death panels'. Preventive care is head and shoulders above the US standards and training on healthy lifestyles is far better. 95% of what the GOP was saying would happen with a single payer system was pure BS.
..........cpwill - but certainly we pay too much - which is why we should put into place the reforms that have been proven to reduce costs.
FD -Other first world countries pay less per capita and have better healthcare outcomes. How? Single payer, universal healthcare. They have proven this works as a cost containment measure so maybe the US should give this a try.